The Rogan phenomenon

The following article tries to analyse the amazing audience appeal of Joe Rogan. I also report initially below some comments by a fellow psychologist which also analyse Rogan:

“You pointed out to me that Malcom Turnbull identified with conservatives but was psychologically a lefty. Joe Rogan is the opposite, he identifies as a liberal but psychologically he is conservative/libertarian.

Before you pointed out the reason for Malcom Turnbull’s psychological incongruence, I could not understand it. But since then I have noticed similar psycho-political incongruence in many people. Many are not aware of the true psychology of the political left, right, conservative, libertarian,… and are barely conscious of their own values and personality inclinations, and so many misidentify themselves as being left or right when they are in fact the other.

Although Joe Rogan claims to be a lefty (US liberal) he is disliked by the left because he is masculine, is weight trained and practices martial arts and archery, he hunts and kills game, he believes in individual freedom and accountability, he believes people should be free to pursue their own passions, and be free to defend themselves.

Politically he may call himself a liberal, but psychologically he is a conservative/libertarian, and he has not realised it. Lefties notice it though. That is why they dislike him.

He chooses all sorts of people to interview, from left and right, religious, atheists, politicians, scientists, sports people, martial artists, comedians, outdoorsmen, inventors and innovators, criminals,… etc, etc.

He is a bit of a chameleon, reflecting the character of his guests, so he draws them out to be themselves. And the long chats which go for 2 or 3 hours are mostly very relaxed and casual, so the subject matter gets explored very gently and thoroughly, and the listener gets to understand the topic.

Naturally some of his guests are not interesting at all, but some are very interesting

JOE ROGAN HAS AMASSED one of the largest and most influential media platforms in U.S. politics, if not the single most influential. The value of his program was quantified in May when the streaming service Spotify paid a reported $100 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast his podcast.

As one illustrative example of his reach, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared on Rogan’s program six days ago, and the episode has already been viewed more than 5 million times on YouTube alone. The first time Snowden appeared on his program was last October, and that episode, just on YouTube, has more than 16 million views. To put that in perspective: The top-rated cable news programs are the Fox News shows hosted by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, and they average between 4 to 5 million viewers, or one-fourth the number of views Rogan’s discussion with Snowden generated.

Rogan is rarely discussed in mainstream political and media circles, which raises its own questions. Why does someone who packs such a big punch in terms of audience size and influence receive so much less media attention than, say, cable news hosts with audience sizes far smaller than his? Presidential candidates certainly recognize Rogan’s importance: All of the major Democratic candidates, according to him, requested to appear on his show. (The only ones he invited on were Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Andrew Yang.)

Rogan was in the news this week after President Donald Trump favorably responded to a guest’s suggestion that Rogan host a four-hour, sit-down presidential debate between the two candidates. The mere suggestion that someone like Rogan could host as prestigious and high-minded an event as a presidential debate prompted condescending scorn from establishment media precincts.

Prior to that, one of the few times Rogan was discussed in mainstream political circles was when outrage among establishment Democrats ensued after Sanders touted a quasi-endorsement from Rogan. The argument was that Rogan’s views are so repellent, bigoted, and anathema to liberalism that no Democratic candidate should be associated with him (this anger was shared by some of Sanders’ own supporters including, reportedly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).

WHAT IS IT, by the standards of U.S. political and media orthodoxy, that makes Rogan so radioactive? In March, billionaire and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg — who spoke at the 2004 GOP Convention in the middle of the Iraq War and war on terror to urge the reelection of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and who presided over and repeatedly defended the racially disparate “stop and frisk” police practice — endorsed Joe Biden for president, and Biden not only accepted but celebrated the endorsement, praising Bloomberg in the process:

What are the standards that make Michael Bloomberg an acceptable endorsement to tout but not Joe Rogan, given that the billionaire three-term mayor and former Republican has taken far worse positions and done far more damage to far more people than the podcaster could ever dream of doing?

That question is even more compelling when it comes to the Biden/Harris campaign’s touting of the endorsement of former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, widely blamed for the criminally negligent lack of clean drinking water which plagued primarily African American residents of Flint, Michigan, for many years. Not only did the Biden campaign accept Snyder’s endorsement, but they issued a press release trumpeting it:

What makes all of this more confounding is that Rogan is a fairly basic political liberal on almost every issue: He believes in the need for greater social spending for the nation’s poor and working class, opposes war and militarism, favors drug legalization, is adamantly pro-choice and pro-LGBT rights, and generally adheres to liberal orthodoxies on standard political debates. That is why he was so fond of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, and why Andrew Yang — whose signature issue was the universal basic income — was one of the few candidates he deemed worth talking to.

The objections typically raised to Rogan concern his questioning of some of the very recent changes brought about by trans visibility and equality, particularly asking whether it is fair for trans women who have lived their entire lives and entered puberty as biological men to compete against cis women in professional sports (a question also asked — and even answered in the negative — by LGBT sports pioneer Martina Navratilova, among many others), and whether young children are emotionally and psychologically equipped to make permanent choices about gender reassignment therapies and gender dysphoria.

If embracing and never questioning the full panoply of trans advocacy is a prerequisite to being permitted in decent society, I seriously doubt many prominent Democratic politicians will pass that test (even Kamala Harris, from San Francisco and the very blue state of California, has a very mixed record on trans rights). Moreover, though polling data is sparse, the data that is available show that there is still much work to do in this area: Only a small minority of Americans believe it is fair to allow trans women to participate in female professional sports.

If the standard is that anyone who even entertains debates over the maximalist and most controversial questions in this very new and evolving social movement is to be cast out as radioactive, liberalism and the Democratic Party will be a very small group. It will also have to proceed without the vast majority of political leaders whom they currently follow. Even on this issue of trans rights, Rogan’s views are in accord with the standard Democratic Party view: He advocates full legal protection and dignity for the right of trans people to live with their gender respected.

The other critique centers on Rogan’s willingness to invite on his show various pundits with far-right views. That’s a bizarre criticism of someone who purposely hosts a program designed to foster dialogue with people across the political spectrum. After all, if one employs the blatantly irrational tactic of attributing to Rogan the views of all his guests, he would be simultaneously everything and nothing.

But again, this is a standard which few if any Democratic Party leaders could meet. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders all went on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show, while Rep. Adam Schiff has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s program. Speaking with people with differing views is called politics and journalism, and if one is decreed radioactive for interacting with people with bad views, few will survive that standard. (Liberals also point to the fact that Rogan said he could not vote for Biden over Trump, but that was not on ideological grounds but based on the same narrative that Democratic political and media elites spent all of last year disseminating: namely, that Biden’s cognitive decline makes him unfit for the job.)

While Rogan is politically liberal, he is — argues former Obama 2008 campaign strategist and Rogan listener Shant Mesrobian — culturally conservative, by which he does not mean that Rogan holds conservative views on social issues (again, he is pro-choice and pro-LGBT rights). He means that Rogan exudes culturally conservative signals: He likes MMA fighting, makes crude jokes, hunts, and just generally fails to speak in the lingo of the professional managerial class and coastal elites. And it is those cultural standards, rather than political ones, that make Rogan anathema to elite liberal culture because, Mesrobian argued in a viral Twitter thread, liberals care far more about proper culture signaling than they do about the much harder and more consequential work of actual politics.

As Rogan’s platform grows, it is worthwhile to understand his appeal, his audience, and what he is doing that is new and different to attract such a large following. But it is also very worth examining the reaction to him by the political and media class because in that reaction, one finds many revealing attributes about how they think, what they value, and the priorities that they actually venerate.

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Innocent Until Proven a Trump Supporter

During a BLM “peaceful protest” in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 30 (over George Floyd’s dying of a heart attack while in police custody in Minneapolis), James Scurlock was peacefully protesting by breaking into an architecture firm — hoisting an office chair and hurling it into two computer monitors, then ripping a phone from a desk and throwing it against the wall, as his friend shattered another monitor — all of which was captured on video.

Nearby, Jake Gardner, an Iraq War veteran and Trump supporter, was keeping watch over the two bars he owned, The Hive and The Gatsby, aided by his 68-year-old father and a security guard. The peaceful protesters soon made their way to Jake’s bar, where they hurled a street sign through The Hive’s plate-glass window. He and his father rushed outside to prevent the peaceful protesters from storming his bar.

Scurlock’s friend, catching his wind after smashing computer monitors, knocked Gardner’s father to the ground. (It’s on tape.) Or as CNN’s Madeline Holcombe put it: “An unidentified man can be seen pushing Gardner’s father.” Gardner rushed to help his father, then backed away toward the bar, lifting his shirt to show the protesters he was armed, and telling them to move along. Again, it’s all on tape. Murmurings can be heard from the crowd: “That (expletive) got a gun” and “It’s not worth it (expletive) you stu–…”

At that point, peaceful protester Alayna Melendez leapt on Gardner from behind (not subscribers to the Marquess of Queensberry rules, these peaceful protesters), knocking him down and into the street, whereupon yet another peaceful protester jumped on top of Gardner, who fired two warning shots in the air, scattering his first two assailants. Again: all on tape.

Three seconds later, as Gardner was trying to get up, Scurlock jumped on him from behind and put him in a chokehold — which I believe is considered definitive proof of intentional murder when performed by a police officer. In videos, Gardner can be heard yelling, “Get off me! Get off me!”

With his right arm pinned, and Scurlock choking him, Gardner moved the gun to his left hand and shot over his shoulder, hitting Scurlock in the collarbone, killing him.

Or as The New York Times’ Azi Paybarah explained it: “Mr. Gardner got into a fight with one man, James Scurlock, 22. The two scuffled before Mr. Gardner fired a shot that killed him.” They “scuffled.” It brings to mind the Times headline from Nov. 24, 1963: “President Kennedy Dies in Dallas After Scuffle — Albeit at Great Distance — With Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Let’s be fair, though. Maybe Scurlock jumped Gardner, or maybe Gardner jumped Scurlock. Who knows? It’s not like there are 4 million videos of the incident.

Gardner was immediately taken into police custody for questioning and held until 11 p.m. the next night.

The Democratic district attorney, Don Kleine, his chief deputy Brenda Beadle, and all the homicide detectives spent 12 hours that weekend reconstructing the incident with multiple videos. Their unanimous conclusion? That Gardner shot Scurlock in self-defense.

Despite the delusional claims posted on “social media” that Gardner used the N-word — which, as we all know, is grounds for immediate execution by any black person — none of the videos substantiate that. To the contrary, Scurlock’s own friend denied that Gardner said anything racial at all. (Apparently, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.)

At 22, Scurlock already had a rap sheet a mile long, including home invasion, assault and battery, domestic violence — and, of course, he was in the middle of a crime spree that very night. Methamphetamine and cocaine were found in his urine.

But “the community” erupted like COVID in April. Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (bisexual, graduate of a now-defunct college) repeatedly called Gardner a “white supremacist.” Another Nebraska state senator, Kara Eastman (bisexual), called Gardner’s shooting of Spurlock a “cold-blooded murder.”

(Why do I mention their sexual orientations? A lot of the hate toward Gardner seems to come from the transgender community for saying on Facebook that transgenders would be restricted to the unisex bathrooms after a man in a dress attacked a female customer in the ladies’ room.)

Twitter was full of unattractive humans claiming that Gardner was a “white supremacist,” which were dutifully reprinted in local media, such as this one from @nostudavab (Twitter banner: “F*CK TRUMP”):

“Club owner Jake Gardner shot and killed a protestor in Omaha on video, yelling racial slurs. he is openly racist and homophobic. he murdered James Scurlock, he’s proud of it, and he’s not in jail.”

Protesters besieged Kleine’s neighborhood.

Kleine responded to the mob’s demand for “justice” by calling in a black prosecutor, Fred Franklin, to make damn sure the grand jury indicted Gardner — whom Kleine (the elected D.A.) had found to be innocent. As he was expected to do, Franklin produced a series of fanciful indictments, including for manslaughter and making a “terroristic threat.” (The “terroristic threat” was Gardner lifting his shirt to show the peaceful protesters that he was armed.)

The special prosecutor’s ALL NEW EVIDENCE THAT BLEW THE OTHER FACTS AWAY was this: The night of the BLM protest, Gardner had posted on Facebook: “Just when you think ‘what else could 2020 throw at me?’ Then you have to pull 48 hours of military style firewatch.”

WHY WAS THIS MAN NOT IMMEDIATELY ARRESTED?

Gardner’s landlord, Frank Vance, immediately evicted The Hive and The Gatsby, and sent an anguished apology letter to Scurlock’s family (“deepest sympathy … the pain and suffering … losing a child to unnecessary violence … apologize for this horrible incident … time to heal … very deepest condolences”).

Gardner was facing 95 years in prison for shooting a career criminal who was choking him, and now he had lost his source of income. So naturally his friends tried to set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for his legal defense.

GoFundMe’s response? They immediately and repeatedly took down the page, based on their clearly stated policy: We don’t like you.

Here’s a thought, GoFundMe: Guaranteeing a fair trial for an individual accused of a crime isn’t the same as defending the thing he’s accused of. That’s the whole point: Gardner wanted to prove that he was innocent. Nope! No fair trial, no fair press, no livelihood, no GoFundMe. No chance.

Meanwhile, the family of the convicted criminal who jumped Gardner has already raised more than a quarter-million dollars on GoFundMe. (Funeral expenses can be costly!)

Poor Jake Gardner didn’t stand a chance against the raging, hate-filled multitude. Even those sworn to uphold the law, like Kleine and Franklin, leapt in with the mob. And a corporation whose business it is to enable people to raise money for just causes such as getting a fair trial refused to do business with him, not unlike the Memphis Woolworth’s treatment of black people in 1960.

Sadly, President Trump never said a word about his polite, cheerful supporter being railroaded in Omaha. Gardner had attended Trump’s inauguration with such high hopes. He had well wishes even for the (can we say “insane”?) protesters he encountered there.

Last weekend, facing death threats and a kangaroo court, and with no means to mount a defense, Gardner killed himself, rather than be killed by the mob waiting for him back in Omaha.

This is the part of the column where I make a clarion call for action. How about civil suits against the monsters in the prosecutor’s office, against the criminal-supporting GoFundMe and the Facebook and Twitter defamation mobs! Maybe a department of justice investigation or FCC action against biased social media companies. Antitrust suits. Boycotts!

I’ve got nothing. The country has gone mad. I always figured the first armed civilian who ever fought back would put an end to the violence exploding all over the country — the violence that police and prosecutors can’t or won’t stop. “We have the guns,” conservatives like to say. In fact, it’s even worse now.

It’s official: You can’t protect yourself. Not even a blameless ex-Marine could defend himself from being choked to death. The D.A. will call in a “special” prosecutor to throw you to the wolves, and they’ll both be praised for railroading an innocent man in the Omaha World Herald, while the “elite” media defame you.

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History Has Been Thrust Upon Us!

How did we come to such Orwellian times? As I watch the insanity swirling around us I couldn’t help but think of this quote from the Lord of the Rings.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

The title of this post, “History Has Been Thrust Upon Us!” was taken from an article by Ray DiLorenzo in the Canada Free Press:on August 29, 2020 entitled, What If Democrats Lose?, saying:

If the Democrats lose this election, it is not difficult to imagine that they will go nuts, slash out at anything that moves in the wrong direction. The mobs are sufficiently riled and waiting for orders. To partly paraphrase Victor Davis Hansen: The Democrats have made a Devil’s bargain.

Marxists under Sanders provide the anarchy and chaos while Democrats watch their cities burn, having agreed to do almost nothing. They will keep COVID-19 alive as long as possible to keep the economy down. Never mind the human toll.

When Democrats win, and at the time they were convinced they would win, Sanders will halt the rioting, having delivered a destroyed middle class, a badly wounded America. The Democrats will take the credit, looking like peacemakers. Sanders will then demand payment, a socialist America ready to be delivered to the globalists. And he will get it.

The left has upended all that’s held inviolable by Americans. Americans believe we have the right to speak our minds, run our businesses, eat at a restaurant, walk the streets and enjoy our homes and families in safety, without being physically attacked, or murdered, by out of control mobs. That used to be known as a crime, now it’s freedom of expression. How Orwellian is that?

Crime is Free Speech and Self Defense is Crime!

These mobs aren’t spontaneous. They’re mobs that have been organized all over the nation. Criminals who are not only encouraged, but supported by politicians. Elected leaders who all swore oaths to protect and defend the Constitution, which means protecting the citizens who voted them in……and they are not doing either. In point of fact, they’re doing everything in their power to destroy the American culture, the American identity, the American economy, the President of the United States and the Constitution. That used to be called treason. Imagine that!

Members of the U.S. Congress can’t even leave the White House without being attacked by a mob.

Sen. Rand Paul and his wife Kelly, attacked by an angry mob as they left the White House Thursday night, on Friday credited police with saving their lives. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he took one look at the mob awaiting Republican guests of President Trump, and became “very worried.”

Who’s behind all this? In this case the D.C. Mayor must share in the responsibility to a large extent. She, in point of fact, had to allow this group to gather. All this insanity and violence is clearly an organized criminal effort masquerading as political expression, and they believe this isn’t the end, it’s the beginning.

Rand Paul says:

My feeling is there is interstate criminal traffic being paid for across state lines, but you won’t know it unless you arrest them. Otherwise you just think oh these are just some normal hoodlums from a big city. I promise you that at least some of these members and people who attacked us were not from D.C.
They flew here on a plane, they’ve all got fresh new clothes, and they were paid to be here. It is a crime to do that and it needs to be traced. The FBI needs to investigate. But the only way you can do it is you have to arrest people. And usually we say ‘oh, well, you didn’t get hurt, so we’re not going to arrest them.’

They were inciting a riot, and they would have killed us had the police not been there. They all need to be arrested, and I’m not saying forever, but they need to be arrested, questioned, they need to say where you’re staying, and the bills need to be subpoenaed by a judge, to say ‘who paid for your bill, how did you get here on a plane and staying in a fancy hotel, and yet you’re acting like a criminal.’

Something’s going on here and it’s much bigger than people think. But the bottom line is, we can’t let the United States become Portland and that’s what my fear is…

Well, fear is what the left is banking on to win the election. Kamala Harris and the Democrat party threaten America with more violence if she and Biden aren’t elected saying:

You think the mayhem in Minneapolis was bad? You think it was bad in Portland? In Seattle? Chicago? New York? How about Denver? Atlanta? Philadelphia? Milwaukee? Washington, D.C.? How about that nice little Kenosha over there? If you think those were bad, just wait for what happens if you do something stupid in November.

Cities are being destroyed, people’s lives are being destroyed, the economy of these cities are crumbling from all this insane violence. Violence that’s not only being condoned by local and state authorities, they’re supporting this criminal behavior by refusing to enforce the law, and even refusing to charge those arrested by the police for the crimes they’re committing.

Police departments they’re trying to defund! Police, leaving their citizens at the mercy of criminals, rapists, thieves, brutes and barbarians. Police who are being deliberately targeted by these barbarians as a result of their complicity in all this criminal activity. All the while charging as criminals those who are defending themselves against these monsters.

Four in Five Black Americans Want Same or More Cop Presence in Neighborhood

Seattle Police Chief Reacts to City Council Voting to Slash Pay Within SPD

But it’s not just the violence. The states have imposed insane and irrational mandates on the entire nation over this over reaction to the latest coronavirus scare mongering, none of their predictions have been valid, and for good reason, see the links below. The entire nation is facing massive economic harm as a result. People have lost businesses! Businesses that will never reopen.

Employees have lost their jobs and are going broke, many losing houses or behind on their rent and facing eviction.
WSJ: Next round of layoffs permanent…

Not everyone furloughed will be put back on payroll…
Fights are breaking out over wearing masks in spite of the fact it’s known the masks don’t work and in fact, are unhealthy.
Masks Are Neither Effective Nor Safe: A Summary Of The Science

The media will surely not tell the truth about the end of COVID during the election

Here’s the Shockingly Small Number of People Who Died From Only the Coronavirus

Oops: It Looks Like the Vast Majority of Positive COVID Results Should Have Been Negative

As a history buff I intellectually understood how all this could overtake a society. But reality is a shocker as I see it actually unfolding right in front of my eyes, in America! I now truly understand how dictators take over a country using propaganda and fear. How easy it is to turn citizens against one another, in order to take power when everything has fallen apart.

The consequences of these lockdowns has been devastating to the nation’s health. Suicides, untreated afflictions that’s ended up costing lives. Governor DeWine of Ohio has an impeachment issue but says he’s not focusing on that according to a spokesman! He’s focusing on saving lives and creating jobs! Really? How Orwellian is that? Since virtually everything he’s done has the opposite effect, and it doesn’t take a degree in medicine or economics to understand that.

This coronavirus scare mongering “has been a godsend to the oligarchs, who are licking their chops as one small business after another fails, leaving Americans with no choice but to spend whatever money they have with corporate behemoths.”

We need to define this reality as it is, and not how these insane politicians and their acolyte conspirators in the media define it. If we want clarity, we need definition because that’s what leads to clarity. Clarity then leads to understanding. Understanding leads to good decision making. And if we want harmony, it will take good decision making.

Truth is the sublime convergence of history and reality. History has a foundation and a context. What we’re told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on in reality. If what’s presented to us fails in either of those categories, it’s wrong. Then all we have to do is develop the intellectual response to explain why it’s wrong.

We simply can’t escape the fact that “history has been thrust upon us. We will either be a witness to a greater America or the greatest catastrophe this nation and the world has ever experienced. Without America, there will be no where else to go”, and now it’s time to “decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

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A multitude of challenges to reason

I know, I know – the only things that matter right now are the election and filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Certainly nothing matters more, but other things matter and the public can’t afford to take its eyes off all of them. The fight against Democrats is a multi-front battle, and every front must be minded and tended, always.

Sometimes fronts that were everything a minute ago fade into oblivion because of the hysteria created to manipulate the public. We need to remember to stay focused amid the distractions.

Remember the post office? It was “THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER!!!” just a few weeks ago, now you never hear about it. Democrats scrambled to come back to Washington to vote on a bailout in order to “save our democracy” from the evil President Trump. It went nowhere in the Senate and Democrats are no longer holding breathless hearings on it. Late-night comics have stopped praising this tax dollar black hole and cable news panels have ceased clutching their pearls over the prospect of the election being “stolen” by stamps. What happened?

Democrats put on their show, knowing it was garbage, it served its purpose and they’ve moved on; it also helps that they had activist state courts change voting laws in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan to make fraud more likely. Postmarks are no longer necessary, deadlines have been arbitrarily extended, and anyone can “collect” ballots on behalf of non-family members. The election runs risk of being stolen in mail, alright, but it’s by Democrats so it doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile, the president orders an end to the racist indoctrination of federal employees, couched under the banner of “inclusion,” called critical race theory. Why the federal government was shoveling money to a bunch of leftists to come in and call everyone a racist while holding segregated events is something that not a single liberal journalist bothered to find curious enough to investigate.

That the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was plowing ahead with their seminar anyway, defying the president’s executive order was also of no concern to the media. The liberal establishment media reported breathlessly about the order, but they largely ignored its defiance by the CDC. Does the president secretly work for the CDC and not the other way around?

It was eventually cancelled, after the Director of the Office of Management and Budget got personally involved. Shouldn’t open insubordination be news? Nope, not when it’s in service to the liberal agenda.

Another tentacle of the government, the Orwellian Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is attempting to sue its way to possibly creating for itself the power to undermine all private sector loans. Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? It’s true.

A friend of mine, former congressman and long-ago colleague when we were at the Heritage Foundation together, Ernest Istook, wrote this week about how the CFPB is suing debt collectors to change the terms of student loans they’ve purchased that went delinquent. As a student debtor (still) myself, and someone who would not have been able to attend college without them, this is an issue I follow.

Istook writes of how the CFPB’s actions could threaten the entire private student loan industry. How? The “secondary market is the key to making loans available, not only for students but also for home and car buyers, for consumer goods, and for credit cards that make everyday transactions work smoothly. Purchasing loans from original lenders expands the availability of credit.”

In English, lenders lend money, then sell those loans to others for a profit less than they would get should the entire term of the loan pass and be paid off on time, but a profit nonetheless. This frees up more money for primary lenders to lend out to more people. If the primary lenders can’t sell their loans, they’ll have less money to lend, and fewer people get loans. If the terms of those loans, which we borrowers agreed to, can be changed to make them unfavorable to hold (as the CFBP is trying to impose), then who’s going to buy them? If they aren’t bought, the primary lenders have less to lend. The whole system could tailspin and leave the federal government in the game of student loans.

The whole thing is a mess, an unnecessary one. This can only happen in a government so big one tentacle has no idea what the other tentacles are doing.

All of these things, and many, many more, are happening simultaneously. None are as romantic or headline-grabbing as the election or the Supreme Court fight, but they’re all important in their own way. Conservatives have to guard against attempts to knock down whole sections of the walls guarding liberty, but they also need to fight against the attempts to chip away pieces too. Each piece lost, big or small, is unlikely to be recaptured once gone.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American “liberals” often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America’s educational system — particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if “liberals” had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. Email me (John Ray) here.
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