Apr 07 2024

The Essence Of Divine Mercy

     Today is Divine Mercy Sunday in the Catholic calendar. It’s also known as Doubting Thomas’s Sunday, for today at Mass we read the portion of the Gospel of John that recounts the Apostle Thomas’s transition from disbelief to belief. Notably, the risen Christ invited Thomas to satisfy himself with physical evidence: the wounds in His resurrected body.

     There’s a huge message in that. Jesus could have dismissed Thomas’s disbelief with a sniff and an offhand remark: “Ten of you believe; that is sufficient. What need have I of an eleventh?” He did not. He invited Thomas to do what was necessary to achieve belief.

     He wants all of us, if we will have Him. Every man that ever lives will be offered salvation at every moment of his life, including the very last one. C.S. Lewis illustrated that in That Hideous Strength, in the demise of arch-materialist Augustus Frost.

     Still not asking what he would do or why, Frost went to the garage. The whole place was silent and empty; the snow was thick on the ground by this. He came up with as many petrol tins as he could carry. He piled all the inflammables he could think of together in the Objective Room. Then he locked himself in by locking the outer door of the anteroom. Whatever it was that dictated his actions then compelled him to push the key into the speaking tube which communicated with the passage. When he had pushed it as far in as his fingers could reach, he took a pencil from his pocket and pushed with that. Presently he heard the clink of the key falling on the passage floor outside. That tiresome illusion, his consciousness, was screaming to protest; his body, even had he wished, had no power to attend to those screams. Like the clockwork figure he had chosen to be, his stiff body, now terribly cold, walked back into the Objective Room, poured out the petrol and threw a lighted match into the pile. Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul—nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half-saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that. With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes and turns them into unchangeable stone.

     A similar scene occurs near the end of the movie God’s Not Dead:

     Salvation is continuously on offer to every man that lives. That is the ultimate meaning of the Infinite Mercy of God.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Apr 07 2024

The Inversions Are Legion

     Some of them exceed even my capacity for fury:

     The FBI trained personnel on countering extremism with material from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), according to former special agent turned whistleblower Steve Friend.
     In an interview with the Tennessee Informer last month, Friend recalled his experience at the FBI Academy in 2014: “We were shown a video that was produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.” The film, Friend said, “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists.”
     “I don’t know if they still show that,” Friend added, “but that’s what we were shown.”
     The FBI still relies on SPLC material a decade later, leading a pair of top Republican senators to demand the agency sever ties with the leftist hate group that routinely smears right-of-center associations as “hate groups.” SPLC’s false “hate group” designations led to a domestic terrorist attack in 2012 on the offices of a pro-family organization.

     If it weren’t for the multitude of offenses against justice the FBI has verifiably committed this past decade, the above would be incredible, in the exact sense. At this point, no outrage seems beyond an agency that berates private citizens about what they’ve posted on Facebook.

     We’ve known for a while that the federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies have been “weaponized” against the American Right. Even so, I for one expected some subtlety from an agency as prominent as the FBI. Time was, it largely deserved its reputation for integrity. Many of its recruits came from Catholic colleges and universities. An agent could be summarily dismissed for even a hint of scandal, especially a sexual scandal. Ah, those halcyon days of yore.

     Tempora mutantur. But to return to the association with the SPLC, it appears to have become a complete and absolute instrument of the Left – and the far Left, at that. Quoth Carol Marks:

     In case you didn’t know, the SPLC likes to create lists of what it considers hate groups in America. Who designated them as the gatekeepers of hate groups? I guess anyone could make a list about anything. But having the FBI look at it as informant material is ridiculous.
     Let me share with you that Moms of Liberty, Alliance Defending Freedom, The Remembrance Project, Oath Keepers, and Gays Against Groomers are some of the groups making their list of hate.
     Most recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center added Chaya Raichik, creator of LibsofTikTok, to its list. She joins Tucker Carlson and Matt Walsh, who are also on the list. SPLC claims that Chaya uses her Libs of TikTok account to mobilize white supremacists.
     Last year, Senator Blackburn of Tennessee asked judicial nominee Nancy Abudu about her work with the SPLC. Blackburn wanted to know why she and two colleagues were on their hate group list.
     Of course, Senator Blackburn didn’t get an answer.

     If the SPLC is getting federal funds in any amount, the federal government has tacitly endorsed all the above. If I may borrow a phrase from…someone:


However much you despise the Feds,
You don’t despise them enough.

     Back later.

Apr 06 2024

Wirings And Rewirings

     Sometimes, a colloquialism will take us somewhere we need to go.

     People speak loosely of being “wired.” Most commonly, the term refers to a kind of addiction made manifest in observable behavior. I have no idea whether the origin of the term has any connection to the adaptive physiology of the brain, but that’s where my focus lies this morning.

     While addiction often correlates with an effect on the body, addiction itself is a phenomenon of the brain. This has been determined conclusively in the case of cocaine addictions. That particular drug makes detectable changes in neuronic connections, more swiftly than any other addictive drug. According to a psychologist friend, without those connections, cocaine’s addictive effect would be weaker and less enduring.

     All by itself, that raises an interesting question which, for practical reasons, must remain unanswered for now: Is every human brain susceptible to being rewired by the use of cocaine?

     It’s a pity we cannot answer that question with any confidence. If we were to learn that there are brains that cocaine cannot rewire, it would tell us something vital: it would give evidentiary support to the loosely described notion of the addictive personality. That what’s actually addicted is the brain rather than the personality is beside the point.

***

     To produce addiction in the user, a stimulus:

  • Must provide positive feedback: i.e., either a gratifying sensation or the reduction of pain;
  • Must do so promptly, to trigger the kind of learning we call conditioning;
  • Must do so persistently over repeated uses.

     Those characteristics are found in all the commonly known addictions:

  • The opiate drugs;
  • The stimulant drugs;
  • Alcoholic beverages;
  • Nicotine;
  • Chocolate;
  • Caffeine.
  • Sugary foods;
  • Video games;
  • Social media.

     Of course, sufficient overexposure to any of those things will cause the intensity of the positive-feedback effect to dwindle, in some cases to zero. But if the effect lasts long enough to condition the user, he’ll remain addicted. Repeated uses will rewire him in a fashion that will oppose any effort he makes to break the addiction.

     How many uses? For how long? And how strong and prompt must the positive feedback be? Those are research questions whose answers will always remain somewhat fuzzy. Aspirin is not addictive, for example, as is morphine. But how much one would have to weaken or slow morphine’s powers to prevent the rewiring is difficult to determine. Not everyone who uses it gets addicted to codeine.

***

     There are other aspects of addiction that are worth studying. I have two in mind as I write:

  • Is susceptibility to addiction tied to age?
  • Which is more likely to rewire the user: discrete exposures over a long period, or continuous exposure over a short period?

     I have no doubt that researchers are studying both, despite the difficulties. My intuition says that age is an important factor, possibly a dominant one. The susceptibility of kids and teens to social-media addiction is striking. Adults seem much less susceptible, though there are some exceptions.

     However, there’s a third question which may remain unanswered forever:

Can any rewiring become permanent?

     We know that some addictions can be broken. While the aversive effects to “going cold turkey” to break heroin addiction are considerable, it has been done by many former heroin addicts. Addiction to nicotine appears at least as difficult to break. While we cannot be perfectly confident, we can theorize, at least, that the rewiring of the brain back to its pre-addicted state is a slower process than that which cemented the addiction. Moreover, it might be incomplete; as regards both the opiates and nicotine, recidivism is commonplace.

     Neurophysiological experiments of other kinds suggest that rewiring will remain possible. For example, the “inverting-lenses” experiment tells us that the brain will rewire to interpret inverted images correctly, but then will rewire to interpret “right side up” images once the lenses are removed. But those experiments are of a kind distant from the experience of an addictive stimulus. They lack positive feedback. We can’t feed heroin to experimental subjects to see how many times they can successfully kick the habit; it would cause talk.

     Still, the point here “should” be “obvious:”


If we can master addiction,
Such that it becomes routinely reversible,
Addiction as a subject for public policy will disappear.

     And with it, a great host of our social and political problems. Which compels a fresh invocation of Porretto’s Carbohydrate Maxim:


Keep thine eye upon the doughnut,
Lest thou pass unaware through the hole.

     More anon.

Apr 06 2024

When Someone Else Says It Perfectly…

     I can only cite, quote, and applaud:

     If you’re on the fence or thinking of sitting this one out because Trump offends your sensibilities, then please be aware that your sensibilities are going to get this country killed. Really. The Democrats are right about one thing — there is a threat to democracy, or, more precisely, the Republic. They’re it.
     […]
     There is no room for feelings in this election. It’s big-boy and big-girl pants time. Freedom-loving people need to come together to make sure that the real United States of America survives past the 2024 election. Oh, it’ll still be called the United States of America if Biden wins, but it’ll be operating with an entirely new set of rules that don’t have anything to do with the Constitution.

     Bravo, Stephen.

     Power politics may be the essence of the problem – I certainly think so – but for the moment, too many people still cling to the notion that we must have government. Our trembling anarcho-capitalist hand is forced. Trump 2024.

Apr 06 2024

Rants From Runts, Pants That Punt, and Cant From…Oh, Never Mind

     [While searching for something else of no particular import, I ran across this piece, which first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 on November 17, 2014. To my considerable surprise and pleasure, the embedded links all still work. – FWP]

If you’ve been waiting for the:

  • Social Justice Warriors
  • Professionally Aggrieved Feminists (i.e., the angry ugly girls)
  • “glittery hoo-hah” owners

(Pick your preferred moniker for them from the list above, or supply your own)…to beclown themselves terminally at long last, your moment has arrived:

…I want to talk about the incident that, somehow, in the realm of the internet, made me into a Lesbian, Thai, Social Justice Warrior….

I’m still wearing my “Wait, WHAT?” face from when Amanda told me about the comment that said this troll – variously identified as Requires Hate and Winterfox and a two-part name I can’t even spell – must be me, because of the “similarity in our rhetoric.” I haven’t read the comment. It might magically suck me through the internet and I might find myself with my fingers clapped around this creature’s neck strangling him while demanding he explain what in heaven’s name he means. (Though I think I know, and I’ll explain later.)

Anyway, after this Requires Hate creature had abused them and called them names and caused them to grovel, and enlisted the cowed cooperation of Alex-no-binary gender and our old friend Damien so-dense-that-I’m-afraid-a-blackhole-will form around me, people started comparing notes and getting mad, because they realized this creature was the same who under the two-name moniker had been sucking up to them. They also claim she had waged whisper campaigns to have them banned from conventions, that she tarnished their reputations with the same whisper campaigns and that she made some people give up writing altogether.

And of course their problem – as explained in this article – is not that she did all those things, but that she used the tactics against the “wrong people” i.e. fellow “social justice warriors”, people who want to eliminate patriarchy and who are sure white privilege is hiding under their bed, ready to pounce out as soon as they relax — People who think that everyone who doesn’t think like them commits thought crime and should be silenced.
That is, they are upset because tactics they sanction and use against people like us are being used against them.

That is so delicious that I’m going to let it stand alone…at least long enough for me to get control over the spasm of incapacitating laughter it’s caused me.

“You can’t say that!” is the battle-cry of the contemporary American fascist. (Yes, they’re leftists, but so were Hitler and his followers; that’s why they called themselves the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.) Their inclination toward censorship is so relentless, and so extreme, that they’ve even got a bright fellow like PJ Media’s Charlie Martin saying idiotic stuff like this:

“they” to include the singular has a long and honorable history, and “his or hers” or worse “his/her” are atrocities.

…just to avert the wrath of the SJW / angry ugly girl / “glittery hoo-ha” crowd. Mind you, I have some sympathy for those who’ve quailed beneath the lash:

My friend Dave Freer, over at Mad Genius Club has a blog about Political Correctness in literature. I confess I have agreed with him ever since I was first trying to break into writing and found myself reading manuals on how to be politically correct in my writing.

I’ve learned to use the execrable he/she or worse, they instead of he in the type of sentence that now goes “one shouldn’t do that, lest they” simply because it’s not worth to endure screams of outrage over what’s at worse inelegant and agrammatical. And the type of person who thinks her worth lies in not being referred to under a generic “masculine” pronoun – as dictated by the rules of most indo european languages — inevitably also thinks screaming about it is an act of civic duty if not virtue.

…but only some: enough to wish them a replacement spine for Christmas.

A writer who allows the SJWs to dictate his choice of words has ceded the greater part of the field of battle. Granted that the SJWs constitute a sect not even the IRS is willing to go after, nevertheless their only weapons are screaming and vituperation. — and if the Internet hasn’t numbed you to that yet, look around you: those vertical thingies are probably the struts on your crib.

But it’s not just writers tugging the forelock, is it?

So how are things going for feminism? Well, last week, some feminists took one of the great achievements of human history — landing a probe from Earth on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away — and made it all about the clothes.

Yes, that’s right. After years of effort, the European Space Agency’s lander Philaelanded on a comet 300 million miles away. At first, people were excited. Then some women noticed that one of the space scientists, Matt Taylor, was wearing a shirt, made for him by a female “close pal,” featuring comic-book depictions of semi-naked women. And suddenly, the triumph of the comet landing was drowned out by shouts of feminist outrage about … what people were wearing. It was one small shirt for a man, one giant leap backward for womankind.

The Atlantic’s Rose Eveleth tweeted, “No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt.” Astrophysicist Katie Mack commented: “I don’t care what scientists wear. But a shirt featuring women in lingerie isn’t appropriate for a broadcast if you care about women in STEM.” And from there, the online feminist lynch mob took off until Taylor was forced to deliver a tearful apology on camera.

It seems to me that if you care about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn’t want to communicate the notion that they’re so delicate that they can’t handle pictures of comic-book women. Will we stock our Mars spacecraft with fainting couches?

“Forced?” Taylor was forced to apologize weepily on camera? Who forced him? How? By threatening more screaming and vituperation at one of the technological heroes of the age? After his epochal achievement, Taylor should have felt free to smile and say “Go fuck yourselves” to his detractors through that camera, perhaps while grabbing his crotch for emphasis. As matters stand, someone should grab his crotch, just to determine whether he’s missing an important organ or two.

Cowardice of that magnitude shames the entire human race.

It cannot be said too often that to allow your adversary to dictate what you may and may not say – even at the level of supposedly offensive words and phrases – is to surrender before battle is joined. A worthy adversary, in politics or anywhere else, would not do any such thing; he’d say “Choose your weapons,” brandish his own, and charge. But the SJWs / angry ugly girls / glittery hoo-ha types are not worthy adversaries. They deserve nothing but contempt…certainly not an abject apology for one’s sartorial preferences.

Censorship is the fundamental privilege of an aristocracy. It underpins all other privileges allowed to such an elite, for if you can’t make critical note of a phenomenon, you’ll never be able to mobilize a force against it. It’s so important to deny that privilege to anyone who asserts it, regardless of the reasons proffered, that when someone tells me “You can’t say that,” I reply with a hearty “Go fuck yourself” even if my would-be censor is nominally in agreement with me on the substance of the topic under discussion.

And so, to the:

  • Social Justice Warriors,
  • Professionally Aggrieved Feminists,
  • “glittery hoo-hah” owners,
  • …and any castrati that might think to side with them out of hope for sexual access,

Go fuck yourselves.
Do it now.
Please.

Apr 05 2024

A Minor Insight That Could Inspire A Solution

I get a variety of emails. The headlines are often clickbait. This morning was I was offered this: America’s Top Enemy Suffers Devastating Blow – New Report Has Biden Weeping.

It worked. I was curious who they meant. As I began reading I wasn’t impressed, so I began scanning. I didn’t see them actually name the headliner. Perhaps I missed it.

But that’s has nothing to do with the point I wish to make.

The insight began with the very first person I thought of who fit that description, and for whom I wished it were true. That was Obama. I do not really believe I need to explain to readers of Liberty’s Torch why he was my candidate instantly.

And even Obama is not the true power. We all witnessed how he has almost never spoken well impromptu or even without his teleprompter. The true powers are his handlers and those who control the handlers. His handlers were all more visible during his reigning years. All of them became far more cautious during what were called — though only briefly — his “shadow government” years: 2017-21.

Now they are handling Biden. They feel so much more free to do the damage they’re doing with him to take the heat. Every thing good for their goals or bad for America under him is due to them and not the man we see. They are performing the role laid out by Plato as taught by the ancient Sophists: shun the spotlight as that is for your servants.

Well, I have one idea on how this insight can help us patriotic Americans: each rule has a use-by-date.

Ancient Athens did not last that long under their tyranny. But we can see that means of rule moved on throughout the Western timeline whenever there was power to be taken without open warfare from what was currently in power.

Yes there were warlords in times that were more anarchal. And that inevitably lead to the solution of a kingdom or other major despotry. And every once in a while there was a benign despot or two. But the powers that be are no longer benign in the sense that anyone who values human life would recognize. It’s so obvious that Fran and I are no longer the only ones who repeated mention the Death Cult. And TPTB now seem to have thoroughly embraced Machiavelli’s “It’s nice to be loved, but it is best to be feared.” That’s what has been going on heavy-handedly since Jan 6 2021. And they intend for everyone to notice, including their violent thugs and other myrmidons who will occasionally be reminded of their own vulnerability.

Anything this rotten cannot last for long. Whatever has driven the Progressive Movement is so decayed that its bursting from its own hubris and fear. They know how to gain power, but they don’t know how to build, operate and repair all that tech which they use against us.

The Progs did it to themselves. The Cloward=Piven Strategy is a double edged sword. It aims to eliminate as much as they can that works, especially education that feeds the human spark that has propelled us at unprecedented speed since the Age of Reason. All to shorten the lives of billions of people, because they believe Malthus has got to be right eventually.

The sad thing is so many people are affected by the awesomeness of their tech — remember shock and awe from Gulf War — that I am almost certain the inclination to lay low until it all runs down is shared by most decent men.

But they are themselves men. They too must be fearful to an extent that I can’t begin to quantify other than the fact that the shrieking of the useful idiots provides us a reflections.

This suggests something I have felt in my gut for many years but it did not transfer to my brain well enough to express, or even to propel me to write out my thoughts in this direction. They still can be reached on a human level. No, not the psychopaths that are their servants. Because there does not appear to be a Mr. Big on the global scene, at least not yet, the individuals who are significant behind the scenes can be appealed to on a human level, even when we don’t know their names. They have ears everywhere.

Let me begin the message and hope others feel some inspiration.

To the powers that be: The Progressive dream is falling apart. All that will remain is chaos and short-lived anarchy. You who believe yourselves to be so brilliant, is that really what you want as your legacy? Have the psychos you’ve had around you so badly warped your senses? Have your own depravities, from which you harvest fewer and fewer thrills and delights, forgotten that you started out intending to make a real and good difference to the world?

Stop lying. Stop lying to yourself. Listen to a nobody who sees value everywhere. Even in the dumbest human being. He finds delight in living now and then. Maybe even more often than you nowadays — and without all the baggage. Are you really going to be resentful of the dumber because they are sometimes more happy than you? Are you that small?

Just go back to basic Western principles, and simply assume what so many others in lower station than you accept on faith. That there is order in the universe. That that provides considerable evidence that there is a God. Be content with what He or circumstance or your own innate abilities have provided you and do good with it.

Gently apply brakes to your progressive destruction. The reorder that comes with that will deal with the psychos, restrain them, and maybe even heal a few. You and — if you can comprehend the notion — your soul will be happy with what comes of it.

Apr 05 2024

Islam: A Reminder

     Islam holds that non-Muslim women taken captive by Muslims are fair game to be raped. Even the famously leftist New York Times admits this:

     In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old [non-Muslim] girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

     And indeed, it’s in the Quran, supposedly the literal word of Allah:

     And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice ( between them ), then ( marry ) only one or what your right hands possess; this is more proper, that you may not deviate from the right course. [Sura 4 verse 3; emphasis added by FWP]

     Would anyone care to discuss what’s been happening to the dozens of Israeli women HAMAS fighters kidnapped on October 7 of last year?

Apr 05 2024

If The Headline Says “Scientists Say”…

     …or any approximation, it’s odds-on to be scare talk:

Bird flu pandemic could be ‘100 times worse’ than COVID, scientists warn

     A bird flu pandemic with the potential to be “100 times worse than COVID” may be on the horizon after a rare human case was discovered in Texas, experts have warned.
     The H5N1 avian flu has spread rapidly since a new strain was detected in 2020, affecting wild birds in every state, as well as in commercial poultry and backyard flocks.
     But it has now even been detected in mammals, with cattle herds across four states becoming infected, and on Monday, federal health officials announced that a dairy worker in Texas caught the virus.
     “This virus [has been] on the top of the pandemic list for many, many years and probably decades,” Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a bird flu researcher from Pittsburgh, said at a recent panel discussing the issue, according to the Daily Mail.
     “And now we’re getting dangerously close to this virus potentially causing a pandemic.”

     While I trust my Gentle Readers’ intellects, I know they expect me to do the verbal dissections of such articles. So take note of the following:

  1. “experts warn”
  2. “federal health officials announced”
  3. Quotes “a bird flu researcher”
  4. “getting dangerously close”
  5. “potentially causing a pandemic”

     That’s in the few dozen words cited above. Later on in the article, we have:

  1. “a pharmaceutical industry consultant for vaccines” “expressed his concerns”
  2. “100 times worse than COVID — or it could be if it mutates”
  3. “the whole U.S. government is taking this situation very seriously” (you bet)
  4. “If the virus does mutate enough to infect humans, it could spread rapidly”
  5. “If avian A [H5N1] influenza viruses acquire the ability to spread efficiently among humans, large-scale transmission could occur”

     And what “run in circles, scream and shout” article would be complete without a bit of vapidity from that indispensable black lesbian immigrant showpiece for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Karine Jean-Pierre:

     “We take the health and safety of the American people seriously,” she said at her briefing on Wednesday. “It is very important to this president.
     “Our top priority is to keep communities healthy, safe and informed.”

     Yeah, suuurre.

     The set-up for massive vote fraud is in progress. Remember that you read it here first.

Apr 04 2024

For The “Post-Humorists”

     The Left is rabidly opposed to a huge fraction of our cultural heritage. Possibly all of it, really. Historical totalitarians have usually striven to destroy their subjects’ cultural memory. The contemporary Left is as totalitarian as any of its ideological predecessors.

     Why let it happen? Preserve what you can. Make sure your children and their friends are aware of it and take what pleasure in it they can. And when it’s funny, remember to chuckle over it yourself.

     My attention this fine morning is on novelty songs. Have a trio:

     “Oooh! How racist! What horrible exploitation of African culture!”

     “What did they sing? ‘Chicks??’ Gaahh! The sexism, it must be destroyed!”

     “How dare you slander our noble Native American kinsmen? They were just defending themselves!”

     And one more for lagniappe:

     Wasn’t that fun? Maybe I’ll do ethnic jokes next.

Apr 04 2024

Early Morning Random Thoughts

This City Journal article is an excellent explanation of how statistics can be ‘massaged’ beyond all recognition.

Just one example:

“But is the Gallup–Lumina survey reliable? We have reason to doubt it, and not only because the nonrandom, web-based sampling employed by the report invites various biases and distortions. Tucked into the survey is the thesis-destroying acknowledgment that “many students do not enjoy the luxury of attending college in any state they choose.” The force of this caveat is only deepened by the fine-print revelation that respondents were between the ages of 18 and 59—not, as one might have expected, 18 and 22. The significance of this disclosure should be obvious. A 20-year-old may flit from state to state on the winds of politics. A collegian in his sixth decade probably can’t, however satisfying it is to tell a pollster otherwise.”

(I bolded the quote, as I’ve never been able to get WordPress to handle indentations and such properly. I have too little time for non-essentials right now – my brother-in-law is hospitalized with major medical issues – so I’m taking that half-a$$ed way of handling the formatting.)

I’m with City Journal on this one – let the Woke and Stupid go somewhere else. The higher education system will survive. Those that remain will likely be more focused on actual education, not ‘activism’, and the actual adults in colleges are relatively stuck in place, as the piece mentions. Only the younger students will leave; good riddance.

As for this American Greatness post on college loans – full disclosure, I was a recipient of student grants (state and federal), scholarships, and loans. But, the practice of making government responsible for the immature choices of the 25 and under voters is not working, in its present format.

I actually like the idea floated here:

“Donald Trump should steal a march on Biden: he should propose forgiving all student loans for people making less than, say, $40,000 a year (if you don’t like that amount, pick another) and—this is the important part—cancel all support for higher education in order to pay for the loan cancellation. Cancelling federal aid to higher education would save billions!”

I’d prefer to limit the forgiveness to:

  • Those that were suckered into loans that were NOT prepared for work at a college level. Those who were affirmatively placed in programs they had no business enrolling in. I do not, generally, blame the students. I blame the colleges – and there should be a 50-50 responsibility for making up the loss. Half the cost should be levied on the colleges/programs that enabled that academic fraud.
  • Those who finished a four year program with a 2.5 or above.
  • Those who spent the money on actual college expenses, not using the money to ‘live the high life’. Before qualifying for forgiveness, students should have to undergo debt counselling and restructuring, and make payments for a predetermined time period before forgiveness. Too often, just allowing part of the debt to be assumed by another – in this case the taxpayers – doesn’t solve the problem, which is that they are idiots with money.
  • Those who signed up for debt before the age of 21. Allowing a legal minor to assume 5-6 figure debt on a signature, without collateral, is idiocy. It’s especially bad public policy.

What about future students?

It’s a STATE responsibility. The federal government should NOT be involved, unless it is to provide money for college for majors/programs for high-need fields related to federal functions. For example:

  • Engineering, physics, chemistry, math – NOT biology. We have sufficient biology majors (most of whom plan to enter the health professions).
  • Special education programs – higher amounts available for those preparing to teach more challenging students – severe disabilities, particularly.
  • Teachers in certain license areas ONLY – math & science. Am I biased (I’m a retired science teacher)? Yes. I’ve seen too many not-qualified teachers in those areas teaching for years on a ‘temporary’ certificate. More programs to move people from para and sub positions to full certification – in certain license areas only. We really don’t need all that many more elementary teachers.

ALL the above are dependent on working in those fields for at least 10 years. Failure to do so triggers repayment of the full debt, with no forgiveness.

One of the biggest barriers to people making use of their degrees (assuming they didn’t major in some quirky or overcrowded field) is the large number of immigrants that are hired preferentially. It’s just about impossible for many tech majors to get a fair shot at a job. So, full stop on work visas, AND deportation – BOTH. At the end of the current work visas, the workers should return. If they have married/started a family that includes American citizens, they can either return alone, and join the queue, or take their family with them (that’s my take on how we should handle family reunification).

Harsh? Yep.

But, don’t blame the fed-up Americans for this state of affairs. Blame all the cheaters, fence-jumpers, and chuckleheads that put on their SAD face and cried for exceptions to perfectly reasonable rules.

Apr 04 2024

Have We Given Up On Ourselves?

     First, a brief Tucker Carlson video:

     Carlson is asking a critical question here. It pays to spend a few moments over it.

     There are three polar attitudes toward time that a man can have:

  1. Past-oriented: He can spend his conscious hours reminiscing, recalling past experiences and achievements, and grousing over past failures and injustices.
  2. Present-oriented: He can focus on his present needs, obligations, desires, and short-term ambitions.
  3. Future-oriented: He can devote his efforts to the attainment of goals or statuses that are distant in time.

     Not too difficult, eh? Most of us distribute our energy and attention over those three states rather than devoting ourselves wholly to any one of them. We work toward some long-term goal (e.g., retirement); we slake current needs and scratch current itches; and we remember where we’ve been and what we’ve done for the sake of what we can learn from it. That’s typical for a mature, healthy human being.

     To obsess over one pole is plainly unhealthful. To neglect one entirely is equally unhealthful.

     Tucker Carlson has focused on the dwindling interest Americans are exhibiting toward the future: their future, that of their progeny, and that of their nation. There are symptoms of a wide-scale loss of confidence in those things:

  • Present-oriented spending patterns;
  • Lack of willingness to save;
  • Few or no children.

     These are baleful trends. Moreover, there are powerful forces – economic, social, and political – behind all of them, especially the drive to depopulate the Earth.

     I’ve mentioned the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement several times before this. I have no doubt that most Gentle Readers scoffed at it. But think how it dovetails with the other elements of the death cults Pascal and I have enumerated:

  1. The nihilists;
  2. The anti-natalists;
  3. The extreme medicalizers;
  4. The radical environmentalists;
  5. The promoters of youth culture;
  6. The anti-growth activists of all kinds;
  7. The homosexual and transgender evangelists;
  8. The growing body of preachers against the work ethic.

     Those are merely the ones that come to mind at 5:30 AM after one cup of coffee. There are others.

     At this time, were it not for uncontrolled immigration, Americans would not be replacing themselves. Other nations that have fallen below the Zero Population Growth (ZPG) reproduction rate – currently, approximately 2.07 children per fertile couple – are visibly on the way to the ashbin of history. Read Mark Steyn’s indispensable book America Alone for further details.

     I shan’t flog this corpse into the magma. My job here is to note patterns. This one is worthy of more attention than it usually gets.

     Another fact of note is that a people that has become radically present-oriented is virtually impossible to reorient. As I’ve written before, encouraging people to work, save, and breed for the sake of “the future” is a difficult undertaking. We’re here now, living, enjoying, and suffering in the present. How shall we deflect a man from his present concerns and focus him on a future he may not believe he’ll see?

     Bravo, Tucker. Oh, Happy 1984 Day, Gentle Reader:

     April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films…

Apr 03 2024

Corporate Malfeasance

I think that’s the correct term – normally, it’s applied to public officials, but in the case of a public corporation, I think it’s appropriate.

I found this on Robert Zimmerman’s Behind the Black blog. Normally, he deals with climate, space, and other science-related topics. I signed up for the $2/month subscription, and it’s been MORE than worth it.

This link is to information about the Boeing culture that is KILLING the corporation, and how it targets engineers.

Now, engineers CAN be picky, overly ornery PITAs (Pains in the – well, you know). I can say this, as I have been married to an engineer for over 50 years. His virtues are many, and why we are still together.

His faults are those of many engineers:

  • Insistence on doing things HIS way (the CORRECT way).
  • Picking apart the flaws in the way others are performing tasks (like his long-suffering wife).
  • Absolutely rigid about not taking shortcuts, ‘just this once’.
  • Not always the most diplomatic in how he addresses others – OK, he can be REALLY clueless about saying things that cut people to the raw.

Now, a lot of that is training. Engineers are schooled to NOT cut safety corners. And, for work situations, that’s fine. Not always so fine when it comes to home tasks. I look forward to getting things done when he’s not around, as I can take time-saving shortcuts on cleaning tasks. My goal is usually to get the job DONE, not done PERFECTLY.

But, when safety is an issue?

He’s the guy I want in charge. Period.

Today’s managers don’t value that attention to detail. They come out of a looser culture. Many of them are women, who come in with the perception that men need to be put in their place (usually that place is UNDER a woman). The DEI culture has forced too many men to either knuckle under to decrees they consider not based on reason or logic, or to leave under a cloud.

Boeing is one such company. The managerial types have weeded out those who won’t go along with their cost-cutting measures, if they threaten safety. What is left is lackadaisical, poorly schooled in safe manufacturing practices, and, shall we say, ethically FLEXIBLE.

Our transportation system – planes, trains, cars, trucks, military and space – is suffering as a result.

Apr 03 2024

Social Media for Women

I was reading an opinion piece about relations between young men and women, and I had a thought:

Is Social Media like a drug with women?

By comparing Social Media to drugs, I refer to the addictive nature of the experience, and the way that use of that media seems to cause personality and behavioral changes in the user.

And, should the use of that “drug” become frequent/more than an occasional dalliance, the changes may be permanent.

I’ve been weaning myself from social media; the primary reason I use any of it is:

  1. Keep in touch with aging friends I seldom see in person (outside of funerals).
  2. Same as above, but with distant family.
  3. For contacts with professional connections – Physics teachers, Ham Radio.
  4. OCCASIONALLY, use either Twitter or Truth Social to post links to posts I’ve written or a post that I’d like to promote. I’m on the fence about that 2nd one, but hate to narrow the Dissident Media to ONE outlet.
  5. I do use the Notes feature for Substack, but mostly use that as I fear narrowing my reach to a single potentially deplatformed outlet.

What has replaced it? Mostly text messages to close family/friends. I’m not interested in posturing for the world; I want to keep in touch with those I love.

My stress level has plummeted.

Apr 03 2024

Things That Make Me Sad

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. It’s Wednesday, or “Hump Day,” as the gainfully employed have long styled it. The rain is pissing down on my kinda-sorta-beloved Long Island home, yet the dogs keep demanding to be let out…and let back in five minutes later. Thus, the house is accumulating a great number of muddy tracks from end to end. But this too shall pass away, right?

     That’s enough of an introduction, I think. Anyway, what I want to talk about is indie fiction.

***

     Hans G. Schantz has been operating a Based Book Sale at regular intervals for a few years now. At first it seemed an effective promotional technique. However, the bloom might be off that rose, at least if my own sales are an indication.

     There are some fiction-marketing “gurus” who argue that the way to develop a significant enduring readership is to “keep the pipeline filled.” Keep pumping ‘em out! Don’t bother fussing over every word. Don’t concern yourself with assuring that your prose flows smoothly and that your sentence structures propel the reader irresistibly forward. Don’t fret over the occasional typo. And indeed, some who have followed that star have sold a lot of books.

     I can’t do that. With one exception, I dislike the stories of those who’ve embraced that prescription. Overall they strike me as slapdash, often repetitive. But as regards sales volume, it seems to work for some of those who have the knack.

***

     Some time ago, I penned a short piece about things a writer should not do in promoting his books, with specific attention to the promotional blurbs we post at Amazon. However, I never posted it here or elsewhere. So here it is:

     Patterns can arise in any venue, and from many practices and techniques. Sometimes a pattern is an unrecognized consequence of the indie-fiction “Uber-consciousness:” i.e., the way we’re always furtively watching one another, hoping to spot someone who’s made an actual breakthrough. Since indie writers are more challenged by promotion than by most other aspects of their avocation, the patterns I’ve found there are my place to start.

     Mind you, I’m not particularly successful. I’ve made some money at this, but averaged out over the hours I’ve invested in my fiction, from a profit perspective I’d have been better advised to get a part-time job at a fast-food place. All the same, as a major consumer of indie fiction as well as a producer thereof, my observations might just have some value to my colleagues in this madness.

     Preliminary Meta-Observation: You cannot rise above the herd by aping the herd’s practices. If it seems as if everyone else (or a large fraction of everyone else) is doing what you’re doing, chuck it at once and try something else!

     When it comes to patterns, the above is the guiding principle. If it strikes you as obvious, then why are you still doing what everyone else is doing?

     First Detail Observation: Indies are prone to praising their own work.

     Doubleplusungood! It’s always a mistake to preen yourself in public, and never more so than when money is involved. Self-awarded praise is almost always detectable, is redolent of arrogance, and will reliably turn your prospective customer off. Speak plainly of your book or story, and let the praise come from happy readers.

     Second Detail Observation: Grammar, spelling, and punctuation always count, and never more so than in promotional material.

     Indies have stories to tell; no one disputes that. Many of those stories are inherently as interesting as anything being published by conventional publishers. But he whose craft is suspect won’t sell his stuff. He could have produced the next Gone With The Wind, and it wouldn’t matter. Paying readers don’t tolerate sloppy writing — and if your promo stuff is slovenly, the prospective reader will assume your fiction is as bad or worse. Remember, authors pay proof readers, not the other way around.

     Third Detail Observation: Even a good promotional technique can be overused. No matter how intriguing or evocative a technique seems to you, if it seems that “everybody is doing it,” you shouldn’t be.

     This comes to mind because, just this morning while fishing at Smashwords for something to read at lunch, I encountered about two dozen promotional blurbs in sequence, every one of which ended with a question. The hook here is easy to understand: If you can get a prospective reader interested in the answer to that question, he just might buy your book. But there are other ways to elicit that sort of reader curiosity. Breaking out of the pack by using one of those alternatives would add the refreshment of novelty to the lure of your blurb.

     If you write indie fiction, let me know whether the above is of any help to you.

***

     One practice mentioned above really must be extinguished at once: self-praise. Is there a reader who’s unaware that your Amazon blurb was written by you, the author? Somehow I doubt it. Yet the trend toward praising one’s own works in those blurbs is actually getting stronger.

     If you can get someone else to praise your stuff – someone who doesn’t owe you money – fine and dandy. But restrict your blurb to talking about the substance of your tale, not how you hope the reader will feel about it.

     I mention this because I was recently induced to check out the fiction of a fairly well-known commentator. This gentleman has written a long series of novels, whose themes “should” have aroused my interest. I’ve resisted his oeuvre because of the style of his commentary, which can be grating. But not too many days ago, he casually referred to his novels as “amazing” in one of his op-eds. Bizarrely, that made me feel compelled to see if he’s as good as all that.

     To stay compact about it, he’s not. I couldn’t get ten pages into his most recent novel without shaking my head at the flaws of craft. I shan’t name him, as I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a dip in his sales. But I hope he learns some fictional craft sometime soon…and some humility.

***

     Finally, a story that doesn’t make me sad. It’s not often that I write Amazon reviews any more, as the frequency of those reviews was proportional to the volume of requests from other writers to review their books, always for no consideration whatsoever. But now and then I do pen a review. The work in question must please me significantly more than average, as mere diversions are legion. My review of such a book will say so.

     And just yesterday, an extremely nice note arrived in the e-mailbox:

Dear Francis,

     Hello. You may not remember me, but I’m the author of Strangely, Incredibly Good, for which you wrote my all-time favorite review, and there have been hundreds! I loved that it tickled you and that you found I didn’t over-write.

     I didn’t have an email for you until recently (found it on GR) and came across your review again today, so I just wanted to thank you for it. You are one of the reasons I probably went on to write five more novels and a couple screenplays! It’s not an easy career, especially with some people who live online deciding cruelty is a way of life, so reviews like yours were the deciding factor for me between persevering and poking my eyes out with a very sharp object so I couldn’t write or read the reviews any more.

🙂 Thank you.
Heather Grace Stewart

     If you have a few bucks to spend, a little room in your reading queue, and aren’t turned off by romantic comedy, go to Amazon and show Heather Grace Stewart some love. She deserves it.

Apr 02 2024

Even a flatworm turns away from pain

And even Oregon can regain a modicum of sanity.

On Monday, Oregon’s Democratic Governor Tina Kotek signed into law House Bill 4002, reverting the possession of small amounts of drugs back into a criminal offense and marking the end of a pioneering decriminalization experiment plagued by implementation challenges.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody with two functioning brain cells, when you legalize the use of drugs, you get more drug addicts. Unfortunately for the good parts of Oregon, Portlandia controls the state much like the Putrid Sound controls Washington. And as we can see from the past couple of decades, the people who inhabit Portlandia don’t have two brain cells. Actually, there might not be two brain cells to share for a majority of the population there.

The decriminalization of drugs in Oregon didn’t just leave Portland as a drug-soaked piss bucket. It also encouraged drug makers to move to the state. Farmland that once grew beans or grazed cattle was being turned into marijuana growing operations. And not from your nice local neighborhood farmer who wanted a new cash crop. No, the cartels moved in. And they don’t make good neighbors. They don’t care if their run-off of pesticides and garbage make it on to your property. They don’t care if you walked up and down your road every day for decades. They’ll trash the property, your property, shoot at you if you get to close to their operation, and generally act like…. well, act like a foreign criminal cartel. Because that’s what they are.

They’re doing the same thing in Northern California. In the National Forests. Where the fuck are the hippy-dippy eco-freaks now? Why aren’t they screaming about all the chemicals that the cartels are dumping into the National Forests? Oh, that’s right, the eco-freaks are just a bunch of anti-American communists who don’t actually give a shit about the ecology, they just use that movement to shut down American development.\

Anyways, back to Oregon. I guess the view of addicts overdosing in the street, pissing and shitting all over public property and the rampant crime that always accompanies large groups of addicts has caused Portlandia a fair amount of pain. Enough pain that the people there, finally pushed out of their comfortable drug-soaked hazy life, looked around and said “Like, woah man, is that dude dead? Hey, where did my favorite coffee shop go? Why did they close? Hey man, um…. *massive bong rip*cough*cough* Like, wow man, someone should do something, or something like that man!”

Lo and behold, cause enough pain and even Leftists can change their behavior. Even if they’re a few steps down from a flatworm.

Apr 02 2024

“…But I know it when I see it.”

     Does anyone remember that little phrase? It became notorious in the early Seventies, after the Supreme Court issued a ruling in a pornography case. The original speaker was Associate Justice Potter Stewart. The stimulus, of course, was the question “What is pornography?”

     The Court did not issue a definition. Instead, the ruling centered on a subjective interpretation of the intentions behind the item to be judged: “Does it possess serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value?” That came to be called the “SLAPS test.” It got the Court into the practice of screening movies for those things, to determine whether they were “pornography” and therefore could be banned. Justice Stewart stuck to his personal non-definition definition.

     Today, laws against porn are ignored nearly everywhere. They’re still on the books in most places, as are the laws against adultery, fornication, and sodomy, but no jurisdiction to my knowledge attempts to enforce them. Yea verily, not even the U.S. Postal Service, which at one point was the focus of the controversy.

     Today, quite a lot of people are saying “but I know it when I see it” about something quite different. Herewith, a brief video from Langley Outdoors Academy, in which master of ceremonies Braden focuses on a fascinating hearing in the United States Senate. As is so often the case, one interlocutor is Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana:

     I hope you watched it, Gentle Reader. Especially if you’re passionate about the right to keep and bear arms, as am I. Note all the following high points:

  • The young lawyer testifying to the Senate committee as an “expert” on assault weapons, the subject of a proposed ban in Illinois, could not say what an assault weapon is.
  • She also admitted that she did not write the amicus curiae brief in question. The brief was handed to her for her signature.
  • It is unclear whether she ever read the brief, for all that mattered was that an Illinois lawyer sign it, to get it before the Illinois legislature.

     Do you suppose that she “knows it when she sees it” — ?

***

     Laws which fail to define their subject matter in an objective fashion are fundamentally wrong. Many such have been deemed unconstitutional upon appellate review. The reason is simple, if not quite “obvious:” if the offense is not defined straitly enough for an ordinary man to know exactly what it means, then no one can be certain whether he’s breaking the law. Such a law is a kind of black-letter Star Chamber, wherein the accused is incapable of knowing against what charge he must defend himself.

     However, vague offenses are grist for the mill of the aspiring tyrant. A “standard” of “I know it when I see it” is inherently personal. It transfers the definition of the offense to a man: whatever man is in power at the moment. It makes room for whatever he pleases to do, regardless of the facts.

     That’s not law as Americans have understood it for centuries. That’s dictatorship. Today it’s as prevalent in American courtrooms as it is in North Korea.

     We may gloss over the obvious interest of such as the Brady Center for Gun Safety in keeping “assault weapons” undefined. What matters more is the difference in kind between such a law and one that would ban a well-defined kind of weapon: e.g., a crew-served .50 caliber machine gun. Even a dunce would have a fair chance of knowing whether he’d acquired one such. Not that I’m advocating laws against such guns, mind you, but at the very least an ordinary man would have the capacity to understand what had been outlawed.

     The difference is Isabel Paterson’s nightmare of the Society of Status, which is incompatible with a Society of Contract and Law:

     In the Society of Contract man is born free, and comes into his inheritance with maturity.
     By this concept all rights belong to the individual. Society consists of individuals in voluntary association. The rights of any person are limited only by the equal rights of another person.
     In the Society of Status nobody has any rights. The individual is not recognized; a man is defined by his relation to the group, and is presumed to exist only by permission. The system of status is privilege and subjection. By the ultimate logic of the Society of Status, a member of the group who has not committed even a minor offense might be put to death for “the good of society.”

     Even persons opposed to the private ownership of weapons should be terrified by that.

     But wait: What’s that you say? We’ve already erected a Society of Status? What do you mean? Well, it seems that FDR’s Administration incarcerated over a hundred thousand Americans in concentration camps, simply because they were of Japanese descent:

     Eighty years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, stripping people of Japanese descent of their civil rights. That order and the subsequent actions carried out by the Federal Government represent one of the most shameful chapters in our Nation’s history. On this Day of Remembrance of Japanese American Incarceration During World War II, we acknowledge the unjust incarceration of some 120,000 Japanese Americans, approximately two-thirds of whom were born in the United States.
     Despite never being charged with a crime, and without due process, Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and communities and incarcerated, simply because of their heritage. For years, many Japanese Americans lived in harsh, overcrowded conditions, surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed guards. Not only did they lose their homes, businesses, property, and savings — they also lost their liberty, security, and the fundamental freedoms that belong to all Americans in equal measure.

     The reasoning? “There’s a war on.” And most Americans bought it.

     Perhaps I should stop there, before I begin to foam at the mouth. But one last question for my Gentle Readers: What is there that you can’t define objectively, but nevertheless you “know it when you see it” — ? Other than art, that is.

Apr 01 2024

A Despotic Self-Own By RFKJr

Say you know a classical liberal. The Dems have finally broken their bond with him, most notably with their Bolshevikian attacks on any one or group that exposes their faults. Their attacks on free speech has him leaning towards RFKJr because of some popular stances that align with his own.

Specifically for people like that classical lib, I am provided you with the following video reminder. In RFKJr’s own words he expressed using the very tactics with which the Dems/Left/Media now attack all opposition.

RFKJr was 10 years ahead of them on intending to jail all his opposition.

Apr 01 2024

From Tolerable To Intolerable…

     …can be a very short journey indeed. Whether it’s possible depends on whether the State decides the protection and promotion of some human aberration would serve its interests. Buckle your seat belt and fold your tray-tables; this ride could get bumpy.

***

     I’ve ranted before about how the politicization of transgenderism has transformed it from something most people could safely ignore into a fearsome threat. I return to this as frequently as I do because it’s a near-perfect “demonstrator.” That is, as a category of human oddity it perfectly exemplifies the venomous power of the State. If I may quote myself:

     I’ll say it once more: There have been transgenders for several decades. (Does anyone else remember Renee Richards and Tula Cossey?) When transgenders were willing to live quietly, without trumpeting their condition and demanding that it be honored by others, they weren’t a social or political problem. But that ceased to be the case a few years ago.

     But transgenderism is not the first such oddity.

***

     Do the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch remember the old movie The Boys In The Band? It was a pretty good flick, with a good script and good performances, but I doubt it’s shown in the “art houses” today. It depicts a group of homosexual friends at their extremes: their best and their worst. It also includes language that implicitly describes homosexuality as a condition to be regretted and, if possible, escaped. That’s because it was made before homosexuality became a political movement.

     Now that homosexuality is an explicit political force – one that commands deference from heterosexuals regardless of their preferences – such a movie is unacceptable. The homosexuals themselves would see to it with mass protests and monkey-wrenching. The State would protect the disruptors from any consequences, as homosexuals and their movement have proved useful to the State.

     Before the politicization of homosexuality, heterosexuals – 97% of the population of the United States – largely tolerated homosexuals. Yes, there were exceptions, some of which were horrifying and deserved to be punished. But the prevailing attitude was of tolerance and the maintenance of a certain distance. In social and sexual matters, homosexuals constituted a separate society. If they weren’t perfectly comfortable with that status, nevertheless they found it bearable…as did the heterosexual majority.

     Things are not better now.

***

     If you can stand a sharp turn to a subject few persons are willing – or able – to discuss rationally, let’s talk for a moment about race.

     One might say, with a modicum of justice, that the legal status of slavery is at the base of all our troubles with race. Certainly, it was protected by State power in the “slave states.” After the Civil War / War Between The States / Late Unpleasantness and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, that was no longer the case. One could have hoped that the enslavement of Negroes – funny, people seldom address the populations of white slaves from that time, whose numbers were not insignificant – was a subject that had been sufficiently dealt with.

     For nearly a century, that was approximately the case. Yes, many whites were uneasy around blacks, and in some parts of the country blacks were treated unfairly. But those decades were far more tolerable than the conditions of today, especially for the 87% of us who are not black. The degeneration from an acceptable degree of social peace to near-constant disruptions and violence proceeded from what originally appeared an innocent thing: the drive for racial integration, which had the power of the State behind it.

     Are you beginning to see a pattern here, Gentle Reader?

***

     Homosexuality…integration…polygamy and polyandry…illegitimacy and “single-parent” households…“non-binary” sexuality…transgenderism… One by one these things groped for and seized political power and moved from the sphere of tolerable aberrations – ones whose existence we could acknowledge without being moved to pogroms – to forces that threaten not only social peace but the probable future of this country. The “frontier” today is bestiality and pedophilia. If there’s anything more looming behind the horizon, I’m not sure I want to know.

     Today there’s an envelope-movement wrapped around the above and a lot of other things: “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI. This is an explicitly political movement that seeks to force Americans to surrender what remains of our freedom of association. It’s an important component of the movement to nullify, de facto, the guarantees of the First Amendment. I doubt I need tell you what will become of us if that goes into the trash bin.

     Time for a graphic, I think:

     Miss Robinson isn’t quite “on the right page.” What’s in the process of felling “America as it was” is the State’s application of political power to all those things. I’ll grant that normal Americans ought never to have “blessed” those things – the usual incantation is “not that there’s anything wrong with that” – but we were able to bear their existence, as long as we were permitted to choose our own associates without fear of some politician or bureaucrat intruding into those decisions. Some persons were excluded from others’ businesses, neighborhoods, and societies…but peace reigned. There were no riots and no violent disruptions. There were no desecrations of religious ceremonies. There were no crowds of “protestors” harassing those who dared to dissent from the “tolerance uber alles” gospel preached today.

     The difference is the ambition – already fulfilled by some; still hoped for by others – to enlist the power of the State on the side of the aberrant movement. The State is nearly always happy to cooperate. Power, after all, is a statist’s top priority at all times. And when power can be used to create conflicts among the State’s subjects that the State can use to increase and extend its power…need I say more?

***

     There is no Last Graf. The solution is the elimination of the State and its abjuration for all time to come…which, for the moment at least, is impossible. Yet it is the only solution with any endurance.

     The “progressive” assaults on individuals’ right to be left alone – the supreme right that underpins all other rights – have united under the DEI banner. If we are to retain any shred of our original freedom, it must be fought a outrance. For it is the State – the 88,000-plus governments that infest America – that presses it upon us. It is their best weapon, for now at least, for completing our subjugation.

     Anarcho-tyranny always moves toward ever greater tyranny. And April 1 notwithstanding, all of the above is meant seriously.

     Have a nice day.

Mar 31 2024

Evidence That Demands A Verdict

     That’s the title of a famous book by a notable Christian apologist. It’s also suitable for labeling this obscenity:

     Protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza interrupted a Saturday night Easter Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, chanting “Free, free Palestine” before being removed from the service.
     Thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered in Times Square earlier Saturday before some headed to the Easter Vigil service at St. Patrick’s, where their chants of “Free, free Palestine” could be heard during the second reading of the service.
     At least some of the protesters were with Extinction Rebellion NYC’s Palestinian Solidarity group and carried a flag with an olive tree and the words “SILENCE = DEATH” written across it.

     That’s enough for me. They are evil. No further argument will be entertained.

Mar 31 2024

The Outrider

     [A short story for you today. Some “great events” are, in point of fact, merely resultants. They’re preceded by much smaller and less visible events that made them, if not inevitable, at least overwhelmingly likely. If there’s a great event to come, where should we look for the seemingly insignificant precursors that will precipitate it upon us? – FWP]

     He struck at the stroke of noon.
     It was the best time by far, for the confluence of conditions made him both a rebel and a hero. With a single mighty sweep of his arm he cleansed the counter of the offending items, the instruments of oppression accepted too meekly and for too long. With motions both magisterial and reverent, he restored the ancient devices the oppressors had seized. As dozens of patrons gazed upon his deed in wonder and joy, he stood aside and gestured at the symbols of freedom reborn.
     “Comes the revolution!”
     He swept his cape aside and marched out of the building with a conqueror’s stride, to the sound of overwhelming applause and cheers.

***

     The authorities were swift to descend upon the scene. It availed them naught, for no one who’d witnessed the event could identify the perpetrator. Their words gave him gentle homage and thanks. Yea, even those who stood mute testified thereby to his greatness.
     “It was magnificent,” one young woman said. “He was magnificent. A hero of the old type, when men were truly men.” There was no mistaking the adoration in her eyes or voice. Had he been present, she would have gladly made herself his slave.
     The myrmidons of the State were not pleased. Their distaste reached its peak when the crowd forbade them, by their sheer numbers, from undoing his handiwork. At that moment it was plain that something greater than they had expected, perhaps greater than they or their masters could gainsay, had begun in that place.
     Their report to their superiors was not cheerfully nor placidly received.
     “Find him,” their commander bellowed. “Leave no stone unturned. Though this be a mere token, a dash of rebellion from a lone outrider, it could galvanize the rabble, spur them to much larger acts of defiance. It is at this stage, when the matter seems trivial, that the impulse to defy us must be crushed.”
     Chastened, the brutes set forth upon their mission. Yet not one dared to return to the place where the rebel had struck. The people had made it into a shrine.

***

     They never found him.
     Days gathered into weeks, and thence to months. His identity remained unknown, as did his whereabouts. Yet he had inspired others to take up his cause. Incidents spread from that seemingly insignificant village with a speed that confounded the oppressors’ expectations. He had kindled the flame of rebellion that commander had feared. His likeness—a short man garbed all in black, with a cape and a mask—became the icon of the rebels from coast to coast. Try as they might, the agents of the State could not erase it, nor him, from the minds of his followers.
     Only one knew him for what he’d done: the woman who nightly shared his bed.
     “Are you happy?” she said when the lights were out and their arms were around one another.
     He smiled in the evening gloom. “Very. You?”
     She nodded. “I wouldn’t have believed it would spread like this.”
     “I couldn’t be sure it would,” he said after a moment. “But big things start small more often than the histories admit.”
     “This seemed pretty damned small, Everett.”
     “It was, no argument.” He chuckled in remembrance. “But it had the advantage of proceeding from an absurdity that had already started people grumbling. Remember?”
     “Not exactly when,” she said. “But what? Of course.”
     He squeezed her gently. “I was there, you know. I didn’t want anything but a burger and a little ketchup for it, the same as a lot of other customers when the jackboots marched in. They wouldn’t even speak to us. They just took the ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise pumps, put up a sign about the new public-health regulations, and marched out. Remember how I looked that day?”
     “I’ll never forget it.”
     “Then came the little portion-controlled foil packages,” he said. “The ones so hard to open that half of them were wasted and half the customers didn’t even bother trying. And then—”
     “The protests about the packaging waste and the damage to the environment?” she said.
     “Yeah. That was when I realized that someone had to take a stand.”
     “Before that,” she said, “I had no idea how…how brave you are.” Her voice shook. “Driving to Mexico all by yourself, evading surveillance, finding and buying those condiment pumps, smuggling them back here, keeping them in secret until it was time to strike…”
     “Don’t think too much of me, Alice. It was something any decent man would have done. Eventually, anyway. The proof is all around us today. Someone just had to be first, that’s all.”
     “They could still find you.”
     He nodded. “They might.”
     She pulled him tight against her. “I love you, Everett.”
     “I love you, Alice,” he whispered.
     They slept.

==<O>==

Copyright © 2024 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

(With gratitude for the works of Harlan Ellison.)

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