Dec 23 2023

The Bearer

     [I’d vacillated among subjects for a tirade much of the morning, when I realized that I’ve been drained of the verve required for the pursuit. So instead, have a short story from F. J. Dagg. It first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 in November of 2020.

     James’s imagination seems to admit to no limits. The following brief tale is one of the hardest-hitting stories I’ve ever encountered. It should be read far and wide. — FWP]

     Keys clattered onto the kitchen counter in the dark room. “Home…sweet…,” as the old song goes. He tapped the light switch. Twenty-two years, five months and thirteen days in the cubicle…”sweet home.”
     Twenty-two years, five months and thirteen days, eight hours a day, composing the likes of, “Congratulations on choosing the MegaPro Office Maximizer! To get started, click the ‘File’ menu…”
     Some, Kathy, for one, called it a life misspent. But now, home.
     A frozen dinner, a glass of wine, not the cheapest, far from the best. He reflected, not for the first time, that he missed the fireplace in the home in which he’d grown up back in the Midwest.
     Later, a familiar voice awakened him from a light doze. “You’re needed.”
     The voice was low and sweet, yet full of import.
     “So soon again?” His eyes remained closed.
     “Afraid so.”
     Silence lengthened. At last he drew a breath, let it out.
     “Tell me.”
     “They’re in Michigan…very poor. He hasn’t worked in years. She makes little.”
     He nodded, eyes still closed. “Have they any others?”
     “One. Aged five. A ‘special’ child.”
     He sighed. “All right.”
     He opened his eyes, rose, went to the window and in the waning light, rested his gaze on the sliver of ocean a mile away. Its uninviting gray merged, horizonless, with the November sky. Thanksgiving next week. Christmas, he thought. He lingered, staring as the ocean faded into the dusk. No point in putting it off.
     “Has it happened?”
     “Just this moment,’ the voice replied.
     “All right.”
     He stepped from the window to the couch and lay down. He closed his eyes and began the mental exercise that would take him–his awareness, his being–to Michigan, and to the thing he dreaded yet must face, being, as he was, a bearer.
     When he was new to it, the drill had been colorful, exhilarating, despite the gravity of the situations that awaited. Now, it was routine, efficient, quickly executed, and in a moment he was on a shabby street in a rust belt town at the back of an agitated and growing knot of people in the deep November evening chill.
     “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God…,” a woman’s voice keened.
     “Looked like a Toyota…” said an excited young man.
     “Nah, it was a Chevy,” growled an older one. “They all look the same anymore…”
     “Didja hear them shots?” asked a youth.
     “Yeah…a dozen, anyway…no fuckin’ nine millimeter, neither,” replied a man as he scanned the shattered windows and bullet-pocked siding at the back of the house’s sagging porch. A siren wailed in the distance, growing nearer. “Hadda be AK’s,” he said. “Thought I was back in fuckin’ Fallujah.”
     The girl lay half in the street, her back bent over the old, high square curb, her head at an impossible angle. The left half of her chest was crushed—the left side of her face the same. Most of her left arm lay three or four yards down the block.
     While a young man tried to fashion a tourniquet, a middle-aged woman cradled the girl’s head, rocked her and crooned, “Hang on, baby, you’ll be OK, baby, just hang on, help’s on the way, darlin’…”
     The bearer saw that the girl had been pretty, as her eye began to dilate and dim. No one in the crowd but he saw the light begin to leave her body and he reached to touch, to comfort. But the other kind of bearer were waiting, as they always were, and they left with the light without acknowledging him, as they always did.
     The crowd grew silent but for the woman’s crooning–softer, slower and without conviction, and now nearly drowned by the sirens.
     The first responders arrived in a nightmare of red and blue strobe light, shrieking brakes, and diesel fumes. The sirens instantly died, the crooning ceased and the only sound was the hum and clatter of idling motors.
     Arcane laws of attraction were at work this night and the bearer found himself in a small, threadbare house a half dozen blocks from the scene. Before the yammering TV sat a heavy man and a thin woman with dark pouches beneath her eyes. A five-year old boy on the floor ran a plastic fire truck endlessly in a square. The woman appeared to be in her mid-forties though in fact she was thirty-one, and despite the perpetual fatigue that hung on her, she fidgeted.
     “Chrissakes, you’re nervous as a whore in church,” said the man. “What’s got into you?”
     She shook her head and bit a fingernail. “Something’s wrong.”
     The man looked at her with rough sympathy. “Take it easy, huh? Could’n’a been ten minutes ago she called, headin’ home,” he said. “She’s a good kid,” he added. He laid an awkward hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Now, take a deep breath, baby.”
     “I hate them damn sirens,” she said.
     She turned to him. “You sure those were backfires?”
     “Yep,” he lied.
     Later, the woman started and gasped at the loud knock on the door.
     The bearer reeled, and the woman died as her intuition anticipated the uniformed stranger’s words that blasted into their home in a bitter gale.
     “…parents of a Heather M____?”
     “Yeah,” said the man as the woman began to hyperventilate.
     “…accident…at the scene…transported…
     Whoa, Andre, catch her! Watch her head…”

*****

     A continent away, the bearer’s eyes snapped open. At a great distance from the storm that engulfed the cruelly diminished family, which went unnoticed in the larger world, his work was beginning.
     Oppression, as he rose the next morning, bearing a portion as the funeral director explained to the mother the impossibility of an open-casket viewing.
     Horror, as the mother insisted she would see her girl before they put her in the ground.
     Home ill that day, he googled, “Heather M____, Flint Journal.”
     “Burton Girl Dies as Drug Deal Goes Bad”
     “How the fuck does a drug deal go ‘good’?” he muttered, as close to anger as he could be after the numbing years as an office worker, and the crushing ones as a bearer.
     “…Heather M___, 13, of Burton died at Hurley Medical Center Thursday evening…struck by vehicle…gunfire at what was said to be a ‘drug house’…police ask community’s help…survived by mother, Debra, stepfather Jason, brother Danny…”
     Some days after the funeral the searing pain that had surrounded his heart became a leaden weight and he settled into to the familiar routine. Children, they were, in his years as a bearer, nearly always.
     Though they are many, each bearer carries out his role in isolation, never in life aware of the madness, or suicide, or death by broken heart averted through his bearing a portion of the unbearable.
     He was ill again on Christmas, but, divorced and without family of his own, it was of no consequence. The New Year began and if the weight lessened, he couldn’t tell.
     February was hard. On the 14th, Heather’s birthday, his boss called him to her office.
     “You’re distracted. Is everything all right?” Her face, to him, a winter sky.
     The only instance of her smile he knew of was in the photograph on her desk with her partner–Barbara, as he recalled. He watched the thin lips move.
     “…more errors and I’ll have to escalate. You have vacation time. Maybe you should take some.”
     He took a week.
     With summer came some relief. Heather’s mother no longer wished to die every waking moment—time was doing its work. But there was a day when she went to the beach and a vision of a tree-rimmed lake–it had to be in Michigan–appeared to the bearer with such clarity as to transport him—and again, his heart for her and for her grief found yet a new color, a new mood.
     She’s testing herself, he thought—knowing from long experience how these things are—she is visiting a favorite place of Heather’s, instead of the grave, just to see. Too soon.
     The year advanced. As shadows grew longer, darker, in the world, so, too, in the bearer’s heart, as the mother watched children return to school, and grieved again, with him. He wondered how it would have been to see his own go to school, too, but Kathy’s master’s degree had taken precedence, then her career, and then she was gone.
     November, and the anniversary. The hardest part was over—they say—yet still, there was Christmas just ahead. Oftentimes, the second is harder than the first, without the shock and the disbelief to obscure the horror and the emptiness, to overshadow the subtler, unnamed shades of grief that humiliate the experts, and grow and grow in unexpected directions, with the sudden, startling tears that take one so by surprise. But all of this was part of his work—the bearing, the endless bearing.
     On a gray Wednesday in the week after Thanksgiving, he came home from the office, had a frozen dinner, a half glass of wine, and the third breathless dizzy spell in as many days. He lay down on the couch and closed his eyes. He may have slept.
     When he returned to himself he was not alone, and his visitor seemed somehow familiar.
     “You’ve done well,” said the young woman, in the low, sweet voice he recognized from long acquaintance.
     He knew, then, that she, too, was a bearer—of that other kind. She held out her hand. Her smile, sunlight.
     “Come.”
     He let her lead him.

*****

     They walked in warm sunshine beside a lake like the one he had seen in a vision the summer before, in Michigan. A distance ahead, a dozen children chased and splashed and laughed at the water’s edge, their voices a kind of music.
     As he and the young woman drew near, one girl left the crowd and ran to them and he recognized her, straight and whole now, her pretty face healed and glowing.
     She threw her arms around him and nearly squeezed the breath out of him.
     “Thank you… Oh, thank you… Mama couldn’t have borne the last year, but for you.”

==<O>==

Copyright © 2011-2016 F. J. Dagg

Dec 22 2023

Evil does exist

Ahem.

So far the Biden Administration has lost over 85,000 unaccompanied minors–they take them in at the border, process them, fly them around the country, and they are never seen or heard from again.

If you or I did this, it would be human trafficking. Federal contractors do it every day.

Not all of them are going into sex slavery. Some of them are going into normal slavery, where they work all day for someone else and are kept in unhealthy conditions at night until they’re pulled out again the next morning for another day of labor.

Remember, the FBI knew who was using Jeffery Epstein’s child sex slaves. They had all the logs, the photos, the videos, the evidence. Has any of Epstein’s clients seen the inside of a courtroom? Of course they haven’t.

The FBI is protecting their friends in the government. Mostly in the Democrat Party. You know it, I know it, and by now they know that we know it.

Ann Barnhardt often points out that Diabolical Narcissists enjoy getting away with their crimes and flaunting it in front of your face. I can see no better example than what we’re observing at the border. And you can rest assured that many of those “unaccompanied minors” will end up crying and/or drugged into subservience while they’re raped by Democrats and Democrat allies over and over and over and over and over.

The people in this government who are allowing this, or supporting this, all need to be hung, publicly, until dead, and then their corpses left to rot and feed the crows. The pain and suffering that they have caused, and are now causing, cries out for appropriate punishment, but we here on earth cannot give appropriate punishment. Only God can do that. But I have no problem ensuring the meeting is sped up a bit.

Dec 22 2023

I Can Hear The Anguish In This Man’s Voice

     Malcolm Pollack asks a painful question:

     [I]s there no point at which kinetic war against people who hate you and seek to subjugate you is justified? As stewards of the American nation we inherited from our forebears to preserve and cherish, and now crumbling before our eyes, where does our duty lie? A great many decent, patient, forgiving, and conscientious Americans are beginning to ask themselves this previously unthinkable question. Nobody else is coming to save us.

     It’s easy, looking at history, to follow the stories of the decline and fall of nations and empires, in which the span of decades or centuries may pass in a day’s reading. To “zoom out”, though, when one is embedded in history in real time is another thing altogether, and far more difficult. But we are, at this point, rushing headlong past all of the familiar mile-posts.

     I don’t know the answer. Do you, Gentle Reader?

     [Applause to WRSA for the link to this article.]

Dec 22 2023

They’re At It Again

     Some of the Establishment’s dance steps are fresh. Others are well rehearsed and easy to recognize:

     Jim Messina, a former top aide to former President Obama, claimed that a “third-party candidate can’t win in 2024” and might guarantee former President Trump does.

     “With a rematch between President Joe Biden and Donald Trump almost set in stone, it’s time to put a farce to rest: The notion that a third-party candidate could actually win the presidency in 2024,” Messina wrote in an op-ed for Politico.

     […]

     “While a third-party candidate can’t win, No Labels could still throw the election to Trump, and it wouldn’t take that many votes,” Messina wrote, explaining that the past two elections indicate that Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin may again swing the election for President Biden or Trump, the current favorite to be his Republican opponent.

     “A No Labels candidate in these states could easily hand the election to Trump,” Messina wrote.

     I recall that the Democrats were happy about the “third party” candidacy of H. Ross Perot in 1992. That candidacy deflected votes mainly from the Republican candidate, incumbent president George H. W. Bush. But then, in 2000, they were unhappy about the “third party” candidacy of Ralph Nader, who deflected votes mainly from the Democrat candidate, Al Gore Jr. So it seems that their tolerance for minor-party participation is a variable thing, according to which candidate they expect to suffer from it.

     In point of fact: A third party candidate can win a federal office. At least, it’s happened in the past. Abraham Lincoln was a third-party candidate for president in 1860. A third party candidate for U.S. Senate, John C. Fremont, won a Senate seat for California in 1850. A third party candidate from Alaska, Andre Marrou, served in Congress from 1985 to 1987. There may have been others; I’m not as informed about such things as I once was.

     In recent years, the stranglehold the major parties have over campaign funding, media exposure, and the Committee on Presidential Debates has made third party presidential candidacies largely an exercise in promoting particular ideas. However, contemporary disgust with both the major parties – you’ve heard them called the “Uniparty,” haven’t you? – could magnify the importance of one or more minor parties. At any rate, Messina’s railing against minor-party candidacies is impotent…for the moment.

     However, I wouldn’t put anything past today’s political Establishment, no matter how low or despicable. Many sitting federal legislators are feeling a cold draft, to say nothing of the Usurper-in-Chief. We may yet see legal challenges and “lawfare” used to hamper or disqualify the candidates of the Libertarian, Green, Right to Life, Constitutional, and Populist parties. Nor would such attacks necessarily come from the Democrats alone. Stay tuned.

Dec 22 2023

I Was Going To Take The Day Off…

     …until I saw this piece at Power Line. As I have a huge disdain for “wine snobs,” it immediately elevated Steven Hayward to my Pantheon of Heroes. A brief “tasting:”

     Talking about wine lends itself to the same kind of silly jargon that has justified the fraud called “modern art” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) and ruined literary criticism. Someday I’m going to write a book about the subject. I’ll call it Higher Humbug for the Truly Pretentious: How to Sound Like George Plimpton in Three Easy Lessons.

     The degradation of criticism through “Deconstructionism” and other preposterous fads may yet achieve the unthinkable: the writing of novels so unreadable that even the critics will look for another line of work.

     All you need do is await your host’s solicitation on the evening’s main wine, look thoughtful, and say, “Superb, but—it dies a sudden death on the middle palate.” If you wish to mitigate this cruel blow, you can add, “But it finishes well.”

     [C]onsider this assessment of a Chateau Woltner 1987 Chardonnay: “Has an extreme style that’s hard and austere . . . a wine of disjointed character and little charm.” Now, I’ve had my prose described this way, but never my wine.

     I think I’ve spotted the next bogus trend. Here’s the Wine Spectator’s rating of Ferrari Carano’s 1988 Fume Blanc: “Rich, intense and concentrated with round, smooth fruit that offers grapefruit, citrus, fig and stone flavors that finish with a soft touch.” “Stone flavors?” I don’t think I want to know.

     Read it all. You’ll thank me later.

     Critics are people who lack creative talent, but who seek to “horn in” on the labors of creative people with supercilious commentary that’s ultimately meaningless and valueless. Oftentimes it’s not even acceptable English. Moreover, what critics in every era seek to become is an Establishment immune to criticism. Enjoy the irony; I always do.

     Myself, I think this timeless, priceless essay does more for the typical wine drinker than any “critic’s” sesquipedalian effusions. But ultimately, it’s a matter of taste…isn’t it?

Dec 21 2023

This Is Too Uplifting Not To Post

     It’s been quite a few years since I last dated…thirty-two years, to be exact. So the vicissitudes of the dating-and-mating dance are no longer among my regular concerns. But every now and then I encounter a story that makes me think.

     “Think what?” I hear you ask. Well, it might be something along the lines of “Why hasn’t the human race died out yet?” Or perhaps “Have actual men gone extinct?” (We know actual women are getting to be a rare find. Always, always check for “the lump:”)

     But there’s a third category of tale that cheers me immensely… the sort of encounter that suggests that just possibly, it’s still possible to defeat the advance of the various pathologies that have turned dating into a tarantella in a minefield. The following is one such:

     (Yes, PJW’s commentary in the above is rather snarky. Still, he’s a bright guy. I’d bet he grasped the full significance of the encounter quite as readily as I.)

     Apparently, all the young woman above needed to flush the feminist / gender-war static out of her brain was an encounter with an unabashedly masculine man who plays the dating game by the old rules. She didn’t say so explicitly, but it appears that her date was a gentleman, to boot. It might be just that she was ready for a change of perspective, but still, the thing gives me some hope for the future.

     Warning, soyboys of America: Real men “got game,” as the saying goes. Moreover, it’s not a set of tricks or techniques you can learn; it’s something you must become. Verbum sat sapienti, dudes. Put down the controllers and get to work on yourselves. Remember who told you so.

Dec 21 2023

The Neglected Front (UPDATED)

     Leftists play a “long game.” To them, no setback is permanent. They keep the pressure up until they get what they want. After that, they defend their gains with unbridled viciousness and pseudo-conservative sentiments such as “it’s here to stay.” Thomas Sowell has delineated their practices in several of his books.

     The longest “long game” tactic is the corruption of juvenile education. Herewith, three links:

     The Left has been pursuing control of the schools – all the way down to pre-Kindergarten – ever since “public education” became the norm. Leftist strategists have mastered the art of infiltration, colonization, and conquest by which any hierarchical institution can be subverted. They attacked the schools as soon as government shoved its snout into education…and today, the public schools are their conquered territory.

     The staggering amounts of money that flow through the government schools give the Left a degree of power over public policy that’s difficult to appreciate. If you’d like a measure for it, find out what percent of your state’s annual expenditures goes to the schools. Then add the federal “support.” Then ask yourself what makes such gargantuan funding necessary?

     The Left has been in the vanguard of every campaign to add new “requirements” to public education:

  • Sex education? Check.
  • Art education? Check.
  • School-breakfast and school-lunch programs? Check.
  • Counselors of every kind? Check.
  • Remedial programs? Check.
  • Gifted and talented programs? Check.
  • Bilingual – whoops, excuse me, multilingual education? Check.
  • Anti-drinking and anti-drug programs? Check.
  • Mandatory reporting to child-welfare bureaucracies? Check.
  • After-school day-care services? Check.

     I’m certain the above list is incomplete.

     The high-level strategy is simple:

Keep America’s youth under the tutelage and supervision of government functionaries for as many hours day, per week, and per year as possible.

     Then make sure, by the time-honored methods of the Left, that those teaching and supervising the kids are Leftists. Then, by steadily raising the tax exaction for “public education,” render the great majority of American families unable to afford any of the alternatives.

     Today, public-school “sex education” is being used to indoctrinate impressionable pubescents in the acceptability – nay, the glamor — of homosexuality and transgenderism. This, at a phase of life when the kids’ glands are in the driver’s seat, such that they can hardly keep their minds on anything else.

     Victoria Taft writes:

     One doesn’t have to teach the intricacies of gay sex — and why is it always gay, not straight, porn that activists are trying to get into schools, anyway?— to convey the idea that we treat all persons with kindness. Since government schools began in the United States, we got along just fine without porn in the libraries, unless National Geographic counts. What’s magical about this moment that requires us to supply libraries with gay porn now?

     “What’s magical” is that the Left has disposed of all attempts at concealment. It is celebrating its triumph, confident that no effective opposition to it is possible. And it is correct.

     Keep your kids out of the public schools, no matter what you must sacrifice to do so.

     UPDATE: Have a little fresh evidence.

You don’t really need to find out what’s going on
You don’t really want to know just how far it’s gone
Just leave well enough alone
[Don Henley]

Dec 21 2023

How Much Worse Could It Get?

     In reflecting on the piece below, it struck me that today’s federal government has become so thoroughly corrupt – so anti-American — that I’d be hard pressed to name a government anywhere or anywhen that compares unfavorably to it. And as usual when I’m only half awake, that started a fresh train of half-facetious thought.

     Many years ago, William F. Buckley stated pungently that he’d rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. He, too, was probably being a bit facetious, but it’s still an approach that deserves some thought. What if the elections that currently populate the two Houses of Congress were scrapped in favor of the following biennial procedure:

  1. On “Selection Day,” tokens representing all the zip codes in the United States are put into a Bingo-style randomizing drum.
  2. The drum is spun briskly, and – under the watchful attention of an auditor from Price Waterhouse, of course – a zip code is selected.
  3. The names of all the persons in that zip code who are Constitutionally eligible to occupy seats in the House of Representatives are put into the drum.
  4. The drum is once again spun briskly, and 435 names are selected. These become our Representatives for the two years to come.
  5. The zip code tokens are returned to the drum, it’s spun once again, and a second zip code is selected.
  6. The names of all the persons in that zip code who are Constitutionally eligible to occupy seats in the Senate are put into the drum.
  7. Yet another spin, and 100 names are selected. These become our Senators for the two years to come.

     Do you think it would work any better or worse than our current system of selling Congressional offices to the highest bidder?

Dec 21 2023

Embarrassing For The GOP

     It’s not that long ago that a revolt against then Speaker-Of-The-House Kevin McCarthy, led by Matt Gaetz, barely succeeded in ousting McCarthy from that post. The vote to expel garnered the support of the Democrat caucus, plus a paltry five Republicans’ votes. What I didn’t know at the time was that some highly prominent Democrats wanted McCarthy to remain Speaker. One such is depicted below:

     That so odious a figure as that wanted McCarthy to remain Speaker should have told the GOP something. It, and the vote to expel that removed McCarthy, certainly told us the hoi polloi something: namely, that the Republican Party no longer differs from the Democrat Party in anything but name.

     Do you call yourself a Republican? Do you send the GOP money now and then? The above is what you’ve been supporting. Please stop.

Dec 21 2023

Discomfort On Display

     I don’t know how to embed one of these YouTube “shorts,” but this one is worth your time. It’s a fine example of the kind of squirming that anti-Second Amendment activists will do to avoid a straightforward question. They cannot abide having their intentions displayed plainly. They will not answer a question with a simple yes or no – ever.

     Their endless attempts to talk around what they seek to do, to keep it sounding nebulous and vague of impact, tells you more about their agendas and their characters than anything else they could or would do in public.

Dec 20 2023

Politically Disapproved Treatments

     We’ve all heard the horror stories about persons with conditions no approved therapy could cure or palliate, who were denied the right to try experimental treatments because… well, because the FDA hadn’t approved them. The excellent movie Dallas Buyers Club, starring Matthew McConaughey, depicts one such case. The logic behind giving the FDA the power to deny sufferers with terminal conditions access to experimental treatments frankly escapes me. Yet it’s been that way for a very long time.

     Then there’s the somewhat more arguable realm of persons who suffer from non-terminal maladies. The FDA’s power to ban unapproved treatments affects them, too. The logic there is a bit more plausible:

  1. Smith has a non-terminal condition;
  2. Therefore, Smith isn’t dying of it;
  3. Therefore, there might be an approved treatment for it before Smith dies;
  4. Therefore, risking an unapproved treatment is not in Smith’s best interests, as it might kill him.

     But of course, that skein of reasoning only holds water if we concede the power to decide “Smith’s best interests” to a federal or state bureaucracy. It’s an arrogation of power I find indefensible, but your mileage may vary.

     The above is merely a preface to the following kinda-sorta short story.

***

     Jones was chagrined. He had to tell Smith something the man would not enjoy hearing. Yet it was imperative under the law that he do so. The other course would imperil his license to practice.
     “Mr. Smith,” he began, and faltered.
     Smith was immediately alert. “Bad news, Doctor?”
     Jones nodded.
     “Well, I’d rather know than not know, so give it to me straight. Will this… condition kill me?”
     Jones sat back in his desk chair and groped for words.
     He deserves the truth. He’s been candid with me. I owe him the same.
     “Not…directly,” he said. “Not of itself. But if the statistics are trustworthy, various problems that are known to be associated with it will degrade your quality of life. They might shorten your life as well.”
     Smith grimaced and nodded. “I expected that. It’s why I came to you. But there is a treatment, isn’t there?”
     It was Jones’s turn to grimace in chagrin. “Not an approved one.”
     Smith’s eyes widened. “After all this time and all the millions of people with this… thing?”
     “I know,” Jones said. “It’s monstrous. But the state has banned the only known treatment. Mind you,” he said, “that treatment isn’t absolutely reliable. In fact it fails more often than it succeeds. But it’s the only known approach…”
     “Well,” Smith said, “if it works sometimes, isn’t it worth a try?”
     “I think so,” Jones said. “If I were in your position, I’d want to try it. But the state has outlawed it. I’m forbidden to offer it to you.”
     Despair flooded Smith’s features. He looked away. “So I have to stay like this.”
     Jones said nothing.
     After a long and agonizing interval, Smith rose. Jones rose as well. They clasped hands mutely, Smith turned, and left Jones’s office in an open state of dejection. Jones all but collapsed into his seat.
     They suffer and suffer, and I’m forbidden to aid them. What point is there in what I do, setting myself up as a dispenser of cures, when the only possible cure for one of Mankind’s worst, most life-limiting afflictions is denied me?
     He’d asked himself that question many times before. He still lacked an answer.

***

     No physician I’ve known would be happy about telling a patient what Jones told Smith in the above. Yet it’s a common problem. You could imagine several maladies, some of them lethal, as Smith’s unmentioned “condition.” But this morning I have a specific one in mind. Joy Pullman addresses it at The Federalist:

     Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to 26 state laws at least partly based on studies claiming “conversion therapy” increases LGBT Americans’ suicide risks. Yet every existing study that makes this claim is seriously scientifically unsound, several research reviews recently found.

     Please read it all. Proceed thence to this Baseline Essay, which has earned me more hate mail and more vilifications than all the rest of my output combined. Then ponder this:

Homosexuality and gender dysphoria were removed from medicine’s catalog of maladies because of political pressure. Political pressure also caused the outlawing of conversion therapy. Whose interests are served by those bans?

     Draw your own conclusions.

Dec 19 2023

The fact that this even has to be said astounds me

Cold weather and batteries DO NOT MIX.

EAU CLAIRE, Wis.—Here in Wisconsin, where fewer than one-tenth of 1% of vehicles are fully electric, it’s rare to see an EV outside the city.

That’s why the latest international climate conference, Conference of the Parties (COP28), which advocated widespread adoption of electric vehicles, should have Wisconsinites concerned.

When the temperature drops below 40 degrees, which occurs over 200 days per year in Eau Claire, electric vehicles experience a reduction in range and efficiency, with losses of up to 40% when the heating system is in use.

My visit to my local automotive shop to have the tires rotated on the family Ram truck was unaffected by the 13-degree Fahrenheit weather.

I mean, let’s leave electric vehicles aside for just a moment. When I was stationed in Wisconsin, my gas powered truck had several moments where I thought it wasn’t going to start because when I turned the key, the dashboard lights took their sweet time coming to life. Outside temps were -46 degrees, and the temps inside the garage were about -20. These temps are not abnormal for the upper Midwest. Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming…..

How in the hell is a person supposed to drive to work when work is forty miles away, and your car will only get you thirty miles before the battery dies?

“Oh but Dave, you can plug in your car and there’s this battery warmer so you have all that range!” Really? And when that car is parked outside in an open parking lot while you’re working? Sure, you might GET to work but can you get HOME afterwards?

That doesn’t even bring into account the fact that we don’t have enough electricity production to cover all the EVs the Left wants to push, nor the grid to deliver the power

The people pushing EVs on America either don’t know what kind of stupid, moronic act they’re pushing, or they DO know and they’re just evil.

After the past few years, I’m going with the latter.

Dec 19 2023

Higher Authorities

     Among the founding principles of our republic, the following statement stands highest:

     This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

     The language reveals it to be a part of the Constitution of the United States: Article VI, Section 2. It’s the original “supremacy clause,” under which Chief Justice John Marshall proclaimed the doctrine of judicial review. It makes the Constitution our highest legal authority. Its dictates are not to be contradicted, dismissed, or qualified. Legislation that attempts to do any of that, including anything in any state constitution or charter, is inherently unConstitutional and is automatically nullified.

     Be not afraid! I’m not here to rant about the many times that clause has been ignored by executives, legislators, judges, bureaucrats, and so on. I have something else in mind.

     Have you ever heard someone who’d been accused of something vile claim that he answers to “a higher authority?” It happens now and then. It made the news recently when the notorious Anthony Fauci said he’d discarded his Catholic faith for “a higher authority.” Fauci’s vanity is such that the “higher authority” he had in mind could only have been himself. But others who echo that claim aren’t quite so obvious.

     Catholics in public life are often accused that their highest loyalty lies with the Pope. That was one of the shafts aimed at John F. Kennedy, our first Catholic president. “Can you trust that he’ll always put America first?” his detractors asked. Yet there was nothing to fear then, and there’s nothing to fear today, for the supreme authority to which Catholics’ loyalty really goes is Christ – and all He asked of anyone is easily and succinctly stated:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

     That doesn’t seem at odds with the Constitution or any laws that conform to its requirements. Neither do its immediate implications as spelled out in the Ten Commandments.

***

     Much of the chaos that’s erupted in our nation of late rests on a premise similar to the “higher authority” claims of such as Fauci. For example, no one could possibly be unaware that stealing is against the law. Yet there are a lot of people doing it. If asked to justify their behavior – without recourse to force – most would be unable. The articulate few would say something about “all wealth is stolen,” or “restitution for years of oppression.” In effect, those are claims that the looter is conforming to a law that ranks above the secular laws of these United States: a “higher authority.”

     This is in the nature of a justification: “an argument that something is right, or reasonable.” Any proclamation that some known law does not apply to one’s actions must appeal, even if not explicitly, to a higher law.

     The day before yesterday, the celebrated Maura Dowling wrote:

     A NY Times article, Inside the Troll Army Waging Trump’s Online Campaign, claims an army of sinister, cruel trolls working for Donald Trump are spreading misinformation online.

     “Much of the group, which refers to itself as Trump’s Online War Machine, operates anonymously, adopting the cartoonish aesthetic and unrelenting cruelty of internet trolls,” Ken Bensinger wrote for the Times.

     He continued. “Cheered on by Mr. Trump, the group traffics freely in misinformation, artificial intelligence, and digital forgeries known as deepfakes. Its memes are riddled with racist stereotypes and demeaning tropes about L.G.B.T.Q. people and broad scatological humor.”

     […]

     Bensinger suggested meme makers be treated as Super PACS and regulated as such with no coordination with Donald Trump.

     What “higher authority” would you suppose Bensinger would cite as high enough to override the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of expression? As far as I know, God’s silent on the subject. But surely Bensinger has something in mind. “The greater good” or “defense of our democracy,” perhaps?

     Are you aware, as Harvey Silverglate has propounded, that you’re a felon in the eyes of the State? What’s that? You’re unaware of having committed any felonies? Well, I don’t know you personally, so it’s just possible that you’re legally untouchable. But Silverglate has a good argument for his position. Were you to be haled before a federal court and asked to justify some “felony,” how would you respond?

     Imagine an alien demanding such a justification from a human:

     “You have or have not violated legislative compulsion programs,” stated the Sirian; and that was the most prolonged session of all. Try as he would, Forrester could not seem to get across the idea of a personal ethic—of laws that one did not violate, because they were morally right, and of laws that everyone violated if they possibly could, because they were morally irrelevant.

     Does such a “personal ethic” qualify as a higher authority? If so, why – and in what specific cases would such an ethic not apply?

     Just a few early-morning thoughts.

Dec 19 2023

The CDC stirs up the panic porn once again

“Tripledemic”? Really?

HOW ABOUT NO

I never got the Covid jab, although there was a period of time where I was going to lose my retirement for that. I’m done getting the flu shot. It doesn’t work, and what evidence is out there regarding the flu shot seems to point to the shot actually making things worse. At this point, if the CDC came out and suggested sunshine and orange juice to boost your immunity I’d double-check the numbers, because the CDC is nothing but money-grubbing Big Pharma simping evildoers.

And I’m being nice when I say that.

You want to stay healthy this winter? Fresh air. Good food, none of that processed, chemically preserved sugar-filled junk. Lots of vitamin D, and vitamin K because K helps the absorption of vitamin D. Quit smoking if you’re a smoker. Drink less. And ignore the panic porn that comes from the US Government. That will do wonders for your mental health.

Just don’t trust the CDC. They’ve proven that they’re not actually trying to help you.

Dec 18 2023

A Nation Or An Idea?

     I don’t always get to every article every Gentle Reader cites while it’s still fresh in people’s minds. Sometimes I must admit to being embarrassed at having missed something tremendously significant. That’s the case today.

     The impetus is this Dennis Prager article from a few weeks back. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so at once. Please try to keep a tight rein on your emotions; I promise, they will be tested.

     The part that fired my engines is this:

     America has never been just a country. Nor is America an ethnic group or race. America is an idea: the greatest nation-making idea in world history. America was set up to be a “bright shining light,” and has always seen itself — correctly, I believe — as exceptional. The America Firsters who believe in America Only do not see America as a moral force for good in the world. It should not “even comment” on good and evil outside of its borders.

     As for the argument — offered by every America Only advocate — that America must first deal with its own problems before helping any other people on Earth, this simply means that America will never help any other people on Earth. There never was and never will be a time when America is free of domestic problems.

     The falsehoods in those two paragraphs are stunning. Prager must have known better. Yet he is generally respected as a rational conservative voice. How could a rational man not see the connections and implications in the statements above?

  • The U.S.A. is not an idea. It is a geographically delimited country with a specific jurisdiction, Constitution, and laws. If it were otherwise, anyone worldwide who subscribes to the “idea” would have a valid claim on American citizenship.
  • The U.S.A. was not “set up to be a ‘bright shining light.’” It was forged from a violent revolution among colonists – overwhelmingly of English origin or descent – who wanted to be left alone by a specific tyrant.
  • There is no connection between an America-Only stance and whether or not one sees America as “a moral force for good.” America-Only merely insists that American problems must be the first priority of American governments, especially the American federal government. Private citizens are always free to do international charity.

     Prager’s stance is a rationale for the sort of federal open-handedness toward other nations that’s drawn us into several foreign wars, is dragging us into two others, and is close to bankrupting us. It is indefensible:

  • Legally: a nation-state’s obligations are delimited by its jurisdiction and its citizenry.
  • Morally: a nation-state that taxes its people for the benefit of other nations is committing grand theft.
  • Practically: once a nation-state accepts responsibility for other nation-states or their citizens, there is no limiting principle that applies to bound its exertions (See our current military and financial mess).

     Let him who thinks himself equal to the challenge attempt to refute me. For additional thoughts, please see this Baseline Essay.

Dec 18 2023

Facepalm

     Sometimes, the gags write themselves.

     You have to be fairly old to remember this incident. It occurred during the first period of Sandinsta political dominance in Nicaragua. One of the few newspapers remaining in operation tried to publish a piece detailing Sandinista censorship of the media — but the regime prevented them from doing so. When reporters from foreign media asked what had happened, Interior Minister Tomas Borge replied, “That was untrue and we could not let them print it.” True story.

     Well, the so-called First World has caught up to the Sandinistas:

     Yet the bien-pensants ask one another why we cling to our guns.

Dec 17 2023

Victims Are Multiplying

WARNING:

     What follows contains explicit, vulgar language. I’ve decided that it’s time to “take the gloves off.” Good people being restrained and proper is part of why America has descended to its current state. Quite a few people need a very painful comeuppance. Until they get it, no improvement in our current degeneracy is possible. Indeed, it will only deepen. Continue on at your own peril.

***

     They’re everywhere! Someone call an exterminator!

     It had to happen, of course. People will flock toward privileges, especially if they needn’t earn them. Victim status today comes with a raft of privileges. Sometimes they include immunity from the law. Other times there’s a cash payment. In any case, things being as they are just now, it’s better to be a recognized member of Victims Unanimous than not.

     Anyone who’s been watching the international news is already aware that HAMAS, the most vicious terrorist group on Earth, now claims to be a victim. Israel had no right to retaliate in force for a measly little 1400-civilian slaughter, you see. It’s disproportionate. And for the United States to support Israel…why, the mind reels at the perfidy of it. Don’t those stupid Americans know they’re supposed to be on the side of the underdog?

     Not all of HAMAS’s supporters are in the Middle East. They’ve got a fair number here in the U.S. They’ve been blocking major highways and airports in the name of their “protest.” In California one highway-blocking group angered drivers so greatly that cars started to run through them at considerable speed. Shortly thereafter, the cops arrived and cleared the “protest.” That made the HAMAS supporters claim to be victims themselves.

     But the most outrageous recent claimant is this shameless sodomite:

     As self-exculpating whines go, this one is top shelf. This…person was filmed in flagrante delicto, as we used to say, getting his jollies on a conference table in the Hart Senate Office Building, where his employer, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D, MD), has his offices. In fact, he and his…partner made the recording and posted it on a social media site for homosexuals.

     You thought the public parades of homosexuals, men in drag, and men leading other men on leashes were bad. You were right. You just didn’t know how much worse was in store. But if you had known, would you have said anything? Would you have rallied to put an end to it?

     Regard ye well, Gentle Reader: These are the fruits of unthinking “tolerance.” Murderers complaining about righteous retaliation. Protestors complaining about being shoved aside by angry commuters. Men fucking other men in the ass on conference tables in public buildings and filming it for social media. If you thought you’d already seen the worst depravity of which Mankind is capable…oh, never mind. Could we possibly have further to fall?

     Strike that last. I don’t think I want to know.

***

     For quite some time, I’ve held that one should be free to espouse whatever ideas or opinions one pleases, whether publicly or privately. I’ve believed that what consenting adults do in private is no one else’s legitimate concern. I want to continue to believe those things. The folks claiming to be “victims” and demanding our “tolerance” are making it very difficult.

     Some hold that there’s a plan in progress to destroy all our public institutions and public order, to destabilize American society completely. They say the events I mentioned above are components of that plan. They could well be right. What I can’t fathom is how passive we’ve become in the face of the onslaught.

     Is it because we fear a backlash against ourselves personally? Given the extent of “cancel culture” to date, I suppose that can be justified. A number of people have already suffered such backlash. They’ve lost jobs, friends, spouses, families, and reputations, often for dissenting from the Left’s preachments and nothing else. No one would want any of that.

     Nevertheless, it must end. The shameless displays of perversion and the public support of murderous savages must be ended, for they will not cease of their own will. Moreover, these things must end very soon, before public outrage rises to such a height that a violent culling, complete with mass bloodshed, arises in response.

     But there’s no one in public life with the clarity, the courage, and the strength to end it. The political class has been intellectually and morally disarmed through the clever deployment of victimism. Not one of our so-called leaders is willing to risk anything to take the lead in this.

     Which means the job is ours: private citizens.

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. Forget all that. Have a nice day. It’s Gaudete Sunday, after all, so rejoice. Try not to get as exercised as I was in writing all the above. It’s not good for you. Trust me on that.

Dec 16 2023

If You Have Ten Minutes

     …this is worth spending it on:

     The struggle continues.

Dec 15 2023

Christian Nationalism (UPDATED)

     We’re being told that we should be afraid of this:

     And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set down, his disciples came unto him. And opening his mouth, he taught them, saying:
     Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
     Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.
     Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
     Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
     Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
     Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
     Blesses are the peacemakers: for they shall be called children of God.
     Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
     Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake: Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.

     [Matthew 5:1-12]

     And this:

     And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?
     Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
     He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

     [Matthew 19:16-19]

     And this:

     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]

     But we’re not supposed to be afraid of this:

     “Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to Paradise, which can be opened only for Holy Warriors! These are hundreds of other psalms and Hadiths urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.” — Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

     “The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets. Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.” — Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister of Turkey

     Those who believe fight in the way of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight in the way of the Shaitan. Fight therefore against the friends of the Shaitan; surely the strategy of the Shaitan is weak. [Koran, Sura 4:76]

     “I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.” [Koran, Sura 8:12]

     “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem…” [Koran, Sura 9:5]

     “Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, of the people of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” [Koran, Sura 9:29]

     “O Prophet! Struggle against the unbelievers and hypocrites and be harsh with them.” [Koran, Sura 9:73]

     Puzzling, eh?

***

     It’s becoming rare that my boiler gets lit over anything, these days. I’ve said too much…written too much. But among my remaining hot buttons, this one may be the hottest: people who promote contempt toward Christianity and malice toward Christians. From the way they whine and rave, you’d think we had our hands in their pockets, if not down their pants.

     Celebrities (i.e., people who are famous for being famous) who promote antipathy toward Christianity are among the worst of the breed. They know the damage they can cause. They’re gleeful about it. Often it’s one of the sources of their sense of importance.

     The latest to poke his head above the high-slime line is superannuated actor-director Rob Reiner:

     On December 7, the outspoken Democrat announced that “God and Country,” a documentary about the left’s boogeyman du jour, will be hitting theaters in February just in time for election season. “Christian Nationalism is not only a danger to our Country,” Reiner assured his 2.5 million X followers, “it’s a danger to Christianity itself.” This raises the question of what exactly Reiner thinks Christian Nationalism is.
     The two-minute trailer that accompanied his announcement failed to provide a definition, but an interview he gave to the Hollywood trade publication Deadline last year provides clues. In it, Reiner says that Christian Nationalism is reflected in “stacking the Supreme Court.” By that he apparently did not mean Congressional Democrats’ 2021 push to expand the Court from nine to 13 justices, but Republicans doing what they had every right to do when they held control of both the White House and Senate – fill SCOTUS vacancies. Did Reiner think Republicans were obligated to appoint and confirm progressive atheists like himself instead of the three conservative Christians they chose?
     Reiner also cited the overturning of Roe v Wade as evidence that Christian Nationalism poses a grave danger to our body politic. In that case, the term appears to mean religious people making use of the same Constitutional remedies – freely speaking, freely associating, and electing candidates who promise to enact their preferred policies – that secularists do. How dare they!

     Once again, we see the Left’s protectiveness over their sole sacrament: abortion. Apparently, if you feel abortion is wrong, as nearly all Christians do, and should be a criminal offense, as many of us do, you’re a threat to the body politic. Do you think Reiner has any knowledge of Islam’s position on the matter? Or its positions on homosexuality, adultery, and sex outside of marriage?

     It’s rarely surprising to discover that a celebrity is an idiot or an ignoramus. They’re not celebrated for their intellect or erudition. The highly intelligent are seldom found among them. Just as rare are practicing Christians who are open about it. Practicing Christians who have substantial careers in the entertainment industry are among the rarest of all species. Some have withheld any mention of their faith until they retired.

     But we’re supposed to fear “Christian nationalism.”

***

     This “Christian nationalism” chimera has very blurry edges. What, specifically, are we supposed to fear? A Christian theocracy? A regime where priests and ministers are legally empowered to arrest people for adultery? For blasphemy? For not praying enough?

     It’s absurd from the start. It gets even more absurd when one considers the number of Christian denominations and the substantial differences among them. But it makes a convenient boogeyman with which to frighten the impressionable.

     It wouldn’t frost my buns quite so badly if it weren’t for anti-Christian militancy. Note how that swells each year at this season: the time when Christians prepare themselves to celebrate the birth of the Son of God in human flesh. The militants simply must do what they can to defame our faith and despoil our jubilation. It must be vital to the maintenance of their self-concept as “brights.”

     I’m sick of it and I will have no more of it. Whenever and wherever I encounter it, I plan to do my utmost to mock, deride, and shame it. It’s not hard; simply ask a militant a couple of sharp questions:

  • Are you against all religion, or only Christianity?
  • What do you mean by “Christian nationalism?” Be specific.
  • Show me the Gospel passage you think mandates a Christian nation.
  • Has someone tried to compel you to practice a religion you don’t believe in?

     Here’s the Ace of trumps:

What are your moral premises?
How do they differ from those held by Christians?

     Be careful about using that one; it’s the nuclear weapon of the bunch.

     Perhaps God will forgive them – in the main, “they know not what they do” – but He might not forgive me for failing to oppose them while I still have breath to do so.

     Merry Christmas, by the way. Now, back to our previously scheduled programming.

     UPDATE: As usual, an atheist stopped by to say something both factually incorrect and irrelevant:

     > What are *your* moral premises?
     > How do they differ from those held by Christians?

     I don’t have “faith”, which means belief contrary to evidence. I won’t believe in extraterrestrial aliens with technological capabilities for telepathy and teleportation (aka “God”), without detailed evidence of their existence. I don’t know what created this thing which I perceive as the universe. Since I know I don’t know, I don’t believe specific details such as that the creation mechanism is sentient, good, loves us, appears to us in human form minus reproductive organs, or behaves like an alcoholic father.

     Note that he:

  • Evaded the question;
  • Mis-defined faith;
  • Insulted those of us who believe in God.

     Faith is not “belief contrary to evidence.” It’s belief despite the unavailability of conclusive evidence. There is evidence both for the existence of God and for the life, ministry, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians take to be the Son of God. It’s just not so compelling that it eliminates all possibility of doubt. But you can always count on a supercilious atheist to get that sort of thing wrong. The evasion and the insults, of course, are de rigueur.

Dec 15 2023

I’m going to put this here

And I’ll expound on it later. What I say might shock some folks. But for now, here is this.

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