Les invasions barbares

Ann Coulter (via QueerConservative):

"Americans — at least really stupid Americans like George Bush — believe the natural state of the world is to have individual self-determination, human rights, the rule of law and a robust democratic economy. On this view, most of the existing world and almost all of world history is a freakish aberration.

In fact, the natural state of the world is Darfur. The freakish aberration is America and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world."

The rest, here.

AndroHysteria

Poor Jack Malebranche finally had to let loose in "A Short Letter to the Gender Confused". Apparently some people have a hard time handling the notion that men and women are...different from each other. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He still wants to engage in discussion and argument about the issues "unless you have yet another bitchy academic critique from a feminist/gender studies/queer theory perspective. In that case just take your meds and leave me alone. Not interested." ;-))

Where was he when Larry Sommers needed him?

Memorial Day

Phenomenology of the occasional male condition

Degrees of separation

Three American soldiers were captured by the Muslim jihadis this month. And the battered body of one of them was recently found in the Euphrates River. He was Pfc Joseph Anzac. I doubt that the fate of the other two will be better.

It turns out that my Marine cyberfriend knows someone who knew him. He sent me some pictures he got. So I now have a kind of three-degrees-of-separation connection to him.

I have been thinking about these three a lot, --my stomach knows how much-- and now mostly about Joseph Anzac. I can't say anything else. I get too wrought up.

Maybe I'm wrong

Victor Davis Hanson, who is way smarter than I am, says America is not in decline.

Pleasant distractions

My default attitude of late has been rather gloomy. I look back on November 2006 with great affection. I am aware that shifts in mood are not shifts in reality, only shifts in how you feel about it...but mood is part of life. Spengler and Raspail...not indicators of mirth.

But I do look for distractions from the basic down mood. Robbing myself of the pleasures of the present moment, for the sake of a questionable perception about the direction of history...even I can see how iffy that is.

So I watched two movies on the here! channel. Films based on the Donald Strachey series, he being a fictional gay PI. I liked them much more than I expected. Even watched one of them twice. The plots are tres gay...reparative therapy, and outing...but the major character, played by real life gay man Chad Allen, is a keeper. And his partner, played for sorta fey by formerly grim star of First Wave, Sebastian Spence, is likeable. But the connection between them is very soothing to me. Don and Timmy. There are moments of reality portrayed in their relationship, things I know and recognize. Apparently four more movies are in the making. This pleases me.

Maybe I should find myself a gay PI!

Reconquista and Jihad

As I half-listen to the nattering in Washington about illegal immigration and the war in Iraq, what I find lacking among us is the spontaneous will to live...to assert forcefully, even unreflectively, and without apology our right to live, as we are and have been, regardless of its effects on others. The critical mass of those fools among us who cannot even imagine such an assertion has become lethal. The slow suicide of the West accelerates.

I had a shocking thought the other day, while moving from sleep to consciousness. That the things which our society has decided are faults which must be eradicated ---imperialism, racial hierarchy, containment of women, disdain of homosexuals, etc-- were in fact part of what made the large civilization possible. And that by removing them, the structure does not improve, but erodes and dies away...superceded not, I hasten to add, by another civilization more humane and inclusive, but by a competitor whose dark impulses will likely repeat ours but lack our gifts. And it will simply replace us, without apology.

Do the Chinese worry about human rights? Do Hispanics wonder if they are acting ungratefully and abusively toward a culture that takes them in? Do Muslims worry that their benighted religion has created nothing of value in centuries and that they might have a thing or two to learn from the formerly Christian kaffirs? I think not.

We will become the Indians.

I wondered if the deeply tragic structure of life on this planet only allows groups to flourish if in fact they include in their flourishing the very attitudes and behaviors that our religions and great thinkers abhor. Reminds me of a thought I had many years ago, relating to other matters, but perhaps generically true: "What if, in order to enjoy what you love most, you must at least tolerate, if not embrace, what you most hate?"

This year is the 40th anniversary of the "Summer of Love". Have I, by asserting my right to live freely as a gay man, aided and abetted the larger liberal virus that will eventually dissolve my whole world?

If I turn out to be wrong, I will be very happy.

On the other hand

Sometimes you see something that just makes you smile and wonder and say, "Damn, that is so effing amazing!" What humans are capable of...breathtaking and funny and playful and sweet and sexy and athletic and rhythmic and magical and really impressive.

Androphiles dancing...

If you want to see the fullscreen version, here's the YouTube link.

My mood of late

One down, one to go

There was a time when Jerry Falwell, along with his evil twin Pat Robertson, occupied significant places in my psyche. That largely had to do with my sense that he was dangerous to me and mine. Unlike Christopher Hitchens, I heard the news of his death with equanimity. I think I kinda felt sorry for him because he was so fat.

Pat, on the other hand...well, I do not have a visceral response to him anymore. But the echoes of those days are stronger. His joshin', good-ol-boy bonhommie presentation covered a lot of bullshit. I think that when he dies, I may feel some satisfaction...or not. Who knows?

I hold no affection for these men. But part of my fall from grace has been to recognize how similar to them are the many people who loathe them. The moral vanity, the smug sense of superiority, the desire to have their viewpoint imposed....I feel this from the Left all the time.
A meeting of Evangelicals For America, a meeting of the Modern Language Association ...different content, same template.

PS. At my neighborhood's busiest intersection, someone laid down a 3x6 piece of astroturf and a cardboard tombstone with Fallwell's info, with an invitation to walk on his grave. There was certainly no love lost twixt Jerry and the gays, --as I said, he used to evoke strong feelings from me- but somehow this felt very mean-spirited. It actually made me physically uncomfortable.

I wondered if, when Osama Bin Laden dies, will there be a grave there for us to walk on, too?
I suspect not.

Diversity is our strength

Decline of the West, continued

Row Over Women In Priesthood Stops Interfaith Ballgame

By Associated Press
May 7, 2007

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — A soccer game between Islamic imams and Christian priests at the end of a conference to promote interfaith dialogue was canceled Saturday because the teams could not agree on whether women priests should take part.

Church of Norway spokesman Olav Fykse Tveit said the imams refused to play against a mixed-gender team of priests because it would have gone against their beliefs in avoiding close physical contact with strange women.

The church decided to drop its female players, and the priests' team captain walked out in protest.

Hours before the game was to end the day-long "Shoulder to Shoulder" conference in Oslo, the church released a statement saying it had called off the match because it was sending the wrong signal.

"Because we thought it would be a nice conclusion of the conference we didn't want to call it off, so we decided to stage an all-men's team game instead," Mr. Tveit said. "We realize now that it will be wrong to have a priest team without women."

Me not being gay anymore, continued

I have remained puzzled by my mother's announcement in March that I was not, after all, homosexual. World-thinker and bad-seed girlwatcher "Emailior fabbro" came up with the best explanation, that mothers don't like to think of their sons as being sexual at all, much less being sexual with other men.

Still, I had an opportunity recently to re-visit the question and the only thing my mom would say was, "I lived in Chelsea for 17 years and I've met hundreds of homosexual men, but I've never met one at all like you."

So, I guess it's basically "My Boy Is Special"...an archetypal theme.



PS. With the glorious inconsistency that makes mom, and all of us, so interesting, she later asked me about a man I had dated in New York this weekend and she seemed interested in hearing about him. When I jokingly said that he was only 49 and so really too young for me, she launched into a homily --without a trace of irony-- about how age doesn't matter if you love someone.

The Demiurge, the Archons and the Fallen Sophia

In Gnostic mythology, our universe of matter and psyche was created when the Aeon Sophia transgressed in the Original Pleroma and fell. From her tears came the Demiurge, the Divine Ruler of this World and his henchmen, the Archons. Bad boys, all. Here the Fallen Sophia laments her exile, while the Archons carry out the evil bidding of their overlord, the Demiurge. You can see why, even though the Archons are false gods, they get worshipped a lot. Great for Gnostic Sunday School classes!

Lyrics (from Bulgarian):

Your beauty drives me crazy.
Your hand makes me shiver.
In your eyes I start drowning.
I want to drown in your hair.

You make me stop breathing.
Pretend you understand.
If needed, lie to me,
say how much you love me.

Chorus:
But I say to you, stop,
stop killing me,
stop burning me:
oh, why do you do it?

I’m not the only one
who has had you.
I’m not the one,
and I believe I have lived.
I’m not the one,
but I believed you are in me.
I’m not the one,
but I could laugh.

__________________

Another impressive, er, guy...sorta

Cassandra, author of the blog Villainous Company, (cheeky logo above)

Her little blurb gives you a taste of her humor, but she's also very smart and articulate... and I agree with her most of the time!

"Welcome to the Snarkpit of Fascism:
proudly marginalizing the dimwitted
and treating them as Other
since December of 2004.
Dyspeptic Marine wife/tech wench
attempts to enlighten
the great unwashed of the blogosphere
while dodging snarky commentary
from the local knavery."