Sep 16 2021

Under Way As We Speak…

     …is a brand new F&SF convention, specifically oriented toward writers and readers in the Right:

     BasedCon survived a July deplatforming attempt. Currently underway in beautiful Norton Shores, Michigan, BasedCon has sold out and turned a profit in its debut outing. Celebrate this gathering for based authors and fans of science fiction and fantasy by topping off your library at a huge sale of based science fiction and fantasy books. Every one of well over a hundred books in the sale is $0.99 or free right now. The offerings include works by John C. Wright, Fenton Wood, Jon del Arroz, Tom Kratman, Mark Wandrey, Larry Correia, Francis Porretto, Mike Massa, David Weber, C.J. Carella, Brian Niemeier, Alexander Hellene, Jon Mollison, Hans G. Schantz, and many, many more. This is a killer deal, and you’re supporting authors who don’t hate you. Go check out the sale now!

     A couple of those writers are fairly decent. I’m sure you’re already familiar with Tom Kratman and John Ringo. Among the others, I particularly like Jon Mollison and Hans G. Schantz. It’s worth checking out a few of the others. But this guy? I don’t know about him. Sounds to me like a real hack. Probably just trying to pay off his bar bill.

     All the same, please give the sale a look. Books for less than a dollar! Some of them free! How can you go wrong?

Sep 16 2021

The Mind-Bogglings Continue

     I have learned an important lesson:

Never imagine that it can’t get worse.

     As a corollary, never imagine that it can’t get more absurd. There’s no limit apparent to the clownishness of American politicians. They’re beginning to make their colleagues in Italy and France look like sober-minded statesmen. Consider this bit of nonsense, for example.

     Democrats want to include 8 million green cards in their monstrous $3.5 trillion package. They need [Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth] MacDonough’s approval. Here is where it gets a little complicated.

     Senate Democrats need MacDonough’s approval to pull off what is referred to as the “reconciliation process,” a procedure that was added to the Senate’s rules in the early 1970s. The roughly 45-year-old process allows some types of budget bills to pass through the upper chamber with just a simple majority. It allows the bypassing of filibusters by opponents.

     Ultimately, MacDonough, whose job it is to protect the rights of both parties, will decided what is and is not acceptable with regard to the procedures.

     Democrat senators are obviously gung-ho about handing over 8 million green cards to illegal immigrants who have crossed our southern border, as it almost guarantees 8 million new Democrat voters.

     Green cards for illegal aliens proposed as a budget measure, eh? Yes, it’s absurd, but absurdities go with Leftist policy proposals just as reliably as violin solos and thunderous grand-piano chords go with horror movies.

     As I noted in a comment to that piece:

     Among the things that come to mind in this connection, my uppermost is that the major media could play a pivotal role in this, by their decision about whether to cover the story. Many people who routinely support the Democrats would turn against them were they to learn about this…but Americans who rely on the major media are at the mercy of their editorial staffs, which are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Democrat Party.

     While I can’t prove it with hard evidence, I’m of the opinion that a great part of the political division in these United States arises from Americans’ decisions about which media outlets to trust, and on which issues. The Left’s dominance of the editorial boards of the mainstream media remains an important asset for the reason I cited above. Information those outlets omit is information those who depend upon those outlets will not receive.

     Which brings me to our top story this morning:

     A Detroit News station’s Facebook query about COVID-19 got an unexpected response when users swamped their comment section with stories that directly contradicted their desired narrative.

     “After the vaccines were available to everyone, did you lose an unvaccinated loved one to COVID-19?” WXYZ-TV inquired in the Sept. 10 post. “If you’re willing to share your family’s story, please DM us your contact information. We may reach out for a story we’re working on.”

     After WXYZ-TV posted its appeal for stories about unvaccinated loved ones dying of COVID, something remarkable happened.

     Thousands of Facebook users shared stories describing alarming vaccine side effects, or posted about fully vaxed loved ones dying of the coronavirus. The viral post appears to have become a popular forum for victims of the vaccines to share their stories.

     Please read it all, especially if you or your loved ones are undecided about The Jab. This is part of the accumulating evidence that the “vaccines” – which don’t really immunize against COVID-19, it seems – are at least as dangerous as the virus itself. This has special relevance to the young and healthy, who are in effectively zero danger from the Chinese Lung Rot. But such stories have received no welcome from the organs of the major media.

     The Usurper Regime is demonstrably frantic to get the “vaccines” into as many Americans as possible: preferably all of us. Its absurd claims that the vaccinated are endangered by the unvaccinated is the best possible evidence that their focus is on imposing the “vaccines” on us, not on somehow ending the pandemic. The unConstitutional attempt to mandate their imposition on the employees of all but smallest companies is proof of the Usurpers’ desperation. Be aware that the Usurpers are now talking openly about abridging another Constitutional right – the right to travel freely, recognized and defended by the Supreme Court long ago – to put additional pressure on We the Unvaxxed to bare arms.

     If you’ve been wondering why, you’re not alone. But rather than pursue that line of thought just now, have another bit of news that could upset a few apple carts:

     House Democrats this week are moving forward with their long-awaited plan to raise taxes to help pay for their next big spending package. With more than 40 separate tax increases, collectively worth $2 trillion, it would be the largest package of tax increases in decades — and a test of Democrats’ willingness to raise rates.

     Lawmakers want the money to fund plans to greatly boost government benefits, from expanding access to pre-K programs to beefing up Medicare — though Democrats remain at odds over the plan’s total size, with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia balking at designs to spend $3.5 trillion.

     Forty new taxes? Even if what’s new is just an increase in the rate, this is not news the American public, already reeling from sharp increases in the cost of living due to Usurper Regime policies, would hear gladly. But will they hear it? Will the major media include those taxes and tax increases in their coverage – and if they do, will the mention of them be prominent or at the bottom of page A37, just beneath the obituaries?

     It’s never been more important to the future of the Republic that we broaden our selections of information outlets. Don’t hew exclusively to the ones that leave your preconceptions and preferences unchallenged. There’s more going on than you’re being told. Some of it is what you really need to know.

Sep 15 2021

From The “No, Really?” Dept.

     There are days I marvel at the obdurate ignorance of self-nominated “scientists.” As I was one, once, I think I can say this with authority: if it isn’t in his wheelhouse, the typical scientist will dismiss it as irrelevant at best, absurd at worst.

     Mankind has developed a great variety of approaches to the acquisition of useful knowledge. Some of those approaches are religious in nature. That is: they proceed from a theology: a creed that incorporates a Supreme Being, a supernatural realm, and a connection between our temporal reality and that higher one. Now, any honest theist will allow that the theology he subscribes to is unverifiable (i.e., unprovable). However, if it is sound, his theology will also be unfalsifiable: incapable of being disproved. A falsifiable system of belief will be subjected to tests of its propositions that human minds can perform. That directly contradicts the nature of a theology.

     More than three thousand years have passed since Moses presented the Decalogue, a.k.a. the Ten Commandments, to the wandering Hebrews. Billions of people have made those commandments the central moral-ethical tenets of their lives. While their lives have not been “perfect” in any sense, those who were faithful to the dictates of the Decalogue (or the Noachide Commandments which preceded them) succeeded in forming coherent, enduring societies capable of progress. While it cannot be proved that adherence to the Decalogue is a necessary condition for forming such a society, history records no examples of successful societies that have lacked them.

     An inquiring mind would note that pattern and say, “Hmm! There might be something to this.”

     In the Christian formulation, the Decalogue is seen as a set of requirements derived from even higher and more imperative principles:

     But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
     Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

     Earlier in His ministry, the Redeemer put it like this:

     All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this is the law and the prophets. [Matthew 7:12]

     Most of us know this Golden Rule in its more concise version: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” C. S. Lewis has called it the Law of General Benevolence: to wish all others well, for we would surely prefer that all others wish us well, and so the Golden Rule applies.

     Not too difficult, eh what? Certainly within the intellectual reach of the “scientific mind.” Yet the habit of prominent contemporary scientists has been to dismiss religious precepts. While there are surely scientists who appreciate those precepts, they are out-shouted by cretins such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their fellow-travelers. It’s arrogant, self-glorifying atheists such as these who get the media attention.

     A citation from Dawkins should give you the flavor:

     A few months earlier, in front of an audience of graduate students from around the world, Dawkins took on a famous geneticist and a renowned neurosurgeon on the question of whether God was real. The geneticist and the neurosurgeon advanced their best theistic arguments: Human consciousness is too remarkable to have evolved; our moral sense defies the selfish imperatives of nature; the laws of science themselves display an order divine; the existence of God can never be disproved by purely empirical means.

     Dawkins rejected all these claims, but the last one – that science could never disprove God – provoked him to sarcasm. “There’s an infinite number of things that we can’t disprove,” he said. “You might say that because science can explain just about everything but not quite, it’s wrong to say therefore we don’t need God. It is also, I suppose, wrong to say we don’t need the Flying Spaghetti Monster, unicorns, Thor, Wotan, Jupiter, or fairies at the bottom of the garden. There’s an infinite number of things that some people at one time or another have believed in, and an infinite number of things that nobody has believed in. If there’s not the slightest reason to believe in any of those things, why bother? The onus is on somebody who says, I want to believe in God, Flying Spaghetti Monster, fairies, or whatever it is. It is not up to us to disprove it.”

     Mind you, no one has demanded that Dawkins, or anyone else, present a conclusive disproof of the existence of God. Rather than confront that unpleasant little fact, Dawkins resorts to ridicule and, later in the same article, defamation:

     Dawkins looks forward to the day when the first US politician is honest about being an atheist. “Highly intelligent people are mostly atheists,” he says. “Not a single member of either house of Congress admits to being an atheist. It just doesn’t add up. Either they’re stupid, or they’re lying. And have they got a motive for lying? Of course they’ve got a motive! Everybody knows that an atheist can’t get elected.”

     Could it be any clearer that Dawkins’s entire argument is circular? That its function in his consciousness is to reinforce his conviction of his personal intellectual superiority? Yet this is the premier anti-theist of the day.

***

     If you’re wondering why this subject is at top of my stack today, it’s this article at that selfsame Wired magazine:

     Science and religion have often been at odds. But if we remove the theology—views about the nature of God, the creation of the universe, and the like—from the day-to-day practice of religious faith, the animosity in the debate evaporates. What we’re left with is a series of rituals, customs, and sentiments that are themselves the results of experiments of sorts. Over thousands of years, these experiments, carried out in the messy thick of life as opposed to sterile labs, have led to the design of what we might call spiritual technologies—tools and processes meant to sooth, move, convince, or otherwise tweak the mind. And studying these technologies has revealed that certain parts of religious practices, even when removed from a spiritual context, are able to influence people’s minds in the measurable ways psychologists often seek.

     (Applause to Misanthropic Humanitarian for the reference.)

     It’s worth reading in its entirety, though my reaction was a rather amused “No, really? What an incredible surprise!”

     You don’t have to seek far into the past to find great minds – among the greatest that have ever existed – that were deeply religious: devout Christians, devout Jews, devout Buddhists, Taoists, Confucians, and so forth. If the Dawkinsites, as well as being numb to the practical benefits of a wholesome religion, are willing to dismiss Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Antoine Lavoisier, and Albert Einstein as unintelligent, I’d say nothing more need be said about them.

     The bottom line “should” be “obvious:” Beware of anyone who purports to judge the intelligence or honesty of others on the grounds of a difference in unverifiable, unfalsifiable beliefs. Such persons habitually set themselves above others. They need to believe themselves morally and intellectually superior to others. It’s a conclusive symptom of an inherently inadequate identity, the sort that could crumble upon being confronted with a single indisputable fact adverse to their creed. It’s no coincidence that the preponderance of militant atheists of the Dawkins stripe are on the political Left…which says a lot about both the militant atheists of the world and the political Left, doesn’t it?

Sep 15 2021

What Belief Can Teach Science

I found this on Wired. Perhaps not surprisingly, those Tech Nerds are flabbergasted at the idea that religions’ practices have practical application for modern people.

As a Catholic, I come from a long heritage of scientists with strong religious convictions – Pascal, Descartes, Copernicus, Lemaitre, Mendel, Mercalli, Lavoisier, Doppler, to just name a few. Check out this list, and this one, and this book by a Jesuit brother that worked in the Vatican astronomy facilities.

When I taught, I found that students were often surprised that I regularly went to church. Particularly for those students coming from “Bible-based churches”, that viewpoint was contrary to the teaching of their pastors, many of whom were actively hostile to science, and certain that the disdain was returned. They had been informed that, generally, scientists were atheists.

I plan to get the book in the near future, once my life settles down. It’s available at my local library in Cleveland, so that might be an option, too.

Sep 14 2021

They Want to ‘Pretty Over’ the Wounds

The memorials – flowing water, ‘pretty speeches’ (well, if you don’t consider the politicized speech of the former president slamming the NLD (Non-Leftist Dissidents) as Domestic Terrorists), and and fervent undercurrent of “Let’s Forget”.

That’s the Democratic Legacy of 9/11. It was Terribly Inconvenient of the Taliban not to cooperate in a quick and “victorious” end to the Official War on Terror, and make those inconvenient videos, pictures, and memes clearly showing that, no, the Democrats were the cause of Yet Another World-Class Failure (YAW-CF).

I keep hearing about ‘Closure’. Closure is what happens when a wound heals – but, it generally leaves a visible scar. Scars aren’t pretty – but, they are an inevitable part of life. I’ve collected scars from accidents, surgeries, and all of the other nicks and dings of living a full life. I’ve also seen my share of lumps, lines, and creaky joints – the result of a life fully lived.

The thing is, we aren’t meant to wander through live as an observer. We are meant to participate, and, in the process, pick up some evidence – visible and invisible – that we LIVED. And, hopefully, learned from that experience.

We are disrespecting the memory of all those who died through a cowardly, vile act, should we relegate what 9/11 meant to this country to vapid speeches papering over what is still a raw wound.

We SHOULD be able to straightforwardly express our outrage – not merely at the Losers who aimed the planes at a civilian population, but also at the MANY politicians and their Elite Controllers who tried to bury the inconvenient truths of 9/11. Jayna Davis did an amazing job investigating the Oklahoma City bombing, and made some inconvenient discoveries that have light to shed on the events that preceded 9/11, including the FBI culture that, even then, was willing to sweep connections to the Elite under the rug. I recommend buying a copy of her book before it gets disappeared.

Buy provisions, plan a garden, prep for a long winter, and hunker down for now. DON’T go to DC to protest – TPTB are orchestrating yet another demonstration of why a Police State is SO needed. Don’t give them the fodder. Instead, give to the support of those STILL imprisoned from 1/6 – here is one such site.

Here is one for the lawyers trying to get accountability for Ashli Babbitt (they are representing the surviving family members). If you have knowledge of any reputable donation site, please put it in the comments.

On a lighter note, the Deplorables of Twitter (DoT) savage one of The Meathead’s more ignorant rants. It’s important not to descend into despair.

Sep 14 2021

Only progressives.

The hero of the article is a young academic super-star lefty named Kathryn Paige Harden who, the New Yorker says, is almost single-handedly fighting a two-front war: “on her left are those who assume that genes are irrelevant, on her right those who insist that they’re everything.” No one — and I mean no one — thinks genes are “everything,” but that is the pose lefties strike. They believe only committed progressives can truly understand the policy implications of genetics.[1]

I think every progressive, i.e., disingenuous leftist who’s 100% indifferent to the preservation of liberty, who wants to advance any “progressive” idea needs to run it by a committee composed of Bronx Tina, Ron Paul, Lara Logan, Philip Giraldi, Ann Coulter, Cynthia McKinney, any Army E-7 drill sergeant whose last name begins with a “K,” Randy Weaver, and Aaron Babbitt. This would be the 21st-c. equivalent of flapping the scientists of Laputa with inflated bladders in Swift’s masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels.

As it is, absolute flapdoodle goes right to the moral certainty glands of the nation’s decisionmakers and shills propgandists journalists like crack cocaine lights up the brain receptors of 48-year-old, overweight, tattooed, lesbian feminists.

Witness the results.

Notes
[1] “Taking the Fun Out of Being ‘Progressive.’” By Jared Taylor, The Unz Review, 9/8/21.

Sep 13 2021

Parodies Sometimes Improve On The Original

     Consider these two songs, the first the original by R.E.M.:

     Now, the parody, by the immortal Al Yankovic:

     Frankly, I prefer the parody. (I must also admit that I do like Spam®. Dad was a Navy man, and the stuff was a staple of his diet in his World War II years.)

Sep 12 2021

Post 20th Year Ceremonies – What Remains of the Republic?

It was said to have been uttered by Ben Franklin. It may have been, he was apparently quick with pithy sayings (not always his own).

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787,  Franklin was queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention,  a lady asked Dr. Franklin “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy.”  Franklin replied, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.”

Joe Martin has a lengthy post – I’d recommend reading it, in full.

We appear to be nearing that time, when it’s necessary to flip the switch from Nice to Not-Nice.

TPTB are drawing the lines. Not merely in the USA, but worldwide.

The Left is also concerned about the Downfall of Civilization – however, they have decidedly different expectations of the course it will take.

Charting a pathway out of our current hysterical response to a relatively mild infection (for most) will take some time. It will take even longer, should we continue to be blocked in ferreting out the reality. Alex Berenson has several small books that attempt to find out the truth from the load of Convenient B$ that is coming from the Left.

I know it’s hard to settle your mind down to reading anything but fluff lately – God knows that I’ve been re-reading old mysteries over the last year. It’s called Escape Literature for a reason. But this is a book that bears reading, and may give you both hope, and a clearer mind for the Re-Building Efforts to come.

Add this report to the stack – those of you who are more philosophic of mind may find it worthwhile.

What the hell, ya’ gotta do something while waiting for the tumbrels to arrive.

All of the above recommended book were from What Would the Founders Think blog.

Lastly, a long-ago case of multigenerational property transfers were negated by the original fraud. Would that the courts would follow THAT precedent.

Sep 12 2021

The Shoulds

     Good morning, Gentle Readers. A number of you have written to ask why I haven’t posted anything about the twentieth anniversary of the greatest atrocity ever visited upon this nation. The short answer is that the date has left me both heartsick and furious: too heartsick to say anything encouraging, and too furious to say anything meaningful about “where we go from here.” As for the long answer…well, suffice it to say that neither of us has the time or patience for that. So I’ll spare you.

     Other commentators have said a great deal about the day today commemorates. Gerard Vanderleun produced a deep remembrance of what he saw that day. Mike Hendrix has rounded up the thoughts of several others and added his own. There’s enough there and elsewhere for your perusal. I have no need to add a great quantity of melancholy or angry verbiage to theirs, especially given how I feel about it all.

     However, there’s a word ringing in my head that simply won’t go away. It’s an old “favorite,” one about which I’ve ranted in the past: should. To be more specific, I’m hearing it embedded in a past-tense phrase: what we should have done. As we’re getting quite a lot of that from other commentators, including the ones cited above, I’ll strive to keep my thoughts brief.

     First, a snippet from a truly excellent thriller:

     “Miss Rains?” It was the General.
     “Yes, sir.”
     “What did you know for certain after the attacks on 9/11?” he asked.
     I hesitated for a moment because I thought I was being tested.
     “I knew for certain on 9/11 that we were at war,” I said. “What did you know for certain on 9/11, sir?”
     “That we had gotten off easy,” he said and hung up.

     [Martin McPhillips, Corpse in Armor]

     Both Mara Rains, the first-person protagonist of the passage above, and her shadowy interlocutor “the General” are correct. Moreover, their conclusions were easily available to anyone who dared to view the atrocity open-eyed. We were at war. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were just early salvoes, the worst our enemy could do to us at that moment. They were not the end of the conflict, but the beginning of its active phase.

     That war began with Muhammad himself. It’s a war between the Christian-Enlightenment West and Islam. It’s now fourteen centuries long and is still going on…and we’re losing.

     We’re losing because we’re unwilling to allow that we’re at war. Instead, our “leaders” prattle about “justice” and exhort us not to think badly of Muslims.

     But war is not justice. War is not the imposition of a judicial procedure upon an accused wrongdoer. War does not send forth detectives to investigate nor policemen to arrest nor judges and juries to try. War is prosecuted with armies. Its aim is to break the will of the enemy: at first, by closing with and destroying its active forces; thereafter, by doing whatever is necessary to eliminate the will of the enemy nation to resist our will.

     We were at war after 9/11…but we did not go to war. Our “leaders” refused to allow that we were at war. They prattled instead about “justice” and “democracy.” In particular, they told us that Islam is “a religion of peace.”

     Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is an ideology of world conquest. It aims at the subjugation of all of Mankind. Stripped of its theological trimmings, it is indistinguishable from Nazism…but wait: didn’t Adolf Hitler want to be seen as a god?

     Islam has always been the open enemy of the West, the United States in particular. It will be our enemy for as long as it persists.

     We cannot impose “justice” on Islam. We cannot “democratize” or “modernize” it. We certainly can’t improve its attitude toward us through immigration or trade. We can only fight it with wholesale slaughter and destruction, just as we did with Nazism and Japanese imperialism.

     Only two commentators took that view, unabashedly and unapologetically, after September 11, 2001. One was Ann Coulter:

     We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

     The other was this clown. If you don’t recall what he said on that occasion, here’s the meat of it:

     I saw and spoke to many people that day. Gripped with shock from the events, many had nothing to offer but tears. Those who could articulate their feelings were nearly unanimous about them:

     “Kill them all.”

     It was a sentiment I shared with a degree of passion and a wholeness of heart that I’d once reserved for the people and things I loved.

     He meant every word of it. He still means it all today. But do have a nice day.

Sep 11 2021

Watching the 20th Remembrance of 9/11 Victims

Every year, I watch this – either the televised services, or the ceremonies that were held at the schools I taught at.

The Southern schools do this well. Most of the schools have an active JROTC program, and the students take their participation very seriously. School leaders, community members – both present and past serving, the local 1st responders and National Guards , and, most importantly, the students (over the last 5 years, were not even born when the Towers fell), made this an emotionally draining, but very important memorial.

Every year, I find myself crying – for the victims, for our country, and for the speed with which most have managed to forget the lessons of that day.

What were the lessons?

That America was being targeted by Islamic radicals, not for what we had done, but for what we represented.

That the weasels of the Left could barely conceal their impatience to push any knowledge or memory of “this event” far away, and minimized as just a terribly sad but completely understandable expression of justified rage of the oppressed. Good luck with that, Weasels!

I was working, and preparing for our school’s opening (delayed due to some construction issues). We would have started with our first day on Wednesday. That was delayed another week, and in the interim, we lost a 1st grade teacher. Her husband, a helicopter pilot in the service, was several weeks away from retirement. She had moved from VA to take her position, and was forced to quit to return to VA, when her husband’s retirement was rescinded.

My husband and I had 2 children in the military – our son was serving on the Bon Homme Richard, at that time out of port, and our daughter was National Guard, and in college. Danny was smart, and, as soon as he heard of the attack (he worked in an office right near the bridge), he emailed me that he was fine, but would likely be out of contact for at least a few weeks. We trusted that God would keep him safe. He ended up going back and forth over the Pacific, ferrying Marines to Afghanistan, and traveling to spots around the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf.

We didn’t hear from our daughters until late in the day – both were fine. The youngest was with her boyfriend, later her husband, also in the Guard. They spent the next few days with their unit, preparing for what might come. As it happened, her unit wasn’t called up until 2 years later.

I’m watching NBC News. Hoda has an oddly inappropriate carefree smile on her face. She seems detached from the ceremony, and is smiling and laughing as though this was just another day. Savannah Guthrie appears to be more attuned to decorum, with a more serious mien.

Apparently, GW Bush is in Shanksville, PA, the site of the Flight 93 plane’s crash. Kah-mah-la will be joining him. Hope she manages to hold back that jacka$$ laughter for the duration of her appearance.

I remember my mother on December 7. I didn’t understand her feelings about that day, until I experienced 9/11. By that point, she, and my father, had been dead for several years. My kids are old enough to understand, but I doubt that my grandkids have the maturity to realize what a shock it all was – not unlike the shock of Pearl Harbor.

Schools don’t truly teach about these pivotal events. They are so anxious not to appear “Islamophobic”, that they don’t convey the deserved outrage these atrocities deserve. Similarly, students are taught more about Hiroshima, than Pearl Harbor. “Moral equivalence” is the order of the day.

There is no moral equivalence. The people who planned, and perpetrated this are moral midgets, privileged and ethically empty, nasty little thugs. I’m not satisfied by the outcome of the Afghanistan War, nor the lack of accountability that Pakistan has been held to. I’m fine with making wide swathes of “Pock-ee-ston” a parking lot.

Screw ’em.

One newscaster is talking about how kids born after that point don’t even question any security measures – whether TSA checkpoints, no backpack rules, long lines to pass scrutiny in sports venues or other large gatherings, and, now, masking. It is the ‘normal’ they have grown up with. They have learned to accept many restrictions on their freedom for the dubious guarantee of ‘being safe’.

My experience with younger Americans is different. Many of them hear stories from elder family members; many of them have former soldiers, sailors, and Marines in that group. They are often quite thoughtful, although, thanks to the readiness of the Karens and Kyles of their acquaintance, they are reluctant to state their non-PC opinions openly. When they talk in private with me, the truth comes out. They are NOT generally happy with our oppressive government. There is an undercurrent of distrust, disdain, and discontent with America’s ‘leadership’ and other Elites.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this sentiment was the tinder that only needed a flashpoint to ignite.

I may add to this post as the day goes on. If I do, I’ll add it below.

9:42 am – I thought I noticed that lying ba$tard Milley at the Pentagon ceremony. Little weasel should be embarrassed to show his face in public after that FusterCluck in Afghanistan.

Sep 11 2021

Chronicles Of The Collapse

     It is characteristic of collapsing regimes that as they feel their subjects turning against them, possibly preparing to rise, they strive to tighten their grip to the maximum. This is happening in the United States as we speak:

     Policymakers in Washington have proposed requiring banks to report virtually all their customers’ bank account information and activity to the IRS regardless of the customers’ consent.

     While community banks do not endorse such broad IRS access to their customers’ account information, consumers need to be aware of the potential effects of this proposal.

     Mandating new, broad bank account reporting to the IRS would infringe on the privacy of bank customers, push more people away from a banking relationship and overload the IRS with more personal information about American citizens than it can possibly process or keep safe from a data hack.

     Applause to Mike Miles at 90 Miles from Tyranny for the reference.

     Remember, just a few years back, when government economists – and if that doesn’t strike you as a contradiction in terms, it damned well should — were openly proposing the complete elimination of cash? You can count on that idea coming back to their table. Cash is the only truly private transactional medium. The doings of people who buy and sell in cash are known only to themselves. Our omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent federal Leviathan doesn’t want us to have any privacy at all. Privacy makes insurrections and revolutions possible.

     The Usurpers are frightened. They’ve heard the talk; they want to know who’s talking it and how serious he is, and they want to put a stop to it right BLEEP!ing now. Why else would the Justice Department and Homeland Security be forming intimate relationships with the giants of Big Tech? Why else would they be straining to eliminate the privacy of our communication via cell phones? Why else would Biden’s puppeteers have told him to mandate The Jab?

     Do you think there’d be anything the Usurpers couldn’t learn about you, once your financial and medical dealings have been laid bare?

     Once more, with feeling: There is no time. The collapse is in progress. Whether we rise soon or late will determine how bad the destruction will be.

     Take it seriously, Gentle Readers:

  • Deal in cash, exclusively if possible.
  • Know the leanings of those you do business with.
  • Keep a significant portion of your savings – at least 10% – in gold and silver.
  • Fill your pantry with foods that will keep your family alive and healthy for at least a month.
  • Be armed. Be well armed. Before all else, be armed! (With copious thanks to the spirit of Niccolo de Machiavelli.)

     I can’t say it loudly enough. Soon I might not be able to say it at all. So take heed.

Sep 11 2021

Undeniable truths.

We are being denied our right to communicate freely. We are being denied our right to a fair election. We are being denied our right to be heard in court. We are being denied our right to be heard in public.

This does not end well. Let us consider the paths forward.

First, we should agree that the Republican party is dead, along with its affiliated “conservative” institutions in the media and think-tanks. . . .

“Where We Go From Here.” By surakblog, 1/7/21.

Sep 10 2021

Note the Exempted Groups – Those That Colluded with the Steal

Postal Workers – whose facilitation of the movement of the fake ballots – through the postmarks that were backdated, enabled a veneer of respectability to cover the shenigans.

Teachers – another group that is largely exempt from forced vaccination.

NGOs are generally under the number of employees (100), and should be exempt from the mandatory shot. Most of their workers are unpaid/part-timers, and won’t force the NGO’s qualification for the mandate.

Sep 10 2021

Bluster Means Nothing When The Enemy Holds All The Trumps

     I’ve long encouraged Americans to present their “leaders” with a healthy spirit of defiance. It’s as American as apple pie – considerably more so than any of the “woke” pro sports leagues. But it’s not enough to be verbally defiant when the Schutzstaffel is at the door, armed and ready to drag you to Hell. You have to be willing to act.

     So this article about gubernatorial defiance of the Usurper Regime got me shaking my head:

     GOP Governors are already telling their attorneys general to prepare for battle against Joe Biden’s unconstitutional vax mandate.

     Joe Biden on Thursday declared war on the unvaccinated and threatened GOP governors when he announced a new federal vaccine mandate.

     Federal workers will be forced to take the Covid jab under Biden’s new order.

     Additionally, businesses with 100+ employees will be forced to either test workers or prove they are vaccinated.

     “Sounds positive so far,” I hear you say? Well, I hope you’re securely seated, because the laugh line is coming up:

     GOP Governors across the country are already preparing litigation over Biden’s new mandate.

     Oh, litigation! The courts! The toothless branch, which the Usurpers can ignore without any peril to themselves! Are the courts going to dispatch their bailiffs to arrest Biden, Harris, and their cronies? Or maybe issue a strongly worded cease-and-desist order?

     The military is now wholly controlled by the Left. The huge federal bureaucracy itself is heavily armed. Through the Federal Reserve system, with no more than a few keystrokes the Usurpers can bankrupt any company that fails to submit. But the courts will fix it. They’ll just cite the Fourth Amendment, and everything will go back to how it was.

     Yeah, right.

     I know the illusion that we still have a constitutional republic is hard to dispel. All the same: It’s time, folks. We are reaping the fruits of the poisonous, blatantly stolen 2020 elections. We failed to correct them forcibly, as was our right and duty from the moment the cheating became visible. The consequences have arrived. Imagine the sound of a train of empty boxcars coming to a stop.

     The country we loved and pledged allegiance to is no more.

***

     There is one chance left, and I can’t put much faith in it.

     No, I’m not talking about an armed uprising. While that’s still theoretically possible, it’s become plain that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. Life is still too comfortable for Americans to plunk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the barrelhead of revolution. Hey, you with the mouth: You do it. We’re too busy replying to one another on Facebook.

     But there’s another weapon, if we can steel ourselves to its use. It has its own hazards, and will require more resolve than we’ve shown so far. Even though it wouldn’t require us to fire a shot, once again most Americans will sit on their hands and wait for someone else to take the lead.

     That weapon is your pantry, assuming you have one and that it’s properly stocked.

     We’re all familiar with jests about “the row of cans in the back of the cabinet.” You know, the ones that have been there since Noah first started measuring in cubits and the unicorns asked one another what all the hubbub about a big flood was about. However, owing to the proliferation of “warehouse” stores such as Costco and Sam’s Club, the majority of us have more than just a few cans of “emergency eats.” Most of us could feed our families on what’s already in the pantry for a week, perhaps longer, without going hungry or running out of anything genuinely essential. It might not be the tastiest menu we’ve ever enjoyed, but we’d live.

     So what would happen if the American economy just…stopped? Not forever; just for a week or two. No workers showing up in the fields or at the office. No incomes or corporate revenues to tax. No municipal workers cleaning the streets or collecting the garbage. Especially, no trucks carrying food to the stores. Would you suffer greatly?

     I wouldn’t, but I know who would: the elites in the cities. They have virtually no disaster reserves. They depend on a continuous flow of goods into their grocery stores just to stay alive. In three days they’d be on their knees, praying for the trucks to return. The cargo cultists of the South Pacific can tell you how that usually works out.

     Food riots are rare in our nation’s history. Few of us can imagine the chaos that would ensue in the big blue cities.

     What would happen to the District of Columbia, I wonder? It’s basically a big slum: a huge zone of blight, petty criminals, and welfare recipients, with a few ornate buildings at its center. Federal employees’ pantries might keep them eating for a few days, but what about the folks around them? And what would those far more numerous folks do when the food has vanished from the stores but the federal bureaudrones still look fat, dumb, and happy?

     It’s fortunate for the Usurpers that we’re too comfortable, too accustomed to our daily routines, to adopt such a course. Probably, at any rate.

     But not certainly.

***

     Four hundred million privately owned firearms and untold billions of rounds of ammunition. A hundred million armed citizens. Millions of military veterans who remember their oaths. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

     An armed uprising against the Usurpers might still be possible, but the odds against it are severe. A passive-noncompliance movement, designed to starve the regime into surrender, is only slightly more plausible. All else is outright fantasy.

     The constitutional federated republic called the United States of America has been overthrown from within. The Usurpers will ignore the courts and the Constitutional provisions designed to thwart them. They are confident that no matter what infamy they decree, there will be no armed uprising sufficient to bring them down. After all, they hold all the trumps.

     Except for the contents of your pantry.

     I leave the rest for my Gentle Readers to work out for themselves.

Sep 10 2021

A Little News, A Little Dance,…

…A Little Seltzer in Your Pants.

Sep 09 2021

Authentic Convictions: Where They Aren’t

     Many in the Right were surprised and worse when a veritable legion of “conservative” commentators reacted with dismay to the ascension of Donald Trump to the Republican nomination for the presidency. For some of that number, their objections approached rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth fury. Those selfsame commentators followed their dislike of Trump with a peculiar dislike of everything he did as president. That President Trump’s policies were squarely in the conservative mainstream seemed not to matter to them. They were his policies; therefore those soi-disant “conservatives” had to disavow and condemn them.

     But the Trump Administration’s policies, especially those the president put in place by executive order, were good for the nation. They promoted prosperity, jobs, the return of various manufacturing industries to American shores, the enlargement of our ability to meet our own fuel needs, the control of our southern border, healthful adjustments in our relations with our allies and with NATO, and other things conservatives had been advocating for some time. For “conservative” commentators to deplore them was beyond puzzling. Yet big names from the Right’s Punditocracy did so repeatedly. Some even collaborated with the Democrats’ attempts to force Trump out of office.

     There were other things going on at the same time, including the failure of several venerable conservative outlets, such as The Weekly Standard. Mind you, that publication had been on the downslope for some time, being repetitive, uninformative, and not terribly attractive for any other reason. However, it crashed and burned when its leading lights turned against President Trump. Several of its contributors, plus a few from National Review, gathered under a new heading, The Bulwark. That publication has proved to be about as “conservative” as Nancy Pelosi.

     The emissions of the NeverTrump “Right” are about as conservative as the NeverTrump Left. Its members have put their support behind all manner of things conservatives have always found to be abominations. Some of them have even endorsed the “right” to abort all the way up to the moment of birth. Good-hearted Americans of a conservative bent have looked incredulously upon this wholesale defection of “conservative” pundits from venerable conservative positions. Had the philosophical basis of conservatism been refuted somehow? Have we in the Right been wrong all along?

     Not to my way of thinking. But then, I’m not paid to orate here. The NeverTrump “Right” makes its living from its op-ed writing. Its commentators needed a paying perch to replace the one that had been yanked out from under them. As the old sailors say, in a storm any port will do.

     But a port that appeared welcoming when the winds were at their worst can prove uncomfortable after the storm has passed:

     It’s been a tough few days for Bulwark writer-at-large Tim Miller:

     Be it my matter-of-fact tweet about generally opposing abortion (we’ll get to that) or my stridency in lambasting the abandonment our friends in Afghanistan, I guess I’ve ruffled some feathers. (“Tim, you used to be so balanced,” they say. I did? Are you sure you have the right Tim?)
     This has been a tad disorienting because I thought we had a nice little deal going, whereby my new friends and I could disagree, even passionately, on assorted policy matters—but we stayed friends because we agreed on the biggest things and the biggest threats and our little alliance is too important to our democracy for it to fray.
…
     To be perfectly transparent with you, the breakdown in our deal has left me feeling kind of blue.
     On the one hand I get it. It’s tough out there in our grand digital battlefield, where disagreement can feel like desertion. Plus when your fellow soldier used to fight for the other side, there is always a flicker of doubt, a mistrust, a fear that they just might unsheathe their katana and slice your backside.
     On the other hand, I have to say it is a little weird. I’m a freaking open wound over here, people! I’m getting dumped by old pals, spilling my guts over past mistakes, changing my views on some things, and getting all John-Boehner-teary-eyed for weeks after we slayed the coral dragon together. Yet some of y’all still are apparently concerned I might flip a switch and jump on Team DeSantis or something? Really?!

     I hope my Gentle Readers will forgive me for the spate of schadenfreude the above plaint has brought me. I find it hard to feel pity for someone who disavows the majority of his “strongly held convictions” for the sake of a paying post from which to pontificate to the public. Perhaps you feel the same, in which case we can do penance together. Is February 30 next year good for you?

     It’s one thing to confront the evidence, re-examine some conviction, conclude that you’ve been wrong, and explain why you now think otherwise. It’s another to reject essentially the whole of your philosophy because you dislike the style of the man who’s become their foremost representative. Worse yet is to do it for money. Detecting the insincerity beneath such an about-face isn’t hard for anyone of normal intelligence and discernment.

     But perhaps a retired engineer turned novelist who is not and never will be admitted to the Punditocracy has no place criticizing his “betters.” At least, we can be reasonably sure his “betters” would say so. They would get paid for it.

     Have a nice day.

Sep 08 2021

What Have We Become? Part II

“Go Forth and Multiply” was produced by James Corbett to provide the human race added incentives to rebel against the deadly self-anointed global elite.

He twice misspelled his lead-in to the video. Here is the corrected version. It says quite a bit about what so many have become.

Do you think the world is overpopulated? Are you worried that having a baby would contribute to climate change? Deep down, do you hate humanity? If [n]o, then it’s time to stop swallowing the propaganda of the anti-human death cult and to realize that creation is our ultimate act of rebellion agains[t] the elitists and eugenicists. — Corbett Report

Note: Word Press often misplaces or suppresses the featured video from appearing on the home page. Readers may need to click through to the singular post to see it.

Sep 08 2021

I Have Designated Today A Day…

     …for lounging about…
     …for reading Tolkien…
     …for watching videos of cute animals…
     …and, as it was memorably phrased by that monumental icon of American culture, the Beaver, “just goofing off.”

     I need a respite. So here are a few loose links to stuff you might find interesting:

     But do please have a nice day!

Sep 07 2021

On Going Too Far

     Yesterday’s tirade about moderation reaped me an email objection I should have expected. My correspondent assumed that I had a “system” of some sort in mind, rather than a simple respect for the equilibrium principle that governs all things under the veil of time. The writer asked if I were about to advocate “Christian Socialism,” a concept with which I was only vaguely familiar. The reference “sent me to the stacks:”

     Christian socialism is a form of religious socialism based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Many Christian socialists believe capitalism to be idolatrous and rooted in greed, which some Christian denominations consider a mortal sin. Christian socialists identify the cause of inequality to be the greed that they associate with capitalism.

     Christian socialism became a major movement in the United Kingdom beginning in the 1960s through the Christian Socialist Movement, since 2013 known as Christians on the Left.

     Socialism with a miter and crozier, eh? Thanks, I’ll pass.

     There are several terms of condemnation in the above, but the standout, which gives the thing its overall flavor is greed:

     greed n: excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions.

     The term greed is widely exploited as a pejorative by the busybodies of the Left. If you have more than they think is “right,” they accuse you of “greed.” If you protest being mulcted of your earnings by the Omnipotent State for “redistribution” to others, they deem you “greedy.” And of course, your entirely natural and understandable desire to retain what you’ve earned for purposes of your choosing is irrefutable evidence that you lack “compassion.” Never mind that the compassion-shouters of the world have done far more harm than good, whenever they’ve been allowed their way.

     May God save us from such people and their arrogation of His authority.

     But let’s get back to my correspondent’s inquiry. By implication, he lumped me in with the Christian Socialists. As I’m moderately wealthy by my own labor and pleased to be so, I found it amusing. A sincere Christian Socialist would be busily dissipating his savings – assuming he had any – in pursuit of that impossible goal of all socialists, “equality.” And while I have no such intention, I also don’t strive to increase my wealth still further.

     The censoriousness of the compassion-shouter, who wants to decide your point of moderation for you, is “balanced” by the money-addict for whom no bank balance can ever be high enough. Neither respects the economic principle of diminishing marginal utility:

     In economics, the marginal utility of a good or service is the gain from an increase, or loss from a decrease, in the consumption of that good or service. Economists sometimes speak of a law of diminishing marginal utility, meaning that the first unit of consumption of a good or service yields more utility than the second and subsequent units, with a continuing reduction for greater amounts. The marginal decision rule states that a good or service should be consumed at a quantity at which the marginal utility is equal to the marginal cost.

     Like most economic theses, the law of diminishing marginal utility cannot be proved. However, it is illustrated by nearly every course of action we undertake. It’s particularly plain in decisions about consumption. It applies with equal validity to individual decisions about virtually any desideratum known to Man.


Any desideratum pursued too far becomes destructive.
First, it blocks other desiderata, which is bad enough.
But worse still, it becomes poisonous in and of itself.

     That that “certain point” is a matter the individual must determine for himself is one that’s lost upon the folks who strive to rescue the word greed from pejorative status. Yes, our desires propel our efforts. (I include our needs among our desires for simplifying purposes.) If we desire nothing, we do nothing; that’s the law of human action. But desire itself obeys the law of diminishing marginal utility. At some point, Smith’s pursuit of more Gorgonzola / single-malt scotch / negotiable bonds / commemorative plates and figurines from the Franklin Mint will make him no happier in the all-important personal sense, and might just obstruct his pursuit of other things he needs.

     If Smith is functional – i.e., if he can manage his own affairs satisfactorily without a minder – he’ll know the point of moderation when or before he reaches it. It’s one of the more common tests of personal balance. Yet there are a lot of unhappy people who are unhappy because their pursuit of some item has passed that point without their recognizing it. Indeed, that might be the dominant cause of unhappiness in America today.

     Advertising – the art of getting the audience to desire something enough to go out and buy it – is responsible for part of this. Happiness isn’t about acquisition per se; it’s about having what you want and not having what you don’t want. (Ask any man whose wife has exhausted their home’s closet space.) But there’s an additional dimension to be considered: the widespread promotion of goals that are inherently unachievable for all but a very few. Goals of wealth. Goals of beauty. Goals of strength or endurance. Some of these goals have nothing whatsoever to do with human happiness…unless it’s the happiness some perverse souls derive from dictating the behavior of others.

     I’ll close with a tale from the great Raymond Smullyan, as closely as I can remember the essence of it:

     Once upon a time there was a man who hated above all other things being envied. He felt the envy of his less-well-off neighbors for his prosperity, so he dissipated his savings, resigned from his profession, and took a bottom-tier job to keep him in necessities. Others envied him for the love of his wife and his sons, so he divorced and separated himself from his family. Still others envied him for the clothes he wore and how good he looked in them, so he wore nothing but a burlap sack. Finally, in a last despairing attempt to avert all envy, he gave up even his subsistence job and went about the land begging for his meals. At last, he said he said to himself, no one can envy me now.

     Then he happened upon a friend from his earlier life, with whom he had been out of touch. The friend looked at his beaming smile and said, “My God, how radiantly happy you look! How I envy you!”

     </rimshot>

     But do have a nice day.

Sep 06 2021

A Deadly Shift In Emphasis

     I am frequently impressed by Misanthropic Humanitarian’s selection of Quotes for the Day. Today is such an occasion:

     Those three quotes underscore one of the deadliest conceptual tragedies of recent times: the shift in emphasis from achievement to acquisition. I’m about to start sounding like a cranky old man, here – as I am a cranky old man, I consider that an earned privilege – so bear with me.

     I was raised to believe the sentiments in those quotes, and I do. I was also raised to understand the concept of “enough:” i.e., moderation. One of my reasons for writing fiction is to illustrate those things in stories. I did so most recently in In Vino:

     Ray held up his glass. “There are eight more bottles of this delicious stuff in a case on the floor behind me. Do you intend to leave them here, Matt?”
     The vintner nodded. “With my compliments.”
     “Thank you. But I’d guess that you don’t expect Father Monti and me to break into them after the rest of you have gone home. Am I right about that?”
     Lundin chuckled. “You are, Father.”
     “And we won’t,” Ray said. “Because we understand ‘enough.’ It’s part of our ethic as priests not to abuse the good things of life. It’s also part of what we try to teach our flocks: Take enough, and be well and happy.”
     He panned the table.
     They seem to get it. Will they get the next part?
     “A great part of what’s wrong in modern society comes from the refusal to allow that ‘enough is enough.’ The acquisition of wealth and property becomes a matter of ego, a way to measure yourself against others. Or you might consume without stopping to distract yourself from an inner emptiness that food, alcohol, drugs, and expensive toys can never fill. But these are not temptations that can be fought directly. They can only be beaten by cultivating an old virtue.”
     He sat back and waited.
     “Which old virtue, Father?” Rachel murmured.
     “It’s called temperance,” Ray said. “The disciplining of one’s own habits and desires, acquired through the conscious practice of ‘enough.’ It’s one of the four cardinal virtues.”

     Temperance is a tough virtue to internalize, especially today. It can take many years. It’s made harder by the flood of consumption-oriented messages. Most such messages carry the implicit subtext that you deserve this, and if you can’t get it, someone is cheating you.

     Nearly all contemporary advertising embeds such a subtext. It’s riddled American society with the worst of the capital sins, and let it be writ large:

ENVY

     For some of us, whether by virtue of ability or inheritance, acquire more than others. Those others look at wealth with envy-germinated hatred. They seek to pull it down, since in their heart of hearts they know that they could never achieve so much. And all too frequently, they succeed at the one thing of which envy is capable: destruction.

     Sometimes the destruction includes the envious one:

     “I nursed him through two divorces, a cocaine rehab, and a pregnant receptionist. God’s creature, right? God’s special creature. I’ve warned him, Kevin. I’ve warned him every step of the way. Watching him bounce around like a fucking game. Like a wind-up toy. Like pounds of self-serving greed on wheels. The next thousand years is right around the corner. Eddie Barzoon…take a good look because he’s the poster child for the next millennium.

     “These people, it’s no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire. You build egos the size of cathedrals. Fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse. Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god. Where can you go from there? As we’re scrambling from one deal to the next, who’s got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, even bees honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity…and it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There’s no chance to think, to prepare; it’s buy futures, sell futures…when there is no future.

     “We got a runaway train, boy. We got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them is getting ready to fistfuck God’s ex-planet, lick their fingers clean, as they reach out toward their pristine, cybernetic keyboards to tote up their fucking billable hours. And then it hits home. You got to pay your own way, Eddie. It’s a little late in the game to buy out now. Your belly’s too full, your dick is sore, your eyes are bloodshot, and you’re screaming for someone to help. But guess what, there’s no one there! You’re all alone, Eddie, ‘CAUSE YOU’RE GOD’S SPECIAL LITTLE CREATURE!” — “John Milton,” played by Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate, describing the milieu that gave rise to his doomed partner Eddie Barzoon.

     The above is one of the most brilliant pieces of dialogue ever inserted into a movie – and to make it sting really badly, scriptwriters Jonathan Lemkin and Tony Gilroy had it come from the mouth of Satan himself. They could not have chosen better.

     I’ll resist the temptation to beat this into the magma layer. Let it close with a handful of bullet points:

  • You are two things: a what and a who. You cannot change what you are, which will include some of your limitations. You can only change who you are, which includes your acquired abilities, through study and diligent effort.
  • What you have does not define you; what you’ve done and what you can do are infinitely more important.
  • Your limitations proceed from within you. They are no one else’s responsibility to remedy. Accept them and take responsibility for them.
  • Accepting your limitations is perhaps the most important goal of the maturation process.
  • If you are a parent, take the above to heart for your children’s sakes.

     Have a nice Labor Day.

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