Nov 19 2023

The Three-Percenters

     Among the interesting aspects of a constantly-changing lexicon is the process by which a word becomes attached to a particular function or occupation, the two never thereafter to be parted. A pattern of common usage, if it persists long enough, can separate the word from its original meaning. That’s the way languages work: a word acquires its meaning from the way it’s used by speakers and writers.

     There’s a common term that’s used to refer to an intermediary between two parties who seek to reach a contract with one another: agent. (Time was, we called that middleman a negotiator, but that word has declined in use. Apparently five syllables is too many for the typical pro athlete.) The agent represents one side of the exchange. He seeks to get the best deal he can for his client, in part because whatever the client gets, the agent will get a percentage: typically ten or fifteen percent.

     For many years, the prevalent agent / client agreement was for ten percent: if the client will nominally be paid $100, in fact he’ll receive $90, the remaining $10 going to the agent. As a result, another term for an agent entered common use: a ten-percenter. That term is still used to refer to an agent today, even though today the more common agreement is fifteen percent for the agent. (Cf. Shoshanna Litvak’s representation of actress Jana Tyrell in my novel Love in the Time of Cinema.)

     The percentage that interests me just now – not for what some agent is paid, however – is three percent. That’s the consensus estimate of what fraction of America’s population is homosexual, lesbian, et cetera: the somewhat fractured quasi-demographic often denoted by the letters LGBTQ.

     Consider, ever so fleetingly, how members of that quasi-demographic have become over-represented in many areas of life and society. Movies and television are practically overrun by them. While I no longer watch broadcast or cablecast TV and seldom go to a movie, I have friends who keep me abreast of such things. Apparently it’s now de rigueur to have homosexuals or lesbians featured prominently in any show in current production. Moreover, cases in which they’re cast as villains are vanishingly rare.

     Let’s pass in silence over the uses to which content providers put those characters. What I want to know is who’s negotiating for them. He’s fantastically effective…often despite the consequences for the “bottom line.” Consider this report:

     Target SLAMMED Over ‘Gay Nutcracker’ Christmas Decorations

     Target is under fire once again – this time for selling LGBTQ+ styled Christmas decorations. And conservatives are NOT having it.

     One of the new items on the chain’s inventory is a 2023 nutcracker decoration which features the nutcracker in a jacket with a pride flag running down the middle, a pride flag hat, and a pride flag in his hand. I say “his” hand loosely, as the statue also has pink hair, eyeshadow, and feminine eyelashes. Perhaps he’s a drag queen as well.

     Another new item this year is a Christmas snow globe with a rainbow heart in the middle and the phrase “love is love” in the center.

     Target also recently collaborated with an artist named Kurt S. Adler, whose creations include more gay nutcrackers, a pride drinking glass ornament, a 10-inch fabergé Pride Santa, and a pride picture frame ornament.

     Other Christmas/Pride collaborations include a rainbow “Love is Love” ornament, the description for which reads: “Spread love and acceptance this holiday season with this charming pride ‘Love is Love’ holiday ornament,” adding, “Whether you’re an ally, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, or simply someone who believes in love and equality for all, this ornament is the perfect way to showcase your support during the festive season.”

     Well, gag me with a spoon! I had no idea the “festive season” is considered a time to wave your sociopolitical affiliation in others’ faces. I had this antediluvian notion that the season is about the Nativity of Jesus of Nazareth. You know, the Christ Child. The kid who was born in a stable and got his first nap in a manger.

     But soft! The point here is that Target has already suffered bottom-line losses from kowtowing to the three-percenters. Remember the foofaurauw about Target’s marketing of transgender-themed merchandise? It wasn’t that long ago. At any rate, I doubt Target’s Board of Directors has forgotten it.

     Boards of Directors have to be sensitive to what management decisions do to the corporate bottom line. Stockholders expect it of them, and turf them out should they scamp their duties. Yet here we are again: Target is showcasing LGBTQ merchandise at the risk of offending the 97% of the nation that’s heterosexual and largely sane: i.e., the folks that penalized Target for its previous decision. Considering that, whatever ten-percenter is negotiating for the three-percenters is definitely worth his fifteen percent.

     Middlemen of the world, you have a new role model. Study his moves! Learn his secrets! Absorbing what he knows could enrich you as well. Or get you tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. But what’s life without a little risk?

Nov 19 2023

What’s Next – The School Choosing Your Mate?

In Miami, the teacher shortage is so acute (and chronic) that one system built a school with the top floor reserved for teacher housing.

Wow!

So, in a relatively insular environment, you will be housed with co-workers for your neighbors, in ONE-bedroom apartments. Nothing confining about that.

Say, doesn’t that remind you of the “Convenient” housing Apple does for THEIR Captive Workers in China?

Talk about the Ultimate Company Housing!

Note that this is NOT housing for families, nor for co-workers that might want to room together.

No, this is ONE prisoner to a cell housing.

If co-workers date, then break up, this could be a Recipe for Madness. Work with your ex, Live in the same small environment with your ex, and – probably – shop/work out/socialize in that same constrained environment.

Foreign teachers might not object; many of them have similar experiences in their home countries. But, I cannot see American workers putting up with this.

Nov 19 2023

This Needs To Be Viewed Widely

     Not because I’m a Tucker Carlson fan or a Trump supporter…but because it’s the Gospel truth:

     Trump 2024. Make America Great Again!

Nov 18 2023

Techniques In Dissimulation

     It pays to stay abreast of developments in deceit. Those who fail to do so might not recognize occasions when someone is striving to mislead them. That can lead to unpleasantness.

     One that is seldom appreciated for its ironic beauty recently poked its head above the high-slime line:

     Late Wednesday, the Capitol Police confronted violent protesters outside the DNC’s HQ in Washington, D.C. The situation was particularly tense because top members of the Democratic Party, some of whom receive a 24-hour security detail from the Capitol Police, were inside the building at the time. Multiple police officers were injured in the violence, which the Capitol Police confirmed was violent and more resembled a riot.

     […]

     “That is quite an image. We haven’t seen an image like that since January 6,” [CNN anchor Dana] Bash said of images from the violence plastered on the screen.

     Let’s pause here for a moment. A couple of years ago, Mainstream Media news figures compared the events in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 to recognized horrors such as those in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. They employed the latter atrocity as a standard: something by which to measure other things. That’s what standards are.

     Above, nearly three years since the January 6 disturbance at the Capitol Building, Dana Bash uses that event as a standard by comparing the riot outside DNC headquarters to it. This implies that the January 6 disorder, which was far milder than the press strove to portray it, has become a measuring stick for outbreaks of violent disorder.

     However, Bash appears to have realized immediately that she’d “overplayed her hand:” that is, that the events of January 6, 2021 were not usable as a standard for atrocities…or at least not yet:

     Reacting to the incident on CNN, network anchor Dana Bash compared scenes from the violence to Jan. 6 — before immediately trying to retract the comparison.

     “Totally different topic, totally different kind of people. I mean, I don’t want to at all compare the sort of substance of it,” Bash backtracked, “but the idea that there was violence and that there were Capitol Police officers actually hurt there.”

     Just a moleskin-gloved minute there, Colonel: Were any Capitol Police injured on January 6, 2021? There were no reports thereof, even though those selfsame police killed at least two of the protestors. But perhaps I should stick to the main point.

     The “promotion” of the scandalously slandered January 6 protest into a standard for the measurement of “other atrocities” might succeed among hard-left-wingers and the most credulous. But owing to the slow leakage of real-time videos from the Capitol protest, the percentage of Americans who are aware of the realities has grown steadily. Perhaps Bash realized that, though not quite in time to avert the comparison.

     What’s the moral here? Just to watch out for the use of a past event as a standard by which to measure something about more recent events. The more distant in time the standard becomes, it becomes more easily distorted in recollection…and the more easily are those ignorant about it to be deceived about what really happened then.

     These are dark times, Gentle Readers. Be on your guard, always.

Nov 18 2023

More On “The Narrative”

     I just encountered the following image:

     The salient part here is that “the authorities” – in this case, school administrators – are deterred from doing what should be done by the fear of being called racists. This is a common problem that affects other authorities as well, including police forces. Consider, for example, that a gang of Muslims who’d immigrated to England were allowed to “groom” – i.e., sexually abuse – a large number of white girls for sixteen years, because the police feared to be called racists:

     That’s where The Narrative gets its power from: fear. Not necessarily fear of being damaged objectively; more often than not, it’s fear of being slandered.

     Now, Weird Dave, who provided the first of those images, doesn’t approve of the “Time to tribe up” approach:

     So is he right? I don’t think so. The solution has always been to live up to the American ideal of all men created equal. But to do that, we have to fight against the reality that some groups are not held to the same standards as everyone else. Illegal and anti-social behavior can not be allowed because the perpetrator belongs to a certain group or follows a certain belief. Can it be done? That’s the question. But Balkinization is not the answer.

     That would be nice…if it worked. But we tried it. The post-World-War-II period emphasized the American ideal of colorblindness and interracial harmony…among whites. This was the consequence:

     And in those places and cases where whites have followed the identitarian path, it’s worked. Assaults on whites by blacks and Muslims have declined sharply. Unfortunately, the masters of The Narrative have managed to keep the general public from learning about most of those instances.

     So we confront two prescriptions. The first, the “colorblind” path, has failed us. Nonwhites – blacks in particular – exploited it to gain legal privileges for themselves at whites’ expense. The second, the “racial identity” path, has worked in those white-majority regions where it’s been followed. Whites have “tribed up,” which deterred blacks and Muslims from violating the regional norms.

     Being a practical sort, I’d say that we should go with what works. The other path has a fine, idealistic feel to it. I wish it worked. But it didn’t – and we have no reason to believe it would work if we were to try it again. The power of The Narrative can only be countered by a greater counterpower: fear among minorities of what an energized and self-aware white majority would do were they to “act up.”

     Deterrence works. That’s why we have a military and a whole lot of big bombs. That’s why millions of Americans have armed themselves. There’s no point in insisting on following another way that has failed when we tried it.

“When what you’re doing doesn’t work,
Do something else!”

—Michael Emerling—

Nov 17 2023

Just in case you need a reminder

You cannot trust the government.

There is currently a cult of pedophiles that has dedicated itself to worshiping Satan and is blackmailing young girls into harming themselves. Alarming, right? I’m sure that you, like me, believe that something needs to be done to stop these miscreants from carrying out such twisted, evil deeds against impressionable youth. Unfortunately, the FBI is not really all that worried about that aspect of the situation. No, what’s concerning them is the fact that one member of the gang once uttered the “n-word,” which we all know is the unpardonable sin to the radical left in this country. 

And again, YOU CANNOT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT.

“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson continued. “I commend Chairman Loudermilk and his team for their diligent work to ensure the thousands of hours of videos are promptly processed to be uploaded to the committee’s public website. Processing will involve blurring the faces of private citizens on the yet unreleased tapes to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind and segregating an estimated 5% of the videos that may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture.”

The fact that Kevin McCarthy didn’t release this footage to the USA on day fucking ONE of his tenure as Speaker is reason enough for him to be removed.

YOU CANNOT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT!

According to VAERS’ standard operating procedure for COVID-19, reports must be processed quickly, within days of receipt.

But The BMJ has learned that in the face of an unprecedented 1.7 million reports since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, VAERS staffing was likely not commensurate with the demands of reviewing serious reports submitted, including reports of death.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents seen by The BMJ suggest that Pfizer has more than 1,000 more full-time employees than the CDC, despite the latter’s responsibility for handling adverse event reports for all manufacturers.

What’s more, other countries have acknowledged deaths “likely” or “probably” related to mRNA vaccination, whereas the CDC, which says it has reviewed nearly 20,000 reports (far more than other countries) hasn’t acknowledged a single death linked to mRNA vaccine.

Short rant today. I’ve been working with chainsaws and I’m a bit tired.

Nov 17 2023

Pride Crap

     [I’m in a bit of a state just now, for reasons that don’t bear on anything my Gentle Readers would (or should) care about, so have a reprint from January 2017, over at Liberty’s Torch V1.0. After rereading it, I must report that my attitude toward “pride crap” has only hardened and grown more hostile. — FWP]

***

     I’ve just thought of another “Please, 2017” item that really should have been in yesterday’s list: the repudiation of insane “pride” in things or conditions that are no way achievements.

     I’m not perfectly sure where this trend was ignited. It might have been the “Black Pride” nonsense of the Sixties or the “Gay Pride” garbage contemporaneous with it. If its roots go still deeper into time, I’m unable to locate them. Whatever the case, Pride Crap has been about as divisive as any insanity this nation has suffered in its 230 years.

     The laughter should be especially loud and contemptuous when the “pride” at issue is about something the “proud” claim they would never have chosen if they’d been given a say. That, of course, is the defining characteristic of Gay Pride. Of course, as homosexual conduct correlates with elevated risks of psychosis, drug abuse, physical disease, suicide, and shortened lifespan, its irrationality goes well beyond mere Pride Crap. There are other “prides” that come close, but in no case is the pressure of the contradiction quite as great.

     Glory be to God! What are these people proud of?

     Note that Pride Crap is a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Left-Liberal Lunacy, Inc. We in the Right aren’t allowed “pride.” We’re the cause of everything unjust, hurtful, and ugly, remember? So no Men’s Pride, or White Pride, or Straight Pride shall be countenanced. Whenever such a thing dares to raise its head above the trench lip, it evokes a withering barrage of condemnation from the salaried bien pensants of the Main Stream Media…and from quite a few on the Establishment Right, as well.

     Actually, it’s worse. In keeping with the horrors for which straight white males are supposed to feel guilty, the Left insists that we must atone. We must make restitution for our many sins against them. The prescribed penance is nearly always a transfer of wealth from us to them. Shut up and write that check, straight white boy. And don’t demand to know when you’ve paid in full.

     And these…persons wonder how their anointed one, destined by the gods to become America’s First Woman President, could have lost an election to a real estate mogul from Queens.

     These past couple of years, Pride Crap has evoked several counter-trends that have shown some promise. Among these are the “red pill” movement among men fed up with pseudo-feminist BS, the “white identity” groundswell that’s risen in reaction to the epidemic of bad behavior from blacks, and the resurgence of disdain for homosexual activists who have nothing to offer but bad art and vulgar street demonstrations. Some of it has been excessive, of course – that’s always the case when the pendulum smashes into one of its stops – but in the main, it’s helped to restore some of our national perspective.

     The most striking contrast between Pride Crappers and those aligned with one or more of the counter-trends has been the juvenility of the former versus the maturity of the latter. The tantrum-wielding two-year-old is the perfect emotional and tactical model of a Pride Crapper: the screaming, crying purveyor of nothing but demands, tears, and feces. Pride Crappers insist that everyone conform to (and help to enforce) their notions of what’s offensive; their opponents merely laugh at them and maintain the right to their own practices, locutions, and opinions. Pride Crappers are full of whining demands; their opponents merely want to be left alone. In the name of “diversity and inclusion,” Pride Crappers agitate for changes in law and social custom that would invert six millennia of human norms; their opponents tell them to get stuffed, whether in the marketplace, in the media, or at the ballot box.

     It should require no great degree of insight to understand why the bastions of the industries that produce nothing of enduring value should be filling up with Pride Crappers while their opponents move to more peaceable climes.

     This map:

     …says more about the counter-trends to Pride Crap and its allegiants than any thousand words I could produce. As I noted in this essay, it’s important that we not allow it to mislead us, as maps often do. However, it’s as good an illustration of the geographic and demographic effects of Pride Crap and the reactions to it as is possible. Where Pride Crappers dominate, there is much social pathology, all the way from public crudity and open vice to outright violence. Where normal Americans dominate, such pathologies and the deviants that promote them get much shorter shrift. Social problems tend to be more rationally viewed and more effectively addressed.

     You’d think that even a Pride Crapper would eventually draw the moral. However, as my hero Jame Retief has said, “Most people are willing to give up their preconceptions, once they’ve had them tattooed on their heads with a blunt instrument.” That process still has some way to go. Perhaps 2017 will bring an inflection point. We shall see.

Nov 16 2023

Defending The Narrative

     Call it what you will: “the narrative,” “the official position,” “the received wisdom,” or perhaps just what “everybody knows.” It’s Big Lie technique, straight from Dr. Josef Goebbels: circle the wagons around the falsehood, relentlessly repeat it in the loudest possible voice, viciously and violently denounce anyone who contradicts it…and with time everyone will accept it as the truth.

     Of course, this will require more effort in some cases than in others:

     Kevin Downey Jr. has a few comments about it:

     The lefty-dominated news outlets, which are busy trying to convince people that, as LeBron James stated, white people are hunting black people every time they leave home, ignore and downplay the reality of racial violence in the U.S.

     FACT-O-RAMA! In 2019, black people killed no less than 566 white people. (These crimes involve one victim, one suspect, and an arrest. Gang assaults or murders that go unsolved are not included). This means white people are “hunted” to the tune of 1.55 murders per day. White people killed 246 blacks — or 0.7 per day — under the same conditions that year.

     Deceased author Colin Flaherty, who presciently authored several books about the wildly out-of-proportion crime rate, once wrote:

     As long as black people are permanent victims of relentless white racism, cops should not chase them, juries should not convict them, judges should not sentence them, schools should not punish them, and white victims should not complain about the black crime and violence so wildly out of proportion. This is what a growing number of lawmakers, professors and, of course, reporters are prescribing as a way to “improve the way our system serves justice.”

     This isn’t my favorite subject, regardless of how often I’ve written about it. But it’s one of the really important ones. Its effects are helping to drive changes in American society that cannot be concealed or disguised, no matter how hard the media may try:

  1. Diminishing willingness of employers to hire blacks;
  2. Diminishing willingness of cops to work in black neighborhoods;
  3. Diminishing willingness of retailers to operate stores in black neighborhoods;
  4. Increasing readiness of white families to move out of neighborhoods with rising black populations.

     These trends are most visible in our cities, but their effects are being felt everywhere. The races are separating, and there’s nothing the Powers That Be can do to stop it.

     But the media won’t mention that a black hockey player killed a white player by slashing him across the throat with his skate. That would give people the wrong idea!

     (Remember this movie? “Hockey! The sport for middle-size white boys.” Well, once upon a time, anyway.)

     Were it not for the Internet, only those who actually saw the event would know who did what to whom. Even so, word would get around. It always has and it always will.

***

     I’m tired of writing about this subject. That’s not because it’s a bad or unimportant subject to write about, but because the trends I enumerated in the previous segment make plain that the consciousness of what’s been going on is now well advanced. Whites and Asians are obeying the fundamental drive built into all living things: Survival comes first. Yea verily, even among white “liberals.” Virtue signaling can’t hold a candle to it.

     However, there’s a related phenomenon that deserves a quick mention: the mushrooming interest in guns, especially handguns. The majority of the states are now “constitutional carry” or “permitless carry.” The most resolutely anti-gun states are finding it difficult to stem the arming-up tide among their residents. They’re trying to weasel their way around the courts, which are increasingly friendly toward the right to keep and bear arms, but with limited success. Even the hostility of the cops in such places toward an armed citizenry can’t do much about it. Too many Americans are willing to break an anti-gun law, if it increases the chance that they or their loved ones will survive a hostile encounter in a public place.

     People don’t spend large amounts of money arming up, nor do they spend significant amounts of time and effort acquiring proficiency with weapons, when they feel safe. What’s making them feel unsafe? See previous segment.

     It’s time for a graphic:

     Have a nice day.

Nov 15 2023

Nikki Haley – Back & Forth with the Wind

Sometimes, she SAYS things that other candidates need to be saying. This post shows her position, which include raising the age of retirement and limiting benefits for the wealthy.

Then, in the same appearance, she also promotes expanding Medicare Advantage, and pegging increases in SS to inflation.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I sell Medicare Advantage. For SOME people, it’s great, providing sufficient coverage and ancillary benefits to make it a good deal – for THEM.

For others, I run the numbers, and give them my honest opinion that they should stick with what they have, whether that’s Original Medicare, VA, employer, or other coverage.

Medicare Advantage is not a magic solution that will work for everyone, despite the commercials. Expanding it makes little sense, as those that benefit are moving to that option, more every year. No reason to change that.

And, the idea of changing COLA to inflation increases is truly demented. There should be NO FURTHER INCREASES in Social Security, EBT, or any other entitlement. Those receiving government money need to face an unpleasant truth – EVERY increase in the national debt – all those programs that The Left just loves and takes credit for, as they know those programs will serve as a legal bribe for recipients to vote for them – will just make the finances of Americans WORSE. To exempt a FEW from the pain of government’s fecklessness is not the answer.

ALL American voters need to wake up and smell the coffee:

I know, I know. Reality is a mother.

But protecting people from the consequences of their bad decisions is worse.

And, this suggestion from Haley is beyond Stupid.

Maybe she should read The Federalist Papers and other early American writing that was anonymous. She might learn something about using pseudonyms, and the utility of commenting about volatile issues without identifying yourself.

Nah. She doesn’t strike me as someone who is open to learning.

Nov 15 2023

Interventionism

     Some years ago, Dr. Robert Mendelsohn wrote a provocative book titled Confessions of a Medical Heretic. Dr. Mendelsohn’s thesis was essentially that the trend toward medical interventionism – i.e., the willingness of doctors to intrude into the processes of the human body for ever vaguer and less compelling reasons – was accelerating at a frightening, even pathological rate. He argued that the trend should be opposed by everyone, whether inside or outside the medical profession. I don’t know what kind of circulation it received, but it certainly stirred things up for my little family.

     Dr. Mendelsohn’s arguments should receive renewed attention in our time, especially given the proliferation of stories such as this one:

     In a heart-wrenching incident, Melody Rain Palombi-Malmgren, a 15-month-old girl, tragically passed away two days after receiving routine vaccinations. Her mother, Katherine Palombi, recalls the shock and sorrow of losing a child who was the epitome of joy and health.

     On October 17, during a routine 15-month well-visit at the Herbert Kania Pediatric Group in Warwick, New York, Melody received three vaccines, News12 Westchester reported.

     Just two days later, she suddenly stopped breathing and suffered cardiac arrest despite exhibiting no warning signs.

     As a scientifically oriented thinker, I must say emphatically before continuing on that correlation does not prove causation. It cannot do so. However, deaths of this sort – very young children, just after receiving a barrage of vaccinations – have been increasing and should be studied closely.

     Great numbers of infant vaccinations are a relatively recent phenomenon. Some of the diseases for which infants are vaccinated have historically been regarded as routine childhood experiences, and relatively low risk. Why are such vaccinations deemed close to obligatory for children in our time? Why do medical institutions put pressure on new parents to accept such vaccinations for their children?

     But then, medical interventionism is only one form of the development. Just about every sector of society has absorbed the notion that such outsider decision-making for others is right and necessary. More, resistance to outsider interventions has diminished dramatically in recent years. In a nation whose credo was once Mind your own business, it’s something to be pondered.

***

     In some ways, the COVID-19 “pandemic” was a testing ground for the ambitions of interventionists of all kinds. The convergence of various kinds of pressure on ordinary people made it extremely difficult to resist the “experts” demand that we all accept the swiftly developed, highly experimental vaccines. The “messenger RNA” technology used in the vaccines was brand new, a huge departure from previous methods. The C.S.O. and I considered it reason enough to eschew the vaccines. It wasn’t a decision lightly made, for both of us are in “elevated risk” groups.

     However, when it came to resisting the pressures to get vaccinated, we two had significant advantages. Neither of us was dependent on a salary. We live in a neighborhood largely bereft of minor children. The retail institutions around us found it impossible to compel their patrons to observe the various “mandates.” Indeed, the only major change forced upon us – today, greatly regretted by all involved – was the denial of in-person religious services.

     Yet most persons in our region flocked to be vaccinated. They meekly accepted all the other miscellaneous interventions into their lives as well. Their behavior was greatly similar to that of Americans in other parts of the country. They masked; they shunned retail businesses and closed their own offices and storefronts; they stayed away from one another, even from close relatives and bosom friends. Why?

     The pressures, whether from neighbors, acquaintances, relatives, or “experts” were simply too much for them. Even the ones who were aware that COVID-19 presented no risk greater than any ordinary strain of influenza felt it was “safer to go along.” They feared to be “out of the mainstream.” The fear was not of the risks from the virus, but for fear of the reactions of others.

     It highlighted a huge change in Americans’ attitudes. We were a people whose distinguishing characteristic, in the eyes of non-Americans, was our defiance: our insistence upon going our own way regardless of the urgings of others. The rest of the world insists on X or dislikes Y? Fuck ‘em. We’re Americans. We’ve always done exactly as we please, and we’ll continue to do so. As Eric Frank Russell once wrote, we recognized the right to go to hell in our own fashion.

     No longer, apparently.

***

     “Experts” of all kinds have been multiplying like maggots on a corpse. All have “recommendations” for us. Most lobby governments: for funds at the least, and all too often for the power to enforce their “recommendations.” Regardless of the variations among them, they’re united in one way: They would pay no costs for what they hope to impose upon the rest of us.

     Thomas Sowell has emphasized this characteristic of the interventionists. It succinctly explains how such “experts” can go from one “recommendation” to another unperturbed by failure or devastating unintended consequence. Yet it doesn’t occur to the typical, appropriately humble American that he’s being shown evidence of a compelling kind…evidence that utterly destroys the pretensions of the “experts” and awakens those dazzled by them.

Nov 14 2023

A Wandering Mind

     “Don’t let your mind wander. It’s too little to be let out alone.” – From a lapel button

***

     Hey, remember those buttons and bumper stickers from a few years back?

     I’m beginning to get that feeling again.

***

     My day is looking bad – very bad, actually – and besides, I’m way too tired to write this morning. So have a gaggle of links with brief comments after each one.

***

     Something new to “fear.”

     That’s for any Gentle Reader who isn’t already near to paralyzed with fear.

***

     If you think the right to life is the supreme issue of our time…

     …the linked commentator wants you to know that you’re the reason for Republican electoral underperformance.

***

     Naughty, evil, colonialist explorer!

     I think it’s time to clean and oil the guns again.

***

     Repentance for a life of idiocy.

     “Most people are willing to give up their preconceptions…after they’ve had them tattooed on their heads with a blunt instrument.” – Keith Laumer

***

     Common sense from the ever-reliable Andrea Shea King.

     I miss her radio show.

***

     Serious news with a silly acronym, from our favorite Graybeard.

     Well, what other animated show was equally optimistic about the future?

***

     Hard truth about Islam’s war against human freedom.

     “First they came for the Jews,” et cetera. They always come for the Jews first – and you know damned well why, so stop pretending you can be “neutral” about it.

     (And for the idiots in the audience: While I wish Israel all the best in its fight, I do not want to see American involvement in its current hostilities. Shouldn’t you be reading something less mentally taxing?)

***

     This might be the Comment of the Century:

“As some “niche Canadian” wrote almost two decades ago, the future belongs to those who show up. Well, on the streets of London, the future showed up.”

     It could only have come from Mark Steyn.

***

     Uncomfortable truth from John Wilder.

     Come for the insight, scurry away quickly averting your eyes from the puns.

***

     We should have paid more attention to Howard Eppis.

     What he said in that line provides a complete explanation for why Leftists are trying to destroy the American economy.

***

     God bless and keep you, Sundance.

     If you read only one thing today, make it the piece linked above.

***

     And do have a nice day. Really!

Nov 13 2023

Critical Recognitions Dept.

     When you’ve been saying something vital to the survival of your civilization, year after year – now and then in an ear-piercing shriek – it’s gratifying to see that someone else actually gets it:

     What is Islam? To answer that question, it’s more important to know what Islam isn’t. Islam is not a religion. It is an authoritarian, political ideology that forcibly imposes itself on all aspects of any society unfortunate enough to be under its yoke…. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, cultural, and military components. The religious component is the veil that hides the dangers of its all-encompassing ideology.

     Thank You, God.

     Most of the article describes the horrors prevalent in Islamic nations. Yes, they’re horrible, inexcusable offenses against human rights and free will. But the key point is that they proceed from the central tenet of Islam, which is that Islam must be supreme over all persons, places, and things.

     Kinda hard to get anything past that one, isn’t it?

***

     What follows is a reprint of a piece I wrote about twenty years ago. It first appeared at the old Palace of Reason. It’s as relevant today as it was then.

March 26, 2004

     Your Curmudgeon had intended to write about ideonics today, a topic that, so far as Google can determine, has received zero attention from the World Wide Web. However, an interesting exchange between two very dissimilarly minded parties has commanded his attention, so ideonics will have to wait.

     Anyone with an interest in the current clash between Islam and the West will probably have heard of Robert Spencer. He’s written two fine books on the matter, Islam Unveiled and Onward Muslim Soldiers, which have garnered him great respect among serious students of religious conflict and scathing condemnations from the spokesmen of Islam. Both responses are understandable, as Spencer holds, based on his close study of Islam’s core documents, its history, and the emissions of its most prominent expositors, that Islam as it stands is the intellectual property of the militants and radicals in its ranks, which makes it a real danger to the liberal Western tradition.

     To your Curmudgeon, Spencer’s conclusions appear inescapable. He’s coupled them to an impassioned appeal to the world’s Muslims: find a basis for civilizing and moderating your medieval creed, marginalize the radicals among you, and come to an amicable coexistence with persons and nations of other faiths. One could hardly ask for a more objective, more principled indictment of a creed than Spencer has produced, nor for a more gentlemanly approach to those who hold to it.

     So naturally, the spokesmen of the innumerable Islamic advocacy agencies have done their best to brand Spencer as a liar and hate monger. They’ve attacked him principally for his entirely accurate citations of the creed’s sacred documents and major thinkers, which are inarguably better aligned with the goals and behavior of militant Islamic radicals than with any hypothetical “religion of peace.” In particular, Ibrahim Hooper, chief mouthpiece for the odious Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has accused Spencer of virtually every scurrility known to Man, often on radio or television broadcasts available to millions.

     All this is compatible with our intuition. Regardless of his real motives, who would want to be revealed as an adherent of a militant totalitarian ideology as bloodthirsty as Nazism that sails under the protective cover of a religion? Who wouldn’t try to redecorate such a creed as something mild and unthreatening, at least until he felt he’d amassed sufficient force to strike?

     Believe it or not, there’s at least one Muslim who wouldn’t. Meet Amir, proprietor of Jihaad, who despises Spencer for a reason one won’t often hear spoken aloud: Spencer’s pleas to Muslims to find a tolerant and civilized basis for their beliefs, that doesn’t commit them to a struggle for the domination of the world and the subjugation of all “infidels.” Amir, you see, holds that that struggle for a world-girdling totalitarian Islamic state is at the very heart of Islam, that to excise it somehow is to become an apostate, and that therefore, Spencer’s call for non-militancy and modernization in Islam amounts to a call for Muslims to abandon their faith:

AoA. I hope there isn’t a Muslim in the whole world who stumbles across “Jihad Watch” and falls for the crap Robert Spenceris pumping out. Him and his loyal band of anti-Islamics (who flood his article comments with Islamaphobic preaching) have dedicated time and effort to make an influential impression on people, mainly Muslims, to re-write the meaning of Jihaad and make people believe it. Mainly Muslims.

     Spencer hasn’t necessarily studied Islam for the purpose of calling people away from it, he isn’t a fanatical enough of a Christian to be doing that, he’s instead studied Islam for the purpose of convincing Muslims to adopt incorrect Islamic concepts — namely on the issue of jihaad. From the Muslim perspective it’s not as bad as apostasy, but still pretty damn bad.

     Here is an example of the depths of deviousness his tactics and styles droop to. Muslims recognise that Islam is not a secular religion, that it is not just a bunch of worship rituals and is in fact a lot more than that — Islam is a complete ideology. An ideology that must be implemented in a state. An Islamic state. Thanks to Islamic groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroon, to name a few, the majority Muslims are aware of the need and Islamic obligation of the Khilafah State. But, to cast doubt and fear in the hearts of some unaware Muslims, here we have Spencer slyly attacking the Muslims in Canada who are advocating the notion of re-establishing the Khilafah as something sinister because “That’s the Islamic state that Osama bin Laden and other radical Muslims around the world have declared their intention to restore.”

     If some Muslims can be made to believe that some Islamic concepts or ideas are “outdated” or “no longer practical in the modern world” then the Muslims’ reaction will be naturally to find an alternative — which is where the Western-thought inspired method and solution will be presented. Islam came for the whole of mankind to deal with all of mankind’s issues and problems in life — Islam is complete and flawless. It requires no additions or alterations and no creation of the creator can bring forth any ideas that are better than what Allah (swt) has given to mankind through the deen of Islam.

     We don’t need non-Muslims trying to teach us Islam — we should avoid these fraudsters no matter what, and tell our fellow Muslims to do the same.

     Spencer, no shrinking violet in any sort of exchange, called him on it:

So Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun, two groups that forthrightly call for restoration of the caliphate and full implementation of the Sharia (including the oppression of non-Muslims as dhimmis) have the right idea, eh? So Al-Muhajiroun, a group that has praised the 9/11 highjackers and Osama, has the correct Islam?

     Note that he is not angry with me for talking about the Islamic roots of modern-day jihad violence, as are the pseudo-moderate American Muslim advocacy groups. Instead, he is angry with me for trying to stop this jihad.

     This is the great challenge that anyone who calls himself a moderate Muslim faces: to convince people like Amir that their “correct” version of Islam is actually incorrect. This was what I emphasized at UNC Tuesday night. It will be interesting to see if anyone even attempts it in any significant way.

     Amir must have found the kitchen hotter than he’d expected, for this is how he responded:

I would agree that secularism is better than the rule of the Church, better does not necessarily mean correct. Christianity, as I mentioned earlier, is no more than a mere religion. It can exist under whatever society, secular or Islamic. But unlike Islam, Christianity has no rules, examples, guidelines or systems for the running of a State. This is exactly what separates Islam from normal religions. The European monarchies claiming to have the right by god to rule the people ruled however they pleased. In Islam, the Khalifa (leader) has to strictly abide by the Islamic rulings and ensure he fulfils every criteria and obligation required of him — the ruler is even elected in to the seat by the people. This shows that ever since the Islamic State was originally established 1400 years ago the Muslims were eons ahead of the West! Islam has a comprehensive, extensive and complete set of systems for the running of the State.

     So when the modern-day West views Islam as a religion and not an ideology, it remembers the dark ages of when the Church was in power, pre-secularism — drawing incorrect parallels to the Khilafah State, considering it to be something similar to that what the West experienced centuries ago. That is why the West has such a dark pre-conception of what a Sharia ruled Caliphate would be like! Not forgetting to mention that it was European nations controlled by their Christian monarchs that struggled for centuries to dismantle the Khilafah, finally succeeding in 1924.

     Thus, Amir now bids us not to go by the words of the Qur’an concerning the forcible subjugation of dhimmis, nor by the brutalities and barbarities prescribed by the words of the shari’a and inflicted on the helpless every day by Islamic states, but to accept that the Caliphate would be a democratic construct — an advance on Western secular systems, for having been laid down so long ago by the followers of a self-nominated Prophet!

     Nor is this theocracy to be judged by its own bloody history of savagery, conquest, and enslavement, apparently. It is to be taken presumptively as superior to the Christian theocracies of the Middle Ages. But why? On what grounds? Amir doesn’t say, except to state that “Islam has a comprehensive, extensive and complete set of systems for the running of the State.”

     So did the Nazis and the Soviets.

     It’s difficult to give such arrogance its proper coloration in a phrase or two, which is why your Curmudgeon has quoted so extensively from Amir’s lunacies. But of this we may be sure: at a time when the entire Muslim world, with its terrorism, its brutality toward women, children, and persons of other faiths, its many subterfuges, and its relentless demand for power over all others, has placed itself under suspicion of being incompatible with civilization, any Muslims who are not committed to a war to the death with the West have no reason to thank Amir. He has painted a bull’s-eye on his own chest — a mark he’d apparently like to see on the flesh of every Muslim on Earth.

     Let all good and decent men pray that Amir is quietly admonished by his co-religionists and unceremoniously shoved to the margins of his creed.

     The prescription in the final paragraph above hasn’t happened, of course. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

     Islam remains a terrible danger for Western societies. Far too many Muslims have already migrated to Western, First World nations. Britain, France, and Germany are feeling more than a little uneasy about what’s followed their open-door policy. America isn’t there yet…but the Muslim riots in New York and other American cities are a preview of what awaits us.

     They really do mean to subjugate us.
     They multiply as we diminish.
     All it takes is time.

Nov 13 2023

Progress Of The Purge

     Courtesy of Maura Dowling, we have this outrage:

     More whistleblowers have stepped forward to tell Congress that high-ranking FBI officials are targeting agents, specifically former military members, for their political beliefs and trying to force them out of the bureau.
     A Marine and other military veterans at the FBI have been accused of disloyalty to the U.S. because they fit the profile of a supporter of former President Donald Trump, according to two disclosures sent to lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.
     The Washington Times obtained copies of the disclosures.
     The whistleblowers said Jeffrey Veltri, deputy assistant director of the bureau’s security division, and Dena Perkins, assistant section chief, specifically pursued employees who served in the Marine Corps or other military branches.
     They stripped the agents of security clearances, which sidelined them on the job and pushed them toward the exit, according to the disclosures.
     The whistleblower disclosures say Mr. Veltri and Ms. Perkins either declared or attempted to declare the Marine and other veterans as “disloyal to the United States of America.”
     “In these cases there was no indication that any of the individuals had any affiliation to a foreign power or held any belief against the United States,” it said.

     Now that the FBI has been completely politicized, this was predictable. Pournelle’s Iron Law and Robert Conquest’s Second Law, don’t y’know.

     But the FBI needs a new, $300 million headquarters, and the GOP-controlled House of Representatives just voted to give it to them. We can’t stint these brave defenders of democracy, now can we?

Nov 13 2023

Medicine Today

      What need be said about this story?

     Man Has Wrong Organ Removed By Surgeons Who ‘Couldn’t Find’ His Appendix

     A Washington state man is suing the University of Washington (UW), after two UW surgeons failed to locate his appendix and instead removed part of his colon – leaving the man with a litany of medical problems.
     Attending physician Nidhi Udyavar was supposed to supervise surgeon-in-training, Paul Herman, as he performed an appendectomy on George Piano on December 6, 2022, according to Piano’s attorneys.
     But Piano alleges that the surgeons failed to locate the organ and botched the surgery to such a degree that he was left in an even worse condition.
     “When I woke up and came out of the drugs, I was in serious pain. Much worse than I had been in when I went to the hospital,” he told KIRO.
     “I was suffering from a leaking colon that created sepsis and infection. And I almost died from it.”
     The procedure was performed at the University of Washington Medical Center Northwest, in north Seattle.

     Two surgeons…and neither one could locate the human appendix? Might there be a problem with UW Medicine’s admissions and hiring policies? A mite too focused on “diversity,” perhaps?

     It’s been claimed that medical mistakes kill far more Americans than guns. There’s a word for the deaths caused by such mistakes: iatrogenic. Considering the contemporary acceleration of the consumption of medical products and services, I’d expect stories of this sort to multiply. I’d also expect medical men to strive to their utmost to bury them. Be on your guard.

Nov 12 2023

Been a little busy around the homestead lately

And quite frankly, I haven’t felt the urge to write. Hell, I haven’t felt the urge to do much except crawl into a hole and pull it in after me, but here we are.

On the topic of “things that make me scream at my computer” is this headline from the garbage bird-cage liner, “Americans don’t want to fight for their country any more”. I perused the bullshit, and I didn’t see a single mention of the jab mandate. I didn’t see a single mention of the fact that the worthless fuckstains who gave us the Afghanistan debacle are still in charge. I didn’t see a single mention of the fact that Americans probably don’t want to go die in Ukraine or Israel.

Americans don’t want to fight for their country? Most of the people I know would willingly lay down their lives for their country. But we also know that the corrupt, illegitimate cabal running this country don’t give a flying fuck about the country they’re destroying. The fedgov hate the patriotic Americans who used to sign up for military service. LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID TO THE MILITARY OVER THE PAST DECADE.

Why the hell should any red-blooded American sign up to serve a corrupt regime who cares more about destroying this country than protecting it?\

Patriotism means supporting my country at all times, and my government when it deserves it. The government hasn’t deserved any kind of support for a good long while, and it’s starting to show. Let the 69th Intersectional Dildo Brigade fight for the fedgov. I’m sure the drag queens, trannies and other assorted victim classes are more than willing to do all the heavy lifting, right? Diversity is our strength something something tolerance inclusivity something something oh gosh why aren’t all the white guys signing up for military service?

The Left wanted to damage the military for a good long time. They finally succeeded with Bathhouse Barry O’Bumblefuck and Drooling Joe. It’s going to take a long time to fix that damage, if ever.

Nov 12 2023

The Days Ahead

     It’s become staggeringly evident – utterly undeniable without first denying the evidence of our senses – that those who wield the powers of the federal government serve an agenda that is opposed to the best interests of the private citizens of these United States. There is simply no other way to interpret what we see around us today. The lies have all been exposed:

The Lie
The Truth
The economy is sound.
The economy is nearing complete collapse.
Inflation is the fault of greedy private interests.
Federal borrowing is what drives inflation.
The border is secure.
The border is wide open.
We just want the rich to pay their fair share.
It’s the middle class that had better watch out.
President Biden is in full command of his faculties.
Biden is an undocumented dementia sufferer.
The Biden family is honest and trustworthy.
The Bidens, including President Biden, are corrupt to the core.
Food deserts are because of racial prejudice.
Food deserts are the result of Negro criminality.
We must support Ukraine to preserve its democracy.
Ukraine is an antidemocratic hellhole with a corrupt oligarch.
Abortion is a form of reproductive health care.
Abortion is infanticide.
One’s gender is a matter of personal identification.
A human’s sex is determined at conception and is unalterable thereafter. Gender is for nouns and connectors.
January 6, 2021 was a violent insurrection.
Insurrectionists bring weapons to an insurrection.
The elections of 2020 were free of fraud.
The elections of 2020 were blatantly stolen.
The elections of 2024 will be free of fraud.
Barring major changes to the procedures, the elections of 2024 will be as fraudulent as those of 2020.
Law and public discourse must be independent of religion.
Christian convictions about right and wrong had to be driven out of public life to make room for the Omnipotent State.
Government officials are public servants.
“If there’s anything a public servant hates to do, it’s something for the public.” – Kin Hubbard

     I could go on, but there’s no need. Any duty of conformance to the law Americans still feel is a form of self-delusion. And they who prey upon us are planning more and worse.

     No one who seeks power is ever happy about limitations of his power. He’ll always chafe under them and seek to throw them off. The greatest thinker of the American Revolutionary period, Thomas Jefferson, violated his Constitutional limits several times as President. And rare is the official who doesn’t seek still more power with his every breath.

***

     Yesterday, Brandon Smith deposeth and sayeth:

     In 2016 the World Economic Forum published a document titled ‘Welcome To 2030. I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy, And Life Has Never Been Better.’ The article was meant to promote a concept called the “sharing economy” which was first publicly fielded to the press at Davos. The article describes a “hypothetical” future in which a communistic system has ended all private property in the name of saving the planet from climate change. The benefits? Well, like all communistic systems, the big lie is that you will get to work less and most things will be free. This is how collectivist ideals have been sold to the populace for generations and it NEVER works the way the establishment claims.

     Now hearken to the great Cyril Northcote Parkinson:

     Freedom is founded on ownership of property…. It cannot exist where the rulers own everything, nor even when they concede some limited right of tenure…. Against a State which owns everything, the individual has neither the means of defence nor anything to defend.

     The World Economic Forum’s anti-private-property scheme, its “15 minute cities,” and the total surveillance and restriction of movement they would require, are what “our leaders” have in mind for us. They have our rights under a crosshairs. With just one more set of stolen elections – and you may take it as written in the stars that the engines of vote fraud are being primed as we speak – they’ll be ready to begin the implementation of the WEF’s ultra-collectivist vision. The justification will probably be “to combat climate change” and “to usher in an era of sustainability.”

     Given the evidence of your senses and the lies we’ve already been asked to swallow, is any other future more likely?

***

     Did all that seem to come out of left field? Perhaps so. But as I’ve said before, I write about what’s on my mind. The above has occupied my thoughts for some time now. I wrote it out in the hope that I could be rid of it. It hasn’t happened yet, but the day is young.

     Enjoy yours.

Nov 11 2023

C’mon, NYTimes!

     I already support the guy. You don’t have to sell him to me!

Nov 11 2023

The Poles Of Human Life

     Now and then I feel the hand of destiny. Or fate. Or God. On rare occasions a man can feel it poking him. Penning the first words of my next novel – working title Ex Nihilo — seems to be the occasion.

     Contrary to what the predestinationists believe, we have free will and are commanded to make good use of it. Human freedom would be meaningless without it. But that doesn’t mean that we never get a nudge from the Creator.

     A momentous and portentous thing happened one hundred five years ago today. Perhaps you’ve read about it. (You certainly didn’t witness it.) Representatives of the Empire and the Anglo-American-French alliance converged in a railway car in Rethondes, in France’s Compiegne forest to conclude an armistice. At 5:00 AM they signed the document formalizing that armistice, which would end the continent-spanning fighting. At 11:00 AM the fighting stopped. World War I was “over.”

     Except that it wasn’t.

     Germany would pay heavily for the war. The negotiations at Versailles Palace imposed conditions upon the defeated Germans that barely stopped short of evisceration. The German representatives at Versailles made plain that they were signing under duress. The duress was utterly unconcealed; the blockade of German ports was still in force until July of 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed and its initial requirements for the demilitarization of Germany were in process.

     Marshal Ferdinand Foch, supreme commander of the Anglo-American-French forces, commented angrily that what Versailles had achieved was merely “an armistice for twenty years.” He was off by a few weeks: it was September 1, 1939 when the Second Round, better known to most as World War II, began with Germany’s invasion of Poland.

     Though no one realized it at the time, the Great War had given birth to a Culture of Death.

***

     I’ve written before about the inception of warmaking against civilians by Germany. It horrified the Belgians, against whom it was essayed, and the British and French, who were treaty-sworn to protect Belgium. They thought the agreements from the Treaties of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna had put an end to such atrocities. It hardened anti-German sentiment throughout those nations, such that there arose a supra-national will to punish Germany so harshly that it could never repeat such a crime.

     No, that didn’t work either. Though there are no living veterans of World War I, we still have a few from World War II, and they’ll tell you straight out. Man’s inhumanity to Man remains alive and well. Indeed, some days it seems to be the only thing that’s truly thriving.

     We are a fallen species. We must not deceive ourselves about that. The Culture of Death rampaging among us should be evidence enough for anyone. But even were war somehow to be made impossible – and how, in this world of States all of which are voracious for ever more power, could we manage that? – the Culture of Death would find adherents. Some would be motivated by a false religion; others by insanity; still others by personal greed.

     But the supreme, counter-intuitive irony is that the most insidious tentacle of the Culture of Death is about the desire to abolish death itself…by abolishing life.

***

     Some Gentle Readers think I cite C. S. Lewis to excess. Well, maybe. But in no other writer have I encountered both the purity of vision and the literary skill to make true horrors – the sort that are really possible – real to the reader. His pinnacle achievement lies in two works, one fiction and one non-fiction.

     The non-fiction piece is his extended essay The Abolition of Man. At the time Lewis wrote it, it received only modest recognition. Yet it is a triumph of foresight. We can see Lewis’s fearful predictions coming true all around us.

     The fiction work is the third volume of Lewis’s “Space Trilogy:” That Hideous Strength. It horrified Lewis’s great friend John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who called it “that hideous book.” Yet it is unsurpassed as a fictional depiction of horrors of the sort that:

  1. Could really happen;
  2. Are emerging around us as we speak.

     Here is where Lewis introduces us to a “scientific” Culture of Death:

     “Why have you done that, Professor?” said a Mr. Winter who sat opposite. “I shouldn’t have thought they did much harm at that distance from the house. I’m rather fond of trees myself.”
     “Oh, yes, yes,” replied Filostrato. “The pretty trees, the garden trees. But not the savages. I put the rose in my garden, but not the brier. The forest tree is a weed. But I tell you I have seen the civilized tree in Persia. It was a French attaché who had it because he was in a place where trees do not grow. It was made of metal. A poor, crude thing. But how if it were perfected? Light, made of aluminum. So natural, it would even deceive.”
     “It would hardly be the same as a real tree,” said Winter.
     “But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess.”
     “I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing.”
     “Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forests, for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.”
     “Do you mean,” put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?”
     “Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.”
     “I wonder what the birds will make of it?”
     “I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.”
     “It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.”
     “And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”

     Filostrato’s vision of the elimination of the organic extends to Man himself:

     “What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould. “After all we are organisms ourselves.”
     “I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mold—all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course. Slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.”

     The severance of the human mind from the organic, ever-growing-and-decaying world is the core of the vision. Decide for yourself whether you’d like it.

***

     Today The Catholic Thing brings us a monitory essay from Julian Kwasniewski, in which he contrasts “the way of hygiene” to “the way of the hearth:”

     [T]he hearth represents, more than anything else, the united family and the warmth that radiates from it. Hygiene (to my mind) represents the modern manipulation of life, which does not truly allow it to flourish. It is at war with “loved life” yet mimics it, never truly creating it. For modernity, life is an enemy: everything from bacteria to men and women are sterilized.
     The way of hygiene – what St. John Paul II called the “culture of death” – seeks the release of man from nature. For Lewis’ Filostrato, its goal is to “bring out of that cocoon of organic life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.”
     Which becomes clearer when we look through the farmhouse door and realize that this comforting view will never exist if we take the sterilized road of “hygiene.”

     Kwasniewski appears to share with Tolkien and Lewis an idealized vision of “the simple life,” which in reality was never so simple. Yet he has a point. Our advances in the understanding of the body, and how it can be kept in a condition of health and vitality, have been great. They’ve improved billions of lives and will continue to do so. But the continuation of life at any cost must not become a racial obsession, for that way lies death of a more horrifying sort: the willingness to sacrifice anything and everything, including one another, even including our humanity, to the indefinite perpetuation of our temporal consciousnesses.

     Perhaps that’s a literal impossibility. Yet people are striving toward it even today.

***

     There must exist a middle ground between the acceptance of squalid, unceasingly painful and impoverished life and an aversion to death so all-consuming that it eclipses all other values. It must be found. Neither pole is endurable. Just as we are made to fight for life and to seek health and comfort therein, we are also made to desire rest, an end to striving and a final release from all care. We must find a middle way.

     But where is it?

     [For a complement to this piece, see my essay Demographics and the Medicalization of Human Existence.]

Nov 11 2023

This Is The Era Of Graphics And Videos

     When Lysander Spooner wrote this:

     The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
     The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

     …he did not have the Internet, the PNG graphical format, or Adobe Photoshop at his command:

     Ahh, progress!

Nov 10 2023

The Biennial Serving Of Kool-Aid

DON’T VOTE: It Only Encourages them! – from a West Coast shopping bag

     I’m in a dour (dire?) mood this morning. Part of it arises from a taxing, difficult chore I’ve been straining to put off, the day for which has arrived and cannot be hired out, delegated, or otherwise shoved aside. But a larger part of it stems from the ongoing willingness of millions – many of them smart enough to know better – to believe that politics can solve problems. That has probably never been true to any degree.

     But electoral politics – the chivvying of “the people” to the polls every two years – is an important, even critical ritual. It reinforces the notion that “we have a voice” in who will run “our government,” and therefore in how it will be run.

     Allow me a citation that the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch have probably seen before:

[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one’s spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the “democratic process.” A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

     [Clarence Carson, The American Tradition]

     Among the things Dr. Carson did not say was this:


To prevent a true revolt against the status quo,
“The people” must believe that they “have a choice.”

     However, in writing that “Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own,” he implied it as strongly as is possible without coming right out and saying it. A graphic I like is of immense relevance here:

     The candidates who are presented to us are carefully selected by county, state, and national committees, all of which are firmly under the control of the political Establishment. And what was it Orwell said about establishments?

The aim of the High is to remain where they are.

     Half a minute while I fetch more coffee.

***

     John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute puts it incisively:

     The Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

     They slipped once in recent memory. By dint of fantastic efforts (and the inability of Establishment Republicans to believe that he could do it) Donald Trump got through the barriers and won the presidency. Once inaugurated, he tried his best. He was opposed at every turn by his own party — and its kingmakers are straining to deny him another term in office. It’s quite possible that those kingmakers are part of the effort to immure him in prison for the rest of his life.

     But the illusion of choice must be maintained. Should that ever fall, there would be no reason for any American to continue to pay taxes, obey the laws, kowtow to officials whether elected, appointed, or hired, and generally support “the system.” So the Establishment – the explicitly political part of which is coming to be known as The Uniparty — works to maintain the illusion that because America holds regular elections, “we” can change things at any time through the vote.

***

     As the years pass I become ever more impressed by the insight of the late Philip K. Dick. Some of his stories display real penetration into what is as opposed to what we like to believe. One of them, “Faith Of Our Fathers,” was a 1968 Hugo Award finalist for Best Novelette. It follows Tung Chien, a functionary in a Chinese Communist government who is given a dose of an antipsychotic – stelazine – and suddenly sees things he’s not supposed to see. In a way, it was a precursor to John Carpenter’s movie They Live, though the politics were completely different.

     The stelazine allows him to see the Party’s Supreme Leader as he – it – really is:

     It was terrible; it blasted him with its awareness. As it moved it drained the life from each person in turn; it ate the people who had assembled, passed on, ate again, ate more with an endless appetite. It hated; he felt its hate. It loathed; he felt its loathing for everyone present — in fact he shared its loathing. All at once he and everyone else in the big villa were each a twisted slug, and over the fallen slug carcasses the creature savored, lingered, but all the time coming directly toward him — or was that an illusion? If this is a hallucination, Chien thought, it is the worst I have ever had; if it is not, then it is evil reality; it’s an evil thing that kills and injures. He saw the trail of stepped-on, mashed men and women remnants behind it; he saw them trying to reassemble, to operate their crippled bodies; he heard them attempting speech.

     But as horrifying as this revelation is, there’s more to come…and come it does:

     “You founded the Party?” he asked.
     “I founded everything. I founded the anti-Party and the Party that isn’t a Party, and those who are for it and those who are against, those that you call Yankee Imperialists, those in the camp of reaction, and so on endlessly. I founded it all. As if they were blades of grass.”

     Dick’s tale is a true nightmare, the exact opposite of the Beatific Vision. Dick, who was fascinated lifelong with questions of reality and what might lie beyond it, had glimpsed something that completely inverts the Christian postulate that Man is the shaper of his own destiny.

     But wait: there’s more! For in that nightmare vision lies the truth about all who 1) attain power over us, and 2) are determined to maintain it: To be sure of power in perpetuity, they must become their own opposition, or at least suborn and control it.

     And the surest way to secure their grip on that prize is to create and maintain an illusion of choice.

***

     There’s a swiftly vanishing chance that Donald Trump will escape the clutches of the “justice system,” gain the GOP’s presidential nomination, and win a second term as president. Should that happen, I would expect a replay of his first term: his own party methodically undermining and thwarting the overwhelming majority of his initiatives. And it won’t matter a dented copper groat how many of us voted for him.

     Our biennial election cycle is not the Kool-Aid of Jim Jones. It won’t kill us…probably not, at least. But it does strive to numb us, to anesthetize our critical faculty. For if a sufficient number of us were fully aware of what’s been done to us – what’s still being done, every hour of every day – we would rebel against it as surely as the Sun rises in the East.

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Have a nice day.

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