Mar 31 2024

Evidence That Demands A Verdict

     That’s the title of a famous book by a notable Christian apologist. It’s also suitable for labeling this obscenity:

     Protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza interrupted a Saturday night Easter Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, chanting “Free, free Palestine” before being removed from the service.
     Thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered in Times Square earlier Saturday before some headed to the Easter Vigil service at St. Patrick’s, where their chants of “Free, free Palestine” could be heard during the second reading of the service.
     At least some of the protesters were with Extinction Rebellion NYC’s Palestinian Solidarity group and carried a flag with an olive tree and the words “SILENCE = DEATH” written across it.

     That’s enough for me. They are evil. No further argument will be entertained.

Mar 31 2024

The Outrider

     [A short story for you today. Some “great events” are, in point of fact, merely resultants. They’re preceded by much smaller and less visible events that made them, if not inevitable, at least overwhelmingly likely. If there’s a great event to come, where should we look for the seemingly insignificant precursors that will precipitate it upon us? – FWP]

     He struck at the stroke of noon.
     It was the best time by far, for the confluence of conditions made him both a rebel and a hero. With a single mighty sweep of his arm he cleansed the counter of the offending items, the instruments of oppression accepted too meekly and for too long. With motions both magisterial and reverent, he restored the ancient devices the oppressors had seized. As dozens of patrons gazed upon his deed in wonder and joy, he stood aside and gestured at the symbols of freedom reborn.
     “Comes the revolution!”
     He swept his cape aside and marched out of the building with a conqueror’s stride, to the sound of overwhelming applause and cheers.

***

     The authorities were swift to descend upon the scene. It availed them naught, for no one who’d witnessed the event could identify the perpetrator. Their words gave him gentle homage and thanks. Yea, even those who stood mute testified thereby to his greatness.
     “It was magnificent,” one young woman said. “He was magnificent. A hero of the old type, when men were truly men.” There was no mistaking the adoration in her eyes or voice. Had he been present, she would have gladly made herself his slave.
     The myrmidons of the State were not pleased. Their distaste reached its peak when the crowd forbade them, by their sheer numbers, from undoing his handiwork. At that moment it was plain that something greater than they had expected, perhaps greater than they or their masters could gainsay, had begun in that place.
     Their report to their superiors was not cheerfully nor placidly received.
     “Find him,” their commander bellowed. “Leave no stone unturned. Though this be a mere token, a dash of rebellion from a lone outrider, it could galvanize the rabble, spur them to much larger acts of defiance. It is at this stage, when the matter seems trivial, that the impulse to defy us must be crushed.”
     Chastened, the brutes set forth upon their mission. Yet not one dared to return to the place where the rebel had struck. The people had made it into a shrine.

***

     They never found him.
     Days gathered into weeks, and thence to months. His identity remained unknown, as did his whereabouts. Yet he had inspired others to take up his cause. Incidents spread from that seemingly insignificant village with a speed that confounded the oppressors’ expectations. He had kindled the flame of rebellion that commander had feared. His likeness—a short man garbed all in black, with a cape and a mask—became the icon of the rebels from coast to coast. Try as they might, the agents of the State could not erase it, nor him, from the minds of his followers.
     Only one knew him for what he’d done: the woman who nightly shared his bed.
     “Are you happy?” she said when the lights were out and their arms were around one another.
     He smiled in the evening gloom. “Very. You?”
     She nodded. “I wouldn’t have believed it would spread like this.”
     “I couldn’t be sure it would,” he said after a moment. “But big things start small more often than the histories admit.”
     “This seemed pretty damned small, Everett.”
     “It was, no argument.” He chuckled in remembrance. “But it had the advantage of proceeding from an absurdity that had already started people grumbling. Remember?”
     “Not exactly when,” she said. “But what? Of course.”
     He squeezed her gently. “I was there, you know. I didn’t want anything but a burger and a little ketchup for it, the same as a lot of other customers when the jackboots marched in. They wouldn’t even speak to us. They just took the ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise pumps, put up a sign about the new public-health regulations, and marched out. Remember how I looked that day?”
     “I’ll never forget it.”
     “Then came the little portion-controlled foil packages,” he said. “The ones so hard to open that half of them were wasted and half the customers didn’t even bother trying. And then—”
     “The protests about the packaging waste and the damage to the environment?” she said.
     “Yeah. That was when I realized that someone had to take a stand.”
     “Before that,” she said, “I had no idea how…how brave you are.” Her voice shook. “Driving to Mexico all by yourself, evading surveillance, finding and buying those condiment pumps, smuggling them back here, keeping them in secret until it was time to strike…”
     “Don’t think too much of me, Alice. It was something any decent man would have done. Eventually, anyway. The proof is all around us today. Someone just had to be first, that’s all.”
     “They could still find you.”
     He nodded. “They might.”
     She pulled him tight against her. “I love you, Everett.”
     “I love you, Alice,” he whispered.
     They slept.

==<O>==

Copyright © 2024 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

(With gratitude for the works of Harlan Ellison.)

Mar 31 2024

Promise Kept

     In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
     And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
     And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
     And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.
     And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.
     Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

     [Matthew 28:1-10]

     The greatest story ever told culminates in the keeping of the greatest promise ever made.

     Happy Easter, everyone. May God bless and keep you all.

Mar 30 2024

When someone tells you who they are,

Believe them.

If you thought March 31 was Easter Sunday, think again, heretic. And no, I’m not referring to the fact that for, Orthodox Christians, Easter falls this year on May 5. Those who celebrate Easter on March 31 are heretics from the standpoint of the Biden regime’s favored religion, which is worlds away from Old Joe’s ostentatious and hollow Roman Catholicism. March 31, you see, is the Transgender Day of Visibility.

Joe Biden’s Catholicism has always been hollow. It’s always been something that he gave lip service to, a shield to be flung up against any accusations of immorality. But Drooling Joe the Chinese Hand Puppet has acted in ways that give the lie to his self-proclaimed faith.

His support for abortion. His support for gay “rights”, which is really the elevation and celebration of LGBTOSTFU over anyone else.. And now this.

Joe Biden’s priorities were always whatever would gain him power. He lies so often and so wildly that you don’t know if he actually believes any of the words coming out of his mouth. He’s been corrupt for as long as he’s been in the public eye. Every single one of his actions shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that when it comes to Christianity, he doesn’t believe a single word of it.

And his puppet masters certainly don’t believe a single bit of it either.

Pray. If you’re of the type, go to confession at some point. Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. But don’t allow yourself to be fooled, or tempted by people who hate the faith, and who hate you for having faith.

Mar 30 2024

Fears And What Lies Behind Them

     If a man should tell you that he’s “extremely fearful” of some possibility, it immediately has you inquiring for his reasons. In some cases, some of those reasons will be (damn it all) “obvious.” You might have known about them before he expressed his fear. But in others, the more important of his reasons will be, in Ayn Rand’s words, “reasons they do not wish to tell.”

     Probe delicately but as closely as you dare. Often you can open a window into his character.

     Today’s screed arises from this Epoch Times article:

     Democrats are more likely to feel fearful and angry if former President Donald Trump is elected in November than Republicans are about President Joe Biden winning a reelection, a recent poll found.
     According to a recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the majority of Democrats are both extremely fearful (66 percent) and very angry (60 percent) if the former president wins another term in the 2024 White House race.
     In contrast, 49 percent of Republicans feel very fearful, and 45 percent are angry about President Biden’s victory.

     “Extreme fear” must be grounded in an expectation of extreme consequences. What possible consequences might those fearful Democrats have in mind?

     One that comes to mind readily enough is impact to their livelihoods. A far higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans work for a government. Trump is candid about his intention to reduce the size and scope of the federal Leviathan. He demonstrated it during his first term. Also, persons on the Left are more likely than those in the Right to partake of some government benefit, which might also be affected by a second Trump Administration.

     Another is the Left’s fondness for sexual license without consequences. It’s been a while since any of the old laws against such things as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, sodomy, et cetera had force, even though many are still formally “on the books.” Trump himself is not a bluenose and would have no interest in returning to that regime, but his most conservative supporters might. There remains an undercurrent of anger about sexual profligacy in certain parts of the electorate that gets more column-inches than it seriously deserves. Also, there’s the Big Unmentionable: abortion on demand.

     But the third reason that comes to mind is the most striking of all: fear of legal and political retribution for what’s been done to American conservatives, and to Donald Trump himself, these past four years.

     As I’ve written before – sorry, it’s too early for me to go searching for the reference – in our attempts to determine the reasons for others’ actions, we tend to project our motivations onto them. It’s a near-to-universal tendency that arises from our inability to escape our own reasons for doing things. It takes a lot of effort to suppress it. That’s highly relevant here.

     For decades previously and for the last four years quite openly, the Left has striven to use its bastions in the federal government to harass and hobble its political opponents. The two impeachments and ninety-plus indictments of President Trump are only the most blatant examples. The brutal treatment of the January 6 protestors, the legal harassment of conservative activists, the use of “lawfare” to impede conservative candidates for public office, and the many attacks on companies that refuse to toe the Left’s ideological line are from the same motives. A person of a certain character will leap to the conclusion that “they’ll do to us what we did to them” – for he projects his motivations onto us.

     Vindictiveness and the desire for revenge are not unknown among persons in the Right. I believe they’re far weaker and rarer. But those on the Left see their own savage desires as equally likely to move us.

     I don’t know if this insight is particularly useful. Generally, persons in the Right strive to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. What more we could do beyond that, I cannot say. But it’s worth a few moments’ thought, and perhaps a bit of light conversation with one’s fearful left-leaning neighbors, if that’s possible. (NB: Leave your guns at home. Yes, all of them.)

Mar 29 2024

On Being Alone Far From Home

     [After returning to and contemplating this piece, I was moved to repost an old item. It first appeared at the late, lamented Eternity Road in December, 2007. – FWP]

     He was far from home, alone in a sterile room in a cookie-cutter businessmen’s hotel, a storage warren for men on the road for purposes not their own. The television was off. The mini-bar beckoned, but he knew better than to indulge in his present mood. Dinner could wait, and anyway, there was room service around the clock.

     He’d just returned to his lodgings after an exhausting day. It had been filled with frustrating negotiation and petty bickering, even though he and his hosts were employed by the same firm. He’d never liked being on the road; it impeded his sleep and compounded his anxieties. On that occasion, he had more than usual to worry about, for he and his wife had fought bitterly on the night before his departure. They’d had their differences before, but the most recent set had reached an unprecedented pitch. Divorce seemed imminent.

     For several years his life had been filled with anxiety and fatigue. Despite an impressive list of accomplishments and a reputation as a genius in his field, his employment had become insecure. He’d worked hard at being a good husband and father, but his children had turned away from him and his wife had grown cold. His health wasn’t what it had been; several maladies common to older men had come upon him, further sapping his energies and causing him to wonder if his time of power was drawing to an end.

     None of his troubles were new or nearly so. Yet he hadn’t learned how to carry them in a way that would allow him not to dwell on them. They were forever near his thoughts and often at the heart of them.

     His strivings had begun to seem pointless. What did it matter how good he was at his trade, or how dedicated he was to it? His achievements would soon be surpassed by other, younger practitioners. No work of man’s hand wears the crown of its kind for long.

     His attempts to heal the wounds in his family appeared doomed. His wife’s priorities had drifted from his. Their lives centered on entirely different things. Their relations with their children were no longer as a couple, but as disjoint individuals. She could not abide any of his few friends; out of a desire for peace, he’d ceased to have them in his home. She would not have any of her family or friends to visit, perhaps out of fear that he’d treat them in similar fashion. He couldn’t remember ever having done so, but surely she had a reason.

     He was a scientist by education and a critical thinker by inclination and long habit. It was not his way to leave a problem unanalyzed, no matter how tender. But in his attempts to deal with his personal troubles, his powers failed him.

     After all, he told himself, don’t innumerable other men face the same sorts and sets of difficulties? My sorrows aren’t unique. My colleagues share them. Some of them must bear far worse burdens. But they don’t complain…at least, not where I can hear. Are they better equipped to deal with their slings and arrows than I am with mine?

     He could not know. He would not ask.

     Worst was the sense of meaninglessness. Nothing he did, or refrained from doing, would affect more than a few lives at most. Were he to die that day, he would be swiftly forgotten, even by those closest to him. In the cooler reaches of his mind, he knew that that is how it must be. No man should matter critically to great numbers. All grief must give way to the imperatives of life and the needs of the living. No individual, be he ever so gifted, should have the power to upset those balances.

     In the place where his agonies lived, he knew he could not resist despair and its accompaniments for much longer. He’d begun to toy with terrible ideas. He’d managed to refrain from embracing them, but how much longer could he withstand the temptations?

     Restlessness impelled him to motion. He donned his coat, strode out of the hotel, got into his car and drove aimlessly down the little harbor town’s waterside street. Fishermen and pleasure boaters roamed the docks, in their several ways concluding their days on the water. Harborside bistros bustled with dinner trade. The late-winter evening was alight with commerce and indulgence, energies not yet spent by the day’s labors.

     Just past the docks and the commercial zone stood a small Catholic church, a white-clapboard saltbox with a modest cruciform spire. It appeared unpatronized: the doors were closed, the windows were unlit, and there were no cars in its tiny parking lot. The sign at the curb was illegible in the evening gloom.

     Though he’d been raised Catholic, he hadn’t been in a church in many years. Throughout his adult life, religion had struck him as a racket, a tool for the enrichment of its hierarchies at the expense of the credulous. Even so, he yielded to impulse, pulled into the lot, and went to the doors. They were unlocked.

     There was no one inside. The nave was both short and narrow. The pews appeared old and hard worn. The altar was a simple table. The only light came from a gas lantern mounted over a gilded box affixed to the wall. From his early religious education, he knew it to be a Presence lamp. It was a rule in Catholic churches that the tabernacle — the gilded box below the lamp — must always be illuminated, for the transubstantiated host, the body of Christ, resides within.

     He marveled briefly at his own presence there. He hadn’t intended to visit any particular place. He certainly hadn’t gone out looking for a church. He hadn’t reexamined his convictions about religion or the supernatural in many years. Yet there he was, in obedience to a sense of obligation he could not define.

     He entered a nearby pew, knelt on the kneeler, and made the Sign of the Cross for the first time in nearly thirty years.

     It triggered a flood of memories. Humorless teaching at the hands of habited authoritarians, impatient with the questions of the young. A rigid discipline that implied that everything not compulsory was forbidden, or very nearly so. Stories of the lives of saints that emphasized their sufferings and renunciations. A program designed to turn children away from the Church could not have done a better job of it.

     But he remembered other things as well. Promises of a blissful life after death. Assurances that a Being infinitely above the mundane and its trials took note of each creature that lived, and loved them all. The serenity of prayer and the quiet majesty of commemorative rituals. A story of unequalled magnificence, of a Deliverer who feared no enemy, over whom death had no dominion. Above all, the certainty that even the humblest life was rich with meaning to an Interpreter that knows all and forgets nothing. Whose judgments were beyond reproach.

     Why did I leave all that behind? Was it too poisoned by its disseminators? Was I unable to separate the good from the bad at that age?

     When I came into the fullness of my powers, why didn’t I reassess it? Was I too embarrassed to do so, when it seemed that all the world had cast religion aside as a bad deal? Or was I unwilling to admit that my youthful reaction to being so brutally indoctrinated might have been excessive?

     Apparently it was an evening for unprecedented thoughts. He chuckled at his own sobriety. If the stories were true, there was a battlefield within him, over which gods and demons struggled with total dedication and transcendent fury. Yet all he could remember of the days when those ideas had first been broached to him were humiliations, exhortations to repentance for guilt he didn’t feel, and wooden paddles wielded to quell the unruly.

     Were the stories true? His habits of analysis and the rigorous examination of evidence demanded that the question be squarely addressed. They could not be proved. Could they be disproved?

     The key narratives were almost two millennia old. They confirmed one another, but no non-Christian source confirmed them in their totality. They spoke of suspensions of the natural law — miracles — of a kind never before attributed to any figure. If they were true, that Figure had to stand above Man in the order of things. If it were so, He could not have been a temporal, goal-driven creature, for He had no agenda of His own. He traveled, taught, healed, suffered, died…and rose from the dead.

     Insight came upon him in a flash of blinding purity.

     Of course no non-Christian source would fully confirm the Gospels. Anyone who wrote objectively of the miracles, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, reporting them as observed, well-testified facts, would have to be a Christian. He couldn’t do so otherwise. So the lack of non-Christian confirmations means nothing.

     It could all be true. It can’t be disproved. All it requires is that I allow that there might be a God — a Being above and apart from temporal reality, to which temporal reality is subject. There could be. That can’t be disproved either.

     Men went to horrible deaths rather than renounce it. Many men.

     There are no words to describe what followed. Faith exploded through him, a Christian satori whose suddenness and totality stopped his perception of time. Was it God speaking to him along some trans-dimensional channel? Or was it his need for meaning, for a niche in existence that would endure after his mortal struggles had ended, groping blindly for its last remaining chance?

     He could never know. But knowing was unnecessary. Acceptance was all that was required of him.

     “Our Father, Which art in heaven,” he murmured, “hallowed be Thy Name…”

     May God bless and keep you all.

Mar 29 2024

The Beginning Of The End

     The materialists say that there is nothing beyond the veil of Time, that the material is all. They say that life begins, and ends, and is over. But then, they say a lot things. They have a lot to say… and one can’t help but get the sense that their aim is mainly to exalt themselves: “Look how hard-headed and remorselessly rational I am!”

     Their pitch does have some power. But it is transient. It is as the clatter of cymbals or the braying of brass. It sounds, and it passes, and is forgotten. It lacks the resonance with which to course through the centuries. It will not be remembered as is this story:

     And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots; then they sat down there and kept watch over him. Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”
     Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to; for he said, ‘I am God’s Son.’” The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way.
     From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.
     At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

     [Matthew 27:34-54, NRSV translation]

***

     Christians know how the story goes from there. But if we take the tale to have an end, where is it? Is it with the Resurrection, or the Ascension? Perhaps it arrives on Pentecost.

     Myself, I don’t think so. I don’t think the story has ended yet. I think it continues on in each of us who has read the story and accepted it.

     To accept it is to accept Him.

     There’s a telling exchange, near the conclusion of the movie The Case For Christ, in which rapidly despairing skeptic Lee Strobel, played by Mike Vogel, consults a medical researcher about the possibility that Jesus didn’t actually die on the Cross:

     Strobel: “I have a real problem with most of the experts that I’ve talked to here.”
     Researcher: “Which is?”
     Strobel: “Which is that most of them are not impartial, and if I’m to take a guess, I would say that you’re not either.”
     Researcher: “And you would be correct, sir. For I have learned that most impartial travelers who undertake this journey rarely remain so.”

     The story has power. It’s a peculiar sort of power. It doesn’t rely upon a great mass of forensics or the sworn testimony of a host of “experts” in a formal court proceeding. It’s just a mass of words that have been relayed down the centuries, translated and re-translated from one vernacular to the next. Somehow, despite the little differences in emphasis and delicate shades of meaning among those translations, the power of the story remains.

     One who lives with the story year after year, and with the demands of “experts” that it be doubted or dismissed outright, learns its true power.

***

     In an essay about the value of skepticism, I wrote that “the vogue is to regard religious belief as a variety of insanity.” And indeed, that is the vogue among the detractors of the Christian faith. Their variety of skepticism differs from mine.

     In all humility and candor, for a time I was swayed by their kind of skepticism. Its subtext appeals to the ego: “Be one of the smart guys.” It didn’t last. At a time when I was at the lowest ebb of my life, the power of the story took hold of me. Each year, when the Easter Triduum arrives, it shakes me afresh. Though nearly two millennia have passed since the events it narrates, the story remains vibrantly alive.

     Today, Good Friday of the Year of Our Lord 2024, take a few minutes to refresh your memory of the story of the Crucifixion. Perhaps at three this afternoon you will kneel, as I will, and give thanks for the greatest act of love ever recorded. As terrible as it was, it was conceived out of love.

     There can be no greater love. Did Jesus Himself not say so?

     This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. [John 15:12-13]

     That’s why we call it the greatest story ever told, but you knew that, didn’t you?

Mar 28 2024

Ignorance, Ingratitude Exploited By TPTB Sociopaths

Below I present two observations. They are nominally related. I’m not sure what can be done about them. But I am presenting them for your further consideration.

Originally set to begin at 39:40, but somehow altered to begin at 39:20. Good enough.

In this short clip, Douglas Murray observes why so many alive in the West today have not a clue why they have had it so good.

Now I’ll provide my own observation related to that one.

Sociopaths recognized and have exploited that ignorance so that the young might hate the West rather than have gratitude for all the sacrifices that provided them their now fading good life.

The rest of the interview has worthwhile elements, particularly near the end. I’ll leave those ideas for the reader to explore should they be so inclined. Contemplating the large scale ignorance and ingratitude is quite enough of a load for you already.

As George Santayana might say were he alive today: ‘Those who study history are condemned to watch those who don’t repeat it.’

Mar 28 2024

Concerning NBC And Ronna McDaniel

     I sometimes wonder if my function in this life is simply to remember things others have forgotten.

     The recent hiring-then-firing of former RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel has widely been treated as an unprecedented event…which it isn’t. Hearken to Ann Coulter’s narration of the media “career” of one Susan Molinari, former Congresswoman from Staten Island, New York. This comes from Coulter’s meticulously researched and footnoted book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right:

     …CBS hired former Congresswoman Susan Molinari in 1997 to co-anchor a new Saturday morning show. Molinari’s job was to cover cooking, fitness, and movies.
     Judging by the media reaction, you could be forgiven for thinking CBS had turned over its entire new division to the Republican National Committee. The New York Times editorialized on this offense to objective new reporting in a huffy piece titled “The GOP News From CBS.”
     […]
     More than one hundred newspaper articles were published on the threat to honest journalism posed by CBS’s hiring of Molinari (moderate, pro-abortion Republican Molinari). The headlines barely convey the hysteria:

  • “CBS Adds Molinari, Loses Credibility”
  • “Hiring Susan Molinari, A Ratings-Hungry CBS Gave TV Journalism A Setback”
  • “Molinari Move To CBS Blurs Journalistic, Political Lines”
  • “Government-media Revolving Door A Threat To Press”
  • “Is It News, Or Is It Propaganda?”
  • “The Faces Are New, The Biases Aren’t.”
  • “Susan Molinari’s Signing With CBS News Causing Quite A Stir”
  • “Susan Molinari Is Not Walter Cronkite.”

     (To that last, Coulter adds, “Yes, Walter Cronkite was a pious left-wing blowhard, but at least she was not Walter Cronkite.”)

     I could make all manner of observations about such persons as George Stephanopoulos, or former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley – a Democrat – whom CBS hired to host a segment on the CBS Evening News. Those recruitments hardly rated a mention from the national press. Certainly there were no condemnations thereof. Indeed, one interviewer slathered so much oily praise over the newly-hired Stephanopoulos that it’s a wonder his clothes didn’t slide off.

     So much for NBC’s cringing recantation of the hiring of Ronna McDaniel.

     I’ll say it once more: The Left knows that its strategy of infiltration and colonization of the media could – conceivably, at least – be used against it by the Right. That’s why its spokesmen are so vigilant – and so shrill – in opposing the entry of any non-leftist to their conquered domain. You don’t need to be a Certified Galactic Intellect to understand these things…though a decent memory, and a library of current-events books that goes back further than six months, would be a big help.

     “The greatest crime is silence! Record everything, record…” – Jewish historian Simon Dubnov, as the Nazis dragged him away to be executed. (Recounted in Alan Dershowitz’s book The Best Defense.)

Mar 27 2024

Constraints

     [A short story for you today. This one will be rather pointed, I fear. It was inspired by an essay I read about an hour ago. That piece, which I’ll link at the end of this one, harmonized so perfectly with my own convictions and the process by which I reached them that I felt a dramatization to be imperative. (Fiction always gets an idea across better than exposition.) Note, however, that persons willing to state those convictions openly are few, marginalized, and frequently silenced. – FWP]

Constraints

     “Ladies and gentlemen,” Jessica Weatherly intoned, “among the truly bizarre features of our era is that the men responsible for its greatest accomplishments tend to go unknown. I’m not talking about the Nobel Prize winners. Their names get around. Indeed, a couple have become regular participants in what a cynical friend of mine calls the Permanent Rotating Panel Show, as ‘anything authorities.’” She shook her mane of blonde hair, still full and beautiful despite her years, in a go-figure gesture. “You’d think we’d know better than to assume that just because a man has achieved greatly in some specific field, therefore he’ll be knowledgeable and brilliant in many others. But that’s the celebrity machine for you.
     “The great but unknown men are not the prize winners but the builders. The engineers. The men who transform hard-won knowledge into designs and implementations of trailblazing new things. Some of those men must forever labor in obscurity. Others become known only for irrelevancies: sex or drug scandals, or terrible tragedies. But a few, the most daring and productive, do become widely known…even if they’re sometimes not merely famous but notorious as well.
     “Tonight it’s my great privilege to have one of those men as my special guest. Not only is he a superb, creative, and astoundingly productive engineer with innumerable accomplishments to his name, he’s also among the most gracious and generous people I’ve ever known. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to our telecast the founder and former CEO of Arcologics Technologies, Todd E. Iverson!”
     Iverson slid his seat into the view of the camera. He waved, produced a sunny smile, and turned to face his interviewer.
     Now we’ll see if I’ve made the biggest error in judgment of my life.
     Weatherly returned the smile. “Mr. Iverson—”
     “Please call me Todd, Ma’am.”
     “As you prefer. If you’ll call me Jessica.”
     “Of course.”
     “Todd, despite your many achievements, until quite recently your name has been anything but a household word. Has that ever bothered you?”
     “Oh, not at all. Publicity is more often than not an impediment in my work. When people know that you’ve embarked on some innovative venture, they tend to have one of three reactions. One is to shrug and turn the page…wait, we shouldn’t use that cliché any longer, should we?”
     Weatherly chuckled. “Oh, most people would understand it, even today.”
     “I hope so,” Iverson said. “Anyway, that’s one reaction, probably the most common. The second kind of reaction is to want a piece of the action, perhaps as investors, and perhaps as ‘co-developers.’ That can be very annoying.”
     “Why is that, if I may?”
     “Not many inventions of importance have come from committees.”
     “Ah. A good point. And the third kind?”
     “They denounce you and try to stop you.”
     “Well, I hope this bit of exposure isn’t detrimental to anything you’ve got going on at the moment.”
     “We’ll see. Now, you did say you had a bunch of questions for me, didn’t you?”
     “Indeed I did, Todd. The first may be the toughest. Ready?”
     Iverson made an exaggerated show of bracing himself. “Fire away.”
     “What does your middle initial stand for?”
     He winced. “I suppose I should have expected that. It’s information I seldom give out.”
     “Why, Todd?”
     “It’s mildly embarrassing. But I’ll tell you if you insist on knowing.”
     “Oh, I won’t insist,” Weatherly said, “but I am curious.”
     “All right.” Iverson made a great show of steeling himself for the disclosure. “It’s Evelyn.”
     “Hm? How is that spelled?”
     “Eee vee eee ell why enn, just like the female version of the name, but with the long eee up front.” He grinned sheepishly. “It was my father’s idea. He was a fan of this English novelist who was middling famous a few decades ago.”
     “Oh. Well, it’s not…discreditable.”
     “Thank you for that. You do have other questions, I hope?”
     Weatherly was momentarily set back. “Well, yes I do. First, would you please define for our viewers how engineers differ from scientists?”
     Iverson smiled.
     It’s a worthwhile question.
     “You nailed it with your opening remarks. Scientists–the good ones–seek new knowledge about the laws of nature. They produce ideas that give birth to theories about the laws of existence. Then they design experiments to test those theories. The ones that survive all the testing become part of what we know…well, what we think we know. Engineers use that knowledge to solve specific problems. Some of those problems might not have been soluble before a particular bit of knowledge became available..”
     “Could you give our viewers an example?”
     “Certainly. Back in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, scientists investigated the existence of electrical potentials inside formations of various elements. It was an outcropping of early quantum mechanics. Their researches made possible the invention of the transistor. Engineers used the transistor in the development of electronic devices: radios, televisions, music sources, and a whole bunch of other stuff.”
     “But you weren’t involved in that, surely?”
     “Ah, no. I wasn’t even born yet.”
     “Well, could we have an example from one of your own inventions?”
     Damn. I should have expected that.
     “I’m afraid I don’t have an easily explained one on tap, Jessica. Maybe we could come back to that another time?”
     Weatherly looked mildly miffed. “I get the sense that you’re afraid of revealing something that would undercut your ownership of something.”
     Iverson merely smiled. “Another question, please?”
     “All right. Do you ever get the urge to go to work on social problems?”
     Iverson’s heart leaped in his chest. “They’re outside my expertise, Jessica. Besides, societies are composed of people. You can’t solve social problems without solving people problems—the problems that people have inside themselves. I’m not nearly arrogant enough to try that.”
     “But engineers are our problem-solvers.”
     “Not every kind of problem, Jessica. We know our limitations. You’ve met people who call themselves ‘social policy experts,’ haven’t you?”
     “Well, of course! I’ve had a number of them as guests on this show.”
     “What did you think of them—please, no names, just as a category of people?”
     Her visage hardened. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
     “I think you do.” He strove for his gentlest possible tone. “Did they strike you as people you’d be comfortable having in your home? People you’d want for friends?”
     “Well, mostly no, but—”
     “Could you say why?”
     It produced a look of consternation from the interviewer. She appeared to be uncertain whether to speak. Iverson decided to rescue her.
     “The ones I’ve known,” he said, “have all struck me as very…definite. Very certain of their ideas. They don’t allow themselves a lot of doubt. That’s made it difficult for me to talk to them. I kept wanting to ask them about their policy proposals, ‘What if it doesn’t work out the way you expect?’ But after a couple of unpleasant exchanges, I gave it up.”
     After a moment, Weatherly nodded reluctantly. “I’d have to agree.”
     “A good engineer has to be modest about his intentions,” Iverson said. “He has to be ready for his proposed solution to fail and have a backup plan. Anything else would be irresponsible. But social-policy types don’t think that way…at least, not the ones I’ve met.”
     The silence that followed seemed far longer than it was. Presently Weatherly said “Well, would you be willing to discuss a few social problems that you think can be solved?”
     She’s just as determined to get me into that swamp as I am to stay out of it.
     “I mustn’t, sorry,” he said.
     “Why not, Todd?”
     He breathed once deeply.
     “Because the constraints make them insoluble.”

***

     Iverson’s resistance to any further exploration in Weatherly’s preferred direction caused the interview to terminate shortly thereafter. Once the camera’s red light no longer glowed, he rose, stretched, and offered the interviewer his hand. She did not take it. She had remained seated.
     “That didn’t go—”
     “The way you wanted?” he said. “I thought it went as well as could be expected given the questions you had for me.”
     “You could have helped me out a little more.”
     “How, Jess?”
     Her look was of pure incredulity. “You’ve got to have opinions on social matters. Everybody does! I’ll bet you talk about them with your wife, your top managers, your drinking buddies—”
     “But I don’t,” he said. “There’s no need and a huge downside.”
     “How,” she growled, “can you say there’s no need? The country is awash in violence, poverty, oppression, and despair! People are crying out for a genius like you to…to help!”
     He could not resist a melancholic smile.
     “Help them how, Jess?”
     She fumed and sputtered but said no more. He waited for her to run down, then reached down and took her hand.
     “I need coffee,” he said, “and I’ll bet you do too. Let’s hit the cafeteria.”
     He led her thence, unresisting.
***

     The cafeteria was lightly populated. Most of the residents were at work. Those that didn’t have absorbing subjects to explore had other responsibilities of equal gravity. Iverson guided Weatherly to a “corner table,” seated her, and held up two fingers to the server on duty. The young man smiled and nodded. Moments later two mugs of coffee sat between them.
     “You haven’t been here long, Jess,” Iverson said. “And I’d bet you haven’t gotten friendly with a lot of people yet. I kinda wish I could bring them all together, give you chance to notice the patterns in them.”
     Weatherly waved it aside. “I know what you’re driving at. All brighter than average, mostly by a lot, and all dedicated to the mission, right?”
     “Irrelevant. Have you met a non-white person since you got here?”
     She frowned. “No.”
     “You won’t.” He plunged onward before she could expostulate. “What about a non-Christian?”
     “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I don’t usually ask people about their religions.”
     “Let me save you the trouble,” he said. “There are exactly three, and all three are what I call amiable agnostics.”
     She gaped. “Out of fifteen hundred people—”
     “Fifteen hundred and twenty-three.”
     “—you have no blacks, no orientals, and only three non-Christians?”
     He nodded. “As I said.”
     She sat back in her chair, plainly dumbfounded.
     Time to soften the blow.
     “You make fifteen twenty-four, Jess. I didn’t ask you about your religion when you boarded Ad Astra. Should I have?”
     “I don’t really have one.”
     “Well, I hope you’re an amiable agnostic, then. Not the sort who gives other people a hard time about their faiths.”
     She grimaced. “I try not to. But why?”
     “Because,” he said in his lowest register, “I wanted to leave America’s ‘social problems’ behind me. This is a tight space. You can’t easily get away from others once you’re here. Well, I could, but I have Ad Astra and the ability to pilot it, but that’s irrelevant. There’s nowhere to go. This is the one and only self-sustaining orbital habitat in existence. If I felt a need to leave here, I’d have to return to Earth. To America. To a nation where the head of state hates me and where lunacy and savagery are running rampant.
     “America is crumbling because of that lunacy and savagery. But what do you do to fix something like that? The obvious answer is to expel the savages and confine the lunatics in rooms with soft walls. It would work—but it’s a disallowed solution. The constraints on any approach to the country’s ‘social problems’ exclude that and every other effective method of quelling them.
     “Someone once said that ‘diversity plus proximity equals conflict.’ Smart guy, I wish I could remember his name. So when Jeanne and I screened for this place, we excluded all excrescences of ‘diversity.’ Diversity of race, of religion, of beliefs about BS like ‘climate change’ and ‘transgenderism’ and ‘polyamory’ and ‘historical oppression’ and whatnot.”
     “So everyone you admitted to the project had to agree with you about all of that,” she said.
     “Exactly right. I wouldn’t have allowed anything else. This is my property. My home. And I refuse to have the kind of chaos that’s rampant Earthside afflict us here.
     “Jeanne and I produced the most purely sane and agreeable population that’s been assembled since the Enlightenment. And thank God no one can get up here without my say-so, because it’s very noticeable once you’ve stirred around a bit. One custard-headed reporter could ruin the whole deal. Imagine what McIlvaine would do with the information. Which is, by the way, why you’ll be staying here whether you like it or not.”
     “I could give you a hard time, couldn’t I?” she said. “Just one telecast about the white-bread composition of this place would do it.”
     “You could and it would,” he said. “And in that lies the measure of how much trust I had to extend to Christine about her decision to bring you along.”
     She nodded and looked away. He permitted himself a moment’s relaxation.
     Presently she said “Will Jeanne be joining you here?”
     “Eventually, I hope. It’s getting awfully dangerous down there.”
     “Even in your beloved Onteora?”
     “There are no walls around Onteora County,” he said. “Lunatics and savages are already flowing in. Onteora’s state of grace might not last much longer.”
     Her eyes closed. A spasm flitted across her face.
     “So President Sumner gets to have his wife with him,” she said, “while yours has to stay Earthside.”
     He nodded. “For now.”
     “But you’re thinking about it.”
     “From the moment I fled here,” he said, “I’ve never stopped.”

==<O>==

Copyright © 2024 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

     [In “Onteora time,” this episode occurs a few days after the events that conclude my novel Statesman. The ‘triggering’ piece I mentioned at the beginning of this screed is this essay / book review by Bernard M. Smith. My thanks to Dio for bringing it to my attention. – FWP.]

Mar 27 2024

Life Happens

I woke early, and was preparing my coffee, when I got a call from my husband’s sister.

Their brother was admitted to the hospital this morning with a suspected stroke. He is my age, just 3 months older

Naturally, this up-ends all previous plans. I’m checking email, packing a go bag, and getting ready for what may be a very long day or two.

Fortunately, he only lives about 1-1/2 hours away. And, the weather is good.

I may leave the laptop at home – too heavy to cart around all day.

Mar 27 2024

Based Book Sale

     Hans G. Schantz, author of the Hidden Truth trilogy, has once again organized a Based Book Sale. It runs from today, March 27 through Wednesday, April 3. All the books in it are available in their Kindle editions for $0.99 or less. Many are free. If you like to read, are dissatisfied with the politically-correct attitude of the conventional publishing houses, and are willing to risk a dollar on an “indie” writer with whom you’re unfamiliar, give it a look!

     (Yes, some of my crap is in there.)

Mar 26 2024

Is it just me

Or is there anyone else out there who reads an article like this and thinks “Nothing I can do about it. I hope they hit D.C.”

So what is to be done? Well, we can vote the bums out, but even if we do, all too many Republicans are just as squeamish as Democrats about incurring charges of “Islamophobia,” which can be a career killer even in these post-Oct. 7, post-Moscow, post-44,000 jihad attacks worldwide since 9/11 days. What’s more, cleaning up the desperately corrupt FBI and the entire rotten intelligence apparatus is not going to be done in a day, no matter who emerges victorious in November.

No, our defense against the next jihad terror massacre in the United States is up to us, and to us alone. The military is preoccupied with studying Critical Race Theory and going to drag shows; it isn’t going to save us. The police, understaffed, underfunded, and on the defensive nationwide ever since a career criminal died of a drug overdose while in the process of being apprehended, aren’t going to save us. Everyone knows now that the feckless and politicized FBI certainly isn’t going to save us. 

Under the “leadership” of Drooling Joe the Chinese Hand Puppet, millions upon millions of unvetted illegal aliens from hundreds of countries have entered the USA. We have no idea who all is here. We do know that military aged males from China are here. We know that the Border Patrol has stopped a few folks in the Terrorist Watch List, but that means even more have NOT been caught and they’re here in the country.

When September 11th happened, I was horrified. I remained horrified, enough to re-enlist and put my ass on the line if it came to it.

But what if September 11th happened today? I don’t think my reaction would be the same. In fact, I know it wouldn’t be. If terrorists blew up some place in LA or Scat Francisco?

Zero. Fucks. Given.

Oh look, the terrorists up in Dearbornistan blew up something in Detroit? Zero fucks given. Hot-lanta got a little hotter? Zero fucks given. Philly gets to experience even more diversity? Zero fucks given.

Quite frankly if I found out that an ISIS bomb had taken out Chuck Schumer and and his henchmen, I’d dance a fucking jig. And I certainly wouldn’t run to their defense. They have willingly taken in the poison. And if I try to help them, I’ll be attacked as well, not just from their diverse multicultural visitors, but from the people who are welcoming them in. “Racist! Bigot! Islamophobe! Hatey Hater McHaterson! NAZI!”

Quite frankly it’s too late to stop any attack. The people are already here. And more are coming who won’t be stopped by Drooling Joe and his puppet masters. So what can you do? Well, I keep mentioning this, but local, local, local. You can’t stop Philadelphia from imploding itself. But you can stop your local area from imploding. You can’t stop Scat Francisco from dying, but you can ensure that the policies of Scat Francisco do NOT come into your burg. You can’t stop Seattle from being a drug-soaked hellhole, but you CAN stop the homeless druggies from setting up camp in your neighborhood.

Plan accordingly. And buy more ammo.

Mar 26 2024

Extrapolation Is Easy…

     …but realism is hard.

     Isn’t everyone familiar with the investment flacksters’ line that “past performance is no guarantee of future returns?” Aren’t we all aware that trends become more dubious the longer they continue? Haven’t we seen enough trends implode “unexpectedly,” and all too often ruinously?

     The quotes at the opening of this essay are invaluable. Ensure your understanding of them. Clutch them to your breast. Be ever ready to brandish them at those who flap their extrapolations in your face…whether those extrapolations are cheery or gloomy.

***

     Some of the most tragic extrapolations prove to be faithless seducers, cruel exploiters of our hopes in ways that a decent man could never anticipate. I have in mind at the moment a scene from an old Heinlein novel, one of his earliest:

     “I had a pretty thorough education in business, finance, economics, salesmanship. It’s true that I got my job because Grantland Rice picked me-I mean football helped a lot to make me well known-but I was prepared to be an asset to any firm that hired me. You see that, don’t you?”
     “Oh, most certainly!”
     “It’s important, because it has a bearing on what happened afterwards. I wasn’t working on my second million but I was getting along. Things were slick enough. The night it happened I was celebrating a little-with reason. I had unloaded an allotment of South American Republics-”
     “Eh?”
     “Bonds. It seemed like a good time to throw a party. It was a Saturday night, so everybody started out with the dinner-dance at the country club. It was the usual thing. I looked over the flappers for a while, didn’t see one I wanted to dance with, and wandered into the locker room, looking for a drink. The attendant used to sell it to people he could trust.”
     “Which reminds me, ” said Hamilton, and returned a moment later with glasses and refreshment.
     “Thanks. His gin was pure bathtub, but usually reliable. Maybe it wasn’t, that night. Or maybe I should have eaten dinner. Anyhow, I found myself listening to an argument that was going on in one end of the room. One of these parlor bolsheviks was holding forth-maybe you still have the type? Attack anything, just so long as it was respectable and decent.”
     Hamilton smiled.
     “You do, eh? He was one of ’em. Read nothing but the American Mercury and Jurgen and then knew it all. I’m not narrow-minded. I read those things, too, but I didn’t have to believe ’em. I read the Literary Digest, too, and the Times, something they would never do. To get on, he was panning the Administration and predicting that the whole country was about to go to the bow-wows… go to pieces. He didn’t like the Gold Standard, he didn’t like Wall Street, he thought we ought to write off the War Debts.
     “I could see that some of our better members were getting pretty sick of it, so I jumped in. “They hired the money, didn’t they, ‘ I told him.
     “He grinned at me-sneered I should say. ‘I suppose you voted for him.’
     “‘I certainly did, ‘ I answered, which was not strictly true; I hadn’t gotten around to registering, such things coming in the middle of the football season. But I wasn’t going to let him get away with sneering at Mr. Coolidge. ‘I suppose you voted for Davis.’
     “‘Not likely, ‘ he says. ‘I voted for Norman Thomas. ‘
     “Well, that burned me up. ‘See here, ‘ I said, ‘the proper place for people like you is in Red Russia. You’re probably an atheist, to boot. You have the advantage of living in the greatest period in the history of the greatest country in history. We’ve got an Administration in Washington that understands business. We’re back to normalcy and we’re going to stay that way. We don’t need you rocking the boat. We are levelled off on a plateau of permanent prosperity. Take it from me-Don’t Sell America Short!'” I got quite a burst of applause.
     “‘You seem pretty sure of that,’ he says, weakly.
     “‘I ought to be,’ I told him. ‘I’m in the Street. ‘”

     [From Beyond This Horizon.]

     For those that don’t get the historical references, the young optimist telling the tale was speaking of a moment during the Coolidge Administration. At that time, the stock market looked like a rocket launch, speeding ever upward with no limit. It had been that way since shortly after the inauguration of Warren Harding. But that seemingly unstoppable trend was not a response to exploding productivity.

     To anyone who understood the dynamics behind the huge gains in the stock market during the Roaring Twenties, it would have been clear that the stock market was the last place one should put one’s savings. The record inflation of that period – at one point the money supply was growing by nearly 8% per year – coupled to the wave of wildly irresponsible stock speculations “on margin” and the tendency of nearly every industry to over-expand built a house of cards that was doomed to fall. Its fall, in combination with the unwise policies of the Hoover Administration, crushed a great many people in the rubble.

     In proof of the old maxim that “the only thing people learn from history is that we learn nothing from history,” it happened again in the Nineties, in a greatly similar fashion.

***

     If you’re wondering what has my Yo-Yo spun up so high this morning, it’s this essay, which Ragin’ Dave brought to our attention in the piece below. Dave demonstrates a better understanding of the dynamics of population growth than that piece’s author. However, there are a few influences still to be mentioned. They require that we ask a simple question:


Why do people choose to have kids,
Whether historically or today?

     Let’s look at a few of the reasons:

  1. It isn’t always a choice.
  2. Women are predisposed to want children.
  3. Some men like kids, too. (Yes, I’ve known a few.)
  4. In farm societies, more children == more labor == more production == more income.
  5. In many contexts there are social and / or religious pressures on married couples to produce children.

     All of those are pro-natal influences. They can be seen operating at any time in recorded history. Now let’s ask the inverse question:


Why do people choose not to have kids,
Whether historically or today?

     There are several influences to consider here, too:

  1. It isn’t always possible.
  2. Children involve commitments of several kinds:
    • Emotional;
    • Financial;
    • Spatial.
  3. Children must be cared for, which involves obligations, risks, or both.
  4. Today especially, there are social / religious pressures not to produce children.
  5. Other duties and obligations attached to children are more numerous than ever before.

     I have no doubt that both lists could be extended, but the above are the considerations that strike me as dominant. To my mind, in these United States in the Year of Our Lord 2024, the latter group heavily outweighs the former. Technology, except as manifested in PlayStations, cell phones, and other gadgets, doesn’t have a lot to do with it.

***

     The author of the cited essay isn’t the only one who looks to technological advance as the countermeasure to the “birth dearth.” Many other writers have looked upon the technological progress of recent decades and reached the same conclusions. But all such are extrapolating without adequate real-world foundations. For technology isn’t a beast that stands apart from causation. Technological developments occur because someone wants something that isn’t yet available to him on acceptable terms. That forces yet another critical question upon us:

Who is he and what does he want?

     The Manhattan Project of the Forties produced a technological development, to be sure: a new way of killing people and destroying things en masse. Given the unpleasantnesses in progress at the time, it probably seemed a good thing. Would it still seem so if the context were not World War II but today? Yet several agencies of our time are pressing for similar advances, most notably in bioengineering. Do their efforts, or the things they strive to produce, seem good things?

     Advances in electronics have provided us with many things our grandparents lacked. Before the transistor, the family had at most one radio and one television. Moreover, they were large, obstructive, and rather unreliable. If there was a local source of music, it was a turntable with a stylus that teased sound out of a vinyl disc. Obviously, those conditions have changed. But so have others, including these:

  • Our savings have been “virtualized.”
  • No one can be certain he’s not being listened to or watched.
  • “Smart” technologies permit others to monitor and control many of our activities.
  • Our decisions, to a large and growing extent, require third-party permission even when wholly legal.

     Technology giveth, and technology taketh away.

***

     When Henry Hazlitt bequeathed this message to us:

     The art of economics consists in not merely looking at the immediate but also the longer-term effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

     …he reminded us of something priceless: To understand what is happening, we must pay attention to all the influences on every decision or action, and all the consequences that arise from them. Just as it’s central to economic analysis, it’s crucial to understanding how societies mutate in response to the waxing or waning of specific influences. The one I’m about to mention is seldom addressed by those who look to technology to “solve” this or that “problem:”

Who’s paying the fiddler?

     Remember how that old maxim went?

     Who is funding the scientific and technological efforts of our time? What is he paying for? The pure love of knowledge? Perhaps some, somewhere, some of the time. But when the money comes from a government, that’s not the way to bet.

     Governments control the overwhelmingly greater part of the funds expended on scientific and technological advance. What do they want? It’s seldom a better egg beater. It’s never anything conducive to individual freedom, unless by accident.

     The broader picture is no rosier. Today, American governments account for nearly half of all expenditures on anything. Incredibly, the governments of other nations are even worse. That sort of buying power influences every imaginable economic decision. Shall we make baby monitors or ankle monitors? Shall we make videophones or closed-circuit television systems? Shall we invest in automobile production, or bomber production? Shall we develop better, cheaper, more reliable firearms for civilian purchase, or ever more complex devices of mass destruction to be wielded by the armies of the State? Which of these markets is growing fastest?

     When the dollars being chased are increasingly being spent on governments’ desires – war and the control of the private citizen – the decisions of developers, and of those who employ and direct them, will be biased accordingly.

***

     Perhaps you think I’ve drifted away from the main point. I haven’t. It might seem that the point is the decline in world fertility, but in truth the point is the future: what we see coming, and how that vision affects our decisions to procreate or not.

     Optimism is a choice: at this time, a choice made against the probabilities. That includes optimism about technological advance. I have no doubt that some of it will benefit us. But how much? And to what extent will those advances be offset by the sort that confine our decisions and reduce our prospects and the prospects of our progeny? With an ever greater share of the Gross World Product being commandeered and spent by governments, it’s hard to expect that our kids’ futures will be brighter than our present. That’s a vision that militates against having children. Especially if they would have to grow up in one of those BLEEP!ing “15 minute cities.”

     Have a nice day.

Mar 25 2024

Technology, or the lack thereof, is not the problem

There’s a link from Instapundit to an essay that states technology will be the way to reverse the birth decline.

Or how about this: What if tech-driven economic growth makes us so much richer that we simply choose to work less? Maybe a lot less. With all that extra time and all those extra resources, maybe we would choose to devote more of both to having more kids. As it is, the rich seems to be having more kids than the poor. What if we all were far wealthier than even the top 1 percent are today?

You want to know why the rich have more kids than the poor? Because kids are expensive, and everybody below that 1% line is getting hammered by inflation.

My friend has a rather large family. One of his daughters married a nice young man, and they moved back to our little town here in Northern Idaho to raise a family. Wanna guess how much a house costs to rent around here? Half his monthly take-home pay, and he’s not some minimum wage earner. This guy can BUILD things. Machines. Parts. He is a skilled metalworker, and yet he’s struggling to make ends meet with a wife and a child.

Don’t get me started on the cost of food. I’m eyeing the arable land that I have and wondering just how much I could grow in it. Unfortunately we’re on the northern slope of a hill, so our sunlight is rather limited compared to just across the road.

And then there’s the laws. The regulations. Gotta have a car seat for each child. Up to the age of whatever the government says is safe. Car seats are expensive. And now, thanks to inflation and the stupid government regulations, a vehicle that will fit a large family is also out of their price range most of the time. The Fat Electrician went on a little rant about this. Short version: The US Government in it’s cult-like devotion to Mother Earth decreed that US automobiles can only emit CO2 in relation to the weight of the vehicle. Now, unlike the US Government, engineers who actually build things instead of ruin them understand that there’s only so much energy that you can get from a gallon of gas. On top of that, every new safety feature that’s mandated by the government adds weight to the vehicle, and that’s more mass the engine has to push. So, in order to get the power that you need for a truck to do truck things, the companies just made them bigger, in order to meet US regulations.

It’s stupid. It’s all stupid. It’s stupidity on a scale that would cause any other intelligent life in the universe to simply avoid our planet the way I avoid San Francisco’s feces-crusted streets.

And it all adds up to higher prices all around. Look, the Geo Metro when it first came out was a tiny little car that got 48 miles to the gallon. I’m not joking. I don’t know what the website specifics on it are, but my friend was getting 48 miles a gallon out of that car. It was light. It was tiny. If it hit a semi truck it would most likely be destroyed along with whoever was in it. But they sold, because they were cheap and got good gas mileage.

The Geo Metro couldn’t be sold today. It wouldn’t meet regulations.

So if the government wants the US population to start having kids and reverse the demographic bomb that’s waiting, they need to get their polished jackboots off of our necks for one, and stop being idiots about money.

(pause for bitter laughter)

Plan accordingly. I’m scouting out the area where I’ll plant my strawberries. And buying more ammo.

Mar 25 2024

Realism In War

     I hope the shade of the late, great Ursula Le Guin won’t mind the following longish excerpt from her short novel The Word For World Is Forest:

     “In Rieshwel, New Java. Fourteen days ago. A town was burned and its people killed by yumens of the Camp in Rieshwel.”
     “It’s a lie. We were in radio contact with New Java right along, until the massacre. Nobody was killing natives there or anywhere else.”
     “You’re speaking the truth you know,” Selver said, “I speak the truth I know. I accept your ignorance of the killings on Rieshwel; but you must accept my telling you that they were done. This remains: the promise must be made to us and with us, and it must be kept. You’ll wish to talk about these matters with Colonel Dongh and the others.”
     Gosse moved as if to re-enter the gate, then turned back and said in his deep, hoarse voice, “Who are you, Selver? Did you—was it you that organized the attack? Did you lead them?”
     “Yes, I did.”
     “Then all this blood is on your head,” Gosse said, and with sudden savagery, “Lyubov’s too, you know. He’s dead—your ‘friend Lyubov.’ ”
     Selver did not understand the idiom. He had learned murder, but of guilt he knew little beyond the name. As his gaze locked for a moment with Gosse’s pale, resentful stare, he felt afraid. A sickness rose up in him, a mortal chill. He tried to put it away from him, shutting his eyes a moment. At last he said, “Lyubov is my friend, and so not dead.”
     “You’re children,” Gosse said with hatred. “Children, savages. You have no conception of reality. This is no dream, this is real! You killed Lyubov. He’s dead. You killed the women—the women—you burned them alive, slaughtered them like animals!”
     “Should we have let them live?” said Selver with vehemence equal to Gosse’s, but softly, his voice singing a little. “To breed like insects in the carcass of the World? To overrun us? We killed them to sterilize you.… You are not children, you are grown men, but insane. And that’s why we had to kill you, before you drove us mad. Now go back and talk about reality with the other insane men. Talk long, and well!”

     Selver, who is humanoid but non-human, is a realist. In the above he educates Gosse, the representative of a Terran colonial expedition to Selver’s world, about reality. That expedition had been busily destroying the ecology of Selver’s world. If its personnel were permitted to multiply and continue its operations, it would have rendered the world uninhabitable for Selver’s species. There was only one measure that would make plain to the Terrans that their presence would not be tolerated: the elimination of their ability to reproduce. Thus, the Terran women had to die, for the alternative was genocide: a complete extermination that would have swept up every Terran on the planet.

     Horrifying? Yes. But in Selver’s eyes and those of his species, utterly necessary. Ponder it for a few moments before reading on.

***

     I’m not fond of war or bloodshed. Americans generally aren’t. But when the need has arisen, we’ve generally proved competent at it. The question of sole importance is always about the need.

     Some very intelligent people, and some very tenderhearted people, have decried Israel’s campaign in Gaza. But neither high intelligence nor tender sentiments guarantee the possession of the relevant perspective or the realism it demands.

     For the relevant perspective, the necessity is that of taking the enemy at his word, especially when it’s well confirmed by his recent actions. For the realism, one must understand and accept the imperatives of survival, whether personal, tribal, or racial. Without these things, one is incompetent to comment on a war in progress. One’s intellect and sentiments are irrelevant a priori.

     The situation in Gaza is this:

  1. Gaza is dominated by HAMAS and HAMAS allegiants;
  2. HAMAS has pledged itself to the destruction of Israel, the homeland of world Jewry;
  3. Point #2 is confirmed by:
    • The HAMAS Charter;
    • The attack on 10/7/2023, which killed 1400 Israelis;
    • The open, public statements of HAMAS’s representatives in several fora.
  4. Islam itself supports HAMAS’s intentions, as is made plain in its sacred scriptures.

     I’m sure there are some among our Gentle Readers who would disagree with me. Sorry, folks: It’s not an arguable point. You’re wrong and will remain wrong for as long as you fail to accept that you are non-combatants. You are not at war. You’re not even bystanders to it. Your survival and that of your tribe and race are not at stake.

     If Israel is to avert further attacks of the sort that occurred on October 7 of last year, it must destroy HAMAS. There are no alternatives. If that requires the complete depopulation of Gaza, then so be it. To recoil from the measures necessary would mean that the blood of future Israeli victims of HAMAS attacks would be on the hands of the decision makers who did so.

     Sometimes, it really is that clear.

***

     The protests against Israel for its campaign in Gaza aren’t entirely motivated by humanitarian concerns. Some are propelled by hatred of Israel, or of the Jews. There’s nothing to be said about such persons. We know them from their prior excursions into public view. For practical purposes, they are HAMAS’s allies in the war.

     But some who protest mean well. They’re simply not realists. There can never be a peace between two peoples when one is bent upon the other’s destruction. The protestors’ lack of comprehension of that irrefutable truth renders their protests irrelevant.

     It’s not pleasant to be told that one’s opinions and sentiments are irrelevant. But on occasion, it’s the only appropriate response. The war in Gaza is such an occasion. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Mar 24 2024

Questions For God

     You might think that once we’re dead and in heaven, there are no more rules. But there’s still a need for discretion. Werner Heisenberg once said that if he got the chance, there were two questions he wanted to ask God: Why relativity? And why turbulence? They’re good questions – I’d certainly like the answers – but at the end of all things they’ll lose a little of their urgency.

     However, of the questions I’d like to ask God, there are a few that I wouldn’t dare to ask…though the impulse might prove very strong. For example:

  • Is there booze?
  • What about chocolate?
  • Do we still have to pray?
  • Can priests have girlfriends now?
  • Can I harass my son-in-law from here?
  • Are the angels allowed to act snooty and sass us?
  • My favorite singer is in hell. Can I get him a furlough?
  • That business about the Deluge: where did all that water go?
  • Does heaven have a shooting range? How long? What calibers are allowed?
  • The harp just isn’t me. Could I have a Fender Telecaster and a Marshall amp instead?

     Do you have any such?

Mar 24 2024

Clubbings

     Two weeks ago journalist Emerald Robinson published a startling article about How The GOP Committed Suicide Trying to Stop Trump. Much of it is about Mitch McConnell (R, KY), whom Robinson accuses of doing his damnedest to prevent Donald Trump from functioning as president, and of subsequently aiding the anti-Trump forces in their attempt to remove him from office. A snippet:

     McConnell wanted Trump convicted, that’s for sure. He pushed that sham until it was clear that he didn’t have the votes. The GOP establishment wanted Trump dead and buried to clear the way for Their People in 2024. At the 11th hour, McConnell realized that he didn’t have the votes and so he told his Republican colleagues: he would no longer vote to convict President Trump. The entire pointless exercise had only served to enrage the GOP base. This time there was no ground cover to hide his double-dealing.

     For the GOP’s Senate caucus to have a leader who was ardent to impeach and convict a GOP president suggests that there was something rotten in the party. The stench had begun much earlier during the Trump Administration. Trump’s initiatives received little to no support from McConnell and other GOP bigwigs. Trump’s major platform point, securing the southern border physically, hardly even got lip service from Congressional Republicans. The ultimate absurdity – “We can’t afford a border wall!” – emanated from Republican and Democrat legislators both.

     It’s no longer in doubt that the Republican Party turned against its president, and thus against the party base, which supported him enthusiastically. The evidence is too plentiful. The question that remains is “Why?”

     I think it started in a more diffuse sort of aversion: an antipathy felt by Republican officeholders toward Republican voters that was born decades earlier. It grew aggressively during the “Tea Party” movement, when the financial upheavals of 2006-2010 helped to blot the presidency of George W. Bush. When the voters spurned two dozen Establishment Republicans in favor of Trump for the 2016 presidential nomination, it reached peak loathing.

     Whatever his value as a leader figure for the Right, Trump, in the eyes of the GOP Establishment, was not a member of the Club. His wealth and commercial prominence didn’t matter to them. Politically he was a parvenu who had forced his way into the highest political circles through mere popularity with the hoi polloi. And the Establishment didn’t like that one bit.

     No one likes criticism. The elevation of Donald Trump said to the GOP’s kingmakers that the voters had had enough of their nonperformance. What else could this embrace of an outsider who hadn’t “paid his dues” in a succession of lower positions, waiting patiently for the party kingmakers to decree that his time had come, possibly mean? Whatever the GOP’s luminaries thought of their performances in office, the voters’ embrace of Trump smarted.

     So they took it out on him…and on us.

     Whatever the relations between the Republican Party and the Democrat Party before Trump, once he was in office their top cadres united to thwart him. He could not be allowed to show them up. On only one legislative initiative, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, did Trump receive enough backing to get his proposal passed into law. Otherwise he was relegated to executive actions his successor could easily reverse. Fortunately, Trump’s judicial nominees did receive the support of the Senate GOP caucus, or all would have been for naught.

     The Establishments of the two major parties had allied against the outsider. We may reasonably expect that the identity of that outsider was of little importance. Instead of Trump, it could have been Curt Schilling, Ted Nugent, Kinky Friedman, or any other popular figure from outside the Beltway. The laagering of the two party establishments would have looked little different.

     There may be financial motives in the mix, but we may be very sure that simple vanity – political elitism and an unwillingness to accept electoral criticism – was a dominant influence. It still is; the McConnells of the GOP are frantic that Trump may yet return to the Oval Office. It’s not just his policy preferences they resist; they scorn him personally, and not because of his brashness or his tweets.

     The prospects for November are murky. The Democrats, whose election-stealing tactics worked four years back to deny Trump his second term, will surely deploy them again wherever possible. If in 2024 they have the covert assistance of the Republican leadership cadre and the electioneering facilities it commands, it’s likely that no turnout in support of Trump would suffice to carry him back to the White House.

     And at the bottom of the mire will be vanity and envy, as it was before.

Mar 23 2024

Now For Something Lighthearted

Weird Dave asks us:

My answer: Engelbert Humperdinck, “Please Release Me.”

Yours?

Mar 23 2024

The Strangest Temptation

     “Truly, this was the Son of God!” – Matthew 27:54

     Tomorrow begins Holy Week for this Year of Our Lord 2024. If you’re a Christian, you already know the significance of this portion of the calendar. If not: it’s the week when Christians commemorate the entry of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, into Jerusalem, in preparation for his Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.

     The Passion of Our Lord was multiply witnessed. Many of those witnesses survived several decades after the event. A fair number of them were themselves tortured to death for maintaining their insistence on what they had seen in the face of Judaic or Roman insistence that they renounce it. Those early years after Christ’s Ascension were, to put it gently, no picnic for those who believed in Him.

     Yet despite that, and despite the extensive documentation of both the Passion and the subsequent sufferings of persecuted believers, it remains – drum roll, please – possible to disbelieve that any of those supposedly witnessed and recorded events really happened. While there is only one route toward belief, there are many avenues to disbelief. The skeptic can tell himself a multitude of doubt-supporting things. A few:

  • “Sentenced to death for preaching without a permit? Ridiculous.”
  • “I’m supposed to trust records two thousand years old? C’mon!”
  • “No one would voluntarily accept being tortured to death.”
  • “It was a con job by a few guys who wanted to be famous.”
  • “If He had Divine power, He could have defended Himself!”

     In the recent, underappreciated movie The Case For Christ, Mike Vogel as Lee Strobel puts the question directly to a Catholic priest:

     Yet for one determined to maintain a skeptic’s stance, even that explanation can be dismissed. “Love? What love is there in death by torture?”

     Which is why I led off with that quote from Matthew.

***

     Christ’s Resurrection – another multiply witnessed event – could not have happened without His Crucifixion. That approaches tautology. One who has not died cannot be resurrected. And it’s the Resurrection that places the seal of Divine authority on the teachings of Christ. Had He not been resurrected, it would have been easy for the Judaic authorities – remember, it was they who demanded His execution – to say to first-century Judea, “See? There was nothing special about Him!”

     And yes, it can be argued that some other demonstration of Divine authority would have sufficed to persuade the Hebrews that He spoke truly and with authority. But would any other demonstration of power beyond human capacity have expressed the desire to give – to love — as did His acceptance of death on the Cross?

     Skeptics and resolute atheists have never succeeded in disproving the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. It’s their most hated stumbling block, for the Resurrection is Christianity. They dismiss it as a fable and the records of it as fabrications. They pour sarcasm on those who “believe a fairy tale.” But as was depicted in The Case For Christ, proving that it did not happen is beyond them.

***

     “Those who love cannot help but give.” — Frank Yerby

     In what I regard as my best novel, I put the case for a loving God thus:

     “God, who created all things,” Ray said after refilling all the glasses, “is all things. As they come from Him, they are of Him. His will is in them. But above all else, He is love. Love is the only possible motivation for creating the Universe in the first place: to have something to love that is not identical to Him. It’s why Catholics believe that all of Creation is good, for He would not have created something He could not love.”

     C. S. Lewis, using the viewpoint of his demon-protagonist Screwtape, put it a bit differently:

     We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.

     If, as Lewis posits, “He [God] wanted to make them [Mankind] Saints; gods; things like Himself,” love is the only credible explanation for Christ’s acceptance of His Passion. Indeed, it’s the only imaginable one. What other gift would have moved a troop of Roman soldiers – they who had crucified Jesus and waited upon His death – to exclaim as they did when He expired, when His Resurrection was still days hence?

     Yet they did.

***

     You might be wondering why I chose this subject today, just before the beginning of Holy Week. The answer may surprise you: despair.

     Theological despair is the abandonment of hope. Not merely hope in the temporal sense, of course, but hope in eternal life and the possibility of eternal bliss as well. It is the precursor to suicide, for one who elects to destroy the life of his body must have previously surrendered all hope.

     For completeness, I must include here two possibilities I first encountered in one of Larry Niven’s short stories. Perhaps the suicide believes that eternal bliss is guaranteed to all and that it beats temporal existence hollow, so why hang around on Earth? Or perhaps he believes that eternal torment is guaranteed to all, and it’s worse the older you are when you die. I can’t see either of those as consistent with a universe ruled by natural laws, but then, your mileage may vary. In any case, to adopt either of those stances nullifies the virtue of hope. If one’s future is guaranteed – the thesis of the predestinationists – there’s no room for hope, regardless of the nature of that predestined future!

     Of course, suicides that believe either of Niven’s conjectures are vanishingly few. Now and then we hear about a bunch of them — Heaven’s Gate, for example – but they’re obviously not common, else the streets would be littered with corpses. The common suicide disbelieves in any life other than that of the body…and that life, he finds intolerable and hopeless.

     But back to the main point: As Christ was both fully Divine and fully human, He was capable of being tempted. He suffered in His extremity on the Cross the temptation to despair. He expressed its power in a few words, near the end of His torments: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” [Matthew 27:46] It was His human nature speaking: for a human father to allow his son to die so horribly surely seems inconsistent with paternal love.

     The possibility that in His last moments, the Son of God might have surrendered to despair is among the most terrifying things imaginable. I cannot say whether it was nonzero. But it did not happen. With His last words, He accepted death and commended His spirit to His Father.

     I think in this lies the best demonstration of Christ’s unique dual nature, both fully human and fully Divine. And further, I think it an indication that every man who lives will face the temptation to despair. None of us are so strong that we cannot be tempted. But we have His example, and His demonstration of the Divine authority with which He spoke, to sustain us.

***

     Christians have often been called “people of hope.” Indeed, the whole of our faith rests upon hope. And hope is the antithesis to despair.

     Pascal’s Wager has been referenced often here at Liberty’s Torch. It has a curious flavor, for it rests upon a quasi-probabilistic assessment of terminal expectations: the possibility of an afterlife that might be filled with either bliss or remorse, versus the possibility that no such prospect is real. In omitting hope as an influence of importance, Blaise Pascal sought to exclude religious conviction from human decision making, such that a coldly objective assessment of the prospects would cause men to choose to behave in accordance with God’s commandments. Yet he, one of the highest intellects of his era, failed to realize that his wager implicitly includes hope. For what, after all, would compensate for a life deliberately restricted by the Commandments if there were no afterlife?

     The answer is hope, whether for an afterlife such as Christians expect, or for the complete extinction of the human consciousness at temporal death. One makes one’s wager according to one’s hope.

***

     As always, the great phrase shook him to the heart. But it was obvious that it meant nothing to anyone else in the room; were such men hopeless? No, no. That Gate could never slam behind them while they lived, no matter how the hornets buzzed for them behind the deviceless banner. Hope was with them yet. – James Blish

     William James, no Christian, once said that “We believe ourselves immortal because we believe ourselves fit for immortality.” He conflated religious belief with insanity, so it seems he disagreed. His emphasis was on the “cash value” of ideas. He dismissed as unworthy of consideration propositions that have no practical consequences. From this one can see how easily a man would be led to dismiss the afterlife.

     But therein lies the temptation to despair: the conviction that one’s existence is temporally bounded and therefore ultimately meaningless. That strangest of all temptations can afflict even mightiest geniuses our race has produced. We have all sorts of literary attestations to it. Have one from Percy Bysshe Shelly:

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'”

     Shelley, to be sure, was not a person of hope.

***

     That’s it. That’s all. The choice is between hope and despair, yet even that choice is bifurcate. One can hope for an afterlife that one can earn with obedience to the commandments, or one can hope there’s no afterlife and cut loose to one’s fullest, Cthulhuvian extent. The atheists I’ve known not only believe there’s no afterlife; they hope that that’s the case. Yet even they tend to behave according to the Commandments. I’ve toyed with polling them for their reasons, but…naah, life’s too short.

     Inversely, one can believe in that either-or afterlife and still surrender to despair. The temptation to think oneself inherently damned can be strong. Yet among Catholics’ treasured maxims is this one:

Every saint has a past;
Every sinner has a future.

     A loving God offers us all the possibility of eternal bliss.

     Anyway, please enjoy your Holy Week. Armor yourself against despair, that strangest of temptations. Wrap yourself in hope. No matter who you are, no matter what sort of life you’ve lived to this point, hope will remain while you live… perhaps even afterward. It will not fail you. May God, whose Son went voluntarily to His death by torture in demonstration not only of His Divine authority but of the magnitude of God’s love for us, bless and keep you all.

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