Feb 24 2021
One time I saw a clip of a reporter trying to interview Kanye West asking him to remove his MAGA hat because “it made him feel unsafe”. West basically told the guy to fuck off.
Statistically you have a higher probability of being killed by your own furniture than an act of terrorism, let alone being attacked by anybody in a MAGA hat.
“Deconstructing ‘WokeThink’.” By Mark Jeftovic, ZeroHedge, 2/22/21.
Feb 24 2021
I’m regaining a little dexterity in my hand, even though I still have a splinted finger, so let’s see how this goes…
I’ve ranted before about the insidiousness of licensure. In effect, it reduces a right to a permission that can be denied at the government’s whim. It’s usually introduced under the rationale that it’s necessary to ensure “order” and / or “public safety.” And regardless of any evidence that might emerge subsequently to challenge that “necessity,” the licensing regime never, ever goes away. Power, jobs, and graft have their own logic, don’t y’know.
Right after right has been reduced to a permission in this manner. Most Americans have accepted it as “just one of those things.” The flacksters of “American democracy” tell us that as long as we have the right to say whatever we think and vote for the candidates we prefer, we can always change such things to suit our preferences…and that “that’s what freedom is all about.” But as of today, the process has finally reached the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression:
Two Congressional Democrats sent letters of demand to thirteen prominent cable and streaming services, including Amazon, Roku, Hulu and Apple streaming services attempting to shred what is left of free speech….
The final demand comes with an ominous tone;
“Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV both now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why?”
Behind those “demand letters” stands the implied threat of regulatory constriction of the threatened streaming services. In this fashion, the Democrats hope to extend Washington’s stranglehold over traditional broadcasting onto the Internet. Their rationale: combatting the spread of “disinformation and extremism.” The probable mechanism would be the use of the Commerce Clause to impose federal control on the Net, with all that implies.
Feeling a chill yet?
The fear I’d harbored was that the late, unlamented Fairness Doctrine would return. This is plainly worse: an attempt to censor streamers if they carry disfavored content. It begins with intimidating inquiries such as the ones cited here; it will end with draconian regulation. I should have been more paranoid, not less.
Consider: the “disinformation” the Democrats are most determined to suppress concerns the blatant theft of the 2020 presidential election. They don’t want any further propagation of the evidence for that theft. A fair number of Republicans would unhesitatingly support them in that goal. It’s all about “order” and “public safety.” Can’t have the peasants marching on the palace with torches and pitchforks, now can we? Too may rice bowls are at stake!
Your vote has already been neutered. Your right to keep and bear arms, as heavily restricted as it already is, is likely to be restricted even further. Now your access to channels through which to receive and further disseminate important information – information the Usurper Regime doesn’t want you to have – is under attack.
We have well and truly arrived at the last hill.
Feb 23 2021
And “our” best thinking got us here:
When a world already in trouble was hit by a severe financial crisis in September 2019, the dose of debt was already excessive. But as the Fed and the ECB opened the money spigots fully, they filled the world with poisoned or fake money. The BY team (Biden & Yellen) will now be certain to finish this process with their profligate spending plans.
MAJOR CENTRAL BANKS BALANCE SHEETS UP 6X SINCE 2006
The financial system has been poisoned for decades by governments’ excess spending and central banks’ prodigal printing of toxic and worthless money.[1]
It’s amazing how so many incredible fortunes are made now by just moving pieces of paper or digital bits around. The notion that the financial world is focused on the fundamentals of a productive economy is absurd. Mr. Von Greyerz publishes a graph showing the take of total income that the tip top 10% enjoy. On the eve of the Depression, it was 50% and now it’s the same. From 1940 to 1980 their take went down to the mid 30s, a period Von Greyerz labels the American Dream. But it’s gone. People today hang by a thread.
I emphasize that “capitalism” is something amazingly productive and creative but that it can only operate correctly in a symbiotic relationship with government. Ordered liberty if you will but with a focus on production and growth.
What is wrong with the current approach is not “capitalism” but the failure of the political class to concern itself with anything other than cashing in, short-term gain, gaming the system (electoral as well as economic), or pandering to minorities for political leverage and, now, control. Every last significant act of the federal monstrosity since the start of the Great Society has been utterly without regard to long-term consequences — creation of a dependent welfare class, consequent destruction of the nuclear family, hyperfeminism, absurd censorship, mass surveillance, Glass-Steagal repeal, “climate” anything, off-shoring, mass third-world immigration, fiscal lunacy, monetary panic, and pointless, ruinous war in pursuit of our dumbass notion that the world needs and hungers for our, so help me God, leadership. Because . . . wait for it . . . “our democratic values.”
This is the perfect formula for the creation of a crisis of legitimacy that the Tea Party and Donald Trump only hinted at politely. Congress strains at a gnat (Russia!!, vindictive impeachment of Trump, Capitol Hill “insurrection”) but swallows a camel (National Guard around the Capitol, year-long AntiFa criminality, alliance with terrorists in Syria, sanctions against naughty foreigners, unbelievable lockdown destruction blithely ordained, fiscal hemorrhage, spit-in-your-face plutocracy).
But the political class are oblivious and, as an earlier post showed, have in their infinite wisdom embarked on a strategy of currency debasement as a way to fiddle their way out of the predicament caused by their abysmal stewardship and utter lack of fidelity to the Constitution and the nation. Unlike the socialist and progressive morons, I don’t want to fiddle with “capitalism” by adding more cars for its magnificent engine to pull or throwing sand in the gears. I do think that major changes are in order that are premised on pure populism, namely, reducing the inordinate economic and polical power of a tiny class of humans who seem to think they are gods and can determine the fortunes of mere human flotsam and jetsam. Great Reset anyone? And we all know what that entails, don’t we? No. No Great Reset. Kcuf that. The Great Devolution, is more like it. Dumping Citizens United and gutting the federal government like a hog. For starters. Then deporting every last illegal alien with a vengeful fury that would make Sam Jackson turn pale.
Then there’s this kind of poison:
Protests premised on baseless claims of alleged voter fraud and irregularities were to blame for President Donald Trump’s electoral defeat have rocked state capitol buildings and election centers at a regular pace since the November 3 election. These so-called “Stop the Steal” rallies have often attracted far-right elements, including militia movement groups, pro-civil war “Boogaloo” supporters, violence-prone Proud Boys members, white nationalist activists, and conspiracy theory driven extremists. A handful of far-right figures, including white nationalist podcaster Nicholas Fuentes and conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones, have received top billing at a handful of Stop the Steal protests. Other events have featured speakers who are notorious for creating and spreading disinformation online.[2]
Thus are the great issues discussed in the public square.
Notes
[1] “Von Greyerz: How Will It All End?” By Egon von Greyerz, ZeroHedge, 2/22/21.
[2] “#StopTheSteal protest website tied to extremist-linked activist’s digital marketing firm.” By Jared Holt, Digital Forensic Research Lab, 12/3/30 (emphasis added).
Feb 22 2021
…because earlier today, one of my dogs – Precious, the Pit Bull mix – mangled my right hand. I have a cast on one finger and two others swollen from a “crush” injury.
I’ll give you the whole story when I can type again. I’m sure Linda, the Colonel, Margaret, Historian, Dystopic, and Pascal will keep you diverted until I return.
All my best,
Fran
Feb 22 2021
Here’s the list – Democrats all.
Let’s put some effort into backing their opponents in the next election, shall we? Perhaps Mrs. Limbaugh can get a fund set up, and give it a little seed money, as a memorial to her husband’s life’s work. I think he would have appreciated that.
Those POS’s need to go home – ASAP.
Feb 22 2021
…you’ve lost the battle – maybe, even, the war.
The Left looks at the Cancel Culture, the Deplatforming, and the stranglehold they have on the televised news, and thinks, “We’re WINNING!”
Because so many in that group are unacquainted with any of the Normals, except as 2-dimensional characterizations, they miss the essential point:
Not cowed and fearful.
Angry.
Not stupid enough to posture with weaponry in public venues.
But, I’ve had many conversations with people who are not activists, nor unusually hardcore NLD. Just regular folks, trying to live a decent life.
And, they’re getting no help from government. In fact, the government seems to be going out of its way to hinder that goal. And, it’s starting to make them angry.
Angry enough to:
First, secure their own responsibilities (family, friends, neighbors). Prep. Install those security features on the property. Arm up. Start a Bug-out stash – both money and supplies. Get fit. Learn skills that may come in handy in any economic/political disruption.
Second, start connecting with each other. On the QT. Offline. NOT plotting sedition, but preparing for the other side to strike first. The same plan that the Minutemen (the original ones) had. Don’t start nothing, but don’t back down.
Prepared. For whatever comes their way.
Feb 22 2021
Cue one of the many great Billy Joel songs:
Where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah.
I have asthma. One of the common issues with it is that coughing and breathing episodes tend to cluster in the early morning hours – literally, in the middle of the night.
I used to think of this as a bad thing. However, since I developed asthma, in my 40s, I’ve used that late night wakefulness to read, plan, and write. Attacks involve needing to sit up in a chair, take my meds, and get my breathing back to normal. Then, often staying awake a while longer, just to get my racing heart to slow down – the meds used in an attack are chemically very similar to adrenaline.
I used to think of this all as a BAD thing. Tonight, for the first time, I wondered whether I would have ever start writing without that happenstance.
So, maybe my late night quiet alertness is a GOOD thing..
It made me think about the connection between Leftist adherents, and the fact that so many of them are WOMEN.
Now, despite their cherished view of themselves as independent thinkers and non-conforming, STRONG women, unlike those wishy-washy stay-at-home moms, in reality, the females who are most outspoken in promoting SJW/CRT/Leftist Dogma are generally those unwilling or unable to act alone.
They are the ones who feel most alive in the company of others who think, talk, and act as they do. They are what were called the “Woooo!” girls on an episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Groupthink.
Conformity.
Inability to act/think/talk independently.
I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.
It is likely that this desire to fit in – to act in ways that the crowd deems worthy – that fueled many of those involved in the actions of January 6. Normally, most of them were average in their activities – these were not the ones that met with fellow revolutionaries in quiet places and plotted sedition. No, they were those who enjoyed gathering with others, the kind of crowds in which they didn’t have to watch ever word or facial expression, where they could let fly those forbidden thoughts about liberty.
It’s not just extroverts that fall prey to this; even introverts sometimes yearn to be a part of a valued clique. In fact, the geeky outsider may be even more vulnerable to the lure of inclusion.
I’ve enjoyed speculating on future events. I will continue reading and touching base on the political situation, and that includes local, national, and international happenings.
But, I’m not going to make that my major focus in the future. I have a life, however limited at the moment, and I have plans for how I want to spend it.
I started writing again this weekend (on my stories and books), and I liked it. I got a satisfaction that I’d been missing.
The same with other parts of my life. On Friday, I reorganized the office area, moving furniture, and cleaning behind the cabinets and shelves (Lord, it was disgusting!). Sitting in my desk on Saturday, I experienced a pleasure I’d been missing. I was able to find things, work on my projects, and just feel less stressed.
I have a large house that needs weeding out. I’ve been putting off tasks, lured as I’ve been into following the Rabbit down the Hole.
I’m planning to broaden my local connections. I need to re-attach to the physical world, and lessen my time online. I will be re-engaging, focusing on the here and now, and making sure that, in my desire to keep the country intact, I don’t lose myself. Part of that determination is to make sure that, for at least a set period of every day, I focus on the day-to-day tasks that have been piling up – taxes, paperwork, necessary phone calls, and my own writing (not blog-type).
Feb 22 2021
As usual, I was wrong:
Disney has decided that “The Muppet Show” — featuring Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear and Miss Piggy — contains “offensive content” and can now be seen only on an adult account.
When viewers open the streaming service, which made five series available last Friday, viewers are greeted with the disclaimer: “This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the Daily Mail reported.
“Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe,” the statement says.
Incredible. But it does include all the usual Leftist cant about “diversity” and “inclusion.”
Leftists run Disney today. The company’s founder, a shy, humble, and thoroughly decent man who never had a harsh word for anyone, would not believe what has become of his firm. More than a half century since his passing, Disney has become a fount of anti-American, anti-Christian, racist and victimist sentiments.
Apparently the Leftists at Disney’s helm today are offended by the Muppet Show’s uses of cultural caricatures. They’d condemn me for noting that many members of the nationalities and cultures caricatured actually conform to those stereotypes. Stereotypes, after all, don’t spring from the void fully formed; they arise because millions of people fit them. Moreover, it’s from caricatures and stereotypes that a huge amount of entertainment – especially comedy – is drawn. That’s the case in every country on Earth, not just in America.
But Leftists have no problem caricaturing whites and Christians as narrow-minded bigots, pigheaded and provincial in all things. That’s perfectly acceptable by their rules. We don’t possess the all-important Certified Victim Group credential. Never mind that there’s never been a less bigoted, more tolerant or accepting society than the 70% white United States of America. Leftists are uninterested in facts that impede their path to totalitarian power.
Whites are supposed to just grin and bear it. Far too many of us do. But if one of us should dare to note behavior, preferences, and accents characteristic of various demographic cohorts? Burn him at the stake!
There are days I wish I’d made a habit of saving my hate mail. Especially the hate mail I got for this column, or this one, or this one. It helped to complete the opening of my eyes. They will never again be closed to the Left’s ravening hatred of everything American…of everything in which earlier generations of Americans took pride, or found value, instruction, or entertainment.
The Left must be destroyed. Not merely forced out of all positions of authority or influence; destroyed. It must become so utterly unacceptable to hold Leftist sentiments of any variety that anyone who’s expressed them where decent Americans could hear will be forever after unemployable, barred from all decent society, and condemned to ostracism. May their lives be nasty, poor, brutal, and short.
Yes, I do know what I’m advocating. Yes, I’m perfectly serious about it in every respect. No other measure will halt America’s descent into madness, much less reverse it. Besides, isn’t it what they’re trying to do to us?
Feb 21 2021
…to all those responsible for this:
Over the past 26 hours – i.e., since midnight February 20, Pacific time ¬– Amazon customers have downloaded just under 2900 free copies of Antiquities. That’s as of 5:00 AM EST today.
A little visibility at last!
Feb 21 2021
Never mind our out-of-control spending, debt, monetary destructiveness, and foreign military adventure (FMA). This is just in the unemployment program created by the CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] Act:
The DOL-OIG [Dept. of Labor Office of the Inspector General] estimates at least $63 billion of the $630 billion in disbursements were squandered by fraudsters. The agency warns that taxpayer funds loss could be higher, with some figures suggest north of $100 billion.[1]
As the saying goes, “You only had ONE thing to do.” It never ceases to amaze me that people who can’t find their ass with with a searchlight run a lemonade stand think we’ll jump on that Great Reset deal with full confidence in our lying, thieving, hypocritical political class leaders to really and truly get it right this time.
“Get it right” doesn’t quite have the meaning you might think it does, however. A George Soros-Bill Gates, MD-Goldman Sachs-JPM-Twitter-Google-YouTube-CNN-DNC-Cosmo Girl-Frans Timmermans-Angela “We’ll schaffen you” Merkel-NATO-Greta “You’ve stolen my childhood” Thunberg-AntiFa-BLM-Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton-Whoopi Goldberg-Lena Dunham-Rachel “Why can’t I get a job?” Dolezal BOHICAthon is more like it.
You’ll love life as a serf according to their plan. Getting it right, as I say.
Notes
[1] “‘It’s A National Crisis’ – Officials Admit Billions Lost In ‘Veritable Tsunami’ Of Pandemic Aid Fraud.” By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 2/20/21.
Feb 20 2021
Year after year, the federal government has spent more than it takes in. Now the debt has piled up past the point of no return; there’s no longer an expedient way to reverse course.
But don’t worry. The eggheads have a plan…
Guided by eggheads, the U.S. government, and by extension the American people, are fully committed to a program of currency debasement to inflate away the debt problem. The eggheads believe executing an implicit default via inflation is the easier and softer way.
Over the last 90 years politicians have promised something for nothing. And voters obliged them. Thus, eggheads from Benjamin Strong to Alan Greenspan, from Robert Rubin to Ben Bernanke, from Janet Yellen to Jerome Powell, and every egghead in between, have put their egghead minds to the task of how to deliver…
Countercyclical stimulus spending. Interest rate suppression. Quantitative easing. Operation Twist. Yield curve control. Elastic currencies. Money shuffling. Inflation targeting. Modern Monetary Theory. Smoke and mirrors.[1]
Astronomic, reckless debt that can never be paid off, all for socialist, interventionist, piñata party, Great Society, nose-in-the-trough, toga party, New Deal, trust us, fly-in-the-face-of-common-decency, cultural Marxist, nature-defying, wipe-every-nose, free-range chicken, diversity-is-our-strength, chase-your-tail, leftist bullshit.
Notes
[1] “QE, MMT, YCC, Smoke & Mirrors: Exposing The Great Egghead Caper.” By MN Gordon, ZeroHedge, 2/20/21 (emphasis removed).
Feb 20 2021
Tucker Carlson reports on the “impartial” investigator of the House Leadership, who will “fairly” poke around to find out what really happened on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington.
Well, that makes me feel safe!
Via Ace of Spades, I found this link, with a person who is NOT saying anything crazy or violent or anything, and who should trigger no alarms among Trump’s security protection detail.
BTW, Nicole Wallace, the MSNBC employee, introduced that Not-Crazy-at-All person’s segment with a video of a Trump-owned building being demolished in an implosion. And, joked about it.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know that it’s not lay down and submit. It’s likely to get ugly – hell, it already IS ugly. When a so-called Free People have to lie and say what is evidentally false:
Well, if the Left has to force you to Lie, it’s for your own good. And, don’t you DARE call them lies!
You could add your own ideas to the above examples of just some of the craziness that has overtaken the Left. You probably can’t get wilder than the reality.
For Winston, Freedom was the freedom to say 2 + 2 = 4.
For us, it’s the freedom to insist on living like a Free People.
So, tell me, Men of America – will you be Free Men, or Slaves of the Left?
Feb 20 2021
…but haven’t got any spare cash? It’s a sad problem, one I’ve suffered in the past. Back then, I did a lot of rereading, which was made possible by my habit of never, ever parting with a book. But today there’s a superior alternative.
The Baen Free Library is exactly that: books Baen Books has published – mostly a few years back – that it will allow anyone to download at no charge! Novels from several of fantasy’s and science fiction’s best known luminaries are included in the Free Library. I’ve enjoyed many of them.
Here are a few names prominent in the Free Library:
We’re talking heavy hitters here. These aren’t no-name nobodies desperate for a little exposure. They’re major talents who allow Baen to distribute several of their best known, best loved works for free.
I mean, yeah: you could kick back with a nice fluffy romance novel, if that’s to your taste. But if you want action…if you want adventure…if you want whole planets, nay whole galaxies mired in unspeakable crises, hit the Baen Free Library.
Tell ‘em Fran sent you. No, you won’t get anything extra that way, but tell ‘em anyway. I can use the exposure.
Feb 20 2021
[My dear friend F. James Dagg has sent along a short story of his early years. It possesses the sort of surprise punch that characterizes his short fiction. Enjoy. — FWP]
I was almost thirteen, and a contradiction. Short, still childlike at a glance, no one took me to be nearly a teenager; but I was bright beyond my years, or so the tests said (I was a year ahead in school), and, perhaps, older in ways not so easily measured. I read a lot, and, for the first time, I was in love.
Her name was Meghan, and the silent “h” enchanted me as much as her perfect Nordic face, her thick blond hair sculpted in a jaw-length bob, and the way she walked. She was a senior, and if the small college town we lived in hadn’t built the middle school and the high school nearly on top of each other I would never have known her. But then, “known” isn’t right—if Meghan was aware of any eighth-graders, I’m sure I was not among them.
My parents—I had two, according to the times—taught me the quaint values: don’t lie, don’t steal, be considerate of your neighbors. And the smaller, civilizing things—table manners, don’t shout, hold the door for a lady—even as the times changed all around us.
I wandered downtown one early autumn evening, coming as I was into a boy’s age of curiosity about things social, drawn to the ever-changing liveliness of the college. As young as I was, and a local, I was of small interest to the freshmen with their getups and their self-conscious loudness, and I was invisible to the smug upperclassmen who slummed among the newcomers. I took in the circus of the new academic year as I walked on.
The auditorium’s marquee read, “Steinem, Abzug, Tonight, 6pm.” I had heard those names, and knew a little of what they were about, and had wanted to know more. But I had missed the evening’s program. It was about nine, and time to head home—my parents would be starting to worry.
Then my eyes dropped from the marquee and fell upon…Meghan.
An electric thrill surged through my chest. She was halfway across the lobby, ahead of the crowd that poured from the lecture hall inside. She wore a tight sweater, a short, pleated kilt, and a supremely determined look, which her confident stride reinforced. She came straight toward the tall glass doors right there before me, and she was, in that moment, the world to me—past, present, future—forever. As my heart and my ancestors bade me, I opened the door and held it for her.
“Men are pigs,” she announced, loudly, as she strode through, her head high.
Three more steps in her knee-high boots, and she threw a glance over her shoulder.
“All of them.”
That was the only time our eyes ever met.
I don’t know if I looked like a pig, but I’m sure I looked like a fool as I stood there holding the door, staring, mouth half open, as the click of her heels on the sidewalk receded into the night.
It’s late in my middle years now, and my parents are gone, with most of their generation. I’m modestly successful, and don’t want for much. At the odd times I socialize with those of my age, when talk turns from business and television to children and grandchildren, among those who have them, I’m sometimes asked how it is I never married. The reasons are many, and most, perhaps, are my fault. But always, when the question arises, I remember Meghan as if it were yesterday.
Feb 20 2021
For today, Saturday, February 20 through Monday, February 22, my latest novel, Antiquities, is free of charge at Amazon:
Gail was a has-been singer from a forgotten band, surviving by performing for small crowds in coffee houses and bars, near to giving up on everything.
Evan was a venture capitalist, widowed by cancer and robbed of his only child by a car crash, who kept going on momentum alone.
They were going through the motions, barely clinging to life, until one Friday evening in a central New York bar, when a faint and a spontaneous rescue brought them together.
Then the music really started.
Enjoy it – and if you like it, PLEASE, PLEASE, REVIEW IT!
Feb 20 2021
Delusional, willfully blind, unprincipled, enemies of liberty.
By extension, leftists have a bizarre obsession with Russia and the theory that Russia is an ever present hand of god in US politics, yet, none of them can produce any concrete proof that Russia has meaningful influence in American elections or affairs.
The political left has committed itself to a fantasy world; a parallel universe. They deeply believes in things that never happened, and treat those beliefs as sacrosanct. . . .
Refusal to question the actions and motives of your chosen movement is willful ignorance, and leftists should be held accountable for that.
They are the ONLY group of people that has consistently supported mass surveillance, mass censorship and deplatforming, mass violence, property destruction and looting as well as violations of individual rights through medical mandates and lockdowns.
They call conservatives “insurrectionists” and “traitors”, but they are the only people openly trying to dismantle constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.[1]
This is a fantastic essay. It merit’s the Colonel’s coveted “must read” rating, along with my entire blog, of course.
Notes
[1] “A Question For Leftists: Why Are All The Evil People On Your Side?” By Brandon Smith, Alt-Market.us, 2/17/21.
Feb 19 2021
My collection of religiously-themed stories, previously available only from Smashwords, is now available from Amazon:
A baker’s dozen journeys in faith, replete with miracles, mysteries, and gentle explorations of God at work in the lives of men. Only $2.99 as a Kindle eBook. (The paperback isn’t quite ready yet.)
Feb 19 2021
I’m thinking State-chartered Savings & Loans, Credit Unions within a single state (but, perhaps with affiliated setups in other states), and other ways to bypass the Choke Point rules.
I’m looking at places to put my available money – friendly money-holders, local credit unions, savings and loans. Also, investments in individual companies (which comes with a big risk, as the work of the Federal Fundstapo may imperil that company, and put my investment in peril).
Any ideas?
Feb 19 2021
One of the most illuminating things ever to emerge from the mind of a pope was this from Pope Benedict XVI: faith is inseparable from doubt. He who holds to a faith of any sort will be plagued by doubts now and then.
That insight applies to more than just religious faiths.
We who believe in the original American idea – i.e., in freedom under sharply limited government and the rule of law rather than of men – have recently had ample reason to doubt. The whole notion has come under attack. Millions of people – perhaps half the population of the country – show absolutely no interest in freedom today. They want their subsidies, their subventions, their protected statuses, and no doubt their MTV. Everything else is irrelevant to them.
The recognition has disturbed many of us pro-freedom types. A country cannot endure as half-free. A certain Abraham Lincoln said that, back when. He may not have been an ideal president or a constitutionalist, but he certainly got that right.
So we’re besieged by doubts. The situation is testing our faith in the American experiment. What do you do when an important component of your belief system is so badly shaken?
When the subject is a religious faith, the key is to go on just as you’ve been going. That seems to be the prescription for assaults on a political faith as well. Of course you make adjustments. You make provisions for assaults from “the other side.” But you keep to your convictions. You resist any and all attempts to infringe on your rightful liberty. You grant no special status to anyone who tries to coerce you, be he a private citizen or the president of the United States.
The optimists among us often say things such as “in the end, we win.” I wish I could share their confidence, but as I’ve said more than once, confidence is what you feel just before you get blindsided. Better to be wary, on the alert and flexed to react.
Anyway, have a bit of fiction to round this off. It’s a story from a collection I expect to release at Amazon sometime soon. And yes: Evan Conklin is one of the Marquee characters in Antiquities, the giveaway for which begins tomorrow.
Gavin’s alarm clock buzzed with its usual peevish insistence. He cracked an eyelid, noted the hour and the pervading darkness, and pulled the covers over his head, hoping against hope that it wasn’t really his least favorite morning of the week yet again.
It was not to be. Within seconds came his father’s usual sharp knock.
“Come on, son.” Even at three-thirty in the morning, Evan Conklin always sounded as relaxed and jovial as a man who’s just finished a fine meal in the company of his best friends. “We’ve got work to do.”
Gavin grumbled an obscenity and flung back the bedcovers with a sweep of his arm. The winter chill was upon him at once, singing along his spine loudly enough to make his teeth chatter. He slapped at the alarm clock with one hand while he groped for his robe with the other and hurried off to the bathroom for a shower and shave.
Gavin couldn’t linger over his toilet if he was to set out at the appointed hour. Evan allowed him to sleep half an hour later than he allowed himself. It was hurry, hurry, hurry from the moment his feet touched his bedroom floor to the moment he buckled himself into the passenger seat of their car. The work, his father explained more than once, would not permit it.
Their destination was only a few miles away, but in the wee-hour blackness of a continental New York winter it seemed like an hour’s ride. It was long enough for Gavin to fall back to sleep, but he didn’t permit himself. One awakening per morning was more than enough. He forced himself to full alertness, stretching out his lower back, loosening the muscles in his arms, hips, and legs, and working his lungs open by steadily deepening his breathing. His father merely drove and said nothing.
Our Lady of the Pines was completely dark. Evan pulled a ring of keys from his coat pocket, thrust one into the lock that had only last spring been installed in the tall oaken doors, and shepherded them inside, flipping light switches as he went. The nave of the church blossomed into brightness. Evan headed directly for the mop closet, while Gavin went to fetch the vacuum cleaner.
Gavin had almost finished vacuuming the little church in preparation for the early Mass when the vampire fell upon him.
The creature was tall and evil of aspect. Its grip was cruelly tight. Its breath upon Gavin’s neck stank of ordure and rotting flesh. Despite its form, it was hard to believe that something so foul could once have been a man.
It had him at its mercy, yet it did not strike. Its attention was fastened upon his father, who stared from the altar steps, mop dangling from his hand.
“Well?” the creature snarled. “Aren’t you going to plead for mercy? Aren’t you going to offer me your blood in place of your son’s? It’s customary, you know.”
Evan smiled slightly. “No need.”
“Oh? You’ll concede me your son’s life if I agree to spare yours, then?”
Gavin squirmed in terror, but the vampire’s grip was inescapable. Evan shook his head. “Not at all. You won’t be killing anyone this morning.”
The vampire cackled. “Really? How do you plan to stop me?”
“I don’t.” With his eyes, Evan indicated the crucifix suspended above him. It evoked a snort of derision.
“Yet you see that I am here, in the heart of your imaginary God’s house where I’m not even supposed to be able to enter, doing as I will with your boy.” Gavin shuddered as the creature’s talons ruffled his hair. “He looks a tasty morsel. I expect I will enjoy breaking fast more than usual this morning.”
His father’s gaze remained perfectly serene. “Go ahead, then. Feed on him.”
A stillness forged of cold iron descended upon the church. Nothing moved nor stirred.
“Well?” Evan said. “What are you waiting for?”
The vampire did not respond.
“You have your victim,” Evan pressed. “He’s helpless in your grip. You know I can’t stop you. Why haven’t you struck him?”
“What makes you so sure I won’t?” the vampire snarled. It crushed Gavin to itself with lung-emptying force, and he gasped in pain.
“It’s perfectly simple,” Evan said. “You won’t because you can’t. You don’t really exist.”
“What?” the vampire roared. “I stand here in your holy place, your son my helpless captive, mocking your Savior as the phantasm you take me to be. I hold your boy’s life in my arms, and you deny my existence with such ease?”
“Of course,” Evan said. “If God is real, then you are not. A just God would not permit the existence of a creature that could suck the soul out of a man’s body and subject him to eternal torment, he having done no wrong of his own free will. And God exists. Therefore, you do not.”
The vampire’s grip loosened, and Gavin’s fear was tinted with puzzlement.
“You see me before you,” the creature said slowly. “You hear my voice and smell my odor. Your son feels my claws upon his flesh. Yet you refuse to believe in me, preferring your faith in a being you cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. What gives you such confidence in your delusion, in the face of mortal peril?”
“It’s quite simple,” Evan said. “The characteristics assigned to your kind contradict all right and reason. Such creatures could not exist without destroying themselves. In a word, you are implausible. No, wait,” he said. “Not implausible; impossible. A creature of supernatural strength and speed that feeds on human blood, yet cannot endure the light of day? A creature that converts its prey into competitors, ensuring both a geometrically increasing number of predators and a dwindling supply of fodder? The laws of nature as God wrote them literally forbid you to exist.”
Gavin twisted again, and broke free of the creature’s grip. He stumbled back and gazed upon the thing. But he could not reconcile what his eyes saw with the superhuman monster that had held him helpless a moment before. It seemed to have become insubstantial, ghostly, a mere appearance projected on the screen of reality by some unseen mechanism.
“You truly believe this?” The vampire’s voice had fallen to a whisper.
Evan Conklin said, “I do so believe.”
And the thing faded from sight.
Gavin awoke in a tumult of fright. He could not remember every detail of the dream that had catapulted him from slumber, but the overpowering sense of helplessness and terror, of being at the mercy of something merciless that no human strength could oppose, still pulsed within him. He sat up, switched on his bedside lamp, and breathed as slowly and deeply as he could manage, struggling to calm himself.
His door opened slowly. His father’s head poked out from behind it.
“Everything all right, son?”
Gavin nodded, unwilling to trust his voice. Evan entered and sat beside him on his bed.
“Bad dream?”
Gavin nodded again, and Evan grinned.
“I know how rugged they can be. I used to have some pretty vivid ones, at your age.” He rose and made for the door. “A shower will help. We’ll hit the diner after Mass.”
Gavin extracted himself from his bed and plunged into his Sunday morning ritual. When he’d buckled himself into the passenger seat of his father’s car, and Evan had backed them out of the driveway and onto Kettle Knoll Way, he said, “Dad? Do you ever…doubt?”
“Hm? Our faith in God, you mean?” Evan kept his eyes on the dark ribbon of road unwinding before them.
“Yeah.” Gavin braced himself for the answer. What he got was not what he expected.
“Now and then,” his father said. “It’s hard not to doubt something you can’t see or touch. But faith isn’t about certainty. It’s about will.”
“So you…will away your doubts?”
Evan chuckled. “That would be a neat trick, wouldn’t it?” He pulled the Mercedes Maybach into the small side parking lot of Our Lady of the Pines, parked and killed the engine. “No, I simply command myself to do as I know I should do. Faith is expressed just as much by our deeds as by our words. As long as I can consistently act from faith, I can keep my grip on it, regardless of my doubts.” He nodded toward the unlit church, barely visible in the darkness. “You might say that’s why we’re here.”
Gavin marveled. “And all this time I thought it was because the parish was too poor to pay for professional cleaning staff.”
That brought a snort and a guffaw. “Get serious. Though the way you vacuum, I don’t wonder that Father Ray would rather have our money than your labor. No, it’s that hiring your chores done distances you from them. You can’t afford to do too much of that if you want to remain connected to life. I pay a cleaning lady to look after our house, but doing this for the parish keeps us involved in parish life, and mindful of…well, of a lot of things.” He cuffed his son affectionately. “Let’s get moving. We’re already behind schedule.”
Copyright © 2009 by Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Feb 18 2021
You’ve heard about the black racialists demanding “reparations,” haven’t you? Translated from the Thuggese, that amounts to “Pay us and maybe we’ll stop trashing your cities.” They might as well walk into your store, look around appraisingly, and murmur “Nice place you’ve got here. Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.” Well, except that they’re seldom that grammatical.
We’re all familiar with racialist racketeering by now. It started with Jesse Jackson and hasn’t petered out yet. But change is a constant, and the latest trend might just surprise you:
BALTIMORE (WBFF) – Tyree Moorehead has spent years in Baltimore’s streets.
If you don’t know his name, drive through the city and you’ll see his mark.
No shoot zones, the sidewalk, streetside sacred space where, after murder, there should be no more killing there.
He recognizes even that hasn’t slowed Baltimore’s bloodshed and now he eyes what he believes is a breakthrough.
“I can relate to the shooters, guess what they want? They want money.
His idea, pay killers to stop killing, his background he says is part of the currency.
Extortionists gonna extort, I suppose. Black extortionists will find a way to link their demands to “systemic racism,” or “white privilege,” or what have you. But the essence of the game remains the same: Danegeld pure and simple, though in Tyree Moorehead’s case practiced on a city-by-city scale rather than nationwide.
For a criminal to point a gun at you and say “Your money or your life” is plainly armed robbery, and punishable by a long prison term. Why Moorehead’s sort of “proposal” isn’t itself a criminal act, I cannot imagine. He’s positioned himself as the lead negotiator for a protection racket, even if the racket hasn’t yet incorporated or nominated a capo.
In a sane era, this man would already be back behind bars, but ours is not a sane era.
