Apr 24 2024

Can We Be Certain There’ll Be Elections In November?

I don’t feel so sure:

     Biden’s puppeteers could well try this. The polls really look bad for him, and they don’t want to surrender power. Suspending elections on the basis of a “crisis” hasn’t happened here before, but that’s not to say that it can’t happen. There are alternatives to a “climate crisis,” of course:

  • A world war;
  • The assassination of Donald Trump;
  • Elections so corrupt that the Usurpers can declare them invalid;
  • The sudden death of Joseph Biden and his replacement on the ticket by…whom?

     In essence, any sufficiently large “crisis,” whether real or contrived, could serve as the pretext. Whether Americans would accept such a suspension of the Constitution passively is, of course, uncertain. Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t try it; he stood for reelection to a third term, and a fourth…and the electorate, unwilling to “change horses in mid-stream,” went along with it. Whether any lame-duck president could get away with it today is dubious.

     Do my Gentle Readers have any other possibilities to add to the list?

Apr 24 2024

In Case You’ve Spent The Last Five Years In A Coma

     …this is what’s being done to you right now:

     I don’t think he left anything out. Applause to my favorite tall but brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning example of a placental mammal.

Apr 24 2024

Repeating The Old Mistakes

     Back in the Sixties, when students on American university campuses first began to exhibit unruly and uncivilized behavior in large numbers, the administrators of those institutions made a fatal mistake: they tried to placate the disruptors. From that moment on, there was no quelling the mobs. Their principal agitators, most of them openly aligned with the Communist Party, had tasted success and were certain they could get whatever they might demand. Whatever event had initiated the disruptions became irrelevant. All that mattered to the agitators was to “keep pushing.”

     Nothing of that sort can last forever, of course. It had to burn out eventually. But many campuses suffered long periods of complete disorder. Hand-wringing administrators, terrified that calling in the police would somehow damage their institutions unacceptably, persisted in trying to “negotiate” with young thugs whose overt demands mattered little. Their whole goal was to “keep the revolution going.”

     It’s always a mistake to try to “negotiate” with such forces. By their actions, they’ve openly dismissed the purpose of a university in favor of their “cause.” Call it what you will: “peace,” “anti-racism,” “social justice,” “the environment,” “equality,” or whatever else. They have set out on a course that cannot be tolerated, lest it completely invalidate the disrupted institution.

     Perhaps some of today’s campus administrators have learned a little from their forebears:

     Protests over the war in Gaza have taken hold at a handful of elite US universities as officials scramble to defuse demonstrations.
     Police moved to break up an encampment at New York University (NYU) on Monday night, making a number of arrests.

     However, others are displaying the timidity that afflicted their predecessors:

     New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat, criticized Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, saying she has “chosen to surrender control of Columbia to an antisemitic fringe.” Torres also said canceling in-person classes is “an admission of failure” by Shafik.
     “If you cannot ensure the safety of your students, then you have no business serving as President of any university, let alone the alma mater of Alexander Hamilton,” Torres said in a statement. “What Columbia University needs is not an appeaser of antisemitism but a leader who will fight with moral clarity against it.”
     He continued, “That Columbia University has failed its Jewish students so profoundly is an indelible stain on the soul of the institution. If the President of Columbia University cannot lead with moral clarity, then she should step aside for a true leader who can and will.”

     Columbia canceled in-person classes in the name of “safety:” specifically, the safety of its Jewish students, who’ve been assaulted and threatened by the “pro-Palestine” mobs.

     Has Minouche Shafik, an Egyptian-born Muslim, aligned herself with the mobs, or have the civil authorities mislaid their water cannons?

     This much is clear: the “pro-Palestine” mobs, like their predecessors six decades ago, sense the weakness of the college authorities whose campuses they infest. That a university has nothing to do with their “cause” means nothing to them. Their mantra is once again to “keep pushing:” not merely for surrender from the university, but also to strike fear into those who administer other institutions. The more fearful they can render peaceable others, the more likely their tactics will be profitable. It’s been the aim of militant minorities since time immemorial.

     Stay tuned.

Apr 23 2024

I Can’t Say I LIKE This Essay…

…but it’s one that brings up some points I – most of us – need to think about.

How would a war affect our own situation? Like it or not, it’s probably the likeliest outcome of the desperate Dem attempts to keep Trump out of office.

They’ve tried a soft, expensive, distracting war with Ukraine as the proxy. They’ve implied that Russia should be opposed militarily. They have studiously avoided pointing out that China is in MUCH worse shape than Russia, and seems poised to invade Taiwan.

What’s left but a hot war?

My Take-Away from the essay:

Who is in charge at the state, county, and local level is critical. I think most states might want to consider moving away from the Nationalized Guard system, and create or shore up a State Guard system, with similar benefits/pay. They would also benefit from not being required to be called up for active Army service at the whim of the occupant in the White House. Their mission would be to protect their OWN state.

States should earmark some money for EMP protection of vital utilities, protection of equipment (both physical and video), and other protection for their state.

You can probably think of other measures.

Apr 23 2024

Philanthroplagues

     If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intention of doing you good, you should run for your life. – Henry David Thoreau

     Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. – Andrew Carnegie

     A case could be made that, except for war, nominally charitable activity has inflicted more misery on suffering Mankind than any other isolatable cause. In this era, when so much supposed charity is inflicted by and through governments, the irony reaches an astounding height.

     But of course the bien pensants would shriek in fury at the idea that organized charity is a bad thing. Isabel Paterson told us why:

     The philanthropist, the politician, and the pimp are inevitably found in alliance because they have the same motives, they seek the same ends, to exist for, through, and by others. And the good people cannot be exonerated for supporting them. Neither can it be believed that the good people are wholly unaware of what actually happens. But when the good people do know, as they certainly do, that three million persons (at the least estimate) were starved to death in one year by the methods they approve, why do they still fraternize with the murderers and support their measures? Because they have been told that the lingering death of the three millions might ultimately benefit a greater number. The argument applies equally well to cannibalism.

     Paterson might have been overly cruel in the above. Surely many decent persons sincerely believe that organized charities do “net good” in the world. The United Way and the March of Dimes don’t send forth sadists to flog the underprivileged, do they? As far as I’m aware, no captured assassin has claimed afterward that “I’m with the Red Cross.” But large, organized – shall we say corporate? Oh, why not – charities are what they are: giant targets for predators. Indeed, the only targets larger than the big charitable institutions are governments themselves, and we know what they do.

     Let’s enumerate the effects – intended or otherwise – of organized charities:

  1. They support the idea that we can buy our way out of our personal responsibilities toward our neighbors.
  2. They promote dependency by doing for others what those others should (and usually can) do for themselves.
  3. They take funds out of the hands of genuinely well-meaning individuals and put them into the hands of persons who will employ those funds impersonally, without responsibility or regard for their actual effects.
  4. They create career paths for persons who, in Paterson’s words, seek to live for, through, and by others, thus diverting them from genuinely productive activity.
  5. They attract the insincere and the outright evil, who drool at the possibility of enriching themselves by “doing good.”
  6. Last but not least, they attract regulation, supervision, and ultimately absorption by governments, which are guaranteed to use them for purposes infinitely distant from the intentions of their donors.

     If you doubt any of the above, ponder this: Why are so many illegal aliens flooding into our country? Is it really plausible that any great percentage of them come here for jobs?

     It is not necessary that, to be net harmful, an organized charity must be large. I wrote the piece below in June, 2017. Ponder it, and its implications for your charitable action.

     The charitable impulse can easily be transformed into a fury that sets heads to rolling.

     My parish – St. Louis de Montfort in Sound Beach, NY – maintains, as so many Catholic parishes do, an Outreach pantry, intended to assist the needy with free food and other consumables while (hopefully) they struggle back to a condition of self-sustenance. My fellow parishioners are generous souls; the pantry shelves are virtually always kept full, even though an average of 150 families partake of the bounty each week.

     Sounds good, right? Christian charity in action, just as the Redeemer prescribed. Well, once in a great while things are not so good.

     Four weeks ago, the parish bulletin listed one of the pantry’s needs as “pork & beans.” Actually, the listing was PORK & BEANS, that we parishioners might grasp the intensity of the need. Accordingly, the next time I was near a supermarket I purchased half a dozen 1 lb. cans of pork & beans, a few other items listed as Outreach needs, brought them to the pantry, and thought no more about it.

     The next Sunday, PORK & BEANS appeared once more as the pantry’s principal need. So the next time I went grocery shopping, I purchased a dozen 1 lb. cans of pork & beans, a couple of other items on the bulletin’s Outreach list, brought them to the pantry, and thought no more about it.

     Sunday June the 18th: the Outreach pantry still listed PORK & BEANS as its principal need. I was beginning to grow a bit concerned. So I made a special trip to the supermarket and bought 24 1 lb. cans of pork & beans. (I’m sure you can see the pattern developing.) I brought them to the pantry and told the supervisor that “if I see pork & beans in next Sunday’s bulletin, I’m going to be very cross. Tell whoever’s eating all the pork & beans to eat a vegetable now and then.” She assured me that it would not appear in the June 25th bulletin.

     That assurance was false.

     This morning at 9:30 AM EDT, I brought 48 1 lb. cans of pork & beans to the Outreach pantry. The expressions that greeted me ranged from poker-faced to stunned. I dropped the case – approximately 70 lb, gross – on the sorting table, fixed the Outreach supervisor with my best gimlet eye, and said, “Where’s all the pork & beans going?”

     The supervisor said, “There was a big barbecue.”

     It took me about a nanosecond to go from relative calm to incipient stroke.

     “The food donated to this pantry is supposed to be for the local needy,” I said. I put more effort into controlling my demeanor than I’ve ever put into anything except concealing my glee at having just been dealt a straight flush. It proved insufficient. “It is not supposed to be used to supply institutional functions!”

     The supervisor smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Well, you know.”

     I departed swiftly, before I could burst a blood vessel.

     That supervisor doesn’t know what kind of agony she’s in for. I intend to spread the news of this all over the parish – with her name attached.

     Fellow Christians, are you sure your charitable donations are actually doing charity? Really sure? If you were to discover otherwise, how would you react?

     Beware the charitably inclined Christian who discovers that he’s been duped. Few creatures are more dangerous. St. Louis de Montfort is about to experience a demonstration.

     And finally, a reprise from the old Palace of Reason:

The Circle Of Care

     I came of age in the Sixties, a time when America was gradually being turned upside down. And that having been said, I’ll spare you any soliloquy about the Sixties. It’s the upside-down part that matters.

     I don’t recall exactly when I learned about the duty of charity toward the less fortunate, but it was probably in my Catholic grammar school. The nuns were quite insistent about the obligation to help one’s fellow man, when he was in genuine need. Every classroom had a “poor box,” filled by contributions from the students. Its contents were periodically totaled and used for some charitable undertaking — and I don’t mean buying a color television for a family that didn’t yet have one, or dragging a “homeless” man into a government-run shelter; I mean providing food or clothing for a struggling family that hadn’t quite managed to make ends meet that month. Blauvelt parish, a blue-collar sector of Rockland County, New York, always had a few such.

     A lot of things come to mind about that poor box and its uses, but none so strongly as this: no one ever suggested that the money be sent far away, to people none of us knew personally. It was to be employed right there, in Blauvelt parish, among the people we knew. This was so obvious, so fundamental to the concept of charity, that the contrary idea was never considered.

     “Charity” derives from the Latin word “caritas,” the concern for others that springs from personal connection. A related word of Greek derivation is “sympathy,” the ability to “feel with” another person. These are not relations one can truly have with faceless and nameless strangers at a distance.

     True charity requires proximity, for at least two reasons. First, the necessary personal connection, the sense that one is helping one’s own, fails at any great remove. Second, human fallibility and weakness guarantee that, just as some will fail to prosper on their own, others will fail to employ charity properly; indeed, to receive money from others sometimes makes one’s troubles worse. When this occurs, the giver must give no further, for other measures — criticism, instruction, discipline — are clearly indicated. With any separation between the benefactor and his beneficiary, it becomes impossible to know whether help helps in fact, or only in theory and intention.

     Compare this ancient, common-sense approach to charity, preserved and perpetuated by all the great religious institutions of Man, to the modern concept. Today, our media would have us believe that charity is about voting for tax-funded, government-administered programs to redistribute our income to others we don’t know. Some of the supposed beneficiaries are in far places where America and Americans are routinely vilified for their prosperity and derided for their generosity. Whatever rules modern charity observes are determined and enforced by salaried bureaucrats who pay no costs for any mistake. Volunteers and private institutions that attempt to take a role are tolerated, but distrusted. The apostles of modern charity would prefer that all of it be under the watchful eye of government monitors, to insure that no misleading messages about the importance of sobriety, continence, or self-reliance are packaged with the gifts.

     Obviously, there’s been some change to the concept. I’d like to leave aside the political implications of this change for a moment and concentrate on the inversion of the circle of care.
If proximity was regarded as the most important of the requirements of the old concept, it is considered no better than optional under the new one, and quite possibly a detriment. If personal concern, for both the bodies and the souls of others of one’s direct acquaintance, was the fuel for the charity of old, the motive power of the new charity is rules: rules that direct the bureaucrat to shower largesse without regard for its actual effects, and rules that punish the citizen brutally if he attempts to avoid “contributing.”

     The new concept of charity first rose over the old one in the late Sixties, when the American welfare state began its explosive growth. In the years since then, we’ve seen many other things explode as well: crime, vice, filth in the streets, and social pathologies such as fatherlessness and illegitimacy whose effects have eclipsed even the darkest predictions.

     Meanwhile, law-abiding, self-supporting Americans of the cities, they who are mulcted for the funds that support the new charity, have been drawing in upon themselves, isolating themselves as best they can from the madness that surges around them. Their circles of care have contracted to hold only themselves and their immediate families.

     Count Leo Tolstoy once spent a night wandering the streets of St. Petersburg, giving to the poor whom he encountered until his pockets were empty and his energy was spent. At the end of his sojourn, those to whom he’d given were a little better off for a short time, but he knew and admitted that he’d made no lasting difference in their lives, that as soon as they’d exhausted the night’s benison, the darkness would return. He concluded that one should act with love toward those whom God has placed in his path, rather than to ride forth and scatter his substance widely and without regard for efficacy.

     Who are the needy whom God has placed in our path? Are they not our family members, neighbors and friends? Is it not these whom our circle of care should encompass?

Apr 22 2024

Surveillance Need Not Be Governmental

     A student at Exeter in the U.K. found out the hard way:

     A philosophy student overheard through the wall of his room saying ‘veganism is wrong’ and ‘gender fluidity is stupid’ was threatened with expulsion by his university, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
     Robert Ivinson said he was disciplined after a student next door in halls of residence at Exeter University heard the comments then complained he had been offensive and ‘transphobic’.
     Mr Ivinson, who expressed the views in a phone call to a friend, was hauled before university officials and put on a ‘behavioural contract’ for the rest of his studies.
     He was warned he could be expelled if the university thought he had done anything else wrong, and told by letter he had been found guilty of harassment.
     […]
     At the time of the complaint, Mr Ivinson – who had just started his first year of a philosophy degree – was alone with the door closed.
     Mr Ivinson, who is 6ft 5in with a deep intonation, said his voice often carried without him realising.
     When an officer from the university’s estate patrol banged on his door to tell him his female neighbour had complained, the mature student was shaken.
     ‘It was like the Stasi had come to my door,’ he said. ‘He stuck his foot in my door and said you’ve been saying some very offensive things.’

     If it is now licit for a neighbor to listen through your wall, and if what he hears you say is now actionable, despite it being an expression of personal opinion…well, the Stasi of the days of East Germany under Communism would be proud. Ivinson’s characterization is quite accurate.

     I wonder about the unnamed female eavesdropper. What “disapproved” opinions might she hold? Do you think anyone will haul her up by the short hairs for expressing them? Possibly not, if they’re in conformance with The Narrative. It’s just as dominant across the Atlantic as here.

     That’s Britain today, folks. No better than the U.S. and in some ways a good deal worse. Scratch it off your list of possible escapes.

Apr 22 2024

Disorientation Or Disoccidentation?

     The United States of America rose to world dominance for reasons that the bien pensants of academia would like to obscure and efface. Rather simply, it was the ideal of individual freedom, which unleashed the creative and productive energies of men as never before, coupled to Christianity and its ethic, which restrained men’s predatory impulses better than any previously known moral system. (Cue the carping voices from the back benches whining about slavery and protesting that “it was never perfect.” Then cue the ushers with the shillelaghs and the rolls of extra-wide duct tape.) With those two conceptions in the lead, there was nothing that could stop us.

     With those two conceptions being tossed on the trash heap today, there’s nothing that can save us.

***

     There’s a writer in Blogdom whom I know only by his Internet moniker “Baron Bodissey.” He borrowed that moniker from science-fiction novelist Jack Vance, who employs Unspiek, Baron Bodissey, as an important but never directly portrayed background figure. The good Baron is filled with valuable insights on things both historical and contemporary. And as one might expect from a thinker who gets it right when others persist in wandering in the intellectual desert, the Baron has a lot of detractors.

     I don’t know whether our contemporary Baron has any great number of detractors. I would guess that he has some; it’s the pattern of intellectual history that men disposed to see clearly, think logically, and speak plainly are widely disliked. As Heinlein has told us, “Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.” The habit can seriously impede one’s social life.

     It seems that the Baron and I share both an advanced age and a sense of fatigue:

     We’ll be coming up on the twentieth anniversary of Gates of Vienna later this year, and the process of preparing for an anniversary post has induced a sort of reverie in me as I contemplate the events of the past two decades.
     Things have changed a lot, both externally and internally. I often feel like I’m too old to be doing this sort of thing. I’m over seventy now, and should be relaxing somewhere pleasant, enjoying the time that remains to me before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
     And I sometimes feel like I’m close to burning out — I’ve just seen too way much information, most of it horrible. I wish I could return to the naïve, idealistic state of mind that I had when I started this job, but, alas, that’s not an option. Once you walk through the door of greater awareness, there’s no turning back. And, worst of all, I don’t think I’ve reached the limit of ghastly understanding. It seems likely that the worst is yet to come.

     [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     A bit later today, I’m going to add the emphasized sentence to the header of this site. It expresses my own sentiments perfectly.

***

     Ponder the following from journalist / columnist Emerald Robinson:

     That, Gentle Reader, is the epitome of the Zoroastrian ideal: to speak truth and shoot the arrow straight. It’s enough to fill with shame anyone who’s sat with folded hands and watched our degradation without even emitting a whimper. But who, of the millions who’ve refrained from even raising a voice in protest against the destruction of all that’s valuable in our society, feels that shame today? Have we not, in the main, simply closed our eyes to it – or run from it?

     Early in The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis observes that men of an earlier era responded to ideas rather more definitely than do we:

     At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning.

     Let that sink in for a moment. Then ponder this: given the incredible weight of evidence to the effect that:

  • Men are free by natural right;
  • The Christian ethic is superior to all other models for interpersonal relations;

     …do you, Gentle Reader, regard either of those propositions as dubious? If so, why? And if not: what aspects of your life have you altered in recognition of those truths?

     No, I’m not here to make anyone feel guilty. That’s just a side effect. I’m really here to talk about economics.

***

     There are more voices than just the Baron’s and mine raised about this stuff. You’d think, given the eloquence and force the best of us possess, we should have made some progress in combatting the tide. But it is not so, and one of the greatest of us has told us why:

     If it were just terrorists bombing buildings and public transit, it would be easier; even the feeblest Eurowimp jurisdiction is obliged to act when the street is piled with corpses. But there’s an old technique well understood by the smarter bullies. If you want to break a man, don’t attack him head on, don’t brutalize him; pain and torture can awaken a stubborn resistance in all but the weakest. But just make him slightly uncomfortable, disrupt his life at the margin, and he’ll look for the easiest path to re-normalization. There are fellows rampaging through the streets because of some cartoons? Why, surely the most painless solution would be if we all agreed not to publish such cartoons. [From Mark Steyn’s America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It ]

     That embeds the core study of economics: how we respond to incentives and disincentives. We tend, as individuals, to look for ways to get what we want – or to avert what we don’t want – at acceptable price. Moreover, if we see the same good available at two different prices, we gravitate toward the lower one. All other things being equal, of course.

     We have a latent capacity for thinking in aggregates – groups; tribes; societies; nations – that we occasionally invoke for “public” purposes. Douglas Hofstadter called it “superrationality.” Martin Gardner renamed it “renormalized rationality,” which I find more attractive. However, that capacity isn’t nearly as strong as our tendency to ask “What’s in it for me, and at what price?”

     Today, that individualization of our responses to events utterly dominates our behavior. Rather than confront the fomenters of evil and chaos, we avert or escape them. We move away, implicitly ceding the streets, and the field, to them. We seldom oppose them even with words. Mark Steyn told us so in connection with the rapidly metastasizing cancer of Islam, but it applies far more broadly than that.

***

     I choose my neologisms carefully. The one in the title of this piece is no exception. If you, Gentle Reader, feel disoriented because of the chaos spreading among us, it may be because we are being disoccidented. We are being transformed, with or without our consent, into men our ancestors might not have recognized and would not have approved.

     Not all of us, of course. Many, especially in locales distant from the big cities and the coasts, retain the spirit of independence, self-reliance, and self-restraint that was common among earlier American men. A regime of individual freedom and Christian ethics selects for such men. Women recognize their quality and seek them as mates. The rest fall by the wayside: they don’t prosper or procreate sufficiently to have a large impact upon the future.

     I’ve written about this subject before, of course. This essay, and this one, and this other one were especially pointed. Yet they’ve had little impact. I seldom hear about them from our readers or anyone else.

     I fear what is to come. Along with the Baron, I don’t expect I’ll live to see the final blackout. I rather hope I won’t.

***

     Apologies for depressing you, Gentle Reader. The Baron’s piece struck a chord with me, and I had to write it out of my head. But there you have it: the plaint of a weary old man who sees what he loves being brought to ruin, while others who love it just as much – or claim to, anyway – stand by and watch. And all of it in conformance with the laws of economics, at that.

     Have a nice day.

Apr 21 2024

And So It Begins

Actually, this sabotage of public utilities and essential services has been in process for some time. But, this is providing a fresh reason to Kick the Bastards OUT!

And, I’m NOT assuming that this was caused by illegals. I’m at least 1/2 way sure that this is domestic terrorism (not the “We just want to have a ‘thing’ to blame all our problems on White People”, but sleeper agents or their home-grown sympathizers.

I don’t care whether it’s caused by aliens or citizens. They need to leave – permanently, AFTER their hopefully very long sentence. And, no leniency for “well-meaning kids”. If you’re old enough to commit a crime against your own country, you need to leave for good.

My tolerance for “protests” and “activism” that includes crimes is NIL. Try ’em, confine ’em, and make ’em leave.

Apr 21 2024

This is a Book Everyone Needs to Read

It’s The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion.

I know, I know. She IS just as ‘Progressive’ and kneejerk as it comes. She’s associated with every cause, activist, and anti-Trump mania as is possible.

But she is a terrific writer. Long before I knew who she was, I read an excerpt of her work in Cosmopolitan during its Helen Gurley Brown years (Hey, I was 20-something. I went along with the crowd). Many years later, I read Play It As It Lays, and remembered that excerpt. It was still as impossible to put down as before.

Her essays on growing up in California, long before the mid-60s invasion of people, are mesmerizing.

So, finally, I noticed some reference to it, and decided to check it out of the e-library.

The book takes the reader through a dreadful year – her husband dies suddenly, then, less than a week after their daughter is taken to the hospital with pneumonia and sepsis. Her daughter’s recovery is complicated and lengthy; when she is out of the hospital, on a trip to LA, she suffers a collapse and spends much of the next two years recovering from a brain hematoma. She eventually dies of acute pancreatitis at 39 years old.

Didion, in her usual detailed style, mines her experiences, memories, and poetry to create an amazing book. The universality of the grief journey, and the sometimes foolish responses we make to overwhelming personal chaos, make this a book well worth reading.

Now, is Didion a deep thinker? A timeless writer?

Hell, no!

What she managed to do, through her fiction and non-fiction, is to capture a slice of American life at a particular time, better than anyone else. At least for the experiences of upper middle class women of the educated class. BTW, she was NOT a feminist, and as an adult, voted for Barry Goldwater. Later, she took on the political colorations and convictions of her literary associates.

She was a woman of many contradictions – career woman who worked alongside her spouse, politically Left, married for 40 years to the same man (a Catholic), mother, gadfly, and lifelong writer.

For an example of refusal to go along with the crowd, here is an essay from the NY Times on feminism. No paywall, it’s archived – just scroll down.

Apr 21 2024

“They Won’t Talk To Me!”

     The news is pretty static just now, and I haven’t done a piece about fiction lately, so have a fresh one.

     There are a lot of approaches to the conception of a story. What matters is the emotional impact of the product, and oftentimes that’s more a function of the writer’s imagination and sensibility than his craft. Please don’t misunderstand me: craft does matter. It’s a sine qua non. But the best collection of skills in the world can’t redeem an insipid story that contains nothing to move the reader.

     Yes – and I have said it before – you must have craft as well. There’s nothing sadder than a genuinely moving story that’s told in an inept fashion that ruins the reader’s experience. While there are innumerable stories among us, few take the time to write them down…and fewer still have the chops required to do them justice.

     But I see I’ve already veered from my main point. Apologies; I’ve only had two cups of coffee.

***

     Affecting stories usually express something that matters greatly to the writer. Yet the writer seldom says to himself explicitly that “I want to tell a story about [insert writer’s passion here].” When I’ve tried that, it’s fallen flat. Other writers of my acquaintance have told me similar stories.

     I have in mind an acquaintance from some years back who was a huge gun nut of the military variety. His enthusiasm for the weapons of war exceeded his sense for what makes a story worth telling. He turned out a novel approximately 200,000 words long that was loaded to the eyelashes with what I call “gun porn”…and as you might expect, it was unreadable. I edited it for him – a mutual friend had asked me to take it off her hands – excising most of the gun porn, refining the character conceptions, and bringing the emotional aspects of their experiences forward. When I finished, it was down to 160,000 words and fairly readable for a military / international intrigue thriller. Sadly, the work came to naught. It did not sell, for the genre was already oversupplied. However, it was a useful lesson to me.

     And that lesson has come around again on the carousel.

***

     No matter what your occupation, it’s essential to play to your strengths. You can spend a whole career straining to shore up your weaknesses. It’s not wasted effort, but to the extent that it takes effort away from what you do best, it can shortchange whoever is paying for your work. It doesn’t matter whether you labor for a wage or for the irregular bit of revenue from your readers.

     I wasn’t sure what my strengths were, if any, until I’d turned out a couple of dozen short stories. After a while, I concluded that I’m better at characterization and the associated skill of dialogue than at the other aspects of fictioneering. So when the time came to try a novel, I started with character conceptions. I figured that appealing characters could lead a reader along quite as well as an intricate plot.

     It developed that once I’d conceived of my Marquee Characters and had given them their essential passions and drives, they knew what story to tell. They told it to me in no uncertain terms. All I had to do was type it out. At the end, I discovered something I badly needed to know:

Theme is expressed through characterization.

     Whatever your passion, your characters, if you’ve thought them out adequately, will embody it. They’ll talk about it in their exchanges with one another. They’ll actuate it through their decisions and actions. You, the writer, won’t need to keep saying to yourself “must express [insert passion here].”

     That insight had great importance for me. It sustained me through nineteen novels and a great many shorter pieces. But these past few months I managed to forget it, God alone knows how.

***

     I’ve been unable to make substantial progress on the book I imagined would be my magnum opus, at least for my personal value of magnum. I kept trying to insert my Marquee characters into contrived series of events that would allow me to explore my chosen theme. As a result, they wouldn’t tell me the story I sought to tell the reader. And why should they? I was trying to coerce them, and they were busy with their escape plans.

     I’d mislaid the insight above and foolishly concentrated on plotting. It was a fatal error, for me at least; your mileage may vary. For me, a plot conceived separately from character conceptions goes nowhere.

     So I went back to the beginning to try again. On this second attempt I’ve striven to focus on what moves my characters rather than the complex, multithreaded plot I’d had in mind. It’s coming slowly – it’s hard to set aside one’s previous work, even when it’s clearly a wrong turning – but it’s beginning to take shape at long last.

     Don’t let yourself stray from what you do best.

***

     The above isn’t an attempt to prescribe a method that every writer must follow. It’s my method; it works for me; that’s all. For example, writers of military and espionage fiction would probably be better served by concentrating on plot construction and then contriving characters that would fit those decisions and actions. But the overarching principle – know what you’re best at and play to it – has wide application.

     But how is one to discover what he’s best at? Must one experiment with a slew of approaches? Should one’s readers have a say in it? Does it take a long period of trial, flecked by failures, disappointments, and periods of agonizing self-doubt?

     Well, maybe. And maybe not. When you’ve figured it out for yourself, write and let me know!

Apr 21 2024

Quote Of The Day

     “Modern science — in the name of progress — has gone from trying to understand reality to denying it altogether. Scientific progressivism is a religion. Don’t be fooled by the fact that its priests wear lab coats.” – Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee

     And indeed, it is so.

Apr 20 2024

Reading a New Book

Well, not NEW – but both the author, and the story, are new to me.

The book is The Tears of Autumn. It’s a spy novel, but that could be anything. What it is, is a book that, but for the names of current politicians, could be written today. It’s about the careless use politicians put their ‘intelligence agencies’ to, the misguided understanding of the public to the interplay of government and spook, and the tendency of too many politicians to put the information gathered to use. Rather than just sit and wait (in my view, often the best response).

The spy agency is American, the setting of the story is 1963, and I’m afraid that it’s one of those books that, should it take me longer to read, may keep me from going to bed at a decent hour. An all-nighter, to be exact.

Apr 20 2024

Oh, Come On!

     It’s all getting to be a bit much:

     A memo by the F.B.I. warning of possible threats posed by “radical-traditionalist” Catholics violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent,” according to an internal Justice Department inquiry made public on Thursday.
     The assessment by the Justice Department’s watchdog found that agents in the F.B.I.’s office in Richmond, Va., improperly conflated the religious beliefs of activists with the likelihood they would engage in domestic terrorism, making it appear as if they were being targeted for the faith.
     But after a 120-day review of the incident ordered by Congress, Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general — drawing from the F.B.I. report and interviews conducted by his own investigators — found no evidence that “anyone ordered or directed” anyone to investigate Catholics because of their religion.

     That’s from the New York Times. Be aware that:

  • The FBI specifically noted a preference for the Tridentine (i.e., Latin) Mass and a low opinion of the Second Ecumenical Council (a.k.a. “Vatican II”);
  • The other “signs of extremism” the FBI enumerated were all straightforward Catholic teachings:
    • The way to heaven is through Jesus Christ alone;
    • Abortion is morally wrong;
    • LGBTQ practices are also morally wrong.
  • The targeting of Catholics was explicit, founded on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s listing of “Catholic hate groups.”

     The “Richmond memo” that details the FBI’s reasons for “infiltrating” Catholic congregations is here. Suit yourself that I’m not exaggerating.

     Just this past Wednesday, former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin wrote feelingly on the subject:

     “This is what being stabbed in the back feels like,” I thought to myself on that winter day when I first laid eyes on the FBI’s anti-Catholic “Richmond memo.”
     My reaction was predictable. I am Catholic, and I thought it was appalling, plain and simple.
     Of all the groups our top federal law enforcement agency would write an 11-page document targeting, they picked us. With all of the crime going on in the country, especially in the last few years, the FBI decided we Catholics were the problem.
     “Radical-traditionalist,” I thought, trying to make sense of the term the FBI used more than 40 times throughout the memo. It was certainly not a term I had ever heard before in the counterterrorism space.
     Who is a “radical-traditionalist Catholic?” (Let’s call them “RTC” for short.)
     I’m friends with people who love the Latin Mass. I attended a traditional school where I learned Latin from fifth grade through high school.
     Are they RTCs? Am I?

     It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the praetorians of the Usurper Regime dislike persons who hold to traditional moral and ethical standards. (Frankly, it was rather a surprise that the “Richmond memo” didn’t also catechize us for being against unrestrained rioting and looting.) Those standards are diametrically opposed to the rash of lunacy that’s recently swept over these United States. As Seraphin points out, it’s not just Catholics that hold to those norms; Christians generally subscribe to them, as do most observant Jews and most religiously indifferent Americans.

     But the Justice Department claims that it has “investigated” the FBI and found that the FBI had “no malicious intent” in categorizing Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. Well, that should settle that, then. It seems to have satisfied the Times.

     Words fail me.

Apr 20 2024

Assimilation In Reverse?

     Paul Joseph Watson brings you news the “media” won’t touch:

     A hearing held earlier this week in New York by the Council’s immigration and hospital committees saw black migrants who have arrived in the city airing their grievances about public services they have been provided, including food and accommodation, with one woman even complaining that New Yorkers won’t learn Congolese languages.
     The hearing drew over a thousand immigrants, mostly from countries in Africa, and many illegally in the country, with some claiming that they had been promised money, green cards or work visas if they attended.

     I don’t think the “melting pot” is supposed to work that way. The immigrant is supposed to assimilate to America’s language, laws, and customs. But black African illegal immigrants…you figure it out.

Apr 20 2024

A Unique FBI Investigation

     Have you ever heard of the FBI launching a criminal investigation into the actions of a slain woman after her death?

     I was astonished when I learned the details of the 62 pages of records Judicial Watch extracted from the Justice Department showing that the FBI opened a criminal investigation of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt after her killing and listed four “potential violations of federal law,” including felony rioting and civil disorder.
     It is beyond belief that the Biden FBI gave Babbitt’s killer a free pass while engaging in a malicious months-long “criminal” investigation of Babbitt herself.
     The records were produced in our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Justice Department and FBI for records related to the death of Ashli Babbitt (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:21-cv-02462)).
     These records may also be responsive to a recent FOIA suit for the family for FBI files and potentially related to the $30 million wrongful death lawsuit we brought on behalf of the Babbitt family.
     The unarmed Babbitt was shot and killed as she climbed into a broken interior window in the United States Capitol. The identity of the shooter was kept secret by Congress, the Justice Department, and DC police for eight months until former U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd went public to try to defend his killing of Babbitt.

     The point of this “investigation,” which seems more like a post-hoc justification of Babbitt’s killing, “should” be “obvious.” Equally obvious is that the FBI is no longer concerned with justice, only the defense of its prerogatives and those of its Establishment backers.

     Michael Byrd, the (black) Capitol policeman who killed Babbitt, has never been indicted for his actions. Indeed, he’s been praised, even lionized. But the wrongful death suit just might do something to correct that. It certainly stung the late Orenthal James Simpson.

     Note also that government wants the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, transferred to Washington D.C. Do you wonder why, Gentle Reader? I do. 🤔

Apr 20 2024

Sure, Go Ahead And Elect Blacks

     But don’t act surprised by what you get:

     BALTIMORE (TND) — Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott shared his disappointment Tuesday that too much public money has gone to arts organizations that “just happen to be White-ran.”
     The comment came during the announcement of a $3.6 million “Diversity in Arts” grant funded by COVID-19 relief dollars. Capital grant recipients include the The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum on North Avenue and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum.

     For too long, public dollars have simply just gone to the big names and the big players in town,” Mayor Scott said. “And dare I say, I know my staff is going to hate this, the big names and big players in town that just happen to be White-ran organizations in Baltimore.”

     How do you suppose this would go over if the races were reversed?

Apr 19 2024

“Give The People What They Want!”

     The title is a watchword – the supreme watchword – in the television industry. Or perhaps I should say that it was, once upon a time. Things have definitely changed.

     You’d think that giving the prospective consumer what he wants would be a maxim for all of commerce. How can you sell something to a man who doesn’t want it, feels no need for it, and might even be repelled by it? You can’t. But if you’ve been watching what the entertainment industry has been doing lately, you’d swear that someone in a mahogany-paneled office thinks it possible.

     There are four foci for this delusion:

  • Movies,
  • Television,
  • Video Games,
  • Printed entertainment.

     That last category includes two overarching specialties: textual fiction and illustrated fiction. The first of those has innumerable specialties of its own, which we usually call genres. The latter embraces graphic novels, manga, and what we still call “comic books,” though there’s seldom anything comical about them.

     It appears that all the varieties of entertainment being vended today are suffering from declines in acceptance. I’ve mentioned video games recently. The whole country is aware of what’s been going on with movies and television. Indeed, Hollywood writers, so recently on strike for greater pay and benefits, have largely found themselves out of work. As for manga, which is the province of Eastern creators, things appear to be okay…but not for American comic books:

     The last several months have woken many up to the comic industry’s problems. Retailer Glenn O’Leary blew the doors off of the problems in mainstream comic book content and their “self-insert” characters, which was roundly mocked by industry professionals who felt threatened and identified with his statement. This was followed up by journalist Heidi MacDonald, laying out figures that Marvel and DC Comics were in trouble. Now, buried in another article, it appears DC Comics is in even worse of a position than we’ve suspected.
     The writing’s been on the wall for some time. Comic book retailers are closing shops regularly. Marvel and DC Comics made moves to not even report their sales any longer. All while, the gatekeepers of the comic industry kept posting that there was nothing wrong and that sales were fine.
     We’ve seen reports that IDW Publishing has laid off more than 40% of its staff in the last year, showing signs of wear for the second-string of mainstream comics as the heavily-licensed publisher under Heather Antos has circled the wagons around diversity hiring at the expense of their content quality. Meanwhile, smaller publishers like Aftershock and Scout Comics were outed as not even paying their creatives.

     How did that happen? How could it happen? Comics have been an American growth industry for so long that it’s hard to believe it could be another way. Unfortunately, it is another way:

     In a recent interview, Batman writer Chip Zdarsky finally blew the doors off the comic industry collapse. He admitted massive issues were going on with the mainstream industry, saying, “The problems in comics are a myriad right now. There are so many ways that the industry is being harmed and is having trouble kind of recovering. It’s facing challenges.”

     The nature of those “challenges?” In a word, “woke:”

     While he didn’t elaborate as to sales, after talking with several retailers, reading between the lines of Heidi MacDonald’s shill coverage, one finds that sales have been on a steady decline since the pandemic, as comic readers have mostly gotten out of the habit of reading these books from Marvel and DC Comics after so many of their beloved characters had been changed to be unrecognizable to their classic forms, much of which has been pushing LGBTQ propaganda.
     DC Comics has suffered worse than Marvel. With their Dawn of DC relaunch failing to garner much interest, fans seemed tired of having to completely reboot the DC Universe every few years. From New 52, to Rebirth, a third relaunch in just over a decade seemed like a good jumping-off point. Once DC Comics made changes to Superman, Robin, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern, and more to add homosexual virtue signaling, few wanted to continue with the lines. It’s been a running joke in the industry that Batman is the only thing DC Comics can sell anymore.

     Damn! How about that: You start perverting the characters comics aficionadi have followed for decades, and…they stop buying the comics. Why, you’d think there’s some sort of evil magic at work. This is Superman, dudes! This is Robin! Green Lantern! Hawkgirl! How can loyal readers turn away from these heroes after loving them for so long?

     It turns out that “woke” – specifically, turning those beloved characters into homosexuals – doesn’t sell comics. Or movies. Or television shows. Or video games.

     Approximately 97% of the world population is heterosexual – straight, in the usual argot. Furthermore, the great majority of heterosexuals are repelled by homosexuality and resist entertainment larded with it. We won’t pay for it. We might not say so where others can hear, but the repulsion is there. And it doesn’t matter how often or how loudly anyone says “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

     Translation: On the entertainment front, we’re winning. The wokesters are discovering that they cannot compel us to purchase their message-laden offerings. We’re tuning out in numbers they never expected. Explaining it to themselves is painful. It requires the virtue called humility: the one that makes it possible to say “I was wrong.”

     They can piss and moan about Stellar Blade and the success of “traditional” entertainment as much as they please. It won’t change a thing. The customer remains the king. The vendor must please him, not the other way around.

     It is possible for him who seeks to write tales centered on homosexual relationships to find an audience. However, he must accept that it will be a rather concentrated audience that shares his enthusiasm. In media that require acceptance, funding, and marketing by a mass-marketing mechanism – e.g., movies, television, and video games – his prospects will be poor…at least once the funders and marketers actually confront the sales figures. Business has its own priorities, and the need to move product trumps all the others, no matter how passionately promoted.

     Thoughts, Gentle Readers?

Apr 18 2024

Voting is Useless? Try This!

From NotTheBee.

Look, I get it. We’re tired and busy. We’re old, and trying to keep equally aging family members from turning toes up.

So, for most of us, community involvement since Covid has been just One More Thing We Don’t Have Time to Do.

Tough. Make Time.

I assure you The Left is.

Apr 18 2024

So You Think Part 2

     The first installment of this drama appeared here three years ago. It raised a lot of eyebrows, but I never heard that anything much had come of it. That’s distressing, as the subjects over which I brushed were significant and threatening. Still, I’m a minor voice in the Internet Commentariat, which makes the likelihood of anything I write fomenting perceptible action rather low.

     Today I have a few more “thinks” for you. We’ll see how this helping tastes.

***

1. So You Think They’re Not Really Trying To Silence Us?

     Consider this report:

     Police in Brussels have stormed a right-wing conference attended by Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman after orders for the event to be shut down.
     Local authorities ordered the controversial National Conservatism (NatCon) Conference to be closed to “guarantee public safety”.
     Ms Braverman, the former home secretary, and Mr Farage, the former Ukip leader, were among the political names advertised to speak at the event on Tuesday alongside right-wing Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban.
     Officers arrived after the event began at Claridge’s, a venue in central Brussels, to tell organisers it would be shut down. According to a report on social media, police arrived while Mr Farage was addressing the event, giving attendees 15 minutes to leave the venue. However, officers did not appear to force the event to shut down and speeches continued.
     Police have now said they will not let anyone else into the venue and people can leave and not re-enter.
     The conference has already had to move location twice after mayors within the Brussels region refused the meeting’s chosen venues.

     “Controversial!” Closed to “guarantee public safety!” My word. What were those conservative speakers expected to say? Apparently, that they’re conservatives was enough for the mayor of Brussels:

     Emir Kir, mayor of the area where the conference was held, said: “I issued an order from the mayor to ban the National Conservatism Conference event to guarantee public safety.
     “In Etterbeek, Brussels City and Saint-Josse, the far right is not welcome.”

     ‘Nuff said.

***

2. So You Think You Can Criticize Blacks?

     Apparently not, if you work for the ACLU:

     Kate Oh, a former lawyer at the ACLU, finds herself at the center of a contentious legal battle after being terminated for allegedly using racially coded language in complaints against her Black supervisors. The ACLU argues that Oh’s expressions, such as stating she was “afraid” to speak with a Black superior and calling another meeting “chastising,” contributed to a pattern of “willful anti-Black animus.” These claims have raised substantial questions about the boundaries of acceptable speech in the workplace, especially within an organization renowned for defending free speech.
     The complexity of the case is underscored by the ACLU’s own defense strategies, which hinge on a broad interpretation of what constitutes racially harmful speech. This stance seems at odds with the ACLU’s historical advocacy for expansive free speech rights, sparking criticisms of hypocrisy and overreach. Sean Vitka, a policy director, described the situation as “absolutely bonkers,” highlighting the paradox of an employee being fired under accusations that calling out perceived abuse is itself abusive and racist.

     Time was, the ACLU could be depended on to defend freedom of speech regardless of its content. The Skokie incident appears to have shorn it of the required courage…and a lot of donors, which probably outweighs any other considerations in our time. Still, I must speculate: had Miss Oh produced recordings of the incidents that evoked her criticism of those black supervisors, would matters have gone at all differently? What do you think, Gentle Reader?

***

3. So You Think Whistleblowers Can Safely Blow The Whistle?

     Maybe not, if the whistle hurts the ears of higher-ups at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting:

     Longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner, who was suspended after blowing the whistle on liberal bias at the organization, announced Wednesday he has resigned.
     “I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years. I don’t support calls to defund NPR. I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism. But I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cited in my Free Press essay,” Berliner wrote in a statement published on X.
     Berliner was referring to Katherine Maher, who took over last month as President and CEO and has gone viral for past social media posts showing far-left personal views.

     For completeness, here’s the whistle that got Berliner suspended:

     Veteran NPR editor Uri Berliner detailed his employer’s “absence of viewpoint diversity” last week in a stunning rebuke of the news organization, and a former high-level NPR executive feels a “real problem” was identified in the scathing piece.
     “I’m not surprised because he’s a very thoughtful and forthright guy,” a former high-level NPR executive who worked with Berliner told Fox News Digital on the condition of anonymity.
     Berliner penned a bombshell piece in the Free Press that criticized NPR’s coverage of Russiagate, the COVID lab leak theory, Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop, embrace of the theory of systemic racism and accused the organization of downplaying antisemitism following Oct. 7.
     He also wrote that registration records in 2021 showed an astonishing disparity between Democrats and Republicans in the NPR newsroom and said staffers didn’t want to help former President Trump, among other things, to indicate an “open-minded spirit no longer exists” at NPR.

     The media are remarkably unified around left-wing views. Unless Berliner can get a job in conservative talk radio, he’s likely to have to leave the field.

***

4. So You Think Protestors Are Trying To Change Minds?

     Well, they don’t think so:

     Regarding the obstruction by activists of the Golden Gate Bridge, a not unfair observation:

     David Thompson continues:

     A protest, then, is not meant to persuade the general public, or to get them on-side, or to make others sympathetic with whatever this week’s cause may be. But simply to be disruptive. To gratuitously frustrate, and aggravate, large numbers of law-abiding people. To exert power. By doing random harm. That’s “the whole point.” A vision doubtless attractive to those with antisocial inclinations.
     And those inclinations aren’t being indulged and given rein reluctantly or under duress. The screwing-over of others is sought out and chosen, over and over again. This is recreational sociopathy.

     Please read David’s whole piece. I love his phrase “recreational sociopathy.” Applause to longtime reader Daniel Day, who directed my attention to this piece.

     Disrupting the lives of others for no reason other than to demonstrate that you can is sadism. Must we permit sadists to determine when we can go about our ordinary business? From what principle of natural or statute law is such a right derived? Is there any alternative to water cannons – and if they don’t work, rubber bullets?

***

     That’s all for the nonce, Gentle Reader. I have a long agenda for today. God willing, if I can persuade myself to get out of this BLEEP!ing chair, I might even get some of it done. Have a nice day.

Apr 17 2024

Yes, I’m still alive

Speaking of trials…. I had the joy of my wife passing on an upper respiratory virus some weeks ago. As I was recovering from that, I damaged the tendons in my right foot. Specifically the ones that run down the back of the calf through the ankle, and control the stabilizing elements of my foot. I went from going to bed thinking my foot was sore, to waking up and not being able to walk on that foot.

So, soft tissue damage, must stabilize it. The doc gave me a walking boot. I gimped around in that boot for some time, until as I was trying to go down the steps to my bedroom I hyper-extended my knee. Now, I hate taking pills. No pain pills for me, thank you very much. But, I was in so much pain from the foot and the knee that I had no choice. Weeks later, my ankle is still swollen slightly but the pain has receded, which is good because I had to fly down to a city I swore I would never re-enter again, Lost Angeles, for a funeral.

I swear that I wish to write. But some days all I do is stare at the computer screen and wonder why I can’t all any words forth. Perhaps as my schooling draws to a close for this semester, I’ll have more of an urge to post. When I’m essentially typing up papers all day that does drain the creative juices.

I’m off for more coffee. Hopefully I’ll be posting a bit more, when I can find news/information that is thought provoking rather than enraging.

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