Sep 17 2023

Marriage And The Loneliness Epidemic

     There have been some articles and videos on “male loneliness” recently that have struck a chord with me. (Yes, I’m male; don’t let the androgynous first name fool you.) I sense that the problem is both real and extensive. I’ve known men of all ages who suffer from it. And while there are some exceptions, it seems that the great majority of the sufferers are unmated.

     Marriage, be it said at once, is not an infallible remedy for loneliness. Spouses often see less of one another, de facto, than they did before they married. But assuming the marriage to have been well founded – i.e., predicated on more than a shared love of ice hockey or pepperoni pizza – it is capable of assuaging loneliness to some degree.

     Now factor in the decline among men of any interest in the opposite sex. The portents are grave for many reasons, but protracted male loneliness is surely among them.

     For a long time, it was marriage, no other event, that signaled the entrance of a man into adult society. By marrying he’d accepted adult responsibilities: the care and feeding of a wife; the rearing of children; the maintenance of a family, its home, and its place in a larger community. Indeed, one of the reasons male homosexuals were so determined to have their liaisons recognized as marriages was the stigma of eternal adolescence and unspecified hazard attached to the unmarried state. Historically, while widows were embraced and protected by their communities, persistently single men were regarded as threats to community stability.

     A lot of factors were involved in the production of contemporary marital malaise. I need not enumerate them again. Most of them are still quite plainly “present and voting.” But there are a couple of newish developments that presage further deterioration in marriage rates, marital stability, and male loneliness.

     Feminism turned virulently toxic a couple of decades back. Feminist icons encouraged women to regard men as their adversaries, even their enemies. That’s not news. What is news is the further deterioration of women’s attitude toward men from suspicion all the way to contempt. There are quite a number of videos on YouTube that address this phenomenon. At least half of them indicate that men are reacting to it by becoming contemptuous and dismissive of women. In particular, they’re defecting from the marriage pool.

     Combine this trend with the increasing difficulty, in our workaholic society, adult men are having at making friends and cultivating friendships. Women, with their natural inclination toward community, consensus seeking, and support groups, are less seriously affected. Men, who are several ways discouraged from serious social activity through their workplaces, have few channels through which to seek the comradeship of other men.

     A return to the perception of marriage as a valued and valuable state could help everyone. Yet the trends are all in the opposite direction. And the sexes’ feelings for one another slide ever more in the direction of dismissal and contempt, as if we’d lost the knack for appreciating one another’s strengths.

     Today, Roger Simon adds some thoughts and some links to the subject. He perceives the current situation as an actual war on marriage. He also sees connections to other social phenomena, especially Leftist politics:

     …a war against the family that is being fought by the left—that apparently has not learned the lessons of the former Soviet Union to which I referred—on many fronts.
     Disbanding the family in favor of the state is their intention. It is also another step toward globalism.
     The tragedy is that it is also a road to serious human unhappiness.
     When Klaus Schwab said, “You will have nothing and you will be happy,” he was also, by inference, implying the dissolution of the family. You don’t need a spouse. You have the World Economic Forum (WEF), or what flows from it, to take care of you.

     It’s all of a piece…and closely coupled to the ongoing march of the death cults. That collection of essays, supplemented by further writings my Gentle Readers can find here, begins to look like a sketchbook for a totalitarian dystopia devoid of all forms of love: for a spouse, for parents and children, and for friends.

     What more can an essayist say about these things? They’re pernicious! Resist them! Build loving relationships, both with members of your own sex and with those of the opposite sex. Don’t fear them; seek opportunities to create, strengthen, and extend them.

     The Simon essay is behind a paywall, so I’ll reproduce here the most important of the links he provides:

     For a look at what we could have instead of the current Sturm und Drang, here’s a snippet from a recent novel of mine, in which an American couple visits with an extended family in the Piedmont province of Italy:

     The day was long and filled with delights. The Monti family embraced their American visitors as if they were old friends of long standing, parted from their Italian amici for an unspeakably long time. The Americans were overwhelmed by the warmth of their welcome.
     Larry fell in with Ottavio Monti’s brothers, sons, and nephews. They toured him through the fields and into the surrounding countryside, chattering bilingually and nonstop of the family, its business, their work with the grapes and the wine, the breadth and intricacy of local society, and much else. Larry was surprised to discover, after an hour in their company, that he could understand them acceptably well even when they spoke Italian, though he remained unable to reply in that tongue. It amused him to learn of their curiosity about American women. They were extravagant in their praise of Trish’s and Fountain’s beauty and asked whether American women generally reached the standard they set. And by the way, the youngest among them asked, did he know any young American single women—preferably as beautiful, impressively groomed, and confidently feminine as his devoted wife—who might be interested in importing a handsome young Italian for a loving husband?
     Trish was immediately englobed by the Villa Monti women: Ottavio’s sisters, sisters-in-law, daughters, and nieces. They dragged her into a kitchen the size of a baseball diamond, sat her down, clustered around her, and plied her with wine and delicacies until she was at the brink of personal embarrassment. They talked rapidly of villa life, the family business, the Monti menfolk, and local society, which was centered on the local parish. As with Larry, within an hour Trish got the gist of their speech even when they spoke Italian. They plied her with questions about her life, her personal beauty and fitness regimens, fashion trends in America, how the Church was viewed there, why so many American women found it necessary to work outside their homes, whether young American women were as loose of morals as American movies and television made them seem…and Fountain. Why, they wanted to know, had she permitted her husband to install this foundling in their home, when it was plain that her unearthly beauty and allure could only endanger his fidelity? And by the way, the youngest among them asked, did she know of any young, single American men—preferably as tall, handsome, and deliciously masculine as her devoted husband—who might be interested in marrying a beautiful, traditionally feminine Italian girl who knows how to keep a nice house, wants lots of bambini, and really loves to cook?

     Doesn’t that sound more appealing than the mess we have today?

Sep 16 2023

Music For The Ages

     In my not-terribly-humble and completely irrelevant opinion, in all the annals of classical composition, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti reign supreme – and Brandenburg Concerto Nr. 3 is the pinnacle of the group. It’s been my favorite classical piece ever since I was a boy.

     But the Brandenburg Concerti were written for a chamber orchestra accompanied by a harpsichord. Bach didn’t contemplate having them transmogrified to be played on a solo instrument…well, if he did, there’s no record of it. It’s a terrifying challenge to contemplate.

     Well, Gentle Reader, allow me to introduce you to a most talented transcriptionist and organist. His name is Jonathan Scott, and here is his solo rendition of the Allegro from Brandenburg Nr. 3:

     Frankly, if I hadn’t seen and heard it, I don’t think I would have believed it possible. Bravissimo!

Sep 16 2023

How Much Evidence Is Enough?

     So you don’t think things are that bad? You think dialogue between Left and Right is still possible? You think when the consequences of their insane policies become sufficiently obvious, our political opponents will come to their senses?

     No, Gentle Reader. It cannot be, for a simple reason: The Left is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the death cults.

     Time was, doctors had to swear the Hippocratic Oath before being issued their licenses to practice. Here it is:

     I swear before my gods, my ancestors, my teachers, my fellow healers and apprentices, and by all the arts and knowledge I was privileged to learn, that I will stand by these words:
     I will love those who taught me these arts as I love my parents and I will offer my skills to the young with the same generosity that they were given to me. And I will never ask them for gold, but demand that they stand by this covenant in return.
     I also swear that if I earn fame and wealth, I will share it with my masters and my students.
     I will soothe the pain of anyone who needs my art, and if I don’t know how, I will seek the counsel of my teachers.
     I will offer those who suffer all my attention, my science and my love. Never will I betray them or risk their wellbeing to satisfy my vanity.
     I will not hurt my fellow or put a knife to his flesh if I don’t know how, or give him an herb to soothe his pain, even if he begs for it in anguish, if it might take away his breath.
     I will never harm my suffering friend, because life is sacred, from the tender fruit that he once was in his mother’s womb to that first sigh he gave out between her legs when he opened his eyes to the world.
     I will try to understand his sorrows but his secrets will never leave my ears. Under no circumstance I will use his body to advance my knowledge or my fame, unless in his last moment, he or his widow give me his corpse, so that his death may help me understand how to soothe another’s pain.
     I pray that the attention I give to those who put themselves in my hands be rewarded with happiness. And in honor of the knowledge I’ve received from my teachers, I swear to care for anyone who suffers, prince or slave.
     If I ever break this oath, let my gods take away my knowledge of this art and my own health.
     Here speaks a citizen, a servant of people. May I be destroyed if I betray these words

     Stirring, isn’t it? Inspiring, even. But doctors are no longer required to swear to it, nor to the “modern version” that displaced it some years back.

     And so today, we have this:

     When medicine itself is no longer trustworthy – when evil men subordinate the practice of medicine to the advancement of their politics – what remains? What code? What standard?

     We are at war.
     It’s a war for survival.
     Either we win, or we die.

Sep 15 2023

In Memoriam

     It was October of 2017. We had just lost our Newfoundland Rufus to B-cell lymphoma the day before. I felt the best way to commemorate Rufus and assuage the grief was to love someone new. So somewhat against Beth’s wishes, I dragged us to the Brookhaven Animal Shelter to adopt a dog in need.

     We “interviewed” several dogs, but the only one who responded to us was a female pit bull terrier mix named Precious. She was seven years old, and had been left at the shelter by her previous family. We never learned why. Anyway, she’d been at the animal shelter for nine days when we came by. She joined our family that day.

     We knew her life was half over when we adopted her, but why deny a sweet dog a “forever home” for that reason? And she was sweet, from the very first.

     Precious was a cuddlebug. Her idea of a high old time was to sit with her head in my lap. She did so often. She also loved food – any kind, in any amount, at any time – and a wide variety of treats.

     Precious was also an escape artist. She managed to worm her way through or under our fence a dozen times. Neighbors would call, thank God, and hold her until I could get there from wherever I was to pick her up. For a while it was almost a ritual.

     She did cost us some trouble. She was bossy toward Sophie, our German Shepherd mix. And she never really got along with Joy, the Newfoundland puppy we acquired in 2020. They got into one fight – over food, of course – that cost Precious three teeth and me a paralyzed finger. We learned how to prevent future scraps between them. We had to; I couldn’t afford to lose the use of another finger.

     We didn’t know until quite recently that Precious had a heart defect. It first manifested as a very faint murmur. Our veterinarian thought it should be watched, but no more than that. Unfortunately, watching it wasn’t enough to prevent catastrophic congestive heart failure, which struck Precious sometime Tuesday. She lost the use of her back legs, her breathing became labored, and at the last could hardly move under her own power.

     We took Precious on her last ride this morning. At about eleven AM, she “crossed the Rainbow Bridge.”

     Precious isn’t the first pet I’ve had to bid farewell. I’ve owned dogs, cats, hamsters, a white rat, even, quite briefly, an opossum. But experience doesn’t make it any easier. Then again, what I really dread is the day my animals, of whatever kind and number they may be, have to bid farewell to me.

     Rest in peace, beloved friend. May God gather you to His bosom.

Sep 15 2023

Bootlickers Disguise Bootlicking as Shoe Shining

Most folks have probably encountered a situation like this. You’re arguing on social media with some Lefty, and he copies and pastes some links he dug up on Google as evidence his point of view is right, and you’re just an idiot who hates fact-based rational thought.

After all, how can you ignore the opinion of a CNN journalist on the scientific findings of a climate scientist who probably did his work under a government grant? You’re probably one of those people who hates experts, like Tom Nichols often rants about.

That is bad enough. Accepting the perspectives of those in authority simply because they are in positions of authority is foolish. It’s a great way to get taken by some bullshit that just happens to align with the political and financial goals of tyrants. But it gets much worse. We might call the Google link citers Shoe Shiners. They are happy to polish the boots of the ruling caste, because presumably it’s easier than thinking for yourself, and popular culture rewards the Shoe Shiners with immunity from cancellation, feelings of being on the right side of history, and respectful nods from HR crones, schoolteachers, and hall monitors.

There’s a more virulent form of authority worship. Keith Olbermann demonstrates it here:

The cartoon artist, you will note, expresses no opinions on Russia or who is morally righteous – if anybody – in the Ukraine war. Instead, the artist satirizes the pop culture adoration of Zelensky, and how it’s kind of silly to assume this head of state is wandering around distant battlefields merely because he wears military-esque clothes to his press conferences.

Olbermann immediately interprets this as dedicated support of Russia, and angrily denounces it.

Shoe Shiners may express similar opinions if challenged, but Bootlickers do so with gusto, putzing around various forms of social media, looking for anyone who displays insufficient enthusiasm for the cause – whatever cause the authorities have deemed important. Nothing even slightly critical of Ukraine is permitted. The Boots must be licked clean of such treason. You may support Ukraine against Russia, and merely think some of the propaganda is silly – and that is enough to damn you in their eyes, you traitor to the United States. You did not lick the boot presented to you.

Similarly, Bootlickers have been calling for the federal government to nationalize Starlink and take it from Elon Musk because the billionaire asked – for the first time in this conflict – to be paid for Ukraine’s use of Starlink. Up until recently, the service was donated. Many Twitter Lefties declared this to be treason against the United States! If not in law, then at least in fact. I wonder if a soldier on the battlefield asking for pay when he is warring against Russia is similarly treasonous?

Insufficient enthusiasm for the cause – which Musk is now guilty of in the eyes of the Bootlickers – calls for extreme acts. Accusations of treason, nationalization of property, etc. Like Olbermann declaring anyone who pokes fun at Zelensky must be a Russian whore.

Shoe Shiners are bad enough. They will interject their worship of authority and credentialism into many conversations. But the Bootlickers are the ones leading the cancel mobs, and they do so with such fire and emotional energy. Olbermann expresses a deep hatred and anger here, and yet at the same time I wonder if there is also glee underneath it, an almost hidden satisfaction that yes, because he licked enough boots, he gets to treat so many people badly and think of them as beneath him.

Imagine a ladder of Bootlicking. Each person gets to crush his boot into another man’s face for the proper licking. And beneath that man, someone even lower he can enjoy smashing in the face, who must then lick his boot. And so on and so forth down the Progressive stack, until we find basement dwelling white Antifas eager to lick enough boots to climb up from the bottom rung so they can enjoy smashing their boot into a face for the first time.

I doubt Lefties would regard a US soldier shooting his own men quite so badly as a man who draws a critical Zelensky cartoon, or a man who decides he wants to be paid for his contributions to a foreign war effort. I stand with Ukraine flags cover social media, but it’s never enough.

Would the Bootlickers be running their tongues on Bush’s boots during the Iraq invasion? Ah, no. Wrong boot. Presumably the flavor of fake vegan plastic leather is better than real cowhide.

But even Righties were less emotionally involved in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They were quite patriotic about the troops, mind you. But back then I doubt a Righty would have cared if someone drew a cartoon satirizing some Iraqi politician’s media antics, even if that politician was an ally. And even if they cared a little, I doubt you would have seen much behavior like that of Keith Olbermann, or the Musk-haters on Twitter. Someone wants to actually be paid for their contributions to the war? Righties would defend that all day long.

Leftism has a Bootlicker problem. Even the more modest Shoe Shiners are trouble enough, but the Bootlickers have taken this up to the eleven. Everything must be exceptionally positive about the things they like – not even satire is permitted. And everything they dislike must be treated as literal Nazism. Laughs are verboten unless it’s at the other. You can satirize Putin all you like, naturally. Meanwhile, nothing positive is permitted to be said about anyone outside the regime-approved tribes. And you must demand no compensation (publicly, anyway – many Bootlickers find themselves quite wealthy for their trouble) for your support of the authority.

There’s no point arguing with the Bootlickers. It’s questionable if there is even any value in bothering with the mere Shoe Shiners. The blind worship of authority is not something you can reason someone out of – and certainly not in a flame war on the Internet. But where historical bootlicking usually attached itself to an individual, today’s bootlicking is more diffuse, more democratized in a way. There are many boots, and many lickers, and a majority are probably some degrees of both.

Remember, whenever a Lefty gets supremely mad like this, he’s probably enjoying the taste of prime shoe leather, and believes this endows him with the inalienable right to smash his boot on your face, and demand you do the same to those beneath you.

Sep 15 2023

Bastiat Redux

     In his last and best-known book The Law, Frederic Bastiat provides us with a striking description of the essence of State lawlessness:

     But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

     The Enlightenment conception of the rule of law is supposed to prevent agents of the State from claiming the privilege of violating the law that binds private citizens. Yet we know all too well that agents of the State frequently violate the law and are excused for it…as long as they serve the interests of the State and its masters. The fracas over sovereign immunity and qualified immunity is about exactly this.

     In Western countries, the rationale offered for permitting agents of the State to violate otherwise binding laws usually sounds like this: “It’s for the greater good.” That’s a clear admission that as far as our rulers are concerned, their agenda trumps the law: “The needs of the State must come first.” Candid analysis of what’s meant by “the needs of the State” is discouraged. We the Put-Upon are basically told to sit down and shut up.

     I don’t expect anyone to find the above an unprecedented illumination of matters previously swathed in shadow. It’s all “previous work” for anyone aware of the degradation of the Republic these past dozen decades. What’s brought it to the top of my thoughts this fine morning is that the privilege expressed above is being asserted by a widening circle of politically connected and influential people. The hypocrisies involved should not escape our scrutiny.

     Consider handguns and who is allowed to carry them in public. Hardly any federal officeholder is without a concealed-carry permit. In all probability, their staffers are similarly empowered. But the typical member of that set blanches at the thought of an armed populace. It makes him tremble with fear to imagine all those…commoners equipped with the same tools that he bears as a token of his status. Why, they might take it into their heads that they don’t need him…and what follows.

     That behavior is common enough among officeholders that it gets virtually no attention except from us gun nuts. But recently the legions of the politically influential and connected have been behaving similarly and being blatant about it…and not just about handguns.

***

     For some years now, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has been headed by a certain Randi Weingarten. She rose to that position after the retirement of her predecessor, Albert Shanker. Among other things, Shanker is known for making explicit something that was considered unspeakable before him:

     “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”

     Weingarten has made it plain that she shares Shanker’s sentiments. She’s been vociferously against any and every educational alternative to government-run, taxpayer-funded public schools, and openly compares those who promote such alternatives to segregationists:

     A top teachers union boss cited a far-left smear factory in demonizing the parental rights movement by comparing it to the “Uptown Klans” that opposed the end of racial segregation in the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
     “Those same words that you heard in terms of wanting segregation post-Brown v. Board, those same words you hear today,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a podcast interview published Tuesday.
     “I was kind of gobsmacked when I was talking to Southern Poverty Law Center, and they showed me the same words, ‘choice,’ ‘parental rights,’ and an attempt to divide parents versus teachers,” Weingarten added. “At that point, it was white parents versus other parents, but it’s the same kind of words.”

     That rhetoric is being echoed by regional teachers’ union officials across the land. But recently, a small inconsistency in that position became visible to the public:

     The president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is facing backlash after it was recently revealed that she had enrolled her eldest child in a private school.
     Stacy Davis Gates – who was elected president of CTU in 2022 and also serves as executive vice president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers – placed her teenage son in a Catholic high school located in Chicago’s South Side, according to a report by NBC Chicago.
     The report, which cited multiple sources and Davis Gates’ own social media posts as confirmation of the enrollment, did not specify the name of Davis Gates’ child or the school he had been enrolled in.
     […]
     Davis Gates, whose two younger children attend public schools, has voiced strong opposition to private education and school choice in the past. She has also taken a stance against the Illinois Invest in Kids program, which “offers a 75 percent income tax credit to individuals and businesses that contribute to qualified Scholarship Granting Organizations” and “provide[s] scholarships for eligible Illinois students to attend qualified, non-public schools in Illinois.”

     So Miss Gates – who’s black, by the way – is opposed to private education for everyone but her own son! She had to double-clutch when that datum became public…and she did:

     “You may have seen the recent online attacks against my family and our union related to the school where my eldest child recently enrolled. This story was initiated by a disgruntled former CTU employee with a history of violent incidents who has stalked members of my family and made threats against other CTU members,” Davis Gates claimed.

     She couldn’t refute the message, so she attacked the messenger! At least she didn’t try to claim her son’s enrollment is “for the greater good.”

     This is how people who believe themselves superior to you and me – they who seek to reduce our choices while preserving and expanding theirs – reveal themselves to us.

***

     I could go on about this and similar behavior, but I think the point will stand. The dyed-in-the-wool statist, whether or not he holds a public office, is all in favor of freedom…for himself. As for you, well, you just don’t know what’s best for you, Citizen! Besides, we’re working for the greater good, and you’re just pursuing your grubby personal interests. So no backtalk! We’ll make the decisions; your role is to obey.

     From his writing desk in heaven, Frederic Bastiat is nodding sagely as we speak. And why shouldn’t he? He did tell us so.

Sep 14 2023

Assorted

     Day From Hell Alert! I have three appointments today – two doctors, one broker – a mandatory social engagement this evening, and a raft of other chores besides, so please accept the following few observations, that I might have some prospect of surviving the day.

***

1. Now Tell Us Something We Don’t Know.

     John Nolte provides his readers A Blinding Flash Of The Obvious:

     New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-Tyrant) believes she can unilaterally suspend the Second Amendment. If that’s the case, then what’s to stop her and her defenders from suspending all the amendments?
     […]
     Grisham used the murder of an 11-year-old boy in Democrat-run Albuquerque, a city that has had one Republican mayor since 1985, to justify this act. No sane person believes this ban will save a single life. In fact, sane people know what happens when criminals know everyone else is helpless and unarmed.

     I had a dim sense – murky, inchoate, and tentative – that politicians who believe themselves above the law might also believe that the law is what they say it is. The Constitution being the Supreme Law of the Land, for a state governor to proclaim it “not absolute” is indeed a reach for dictatorial status. But let’s not forget that Joe Biden did the same thing:

     President Joe Biden said Thursday that “no amendment is absolute” while discussing the Second Amendment and repeated a debunked claim that cannons were prohibited when the amendment was passed.
     […]
     Additionally, Biden received backlash on Twitter from gun rights advocates who took issue with his claim that the Second Amendment is not “absolute.”
     “Actually, @JoeBiden, the 2nd Amendment is absolute,” oil executive and author Dan K. Eberhart tweeted. “It’s part of the Constitution, whether you like it or not.”
     “Biden targets law-abiding gun owners, saying ‘there’s NO amendment that’s absolute!’” a Republican National Committee Twitter account posted.

     The politician’s credo: “Our will is absolute. Your rights are not.”

     Never forget.

***

2. Astounding…But Only If You Were Fanatically Dedicated To The Contrary.

     Enjoy the tone of this article from the Daily Mail:

     President Joe Biden faces an impeachment vote over his alleged ties to his son Hunter’s business dealings – many of which have been uncovered by DailyMail.com.
     Emails, texts, photos and documents unearthed by this publication have added to a still-growing body of evidence suggesting that Joe may have been improperly involved in Hunter’s shady foreign deals, including when he was Vice President.
     That evidence has now prompted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to call a Thursday meeting of top Republicans to plan a vote on impeaching the President.
     Impeachment could give GOP investigators more powers to obtain bank statements and other documents to root out any possible financial links Joe had with his son.
     It could also see Hunter hauled in front of Congress to testify under oath.

     This U.K. publication has always tended toward the sensational and the scandalous…except in reporting on left-wing politicians. Now that there’s enough evidence of Biden’s corruption to float an aircraft carrier with all of its supporting vessels, the previous revelations must be made to look like the Mail’s own, original work.

     Color me unsurprised.

***

3. The Red Pill.

     As the times darken, Francis X. Maier states an imperative, not just of Catholics, but of all good men. He begins with a quote from a Paul Kingsnorth essay:

     Sometimes I lie awake at night, or I wander in the field behind my house, or I walk down the street in our local town and think I can see it all around me: the grid. The veins and sinews of the Machine that surrounds us and pins us and provides for us and defines us now. I imagine a kind of network of shining lines in the air, glowing like a dewed spiderweb in the morning sun. I imagine the cables and the satellite links, the films and the words and the records and the opinions, the nodes and the data centres that track and record the details of my life. I imagine the mesh created by the bank transactions and the shopping trips, the passport applications and the text messages sent. I see this thing, whatever it is, being constructed, or constructing itself around me, I see it rising and tightening its grip, and I see that none of us can stop it from evolving into whatever it is becoming.

     I see the Machine, humming gently to itself as it binds us with its offerings, as it dangles its promises before us and slowly, slowly, slowly reels us in. I think of the part of it we interact with daily, the glowing white interface through which we volunteer every detail of our lives in exchange for information or pleasure or stories told by global entertainment corporations who commodify our culture and sell it back to us. I think of the words we use to describe this interface, which we carry with us in our pockets wherever we go, as we are tracked down every street and into every forest that remains: the web; the net.

     I think: These are things designed to trap prey.

     Maier continues:

     In The Matrix, Neo’s awakening to reality involves literally unplugging from the machines and a painful, if salvific, recovery. Paul Kingsnorth has stripped away as much of today’s high-tech, narcotic cocoon as he can from his family’s daily life. (He still writes on his computer; he’s not crazy.)

     And he’s happier for it – for good reason. We can’t be the creatures of dignity God made us to be; we can’t be leaven in the world; we can’t serve Jesus Christ and see clearly what needs to be done in the world, if we’re lumps of its sleeping debris. We’re meant to be better than that. As St. Paul writes, we’re meant to be sons and daughters of the light, so “let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.” (1 Thess 5:6)

     In other words: Take the red pill.

     Penetrating and brilliant. Please read it all.

***

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Now begins the driving around, being poked, prodded, and Dutch-uncled by the minions of the Medical-Financial ComplexTM, plus the even more painful shelling-out that usually follows routinely painful experiences. Have a nice day.

Sep 13 2023

De-Angrifying Music

     Sometimes, nothing else will do the job for me. Herewith, The Telling, with the concluding track from their brilliant first album Blue Solitaire:

     May you know peace and contentment. They’re getting pretty hard to find, lately.

Sep 13 2023

Mask Droppings Dept 2023-09-13

     I never expected anything this brazen, even from the Usurper Regime:

     The White House sent a letter to top US news executives on Wednesday, urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite having found no evidence of a crime.
     “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by CNN.
     The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” was sent to executives helming the nation’s largest news organizations, including CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News, and others, a White House official familiar with the matter said.

     That was reported by CNN, Gentle Reader. Consider the implications.

     What’s next? Will the Biden White House order the IRS to begin audits of all Congressional Republicans? Perhaps have the National Security Agency monitor all their communications? Or just have the FBI’s special-weapons squads raid every Republican in Congress at 4:00 AM?

     We are living through a coup d’etat. Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, we can track it move by move. We can know who did what, and when, and to whom, and who was paid what to do it. Yet the Democrats apparently fear none of the foreseeable consequences.

     How can this be? Have we truly become so inured to outright, undisguised authoritarianism and corruption that a blatant attempt to mobilize the media as overt political weapons is now a usable tactic? What will it take to rouse us from our torpor, such that we rise up, pull these villains bodily from their offices and hang them from Washington D.C.’s lampposts?

     Either the Usurpers are flailing in a pure panic, or they sincerely think they can get away with anything. Given the flaccidity of the American public despite their depredations to date, I’d bet on the latter. Will this stroke change anything?

     The step after this would be the Usurpers’ nationalization of the broadcast and cablecast networks. Is that what we’re waiting for?

     I think I’ll check the ammo stocks. Then lie down for a while.

Sep 13 2023

AFK

For those of you who weren’t around when bulletin boards and internet chat were new, that stands for “Away From Keyboard”. Just a little note to let people know you weren’t going to be there for a while. Since Mr. Porretto does the lion’s share of the writing here, you won’t miss much.

I’ll be taking a trip on two wheels, and I’m deliberately not bringing any electronics other than my phone for emergencies and my GPS for directions. Although I’m bringing my map and compass, so the GPS will likely stay tucked in the saddlebags.

For those who are interested in this sort of thing, you can go to Tour of Honor and get the gist of what I’m doing. Normally I would do this in more of a barnstorming manor, hauling ass through states and trying to hit all the sites as quickly as possible. This time I’ll be stopping to smell the roses, visiting with a few friends, and seeing some places that I’ve never seen. Maybe camping out under the stars a couple of times.

Anyways, I’ll see you in a week. Maybe a week and a half.

Sep 13 2023

Drooling Joe’s puppet masters summon their flying monkeys

New 8x10 Photo: Wicked Witch of the West and Flying Monkey in"The Wizard of Oz"

You can almost hear them screeching “ATTACK! ATTAAAAAAAACK!”

Biden’s White House is planning to send a letter to some of the country’s most prominent news organizations — including CNN, The New York Times, and Fox News — urging them to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans “for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.” [….]

In a draft letter to news executives obtained by CNN Tuesday, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, said the inquiry has no supporting evidence, which “should set off alarm bells for news organizations.”

Setting aside the obvious lie that this inquiry has “no supporting evidence”, a claim so laughable that anyone uttering it should be publicly flogged for the good of humanity, the anti-American Marxists running this country are now openly telling their propaganda mouthpieces what to do, rather than saying it behind closed doors. Which means they’re either scared stupid, or they have no fear that the American public will be able to do anything about it in 2024.

Drooling Joes puppet masters are flat out telling the media to attack Republicans, and they’re doing so openly. And I think some of the media are panicking about it being so open, but there’s nothing that they’ll do to push back on it. The media has been part of the DNC for decades now, and short of total destruction I don’t see that changing. And I’m not opposed to the total destruction of the alphabet networks. Hell, I wouldn’t even miss FOX, given that they played the Democrat’s tune in 2020 during the election. “Arizona for Biden”, anyone? What a crock. But it shouldn’t be surprising given that one of the ultimate two-faced backstabbing traitors, Paul Ryan, is on some board or another for FOX. Who you choose/pay to advise you tells me the direction in which you’re heading.

Expect the usual swarm of lies to pour forth like a tidal wave during the proceedings. The DNC whores/Media are going to have to ramp up their spin even harder than they normally do for Drooling Joe.

Sep 13 2023

Has The Left Reached Peak Viciousness Yet?

     It doesn’t look like it:

     Far-left MSNBC columnist and radio host Dean Obeidallah said that Trump, “must die in prison,” to send a message.
     “I think Donald Trump must die in prison because I don’t care if he was 45 years old. You should get life in prison if you attempt a coup, and there should be no chance of parole. I don’t care who it is,” the radio host said in a recent interview with a Mediaite reporter, according to Fox News.
     Dean Obeidallah insisted the former president die in prison for daring to challenge the 2020 election to send a message to the public that “you can’t do this.”
     “That’s why I think Donald Trump or anyone else who commits a coup, must die in jail, because either we’re going to protect the democratic republic, or we’re going to allow people, in this case, Trump, to chip away at our democracy and chip away at what we believe in these institutions,” he argued. “That’s why I’m so passionate about, like with every fiber of my being, that Donald Trump has to live out his natural days, his last days of natural life, in a prison cell.”

     These people are so filled with hatred that there’s no unit of measure that could be applied to it. To call them out on their deceits evokes the “Kill!” response from them with absolute reliability. Now that they’ve captured the elections machinery, they consider questioning it a capital offense.

     But that’s not the end of the story. They have Republican allies. Men equally determined to destroy Donald Trump, though they might not say so where others can hear.

     Trump violated the unspoken Prime Directive of politics: Don’t rock the boat. And that terrified both wings of the political Establishment. They have decreed his doom. He’ll be lucky to escape their wrath, regardless of what verdicts are returned by the kangaroo courts that will try him for speaking his mind.

     And you, and I, and anyone else who dares to defy the Powers That Be, will be next.

Sep 12 2023

And once again, we were right

Not the Royal “we” but the thousands and thousands of people who have been telling anyone who would listen that the jab is worse than the Kung Flu.

The Vaccine is the Virus.

Sep 12 2023

Invidious Comparisons Dept.

     This story provoked quite a range of reactions from readers. Mine was “Why did ‘they’ wait so long when the danger to ‘them’ is so obvious?”

Bank Shuts Down ‘Silver Stackers and Gold Stackers’ Shop’s Business and Personal Accounts

     An Ohio-based coin shop owner recently took to YouTube to share alarming news: His regional bank, with whom he has been a customer for years, has suddenly decided to sever ties by closing all six of his business and personal accounts….
     This isn’t an isolated event. The owner is aware of at least three other businesses — two coin shops and a pawn shop — in Ohio that faced the same issue in recent years.

     Please read it all. The banks involved were “unable” to give reasons for the severance of these longstanding relationships. “Unable” might be better read as “I know but I can’t (or won’t) tell you.” The nature of the enterprises treated this way is the key.

     If you’ve ever possessed a silver dollar, do you remember how it felt to have it in your hand? Solid. Substantial. Even pretty, despite being a wee bit tarnished. It feels real. It doesn’t promise anything; it is something: an item of value that’s widely recognized and accepted as such. The alert individual will perceive and acknowledge those traits without being prompted.

     Compare that experience to pulling a $20 bill out of your wallet. Today the two have approximately equal market values.

     The federal government is conducting a War on Cash. It’s simultaneously inflating the dollar as rapidly as possible while working toward the elimination of all physical currency in favor of a “digital dollar.” Since it wants that digital artifact to be the sole medium of exchange accepted in these United States, it must eliminate any media that might compete with it. Just now, the purchase and accumulation of gold and silver by private individuals is racing the available supplies. Anyone who needs an explanation should give these baseline essays a review:

  1. King Cash
  2. The Nature of Money and Currency
  3. Bimetallism and Gresham’s Law
  4. The Great Transformation
  5. The Emergence of Banks and Banking

     Q.E.D., as we mathematical types like to say.

     Cash is essential to privacy – and historically, gold and silver have been the preferred forms of cash. Moreover, a comparison between the attributes of gold and silver coins and those of any other medium always favors gold and silver. Most important of all, “the dollar,” bless its heart, is steadily losing value, as anyone who has to feed his household will know. But gold and silver are rising in value even more rapidly than the dollar is sinking.

     And so I find myself asking, “Why did the Usurpers wait so long to move against the sellers of gold and silver to private parties? The threat to politically-controlled money and the ‘digital dollar’ has been obvious from the very first.”

Sep 12 2023

Why Now?

     Robert Royal’s column of today, “Psychopaths In Power,” makes several useful observations:

     The great psychologist and social commentator Jordan Peterson recently found exactly the right few words for our predicament: Psychopaths are in power. Others have said as much. He added, however, that the psychopaths have been utterly brilliant in using terms like freedom, tolerance, inclusion, openness, and diversity to disguise the destruction they’re causing, making it look sane, progressive, constructive, compassionate, even “Christian.”
     A bit of realism based on experience treating mentally disturbed people.
     It’s useful to trace out exactly what this means just now, because we’re living through something different than in the past. We’ve seen psychopaths in power, via obvious lies, in historic dictatorships: left was right, down was up, murder was justice, repression brought liberation. The twentieth century was full of them: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Fidel. More recently we’ve had Hugo Chavez, the Ortegas, Xi, Kim Jong Un, and countless others.

     It’s often been asked, in the present and the recent past, “Why now? Why are all these monsters in power at essentially the same time? Why weren’t previous generations afflicted as we are today?” It’s about numbers, really. There are more humans alive today than ever before. The rate of incidence of certain pathologies doesn’t vary much, so the number of psychopaths “available” is roughly proportional to the total world population.

     Add to that: The more psychopaths there are, the more brilliant psychopaths there are. Such people, with their innate drive for power over others, will have the necessary “pride, craft, and cruelty” (Leo Tolstoy) to get it. The rise of national and international media and the widespread embrace of “democracy” are things they learn to exploit. Thus we get the political history of the century-plus just behind us.

     It follows that as our numbers increase, the urgency of identifying and culling the dangerous individuals among us increases as well. Catastrophically, the trend is in the opposite direction: we’ve been treating psychopaths and sociopaths ever more gently, and allowing them ever more opportunities to rise to power as we – and they – have multiplied. Concurrently, the psychopaths have been getting more and more skilled at subjugating us. Unless we manage to open the “high frontier” P.D.Q., the prognosis is bleak.

     Americans have the literally unique advantage of being armed – of having the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in our Supreme Law. That is the sole potential corrective for the rise of psychopaths. If anyone needs it explained why we must hang on to our guns at all costs, remind him that upon rising to power, among the very first acts of each great psychopath in history was the disarming of his subjects. After that, all else follows.

Sep 12 2023

Now Where Have I Seen This Before?

     Karen Ashley reports:

     New York City is struggling with the financial toll of the illegal immigrant crisis, so as part of the city-wide budget reductions, the Director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, Jacques Jiha, suggested reduced overtime hours for the NYPD, the Department of Sanitation, the Fire Department, and the Department of Corrections.

     This is an old play known as the Washington Monument Defense:

     When informed that cuts in jobs and in pay were inevitable, the municipal unions ran amok. It is only fair to say that Mayor Beame’s cuts in the summer of 1975, under the supervision of the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC), were deliberately inflammatory. They were calculated for the purpose of “proving” that the city needed state and federal aid. Beame dismissed nearly 5000 policemen and more than 2000 firemen (closing twenty-six firehouses) and fired nearly 3000 of the city’s 10,000 sanitation workers. The unions understood that this was an act of political blackmail. In June 1975 the firemen’s and policemen’s unions published a four page leaflet which they distributed to tourists. Titled “Welcome to Fear City,” with a lurid skeleton’s head on the cover, the pamphlet advised visitors to New York to stay indoors after 6 P.M., avoid public transportation, and, “until things change, stay away from New York if you possibly can.” In July the sanitation workers went on strike. They threatened to turn “Fear City” into “Stink City” and shouted from picket lines, “Wait till the rats come!”

     [From William E. Simon’s A Time For Truth]

     Statists don’t have a lot of categorically different arrows in their quiver. They all come down to a threat of some sort, whether it’s a threat to harm us directly, with their enforcers, or a threat to harm us indirectly, by withholding something we need that they control. It works more often than not.

     And it suggests that the whole rotten notion that some must rule over others, whether we call it the State or government, must be ditched – the sooner the better – and replaced by free men who look after themselves and demand nothing of others except to be left in peace.

Sep 11 2023

Forgotten

Sometimes it’s hard to understand that actions which affected me greatly had very little effect on someone else. At my final duty station, one of the troops I supervised was born after September 11th 2001. Although she understood 9-11 as a historical event, there’s no way that she could understand it emotionally, how it impacted the people of this country. She didn’t have the experience of it, just as I didn’t have the experience of December 7th.

But that doesn’t excuse the vast majority of people who have willfully forgotten anything and everything about 9-11.

Reading Instapundit this morning, this quote caught my eye:

But we have forgotten the criminal negligence of our political leaders and intelligence services that got us to that point. We should have purged the incompetents then. Instead, they’re still running the show. The country is still sound, but the people in charge of it have only gotten worse.

Does the name “Jamie Gorelick” ring a bell? She was the incompetent commie fart-sniffer who made sure that the FBI and CIA couldn’t talk to each other about the muslims who wanted to learn how to fly a plane but not land one. She’s still involved in the government to this day. She has her fingers in everything, despite having the literal opposite of the Midas Touch. Everything she touches turns to shit. She’s highly credentialed and highly incompetent, but she’s also highly connected and she only fails upwards.

And she’s only one example. Look into the bureaucracy, the Deep State that’s running this country, and you will find more and more examples of corruption, incompetency, and outright anti-American activities from people who have infested the government for decades, fat ticks riding on the American public, and killing us at the same time.

It’s a cycle if failure and stupidity that keeps coming around. Time to whip out that graphic again:

September 11th was a horrifying day. But what is more horrifying to me is the fact that the people who allowed September 11th to happen are still in charge, and actively working to make people forget that day because then people might stop asking how it was allowed to happen.

And too many Americans are happy to go along with that.

Now if you’ll pardon me, I have things to do, and I’m in a foul mood. Perhaps some hard physical labor will help me improve my thinking. If not, at least I’ll get things done.

Sep 11 2023

Sovereign Immunity

     [The following piece first appeared at Liberty’s Torch V1.0 on June 14, 2016. And before you ask: No, I haven’t been to the kzinti homeworld since then. – FWP]

     Some years ago, a friend of mine who sought to pursue an action against his township for mistakenly demolishing his house was told, in exactly the following words, that “The king can do no wrong.” The town functionary who said it was chuckling as he did so.

     This is the doctrine of sovereign immunity: the notion that a government, whether federal, state, or local, is immune to any recourse against it sought by private citizens. The following sentence from a 1991 decision concerning a suit against an Alaskan aboriginal town is particularly striking:

     [W]e have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact; that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the “plan of the convention.”

     (I particularly like the interpretation of Amendment XI as standing “not so much for what it says,” don’t you? “It doesn’t mean what it says; it means what we say it means.”)

     In combination with sovereign immunity doctrine, the Martinez-Barker decision allows individual State functionaries to claim as their defense that they were “just following orders” in committing even a major felony against a private citizen. Thus, a government can do anything to a private citizen without it or any of its minions being vulnerable to legal action.

     Note how this contradicts the legal doctrine under which the Nuremberg war crimes trials were conducted.

     At this time, government agents are getting away with quite a lot. Nor did it start with Ruby Ridge.

     The conception of the American polity as one governed by the “rule of law” would suggest that no one, regardless of his station, can claim immunity from the law. Indeed, it was a point often and publicly made by presidents and legislators before the Civil War. Isabel Paterson considered it a fundamental distinction between American society, which she called a “Society of Contract, and its European forebears in which altitude of birth could immunize an individual against legal claims, which she characterized as “Societies of Status.”

     Yet we see today, from Ruby Ridge, the Waco massacre, and other, less well publicized incidents, that the “rule of law” is a fiction when it comes to seeking redress against a government or a politically privileged individual. When it was asserted that “The king can do no wrong” in medieval times, the unspoken codicil was “You just try to do something about it.” That’s not supposed to be the case in these United States, as Amendment II should make clear. Yet the courts have maintained the “sovereign immunity” pretense even in the face of the most outrageous misdeeds.

     Have a snippet from a great science fiction novel of the early Seventies: Larry Niven’s Ringworld:

     Earth’s population had been stabilized, about the middle of the twenty-first century, at eighteen billion. The Fertility Board, a subsection of the United Nations, made and enforced the birth control laws. For more than half a thousand years those laws had remained the same: two children to a couple, subject to the judgment of the Fertility Board. The Board decided who might be a parent how many times. The Board might award extra children to one couple, deny any children at all to another, all on the basis of desirable or undesirable genes.
     “Incredible,” said the kzin.
     “Why? Things were getting pretty tanj crowded, with eighteen billion people trapped in a primitive technology.”
     “If the Patriarchy tried to force such a law on kzinti, we would exterminate the Patriarchy for its insolence.”

     The “kzin,” known (at that time) as Speaker to Animals, was expressing his sense that the kzinti Patriarchy, a nominally unbounded authority over all kzinti, would nevertheless not tolerate certain abuses of its supposed power. (He may have been correct; I’ve never visited the kzinti homeworld.) In practical terms, this is also the American attitude…until the American in question collides with the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

     On occasion, sovereign immunity has failed to protect a government; see the Battle of Athens for a recent example. When a sufficient number of persons are sufficiently well armed and sufficiently motivated, they can topple a government. In that sense, sovereign immunity in the U.S. is a fiction, for few local governments are better armed than their residents en masse. Indeed, I would guess that at this time no state government could outgun its residents without federal assistance. However, the fiction is important, above all for a terrible reason: it increases the probability that a truly outrageous government act will precipitate a rebellion and the concomitant bloodshed.

     Amendment I, which includes the express acknowledgement of “the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” implies thereby that sovereign immunity is an unAmerican concept, the rhetorical vermiculations of jurists notwithstanding. Yet it has been maintained for more than a century. I can’t nail it down, but I have a strong suspicion that the origin of this noxious judicial doctrine might be found in the many overreaches of Reconstruction governments after the Civil War. If that proves to be so, it will add further ammunition to the cause of those who argue that that war, despite the liberation of the slaves and the preservation of the Union, is something modern Americans should hesitate to defend. But that’s past. What’s of much greater importance is whether sovereign immunity can be undone by anything short of a national revolt.

     Food for thought.

     [A final thought: Charles Evans Hughes, once the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, once said “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” In this he echoed a liberal scholar, Leonard Levy, who said that what matters is not what the Constitution says, but what the Court has said about the Constitution in more than 400 volumes of commentary. That is the attitude of the man who disbelieves in individuals’ rights, who holds that “the needs of the State come first:” the deep-dyed statist – and today, American governments are entirely in the hands of such persons. – FWP]

Sep 10 2023

Never forget that this was MANDATED

Boosted people more likely to be infected than unvaccinated people.

The Role of Spike Protein in Myocarditis.

So people who got the jab are MORE likely to catch the Kung Flu when it comes around again. And there is obviously a link between the jab and myocarditis and a whole host of other problems. People were pointing out years ago that there had never been a successful vaccine against any covid virus. Not only does the once-mandated jab NOT protect you, it makes you more likely to get sick.

I don’t know how many times we get to say “I told you so” but I know that I’m not reaching my limit any time soon.

Sep 10 2023

Some Music For Your Afternoon

     With the summer drawing to a close, preparations for the autumn season are in progress. Here at the Fortress, we’re slowly gathering the outdoor impedimenta of summer and taking it to storage, while inside we’re making adjustments to the décor, unloading the summer rounds from the guns and reloading with autumn-appropriate rounds. Yes, really! I mean, you wouldn’t want to be shot with a round that’s out of season, would you? What would the neighbors think?

     Anyway, here’s some thematic music for the time of year, from the Strawbs’ album Hero and Heroine, with seasonal images:

Load more