Dec 05 2022

It Seems That MOST of the World’s Progressive Leaders Are in Trouble

Britain – not able to keep Prime Ministers in office, other than short duration.

France – Heavy competition from Nationalists, like Le Pen.

Italy – Meloni wins a surprise (to the Elite) election. Here policies havce widespread support from the voters.

Russia – Putin may be ill with cancer. At the very least, his control of his top staff is lacking – they are not afraid to spread details/rumors (hard to tell what is Truth and what is Pravda in Russia).

China – Xi had to publicly take out a rival. Challenges to his rule are escalating – lockdown rebellion, use of Apple apps to organize resistance (stopped by Apple, at China order).

USA – FJB is continuing to spread, even on Christmas paper. The *resident is widely seen as senile and weak, and that’s a problem, as our enemies may decide to act while they can.

BOTH available at the link above.

And, it’s nearly Christmas.

Many don’t feel inclined to let loose their festive side, given the poorly performing economy, the rising national debt, gas shortages, and a citizenry still nervous about spreading infections.

Myself?

I think it time to kick my Christmas prep into high gear – cards, shopping, decorating, Christmas cookies, and prepare for the annual Celebration of the Birth of My King.

And, a party –

My family will enjoy gathering for that. I’ve sent out the invite, but may schedule it for 12/23. The Original Die Hard, popcorn, drinks, Christmas cookies, and, of course, C4.

After all, it’s tradition.

I saw this post in the Bablyon Bee. I had to link from Twitter, as my &^%$#$%^&^% Windows Security stuff blocked the site, then sent me to a malicious site.

And, if you want to remember that rare departure from Commercial Santa, over-the-top focus on purchasing crap, and irreligious drek, here it is.

Dec 05 2022

“Freedom: I Won’t!”

     This will be an extremely trying day here at the Fortress, for doggie reasons: our Newf must go back under the knife yet again, this time to correct a dangerous abdominal hernia. So I doubt I’ll be posting anything much.

     Accordingly, I’d like to recommend that anyone who hasn’t yet read Eric Frank Russell’s classic novella “And Then There Were None” take the hour or so it requires to digest it fully. I first read this tale at a very early age, but even then, long before I began a deeper acquaintance with politics, propaganda, and the evil we call The State, it stirred me deeply. It remains one of my favorite fictional treatments of freedom. The message is simple:

“No” Is The Freest Word In Any Language.

     Treat yourself. Then unbox your telescopes and start searching the sky for that planetoid.

Dec 05 2022

Mark Levin: We are moving toward a Democratic run police state.

One of his finest:

Dec 04 2022

Apparently “No Law Abridging” Cannot Mean No Law Abridging

     “I have always read ‘no law abridging’ to mean no law abridging.’” – Associate Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black

     Time was, Black was regarded as a jurisprudential giant, especially by liberals. Of course, we don’t really have liberals any longer; they’ve been swallowed up by the “progressives.” You know, the political creed that’s opposed to progress. Such is life in our time, when I identify as is taken as a license to deny inconvenient realities of every sort.

     Of course, we’ve been here before. But this time around on the Left’s ideological roulette wheel, the little ball has dropped into the double-zero slot:

     Dems were actively engaged in encouraging Twitter to suppress voices and news they didn’t like. According to them, the First Amendment isn’t absolute.

     There are lots of revelations coming out from Elon Musk releasing key Twitter files surrounding the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Deanna wrote about Gaddes and Roth, which is jaw-dropping on its own.

     Now through additional tweets on the subject, we see that most Democrats truly believe that the First Amendment can be bent to their will if it furthers their narrative. What mattered to them was dragging basement-hiding Joe Biden over the finish line in November and any news item about Hunter Biden was a problem. Then, suddenly, the laptop showed up. And, the Democrats circled the wagons.

     The very same Democrats who always screamed that Twitter is a company so they can do what they want regarding speech and censorship, actively asked Twitter to censor the Hunter Biden story. They didn’t want the info out there as they knew it could hurt the campaign. How to make this go away? Pretend this was a hacked laptop, thus all info from that laptop must be viewed as suspect.

     It’s time to refresh our awareness of the Left’s attitude toward words, statements, and truth:

     It’s hard for most people to grasp that objective truth is a conception, rather than something self-evident. Yet furious philosophical battles have been fought over it. The negative side has never conceded defeat. They’ve advanced reason after reason to doubt the existence of objective reality. As each one is destroyed, they shift to another. In a sense, their proposition is its own strongest weapon, for they respond rather frequently to even the most obvious points by saying, “No, that’s your truth” — an implicit claim that it’s the not the observation but the observer’s willingness to accept it that really matters.

     John Q. Public has heard little of this, of course; it’s mostly fought in the ivory towers, and in the publications that cater to professional intellectuals. All the same, it matters to him more than he’s able to appreciate.

     Truth is an evaluation: a judgment that some proposition corresponds to objective reality sufficiently for men to rely upon it. The weakening of the concept of truth cuts an opening through which baldly counterfactual propositions can be thrust into serious discourse. Smith might say that proposition X is disprovable, or that it contradicts common observations of the world; Jones counters that X suits him fine, for he has dismissed the disprovers as “partisan” and prefers his own observations to those of Smith. Unless the two agree on standards for relevant evidence, pertinent reasoning, and common verification — in other words, standards for what can be accepted as sufficiently true — their argument over X will never end.

     An interest group that has “put its back against the wall” as regards its central interest, and is unwilling to concede the battle regardless of the evidence and logic raised against its claims, will obfuscate, attack the motives of its opponents, and attempt to misdirect their attention with irrelevancies. When all of these have failed, its last-ditch defense is to attack the concept of truth. Once that has been undermined, the group can’t be defeated. It can stay on the ideological battlefield indefinitely, preserving the possibility of victory through attrition or fatigue among its opponents.

     Slam that last paragraph. It describes the Left’s attitude in all matters they cannot protect against counter-arguments. Mike Adams provided a case for study:

     When I asked another feminist to debate me on abortion she said that she didn’t discuss such personal topics publicly. But then I read her biography. After talking about losing her virginity (including details about how she cleaned the blood off the couch afterwards) she dedicated countless pages to the issue of abortion and how a “lack of choice” adversely affects young women. After reading on, I realized why she didn’t tell me the truth. She revealed that she was a postmodernist who didn’t like to use the word “truth.”

     The next time I got into an argument with a feminist – over whether a female student who lied about a rape to get out of a test should be expelled – I understood the postmodern feminist position better. Feminists just can’t help but lie because there really is no such thing as the truth.

     Since so many feminists cannot tell the truth – because it doesn’t even really exist – I simply cannot take them seriously.

     Feminists of that sort are merely one family within the Leftist clan. “Truth” is something they evaluate as either an asset or an obstruction, rather than an objective characteristic of a statement that’s independent of whose agenda it serves. They cannot permit it to stand apart from its political value.

     Therefore, they cannot allow “no law abridging” to mean no law abridging. The phrase must somehow be magicked away, or measured against “national security,” or a “compelling government interest,” or some such. They’ve gotten away with similar exercises in politically expedient dishonesty many times, especially as regards “public use,” “cruel and unusual punishment,” powers “reserved to the states, or the people,” and “the right to keep and bear arms.”

     It will take more than mere words to put a halt to it.

Dec 04 2022

A Light In The Darkness

     Quoth Neil Oliver:

     I love Christmas … always have and always will. In every conceivable way, Christmas is light in a time of darkness and for many of us, that light has never been more welcome and so can’t come soon enough.

     Especially since the festival is once again under attack by the joyless division. In line with what has become a tradition of the season in benighted Britain, yet another bunch of interfering, patronizing preachers of the witless cant of “diversity and inclusivity” have decided it’s their turn to take a pop at Christmas.

     I wonder if it’s as bad in Britain as it is here.

     Just in time for the holidays, ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” will appear on Washington, D.C., buses. The American Humanist Association will pay the $40,000 price tag.

     It almost sounds good to “just be good for goodness sake.” Why do we need God to scare us into being good? Why can’t we just be good on our own for the sake of pure goodness?

     As reported in the Associated Press, Fred Edwords, spokesman for the Washington-based humanist group explained: “We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you. Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

     That campaign first reared its head fourteen years ago. I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing it again this year, along with other, similarly sour-spirited attacks on the feast that commemorates the Nativity of the Son of God.

     These “non-theists…feel a little alone” – ? So we who believe must renounce our celebrations and wishes of Christmas cheer? Has Christmas not yet been secularized sufficiently for them? Or is it that they’d love to share the joy of us knuckle-dragging theists, but being in the presence of open displays of faith gives them a pain they can’t – or won’t – admit?

     Perhaps you’re aware that there’s been a coordinated attack on Christian-derived celebrations and expressions of sentiment. The “Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays” thing is the most prominent, but there are many others as well. The secularizers have become ever more relentless these past few decades. They want all remaining traces of the Christian faith not merely silenced, but anathematized and driven from public view. Many unbelievers who aren’t militant about it passively support them.

     But why? “It’s exclusionary,” some reply. “It makes persons of other traditions feel bad not to be a part of it.” Who tells them that they can’t be a part of it? But others say “It’s judgmental. It castigates people for their weaknesses, their failure to be perfect.” Christians don’t hold themselves to be perfect; we merely hope to be rescued from our imperfection. And still others simply reject it as “a myth:” “A man born of a virgin, willingly embracing poverty to preach throughout Judea, accepting death by torture, and then rising from the dead? Absurd!”

     My dear non-theist friends: Either it happened or it didn’t. If it did, as the available evidence has persuaded me, disbelieving it won’t make it untrue.

***

     I’ve been challenged about my faith. “Why? Do you need to believe it?” It’s about as irritating as any non-injurious phenomenon I’ve suffered. Though I regret it, I must admit that a couple of such incidents have evinced rather uncharitable responses from me.

     Such persons have a cockeyed conception of “need,” to start with. Need is personal and contextual, always. “Need for what?” should be the reply. “Are you asking how I consume it, or what I plan to buy with it, or what project I hope to incorporate it into?” Even when uttered in the gentlest tones, the riposte flummoxes the majority of irritants, which is itself a sufficient reason to recommend it.

     (Digression begins: I’ve come to dislike the word need almost as much as the word should. “Why do you need an AR-15? Why do you need a Mercedes S550? Why do you need a wife…a home in the suburbs… a Newf… a lawn tractor…a five-computer network…a supercharged, chrome-plated, fully gurgitated, Escher-certified three-pronged blivet?” He who takes need questions seriously, rather than dismissing them with a grimace and a growl, has admitted a hungry predator to his life, one capable of consuming his peace of mind and eager to do so. My advice? Don’t. End of digression.)

     But let’s imagine that your interlocutor stands his ground and presses the matter. He might not be hard of hearing. He might be worried. The possibility that you’re right and he’s wrong troubles him deeply, so he must prove you wrong, or at least that you’re inadequate by some standard. This is especially the case with persons who‘ve been persuaded to believe themselves more intelligent than others specifically because of their atheism.

     Yet even the most resolute atheist will hear the “still, small voice” at some point in his life. God does all things for each of us, though not necessarily in the same way, at the same time, or under the same circumstances. Some only hear it in the final moments of their lives. Some hear it repeatedly, perhaps for days or weeks at a time.

     And some only hear it when they’re with you or me.

***

     Many a Christian is daunted by the certainty and self-satisfaction of the militant atheists. He shrinks before the challenge such persons represent, especially those among them who are of good repute despite their Godlessness. The Christian might say to himself, “What can I do? I’m only a man, one voice in a cacophonious multitude. As ill-equipped as I am, far better to keep silent than to tread dangerous conversational ground.”

     I know the feeling. I’ve been there.

     Time was, there were two older persons whose neighbors held them in high esteem. To their sorrow, they had never produced a child. Yet despite their years they had not given up hope. They prayed that that empty place in their lives might somehow be filled. And it was:

     There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was barren, and they both were now well stricken in years.
     And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order of his course, According to the custom of the priest’s office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.
     And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
     And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.
     And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

     And what a child John proved to be:

     Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.
     Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
     And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?
     He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.
     Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do?
     And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you.
     And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.
     And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not; John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable.
     And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people.

     And many heard John and believed, though he was not himself the Messiah.

     Who might hear you?

     May God bless and keep you all. And Merry Christmas, of course!

Dec 04 2022

More Than Coincidence?

Maine is also a Constitutional-carry state. No permit required, though I think the state will issue you one on request, for use in other states that observe reciprocity. Considerate, eh?

Dec 03 2022

Please Share This Link

It’s to Project Veritas’ story about HHS’s complicity in human trafficking of migrants.

I’ve been active this morning:

On Blogger

Substack

And, just generally getting stuff around the house done.

Dec 03 2022

Yesterday Was Newsworthy

     And for more reasons than one.

1. The Twitter News.

     Elon Musk has made good on his promise. I hardly need tell my intelligent, observant, highly skeptical, exceedingly handsome Gentle Readers what I mean by that. Despite the flood of revelations he’s provided through journalist Matt Taibbi, there remains enough ambiguity for any federal operatives involved in the censoring of the Hunter Biden Laptop story to maintain “deniability.”

     It remains to be documented beyond all possibility of refutation that a federal agency requested the suppression of the laptop story. Apparently, if such an agency was involved — FBI, White House, or what have you — it was subtle enough to camouflage itself and / or its demands against future accusations of this kind. At least, the material I’ve seen so far suggests so.

     I believe that there was federal involvement: i.e., that a federal agency of size and enforcement power “put the screws” to various persons capable of suppressing the story. Indeed, I want to believe that. But that desire is itself a danger. (“We believe easily what we fear or desire.” — La Rochefoucauld) Whether it happened or didn’t must be nailed down tight before the feeding frenzies start.

***

2. Death Cult Chronicles.

     Sometimes the masks don’t just come off, their wearers rip them off:

     “The pregnancy center provides free pregnancy testing, peer counseling, education, support and referrals to pregnant women who need support. They also provide free baby clothes and other parenting-related supplies,” Live Action reported.

     Will anyone sincerely argue that these “pro-choice” monsters are not in fact pro-death?

     For a seriously wide-angle take on this gruesome subject, read David Warren’s poignant essay “From 8,000,000,000 to Zero.”

***

3. America’s Premier Trustworthy News Provider.

     My admiration for the courage, penetration, and joyous snark of the writers and producers at The Babylon Bee only grows with time:

     I doubt it could be done better than that.

     I attended college a long, long time ago, beginning in 1968. Even then, there was a trend toward getting the most easily acquired, practically substanceless degree possible. The argument ran as follows:

  • Employment is what matters.
  • Employers want to know that you have a degree, and that your grade-point average was respectable, but they’re not really interested in what your degree is in.
  • So get a degree – whatever you can – in some subject where you can get mostly As and Bs without effort.
  • That goes on your resume; the rest is just gravy.

     That trend acquired sufficient members to invalidate the Bachelor’s degree as a credential employers would trust. The consequence, at least at the places where I worked, was an intensified interviewing scheme that really probed:

  1. Whether the candidate knew anything much…
  2. …About anything relevant to our business…
  3. …And whether he could actually think rather than just regurgitate.

     As a front-line supervisor, I was one who implemented such a scheme. It wasn’t fun, especially for the candidates, but the deterioration of the college degree had forced it on us. Conditions have continued to deteriorate…while contemporaneously, Departments of Labor, both state and federal, have striven to restrict what questions and criteria an employer can impose on candidates.

     Things aren’t looking up. The current shortage of persons willing to work makes the near-term outlook grim. And I believe I’ll drop the subject here.

***

4. Nerve Struck.

     Yesterday evening, in a fit of melancholy about current events, I wrote at Gab::

We must accept…
That the Constitution is a dead letter.
That the last two elections were fraudulent.
That the edifice in Washington is hostile to us.
That we cannot trust anyone who holds public office.
That “movements,” so called, are mostly a trap for enthusiasts.
That no explicitly political undertaking will restore our rights or our nation.

These are not happy pronouncements. I’m distressed by the need to make them. But reality is not a matter of opinion. Today we have a government of Usurpers who mean to rule by force, and with no particular regard for our rights. They will not yield to anything but massively superior force.

So what then?

I don’t know. I don’t have the answers. I’m an old man who’s seen too much and has no stomach for yet another fight. But what is must be frankly faced. America is now a nation ruled by an unelected oligarchy that selects its own successors, much as the Kremlin did. And as bad as its oppressions and exactions are today, present trends continuing, they’ll get worse.

How do we prevent “present trends” from “continuing?” And please, nobody say “Vote harder!”

     It got a lot of likes, reposts, and comments. It’s also been picked up by other sites, Mike Hendrix’s Cold Fury and Western Rifle Shooters being the most prominent. Perhaps it will get others thinking about alternatives to passive acceptance.

     Trouble is, the alternatives I can think of are attached to massively unpleasant possibilities. But as I said, I’m an old man with no stomach for another fight. I’m not unpacking the guns for anything less than a direct assault on my home and loved ones. Hell, even speaking your opinion freely has become a risk-taking enterprise. Anyway, have at it in the comments.

***

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I have a novel to work on…well, five of them, actually, plus I’ve just had a sixth idea that’s getting harder to resist with every passing moment, and miscellaneous other obligations. See you tomorrow: same time, same URL.

     “Be there. Aloha!” – Jack Lord.

Dec 02 2022

Musk And The Censors

     “There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they’re afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that’s all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns—just somebody naming the exact nature of what you’re doing?”

     [You know perfectly well where it’s from.]

     The ironies have gone beyond my ability to capture them in an original and unique manner. But that doesn’t matter, for Jonathan Turley has captured them for us:

     Unable to convince users to embrace censorship, [Hillary] Clinton and others are pressuring corporations and foreign governments to deter [Elon] Musk from restoring free speech. Since users are embracing the new Twitter, the campaign has focused on preventing them from signing up by removing the app from the Apple and Google stores. In the meantime, Apple is joining the boycott by withholding advertising revenue to coerce Musk to reverse his free-speech pledge.

     Musk, however, is sitting on the ultimate weapon to bring this war to an end: free speech itself.

     Professor Turley is in danger of getting himself “read out of meetin’,” as the old folks used to say before we censored them. The shade of Eric Frank Russell must be applauding wildly. At any rate, he should be.

     We know that the Left’s censors aren’t “offended” by freedom of speech. They’re threatened by it: most particularly, by the possibility that uncensored speech will reveal their crimes to all and sundry. Their efforts to silence us have largely been strokes in their own defense. But they have a little problem. The Left, historically, has championed freedom of expression so fiercely that they’ve raged against any kind of suppression thereof. Obscenity? Pornography? Slander? Threats? Incitement to riot? “Freedom of speech! they shrieked. “Carve-outs are a slippery slope straight to Hell! There must be no exceptions!”

     It’s come back to bite them on the ass, and it’s glorious.

     Needless to say, they haven’t given up. They’ve simply invented an exception of their very own, a truly exceptional exception: for “hate speech.” “Hate speech is not free speech!” they trumpet. But what is it? “Never mind!” comes the reply. “We know it when we see it!” If memory serves, that was the Supreme Court’s test for whether a movie was obscene enough to be banned, back when.

     Over the years the Church of the Left has grown ever more dogmatic. Time was, there were such things as pro-life Democrats. No longer! Nat Hentoff, one of the fiercest advocates of complete freedom of speech, found himself shunned by persons who agreed with him on every other subject, because he was against abortion and said so freely and fearlessly. If memory serves, toward the end of his distinguished career he was denied a lifetime-achievement award for that very reason.

     I’ve reached an age and a condition such that few things reliably make me giggle. It’s nice to know that hasn’t been reduced to the null set just yet.

***

     Many are the things the Left doesn’t want anyone to say openly. Discussion of certain subjects – for example, the influence of federal regulation and the profit incentive on the behavior of large pharmaceutical companies these past few years – has been ruled completely out of bounds. Discoursing on such a subject on any of the big sites risks being banned and shunned as a “hater.”

     The tendency has been for persons who value their participation in various social media – ironically, about the most antisocial phenomenon that has ever existed – to “self-censor.” Contact with their “Facebook friends” is simply too vital to endanger. Combined with the Left’s swiftly pouncing “banning brigades,” ever ready to bring the sins of others to the “trust and safety” cadres, this has stifled public examination of developments that have deserved close, widespread scrutiny.

     It’s become a kind of self-mockery. They who, once upon a time, would have been strident in demanding absolute freedom of expression for themselves are now the world’s most minutely scrupulous censors. (I almost wrote “sensors,” and what would Mr. Spock think of that?) The significance is too plain for anyone to miss. Their edifice of lies and betrayals has grown so large and so fragile that for a single popular site to dismantle its suppression mechanisms threatens its very existence.

     I would not have credited the possibility before Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. Indeed, I did not. Perhaps my imagination is failing me. That’s a terrible thing for a novelist to contemplate.

     I’m fortunate in being immune to “cancellation.” No one alive has anything to hold over my head. Therefore I can say what I think without fear. That isn’t true of most Americans. Even on the newly liberated plains of Twitter, there are still hazards in publicly going against the Left. If you’re in business, or earn your living as someone else’s employee, or have a significantly “diverse” social circle, you must still weigh the satisfactions of plain speaking against the possible consequences.

     But there’s a chink in the armor at last, and it’s thanks to one maverick, slightly eccentric billionaire, who saw the wrong and set out to right it as his personal cause and at his personal cost.

     To Elon Musk: Thank you. To his would be-censors: Have a nice day.

Dec 01 2022

Meaning What?

     It’s time for another tirade on clarity in expression. Let’s start with a little George Orwell:

     [O]ne ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.… Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. – From “Politics and the English Language”

     Orwell wrote that essay, one of his most pointed non-fiction statements, in 1946. Suffice it to say that the disease has “progressed” in the decades since then. Its severity today threatens the life of the body politic and the sanity of the politically attentive reader / listener.

     Rare is the politician who says what he means clearly and unambiguously. Politicians abhor being tied down to a position. They want as much wiggle room as they can get for themselves. Simultaneously, they strive to tie their opponents down as firmly as possible, thus giving them a fixed position to attack. The aspiring politician must master the circumlocution, the periphrasis, the adroit substitution, and the misleading implication, for his opponents will use these weapons against him.

     Babblespeak – the deliberate proliferation of ambiguity, obfuscation, and vermiculation — is the small-arms fire of political combat. Prohibited nowhere. No license is required.

     Two examples of political babblespeak are stuck in my craw this fine December morning. Though one of them is not from an aspirant to political office, both are political in the intentions behind them. The first is from Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH):

     “This is the latest example of systematic corruption happening at the highest levels of the FBI, and the American people deserve full transparency.”

     This is typical of Jordan’s style. It’s full of sound and fury, but what, exactly, did he mean? “Systemic corruption:” a good round thumping phrase, but of what is he speaking? Did the “system” corrupt the FBI’s top people, or did they corrupt the “system?” What specifically did he mean by “deserve full transparency” — ? “Transparency” meaning what? Is the FBI to publicize the details of all its operations and discoveries henceforward, perhaps on the Web? Can there be such a thing as partial transparency? “Transparent” on what subjects: all, some, or only one? And how on Earth did “the American people,” itself an ambiguous construction, come to “deserve” any of that? Did we earn it somehow, or purchase it retail, or is it the subject of an entitlement buried somewhere in the Constitution?

     The second example comes from a departed Twitter executive:

     Yael Roth, who resigned as Twitter head of safety Nov. 10, said during an interview at a Tuesday Knight Foundation event that the social media site was less safe since Musk took over the site, Reuters reported.

     I do love that word “safe.” The non-specificity of it is unequaled in political jargon, unless by the approximately equivalent term “security.” Safe from what? What actual hazards to life, limb, or property have emerged from Twitter since Musk’s purchase? Are there degrees of safety that we can measure with some notional calipers? And by the way, whose safety is at issue? The random Twitter user? The Twitter workforce? Or perhaps the Usurper Regime, the Democrat Party, and their media handmaidens?

     There aren’t many people who unpack political statements as meticulously as I do. But then, I’m a fanatic of sorts: I insist on knowing exactly what’s meant by such pronouncements. The typical news consumer might not be aware of the dangers inherent in such orations, but many, perhaps most, have a formless feeling of unease about it all. Something is lurking in the shadows cast by these statements, and we know without being able to pin it down that it means us nothing good.

     Arthur Herzog, in railing against such stuff in The B.S. Factor, prescribed what he called “sharp questions:”

     “Why?” “What for?” “When?” “What do you mean?” “Who?” These are terrifying questions, in a way, considering how seldom they are answered. And when answers are given, they don’t appear to be the right answers….

     The point is that such questions are designed to illuminate what is happening and they tend to take little for granted by way of conventional answers. The aim of the radical skeptic is to lower the confusion and eliminate the nonsense, hedges, and non sequiturs which make the American political dialogue something that approaches real torture.

     But rather than ask such questions and insist on specific answers to them, the typical American news consumer is more inclined simply to “tune it all out.” Despite my diametrically opposed inclinations, I have a great deal of sympathy for him.

     “Say what you mean, mean what you say. You know that if everybody followed that rule, there’d be a lot less trouble.” – Chris Cooper as Bob Cody, in Interstate 60

     And a lot less verbal offal to pollute our news organs, airwaves, and ears.

Nov 30 2022

The Triad, The Dyad, And The Monad

     If you’re aware that there is a school of philosophy that rigidly separates “real” things from men’s experiences of them, you’re a rare individual, and I commend you. If you’re aware that the promotion of that dichotomy has engendered some of the fiercest disputes in the history of philosophy, you’re an even rarer individual, and I salute you. Finally, if you managed to grasp Phaedrus’s difficulties in coping with the concept of quality, and understand how it can be harmonized with Ayn Rand’s fictional defense of Aristotelianism, you’re among the rarest of the rare, and I applaud you.

     (Yes, I’m sure you’re aware that your Curmudgeon is a long-winded bastard who spends too much of his time reading the effusions of other long-winded bastards. Hey, we all have our little flaws.)

     Many a writer has brushed his thoughts over the question What is real? Few have coped with it successfully. Writers on the nature of perception have struggled to link it solidly to “real” things and events…and have usually failed. Writers who’ve concentrated on the inner workings of the mind have often stumbled into Plato’s Cave and failed to find the way out. Finally, there are writers like Douglas Hofstadter and your humble Curmudgeon, who muddle the mess with a big spoon – don’t stir, fold! – in the hope that their readers will like the flavor.

     I once knew a very bright man – there were no flies on this guy; he had doctorates in both Physics and Theology – who contended quite seriously that all knowledge is illusory. His reasoning? Knowledge cannot be separated from perception, and our interpretations of what we perceive are irremediably “theory-laden.” When I pressed him for an explication, he merely smiled and moved away.

     Are you feeling all right, Gentle Reader? Perhaps you sense a headache coming on? A glimpse down the road to solipsism can do that to anyone.

***

     What is real? The question is basic…and ultimately irrelevant to human life. The world – whatever that is – provides a stream of data we apprehend through our several senses; we struggle to “make sense” of that data stream; we reach conclusions about it; and we act accordingly. Our nature as “project pursuers” (Loren Lomasky) dictates all of that and our reactions to it. Those who fail to steer the process into a sufficient degree of correspondence to reality – whatever that is – are generally classified as insane, and housed in pleasant institutions where the harm they can do to themselves or others is minimized.

     That’s life, Bubba! It’s The Algorithm we all execute continuously:

  1. Select a technique that you think will get you what you think you want.
  2. Will this technique require you to lose body parts, go to jail, or burn in Hell?
    • If so, return to step 1.
    • If not, proceed to step 3.
  3. Do a little of it.
  4. Are you at your goal, approaching it, or receding from it?
    • If at your goal, stop.
    • If approaching, return to step 3.
    • If receding, return to step 1.

     Iterate until dead.

     (If you can hear, far off in the distance, Alan Turing muttering “But does it halt?” congratulations. Some think it will, others think it won’t, but at some point we’re no longer around to quibble about it.)

     That’s how people work, reduced to the bare elements. It’s not how beavers work. Beavers do what they do from instincts and drives built into their flesh. They don’t select among priorities or paths toward them. They don’t question the probable consequences of their projects. Above all, they don’t abstract.

     That’s our blessing and our curse.

***

     You’ve probably been wondering what bizarre events have me following the line of thought above. As it happens, this is a recurring line of thought for me. This morning it took the wheel owing to a stunning essay by N. S. Lyons. Therein the author discourses on two of my favorite writers – J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis – as predictors of a possible anti-human dystopia:

     Which dystopian writer saw it all coming? Of all the famous authors of the 20th century who crafted worlds meant as warnings, who has proved most prophetic about the afflictions of the 21st? George Orwell? Aldous Huxley? Kurt Vonnegut? Ray Bradbury? Each of these, among others, have proved far too disturbingly prescient about many aspects of our present, as far as I’m concerned. But it could be that none of them were quite as far-sighted as the fairytale spinners.

     C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, fast friends and fellow members of the Inklings – the famous club of pioneering fantasy writers at Oxford in the 1930s and 40s – are not typically thought of as “dystopian” authors. They certainly never claimed the title. After all, they wrote tales of fantastical adventure, heroism, and mythology that have delighted children and adults ever since, not prophecies of boots stamping on human faces forever. And yet, their stories and non-fiction essays contain warnings that might have struck more surely to the heart of our emerging 21st century dystopia than any other.

     Talk about having encountered a kindred spirit! Lyons’s observations are both piercing and terrifying, for both Lewis and Tolkien wrote from a sense of mission: an inner foreboding about the dark possibilities that loom before us and what might be done to head them off. While his essay is long, it will amply reward your attention. It will also give you a new appreciation for Lewis and Tolkien not as mere storytellers but as seers, moral philosophers, and guides.

     Lyons’s essay came to my attention through a shorter piece by Francis X. Maier:

     Every so often an article appears that demands to be shared. So I’m doing that here. If you do nothing else in the coming week, read N.S. Lyons’s recent essay on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and technocracy at his Substack site, The Upheaval. It’s worth every minute of your time.

     And note that the name “Lyons” is a pseudonym. In real life, the author is an analyst working in the U.S. foreign policy community. The Upheaval is not a religious site; it covers a wide range of global topics. But Lyons’s skills go well beyond the mechanics of foreign policy.

     If you value a human future, you’d do well to read both pieces – preferably Lyons’s essay first – and give them your soberest consideration.

***

     Now, concerning the unusually obscure title of this unusually obscure piece: every man lives in three different realms, depending on the degree of abstraction he indulges at any moment:

  • The Triad: The three-part world of subject, object, and our thoughts and emotions about them;
  • The Dyad: The two-part world of external things and our perception of them;
  • The Monad: The integrated, entirely unabstracted gestalt we conventionally call reality.

     Grasping the qualities of and the contrasts among those three realms compels an acceptance that only a mind that’s both capable of abstraction and capable of eschewing it can achieve. There is no clash among them; each is as necessary and valid as the others. We cannot validly dismiss any of the three, all of which pre-exist our opinions and reasoning about them, as unreal.

     Our thoughts and emotions are real.
     Our perceptions are real.
     The world is real.

     If not, then nothing is or can ever be. “Theory” has nothing to do with it.

     If the above hasn’t tired you out, refer to Godel, Escher, Bach, specifically Birthday Cantatatata, the dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise about Achilles’s birthday. Can you spot the escape hatch now? For extra credit, read Robert Nozick’s discourse in Philosophical Explanations on treating the word thing as a verb.

Nov 30 2022

Busy as a Babylon Bee

Not that I’m as talented a parodist.

I’ve been updating both my Substack site and my legacy Right As Usual blog.

Annual Enrollment for Medicare has just 7 days to go. At that point, I’m planning a Pamper Me day. I will, by then, deserve it.

There is still time for people under 65 to sign up with the Marketplace plans (Obamacare). If you choose a plan by 12/15, it will be effective in January. The signup period continues until January 15, but the plans won’t take effect until February 1st. I have NO idea why they decided to extend the signup period.

Nov 30 2022

The Fish Rots From The Head

     …but in time the decay will reach the whole of the corpus:

     [Wil] Wilkins has called Montana home for more than 40 years. He bought his property, just over nine acres adjacent to the Bitterroot National Forest, in 2004. When he bought the property, surrounded by pine trees and with plentiful birds and wildlife, it corresponded to a vision he’d had his entire life….

     Outside his front door sits Robbins Gulch Road, built and maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, the result of a limited easement granted to the Forest Service by the property’s previous owners in 1962. That agreement permitted the Forest Service to build and maintain this unpaved access road through the private property, now owned by Wilkins and his few neighbors along the road, into the national forest, primarily for purposes of timber harvesting and general maintenance.

     Importantly, the 1962 easement did not grant access for general public use — the road was to be for Forest Service employees and permitees only. When he bought his spread, Wilkins wasn’t entirely enthused to have the road on his property. But since the easement agreement restricted the road’s usage, he figured he could live with it.

     Unfortunately, it soon became clear the government was not abiding by the terms of the original agreement. Wilkins says that after the Forest Service posted signs encouraging public use of the road for visitors seeking entry to the national forest, traffic and parking increased dramatically. Wilkins and his neighbor have endured trespassing on their property and even theft — someone stole a pair of elk horns he had mounted on his porch. One of his neighbor’s dogs was killed by a speeding driver, and at one point someone shot Wilkins’ cat (which survived).

     Wilkins reviewed the easement agreement, which clearly designated Robbins Gulch Road as a right-of-way for limited use. But discussions with the Forest Service to get the agency to honor its agreement were fruitless. Wilkins hasn’t forgotten the response from a district ranger: “He crossed his arms, leaned back in his chair, looked at me and he started laughing,” Wilkins recalls. “He said, ‘Wil, you can always sue us.’ And that’s when I said to myself, ‘OK then, I will.’”

     Funny, isn’t it? You let a few of the top guys – you know, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bidens – get away with a felony or two, and pretty soon even Forest Rangers in Montana figure they can do what they please to whomever they please. Whoda thunk it?

     Incidents similar to this – I hope my Gentle Readers all remember Cliven Bundy and Donald Scott — are what will precipitate the tide of bloodshed that has become inevitable.

Nov 29 2022

The Chinese Takeover of American Farmland?

There has been a frenzied race to buy up farmland, not only by the Chinese, but also by Zuckerberg. They seem to have a simple business plan:

  • Buy American farmland (at sky-high prices)
  • Secure enough land to ‘control the market’
  • Collect BILLIONS!

Yeah, from what I know about farming (some of my family were farmers, and I’ve lived in and around semi-rural communities for years), that ain’t gonna work.

In the first place, they’re paying too much for the properties. The real estate market in the Midwest is not as heated as that of the coasts.

In the second place, they have NO experience with agriculture, and the extent to which the agribusinesses control the money – loans, contracts locking in a substantial part of the year’s crops, and the disheartening effect of weather on crop outcomes.

The sheer KNOWLEDGE that the average farmer has would astound many.

I remember some Leftist sneering at the idea that having Internet access on a tractor would be a useful thing.

Dumba$$.

Farmers use it for programming of the timing of watering, to keep an eye on the local weather, checking the farm reports and daily price shifts, and getting notices of deliveries of seed, supplies, and other interactions with associated merchants. That’s just a small part of their tech use. Some also monitor the pH, plant and animal health, and make appointments online with vets and repairmen.

In the third place, the would-be moguls have no idea just how little of the nation’s arable land is used. They can TRY to buy up and monopolize land, but they really can’t. We have some of the most diverse climate of any country – we can grow grain, raise both milk and feed cows, chickens, and hogs. The cattle of the West graze on marginal land – but, it’s good enough for vegetation to be turned into high quality protein.

We have fruit and vegetable farms. We have organic farms, and some of them are among the most productive and profitable around. We have mini-farms, with the owners farming in between their other paid work. We have acreage in our rural and suburban properties that is underused, and, in a pinch (like the increasing prices at the supermarket), can produce an abundance of food. And we have a culture that tells Americans that it’s not a shame to work with your hands in the dirt.

We have 1/5 of the WORLD’S fresh water, just in the Great Lakes. The farmland along that shoreline is some of the best in the world.

Frankly, both Zuckerberg and the Chinese are gonna lose their shirts. Couldn’t happen to guys more deserving.

Nov 29 2022

A Direct Hit On The Jugular

     Dan Gelernter’s column of today is a must-read. The Sunday punch:

     We—individuals, local governments, state governments—need to get off the drug of government money. Ultimately, it’s just our money but with all the freedom filtered out: We’re actually paying to be enslaved.

     I’d like to start a petition declaring a national federal tax holiday. Not asking the government for one—just declaring it. I’d say the performance of our government is unsatisfactory, and I’m not paying for it anymore until it gets its act together. No taxation without representation. Maybe we could ask Elon Musk to make a poll for that on Twitter—since it seems to be a more reliable method of collecting votes than our carefully supervised elections.

     BRAVO! This badly needed to be said – and Gelernter’s point that it must be We the People who declare and implement such a holiday, rather than any government official[s], is central to the idea.

     Remember your Lysander Spooner:

     All political power, as it is called, rests practically upon this matter of money. Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a “government;” because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will. It is with government, as Cæsar said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually supported each other; that with money he could hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money.

     For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a “government” (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future.

     [From No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority.]

     I’d call this an idea whose time has come, though in truth it came long ago. And failing the arrival of a convenient planetoid, it’s about all we can do in the cause of freedom: our own and that of our descendants.

Nov 29 2022

Perhaps The Truth Really Will Set Us Free

     Initially, I was dubious about the relative importance of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. However, the above suggests that Twitter and its deliberate suppression of views from the Right were of more significance than I estimated. I look forward to the revelations…and to the reactions of Leftists.

     Some will say the records are fake, or have been falsified. Others will try to minimize their impact with arbitrary qualifications and dismissals. Still others will attempt a tu quoque defense, as if there were a competing social medium that suppresses views from the Left. The “mainstream media” will add their voices to the campaign as well, though, given the abysmal degree of public confidence in them, to what effect it’s difficult to say.

     We shall see.

Nov 28 2022

So Much More To Say, Kept Short

How much higher will “they” ever so gradually increase the load on lives before a societal circuit breaker kicks in?

Last week there was this news: The Collapse of Consent in Canada, Canada’s surging number of assisted suicides reveals that consent is a weak and malleable thing.

Amir Farsoud is going to be murdered. The 54-year-old Canadian, whose story went viral online this week, is in the last stages of approval for “medical assistance in dying” (MAID), the neat bureaucratic euphemism for our northern neighbor’s rapidly advancing euthanasia program. In 2016, the country authorized physicians to kill their patients in cases of terminal illness or “reasonably foreseeable” death; Farsoud is being euthanized for back pain.

This week we have even more news of — what to call it? — brazenness: Assisted suicide plans for children unveiled at Toronto’s Sick Kids hospital

In a prestigious medical journal, doctors from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children have laid out policies and procedures for administering medically assisted death to children, including scenarios where the parents would not be informed until after the child dies.

So many “experts” have come to agree on a “new normal” that were once decried as abnormal, that it is not really hard to realize that this confluence of expertise and events was inevitable.

Why inevitable? Well, look at the political leaning of all who have been put in charge of deciding which brains in all sorts of institutions are to be placed in authority. Let this short clip inform you of the caliber of these head-hunters. The clip also suggests the nature of the circuit breaker.

Nov 28 2022

Perspectives

One of my favorite Catholic writers is the late Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen:

     Venerable Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. His cause for canonization as a saint was officially opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that he lived a life of “heroic virtues” – a major step towards beatification – so he is now referred to as “Venerable”.

     At one time, this unabashed promoter of the Catholic faith and its teachings was the most popular media figure in America. Anyone old enough to remember his radio or television programs will know why. His personality was warm and appealing, and his presentations were models of clarity and conviction.

     Just yesterday I stumbled over a statement from Archbishop Sheen that I hadn’t remembered:

     “The world is living today in what might be described as an era of carnality, which glorifies sex, hates restraint, identifies purity with coldness, innocence with ignorance, and turns men and women into Buddhas with their eyes closed, hands folded across their breasts, intently looking inward, thinking only of self.”

     I think Sheen wrote that during the Sixties: before the Internet, before the porn explosion, before the de facto legalization of everything sexual short of rape, and before the emergence of such “interest groups” as the North American Man-Boy Love Association and the Freedom From Religion foundation.

     What would Sheen think of today? I doubt he’d be less scathing. He might be too stunned to speak coherently. He’d goggle at the recent Balenciaga ad with a toddler holding a teddy bear in a bondage harness.

     Your personal opinion of contemporary conditions and trends is in part a consequence of the cultural matrix that formed you. Sheen was born in 1895 and raised in Peoria, Illinois. He became a Catholic priest in 1919 and spent the next six decades in the service of God and the Faith. His cultural matrix regarded sex as supremely private, licit only within a sacramental marriage, and oriented principally toward reproduction.

     As a priest sworn to celibacy, Sheen’s parishioners, listeners, and viewers would expect that he had no personal experience of sex or marriage. He was promulgating the Faith, and such was his fervor and his saintly way of conducting himself that virtually no one would have doubted his virginity. Only a case-hardened cynic would have entertained any doubts about him – and even a cynic’s cynic would never have voiced them.

     Today it’s commonplace for the irreligious to scoff at the chastity of a Catholic priest. So what if they’ve vowed it before God and have taken on clerical duties? “They’re only human,” is the mocker’s rejoinder. “Besides, if they sin they can just confess it to one another.”

     If you haven’t had any contact with persons who think and talk that way, you’ve led a remarkably sheltered life. Such is the cultural matrix of our time, and the perspective it inculcates in those raised in it.

     Our era has ceased to believe that a man can make a promise to God and keep it thereafter. Granted that the vow of chastity is a demanding one that’s opposed by the urges of the body and frequently, of the heart as well. Yet the overwhelming majority of candidates for the priesthood make that vow sincerely, fully aware that they will be tempted to the limit of their strength.

     Today, the temptations are everywhere. It requires all of a healthy man’s strength of character to remain true to such a vow. Do some fail and fall? I have no doubt of it. But the presumption abroad among laymen is that they will all fail and fall. That is monstrously unkind not only to Catholic priests but to the whole male half of our species. It embeds the assumption that we cannot possibly be sincere about something of such importance.

     The mass media, both physical and electronic, are the principal promulgators of our cultural matrix and its assumptions. That they promote an assumption of general insincerity is a good argument for shunning any and every medium of information propagation extant today. Yes, yes, I know: as if another such argument were needed. But thence come many such assumptions, including the ones that have destroyed our willingness to trust one another.

     Have a nice day.

Nov 27 2022

The Adventure Of Love

     A number of my fiction readers have commented that the romances I write are “different.” Well, I should hope so. Why write what everyone else is writing? Why not follow a unique path that persons bored with “the same old thing” can use for their refreshment? All the same, it raises the question of whether the recognition of “romance” as a genre sets down specific rules that the participating writer must obey.

     It’s not a new question. The emergence of the crossbred “science fiction romance” has had it on many writers’ minds. For one thing, those SF / romance hybrids happen to sell very well. For another, the use of SF motifs allows the romance writer lots of latitude in constructing problems and dilemmas for his characters. But, reply the purists on both sides of the divide, the result is a beast that’s neither fish nor fowl; the consumer doesn’t quite know what he’s purchased until he’s plunked his cash on the barrelhead.

     Well, to each his own, I suppose. Myself, I like to be surprised by the fiction I read, as long as the author is skillful enough about how he presents them. If a lot of writers don’t possess that degree of skill…disappointment is also a feature of life with the printed / pixelated word..

     But apparently that’s not what disturbed one reader of my crap. She gigged me for “front loading the romance:” i.e., getting Boy and Girl together early in the action and devoting the subsequent three-quarters of the tale to developments of other kinds. Her preference was / is for romances that prolong the build-up, such that the clinching union of hearts comes much nearer to the end of the book. Once again, to each his own. You can’t please everyone, and only a fool would try.

     Still, she got me thinking about the adventure of love. It’s a somewhat larger subject than the typical romance would have us think.

***

     Have a little C. S. Lewis for a taste-whetter:

     The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.

     [From The Screwtape Letters]

     Is there no married man or woman who does not know what Lewis is saying in the above? Hasn’t just about any married individual experienced the let-down that arises as one goes from the intoxication of romance to the mundane, repetitive, often irritating business of conducting a life shared with another person? For most of us, that is by far the larger portion of our love stories. Our stubbornness about our individual preferences and proclivities brings many such stories to a bitter end. Worse, not all of us learn from such sad tales.

     This is not a brief for romance novels that end in misery and solitude. It’s just a recognition that “the romantic part” of a real-life love story is almost always a brief phase. It’s usually followed by a much longer period in which the erotic intoxication of romance is of little help in coping with the difficulties of life together. For the overwhelming majority of us, life is difficult. Our difficulties ramify when we elect to pair with another.

     So I “front load the romance.” I get the lovers together early and use the rest of my novels to explore the difficulties the newly paired lovers must face together. Not every adventure of love goes smoothly and without incident. Sometimes, as in Antiquities, the ending is other than happy. Life is like that, sometimes.

     I claim this is just realism. What sort of adventure is without costs, risks, obstructions, setbacks, and crises? How realistic is a tale in which the protagonists conquer every challenge easily? Would it be sensible to demand that two lives bonded by romance, however great the love that initially united them, be entirely without trials of the lovers’ patience, endurance, and charity? Even the most escapist story must make some concessions to reality.

     Well, everyone knows how eccentric I am.

***

     All the above having been said, romance readers love a happy ending. I certainly do. And I try to give the reader a sense that the adventure of love will “end well.” So even if the action takes one or both of my lovers to the grave, I provide balm in the form of happy memories.

     Speaking of adventures in love, today is the first Sunday of Advent, the celebration that opens a new liturgical year. Today also begins a new three-year cycle, over the course of which Catholic congregants at Mass are exposed to readings from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in turn. The story of Christ’s ministry, Passion, and Resurrection the three synoptic gospelers tell, in their several ways, has been called “the greatest story ever told,” and with good reason. For the Son of God was born in mortal flesh to bring a New Covenant of love to Mankind. The two Great Commandments:

     But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asked him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
     Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

     …make that perfectly plain. (Further thoughts on the subject may be found in this piece.)

     Now I must move from talking about my fiction to actually writing it. May God bless and keep you all.

Nov 27 2022

Conversations

     From the “Questions No One Is Asking” division:

FWP: What do you think would happen if a jug band were to appear for a scheduled concert without its jug? Say if it was broken in an accident on the way over?
CSO: Horror of horrors!

FWP: Well, yes, but would the show go on? Would the jug player try to borrow a jug from someone in the audience?
CSO: I don’t think so. A jug player’s instrument is special to him. It’s a very intimate relationship.

FWP: Well, what then?
CSO: He’d have to wing it a capella. (Pantomimes puffing into an “invisible jug.”)

FWP: Which suggests that there’s worse possible. The jug might have come through the accident okay, but the jug player might not!
CSO: Jaw wired shut, maybe?

FWP: That would do it. Of course, there would be volunteers from the audience to “pinch hit” for him.
CSO: But what are the odds that a stand-in would know all the band’s tunes?
FWP: Hmm, not good.

     And a happy First Sunday of Advent to you!

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