Francis W. Porretto
Mount Sinai, NY USA
Author's posts
Aug 01 2022
An Overlooked Lesson
I’ve written to this effect on several occasions: The New Segregationists Hard Truth Unspeakabilities Media Strategies And Tactics New Things To Fear Nevertheless, the idea isn’t sinking in very widely. I suppose that’s just the consequence of a small readership. All the same, it’s somewhat depressing. “But what’s the lesson?” I hear …
Aug 01 2022
The Terror Is Approaching
And it is intentional: Darren Brady, 51, has slammed Hampshire Police for ‘impeding his right to free speech’ after he was placed into handcuffs on Friday at his home in Aldershot for sharing a meme. Footage of the arrest was widely shared on social media and showed an officer who told Mr …
Jul 31 2022
Entertainers and Entertainment
Forgive me, Gentle Reader. For the moment I simply can’t fulminate about politics or current events. I’m out of bile. But that doesn’t mean I have nothing for you today. *** I’ve often found myself stalled in the middle of some novel-length project. In the most dramatic case, the “stall” lasted for twelve …
Jul 30 2022
The Pacification
My thoughts are more scattered than usual this morning, for a bevy of reasons my Gentle Readers would probably find uninteresting, excessively personal, or both. But when I sense that the floor of our national handbasket is being ripped away by flesh-eating zombies, such that the lake of bubbling lava below is plainly visible, …
Jul 30 2022
Accolades
No one commentator can cover everything. Some choose to specialize in one sort of news or development. Others relax and accept their discursive natures. But whatever one chooses to cover, learning to punch hard and strike a vital spot, without exhausting the reader’s patience, is essential. Sadly, it’s a skill I haven’t yet mastered. …
Jul 29 2022
Aspects Of Aging
One of the inevitabilities of life is life itself: if you don’t die, you’ll get older. Of course some persons do, ah, elude that development, though whether their course is the better one I must leave to individual judgement. I’m on one side, Deborah Harry’s on the other. Choose according to your tastes. …
Jul 28 2022
What Cannot Be Reported As Fact
…can sometimes be depicted to good effect in fiction: Then there was the matter of process. How the election was run. How it was administered. The frenzied push to ramp up absentee and mail-in ballots and ramp down verification, especially in battleground states. How many states changed election laws? Hint: a lot. How …
Jul 27 2022
Individuality And Sex
Is this or is this not a strange combination? *** Recently, Carl Trueman, a professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College, released Strange New World, a study of contemporary notions of identity, with emphasis on the Sexual Revolution. The book is a condensation of his earlier book The Rise and …
Jul 27 2022
A Quick Thought
I’ve written many times about political dynamics and the swelling of blatant demagoguery in response to the incentives built into our system of government. Recent developments, especially the increasing degree of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans at destroying our rights and seizing our property, persuade me that the time has come to declare the …
Jul 26 2022
The Rulers
To learn who rules over you, simply look to those you are not allowed to criticize. [Multiply attributed, most often to Voltaire.] The above seems sound. Certainly many aristocracies treated the criticism of the rulers — lese majeste — as a serious offense. In some such lands it was treated more harshly than …
Jul 25 2022
Unsolvings
The world of “problems” and “solutions” makes for a fascinating exploration of human conceptual space. The tendency to view some unsatisfactory condition as a “problem” to be “solved” is intriguing all by itself. Some such conditions are so persistent and so deeply embedded in the history of Man that it would be more reasonable …
Jul 24 2022
The Ever-Trendy Faith
Gerard van der Leun has a typically excellent essay up today. It’s so good that I almost feel as if I’m committing an offense against the proprieties by pull-quoting it, but…well…maybe the authorities will look the other way: Back in 2006 National Geographic and other media echo chambers thought enough of this “discovery” …
Jul 23 2022
Ruins
The saddest things on Earth, for my money, are the ruins of things that could have been great. That excludes archaeological ruins, of course; at one time they were legitimately impressive structures, or so we’re told by the “authorities.” What I have in mind here is a bit different: art, or music, or fiction …
Jul 23 2022
Who For President?
The wizened old librarian-curator who lives in the back of my head said that he was prompted to dredge this up by the talk that Gavin Newsom would make an excellent Democrat presidential nominee: March 3, 2004 “Everybody’s always giving me guns.” — Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe, in The Big Sleep …
Jul 23 2022
A Timeless Observation
As I’ve recently been re-enjoying the writings of the great Henry Louis Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore – yes, there was a time when Baltimore not only had a Sage but actually produced its own! – I thought it might be appropriate, in this time of troubles, to share a slice from one of …
Jul 22 2022
What Matters
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away childish things. [First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:11] A fiction writer must know what matters to the reader. But this is far easier if …
Jul 22 2022
One Incident, Two Observations
Just yesterday evening, Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin was attacked during a campaign rally: Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for New York governor, was attacked during a campaign stop near Rochester in upstate Monroe County on Thursday night…. The suspect approached Zeldin wielding an unknown weapon and Chenelly tackled him. …
Jul 21 2022
Computer-Generated Fantasies
It was 1983: “early days” for the personal computer upheaval. Most Americans knew that microcomputers existed, but few had actually acquired one, or knew what they were good for. (Spoiler alert: not much.) I was asked about them now and then – I remember an ophthalmologist quizzing me about them during an eye exam …
Jul 21 2022
“But They’re Not Allowed To Know!”
If you have firearms, the federal government knows about it: The homeowner was alerted there were trespassers on his property by motion detectors outside his front door. A live video feed from his doorbell camera showed three armed men wearing tactical vests, t-shirts and jeans. Two appeared to be ATF agents. The third …
Jul 20 2022
Objectives And Constraints
“If you’re willing to die you can do anything.” – lapel button Yes, there’s a point to the above – and it’s not that the accumulated wisdom of Mankind can be found on lapel buttons. (It’s also not that I’m willing to die.) Life under the veil of Time is an exercise …
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