Dec 10 2023

What You Always Have With You

     It feels a bit strange to be writing about this during Advent, but my wandering mind resists being told what to dwell on.

     The Gospel citation below is from John, chapter 12:

     Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.
     Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.
     Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?
     This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.
     Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.

     [John 12:1-8]

     There are several threads running through that passage. The first is the naked revelation of Judas’s hypocrisy. Apparently Judas, along with his willingness to betray Jesus to the Hebrew religious authorities, was avaricious, and would skim from the bag of coins the apostles carried with them. That’s consistent with his betrayal of the Redeemer, who had befriended him, for money.

     But Judas had to put a good face on his criticism: “The money that cost could have helped the poor!” Here is our second point of interest. Regard the unceasing whining from the Left about “inequality,” “social justice,” and “the cruelty of capitalism.” Consider that despite the astonishing expansion of the welfare system over time, we have more “poor” than ever before in American history. (No, they’re not poor as our forebears would have understood it, but let’s leave that for another time.)

     Thomas Mackay had it right:

     …the cause of pauperism is relief. We shall not get rid of pauperism by extending the sphere of State relief…On the contrary, its adoption would increase our pauperism, for as is often said, we can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for.

     Government charity, which by law must be rule-based and therefore uncritical of the recipient, is a mechanism for purchasing “poverty.” The multiplication of the “poor” in response to uncritical charity provides the State with a justification for unending expansion and ever higher exactions from the self-supporting. If you’re not thinking cui bono? at this point, see me after class.

     Here is our third point: Jesus came very close to saying outright that just as it is wrong to ignore the poor – by which He meant those in verified need of necessities, not just designer sneakers or smartphones – it is wrong to obsess over the poor. They will always be with us, no matter how extensive our charitable works. It’s a sad truth of existence under the veil of Time that there will always be people who can’t support themselves, or can’t afford vital medical care, or can’t look adequately after their children. We are permitted to have other priorities apart from feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, et cetera.

     And now we have our fourth point: If you are looking in one direction, you are simultaneously not looking in any other. Once again we face the question “Why do the obsessives want us to join them in their obsession?” In considering his opponents’ dismissal of his thesis about quality – i.e., their flip statement that “quality is just what you like” – Robert M. Pirsig provided the answer:

     Why should Quality be just what you like? Why should “what you like” be “just”? What did “just” mean in this case? When separated out like this for independent examination it became apparent that “just” in this case really didn’t mean a damn thing. It was a purely pejorative term, whose logical contribution to the sentence was nil. Now, with that word removed, the sentence became “Quality is what you like,” and its meaning was entirely changed. It had become an innocuous truism.
     He wondered why that statement had angered him so much in the first place. It had seemed so natural. Why had it taken so long to see that what it really said was “What you like is bad, or at least inconsequential.” What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad, or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? It seemed the quintessence of the squareness he was fighting. Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked” but…but what?…Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others—a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.

     Those others, who want you to do what they like rather than what you like, will strive to the utmost to get you looking in their preferred direction, so you’ll miss what’s happening in any other. While they gesticulate and rant about their pet “need,” their other hand will be deep in your pocket…if it’s not fastening shackles upon you to prevent any departure into realms they seek to shield from your prying eyes.

     Politicians, activists, and sleight-of-hand adepts have a lot in common. And these, too, we will always have with us.

     Have a nice day.

Dec 09 2023

Giveaways

     When a man shows you who he is, believe him. – Maya Angelou

     Among the great weaknesses of the Right is our powerful desire to believe that our opponents are fundamentally just as decent as we are. There’s actually some rationality behind that assumption. If our opponents are not fundamentally decent – that is, if they don’t share our core convictions about good and evil – we have no chance of reasoning with them. As we’re determined to prevail politically with logic and evidence rather than through bloodshed, the assumption is vital to keeping our guns in the closet.

     But the evidence is strong that the Left does not agree with our convictions about good and evil. Now and then we get more of it.

     Quite recently, Pramila Jayapal sought to deflect discussion from HAMAS’s rapes and other brutalizations of Israeli girls. From an open HAMAS supporter, the impulse to dismiss their atrocities might be understandable…but giving in to it indicates a missing moral foundation. Either that, or she’s seriously stupid. And yes, I suppose it could be both, though that leaves her tenure in Congress unexplained.

     A few days later, a New York University law professor tried to justify those rapes as less evil than Israel’s military response:

     It’s difficult to believe someone that morally empty could hold a law professorship at a prominent law school, but this is 2023.

     The most illuminating giveaway of all is a few years old. Regard the little video below: a segment from a “debate” over what European policies should be toward the waves of “refugees” flooding Europe:

     Note that the leftists, Simon Schama and Louise Arbour, scoff at the plague of sexual violence – rape, often gang rape, and often of underage girls – that the “refugees” have inflicted on the women and girls of Europe, and imply that the position of the Right is founded on prudery or “newborn feminism.” Mark Steyn’s riposte devastates them, simply by citing a handful of the known incidents the leftists were determined to dismiss with weak sarcasms.

     But what does it really signify that Arbour and Schama regard violent sexual predation as something they can dismiss with a flip remark? Are these persons to whom you would entrust the care of a young girl? Would you be confident that they would protect her from the sort of vermin Mark Steyn cited? Or might their attitude be “Well, different cultures” or perhaps “Hey, these things happen” – ?

     A man who’s willing to countenance the sacrifice of women’s and young girls’ bodies to debatable “humanitarian” priorities, or for the sake of some political or economic advantage, or perhaps merely to prevail over an ideological opponent, has embraced evil. Arbour and Schama have shed all pretense to the contrary. They have shown us who they are, and we should believe them.

     Good men don’t compromise with evil. They don’t try to reason with evil. They fight evil. They do their utmost to destroy it. The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

Dec 09 2023

Dispatches From The War On Normality

     The guiding principle is only this: If it’s normal and healthful, they hate it and want to destroy it:

     A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by one Denver Public Schools father alleging his two children have been denied their First Amendment rights to have a “straight pride” flag in school may stand a chance in court….

     CBS News Colorado has been following this lawsuit closely, which was first filed back on Nov. 10 by two Washington D.C. lawyers, Mike Yoder and ChadLaVeglia. The lawsuit argues Nathan Feldman, a father of two children attending the K-8 Slavens School in Denver, was denied being able to put up a cisgendered, heterosexual flag at school. He says a “straight pride” flag represents his children’s beliefs and should be allowed on campus in the same way LGBTQ+ flags are allowed.

     You’d think there could be no logical argument against that position. After all, haven’t we committed to the proposition that sodomy, sexual confusion, and miscellaneous perversions are “just another orientation” that deserves toleration? According to the sodomites, the confused, and the miscellaneous perverts, that doesn’t mean we can tolerate heterosexual pride:

     A spokesperson for LGBTQ Colorado sent the following statement in response to the lawsuit:

     A Pride flag is not meant to be exclusive – it is designed to be inclusive. It is meant to draw attention and humanity to people who historically have been considered “illegal”, ostracized, excluded, and for too long quiet victims of discrimination and violence.

     A Straight Pride Flag speaks “us vs them” wherein a Pride flag lifts up an “all of us” dynamic that recognizes the too often quiet and quieted LGBTQ+ community.

     You have to laugh, if only to resist the urge to cry. “Quiet and quieted” – ? These clowns have utterly dominated all discourse for decades. They have legal privileges written into the law. Dare to argue with them, and they crawl all over you, do their best to destroy you. Dare to exclude them from your treehouse and you’re guilty of “discrimination.” Ask Masterpiece Cakeshop proprietor Jack Phillips. Ask the couple that ran Sweet Cakes By Melissa. Ask the proprietors of Memories Pizza.

     (I’m too tired to insert all the links. Look ‘em up.)

     The LGBTQ+ folks don’t want tolerance. They demand dominance.

     Excuse me, Gentle Reader. The steam pouring out of my ears has fogged my reading glasses, such that I can no longer see the keys I’m missing. It’s time to decompress. Back later, I hope.

Dec 08 2023

Delusions And Stability

     Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. — Robert A. Heinlein

     I’m still on the mend, but a little better, thanks for asking. Maybe I’ll be able to speak audibly by New Year’s Day. It’s ambitious, I know, but one must have a goal to strive toward.

     The following graphic was shamelessly stolen from the indefatigable Mike Miles:

     That’s a pretty accurate summary of the resentment many people feel toward Elon Musk. Removing a man’s protective delusions does bad things to his mood. Sometimes it results in bad things being done on a wide scale. Really bad things.

     A lot of common delusions that have proved structurally essential to The Way Things Are have been endangered by recent events. I’m sure you have your favorites, Gentle Reader. Here are a few of mine:

  1. Government keeps secrets for the greater good of the nation.
  2. Most public servants genuinely want to serve the public.
  3. The job of the police is to protect the citizens.
  4. We can all get along if we just try.

     I could go on; the list is a lot longer than you might think. But those will do for starters.

     Those beliefs, which for many years were very widely shared – not quite unanimous, but sufficiently near to it that persons who differed were regarded as cranks – kept the American sociopolitical order from undergoing any convulsive changes. And, as I wrote yesterday, convulsive changes always mean that someone will suffer. Possibly many someones.

     I’ve reached an age at which the avoidance of suffering, to the greatest extent possible consistent with justice, is a major priority. Given recent events, it’s getting mighty difficult. Our delusions are being revealed as such too baldly for most Americans to maintain them.

     When a high enough percentage of Americans have shed those delusions, things will get very spicy. How high is “high enough?” We might soon find out.

***

     No matter how often it’s been said, it bears repeating:

Peace and prosperity are exceptional conditions.

     The extreme prosperity of these United States is unique in human history. Americans are largely unaware of how extreme it is. It came home to me – not as a revelation, but as a much appreciated reminder – just yesterday. At mid-morning, the C.S.O. announced that she “had to” go shopping, and as S.O.s will do after such a declaration, she…went shopping. She came home with, among other things, a five-pound sack of Idaho Russet potatoes.

     I was mildly puzzled. We already had potatoes in-house. Quite a lot of them, in fact. So I did what husbands will do: I asked her why.

     She looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. “For the latkes, of course.”

     Well, it is Chanukkah, and she does make latkes on Chanukkah. But my curiosity remained unsatisfied. “Don’t we have potatoes in quantity?” I said.

     (It was a rhetorical question. I’ve been shuffling that sack of Red Bliss potatoes from here to there for at least a week. The C.S.O. knew, and knew that I knew.)

     “Wrong kind,” she said. “Only Russet potatoes for latkes.”

     Well, one does live and learn. I, being of Irish descent, have always thought that a potato is a potato. But apparently, when you reach a particular degree of culinary erudition, the choice of potato for a given application becomes critical. As I like the C.S.O.’s cooking, I decided not to pursue the matter any further.

     Still… consider the train of events that put those potatoes in her hands:

  • Someone in Idaho had to grow them, of course.
  • He had to reach a marketing agreement with a large-lot shipper.
  • The shipper had to purchase those potatoes and others like them for shipment.
  • He had to contract with a cross-continent shipping service to ship them to Long Island.
  • The supermarket had to choose a price for those potatoes and display them in its Produce section.
  • The C.S.O. had to navigate her 4000-pound vehicle through the hazards of Long Island’s roads to the supermarket.
  • She had to select those potatoes, pay for them, and bring them to the Fortress of Crankitude, where they would be multifariously tortured to become her justly famous latkes.

     That process wearies me out just from thinking about it. But the Ace kicker is this: That five-pound sack of potatoes cost her less than $6.50.

     A lot of people would say that the price was extortionate. For my part, I marvel that it could happen at any price. But it did. And does. And probably will go on doing so…for a while, at least.

     Then I started thinking about the commercial infrastructure that made all those steps from an Idaho farm to here possible. After that, I contemplated the sociopolitical conditions that make possible the commercial infrastructure. After that, I started shaking.

     Given the way things are trending, how much longer can it last?

***

     We are unbelievably rich. There’s nothing to compare with our prosperity anywhere on Earth. There never has been. But it’s not a metaphysically given condition of existence. It’s the consequence of two and a half centuries of peace and sociopolitical stability.

     Too many Americans never think about that indispensable foundation. It’s time to do so, especially as it’s coming apart around us.

     Our foremost delusion, as a people, is that things will always be this way. We think so because our lives are short and we tend to dismiss or discount the reminiscences of our elders. (“You young folks don’t know how lucky you are” — ? Yeah, yeah. Go back to sleep, Grandpa.) But things have only been this way here, and for a relatively brief historical interval at that. What if the foundation is ripped out from under it all, as is threatening to happen today?

     Perhaps we can maintain it all. But the delusion is as important to its maintenance as any of the other components of the foundation. And the delusion is increasingly endangered. Americans are awakening to an unpleasant set of trends.

     Should Thomas Hobbes’s “war of each against all” erupt among us, the C.S.O. won’t be able to sally forth at whim to purchase five pounds of Idaho Russet potatoes. Certainly not for a paltry $6.50.

     Feeling a mite uneasy, Gentle Reader?

Dec 07 2023

Pearl Harbor Day

My father was born in early 1940. My grandfather was a gunner’s mate on a US Navy destroyer. Time at home was scarce, and well apprciated.

And then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on this day in 1941. And my father didn’t see his father for four years. Can anyone reading this imagine that? Even I, a recent military retiree, am used to the one year tours where you come back and see your family (at least as much as Army training allows). To just be…. GONE. For YEARS. And for the US Military, the end of the war didn’t mean you got to go home. We were rebuilding our former allies and keeping the peace, especially the Navy.

And then came Korea. But that’s another story.

If you have a chance to visit the USS Arizona memorial, please do so. I remember going there as a young child and the memory still haunts me to this day.

There’s been a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding whether or not Roosevelt knew the Japanese were going to attack. I don’t know if I believe them. All I know is today, in 1941, led to events that influenced this country is ways that even today show in our actions, both good and bad. It also led to the world seeing just what the American men were made of.

And in all things, remember the sacrifice made by those men.

Dec 07 2023

The Unreasonable

     Clever title, eh? Gets the brain churning, doesn’t it? “The unreasonable who?” “The unreasonable what?” “Porretto’s playing games again, isn’t he?”

     (“Again,” you say? When did I stop?)

     Well, it’s all in a day’s work here at the Fortress of Crankitude, Long Island’s premier shrine to self-indulgent snark over too many glasses of wine. I maintain this site and write these pieces to stimulate thought. One of the most effective stimulants to thought is the antinomy: two propositions both of which appear unquestionably correct, yet which fundamentally contradict one another. To resolve such an opposition can cost a lot of skull sweat.

     Among the triumphs of the American Revolution was the promotion of human reason as the proper tool with which to address government and law. Of course, that was the late Eighteenth Century. If reason ever had a heyday, it was then. Yet a fair number of persons, many of them deemed highly intelligent and erudite, disliked the idea that reason should be the arbiter of what is legitimate in matters of law and government. They argued that tradition, and the structures it had bequeathed us, deserve respect and deference no matter what a reasoned analysis might say about them.

     And even when they were wrong, they were right.

     Tradition has been called “the democracy of the dead.” For us of Twenty-First Century America, where the votes of the dead decide a fair number of elections, that’s a characterization that causes heads to shake. “Why,” many of our contemporaries will say, “should this fetish of people who lived long ago hold sway over us? We know so much better today!”

     There are a number of rejoinders to that sally, but the one I like best is “Do you really?”

     Patience, Gentle Reader. This is the first morning in awhile that I’ve risen from my coffin feeling approximately human. Give me a few hundred words to “rev up.” And another pot of coffee.

***

     There are elements of American law whose legitimacy rests on tradition: “This is the way it’s always been.” A reasoned analysis of the consequences of those laws, measured over the decades, suggests that they have not served society well. The uncritical analyst might say of such a law “Well, then repeal it!” And he’d have an argument. After all, that’s what a reasoned analysis is: an argument.

     But he might be wrong no matter how rigorous his logic.

     Perhaps “wrong” is too strong a word. Perhaps our use of it is part of our problem, the part that creates a seeming antinomy. Perhaps a test case would help us to decide. Let’s consider something that’s been a blight on society, especially our urban areas, for a long time: prostitution.

     Laws against prostitution have done nothing to dampen it. The prostitute’s trade is practiced more widely today than ever before. (They call themselves “sex workers” now, but that’s beside the point.) The illegality of the trade has corrupted police departments and ended the careers of prominent politicians. An utterly bloodless approach to the subject would render an uncompromising verdict: “The law does more damage than good. Repeal it.”

     But an all-or-nothing, pushbutton repeal would have some very unpleasant near-term consequences. Many people would suffer. Not all of them would be prostitutes. The traditionalist would point to those consequences and say “What did I tell you? There’s a reason our forebears outlawed this practice!”

     He’d be wrong in this respect, at least: Our forebears outlawed prostitution largely out of religious conviction. But the consequences he condemned would still be there, making the apostles of pure reason wonder if they hadn’t missed something in their analysis.

     The two great Thomases of reason – Aquinas and Jefferson – both called for stability in the law. Laws, they argued, must not change swiftly. Stability allows the individual to plan with a degree of confidence. If they must change, let it be by degrees, over a period that would permit the citizen to adjust without inducing convulsions in the greater society.

     A swordstroke repeal of the law would destabilize the lives and fortunes of a significant number of people. If the change could be phased in – and I’ll admit that as regards some laws, that is not possible – the negative consequences could be dampened. Some might be eliminated entirely.

     The traditionalist’s argument, while it might not address the analysis of the law in question, has more substance than the rational analyst might care to concede.

***

     Many in the pro-freedom Right have called for Alexandrian solutions to social problems brought about by bad laws. Their motives are laudable. No one can look upon the damage done to our social order by some of our longstanding legal prohibitions and cheerfully say, “It has to be this way.” Even so, there’s always an argument for trying to minimize the damage that would follow from a pushbutton change.

     “This is the way it’s always been” should cause us to think about the negative consequences of too swift and dramatic a change in the law. Perhaps they who erected a bad law didn’t think it through all the way, but as the law acquired longevity, it caused individuals to position themselves and arrange their affairs according to the shadow it casts. Should the light blaze in all at once, what consequences would there be then?

     “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” – Thomas Sowell

Dec 07 2023

Must It Be Said Yet Again?

     Get out of the cities!

     Predators converge on concentrations of prey.
     Predators are especially fond of defenseless prey.
     America’s cities are irreparably hostile to the armed citizen.
     For a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, no more need be said.

     Applause to Matt Bracken for bringing this to general attention.

Dec 07 2023

To Those Who Think The UN Is Worth Something

     Ponder this:

     United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres invoked Article 99 of the U.N. charter on Wednesday for the first time. He cited a “severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza” as the war rages on between Israel and the militant group Hamas….

     Guterres has called for a ceasefire.

     Has Guterres, or anyone else at the UN, had anything to say about HAMAS’s unprovoked attack on Israel and its slaughter of 1400 Israelis, including women and children? What about its use of Israeli hostages as human shields?

     If I were in possession of a single 10 KT nuke and had to choose whether to use it on Washington D.C. or the United Nations Building… I’d use it on the UN Building. Ten kilotons is too small to do a proper job on Gomorrah on the Potomac. Then I’d go shopping for a bigger nuke.

Dec 07 2023

This Wins The Internet For Today

     There are 13 minerals that are essential for human life, and all of them can be found in Wine. Coincidence? I Think Not! — Diogenes Sarcastica

     Applause, Diogenes, you tall, brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning placental mammal, you. But then, others have expressed that sentiment as well:

     “An ancient writer said that, if there were no flowers and moon and beautiful women, he would not want to be born into the world. I might add that, if there were no pen and ink and chess and wine, there was no purpose in being born a man.” – Chang Chao

     And of course, we have this more recent emission:

     “I must learn all there is to know about wine. It has great power. It could protect the health. It could relieve many sorrows…. I must study it thoroughly.” – Fountain

     All true. I’ve researched each of them personally! 😉

Dec 06 2023

A Growing Hunger

     “If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     No, I’m not entirely well, but a plaintive comment by a regular Gentle Reader that he was experiencing “Porretto withdrawal” has – temporarily, at least – restored enough of my energy and determination to write something substantial for him…and for you.

***

     Writers of fiction tend to be a clannish breed. We talk mostly to one another, listen to what others of our kind have to say in preference to commentary from “outsiders,” and strive to seine information about social trends from the patterns we detect…in fiction. What we believe we discern from others’ stories often helps to determine what we’ll write thereafter. It’s been that way for me, at least.

     But the information available that way can have another kind of value. It can point to what’s happening to attitudes in the larger society. After all, people buy the kind of fiction they do because it speaks to their personal needs. I’ve mentioned that before in discussions of heroes and heroism in fiction.

     People need heroes. The explosion of superhero fiction speaks to that rather plainly. Moreover, they want their heroes to be the sort of people they can admire unreservedly. For that reason, the day of the “antihero hero” appears to be just about over.

     But what do we mean by hero these days? Has it changed at all over the years? I’d say so. Time was, a hero could be morally flawed in small to moderate ways as long as he was good in the “big” ways: e.g., protecting innocents’ lives and opposing blatant injustices (as long as it was at little or no cost to him personally). The trend appears to be away from the “gray” hero and back toward the entirely “white” variety.

     But that’s not all. Fictional heroism is moving toward the promotion of persons who perform “extra-judicial justice:” in less academic terms, vigilantes. That sort of hero is guided by his sense of right and wrong, and damn the “official” law and its enforcers if they disagree. Louis Redmond was like that. So was Andrew MacLachlan. And of course, obscure heroes such as Jack Reacher are like that, too.

     But for a long time, heroes of that sort were disfavored. A hero had to “stay within the lines” to earn the plaudits of readers. I sense that that particular constraint has weakened considerably…and that the weakening speaks to a hunger, not specifically for heroes, but for justice.

***

     Justice, to many eyes, is in short supply today. Miscreants have been getting away with outrages that prior generations of Americans would have deemed unthinkable – even impossible. If you’re a regular Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, I’m sure you don’t need a long list of examples. Those outrages have fed the hunger to see justice done, to which contemporary fictional heroes are an answer.

     You cannot have a coherent society in which a high degree of natural justice is not enforced and maintained. At best you’ll have the sort of bifurcated society that existed in the old Soviet Union: an “above-ground” layer sustained and kept peaceful in large measure by an “underground” layer that fills in the gaps; at worst you’ll have utter chaos in which nothing is safe. Cosa Nostras, Yakuzas, and Bratvas arise and prosper because they answer a demand. Sometimes, the demand is for justice.

***

     I’m on this subject today because of an eBook I purchased back when the adventure of digital publishing was just gaining momentum: Carlos G. Cooper’s novel Corps Justice. I hope Mr. Cooper won’t object too strenuously to the following excerpt from that novel. Protagonist Cal Stokes is trying to explain the operating ethic of his company, Stokes Security Inc., to his friend Brian:

     CAL: Are you really so naïve to think that the police can do anything they want? Come on, doc. You’ve seen the shitty things people do in this world.

     BRIAN: I know. I guess I never really thought about it that much until now. It’s like the cops are handcuffed from doing their duty. Reminds me of those times in Iraq when the Rules of Engagement kept my Marines from killing bad guys.

     CAL (nodding): Exactly. If they don’t do things by the book these good cops that don’t get paid squat could lose their jobs. The law’s made it to where police hesitate because they’re worried about getting in trouble.

     BRIAN: Yeah. Last week I saw that some cop was getting sued by a guy who got shot while robbing a bank. The cop shot him AFTER the guy shot one of the tellers and refused to give up. It’s bullshit.

     CAL: Yep. That’s where Corps Justice comes in.

     BRIAN: Explain that.

     CAL: Like I told you before, my Dad lived and breathed the Marine Corps way. It was my fault he got out of the Corps, but you could never take the Corps out of him. That, mixed with his moral sense of right and wrong, made him adopt his motto about Corps Justice.

     BRIAN: So is this Corps Justice like a company credo or something?

     CAL: Kind of. It’s more of an overarching guidance for SSI employees for when they encounter gray areas.

     BRIAN: Is it written somewhere?

     CAL: For obvious reasons we can’t publish it….

CORPS JUSTICE

1. We will protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
2. We will protect the weak and punish the wicked.
3. When the laws of this nation hinder the completion of these duties, our moral compass will guide us to see the mission through.

     For reasons I hope are obvious, Stokes Security would have to be utterly sure that a candidate’s moral compass points true North before bringing him in.

     Now, that’s fiction. There is no Stokes Security Inc., as far as I know. But my God, how well it’s sold! Carlos G. Cooper has tapped the Zeitgeist. People want to see natural justice: the defense of the vulnerable and the punishment of the criminal. That’s how justice has been understood since Hammurabi…but in recent years, “official” justice in America has been wildly at variance from the natural standard.

***

     Fiction can mitigate certain appetites, but it cannot satisfy them completely. We buy fiction to be diverted and entertained, but we live in a real world in which we’ve lately seen many unpleasantly real departures from natural justice. There will be consequences. Indeed, there have already been some. Private parties have stepped up in an increasing number of situations. There will be more of them.

     Of course, the mandarins of “official” justice are displeased by this. They seek to squelch it before it becomes an unquenchable fire. Attempts to prosecute effectuators of natural justice have been much in the news. Kyle Rittenhouse is only the best known.

     It might be wild and erratic. It might be “rough;” it often is. And it might involve as effectuators persons who, in other circumstances, we’d be inclined to disapprove. But for as long as “official” justice falls short of the natural standard, it will survive and flourish. Fiction alone cannot slake the hunger.

     Watch for it.

Dec 05 2023

Assorted

     Yes, Gentle Reader, I’m still pretty sick. The energy isn’t there for more than a few casual shots out the passenger-side window as I drive past the passing scene. But I hate to leave you with nothing to read, and my Co-Conspirators, normally a worthy bunch, appear to have gone mute for the time being. So here goes next to nothing.

***

1. One Of My Favorite Commentators Scores Heavily.

     Seldom have I read anything quite as penetrating as these two paragraphs from Roger Kimball:

     It is curious how people romanticize evil and insanity. The habit, I believe, is born in part of naiveté, or at least inexperience. The college student who prances about in a T-shirt bearing the image of Che Guevara, for example, generally has no idea of what a malignant figure Che was, how treacherous, how cruel, how murderous. He sees only a handsome “freedom fighter” swaddled in the gauze of exotic Latin flamboyance. The grubby reality escapes her entirely. Ditto with respect to Hamas.
     The knotty French philosopher Simone Weil saw deeply into this phenomenon when she observed that “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.” Weil understood the converse as well: “Imaginary good,” she wrote, “is boring, real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Something similar can be said about sanity, what David Hume rightly extolled as “the calm sunshine of the mind.” Madness seems like an adventure only if you do not have to contend with it.

     The entire essay is worth your time. Hie thee hence and read it!

***

2. The War Over The Family.

     There was a fine book on that subject, written some time ago. Yet it is possible that the authors thereof, if asked to envision the current state of the battle, would have scoffed and dismissed it as impossible. Directly attack the family as illegitimate – as actively harmful to its members? C’mon!

     Yet it is so. The activist Left is more hostile to the nuclear family than to any other social phenomenon except Christianity. The family is the original source of moral and ethical guidance. Children derive more of their convictions and attitudes from their upbringing within their families than from any other source. The whole point of the Leftist “youth movement” of the Sixties and Seventies was the Left’s aim to nullify the family’s transmission of values through the generations. Only thus could those values be supplanted by Leftist nostrums.

     Which brings us to the Left’s assaults on America’s traditional holidays, especially Christmas and Thanksgiving:

     If you ask many people what Thanksgiving is about, they will provide an honest and accurate response: family and gratitude. And here we see why some radicals want to sully a unifying and wholesome holiday like Thanksgiving. Doing so taints a family occasion and promotes ingratitude, which helps undermine the American character.
     So it’s easy to see why they’re targeting a holiday centered around the family. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.” Through the sacrament of marriage, men and women learn from one another, and the character of children is formed within the family. These are the bonds that root the individual and offer purpose.
     Families are built around the small moments and the deliberate protection of those moments: of making time to read to children at bedtime and having a standing tradition of sharing a meal together amid the busyness of everyday life. Thanksgiving is naturally a precious occasion and is often a connecting point enveloping multiple generations.
     The attack on gratitude is just as serious. Like forgiveness, gratitude is a choice, not grounded in naiveite or ignorance. Both forgiveness and gratitude require a confronting of wrongdoing, followed by a decision to dwell in the good rather than the bad.

     The steadily advancing secularization of America has created a wide inroad for such attacks. The correlation between assaults on Christianity and assaults on Christmas and Thanksgiving is very nearly perfect.

***

3. Second Amendment Incrementalism: Pros and Cons.

     This article at AmmoLand lays out the pros:

     A major point of disagreement among Second Amendment supporters was how to approach the problem.
     One group claimed anything but full and complete recognition of Second Amendment rights was futile and counter-productive. The argument was: any lesser legislation, moving incrementally toward full Second Amendment rights, would only legitimize infringements on those rights. They were/are the “All or Nothing” group. Some called/call themselves “principled”.
     The other group of Second Amendment supporters argued Second Amendment rights could be restored bit by bit. Pass legislation first, for a permit system. Keep reforming and improving the permit system. Reduce requirements, reduce fees, reduce “gun-free zones”. Keep on incrementally improving the law, until Second Amendment rights were fully restored. They were/are the “Incrementalists”. In the middle 1990’s it was not clear if either approach would be effective.
     Twenty years later, it was clear. Second Amendment Incrementalism worked.

     As it happens, the cons are equally well stated above:

     … any lesser legislation, moving incrementally toward full Second Amendment rights, would only legitimize infringements on those rights.

     To ask for only part of the right set forth by the Second Amendment is to imply that infringements on the rest of it are somehow acceptable. Perhaps Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in NYSRPA v. Bruen will help to dispel that implication. Whether or not that’s the case, it would be a strategic error to let the implication stand…as many people and some organizations nominally on the pro-gun rights side of the contretemps have done and are doing.

***

4. Can’t Find A Fella? Blame Trump!

     Amanda Marcotte has a long, colorful history of Left-wing lunacy. It would be a mistake to think that it’s limited to explicitly political issues. Certainly Marcotte doesn’t so limit herself:

     Salon writer Amanda Marcotte was recently triggered by an insufficiently woke Washington Post editorial warning that fewer young American women are getting married because “they can’t find suitable partners.” The Post basically claimed that these women aren’t getting married because far-left politics have become their religion and their identity, and suitable (read sane) men don’t drink their Identitarianism Flavor-Aid. These men have grown more conservative.
     Salon concludes, naturally, that this is obviously Donald Trump’s fault.
     “Supporting Trump is much like refusing to bathe, blowing your nose in your hands or farting loudly on purpose,” the TDS- suffering Marcotte writes. “It’s a repugnant habit that makes you repulsive to normal people,” says the writer.

     I have no difficulty believing that the hardening political polarization of America has added a barrier to the formation of male-female alliances. It’s a subject I intend to pursue at greater depth when I’m once again able to breathe. But to blame it on Donald Trump! Amanda, have you been taking your meds?

***

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I’m headed back to bed. Have a nice day.

Dec 04 2023

The Loss Of Simplicity

     [I’m still afflicted by some sort of upper-respiratory torment, and expect to spend the day under about a dozen blankets, so have a reprint from Eternity Road of fond memory. It first appeared there on July 28, 2007. Sadly, some of the embedded links no longer work. Sixteen years is long enough to lose a few blogging colleagues. – FWP]

     By way of the esteemed Pommygranate, your Curmudgeon happened upon this emission by previously unknown Ruthie Zaftig in the wee hours:

     Long, long ago (well really, about a month ago) Tom Paine wrote about the reasons for blogging. Blogging, he says, is a vain activity but a worthy one— the blogosphere enables us to escape our typecast roles that we fall into in everyday life. It lets us speak truth as we see it, unencumbered by “the conventions of everyday life.” Blogging lets us see past a person’s normal, public facade and into the inner workings of their mind, the heart of their being.

     Meet them in their everyday lives and they would be playing their parts. We would not really know them. In a sense, they would not really be them. As bloggers (particularly anonymous or pseudonymous bloggers) their inner voices speak.

     Ruthie goes on at length about this thesis, concluding thus:

     A blogger’s identity—especially those who use pseudonyms and avoid personal references—can theoretically be free from outward social stigma and stereotypes— ideas and words judged by their worth and quality alone.

     Your Curmudgeon must disagree. Rather strongly, at that.

     Bloggers, like saner persons, can be partitioned into those who are the masters of their own souls and those who are not. The former type may have adopted what’s colloquially called a “role” — husband and breadwinner; mother and homemaker; pillar of the community; what have you — for practical reasons, but he plays it; it doesn’t play him. When he speaks, whether on the record, off it, or pseudonymously, he’s candid, sincere, and trustworthy. He might be wrong about any given thing, but he’s not trying to deceive you. What he tells you about himself is what he himself believes.

     The latter type is the reverse. His “role” is his defense against a world he fears to show his real face. It’s stronger than he; that’s why he adopted it. It doesn’t matter whether you know his name or not, for even if you did, what you’d be getting from him when he opens his mouth is the role, not his heartfelt convictions or sincere desires.

     Anyone not blinded by his own prejudices and fears can tell the two breeds apart, whether they adopt nommes-de-plumes or write under their public names. This gives the former, publicly named sorts an edge with your Curmudgeon; it means they’re willing to stand behind their statements regardless of what others might say or think.

     But that’s not exactly what your Curmudgeon is here to talk about.

***

     The cult of celebrity has taken an appalling toll upon the persons on whom it focuses. Take the much-reported descent of actress Lindsay Lohan into degeneracy as an example. Despite multiple prior brushes with the law and with serious self-inflicted harm, this young woman is apparently unable to control her desires for alcohol and cocaine — all the way to the extent of driving California’s already life-threatening roads in a state of intoxication that would induce paralysis in half the human race.

     One must ask why. If there’s ever been anyone one could justly say had the world by the tail, it’s this beautiful, talented, wealthy young woman. Why would anyone so gifted and fortunate seek out the oblivion of routine intoxication? What objective fears for herself could she possibly have? What does she lack that her assets could not secure for her?

     Well, actually, there are a couple of things.

     The first is love. One price of being forever in the public eye is the loss of the ability to determine whether people actually see you when they look at you. A celebrity’s public image is seldom controlled by the celebrity; it’s almost always the creation of skillful flacksters whose sole interest is in the commercial possibilities of the person they promote. This is true even of the reports of “journalists” — yes, those are “sneer quotes” — from supposedly objective news organizations. A celebrity with a quiet, sane private life cannot be used to sell advertising space.

     To be wrapped thus in an artificial veneer, however glamorous and pseudo-exciting, deprives one of the ability to take others at their “emotional word.” Every offering, advance, or gesture becomes subject to question: What does he really want from me? The undermining of the requirements of mutual trust makes intimacy remarkably difficult to achieve. It can even affect one’s relations with one’s parents, who are often seduced into becoming part of the “money machine” and stripped of their natural love for their child.

     (Yes, parents do love their children. Overwhelmingly, and despite their many flaws. Why do you think infanticide is so rare? If you don’t think the point is relevant, you’ve never changed a diaper.)

     The second thing is privacy. This is hardly an arguable point. The entertainment industry, like any other, is focused on profit. That’s not a condemnation; your Curmudgeon could hardly be accused of decrying capitalism, and despite the entertainment world’s many shortcomings, we would be worse off for its loss. But the cult of celebrity and the use of entertainers’ off-screen and off-CD personae as marketing vehicles for their movies, discs, and television shows has made it impossible for anyone significant in that industry to have a truly private life. They’re followed, whether they wish it or not, through every move they make. Even the ones who preserve some solitary space behind high walls and locked iron gates have to be aware at all times that the barriers that keep the “journalists,” paparazzi, and obsessives locked out also keep them locked in. Their marketability has imprisoned them in a cage of klieg lights and telephoto lenses.

     In our era, when the mass media are everywhere and thousands scramble madly for every iota of potentially profitable attention, this may be unavoidable. It also suggests that anyone who heads into an entertainment career in full knowledge of the price of stardom might start out a trifle “tetched.” But those considerations stand apart from your Curmudgeon’s major thesis: the cult of celebrity is a mechanism that destroys the stars upon whom it focuses.

     Yes, there are exceptions. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward come to mind, as do Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. These are to be commended for their fortitude. But such exceptions are rare, and are growing rarer as we speak.

     But that’s not exactly what your Curmudgeon is here to talk about.

***

     Like most Americans who own freestanding homes, your Curmudgeon is assisted in his toils
by a host of machines:

  • Two cars
  • A lawn tractor
  • A walk-behind mower
  • A snowblower
  • A chain saw
  • A hedge clipper
  • An air compressor
  • A wide variety of other power tools
  • A washing machine and a dryer
  • A dishwasher
  • A furnace and a hot-water heater
  • A water softener and a carbon-filtration system
  • Two vacuum cleaners
  • A carpet-steaming appliance
  • Two fans and three window-mounted air conditioners
  • A host of computers and related devices

     As you would expect from a brute of gorilla-like strength with a Certified Galactic Intellect, your Curmudgeon could tear any of these devices down to their lowest components and reassemble them flawlessly. He could easily service any of them that might experience a breakdown, without so much as a tip of the fedora to paid service personnel. He can do all of these things, and he has…but not recently.

     Life is too BLEEP!ing complicated and tiring already. Why add to one’s burdens when one could easily, at modest cost, shunt them onto the backs of others?

     No doubt many Eternity Road readers are in sympathy, whether they possess your Curmudgeon’s array of skills or not. Our lives are fantastically complicated. Even given that he can hire out many irritations to the attention of paid specialists, the challenge of a typical day demands that the typical American exhibit competences of unprecedented variety and delicacy from the moment he rises to the moment he drops his briefcase or toolbelt in the foyer. It leaves him prostrate with exhaustion by six PM. He’d rather spend a hefty fraction of his income on those specialists than assume a greater burden than he already carries.

     If you’ve been wondering why you have less time, energy, and inclination to play with your kids than your parents had for you, this is a large part of the answer.

     Complexity is fatiguing all by itself. A complex situation that demands a response also demands a significant investment in analysis and the assessment of risks. Mental fatigue is just as important to our overall enervation as physical fatigue. Indeed, it might be more so.

     One of your Curmudgeon’s favorite colleagues, Og the NeanderPundit, has said on many occasions that his most cherished dream is to retire to a cabin in the woods bereft of any technology more recent than the centerfire rifle. This is an undisguised cry for a return to simplicity — a return to a milieu in which one could expect to exercise complete personal control over every element that affects his life in any way, and still have time and energy left to ogle the girls and enjoy the sunset.

     Your Curmudgeon knows exactly what Og means. He’s occasionally wished for it himself, as much as he might miss his broadband Internet connection.

     But — you guessed it — that’s not exactly what your Curmudgeon is here to talk about. Then what, you may justly ask, is he here to talk about?

     Why, the Girl Next Door, of course. What else?

***

     One of Fritz Leiber’s delightful early short stories, “The Last Letter,” concerns Richard Roe, a young man in a bizarre future society where all communication-over-distance is monitored by agents of the State and everyone is expected to marry the Girl (or Boy) Next Door. Our hero spots a young beauty in his travels who is most definitely not the Girl Next Door and writes her a letter — don’t ask how it was conveyed to her; exercise a little willing suspension of disbelief, willya please? — to propose marriage. The mere act of writing that letter causes major convulsions among the Powers That Be, who intervene swiftly to determine what could possibly have moved young Richard to such a deviant act. He’s told that he’s supposed to marry the Girl Next Door. Everyone is.

     That’s not too far from the way things used to be here in America. Minus the official inquisition for having written a letter, that is.

     One of the measures of our lives’ greatly increased complexity is the geographical measure of our relationship-bonds. How far away was your spouse born and raised from where you were born and raised? How about your closest friends? Your associates at work? If your children are grown and out on their own, how far away from you do they live? In your routine personal communications, what’s the physical distance between you and the other party? (Include your chats on the Internet.)

     It can be a bit frightening to tot it all up that way. Your Curmudgeon knows that very well. He’s blathered about it before. But its major significance is the increment of difficulty this complexity adds to the search for something all of us need: love and acceptance.

     Allow your Curmudgeon a small but critical tangent. One of the prevalent emotional motifs of our time is the notion that all of us are entitled to “unconditional love.” You can hear this asserted in any forum you prefer, not merely on daytime talk shows. But your Curmudgeon would like to demur, in the fashion you all know so well:

BALDERDASH!

     No one is inherently entitled to anything, whether physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual. Each man must earn what he needs and desires, or receive it as a gift from someone favorably inclined toward him, or learn to do without it. Love is no exception.

     Love always comes on a condition: the condition that one must be lovable.

     Being lovable is a bit different from “being yourself,” one of the other maximally irritating mantras of our time. He who is focused on “being himself” is unlikely to be lovable; he’s too self-obsessed for that. He may be admirable in many ways, but without the openness to self-extension and generous accommodation of others that genuine intimacy demands, he will not be lovable — and he will not be loved. The Girl Next Door would find him weird and repellent…if she were still there.

     Who is — or was — the Girl Next Door? Why, she was someone you knew from sustained proximity. Someone whose “little ways” are no surprise to you. Someone whose conduct was no more than mildly at variance from the norms dictated by polite society. Someone whose family was well known to you, so that you need have no fear of them, or of their interactions with your own kin. In other words, she was someone you could love, if you chose, without fearing anything too untoward in consequence.

     But the Girl Next Door isn’t there today. At about age seventeen, she moves a great distance in physical, psychological, and/or emotional space. Usually, that distance is great enough to forestall any intentions you might have had toward her. You seldom wind up marrying her, whatever relations you might have had with her before she joined the Great American Diaspora.

     The physical displacement is bad enough. The psychological displacement is worse: she almost always comes under the sway of “authority figures,” sometimes teachers or employers and sometimes just charismatic contemporaries, who are determined to wipe out her original, authentic self and replace it with something molded to suit a crabbed and monomaniacal ideology. The emotional displacement is worst of all: while those “authority figures” — why, yes, I do have a key labeled “Sneer Quote;” why do you ask? — are at work on her, her hunger for any sort of connection to others is steadily being transformed from an asset to a liability. She accepts random hookups as substitutes for genuine affection, and fastens on bright lights among the glitterati of the entertainment world to admire, in place of the uncelebrated but substantial heroes of her youth whose shoulders steadied the sky above her.

     If the Girl Next Door returns home, it’s for a brief visit. Those who knew her before are stunned by the transformation, and not in a good way. The weird clothes and makeup, the tattoos and piercings, and the changes in diction and sentiments are signals that not all has gone as well for the Girl as her parents and their friends had hoped. When she concludes her visit and returns to the remote wherever, they’re secretly relieved. Their cherished image of her is forever compromised by the alien who came to call bearing her name and the vestiges of her face.

     These are the fruits of the physical diaspora, the displacement of solidity in favor of celebrity, and the severance of our traditional connections to home, family, and neighborhood. In sacrificing these things, we don’t shed burdens as we might once have imagined; we discard the most important supports for life in a world more complex than anyone has ever managed to bear alone. We sacrifice all hope for the most critical simplicity of all: emotional simplicity, the sort that comes with knowing that one is accepted and loved, and can accept and love in return, without compromise or pretense.

     And we sacrifice the Girl Next Door.

     Good luck with that babe from the back of beyond you took into your bed. How long do you think it will be before you know her? Really know her, enough to be confident that the chemical infatuation that fueled your lusts will be enough to get you past her “little ways” — or her past yours?

     Keep your Curmudgeon posted.

***

     The opening segments of this tirade were not an accident. Their connections to one another and to the rest are not tenuous. Do you see them now?

     A man will only seek to conceal his identity if his identity is an impediment or a burden to him — that is, if who he is stands athwart his path to his goals. In other words, he’ll conceal his true self if it complicates his acquisition of whatever he happens to want. This has been demonstrated to compelling effect in every imaginable venue; think “singles bars” and shudder along with your Curmudgeon.

     A young woman of beauty, wealth, and talent will only embark on self-destruction by drink and drugs if she cannot cope with who she is, or who she’s been hyped to be. If “who she is” is be defective, but “who she’s been hyped to be” forbids her to reveal a flaw, she could implode as catastrophically as Marilyn Monroe. If “who she is” is sound, but “who she’s been hyped to be” demands that she be a degenerate party animal for the publicity it will garner her, she’ll be revulsed by her self-betrayal, and attempt to hide it from her consciousness. To both of these escapes, drink and drugs are a venerable avenue.

     The purpose of all human striving is to get and keep what we want, and to avert or shed what we don’t want. The state of mind in which one is confident that there will arise no body- or mind-defying barriers to those meta-purposes is what your Curmudgeon means by simplicity.

     Do you have enough of it for your needs?

Dec 03 2023

Day Off

     Apologies, Gentle Readers. I’m a bit under the weather today, and lack the energy for my usual ranting and raving. However, the comments to this piece have cheered me greatly. If you haven’t read them, I recommend that you do so. After that, perhaps you might revisit this Baseline Essay, which is very much in keeping with the spirit of that piece and those comments.

     Enjoy your First Sunday of Advent in this Year of Our Lord 2023. Back tomorrow, I hope.

Dec 02 2023

This Is America

     Presented without comment:

     …because it brought tears to my eyes.

     May God bless and keep you all!

Dec 02 2023

Just How Does Harvard Award Professorships?

     You really have to wonder:

     Scientific American, which dates to 1845 and touts itself as “the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States,” recently ran an article arguing that scientists should prioritize “reality” over scientific “rigor.” What would make a publication with a name like this one set empirical evidence at odds with reality? Masks, of course.
     Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science, argued that by “prioritizing scientific rigor” in its mask studies, the Cochrane Library may have “misled the public,” such that “the average person could be confused” about the efficacy of masks. Oreskes criticized Cochrane for its “standard . . . methodological procedures,” as Cochrane bases its “findings on randomized controlled trials, often called the ‘gold standard’ of scientific evidence.” Since RCTs haven’t shown that masks work, she writes, “[i]t’s time those standard procedures were changed.”

     This…person has just made the Left’s epistemological premise explicit. For the benefit of the less philosophically inclined, here it is, in large font:


If the facts contradict your Narrative,
Dismiss the facts!

     Harvard must have some strange criteria for awarding high faculty posts.

     Concerning Scientific American, I stopped reading it when the Left colonized and conquered it in the late Seventies. It’s no longer a reliable journal for any purpose I can think of. But then, how many publications of any description remain reliable reporters of verifiable facts?

Dec 02 2023

“Sorry sir, your race card has been denied.”

     Perhaps this will trigger a general re-evaluation of the bilge poured forth by the racialist hucksters:

     It’s hard to believe it has been nearly five years since the Jussie Smollett hate hoax happened. It’s even harder to believe that despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, Smollett has only spent 6 days in jail since then. But today an appeals court upheld his conviction so he may finally be finishing out the rest of his sentence.

     An appeals court on Friday upheld the disorderly conduct convictions of actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and then lying about it to Chicago police.
     Smollett, who appeared in the TV show “Empire,” challenged the role of a special prosecutor, jury selection, evidence and many other aspects of the case. But all were turned aside in a 2-1 opinion from the Illinois Appellate Court…
     A jury convicted Smollett in 2021 on five felony counts of disorderly conduct, a charge that can be filed in Illinois when a person lies to police.

     The sentencing back in March of 2022 was quite a scene. Smollett’s lawyers once again tried to claim he deserved a new trial but the judge denied their motion. Finally Judge Linn really uncorked what a lot of people had been feeling, straight to Smollett’s face. “[The] hypocrisy is just astounding,” Linn said. He went on to call Smollett, “profoundly arrogant and selfish and narcissistic.”

     In Illinois, no less. I’d have given it poor odds, but there it is. I wonder what sort of pressures Judge Linn had to withstand to uphold that verdict.

     Is the “blacks are oppressed” grift coming to an end? Are American Negroes, the most racist demographic in the Western Hemisphere, who’ve been soaked in victimism and hatred of whites since the Sixties, ready to accept that it’s at an end? And what about the Left, which has made racism and victimism the core of its political posture in these United States? Unclear. But we can hope.

Dec 02 2023

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes Dept.

     I just saw this graphic over at Mike Miles’s place:

     But Congress, which is 95% recidivists and 50% millionaires, would balk at both propositions. For one thing, the swollen Defense Department appropriations are a fertile source of pork for their constituents. For another, it’s a safe bet that a lot of them are in on the grift. How else does one get to be a millionaire while laboring on salary?

     Don’t expect the people who benefit most richly from an abuse to do anything to remedy it.

Dec 01 2023

Omission Statement

     There are many in the right who feel we’re not making progress. Given that the political milieu hasn’t budged since the inauguration of the Usurper-in-Chief, I can understand the feeling. But in point of fact, we’re advancing “upstream,” in the battle over the culture:

     “Entertain first, not messages,” Iger said at something called the New York Times’ DealBook Summit. He added that “positive messages for the world” are great but shouldn’t be forced on the public or used as the story’s primary job.
     Iger claimed (falsely) that Disney’s propagandizing got worse after he left the CEO position and handed the reigns to Bob Chapek in early 2020. The board booted Chapek in 2022 and put Iger back in charge. Iger is contracted through 2026.
     Iger also said Disney produces too many sequels. Going forward, the sequel must work as a standalone movie before it will be greenlit.
     I’ll believe this change will happen when I see it, but even if Iger’s lying (and I think he is), it is still a total surrender. It might only be a rhetorical surrender, but it proves Iger understands the necessity of sending the message to tens of millions of normal people that he wants another chance. We screwed up. We know we screwed up. We’re sorry. Come back, Baby. Please, please come back.
     We know what happens when Baby comes back. She gets slapped again.

     There are things in there that clash with the opening admission: in particular, Iger’s pitiful attempt at self-exculpation, and commentator John Nolte’s cynicism about what’s really to come from Disney. But in point of fact, it’s Iger’s admission that he’d sold out Disney’s storytelling heritage for (as another wag put it long ago) “a pot of message” that matters most.

     Entertainment must entertain. You’d think it’s obvious. Well, there we go again, imagining that what’s obvious to sane and rational persons of ordinary attainments must also be obvious to the captains of industry. But it is not so. Plain truths recognized by Us the Hoi Polloi are never respected by persons with swollen egos…and the egos of the CEOs of the world are as monstrous as they come.

     In a sense, it’s just one more episode in the Schumpeterian march of “creative destruction.” They who fail must give way to others who might do better. The failure of contemporary entertainment is open for all to see. Why else would independent creators, who have been disdained by the entertainment industry’s gatekeepers, be beating those Established Ones in volume of sales and aggregate revenues?

     It’s a heartening thing. I’ll bet the soul of Andrew Breitbart is chuckling over it, too.

***

     The cultural battle is more important than the explicitly political one. The culture war is essentially over whether truth is a matter of opinion. Not even majority opinion, mind you. The noisy minority of “woke” activists has endeavored to force its lunacies on the rest of us by sheer volume of venomous shrillness. And yes, for a while it looked bad. But the worm has turned; normal people able to see the world as it is have risen up on their hind legs. Ask Anheuser-Busch and Target.

     Of course, we must remain alert and aware. The Left’s cultural forces are wounded, lessened, but they have not yet surrendered. I doubt they have the moral clarity to recognize defeat and admit to their errors. For better or worse, this is war to the knife: we must insist on unconditional surrender and a cultural Nuremburg tribunal in the aftermath.

     I suppose this is a longwinded way of merely saying We’re winning. Keep the pressure up. Yet that’s all I have to say. Patronize only those media and those entertainers who never spit upon your values nor insist that black is really white. The goal line might be only mistily visible, but we’re advancing toward it nevertheless. Don’t be one of those who, as they glimpsed victory, sat to rest, and while resting, died.

     Have a nice day.

Dec 01 2023

The Eternally Misleading Vision

     Some thematic music:

As the dust settles, see our dreams,
all coming true
it depends on you,
If our times, they are troubled times,
show us the way,
tell us what to do.

As our faith, maybe aimless blind,
hope our ideals and
our thoughts are yours
And believing the promises,
please make your claims
really so sincere.

Be our guide, our light and our way of life
and let the world see the way we lead our way.
Hopes, dreams, hopes dreaming that all our
sorrows gone.

In your hands, holding everyone’s
future and fate
It is all in you,
Make us strong build our unity,
all men as one
it is all in you.

Be our guide, our light and our way of life
and let the world see the way we lead our way.
Hopes, dreams, dreaming that all our sorrows
gone forever.

     If you aren’t acquainted with Gentle Giant, it was an early prog-rock group – for an exposition about prog-rock, consult this invaluable guide — that produced quite a lot of impressive music. The above is a track from its concept album The Power And The Glory. It’s an excellent example of G.G. at its adventurous best.

     The central concept of The Power And The Glory is the rise of a tyrant. Initially wildly popular, borne upon the adulation of the crowd, he comes into essentially complete and unopposed power. However, as his schemes are seen to fail – drum roll, please – he defends them with religious fervor. Ultimately, he refuses to relinquish power.

     The pattern is as old as history. It’s powered by a dream: the dream of a painless, effortless solution to all that ails us, that comes to be personified in a single individual. But dreams are ephemeral. We awaken from them to a world with inviolable natural laws. Those laws are indifferent to our dreams.

     There is no mortal who can fulfill our dreams. Beware the “cult of personality.” Insist on specific proposals, objective evidence, and verifiable results. Better still: Insist upon being left alone to work on your own dreams.

     Just a reminder.

Dec 01 2023

Apostate Glimpses A Critical Truth

     It cannot be said too often: Leftism, whether it goes by “liberalism,” “progressivism,” “socialism,” or outright “communism,” is a religious faith. As with most faiths, believers regard apostates as the worst of evils:

     The reasons are several, but paramount among them is this one: the Leftist regards his faith as a badge of intellectual and moral superiority. Anyone who voluntarily removes that badge has implicitly rejected that premise of superiority. Those who still wear it cannot escape that implication. It’s a thrust at their self-image they cannot endure.

     Never underestimate the power of courtesy toward those with whom you disagree.

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