Threatened chaos, followed by the proles panicking and calling for heavy action by whatever Warlord is near.
The Heavy Hand of the Entitled Elites coming in to “save” the Unwashed Peasants from the consequences of their naive turn to Fascism.
Rule by EE/Our Betters.
Popuation reduction:
Mandatory contraception for the Unlicensed
“Gentle” death for the old (anyone not politically connected, or not creating more money for the EE
Ruthless, but “Compassionate” culling of the “Unfit”
Amazingly, the EE seem to believe that we who are being targeted will comply with their Authority. They really don’t know us, do they?
What will likely REALLY happen:
Financial institutions will be inaccessible. Completely surprising the EE, regular Americans and others present here will revert to Plan B, which is to use barter of services, informal sales of goods, and other non-official means to keep their families alive. Those that do so will NOT be paying taxes.
The “Truly Desperate” will squawk, threaten violence, and – when neighboring communities refuse to roll over and give in, shrug and do much the same as in the first item on the list. Let’s face it, MOST of those TD types do have resources, they just choose to live off easy money, given the option. Some of the absolutely essential supplies will be liberated (toilet paper, baby formula,etc.), and there will likely be some willing saps to deliver emergency supplies in the short term. Too many people to evict, so they’ll have a roof over their head. If it’s winter, they WILL suffer – energy will likely NOT be available.
In the absence of official government, those close to the border will self-organize, and Shut the Border. One problem solved.
Similarly, locals will likely take over operation of local security and services – civil order, fire, communications. Water, trash collection, etc.
The non- connected elderly/disabled will be at risk, if there are no family near. But, in most cases, family will step up for them. Some of them will die.
The Big Question: What will the military/Guard/Police do?
If they act as actual public service workers, they should be fine. The community will figure out how to pay them, in goods and supplies.
A whole lot of Not-Our-Friends in the Protection Racket will find themselves facing removal of all weapons/vehicles, and sent away. IF they live. Think of this as cleaning house for the New Times.
With the financial industry in meltdown, the positive side is that debts will be uncollectable. That will benefit the inprovident; the frugal savers will be largely hosed. It may be YEARS or even DECADES before the money system gets back in action. For the interim, if you have paperwork that says you owned it, it’s yours.
The non-essential services will not continue to be available: cable, phone, internet (unless the government steps in). No more premium channels, insurance. Amazon may well go under – without money services, who will pay them? Most of what they sell is not made in the USA, so expect China to get a reality check that says “if you owe the lenders large amounts, too bad for THEM”. They are the lenders who are going to find that their markets have collapsed, but also their ability to collect their collaterol. Good luck repo-ing the land, China. You may have a piece of paper that SAYS you own it, but you gotta manage to collect on that.
Health services people will likely find that they do better independently – nurses can provide most basic health care, docs will find that the old Depression model of setting up a small storefront and taking payment in kind works, and with little to no money to collect on, malpractice lawsuits will evaporate.
There are a hell of a lot of people (like me) working for industries that will not survive. That’s ok, I also have other skills – teaching, sewing, baking bread. I would expect that most of those reading this will be fine.
Hm. Perhaps that should be “And The Faith,” but let it stand as it is.
Yesterday at The Catholic Thing, there appeared an essay, with embedded interview, on Fostering the Catholic Imagination. Let there be no argument: the subject is an important one. There isn’t enough fiction written from a Catholic perspective, which is a great part of the reason I write it. I’d like to see more of it, especially as the better-known practitioners of Christian fiction are, to be as gentle as the language allows, not very good. However, the essay failed to address certain aspects of the undertaking that are more difficult than the cheerers-on along the sidelines would like to admit.
First and foremost is the concept of Catholic fiction itself: What is it? Is its principal purpose to preach the Faith? If so, it fails the critical test of all fiction. Fiction is a form of entertainment above all else; therefore, to put any intention above entertainment is to guarantee failure. If your novel or story, however ardent its preachments, fails to entertain the reader, it will accomplish nothing.
Second but barely less important: What theme does your fiction embed? For while there are some themes that are definitely opposed to the Faith, there are many that are of a variety I would call clerical: that is, the promulgation of doctrines that have as their principal support the statements of clerics: ordained men. Those doctrines may be wise; following them may be beneficial to life and society. But what if they have no support in the teachings of Christ as recorded in the four canonical Gospels?
Third and last for this brief disquisition: Must the characters prosper or suffer according to their fidelity or infidelity to the Faith? It’s an observable fact that some of the vilest bastards ever to live escaped punishment for their crimes in this life. As only mystics have received a glimpse of the life to come, we must rely upon the teachings of the Church to the effect that even the most adroit and successful criminals under the veil of Time will receive justice in eternity. However, fiction can validly allow that some will “get away with it” in the temporal realm.
Larry Niven and others have attempted to treat with the afterlife in a fashion consistent with Christian conceptions thereof. Such fictions are inherently speculative. Not all of us are brave enough to attempt such things. Moreover, some of us are troubled by the changes over time in Church teachings about the eternal realm, to say nothing of what sort of conduct would close the blissful fork in the road to oneself.
Compared to the difficulties presented by the questions above, the paucity of publishing houses geared toward Catholic fiction seems trivial. And they are difficult. Those who advocate the expansion of Catholic fiction, whether that’s taken to mean “fiction from a Catholic perspective” or “aimed at the tastes and convictions of practicing Catholics,” must grapple with them. They must arrive at clear definitions before prescribing or proscribing for us who think we’re getting it done by our own lights. Moreover, they must accept ab initio — hey, what’s a Catholic essay without a little Latin? – that not all of us who consider ourselves Catholics will agree with them.
All that having been said, there remains this: Despite my departure from perfect orthodoxy, I consider my own fiction to be acceptably Catholic. I will entertain discussion on the subject, but let no one who thinks to argue with me do so without first reading my crap and demonstrating to my satisfaction that he has done so. Nor will I accept anyone’s ex cathedra proclamations as something to which I am required to conform. There were and are married Catholic priests. There have been revisions of Catholic teaching, and there may yet be others. There is neither truth nor virtue in insisting otherwise, no matter what sort of collar one wears. Besides, the fictioneer must be allowed to imagine. That’s what “fostering the Catholic imagination” is about, isn’t it?
I stated the pre-AEP Season mostly READY to go. Actual AEP signup starts 10/15, this Saturday. For two frenzied months, agents can sign you up for health insurance or changes.
On Thursday, I was anticipating a restful evening, kicking back and watching Cleveland battle the Yankees in the playoffs. But, my dog wanted to get out, so I leashed him up before starting to prepare dinner.
Then, all hell broke loose.
On the way back to the house, a large dog ran across the street to attack my BichonPoo (about 20 pounds, counting all the fur). He picked him up by the throat, and shook him like a rag doll. He only let go when a passing Good Samitarian stopped his truck, grabbed a metal cane, and beat him off my dog.
i hurried home to call the vet. My sweet Samaritan called the police. All together, I spent around 6 hours in the doggie ER, waiting for him to get shaved, sutured, and medicated. The last hour, we were just waiting for him to wake up from the anesthesia.
He’s mostly been sleeping. Not much interest in moving around. My daughter arrives this afternoon and will be watching him while I’m working. I’m exhausted too. It will be nice to watch the third game of the playoffs with her.
Before the Seventies and “America’s Suicide Attempt.” (Cf. Paul Johnson)
It was also before Richard Nixon closed the gold window on Europe’s fingers: August 15, 1971, when the last linkages between the dollar and gold were severed. That allowed inflation to remove what little purchasing power still attached to the dollar. Ever since then, two incomes have been required for all but the genuinely wealthy. With the proliferation of luxury goods and conveniences that everyone simply “must have” and the decision to treat children as minor royalty immune to discipline, the two-income family was cemented firmly into place.
The one-income family was made possible by self-restraint and deferred gratification. One-income families didn’t eat in restaurants more than once or twice a year. Mom made the family’s meals; she seldom used packaged prepared foods to do so. They didn’t buy designer clothes or every imaginable gewgaw, neither for themselves nor for their children. Dad maintained the house and yard and Mom did the cleaning, not paid hirelings. They had one car and at most one television. Weekend entertainment was likely to be family-oriented, perhaps kids’ sports contests.
I should mention this as well: There was no presumption that all the kids simply had to have college degrees.
We are not capable of being one-income families. We are too self-indulgent. While we are more averse to actual work than any generation of our forebears, we are nevertheless determined to “have it all” and “have it now.” And we are far too prone to blame our deficiencies and defaults on “society.”
At the time this mini-grump was composed, “Society” could not be reached for comment, so I stepped up. But do have a nice day.
UPDATE: Whoops! Almost forgot. Does anyone else here remember Berkeley Breathed and “Bloom County?”
We should have listened. We didn’t. Verbum sat sapienti.
Many preclassical religions employed the notion of a “scapegoat:” an animal to whom the sins of a penitent could be mystically transferred, securing forgiveness for the penitent at the cost of the animal’s life. This practice was in deference to the old maxim that “there can be no remission without the shedding of blood.” Jews of the First Century held to this belief as well. That’s part of the reason – though by no means all of it – that Jesus allowed Himself to be sacrificed on the Cross.
It makes a weird kind of sense that scapegoat practices should have returned in the Twenty-First Century, though not in the guise of religion. There are an awful lot of sins of the political variety demanding expiation.
We’re all familiar with the loss of cognitive function – including awareness of his surroundings – exhibited by Joe Biden. No one who’s watched any of the videos of his sputtering or aimless wandering could honestly claim to be unaware of his deterioration. Yet this is the man the Democrats’ kingmakers decided to install in the presidency by hook or by crook: a man visibly incapable of discharging the lightest of its duties. Intelligent observers have, quite naturally, been wondering why.
Simultaneously with the ever-deepening dementia of Joe Biden, we have the spectacle of John Fetterman, currently the lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania, running for a seat in the United States Senate. Fetterman, a recent stroke victim, is so plainly mentally disabled that even legions of Democrat-friendly reporters can’t conceal the fact from the public…though God knows they’re trying.
There’s also Eric Adams in New York City and Lori Lightfoot in Chicago to consider. These people are so obviously incapable of performing the duties of their offices that no further comment is necessary. Both cities are on the verge of total collapse. Neither mayor has the least idea what to do about it…and, quite possibly, would be prevented from doing anything that might work even if they were to stumble upon it by accident. Are they brain-damaged? Perhaps…but they’re certainly unequal to their public responsibilities.
Gentle Readers can extend this list of inadequate-for-public-duties Democrat officeholders at their leisure. I’m more interested in the why than in making a definitive list of the who.
Remember that the scapegoat was chosen to be sacrificed: to shed its blood in place of the human sinner. The dubious spiritual efficacy of the procedure to one side, the practical value – that is, the uninterrupted life and health of the sinner – is obvious. Few persons are so consumed by contrition that they’d elect to be ritually slaughtered for whatever sins might lie upon their consciences.
The political scapegoat is a horse of a different color. His function is to shield others – the handlers and real policy makers – from the odium for their sins. If public outcry against the policies dictated by those gray eminences becomes too loud, the scapegoat-officeholder can be pushed forward to take the blame and suffer the penalty. While the practice is neither honest nor kind, as the penalty is usually just loss of office, it’s not quite as savage as the blood sacrifices of yore.
Decent persons would never tolerate such things. Neither would we knowingly elect an obvious incompetent. It requires massive electoral fraud to put a political scapegoat in office. It requires huge and complex deceptive operations to keep the fraud, and the incapacity of the scapegoat, from being successfully plumbed, which is why the cooperation of the media is essential.
Perhaps this has already occurred to my Gentle Readers. But contemplate this as well: for some of these scapegoats, specifically the ones in executive offices, there may be backup scapegoats, ready to be pushed forward should the gray eminences decide that the “front-line” scapegoat must be sacrificed. Kamala Harris is only the most obvious example.
It’s something to keep in mind in those states that will hold gubernatorial elections this coming November…also, among those who think that merely ridding ourselves of Joe Biden would do anything much to repair the policies with which the Usurper Regime has saddled us.
I shan’t excerpt it here. If even 10% of the claims made in the prisoners’ letter are true, this constitutes an outrage unworthy of any nation – and over what’s at worst a misdemeanor trespassing offense. But there’s a larger point to be made, and there are other data to be added to the array in support thereof:
Democrat rhetoric condemning the MAGA movement in particular and the Republican Party in general as “fascists” and “a threat to democracy.”
Ongoing pressure on social media and financial institutions to “cancel” prominent persons in the Right.
Raids by heavily armed FBI squads on the homes of pro-life organizers and spokesmen.
Surprise visits by ATF agents to the homes of gun purchasers.
“Blue” states’ defiance of recent SCOTUS decisions.
The USDA’s “Register Your Garden” campaign.
I’m sure there are more data to be added to the above, but those will do for starters.
At base, it’s an intimidation campaign. The Usurpers want us in the Right to fear them: Oppose us too visibly or vocally, and we will make you suffer. And despite our numbers and their transparent intent, it’s having an effect.
What can a narrow-gauge commentator usefully say about it? “Don’t be intimidated” — ? It’s a laudable stance, but many in the Right have a lot to lose. Some very prominent Republicans and Trump associates have already lost heavily. Few of us are utterly invulnerable to the Regime.
I have this fantasy of a mass raid by American patriots on the DC Bastille, freeing the imprisoned and declaring that the end of the Regime’s Reign of Terror is here. Either it will end at once, or the Usurpers will face the severest imaginable retribution, from the top all the way down to the lowest third assistant gopher. But it’s uncertain that there are enough patriots, with enough steel in their spines, to take the risks involved with open eyes and stern hearts.
I am certain of this: Unless the intimidation campaign is shattered by patriotic counteraction, it will continue to intensify, and the Usurpers’ grip on the nation will tighten. Beyond that, I cannot say.
Apologies for the depressing thoughts. Perhaps I’ll have something cheerier to say later.
The several pieces that Fran posted this week have prodded me to move forward with a conjecture that I have long felt needs to be shared.
With the video featured below, Jordan Peterson spurred the bulk of what I will present to you today. I reacted favorably to his sudden realization that his predilection to avoid facing a difficult conclusion — that is often stated by some version of what is called Hanlon’s Razor — is long past its expiration date. Rather than watch all the video, I have provided readers with this easily read transcript. (Right click to open in a separate window should you wish to follow along with the video.)
“We [Western powers} seem to be doing everything we can to break everything as rapidly as possible.”
I see the evidence as insurmountable and undeniable as does Dr. Peterson. What we are witnessing is far worse than mindless stupidity. Gates (and others like him, but let’s continue to use him as the avatar of that sort) appears to be mesmerized with destruction. Why?
There is a huge likelihood to suspect the desire to destroy on a large scale is related to the ultimate violation of the Tenth Commandment. With all the wealth he has accumulated — only he knows how much by fair or foul means — came all this power to affect the lives of others.
But he cannot create life. So far it seems only The Creator can do so. Many have faith in Him. But even the atheist occasionally has doubts that he is correct in believing that God does not exist. One may think “but what if He does” from time to time. Yet even after he discards his doubt, what remains is the very concept of God. It’s an idea that can stick in anybody’s head and refuse to leave.
And an apparently Godless man such as our avatar cannot help but feel the frustrations that any mortal must endure. For all his power he cannot compete even with the concept of God. “So many people love that concept but resent and even hate me.” So we can see how our avatar’s resentment can come to be as boundless as that which he has come to hate megalomaniacally. If it wasn’t so dangerous in a powerful human, one might feel sympathy. One more effectively could wish there was a way to get him to repent his envy and simply feel grateful for all that has come his way.
So what remains for this ungrateful oaf to do to express his dissatisfaction? Destroy all that is good that he can, for the good is what God represents and makes available to all.
Sure there are fools who believe in the Malthusian Inevitability, but Gates simply hides behind their antihuman drive to aid them so he may strike back at the very concept of An Ultimate Creator. There cannot be a trace of selflessness in such a Godless creature. Whatever drive he started out with to achieve his wealth, almost certainly he is now solely driven by hatred for an Idea he finds out of his reach.
And what better way to do this than to destroy the only creature on Earth who can contemplate the existence of God.
(Hat tip to Darin at Crusader Rabbit for bringing this Peterson clip to my attention.)
I have no idea how much attention John C. Wright’s impassioned essay, which I cited yesterday, has received. I hope the answer is “enormous,” as it deserves that much, but in the main people are averse to confronting their own sins. And let’s be candid here: just about all of us are complicit in the crimes Wright has enumerated. For most of us, our contribution has been an unwise degree of tolerance for what should never have been tolerated at all.
The evil jewel has innumerable facets, but the core of the gem is the tolerance of lies. Sensible people stood mute and idle while others promulgated unrealities and demanded that they displace objective realities.
Unreality kills. Indeed, it’s deadlier than any tangible weapon Man has yet devised.
Do I really have to explain that? Have we lost so much of our sense for our own natures that we can no longer see how unreality undermines the foundations of human existence?
Oh well. At this hour I don’t have much else to do.
***
No other neologism has attained the power and uniformity of interpretation achieved by the term gaslighting:
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s belief….
Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics to abuse and undermine their victims. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws and exploit others, but typically also are convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their own perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent. Gaslighting may occur in parent–child relationships, with either parent, child, or both lying to the other and attempting to undermine perceptions.
An abuser’s ultimate goal is to make their victim second-guess their every choice and question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser.
Patrick Hamilton’s play Gaslight gave the term its interpretation. The 1944 Charles Boyer / Ingrid Bergman movie embedded it firmly in our popular lexicon. But why? What accounts for its power?
The answer is appallingly simple, though few people bother to reflect on it:
When no fact is reliable,
No purposive action is possible.
The mind deprived of the ability to rely upon its sense data is paralyzed thereby. Similarly, the society that is allowed no solidity – that is, no objectively true and enduring reality, agreed upon by all sane persons at all times – is paralyzed. It cannot support itself nor act in its own defense and will swiftly deteriorate into chaos. Chaos means death, both for the individual and for his society.
Purpose only sets goals. Action is required to pursue and fulfill them. Unreality deprives us of the ability to know what will result from our actions. Thus, when unreality displaces reality, action becomes impossible. Death will swiftly follow. It cannot be made simpler than that.
And a cocoon of unrealities wraps ever more tightly around us.
***
Most of the ranting and raving I do here addresses political questions. That’s fairly commonplace for bloggers of my generation. And to be sure, many of the lies being pressed upon us are political in nature. But there are others, nominally separate from any political question of note, that are at least as destructive as any Usurper Regime policy to date. Wright addresses them all; I shan’t recount them here. But in one brief sentence of diamond-tipped penetration, he elucidates the intent of the promulgators:
Theirs is the motto of the unhinged egomaniac: Thou art God.
God is the conceptual instantiation of our fundamental conviction that reality is real. (Yes, yes: He exists, though in a supratemporal, supra-spatial sense. I’m talking about the importance of the concept of a Supreme Being in undergirding our metaphysics.) We rely upon reality – we consider it reliable — because we believe that it is God’s handiwork, and that He made it lawful. Without God, the universe is foundationless. It has no “why.” The impossible and mutually contradictory are as admissible to our thinking as the possible and logically consistent.
Metaphysics abhors a vacuum quite as much as does Nature. Something will flow into the space from which we have expelled God. The promulgators of unreality intend to take that vacated space for their own. What they desire shall be theirs regardless of its impossibility. What displeases them, they will simply decree not to be.
You don’t have to squint to see the end in view.
***
I’ve relied heavily upon the intelligence of my Gentle Readers. Individuals near to the axis of the Big Bad Bell Curve would find the argument above confusing, perhaps even incomprehensible. You have to be fairly far to the right of that axis to have a chance of integrating it – and integrating it, rather than merely accepting it as true by decree, is the critical event. It renders you capable of acting as an ambassador for it.
How odd that last sentence must seem to you! Does reality need ambassadors? Time was, you might have said “No, it can speak clearly enough for itself.” But these are not normal times. The concept of normality itself is under severe and sustained attack.
This is my “briefer jeremiad.” If you grasp what I’ve said here, you have a mission, one as imperative as Jeremiah felt his to be:
Then I said: I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name: and there came in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was wearied, not being able to bear it. [Jeremiah 20:9]
Jeremiah was persecuted for his preachments and prophecies. It’s the price of witnessing to reality in an Empire of Lies. And with that, I believe I’ll close for today.
I’ve been working hard to get set up for AEP. That’s the season when Health Insurance Agents basically run around losing their minds and sleep, trying to fit a year’s work into just under 2 months.
It’s hectic, but generally energizing. Some years, circumstances put roadblocks in the way – as COVID-19 did for us, in 2020 and 2021. Masking created a barrier to communication, many interactions were pushed in the virtual realm, and frustrations escalated.
The plan providers rose to the challenge. They created software and workarounds in blazingly short timeframes. They impressed the heck out of me.
But this year brought a special challenge. A dear cousin died last month, and, due to several moves (on her part and mine), we’d lost contact. I only heard about her passing yesterday. she was five years younger than I am, and way too young to die.
There will be a memorial service, one they are calling a Celebration of Life, in November. The time delay is likely due to the challenge of getting together such a large group. She was one of ten children – two others since passed – and they live in multiple states.
My kids reacted much as I did when I was a child and heard of the passing of one of my mother’s many relations like many of Irish Catholic descent, her family was large and close. To me, it was sad. To her, it was yet another death of someone connected to pieces of her youth. Each death tore a hole in her memories and connection to family.
My gift to family this year will be to provide links to family photos and stories. My brother and sister and I have been scanning old photos, writing the information (who, what event, when, where) and attaching the description to the file. It was a massive project, but the majority of the work is done. I’d love for others in the family to set up folders for their branch of the family tree, and add their own photos.
With a small number of exceptions, I find the fictions of John C. Wright not to my taste. However, as a general commentator, the man ranks with the best. Yesterday, he let fly with a jeremiad that Jeremiah would have envied. Have a brief taste:
All of our current society, as embodied in every major institution, are likewise aimed toward a purpose, but a far less noble one. The purpose is the opposite of Christendom. It is Antichristendom. The purpose is to conform the current laws and customs to the most hypocritical, perverse, and most wicked vices that benightedness can produce.
The purpose is falsehood.
Our age ventures to destroy civil order, to denature man, to defame heaven, and to establish and maintain an Empire of Lies. For our age is devout toward unreality, and worships untruth. Every major institution is fraudulent, fake, and false.
And that’s before Wright is fully warmed up. After that he “swings for the fences.” Please read it all.
With most commentators, I can find some points on which we disagree. That’s natural; after all, how often do two persons on this ball of mud agree on absolutely everything? Even the late Joseph Sobran, my commentator-hero whose style and penetration I’ve striven to emulate, differed with me about a couple of things, most notably in his criticisms of Israel. But in my opinion, Wright’s essay is a dead-center bull’s-eye. Andrew Klavan and others have discoursed on the “Empire of Lies,” but never with Wright’s precision, concision, and fury.
I don’t think I’ll have time for a regular essay today, so please read Wright’s opus and reflect on it. Yes, it’s unsparing. But perhaps the time has come for us – We the Perpetually Babied, who demand not merely tolerance but applause for the worst of our excesses, who’ve been told from innumerable sources that “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” – to be spared no longer.
I understand those who have an emotional response to the Russia-Ukraine War. I have, myself, experienced some sports-stands reactions (Yay, MY team!) to news about the events.
But, in fact, for most Americans, it is not, and should not be. We cannot get involved in Yet Another Far-Off War (YAFOW). It drains our Treasury, it forces us into alliances with corrupt governments, and it allows the interests of Europe to dictate our national policy.
Just yesterday, I encountered this touching essay at The Catholic Thing. It starts with the mention of a recent wedding. However, its true import is expressed in this segment:
I’d converted to Catholicism from atheism in my mid-20s (I’m 39 now). This wasn’t news to anyone, but few expected the faith to take center stage on a day that was ostensibly about my wife and me.
Even those I’d been closest with in recent years were surprised by the lack of subtlety. My social circle had remained secular-liberal following my conversion – I’d never been introduced to the young Catholic scene since my conversion came post-college. And while I lived the faith unselfconsciously, I never pushed my friends’ noses in it. I think (I hope) this earned quiet respect over the years.
I’d overheard enough at parties to know how they felt about Catholicism. I’d certainly seen enough on social media.
But they loved me much more than they hated my religion. Anything good for me was good with them. So they were able to appreciate my faith on a therapeutic level, as if it were no different than if I’d taken up yoga or started a healthier diet. Catholicism was just another item on my personal wellness plan, albeit one they considered mildly distressing.
And so our deeply Catholic wedding was a shock for them, just as it would have been had I gotten married in a yoga studio and given all thanks and praise to the Master Yogi.
This is a more common thing than most people, including most Christians, are aware. Nonbelievers generally regard believers as deluded, if not outright insane. The C.S.O. regards me that way – and after 31 years together, I don’t think her opinion is likely to change.
The author continues in an evangelistic vein:
Since entering the Church, I’ve favored the “show-don’t-tell” approach to evangelization. “Preach the Gospel at all times, use words when necessary,” Saint Francis of Assisi supposedly said, though it’s difficult to imagine him speaking in syrupy quips….
The preach-through-example model also enables us to shirk the responsibility of explaining the complexities of our faith. Even communicating the basics – that we were bestowed existence by a Creator Who, like a good parent, both respects our freedom and loves us madly – takes preparation, practice, and effort. [Emphasis added by FWP.]
And in this, he goes wrong.
***
Complexity, properly understood, is a function of causation. Things with clear causal origins are simple. Things with muddled, multivariate causal origins – i.e., multiple factors interacting in shifting ways – are complex. Note that this has nothing to do with whether the thing itself is easily identified and dealt with. An apple is a simple thing: the fruit of a particular tree, good for eating and cooking. The biological processes that give rise to apple trees and their fruit are complex.
In a sense, the existence of Mankind is simple: We’re here. We didn’t do anything as a species to get here. The biological, social, and evolutionary processes that produced our kind were undoubtedly complex, but as individuals, dealing with us tends to be fairly straightforward. The optimal method is summarized in Christ’s Golden Rule.
The Christian faith, as summarized in the Nicene Creed, is also simple. It involves some simple premises:
That there is a supernatural realm, and a Supreme Being who rules it and all of what we call reality;
That what we call reality is His creation, and whether directly or indirectly, we are His creatures;
That because Mankind is flawed – i.e., men have a propensity for abusing one another – He sent His divine Son to preach a New Covenant to us, and counsel us to repent.
That there is a third Person of the divine Trinity, “who proceeds from the Father and the Son,” Who functions to illuminate the minds of men.
These are premises. Accepting them requires treating them as postulates must be treated: unprovable but true. From them comes all of the Christian faith, though not all of the teachings of the Church.
Accepting the premises is not a complex operation. It may be hard – the decision to put one’s trust in propositions about things we cannot see or touch usually is – but it’s not complex. We even have a short name for it: faith.
Eighteenth century mathematician Girolamo Saccheri was unhappy about postulates too: in his case, the postulates of Euclidean geometry. Look what happened to him.
***
Catholicism may be a ramified set of doctrines, but Christianity itself is not. Many persons are Christians but not Catholics. Accepting Catholicism requires an extra premise: that Christ has delegated the continuing elucidation of the New Covenant to the Catholic clergy. That premise, which Catholics call the Apostolic Succession, implies that the Church hierarchy has limited authority to expand on the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments on which they’re based: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [Matthew 16:17-18]
There’s no need to go into Catholic doctrines themselves. Nearly all of them are clearly wholesome and quite obviously beneficial to life, but even that is irrelevant to the central question. The point is that the premises required to accept Christianity, and after that Catholicism, are simple. Either one accepts them or one doesn’t.
Effective Christian evangelism does not require complex explanations. It requires what I’ve set forth above. The premises from which Christians proceed are not complex but simple. However, they are mysterious: that is, they evoke questions that begin with “Why?” and “How?”
Christianity has often been called a “mystery religion.” But it is very far from complex. Indeed, complexity would have rendered it incapable of taking hold of billions of souls over the course of two millennia, for people generally refuse to base the principles that govern their lives on complexities. Saint Francis of Assisi’s possibly apocryphal statement – “At all times preach the gospel. When necessary, use words.” – stands as the best imaginable testament to it.
Videos posted to social media show a mob of young Black men, teens and children violently attacking a Hooters restaurant in Plano, Texas on Thursday, according to posters of the videos. Customers and staff were attacked at the entrance and windows were smashed. A woman inside the Hooters can be heard off camera exclaiming, “It’s over a f***ing chocolate bar!”
The videos show what appears to be staff retreating to the entrance from a dispute outside in the parking lot that turned violent. The staff is attacked in the vestibule, with one male staff member assuming the BLM kneeling position to no avail.
Reading this story, I note that it makes no mention of the races of those involved. You know what that means. Just as I suspected, white cop and black attacker. Watch the video and see for yourself.
PayPal would probably demand $2500 from me for noticing this.
An Alabama man with a history of domestic violence charges has been charged with another crime after a 1-year-old girl had boiling water poured down her throat.
Eugene Lamont Sneed, 23, of Mobile was charged with aggravated child abuse, according to WPMI.
Sneed has had three domestic violence charges against him in the past four years.
Sneed faced a third-degree domestic violence charge in 2018, a first-degree domestic violence charge in 2020 and another domestic violence charge in 2021.
PayPal must be run by people with really short memories. The threat to fine PayPal users for saying things PayPal dislikes is still in force, except that the “misinformation” clause has been dropped.
It won’t work. PayPal is going down. After all, these days just about anything anyone says can be castigated as “racist,” “fascist,” or “discriminatory,” including citations of federal statistics.
People tend to be more protective of their wallets than anything else in their lives except their children. PayPal will learn this to its ultimate sorrow.
Just a quick observation. I’ll be back later with something more substantial.
The PayPal version of a Kinsley gaffe, about which I posted Friday, has angered users widely. Apparently, the backlash has been voluminous – too great for PayPal’s managers to withstand and keep their annual bonuses. So they’re trying to walk it back:
A red-faced PayPal walked back a shocking new policy announcement that users who advance “misinformation” could face fines of $2,500 per offense, saying it was all a mistake after The Daily Wire called attention to the chilling scheme.
The financial services company, which has repeatedly deplatformed organizations and individual commentators for their political views, announced Saturday, one day after The Daily Wire story broke, that the announcement went out in error.
“An [Accepted Use Policy] notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information,” a PayPal spokesperson said. “PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy. We’re sorry for the confusion this has caused.”
It won’t work. Pretending that the proposed $2500 “fines” are what departing users are cheesed off about and beating a hasty retreat from the proposition won’t save PayPal. Too much “woke” bullshit has already gone down.
The proposed “fines” were laughable for several reasons, not the least of which is that the great majority of PayPal users literally never have $2500 in their accounts at any time. But for my part, I kicked them to the curb for the clause that says “in PayPal’s sole discretion.” History on that subject makes it plain that their “discretion” cannot be trusted, especially in combination with these clauses:
“the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory”
“depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.)”
“are fraudulent, promote misinformation, or are unlawful.“
That stinks of “woke,” and I will have no part of it. I’m sure many other former PayPal users feel the same.
The penetration of “woke” bullshit into a great many private-sector firms that should know better is having steadily intensifying effects. People have already lost jobs at companies that one would think have no coupling to any particular political posture. People have already been refused various services for “woke” reasons. And of course we have the closure of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other Big Tech fora to anyone who dares to emit an anti-“woke” opinion.
“Money talks; bullshit walks,” as the old saying goes. The promulgators and enforcers of “Woke” – the whole censorious constellation of hard-Left / “politically correct” bullshit – are learning, albeit tardily, that the old saying retains its force. PayPal will suffer. It will be left with a shrunken user base that does less transacting per capita than the users it alienated. And in keeping with another old saying — “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” — there will be no redemption.
Time was, anyone with a high school diploma could be relied upon to know at least a little about mathematical progressions: arithmetic (additive), geometric (multiplicative), and others. If you had a little awareness of limits, you might even be able to work out how an open-form progression can be reduced to a closed-form expression. And with that sentence, I’ve probably lost half my audience, for such things are no longer included in the typical high-school education.
There are other kinds of progressions than the purely mathematical, of course. Some of them have been at work on us for some time now.
I’ve written about the loss of trust on several previous occasions. It’s a melancholy subject, as the cited essay demonstrates. What makes it so bleak is our awareness that trust is built gradually, over years, decades, and generations, but is infinitely fragile regardless of its longevity. It can be shattered by a single betrayal, and often is.
The progression toward trust and the cataclysm that can follow its sundering are worthy of contemplation all by themselves. However, there’s an aspect of that progression that deserves particular mention on this rainy Saturday morning in the Year of Our Lord 2022.
***
The accumulation of social trust — i.e., trust in the honesty and / or fidelity of an individual, group, or organization – progresses by statement-plus-confirmation. That’s one of those things that impels me to use the “obvious” word…but please do remember that in the practical sense, obvious means overlooked.
What’s also all too frequently overlooked is that the con men and swindlers of our species know it, too. A snippet from Steven Brust’s novel Phoenix comes to mind:
“Why did you arrange to have those Easterners arrested?”
A sneer began to appear on his face but he put it away. “Is there some reason I should answer you?”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
“You’d never make it out of here alive.”
“I know.”
He stared at me. At last he said, “You’re lying.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t lie. I’m cultivating a reputation for honesty so I can blow it when something big comes along. This ain’t it.”
(Apropos of nothing, Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels are a master class in the writing of effective dialogue. Aspiring novelists can learn more from them about the paired arts of characterization and dialogue than from nearly any other works of contemporary fiction. Highly recommended.)
The con artist learns to inculcate trust of him in his target by this simple, pedestrian method. He simply cultivates the relationship for as long as necessary, giving the target ample opportunities to witness his reliability in word and deed. Generally speaking, the bigger the score he’s aiming at, the longer and more complex the cultivation of trust must be, each event coaxing the target to increment his trust in the con artist. When the time is ripe, he “spends” that accumulated trust to pull off his con. Afterward, of course, the trust has dissipated…but the target has been shorn of his life savings, or his company, or what have you. David Mamet’s brilliant movie House of Games illustrates the procedure, with some clever twists thrown in for lagniappe.
***
Some of the above is undoubtedly familiar to my older Gentle Readers from life experience. Nearly everyone near to my age has been conned at some time in his life. Only the perfectly sheltered manage to avoid it. Our species’ con artists are many, skilled, and widely distributed.
There are maxims about how not to be conned. One of them is that the ripest target is the man who’s looking to score big himself. Another is that the desire to get something for nothing is a target’s prime qualification. Both are valid. Combine them and see what you get.
What has this subject on my mind is a startling, even frightening article about election fraud. Please, please read it in its entirety, including the linked material. My thoughts this morning center on a clash between two loci of trust: Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
We’ve been assured, in many and varied ways, that the FBI is an institutional paragon of trustworthiness. Recent events have called that notion into severe question, such that the public’s willingness and ability to trust the FBI has cratered almost completely. At this time, the FBI can no longer be regarded as reliable, neither in word nor in deed.
Catherine Engelbrecht has accumulated a lot of trust from those who’ve watched her these past few years. For my part, I take her at her word. The events chronicled by the linked piece put her and her colleague Gregg Phillips in direct, absolute opposition to the institutional veracity of the FBI. She can substantiate all the developments in the 15-month adventure with no difficulty. The FBI, on the other hand, has gone silent.
Where does that leave us, trust-wise?
***
“Be careful not to fool yourself with your own tools. A map is a useful thing, but it hides details that can change the whole complexion of a campaign. Look here.” Malcolm pointed to green-shaded bands labeled Alsace and Lorraine. “It doesn’t look any different from the areas around it, does it?”
“From which I infer that it was different.”
“Very different. Heavy forestation, few major roads, and uphill going east. An attacker’s logistical nightmare, especially from the western side. Probably the best defender’s territory anywhere in Europe. The French thought they could penetrate the German defenses here before the Germans swept down on Paris. The path from Paris to Berlin through Alsace and Lorraine is visibly shorter than the path from Berlin to Paris through Belgium. They were very, very wrong.”
“How long did it take them to figure out that they’d been had?”
He grinned without humor. “One month. By which time they had lost the northern quarter of their territory and were committed to a four-year war that cost them two million men.”
“Didn’t anyone know about this beforehand?”
He nodded. “Yes. Schlieffen and the Germans. They knew that the French emphasis would be on reclaiming the provinces they’d lost in 1870. It was a motive burned deeply into the French General Staff, and it worked entirely in the Germans’ favor.” He snorted. “Of course, the Germans eventually forgot what they were doing, too.”
It’s possible, though unlikely, that the FBI’s public history has been a conscious attempt by persons in power to con the American people. It’s more likely that recent con artists in the corridors of power, having noted how successful the campaign has been to promote the FBI as the ultimately trustworthy law-enforcement agency, decided to infiltrate, colonize, and corrupt it as the Left has done to the education, entertainment, and communications industries. There can be no doubt that “something big” – the absolute, permanent subornation of the American electoral process – is in play.
The progression of the FBI from a relatively minor anti-bootlegging agency to a virtually unrestrained organization for investigation and “law enforcement” illustrates something everyone should keep in mind at all times:
Image Is Not Reality.
The map is not the terrain. The reputation is not the person, or organization. The image is not the reality. Yet over a sufficiently long time, populated by a sufficient number of confirmations, we can cease to think of the image and the reality as distinct. We can co-identify them so deeply that the identification becomes subconscious. Persuading oneself to doubt the probity of the reality becomes almost as hard as doubting oneself: an undertaking of singular difficulty, to say nothing of the danger involved.
But sometimes it’s a matter of preserving our sanity…or our Republic.
Thanks to Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane, I have just become aware of utterly unacceptable changes to PayPal’s Acceptable Use terms:
You may not use the PayPal service for activities that:
1. violate any law, statute, ordinance or regulation.
2. relate to transactions involving (a) narcotics, steroids, certain controlled substances or other products that present a risk to consumer safety, (b) drug paraphernalia, (c) cigarettes, (d) items that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity, (e) stolen goods including digital and virtual goods, (f) the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime, (g) items that are considered obscene, (h) items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction, (i) certain sexually oriented materials or services, (j) ammunition, firearms, or certain firearm parts or accessories, or (k) certain weapons or knives regulated under applicable law.
3. relate to transactions that (a) show the personal information of third parties in violation of applicable law, (b) support pyramid or ponzi schemes, matrix programs, other “get rich quick” schemes or certain multi-level marketing programs, (c) are associated with purchases of annuities or lottery contracts, layaway systems, off-shore banking or transactions to finance or refinance debts funded by a credit card, (d) are for the sale of certain items before the seller has control or possession of the item, (e) are by payment processors to collect payments on behalf of merchants, (f) are associated with the sale of traveler’s checks or money orders, (g) involve currency exchanges or check cashing businesses, (h) involve certain credit repair, debt settlement services, credit transactions or insurance activities, or (i) involve offering or receiving payments for the purpose of bribery or corruption.
4. involve the sales of products or services identified by government agencies to have a high likelihood of being fraudulent.
5. involve the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty, or self-harm (e) depict, promote, or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) (f) present a risk to user safety or wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation, or are unlawful, (h) infringe the privacy, intellectual property rights, or other proprietary rights of any party, or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.
6. relate to transactions involving any activity that requires pre-approval without having obtained said approval.
I added the emphasis, of course. Therefore, I am:
Removing the PayPal buttons from this site;
Terminating my PayPal account;
Looking into alternate arrangements for accepting payment for my novels.
If I can’t find an acceptable payment processor for my books, I suppose I’ll just have to give them away. Concerning donations to Liberty’s Torch, no Gentle Reader should trouble himself. The site costs me very little to maintain, so keep the money, have a drink, and think of me.
I don’t write a great deal on this subject, but lately I’ve been getting the sense that the time has come to confront some harsh realities and some ugly possibilities. If you’re not in the mood for the subject this fine Friday morning, I promise that I’ll understand…but I am.
***
The following video, which you may have seen before, is only a minute and a half long and deserves to be viewed in its entirety by everyone alive today:
Dr. Christiansen’s point is of overwhelming importance. It echoes a statement by Rose Wilder Lane in her impassioned book The Discovery of Freedom:
The real protection of life and property, always and everywhere, is the general recognition of the brotherhood of man. How much of the time is any American within sight of a policeman? Our lives and property are protected by the way nearly everyone feels about another person’s life and property.
But whence cometh this notion of “the brotherhood of Man?” It’s not immediately obvious. Most of us can’t reason our way to it; we don’t have the intellectual horsepower. As Dr. Christiansen points out, most of us who hold to it acquire it through religious education, usually Christ’s Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
(Yes, yes, Confucius, Hillel, and others essayed a weaker version: “Do not do unto others would you would not have them do unto you.” This is sometimes called the Brazen Rule. Christ’s Golden Rule is a transcendent advance over it. ‘Nuff said.)
Do you have neighbors who are capable of overwhelming you? It doesn’t matter how, or how many. If you do, it’s likely that they could take whatever they wish from you and prevent you from doing anything about it. So why don’t they? Is it the fear of prosecution, or is it the deep-set conviction that to do so would be wrong?
***
The celebrated Matt Bracken wrote this essay in 2012. The thematic lead-in is terrifying all by itself:
It’s estimated that the average American home has less than two weeks of food on hand. In poor minority areas, it may be much less. What if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but ERROR? This could also be the result of deliberate sabotage by hackers, or other technical system failures. Alternatively, the government might pump endless digits into the cards in a hopeless attempt to outpace future hyperinflation. The government can order the supermarkets to honor the cards, and it can even set price controls, but history’s verdict is clear: If suppliers are paid only with worthless scrip or blinking digits, the food will stop.
Mobs ransacking supermarkets and neighborhood grocery stores are a foreseeable consequence. Bracken gives a simple outline of the progression toward chaos:
STEP ONE: FLASH MOB LOOTING: The ransacking of known food stores.
NEXT STEP: FLASH MOB RIOTS: When there’s no food to steal, there’s still “acting out.”
THE OFFICIAL POLICE RESPONSE TO FLASH MOB RIOTS: Here, Bracken sketches in a police state like unto that in The Running Man. However, he posits that it won’t be capable of reacting with the speed and coverage required. He’s probably right.
Public order is a many-faceted thing – and the facets are interdependent. Should something formerly as reliable as Americans’ food retailing system suddenly stop serving the underclasses, the rest of what we think of as public order will crumble quickly. Arthur Sido comments thus:
When the rule of law ceases to exist, and damn son we are close to that point now, the worst dregs of society won’t hesitate for even a moment before they kick off an orgy of theft, assault, rape and murder. They are already mostly out of control but when the rule of law ceases to function, it won’t be long before the chaos really kicks off.
This will of course be most pronounced in urban areas where the rule of law barely exists as it is. There will be a tipping point where the remaining cops will be overwhelmed and so outnumbered that they stop responding to calls at all. The ferals will sense this long before media reports it, the word will spread like wildfire among the ghetto-dwellers that they capped Da’Lishush and the cops never ever showed up.
The important takeaway here is that the response time to WROL [“Without Rule Of Law”] will be far shorter for people operating on the fringe of lawlessness or already over the line anyway compared to suburbanites and others who fall under the umbrella of “law abiding.” Those who hold up “The Law” like a talisman to keep them safe will take much longer to abandon that mindset and that delay might be fatal.
And he is definitely right.
***
The above provides a good summary of what motivates the preparationist and survivalist communities. Note that persons in those communities are highly unlikely to live in or near to a significant city. It would undercut their preparations for security to be near a likely flash point. That is perfectly sensible, given their pessimistic view of things to come.
Their view is only slightly more pessimistic than mine.
We’ve already seen the localized disappearance of anything resembling public order. The “George Floyd riots” that destroyed large swathes of a couple dozen cities provided a mild taste of the chaos that would attend a breakdown of the food system. Imagine those riots expanded to swallow whole cities and their nearest suburbs, instead of a few districts in the cities’ cores. Imagine further that they’re not propelled by the ersatz anger of the George Floyd rioters, but by actual, belly-gnawing hunger.
If the “forces of order” cannot respond, armed Americans, determined to protect what they value, will step into their place. Arthur Sido cites Glenn Reynolds to this effect:
Police don’t actually protect law-abiding citizens from criminals so much as they protect criminals from the much-rougher justice they’d get in the absence of a legal system.
Burglars would be hung from lampposts, and shoplifters would be beaten and tossed into the gutter if there were no police, as in fact happens in countries where there isn’t a reliable justice system and a civil-society culture that restrains vigilantism. Reminder to the criminal class: Ultimately, we’re not stuck in this country with you. You’re stuck in this country with us.
And Reynolds is right and more than right: he is prescient.
One standard of justice for one group, but another for a different group? Even though that sounds distinctly un-American, many voters believe that’s happening today in America’s courts and legal venues. And it seems to be getting worse, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests.
In June, a Golden/TIPP Poll (TIPP is Issues & Insights’ polling partner) asked Americans if “There is a two-tiered system of justice in America depending on your political affiliation and ideology?” At the time, a sizable majority of 63% agreed, either “strongly” (28%) or “somewhat” (35%), with that statement. Only 17% disagreed, while 21% said they were “not sure.”
But something intervened between that June 8-10 poll, the first time the question was asked, and the one taken from Sept. 7-9. Namely, the Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate by the FBI, which took documents from Trump’s presidency along with personal effects.
The latest online survey of 1,277 voters found a significant increase from 63% to 71% of those saying they agreed that we now have a “two-tiered system of justice,” with 32% agreeing “strongly” and 39% agreeing “somewhat.”
Just 15% disagreed, with 5% saying they disagreed strongly and 10% saying they disagreed somewhat. The “not sure” responses fell to 14% from the earlier 21% reading.
When there are two de facto legal standards, one for the privileged and another for everyone else, there is no law as Americans understand it. The terrifying degree of concurrence indicated above need not grow much larger to being about a complete disaffiliation from “the law” among the “other than privileged” – and that could disrupt public order just as dramatically as riots among the “dregs” and “ferals.”
***
This is grim stuff. I know that. And I hate to have it front and center in my thoughts. But I must, as I have a family to protect. If you’re in a similar position, perhaps it should be front and center in your thoughts, too.
If you regard your district as “safe,” an evaluation that’s always relative, ponder these questions:
How far is it from a significant city? (Take “significant” to mean a population of 500,000 or more.)
How easy or hard is it to get here from there? (Consider private transportation only; looters and rioters seldom take mass transit.)
What concentrations of valuable resources exist in this district? (Concentrated value constitutes a target for looters and rioters.)
How many of my neighbors are armed and ready for disorder?
Are they sensible or Pollyannas?
Allow me to close with a snippet from Robinson Jeffers:
“The world’s in a bad way, my man,
And bound to be worse before it mends;
Better lie up in the mountain here
Four or five centuries,
While the stars go over the lonely ocean,”
The old father of wild pigs,
Plowing the fallow on Mal Paso Mountain.
That “old father of wild pigs” had the right idea.
Our economy knows many middlemen: persons and organizations that stand between the original producer of a good and the ultimate purchaser. These past few years, certain categories of middlemen have come under pressure, owing to the rise of the World Wide Web as a retailing tool. Consider how difficult it is for conventional travel agents to compete with the online airline-booking system, for example.
The essence of middleman operations is the old prescription: Buy low, and sell high. The numbers dictate everything. This can lead to an unhealthful kind of myopia in a period in which the dollar itself has become questionable. We’re in such a period today.
Financial guru John Pugsley, in his excellent book The Alpha Strategy, relates a case of this kind:
As a further complication, the businessman tends to count inflationary gains on inventories as profit, when in reality they are not. I was reminded of this recently when, while on vacation, I went into a health food store to buy some honey. The jar on the shelf was priced at $1.00. As I was paying for it, the proprietress and I began to talk about rising prices. She noted how lucky she was to have bought a large supply of honey two years earlier when prices were much lower. The jar I held in my hand cost her only fifty cents, she noted, while now the same jar would cost her $1.10 at wholesale. Many other items in her inventory had risen proportionately. She then made the comment that she was thinking of expanding her little store, as profits had been good.
She assumed that because she had purchased the honey for fifty cents and sold it to me for $1.00, that she was making a fifty-cent profit. I was a bit embarrassed to point out to her that she had not made a profit at all. She would have been better off not to have sold the honey to me, since now she had to take the dollar I gave her, plus a dime from her cash drawer, just to replace the jar on her shelf. She was going to lose a dime the moment she replenished her inventory. To bring her mistake vividly home to her, I suggested that she would be smart to immediately buy the honey back from me at $1.05, since that was five cents less than she could buy it for at the wholesaler. By her way of thinking, she would have bought all the jars on her shelves herself, made a fifty-cent profit, and then turned around and sold them back to herself at $1.10, and made another dime.
Like many business owners, she did not understand that a profit is not the difference between original cost and selling price, but the difference between replacement cost and selling price.
In that final paragraph, Pugsley has proclaimed the Gospel of the Enlightened Middleman…but there aren’t many who are that enlightened.
***
I had a chat with my broker Bogdan just yesterday. Like many who have their savings in an Individual Retirement Account (IRA), I’ve seen a considerable decline in its paper value these past eighteen months. Equities of all sorts have declined, as anyone who even glances at the stock market reports will know. Coupled to the high inflation rate, this made me nervous. I asked Bogdan what might be done to brace against it.
Bogdan was phlegmatic about it. His advice was to stay calm and ride it out – that there wasn’t much chance of losing everything, and that when equities rebound, I’d be glad I’d sat tight. That was probably the best advice anyone could give in these times. However, he related a tale of another client who’s decided to “go to cash:” i.e., to sell everything and merely hold dollars until the markets had settled. As this other client is very high net worth – much higher than I, at least – that had me shaking my head.
The hell of it is that there are brokers counseling their clients to do that very thing: Sell equities that will probably recover in preference for an “asset” that’s already deteriorating swiftly. Good brokers call that “locking in your losses.” A broker who understands the difference between dollar-denominated price and asset value would not advise his client to do any such thing, even at a time when the dollar is relatively stable.
Compare this to the preconceptions of the health-food store proprietress in the previous segment.
***
Under the veil of Time, few things are certain. When it comes to finance, nothing is certain except fluctuation. True stability is almost unknown in the history of our economy. Thankfully, if you have patience enough (and stomach-lining enough) not to panic when things take a downturn, you can usually endure the negative fluctuations and come out better off in the aftermath.
The main hazard in times such as these derives from a narrow focus. If you aren’t adequately diversified, as the gurus say, a fluctuation can wipe you out. Diversification lowers the probability of a big win, but it also protects against losing everything by betting on a single investment. The general understanding of this has risen in recent decades…yet there remain a large number of “investment counselors” who strive to steer the small investor toward “a hot thing.”
Dollar-denominated gains from the hottest of hot things can be a complete illusion when high inflation is part of the mix. But the middleman’s bias — Numbers Uber Alles — coupled to the small investor’s natural desire to trust his “expert” advisor can lead him astray.
It would be a big giveaway for such a broker to say “Trust me.” Unfortunately, most brokers are too smart to say it. What a pity.
(I don't endorse any of these sites. I list them to marvel at how many people and organizations want to run a "news site," but have no idea what that entails. -- FWP)
