You Are 32% Feminine, 68% Masculine |
 You are in touch with your masculine side. You are not overly sensitive and not easily moved. Occasionally, though, something will get through and touch your heart! |
"During the first centuries of our era, the Gnostics contended against the Christians. They were vanquished, but we can imagine their possible victory. Had Alexandria triumphed instead of Rome, we would find the bizarre and muddled stories that I have recounted here coherent, majestic and ordinary."
A vindication of Basilides the False
Jorge Luis Borges.
"Divinity tempted,
unrest stirring among the blessed Aeons,
God's erring wisdom, Sophia,
falling prey to her own folly
wandering in the void and darkness of her own making
endlessly searching, lamenting, suffering, repenting,
laboring her passion into matter,
her yearning into soul;
a blind and ignorant Creator,
believing himself the Most High,
and lording it over the creation,
the product, like himself, of fault and ignorance;
the Soul, trapped and lost
in the labyrinth of the world,
seeking to escape but frightened back
by the gatekeepers of the cosmic prison,
the terrible Archons;
a Savior from the Light beyond
venturing into the nether world,
illumining the darkness, opening a path,
healing the divine breach:
a tale of light and darkness,
of knowledge and ignorance,
of serenity and passion,
of conceit and pity,
on the scale not of man
but of eternal beings
who yet are not exempt from suffering and error".
Hans Jonas 1957
Preface to The Gnostic Religion, p.xiii
I live in San Francisco, a city which, like reality itself, is overdetermined. It is full of nutjobs and a lot of the time the things that come out of people's mouths make me want to cry "Aaargghhh!". But this is a place where I can live openly. Being gay in this town is a big yawn. And let's face it, that did not come about through the efforts of the Log Cabin Republicans (peace be upon them).
As part of the continuing Liturgy of Sanctum Effluvium here at the Sacred Order of Codgers, Coots, & Curmudgeons, I would like to say that I am so effing tired of people erasing themselves by saying, "It's just a preference, not a judgment."
Victor Davis Hanson –The Man—has written a 2006 reflection on Mexifornia. Things, he suggests, are worse than he predicted.
“Para leer este articulo en espanol, oprima el numero dos”.
I say “Gringo” for the same reason I say“Kaffir” (which means “unbeliever” in Muslim parlance). "Gringo" is a generally unfriendly Mexican term for Americans. Identity formation by defiance. Part of what irks me –to put it at its mos’ mildest—is that our border with Mexico has functionally evaporated and we are being invaded by millions of foreigners...with virtually no responses from the folks whose job it is, I thought, to protect our borders and sovereignty.
Reconquista and Jihad, with the support of the Fifth-Column Left. The Marine hymn starts out prophetically: "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli". Mexicans and Muslims, once again.
Regarding immigration, George and Jean Francois K are equally useless. Well, George, actually, is much worse, since he should know better. Sometimes the man drives me to distraction.
Yes, I said "invaded". Do you think, for un momentito, that if Mejico were to find millions of gringos flowing across their frontera without permission, headed al sur, that they would not consider themselves "invaded"? Do you think they'd be singing "El Grito de la Guerra" in English so the Yanquis wouldn't feel excluded? Por favor. Ask the Guatemalans who try to cross over into Mexico...(on their way here, of course).
I will not rant further here. I will do that in stages. Ainthcha graytf'l? But here are the reasons, in a nutshell, why I am dead set against the flood of illegal Mexican immigrants in this country. (I have taught Spanish, btw, so I can handle the linguistic logistics just fine; that is not the point).
They are here illegally (!!) --punto numero uno--, in massive and continuing numbers, from a single non-English-speaking and dysfunctional culture, right next door, with a choppy and often hostile history between us, at a time when the US is in bondage to our cultural elite’s self-hating multiculturalism, and current stats indicate that many of them will raise double-alienated children –and the next generation will be the really merry problem—into the underclass.
Just what we need… The only plus in all this is that they are not Muslims.
I am not...zzzzzzz....."anti-immigrant" or some such NPR BS.
(God, how I hate it when lefties start spewing labels which all mean the same schoolgirl-monitor-in-the-play-yard thing: "You're not NICE!!!" And by the way, I can be very nice...or not. I have references.)
I am anti-this-immigration. Chinga Aztlan.
Some dork in my neighborhood has the above sticker on his car: "If my taxes are legal, why are you calling me illegal?" Well, Jose, it's simple: 'cause you're here without permission and against the law. Comprende? Crazymaking.
We have become, practically overnight, against the will of the people, and with the compliance and/or collusion of our government and other overlords, spiritual and temporal, a bilingual and bicultural country. Ya wanna get me on board for impeachment? Here's yer sign. Wanna get me into a lather about the Catholic Church in America for aiding and abetting this invasion? Wanna hear me get all anti-business for their complicity? Mexifornia, Amerexico... it's a recipe for disaster. See: Austro-Hungarian Empire...or Belgium. Remember Yugoslavia?
I lived in Canada/Le Canada for almost two bilingual/bicultural decades. It's not a model you wanna import. Trust me.
There is, in my ear, a distinctly Northern Dominion quality in the music of the Jennys. It is an emptiness, a silence, that comes from the overwhelming space of the country, from how much of it is northern and vacant, wild but in a contained and almost marginal way, unnoticed, far away from the bustling places of empire, like the Northern Tao. 
John Henry Newman was a great light of the Church of England in its 19th century revival. However, he eventually went over to the Dark Side and converted to Roman Catholicism. He died a Cardinal and may one day be canonized as a Saint. No one on either side doubted his prodigious intellect, but a lot of people found his choice very hard to take. To Brits raised for 300 years on Guy Fawkes and “No Popery”, it felt like a terrible betrayal. He called his autobiography, Apologia Pro Vita Sua. That translates as “Apology for His Own Life”. In English, an apology nowadays is an expression of regret for a wrong committed. But its origin in Latin and Greek is in fact the opposite: it is a defense and an explanation of something. In seminaries, the study of how to argue with opponents, in favor of Christianity, is still called “apologetics”.
I believe that Western civilization is under attack, from without by the Jihad, the shock troops of a resurgent world Islam; and from within, by a culturally Marxist progressive agenda held both in part and in whole, consciously and semiconsciously, by a great many of the educated and elite members of our civilization.
I am a very smart guy –no sense being coy about it. I have the ability to deal with complex ideas, both by natural inclination and by way of too much education. But I have also loved images and I tend to use images and my intuition a great deal. I have a gift for metaphor and, at least as a way of fundamentally orienting myself, often prefer it to complex discourse.So it seems to me that the simplest way to “apologize” for my shift is to use the metaphor I wrote about in my earlier post:
“I'd rather go to the ramparts with the irascible folks who want to save our town from the invading barbarians than stay at home with the charming pacifist intellectuals who argue about re-designing the bedroom.”
This is the fundamental difference in perspective between me and my neighbors and friends. They turn their attention away from the Muslim threat ("It's overblown, you're getting paranoid, and maybe even a bit racist") and are, of course, totally unfriendly to the notion that their progressive attitudes are anything but an improvement to the West ("How can social justice be wrong? Don't you want gay equality?"). Basic perceptions differ.
A great example of what I mean shows up in a quote that cranky Christopher Hitchens --who threw his lot in with the neocons precisely because he is a “man of the Left”—takes from a book by British lefty journalist Nick Cohen. Cohen’s work joins others in a newish genre: “Why I Left the Left”. I’ll let Cohen speak for himself, from WHAT'S LEFT? How the Liberals Lost Their Way:
“My instant reaction to the 9/11 attacks was that they were a nuisance that got in the way of more pressing concerns. Throughout the 1990s, I had been writing about the overweening power of big business and how it could corrupt democratic governments. I had lambasted new Labour for its love of conservative crime policies and attacks on civil liberties for years. Attacking Tony Blair was what I liked doing — what got me out of bed in the morning. Accepting that fascism is worse than western democracy, even western democracies governed by George W Bush and Tony Blair, sounds very easy in theory, but it is very difficult to do in practice when you are a habitual enemy of the status quo in your own country.” (emphasis mine)
For me, the 11th of September 2001 was not "a nuisance". It was a trauma.
And it completed a long slow process of waking up.
My experience with the Blue State mind is that it is exclusively and compulsively focused on internal enemies in whom doth reside all evil: George Bush, Republicans and the Christian Right, along with Corporate America. All the animus goes there. And what Cohen is suggesting is that such a habit –and I would describe it as often complex-driven—can lead to a de facto support of fascism –in this instance, the Jihad.
Hence, the metaphor of the ramparts and the bedroom. And why, with all its difficulties, --especially for a man who thinks that his sexuality is a gift from God!—my sympathies now lie on the Dark Side, with the cranky people on the ramparts. To many in my tribe, I have abandoned the Jedi to become a Sith Lord.
Complicated it may be, but “self-loathing” is the last thing it's about.
