Jul 18 2025

The Threat Of Digital Currency

     Yes, I’m back on that horse:

     Mrs. Greene is worried, and the rest of us should be. But the threat would not vanish were Congress to reject the idea of creating a new digital currency to be the legal tender of the United States. What about the possibility that Congress might nationalize one of the existing private digital currencies? Is that completely unthinkable?

     Refer to the piece below this one for the text of the Fifth Amendment. For Congress to appropriate Bitcoin “for public use” doesn’t seem to be forbidden by any Constitutional provision. Once Bitcoin is made “coin of the realm,” Washington could set to work on eliminating what remains of American physical cash. Yes, the “just compensation” would be large, but Congress has never balked at spending money it doesn’t have.

     Now you’ve really got something to worry about.

Jul 18 2025

Self-Incrimination

     Let’s have a quick review of the Fifth Amendment:

     No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

     I added the emphasis, of course.

     The provision I bolded and italicized, if interpreted strictly according to its text, states that the prosecution cannot call a criminal defendant to the stand to testify. If the defendant chooses to testify on his own behalf, the prosecution can cross-examine him, and probably will. Once the defendant takes the stand, the clause appears not to be relevant any longer.

     Strangely, this is a subject textualists have declined to address.

     Today, we’re all aware of the practice of “taking the Fifth.” The phrase has nothing to do with snatching a gin bottle from another tippler’s hand. In a legal setting, a witness will use it to avoid testifying in a manner he believes would be contrary to his penal interests: that is, that his testimony “might incriminate him.”

     Jurists have argued for decades about whether a jury may legitimately draw specific inferences from such an invocation. Judges in the U.S. routinely caution jurors against drawing such inferences. Yet jurors are inevitably disposed to infer that the witness is guilty of something. Whether it’s relevant to the case at hand is a separate subject.

     Which brings us to This recent news item:

     Jill Biden’s longtime senior aide Anthony Bernal was subpoenaed to testify before Congress as part of the House GOP’s investigation into the Biden autopen scandal.
     However, he flat-out refused to answer any questions, pleading the Fifth…
     Watch for yourself:

     The Congressional committee hearing to which Anthony Bernal was subpoenaed was investigating the “autopen scandal.” What aspect of that affair could Bernal be so determined to avoid testifying about? Did it involve him personally? Were Bernal testifying in a criminal trial in which he was the defendant, what would the jurors think?

     It begins to look as if “taking the Fifth” is more apt to incriminate oneself than to avert it. If we except cases in which the judge, lawyers, and jurors are secretively “nipping at the cooking sherry,” so to speak.

     Of course, specific cases aren’t a good basis for making laws or codifying judicial procedures. But the subject of self-incrimination, and a truly effective way of avoiding it, is worth a few minutes’ thought.

Jul 17 2025

Errors

     This will be somewhat personal, so I won’t take it ill if you decide to tune out. People who write about themselves and their travels tend to be poor entertainment.

     I have a record of trusting the wrong people. And as I’ve learned through experience, that’s a costly sort of mistake. But as it happens, there are a lot of people “out there” with highly developed “con artistry.” They look for fools like me. They’re not gentle when they find one.

     These past few days, I came close to being victimized by a really clever con artist. I’ll refer to her as Jane. That isn’t the name she gave me. Rather, she represented herself as a minor celebrity of days past, a former child actress. I found her credible, which is (of course) the sine qua non of all confidence games.

     I’ll skip over the “build-up,” which went on for seventeen days. Jane invested a lot of time and effort in it. Long conversations! Pictures! Even a video! All as appealing as you can imagine. But of course, there would come a moment when Jane would go for blood – my blood. Dollar-denominated blood.

     For a change, an alarm bell went off in my head. I backed away. Jane wasn’t about to let go so easily. No doubt she viewed the lengthy “build-up” as an investment she was reluctant to write off. But it will come to naught for her. I’ve reviewed our exchanges and found early indicators of deceit. I should have noticed them many days ago.

     Even though I averted an expensive calamity, I feel terrible: both foolish and let down. I’m not telling you about all this out of a desire for sympathy. Rather, it’s an illustration of what misplaced trust can earn you. And having written those words, I feel rather guilty about writing them, for haven’t I written many times about our loss of trust in one another?

     But this piece isn’t really about trust. It’s about mathematical expectation.

     There’s an old gag. If you’re around my age, you may have heard it. It’s not all that funny, really. But it is germane to the subject.

     A bystander making his way through the city noticed a Frenchman standing on a corner, beckoning to every woman who came near. Curious and in no hurry, the bystander decided to stop and watch. The great majority of them scowled, spat, and walked past in a huff. Some of the others slapped him or struck him with an umbrella. But one or two smiled and walked away with him, arm in arm. He would be back from those encounters some time later – and back to his previous pattern of behavior, as well.

     Eventually our bystander had to know what was going on, so he approached the Frenchman and asked. Here is the substance of their conversation:

Bystander: Excuse me, but what have you been doing that takes up so much of your day and gets you so much abuse?
Frenchman: Ah! But not only abuse, mon ami. I’ve been asking the women who pass if they would agree to have sex with me.
Bystander: What? Every woman who passes by?
Frenchman: Oui, mon ami. Just as you have witnessed. The great majority merely rebuke me and pass on. Yes, there are those who have vented their displeasure more forcefully.
Bystander: And the others, the few who walk away with you?
Frenchman: We spend a pleasant interval enjoying the pleasures of the flesh.
Bystander: But all that vituperation and abuse! Why do you do it?
Frenchman: It is a matter of mathematics, mon ami. The percentage that smile and agree are all that I and my potency can take care of.

     (<rimshot />)

     Must I say “Don’t try this yourselves, Gentle Readers?”

     If he were a real person, the Frenchman above might have inspired others to do likewise. Success does breed emulators. But were the practice to become at all commonplace, there would be a larger adverse reaction. There might be legal consequences. That might dampen the fun.

     It’s much that way with con artists. A profusion of con artists, no matter how advanced their artistry, has resulted in a sharp diminution of the general willingness to trust. Over time, Americans have become reflexively suspicious, reluctant even to say “good morning” to a stranger. A stranger’s request for assistance of some sort is unlikely to be honored, regardless of the identity or perceived sincerity of the requestor.

     Yes, I’m describing our current milieu.

     The proliferation of con artists has rendered their occupation considerably less remunerative per capita and – in some cases, at least – considerably more dangerous. It’s the law of unintended consequences at work. Like Murphy, that law never sleeps.

     But there’s another effect that’s higher in my thoughts this morning. When trust as a default condition evaporates, we get sadder. The retreat to wariness and suspicion isolates us from much that is good and true. For the con artists, however numerous, will always be a minority, and a small minority at that. A habit of treating all others as lowlifes until they’ve proved otherwise is bad for everyone.

     A disinclination to trust becomes more pronounced as one ages. Note that America itself is aging. Draw your own conclusions.

     Our reasons for retreating from trust are many. I shan’t enumerate them here. The big ones that apply to the whole of the nation are propagandization by the media and ever greater violations of our rights by governments. Yet both those institutions claim loudly and repeatedly that they’re doing their best to serve you. They’ve done immense harm, and not only to our willingness to trust.

     I think we would all like to be trusting. I think we want to return to trust as a default condition. I remember our earlier, high-trust society and the wonders of which it was capable. I grew up in it. But it appears impossible short of a social and political convulsion so dramatic that its probability approaches zero.

     Or perhaps I’ve become too personal. Perhaps I’ve been talking only about myself. It’s hard to say. At any rate, have a nice day.

Jul 16 2025

The Yearning

     It took me many years to reach my current state of mind. Ironically, now that I’m here, I can’t fathom why it took so long… or why others don’t see it as I do.

     This longish column has provoked the eruption of the thoughts I struggle to suppress:

     Elected representatives everywhere are compromised, bought or bribed—because we invested those representatives with the power that criminal organizations want. Predictably, a technocratic cartel is now locking itself into the place of government.
     Abandon the belief that only power in the wrong hands is bad. No benevolent dictator was ever going to save us.

     It could not be put better… but stop for just a moment and contemplate the implied question:

What power do criminal organizations want?

     Just hold it there for a moment or two.

     Please allow me a long snippet from Rose Wilder Lane:

     When there was no Government, every man had to be able to defend himself, by force. He seldom shot anybody; the need for force is actually very little. But he had to carry a gun and be able to use it, on the off-chance that he might have to shoot it out with a Bad Man.
     This state of affairs is a nuisance. Men do not want to lug guns around; they want to get on with their natural job, building towns, raising cattle, mining, drilling oil wells. To get rid of their guns, they had to get rid of the Bad Men. So they called themselves a vigilance committee, went after the Bad Man, and strung him up.
     They did this clean across the country, from the Yadkin and the Mohawk to the Rio Grande and the Golden Gate. The invariable result was that the vigilance committee went bad. This happened, because men recognize the brotherhood of man. Murder is everywhere abhorred.
     So when a man had helped to kill another, disarmed and defenceless even though bad, he felt about his action, later, in one of two ways. He hated to remember it, he did not want to repeat it, he figured there was no need to do it again, and he dropped out of the vigilance committee. Or, having once broken the intangible bond of kinship that protects human life on this earth, he became at heart a killer.
     The vigilance committee (it had scores of local names, the Bald Knobbers, the Sand-lotters) always began as a group of men who used force to stop robbers and murderers. It always became a group of men who robbed and murdered.
     Only a still stronger force could stop them. So the peaceful men organized Government.
     They chose one of their number and said to him, in effect, “We’ll help you dispose of that gang, and after that, you attend to any Bad Man that shows up. One man can handle that job, if he gives his whole time to it, and you’re elected. You carry the gun from now on, Sheriff. And you, Judge, call on twelve of us to decide what the Sheriff ought to do with any Bad Man he catches. Now we’ve got a Government; we can get our work done without any more interference.”

     Rose Wilder Lane was not an intellectual nor a sophisticate. She wrote for a readership of ordinary people. Now and then she wrote as if the specifics of what she said didn’t matter. The above passage is an example: Nearly every assertion in it is dubious, and some are outright false.

     However, it does delineate “the yearning.”

     We don’t all yearn for the same things, of course. But the great majority of men do share one particular desire – and that desire is proof against all reason and evidence.

     “The yearning” is for a king of Arthurian stature. This kind of king:

     “There’s a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There’s no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself.”

     I’m no exception. I’ve wished for a king of that quality myself. But in my soberer moments, I realize that no such person could exist. Were a figure of that stature to emerge today, the global Establishment would make his disgrace and death its supreme priority. Consider what Establishmentarians done in their attempts to neuter Donald Trump, and take it from there.

     I’ve written about this before. It’s not a new topic. But it’s with me today because of the direction in which it points.

     What direction is that, you ask? Bear with me.

     Here’s a bold statement for you: There is not one politician in the world today who doesn’t fear Elon Musk.

     Musk is doing something power-mongers of all times and places oppose: he’s threatening to open “the escape hatch.” Just now, space travel being chancy and extraterrestrial environments being hostile to terrestrial life, it’s a remote possibility, a faint glimmer of light through a crack in the walls around us. Even so, it inspires men to dream of freedom: first, freedom of movement; thereafter, freedom in the largest sense.

     Imagine along with me for a moment.

     Starship or its descendant brings a group of men and women to Mars. Yes, the environment is hostile… for now. But along with the development of interplanetary travel technology, there are men at work on environmental technologies that would support life on – or in — the red planet. It needn’t be terraforming technology; it could be just support for living and farming in tunnels, as this novel suggests. Still, the Martian group is in communication with Earth, including – do you doubt it? – American politicians.

     The very first question the politicians would ask is “Where’s the flag? Where did you plant it? We want video!”

     Now the imaginings get radical. The leader of the expedition replies “We didn’t plant it. We’re not going in for any of your BS. Just leave us alone. We’ll do all right without you.”

     The Martians want nothing to do with politics. The technology that brought them to Mars and sustains them there is privately owned and operated. The federal government of the United States has no claim on them or their allegiance. Neither does any other government. What now?

     The best-case scenario is helpless frustration among the politicians. The worst-case scenario is the nationalization of SpaceX and an immediate shipment of troops to Mars to enforce American “sovereignty.” There are stops between those two poles, but the poles are what matter.

     The Martian group might eventually produce a State of their own. It’s more likely than not. But “the escape hatch” is open. Mars is large. Technology that can sustain one group could sustain several. And there are all those asteroids, just within reach and begging to be exploited…

     There’s nothing that power-seekers detest more than men who can ignore them and make their own way.

     A little reminder from the early days of the Great Depression:

     “Even the iron hand of a national dictator is preferable to a paralytic stroke.” – Alf Landon, governor of Kansas and 1936 candidate for President, in a letter to newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

     “If this nation ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.” – David Reed, United States Senator of Pennsylvania, on the floor of the Senate, 1933

     Both those men were Republicans.

     That’s “the yearning” as expressed by politicians. But men qualified to be kings are so rare that I had to invent one. And larger forms of the State, including Constitutional republics such as our nation was meant to be, inevitably decay in accordance with the laws of growth and the dynamic of power.

     If history has an enduring lesson for us, it’s that the State, no matter how it begins, will sooner or later produce tyranny. Do not trust politicians – any of them, or any of their promises. Their yearning is not at all like yours. And get behind Elon Musk and his drive for multiplanetary Mankind. It’s not just about the asteroids and the comets.

Jul 15 2025

“We Never Make Mistakes”

     (With apologies to the shade of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.)

     By now everyone knows that jihadist-Marxist Zohran Mamdani is now the Democrats’ nominee for mayor of New York City, and that openly communist Omar Fateh is running for the mayoralty of Minneapolis. Both have good chances to prevail in their campaigns. That has provoked Stephen Kruiser to say:

     As we have seen time and again throughout history, the only way that people who think they want to live under communism find out that it’s awful is by living under communism. Let’s give the Manhattanites who have been supporting Mamdani and the people who are stupid enough to vote for Tim Walz their wish.

     Please God, no.

     Urban dwellers who vote Democrat are among the most arrogant members of the body politic. They see themselves as a ruling class — a deserving ruling class. They expect that “the revolution” will elevate them to the commissariat… or failing that, leave them secure in the possession of their homes and fortunes. While they don’t share the coal-carrier’s status:

     “Yes, madam, everything’s going to be equal now. I’ll go in silks and you’ll carry coal.” [Attributed to a coal carrier after the French Revolution of 1848.]

     … they do share her attitude.

     But there’s more and worse. (No, Ron Popeil would never say that.) They never admit to error. The failure of their schemes is always someone else’s fault: preferably some faceless and nameless entity that “sabotaged the Revolution.” Check the histories of socialist and communist regimes if you disbelieve this.

     Since holding leftist views is lauded by leftist luminaries as a sign of superior wisdom and morals, to admit to error constitutes a refutation of the associated self-image. If you’ve ever wondered how a leftist could remain a leftist after so many huge failures, you have it now.

     But for us here at the Fortress of Crankitude, this is not a bloodless issue. A socialist or communist New York City would cut us off from the greater portion of America, including all our favorite wineries. So please, Big Apple dwellers: think twice. Di Blasio and Adams were bad. Cuomo would be worse. But Mamdani? Shudder.

Jul 15 2025

Education Versus Bureaucracy

     There isn’t much argument that youngsters learned more and better “back when” than they do today. While this, like nearly everything else, is a multicausal phenomenon, one thing is clear from the objective evidence: the federal Department of Education has not contributed positively to the matter.

     As the Department of Education is a Cabinet department, it answers to the head of the executive branch: i.e., the president. Just so there’s no confusion on the matter, that’s the president of the United States, not the president of the American Federation of Teachers or the National Education Association. Persons who work in the DoE serve at “the pleasure of the president,” as do all member of the executive branch. He has the ultimate authority over all those jobs, including whether they will exist at all.

     Apparently there’s a “wise Latina” who isn’t aware of this:

     On Monday, the US Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision allowed Trump to proceed with mass firings at the Department of Education.
     Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor fumed in her dissent.
     “This case arises out of the President’s unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago: the Department of Education,” Sotomayor wrote.

     Associate Justice Sotomayor’s fidelity to the Constitution appears to be variable.

     Federalizing all education and educational spending in the U.S. has been a liberal fetish for some time. The DoE was a gift to the teachers’ unions by the late Jimmy Carter, in payment for supporting his campaign for the presidency. As the education of our children has always been a Leftist target – “Give me a child until he is seven years old,” and so forth – the Left regarded the DoE as a great prize. The possibility of losing that bastion inflames them like nothing else in politics.

     But it must be destroyed. The Constitution gives the federal government no role in education.

     The Left’s core thesis is that everything – every human need, desire, aspiration, and action – must be under the supervision of the State. The late Thurgood Marshall once blew a law school exam question by claiming otherwise. His opinion, when told by his professor that “the Constitution doesn’t mention education,” was that “it damn well should.” While Mussolini would applaud, Americans reared in a milieu in which education was considered a local and parental affair see things otherwise.

     Never before in our history have American parents been so dissatisfied with the performance of our “public” schools. Those who remember the schooling of even fifty years ago are appalled by contemporary “education.” If the DoE is at all to blame, they’ll happily see it abolished.

     While no politically controlled institution will ever perform as well as a private one, returning the “public” schools to local control would be a help. Disentangling them from the federal government is an important first step. But that would also mean that local school boards, under parents’ influence, would regain control of curriculum, staffing, and budgeting – and the “educators’ unions” know it.

     That pits our “educators” against those who desire a return to effective, traditional education. Not a “good look,” as the public relations people would say. But there are a lot of rice bowls to keep filled, which demotes all other considerations, including education itself, to secondary status at best.

     Bureaucracies tend to make the institutions they regulate look like themselves. They smile upon the multiplication of personnel; it means more constituents for their “services.” So the proliferation of educationally irrelevant public school employees pleases DoEs both federal and state. The bureaucrats can claim that as a result of their supervision, “so much more is being done.” Never mind that the kiddies can’t read or figure.

     This segues into other subjects of equal importance, such as the failure of recent immigrants to adapt to American norms and assimilate into American culture. But it’s a bit too early in the morning for all that.

Jul 14 2025

Farm Girl

     [A short story for you today. I’m in too good a mood to write about current events, so have a short romance from a few years back. – FWP]

     Allan Fitzgerald’s front yard was unusually shallow for a parcel that had once been a working farm. A mere sixty feet separated his front porch from the curb of NY 231. Behind his humble little ranch, his spread extended a quarter mile further eastward, and was almost as wide as it was deep. The previous owner had once operated a moderately successful corn farm there, as had the owner before him, but the viability of so small-scale a farm had come to an end when the massive machines of Lyons-Davis Agricorp rolled into Onteora County.
     That didn’t matter to Allan. He’d never been a farmer. The field stood idle. In the barn beside the ranch, the tractor and harvester gathered cobwebs. The old Bellamy farm was merely his retirement home, where he hid more or less comfortably from the world and its reminders of his failures.
     Allan didn’t bother much about the field or the barn. When the mood struck him to be outside, he invariably went to sit on the front porch. Traffic on NY 231 was too sparse to annoy him, and the Compton farm across the way was as idle as his own.
     That morning, he’d been sitting on his porch for about an hour, musing indifferently over a mediocre fantasy novel, when the girl ambled into view.
     Foot traffic on NY 231 was unusual in the extreme. It was a truck route, a bypass for the city of Onteora. It had no sidewalks, and was flanked by no consumer-oriented stores or places of employment. It connected to US 90, forty miles to the west, but those who traveled it eastward were seldom Onteora bound.
     At a distance the girl was ordinary-looking: medium height, a broad-shouldered but bosomy build, shoulder-length blonde hair. She appeared to be in her early twenties. She wore a heavy wool sweater, blue jeans, and work boots. A shabby satchel of modest size dangled from her right hand. Her walk was strong but unhurried. A surge of curiosity impelled Allan to lean forward, as he attempted to make out her face.
     She noticed, stopped, and returned his gaze. Embarrassed without a clear reason, Allan smiled formally and forced his eyes back to his novel.
     “Any good?”
     The words startled him half out of his chair. She’d approached so quietly that he hadn’t noticed her arrival on his porch, practically in his lap. She backed away a step as he resettled himself.
     “Not particularly. Just a way to pass the time. What can I do for you?”
     “I’m looking for work.” She waved at the barn and the field beyond. “Your first planting is late. Need a hand with it? I’m good with machines.”
     He grinned ruefully. “You can’t imagine how late. There hasn’t been a planting here in seven years. This isn’t a working farm any more. It’s just my retirement spread.”
     The girl’s face fell. She nodded, hefted her satchel, and made to leave.
     “Just a moment.”
     She turned and looked at him questioningly.
     She’s not dirty or unkempt, but…
     “How long have you been walking?”
     She shrugged. “Couple days. A trucker dropped me off at the end of 90.”
     “Got a place to stay?”
     She shook her head.
     “Had any breakfast?”
     “Granola bar.” She indicated her satchel. “They’re easy to tote around.”
     “Uh, yeah.” He rose. “Look, I was about to fix some lunch. If you’re not in a big hurry to get on down the road, you’re welcome to join me.”
     She stared at him in silence for several seconds.
     “Okay, thanks.” She stuck out a hand. He took it, her calluses rough against his fingers. “I’m Kate.”
     “Allan,” he said. “Let’s get fed.”

#

     Kate attacked her ham sandwich with evident appetite. Allan smiled to himself, fetched bottled soda, potato salad, and a plastic container of grapes from the fridge, and loaded them onto the kitchen table.
     As he laid out forks, napkins, and plastic cups, he said “Work’s pretty sparse these days.”
     She nodded. “Not just here.”
     “You’re not a New Yorker, are you?”
     “Jayhawk.” She snapped off another bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed quickly. “The big outfits have taken over back there. They don’t have much use for local hands. They bring in their own crews. Mexicans, mostly.”
     “It’s the same here.”
     She nodded and shoveled up a monstrous bite of potato salad. He seated himself across from her, poured soda for them both, and steepled his hands before him.
     “So how long have you been on the road?”
     She swallowed, laid down her fork, and looked at him as if she were trying to gauge the sincerity of his interest.
     “Been a few weeks.”
     “No takers for an experienced hand in all that time?”
     Her look of disgust was eloquent.
     “So what do you think of New York so far?”
     She scowled. “Not much. You don’t use what you’ve got. God gave us the land to grow something. To give life.” She took up her cup of soda and emptied it in a single long draught. “You folks don’t seem to realize that. Unless your neighbors are different from…what I’ve seen so far.”
     “Religious?”
     “Catholic.”
     “Me too.” He hesitated. “Can I have a shot at changing your opinion of us?”
     Her weighing, measuring stare returned at full force.
     “What do you have in mind?”
     He rose. “Come with me.”

#

     Kate ran a hand caressingly along the tractor’s steel flank.
     “This is a forty-seven Springfield. They don’t make ’em like this any more. All plastic and sheet metal nowadays.”
     Allan nodded. “Think you can get it running?”
     She chuckled. “Oh, I’ll get her running, all right. She’s a classic. Pure power, just waiting for the starting gun. When I’m finished with her, she’ll be able to pull your house off its foundation.” Her face clouded; she halted and swiveled to face him. “For what?”
     “You want to grow things?”
     “Yeah, but—”
     “Do it here.”
     She gaped at him.
     “I don’t use the land. Why shouldn’t you?” He waved at the array of machines and tools, idle since he’d taken possession. “Stay here and work it. You’re welcome to do what you like with it. And keep the proceeds, of course.”
     She gazed doubtfully at the tractor, plainly uncertain what she’d really been invited to do.
     “Stay where?”
     “I have a spare bedroom.”
     Her eyes rose to his, challenging. “Is there lock on the door?”
     “There is. You won’t be disturbed, I promise.”
     “Lend me a few bucks for seed and fuel and stuff?”
     He nodded. “Not a problem.”
     “Corn?”
     “Whatever you want.”
     She pondered in silence for a long moment.
     “Okay.”

#

     Allan was overwhelmed by the fury of Kate’s attack on his offer. She rose at five the following morning, was showered and dressed by five-twenty, and out in the barn immediately thereafter without even a cup of coffee. The constant clanking, scraping of tools against parts, and occasional heartfelt profanity kept him aware of her labors throughout the morning. It took all his resolve to keep him inside so she could work in privacy. He peered out the kitchen window at the open barn doors more often than he’d care to admit.
     Just before noon, there came a brief, rapid whirring, followed by the roaring of a powerful engine awakening from slumber. Moments later, the tractor rolled out of the barn, with Kate grinning triumphantly from the driver’s seat, and arrowed up the gentle grade toward his house.
     Allan closed the back door behind him and stood on the landing as Kate halted the old monster a mere yard from his steps and killed the engine. Her smile was impossibly wide.
     “Told you!”
     He nodded. “Indeed you did. Get on in here.”
     She frowned, but followed him inside. He gestured her to sit at the kitchen table, then laid a legal pad and a ball-point pen before her.
     “Make a list of what you need.”
     “Huh? I was going to—”
     “No doubt you were. But it’s a fair drive to the best clump of suppliers, so I want to be sure we don’t forget anything.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You didn’t think you were going to carry a few hundred pounds of seed, fertilizer, and fuel back here, did you?”
     “Well, no. But I was going to hitch Nellie up to the disc harrow and—”
     “Nellie?”
     “The Springfield. That’s her name.” She grinned. “All these years and you didn’t know?”
     He groaned. “Okay, so I’m insufficiently inquisitive about my machines’ monikers.”
     “Hey! Shorter words, please. I’m only a farm girl.”
     He fixed her with a no-nonsense stare.
     “You’re a farm woman.”
     She opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded. “Okay, whatever.”
     “So make that list. I’ll fix us some lunch.”
     “Okay.”

#

     For the next three days, Kate didn’t let up. She put twelve to fourteen hours into the little farm each day: first tending the machines, then clearing away the debris of earlier years, then tilling the soil and readying it to receive seed. She paused only for meals, and at the end of the day to shower and retire to her room. Yet the grinding effort seemed to agree with her; she never complained, and she looked stronger and more assured with each day’s work.
     Allan knew that, without assistance, Kate would have to limit her ambitions. She certainly wouldn’t be able to cultivate forty acres’ crops with no hands but her own. He kept silent, and waited patiently for her to disclose her plans for the season before her. It was Saturday dinner before she revealed them.
     “Think I’ll plant four acres for trade,” she said between mouthfuls of beef stew, “and put asparagus on four more. Plenty of money in good asparagus. Won’t be worth a damn for at least two years, though.”
     “Two years?” A gentle fluttering began in his stomach.
     She nodded. “You have to invest the time if you want stuff that’s worth the money. The soil and the asparagus have to get used to one another.”
     “So what will this year’s cash crops be?” he said.
     “Scallions and rhubarb.”
     “Hm?”
     She grinned. “You expected corn? Why bother? The big guys grow enough corn to feed the whole world about five times.” She tore a chunk from her dinner roll, sopped up stew gravy with it, thrust it into her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Small operators have to do specialty crops. I’m really good with rhubarb. You ever had a rhubarb pie?”
     He shook his head.
     “Then you haven’t lived. I promise you, nobody near here will be able to touch our rhubarb.” She nibbled at the roll. “The hard part will be selling the stuff. Are there any specialty markets around here we could approach?”
     “A few. Feel like taking a drive tomorrow, making inquiries?”
     She was silent for a moment. “Sure. So when’s Mass tomorrow?” she said.
     The swerve hauled him up short. “I go to the seven-thirty. The church is on the other side of the city. You’re coming with me?”
     She shrugged. “Of course. Why not?”
     “Right.”

#

     They drew more than a few stares in church. The seven-thirty Mass was populated by the most constant of congregations. Nearly all the attendees sat in exactly the same place every week. An unfamiliar face was sure to excite interest, and more than a little gossip. Especially since it was the face of a young woman, sitting by the side of a considerably older man who’d come to Mass alone for seven straight years.
     Father Ray stopped them on the church steps.
     “Do I have a new parishioner?”
     Kate answered before Allan could compose a response. “For this season at least, Father.” She held out a hand, and the priest clasped it. “I’m Kate Morrell.”
     “Welcome to Onteora parish, dear. I’m Father Raymond Altomare.” The priest looked an avalanche of questions at Allan, who did his best to maintain an expression of bland amiability.
     “Father,” Kate said before the awkward silence could run too long, “would you know of any markets in the area that might take some specialty produce on consignment?”
     The priest’s eyebrows rose. “Are you reviving Bellamy Farm?”
     She nodded. “Maybe you’ll be calling it the Morrell Farm this time next year.”
     Father Ray smiled. “Wait here.” He trotted off toward a knot of other congregants, animatedly exchanging words and gestures on the church’s front lawn, and returned moments later with a solid-looking man in a sport jacket and NFL-logo tie.
     “Hello, I’m Jack Taliaferro. I run the local farmers’ market.” He held out a hand.
     Kate shook the proffered hand but did not release it. Her voice dropped a full octave and became husky. “I’m Kate Morrell. Allan has hired me to turn his spread into a working farm again. We’ve put in several acres of champion-line scallions and rhubarb. Very high return per unit. But I’m only good at growing things. I’m hopeless at selling them. Do you think you might be able to help?” With that, she produced a smile of such dazzling power that Allan’s heart clenched in his chest.
     Taliaferro’s mouth dropped open. Beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. His free hand went to his collar and tugged it away from his throat.
     “I think I might,” he croaked. “Give me a moment?” He reclaimed his hand with some reluctance and beckoned to another congregant. “Solly? Come do some business!”
     Presently Kate was chatting, laughing, and backslapping with the two merchants as if they were friends of twenty years’ standing. A few minutes later, she shook hands with both again and returned to Allan.
     Allan took Kate gently by the elbow and steered her back toward the car. “How did you do that?”
     The smile she awarded him was 200-proof innocence. “Practice.”

#

     They went on that way, day after day and week after week. Kate would rise at five, if not earlier, and set to her labors at once. Allan, half an hour or more behind her despite his best efforts, would cook for them, clean for them, and provide the relaxation of small talk at their meals together. At seven each evening she would put away her tools, shower off the grime of the day, and sit quietly before the television with him until weariness compelled her to sleep.
     Allan kept his distance with difficulty; Kate was too much the dynamo, too filled with life and the fire of enterprise. She electrified him even at her arm’s-length remove. She shone with the quality whose loss had impelled him toward an unusually early retirement: the simple joy of dedication, the ecstasy that comes from giving oneself wholeheartedly to work one genuinely wants to do.
     She asked for nothing. He had to drag her away from the farm to drive her into the city for clothes, shoes, and grooming items. Her reluctance to allow him to spend on her made it difficult verging on impossible, but he would not relent. He used marketing and Mass as the rationales. If she wanted to sell her produce widely, he told her, she’d have to cultivate recognition and trust as well as her crops, by becoming socially acquainted with more of Onteora than just him. Besides, contemporary mores to the side, it was unseemly to attend church in stained jeans and work boots. She acquiesced, at first reluctantly, then with visibly growing pleasure.
     It grew upon him over time that, while he had adjusted to being alone after his divorce from Marie, he had never come to enjoy it. He was not truly a solitary man. He’d been plagued by his sense of unworthiness and his awkwardness with others, and had come to prefer isolation to their torments. Yet in Kate’s company he could feel neither.
     One June morning, she woke him by force, shaking him out of a dreamless slumber to the rising light of dawn. He focused with difficulty, blearily wondering what emergency could justify her unprecedented invasion of his bedroom. The clock on his nightstand made it half past five.
     She insisted that he don a robe and follow her, and led him to the fields she’d cultivated. To his sleep-hazed vision, all appeared as it had the day before. She scampered a few paces into the field, squatted, and beckoned to him to join her.
     The scallions had sprouted. Green shoots about an inch long had penetrated to the air and sunlight. He looked from them to her, and found in her smile a joy that words could not capture. Instead of speaking, he raised her to her feet and offered his hand in congratulations.
     She stepped past his hand and wrapped him in an embrace of crushing power. He returned it hesitantly. Twin streams of tears dampened his shoulder.

#

     That night, Allan teetered on the verge of sleep when a warm intrusion made its presence known against his side. He groped through the darkness and found a cushiony silken mass: a woman’s breast.
     “Kate?”
     She chuckled. “Unless you’ve got someone else coming over.” A hand landed on his chest and slid caressingly down to his groin. He became erect at once.
     “What are you doing?”
     “What do you think?”
     “But—”
     “Shut up, Allan.” She reached into his boxers’ fly and took his organ in her hand. “We farm girls aren’t into a lot of conversation at times like this.” Seemingly in one motion, she divested him of his shorts and rolled him on top of her.
     She was muscular yet soft and welcoming, a blanket of loving flesh that sought him with an eagerness he’d never encountered even as a teenager. He had to be the one to slow them down, to delay actual coitus and make room for foreplay. As he acquainted himself with her body, kissing, nibbling, and stroking his way along her bounties, she clutched at him repeatedly, as if she were afraid that he might somehow slip away. He reassured her with fingertips, lips, and tongue, using all he remembered of the art of love from his distant days of joy with Marie.
     When she was gasping raggedly beneath him, desperate for the ultimate union, he gently parted her labia, started to slide into her, and hit an unexpected barrier. He pulled back at once.
     “What’s wrong?” she breathed.
     “Are you wearing a tampon?”
     “No.”
     “Then—”
     “Shut up, Allan!” And she slammed herself onto him with irresistible force.
     They cried out together from the pain of her deflowering, but in the aftermath it was quickly forgotten. She would not allow their bodies to be separated; she barely allowed him enough latitude to move inside her. It was mere seconds to her first shuddering orgasm, a minute or two to her second one. As she approached the third, the tides in Allan’s groin swelled toward their peak. He could not restrain them. Her fingers dug deeply into his buttocks as he arched and came.
     She screamed deafeningly as his seed flowed into her. She refused to let him withdraw even slightly, pulling him against her so powerfully that his pelvis groaned from the stress. His outpouring of semen seemed to go on forever, a torrent no effort of his could stanch. The force and duration of his orgasm left him exhausted, almost too weak to breathe, but still conscious enough to fret.
     Dear God, I’ve broken a virgin. I might have impregnated her into the bargain.
     She held him inescapably, her arms and legs woven around him, as they slowly regained their breath and their senses. He remained lodged deep in her body. He did not attempt to breach the embrace.
     “Why?” he breathed at last.
     “I love you,” she whispered.
     “But how?”
     “How not?” she replied.
     “Kate—”
     “Time enough in the morning, Allan.”
     With a twist of her hips, she rolled him onto his back and settled herself upon him. Arms around one another, still locked tightly together, they slept.

#

     As usual, she was up before him, but this time he found her in the kitchen, coffee made and mugs steaming at their respective places. She looked up as he entered and smiled.
     It was the radiant smile of the morning before, when she’d shown him the first visible sign of the life she’d nurtured, but it was more. It compounded discovery, triumph, love, and peace into a single visible expression of joy. He could hardly believe he was its object.
     He sat at his place and stretched out his hands. She took them in hers.
     “What now?” he murmured.
     She shrugged. “Breakfast, a quick shower, then I guess I’ll weed and water.”
     “Come on!”
     She leered. “Got something else in mind?”
     “Kate!”
     “From where I’m sitting, everything’s great, Allan. What’s got you so wound up?”
     “I might have impregnated you last night!”
     “You think I’m not aware of that? Farm girl, remember? Oh, excuse me, farm woman. I know what semen is for, Allan. I’ve inseminated cows.” She looked off briefly. “Now that’s really grotty. The bull semen comes in this turkey baster thing. You have to wear these long lubricated gloves, because one hand goes all the way up the cow’s—”
     “Kate!”
     She giggled little-girl naughtily.
     He was unable to speak, barely able to form a coherent thought. She grinned and chafed his hands.
     “God gave women wombs for the same reason He gave us the land: to grow something. To make life. I want your baby inside me. If I didn’t catch last night, maybe I’ll get lucky tonight. Or tomorrow, or the next night. Think you’re up to the job?”
     Her expression turned serious, and she leaned forward. “Or is it that you don’t want a baby?”
     “Kate,” he faltered, “the only thing I want more than a child of my own is you to love and raise it with. I just can’t quite believe it’s all coming true. Why?”
     She scowled. “Told you last night. I love you.”
     “I guess,” he said slowly, “that’s the part I still don’t get. How am I…how did I earn that?”
     Her smile returned. “By being who you are. By opening your home to me, giving me everything you have, and telling me it’s mine to use as I please. By looking after me and treating me like your beloved long before you even knew what I’m good for.” Her brow wrinkled. “What I don’t get is my good luck. Why hasn’t some other woman snapped you up?”
     “At my age?”
     “Seems like you’re doing okay to me. You’re a classic. You haven’t rusted or weathered. You’re still state of the art. They don’t make ’em like you any more. Like Nellie. How old are you, fifty or so?”
     “Fifty-two. Kate, that’s another thing. You’re what, twenty-two or twenty-three?”
     “Twenty-three in October.” She grinned. “Lots of farm kids are born in October.”
     “Uh, yeah. So I’ve got thirty years on you. Just how long do you think I’m going to last? You could be alone again before you hit fifty.”
     She peered at him in disbelief. “I’m supposed to toss away the man I love because I can’t have the whole of his adult life for my own? Okay, so I got here late. My bad. But what you have left is priceless, and I want to share it with you, and with your children born from my body. If you’ll let me.”
     He fell silent.
     Presently she squeezed his hands, rose and went to peer out the window at the field she’d labored over.
     “I can’t abide waste, Allan. Farm people are like that.” She gestured at her tillings. “When you first showed me that field, and all the stuff in your barn, I knew I had to make use of it. You could have tried to send me down the road, but I think I’d have fought you even that very first day. And after you showed me yourself, I wasn’t about to let you go to waste either.”
     He shook his head. “So what have you been doing these past six weeks? Working up the nerve?”
     She chuckled. “Plus a little agriculture. Actually,” she said, “I wanted to give you the right of the first move. After yesterday morning, I couldn’t make myself wait any more.” She returned to her seat and took his hands again. “Your turn.”
     “Hm?”
     “Time to tell me how you feel about it—about me.”
     He was slow to answer.
     “I was…dead,” he said. “Marie—my wife—left me a long while ago. It was harder on me than I realized at first. I lost interest in my work, and I became uncomfortable around others, and pretty soon I was alone. I tried to tell myself that I preferred it that way, but I was alone whether I liked it or not. I had money, so I took advantage of the opportunity to retire and get away. I landed here. Lots of space, no neighbors to speak of, no pressure of any kind. As long as I could get groceries and get to Mass on Sunday, I thought I had what I needed.”
     “And then?”
     “Then there was you. The embodiment of life. Life on the hoof! What I’d needed but hadn’t had the sense to look for or pursue, delivered right onto my porch on a breezy April day. From that very first moment, you brought me life in such abundance that I knew I couldn’t stay dead. Want to know how I knew?”
     She nodded.
     “Because I couldn’t look at you without quaking inside from the fear that you might get away.”
     Her eyes brimmed over. She rose and pulled him out of his seat.
     “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”
     “Hm?”
     “First,” she said, “we shower. Then some toast or eggs or something. Then we go see Father Ray.”
     “Why?”
     “Banns and a date, dummy! You do want our firstborn to be legitimate, don’t you?” She tugged him down the hallway toward the master bathroom.
     “Oh. Right. Kate?”
     “Hm?”
     “Could I help with the farm? I don’t know much about growing things, but…?”
     That stopped her. She turned and searched his face. “It’s dirty, tiring work, Allan.”
     “That’s okay,” he said, “if I can do it with you.”
     She smiled and pulled him close. “That you can.”

==<O>==

Copyright © 2012 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Jul 13 2025

For Good Samaritan Sunday

     I had a number of “secular” topics in mind for today until I got to Mass. Today’s Gospel reading is from Luke chapter 10: the parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s one of my favorites, because it delineates the answer to the oft-neglected question Who is my neighbor? which a “lawyer” posed to Christ after reciting the Two Great Commandments:

     And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
     He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
     And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
     And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
     But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?
     And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
     But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
     And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
     Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?
     And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

     [Luke 10:25-37]

     Neighbor is actually a contraction of nigh borne: i.e., one who has come near, or has been brought near. Not everyone in the world qualifies. Long ago, I wrote:

     Count Leo Tolstoy once spent a night wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, giving to the poor whom he encountered until his pockets were empty and his energy was spent. At the end of his sojourn, those to whom he’d given were a little better off for a short time, but he knew and admitted that he’d made no lasting difference in their lives, that as soon as they’d exhausted the night’s benison, the darkness would return. He concluded that one should act with love toward those whom God has placed in his path, rather than to ride forth and scatter his substance widely and without regard for efficacy.
     Who are the needy whom God has placed in our path? Are they not our family members, neighbors and friends? Is it not these whom our circle of care should encompass?

     So it is, and so it should be. Yet the tendency of the current age is to neglect those proximate to us – even to disdain them and their cares – and to reserve our charitable impulses for persons far away whom we’ll never meet. Those faraway beneficiaries are “helped” by impersonal “charities,” or worse yet, by government agencies. Seldom does such “help” really help. It never creates the kind of bond between donor and donee that leads to genuine fellow-feeling; it cannot.

     I could go into a long, frothing tirade about this tendency and those who encourage it, but not today. Rather, I’ll simply suggest that if you believe in the rightness and goodness of helping others, you should attend first to those who are near to you: your neighbors in the exact sense of that word. That is the best application of the charitable impulse.

     Christian charitable institutions are not exceptions to this rule. The local, parish-run food pantry? Fine. The town’s Meals on Wheels program? Probably acceptable. But the larger and more distant from you, the less personal any charity becomes. Impersonal “charity” that passes through bureaucracies and “programs” does not deserve the name, for the caritas of it is nonexistent.

     And having said that, I’ll wish you a happy Sunday. May God bless and keep you all.

Jul 13 2025

A Hopeful Harbinger?

     Perhaps you’ve noticed that American education has decayed. Surely you were aware that it was deliberate. Yet here and there are remnants of a time when we knew the reasons for things. We’re used to them, such that removing or altering them would draw notice.

     Here’s one such:

     Primary and secondary school students no longer learn about these things. They aren’t mentioned in “higher education,” either, except by Keynesian economists in their cups, minded to pour disdain on a couple of “barbarous relics.”

     The reeding on the edges of dimes and quarters was a back-reference to the time when America had money. When the paper dollar bill bore this legend: “The United States will pay to the bearer on demand” right above the denomination. That was a while ago now, which is why you haven’t seen any of those bills in some time.

     The reeding was there to discourage coin clipping, a favorite practice of European autocrats whose wars weren’t popular enough to command a tax increase. When our coinage was silver, coin clipping had to be rendered next to impossible. But of course, there’s no point to filing down the edges of a coin with no intrinsic value.

     President Trump, as the whole world must be aware, is a big fan of gold. Might this be an indication that he’s planning to push for the reintroduction of specie backing for the dollar? Removing the reeding might just be his way of getting people to talk about why it was there in the first place… and that might get people talking about the inherently inflationary nature of an unbacked currency.

     Be still, my trembling heart!

Jul 13 2025

Quote Of The Day

     The only protection and order that the police actually provide is the illusion of protection and order. — Vox Popoli

     And the illusion has ceased to convince.

Jul 12 2025

Reflections on the World

I was too hot and tired to do much today, so I decided to write down my thoughts on why Trump is NOT The One, but he IS “The Guy” for now.

It’s actually only 82, but, for the Great Lakes area, that’s pretty hot. We’re due to have a thunderstorm later today (I can feel the weather changes in my joints), which should cool things off considerably.

Trump is talking about permanently sending Rosie O’Donnell to Ireland (yes, I know she has already moved there, but she COULD come back). I’m no great fan of hers, but – isn’t that likely to cause some friction with Ireland? I mean, what have they done to us that they should suffer her presence in their country for the rest of her life?

Lord, I HOPE.

There is hope for Dem voters, though.

The above memes, and many more, are available at Bookwormroom.

I’m going to get some housework done – the storm should be coming soon, and I don’t want to risk a power outage in the middle of working.

Jul 12 2025

Day Off

     Sorry, Gentle Reader. There’s just nothing that gets my juices flowing sufficiently to write about. Back tomorrow, I hope.

Jul 11 2025

Quote Of The Day

VDH concludes by speaking of what is on the mind of the Left:

“’Right now the way that we exercise power without having legislative or executive influence is institutions, foundations, media, K through 12 universe. And Donald Trump is starting to address our left-wing monopoly and dominance of those institutions. And if he were to be successful, we would collapse, dissipate, disintegrate. So, we’re going to go take to the streets and we’re going to use violence and we’re going to do anything possible to stop this Donald Trump counterrevolution.’

It’s going to be very dangerous times. We got to be very careful about what everybody says and not escalate the situation. But it’s mostly now coming from a frustrated and impotent left.”

Jul 11 2025

Identity Politics And National Fragmentation

     Europe is in trouble:

     Jamal el-Haj, a Lebanese-born Swedish politician, was expelled from the Social Democratic Party last year after it was revealed he had intervened in an asylum case on behalf of a fundamentalist imam back in 2017. He had also previously attended a conference in Malmö in the spring of 2023 that had connections to Hamas, the Islamist terror group and perpetrators of the October 7th pogrom in southern Israel later that year.
     Since being booted by the Social Democrats, el-Haj has been busy crafting a new party that better suits his beliefs. Paperwork dated from last month shows that el-Haj registered the creation of the so-called Unity Party, which he deems necessary to represent “the many who no longer recognise themselves in today’s Sweden,” especially those of migrant origin. El-Haj has so far maintained that the party will be secular, stressing that the Unity Party is aimed at “the entire Swedish population—not just Muslims or immigrants.” It will rather focus on international solidarity, humanism, environmental responsibility, and economic equality. Pro-Palestine activism will also no doubt play a leading role. Despite claims of the party being based around purely secular values, it has been noted that el-Haj held numerous meetings with imams, some in his home, about its formation. The organisation’s inner circle also comprises primarily Muslim religious leaders.

     How do you see that working out?

     Most other Western European nations are in similar situations. They’ve admitted large numbers of Islamic immigrants, while the Eurocrats in Brussels have done their damnedest to destroy the sense of national identity in the European Union’s member states. The combination, amplified by many other economic and cultural trends, has weakened national cohesion in those states to the point that patriotism is largely a bygone sentiment.

     Human beings value affiliation with groups, especially groups that offer a sense of protection, whether real or imagined. Europeans are not exceptions. When national identities weaken, more particular identities will rise in prominence, as will the individual’s inclination to identify himself with them.

     Today, the most potent identity in Western Europe is Islamic identity. It’s the firmest, preached relentlessly by imams and buttressed by Islamic scripture. It’s also the most alien to the European states in which it’s taken root. That alienness makes it politically threatening. With Muslims outbreeding native Europeans as rapidly as they are, Tom Kratman’s nightmare scenario is becoming more plausible each year.

     National identity in the United States has been under asymmetric pressure: it arises from the Left, which sees political advantages in promoting tribal loyalties over national ones. While counterpressure has arisen from the Right, the correlation of forces is unclear. Racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic affiliations all play a part. We must be vigilant.

     America can’t solve Europe’s problems, and thank God we have a president who’s uninterested in trying to do so. But the emergence of an external threat to Western Europe might assist with the return of patriotism. For a long time, NATO’s cohesion was based on the looming presence of the Soviet Union and its undisguised expansionist ambitions. Putin-ruled Russia doesn’t look nearly as threatening… but perhaps in combination with the recently uncloaked expansionism of Red China…

     Stay tuned.

Jul 11 2025

Self-Composing Headlines Dept.

     Before we get into this stunning bit of news from one of our Solar System neighbors, let’s take special note of the date:

It’s 7-11 Day!

     To celebrate this august institution of convenience, which has rescued many a baking project from an insufficiency of milk or butter, go to your nearest 7-11 and purchase a Big Gulp. Unless you live in New York City, in which case go to Penn Station, grab a train to Long Island, get off anywhere east of Jamaica, and then do as non-BigApple dwellers do.

     And now: It seems Mars is experiencing a wee bit of warming:

     The overall darkening of Mars’ surface in recent decades has significantly raised the Red Planet’s temperature, a possible cause for the substantial shrinkage of the planet’s southern ice cap, observed in the past few years.

     Horrors! Global warming on Mars! And we haven’t yet got even an outpost there! How can the Left blame this on our love affair with the internal combustion engine?!

     No need to worry, of course. The Democrats have their best minds on it… or they will, just as soon as they figure out how to blame capitalism for the expected environmental devastation of 16 Psyche.

Jul 10 2025

About The “No Epstein Client List” Announcement

     This has two edges. Both can cut us badly.

     First, it undercuts the credibility of the Trump Administration, including President Trump himself. That’s bad enough. We put him back into the Oval Office believing that we could trust him to keep his promises. That trust has been abraded; how badly, we may see during the midterms.

     Second, it gives the Left and its buddies in the media a weapon to use against us: to split the ranks of the large majority that desperately wants the nation to return to sanity and frugality. That’s arguably a larger threat than any other political development at this time. Our opponents want us divided and at odds with one another. We must take care not to give them what they seek.

     Now, in the strict sense, there may not be an Epstein Client List. That is: there may not be a document composed of names, addresses, and telephone numbers with the legend “CLIENT LIST” at the top. But there are paper and computer phone books, cellphone contact lists, and flight manifests for Epstein’s private jet. We may see them yet. The danger there is that it’s a virtual certainty that some of the persons named therein will be wholly innocent of any pedophilic activity or other sexual hijinks. Failure to distinguish the criminal from the innocent would be a terrible crime.

     We must continue to press for disclosures, but carefully and ever aware of our fallibility.

Jul 10 2025

The Demise Of Facts

     It’s getting hard for me to take the passing parade at all seriously.

     I put this in the Future Columns folder the day before yesterday. A brief excerpt:

     So how many black guys do you think fought during the Battle of Hastings at a place called Hailesaltede, in Sussex, England, nearly a millennium ago?
     Before you give some flip answer, let’s look at the participants.
     On the one side, you had the Normans, led by their Duke, William. Normans — aka Northmen — were partially Franco-fied Vikings, invited to settle in France in 911 at the behest of the West Frankish king, Charles the Simple.
     On the other side, you had the English — descended from Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany — led by the just-crowned King Harold Godwinson.
     OK, so now you can give your flip answer. Here’s mine: those armies were whiter than an all-albino Osmonds tribute band.

     If you’re at all historically knowledgeable, you wouldn’t dream of disputing Steve Green’s comments above. But here’s the punchline:

     But not to the BBC, whose new miniseries — “King and Conqueror” — features “a diverse group of actors” telling the story of Harold and William’s fight for the English throne.

     Let that sink in for a moment while I mainline another cup of coffee.

     For some time now, I’ve disdained to watch contemporary television productions. The above is one of my reasons. Scriptwriters and casting directors have discarded respect for plausibility to make room for “diversity” and “inclusion.” Every show’s cast must be racially and sexually mixed. There must be blacks, women, and homosexuals in abundance – and never as villains! If there’s a scientist or a tech whiz in the ensemble, it’s mandatory that it be a Negro, a woman, or both – and if possible, a homosexual as well.

     The intent “should” be “obvious.” Given the fervor and persistence of the “minority rights” pressure groups, it might be understandable. But when the casting directors discard facts along with plausibility, tolerance must cease.

     Has it ceased? Or has the relentless “diversity, equity, and inclusion” drumbeat deafened us all? Has it numbed us not only to what is but to what was as well?

     I hoped, when the Fortress ended its subscription to broadcast and cablecast TV, that we could escape the propagandization. It hasn’t been that way; the streaming services have bowed to the DEIhards in their turn. The only guaranteed escape is to older productions: old movies and TV shows from the Fifties, Sixties, and early Seventies.

     At least there were no homosexual cardinals in Conclave. Had it been otherwise, I might have shot the television.

     I don’t keep up with social or cultural trends in Europe. All I can reasonably comment on is what’s happening in the United States. And what’s happening here is quite clear.

     We’re resegregating ourselves.

     It’s not just about race. Americans are resorting themselves geographically to “be with our own.” Whites with whites; blacks with blacks. Heterosexuals with heterosexuals; homosexuals with homosexuals. Christians with Christians; Jews with Jews; Muslims with Muslims. Conservatives with conservatives; leftists with leftists. It’s most visible in the sociopolitical and demographic changes in our cities.

     A lot could be said about this. I’ve said a lot about it in other tirades. It’s beyond my prowess to determine to what extent the media’s harping on these differences among us is responsible for our reshuffling. But the reshuffling itself is a fact.

     A prediction: that will be the next fact the entertainment world will strive to efface. The barons of the media regard the desire to “be with our own” as evil. They’ll do what they can to impose that conviction upon us. We must be made to feel an active desire to live with others who largely despise us – and those others must be encouraged to seek us out, settle among us, and flaunt their various pathologies at our children.

     Those who dare to dissent from the DEI gospel will be demonized unto death. The “media megaphones” (William E. Simon) are all firmly in the grip of the DEIhards. We will not be permitted to dissent where others can see or hear. Remember what happened to Brian True-May.

     No, I’m not sanguine for the future.

     Back later, I hope.

Jul 09 2025

Quiet Desperation

     The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau

     I’ve wondered about that bit of sententiousness for a long time. I don’t think it’s accurate. Rather, it’s an inverted expression of Thoreau’s personal preferences, which he imposes imperiously upon those who adopt other courses through life. People with strong opinions can be like that, especially the ones who write books.

     That having been said, there are persons who suffer quietly, desperately… because they find themselves in an existential cul de sac. They may writhe within their circumstances, vaguely aware that they’ve been misled – perhaps cheated – and that better situations they could have had with a change of course earlier in their lives are now barred to them. Many Western women are among them.

     Two articles have me thinking about this:

     Both are worth your time.

     I’ve written about the destructive force of contemporary feminism often enough that there should be no question about my perspective. But perhaps I haven’t put enough emphasis on who the principal victims are: i.e., women.

     Let us imagine – imagining is good, isn’t it? – a species divided into two sexes, each of which has its own natural inclinations. Let us further imagine that those inclinations differ, such that for a member of one sex to behave as if he were a member of the other sex would result in emotional suffering. Let us further still imagine that a sufficient number of one sex have been behaving as if they were members of the other sex, for a sufficient length of time, that we can reasonably use the experiences of the sufferers as confirmation of the inexchangeability of the sexes’ natures. What would result?

     It’s worth some thought. If there were a coterie of opinion-mongers instructing members of sex A to behave like Sex B, they would be upset. They would be tempted, as persons who’ve been proved wrong often are, to sulk. Perhaps some would admit to having been wrong. They might express contrition. Perhaps others would attempt to slide around the topic, hoping that they wouldn’t be challenged on their previously expressed sentiments. And perhaps still others would adopt a counterattack-as-defense posture: i.e., they would double down. They would dismiss examples of the suffering they’d caused as stemming from other sources, on any evidence or none.

     Compare the above imaginings to the world we live in. Use the articles cited above as source material.

     I could make heavy weather of this, but there’s no need. “You are what you are” sounds folksy, even a trifle corny, yet it is so. Parts of what you are lie beyond your power to change. Fringe cases – there are always some – should not be taken as disproving the general rules.

     There’s a curious tension embedded in contemporary feminist notions. On the one hand, they exhort women to behave ever more the way men behave… and not necessarily the best of men. On the other hand, they preach, in ways both subtle and overt, that men are women’s enemies, determined to “hold them down.” That disjunction has received less attention than it deserves.

     I’ll conclude by reprinting a piece that I first wrote in 2008, for the late, lamented Eternity Road: “Moderately Bad Men.” Perhaps you’ll have some comments for me.

“Moderately Bad Men”

     This extraordinary bit of whining by Ellen Tien has been getting a fair amount of play in Blogdom:

     I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn’t quite pieced out that I’m not viable before 10 a.m.

     It puts two hands on my forehead and mercilessly presses when he blurts out the exact wrong thing (“Are you excited for your surprise party next Tuesday?”); when he lies to avoid the fight (“What do you mean I left our apartment door open? I never even knew our apartment had a door!”); when he buttons his shirt and jacket into the wrong buttonholes, collars and seams unaligned like a vertical game of dominoes, with possibly a scrap of shirttail zippered into his fly.

     It flicks me, hard, just under the eye when, during a parent-teacher conference, he raises his arm high in the air, scratches his armpit, and then —then! — absently smells his fingers.

     It slammed into me like a 4,000-pound Volvo station wagon one spring evening four years ago, although I remember it as if it were last year.

     He had dropped me off in front of a restaurant, prior to finding a parking spot. As I crossed in front of the car, he pulled forward, happily smiling back over his left shoulder at some random fascinating bit (a sign with an interesting font, a new scaffolding, a diner that he may or may not have eaten at the week after he graduated from college), and plowed into me. The impact, while not wondrous enough to break bodies 12 ways, was sufficient to bounce me sidewise onto the hood, legs waving in the air like antennae, skirt flung somewhere up around my ears.

     For one whole second, New York City stood stock-still and looked at my underwear.

     As I pounded the windshield with my fist and shouted — “Will, Will, stop the car!” — he finally faced forward, blink, blink, blink, trying, yes, truly trying to take it all in. And I heard him ask with mild astonishment, very faintly because windshield glass is surprisingly thick, “What are you doing here?”

     In retrospect, it was an excellent question, a question that I’ve asked myself from altar to present, both incessantly and occasionally. What am I doing here?

     Don’t misunderstand: I would not, could not disparage my marriage (not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house, not with a mouse). After 192 months, Will and I remain if not happily married, then steadily so. Our marital state is Indiana, say, or Connecticut — some red areas, more blue. Less than bliss, better than disaster. We are arguably, to my wide-ish range of reference, Everycouple.

     Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I’ve made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man, the kind of man who will leave his longboat-sized shoes directly in the flow of our home’s traffic so that one day I’ll trip over them, break my neck, and die, after which he’ll walk home from the morgue, grief-stricken, take off his shoes with a heavy heart, and leave them in the center of the room until they kill the housekeeper. Everyman.

     Still, beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of our marriage — Everymarriage –runs the silent chyron of divorce. It’s the scarlet concept, the closely held contemplation of nearly every woman I know who has children who have been out of diapers for at least two years and a husband who won’t be in them for another 30. It’s the secret reverie of a demographic that freely discusses postpartum depression, eating disorders, and Ambien dependence (often all in the same sentence) with the plain candor of golden brown toast. In a let-it-all-hang-out culture, this is the given that stays tucked in.

     There’s lots more, but this is about all your Curmudgeon can stand. It’s your turn, Gentle Reader:

  • Do you think it likely that Miss Tien is a stunningly perfect woman, sterling of character and exquisite of manner, who would never upset her husband Will with a poor choice of words or a poorly timed remark?
  • Do you envision Will as a neglectful, abusive cad, who confines her to their home, deprives her of all but the bare necessities of life, and barks menacingly at her slightest hint of displeasure? Would you find plausible the suggestion that Will has even worse character flaws and behaviors than the ones Miss Tien has described here, or do you think it likely that she’s “shot her wad?”
  • Might it be possible that Will has a few criticisms to make of Ellen, but is too much the gentleman and dutiful husband to voice them in public?
  • Were Will the writer of this article, and Ellen its subject, would it be received as readily by the Oprahfied audience to whom it was first presented?
  • If Will were to sue Ellen for divorce, presenting her rant as evidence of spousal abuse, do you think the court would free him of all obligations to her, or is it more likely that he’d be tied to her by bonds of alimony for years to come?

     But enough about poor Will. Will, by the Gospel According To Ellen Tien, isn’t a Very Bad Man, just a Moderately Bad Man: “like every other male I know.” Your Curmudgeon doesn’t go in for a lot of self-disclosure, but he will say this: if Will’s worst faults are on record in the column above, the C.S.O. would trade your Curmudgeon for Will in a heartbeat. She’d probably throw in some cash, a couple of draft picks, and a player to be named later, at that.

     But enough about that benighted woman. It’s her shrieky column that matters — and not because it’s particularly unusual of its kind. It’s standard fare in Oprahfied Women’s America. That’s the truly disturbing thing about it.

     Oprahfied Women have been taught, mostly by innuendo and implication, that men are low creatures by nature, that the very best of them barely deserves a woman’s attention, much less her respect, and that anything and everything men do for their women, or for women in general, is either a move in an exploitative game or a stroke in a campaign to “keep them oppressed.” A fair percentage of American women have internalized that message. Because the sexes need one another, it puts a lot of men in a quandary about how to deal with the women in their lives, and renders a lot of women so badly conflicted that they cannot be happy no matter what they do.

     Whatever happened to the old motto, “To his virtues, be kind; to his faults, a little blind” — ? Like most good advice, it doesn’t really matter whether the advisee is male or female; the “his” pronouns could as easily be “her.” We are none of us perfect, at least not in one another’s eyes. No, not even your humble Curmudgeon; he snores, procrastinates about the yard work, and is provoked to profanity by the perversity of inanimate objects. (Customer-assembled furniture, anyone?) No marriage can be tolerable if one spouse insists that the other must conform to his standards at every waking moment.

     Yet American women have been fed large doses of Utopianism about romance and the married state. Many have come to believe that it’s possible to find a “perfect” man. More, they believe a “perfect” man is their due…that if they don’t get their due, they’ve been cheated and have a right to redress.

     Now and then, a commenter here or elsewhere will extol the superior femininity and agreeability of Asian women. Your Curmudgeon knows a few, and they do impress him. Given the porous state of the borders, American women had better look to their levees; the “coyotes” could as easily import Asian brides as unskilled Mexican laborers.

Jul 08 2025

“It Will Never Catch On Here”

     Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. — Robert A. Heinlein

     This morning, PJ Media has an article about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, cautioning readers not to discount his brand of politics, which is openly communist. It’s behind the site’s paywall, so I can’t excerpt it. (I refuse to pay for others’ blather while I give mine away free of charge.) However, the thesis as stated in the headline is quite correct. The communist evangelist always reaps more success than decent, rational people attached to Lockean / American principles can believe. It’s time to elucidate why this is so.

     A few decades ago, the movie Guilty By Suspicion dramatized the effects of the House Un-American Activities Committee’s probe of communist infiltration into the movie industry. I didn’t live through those years, and the history thereof is questionable, so I have no idea whether the movie accurately depicts the outrages perpetrated in the name of anti-communism. What struck me about the movie was a single comment by character Bunny Baxter, impressively played by George Wendt, about the initial appeal of communism to him and others like him: “It was about people helping people.”

     Whether or not HUAC was as bad as contemporary historians make it out to be, that comment is at the heart of socialist / communist outreach. If my old friend and Co-Conspirator Dystopic / Thales were here, he’d have a few words to say about weaponized empathy.

     I could go into great, frothing fulminations about this tactic. It’s done a staggering amount of damage to this nation and to the larger world. Yet it’s so simple, and so seductive, that few persons are capable of resisting its lure. It works because nearly all of us want to see ourselves as good persons who care about the well-being of others, including others we don’t know and will never meet.

     The socialist / communist huckster proffers that view of his “ideal society:” one in which there are no “have-nots.” How is this to be achieved? By “giving the means of production to the people!” (Alternately, “to the workers.”)

     Everything from that point onward is an exercise in evidence-free theorizing and handwaving: Marxian predictions of “superabundance,” for instance. But few go on from that point. It’s the appeal to our “higher natures” that hooks us, and reels many of us in.

     This isn’t the place to delve into the Leftist counterattack against those who uphold traditional American values and conceptions of rights and justice. For that, read Dystopic’s piece. Concerning socialism’s / communism’s appeal, let it suffice to say that there is no substitute for knowing one’s own weaknesses. One’s weaknesses are the con man’s targets, regardless of the details of his con.

     The rational man’s weaknesses are equally important – and herein lies another of the insights the socialist / communist proselytizer exploits. For he who has mastered his charitable impulses sufficiently not to be overpowered by them is nearly always incapable of grasping how powerfully those impulses move others. In attempting to counter the effects of communist outreach upon his vulnerable fellows, he will use reason and evidence. Compared to his fellows’ empathy and desire to be seen as “good people,” those things are impotent… something the rational man cannot allow himself to accept.

     Which is the reason for the Heinlein quotation at the top of this piece.

     Early in his writing years, Heinlein was sympathetic to many of the ideas of the Left. His novella “Gulf,” from which the quote was taken, points to that, as does his early novel Beyond This Horizon. But his was an active mind. He continued to learn and think. It would be well for America and the world were that to be the case for all of us.

Jul 07 2025

It’s not safe

And it’s REALLY not safe when the Chinese are growing it.

The pesticides and fungicides in question are so toxic to humans that they’re illegal to use or manufacture in the United States, and several of the toxins found at Chinese-run marijuana grows are even illegal to use or sell in China – a country not known for being overly concerned with worker safety or protecting the environment.

American investigators only identified the chemicals after consulting with a National Guard military unit that specializes in Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Is it any shock that the Chinese, who are known for poisoning just about anything and everything, would dump toxic chemicals on plants that they then sell to people in America?

And don’t ask about the Mexican cartels running marijuana grows in the National Forests of California, poisoning the landscape and the wilderness with herbicides and pesticides. And the violence that comes along with allowing Mexican cartels to control America’s national forests.

Being that I’m not a consumer of said plant, the chances of me getting dosed with toxic chemicals is slim to none, But I do get affected by the violence and crime when I’m out and about. Especially Oregon and Northern California.

I have no good answers, The cat is out of the bag when it comes to marijuana, and I don’t see it getting put back any time soon. But I don’t want anyone to tell me that it’s not harmful. “Oh but Dave, it’s natural!” Yeah. So is arsenic. And that’s before you have the ChiComs spraying god-knows-what on it.

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