Mar 27 2022

Sex As Strategy And Tactics

     It goes essentially without saying that sex, owing to our nature, is a principal attractor. However, the reverse of the coin is seldom discussed: it’s also a principal distractor. Clever sorts can use sex or parasexual matters to distract target audiences from what ought to be get their greatest attention, just as a stage magician uses physical flourishes to distract his audience from the setup for his next trick.

     A refinement on that strategy uses blatant sexual behavior to induce a kind of shock in the audience: shock sufficient to paralyze (or numb) them, such that they fail to react to associated developments that, in other contexts, would draw not merely their attention but their outrage. This tactic can thwart the enforcement of public norms, including the norms of justice.

     The Left has employed that method against normal Americans for some time now. This article provides an example.

     I’m not going to quote from that article; you can read it if you like. Here are some observations from Miriam “Mockarena” Weaver, co-founder of Chicks on the Right:

     It’s all about photographer Evan James Benally Atwood, who is a “queer, Indigenous artist.”

     I’ll let you take a moment to peruse the self-portraits of Evan at the sourcelink. Warning: His assular area is hairy and he wants you to know it.

     The Vice column is essentially a gushing puff piece on Evan, whose work is described as the undoing of “certain effects of colonialism – the desecration of stolen land, the imposition of a gender binary.” Evan’s photography, the article says, is a form of “visual sovereignty.”

     Is that what you think when you look at his work? Because what I think is that Evan reeeeeeally wants us all to see his ass.

     The Vice article leads off with Atwood’s sexuality. Why? What possible difference does it make to his subject matter? I can’t see it. But including – nay, emphasizing Atwood’s sexual variation provides the Left with a cudgel: If you find his opinions about “colonialism” to be stupid or vile, the Left will simply condemn you as one who hates fudge-packers.

     Let’s pass in silence over Atwood’s hairy ass…no, wait: we shouldn’t. The depictions thereof, which are even less relevant than his “queerness” to his notions about “colonialism,” are an example of the shock tactic mentioned above. The point is to shock and dismay anyone who might take exception to his aggressive anti-Americanism. It would work on a large fraction of Americans…possibly a majority.

     First the Left shocks us with sex and sexually related behavior. Then it mocks us for being shocked. If we persist in protesting, it labels us “haters” and says we just want to persecute those poor, misunderstood, harmless meat smokers and carpet munchers. The pattern is quite reliable.

     Nearly every normal person understands that sex should be a private matter – that parading sex and parasexual behavior in public is socially destructive. By flaunting it, the Left implicitly proclaims itself socially and legally privileged. By inducing us to accept bizarre public sexual caperings in silence, it performs the most important stage in any campaign to subjugate a people: it humiliates us with our own cowardice.

     Theodore Dalrymple noted that Communist regimes induce submission in their victim populaces by compelling them to repeat lies. No one can retain any respect for himself once he obediently parrots a blatant lie. It’s a quick and effective way to break a man’s self-regard. Indeed, we’ve known it since Orwell published 1984, if not well before that.

     The blatant lie that perverts and pedophiles promulgate by parading their perversions in public – “We’re just like everyone else” — is cover for their political agenda. (“Everyone else” does not proclaim their sexual orientations in their Twitter profiles, or flaunt their naked bodies or their sexual preferences in the streets.) The “sexual Left” is almost entirely on the political Left. Their “haters” gambit is an underhanded way of saying “Tolerate what we do to you, or we’ll make your life hell with accusations and depredations of every imaginable kind.”

     This is very much in the Communist tradition. Indeed, it goes beyond what the Soviets did. They never actually convinced the majority of the USSR’s populace that “the Jews” were conspirators out to enslave them. It was all too clear that the Communists had done that already.

     Imagine public propriety restored: sexual behavior and proclivities removed from public view and returned to the privacy they deserve. Never again to hear whining homosexuals demand to know why they’re unwelcome in a Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Never again to endure a “Gay Pride” parade! (What are they proud of, anyway?) Never again to hear about some “photojournalist’s” preference for sodomy, or small boys, or mackerel! What would you say – or do – to achieve that result? Would it be worth some name-calling, some confrontation, perhaps even some public scuffles?

     Your mileage may vary.

Mar 27 2022

Snark Level: World Championship Contender

     This (found at 90 Miles From Tyranny)) requires no comment from me:

     I do find it “cute” and “heartwarming,” though. (Did Mommy Tank ever get Junior back on his treads?)

Mar 26 2022

What Is The Diminutive Of “Snark?”

     Occasionally, I experience a spike of irritation that briefly deflects my train of though onto a semi-humorous side track. I think that henceforward I’ll indulge myself at such times. Like just a moment ago.

     Here’s “how it goes” in this Year of Our Lord 2022;

Speaker 1: Why aren’t your pronouns in your profile?
Speaker 2: Oh, sorry. Just an unintended omission. They’re he / him / his.
Speaker 1: Thanks. I wouldn’t want to misgender you.
Speaker 2: I know how easy it can be.

     But here’s “how it went” only a few years ago:

Speaker 1: Why aren’t your pronouns in your profile?
Speaker 2: Because I don’t concern myself with the obsessions of lunatics.
Speaker 1: What? You don’t care if I –
Speaker 2: I’m simply leaving it to you. Trusting your eyesight and judgment. You decide how you’ll refer to me, and I’ll decide whether to punch you in the nose. Clear enough for you?

     After sober consideration, I think I prefer the earlier custom. Strangely enough, there were fewer bloody noses per capita back then. More than coincidence?

Mar 26 2022

The U.S. propaganda deluge.

In foreign relations, here we are today: the US is in a de facto but undeclared war with Russia. No one calls it that, but that’s what it amounts to when the US is providing armaments through intermediaries to the forces that Russia is battling on its border. This intensifies and escalates conflict, same as sanctions. The dangers right now are intense, on all fronts. It’s not clear that decision makers even understand what they are doing.

Or maybe they do. Since the end of the Cold War, the US military-industrial complex has been searching for a reliable enemy that the US population could hate, as a way to distract from the misdeeds of the political elite at home. After decades of cycling through them, it appears that the old enemy was the best enemy. And with a small turn of a dial, vast swaths of high-end opinion are exclusively focused on the terrible plight of Ukraine.[1]

See, Zelensky, the stiletto-heels-prancing, 21st-century apotheosis of Churchill (with an allergy to Ukrainian political parties), is the new standard bearer of what is laughingly referred to as liberal democracy or, in Nancy Peloisi’s shorthand, “our democracy.” And you better believe that assassin Putin is hell bent on reestablishing the Soviet Union and communism.

See war pigs Hannity and Levin for the state-of-the-art hysteria and distortion:

(Link to video in case the above doesn’t take you to the video: https://video.foxnews.com/v/6301535562001#sp=show-clips)

If you were looking for nuanced, objective, fair, historically-informed commentary on a deadly serious matter instead of vapid war piggery, well then that was just a complete waste of nine minutes of your life.

And for a glimpse of real tire-iron and broken-bottle message whoring (AKA “strategic communications”) be sure you don’t miss this article by Dan Cohen at MintPress News: “Ukraine’s Propaganda War: International PR Firms, DC Lobbyists and CIA Cutouts.” (H/t: South Front.)

Notes
[1] “How Seventy Years of Progress Came to an End.” By Jeffrey A. Tucker, Brownstone Institute, 3/11/22. See also Craig Murray for the U.S./U.K./NATO need for a Russian enemy: “[Then, post-1991, the] truth, of course, was that it had always been in the interest of MI6, the Defence Intelligence Service, the British armed forces, of their American counterparts, and of all their NATO counterparts, massively to exaggerate the strength of the Red Army. Because the greater the perceived enemy, the more we needed to throw money at MI6, the Defence Intelligence Service, the British armed forces, their American counterparts, and at all their NATO counterparts.”

Mar 25 2022

We Won’t Get A Clearer Warning

     Sorry, Gentle Readers, but time is up:

     Earlier today, the hapless president of the United States emerged from one of his NATO huddles to answer questions from the reporters he had been instructed to call upon, as per his SOP. One of them brought up the potential for food shortages, and Biden’s answer was serious bad-feeling-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach material:

     “With regard to food shortages, yes, we did [random sounds] talk about food shortages. And, uh, and it’s gonna be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

     If the connection between Russian sanctions and food shortages isn’t clear, it arises from Russia’s decision to halt its exports of fertilizers: a counterstroke to the sanctions the U.S. and other nations are imposing on it. Russia is the world’s #1 exporter of fertilizers. Don’t feel bad about only just learning about that; I didn’t know it myself until a few weeks ago.

     How’s your pantry looking just now?

     Granted that shortages are anticipated and not immediate, nevertheless: if the Green Revolution that’s made food cheap and plentiful worldwide is to continue, the fertilizers and associated chemicals needed to produce food in large quantities must continue to be available. The food growth cycle in the Northern Hemisphere is entering its ramp-up…but whether there will be fertilizers enough has become questionable.

     Thinking of running to the supermarket? It’s not a bad idea. Moreover, now’s the time, before inflation and the proposed Global Digital Currency can leach the rest of the purchasing power out of your wallet.

     Don’t look to government to save you. Governments worldwide, including ours, have collaborated in bringing this situation about. They want still greater control of you; total control, if possible. The prospect of food shortages is a proven way to go for it. Ask the North Koreans or the Venezuelans.

     If you haven’t yet hunkered down, you’d bloody well better get to it in the few instants remaining:

  • Fill your pantry to bursting.
  • Get a freezer or two and fill them as well.
  • Are you armed? If so, do you have enough ammunition?
  • Make sure that your oil, gasoline, and propane tanks are full.
  • Make any anticipated clothing purchases now. Emphasize practicality.
  • After you’ve attended to all the above, buy gold, silver, and copper coins.

     If you think the above exhortations are panicky or hysterical, because “things will be back to normal real soon,” see your brain-care specialist as soon as possible. The Usurpers have control, a program in progress, and no trace of a conscience to impede them or it. Elections? Trusting in them has been proved foolish. And anyway, can you be confident that the Republicans would relinquish totalitarian power rather than use it for their own ends?

     Perhaps I shouldn’t repeat myself this much, but Keith Laumer’s observation (through the mouth of his perennial hero Retief) has much impact:

     “Most people are willing to give up their preconceptions, once they’ve had them tattooed on their heads with a blunt instrument.”

     Don’t be one of the tattooed. Verbum sat sapienti.

Mar 25 2022

Pearls of expression.

Me and Musk are on the same wavelength. Except for him being born in a different part of the world, growing up to create the largest online payment system and eventually create re-usable rockets that launch into space and land vertically while seeding the lower Earth orbit with satellites that decoupled the internet from the deep-state controlled infrastructure on the ground, all while being the richest man the planet has ever seen, we’re pretty much the same.

“Elon Musk Puts Out Tweet on THE “Big Tech” Kill-shot: Open-Source Their Algorithm.” By DC, Conservative Hardline, 3/24/22.

Mar 24 2022

The Sane And The Insane

     Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson pulled off quite a lot of masks yesterday with her non-answer to a single, putatively nonthreatening question posed by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R, TN):

Sen. Blackburn: Can you define the word “woman?”
Brown Jackson: I’m not a biologist.

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers, as engaged with current events as you are, are aware of that exchange. The time has come to explore its significances – plural, for there are several.

***

     I titled the third volume in my Futanari Saga in a provocative fashion: The Wise and the Mad. The provocation, as you would expect from me, was deliberate. I wanted readers to think about what distinguishes wise men from the unwise, and mad men from those we regard as sufficiently sane. I chose the title of this essay with a similar objective in mind.

     There’s a little epistemology, and the metaphysical foundation for it, coming up, so readers who have no patience with such things should stay braced.

     Epistemology is the study of what and how we learn. Knowledge is its touchstone. That which does not produce or destroy knowledge, or which does not facilitate or impede the acquisition of knowledge, is excluded from the subject. But to make use of the definition – i.e., to say “this is an epistemological proposition, but that is not” – we must understand and agree on what constitutes knowledge.

     The fundamental presupposition of knowledge is that there is something to know. In other words, it presumes that there is a real world from which we can draw data and, with thought and effort, arrive at useful conclusions about its laws. This begins as a utilitarian pursuit – “can I use this to get somewhere or something I want?” – but, by a process of repetition and induction, arrives at the conclusion that there is an objective reality underlying our perceptions. As a Randian would say, existence exists. We are not helpless captives of Maya.

     Reality is indifferent to our opinions, preferences, assumptions, and convictions. Because it is lawful, it supports our efforts to learn about it – to acquire knowledge. But it won’t alter its laws, or morph from one thing into another, simply because we decree that it shall.

     A passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance makes clear the critical importance of this metaphysical foundation:

     [Phaedrus] didn’t jump from Immanuel Kant to Bozeman, Montana. During this span of ten years he lived in India for a long time studying Oriental philosophy at Benares Hindu University.
     As far as I know he didn’t learn any occult secrets there. Nothing much happened at all except exposures. He listened to philosophers, visited religious persons, absorbed and thought and then absorbed and thought some more, and that was about all. All his letters show is an enormous confusion of contradictions and incongruities and divergences and exceptions to any rule he formulated about the things he observed. He’d entered India an empirical scientist, and he left India an empirical scientist, not much wiser than he had been when he’d come. However, he’d been exposed to a lot and had acquired a kind of latent image that appeared in conjunction with many other latent images later on.
     Some of these latencies should be summarized because they become important later on. He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself….
     [O]ne day in the classroom [at Benares University] the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phaedrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.
     Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phaedrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up.

     The author, Robert M. Pirsig, speaks of “Phaedrus” as a separate entity from himself – yet it is his own experiences he’s relating. At that time of his life, he was in the grip of what seemed an insoluble contradiction between two obviously true statements:

  • Knowledge is demonstrably possible;
  • Yet for any given phenomenon, the number of possible explanations is unbounded.

     Pirsig was not a fool. He simply “lived too much in his head,” a malady that afflicts many persons of high intelligence who have a penchant for the abstract. It took him years, a psychotic breakdown, and a course of electroshock treatments to get him back in touch with reality. A high price to pay for a best-selling book, eh what?

     The moral “should” be “obvious:”


Sanity demands the acceptance of objective reality.
He who rejects objective reality is insane.

     Sanity is the prerequisite of wisdom.

***

     The pursuit of knowledge, of course, has more requirements than simply conceding that existence exists. It requires that we learn how to define and measure; how to generalize and manipulate generalizations; and how to test our theses. Colloquially, we call the process reasoning. But beneath all our reasoning must be the acceptance of objective reality. Without accepting that the data our senses gather is real information about real things – things whose nature and characteristics are indifferent to our preferences – we can make no progress.

     The insane are impeded from doing that. Their impediment consists of a rejection – partial in most cases – of the objective reality the rest of us accept. Depending on the specifics of that rejection, they might be dangerous to themselves or others. Traditionally, those judged to be so dangerous were forcibly confined and protected. That is no longer the case today.

     Today, many people hold that reality is plastic before the human will; that each of us can decide “what is” for ourselves, regardless of externals and the convictions of others; in effect, that “reality” is a meaningless noise. But this is plainly not the case; it’s insane at its base. For thousands, perhaps millions of persons to believe it and yet be walking around without minders suggests that the world has turned into an open-air sanitarium.

     Some coddle the insane for political purposes. That doesn’t render their mascots sane. Indeed, it makes their condition even more threatening to them and to others.

     The problem goes well beyond the lunacy of allowing biological men to compete in women-only sporting events.

***

     We return to Ketanji Brown Jackson and her “not a biologist” farce.

     Why did a woman intelligent enough to be a federal judge – never mind her dubious allegiance to the law and the Constitution – say something so fatuous during her own confirmation hearings for a position on the United States Supreme Court? What possible explanations are there? Indeed, what advantage could she have sought, or disadvantage could she have hoped to avert, with so stupid a statement?

     Only one explanation holds water.

     The blatant attempt not to incur the ire of those who insist that saying “I identify as a woman” can make a biological man a woman was a kind of appeasement. From the side of her mouth, Ketanji Brown Jackson was saying – to militant transgender activists, and to the Democrat Party that has enfolded them into its political coalition – “Please don’t hurt me.” She knew that acknowledging objective reality would hurt her politically.

     Let’s leave aside whether the country can afford to have a Supreme Court Justice who’s willing to deny reality for political purposes. I don’t think there’d be much argument about it. What does it say about the Democrat Party that its strategists, policy makers, and elected officials willingly pander to the demonstrably insane in order to garner a few more votes for its candidates? And what does it say about the character of persons so disposed?

     Is there wisdom in supporting the aspirations of such persons? Could we expect anything good to come of awarding them power? Is it not time to put an end to such madness?

     I leave it to my Gentle Readers to decide.

Mar 23 2022

Outsourcing Tyranny

     Many Gentle Readers are already acquainted with this subject, owing to the rise of cancel culture and the impediments the giants of Big Tech have dropped upon our freedom of expression. Mind you, while there are many persons ready, willing, and able to offer opinions about what should be done, the subject is considerably more complex than most imagine. For cancel culture is made possible by private enterprise. The proximate cancellers are private corporations, whether their actions are moved by human wills or are algorithmically driven. So the guarantees of freedom of expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights don’t apply directly to those entities.

     Does that mean nothing can be done about them? Not necessarily. However, some of the remedies proposed are guaranteed to fail completely, while others will not produce improvements sufficient to satisfy the majority of those who reject and condemn the cancellers. In part this stems from the diversity of opinion, and in part from the network effect.

     But we have not yet mentioned one aspect of the political angle: the attitude of elected officials toward cancel culture. Those on the Left are largely fine with it. Indeed, some hope to see it expand still further, such that those who don’t share the Left’s positions and agenda are completely erased from political exchange. Those on the Right are likely to decry it, though the attitude is not uniform. The constitutionalist is caught between two fires, for he knows that the temptation to award governments the power to intervene in such things would inevitably be used against him when his political adversaries rise to power once again.

     It is, as the King of Siam said to Anna, a puzzlement.

***

     As enraging as contemporary cancel culture and the suppression of non-Left opinion can be, there’s worse in the offing – and this goes directly to the accounts of governments.

     At Tablet magazine, Michael Young is eloquent about the terrors that could easily be unleashed against us. The thrust of the article:

     The loss of real-world friction coupled with the increasing centralization of the financial system has opened up possibilities for new forms of coercion, control, and power—particularly when governments and the private sector decide to cooperate. Which brings us to the case of the Canadian prime minister….

     What happens when a government is no longer required to do the very difficult, friction-filled work of finding people, writing tickets, arresting them, charging them, granting them due process, obtaining convictions, and jailing the guilty? When the government can bring a person’s practical participation in society to a standstill with the push of a button, it becomes silly to even talk about individual rights or due process. In the face of this new kind of push-button power, exercised at the whim of the governing party with zero legal oversight, individuals can simply be deleted from the system—even if, technically speaking, they are never charged with or convicted of a crime.

     Please read it all. Canada’s Freedom Truckers surrounded Ottawa in hopes of compelling prime minister Justin Trudeau to lift the many restrictions that impede their practice of their trade. But Trudeau, who aspires to being Canada’s first Fuhrer, was unwilling to allow that he might have overstepped. Instead, he used “emergency powers” to blot hundreds, perhaps thousands of truckers and supporters out of “practical participation in society.” He even threatened law-abiding married couples with the loss of their children. How far his exertions have gone, I cannot say…but the mere possibility that he could do what he did – even to a single individual, and even if it were later reversed – is enough to freeze the blood.

     What makes Trudeau’s bullying possible? Young is specific:

  1. Digital communications technology;
  2. The digital integration of the financial systems of the Western world;
  3. The willingness of nominally private financial institutions to comply with the State’s decrees.

     Items 1 and 2 are generally considered major advances in efficiency and convenience. Item 3 is made possible by a species of political evil that I’ve condemned before and will again: licensure:

     Licensure, when it first appeared, applied to very few things: mainly the practice of medicine and law. The rationale was “the public safety:” the protection of the layman from the quack practitioner of little or no actual skill. That rationale now applies to trades as unthreatening as the braiding of hair.

     A case from some years ago, to which I was privy simply as an observer, involved a state official in Massachusetts who entered a unisex hair salon and demanded service. The attendant on duty politely asked if he could wait for the specialist in his sort of hair, who was expected to arrive shortly. When the official saw the attendant give immediate service to a subsequent arrival, he had the state police shut down the salon, invoking the state’s licensure laws for his authority.

     Yes, the official was a Negro.

     This is what comes of allowing the State to decide who may ply what trade and under what conditions.

***

     The contemporary financial system, of course, is made possible by fiat money: money that is not redeemable in some physical commodity. “It’s money because we, the Omnipotent State, say it is.” Fiat money is divided between physical currency – i.e., the Federal Reserve Notes in your wallet – and accounting entries in the computer systems of financial institutions. The physical notes are a tiny portion of the “money” now “circulating” in these United States…and for that matter, in every other nation on Earth. Most “money” is merely an entry in the digital accounts of some bank.

     The nature of “money” today makes it plausible that banks should be licensed and regulated. After all, we wouldn’t want the banks that hold our savings to play fast and loose with the numbers. They could pauperize us at the press of a button. So let’s have the State look over their shoulders to make sure they stay honest.

     Trouble is, that merely transfers the power to pauperize us to the licensing and regulating authorities – and to the officials to whom they answer.

     There’s a particularly stinging irony about the way Justin Trudeau went about his machinations. He didn’t impose fines on the truckers or their supporters; that would have been an exercise of penal authority – punishment – which in Canada as in the U.S. requires the verdict of a jury. Instead, he froze access to their accounts. Thus, he could say that he hadn’t taken a dollar from them; he’d merely limited their use of money. What banknotes and coins they had in their pockets was all they could use, until Trudeau should choose to relent.

     The banks had to go along with it. Had they demurred, Trudeau could have pulled their licenses to operate and destroyed them. Thus the integrated financial system that had seemed a pure convenience only a day earlier had been transformed into an instrument of torture. That instrument is as ready to the hand of an American tyrant as it was to that of Justin Trudeau.

***

     Inflation, the ongoing campaign against cash, cancel culture, and other current phenomena bear on the increasing fragility of our “money.” If the necessary realization hasn’t penetrated the majority of Americans’ heads, it certainly should. Perhaps it will take time.

     Time, however, is not on our side. The Usurper Regime is becoming desperate as the national economy declines. The Usurpers have no intention of relinquishing power this side of the grave. Now that they face electoral disaster in 2022, we must fear arbitrary, unpredictable incursions on Americans’ freedom to avert the loss of their perches. They’re aware of what Justin Trudeau did to the Freedom Truckers, and aware that the same lever is in their hands.

     Reread this essay. Buy gold and silver while you still can. And pray.

Mar 22 2022

Back In The News?

     No, not the Hunter Biden laptop. (I almost typed “Hunted Biden laptop,” which might soon be “breaking news,” but we’ll have to wait and see.) Rather, it’s one of the ideas that was floated shortly after Gregor Mendel discovered that fruit flies like sex: deliberately, eugenically breeding people as a way to improve us and our societies.

***

     Here’s the OED’s definition of eugenics:

     The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.

     In these “woke” days, a “definition” that’s mostly made up of slander or condemnations should surprise no one. In point of fact, only the words up to the first period – the first “full stop,” as our British cousins would say – constitute a proper definition. The rest is an attempt to tar eugenics with a brush of Nazi black.

     This article, which is mainly a book review, mentions some of the historical data about eugenic thinking:

     There was also concern, especially among scientists such Francis Galton and Charles Darwin, about “dysgenics.” Prior to the Industrial Revolution, social class was correlated with fertility, child mortality was approximately 50%, and so the genetically sick, and those with low intelligence and poor moral character (correlates of low socioeconomic status), were purged every generation. But, despite its reputation, the Industrial Revolution, and especially the rise of inoculation against killer childhood diseases, created easier conditions and, thus, dysgenics. This risked the breakdown of civilization, in the view of the early eugenics advocates.

     By 1900, eugenics was massively influential among Western elites. Conservatives such as former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour perceived it as a means of creating a great people. Leftists regarded it as a means of reducing suffering, and some of the most vocal advocates of eugenics were committed leftists—George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells. Opposition came from conservative traditionalists, such as G.K. Chesterton, who felt that eugenicists were playing God [Eugenics and the Left, by Diane Paul, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1984].

     Laws were passed in various countries, some not revoked until the 1970s, allowing the sterilization of “mental defectives” and, in some cases, encouraging those considered of good “quality” to be more fecund.

     The above is largely accurate and unbiased. Those were the prevalent opinions of those times. Moreover, they were founded on what was believed to be the best science of the times. An intellect as advanced as that of Oliver Wendell Holmes was wholly in accord with the desirability of a eugenic approach to the improvement of homo sapiens terrestrialis.

     Eugenic thinking has not been disproved in any rigorous sense. What happened to “discredit” it was the association of eugenics with Nazism in Europe, and the forced sterilization of mental defectives and the insane here and elsewhere. The moral horror those phenomena inspired were enough to put the idea of breeding a better human being by design outside the bounds of acceptable thinking.

     Yet eugenics itself, as a thesis, has not been disproved. Indeed, copious statistical evidence supports the idea that intentionally breeding a better man just might produce one. When above-average people get together and produce a baby, their child is likely to mature into an above-average adult – above average, that is, in whatever transmissible characteristic – physical, esthetic, or intellectual – makes us regard the parents as above average. Moreover, it happens too frequently to be ignored.

     Similarly, the inverse idea of dysgenics — that it’s possible to lower the general quality and survivability of Mankind through unwise breeding – has not been disproved. Laws that forbid the marriage of brother to sister, or of first cousins to one another, implicitly acknowledge the dysgenic thesis. So does what we know of the spawn of lower-class couples.

     So eugenics and dysgenics remain unrefuted. They’re not unthinkable because they’re wrong. We reject them because of the moral horrors implicit in imposing them coercively on third parties.

***

     Couples these days don’t fall in love, marry, and set out to produce children for eugenic reasons. Inversely, couples don’t…well…refrain from coupling because they fear to produce monsters, morons, or politicians. Other considerations usually prevail over the “what would our babies be like?” question. Oftentimes the key consideration is economic. At others, it’s “Damn, I’ve been alone a long time. Would he / she have me?”

     However, virtually all of us attempt to “marry upward:” i.e., to mate with someone whom others, at least, would say is somewhat “out of his league.” (Apropos of which, the romantic comedy She’s Out Of My League is a major delight. It’s available on DVD. See it.) At least, we (meaning heterosexuals) all hope to do so, even if unconsciously. In so doing, we practice an undiscussed version of eugenics. Inversely, when a pregnant woman decides to abort her Down’s Syndrome unborn child, she’s practicing a form of dysgenics. (No, I don’t approve, but you knew that already.)

     What renders eugenics and dysgenics undiscussable de facto is the implication that they should inform government policies about mating and reproduction. Apart from the laws that forbid marrying someone too close to you on the family tree, we don’t have any such policies in these United States. But intertwined with our distaste for eugenics and dysgenics as staples of policy is a much more dubious aversion: our reluctance to admit that certain characteristics are transmissible, in part at least, from parents to children.

     As I noted in the previous segment, we have ample statistical evidence that several physical, esthetic, and mental characteristics are partly genetically derived. Yet pointing this out can get you called “everything but white”…depending on who you are and “your angle.” A few years back, a deaf lesbian couple made the news with their avowed intention to produce a deaf baby. Of course, they couldn’t do so without male help, so they went looking, quite openly, for a suitable deaf sperm donor. “Deaf activists” – a phrase whose significance I didn’t grasp at the time – were vocal and more in defending that couple’s intentions and actions, despite the inarguable cruelty of deliberately inflicting a severe handicap on a helpless infant.

     “Your angle,” and whether there are loud activist groups that are for or against you and have the ear of the major media, very much determine what you can say about this subject. A prominent white man who would dare to say that whites should marry and procreate strictly within their race would immediately be condemned as a monster. Compare this to the immunity from criticism enjoyed by that deaf lesbian couple. Then go on to the open anti-white racism of prominent persons such as Elie Mystal.

     Some concepts are “unthinkable” not because of the concepts themselves but because of who seeks to discuss them. Eugenics is only one such.

Mar 21 2022

The Mrs. Jellyby syndrome.

Here’s a good description of our Iraq misadventure:

America has made plenty of blunders as a global superpower, but the Iraq War was the worst. It was entirely optional, easily avoidable, strategically worthless, hideously wasteful, and far too often, morally compromising.

As bad as a mistake as Iraq was, in the moment it can be understood. The 9/11 attacks were a profound shock to the national psyche, and for years the nation remained paranoid that deadly enemies were everywhere and 9/11 would just be the prelude to future, much deadlier attacks. Not only that, but the national security state had not spent 20 years lying about Afghanistan then, and had not declared war on American conservatives as a class, so the need to distrust them was not quite as obvious.[1]

Our rage has dissipated since 2001 but the receding tide of rage did not expose anything noble or rational. A global American crusade of stupidity and viciousness gradually appeared but you have to be blind not to see the futility of it. Vicious Talibs abusing Afghan women were proof of a barbarism seemingly endemic in the Muslim world. Against which Bunny is but are such these things that ANYone can change and is it a unique US obligation to oppose and vanquish loathsome behavior wherever it can be found?

Our own nation has been subverted and cheapened on an immense scale and yet one hears nothing from the political elites making the case that there needs to be any balancing of priorities. It’s just assumed that foreigners come first under any and all circumstances. (And home-grown and imported minorities here at home too but that’s for later discussions.)

The clue that our World Crusade is off is in the question “what’s the missing part in all of this?” In slaying dragons in the Hindu Kush and Mesopotamia what were we NOT doing? Well, the political class was NOT fulfilling its responsibility to take care of our own people first. Oh, that! What a novel idea.

If you’ve ever known someone who is endlessly fixated on the needs of others you know that that is unhealthy behavior. As a commenter on some ZeroHedge article today observed, “we” are unwilling to spend $3B to pay for the completion of the wall on the southern border but sending something like $13B to Ukraine, so help me, to help them fight another war a long way away that doesn’t concern us is all in one morning’s work for the sell-out crowd.

You can see the problem. We have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in foreign climes dealing with primitives and their murky or unknowable ambitions, obsessions, and resentments BUT not a bleeping troop one on the U.S. border. It makes one weep or want to chew nails in absolute frustration, the betrayal shining like a bright star when you forget the foreigner. Compared to the endless sophistries and chest thumping about some distant Dogpatch the agenda of the diseased American political class and its yet-more-diseased billionaire controllers is abundantly clear. Not us.

Notes
[1] “The America First Movement has a Sean Hannity Problem.” By Darren J. Beattie, Revolver, 3/20/22.

Mar 21 2022

Prep for This Year’s Elections

The FIRST task:

Let your party know, in clear and unmistakable terms, that NO Representative will be returned who voted to impeach Trump for Jan. 6th events.

NONE.

Specifically, wave a check in front of them, and inform them that you will NOT be handing it over, should they nominate one of those Quislings. Further, that you will ACTIVELY vote for ANY opponent, EVEN if it means that a Democrat is elected.

PERIOD.

Mar 20 2022

The Numbing

     I wrote not long ago about the fraying of the norms that bind Americans together as a coherent society. That process is been going on for long time now, and has almost reached the level necessary for complete social collapse. However, while the fraying of our norms is necessary for collapse, it is not sufficient to bring it about. Another process, operating in parallel to the fraying, is joined to it in the effort to destabilize us. Together they just might do the trick.

***

     A significant array of considerations, influences, and forces act upon the typical American’s consciousness each day. Some of these are matters of necessity. Others arise from our routines; Those in a third group have little or nothing to do with our conscious choices. In aggregate, they induce individuals to perform mental context switching — i.e., leaving one chore temporarily behind to attend to another one – more frequently and therefore faster than ever before in the history of civilization.

     Trust an old system software engineer to know about context switching and its hazards. It’s the blessing and the curse of contemporary operating system design. Computers today must handle more needs faster than any previous generation. Nor is the trend likely to be reversed any time soon. In consequence, multitasking architectures are now ubiquitous even in the designs of the smallest microprocessor-based systems. But that has elevated consideration of the problems that arise from a multitasking design. One of those is called thrashing.

     A system afflicted with thrashing is switching contexts so frequently that it’s unable to attend adequately to “real work.” Needless to say, this is an undesirable condition. It usually occurs in “underpowered” systems: i.e., those that lack adequately fast processors or sufficient memory. However, any system, regardless of the speed of its CPU and the copiousness of its memory, can suffer thrashing if external conditions become perverse. For example, a sufficient frequency of device interrupts will do it. Whatever the cause, the effect is massively undesirable.

     However, computer systems have an advantage over the human brain: no matter how severely they thrash, they don’t get numb. Subject a human to a sufficiently sustained, sufficiently rapid series of interruptions, each of which demands that he switch his attention from this to that, and he’ll shut down…blank out…cease to perform any task that requires attention coupled with rationality. This is what I mean by the numbing.

***

     In many ways, contemporary technology is a great boon. I’m sure I need not detail the reasons for the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. Yet it also makes possible the bombardment of our senses with a series of interruptions – demands that we “context switch” – that can rise high enough to overwhelm us. Some, under such a barrage, cease to function at all. These may wind up in places where others will attend to their necessities for them. The rest of us aren’t so lucky.

     Remember this classic soliloquy from one of the great movies of the Seventies?

     I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

     We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’

     That closing plaint represents the numbing: the shutting-down of our interest in and attention to all inputs, however loudly they may shriek for our concern. It’s not the only possible response, of course:

     Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’

     So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

     That’s the alternative response to being overburdened and over-interrupted. And yes, some people will choose to lash out, whether with words or with deeds. But in the main, the numbing is what we should expect. It’s easier, requires fewer calories, and doesn’t draw complaints from the neighbors. More critically yet, it leaves the destroyers of our norms unfettered, free to continue their destruction.

***

     So, Mr. Citizen! Your kids’ teachers are urging them to change sex, or experiment with sodomy, or call you a racist. Your neighborhood is going to Hell from rising crime and unfilled potholes. The prices of the necessities are rising but your income isn’t. Your income taxes make you feel like a mugging victim. Your property taxes are slowly forcing you out of your home. You can’t get away for even a weekend, out of fear that you’re return to find that your job has been eliminated. Your wife wants to know why you come home from work too tired for anything but sitting before the Idiot Box and eventually falling asleep.

     Work used to stop when you left the workplace. Not anymore! Through the miracle of the Internet, today it can follow you home, and it does. Don’t shut off your smartphone; your boss could need you at any moment, and he won’t hesitate to call, regardless of the hour. He’ll take it badly if you fail to answer.

     On the news the commentators are talking about mandatory bank account monitoring, and Internet censorship, and injections against some virus or other, and the elimination of cash, and the rationing of fuels and electrical power. It’s bizarre! Did we just declare war on someone and you didn’t notice? Perhaps so. At least, a number of talking heads are nattering about some dustup in Eastern Europe, our “duties” as world policemen, the need to sacrifice for “the common good,” and the possible reactivation of the draft…this time, for both sexes.

     But you don’t have to watch the news. There are fifteen hundred channels of entertainment waiting for you. None of them are particularly entertaining, but at least they don’t demand anything of you. So what if you know that homosexual couples and interracial couples aren’t nearly that common in real life? So what if you’ve never met a black or female tech whiz of the sort all the crime and espionage dramas present? You’re not watching this stuff for its conformance with reality. You’re just not good for anything more demanding, so you “veg out” with the Box for a background light and noise show. That way they can program your brain with their preferred Weltanschauung when you’re too tired to resist it.

     If The Numbing hasn’t got you yet, it will soon.

***

     There’s no Last Graf. I have no solution, other than withdrawal to a laager insulated against the tide, in which you can defend your convictions and your rights against the tumult beyond. And yes, a significant number of Americans are constructing and moving to such redoubts. But it’s not a solution everyone can use.

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader. All I’ve ever wanted for the closing years of my life was to sit under my own vine and fig tree, where none shall make me afraid. But our nation is crumbling as we watch. All the certainties of our youth are turning to ashes as we speak. Afraid is getting to be all I’ve got.

     “Hey, I know a place. Let’s go.” – Russell Baker

Mar 20 2022

I Try Not To Use Certain Words

     Indeed, I try really hard. But sometimes, I can’t resist.

     Today’s word is inevitable:

     Analysis of the Russian attack on Ukraine has rightly focused on the strategic, military and humanitarian considerations of the conflict itself. Soon, however, domestic implications will begin to impinge on the geo-political. Maintaining public support will be critical as President Biden and other democratic leaders around the world ask their citizens to sacrifice for the cause of countering Russia’s war.

     The pressing nature of this challenge is made obvious by the ban on Russian energy imports that Biden announced on March 8. Cutting off the revenue that Russian oil and gas sales generate for the Kremlin is of clear strategic importance, but most analysts agree that it will raise gasoline and other energy prices for American consumers. Such hikes will come on top of the existing inflation problem with which the Biden administration has struggled for months.

     So far, just the sort of pro-war obfuscation expected from the types who want us to look anywhere but at our own troubles. But here’s the Sunday punch:

     Most mainstream economists today oppose price controls, although in recent months a sometimes-intense debate has emerged over the issue. Critics point to the pitfalls of the policy, such as the way that they can exacerbate shortages by preventing price signals (i.e., price increases) from inducing producers to increase supply. There is also the problem that controls cannot by themselves fix underlying structural causes of inflation.

     Defenders of the approach note that a nuanced regime of “administered prices” has worked in the European Union, and that China relied on a system of price management during the early stages of its rapid economic development in the 1980s and 1990s. They also argue that controls can prevent corporate profiteering.

     Whatever the drawbacks of price controls, however, the issue is no longer one of economic policy alone. It is now a strategic problem too, as the Biden administration’s other options for cushioning the impact of the Russian energy ban have their own downsides.

     PRICE CONTROLS! Great God in heaven, are the people who write this bilge stupid, evil, or both? The history of price controls is entirely black. They create shortages of the very things the controls supposedly make “affordable!”

     Yet it was inevitable that the Usurpers would seek to impose price controls. Price controls are actually people controls. They say to the producer and the vendor, “We the Rulers will decide what your goods and your labor are worth” — while those same Rulers go on merrily inflating the currency, rendering it worthless, and arrogating huge chunks of the price-controlled items to themselves. “The needs of the State come first,” don’t y’know. There’s no more effective method for reducing a society to poverty, black-market dependency, and dog-eat-dog savagery.

     The suggestion of price controls is always accompanied by insinuations that producers are “profiteering.” People must be provided with a villain to blame other than the regime. It’s worked in the past; it would probably work today.

     Did Nixon’s price controls on gasoline increase the supply of gasoline? If you’re not old enough to know about that episode, allow me to provide the answer for you: NO!

     One of the reasons FDR seized all privately held gold was to allow him to conceal what he intended to do to the dollar. Today the dollar’s purchasing power is down to about 4% of what it commanded in 1913. Think about it.

     It’s time to hunker down:
     Fill your pantry and freezer to bursting.
     Advance anticipated purchases of clothing.
     Keep your oil, gasoline, and propane tanks full.
     Buy gold and silver, and tell no one that you have it.

     Beware, Gentle Reader. This won’t be the last time you hear about price controls as a “remedy” for what the Usurpers’ radically inflationary policies are doing to us.

Mar 19 2022

The Wide World Of Pranks

     We’ve all heard about them. Some of us have perpetrated them. The easier and more common ones – filling someone’s bedroom with Styrofoam® peanuts, or turning every item in his room upside-down – have lost their humor value through overuse and are merely irritating. But there are still a few that can tickle one…as long as you’re not on the receiving end.

***

     When I was in college, one weekend some contemporaries of mine who were at “loose ends” decided to exercise their dubious sense for vengeance upon an officious Resident Assistant. As it happens, that fellow had left campus for the weekend. He’d made the mistake of taking the train and leaving his Volkswagen behind. So his “friends” took the opportunity to break into it – it was easy with a mid-Sixties Beetle – hotwire it, and re-park it in the lobby of his dormitory. They then proceeded to call Campus Security and have a parking ticket put on it.

     They thought themselves clever, but they were unaware that some CalTech students had already one-upped them. Those gentlemen emptied their target’s dorm room of everything movable, disassembled his Beetle, and reassembled it in the target’s dorm room – with a parking ticket affixed. Surely this is an adequate demonstration of why undergraduates need to be kept busy.

***

     An old friend of mine told me about a corker from Buffalo, New York, whence came Grover Cleveland and spicy chicken wings. Two bored young men, resolved upon doing something memorable, marched into the city and picked out a barber shop. Back then, the tradition of the helically striped barber pole was still alive and widely practiced. Our heroes negotiated to purchase that barber’s pole, asked for and received a written bill of sale, and told the proprietor that “We’ll come back later to pick it up.”

     And come back for it they did…at 2:00 AM. They were toting the pole down the street when a cop saw and stopped them. He arrested them on suspicion of theft and hauled them into the precinct HQ, at which point they showed the bill of sale to the watch commander. The WC let them go.

     Within fifteen minutes of their release, another cop had stopped and arrested them and brought them to the precinct HQ, where the same scene was played out a second time. This time, the watch commander put out an APB to all on-duty police that “If you see a couple of kids toting a barber pole, leave ‘em be. They’ve got a bill of sale.”

     By dawn there were no barber poles left in the City of Buffalo.

***

     While we’re on the subject of chicken…we are, aren’t we?

     The rise of wireless digital communications has made pranks possible that were impossible only a little while earlier. One that never fails to tickle me involves a pair of neighbors at odds over what constitutes endurable noise. The noisier family is unwilling to acknowledge the grievance of the quieter household. So the young son of the quieter family went looking for a way to take vengeance. He found it in the unsecured wireless printer of the noisemakers.

     Whenever the noisy folks get cranked up – music, television, a family fight, what have you – our hero sends a document to their wireless printer. 

     The noisy family is apparently on the clueless side. To this date, they have no idea why this is happening.

***

     System Administrators must be sobersided types. The power inherent in SysAdmin privileges can be used for many things…some of them quite funny, at least in the aftermath.

     At one place I worked, the SysAdmin was seriously underappreciated. He was seldom treated with the degree of respect appropriate to one who bears System Administration powers. Also, he was perhaps not quite as serious an individual as a SysAdmin should be. After one particular engineer had treated him especially badly, he decided to strike back.

     First he inserted into his target’s logoff procedure a simple script that would display a GIF guaranteed to freeze the blood: one that made it appear as though a script were formatting his hard disk. After a brief time interval on display, the GIF would disappear and the user would be logged off. Thus it would appear that all the user’s personal files had been irretrievably wiped.

     Second, he incorporated in his target’s logon procedure a keyboard diverter that captured all the user’s keystrokes. In response to anything but the ls command (this was a LINUX-based shop), the diverter would respond with ?Unrecognized? and the prompt. In response to the ls command, it would respond with a carriage return and nothing else. This, of course, caused the unhappy engineer to panic and run to the SysAdmin shrieking of disaster.

     The SysAdmin listened briefly to the panicky engineer, held up a hand, and said “Let me try it.” He logged into the engineer’s machine remotely, quickly and silently executed a command that undid his previous hackings, and demonstrated that everything was as it should be. That sent the engineer back to his desk bewildered and shaking his head. When the door had closed behind him, the SysAdmin had hysterics.

     Be good to your SysAdmin, so he’ll be good to you.

***

     Got any of your own to tell us about, Gentle Reader?

Mar 19 2022

The Neglected Patriarch

     Today is the feast day of a remarkable saint, the stepfather and protector of the most important Child ever to be born: Joseph of Nazareth. Yet few give him much thought, as virtually nothing about his life is included in the New Testament. For a modest taste, one must turn to a “non-canonical” document: the Protoevangelium of Saint James.

     The Protoevangelium tells a beautiful tale. It speaks of how Joseph, “an old man with sons,” grudgingly accepted the guardianship of the virgin Mary from the priests who had raised and educated her, of his subsequent discovery that she was with child, and of the tests the priests applied, to him and to her, to test his claim that he had never had coitus with her – indeed, that she was virgo intacta, and thus that hers was a miraculous conception. Yet because it is believed to have been composed in the Second Century, it is regarded by many as apocryphal. At any rate, the Church has deemed it insufficiently well confirmed to be included in the Biblical canon.

     The lives of the Holy Family, as recorded in the Gospels, make little mention of Joseph. Yet Mary’s pregnancy posed him a hazard no less than it did her. The authorities of the time, had they not been convinced that he was blameless and that she was still a virgin, could and would have put the two of them to death for adultery, as the Mosaic Law commands.

     Joseph supported and protected Mary and Jesus for many years, until that “good and faithful servant” was received into eternity. Yet the Gospels record nothing about him past Jesus’ childhood. He was a “silent witness” to the maturation of the Savior: present, toiling and nurturing, but unspeaking.

     This quiet man, faithful steward of an unsought responsibility, exemplifies all the virtues of the responsible husband and father – for a virgin less than half his age, and a Child not of his flesh, whose very existence put Joseph in peril of his life. Today he is deemed the patron saint of fathers, families, married couples, children, pregnant women, workers, craftsmen, against doubt, the dying, and a happy and holy death. He is a model that deserves to be honored and emulated…but seldom is.

     Saint Joseph has two feast days: March 19, in commemoration of his protection and support of Mary and the child Jesus; and May 1, dedicated to Saint Joseph the Workman, the model for all men who labor. Indeed, the Church dedicates the entire month of March to the honor of this saint. Yet of the Holy Family, his are the labors and the virtues least remembered and appreciated.

     Saint Joseph, laborer, reluctant spouse and steadfast protector of Mary the Mother of God, stepfather to Jesus Christ Our Lord, pray for me.

Mar 18 2022

Theorizing Unbounded

     First, a few quotations – hey, quotations are my thing, you know:

     “The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what was left. They slipped in the Lie, as always. We aren’t sure of anything concerning the Age of the League; how many of the documents are forged? You must remember, you see, wherein the Shing are our enemy. It’s easy enough to live one’s whole life without ever seeing one of them — knowingly….There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them….It was the Lie that defeated all the races of the League and left us subject to the Shing. Remember that, Falk. Never believe the truth of anything the Enemy has said.” [Ursula K. LeGuin, City of Illusions]

     “A thousand truths do not mark a man as a truth-teller, but a single lie marks him as a damned liar….Lying to other people is your business, but I tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.” [Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy]

     “You spoke of trust. If there is no truth, there can be no trust.” [Jack Vance, Araminta Station]

     How odd a thing it is, that the most striking statements I can recall about the imperative of truth should come from great writers of fiction! Yet it is so. Oh, wait: here’s another one, this time from a non-writer:

     “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it – no matter if I have said it! – except it agree with your own reason and your own common sense.” – Buddha

     That should suffice for authoritative references.

***

     The years just behind us have given Americans reason to doubt any and every claim, almost without regard for its source. A handful of sources retain some shred of credibility, yet even they are subject to demands for verification and confirmation. One thing has become clear: we cannot trust our political class. Nothing a politician says can be taken at face value. Even the best of them are subject to suspicion and scrutiny – and that is exactly as it should be.

     However, the foulest offense against truth – the capital offense, if I may – is to the account of the “news media,” which are no longer any such thing. Their partisanry stands revealed. The tawdriness of their motives is irrefutable. Yet they strut as shamelessly as ever. Trust us, they say. Ignore the so-called “alternative” media and the “citizen journalists.” We’ve got the real news.

     A few Americans, incredibly, still buy it. I hope you don’t, Gentle Reader. There is no truth in them. There is only an all-eclipsing agenda. They demonstrate it every day.

***

     Today, the media offense at the center of engaged Americans’ attention concerns the Hunter Biden laptop:

     …Last year, prosecutors interviewed Mr. Archer and subpoenaed him for documents and grand jury testimony, the people said. Mr. Archer, who was sentenced last month in an unrelated securities fraud case in which a decision to set aside his conviction was reversed, had served with Mr. Biden on Burisma’s board, starting in 2014.
     People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
     In some of the emails, Mr. Biden displayed a familiarity with FARA, and a desire to avoid triggering it.

     When the New York Post broke the laptop story, the rest of the “major media,” with the Times leading the charge, pissed on it and the Post from a great height. In tandem, Facebook, Twitter, and other “social media” platforms censored any reference to the Post’s article. And of course we had these tidbits:

     The Post, of course, is gleeful in vindication:

     Forgive the profanity, but you have got to be s–tting us.

     First, the New York Times decides more than a year later that Hunter Biden’s business woes are worthy of a story. Then, deep in the piece, in passing, it notes that Hunter’s laptop is legitimate.

     “People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity,” the Times writes. “Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”

     Authenticated!!! You don’t say. You mean, when a newspaper actually does reporting on a topic and doesn’t just try to whitewash coverage for Joe Biden, it discovers it’s actually true?

     Any honest organ of journalism would be pleased to be so definitively vindicated. The pity of the thing is that the damage done is likely to be irremediable. And I’m not speaking solely of the damage to our nation by a usurped federal government.

***

     There are consequences to the destruction of trust. Miriam of Chicks on the Right mentions some of them today:

     Daisy sent this to me this morning.

     I offered to address it because she was afraid she’d be too mean. 🙂 I’m not promising I won’t be, because you guys, this is freaking batsh*t….

     I’m convinced that all of the Big Tech censorship that’s happened over the past year has actually made people MORE susceptible to conspiracy theories, radicalization, and ideas like those espoused by the woman in the above video. I’m not sure how many more times folks who believe in all of this stuff need to be let down by their own deadlines, their own theories not coming to fruition, before they realize they’re being played.

     Now, whatever the truth of the matter – and it may be quite a long time before we have it, if we ever do – the proliferation of wild theories is a direct consequence of the loss of trust in the major media. The dynamic is fairly straightforward:

  • The organs of information have proved themselves un-trustworthy, and the fora for discussion arbitrarily silence persons who deviate from the “official truth.”
  • Thereafter, conversation will admit any and every thesis that might explain why we’re being force-fed a steady diet of lies.
  • Since there are innumerable possible explanations for such a thing, they will multiply and proliferate without limit.
  • The “zero plausibility threshold” was set by the major media, which have demonstrated indifference to the truth.

     Perhaps this would be beyond the comprehension of a small child. However, I’d expect a teenager to get it without a beat. Look at how much crap the “authorities” in their lives feed them.

     It’s bad. Expect it to get worse. What the ultimate consequences will be, I cannot say.

***

     It’s not just the profusion of new, barely comprehensible conspiracy theories that should concern us. The loss of trust in our informational institutions has begun to atomize our society. The groups in which individual Americans invest themselves grow steadily smaller. The extent to which we’re willing to burden ourselves for others’ benefit is dwindling. And of course, we grow ever more cautious about what we say that we allow others to hear, and what we do that we allow others to know.

     I’ve written before about the importance of “identity management:” the practice of deciding whom you can allow to know what about yourself. Outside our homes, we’re letting less of ourselves be known. The dangers from allowing others to know much about you have risen higher than the interpersonal and social advantages from disclosure. No one can be certain what would follow the admission of some unpopular belief or position.

     Our trust in the organs that disseminate information of all sorts cannot fall much further before our suspicions isolate us all. For my part, I don’t like the idea of having to arm myself before I answer the door. I’ll do it if I must, but I’ll hate it – and I’d bet that you’d hate it too.

     See also this old piece about trust. And have a nice day.

Mar 17 2022

The Gods Of The Not Quite Copybook Headings

     You know the old Kipling poem, don’t you? You should, really. Like many of his poems, it speaks of something beyond our preferences: laws that no amount of human effort or ingenuity can repeal. That there are such laws is a reflection of what Clarence Carson called “the moral order of the universe.” That order is as relentless and unsparing as the most malevolent gods of ancient history.

     But the moral order is not the only order in the universe. There are others that derive from it, and are equally unmodifiable. One such is this:

Men’s desires are their own.
You cannot make a man not want what he does want,
Nor can you make him want what he does not want.

     This is demonstrated daily, in every corner of the globe. Yet there are persons determined to ignore or gainsay it. Some are so determined that they’ll knowingly act against their own interests to do so…and will reap ruin thereby.

     This lesson is nowhere more imperative today than in relations between the sexes.

***

     The plaints – “Where are all the masculine men?” “Where are all the feminine women?” – are louder today than they’ve ever been before. We’ve spoken of marriage being endangered for many years already. Today even non-marital romantic partnerships are in trouble. A great part of the phenomenon stems from that bizarre determination to “rewrite the laws:” specifically, the laws of attraction and bonding.

     Ralph Waldo Emerson has already told us once:

     The ingenuity of man has been dedicated to the solution of one problem – how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end.…

     Steadily is this dividing and detaching counteracted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, the moment we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow.

     Emerson’s terminology is oriented towards matters of right and wrong. Yet his observation applies equally to morally and ethically neutral dealings between individuals. Its baldest demonstrations are in the marketplace: You must pay for what you want. The man who seeks to get without paying is called a thief. When thieves are so numerous and so clever that they cannot be thwarted, the goods they hope to steal vanish from the shelves.

     You must pay for what you want. It’s as inexorable as gravity…and it’s equally applicable to relations between the sexes.

***

     Not long ago I was charmed by this essay by Stephanie Edelman:

     You’ll see her perched at a banquette at the bar after work: the millennial college grad nursing that outdated American dream of marriage, kids, and the house with the lawn and the white picket fence… She’s nursing a stiff drink, too, because husband-hunting is hard work these days, not to mention frowned upon in college-educated career-girl circles. She toys with a stray curl and sucks listlessly at (how fitting) an Old Fashioned, or a gin martini (but only one) if she’s out with an older man and wants to seem sophisticated.

     She may go full-blown retro and have her hair done in pin curls, or it may be modern, but her lips are likely stained a crimson shade—Bésame’s Red Velvet 1946 as seen in ABC’s “Agent Carter” is a good bet these days. She’s dressed in something fetching and feminine that she got from Etsy, eBay, or one of the dozens of “vintage inspired” or reproduction clothing companies that have gained popularity in the last decade (PinUp Girl, Tatyana Boutique, Stop Staring, Collectif, Trashy Diva, Bettie Page Clothing, Queen of Heartz, Heart of Haute, Voodoo Vixen, ReVamp Vintage…the list goes on.)

     Of course she’s seen “Mad Men,” but she will tell you she’s been dressing this way since before January Jones ever graced our television screens in all her manicured and wave-set domestic beauty—that it comes naturally to her, along with her maternal instincts, her culinary prowess, and her 36”-25”-37” measurements (well, those may require a little assistance from an old-school waist cincher, corset, or longline bra.)

     However she came by it, our girl’s mid-century aesthetic—not to mention her domestic aspirations—is giving Third-Wave feminists fits.

     There’s a refreshing quality about that piece. These women – the ones who have embraced “retro-sexism” — are acting on a dual insight: first, into what they really want; second, into what the sort of man they hope to attract would want from them. No one is “objectifying” them. No one is “keeping them in their place.” They are consciously acting on their insights in pursuit of what they want – and militant feminists are up in arms over it.

     You see, the militant feminist’s cry is that “You mustn’t want that!” Concerning which, please recur to the large-font proclamation near the start of this tirade. But the inviolability of a natural law has never daunted a dogmatic feminist.

***

     Dogmatists and ideologues put their hopes in the strangest of imagined allies:

     You may have noticed that everyone seems to be dressing like a lesbian these days, and by everyone, I mean even — and perhaps especially — straight-identifying or otherwise hetero-presenting women.

     From the baggy, loose-fitting silhouettes that have replaced the skinny jeans of yore to the practical footwear that has taken over since women (reportedly) ditched their heels in the pandemic, the most popular mainstream women’s fashion trends of the day all reflect a certain sapphic influence. And androgynous style isn’t just for ordinary women reluctant to return to their pre-pandemic uniform of skin-tight pants and sky-high heels; from queer icons like Kristen Stewart to supermodels like Gigi Hadid, androgynous fashion has taken over Hollywood as well. Traditionally straight-presenting A-listers like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid — icons of conventional female attractiveness as dictated by the male gaze — have been photographed rocking the lesbian-chic aesthetic, sporting power suits, designer loafers and oversize everything.

     Read the rest for yourself, if you can stomach it. Then tell me if you detect a certain gleeful applause for “the pandemic” for nudging women’s sartorial choices in the “sapphic” direction.

     I have no doubt that women find loose-fitting clothing and flat-heeled shoes more comfortable – and in many contexts, more practical – than body-conformant garments and high heels. However, there is no concealing the intention, or the lack thereof, behind such choices. It’s diametrically opposed to the “retro-sexist” choices of the women in Stephanie Edelman’s piece. Men find women garbed in oversize clothes and flat-heeled shoes much less attractive than women who dress to emphasize their figures, however subtly. Any woman who has attained her majority will know it.

     Women, quite as much as men, must be assumed to intend the foreseeable consequences of their decisions and actions.

***

     In relations between the sexes much as in marketplace behavior, you must expect to pay for what you want. The woman who laments that “all the good men are taken” while styling herself in “lesbian chic” is trying to have it both ways. A masculine man, who can be relied upon for the many things women have always looked for in a mate, won’t feel a pull toward her if she dresses – or conducts – herself in a fashion that expresses indifference to what he wants and seeks.

     No, it’s not quite “Gods of the Copybook Headings” stuff. But it’s just as immutable, and just as deeply resented by entitlement-filled persons – of both sexes.

     Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Mar 16 2022

Is This a New Thing?

I had need to consult with senate.gov about a committee membership. I noted that many of the Senate biographical information does NOT provide information on party membership, other than listing the members of sub-committees as Majority/Minority.

Is this something new? I seem to remember several years ago, it was common to find party affiliation.

Mar 16 2022

Synonym for Leftist

Clueless Elitist.

I saw this, and had to respond directly.

My answer:

Mar 16 2022

One Melody, One Rhythm, One Agenda

     It’s Ukraine all day, these days. You can hardly go to the corner store for milk without hearing some talking head blustering about Ukraine. Congress is feverishly debating how to help the Ukrainians resist the Russian invaders. Elected officials of both parties bloviate endlessly about Ukrainian sovereignty and the evil of Vladimir Putin. And of course Ukrainian flag images litter social media.

     So…Ukraine. What can we do? No: not about helping the valiant Ukrainian people to resist Vlad the Conqueror. What can we do to put a stop to the unceasing Ukraine-flogging around us? It’s threatening to give me a massive Ukraine migraine.

     Of course, the most significant aspect of this is what the drums aren’t pounding out: all the little bits of political sleight-of-hand going on as we speak, while our attention is on Ukraine. Keeping our attention on Ukraine – say, hasn’t it been the pinnacle of military wisdom for about five centuries to stay out of land wars in Asia? — allows the Usurper Regime a free hand to destroy what remains of our economy, our institutions, and our rights as individuals. And brother, they are busily at work at all three.

     As usual, the more telling the development, the less likely it is to get media attention. Consider this item from a couple of days ago:

     Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin will oppose President Joe Biden’s nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, ending a standoff over the Obama Treasury Department official’s status.

     Bloom Raskin, the wife of Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, is an advocate for using the Federal Reserve to promote green energy policy, which would mark a dramatic departure from the central banking system’s dual mandate of maintaining maximum employment and keeping inflation in check. The Biden administration promoted Bloom Raskin’s nomination as contributing to “bring long overdue diversity” at the Federal Reserve. She has also served as a Duke University law professor and on the board of a major financial services provider. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     Why on earth would a supposed financial expert make “green energy policy” the center of her agenda for the Federal Reserve Board? It makes no sense whatsoever…but there it is. As of this morning, Raskin has withdrawn her candidacy, but the significance of her nomination remains huge…and essentially undiscussed.

     There have been other straws in the wind: The Atlantic mumbling about what effect a “small” nuclear war would have on “climate change;” our armed forces’ insane emphasis on “diversity” and “gender identity” while they continue to persecute soldiers who refuse The Jab; the Usurper-in-Chief’s repeated insistence that high fuel prices are the doing of Vladimir Putin; Congress’s stealthy grab of a huge pay increase in the most recent appropriations bill; the sealing-off of the District of Columbia against private citizens; and so forth. In aggregate, what could they mean other than that our high officials don’t want us to know what they’re really doing?

     “Don’t look there; look over here!” is the prestidigitator’s meat and drink. It’s a tough trick to beat for several reasons. In politics, the press is supposed to provide a countermeasure. It hasn’t done so for quite a few years now. That might be the most frightening aspect of this whole sorry mess.

***

     A couple of Gentle Readers have noticed that my pieces here have been trending shorter. I’ve noticed, too. There’s just as much to rant and rave about as ever, but my ability to fulminate at length about any of it is declining. I’ve been having regular attacks of what’s the use? It’s a malady my Primary Care Provider can’t prescribe a pill for.

     It doesn’t help that I’ve barely been able to sleep lately. But that might yet pass.

     If you haven’t yet started stockpiling against an economic crash, you’d better get to it. If you haven’t yet armed yourself adequately to defend your property, your loved ones, and yourself, the time is now. And if you haven’t yet acted to protect at least a part of your savings against the torrent of inflation the Usurpers have inflicted on us, all I can say is that I warned you. Opportunities to do any of those things under favorable terms are dwindling. Meanwhile, as the COVID hysteria fades, the Usurpers are sharpening their “emergency” and “national security” tools for the reimposition of de facto martial law, this time with the war in Ukraine as their rationale.

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. I never meant to be a Debbie Downer. Perhaps I’ll be in a better frame of mind tomorrow. Keep the faith.

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