Victor Davis Hanson
HOW AMERICA BECAME LA-LA LAND
America these last 14 months resembles a dystopia. It is becoming partly the world of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, partly the poet Homer’s land of the Lotus-Eaters.
Nothing seems to be working. And no one in control seems to care.
What explains an America that suddenly no longer works? Here are three reasons.
I’M DONE TALKING
Nance told Reid that he joined the International Legion of Territorial Defense in Ukraine.
"The more I saw of the war going on, the more I thought, I'm done talking.It's time to take action here. So, about a month ago, I joined the international legion here in Ukraine, and I am here to help this country fight, you know, what essentially is a war of extermination."
WHY ARE WOMEN UNHAPPY?
A little over a decade ago, two researchers at Wharton published a paper showing that, despite women’s increasing work and educational opportunities, their self-reported happiness was in steady decline. Back in 1970, women were on average happier than men; they are now less happy than men.
Broadly, since 1970, everyone has gotten more miserable. But the decline in women’s overall happiness has outpaced men’s, and the happiness curve inverted sometime in the early 1990s. The paper also documents increasing anxiety and neuroticism, as well as decreasing social cohesion among women.
The researchers couldn’t come up with a good explanation for their observations. So here’s mine:
Maybe women don’t want to fill traditionally male roles. Is it conceivable (or is it inconceivable) that women have traditionally lived a certain way and derived happiness from certain things not because they were weak and forced into it by men, but because that is what they actually preferred?
UKRAINE AND THE END OF RUSSIA
Russia’s impending doom is a driving force to invading Ukraine.
For centuries, Russia’s rulers have thought Russia’s border regions are indefensible. There are few geographic barriers to block potential invasion, forcing the Russians with their dwindling numbers to attempt to defend massive stretches of territory.
What barriers the Russians do have now — Crimea and the Caucasus come to mind — are only because of the sort of strategic adventurism that Putin is now threatening to Ukraine as a whole.
There is a method to the madness. To paraphrase Catherine the Great, Russia can expand, or Russia can die. Today, that means Russia is going to die.
CHINA’S BEST DAYS ARE BEHIND IT
[Michael Beckley is a Professor of political science at Tufts University. He is gaining international recognition for his insightfulness and meticulous research on global power politics. Here he presents a short synopsis of China’s serious shortcomings]
KEEPING YOUR SANITY WITH TIME WELL SPENT
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. - TS Eliot, Burnt Norton
Time is a continuous, objectively measurable forward movement. We measure it with the rotation of the earth, the orbit of the earth about the sun, and the tilt of her axis relative to that sun as we make our way about it, seen through the changing seasons.
While the mechanics of time in a basic way are well understood, our experience of time and our relationship to time is complex, and can hold the key to our experience of life itself.
Phil Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus of Stanford and author of "The Time Cure describes 6 different time orientations. Our happiness is dependent to a large degree on our relationship to these 6 different time orientations (you can take the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory here).
SKYE’S LINKS 04/14/22
Now we know why Elon refused his offered Twitter board seat, as it required him to agree not to acquire more than a total of 14.9% of Twitter stock. Today (4/14) he made an offer to buy 100% of Twitter stock and turn it into his own private company. Can you imagine how catatonic this is making Twitter’s army of snowflake fascists who are paid big bucks to ban conservatives? Goodbye to them!
Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter, Take It Private
Michigan Militia alleged kidnapping conspiracy case collapses:
Welcome to the new dark ages - where math is racist:
THE DECISIVE MOMENT IN UKRAINE
“FREEDOM MUST BE ARMED BETTER THAN TYRANNY” --Volodymyr Zelensky
The relatively brief but bloody war in Ukraine is entering its fourth and possibly decisive phase.For those of us born after World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Upon its outcome rests the future of European stability and prosperity.
The Russian military—revealed as inept at tactics, unimaginative in operational design, obtuse in strategy, and incompetent at basic logistics and maintenance—can do only two things well: vomit out massive amounts of firepower and brutalize civilians.
Putin and his senior advisers, as stewards of a military that cannot adequately care for its wounded and that abandons its dead, don’t care about the human price they are paying. And so Putin will order offensives that, if confronted by a well-resourced Ukrainian foe, can effectively destroy his own army.
The challenge for the West is to ensure that this is its fate.
UKRAINE HAS JOINED NATO WHETHER RUSSIA LIKES IT OR NOT
Last Thursday (4/07), the NATO foreign ministers met in an emergency session about Russia’s increasingly horrific and atrocity-filled invasion of Ukraine. However, unlike most NATO meetings, this one was substantive. The main issue on the table was weaponry. Quantity, quality, and purpose were all concerns. To date, the weaponry supplied to Ukraine has been defensive.
No more. Game-changing weapons began to flow to Ukraine immediately after the meeting.
Further, the attendees were not only NATO nations; there were also observers present: the European Union, Sweden, Finland, Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine. If Putin was afraid of being surrounded before, he should take a quick look at his map now.
A very insightful statement came from Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba: “I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair. You give us weapons, we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine.”
All of the actions taken by NATO countries indicate they have agreed to Mr. Kuleba’s deal.
TO SECURE THE BORDER, TEXAS GOV GREG ABBOTT SHOULD SHUT IT DOWN
AMERICA IS OUR COUNTRY NOT THEIRS
Title 42 is the last remaining tool the federal government has to control record-high levels of illegal immigration. Every other policy the Trump administration implemented to secure the border has been rescinded or neutered by Biden, and on May 23, Title 42 will be gone too.
What’s coming, in other words, is a border surge of historic and almost unimaginable proportions, and it is happening as a direct result of Biden’s policy choices. The crisis about to unfold is 100 percent avoidable, and 100 percent Biden’s fault.
If Abbott were serious about securing the border, he wouldn’t announce a plan to transport migrants to Washington but a plan to take them back to Mexico -- immediamente. Here’s how he can.
RUSSIA IS A FAKE POWER
Winston Churchill famously called Russia "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." A more accurate description of the current Russian Federation is a forgery wrapped in a deception inside a lie.
Numerous analysts have focused on Moscow’s campaign of disinformation to undermine the West, but they have barely noticed that the most important subject of disinformation is Russia itself. Moscow has a long record of deceiving Westerners and depicting its empire as invincible.
In a previous imperial incarnation, Soviet communism and socialist internationalism were supposed to ensure salvation for all humanity. Until, that is, they were exposed as a fraud. Today’s Russia has created an image of great power status, economic strength, and military power that is rapidly unraveling in Ukraine. This is revealing that the Russian state structure itself stands on rotting foundations.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY KNOWING WHAT MATTERS TO YOU
Changing behavior, learning new skills, overcoming personal limitations, all take consciousness, time and willpower.
Willpower works like a muscle: it strengthens with use over time, but it also takes energy. When our reserves get depleted – through fatigue, hunger, or overuse – it can weaken. But what if we have to do things anyway?
I think we’ve all been there at some point, and somehow we rise to the occasion. How can this be when our willpower is spent? What makes the difference?
What it all comes down to is that we care enough. Big things can happen when something matters enough to us.
THE NIHILIST OMELETTE OF THE LEFT
The last 14 months have offered one of the rare occasions in recent American history when the hard Left has operated all the levers of federal government. The presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the permanent bureaucratic state are all in progressive hands.
And the result is a disaster that is uniting Americans in their revulsion of elitists whose crazy ideas are tearing apart the fabric of the country.
In pursuit of its nihilist utopian omelet, the Left cares little about the millions of middle-class Americans it must break to make it.
The result is an unmitigated disaster that not only has tarred the Democrat Party, corrupted once-revered agencies, and alienated half the country from our cultural institutions, but now endangers the very health and security of the United States.
SKYE’S LINKS 04/07/22
No doubt about it – The Babylon Bee is the absolute best satire site on the Internet, just see the above. But this is a real BB news story:
Free speech absolutist Elon Musk buys largest chunk of Twitter stock, and the Woke are freaking out:
Liberals Rattled After Elon Musk Joins Twitter Board.
Or as The Babylon Bee reports it:
[Note by Jack – this is Skye’s best yet – you’ve got to read it entire!]
PROOF FROM THE WHITE HOUSE THAT BIDENS PRESIDENCY IS OVER
In fact, it left me with an admittedly wild theory about how Obama may intend to fix things: Obama’s aiming to get back into the Oval Office. Here’s how he can do it, without violating the 22nd Amendment. There are three steps to return Obama to the presidency:
THE MORAL COLLAPSE OF MITT ROMNEY
Mitt Romney is thoroughly damaged by Trump derangement. This has been evident for a long time over the last four years, but his vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson is a bridge too far.
For a man of the Mormon faith to accept a judge who is perennially partial to purveyors of child pornography is incomprehensible. How does a man with five sons and twenty-four grandchildren suffer from the same Woke blind spot as Judge Jackson?
Romney's purported religious faith must be fake; if it were real and true, he would be unable to vote to confirm Jackson.
A RED TSUNAMI NEEDS AN AMERICA FIRST PLAN
America has had enough of the disastrous leftist policies of the Biden Administration. We must return to America First policies.
After American voters clean Biden’s Democrat henchmen out of the United States House of Representatives in November’s elections, they will want to see action on the part of incoming Republicans.
It isn’t enough for Republicans to remind voters that Democrats have lost their soul as a party. Republicans must have an affirmative, positive platform that can be implemented. The plan must enact real policy changes while rolling back Biden’s harmful initiatives.
We need an America First Plan, a new contract with America. Our America First Plan must contain three sections: a brief assertion of positive policy initiatives—with legislation ready to go, a plan of how to achieve the objectives, and a list of the oversight actions that Republicans will take when we control committees.
“OK, GROOMER”
The spectacle of America’s cultural elite uniting to defend the propriety of child porn in school libraries, insisting that a gender ideology they had not even heard about until seven years ago must be taught to seven-year-olds, and a presidential administration publicly celebrating the breast amputation, genital mutilation, and sterilization of autistic children, should be utterly appalling to anyone with a shred of human decency.
This all has led some on the Right to finally try to do what the Left always does: coin a novel political epithet.
You’ve heard the catch-all dismissal insult of young know-nothings of any advocacy of normality by older people – “OK, Boomer”? Well, how about we turn some tables with a catch-all dismissal of what the Left is trying to do with our children – “OK, Groomer”?
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY KNOWING HOW TO WORRY EFFECTIVELY
Anticipating events to come so that we can take effective action is invaluable. But worry is a different animal. Worrying is ruminating about the future. In the same way that we can get stuck and helpless in painful memories from the past, worry is a passive, helpless stance in relation to events that may happen in the future; and it drains us of the energy and spirit to act effectively where we can.
So let’s take a step beyond Bob Marley’s advice to just “be happy” (while that’s a good first step!) and talk about how to take effective action when worrying.
BIDEN WAS RIGHT – PUTIN MUST BE DEFEATED
President Biden closed his speech in Warsaw March 26 with a ringing denunciation of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said, setting off a firestorm of criticism from around the world.
Well, it’s simply off the wall to say that calling for regime change in Russia is inappropriate. Putin has not merely called for regime change in Ukraine, he has launched a full-scale invasion and repeatedly sent squads of assassins to murder Ukraine’s elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Putin has stated that he wants to restore the Russian and Soviet empires; and if he thinks he can get away with it, he’ll likely continue in that project. He therefore cannot be appeased. Each successful aggression leads to yet a more offensive one.
If he succeeds in conquering Ukraine, he will go for more, because his position will be stronger and the West — with Ukraine’s forces neutralized — will be weaker, and because he will have seen, once again, that the West is unwilling to fight.
So Biden spoke the truth: For the sake of world peace, Putin cannot be allowed to remain in power.
SKYE’S LINKS 03/31/22
Is this a Father-to-Son lecture between Senator Joe and Hunter? Guess the boy never listened – or knew the Dad was just doing his political grandstanding. So they went into the corruption business together – and now the piper is being paid.
Hunter Biden Dam About To Burst? WaPo, CNN Go Scorched Earth Over 'Laptop From Hell'
Bottom line: I don't think that this is merely rats deserting a sinking ship; I suspect that Xiden's puppeteers have decided that Sloppy Joe has got to go, and go before the midterms wipe out their control of Congress. Read on to see what just happened that proves this.
PUTIN REAPS A BITTER HARVEST IN UKRAINE
Thousands of Russian corpses litter Ukraine
When Russia invaded Ukraine, it was widely believed to have expected an easy victory over its neighbor.
But so far, Russia has little to show for what it has called its “special military operation.” Just over a month into the war, Moscow is facing unintended consequences of its aggression in Ukraine, ranging from high casualties among its troops to economic ruin for years to come.
Here are five of them, showing how Putin is reaping a poisonously bitter harvest in Ukraine.
THE EMBARRASSMENT OF BEING A DEMOCRAT ISN’T IMPROVING, IT’S GETTING WORSE
A year ago, were barely 2 months into the Harris/Biden administration and my Dem friends were getting a bit embarrassed about the leadership they had helped foist on the country.
My naïve friends had bought into the propaganda that all of the turmoil in Washington was because of Donald Trump. They voted for a return to normalcy. Only two months into this administration, they were embarrassed to see that they had been hoodwinked big time.
I predicted to my friends that their embarrassment and that being suffered by so many of their fellow Dems would turn to anger in time for the midterm elections. I was way off. We’re already into Category 3 Hurricane Anger already and rising.
THE SHEER MADNESS OF THE LEFT TODAY
Madness! Madness!" — The Bridge on the River Kwai
With that exclamation, director David Lean ended his epic film about a dutiful but vainglorious British officer who sought to display to his Japanese captors superior British discipline and morale in a prisoner of war camp.As proof of British engineering superiority, he pursues his agendas by ordering his POWs to build for their Japanese captors a strategic bridge that otherwise they could not have built—only to try to destroy the efforts of fellow Allied soldiers sent to blow-up his masterpiece. For the delusional ideologue, reality must never intrude.
So it is now. When the rock of green and woke ideology hits the hard place of reality, sheer madness always results. Here’s how.
THE FIRST TO FALL – COULD THE EURO BEAT THE YEN TO THE CURRENCY GRAVEYARD?
Considering all of Europe's problems the big issue is envisioning a scenario from which an economic renaissance might flow.
To say the Euro-zone banking system deception which has been going on for many years is continuing understates the size of the fraud occurring before our eyes.
For years Japan has been the poster child and living proof that low-interest rates do not guarantee economic growth and prosperity. Going unnoticed by many investors is that the BOJ has been pumping up Japan's stock market by buying into the ETF market.
So which goes first, the euro or the yen. As Ludwig Von Mises wrote; "The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY UNDERSTANDING SELF-ESTEEM
In a study by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, she found that college kids today are more likely to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, while their test scores and hours spent studying are decreasing. Their tendency toward narcissism has also increased over the last 30 years.
Today I want to look at what I consider one of the sources of this trend: the phony self-esteem movement.
Many years ago, when I was young psychology graduate student studying with Nathaniel Branden, I remember him talking one day about how he had been invited to be part of The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, led by California State Assemblyman John Vasconcelos.
Nathaniel couldn’t see why he would be involved in that, since he did not see a role for government in the development of self-esteem. Nonetheless, the Task Force carried on, and created guidelines for building "self-esteem" in a way that Branden would never have advocated. For these guidelines are causing the mess so many college kids are in today.
SKYE’S LINKS 03/24/22
How to hit the ground running; House GOP members train and prepare to launch an onslaught of oversight investigations in 2023:
Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan – The West’s unanimity in punishing Putin are a shocking wakeup call for Xi regarding Taiwan:
China Wins A Little, Loses A Lot From Russia’s War On Ukraine
China's plans for Russia:
GOP Rep. Palmer: China's Intent Is to Make Russia a Vassal State
KETANJI JACKSON IS TOO SUPREMELY STUPID TO BE A SUPREME COURT JUSTICE
Even before Ketanji Brown Jackson's extraordinary statement that she does not know what a woman is, I'd concluded that she's a dim bulb and, really, the judicial equivalent of Kamala Harris: an uninspiring Black woman who's floated effortlessly upward through affirmative action and fealty to leftism.
I'd spent the day mentally writing an attack on her, only to see Tucker Carlson hold forth with an incendiary monologue that attacked her "I'm not a biologist" lunacy, the whole transgender madness that the left is advancing, and the real agenda of remaking society in an ugly way, especially through the death of free speech.
I’m posting it below since it’s over 15 minutes long, so please finish reading me before you watch him, okay? Here we go…
WHEN WILL THE WEST SEE THAT UKRAINE IS WINNING?
One of thousands, died for nothing NATO: Up to 40,000 Russian Troops Killed, Wounded, Taken Prisoner or Missing in Ukraine Wall Street Journal March 23, 2022
When I visited Iraq during the 2007 surge, I discovered that the conventional wisdom in Washington usually lagged the view from the field by two to four weeks. Something similar applies today.
Analysts and commentators have grudgingly declared that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been blocked, and that the war is stalemated. The more likely truth is that the Ukrainians are winning.
What follows is an analysis of how and why they are winning, how and why the Russians are losing, and why both will quite likely continue to do so.
UKRAINE MUST WIN
The war in Ukraine has reached a turning point. The Russian troops that invaded the country from the north, south, and east are now scarcely moving. They have targeted schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and a theater sheltering children, but they are not yet in control even of the places they occupy.
And no wonder: Few Ukrainians are willing to collaborate with the occupiers. The overwhelming majority, more than 90 percent, believe they will defeat them. The Ukrainian army refuses to surrender, even in cities badly damaged by bombardment.
There must be an endgame, a moment when the conflict stops. The Ukrainians, and the democratic powers that support Ukraine, must work toward a goal. That goal should not be a truce, or a muddle, or a decision to maintain some kind of Ukrainian resistance over the next decade. That goal should be a Ukrainian victory. Now.
WHY WOULD ANYBODY BACK PUTIN?
How can anyone of moral decency excuse this?
We’ve been assured repeatedly lately that nobody on the right supports Vlad the Invader and his inept, ill-planned, and ill-fated invasion of Ukraine. Would that it were so… but it isn’t.
In truth, there are numerous people on the right and calling themselves conservative, who are praising, egging on, and making excuses for Putin in his war of conquest against Ukraine. I won’t bother to link to any of them. You’ve no doubt seen them and can provide your own examples.
There seem to be three major elements to the pro-Putin platform. They are all nonsense and here’s why.
RUSSIA HAS A HISTORY OF REVOLUTIONS AND COUPS AFTER LOST WARS
It is well documented that sanctions themselves are not enough to topple authoritarian regimes – look at North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. Yet sanctions have had tremendous impacts on the citizens of those countries – Venezuela experienced a 30% contraction in its economy in 2020, while the consequences of sanctions against North Korea have left most of the country malnourished.
Despite a war fever whipped by Putin's propaganda machine, sanctions can be a stress multiplier on an already vulnerable political system facing military, economic, and social setbacks.
For history has shown that Russian revolutions are not just a result of economic despair; they are also deeply intertwined with heavy Russian losses attributed to war. One only needs to look at the Crimean War in the 1850s, the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, World War I, and the Soviet War in Afghanistan in the 1980s to see how in Ukraine history may be repeating itself.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY BUILDING A GOOD REPUTATION WITH YOURSELF
We pay attention to other people who matter to us, and we tend to ignore those who don’t.
There’s more to this, though: We watch ourselves just like we watch others, and we develop a reputation with ourselves accordingly.
What kind of a person are you, in your own assessment? Do you have values, goals, and priorities? And do you act in accordance with those values, goals, and priorities? Are you the kind of person you would like to be? And if not, what are the barriers to becoming the kind of person you would like to be?
These questions are really important because our own self-reflection has a huge impact on our behavior.
SKYE’S LINKS 03/17/22
This is a photoshop fake picture. Enter “biolabs Ukraine” and you’ll get 9.5 million hits and not a single picture of one
Why did Czar Putin the Terrible invade Ukraine? Here are eight plausible reasons, and all eight may be true. The more that they are true, the less that Vladimir The Would-Be-Great is likely to give up rather than double down:
Why Did Vladimir Putin Invade Ukraine?
I add one more point to the above. I suspect that the CCP is feeding Putin with false information regarding Ukraine with respect to making biosurveilance labs look like biowarfare labs (see Jack’s HFR last Friday on this) and promoting further disinformation that the Ukraine has a nuclear weapons program.
Long overdue; if the; if the Crats lose one House of Congress, will the Republicans have the guts to do this?
UNDER PRESIDENT TRUMP, WE REALLY HAD A WONDERFUL LIFE
In the film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey is able to see what the world would have been like had he never been born.
Everything changes. George wasn’t there to save his younger brother from drowning. And, that in turn, meant that his brother wasn’t there to save the lives of hundreds of men on board a U.S. military troop ship. Everything has a domino effect.
Unfortunately, we get to have a similar experience. We see how one terrible leader imposing his disastrous policies on the American people has negatively impacted every American. We wonder wistfully what the world would look like had President Trump remained in the Oval Office instead of the blindingly incompetent and malevolent Joe Biden.
XI TO PUTIN — THANKS FOR SIBERIA, VLAD!
[TTP veterans may recall these maps from Chinese Siberia from 2006 – which explained why Russian Siberia will be Chinese Siberia in the not-distant future. It provides the historical background for Col. Austin Bay’s account of how Putin has accelerated the Chicom goal of making much of eastern Siberia Chinese once again.]
Before launching his war, Putin, his pals and for that matter, his pretend-allies in China, should have examined the strategic downside of both Russian "non-victory" in Ukraine and even defeat in Ukraine.
But his Chinese pretend-allies did consider these unpalatable alternatives -- and they grinned. Shift from Europe to East Asia and Russia's military failure in Ukraine calls into question the vulnerability of the Kremlin's greatest geostrategic treasure: resource-laden Siberia.
Communist China 2022 is bitten by the same savage imperialist bug as Putin. Beijing intends to restore the Chinese empire. And Beijing covets Siberia.
THE CULMINATION OF RUSSIA’S DEFEAT IN UKRAINE?
[Generals Ryan and Hodges provide their professional assessment of how and why Russia is losing its military attempt to conquer and subjugate Ukraine. Gen. Ryan gives the background to today (3/15), then Gen. Hodges explains why “the next ten days may decide this war.”]
General Ryan:
Experienced Russia observers were saying as early as 2017 that the power of the Russian military was overestimated, it was challenged by overstretch, and was technologically backward. These observers have been proved right.
Russia committed around 55% of their total regular ground forces to their invasion of Ukraine. This was not a calculated risk by the Russians; it was a gamble. A gamble that is failing badly.
As open source, as well as UK and US military briefs, note, the Russian advances in the north, east and south are grinding to a standstill. They have been outfought by the Ukrainians and have not been able to logistically sustain advances on multiple fronts.
Summing up, Russia has not achieved its key military objectives in the north, east or south. It is conducting concurrent offensives in different, disconnected parts of Ukraine. It has committed all the military forces it had for Ukraine on these missions.
AMERICA’S HESITATION IS HEARTBREAKING
The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia. They are supplying thousands of munitions and hopefully doing much else—sharing intelligence, for example—with the intent of killing Russian soldiers.
And because fighting is, as the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said, “a trial of moral and physical forces through the medium of the latter,” we must face a fact: To break the will of Russia and free Ukraine from conquest and subjugation, many Russian soldiers have to flee, surrender, or die, and the more and faster the better.
Yet, when the Ukrainians are willing to spill their blood, seemingly without limit, in a wholly admirable cause, American hesitation is heartbreaking. New Hampshire license plates bear the state motto Live Free or Die. The Ukrainians are acting on that belief, which previous generations of Americans acted upon as well.
KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY TURNING A WISH INTO A TRIUMPH
[Note by Jack Wheeler: I always find Joel’s wisdom valuable, and this week especially so. He explains why, for example, women who fantasize about losing weight end up losing less weight that women who don’t! To learn why and a lot more, read on…]
Have you ever watched the downhill skiers in the Winter Olympics before a race, visualizing the run, moving and swaying their bodies as though they’re on the run itself? They all do this now, because the visualization is a powerfully effective strategy for bringing out their best.
Much is made these days of having a compelling future vision. Picturing yourself on the winner’s block, or with that book published, or that wonderful relationship; imagining a future that you can step into… The pop psychology literature is chock full of advice for seeing yourself having accomplished your goals.
But the pop psychology literature on this is wrong.
NEW ARMY THTRONG
In these days of crisis, CJCS General Mark Milley is making sure our country will be protected from America’s worst dangers, white supremacists and enemies of inclusion and diversity, by New Army Thtrong!