Mar 12 2024
I’m exhausted. I have an essay subject in mind – working title “When Presumably Decent People Write Hateful Things” – but in my current state I’d surely make a hash of it. So please allow me a day’s rest. With luck and a little cooperation from my wife and my four-footed dependents, I’ll be back and in form on the morrow.
Love,
Fran
Mar 11 2024
I’ve been “out of the game” for more than thirty years, so I don’t really know what it’s like to be unwillingly unmated. I do know that there are a lot of men, from young adults all the way up to my age and beyond, who are either in that category or in an even more painful one: mated to a woman who’s turned cold and indifferent toward them. The search for a woman’s love – real love, the sort that provides him the physical affirmation and emotional sustenance he needs when he needs it – has become a truly agonizing feature of male Americans’ existence.
In great part, that agony stems from the twisting of American women’s psyches. Forces have converged on American women that have warped them into a unique variety of solipsism. The majority of them are psychologically wrapped around themselves as “victims,” “oppressed,” “underappreciated,” “marginalized,” et cetera ad nauseam infinitam. Simultaneously, those forces have done their damnedest to denigrate American men and masculinity generally. That pincer attack on love practically guaranteed the chilling of male-female relations into something resembling a demilitarized zone.
I could spend a hundred thousand words on this, but it’s sufficient that my Gentle Readers see the outlines of the problem. What has my boiler lit this misty moisty morning is something I’ve only just learned about, courtesy of Misanthropic Humanitarian: a technological response to the subject that’s had interesting consequences:
Artificial intelligence-powered girlfriends, or chatbots programmed to provide companionship, are gaining traction.
This is especially the case with those who are struggling with loneliness or navigating the complexities of real-world relationships.
These AI companions can engage in conversation, offer words of encouragement, and even adapt their personalities based on user interaction.
That’s intriguing and somewhat worrisome all by itself, but we haven’t yet reached the Sunday punch:
My.Club, specifically, provides a similar experience to any online chat interaction you would have on social platforms.
Except, the platform, which uses an AI feature called “Digital Twin,” doesn’t create AI girlfriends out of thin air.
Instead, the virtual models are replicas created by real-life models who have brought them to life with their personalities, images, and minds.
I added the emphasis. Ponder the implications while I make more coffee.
The universe of opinion writers will provide every sort of analysis, justification, riposte, and rebuttal of the whys of this phenomenon. But for me, the tragic heart of the thing is implied by that emphasized sentence above.
A woman who has a “personality, image, and mind” that appeals to the emotional needs of men, and can be implemented as an AI chatbot, isn’t necessarily a rare thing. It’s quite possible that there are many such women, and that many of them are unmated. But we must assume that the women who allow themselves to be used in this fashion are unavailable to the men who interact with their AI avatars. Possible reasons abound; I need not enumerate them here. Still, if they’re available as chatbot-implementations, they must be out there in the flesh.
He’s searching, or has searched, for her real instantiation. Why is his search so frequently in vain?
To be fair, sometimes it isn’t in vain. Sometimes he can’t offer her what she needs. And sometimes the problem is one of space, time, or circumstance. Still, the existence, and rising popularity, of those pseudo-women suggests that the larger problem – that “demilitarized zone” between the sexes that has caused so much frustration and sorrow – is soluble.
Frustration is not indefinitely sustainable. If he becomes convinced that she’s not really available to him, he’ll look for a substitute, or an alternative outlet, or some combination thereof. The AI chatbots are an example of what men desperate for love and support will accept, temporarily if not permanently.
Yet we know from the above that the problem is soluble: i.e., that there are real women capable of the sort of constructive, sustainable romantic relationship he seeks. I’d go further: I maintain that the great majority of women are capable of it. However badly contemporary pressures and trends have warped women’s beliefs and behavior today, they could un-warp tomorrow should they choose to do so.
Attack my proposition from the contrapositive. If it were not so – if the knowledge of what it takes to be a good companion and helpmeet to a decent man were for some reason unavailable – would the chatbots be possible?
There are important non-emotional obstacles to the restoration of “traditional” romantic expectations and accommodations. Have a snippet from an analyst in the far future:
“[A]s a people grows wealthy, it ceases to breed. Earth data does indeed suggest that. The richest of Earth’s nations had fertilities below replacement level—below the rate at which the population could sustain its numbers, much less increase them.
“As it happens, those very rich societies had become obsessed with what they called ‘youth culture,’ and the concomitant assumption that the young deserved whatever they might happen to want. What the young mostly wanted, then as now, was playthings. Families with young children routinely buried themselves in children’s toys, some of which were crafted to appeal to an adult’s frivolous side as well.
“Now, we know from historical data that predators of all sorts will concentrate where the prey is fattest. The State, which is merely an organized band of predators with a veneer of legitimacy derived either from tradition or from a manufactured appearance of the consent of its subjects, took a huge fraction of its subjects’ annual production from them in taxes. A typical State would increase its exactions on its subjects faster than those subjects could increase their own fortunes. That compelled wage earners to strive ever harder just to run in place, with obvious consequences for production and marketing. Of course, after some point has been reached, the economic frontier will be purely discretionary items: entertainments, diversions, toys, and the like. Thus, the ever-accelerating production of junk was reinforced by two powerful impetuses.”
[…]
“Families are the fundamental building blocks of a stable society. Extended families—clans—are the best conceivable environment for the rearing of children, the perpetuation of a commercial forte, and the germination of new families and their ventures. A clan like yours, Miss Albermayer, conserves a brilliant genetic line and a priceless medical specialty at the same time. A clan like yours, Mr. Morelon, makes possible a benign agricultural empire and produces natural leaders one after another while connecting Hope to its most distant origins. And all healthy families, which cherish life and bind their members to one another in unembarrassed love, can find far more to occupy and amuse them than they need.
“When Earth’s regard for families and their most fundamental function deteriorated, her people ceased to enjoy the sorts of ties that had held them together throughout the history of Man. Without families, and especially without children, they groped for other things to fill their time, whether to give them a sense of purpose, or to distract them from the waning of their lives. Some invested themselves in industry or commerce, but without the sense of the family line to be built up and made prominent, those things failed to satisfy. Others immersed themselves in games, toys, fripperies, and increasingly bizarre forms of entertainment, which palled on them even faster. Still others made a fetish out of sex; there was a substantial sex industry on Earth, though it tended to operate in the shadows and was seldom openly discussed. They needed emotion and substance, but all they could contrive was sensation and novelty, and they pumped an ever greater share of their effort and wealth into seeking them. That’s my thesis, for what it’s worth.”
Listen to the man. The most prestigious university on Hope didn’t give him the Genet Chair in Sociology for the elegance of his haircut.
I could go in many directions from here, but I’ll spare you. It’s Monday, after all. I’ll conclude with this: Consider the burgeoning of the “traditional wife and homemaker” pattern, which is now being adopted by an increasing number of young women. One of its best known practitioners, Estee Williams, has a fair number of pieces on YouTube. If she’s faking it, I can’t tell, and I fancy myself a good judge of sincerity.
But having noted Mrs. Williams and the pattern of which she’s an exemplar, allow me to note this as well: Angry voices are being raised against her and that pattern. Some of them are familiar from decades past; others are artifacts of more recent trends. They’re united in their hostility to her message and their determination to turn young women away from it. Their ideological standard-bearer is Simone de Beauvoir:
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” — Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, “Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma,” Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18
If you were wondering about the “death cults” tag at the start of this essay, there’s your explanation.
I’ll end this screed with a few questions for the ladies in the Liberty’s Torch audience:
Should you find yourself wondering whether there might be something more satisfying and enduring than money and work, in what direction will you look?
Should you find yourself beset by nameless anxieties and formless fears, to whom will you turn for protection and security?
When you look up from your transient personal concerns to contemplate society’s grand vista, and you see the sweet and pretty women going in one direction, and the “angry ugly girls” (Duyen Ky) going in the opposite one, which will you prefer: for your children, your young friends, or yourself?
Need I say more?
Mar 10 2024
UPDATE – saw this meme and couldn’t resist posting it.
Mar 10 2024
I don’t awaken to a lot of news-rich Sundays. Generally, that’s to the good, as Sunday tends to be the busiest day of my week. Still, it’s nice to have something to rant and rave about. A news-deprived day is a blogger’s definition of frustration.
1. Vending Machines.
The C.S.O.’s morning begins with the Wall Street Journal. (Be nice; she’s an accountant.) But the Journal isn’t the stodgy rag of yore, focused exclusively upon matters commercial and financial. It carries articles on many things today…such as this one:
With a brick of cash in his hand and a grin on his face, Jaime Ibanez shows his half-million YouTube subscribers a path to earning money without burning many calories: Vending machines.
In videos with titles such as “This Is HOW MUCH My Vending Machines Made IN 7 DAYS!!” the swoopy-haired 23-year-old Texan makes the rounds to his 51 machines, stocking them and taking the profits.
His channel promotes the idea that with diligence and luck, anyone can go from snacks to riches.
That article made the C.S.O.’s eyes light up. (Nothing will do that faster than “passive income.” It’s the accountant’s Holy Grail.) This exchange followed:
CSO: Why don’t we get into this?
FWP: Would you want to do all that driving?CSO: Hmm…good point. What if we kept all the machines near to us?
FWP: Well, okay, but what are you going to vend that isn’t available a thousand other places?
A brief yet tension-filled silence ensued as the C.S.O. sifted through the universe of possibilities. Then:
CSO: Hosts! There’s a priest shortage, right?
FWP: (nonplussed) Huh? Uh, yeah.CSO: Put vending machines filled with consecrated hosts in the vestibules of churches! Think of the time and labor savings! Walk in, insert a ten-dollar bill, get your host, and walk out! No need for expensive personal service!
FWP: I don’t think it would play, Sweetie.CSO: (draws herself up) Why not?
FWP: For one thing, it would be considered simony. More than that, people like that expensive personal service. It helps justify their weekly contributions.CSO: Oh. Well, it was a thought.
FWP: Original, too. Blasphemous, but original. But… (grins evilly)CSO: What, Sweetie?
FWP: Maybe not consecrated hosts, but if you could fill your vending machines with absolutions, I’d say you’ve got something!
Yeah, yeah, I know I’m going to Hell.
2. Boobs.
There are few things more eye-catching than a fabulous rack. From the youngest infant to the oldest dirty old man, the female bust is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. And so, a young woman with notable knockers will get a lot of attention should she put them on display. However, this tends to evoke resentment from the not-so-generously-endowed:
For those not living perpetually online, [actress Sydney] Sweeney’s au naturale double D bombs set off one of the most brutal, bloody battles in our raging culture wars.
While co-hosting “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, the 26-year-old actress leaned into her famous bust, playing a stacked Hooters waitress in one sketch.
During the show’s wrap-up, she donned a plunging black frock that showed off her girls, bouncing as she enthusiastically dished out the customary thank-yous.
The image of the blonde’s embonpoint boomeranged online, drawing lusty appreciation from dudes.
But these days, even Mom’s Milk Jugs are regarded as a political subject:
Writer Amy Hamm argued in the National Post that Sweeney’s breasts were beating back woke culture and the clever Bridget Phetasy heralded the return of boobs for The Spectator.
“For anyone under the age of twenty-five, they’ve likely never seen it in their lifetime — as the giggling blonde with an amazing rack has been stamped out existence, a creature shamed to the brink of extinction,” Phetasy wrote.
And then, blowback from the left flank: a flurry of angry tweets including one from writer Ali Barthwell who admitted she couldn’t get past the paywall to read Phetasy’s analysis but called Phetasy’s premise, “fatphobia, misogyny, anti-blackness, transphobia just rolled into one” anyway.
“These weird conservatives are lifting up sydney sweeney for being a thin cis white blonde with big boobs because they are mad other body types have also been on tv,” she wrote.
Poor Sydney. Everything I’ve read about her suggests that she’s a perfectly nice girl, as well as being drop-dead gorgeous. But those two perfect double-D spheres have forced her, willy-nilly, into the political sphere! And once you’ve been shoved in there, it can take more than a (ahem) jiggle of the doorknob to get out.
I’ll be watching this…fascinating case. Closely!
3. Vegans.
There’s a joke making the rounds:
The bus driver had closed the doors, engaged the first gear, and was pulling away from the curb when a nearby passenger shouted “Wait! Someone’s chasing you!”
Startled, the driver clutched and braked, bringing the bus to a somewhat awkward halt halfway into the intersection. He immediately spotted the pursuer, a young woman running full-tilt toward his bus. As she arrived, he quickly opened the bus doors expecting her to scurry up the stairs and find a seat.
Instead, the young woman stood there, huffing, puffing, and grinning as if she’s just won a race. After a few seconds, the driver, perplexed, said, “Well, aren’t you going to board?”
“Oh no,” the young woman said. “I’m not going anywhere. I just wanted to tell you that I’m vegan.”
Whether or not it strikes you as funny, the unsolicited “I’m vegan” announcement seems to be all the rage in human intercourse today. But perhaps not for long:
Welcome to our article on Trans Veganism, a lifestyle choice that combines two unique identities: veganism and transgenderism. Trans Veganism is an extension of the veganism philosophy that promotes compassion, empathy and equality towards all living beings.
So, what is Trans Veganism? It is a lifestyle choice that brings together the principles of veganism and transgenderism, promoting a compassionate and eco-friendly approach towards food and identity. Trans Veganism is not just about what you eat, but how you live your life, and how you express your identity in the world.
Trans veganism is a unique lifestyle that combines two seemingly different movements – veganism and transgenderism. However, upon closer inspection, one can see that these two movements share a lot of common themes, such as compassion, empathy, and equality. Both movements promote a vision of a more just, fair, and equitable world.
At the intersection of veganism and transgenderism, we find that both movements share a commitment to challenging the status quo and the dominant power structures that oppress individuals and groups. Veganism seeks to challenge the animal agriculture industry, which is notorious for its cruelty and exploitation of animals. Transgenderism, on the other hand, seeks to challenge the gender binary and the patriarchal structures that enforce gender norms and restrict personal expression.
I suppose we can expect this to displace the simple “I’m vegan” declaration in the near future. Or perhaps not! Perhaps they’ll duke it out. Other “communities” among the crack-brained have begun to do so. There can be only one marginalized intersectional victim group on the pinnacle of Mount Oppression.
I owe something to Dave Blount for this citation…but I’m not sure it’s my thanks.
That’s all for the moment, Gentle Reader. I might be back with something more later. Until then, enjoy your Laetare Sunday. (Fudge sauce and sprinkles not included.)
Mar 09 2024
He once composed a piercing piece called “If I Were The Devil.” The following video, a Trump campaign ad, borrows its structure from that piece:
Video created by the Dilley Team for Trump.
Do not skip this one.
If I were the Deep State.pic.twitter.com/MfQvFubUUm
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 8, 2024
Pass it around.
Mar 09 2024
I’ve been exploring evil as an abstract, categorizable phenomenon for decades. It’s one half of the most important question in all of human life. I sketched the edges of the other half of that question in this brief piece. To save you a mouse click:
Primary authority is the sort possessed by him to whom has been given the role of “he who makes the rules of the game.” If you choose to play the game, you must abide by the rules as the primary authority has decreed them. He who violates the rules will be penalized or expelled. Of course, that authority pertains only to the game and those who play it.
But what if “the game” is human life?
In that “game,” the “rules” can only be what constitutes acceptable conduct by human beings. But acceptable meaning what? What are the “rules” of this “game?” One cannot “quit” this “game” except by suicide. What does it mean to “win” at human life? What is the “payoff” for winning?
If you can see how its edges align with the edges of the question “what is evil,” you can infer my personal take on evil…and on good.
Ragin’ Dave’s recent, furious piece on the sale of infant body parts illuminates a horror that, so far, has not touched a great many American lives: the reduction of human life to a commodity to be bought, sold, and manipulated as if it were of no greater significance than the life of any lesser creature.
People are doing this as we speak, Gentle Reader. I don’t give a flaming fuck how you feel about abortion…well, no, as a matter of fact I do, but let’s leave that for a bit later…to treat human lives and parts thereof as commodities is the very nadir of evil. There is nothing a man can do that’s worse, or that should elicit a greater degree of horror and revulsion from an onlooker.
Back when those lives were whole and approximately healthy, we called it slavery. Think about that for a moment.
There are persons, some of them highly intelligent, who hold that all animal life should be treated as reverently as human life. I disagree, for a reason that must be accepted or rejected as a postulate: Human life differs qualitatively from animal and plant life. The heart of the thing is our ability to distinguish between good and evil: something that no other species has exhibited. If that ability, and our inability to dismiss or ignore it, fails to elevate Man to a higher plane, what could do so?
To head off the objection that’s about to be raised: Yes, there are sociopaths. Yes, there are persons who, whether by conscious decision or because of a birth defect, fail to draw the critical distinction. But despite the harm they can do, and that some of their exemplars have done, they are exceptions, a tiny group that lacks categorical significance. Aristotle would be muttering about “essence” and “accident” just now, but we’ll let him do so in silence.
In short, if the treatment of human life as a rightless commodity, of no value other than what one can get for it in the market, is not evil, then nothing could possibly make the cut.
For the sake of my aged fingers (and my increasing tendency to “type in the cracks,” as a dear friend puts it), I’m going to introduce an acronym here: COHL, which will stand for “Commodification Of Human Life.” Henceforward in this essay, please take the acronym in place of the phrase, which my slipshod typing has already mangled more than once.
Among generally good people, COHL starts by nibbling at the edges. I’ll describe just one, in a fictional vignette, with hope that it will suffice.
“Shaw’s still alive?”
The doctor nodded.
“Despite the removal of the ventilator?”
Another nod. “Seems he has enough pulmonary capacity to keep him going a while longer. I wouldn’t have expected it, but…” The doctor shrugged and spread his hands in a what can you do? gesture.
Terman scowled. “Pierson won’t last out the day without a kidney and a new renal artery.”
“Dialysis has failed?”
“Completely. Isn’t there anything…?”
The doctor winced.
I knew the question would come.
“I took an oath, Mr. Terman,” he said.
Terman bared his teeth. “To preserve a life that’s already doomed when you could use it to save one that has many years to go?”
The doctor started to reply, but caught himself as a hand landed on his shoulder. He turned to find the hospital administrator standing behind him. The man’s eyes were unreadable.
“Louis,” the administrator said, “we need to talk.”
You get the idea, don’t you? Sacrifice one life to save another? Treat the dying man as a collection of useful parts rather than a human being with an innate right to life? Besides, that dying man is consuming expensive medical resources! What’s the point when we already know he can’t last more than a few days longer?
Let’s not omit consideration of the revenue to the hospital. Oh no, we don’t sell transplant organs! The procedure is just complicated and expensive, that’s all! Transplant surgeons are rare and special, and their fees are high. Besides, if we don’t charge you heavily for it, we won’t be able to provide it free to others who need it just as desperately as you!
That’s how COHL starts. Read this Baseline Essay for my take on where it stands today.
I could go on about this, but I’ll spare you for the present. I have a novel in development that will address this and related questions. All the above “should” make my point “obvious:”
The frontier of evil is wherever some men are concocting rationalizations for doing so. The rationalization will always be utilitarian, as if there were a calculus of human life and well-being that can be worked to a solution in particular cases:
Shall we kill this one to save that one?
Abort this one for the convenience of his parents?
Enslave these because it will serve a greater number?
Expropriate these because it will conduce to a greater good?
Deceive these to mollify those other ones?
More anon.
Mar 08 2024
Nothin’ wrong with me…
Nothin’ wrong with me…
Nothin’ wrong with me…
Nothin’ wrong with me…
Oh fudge…who do I think I’m kidding?
Courtesy of Ace’s long and detailed piece of yesterday, I’ve only just become aware of what he’s styled “GamerGate 2.0.” You may recall the original GamerGate dustup. Among other happy consequences, it resulted in a huge defeat for the forces of “woke” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” But the thing to remember about the Left is that its strategists regard no setback as permanent. They’re relentless. Wherever we think we’ve defeated them, they’re sure to be back. So it is with video games.
This “Sweet Baby Inc.” (SBI) organization is an explicitly ideological firm. It’s dedicated to forcing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” into video games – preferably popular video games. Its camouflage is as “narrative developers” who propose to “assist” game makers with their “storytelling.” And as you may have guessed, it’s a total canard.
Here’s SBI’s very own home-page description of its mission:
Founded in 2018, Sweet Baby Inc, Is a narrative development and consultation studio based in Montreal and working around the globe. Our mission is to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry. We aim to make games more engaging, more fun, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone….
We believe you need diverse voices to solve diverse problems. Sweet Baby Inc. provides narrative consultation at any stage of development, boasting a talented team with vetted industry experience to bring your best story to life….
New and marginalized talent can change this industry if given the proper support. We want to provide this through our outreach programs.
Got the idea? It’s hardly concealed.
As with the original GamerGate contretemps, gamers are reacting – negatively. I don’t have demographic statistics on the gamer populace, so I’m willing to assume that gamers are demographically distributed roughly as are First Worlders generally. Whatever the case, they don’t want SBI fucking with the games they love.
But how does SBI actually pursue its agenda?
Here’s Ace’s take:
Sweet Baby Inc. claims to be a game development company, but they develop no games. Instead, they pressure actual game companies to hire them to censor their games for them. In addition, Sweet Baby Inc. demands that the companies paying them for their worthless services increase Muh Representation in every game, no matter how little sense it makes.
For example, Sweet Baby Inc. was hired by the God of War developers. The latest game involves the Norse gods. God of War includes a black female Norse god.
Ace provides a long list of games where SBI has had its way. Then:
How does Sweet Baby Inc. get actual game developer companies to make worse and more unpopular games than they otherwise would, and get paid for telling people how to lose money?
It’s very simple, as the founder of the grifter group explains: You pitch your money-losing ideas to the companies’ leaders. Then, when they turn down your ideas (as they SHOULD!), you just go to the marketing department and “terrify” them by telling them how much money they’ll lose when Sweet Baby Inc.’s ideological allies cancel the game for not being sufficiently woke:
The Co-Founder of Sweet Baby Inc Kim Belair proudly explains the method she uses to force bosses at game studios to censor, alter, and “diversify” game projects she feels are problematic – “Terrify them” aka threaten them with the anger of the cancel culture mob. pic.twitter.com/eFJZeKqSZd
— GamesNosh (@GamesNosh) March 4, 2024
The “narrative” being “developed” here is that of a protection racket. Nothing more. But that’s the whole of the Left’s strategy: threaten the target with a militant group of “victims” and “marginalized persons” that will wage a campaign of defamation against the target if it doesn’t bend the knee to the Left’s agenda. As the media in our time are ever-ready to provide a megaphone to such groups, such a threat can chill the blood of legendarily lily-livered corporate managements. You need actual confidence in your stance to withstand it.
But the companies that develop video games appear to be of a higher class. They know what they’re doing. They know what works in video gaming. They also know they have the support of their customers; that was established back during GamerGate V1.0. So for the moment, most are resisting successfully.
I spent some time yesterday on various gamers’ sites such as Steam, and in the sections dedicated to them on servers such as Discord. Gamers are furious about SBI and its tactics. They want better games, with better stories to propel them. They don’t want to be lectured or harangued by anyone, regardless of his message. So they’re fighting back. One enterprising gamer even wrote a plug-in that detects SBI’s meddling with a game and warns off potential buyers. That degree of constructive involvement is all but unique to the videogaming community.
There’s a lot we in the Right can learn from the gamers. If they differ about whether and when to tack or furl the sails, nevertheless they come together to repel boarders. And they do it with a fury that deserves copious applause. Now it’s back to my daily dose of Drowning Pool. “Nothin’ wrong with me…nothin’ wrong with me…”
Mar 08 2024
If we can’t bring back the idea of personal agency and responsibility for one’s actions, along with a societal moral code of right and wrong, we are doomed. — Weird Dave at AoSHQ
Bravo. It cannot be said too often or too loudly. But note that the Left, principally through its “DEI” and “woke” campaigns, is doing its damnedest to eliminate the concept of individual rights and individual responsibility in preference for permanently indemnified “victim groups” that can do no wrong.
You and only you can put a stop to it.
Try – try and not hear the voice,
Telling you if you will not hear, will not see,
Will not choose which way to go –
You still have made a choice. — Glass Hammer
“Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”
Back later.
Mar 07 2024
Writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror – the three main speculative genres – face challenges that don’t trouble mainstream fictioneers. We’re supposed to strive to be original, constantly looking for a new conception, a new scientific or technological development, a new evocation of wonder or terror. The flattest and least refutable of all criticisms of a work of speculative fiction is “It’s been done before.”
Yes, yes, you’ve heard me rant about the shortfall of originality in spec-fic more than once. It continues to be among my frustrations, as a reader and a writer. But the above is just a lead-in for a quite different subject.
Our great limitation arises from what we are: our human nature. Being embedded in it as we are, everything we see and everything we imagine must be filtered through it. That renders concepts a great distance from our nature misty at best. If we can glimpse them at all, it’s “through a glass, darkly:”
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (First Corinthians 13:11-12)
And today, approximately the midpoint of the annual Lenten season that precedes the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Our Lord, is a good time to reflect on that darkness of our vision.
The Catholic liturgical cycle is, of course, designed around the Gospels. The synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are its backbone. Within the three-year cycle is a calendric cycle that embeds all the great events of Christ’s time on Earth, including the terrible events of His Passion and Crucifixion.
Probably the greatest obstacle to accepting the Christian faith is our human inability to understand why He, the Son of God and fully as divine as His Father, accepted such an awful fate. The recent movie The Case for Christ captures that obstacle in a memorable scene:
Note that the skeptical Lee Strobel, ably played by the underappreciated Mike Vogel, can’t quite wrap his mind around the proffered explanation. His human nature – in particular, our built-in aversion to pain and death – obstructs it. We wouldn’t accept such a fate; why did Jesus? Love on that order is almost completely beyond our conception.
Almost. For we are capable of it. It’s one of the little hints we get that we are not meaningless accidents of biochemistry.
Love, as I’ve written before, is a heavily overloaded word. We speak of “loving” so many different people, creatures, and things, of such diverse natures and relationships, that the word’s import becomes elusive. Yet it is massively important, especially in regard to our relationship with God.
We are told that God loves us, and that we should love Him. But how? What does the love of a Being infinitely beyond our conceptions of existence, a Being of whose nature we have only the faintest and foggiest glimpse, really mean? How does it relate to our “human loves” of spouse, friends, pets, cherished possessions, favorite pastimes, and so on?
I’ve come to see this as one of the greatest challenges of human life. For we know, despite our preferences, that we are not the center of the universe. We sense our incompleteness. We yearn to be part of something larger, something with greater longevity than ours. It’s the key pressure that drives us to do just about everything we do: our awareness that each of us must die, and that the world will go on spinning without us.
We are aware…yet we cannot fully accept it. We yearn for meaning that persists, even if our bodies do not. How, then, can we cope? What makes it possible for us to live, work, and endure when the inescapability of death will ultimately render all our strivings and sufferings irrelevant?
The answer lies in the mystery of love.
The late M. Scott Peck, in his first and best book The Road Less Traveled, approaches love in a fashion that generalizes it across all its overloadings. Love, he says, is the willed extension of self. But extension why? Extension how? In contemplating those questions, the many variant uses of love gradually become comprehensible.
We “extend ourselves” into whom and what we love by making them – their needs, drives, priorities, and general well-being – integral to our own concerns. Even our metaphoric “love” of a pastime can be seen this way. For example, I “love” the game of chess, so I work to understand it better, to become better at it, and when the opportunity arises to extend my love and appreciation for it to others in the hope that they’ll come to love it, too. If you’d like to see the reverse of that coin, the late Bobby Fischer, once the world champion of chess, decided shortly before his death that contemporary practices had “ruined” it, and so turned away from the game as it had been played for centuries in favor of a randomized version called Chess960.
I deal with love in just about all my fiction. Here’s a little from what I think is my best novel:
“Fountain, dear,” Ray said, “I think you know how you do this. I think you’ve told us already once…well, some of us. Would you tell us again, please?”
“Certainly, Father Ray,” Fountain said. “It is in the food.”
“But if it is in the food, dear one,” Ray said, “why is it that none of the rest of us can do what you do?”
The question seemed to trouble Fountain. She frowned slightly and looked off in obvious thought.
Ray felt the approach of a revelation.
“I think,” Fountain said after a moment, “it is in how I love the food.”
Larry peered at her. “I love food plenty, Fountain. I’d rather eat than…well, than most other things. But my cooking can’t compare with yours.”
She grimaced gently. “It is not the same, my lord. “You have said that you love food, but what you meant was that you love to eat. That is different from loving the food for its own sake…for what it is.”
“How do you do that, dear one?” Ray murmured.
She grimaced again. “It is like when I came to know my lord,” she said. She reached for his hand and pressed it briefly to her lips. “You must know a person to love him. Once I knew my lord, I could love him. It is the same with food. You must know it. You must offer it your trust and ask it to show itself to you: all it is and all it can do. Once you know those things, you can love it for itself—and it will love you in the same fashion. It will teach you how to call its powers forth.”
“Gran Dio lassù,” Monti murmured.
Around the table, all eyes were wide and fixed on the young futa.
Fountain smiled fleetingly. “When I tasted the unclarified Malbec, I knew at once that it could be far more than it was. It could love us. So I spoke to it. I gave it my trust, told it that I would love it if it would show itself to me, and it did. I saw the treasures it could give to us, and I praised it for itself. I told it that Mr. Lundin loved it too, even if he could not tell it so as I did, and that it could fulfill his dearest dreams.” She raised her glass. “I am pleased with its response. What did Mr. Lundin say, Father Ray?”
Thank You, God.
“Fountain,” Ray said in a formal tone, “you have succeeded in every respect.” He saluted her with his glass.
Fountain, a futanari cloned from another such, learned love the hard way: through its opposite, extreme sustained abuse.
Still, the ultimate need – the comprehension of the love of God and how to love Him as we ought – requires more thought. For if God is in us — and He is; that’s what it means to have a soul – we are already intertwined. But though He is infused in us, we must learn to reciprocate. It comes neither naturally nor easily.
To love God means to adore Him. Adore is a word we don’t hear too often these days:
adore:
1. to worship or honor as a deity or as divine;
2: to regard with loving admiration and devotion.
The Latin roots of adore mean “to pray to.” Prayer is much more easily comprehended than love. To pray is to submit oneself to Him: in effect, to set one’s own will aside and to embrace His will in its place. For thus and only thus can we demonstrate to God our “loving admiration and devotion:” “Not my will, Lord, but Thine be done.”
Note what Jesus said in His prayer in the garden at Gethsemane:
And he came out, and went, as he was wont, to the mount of Olives; and his disciples also followed him. And when he was at the place, he said unto them, Pray that ye enter not into temptation.
And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.[Luke 22:39-44]
The love of the Son for His Father is made explicit here.
It seems we’ve come back to the Passion. That’s appropriate, seeing that the commemoration of those events is only a few weeks away. If love was Jesus’s reason for accepting such a horror, what interpretation will such love bear?
It’s in the contemplation of this question that the acceptance of the Christian faith must begin.
We are told that His sacrifice of Himself was to redeem us from our sins. But redemption of that sort requires cooperation from the sinner. We must achieve contrition for our sins, repent of them, and ask for God’s forgiveness for them. So in that sense, His torment and death only did “half the job.”
But the larger significance of the Passion lies in its completing event: Christ’s Resurrection. For in returning to the world of the living after having been executed in the most excruciating fashion – note the roots of the word excruciating, Gentle Reader! – He exhibited divine mastery over life and death: the ultimate demonstration that divine authority resided in every word of His teachings. We lesser ones, not gifted with the power to defy death, can rely upon them.
Did He not say to His apostles that He is our friend?
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. [John 15:12-14]
In learning to love God in His Three Persons – to adore them, pray to them, and humbly place the divine will above our own – we become His friends. We achieve “the willed extension of self” into the divine. We complete the circle of love.
As I said at the outset, our human nature as project pursuers makes this a difficult concept to absorb. Perhaps we can’t comprehend it fully while we live. Our hope – mine, at least – is that we’ll get there when we die, as we must, each and all.
For now, enjoy your Lent. Yes, I know it’s a strange valediction for a penitential season, but it’s what I have to offer. And anyway, isn’t it appropriate for the conclusion of an essay about love?
May God bless and keep you all.
Mar 06 2024
Why, I wonder what actions a satanic death cult would take to show that it’s a satanic death cult. I mean, they don’t often parade around in pentagrams and occult clothing, although that’s certainly happening in Hollywood. Still, if one were a member of a satanic death cult, how would we know?
New documents obtained via public record request by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) reveal contracts and conversations between Planned Parenthood and the University of California San Diego (UCSD) where the abortion provider agreed to supply aborted fetal body parts to the school explicitly for “valuable consideration.” In exchange, the university would grant Planned Parenthood ownership of all “patents” and “intellectual property” developed through research and experiments using the supplied fetal tissue.
Oh, well…. I suppose the selling of body parts of babies who were murdered in the womb might serve as a good sign.
In all seriousness folks, every time you walk past a Planned Parenthood clinic you should be cautions about the sulfur and brimstone emanating from the place. I have no doubt that demons dance down the halls in some form or another. They are killing babies and then selling the body parts. And they have been doing this for years. There was an undercover journalist, a REAL one not some Democrat party mouthpiece, who got video of a Planned Parenthood ghoul bragging about selling the body parts of dead babies back in 2014. And you know it’s been going on a lot longer than that. Part of the reason I refused the jab was because it used embryonic kidney cells in the development of it. They claim that those cells are from a baby who was murdered back in the 60’s.
I call bullshit. Because Planned Parenthood is selling off body parts today to universities and other entities. We know for a fact that companies are buying the body parts to use in research. What’s more plausible: That big pharma has somehow managed to find a way to grow kidney cells from an fetus for sixty years, or that they just replenish their supply from willing suppliers?
Do you know how they obtain an embryonic kidney? They have to get it through vivisection. The baby has to be alive as they cut the kidneys out. Killing the baby first risks damaging the kidneys and that makes them worthless.
Do you understand just how fucking evil that is? Just the thought of it makes my stomach churn.
So yeah. Death cult. Cult of Death. These people aren’t possessed, they are willingly working with Satan himself. And they’re not even bothering to hide it anymore.
Mar 06 2024
This bit of news rang a bell for me:
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – A Senate bill introduced on Tuesday would prohibit businesses from refusing cash-only payments.
[…]
Senate Bill 306 has not been assigned to a committee yet. [Steve] McClain said the Kentucky Retail Federation will be closely monitoring it.
There are several pressures on retailers to abandon cash payments. The rising tide of armed robberies is surely one, and possibly the most prominent. A thief can’t steal what you don’t have. But I can think of several others:
And there may be more. But many customers today are rediscovering the great virtues of cash:
Even retailers who’ve chosen to refuse cash would like to be able to accept it. Among other things, cash transactions don’t leave an audit trail for the snoopy bastards at the IRS. So it’s by no means a happy decision for a retailer to decide not to accept cash.
Add that today, cash is being attacked by the federal government, which would like to eliminate it in favor of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). When the government decides to attack something, you can be reasonably sure that it’s something you’d like to keep hold of. But if it’s hard to spend, its desirability is reduced.
This is worth watching, both in Kentucky and elsewhere. It will become supremely important should the social fabric of the nation suffer deep deterioration after the quadrennial elections. At this point, it’s probable that there will be riots and widescale disorder no matter who prevails in November.
Oh, before I forget: It’s still a good idea to have gold, silver, and a hefty supply of ammo on hand. The prices of those things have been rising sharply. My hunch is that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Verbum sat sapienti.
Mar 06 2024
Before I saw the image below – shamelessly stolen from Kenny Lane’s place – I’d have said that there isn’t much in the way of untried yet marginally imaginable lunacy left to explore. But here we are:
Yes, it’s possible. But it’s also a manifestation of genuine insanity. If you’re inclined to dispute that, look at it from her husband’s perspective. To be a wife she must have a husband, right? And these days, shotgun weddings are frowned upon, so he had to have married her willingly.
Some years back I read a novel the central premise of which was that a clone of the Christ Child had been conceived and implanted in the womb of a (willing) host mother. That young woman was described as:
Yet the cloners found a young man willing to marry her.
At the time I thought the premise clung to the outer edge of a reader’s “willing suspension of disbelief” by its fingernails. Now I must contact the author and tell him about “Jennifer.”
Mar 05 2024
The World Economic Forum is telling governments to stop people from growing their own food because of Climate Change. Yeah. Of course they are.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is calling on governments to ban the general public from growing their own food at home by arguing that they are causing “climate change.”
According to so-called “experts” behind a recent WEF study, researchers apparently discovered that the “carbon footprint” of home-grown food is “destroying the planet.”
As a result, the WEF and other globalist climate zealots are now demanding that governments intervene and ban individuals from growing their own food in order to “save the planet” from “global warming.”
If we really wanted to save the planet, we would take every person who goes to Davos on a private plane and dump them into the middle of the ocean without a life jacket. Think about all the carbon that would be stopped just be reducing the number of hypocritical shitheads who fly private jets in order to tell you to stop driving a car and eat the bugs.
Look, at this point it’s just laughable, except for the fact that our own government seems to follow what these satanic filth tell them to do. Now I luckily live in a rather conservative area of the country, so the idea of having the government tell us not to grow our own food is non-existent, and should anyone attempt to try such a feat, the local Sherriff is more than likely to show up and usher them off the property.. The moment some government drone comes up and says I can’t grow my own garlic, or strawberries, or apples, or any of the other foods that I grow, is the moment that it’s open season on government drones. No bag limit. And I’m one of the nicer people up here when it comes to dealing with the government. We have folks here who’s family roots go back to the original homesteaders, and I guarantee you that if they were told not to grow their own food, people would just disappear. And the coyotes would get fatter.
As for the whole Glowbull Warming Climate Cooling Change bullshit, do you know what plants pull out of the air? Yeah, C02. And what do they release? O2. So where does that C go? That CARBON molecule?
That’s right. The plant is using it to build itself. If you want a healthier planet, the plant more veggies. And tell the satanic globalist fuckheads to piss off or get shot.
Mar 05 2024
The following snippet is from a column by Jeffrey A. Tucker, the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute. The column, ”What Happened To Intellectual Life?” appeared at the Epoch Times on February 26, 2024.
It seems that not even the specialists can tell the science from AI-generated caricatures built from utter rubbish. What’s worse is that everyone knows that these cases of hoaxes, plagiarism, and obvious corruption and incompetence are only the tip of the iceberg. Vast swaths of official academia are entirely fraudulent, a heavily funded and deeply institutionalized version of the fake paper published in Frontiers.
Two days ago, a friend and I were musing about the meaning of all of this. He wondered just how easy it was to generate these deep fakes. I pulled up an artificial intelligence (AI) engine and asked for a paper proving that all human beings should be living in refrigerator boxes. I did this just because it was the first thing that came to mind.
Within seconds, I was sitting on a compelling paper with complete arguments and citations and every accouterment of scholarship in modern academia. I did the same thing again with a request to prove that caffeine fixes dyslexia and the results were even more compelling. No, I didn’t submit them anywhere but with a bit of work and time, I’m guessing they could find a home somewhere in the thousands of expensive academic journals to which tax-funded libraries subscribe.
Feel free to be outraged. But do laugh, at least a little, at the proposition that we all ought to be living in refrigerator boxes. Some of the larger ones are really quite nice, though the lack of WiFi would discommode some. As for myself, I feel an attack of dyslexia coming on, so it’s off to the coffeemaker yet again.
Mar 05 2024
It has frequently embarrassed me that Jorge Bergoglio, elevated to the Throne of Saint Peter some years back, chose my name for his papal appellation. The man is so demonstrably unfit for his position that the entire College of Cardinals should do severe penance for electing him. And as the successor to Pope Benedict XVI, the foremost Catholic intellectual of modern times! What on Earth were they thinking?
Bergoglio’s latest emission has me wondering whether he’s a dupe, a victim of ingressive senility, or a socialist tactician:
ROME — Pope Francis said Sunday that military disarmament is not optional but constitutes a “moral obligation” for all nations.
Following his weekly Angelus address in Saint Peter’s Square, the pontiff recalled that March 5 marks the second International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness.
“How many resources are wasted on military expenditure, which, because of the current situation, sadly continues to increase!” he told the estimated 20,000 tourists and pilgrims gathered in the square.
He went on to express his hope that “the international community will understand that disarmament is first and foremost a duty, and that disarmament is a moral obligation.”
“Let’s get this into our heads,” he added. “And this requires the courage of all members of the great family of nations to move from a balance of fear to a balance of trust.”
In the past, the pope has suggested that if people are really serious about world peace, the solution is to “ban all weapons.”
Oh yeah, right. In a world where totalitarian states seek the subjugation of their neighbors, those neighbors should melt their guns and extend a welcoming hand. In a world where more than a billion persons seek to conquer all the rest of us for religious reasons, we should beat our swords into plowshares. And in a world where human predation is the greatest of all threats to innocent life and property, we should put all the tools of self-defense into the incinerator and let the violent and aggressive have their way with us.
If it isn’t madness or senility, it’s a move in a totalitarian plan.
At times like these, it can be embarrassing to be a Catholic. Supposedly we owe an absolute allegiance to the Holy See. At least, that’s what the Holy See says. It’s not true, but even smart Catholics can be befuddled by the notion.
The Vicar of Christ on Earth – that’s the pope, for those of you without a program – has only limited authority. His doctrinal pronouncements cannot contradict the teachings of Christ. If you need an example, imagine a pope issuing an encyclical sanctifying murder or adultery. Imagine a pope proclaiming that it’s a Catholic’s religious duty to convert his non-Catholic neighbors by force. Imagine a pope blessing same-sex marital unions. Oops! Bergoglio did that, didn’t he?
Other commentators have called Bergoglio an “antipope.” I’m unsure of the technicalities here. I’d thought that an antipope was one who claimed the office without having been elected to it by the College of Cardinals. Whatever the case, Bergoglio is a bad pope, whether by dint of stupidity, senility, or a desire to remake the Church as a religious version of the Comintern.
However, there’s no way to pull a sitting pope off the Throne against his will. Catholics can only hope that the next Conclave learns from the last one’s mistake.
Mar 04 2024
Have I not said this before? Have I not screamed “Don’t be a joiner” loudly or frequently enough? Well, looky here:
Ed Cox must resign.
He is a donkey in Elephant’s clothing.
It has been discovered that Cox, chairman of the New York Republican State Committee, sits on the board of “League of Conservation Voters” (“LCV”) — which controls a network of at least five PACs, all registered as liberal and attached to a broader national network of far left Super PACs, including the “Beat Trump Climate Unity Fund.”
The mission of these PACs is twofold: support Democratic and far-left politicians, such as “Squad” members Rashida Talib and Ayanna Pressley, and even Letitia James, Tom Suozzi, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who received thousands of dollars and were all endorsed by the Cox-backed PAC.
In addition to funding far-left candidates, LCV has supported Never Trump PACs, like the “Beat Trump Climate Unity Fund” in 2020, which had the goal “to raise money for the eventual presidential nominee who will face Trump in the 2020 general election.”
This is the Republican Party in the Northeast. Perhaps it’s different in other parts of the country, but so what? We’ve known for a while that the national apparatus is corrupt, animated almost entirely by money and the desire to retain the allegiance of its donors. Now we discover that the GOP chairman in the fourth largest state in the Union is part of the effort to keep Donald Trump, the most effective president of the post-World War II era and the most popular figure in America, out of the White House!
Do you begin to see the folly of looking to partisan politics for salvation? If not, what will it take to awaken you?
I’ve had high officials of the New York GOP tell me that I “belong” in the Republican Party. Why? “You’re passionate and eloquent, Fran. We need your energy.” But when I started to probe for what the New York GOP is willing to do…blank-out. It won’t campaign for educational vouchers. It won’t campaign for constitutional carry. It won’t campaign for a Proposition 13 for New York. It won’t campaign for cost-benefits analyses of proposed “environmental” laws and regulations. And it simply won’t touch the issue of abortion.
So why does anyone of a conservative bent think the GOP is “the place to be?”
There may not be much individual New Yorkers can do to advance our liberation from this increasingly tyrannical state, but at the very least we can stop supporting a party that does nothing but solicit donations from us with which to run covert liberals for our statewide offices. There’s simply no reason to think the top layer of the party will ever change.
Don’t bother counseling me to move. I can’t. And it chafes me more than words can say.
Mar 04 2024
Now that I’m caught up on my obligations, let’s address a painful question. It’s often been asked over the years. It’s painful because the most accurate answer to it is unpleasant. It just cropped up at Gab:
And the answer is: Yes, some wars, some of the people, and some of the time.
Wars are not always the will of the ruler. Sometimes the ruler is pressured into a war by popular sentiment. A good example is the Spanish-American War. President McKinley opposed it, but popular sentiment demanded it. Popular sentiment for war had been deliberately inflamed by the Hearst chain of newspapers.
But even wars reluctantly embarked upon will have the enthusiastic support and participation of some. While the typical soldier of any elevation might not want to go to war – it’s reputed to be “not healthy for children and other living things” – some soldiers are other than typical.
The screenwriters of the first Jack Reacher movie nailed it:
Many opinions change in the course of a war. If memory serves, the American public was strongly behind President George W. Bush as regards going to war to depose Saddam Hussein…before the war was over. But many of those supporters dropped away in the course of the events that followed.
The era of kings, royal houses, and noble families was different. In that era, decisions to go to war, whether it would be nation against nation or one nobleman against another, were independent of the opinions of those who would fight in them or be taxed to pay for them. Today some degree of popular support is required, except in those regimes completely controlled by an autocrat or oligarchy. That’s why information warfare, in which agents of influence strain to bend popular sentiment in their preferred direction, is so important today.
In any conflict, the most important agents of influence are always the warring national governments. The influence each government seeks most ardently to wield is over its own subjects. This has implications that every subject of any State should bear in mind at all times – and most particularly when the masters of the State decide that it’s in their personal or familial interests to take their nation to war.
“War is the health of the State.” – Randolph Bourne
Mar 04 2024
For your humble Curmudgeon, Monday mornings are no longer special occasions that feature groans and a prolonged interval of turgid movement. Since I retired, that’s every day.
I’ve been sifting through this article for a while, and I’m not sure how to assess it. The author makes some good observations, but he goes overboard at several points. Rather than go into detail, I’ll simply advise my Gentle Readers to read critically and decide for themselves.
Warning: Patience will be required. If you’ve ever said to yourself that “Porretto is in love with the sound of his own voice,” there’s a revelation ahead of you.
The incident at Deer Creek High School continues to elicit outraged commentary. Given the specifics, I wouldn’t have expected anything else…but outrage per se is not enough. Especially if it leaves you exhausted and asking yourself “What’s the use?”
If ever there was a justification for a mass march on an institution and the defenestration of every single one of its officials and functionaries, this is surely one. Have the parents of Deer Creek’s student body done anything like that? If not, why not? What good is your outrage if it doesn’t motivate you to tar and feather the rascals and run them out of town on a rail?
Outrage can be either a motivator or an anesthetic. The choice is yours.
In my writing here at Liberty’s Torch, I often emphasize distinctions between primary phenomena and consequential phenomena. Those are important differences to recognize, for reasons my Gentle Readers are far too intelligent to need explained to them. Among the Left’s “distinctions” is its insistence on treating consequences as primaries…when it suits them politically.
Consider this recent piece. The persons featured in that little clip want flagrant black lawbreaking and disorder to be considered a primary: “It’s just our culture.” Can’t outlaw a man’s “culture,” don’t y’know. It would be “unfair.”
The reactions of whites, which are ever more trending toward the race-realist position, are in large measure a consequence of the lawlessness and disorder prevalent among blacks, especially young black males. But rather than allow that whites have some justification for our reactions, Leftists insist that our sentiments are primaries: “racism,” which must be combatted by every means available, including the force of law.
It doesn’t work like that, of course. It evokes reactions such as this one:
…which in its turn evokes the Left’s “la la la la I can’t hear you!” response. It’s mandatory, for American blacks are the Left’s most important mascots and a key voting bloc. (“I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” – Lyndon Baines Johnson)
And the tide of black lawlessness and white reactions against it continues.
The above was essentially prefatory. The subject I had in mind as I wrote it was the murder of Laken Riley:
To CNN and its writers, victims aren’t real victims unless they’re minorities.
An appalling article from the left-leaning news organization was published on Saturday where the author discussed how Hispanic students at the University of Georgia, the school where Laken Riley recently met her brutal death, haven’t “felt safe.”
The article goes into detail about how students aren’t feeling unsafe because an undocumented illegal is suspected of recently killing a student, but instead because racism is the greater evil.
Let’s assume entirely for discussion purposes that there has been some verbal backlash against students of Hispanic heritage in consequence of the murder. That’s unfair, to be sure. But the article’s determination to ignore the primary in the incident is, as Connor Cavanaugh says in the above, appalling. For what is the primary here?
And both native-born Americans and legal, properly vetted immigrants are aware of it.
It’s been said many times that we must assume that a man intends the foreseeable consequences of his actions. So also with the foreseeable consequences of government policies. The aversive responses from decent Americans are prominent among those consequences. The question follows naturally:
A question I shall leave for my Gentle Readers to ponder.
That’s all for the nonce. I have several promises to keep today, some of which will require a lot from me. Enjoy your day as far as possible. Given everything that’s going on, that might require more effort than usual.
Mar 03 2024
From March 3 through March 9 is Smashwords’ Read-An-Ebook Week. In recognition thereof, nineteen of my books are free downloads at Smashwords this week. If you’re unacquainted with my fiction, stop over there and sample it while it’s free. What have you got to lose?
