May 08 2024

Profiles In Unconsciousness

     Now and then, something will come down the pike that’s both puzzling and fascinating. I have such a phenomenon at hand today: a series of tweets from former CNN contributor Michelle Kosinski. Here it is:

     Now, I know better than to expect a leftist to entertain a suggestion that she might be under-informed. I also know better than to expect her to allow that her “facts” might not be actual facts. All the same, as a case study of a Hofferian “fact-proof screen,” the above is hard to beat.

     Leftists seldom concede the possibility that they might be wrong. Moreover, as the Left’s beliefs move ever further from reality, leftists put ever more effort into seeking out and purging doctrinal divergence. Theirs is “a church outside which there is no salvation.” The rationales they bring to their doctrinal enforcement are notions I’ve discussed here on other occasions, so I’ll pass from that subject without comment. But note the “giveaways” Miss Kosinski cites as evidence that she was surrounded by agents of evil:

  • Her dinner companions refused to allow their kids to apply to Ivy League universities.
  • They showed disdain for the “climate change” canard.
  • And they differed over the value of something Donald Trump had done as president.

     GAHH! Call out the National Guard! Such persons are “a deadly canker in the body politic!” They cannot be allowed to hold such opinions! Failing their re-education, they must be kept away from the good and righteous!

     Yes, I’m laughing as I type. It demands laughter, to ward away the tears.

     Time was, the “liberal” credo gave lip service (at least) to being open-minded. But that time has plainly passed. By the Left’s notions, one cannot be “well educated and successful in careers” and still differ with Leftist dogma. It’s a sin against the “facts.”

     And that, Gentle Reader, is why there’s no meaningful exchange of views between Left and Right in America today.

May 08 2024

AND Initiate a CIVIL Lawsuit Against That Overprivileged A******

This NY Post story, about a janitor who faced off against the protesters – including James Carlson, a very rich heir with a $3.4 million townhouse (say, that would be a GREAT prize in a settlement!), and is afraid to go back to the school, says a lot about the way The Left cares about minorities or the poor.

That is – not at all.

“While Torres was able to make it out of Hamilton Hall before the protesters locked down the building with makeshift barricades, he said the experience has left him shaken and unable to go back to Columbia.

“They should have protected us a little bit more,” he told the Press. “Even when I left the building I did not see one public safety officer. What’s that about? We had to fight our way out.””

Here’s the 411 on Carlson from MSNBC online.

This is, for those who, like me, grew up in neighborhoods filled with WWII refugees, some of them Jewish.

Never Again – Watch it on X to get the full impact.

It’s funny. Just as the economy settles down into the usual pre-election torpor, and before the pre-election frenzy begins, many of my friends and acquaintances are feeling an unease. Like waiting for the shoe to drop, or for that sudden alarm that signal The Terror is about to begin.

I’ve seen the uneasiness during interactions. People are making plans for the summer, and adding, “Assuming nothing major happens.” In fact, I’ve noticed people are reluctant to make plans.

  • Leaving home for a vacay? Few want to abandon known surroundings for novelty.
  • Flying? Surely you jest! The Boeing plane problems, despite the airlines having avoided a major catastrophe through the training and judgement of the crews, make ME nervous about flying. I have an upcoming workshop in Boston this July, and I’m thinking about persuading my husband to drive there.
  • Family reunions? Hunkering down seems to be the preferred mode for many, rather than gathering all the family in one place.
  • Stateside travel? Not if it requires people to be near major cities, even if only passing through. Those road-closing jacka$$es have depressed that outlet.
  • Tourist hot spots? Not Europe, not amusement parks, not concerts, not traditional travel to famous cities, not ships (the lingering problems they have with communicable diseases spreading throughout the ship, other than Covid are a factor).

Oh, well. I’m off next week to Hamvention, in Xenia, OH, to meet up with a friend of mine from SC. She and I have been planning this for months. I’m just making my lists of equipment I want to take, and making sure my clothing is clean. Some years, it’s a muddy mess on the fairgrounds.

And, I just checked the forecast – as usual, there will be intermittent showers. I’m going to bring an umbrella, and order a poncho/raincoat. It should arrive in time.

May 08 2024

Trends

     I spend very little time with other people – the C.S.O. excepted – and none in groups larger than four persons. (Willingly, that is.) So I tend to be late-to-press with social trends. In the main, that doesn’t trouble me. What use has an isolate for social trends? He’s not terribly likely to adopt them.

     Still, this bit of commentary cheered me:

     Behold the “frat boys” unapologetically saving Old Glory, singing the national anthem, chanting “USA, USA, USA,” and rudely ridiculing the campus freaks who parade around in Hamas colors and barricade themselves in university buildings.
     God forbid! They look like Trump voters.
     This display of irrepressible masculinity erupting in Gen Z is an affront to the grand societal feminization project of the left, which has only itself to blame.
     Frat Boy Summer is this year’s backlash against an epidemic of arrogant, entitled women who have been coddled all their lives and think they’re smarter and more important than they really are.
     It is a manifestation of the growing political divide between men and women that has been evident in opinion polls for some time. There is a 10-point gap on most issues between men and women.
     Young unmarried women, in particular, skew very left, while young men are becoming markedly more conservative.

     I hope Miranda Devine’s observations are accurate. The nation needs a rebirth of masculinity. I had an exchange of views about that on Gab recently, and the consensus was strongly in that direction. However, if such a revival is in progress, the genesis thereof is worth exploring.

     Ponder these possibilities:

  • Are young men trending rightward because young women are so far to the left? If so, why?
  • Could it be a consequence of the “men going their own way” phenomenon?
  • Is it out of revulsion against androgyny and transgenderism?
  • Are young men, who are trending away from “higher education” and toward the “trades,” finding vital lessons in manual labor and male comradeship?
  • Or are they just watching events and getting smart? It has happened before, you know.

     I could speculate endlessly, and sometimes I do. The important thing is to feed the trend: to keep it going and, if possible, to strengthen it. But to do that, we must learn what has sparked it.

     The time is now. America has ceded too much ground to the enemies of masculinity…who, by no coincidence whatsoever, are also the enemies of America as she was birthed.

***

     The following has appeared many times, in many places:


Hard times create hard men.
Hard men create good times.
Good times create soft men.
Soft men create hard times.

     There’s a lot of truth to that. The problem of attaining prosperity and comfort without creating conditions that permit excessive self-indulgence, and thus promote general softness, has yet to be solved. A lot of fiction has touched on the subject. One of the projects on my anvil addresses it.

     The cyclical character of the thing is especially troubling. Breaking free of a natural cycle is exceptionally difficult, and fraught with perils of its own. For as much as I dislike the idea, it’s possible to take masculinity to an oppressive, overbearing excess. It’s observable in the cultures of the Muslim Middle East, for example.

     The American masculine ideal has traditionally been united with what we might call the chivalrous ideal: i.e., men’s rejection of arrogance in favor of the protector-provider’s role. A successful combination of those two models yields the optimum of the American gentleman. Let’s look somewhat more closely at this creature:

  • He is physically capable and, when the occasion arises, willing.
  • He is protective toward those weaker and less capable than himself.
  • He is courteous, but not affected or foppish. He doesn’t boast.
  • His occupation does not confine him; he’ll “lend a hand” if one is requested.

     Such men were numerous among us in the years before the World Wars. But they didn’t spring full-grown from the brow of Zeus. Parents had to bear and rear them.

     American parents of sons: You have a field of study to master. Time is short, so get to it.

May 08 2024

So You Think Pas And I Are Kidding About The Death Cults?

     I assure you, we aren’t:

     For nearly 30 years — since Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted death — Congress has prevented federal funding such as Medicare from being used by patients to pay for the practice. A bill proposed by Democratic lawmakers seeks to change that.
     In 1997, Congress passed the Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act, which prohibits using federal funds to provide for any health care services that assisted in someone’s death, including “assisting in the suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing of any individual.”
     “Medical aid-in-dying, an authorized medical practice, is not euthanasia, mercy killing, or assisted suicide,” a draft discussion of the new “Patient Access to End of Life Care Act’’ obtained by the Sun reads.
     In states where physician-assisted death is legal, the 1997 restrictions “shall not apply to any information, referrals, guidance, or medical care provided consistent with such programs,” the bill, sponsored by Democratic Representatives Brittany Pettersen and Scott Peters, notes.
     Medical-aid-in-dying, the bill notes, is when a “mentally capable, terminally ill adult with less than six months to live requests a prescription from their qualified clinician for medication to bring about a peaceful death to ingest at any point if their suffering becomes unbearable.”
     Physician-assisted death for terminally ill patients is legal in 10 states and Washington, D.C. — and more than 10 states are actively considering legislation to allow it, including New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and North Carolina, according to Death With Dignity’s legislative tracker.

     The New York Sun is quite young; it’s not “major media.” A Google search reveals no major-media references to this bill. I wonder how much longer it will be before the big, prestigious news outlets treat with this, assuming they ever will.

     The Death Cultists are on the march, Gentle Reader. Their setback in the Dobbs decision appears to have energized them for a major push. Add this to the fresh round of scare talk about new, more dangerous COVID-19 variants and bird flu contamination in cattle. When will the next ultra-modern vaccine for such things be announced? Care to start a pool?

     I’m not clear on their uber-message. Is it that living is just too hard? Perhaps our medicalization hasn’t gone far enough for them. If they can’t contrive more actual diseases to treat with ever more dubious drugs, maybe the answer is to treat us for the only known disease with 100% mortality: being alive.

     I’ll be following this. Stay tuned.

May 07 2024

Man vs. Bear

So, unless you have been living under a rock lately, there’s yet another stupid trend on TicToc (the birthplace of stupid trends, thanks to the ChiComs running the algorithm to make American kids dumber) where women are asked if they would rather meet a man or a bear if they were in the woods alone. And the majority of them are saying they’d rather meet the bear.

Of course there’s much hue and cry and shouting and insults flying. But I was able to get a different perspective out of someone who I trust and hold in rather high esteem. Folks, their response is biological.

Have you ever been around someone and you just knew that no matter how tough you thought you were, that person could dominate you and kick your ass? I can remember a few moments like that, actually. That’s a good thing, it keeps you humble. I was sparring with people back in my early Army days when I was stationed in Korea, and even though I wasn’t the most skilled I was holding my own. Until SGT Kim stepped into the “ring”. The ring being a space in the motor pool where we were less likely to be seen and thus receive an ass-chewing.

Now, we were still in uniform, and since we were outside we had on our headgear. SGT Kim and I trade a few blows, nothing hard, and then he steps back and kicks. Fast. He kicks the brim of my headgear, causing it to fly off my head, and then holds his foot in mid-air two inches from my face. I didn’t even have time to react.

I didn’t know it at the time, but SGT Kim had been in the top 10 rankings for Tae Kwon Do in Korea before he was conscripted into the ROK Army. This man could have killed me in multiple ways and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do about it.

There were a few times in the gym in my career when someone who was so far above the rest of the group physically would step into the deadlift area, add four more plates on to your stack, and lift it like it was nothing. And you knew, once again, that if it came to a fight your best bet was to have a gun. A big one. And your friends should have guns too.

For a guy, it’s a moment that makes you step back and say “Damn, I’d be in trouble if that guy wanted to start anything.” And women deal with that every. Single. Day. When they deal with men, because men on average are far physically superior to women. It’s not even close. Women are reminded every day that men could cause them great physical harm. And so if the choice is a man or a bear, they’re choosing the bear, partially because the bear is unknown, but they know the bear isn’t going to rape them. That was actually an answer from a lot of women when they were asked why they chose the bear. “The bear might kill me, it might not, but it won’t rape me.”

Their response is a biological one. Anyways, I’ve finally finished up my last finals exam. I can say that having done a semester of online college, I will never do it again. I’ll find a place to take classes in person, or I’ll just start my own business. This last couple of months purely sucked, both on an emotional and physical level. Ain’t gonna do it again.

May 07 2024

The Chronicle of The DC, 7May24: Reverse Envy Hatred

First, the recent, frequent mention of envy/covetousness and the last commandment in posts and comments suggests that readers of Liberty’s Torch would want to see this. Certainly the commandment lists only material things, but it also says “not anything that is thy neighbors.” Often overlooked but no less a possession, is love, ability, power, etc. And perhaps most important of all: happiness. MIdas Muffler may be the last remnant of the story of King Midas. The moral of which was wealth is worthless if it ruins your happiness. No matter how fleeting, someone who is currently happy may be envied by one who is not. Please keep that observation of happiness in mind as you read all that follows.

Second, let me thank long time reader and friend, Daniel Day, for alerting me to the study that provides evidence, not proof, for the key words in the title. The title is shorthand for my observation that the well-to-do can envy and hate those who are less well off for a most base human reason: witnessing those less well off being happier.

In the spotlight today, Study: Walking Through First Class on Planes Makes Passengers Angry, was published in 2016.

Here is Daniel’s fine truncated excerpts highlighting the provocative statistical findings.

Researchers studied 1,500-4,000 incidents of air rage that occurred on 1-5 million flights.

[snip] when passengers boarded through the front of the plane, through first class (as opposed to boarding from the middle of the plane), episodes of air rage in economy more than doubled

[snip] [and] incidents of air rage in the first-class cabin increased by a factor of nearly 12. — h/t CNTraveler

I searched for and found the site so as to decide how serious a study this was. It indeed was. Airlines were seeking to discover causes for air rage so that they might find ways to cope. It’s not mere liberalism to try to stem troublesome human behavior. But, as you will see, it seems those who were put to work on the study were themselves liberal if not full out leftists. The key give-away was that they concluded that among other factors, exposure to inequality was a major factor. (If written in 2024, they would no doubt blame exposure to inequity. That’s Progressive you know.)

They were so certain of their conclusion that they highlighted it in a separate window, thusly:

The increasing incidence of ‘air rage’ can be understood through the lens of inequality.

What caught my eye was the contradiction for which they simply let slide. No doubt because it does not fit the social justice narrative. I hope you noticed already.

While rage in the coach area rose between 2 to 4 times when those passengers passed through the premium sections, the rage of premium passengers increased 12 times when forced to endure the less privileged passing by them. “Ugh — how gross!”

It has long been customary in America to have the upper crust congregating amongst their own kind. Among other criteria of a country club, the high cost of membership shares ensured that only the right strata could afford to be a member. And to whom those shares might later be sold required approval of the board of directors.

And that is their right. Or it once was before the social justice warriors (even before that term had been coined) were encouraged to break down such barriers as private club membership restrictions. Yet, today, the very upper crust still have them. Not so much for the next lower level aristocrat wannabes.

Anyway, here my observation in a bit more detail.

That one part of the study the authors let slide indicates that some humans have less reason to be motivated by envy of wealth than having to endure their privileged space being violated by the low-stationed. “I’m troubled, but they seem happy. Why must I be reminded?”

I say it is hard to better demonstrate the existence of Death Cult inclinations in the powerful and well-off than that 12:2 ratio. And that was for the less than high well-off. That is not the group who is the worst of them. For our enemy, it is no longer sufficient for the bulk of humanity to be out of sight. Far better for them to be gone altogether.

May 07 2024

Betrayal By Ballot

     Kurt Schlichter’s column of today makes a couple of penetrating observations, some of them rather sad. Here’s the bit that’s uppermost in my thoughts:

     Some groups vote as a bloc. Black Americans almost always vote Democrat – something like 90%, though this time Donald Trump seems to be earning a better percentage. Similarly, Jewish Americans are famously liberal voters, with the vast majority supporting Democrats in the past. But things have changed. The position of the Democratic Party is aligned with the far left, which pretty much wants to kill all the Jews. And Biden really, really wants to win the states with large number of Muslims like the despicable Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, whose daughter/niece was recently suspended from the University of College for her hate crimes.

     Yes, Kurt needs a proofreader. But apart from that, he’s spot-on in the above. Furthermore:

     A lot of Jewish Americans are very invested in being liberal. That’s who they are. That’s not just a political affiliation but an identity. Imagine you’ve spent 65 years of your life voting for Democrats, and suddenly this happens. Are you ready to make a 180° turn? That’s hard. That’s hard for anybody. It’s human nature. Voting Dem is a habit mixed up with personal identity. That is tough to change, even then the face of indisputable and undeniable evidence like these sociopaths chanting “From the river to the sea.” So, my guess is we’re going to see some Jewish voters swinging to the Republicans, but not most – at least not in 2024.

     My outlook isn’t that optimistic. I doubt we’ll see even a 5% shift in party preference among American Jews. Jews who vote Republican will conceal the fact from their Jewish friends and associates. Family members who “go red” will be excoriated, and perhaps cast out, by their relatives. Rabbis will speak against voting Republican, though they’ll have a hard time articulating their “reasons.” Allegiance to the Democrat Party isn’t just a habit “mixed up with personal identity;” it’s a prescription written into Jewish tribal solidarity.

     The Jewish people in our time are the most insular of all American demographic cohorts. They have their reasons, including history’s whisper that gentiles can’t be trusted. That insularity includes a mandatory “liberal” political stance. (Why yes, those are sneer quotes. After all, liberal means “favorable to freedom.” How many Democrats do you know to whom that description applies?) The Jewish identity is one founded on exclusion: the historical exclusion of Jews from mainstream society in virtually every nation of the West. Their reaction has been to embrace the practice of exclusion: i.e., to be quite unbending about who is and who is not a Jew.

     Allow me to emphasize this:

It’s not about the Judaic religion.
It’s about membership in the tribe.

     You can go badly wrong thinking that it must be about religious belief or practice. The Judaic faith in this country is as fragmented as Christianity. The political alignment is separate from that – even orthogonal to it.

     Unfortunately, voting Democrat became integral to Jewish tribal identity some time ago. The parallel to the voting practices of American Negroes is exact, with the difference that American Jews are even more united that way. Today, if you’re a Jew who votes Republican, be careful to whom you admit it. A lot of American Jews would declare you “not of the tribe” for your “betrayal.”

     I dislike to say such things. After all, the C.S.O. is Jewish (non-religious). While it’s unwise to generalize from personal and therefore sharply limited data, her family, that of my first wife, and that of many other Jews I’ve known over the decades, have been consistent in this regard. I’ve heard many among them, on many occasions, dismiss some group as “not Jews” for this reason among others.

     For which reasons I don’t expect American Jewish votes to flood into the Republican column this November.

May 07 2024

The FIRST Task for the Next Non-Leftist President

Appoint a sound head of the Dept. of Health & Human Services, and – on the FIRST day, direct CMS – the Center for Medicare Services – to change their rule DEEMING illegal aliens eligible for services.

They ARE. I don’t care WHAT you’ve been told. Here is a link to the slide presentation that teaches their staff about that rule, which is the gateway that allows all the other services to be given to ineligible illegal aliens. It’s the rule that has the US Federal Government SUBSIDIZING the invasion, thereby relieving The Left of that financial burden.

https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/technical-assistance-resources/immigrant-eligibility-marketplace-medicaid-chip.pdf

Slide 5 is the one that spells it out.

I know, I know. You’ve been told otherwise. You believe that this is because of actions of multiple embedded Leftists in the agency.

Nuts. It’s an action by a few, that is carried out by the many (who are specifically ordered to do it). Now, I can’t blame the clueless Minions – most of them just want a job that is steady and with decent benefits. Firing them won’t help; instead, treat them like potential allies.

So, it’s the Rule. Game over, right?

No. As we have learned, RULES are relatively easy to change, and should be the FIRST step.

Afterwards, follow up with Congressional action, bolstering the rule with black letter law. Take away the next President/*resident’s ability to use a pen to change it back.

I’m sure The Left has squirreled away a lot of these Rule-Making Easter Eggs. Perhaps we should turn a bunch of kids loose on the Leftist-infiltrated agencies and departments and find them. Offer a paid-for internship (sufficient for real living expenses) to those finding worthy targets for change. Do that this summer, so the next President can come in ready to Rock & Roll.

May 07 2024

Whose Side Are We On

     I can’t help but wonder:

     The Biden administration’s intensive public and private campaign to forestall Israel’s assault on Rafah has become its toughest test to date with its Middle East ally.
     Hours after President Biden on Monday warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a full-scale assault on Rafah, Israel’s military conducted what it called targeted airstrikes in the eastern part of the city and sent in tanks as it seized the enclave’s border crossing with Egypt.
     The Israeli attack signaled the wide gulf between Biden and Netanyahu over a strategy for securing the release of hostages held by Hamas and ultimately bringing the fighting to an end.

     The language in the above is more significant than it might appear at first. The “Biden administration,” which I prefer to call the Usurper Regime, has made plain that its near-term objective in this matter is to prevent Israel from assaulting HAMAS’s stronghold in Rafah. Why? Usurper Regime spokesvermin would probably say that “it would impede the chances for a lasting peace in the region,” or some such. But there is no peace in the region. There cannot be peace as long as HAMAS exists, for the aim of its existence is the elimination of Israel.

     A thorough Israeli victory in Rafah would bring about the end of HAMAS. That, given not only the October 7 assault on Israel but innumerable terror attacks previous to that one, would give Israel a real chance to pacify the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, the Figurehead-in-Chief “warned” Israel not to assault Rafah. What’s the “or else” in that warning? What negative consequences do Washinton’s foreign-policy Usurpers have in mind should Israel not knuckle under?

     The only ones Washington can inflict, as far as I can tell, are the cessation of foreign aid to Israel and the halting of ammunition shipments to Israel. The foreign aid mostly becomes purchases from American munitions makers – goods that would be delivered in the future – but the ammo shipments have a more immediate value. There have been reports that the Usurpers have suspended those ammo shipments…while they continue to send many millions of dollars of “humanitarian aid” to HAMAS.

     I doubt that many Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch harbor any illusions about the dealings and doings of nation-states, but I’ll say this anyway: If Smith and Jones are locked in mortal combat, and Davis provides aid and / or weapons to Smith, then Jones is correct in classifying Davis as his enemy, quite as much as is Smith. No matter what pieties Washington may mouth, if it supports HAMAS while denying Israel the ammo it needs, the federal government of the United States has allied itself with HAMAS.

     Caroline Glick comments:

     The most prominent of those pieties are about the “harm to innocents” that will arise from the continuation of Israel’s war drive. But HAMAS could forestall any such harm in an instant by surrendering. For Israel to agree to a cessation of its drive would condone HAMAS’s murder of approximately 1400 Israeli citizens last October 7. HAMAS would continue to prosecute its own terror-war against Israel. There’s also the little matter of HAMAS’s continued retention of some number of Israeli captives.

     But nevertheless, the cry is “Peace! Peace! We must have peace!” Peace is not sacred, Gentle Reader. On that subject, have a few bits of wisdom from other sources:

     “Peace means something different than ‘no fighting.’…Peace is an active and complex thing, and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.” – Jo Walton

     We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. Chains are worse than bayonets. – Douglas Jerrold

     Once you know a man deserves to die, you have to kill him. If you don’t, you’re committing a crime against everyone who doesn’t deserve to die. If you get him down but can’t bring yourself to do it, and he gets up off the mat and kills you instead, you’re only getting what you deserve yourself. – Christine M. D’Alessandro

     As with men, so also with groups and polities. Verbum sat sapienti.

May 07 2024

The Chinese Just Love Playing With Deadly Diseases

     A story I wasn’t happy – or surprised – to read:

     Chinese scientists have engineered a virus with parts of Ebola in a lab that killed a group of hamsters.
     A team of researchers at Hebei Medical University used a contagious disease of livestock and added a protein found in Ebola, which allows the virus to infect cells and spread throughout the human body.
     The group of hamsters that received the lethal injection ‘developed severe systemic diseases similar to those observed in human Ebola patients,’ including multi-organ failure,’ the study shared.
     One particularly horrific symptom saw the infected hamsters develop secretions in their eyes, which impaired their vision and scabbed over the surface of the eyeballs
     While the experiment may spark fears of another lab leak, the researchers say their goal was to find the right animal models that can safely mimic Ebola symptoms in a lab setting.

     “May” spark fears of another lab leak? Well, gee, it’s just Ebola, right? It’s just one of the two deadliest hemorrhagic diseases known to medicine, so why worry? Especially since the point of this “experiment” was to downgrade the safety protocols for working with Ebola:

     Ebola needs to be handled in Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facilities which are special high security laboratories, while many are only BLS-2.
     To work around this in a lower security setting, scientists used a different virus called vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), which they engineered to carry part of the Ebola virus that’s called glycoprotein (GP) that plays a crucial role in helping the virus enter and infect cells of its host.

     Never imagine that this…experiment could be carried out without the approval of the Chinese government…nor without the knowledge and tacit acceptance of the United States government.

     I think I’ll just sit in the corner in fetal position and shiver for a while.

May 06 2024

The Chronicle of The DC, 6May24: Compelled Wastefulness

That one was on a dam in India.

This one, on the plains in Nebraska, was destroyed by hail.

Only in Utopia (no place) there are no storms.

May 06 2024

Pouring Cement Into The Wound

     The COVID-19 affair was arguably the worst thing to happen to the United States since the Civil War. The disease aside, the “remedy:”

  • Closure of schools;
  • Closure of businesses;
  • Closure of places of worship;
  • Nationwide lockdowns of healthy Americans;
  • Suppression of dissent from the official narrative;
  • Coerced administration of experimental, untested vaccines;

     …did enormous, entirely objective damage to the economy, the education of children, and the morale of the public. It very nearly destroyed the country. Yet even today, with the results as plain as 72-point type, the architects of this self-inflicted catastrophe – not one of whom has even lost his job – want to institutionalize it as a worldwide policy under United Nations control:

     The head of the World Health Organization on Friday urged countries to agree to an accord to help fight future pandemics as negotiations approach a deadline this month.
     The new pact and a series of updates to existing rules on dealing with pandemics are intended to shore up the world’s defenses against new pathogens after the COVID-19 pandemic killed millions of people.
     Countries are due to finalise negotiations on the accord on May 10, with a view to adopting it at the WHO’s annual meeting later this month, but sources involved say that big differences remain.
     “Give the people of the world, the people of your countries, the people you represent, a safer future,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a Geneva meeting.
     “So I have one simple request: please, get this done, for them,” he said. He encouraged countries who did not fully agree with the text to at least refrain from blocking consensus among WHO’s 194 member states.
     One of the main points of disagreement between wealthy countries and developing states is the vexed issue of sharing drugs and vaccines fairly to avoid a repeat of COVID-era failures.

     But what are these “new rules on dealing with pandemics” – ? As of a year ago, despite the compilation of a 208-page framework-agreement, they were still largely undefined. However, on one thing they were clear: the ultimate authority would rest in the hands of the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO). National governments would cede their sovereignty in this regard.

     The great majority of the fatalities from COVID-19 were among the elderly and the already-morbid: the usual victims of a flu outbreak. Most of the others were victims of the “treatment” they received for that 99.7%-survivable disease. Reflect on that – and on the use of this engineered disease to justify a cession of U.S. sovereignty to a supra-national organization that seeks to invade our system of drug patents “for the greater good.”

     We are fortunate in this nation in many regards. The one uppermost in my thoughts just now is that treaties must be ratified by the Senate, by a two-thirds majority. Should the Democrats gain sufficient numbers in that body, American sovereignty (and much else) would be seriously imperiled. That makes the November elections appear highly consequential.

     Remember that “public health” has been used on several occasions as a justification under which to abridge the rights of Americans. There have even been attempts to use it as the rationale for extensive gun-control and gun-confiscation measures. Imagine what the U.N. could do with “worldwide public health” as a tool. Should the Director-General of WHO declare that the world is suffering a “violence pandemic” largely due to the prevalence of guns in unapproved hands, can you imagine what would follow?

     They who prowl the corridors of power are ever eager for new rationales under which they can extend their control over private citizens. “Pandemic response” is the most far-reaching such rationale yet to be devised.

     Stay tuned.

May 06 2024

Want To Know Whose Side “Big Tech” Is On?

Google banned this pro-Trump ad:

‘Nuff said.

May 05 2024

On This Day Of Days

     …which we wait for all year – we do, don’t we? – we commemorate World War II’s great Battle of the South Atlantic, in which Argentina’s innovative and deadly pocket battleship Mayo faced off against the intrepid Mexican cruiser Alas de Agua and went to a watery grave…wait, what? There was no such battle? Oh, then it must have been when the world-famous Mexican chef Sin Salsa announced that he had perfected tequila-flavored aioli…huh? Not that either? Well, something notable happened somewhere on May 5, long ago. Here at the Fortress of Crankitude, we eat enchiladas in celebration of whatever it was. I’m sure my Gentle Readers have comparable traditions.

     Anyway, as usual for a Sunday morning, the news is a bit dull, so I think I’ll talk about fiction and “the rules.”

***

     If you write fiction, as I’m certain at least one reader of Liberty’s Torch does now and then to his sorrow and regret, you’re continuously assailed by doubts. Some of those doubts are of your own conceptions. Those may come and go, but others of greater weight are about whether you’re following “the rules” adequately. “The rules” hang over all of us like a dark cloud, a harbinger of doom, or some other murky cliché.

     It wasn’t clear to me, when I set out on this journey, who made “the rules” and what invests them with authority. Indeed, “the rules” seemed to me a shifting collection of thou-shalts and thou shalt nots that reflected the prevailing tastes of the times in which they were promulgated. In the early Nineteenth Century, when Victor Hugo bestrode the world, it was apparently all right to festoon one’s tales with narrative intrusions about the place and time in which the tale was set. That practice lasted about as long as did Victor Hugo, though it had a brief resurgence when Leo Tolstoy came to town.

     The late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries brought us a hodge-podge of rules. From Mark Twain we got “If you catch an adjective, kill it!” Ernest Hemingway made that the core of his approach to narration. Funny that he shared the stage with America’s best-known over-writer, William Faulkner, isn’t it? But literary trends can be erratic, just as writers are. Oops! I’m not supposed to end a sentence with a cognate, am I?

     Genuinely popular fiction, mostly published in paperback, began to surge to the forefront after World War II. With it came the speculative genres: science fiction, fantasy, horror, and what we often call “magical realism.” Those writers felt free to “cock a snook” at “the rules,” including that pesky one about not using idioms unlikely to be familiar to one’s readers. They leaned on their imaginations rather than the characterological and stylistic strengths of the figures that preceded them. When I revisit some of their works, I often find myself wondering what they (or their publishers) thought of “the rules,” if they ever did at all. When the literati deigned to acknowledge their existence, they dismissed them as unworthy. Still, the new genres sold well, which surely provided some balm for the wounds to their egos.

     It’s unclear to me, despite the enormous amount I’ve forced myself to read on the subject, whether “the rules” have any real substance. There are some exhortations that strike me as constructive, for example the rule about taking care to maintain a consistent viewpoint within a given scene. But there are others, such as the one that forbids prologues, whose violation sometimes strikes me as compulsory. And by God, I’ll use adverbs as and when I please, and be damned to anyone who objects!

     You see, a writer of fiction really has only one rule whose observance is mandatory: he must entertain his reader. He must do what he can to achieve that. In pursuit of that goal, the breaking of any lesser rule might be justified. Yes, yes, including the rule about “show, don’t tell,” which should really be “show character, don’t tell it.”

     If there’s ever been a more entertaining writer than the late Roger Zelazny, I’m unacquainted with him. Zelazny himself often speculated about whether it’s possible to break some rule or other to advantage. In an essay in his collection Unicorn Variations, he wrote about his decision to do so in one of his novels, Isle of the Dead. He said quite frankly that his aim was to see if he could get away with it…and he did. His most famous rule-breakage, though, was surely in his award-winner Lord of Light, a can’t-put-it-down novel which is 98% flashback.

     I could go on about this, but I’ll spare you. The bottom line is clear: if you succeed in entertaining your readers, you may do as you please. As a present on this most auspicious day – ah! I have it! It’s the day Simón de Mayo routed the savage Persnicketians, ended for all time their lethal disdain and their incomprehensible metaphors, and earned for himself the title of El Lubricador – have an old short story I found while wandering through my archives a day or two ago.

Attitudes

     Kevin Conway noticed Hajj al-Siddiqui’s entrance to the Onteora Aviation Christmas party before anyone else, and was unable to look away from him thereafter. The Saudi, whose attendance no one had expected, scanned the throng, found Marwan Sayyat, OA’s only Muslim employee, standing alone along its edge, and moved unerringly toward him. Sayyat greeted the Saudi with something halfway between a curtsey and a bow. The two moved well away from the rest of the personnel, as if to preserve the privacy of their unit of two.
     “Kevin?”
     “Hm? Oh, sorry, Tanya. Something wrong?”
     “That’s what I was going to ask,” Tanya Taliaferro said. Her expression wasn’t exactly alarmed, but there was more in it than a casual inquiry into her boyfriend’s state of mind.
     He grinned down at her. “Oh, nothing.” His gaze moved immediately back to the two Muslims, who were conversing with unusual animation and a wealth of dramatic gestures. “I just didn’t expect our visitor to put in an appearance.”
     But I didn’t expect Marwan to be here, either. First time in eight years.
     “He was invited, wasn’t he?” Tanya sipped at her cola. “Mr. Forslund would hardly have neglected to do that.”
     “I imagine not. Still…”
     He was groping for another topic of conversation when Emil Deukmeijian came through the doors behind them with a hardshell guitar case and a gleam in his eye. The crowd parted to let him pass, and he headed straight for Louis Redmond, who was hunched over the buffet table searching for God alone knew what in a platter of vegetables and dip.
     Louis turned, saw his Tactical colleague approaching with the instrument, and threw his eyes to heaven in mock despair. Around them, coworkers familiar with their routine tittered at the byplay.
     “Don’t I ever get a break from this, Emil?”
     Deukmeijian thrust the guitar case at him and dragged a straight-backed chair to the front of the throng. “Shut up and earn your dinner.”
     The crowd laughed.
     Conway caught Tanya by the arm and pulled her toward the front of the gathering. “Come on. You don’t want to miss this.”
     “Miss what?”
     “Trust me.”
     Around Louis the clapping was building steadily. His expression of dismay slowly softened to a grin.
     “All right, all right.” Louis seated himself, pulled an old Guild acoustic guitar out of the case and settled it on his thighs. “I don’t know any modern songs, though.”
     Deukmeijian snorted. “No excuses, choir boy. Make ‘em sing!”
     Louis shook his head in resignation and began to tune.

* * *

     Tanya nudged Conway. “Whose guitar is that?”
     “His. He leaves it here, practices at lunch most days.”
     Her eyebrows rose, and she turned to watch with heightened interest. The crowd pressed forward around them.
     “Any requests?” Louis called out.
     A voice from the far end of the room shouted back “Something from after 1900!” The crowd laughed again.
     Louis shook his head. “You guys should know better. All right, here goes nothing.” He brushed his fingers lightly over the strings, a motion curiously like a caress, and began to play.
     It was a thing of angular elegance. It stepped in light circles of three and four, beckoning and retreating, one measure, two, and then Louis’s soft voice rose to match it.
     “Sally free and easy, that should be her name,
     “Sally free and easy, that should be her name,
     “Took a sailor’s loving, for a nursery game.”
     The young engineer’s face was wreathed in light, the strange glow Tanya sometimes perceived around him that it seemed no one else could see. She pressed further forward, pulling Conway with her.
     “Oh the heart that she gave me, was not made of stone,
     “Oh the heart that she gave me, was not made of stone,
     “It was sweet and hollow, like a honeycomb.”
     Louis lowered his head and cycled the melody through two simple variations, four measures. Conway’s heartstrings vibrated in sympathy.
     “Think I’ll wait till the sunset, see the ensign down,
     “Think I’ll wait till the sunset, see the ensign down,
     “Then I’ll take the tideway, to my burying ground.”
     He gave the melody a final contrapunctal spin and lowered his voice still further.
     “Sally free and easy, that should be her name,
     “Sally free and easy, that should be her name,
     “When my body’s landed… hope she dies of shame.”
     One bare cycle over the strings, and silence.
     The applause was sudden and vigorous. Louis bowed his head and waited for the approbations to die out.
     “Thank you.”
     Tanya nudged Kevin and whispered, “He didn’t do this last year.”
     Conway’s face clouded in recollection. “Events, love. There was other stuff to deal with, remember?”
     A pang went through her, and she nodded.
     “Is that new?” someone shouted.
     Louis shook his head. “Thirty years old at least. Written by an Englishman named Cyril Tawney. Ready for the old stuff?”
     The response was a wordless shout of assent.
     Louis nodded and began to pick again. This melody was more regular than the first. It sang of sunlight, a joyous romp over an open meadow, and an enveloping warmth.
     “Oh the summertime’s a comin’,
     “And the fields are sweetly growin’,
     “And the wild mountain thyme blooms around the purple heather,
     “Will you go, lassie, go?
     “For we’ll all go down together,
     “We’ll pull wild mountain thyme,
     “From around the purple heather,
     “If you’ll go, lassie, go.”
     The melody circled and rang in the great room.
     “I will build my love a bower,
     “By yon clear crystal fountain,
     “And around it I will sow,
     “All the flowers of the mountain,
     “Will you go, lassie, go?”
     Louis closed his eyes and let his fingers tease that timeless paean to youth and love from the strings in endless revolutions. He tipped back his head, his lips parted, and his sweet, soft baritone became a thing with wings.
     “If my true love will not go,
     “I shall surely find another,
     “Who’ll pull wild mountain thyme,
     “From around the purple heather,
     “Yes we’ll go, lassie, go,
     “And we’ll all go down together,
     “To pull wild mountain thyme,
     “From around the purple heather…
     “Will you go, lassie go?”
     A measure to relax, a measure to conclude, and it was done. The crowd erupted in mind-numbing applause, stomping and cheers.
     Tanya pulled Conway through the crowd, to the forward edge. Louis noticed. His eyes twinkled; he nodded minutely toward them and continued playing.
* * *

     “It is a blasphemy,” al-Siddiqui said.
     “The entire event is a blasphemy,” Sayyat replied. “The entire company is a blasphemy. Have you not seen? The sexes commingled, women in lascivious dress, haram food in the cafeteria, and no breaks for prayer! It has surely earned God’s wrath.”
     The Saudi turned away from the infidel performer and fixed an interrogative gaze on his companion. “Why, then, do you labor here? Why not at a company run by one of the Faithful?”
     Sayyat shook his head ruefully. “I tried, my brother. There are none in Onteora. Indeed, I could find none within two hundred miles.”
     “Then move! A servant of Allah must not take friends—or orders—from among the infidels!”
     Sayyat started to reply, caught himself, and returned his eyes to Louis Redmond.
     I must take care to keep him away from Fatima.
     His beloved was almost ready to return to the fold from which the infidels had seduced her. She could not and would not speak ill of Louis Redmond, nor of Emil Deukmeijian, whose affections she still craved. Yet she had spoken more than once of the fear and disorientation that had accompanied her apostasy from the Prophet’s Holy Way. Her sole hope of relief lay in her return to the One True Faith. But…not yet, may Allah make it so. Not quite yet. It was still too soon for Fatima Ozgal to learn of his plans for her. Any of them.
     “We must put a stop to this,” al-Siddiqui said, far too loudly. “No matter the cost.” Though a dozen feet separated them from the rest of the celebrants, dozens of heads turned toward them with stares of inquiry.
     “Brother, please!” Sayyat whispered. “We are two among many, and in no way prepared for anything but talk. There will be a better time.”
     “Allah wills it!”
     Onteora Aviation’s Administration Building cafeteria, though filled by more than seven hundred persons, immediately became silent. Sayyat turned to find that the two of them had become the focus of every eye in the huge room.
     “Excuse me,” said a soft baritone voice. “Don’t care for the music?”
     Louis Redmond stood before them, guitar in hand. His attention was fixed on al-Siddiqui.
     Al-Siddiqui’s face twisted into a mask of hatred. Sayyat stepped between them at once.
     “There is no need for this.”
     The little engineer shook his head. “I think there is, Marwan. Mr. al-Siddiqui—“
     “I am cousin to a king, infidel! A member of a royal house!”
     “Oh?” Louis’s eyebrows rose. “But we’re in America, not Saudi Arabia. Well, I suppose I should be polite to you anyway. Your people would insist that an American visitor there conform to local laws and customs, wouldn’t they?”
     Al-Siddiqui said nothing. His grimace remained in place.
     “I thought so,” Louis said. “Why are you here, surrounded by all these infidels and our revolting practices?”
     “I am the emissary of the defense minister of my country, and you will show me the proper respect!”
     “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Louis said. “All the respect you deserve and quite a lot more. Please note that no one is keeping you from leaving. If you need help finding your way out, I’m sure Marwan will be happy to assist you.” He smiled, returned to his chair, and settled the guitar on his lap once more.
     “Apologies for the interruption, ladies and gentlemen. Anyway, I’d say it’s time for a few Christmas carols, wouldn’t you?”
     The crowd roared in approval.
     Louis nodded in acknowledgement and began to pick.
     “Oh come, all ye faithful,
     “Joyful and triumphant,
     “Oh come ye, oh come ye, to Bethlehem…”
     A thunder of voices joined with Louis’s in song. Al-Siddiqui snarled and started forward. Sayyat took hold of the Saudi’s arm and jerked him back.
* * *

     Tanya was incredulous. “Where does all that brass come from?”
     Conway grinned. “You know him. He’d face down an invading army with one slightly raised eyebrow and a sneer of contempt.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t lay any bets on the outcome, either.”
     The party had recovered its spirits at full intensity. Louis swung from one traditional carol to another. The volume and gaiety of the crowd rose with each one. At the far edge of the gathering, al-Siddiqui and Sayyat had hunched toward one another and were conversing with apparent urgency. Now and then Sayyat glanced toward Louis, who was apparently unaware.
     “Kevin?”
     “Hm?” Conway turned to find the tall, husky figure of Emil Deukmeijian standing behind him.
     Deukmeijian indicated the two Muslims with his eyes. “I don’t like the way this is trending.”
     Conway shrugged. “Who does, Emil? Not much to be done about it at the moment. Marwan’s got as much right to be here as I do, and Anders Forslund invited al-Siddiqui here himself.”
     “All the same,” Deukmeijian said, “we should try to be ready, don’t you think?”
     “Ready for what?”
     “Anything.” Deukmeijian glanced again at the Muslims. “It’s an awfully nice party. Shouldn’t we try to make sure it stays that way?”
     Conway looked hard into the big software engineer’s eyes, smiled, and nodded. “Tanya, wait here, would you please? Emil and I will be back in a little while.”
* * *

     Sayyat stiffened as a large hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. He straightened and tried to shake off the offending digits, but failed. He turned partway to find Kevin Conway smiling at him.
     “Merry Christmas, Marwan. The two of you looked a bit lonely, over here all by yourselves. Terrible thing to behold on Christmas Eve. So we decided to bring you a little seasonal cheer.” He presented Sayyat with a small cup of yellowish fluid.
     Emil Deukmeijian had Hajj al-Siddiqui in exactly the same grip. The Saudi’s face had mottled with outrage.
     “If the two of you would be so kind as to come with us,” Conway murmured, “I think we can show you a better time than you appear to be having here.”
     “We will stay where we are,” al-Siddiqui growled. His eyes darted toward Deukmeijian. “And you will remove your unclean hand from my person!”
     “Oh, I think not,” Emil drawled. “That young fellow with the guitar you were talking to a little earlier? Happens that we think a lot of him. So does everyone else in this room. We’d take it badly if you were to do anything that might get him upset. And he gets very upset at any criticism of his singing. So we thought we’d let you know about that beforehand.”
     Emil’s fingers closed powerfully on al-Siddiqui’s shoulder. The Saudi’s face went dead white, and he started to slump to the ground. Emil quickly caught him and held him up.
     “A bit too much Christmas cheer, Mr. al-Siddiqui? And so early in the evening, too. I thought your sort didn’t drink. Well, it takes all kinds. As long as you’re going to stay, we’ll just stay here with you and make sure everything remains copacetic until you’ve had enough. That okay by you, Kevin?”
     Conway smiled ferally. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
     Sayyat wilted.
* * *

     “What was that all about?” Tanya said as Conway returned to her side.
     He shrugged. “Call it a peacekeeping measure.”
     “You really thought—“
     “No, love. Emil did, though. I was just backing his play.” Conway looked toward the departing Muslims. Deukmeijian was herding them through the cafeteria doors.
     Mission accomplished. Good work, Emil.
     “They don’t play nice,” he said. “The Middle Eastern ones bring their attitudes with them wherever they go. They’re Allah’s chosen people, and the rest of us are infidel scum: too happy, too free, and too ignorant of our lowly status. So they feel they have the privilege of abusing us, even in our own country. It doesn’t take a lot for that attitude to come to the surface.”
     He looked toward the front of the gathering, where Louis was packing up his guitar to groans of disappointment from his audience. “They can just barely bear to deal with the rest of us as if we were actual human beings. But there isn’t a man among them worthy to tie Louis’s shoelaces, they know it as soon as they look at him, and it gets them in a really tender place. The ones who’ve been in this country for a while have enough sense to restrain themselves. Most of them, most of the time, though there’s no telling what they’ll do when enough of them get together. But the ones fresh off the tarmac from places where their kind reign unopposed?” He shook his head. “Emil had the right idea. If the Saudi had dared to try anything with Louis…”
     Tanya wrapped an arm around him and snugged herself into his side. Her expression had become solemn. “They don’t belong here, do they?”
     “No,” Conway said. “They don’t.”

==<O>==

     Copyright © 2010 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

May 04 2024

This Is The Nation’s Top Economic Advisor

     And you won’t believe the crap he spouts, or how he stammers and misdirects:

     Time was, even a schoolchild knew what money is:

money n: a medium of exchange and a store of value.

     I was taught that before I could write a check. Note the and in the definition. Money must have both the indicated characteristics. Paper currency can be a medium of exchange, and land can be a store of value, but neither of them is money.

     In the clip above, Bernstein’s tongue tangles because he doesn’t want to be clear about how federal borrowing and the subsequent national indebtedness interplay. It’s vital to the power and status of the political Establishment that those who do understand it be as few as possible – and all of them corralled within the corridors of power.

     Time was, the national debt was owed to individuals and private companies (mostly private banks). But those days are far behind us. Today, the national debt is ever increasingly owed to the Federal Reserve Bank: the entity with the monopoly privilege of creating money out of nothing. In the simplest possible terms, it works like this:

  1. Congress passes an appropriations bill that overspends federal revenues.
  2. The Secretary of the Treasury applies to the Federal Reserve system for a loan.
  3. The Federal Reserve issues the loan to the Treasury: not as physical currency, but as a balance upon which the Treasury can draw. Simultaneously, the Fed creates one or more debt certificates: promises that the Treasury will repay the loan with interest, by some agreed-upon future time. The sum of those instruments equals the amount the Fed has loaned to the Treasury.
         Note that nothing in this sequence of events is at all physical. It’s all as virtual as can be: entries in various Federal Reserve and Treasury ledgers.
  4. The credit thus created enters the economy as it’s spent by the various departments of the federal government’s executive branch. In doing so, it dilutes the purchasing power of all the previously existing currency and credit in the national economy.
         The debt thus created is “serviced,” in financial language, by regular interest payments from the Treasury to the Federal Reserve. The principal amount is never reduced. When the debt’s due date arrives, it’s “refinanced” by another loan, possibly at a different interest rate.

     Under contemporary conditions – i.e., since the New Deal years – the principal-amount of the national debt is never reduced. Thus, there are repeating obligations on the Treasury to refinance it and to pay interest on it. Moreover, the total supply of currency and credit only increases, never decreases. Thus, the value of the dollar in purchasing real goods and services never increases; it can only decrease.

     Jared Bernstein is perfectly aware of all this. He’d never explain it to you in the simple, perfectly adequate manner above…but he will defend it to the death.

May 04 2024

From The “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Files

     Democrat politicians would like you to believe that they’re women’s best advocates and protectors. (Mind you, you mustn’t ask them Matt Walsh’s question “What is a woman?” That would upset them terribly.) They constantly prattle about “women’s rights,” as if one’s rights are in some way dependent on one’s sex. But then, we know what they’re really talking about, don’t we, Gentle Reader?

     Well, it seems that in the Democrats’ view, “women’s rights” don’t include the right guaranteed to all Americans by the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

    

     That’s an actual Democrat legislator who currently sits in the Minnesota state legislature. And yes, she’s just admitted, publicly, to being too stupid to learn how to operate a handgun. So perhaps she shouldn’t have one. But as an advocate for women’s rights…I’d imagine the leaders of her caucus, if they haven’t already taken her to the woodshed, will be doing so quite soon.

     I’d suggest spreading that clip around, especially to your left-leaning female friends and acquaintances. But I’m not quite done with this yet.

***

     A few questions of particular import:

  • Do you own a handgun?
  • Do you have it on your person when you leave your home?
  • Do you have it on your person when you’re in your home?
  • Where is it right now?
  • Do you think that’s where it should be at this time?

     I’ve been thinking about this in the light of two other considerations:

  • “Safe storage” laws and counsels;
  • The “when seconds count” mantra.

     The “safe storage” shibboleth, to which innumerable persons would automatically pledge their allegiance, is in direct contradiction to the “when seconds count” concept. After all, if we could predict when a need to defend oneself or a loved one would occur, there would be no value to the “when seconds count” notion. But we can’t, can we? Such moments can come upon us without much warning. When that happens, I wouldn’t want to need to descend to my basement, dial the combination of my gun safe, extract my handgun and a loaded magazine for it, combine them properly, then return upstairs and say to the threat, “Okay, Suddenly Appearing Threatening Person, I’m ready for you now.” Especially if I’m not at home at the time.

     A handgun is a defensive tool. If the need for self-defense can arise at any moment, should your handgun really be in a locked steel safe where it would take you a couple of minutes to fetch it and ready it for use? Would you expect to say to an intruder, “Just a second, I’ll be right back,” and have him assent?

     Now, many Americans live in districts that can legitimately be called “safe:” i.e., where in one’s day-to-day meanderings, a need for self-defense is highly unlikely to arise. But such districts are fewer than they once were. Ironically, the shrinkage of such safe areas can be directly, causally connected to the decline in Americans routinely going about their day armed and ready.

     Long Island, where I’ve made my home this past half-century, has both safe and unsafe areas, by my personal criteria. I would no more venture into one of the unsafe ones unarmed than I would pick my nose in church. But New York, “the Vampire State” whose residents’ Second Amendment rights have been deeply infringed in defiance of the Constitution, won’t have it. A Long Islander must go unarmed except when hunting or perforating targets at a state-approved shooting range. We’re not even allowed Tasers.

     At this time, New York Metro, which includes most of Long Island, is regarded as one of the least safe areas in the country. Yet decent people must go about unarmed, while predators do whatever they please. Make sense of that, if you can.

***

     Not long ago, a young nurse-practitioner-in-training asked me “Do you own any guns?” I was tempted to reprove her for it. I didn’t; her training officer was nearby and probably would have intervened, to everyone’s dissatisfaction. But even fully-fledged medical practitioners routinely ask that question of their patients. I think the AMA demands that they do so.

     This is the milieu. This is the state of our supposedly free country in this Year of Our Lord 2024. Being armed has been made akin to a disease, something medical practitioners must take into account when treating you for a cough or a blister. We wouldn’t want your KelTec P15 to interact negatively with the pill for your infection or the salve for your wound, would we?

     It’s more than a symptom. It’s a regression from our understanding of the prerequisites of safety and civility. It dismisses the central precept of all rights-based polities:

Man only possesses those rights
He can defend.

     But never fear, Gentle Reader. Officer Friendly will protect you. Didn’t he tell us so?

May 03 2024

“We Don’t Need No Laugh Track!”

     We’ve got enough to laugh at right in front of us…and laugh we must, for the sake of our sanity.

***

1. Did you really need to ask, Megyn?

     Well, she did answer her own question:

     Megyn Kelly wants to know what many of us are thinking.
     As anti-Israel protests continue to rage across America’s college campuses, the former Fox News anchor questioned why so many of the protesters look like they need to focus on themselves rather than issues in the Middle East.
     “Why are they so unattractive? Why are the protesters so homely?” she asked.
     “I think attractive smart people are not drawn to this nonsense. They are living their lives, being successful.”

     Cause People are seldom persons whose personal lives are rich and fulfilling. Political involvement is a convenient ego-bolster for those whose lives are empty and valueless. And he whose life is empty and valueless is nearly always aware of it. Politics has been called “show business for ugly people” for a good reason.

     But few who are unattractive, and incapable of doing anything that others would value, possess the characteristics necessary for success in overt politics. First and foremost, they can’t lie convincingly. Nor do they possess more energy and endurance than would suffice for a day or two of a “sit-in.” Give our politicians this much: they do have to hustle to win high office. Their competition sees to that.

     So our homely, valueless, but unenergetic cohort must turn to another anodyne: the Cause. And the Cause must be something that would disturb the great majority. Otherwise, people would yawn and turn the page. Couple that to the prospect of camaraderie with one’s “comrades,” and the lure becomes obvious.

     Sadly, municipalities cannot “zone” against Causes.

***

2. Quis custodiet,et cetera?

     I’ve become convinced that no one employed by a government can be trusted:

     That was a prosecutor, Gentle Reader. An agent of the State who has the power to ruin lives by accusation alone. I know we’re not supposed to take a refusal to testify as evidence of guilt, but given the subject matter, the specific question involved, and Pomerantz’s unwillingness to answer, what else could we be looking at?

     A prosecutor who, when asked whether he ever violated the law in the course of his public duties, invokes the Fifth Amendment right not to testify against oneself should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail. While that would be an “extra-judicial” remedy for untrustworthiness, it would also be a lot of fun.

***

3. Xenophobia Or Good Sense?

     Diagnose for yourself:

     President Joe Biden said Wednesday that U.S. ally Japan was struggling economically because of xenophobia, along with other countries with which the United States has more adversarial relations, including China and Russia.
     Speaking at a campaign fundraiser in Washington that marked the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Biden said the U.S. economy was growing in part “because we welcome immigrants.”
     “Think about it. Why is China stalling so bad economically?” he said. “Why is Japan having trouble? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.”

     Then why was Japan’s economy in the Seventies and Eighties the envy of the world, Joe? They didn’t admit immigrants then, either.

     Japan’s economic malaise has – as do most conspicuous political maladies – a number of contributing causes. Part of it is financial: the pyramiding of mountains of debt upon the value of urban Japanese real estate. Another part is sunk capital: Japan’s capital plant is difficult to modernize or repurpose. And a third is the rapidly aging Japanese population. But admitting immigrants in large numbers to the highly insular Japanese culture would not be a cure. It would be deadly, about like importing huge amounts of fentanyl…wait, don’t we do that here?

     Whoever’s scripting Biden’s speeches should be updating his resume.

***

4. Shouting Into The Wind.

     It’s highly distressing – on this I speak from experience – to express vital truths when no one is listening:

     As far as I know, Chip Roy is “one of the good ones.” What he said above is gospel truth, and vitally important to the American electorate. But it doesn’t matter. Even the GOP colleagues he lambasted in the above don’t think it matters. The proof: They’re not in the chamber.

     You’ll seldom see the camera that records an emission such as Rep. Roy’s pan out to display the rest of the House chamber. Congressvermin don’t listen to one another’s orations. That would take them away from the far more valuable hobnobbing with lobbyists and logrolling with their opposites across the aisle. That takes place in the lobby, not in the House chamber. But when a vote is called, they’ll flood in, vote, and then…go back to the lobby.

     Federal Republican legislators have two priorities:

  1. Get re-elected;
  2. Keep the swag coming in.

     Their sub rosa alliance with the Democrats provides them with both. As for the occasional maverick such as Chip Roy, he serves a useful function: the “conscience” of the caucus, to be trotted out when some portion of the electorate needs to hear some fire. But should he galvanize a following, he’d be purged.

     I sometimes wonder whether, were there no Chip Roys, would the public finally decide that it’s had enough and flush the Congressional toilet? Impossible to say, I know. But I can dream.

***

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I have a host of chores before me, so stay warm, dry, and properly lubricated. Back tomorrow, I hope.

May 03 2024

Light Reading

Not really. I’ve been reading about the Deep State, particularly the ‘Intelligence Community’. It has been some depressing and dark material.

Whoever wants to bring in some sunshine has a near-impossible task ahead of them. I like the idea from the linked article to employ Extreme Federalism. Federalism is a concept that is almost completely unknown among regular voters. The name always makes it seem like the complete opposite of what is meant by it.

At this point, although the balance on the Supreme Court is unsteady, the majority seem to be leaning towards neutrality or even a slight willingness to support the Federalism Model. That may snowball into a increase of the power of the states, at the expense of the overreaching hand of the Federal Government.

One can hope.

Realistically, improving the economy through growth of American companies, as well as drastically reducing the size of government, may be our best shot at digging out the dandelion-like entrenched Deep State. Dandelions are heavily on my mind at present; our part of northern Ohio has been a soggy mess for weeks, making it impossible to get the lawns trimmed. Until this week, most of the yards around me looked like jungles in the making.

As a result, the pernicious weeds had full run of the yard. I’ve spent a good portion of the last few weeks tending to long-overdue medical and dental appointments, running back and forth with my husband to see his ailing brother, and trying to manage some time to sort out paperwork that had been piling up.

But, the yard is mowed, and I have hopes of using my handy-dandy weed puller (see picture below, it’s a great little tool, and the long handle eliminates stooping or kneeling).

product gallery

Sink it into the middle of the weed, depress the plunger, and twist viciously to bring the blasted weeds out!

I love using it – can’t do it for a super long time, but I keep it handy on the porch for 15 minutes sessions – you can accomplish a lot in a short time.

I’ve been in a really good mood for the last several days. I managed to figure out what was wrong with my radio (wouldn’t turn on), bought the part, and it started right up. Just in time, too – I’ve started a CW class (Morse Code to the average person), and the radio has to be connected to the key in trainer mode to do my homework and classwork. I’m making nice progress, too. With some hard work, I could be contacting on CW by summer.

Other than that, I’ve been sorting, filing and throwing away paper. I’m setting aside some time each week to scan documents that are important. That’s because when life was chaotic this winter, I mislaid some tax stuff. My plan is to set aside important stuff to be scanned, then filed. Should the hard copy get mislaid, there will be an electronic backup.

My brother-in-law’s illness and hospitalization led us to a realization that we won’t likely live forever; therefore, we are going to – finally – get the paperwork done for power of attorney for health and finances, update our wills, make sure we write down instructions for ourselves and our kids, and commit to organizing access to our online accounts, including electronic and hard copy updates of our passwords. Also, get a safe deposit box and – for home – a fireproof safe for really essential stuff.

It’s a lot. I’ve gotten a tentative commitment from my husband to help with it, but, realistically, it’s probably going to be mostly my job. I’ll remind him about that the next time he complains about my lax approach to housework.

May 02 2024

When The Answer Is Terrifying…

     …the question is unlikely to be faced squarely.

     Dystopic’s painfully brilliant piece of Monday has been much on my mind. He poses a question whose most plausible answer is the reverse of comforting. Indeed, it extinguishes comfort. It undermines hope for a better society. It invokes a “don’t think about it” pressure that’s difficult to resist.

     Such a question is the sort for which I operate this site: the kind others are unwilling to confront. The core of the thing is the vignette about C, K, and W. The question Dystopic poses arises here:

     C provides a very good lifestyle – probably top 5% in the country – to K. But now K is dialed in to the expectations of the world, the chattering of the other women, and it is a kind of happiness poison. W wants to divorce her husband, take his money, and land somebody she perceives as higher status. Will this destroy K’s relationship with C? It remains to be seen. I hope not – C is a great guy, and K was a wonderful woman before the influence of W came into the picture.

     At first, C, K, and W are faceless figures in a morality tale. We can pretend we don’t know them and never will. But a bit later:

     To my horror, I realized at some point in this tale that if K follows W’s path, she will become the voice whispering to my wife: he should give you more, he’s not good enough. Trade up for someone else. How much of my own fear of losing what I have is rooted in the thought that I could very well be next in the domino chain of status obsession?

     And the key question strikes home with piledriver force:

Is envy transmissible?

     Let that simmer for a moment while I fetch more coffee.

***

     There are several indications that the answer is yes: it is. Moreover, the art of inspiring envy has been deeply studied. It’s the Left’s meat and drink. Its masters apply it routinely and diligently to a variety of political, commercial, and social venues.

     Envy undergirds the great majority of the hostilities and resentments prevalent among us today. Race-hustling of the sort that’s poisoned our society would not be possible without envy as its driving force. The notion of “class struggle” is a collectivization of the envious impulse. Bertell Ollman plainly knew what he was doing when he embedded it in a board game: if you can get the “players” thinking not about what they can achieve for themselves, but what others have that they don’t, the rest will follow as the night the day.

     Envy negates gratitude, and therefore happiness.

     Viewed dispassionately, envy appears above all to be a psychosis. The sufferer is unable to grasp a key fact of reality: What others have has nothing to do with him. But if there’s an antipsychotic medication that will dispel it, I’m unaware of it.

     An antidote to envy has become one of the central needs of our time.

***

     In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the late Robert Nozick addresses envy thus:

     The envious person, if he cannot (also) possess a thing (talent, and so on) that someone else has, prefers that the other person not have it either. The envious man prefers neither one having it, to the other’s having it and his not having it.

     He lays out these preferences in a footnote:

     With regard to you, another person, and having a kind of object or attribute, there are four possibilities:

He
You
1
Has it
Have it
2
Has it
Don’t Have it
3
Doesn’t Have it
Have it
4
Doesn’t Have it
Don’t Have it

     You are envious (with regard to that kind of object or attribute) if you prefer 4 to 2, while also preferring 3 to 4.

     Envy, therefore, is clearly a destructive impulse. The envious man would take from others even if he cannot benefit thereby. It’s the impulse toward a Harrison Bergeron variety of “equality.” As such, it provides power-mongers with a “rationale” for intrusions into the lives of others.

     Does “equality” arise from such intrusions? If Communist societies are relevant tests of the proposition, the answer is no, it does not. Rather, it elevates the nomenklatura ever farther above the proletariat. You’d think the moral would be obvious.

     Even so, envy is the dominant social force of our time. It’s been invited into every aspect of life. The political uses are obvious; the commercial uses are, perhaps, somewhat less so. The purely personal influences, such as those Dystopic sketched among C, K, and W, operate in concert with other atomizing forces to render us chilly in the midst of unimaginable warmth.

***

     Few rabble-rousers openly exhort their targets to envy. Neither is W, in Dystopic’s vignette, likely to acknowledge her envy of others who have what she lacks. Rather, the inciters of envy tell their targets what they deserve. And of course, what Smith “deserves” but lacks while Jones has and enjoys it is a stimulus for envy.

     Envy cannot be rendered impossible. Neither can it be assuaged, for there will always be inequality and irregularity in the world. But it can be caged. There are three limiters known to be effective:

  • Custom, as expressed through social disapproval and exclusion;
  • Religion that proclaims a Law of General Benevolence (cf. C. S. Lewis);
  • Laws that forbid the plundering of others and are rigorously enforced.

     I submit that those three limiters have been rendered inoperative in America today. Indeed, as Helmut Schoeck has written, the assuagement of envy – all the while being flogged to ever higher heights – seems today to be the ostensible aim of all social policy.

***

     When I first read Dystopic’s piece, I set my fingers to the keys and wrote about “the absolute treachery of more:”

     There will always be others who have more than you have. Who are wealthier, handsomer, more accomplished, more admired, and so forth. You are not any of them. You might wish you were, but the facts are as they are. You lack whatever gift they possess which made their attainments possible.

     What do you propose to do about it? Whether your gift is for plumbing, or programming, or proctology, there’s an upper bound on what you can achieve. No matter how well you do what you do, you’re not going to become a billionaire, a world-famous celebrity, or the idol of millions.

     But what can you be?

     Strangely, that last sentence – an undisguised plea to think about oneself — is the one the envious almost never address. “Why don’t I have a mansion in Bedford? Why don’t I have a yacht and a Lamborghini? Why don’t I have a lover of Apollonian magnificence who’s utterly devoted to me?” The answer is distasteful – and the envious person knows it:

You haven’t earned those things.
You’re probably incapable of it.

     Once again, the answer, which is as obvious as a cow in church, keeps the question from being frankly addressed. As a rule, and in the absence of predation, each of us gets what he deserves. Each of us has what he has the wit to appreciate, maintain, and defend. And like it or not, we don’t all deserve the mansion, the Lambo, the yacht, and the demon lover.

     And with that, I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

May 01 2024

The Return Of The “Outside Agitator”

     They were big back in the Sixties. At least, the reports of them seemed to be everywhere. But there followed a period of relative calm. University-based radicalism retreated from the public eye to a large degree. It found the classroom a homier venue.

     I needn’t provide you any links, Gentle Reader. You can find them for yourself. Make a point of perusing the photos. Note the similarity in costuming between so many of these “student protestors” and the vermin of AntiFa, BlackBloc, and HAMAS and Hezbollah. Keffiyehs are everywhere. So are black masks and black garb. Think there’s a message in there?

     Young adults – late teens through the early twenties – are the members of our species most easily whipped into a frenzy. For one thing, they have very active glands. For another, they believe themselves to be the saviors of Mankind, despite not knowing shit about anything. And a terrifying percentage of college instructors play to their vanities. Why? Unclear.

     I can’t imagine a better place than the university for an outside agitator to ply his Soros-funded trade. Thousands of ignorant, easily agitated kids with delusions of world-historical stature! If there’s an Athene Academy among them – intellectually speaking, not the genital stuff – I don’t know of it.

     Really, the universities would be much quieter places if the students would expend their energies fucking, the protests of bluenosed Americans notwithstanding. Maybe those condom and lubricant dispensers in dormitory bathrooms aren’t a bad thing after all. Now what can we do to get the kiddies to use them? Free Proactiv and teeth whiteners?

     I’ve been saying this for a while now: the universities are doomed. They should be walled off: no one allowed out. You want in? It’s a one-way deal, Bucko. Food and sanitary supplies are airdropped once a week. Enjoy your “liberation.”

     No, I’m not feeling poorly. I’m feeling prescient. For a good thirty years, the evidence of metastasized ideological cancer among the universities has been plainly visible. If it was ever possible to save them from themselves, that time has passed.

     Legislators: Defund the state systems.
     Donors: Pull the purse strings tight.
     Parents: Teach your children well – in particular, that if they’re really serious about learning, they’ll do more of it by spending four hours in the library five days per week than they would at any American “institution of higher education.” And that you’ll be damned rather than see a penny of your money go to any such pesthole.

     On this subject, there’s nothing more to say. Perhaps I’ll be back later with something cheerier.

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