Jan 25 2024

Is This Credible, Or Is It Meant To Scare Us?

     According to Radar Online:

     President Joe Biden is stubbornly ignoring polls, pals, and former President Barack Obama, who are all allegedly telling the 81-year-old he needs to quit the 2024 race to save America and the Democratic Party, RadarOnline.com has learned.
     Insiders snitched that tensions between the two presidents recently exploded after irate Obama rushed to a secret meeting and confronted Biden about his fading chances to fend off surging Republican candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming November election.
     “Obama read Joe the riot act,” spilled a Beltway insider to the National Enquirer. “He told him to up his game or step aside for a candidate who can win the race.”

     Obama does see himself as the Democrat Party leader. Moreover, there’s plenty of evidence that it is Obama, rather than Biden, who’s dictated the policies of the Biden regime. Obama being…Obama, he wants that condition to continue. If he becomes convinced that Biden can’t prevail in November, he’ll displace the octogenarian in favor of a candidate with a better shot at it.

     The speculation is that Michelle Obama is that candidate. And Obama being… Obama, that is entirely credible.

Jan 25 2024

Another Non-Surprise

     That perennial loser “Beto” O’Rourke wants the invasion of Texas to continue unbounded:

     The flood of illegals into the Lone Star State is part of the Democrats’ campaign to turn Texas “blue.” It’s already difficult to keep non-citizens out of the voting booth. Thus, more illegals means more illegal voting – and illegal aliens are reliable Democrat voters. Naturally, “Beto,” who couldn’t win an election for assistant dogcatcher in Texas as it stands, is in favor of that.

     I’d like to see this spread around widely, as it gives true coloration not only to O’Rourke but to the Democrats and the Left generally: “We’ll do anything to win!”

Jan 25 2024

“You Are TOO FREE!” Say The Elite

     Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me:

     The nation’s ruling class holds deeply authoritarian opinions widely divorced from the rest of the American electorate, finds a survey out this week. It found nearly 60 percent of American “elites” think there is too much individual freedom in America. Meanwhile, nearly 60 percent of registered voters have the exact opposite opinion, reporting the United States has too much top-down control, limiting liberty.

     The study, titled “Them Vs. U.S,” defined the American “elite” as “having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile.” Such people account for about 1 percent of Americans. The study also examined a sub-sample of the 1 percent who graduated from Ivy League schools or other name-brand institutions such as Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.

     By contemporary standards, those are the favored of our time. And it is normal today for persons with those characteristics to aspire to power, wealth…and distinction. It’s a fair bet that most of them already have some personal power and generous amounts of wealth. However, distinction is getting harder to achieve.

     To be distinguished from others requires that you have what they do not – and cannot. Freedom makes it possible for ordinary people to become wealthy. That undercuts the distinction of affluence. To restore that distinction requires that the freedom that makes general affluence possible be reduced if not eliminated. That plays nicely into the elites’ desire for more power.

     Thomas Szasz sarcastically defined freedom as “That which you demand for yourself but would deny to others.” Perhaps America’s elites hold to that definition.

Jan 25 2024

The DEI-Hustlers Won’t Relent

     They’re a bit like the Chinese that way: they just keep coming:

     The Wizard Of Oz and It’s A Wonderful Life are going to get a ‘diverse’ reboot, a Hollywood director has revealed.

     Kenya Barris, who created the ABC sitcom Black-ish, is working on scripts for the Warner Bros adaptations of the Hollywood classics and spoke of his plans to make some key changes as he appeared at the Sundance Film Festival.

     The producer, 50, said the 1939 Judy Garland film The Wizard Of Oz will get a modern day remake with it set it The Bottoms – Inglewood, California, rather than Kansas.

     Kenya added it is the ‘best time to turn a mirror on society’ and he wants to do both films with diverse characters.

     Apparently, the bankrupting of Barris’s predecessors in such madness, including Disney, hasn’t convinced him that ruining a cultural mile marker such as The Wizard of Oz is an auto-da-fe. Well, hard-boiled race-hustlers can be like that. From the above, Barris has already enlisted in that cause. Such persons view everything through their personal myopia. They cannot see anything in a classic movie except that “there are no blacks in it!”

     This is what happens when a people is relentlessly propagandized about its “oppression” and persuaded that the remedy is to make war on the “oppressors” by defacing and defiling what they love.

Jan 24 2024

Extra! Extra!

     If you’ve read this essay of a few years ago, you know how I feel about “white privilege.” Well, as it happens a particularly incisive writer has penned a piece that summarizes and celebrates “white privilege.” If you’re already seen it, please ignore this notice…but if you haven’t, it’s a howl a second. Hie thee forth and enjoy!

Jan 24 2024

“Galting” Or Despair?

     You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

     For many years, the “work ethic” – i.e., the idea that work is worthy and will be rewarded according to its merits – dominated Americans’ thinking on workplace behavior and employer / employee relations. Granted, the idea wasn’t reflected in the behavior of every employer or employee. Some high performers were exploited rather than rewarded; some promotions were awarded for reasons other than merit. But in the main, competitive forces encouraged the idea of “going the extra mile,” and compelled employers to recognize and reward those who did so.

     It seems that era may be over:

     According to the Harvard Business Review:

     “Quiet quitters continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities, but they’re less willing to engage in activities known as citizenship behaviors: no more staying late, showing up early, or attending non-mandatory meetings.”

     Simply put, having perceived their jobs to not have value and meaning, they do no more than absolutely necessary.

     There is debate among scholars as to the extent of the quiet quitting phenomenon, but there is increasing evidence that white Americans are increasingly quiet quitting America’s leading institutions. And the possible implications of that for American society are profound.

     This phenomenon is a consequence of the trends I write about in my forthcoming book, The Unprotected Class, about the rise of anti-white racism in American culture and how both formal and informal anti-white discrimination have become a factor in almost every area of American public life.

     Legally enforced preferential treatment has undone the work ethic among white Americans? Ignoring the high performers and distributing rewards according to race and sex quotas has resulted in a diminution of high performances? Astonishing! Who could have imagined it?

     I’m sure you could have predicted it, Gentle Reader. You’d have to be a left-liberal to believe that you could outlaw the practice of rewarding the best performers and still get high performances. Left-liberals don’t read Liberty’s Torch. But they dominate the alphabet agencies, particularly the ones that “fight discrimination.”

***

     When I left the working world, the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” madness had not yet gained a foothold at my employer. That may have been because it was a defense-engineering company. The military, whatever its faults, has always been deadly serious about getting good, reliable products for its shooters. But that was the military then. My old shop has been colonized and conquered by the DEI lunacy since I left…just as has the American military.

     A company must be tiny to escape the attentions of the DEI apostles. You’d think that would give tiny companies a competitive edge. However, “big prefers to deal with big.” Regulators labor overtime to see that it stays that way. That keeps tiny companies tiny, as a rule.

     So high-capability employees, seeing that their efforts “above and beyond” are barely even noticed, much less rewarded, are gearing down. And no matter how little the bien-pensants of the Left like it, that means white male employees far more often than any other flavor.

     Seems that Emerson was right yet again.

***

     A retreat from effort can be interpreted several ways. Hopeful folks in the Right would like to believe that it’s a form of “going Galt.” However, in the usual case it’s not motivated by anything abstract, but rather by the onset of despair: “What’s the use?”

     The late Florence King wrote feelingly about that sense of things:

     Affirmative action is our French Revolution, goading us into misanthropy as surely as the excesses of the Terror goaded Fisher Ames. It has sent a twist through the national belly, as anyone who knows anything about this country might have predicted….

     What’s the use? is becoming our national war cry. Copious tears have been shed over despairing rage in the ghetto, but there’s more than one kind of despairing rage, and more than one kind of ghetto. The talented student who cracks the books to get into college, only to be passed over for someone less deserving, thinks what’s the use? and then feels the twist in the belly. His parents, who have worked themselves ragged to give him a college education, think what’s the use? and then feel the twist in the belly. The professor who demands excellence from his students, only to find himself charged with elitism, thinks what’s the use? and then feels the twist in the belly.

     It’s not about “going Galt.” That visceral sense of despair, the subconscious perception that “it’s all been for nothing,” can unmake a man. It can convert him from one who passionately loves his work to a time-server, a clock-watcher. That such should be happening at our ever more regulated and DEI-colonized Fortune 3000 companies shouldn’t surprise anyone. However, say any of that to a left-liberal and you’ll be called “everything but white.”

     Ultimately, it’s about reality itself. The Left’s insistence that things should be a certain way has absolutely no power to set aside the laws of human nature, especially this one:

What is rewarded will increase;
What is penalized will diminish.

     That is a truth the Left will never, ever acknowledge.

Jan 23 2024

How about a new plan?

Drooling Joe Biden and his puppet masters admit that what they’re doing isn’t working, but they’re going to continue doing it anyway.

Joe Biden admitted the US’s strikes on Houthi forces in the Red Sea are “not working” but will continue.

The US President has authorised five rounds of attacks on the Houthi movement’s infrastructure since last Thursday.

Here’s my idea, and they can have it for free because I’m such a nice guy.

You take a video of US servicemembers walking all over the Houthi “statement” It’s kinda like their flag, It looks like this:

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It has statements in satanic script Arabic on it that reads:

Allah is the greatest

Death to America

Death to Israel

A curse upon the Jews

Victory to Islam

Now here’s what you do. You get that made up as a really large flag. Like, twenty feet tall or around there. And then you have an entire division of US Army Soldiers march across that bastard. Lay it on the ground at Ft. Bragg and just have the 82nd Airborne march over it until it’s covered in mud. And then, since we’re being such nice guys, we’ll rinse off the mud by having anyone who wants to help, piss all over that garbage. I bet we could get some people to donate some cases of beer so that we can keep the piss flowing for a good long while. Drink beer, piss on Houthi statement. We’ll drag it out to the cleaning bays where tanks normally get sprayed off and we’ll just piss on it until the satanic script is legible again. And then, because we can’t have that kind of garbage polluting our Army bases, we’ll fucking burn it. Dig a pit, drop that crap into it, lots of JP-8 on top, and light a match. I want those goat-fucking retards with their pedophile prophet to see that crap from the other side of the world, if possible.

Naturally, the violent followers of a pedophile prophet of Satan will be outraged, because they’re always outraged. The last time we did strikes on their little shithole, the streets were filled with people screaming for blood, although in Shitholestan any riot where people scream for blood counts as “Tuesday”. But this time we REALLY want them out in the streets. Wait until they’re damn near stacked on top of each other while they scream in anger.

And then drop a Daisy-cutter on the whole fucking lot of them. There cannot be any peace made with bloodthirsty Satanic barbarians. Mr. Porretto’s post right below this one should make that plain and clear. It would take generations before their children would be able to interact with the civilized world, but only if we get rid of the adults today could that start to happen. Enough is enough. If their statement is that they refuse to exist on the same planet with us, then my statement is that we need to remove them from the planet. I didn’t ask for them to be a bunch of low-IQ, raging, bloodthirsty ferals. Hell, I’m normally a live-and-let-live guy. If they wanted to continue fucking their goats and sacrificing their female children to their satanic prophet I would be sorrowful for where they’ll end up at the end of their short, nasty lives, but I wouldn’t be vengeful or anything like that. However, any time these camel-sodomizing, child raping pieces of shit manage to get their hands on a tiny bit of power, they use it to attack other people, and especially America and Jews. Nah bruh, we’re gonna show you a little something about Fuck Around and Find Out.

Of course, the drooling Chinese Hand Puppet and his puppet masters would never actually follow my advice, because a whole bunch of them hate America and want to see us fail, and the rest are so weak, pathetic, deluded and brainless that they think they can actually work hand in hand with people who want to kill them. More’s the pity. But it’s at least a plan, which is more than Drooling Joe and his puppet masters have.

Jan 23 2024

Said But Not Heard

     Much of the evil perpetrated upon the world could have been averted had people paid proper attention to critical statements made by key public figures. The potentates of interwar Europe dismissed nearly every indication that Adolf Hitler meant to conquer Europe, including Hitler’s own words to that effect. How many lives were lost because foreign ministers kept telling one another that “He doesn’t really mean it” — ? There’s no way to know.

     We have a similar situation with HAMAS. Its top men have made perfectly plain that their fixed intention is to destroy Israel:

     “People are saying now that the October 7 war has opened a new horizon for a vision of a political settlement. Here, they pull out their old ‘merchandise’ of the two-state solution. I would like to say two things about the two-state solution. First, we have nothing to do with the two-state solution. We reject this notion, because it means you would get a promise for a [Palestinian] state, yet you are required to recognize the legitimacy of the other state, which is the Zionist entity. This is unacceptable. We demand to be liberated, to get rid of the occupation, and to have our independence, and our state. [Israel] is my enemy. It is not my concern.”

     Could it be clearer? The destruction of Israel is HAMAS’s aim and has been since the organization coalesced. It’s written into the HAMAS Covenant:

     The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?

     This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

     It happened like this: When the leaders of the Islamic armies conquered Syria and Iraq, they sent to the Caliph of the Moslems, Umar bin-el-Khatab, asking for his advice concerning the conquered land – whether they should divide it among the soldiers, or leave it for its owners, or what? After consultations and discussions between the Caliph of the Moslems, Omar bin-el-Khatab and companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, it was decided that the land should be left with its owners who could benefit by its fruit. As for the real ownership of the land and the land itself, it should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day. Those who are on the land, are there only to benefit from its fruit. This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.

     “Verily, this is a certain truth. Wherefore praise the name of thy Lord, the great Allah.” (The Inevitable – verse 95).

     That puts the matter quite plainly. Yet statesmen repeatedly wish it away. I don’t know if any “reporter” has confronted an important president, prime minister, or foreign minister with the above and asked “What do you have to say about that?” However, given the determination of such persons to believe that one can achieve an enduring peace between two peoples when one of them is dedicated to the destruction of the other, I’d bet that the politician would simply talk around it.

     Politicians don’t like it when facts get in the way of their fantasies.

***

     Another recent case concerns something that, even if those to whom it was addressed heard it plainly, they could not and would not accept the import of it:

     Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan was on CNBC this morning discussing 2024, and he had some things to say that will probably piss off some Democrats. So you know I’m here for that! He started off by saying that Trump was actually right about some things (gasp!). He finished it off by calling Democrats out for name calling Republicans and said that Democrats need to, “Grow up and treat other people with respect.” He seems to think that negativity about MAGA is going to hurt Biden in the 2024 election.

     That is excellent advice for anyone with ambitions for high office: treat others with respect. But Leftists, who dominate today’s Democrat Party, are incapable of doing so for a tragic reason: Their self-concept is inextricably bound to their presumption of moral superiority. And of course, one must not grant respect to a moral inferior. That would be like saying that Satan has some good points and should be listened to.

***

     How many observant and wise things have been said that people prefer not to hear? As any regular Gentle Reader would know, I have a large collection of quotes, into which I dip at need for a bit of reinforcement from a historical figure more widely known than am I. (I have no ambitions to become a “widely known historical figure.”) Some of them are millennia old. Many once appeared in various grammar and high school curricula. But they say things people today simply don’t want to hear.

     Time was, we had some regard for the accumulated wisdom of our forebears. I’m unsure how we lost it. Perhaps we can get it back if we learn how to listen. But a great many of us are disinclined to do so…perhaps for the same reason politicians reject demonstrable facts in favor of their fantasies.

Jan 23 2024

The Ultimate “Non-Starter”

     This requires no comment:

     Is this guy on drugs? I mean, really!

Jan 23 2024

The Value of Contrarians

I was reading in the middle of the night (our dog is sickly, and I was keeping an eye on him), and happened upon this Substack post about dissident thinkers.

For those who aren’t aware of Substack, it is the platform that first gained some traction when they allowed people to seamlessly ask for, and manage, individual subscriptions to a blog. Unlike Google or other large ‘monetizers’, Substack doesn’t penalize those with few followers, but allows them the same opportunity as the ‘Big Guys’ to make money off their writing.

Even those who formerly wrote on their own hosted site started switching to Substack. That was probably facilitated by the lessening money being made by bloggers. Over the last few years, ads, sponsorships, and readership have been plummeting. I think it’s probably the competition from the non-text alternatives – initially YouTube and Pinterest, but now Instagram, TikTok, and other media focusing on short, video-based content.

Full Disclosure: I have a substack blog, which, so far, is based on a free subscription. I chose to allow subscribers, as I wanted to have a connection with the readers.

Even dealing with the normal learning curve, Substack is a LOT easier to use than either Blogger or WordPress. It has some very useful tools – analytics, seamless management of paid subscriptions, email links to subscribers, the usual editing tools, and the ability to promote your blog on the main landing page, through Notes.

So it’s easy to understand why the platform has grown so quickly.

Many shifted their blogs to Substack – some in tandem with another site (hey, after the quick rise of platforms, coupled with the equally quick disappearance of many of them, I cannot fault their caution).

Some of those blogs were what you might call Dissident – they offered content that was sceptical of mainstream thought.

And, that was the problem – for the Left-leaning Karens. It just wouldn’t DO for Non-Leftists to have a fair chance to get their message out.

So the Leftist PTB decided to smear some of their target with the ‘N’ word.

No, not THAT word. The OTHER ‘N’ word.

Nazi.

That’s right. Without a shred of evidence, the Left imposed their ultimate weapon upon some struggling writers, expecting Substack to fold.

Which they didn’t.

The value of resistance is explained in that blog post that I mentioned at the beginning of this message. And, the answer of

Why do the Leftists attack relatively mild Dissidence?

Because it’s dangerous to their complete control.

Jan 22 2024

We all knew it

It didn’t matter how much Little Fascist Fauci tried to deny it, it doesn’t matter how much Francis Collins lied about it until he was put under oath, we all knew that Covid 19 came from a lab.

And here’s your confirmation, just in case you still weren’t convinced.

It’s a Chinese-made virus. Paid for by Anthony Fauci, through his funneling of funds via the EcoHealth Alliance. In a just world, Anthony Fauci would be publicly executed. Sadly, we’ll have to wait for his natural death before he can experience his true reward, burning in the fires of hell for all eternity.

Jan 22 2024

The University Cesspool

     Via Maura Dowling comes this set of horrors being perpetrated upon first-year students at the University of Wisconsin Law School:

     The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) is alerting the public to a mandatory “Re-Orientation” session happening tomorrow, Friday, January 19th, for all first-year law students at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin. In preparation for the session, law students are asked to study a description of “racist” behaviors, including the false claim that non-discrimination is “racist” and a collection of other assertions about “whites” and “people of color” that actually are racist.

     It would be one thing if the law school proposed an academic debate about such matters. But no one believes for one moment that’s what this session is about. This “DEI training” is a form of indoctrination and demeans law students based on their race. WILL strongly condemns this meeting’s proposed subject matter and demands that any racially discriminatory instruction be removed. By pushing racist ideology on law students, the University is defying federal law, creating a racially hostile environment, and harming individual student dignity.

     The list of “racist” no-nos is itself illuminating:

  1. Only white people can be racist.
  2. Advocating for a “colorblind” society is racist and “negates” the “experiences of people of color.”
  3. It is racist to attack affirmative action.
  4. All white people experience “privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from the system of oppression and advantage, no matter what your intentions are.”
  5. White people have a “fear of people of color, and what would happen if they gained control.”
  6. White people are all infected with “whiteness,” “white guilt,” “denial,” “fear,” and “privilege.” Ridding white people of “racist conditioning” “will never happen.”
  7. There are no exceptional, white people such that “all are tainted by skin color.”
  8. White people are the “beneficiaries of racism and white privilege.”
  9. White people should never talk about “their own story of hardship” because it “diminishes the experiences of people of color.”
  10. White people “attempt to, defend or cover up the racist actions of other white people.”

     It’s been more than twenty years, but the following episode remains vivid in my memory:

     Being the stepfather of two bright young women, both of whom recently passed through institutions of higher learning, it was necessary for your Curmudgeon to acquaint himself with a most noxious modern collegiate phenomenon: the mandatory diversity / sensitivity orientation seminar. He’d heard about this particular insult to intelligence and taste well before his girls had to confront it. Apparently, the standard practice is to herd the incoming freshmen into a large auditorium, parade all sorts of offensive things before them, and demand that they learn to tolerate and respect the practitioners of the vices and perversions exhibited. The freshmen are held captive to this assault for several hours; no one is permitted to leave.

     Before his elder stepdaughter had to face this ordeal, your Curmudgeon instructed her to keep her cell phone fully charged and powered up. He gave her a script to follow, should she desire to leave the place of confinement:

Burly Upperclass Doorwarden: Return to your seat, please.
Curmudgeonly Stepdaughter: I’d prefer to leave. This is making me physically ill.

BUD: I’m sorry, but no one is permitted to leave until the presentation has concluded.
CS: Do you see what I have here?

BUD: A cell phone. What of it?
CS: This of it. My stepfather is standing just beyond these doors with his cell phone and his Browning Hi-Power automatic. If I press this little button here, he’s going to shoot his way through that door. Now will you stand aside, or shall I make the call?

     (Fortunately, this proved not to be necessary, but one must be prepared.)

     That’s the state of our universities, from top to bottom: To avert forcible indoctrination by the Leftist / SJW / BLM / alphabet crowd, one must be willing to threaten: violence, arrests and indictments, lawsuits, adverse publicity, protracted pouting, the lot. To incarcerate anyone against his will is a felony crime called false imprisonment. That includes being locked into a “mandatory reorientation.” Yet universities are being permitted to get away with it, God alone knows why.

     Antonio Gramsci and his followers emphasized capturing the schools as among the most important of all Marxist initiatives. The sad truth is that they’ve succeeded so completely that there’s no possibility of driving them out and returning the “education system” to the job of educating. America would be better off bulldozing every school of any elevation than trying to reform them.

     Today, Charles Sykes’s early tour de force Profscam seems a little dated, but that’s only because the disease is far more advanced today than it was in the Eighties when the book was published. Sykes’s opening recommendation remains entirely applicable: burn down the universities and hang the professors. Optionally, plow the ruins under with salt. Salt’s still pretty cheap, after all.

Jan 21 2024

Poverty In Spirit

     [This piece first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 on November 1, 2015 — FWP]

     Perhaps the most famous of all Jesus’s words:

     And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
     And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
     Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
     Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
     Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
     Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
     Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
     Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
     Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
     Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
     Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
     Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

     [Matthew 5:1-12]

     The very first of the Beatitudes is for many the most troubling. What can it mean to be “poor in spirit?” If we can’t figure it out, how can we achieve it? and if we can’t achieve it, is there a path to heaven open to us?

     It had me baffled for a while. I had to reflect on the nature of poverty and the nature of the soul before I could make any sense of it – and I don’t guarantee that I’ve got it right. As I’ve said before, I write these Ruminations principally for my own benefit, but in the hope that others might glean something of value from them, too.

***

     To be poor in the material sense is to lack; in extreme cases, to lack one or more necessities. But there are instances – today, many instances – of persons deemed “poor” who enjoy material comforts beyond what a middle-class European enjoys, or a middle-class American of a few generations ago would have enjoyed. Genuine poverty is vanishingly rare in America. To find the real McCoy, one must go into the Third World, many of whose denizens can’t even secure food enough, clothing enough, or a shelter from predators and the elements. Those are people who genuinely lack.

     What does the human soul lack? It’s immaterial; it has no survival needs, at least as long as it’s bound to a working body. So the material conception of poverty is irrelevant to it. But to lack and be aware of it has other implications.

     In the material realm, he who lacks something that he truly needs feels a hunger for it. In the spiritual realm, there is only one need: grace, the acceptance of God and His gifts.

     Thus, to be “poor in spirit” would suggest an awareness of the importance of grace and a desire for it. That has its own implication, for grace is available only from one Source. That Source has made His requirements explicit:

     Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? [Matthew 7:7-11]

     Prayer – the humble admission of spiritual need to Him Who can fill it – is the engine. The hunger for grace – spiritual poverty – is the fuel. Combine those ingredients, and all else follows.

     But there’s a trap to be avoided as well.

***

     I’ve harped so often on the critical importance of humility that no doubt many Gentle Readers have tired of hearing about it. Indeed, I’m sure a few among you, reading this essay, have just said to yourself, “Oh boy, here he goes again,” and have tuned out. But there is no venue in which humility is so great a need as in this matter of grace.

     Christ made a powerful statement about it:

     Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
     I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

     [Luke 18:10-14]

     He who is confident of his place in God’s eyes is in a greater degree of spiritual danger than any other living man. He who doubts his spiritual standing and is willing to abase himself before God, pleading for His love and mercy, is the one who will receive the gift of grace. The Redeemer said it as plainly as it can be said.

***

     A few words on prayer and its objects, and I’ll close for today.

     Among the faults our Protestant brethren attribute to us is that we “pray to saints,” when prayer is properly directed only to God. The accusation would have a great deal of force if it were true – and I cannot doubt that in some cases, it is. The object of prayer is to secure God’s grace for oneself, and no mere saint can grant that. However, several of the saints, designated as patrons of some special occupation, context, or need, may be asked to pray for us as intercessors.

     Prayer must always have God as its ultimate destination. However, it does no harm to ask a saint associated with our particular need to “put in a good word.” The Blessed Virgin is paramount in this regard, as the Queen of Heaven among all the saints has the greatest influence on her Son. Note that though the Hail Mary seems to address her rather than God, it asks her to pray for us: indirectly identifying God as the true Source from Whom we hope for a benison.

***

     If the above is well reasoned, then perhaps poverty in spirit is attainable by any sincere Christian. After all, we claim to love God and desire His acceptance. We claim to believe in the bifurcated afterlife, and to prefer – I should hope! – one fork over the other. How much greater could the contrast between two paths be? What could possibly elicit a greater sense of need?

     May God bless and keep you all.

Jan 20 2024

Sports Illustrated is done

The entire staff is getting laid off.

I used to read SI on a regular basis, both in print and online. But way back in the first Bush administration I noticed the Leftism creeping in. Reporters are notoriously Leftist, and sports reporters are the worst of the lot. There’s a reason that ESPN is so openly communist; they literally don’t know anyone else who’s to the right of Karl Marx. It’s a shock to them when someone who values individual liberty and freedom shows up, because they have no basis to recognize such a person.

So SI followed the same trend but in words instead of talking heads. I had stopped reading SI years ago because I didn’t need some J-school moron to give me his political opinions disguised as sports news. And I knew SI was done when they started putting trannies and fatties in their swimsuit edition.

That’s right, they were putting men and fat women into a magazine that should have been dedicated to beautiful women in skimpy beachwear.

So now it’s dead. Maybe someone can bring it back. Maybe not. Apparently the Baltimore Sun is being resurrected by someone who actually cares about reporting news and not being the CCP/DNC mouthpiece, so it could happen to SI as well.

Jan 20 2024

Blinding Flashes Of The Obvious Dept

     Today’s fearless probe into the wilds of cause-and-effect reasoning comes from Roxbury, Massachusetts:

     As this CBS “journalist” summarizes the issue: “Why do you think Walgreen’s is targeting black and brown neighborhoods?”

     She refuses to ask anyone about rampant looting putting this store out of business.

     “Predominantly black neighborhood.” Okay, got it. The residents of that neighborhood will now have to travel a bit further to find a Walgreen’s to loot shop at. And as those residents are “predominantly black,” this constitutes racial discrimination.

     But protesting residents exercised a bit of subtlety:

     “What happens to our seniors and our single parents that have no way to get to a Walgreen’s or another pharmacy anywhere near their home?”

     He managed not to mention either rampant shoplifting or race. And yes, it will certainly inconvenience the locale’s senior citizens, but do they have an enforceable right to a pharmacy within walking distance? But wait: there’s more! Hearken to the Reverend Minard Pepper:

     “So we think it’s insensitive, it’s unjust…. Why do you think they target black and brown communities? I think because they get no push back.”

     Well, there is the possibility that shoplifting in predominantly white districts is far less: a tolerable degree of what liquor store owners have traditionally called “spillage.” But once again, there’s no mention of either theft or race. One more, from former Boston NAACP president Michael Curry:

     “The communities where they’re closing these pharmacies are communities where people are, uh, desperately impacted by disease. You know, two or three times higher rates in cancer, diabetes, heart disease, where life expectancy can be 15, 20 years less.”

     Such awareness. Such compassion! I wonder if the thieves who’ve driven Walgreen’s out of this “predominantly black” neighborhood ever stop to think about the burdens they load onto their sick neighbors. My bet is on “no.” Where’s yours?

     These black “civil rights activists” are fully aware of why Walgreen’s is closing those stores. They simply don’t want to acknowledge the facts of the matter. That would indict “their people.” It would suggest that if there’s a solution – which is unclear, as battling shoplifting has always been a difficult and expensive undertaking – it would take the form of law enforcement. But no, we can’t have that in “predominantly black” Roxbury! That would be racist.

     Such closures are occurring wherever there’s a high enough percentage of blacks. And in every case, “civil rights leaders” – almost always black – step to the microphones and cameras to denounce it. But they seldom mention the plague of shoplifting. Neither do they mention the ceaseless propagandization of young blacks against law enforcement and the rights of property owners, nor the simple cause-and-effect dynamic that makes whites and businesses flee from the blacks who prey on them.

     Sadly, it’s fated to continue. I don’t know how it will be resolved, though I have a foreboding.

Jan 20 2024

Matter And Spirit

     The following passage from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity has me thinking about things most theologians don’t – or perhaps won’t – address:

     There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

     Combine it with this one, which is very well known:

     “You do not ‘have’ a soul. You are a soul. You ‘have’ a body.”

     Lewis insisted on the primacy of the soul…if you like, on its superiority to our physical selves as regards our true identity. It was a critical observation, one that I’ve used in fiction. But it has implications that are worthy of more thought than I’d previously given it.

     Men are plainly material beings. That we are also spiritual beings is less obvious. It’s something we had to discover, or be told. But because we can’t sense the soul with our physical, material senses, we have a tendency to regard it as immaterial, or perhaps sub-material. That may be an error. Consider: in Christian theology,

  • The soul’s existence precedes the body;
  • It holds the essence of our identity;
  • It survives the death of the body;
  • In fact, it persists eternally.

     That collection of properties makes the human soul super-material. It has a greater, larger, more enduring reality than the stuff we can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. It gives fuller meaning to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as well: the transformation of the material body into a super-material form, capable of persisting forever.

     This has me thinking about Abbott’s Flatland, and the two-dimensional protagonist’s revelation that there are more dimensions than he was previously able to perceive. Perhaps the matter we know is a projection from God’s realm into this four-dimensional universe in which we are born, live, and die. If so, then death allows us to rise, as did Mr. A. Square, to perceive our true selves, the super-matter of which our four-dimensional selves are a flattened image.

     This seems to me a possible clue to the nature of God’s super-reality, from which He projected our material universe. But it’s too early in the morning for me to take this any further. I need another pot of coffee, at least. Maybe with pancakes and bacon to wash it down. Bacon improves everything, does it not?

     Back later.

Jan 19 2024

This is being done on purpose

Denver’s hospital system my collapse. Key note: 8,000 illegal aliens counted for over 20,000 hospital visits.

TWENTY. THOUSAND. HOSPITAL. VISITS. WITHOUT A SINGLE DIME BEING PAYED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THIS COUNTRY ILLEGALLY.

This is being done on purpose. The people running the Biden administration want the system to collapse. It’s part of their plan. If you don’t now the Cloward-Piven strategy yet, you should probably spend some time looking it up.

Soros DAs refusing to prosecute sex trafficking. Contributing to the breakdown of society. If people who rape teenage girls and traffic them as prostitutes are not prosecuted, then the average joe is finally going to start taking care of them problem themselves, which the resulting pile-on from the DA who refused to deal with the sex trafficker but will absolutely deal with the father who killed the person who trafficked his daughter.

The legalization of drug use leads to massive overdoses and death? Who would have known? I mean, besides anyone who has two functioning brain cells rubbing together. Every location, state, city, whatever that has legalized the use of drugs has seen an increase in crime, an increase in homelessness, an increase in overdose deaths, an increase in drug use, and a decrease in the quality of life for everyone. This is not an accident. This is not silly ignorance. This is willful destruction of civilization.

Again, this is being done on purpose. This sort of thing is not accidental. It’s meant to attack the fabric of this country (and others), and it’s successful because too many normies are willfully blind to the damage, or if they’re Democrats they’re probably cheering it on like the America-hating communists that they are.

Buy more ammo.

Jan 19 2024

Let’s Play “Spot The Loony”

     [Seeing the sign embedded below at WRSA sent my thoughts hurtling back twenty years to the following piece, which first appeared at Eternity Road of fond memory. Be aware that the embedded links no longer work; not my fault. — FWP]

     Heather at Lil Cup Of Love has a half-hilarious, half-ominous post up today about recent encounters between a hairstylist friend and a couple of seriously defective customers. Give it a read and hurry back.

     Finished so soon? My, my. One cannot but feel immense sympathy for that hairstylist, and a great desire to remain several thousand miles away from the customers of whom she complained. What you should note about these…persons is that both are beyond all dispute the sort of creature that seeks out helpless victims to loonify (Copyright © 2004 by Your Curmudgeon). Therefore, they go to “public accommodations” which offer one-on-one services of the sort that compel the tradesman to endure anything the customer might happen to dispense short of actual violence. The vendors of services who must perforce touch the client, or who are required by their trade to listen to the client, are particularly vulnerable. Barbers and hairdressers are among the worst afflicted.

     The problem is rooted in the disappearance of a little sign that once hung on the wall of every store, barbershop, tavern, and bordello in America:

     You can still find that little sign in some shops, but legal changes have emptied it of its significance. For all practical purposes, no one who sells any good or service to the “general public” — that is, with no requirement for prior introduction, specification, and negotiation — can refuse to serve anyone, without risking both civil and criminal consequences.

     So the loonies have their way with folks such as Heather’s hairstylist friend.

     America’s loony population is not evenly distributed over the fifty states. They tend to concentrate in cities, with the greatest densities observable in the coastal megalopolises such as Los Angeles and New York. There’s a lot of information buried in there, actually. Since loonhood normally includes a ravenous appetite for the attention of others, the loony will automatically go to where that can be had. Large cities offer the most potential victims, and large American coastal cities, which are utterly under the spell of leftist moral relativism, unearned guilt, and legally mandated “compassion” for the unfortunate, will naturally be the worst off.

     Granted that there are degrees of loonhood. Heather’s friend didn’t suffer any physical damage from her encounters; she was merely offended and somewhat shaken by them. But a fearless researcher with a good pair of walking shoes could easily turn up a dozen far more radical cases, some physically threatening, in a single afternoon’s stroll on the streets of New York.

     It’s not against any law to be an irritating, irrational whiner. It’s not against any law to complain baselessly about one’s treatment by some hardworking, longsuffering tradesman. It’s not against any law to shout imprecations or outright threats at the objects of one’s disaffection, with the exception of government officials in the performance of their duties. But damn it all, there used to be curbs on this sort of thing — unofficial but quite stringent curbs that kept it out of the faces of the decent and honest, so that we could count on civility and courtesy even from complete strangers.

     The more severely diseased of the loonies were confined for their own protection. Those with milder strains of the virus were told to “keep moving.” And that is exactly as it should be.

     Those who’ve read extensively of your Curmudgeon’s blather will find this opinion unsurprising. Indeed, it seems to be widely shared. So why can’t we act on it?

     The answer is uncomfortable to ponder. We’re afraid.

     We’re quite reasonably afraid of the gendarmerie. Many of these are dumb as rocks. Many others take an unholy delight in any opportunity, however unrighteous, to exercise their “authority” over the rest of us. Not much to be done there, except to lobby strenuously for changes in the laws that govern retail commerce.

     We’re also afraid of the loonies themselves. Some of them genuinely are dangerous, and will do what they can to punish anyone who refuses to submit to loonification. Others exert a rather subtler sort of intimidation, the variety enforced by great embarrassment.

     But in large measure, what we’re afraid of is our own consciences.

     We’ve been hypersensitized to the “plight of the less fortunate.” We’ve been harangued to death about how, in some indefinable and ultimately elusive way, their condition is our fault and our rightful burden. And those “less fortunate” have been overdefined to include persons who take a perverse pleasure in annoying others.

     Compassion freaks will immediately rise to condemn this. Their usual argument is that the defects of these unfortunates are not their fault. Even if that were true, that the responsibility for dealing with them should fall on the shoulders of the sane and civil does not follow.

     A society is not an infinitely elastic or tolerant construct. Enough abuse of its unwritten rules will cause it to fragment in ways that no man can predict. Those rules deal with what is legally permitted but is nonetheless unacceptable: the gray zone of human conduct that demands action by the civilized to quell the barbarians, but which cannot, for diverse reasons, make use of the weight of the law. This is inadequately understood and even less adequately articulated.

     Heather’s friend probably understands it.

     Is there a freedom commando out there who’s willing to make this his personal mission?

Jan 19 2024

It Might Not Have Started That Way…

     …but in our time:

     Besides, how else could all those autocrats and tyrants in Third World hellholes get so rich? Did you know that infamous “Palestinian” terrorist Yasser Arafat had accumulated a personal fortune of over $1 billion before he died? Where do you suppose it came from, considering that the man never did one constructive thing in his life?

     Loans made by one government to another do not answer to any of the proper conditions of credit. The money lent belongs to the people of the lending nation, not to the officials who grant the loan; and it becomes a charge upon the people of the borrowing nation, not upon the officials who negotiate the loan and spend the money. There is no collateral, and no means of collection by private action. If the debt is not paid, war or the threat of war is the only recourse. Meantime private production is wrecked; the economy of the lending nation has to bear the capital loss; while the economy of the borrowing nation is loaded with the dead weight of government projects (buildings, armies, etc.) for which the money is spent. It is an infallible formula for disaster. – Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine

     You could learn more about politics and economics from reading The God of the Machine than by earning bachelor’s degrees in both subjects.

     It’s time for it to go…and, God willing, never return.

Jan 18 2024

Music From A Great Old Movie

     My favorite two tracks from the 1981 animated classic Heavy Metal:

     Ah, to be young and stupid again!

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