In HP and the Goblet of Fire, --spoiler, btw--while Harry and Cedric are in the maze, Harry rescues Cedric from being enveloped by the roots. In the interest of good sportsmanship and friendship, he and Cedric both touch the Cup together. Which transports them into Voldemort's realm and where Cedric is killed.
Had Harry selfishly left Cedric in the maze --and fired off a warning flare, as he did for Fleur-- and taken the Cup by himself, Cedric would not have been murdered.
Doing good things doesn't always produce good things as a result.
----
Friday, May 31, 2013
UnPC thought for the morning
People who wish to ignore demographics as the foundation of society are living in a dream or a trance. The lie of America as a "creedal" society where race, ethnicity, religion and culture...and gender, Ex Cathedra would add..mean nothing is part of what has brought this once-great nation to its present pathetic state.
For example. Let the American electorate be a group of 25 native adult White males. Then let us add in 25 native teenagers of both sexes and call the whole group of 50 "the American electorate." You can see the look of horror on people's faces when they imagine that hormone-addled, immature teenagers are now a political power.
One of the oddities of our regime is that while no one questions the exclusion of the young from politics, --and indeed, it is mandated by the Constitution--any other grounds are seen as heinous. Even the notion that the President must be a natural born citizen is looked upon with embarrassment.
Now take 25 native adult White males and add, oh, 6 Somalis, 2 Israelis, 4 Arabs, 10 Mexicans and 3 Hmong (of mixed genders) and let's call that group of 50 "the American electorate."
My current thought is that "democracy" only makes sense if the demographic which exercises it makes sense.
And you can imagine what sense the above demographics make.
---
For example. Let the American electorate be a group of 25 native adult White males. Then let us add in 25 native teenagers of both sexes and call the whole group of 50 "the American electorate." You can see the look of horror on people's faces when they imagine that hormone-addled, immature teenagers are now a political power.
One of the oddities of our regime is that while no one questions the exclusion of the young from politics, --and indeed, it is mandated by the Constitution--any other grounds are seen as heinous. Even the notion that the President must be a natural born citizen is looked upon with embarrassment.
Now take 25 native adult White males and add, oh, 6 Somalis, 2 Israelis, 4 Arabs, 10 Mexicans and 3 Hmong (of mixed genders) and let's call that group of 50 "the American electorate."
My current thought is that "democracy" only makes sense if the demographic which exercises it makes sense.
And you can imagine what sense the above demographics make.
---
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Simple pleasures
A beautiful day, sunny and temperate, now a bright clear evening. Discovered that my loose change jar had three times more money in it than I thought.
Chicken wings baking in the oven --sesame oil, cumin, hot sauce-- with blue cheese dressing waiting. A bottle of Cabernet. A Harry Potter movie. Vanilla yogurt for dessert. A cigar later, if I'm in the mood, and a glass of brandy.
Not bad.
My friend VB dropped by, with his wolf-dog Molli, and chocolate chip cookies.
And then much later, B called from Manchester to say hi.
As I said, not bad.
--
Chicken wings baking in the oven --sesame oil, cumin, hot sauce-- with blue cheese dressing waiting. A bottle of Cabernet. A Harry Potter movie. Vanilla yogurt for dessert. A cigar later, if I'm in the mood, and a glass of brandy.
Not bad.
My friend VB dropped by, with his wolf-dog Molli, and chocolate chip cookies.
And then much later, B called from Manchester to say hi.
As I said, not bad.
--
A turning point
I recall how stunned I was to read sections of this book one afternoon while browsing through a local Barnes and Noble. It seemed so transgressive in that ultra-liberal environment.
When I looked at the backleaf and found that the author --whom I'd never heard of-- was a Black man, I was surprised to hear these ideas from such a guy, and also surmised that this was why he had not been taken out and shot. I later learned that he had been a Marxist who'd been cured of that disease by working one summer for the Federal government and learning firsthand what a governmentally administered economy really looked like.
What he regards as axiomatic common sense remains, as he noted, politically controversial:
1. The impossible is not going to be achieved.
2. It is a waste of precious resources to try to achieve it.
3. The devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account.
As he says, the people who hold the vision of cosmic justice benefit far more from holding it --at least in their own eyes--than the people ever do whom it is supposed to benefit.
I still have the book. It crystallized a lot of my inchoate discontents and turned me fast and furiously to the Right. I later read his trilogy on culture seen through the lenses of race, migration and conquest. That, I fear, sealed my fate.
Thomas Sowell | Speech "The Quest for Cosmic Justice":
proponents of "social justice" are unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely the deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos. What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man but the oversights of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice.
Bingo.
--
Good line from Dr Sowell during a question period, when someone asks him his opinion of X. "Compared to what?"
'via Blog this'
Negative retrojection again
This technical term is one of my own invention.
It means going back in time, imaginatively, and removing an element in a scenario and then calculating the alternate outcome and assessing the differences between the actual and the alternative.
I use it in therapy, too. After hearing a patient recount an unhappy story, I often ask, If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently? Sometimes that can help a man see how he contributes to his own troubles.
So here's an application of NR to American history. Not the first time I have indulged in this procedure. A question:
I am not foolish enough to believe that the tragedy inherent in the human condition can be avoided. But even if you hold to the tragic or the constrained view of life --as conservatives should do-- not all tragedies are created equal. Some are worse than others.
It will not surprise readers of Ex Cathedra that I choose the day in 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia.
My choice, I think, needs little explanation.
What, I wonder, would be yours?
---
It means going back in time, imaginatively, and removing an element in a scenario and then calculating the alternate outcome and assessing the differences between the actual and the alternative.
I use it in therapy, too. After hearing a patient recount an unhappy story, I often ask, If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently? Sometimes that can help a man see how he contributes to his own troubles.
So here's an application of NR to American history. Not the first time I have indulged in this procedure. A question:
If you could change one action, one element, one choice, one moment of American history, which one would it be? And why?
I am not foolish enough to believe that the tragedy inherent in the human condition can be avoided. But even if you hold to the tragic or the constrained view of life --as conservatives should do-- not all tragedies are created equal. Some are worse than others.
It will not surprise readers of Ex Cathedra that I choose the day in 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia.
My choice, I think, needs little explanation.
What, I wonder, would be yours?
---
Supreme among the Supremes
Antonin Scalia is no friend of us guys who like guys. No law says he has to be. But he is the least silly of that whole bunch. The man knows what a limit is. In this day and age, a rare virtue.
I had no idea that the Supreme Court had defined the essence of golf...
This day in Supreme Court essentialism | Power Line:
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Tonto's Razor
MAD magazine, a childhood favorite of mine. (B still has a subscription). The setup: The Lone Ranger and Tonto are surrounded by a huge tribe of attacking Indians. The Rangers says, "I think we're in trouble." Tonto's comeback, "Whadda ya mean 'we', White man?"
Race is genetic, to be sure. And has much to do with skin color and facial structure. But that's not all it is. It's also historical and political, cultural, contextual. Just ask the Lone Ranger. As I wondered in my previous post, even if it is socially constructed --which it partially is--, what part of human life and experience is not socially constructed?
So: Who's White?
Whereas it was once the vogue to try to be included in that exclusive apex group, now that Whites have turned into The Most Foolish People On The Planet, the excluding is nowadays often a self-exclusion.
I'll spare you the trouble of thinking this through and explain to you that Whites are Caucasian humans who can't deny that they are White. Now that Whiteness has become a stigma, I count you as White if no one would believe you if you denied it. You can call my approach Tonto's Razor.
Genetically, if you're a SubSaharan African or a Melanesian or an Australian aboriginal or a Dravidian, you're definitely not White. Ask Obama. You might get yelled at by your peers for acting White if you speak standard English or get good grades in school, but the accusation only proves the point that you're Negroid/ish. If you're of the Mongoloid folks of Asia and the Pacific Islands, again, not White. No question. No one would accuse you of it. Same thing for the Northeast Asian diaspora known as the aboriginals of the New World. Sioux or Aztec, you're not White.
So that leaves the Caucasoids, the non Negroid and the non Mongoloid peoples. I think it's pretty clear here, if you combine genetics and cultural history and politics. The only people who cannot deny their heinous Whiteness are the peoples of European Christendom.
If your haplogroup derives from Europe, west of the Urals to the Atlantic, north of the Mediterranean, then your ancestors were very likely at one time Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. European + Christian = White. I would include Georgians and Armenians here, for genetic and cultural/historical reasons, even if their countries lie, according to some, in Asia. In some places the Europe/Asia geographical boundary is fuzzy.
The other Caucasian peoples, the non-European ones --whom I call the Bronzes, even if they're pale Chechens-- stem from western Asia, Siberia or north Africa (eg, Berbers). They are definitely not Negroid and not Mongoloid. But these Caucasians can all credibly deny being White because they were not part of EuroChristendom and are mostly Muslim or Hindu: Arabs, the Turkic peoples of Turkey and the Stans, the Persians and Afghans, the Aryan Indians and Pakistanis, etc. (And Gypsies. Even though they've lived in Europe for over 1000 years, genetics has shown the "Roma" to be Indian untouchables.)
Only one group, to my knowledge, is sorta on the fence about this. The iffy group, for me, is Ashkenazi Jewish (and perhaps/probably the Sephardi). As I said once before, in a race riot, Harry Birnbaum would be in just as much trouble as Ex Cathedra. We look no more different --being both Caucasian-- than I do from a southern Italian. But in addition to the Jewish haplogroup and homeland being in western Asia, Jews have always seen themselves as both special (banning intermarriage with goyim) and as outsiders in Europe. And often very much treated as such. Yet if Israel isn't a Western country, what is it? And since their emancipation, Jewish participation in Euro culture has been massive. So here it's not so clear. Jews: White, or Bronze? Maybe a rabbi could figure it out.
White was once the club to belong to. Those who could, passed. Now, as Tonto reminded us, it's the Pack of Evil Bad Guys. The whole world continues to imitate us even as they resent us. Beyonce may dye her hair blond, (even lighten her skin) but you better not call dat sistah White.
Race is genetic, to be sure. And has much to do with skin color and facial structure. But that's not all it is. It's also historical and political, cultural, contextual. Just ask the Lone Ranger. As I wondered in my previous post, even if it is socially constructed --which it partially is--, what part of human life and experience is not socially constructed?
So: Who's White?
Whereas it was once the vogue to try to be included in that exclusive apex group, now that Whites have turned into The Most Foolish People On The Planet, the excluding is nowadays often a self-exclusion.
I'll spare you the trouble of thinking this through and explain to you that Whites are Caucasian humans who can't deny that they are White. Now that Whiteness has become a stigma, I count you as White if no one would believe you if you denied it. You can call my approach Tonto's Razor.
Genetically, if you're a SubSaharan African or a Melanesian or an Australian aboriginal or a Dravidian, you're definitely not White. Ask Obama. You might get yelled at by your peers for acting White if you speak standard English or get good grades in school, but the accusation only proves the point that you're Negroid/ish. If you're of the Mongoloid folks of Asia and the Pacific Islands, again, not White. No question. No one would accuse you of it. Same thing for the Northeast Asian diaspora known as the aboriginals of the New World. Sioux or Aztec, you're not White.
So that leaves the Caucasoids, the non Negroid and the non Mongoloid peoples. I think it's pretty clear here, if you combine genetics and cultural history and politics. The only people who cannot deny their heinous Whiteness are the peoples of European Christendom.
If your haplogroup derives from Europe, west of the Urals to the Atlantic, north of the Mediterranean, then your ancestors were very likely at one time Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. European + Christian = White. I would include Georgians and Armenians here, for genetic and cultural/historical reasons, even if their countries lie, according to some, in Asia. In some places the Europe/Asia geographical boundary is fuzzy.
Christian Caucasians from Europe = Whites
The other Caucasian peoples, the non-European ones --whom I call the Bronzes, even if they're pale Chechens-- stem from western Asia, Siberia or north Africa (eg, Berbers). They are definitely not Negroid and not Mongoloid. But these Caucasians can all credibly deny being White because they were not part of EuroChristendom and are mostly Muslim or Hindu: Arabs, the Turkic peoples of Turkey and the Stans, the Persians and Afghans, the Aryan Indians and Pakistanis, etc. (And Gypsies. Even though they've lived in Europe for over 1000 years, genetics has shown the "Roma" to be Indian untouchables.)
Only one group, to my knowledge, is sorta on the fence about this. The iffy group, for me, is Ashkenazi Jewish (and perhaps/probably the Sephardi). As I said once before, in a race riot, Harry Birnbaum would be in just as much trouble as Ex Cathedra. We look no more different --being both Caucasian-- than I do from a southern Italian. But in addition to the Jewish haplogroup and homeland being in western Asia, Jews have always seen themselves as both special (banning intermarriage with goyim) and as outsiders in Europe. And often very much treated as such. Yet if Israel isn't a Western country, what is it? And since their emancipation, Jewish participation in Euro culture has been massive. So here it's not so clear. Jews: White, or Bronze? Maybe a rabbi could figure it out.
2015 Update. I have since decided that while Ashkenazi Jews function as Whites, (and can try to distance themselves from that when its suits their interests) their homeland is outside Europe, in West Asia, and so they belong to the AfroAsian Caucasian group, the Bronzes. When, in the current state of things in Europe, with Muslim violence against them rising, they ask, "Is it time to go home?", they give the thing away. Europe is not home. As their own Passover prayer says: Next year, in Jerusalem!
White was once the club to belong to. Those who could, passed. Now, as Tonto reminded us, it's the Pack of Evil Bad Guys. The whole world continues to imitate us even as they resent us. Beyonce may dye her hair blond, (even lighten her skin) but you better not call dat sistah White.
The (de)construction trades
Social construct is one of the code phrases of the post-modern Left. It is either explicitly or implicitly preceded by the words "merely a". When sex, as in male or female gender, is called a social construct, the purpose of calling it that is to validate --actually, to mandate-- alterations in it. After all, what is merely socially constructed can obviously be socially de-constructed. Right?
I wonder, though, in this frame, what human phenomena are not socially constructed?
The other oddity is that culture --which is obviously socially constructed-- is considered inviolable and sacrosanct...as long as the culture is not White Western. In which case it is merely an oppressive system of power relations crying out for de-construction.
One of the other fun things about this worldview is that race is considered both sacred and fixed and at the same time a deceptive social construction that does not really exist. When it serves an anti-White agenda, race is a fiction. But if, suppose, Ex Cathedra, in transgender fashion, decided to socially reconstruct his race...well, come on. Are you crazy?
As I move farther and farther way from liberalism --first and briefly, libertarian, then a dozen years or so of American style conservatism and lately, what I can only call a kind of reactionary stance-- the entire edifice seems like the walls of an insane asylum.
---
I wonder, though, in this frame, what human phenomena are not socially constructed?
The other oddity is that culture --which is obviously socially constructed-- is considered inviolable and sacrosanct...as long as the culture is not White Western. In which case it is merely an oppressive system of power relations crying out for de-construction.
One of the other fun things about this worldview is that race is considered both sacred and fixed and at the same time a deceptive social construction that does not really exist. When it serves an anti-White agenda, race is a fiction. But if, suppose, Ex Cathedra, in transgender fashion, decided to socially reconstruct his race...well, come on. Are you crazy?
As I move farther and farther way from liberalism --first and briefly, libertarian, then a dozen years or so of American style conservatism and lately, what I can only call a kind of reactionary stance-- the entire edifice seems like the walls of an insane asylum.
---
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
She-agra
Is female Viagra a pill to thrill - or just a new headache for weary wives? | Mail Online:
*jpnill has been telling me this for years.
'via Blog this'
"For too long now, there has been a huge gulf between the sexes — largely fostered by the counselling and cosmetics industries — when it comes to actually Doing The Deed.
Women seem to think sex should be about sharing the washing up, talking for five hours non-stop first, lighting two-dozen scented candles, taking an hour-long aromatherapy bath, being given a 30-minute massage with oil that smells like someone’s regurgitated a whole Chocolate Orange, kissing, cuddling, stroking, more talking . . . and then That Other Thing, YOU KNOW, that’s really rude and boring. And then more cuddling.*
Basically, a cross between a spa day with the girls and a petting zoo trip with the children. (Great line! LOL!) Men, the swine, seem to think sex should be about sex."
*jpnill has been telling me this for years.
'via Blog this'
Monday, May 27, 2013
Insight
Good line from the series Top of the Lake, set in New Zealand and starring (yet another) female cop with an attitude. Odd, dark, off and atmospheric. All the men, so far, are either brutes, ass-kissers or disappointments. Aside from the bitch cop, all the women are victims, on a spectrum from pathetic to crazy. I hope things become less cartoonish. The New Zealand landscape is jaw-dropping.
Her mother, who may be dying, says to her, "You are cold and hard. And your tragedy is that you you think it's strength. It's not."
A lot of women could listen.
--
Her mother, who may be dying, says to her, "You are cold and hard. And your tragedy is that you you think it's strength. It's not."
A lot of women could listen.
--
Trinity
It's common to hear that the supposed primitive purity of Christianity was polluted by its embrace of Greek philosophy. Its "primitive purity" almost always turns out to be a reflection of the idealized self of the critic.
Yesterday was Trinity Sunday. After the fifty days of Easter culminate in Pentecost, a week later there's a kind of theological wrap-up day for Christianity's fundamental doctrine. And its most puzzling. Three divine hypostases in one divine ousia.
As proponents of orthodoxy point out, Christianity made use of the philosophical language of its time in order to play out the implications of its faith. But in the case both of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, they used Greek categories to say things that Greeks would never say. The real power of Greek thought was shown in the positions that were rejected, the heresies of Modalism and Arianism. In those cases, Hellenic rationalism was the winner.
Jews and Muslims both think that it's just a disguise for polytheism. But Trinitarian Orthodoxy is the form of Christianity held by 95% of Christians for about two millennia.
--
PS. I dreamt last night that I had returned to the Dominican Order. I was completely puzzled about how it could have happened and was trying to remember, in the dream, how I got from the couch in my living room in my apartment to the monastery common room where I was sitting and reading, with my capuce pulled up over my head.
I was thinking, How can that guy be this guy? But then there was a commotion down the hall and I entered another room where my oldest friend was complaining because my cousin A had gotten drunk and kissed my friend's ex-wife, who was now his girlfriend...
Yesterday was Trinity Sunday. After the fifty days of Easter culminate in Pentecost, a week later there's a kind of theological wrap-up day for Christianity's fundamental doctrine. And its most puzzling. Three divine hypostases in one divine ousia.
As proponents of orthodoxy point out, Christianity made use of the philosophical language of its time in order to play out the implications of its faith. But in the case both of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, they used Greek categories to say things that Greeks would never say. The real power of Greek thought was shown in the positions that were rejected, the heresies of Modalism and Arianism. In those cases, Hellenic rationalism was the winner.
For over 1000 years,
Christians avoided any depiction of God the Father.
Christians avoided any depiction of God the Father.
Now of course The Old Man With The White Beard is familiar.
Jews and Muslims both think that it's just a disguise for polytheism. But Trinitarian Orthodoxy is the form of Christianity held by 95% of Christians for about two millennia.
--
PS. I dreamt last night that I had returned to the Dominican Order. I was completely puzzled about how it could have happened and was trying to remember, in the dream, how I got from the couch in my living room in my apartment to the monastery common room where I was sitting and reading, with my capuce pulled up over my head.
I was thinking, How can that guy be this guy? But then there was a commotion down the hall and I entered another room where my oldest friend was complaining because my cousin A had gotten drunk and kissed my friend's ex-wife, who was now his girlfriend...
Memorial Day
Via YouTube, there's an offering of a virtual tour of the 9/11 Memorial in New York.
My bet is that the entire proceeding will be absent any mention of Muslims or Islam, as the memorial itself seems to be, so I will pass.
My birthfather, whom I never knew, was in North Africa and Italy during WW2 and, from the fragments I get from my mom, had a kind of PTSD. My Dad, who raised me, was a Navy pilot in the South Pacific.
--
My bet is that the entire proceeding will be absent any mention of Muslims or Islam, as the memorial itself seems to be, so I will pass.
My birthfather, whom I never knew, was in North Africa and Italy during WW2 and, from the fragments I get from my mom, had a kind of PTSD. My Dad, who raised me, was a Navy pilot in the South Pacific.
--
Girlish whims
Women becoming priests without Vatican's blessing - latimes.com:
Another confused and silly would-be Priestette, ordained this time at the Purple Goddess Temple about two miles up the hill from my house. That particular "church" can cause testosterone levels to plunge even from several blocks away.
It is one of the strange features of religious dissent in our time, among Catholics anyway, that people who are clearly no longer Roman Catholic continue to assert that they are. At least the 16th century Reformers broke with Rome and were clear and happy about it. But then, they were all men. These women are clearly bargain basement Protestants in most ways, but with an atavistic obsession with the Mass and the priesthood. In reality, they are not even classical Protestants, --who would have quoted I Corinthians 14:34-- just entitled and resentful White feminists with chalice envy and a limitless capacity for denial.
Is it inertia that creates this odd anti-belonging? Or just fixation in the adolescent phase of development? Or the hugely changed and diminished role of religion, where now it is really nothing more defining than any other consumer choice. Political identities are far more "hard".
One of the women says that she does not leave the Church because it "belongs" to her. A completely ludicrous notion in Catholic terms. I hear echoes of Jung's animus-possessed women, females who have identified their egos with their inferior masculine and present the undignified spectacle of trying to impress you most loudly with their least-developed talent.
It is no accident that the female who transgresses male boundaries is one of the archetypal themes in tragedy. Even in Gnosticism, supposedly a great feminist friend, the primordial disaster in the Godhead was provoked, at least in one major version, by a female aeon's driving curiosity and refusal to accept her destined distance from The First Father.
I notice a bizarre contradiction in these women that I also notice in a lot of transgenders. The womenpriests' whole point is that they are priests, sacramentally ordained in a way that distinguishes them from laypeople. Not, no not, laypeople. Yet in this article, as throughout this movement, we find them verbally denying the very thing that obsesses them. If "Jesus said we are all priests" --and I dare you to find the scriptural support for that one-- then why bother to get ordained? They assure you that their vestments are just "baptismal", as they set about to get the priestly laying on of hands. So why not let everyone just take the priestly role in turn? Like the Valentinian Gnostics? But could all this really be about power and status? About female ego? Shocka.
Transgenders, too, will go on and on attacking "the binary gender regime" which forces us all to be either male or female. And then they spend lots of money, endure all sorts of pain and dislocation in order to fulfill that precise binary mandate.
Wabbits are not the only silly ones.
HT to TB, Bishop of Portland.
'via Blog this'
Another confused and silly would-be Priestette, ordained this time at the Purple Goddess Temple about two miles up the hill from my house. That particular "church" can cause testosterone levels to plunge even from several blocks away.
It is one of the strange features of religious dissent in our time, among Catholics anyway, that people who are clearly no longer Roman Catholic continue to assert that they are. At least the 16th century Reformers broke with Rome and were clear and happy about it. But then, they were all men. These women are clearly bargain basement Protestants in most ways, but with an atavistic obsession with the Mass and the priesthood. In reality, they are not even classical Protestants, --who would have quoted I Corinthians 14:34-- just entitled and resentful White feminists with chalice envy and a limitless capacity for denial.
Is it inertia that creates this odd anti-belonging? Or just fixation in the adolescent phase of development? Or the hugely changed and diminished role of religion, where now it is really nothing more defining than any other consumer choice. Political identities are far more "hard".
One of the women says that she does not leave the Church because it "belongs" to her. A completely ludicrous notion in Catholic terms. I hear echoes of Jung's animus-possessed women, females who have identified their egos with their inferior masculine and present the undignified spectacle of trying to impress you most loudly with their least-developed talent.
It is no accident that the female who transgresses male boundaries is one of the archetypal themes in tragedy. Even in Gnosticism, supposedly a great feminist friend, the primordial disaster in the Godhead was provoked, at least in one major version, by a female aeon's driving curiosity and refusal to accept her destined distance from The First Father.
I notice a bizarre contradiction in these women that I also notice in a lot of transgenders. The womenpriests' whole point is that they are priests, sacramentally ordained in a way that distinguishes them from laypeople. Not, no not, laypeople. Yet in this article, as throughout this movement, we find them verbally denying the very thing that obsesses them. If "Jesus said we are all priests" --and I dare you to find the scriptural support for that one-- then why bother to get ordained? They assure you that their vestments are just "baptismal", as they set about to get the priestly laying on of hands. So why not let everyone just take the priestly role in turn? Like the Valentinian Gnostics? But could all this really be about power and status? About female ego? Shocka.
Transgenders, too, will go on and on attacking "the binary gender regime" which forces us all to be either male or female. And then they spend lots of money, endure all sorts of pain and dislocation in order to fulfill that precise binary mandate.
Wabbits are not the only silly ones.
HT to TB, Bishop of Portland.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, May 26, 2013
More of my lurid past comes out
Just discovered that Gordon Gecko and Jason Bourne have sex scenes together in the Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra.
Well, Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his live-in boytoy Scott Thorsen.
Having seen the trailer, I think I will skip the movie.
But I confess. I saw Liberace, live and on stage. Back in the 80's.
How it came to be is a matter for the confessional, but the end result was that I saw one of his shows --with Scott as his liveried driver. It was amazing. Over the top. And funny. He showed a movie of his house and all his rings. You guys deserve to see them. After all, you paid for them. The guy could entertain.
This was before his sexuality was revealed --I know. How could people not know?-- and the audience was predominantly straight couples of serious middle age. And he was fagging it up right in their faces. They loved him. Hell, my mother and grandmother used to watch his B&W TV show. But that was years before the invention of homosexuals.
One funny moment in the trailer, where Douglas/Liberace is responding to some kind of tail or other. "God, what a story. It has everything but a fire in the orphanage." Laughed out loud.
---
Demonizing Satan
Episcopal Leader Claims St. Paul of Tarsus' Curing of Demon-Possessed Girl Was Wrong:
The Presiding Bishopette of the Episcopals latest insight into Christianity:
Not seeing God in the girl's demon-possession is the same attitude that gave us slavery and rejection of gay marriage...Really.
And this is not from The Ecclesiastical Onion.
It just gets curiouser and curiouser, these Unitarians in drag.
'via Blog this'
Her Grace in male drag
The Presiding Bishopette of the Episcopals latest insight into Christianity:
"Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of her gift of spiritual awareness," said Jefferts Schori.
"Paul can't abide something he won't see as beautiful or holy, so he tries to destroy it. It gets him thrown in prison. That's pretty much where he's put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God's nature, just as much as he does – maybe more so!"
Not seeing God in the girl's demon-possession is the same attitude that gave us slavery and rejection of gay marriage...Really.
And this is not from The Ecclesiastical Onion.
It just gets curiouser and curiouser, these Unitarians in drag.
'via Blog this'
Little devil
This pic reminded me of an incident when I was in 6th or 7th grade. I became interested in demonology. (Harbinger of things to come!)
and one afternoon while my mother was cooking dinner, I offered to summon a demon on the kitchen floor. She freaked. Did not find it funny.
I was banished, with my books, to the basement.
Harbinger* of things to come!
--
*A redundant sentence, strictly speaking. Harbingers are only of things to come.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Okay!
A Third World commentor replies to a statement about his/her people from a First Worlder:
sounds extremely racist .. although valid.
:)
--
This slip of the keyboard reveals how the game is played: We --and you know who we are-- are not allowed to notice, much less mention, things about Third Worlders, aka, People of Color, which they find embarrassing. No matter how accurate they are. In fact, the more accurate, the more we are forbidden to see them.
Oddly enough, what is embarrassing and what is not is still largely based on our value system, the evil and mandatedly blind First Worlders.
sounds extremely racist .. although valid.
:)
--
This slip of the keyboard reveals how the game is played: We --and you know who we are-- are not allowed to notice, much less mention, things about Third Worlders, aka, People of Color, which they find embarrassing. No matter how accurate they are. In fact, the more accurate, the more we are forbidden to see them.
Oddly enough, what is embarrassing and what is not is still largely based on our value system, the evil and mandatedly blind First Worlders.
The philosophy of knuckle-dragging
A fascinating alternative take on The Neanderthals...whom genetic testing has revealed to be our partial ancestors. Poor victims of advanced Homo Sapiens? Not according to this fella.
I have no idea of its validity, being no scientist about such things. But it's striking.
--
I have no idea of its validity, being no scientist about such things. But it's striking.
--
Friday, May 24, 2013
Paste jewel in the crown
One of the exchanges among the characters, to the effect that it really makes no difference who rules India, brown Hindu or brown Muslim or white British faces.
God, what crap.
Take a look at British India. Then at Hindu India. Then at Muslim Pakistan.
It makes a very great deal of difference.
Only foolish White people would give ten seconds consideration to such drivel.
---
PS. At one point, Count Bronofsky notes that while the Hindus and Muslims set about slaughtering each other --about a million died-- they did not turn on the British. Curious, don't you think, that the oppressive White people who should have been the objects of their special hatred were left largely in peace?
--
No expert here, but was is not Islam, the Muslims, who demanded their own state --not Hindus demanding that they be expelled-- which caused all the misery and death? If "the British divided India", as the blaming meme goes, who's idea was that? Not the Brits. Maybe the Muslim League had something to do with it? And if the Indians hated the idea so much, what was to prevent them from merging after independence?
The Brits were shamed by the Amritsar Massacre. A speck of dust by comparison with the savagery that the natives unleashed on each other when they got the chance. Watch Earth 1947, if you can stand it. It shows how the inter-religious hatred unfolded among a group of friends. The particularity of it makes the betrayals almost unwatchable.
When you take a peek at the history of India, the rivers of blood that the invading Muslims caused, for centuries, it's no wonder that there are three countries there and that that Pakis and Indians hate each other unto death.
The Hindu-Sikh violence around Indira Ghandi. Tens of thousands of deaths in the mid 80's. How much human misery in history has come from alien peoples living in the same space, under the same governmental roof?
Post-colonial whining. It lacks dignity. It inspires no respect. Like that stupid African Dominican student who wanted to blame the Rwanda bloodbath on "faulty evangelization by the Europeans." Talk like that only verifies the Euros' assessment of the colonized peoples as irresponsible children.
God, what crap.
Take a look at British India. Then at Hindu India. Then at Muslim Pakistan.
It makes a very great deal of difference.
Only foolish White people would give ten seconds consideration to such drivel.
---
PS. At one point, Count Bronofsky notes that while the Hindus and Muslims set about slaughtering each other --about a million died-- they did not turn on the British. Curious, don't you think, that the oppressive White people who should have been the objects of their special hatred were left largely in peace?
--
No expert here, but was is not Islam, the Muslims, who demanded their own state --not Hindus demanding that they be expelled-- which caused all the misery and death? If "the British divided India", as the blaming meme goes, who's idea was that? Not the Brits. Maybe the Muslim League had something to do with it? And if the Indians hated the idea so much, what was to prevent them from merging after independence?
The Brits were shamed by the Amritsar Massacre. A speck of dust by comparison with the savagery that the natives unleashed on each other when they got the chance. Watch Earth 1947, if you can stand it. It shows how the inter-religious hatred unfolded among a group of friends. The particularity of it makes the betrayals almost unwatchable.
When you take a peek at the history of India, the rivers of blood that the invading Muslims caused, for centuries, it's no wonder that there are three countries there and that that Pakis and Indians hate each other unto death.
The Hindu-Sikh violence around Indira Ghandi. Tens of thousands of deaths in the mid 80's. How much human misery in history has come from alien peoples living in the same space, under the same governmental roof?
Post-colonial whining. It lacks dignity. It inspires no respect. Like that stupid African Dominican student who wanted to blame the Rwanda bloodbath on "faulty evangelization by the Europeans." Talk like that only verifies the Euros' assessment of the colonized peoples as irresponsible children.
Counter-cultural notions
The Inquisition! The Crusades!
With these bumper sticker ideas, how many arguments have been brought to a standstill?
The religious equivalent of Raciss!
The links above offer a different perspective.
---
With these bumper sticker ideas, how many arguments have been brought to a standstill?
The religious equivalent of Raciss!
The links above offer a different perspective.
---
No great loss
After discovering just the other day that the feminists had invaded the Boy Scouts of America in the 70's, and that women have been active in all levels since then, including as scoutmasters, I feel less, well, of anything, about their decision to cave to the LGBT lobbyists. The ship had already sailed.
--
--
Italian genes
The Italian Invasion of American Culture - Taki's Magazine:
"nurture and nature worked together to make Italy a place where you definitely want to visit although you might not want to live there. "
Lived there for a year, have visited 3 times since.
Beautiful. And crazy. The fictional country called Italy is really a kind of overlay on the regions and cities and towns where these people actually think they live. As the Romans like to say, To the north of us, they're all really Germans, to the south, Arabs. We're the only true Italians.
(With apologies to my local Calabrese.)
'via Blog this'
"nurture and nature worked together to make Italy a place where you definitely want to visit although you might not want to live there. "
Lived there for a year, have visited 3 times since.
Beautiful. And crazy. The fictional country called Italy is really a kind of overlay on the regions and cities and towns where these people actually think they live. As the Romans like to say, To the north of us, they're all really Germans, to the south, Arabs. We're the only true Italians.
(With apologies to my local Calabrese.)
'via Blog this'
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Crossed wires
Michael Cooper - IMDb:
How the hell I wound up here I don't know.
Short version. An anti-Communist priest in Poland, Jerzy Popielusko, was killed in 1984 for his resistance, by the Polish security forces. On the fast track to holiness, he was beatified as a martyr in 2010.
The 1988 movie of his life and death, To Kill A Priest, was written by Polish/Jewish Agnieszka Holland and the English script adapted by American Michael Cooper, noted above.
Minutes before his death, we see him laughing at a fag joke told him by his chauffeur.
Is this historical? Was it made up? If so, why?
WTF?
'via Blog this'
How the hell I wound up here I don't know.
Short version. An anti-Communist priest in Poland, Jerzy Popielusko, was killed in 1984 for his resistance, by the Polish security forces. On the fast track to holiness, he was beatified as a martyr in 2010.
The 1988 movie of his life and death, To Kill A Priest, was written by Polish/Jewish Agnieszka Holland and the English script adapted by American Michael Cooper, noted above.
Minutes before his death, we see him laughing at a fag joke told him by his chauffeur.
Is this historical? Was it made up? If so, why?
WTF?
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The Boomer Disease
A lot of Boomer organizations seem to wind up like this.
The California therapists association I belong to just informed us that 60% of its membership is over 55. (And is typically female and White).
Almost as bad as nuns, whose average age in the US is 74.
---
The California therapists association I belong to just informed us that 60% of its membership is over 55. (And is typically female and White).
Almost as bad as nuns, whose average age in the US is 74.
---
Unintended outcomes, again
Number one. The Jewel in the Crown. One of the best film series of a book. Have seen the whole thing several times since its appearance in '84 and my views about it have changed a lot. But it remains a really fine piece of dramatic storytelling.
Yet.
I notice that it is only because of the do-gooding of the Mother Theresa character --Sister Ludmilla-- that policeman Ronald Merrick and tragic lover Harry Kumar meet, conflict and begin their gruesome relationship. Without her charity, they might never have crossed paths.
Number two. The most brilliant fictional incident of unintended outcomes is in the book which also contains perhaps the most famous opening sentence in modern English literature. In Earthly Powers, --this is a spoiler-- a pious priest, who later becomes a Pope on the verge of being canonized, performs a healing miracle and saves the life of a young baby in the hospital. Later in the story we discover that the boy grows up to be Jim Jones, of Jonestown.
No good deed...
Yet.
I notice that it is only because of the do-gooding of the Mother Theresa character --Sister Ludmilla-- that policeman Ronald Merrick and tragic lover Harry Kumar meet, conflict and begin their gruesome relationship. Without her charity, they might never have crossed paths.
A side note on the crucial importance of group status in human life. I don't think anyone could make the case that the British Raj was anything at all like the earlier Mughal invasions, which Will Durant considered some of the bloodiest in history. The drive to make the British "quit India" must really have been driven by status resentment rather than real oppression. But it was powerful enough to make the British leave.
Number two. The most brilliant fictional incident of unintended outcomes is in the book which also contains perhaps the most famous opening sentence in modern English literature. In Earthly Powers, --this is a spoiler-- a pious priest, who later becomes a Pope on the verge of being canonized, performs a healing miracle and saves the life of a young baby in the hospital. Later in the story we discover that the boy grows up to be Jim Jones, of Jonestown.
No good deed...
African Muslims slaughter Brit soldier in London street
Soldier hacked to death in London - FT.com:
If this case is as described, here and elsewhere, then the rational response, the response that makes the most sense, would be riots, burnings and killings by the native English population.
You say that I am a savage. But how do you fight this kind of savagery? With conferences and pamphlets? Empty expressions outrage? Do you think that the willingness of the Brits to tolerate this on Remembrance Day..
had nothing to do with this today?
Unless these vile communities are assured of responses in more-than-kind, they have NO reason to stop. Refusal to attack back is only interpreted as weakness.
Enoch Powell was right. Just ask Kathy Shaidle.
Operation Ferdinand and Isabella 2.0: the expulsion of the Moors from England...and eventually from all of Christendom.
Santiago Matamoros!
BTW, if you know some nice Muslims who would never think of doing anything remotely like this, so do I. The point is that Islam is your enemy, even if individual Muslims are not. When Muslims grow in numbers, it is not your nice neighbor who takes leadership, it is the classical and true Muhammad-imitating Muslim. And he was a warlord and the instituter of the jihad.
I know a nice local gay psychologist who is a Communist. That changes nothing about what Marxism really was and is. One of him is a curiosity; ten thousand of him is a crisis.
'via Blog this'
If this case is as described, here and elsewhere, then the rational response, the response that makes the most sense, would be riots, burnings and killings by the native English population.
You say that I am a savage. But how do you fight this kind of savagery? With conferences and pamphlets? Empty expressions outrage? Do you think that the willingness of the Brits to tolerate this on Remembrance Day..
had nothing to do with this today?
Unless these vile communities are assured of responses in more-than-kind, they have NO reason to stop. Refusal to attack back is only interpreted as weakness.
Enoch Powell was right. Just ask Kathy Shaidle.
Operation Ferdinand and Isabella 2.0: the expulsion of the Moors from England...and eventually from all of Christendom.
Santiago Matamoros!
BTW, if you know some nice Muslims who would never think of doing anything remotely like this, so do I. The point is that Islam is your enemy, even if individual Muslims are not. When Muslims grow in numbers, it is not your nice neighbor who takes leadership, it is the classical and true Muhammad-imitating Muslim. And he was a warlord and the instituter of the jihad.
I know a nice local gay psychologist who is a Communist. That changes nothing about what Marxism really was and is. One of him is a curiosity; ten thousand of him is a crisis.
'via Blog this'
Dos X Files
On my way to my office this morning it dawned on me that the X-Files is a long and coded exploration of the treason of our liberal elites in the colonization of America through Third World ill legal and legal immigration. When I get home later I will expand on this brilliant insight. I am sending this post by way of my iPhone using the microphone rather than the keyboard. This little piece of technology is truly amazing.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Rites and wrongs
Papal ceremonies, and liturgical rites in the classical Roman form, now have and have long had a Master of Ceremonies, a sort of on-stage director who makes sure everyone does what they are supposed to do.
Orthodox ceremonies, far more complex than the Western ones, lack this role entirely, and seem to flow along just fine.
What's that about?
I'm sure there is some cultural meta-message here, but I have to go out now so I'll think about it on the bus.
--
Orthodox ceremonies, far more complex than the Western ones, lack this role entirely, and seem to flow along just fine.
What's that about?
I'm sure there is some cultural meta-message here, but I have to go out now so I'll think about it on the bus.
--
Were ExC the Consul of the Republic
BBC News - Police 'investigating 54 child grooming gangs':
All non-citizen Mohammedans would be sent home and all Mohammedan citizens would have to register as agents of a hostile alien power, with consequent restrictions and surveillance. In short, as Muslims treat dhimmis, so we would treat Muslims.
'via Blog this'
All non-citizen Mohammedans would be sent home and all Mohammedan citizens would have to register as agents of a hostile alien power, with consequent restrictions and surveillance. In short, as Muslims treat dhimmis, so we would treat Muslims.
'via Blog this'
La Paglia
makes sense. In a scathing review of some airlessly dogmatic and dismal pomo academic studies of kinky sex, she writes:
Imagine. Including the male and female bodies as data in the study of gender. How essentialist.
Her summary comments about her own reading of S/M match my own experience of working in therapy with men who are drawn to it, as well as Jungian Antony Stevens' analysis (who links it, in male-male forms, to initiation rituals)
Her article's clever title, Scholars in Bondage, makes her eligible to join the crack team of post heading writers here at ExC.
---
First of all, every gender studies curriculum must build biology into its program; without knowledge of biology, gender studies slides into propaganda. Second, the study of ancient tribal and agrarian cultures is crucial to end the present narrow focus on modern capitalist society. Third, the cynical disdain for religion that permeates high-level academe must end. (I am speaking as an atheist.) It is precisely the blindness to spiritual quest patterns that has most disabled the three books under review.
Imagine. Including the male and female bodies as data in the study of gender. How essentialist.
Her summary comments about her own reading of S/M match my own experience of working in therapy with men who are drawn to it, as well as Jungian Antony Stevens' analysis (who links it, in male-male forms, to initiation rituals)
My conclusion, after wide reading in anthropology and psychology, was that sadomasochism is an archaic ritual form that descends from prehistoric nature cults and that erupts in sophisticated "late" phases of culture, when a civilization has become too large and diffuse and is starting to weaken or decline. I state in Sexual Personae that "sex is a far darker power than feminism has admitted," and that its "primitive urges" have never been fully tamed: "My theory is that whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sadomasochism will not be far behind."
Sadomasochism's punitive hierarchical structure is ultimately a religious longing for order, marked by ceremonies of penance and absolution. Its rhythmic abuse of the body, which can indeed become pathological if pushed to excess, is paradoxically a reinvigoration, a trancelike magical realignment with natural energies. Hence the symbolic use of leather—primitive animal hide—for whips and fetish clothing. By redefining the boundaries of the body, SM limits and disciplines the overexpanded consciousness of "late" phases, which are plagued by free-floating doubts and anxieties.
Her article's clever title, Scholars in Bondage, makes her eligible to join the crack team of post heading writers here at ExC.
---
The Pope and the Devil and the Associated Press
Did Pope Francis Perform An Exorcism?
The AP refers to his "obsession" with the devil.
Objective and unbiased reporting, as usual.
Reminds me of a very recondite old Catholic priest joke about the Pope and exorcism. When I tell it, you'll see how very recondite and old Catholic priesty it is.
Pope Leo XIII was receiving distinguished visitors in audience for his blessing --this would be in the 1890's-- when one of his aides realized that a British noblewoman had been admitted whose divorce and remarriage had been a scandal back in England. What to do? The Pope motioned his aide to stand aside and not worry.
When the lady appeared before him, she knelt and kissed his ring and waited for her blessing. His Holiness raised his hand and made the sign of the cross over her and said: Benedicaris ab illo in cuius honore cremaberis...the blessing used in the traditional Mass when incense is placed in the censer: May you be blessed by Him in Whose honor you shall burn.
Now that's religious. Not spiritual.
And very recondite old Catholic priesty.
--
PS. Mr. Poor Church Pope Francis lashed out at the inordinate love of money that characterizes our world...As if this were some awful novelty that never happened before. Reminds me of the ravings of the apocalyptic type evangelicals who are always finding 'the signs of the last days' in the newspaper. Any day of the week, of any year, will do.
Ex Cathedra's declinism is exempt from this critique because, well, I'm right.
'via Blog this'
The AP refers to his "obsession" with the devil.
Objective and unbiased reporting, as usual.
Reminds me of a very recondite old Catholic priest joke about the Pope and exorcism. When I tell it, you'll see how very recondite and old Catholic priesty it is.
Pope Leo XIII was receiving distinguished visitors in audience for his blessing --this would be in the 1890's-- when one of his aides realized that a British noblewoman had been admitted whose divorce and remarriage had been a scandal back in England. What to do? The Pope motioned his aide to stand aside and not worry.
When the lady appeared before him, she knelt and kissed his ring and waited for her blessing. His Holiness raised his hand and made the sign of the cross over her and said: Benedicaris ab illo in cuius honore cremaberis...the blessing used in the traditional Mass when incense is placed in the censer: May you be blessed by Him in Whose honor you shall burn.
Now that's religious. Not spiritual.
And very recondite old Catholic priesty.
--
PS. Mr. Poor Church Pope Francis lashed out at the inordinate love of money that characterizes our world...As if this were some awful novelty that never happened before. Reminds me of the ravings of the apocalyptic type evangelicals who are always finding 'the signs of the last days' in the newspaper. Any day of the week, of any year, will do.
Ex Cathedra's declinism is exempt from this critique because, well, I'm right.
'via Blog this'
Monday, May 20, 2013
Old head
Herculaneum, the smaller town near Pompei, holds an unusual number of pieces, both of wood and stone, whose painted surfaces survived the volcano. Unlike our assumption that statuary was white marble, most ancient imagery was brightly painted. This astonishing piece.
The whole program here.
The whole program here.
Social change
Funny line from an article about Jason Richwine and the Hispanic IQ witchery panic:
Q. Does the rank order of how groups perform on cognitive tests ever change?
A. Sure. When I first got interested in the social sciences in 1972, the usual rank order of cognitive performance was Oriental, then Caucasian, Chicano, and black. Now, it’s Asian, then white, Latino, and African-American. So everything is different.
--
Devil's Dictionary, version 3.7
The Progressive Glossary - Taki's Magazine:
The lingo of liberal virtue. Nicely done.
'via Blog this'
The lingo of liberal virtue. Nicely done.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Bitchin'
20 minutes of a tasteless/sentimental film about drama camp.
I know. I'm sorry.
Noticed that the two male characters who played the teachers could have been played in exactly the same way...exactly...by female actors. Burnt-out whiskey and cigarette voiced women aged 60 would have done the very same job. Exactly.
And the Latina MTF who is nothing but either a) cold, attacking bitch or b) a pouty, needy and tragic victim, is found by the one straight guy in the place to be "a wonderful person."
Do these people either a) read the scripts they write or b) watch the scenes they direct?
--
I know. I'm sorry.
Noticed that the two male characters who played the teachers could have been played in exactly the same way...exactly...by female actors. Burnt-out whiskey and cigarette voiced women aged 60 would have done the very same job. Exactly.
And the Latina MTF who is nothing but either a) cold, attacking bitch or b) a pouty, needy and tragic victim, is found by the one straight guy in the place to be "a wonderful person."
Do these people either a) read the scripts they write or b) watch the scenes they direct?
--
Bad boyz
There's been a spate of anti-gay violence in New York lately, beatings and one death. All seem unprovoked and cowardly. The victims were all taken by surprise, either outnumbered by a larger group or unarmed against men with weapons.
It's one thing to hold a public anti-homophobia rally in an obviously anti-gay society like Georgia and not expect a violent pushback. It's another to be walking around the streets of New York doing nothing provocative and be set upon by a pack of thugs. Urbania.
As disapproving as I am of LGBT victimist carryings-on and as respectful I am of traditional masculinity, this kind of contemptible human-hunting behavior, gangs stalking the weaker, is the shameful shadow of men. Acting out a primal instinct of showing dominance, it actually reveals cowardice. No matter who the perpetrators, or the victims, it's always turned my stomach.
---
Now for the tricky part. About the Georgians.
It's easy to make the locals and their church look like mere barbarians. Especially if you know nothing of their history and current situation. But from their point of view, if you look around at the advanced West, to see what eventuates from the recognition of "LGBT rights", what starts out as a humane plea for the tolerance of a tiny minority winds up with a society where merely arguing against gay marriage makes you a pariah. Seeing that trajectory...
---
It's one thing to hold a public anti-homophobia rally in an obviously anti-gay society like Georgia and not expect a violent pushback. It's another to be walking around the streets of New York doing nothing provocative and be set upon by a pack of thugs. Urbania.
As disapproving as I am of LGBT victimist carryings-on and as respectful I am of traditional masculinity, this kind of contemptible human-hunting behavior, gangs stalking the weaker, is the shameful shadow of men. Acting out a primal instinct of showing dominance, it actually reveals cowardice. No matter who the perpetrators, or the victims, it's always turned my stomach.
---
Now for the tricky part. About the Georgians.
It's easy to make the locals and their church look like mere barbarians. Especially if you know nothing of their history and current situation. But from their point of view, if you look around at the advanced West, to see what eventuates from the recognition of "LGBT rights", what starts out as a humane plea for the tolerance of a tiny minority winds up with a society where merely arguing against gay marriage makes you a pariah. Seeing that trajectory...
---
Cucina
I like my kitchen. It is the brightest room in the house, with a southern and eastern exposure. On beautifully perfect sunny days like today, it is filled with light all morning. Sunlight filtering in, making sharp bright and shadow, falling even on the most mundane of objects I find beautiful.
B has a photographer's eye for light and shadow, too. The back of a dining chair, casting a morning shadow on the floor of his cucina.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Shallow me
Via the lawless internet, I can watch the new Star Trek prequel movie. But it's a camera version of what's shown on the screen so it has a kind of 1930's look to it. It's exciting, and silly. Some of the barfworthy Star Trek PC moralism remains. The new BBC Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch, is the serious bad guy, Khan, who will/did show his Wrath.
The young Captain Kirk is the freakishly handsome Chris Pine, whose bromance with Spock (out gay man Zachary Quinto) continues, the switching of a famous franchise scene between the buddies bringing out a side of the Vulcan we have never seen before. (Vagueness to avoid spoiler.)
PS Although Uhura is now played as a super-efficient fox, she remains a woman. She starts a romance with Spock --the Vulcan-- and then gets mad at him --the Vulcan--for not showing his feelings...
The intractable irrationality of the female.
Spock and Kirk out of uniform
The young Captain Kirk is the freakishly handsome Chris Pine, whose bromance with Spock (out gay man Zachary Quinto) continues, the switching of a famous franchise scene between the buddies bringing out a side of the Vulcan we have never seen before. (Vagueness to avoid spoiler.)
PS Although Uhura is now played as a super-efficient fox, she remains a woman. She starts a romance with Spock --the Vulcan-- and then gets mad at him --the Vulcan--for not showing his feelings...
The intractable irrationality of the female.
Is it just me
FBI — Most Wanted Terrorists:
Or are the first two faces and names on this list a Black woman and a Hispanic man because they are more wanted than the following 30 men, all of whom are Muslims, or because it would not be nice to start out with Muslims because that would be un-dhimmi-like Islamophobic?
'via Blog this'
Or are the first two faces and names on this list a Black woman and a Hispanic man because they are more wanted than the following 30 men, all of whom are Muslims, or because it would not be nice to start out with Muslims because that would be un-dhimmi-like Islamophobic?
'via Blog this'
Patient Nation
CDC finds mental health woes in one in five U.S. kids - CBS News:
All your diagnoses are belong to us.
[In typical ExC fashion, I note that the stock photo used to represent US children is not inclusive. There is one racial group which we are obsessively required to include that in this case, because it would meaning being included in a bad thing, is absent... How considerate we are.]
'via Blog this'
All your diagnoses are belong to us.
[In typical ExC fashion, I note that the stock photo used to represent US children is not inclusive. There is one racial group which we are obsessively required to include that in this case, because it would meaning being included in a bad thing, is absent... How considerate we are.]
'via Blog this'
Just for the record
My reaction to a scene and character on X-Files:
I am so fucking sick of The Sassy Black Woman.
The combination of privilege/protection because of race and gender, along with the condescension, patronizing (matronizing) and aggression deserves a much more robust response than the usual. You can imagine what I think it should be.
A related unPC note: a Black person of my acquaintance, who has spent their life almost entirely in a White world, by clear choice, with only tangential relationships with other Blacks, is nonetheless always scanning for White racism. Responding to a program in Britain, a cooking show, no less, this was the set of responses: Are they cooking food for the (insert People of Color group here) that they would like or is it just British food? Do they treat those people well? Why is the final dinner just with the Whites?
Here you have the Obama Reflex: Black people who live in this country --whether to call them Americans or not is a good question-- and whose lives are entirely dependent on the good will, protection (and guilt) of Whites, carry around an unquenchable suspicion and resentment of the very people who have made their lives possible. They rely entirely on Shelby Steele's damnable bargain of license and deference.
Thanks, Rev "Dr" King, for your contribution.
--
I am so fucking sick of The Sassy Black Woman.
The combination of privilege/protection because of race and gender, along with the condescension, patronizing (matronizing) and aggression deserves a much more robust response than the usual. You can imagine what I think it should be.
A related unPC note: a Black person of my acquaintance, who has spent their life almost entirely in a White world, by clear choice, with only tangential relationships with other Blacks, is nonetheless always scanning for White racism. Responding to a program in Britain, a cooking show, no less, this was the set of responses: Are they cooking food for the (insert People of Color group here) that they would like or is it just British food? Do they treat those people well? Why is the final dinner just with the Whites?
Here you have the Obama Reflex: Black people who live in this country --whether to call them Americans or not is a good question-- and whose lives are entirely dependent on the good will, protection (and guilt) of Whites, carry around an unquenchable suspicion and resentment of the very people who have made their lives possible. They rely entirely on Shelby Steele's damnable bargain of license and deference.
Thanks, Rev "Dr" King, for your contribution.
--
Mamas from (Muslim) hell
PJ Lifestyle » How Mothers from Hell Raise Their Boys to Do Evil:
Our natural, and rather sentimental, sympathy for mothers needs to be seriously critiqued in these cases. Most Westerners refuse to confront how deeply alien Islam is.
I'll bet that the same people who would have been in favor of dialogue with Marxists back in the days of Communism now take the same denial-cum-appeasement attitude to the Mohammedans.
'via Blog this'
PS One of the characteristics that I noticed right away in Muslim culture is its obsession with conspiracies. Muslims may critique themselves for not being Muslim enough, but there is no critique of Islam itself. So the outward-projection is massive. Foolish White People, however, blame themselves for everything.
Of course, --as we who have taken Logic 101 know-- just because Muslim culture is paranoid, does not mean that only Muslim culture is paranoid. Nor one bit less paranoid because of that.
Our natural, and rather sentimental, sympathy for mothers needs to be seriously critiqued in these cases. Most Westerners refuse to confront how deeply alien Islam is.
I'll bet that the same people who would have been in favor of dialogue with Marxists back in the days of Communism now take the same denial-cum-appeasement attitude to the Mohammedans.
'via Blog this'
PS One of the characteristics that I noticed right away in Muslim culture is its obsession with conspiracies. Muslims may critique themselves for not being Muslim enough, but there is no critique of Islam itself. So the outward-projection is massive. Foolish White People, however, blame themselves for everything.
Of course, --as we who have taken Logic 101 know-- just because Muslim culture is paranoid, does not mean that only Muslim culture is paranoid. Nor one bit less paranoid because of that.
Useful learning
A very smart, rather arrogant and showy, professor I had in my theology studies did leave me with one useful bit of learning. To ask about any proposed fact, not one but three thing:
--
Is it true?
Is it significant?
Is it compelling?
--
Good luck with that
Farrakhan To Detroit: Investment Needed In City
“Why shouldn’t we come together and own Detroit?”
Whaddaya mean "we"...?
'via Blog this'
“Why shouldn’t we come together and own Detroit?”
Whaddaya mean "we"...?
'via Blog this'
Islam and the West: Either/Or
The long and messy aftermath of the original Reconquista. Historical details new to me.
Articles: The Expulsion of the Moors:
One more example of multiculturalism.
'via Blog this'
Articles: The Expulsion of the Moors:
One more example of multiculturalism.
'via Blog this'
Friday, May 17, 2013
LGBT culture again
Same-sex desire is not sufficient to explain "gay culture." One might hypothesize that some element of gender dysphoria is involved.
Paul VI was right
(in)Famous for vetoing the opinion of his pontifical commission by continuing to forbid artificial contraception in his 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, Paul VI was right.
Of course, the horse was already out of the barn by then, both technologically and culturally, and The Pill was on its way to attaining the sacramental status it shares today with abortion.* In ObamaNation, the country formerly known as the USA, it is now an assumed duty of the Federal government to see that this child-preventing wafer is provided freely to any girl or woman who wants it. It is a de facto "civil right."
Two deleterious results of this Pandoran "reproductive technology." It allowed feminism to take off and infect the entire West with a host of ills. And it has allowed the same Western (aka White) nations to de-breed themselves out of existence.
As the native peoples of England and Wales enter population decline, one in ten inhabitants of Britain under age 25 are now Muslim.
We Whites --a combination of the Krell and the Eloi--are the authors of our own destruction, truly The Most Foolish People On The Planet©.
*Some Canadian feminist, name unrecalled, famously pronounced that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. One of my teachers at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where I did my psychology degree, wrote a book by that very name. In congruent irony, this very feminist scholar hails from Quebec, where the precipitous decline in the native French birthrate, combined with an enthusiasm for Third World immigration into the province, has made it demographically impossible for these perpetually dissatisfied children of France to achieve their dream of independence by plebiscite.
Of course, the horse was already out of the barn by then, both technologically and culturally, and The Pill was on its way to attaining the sacramental status it shares today with abortion.* In ObamaNation, the country formerly known as the USA, it is now an assumed duty of the Federal government to see that this child-preventing wafer is provided freely to any girl or woman who wants it. It is a de facto "civil right."
Two deleterious results of this Pandoran "reproductive technology." It allowed feminism to take off and infect the entire West with a host of ills. And it has allowed the same Western (aka White) nations to de-breed themselves out of existence.
As the native peoples of England and Wales enter population decline, one in ten inhabitants of Britain under age 25 are now Muslim.
We Whites --a combination of the Krell and the Eloi--are the authors of our own destruction, truly The Most Foolish People On The Planet©.
| -- |
*Some Canadian feminist, name unrecalled, famously pronounced that if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. One of my teachers at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where I did my psychology degree, wrote a book by that very name. In congruent irony, this very feminist scholar hails from Quebec, where the precipitous decline in the native French birthrate, combined with an enthusiasm for Third World immigration into the province, has made it demographically impossible for these perpetually dissatisfied children of France to achieve their dream of independence by plebiscite.
DisUniting
Steyn warns of 'serious secession movements' [VIDEO] | The Daily Caller:
Mark Steyn and Dennis Miller contemplate leaving the Union.
Steyn would head for Texas. A nice idea, except for the fact that Texas is demographically turning into Mexico.
But I sympathize. Dennis wants to hold a Civil War using a paintball match to decide the outcome. Now that's creativity.
'via Blog this'
Mark Steyn and Dennis Miller contemplate leaving the Union.
Steyn would head for Texas. A nice idea, except for the fact that Texas is demographically turning into Mexico.
But I sympathize. Dennis wants to hold a Civil War using a paintball match to decide the outcome. Now that's creativity.
'via Blog this'
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Burn the witch
Should Research on Race and IQ Be Banned?* | Cross-Check, Scientific American Blog Network:
Dr. Richwine has apparently touched the heart of the Liberal religion. Such ideas must be banned and those who persist, sent to Guantanamo...
I wish this were a piece in The Onion, but it's not.
HT to J Donovan
'via Blog this'
Dr. Richwine has apparently touched the heart of the Liberal religion. Such ideas must be banned and those who persist, sent to Guantanamo...
I wish this were a piece in The Onion, but it's not.
HT to J Donovan
'via Blog this'
X Typing
Ex Cathedra is a Meyers Briggs INTP. Alas.
I find these phrases:
true of me, sorta true of me,not true of me.
loner,
more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family,
wrestles with the meaninglessness of existence,
likes esoteric things,
disorganized,
messy, (alternating with OCD moments of orderliness)
likes science fiction,
can be lonely,
observer,
private,
can't describe feelings easily, (I've learned how to over the years)
detached,
likes solitude,
not revealing,
unemotional, (on the outside, anyway)
rule breaker,
avoidant,
familiar with the darkside,
skeptical,
acts without consulting others,
does not think they are weird but others do,
socially uncomfortable,
abrupt,
fantasy prone,
does not like happy people, (only if they're dumb; otherwise I like em)
appreciates strangeness,
frequently loses things,
acts without planning,
guarded,
not punctual,
more likely to support marijuana legalization,
not prone to compromise, (practically I do compromise, intellectually, no.)
hard to persuade,
relies on mind more than on others,
calm
Mr B, my demi-nemesis and favorite guy, is an ESTJ...(and a Seven to my Five) which, as he will tell you, is much better. I can't disagree.
--
I find these phrases:
true of me, sorta true of me,
loner,
more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family,
wrestles with the meaninglessness of existence,
likes esoteric things,
disorganized,
messy, (alternating with OCD moments of orderliness)
likes science fiction,
can be lonely,
observer,
private,
detached,
likes solitude,
not revealing,
unemotional, (on the outside, anyway)
rule breaker,
avoidant,
familiar with the darkside,
skeptical,
acts without consulting others,
does not think they are weird but others do,
socially uncomfortable,
abrupt,
fantasy prone,
does not like happy people, (only if they're dumb; otherwise I like em)
appreciates strangeness,
frequently loses things,
acts without planning,
guarded,
not prone to compromise, (practically I do compromise, intellectually, no.)
hard to persuade,
relies on mind more than on others,
calm
Mr B, my demi-nemesis and favorite guy, is an ESTJ...(and a Seven to my Five) which, as he will tell you, is much better. I can't disagree.
--
X-(enophobic) Files
One of the worst X-Files episodes --even the producers wished they'd never filmed it-- is Badlaa, about a little deformed Indian beggar with magical powers and a nasty attitude who...oh, never mind. But one of the reviewers wrote an article about The X-(enophobic) Files...in which he ethico-pompously revealed to us that it raised issues of how we view poverty, race, deformity and 'otherness.'
Mother of God. "We"? Whaddaya mean "we", White man? Anyone who talks like that already has all his answers decided on and you know who the Bad Guys are gonna be. White People Are The Most Foolish People On The Planet.
Now if a character were, say, a White Southerner who was poor and deformed, then Mr Reviewer would really be dealing with 'otherness.'
---
Mother of God. "We"? Whaddaya mean "we", White man? Anyone who talks like that already has all his answers decided on and you know who the Bad Guys are gonna be. White People Are The Most Foolish People On The Planet.
Now if a character were, say, a White Southerner who was poor and deformed, then Mr Reviewer would really be dealing with 'otherness.'
---
Archetyping
Archetypes are species blueprints. I use the model of a constellation to think about them, especially the archetypal masculine. I think that pretty well any form of masculinity can be located somewhere with and within these twelve basic types, singly or in combination. They unfold from the primal four: father, warrior, hunter and friend. I have not listed their shadow forms, eg healer/charlatan, king/tyrant, etc.
The Culture bearers might be divided into two: the poet/singer and the teacher/mentor. One creates cultural forms, the other passes them on.
As I have noted before, homosexual men tend to cluster around the Culture and the Ornament "stars" in the constellation. They are not uncommon in the Sacred star, either...at least in Christian countries, where you get a confluence of culture and ornament with spirituality.
The Culture bearers might be divided into two: the poet/singer and the teacher/mentor. One creates cultural forms, the other passes them on.
As I have noted before, homosexual men tend to cluster around the Culture and the Ornament "stars" in the constellation. They are not uncommon in the Sacred star, either...at least in Christian countries, where you get a confluence of culture and ornament with spirituality.
Cranky motives
When William F Buckley hired George Will to write a twice-weekly column for the National Review, Will was unsure he could turn out that much work on a regular basis. Where would his inspiration come from. Buckley told him that he'd be annoyed about something at least twice a week and that would provide his inspiration.
Truer words.
I do occasionally write about things that make me happy or smile. And my icons of the male form proceed solely from appreciation. No ranting there.
But the typical literary form of this blog is the rant. It's not elegant --though I think that (my overuse of parentheticals excepted) I am a good writer-- but truth, infallible truth in this case, need not be arrived at only through the high roads of rhetoric.
So, two and a half brief annoyances.
Truer words.
I do occasionally write about things that make me happy or smile. And my icons of the male form proceed solely from appreciation. No ranting there.
But the typical literary form of this blog is the rant. It's not elegant --though I think that (my overuse of parentheticals excepted) I am a good writer-- but truth, infallible truth in this case, need not be arrived at only through the high roads of rhetoric.
So, two and a half brief annoyances.
Anti-Christian. The Pope made some speech about the tyranny of finance and the poverty of the poor and the world financial system. As if he's some kind of expert. My usual complaint about clerics lecturing experts based on ideals they concoct.
Pro-Christian. Or at least anti-anti-Christian. Media ignorance about Christianity, or wilful distortion of Christianity by media and entertainment types, almost as a badge of honor. An X Files episode where a Bible-based cult believed that Christ had returned to earth as a foot-long slug who needed human hosts...
Anti-reactive/compulsive-inclusionism. In an otherwise laudable article about the revolting prayers of a Muslim imam at the funeral service for the dead Navy Seals in Afghanistan, a Jewish writer complains that they had been deprived of prayer to the Seals' "Judeo-Christian" God. I have complained about this before. Given the rarity of Jews in the Navy, much less the Seals, what's the likelihood of there being a Jew in the bunch?
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
UnReformed
In my regular perusal of a religion news aggregator, I held my Catholic nose to watch a video about currents in American Evangelicalism. I sorta see it like the Jesuits. Lots of words (read, spoken and sung) and lots of subject-based emoting. It's clearly compelling to some people, but I don't get it. As my friend the bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostic Sacramentorum says, I may be a Gnostic, but at least I'm not a Protestant.
Sola scriptura. Building your whole religion just on the Bible. On that library which masquerades as a book. As if it were the Betty Crocker Recipes of religion, that you could start from zero and build up a whole faith from it, just by itself.
Of course no one does that. They all have crypto-Traditions and crypto-Magisteriums. And Protestants pretty much start everything out from North and Western Europe in the 1500's.
Zzz.
I'd rather go to a Russian Orthodox liturgy in Old Slavonic where I couldn't understand more than a dozen words of it.
--
Sola scriptura. Building your whole religion just on the Bible. On that library which masquerades as a book. As if it were the Betty Crocker Recipes of religion, that you could start from zero and build up a whole faith from it, just by itself.
Of course no one does that. They all have crypto-Traditions and crypto-Magisteriums. And Protestants pretty much start everything out from North and Western Europe in the 1500's.
Zzz.
I'd rather go to a Russian Orthodox liturgy in Old Slavonic where I couldn't understand more than a dozen words of it.
--
More natural imbalance
The near-idolatrous reverence of liberals for The Ecosystem is well known. For the last thirty years at least, hardly any nature programming does not hold forth about the complex interconnectedness of the ecosystem and the disasters that can result --in often entirely unexpected ways-- when any part of it is tampered with.
I thought of this because of a brief discussion with a friend about bumble bees. It started out with sunglasses he was wearing. I'll spare you the details. I got curious and looked up Wiki and found a quote from Darwin. He noticed that a certain type of clover was visited solely by bumble bees and that it must rely on them for pollination. Bee nests were destroyed by field mice. And so where mice-eating cats abounded, so did bumblebees, on which the clover depended. He pointed out that cats were, further along the chain, the protectors of bees and of clover. Not an obvious link, but a real one. The idea of the ecosystem need not be worshiped in order to be true.
But liberals never seem to think of human communities as ecosystems, as natural systems. Because they don't really accept the idea of a human nature, preferring to think of our species as the one blank slate on the planet. They assume that society and society's laws lay hid in night/ Liberalism said, Let the Managerial State be!...and all was light. But the examples of disaster resulting from well-intentioned but compulsive and chronic tinkering with the human ecosystem are too numerous. All of Marxism is one long planned and disastrous tinkering with it. Liberalism, its not-often-enough acknowledged cousin, plays the same game and similar downstream miseries result.
Who would imagine, if they decided to cut down on the number of cats in a rural area --because, for example, they threaten birds' eggs-- that one day you could wind up with cloverless fields of mice? The human system may in fact be far more complex and interconnected, yet fiddling with it is the Liberals' daily bread.
--
I thought of this because of a brief discussion with a friend about bumble bees. It started out with sunglasses he was wearing. I'll spare you the details. I got curious and looked up Wiki and found a quote from Darwin. He noticed that a certain type of clover was visited solely by bumble bees and that it must rely on them for pollination. Bee nests were destroyed by field mice. And so where mice-eating cats abounded, so did bumblebees, on which the clover depended. He pointed out that cats were, further along the chain, the protectors of bees and of clover. Not an obvious link, but a real one. The idea of the ecosystem need not be worshiped in order to be true.
But liberals never seem to think of human communities as ecosystems, as natural systems. Because they don't really accept the idea of a human nature, preferring to think of our species as the one blank slate on the planet. They assume that society and society's laws lay hid in night/ Liberalism said, Let the Managerial State be!...and all was light. But the examples of disaster resulting from well-intentioned but compulsive and chronic tinkering with the human ecosystem are too numerous. All of Marxism is one long planned and disastrous tinkering with it. Liberalism, its not-often-enough acknowledged cousin, plays the same game and similar downstream miseries result.
Who would imagine, if they decided to cut down on the number of cats in a rural area --because, for example, they threaten birds' eggs-- that one day you could wind up with cloverless fields of mice? The human system may in fact be far more complex and interconnected, yet fiddling with it is the Liberals' daily bread.
--
Starz
I do like Chad Allen as Donald Strachey. Can't think of a gay character in film or TV remotely like him. I even like the low-budget kinda semi-noir claustrophobic set style of the series.
Joshua Tree, 1951. A black-and-white art style film about James Dean. Not bad. (I liked The Roomate better.) I have two degrees of separation from the rebel without a cause. My sister --who died nine years ago today-- bought her house from a old New York actor who had a fling with him back in the 50's. My parents' place is right next door. So I got invited over for drinks one evening. That evening also gave me two degrees from Elizabeth Taylor. Eventful :)
--
Joshua Tree, 1951. A black-and-white art style film about James Dean. Not bad. (I liked The Roomate better.) I have two degrees of separation from the rebel without a cause. My sister --who died nine years ago today-- bought her house from a old New York actor who had a fling with him back in the 50's. My parents' place is right next door. So I got invited over for drinks one evening. That evening also gave me two degrees from Elizabeth Taylor. Eventful :)
--
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
OBTW
Ariel Castro, a Puerto Rican Hispanic, kept three women as sex slaves for ten years. Two of them are clearly White.
Why is there not racial outrage?
Can you imagine if a White man kept two Hispanic women in that state for that time?
Whites: The Most Foolish People On The Planet.
---
Why is there not racial outrage?
Can you imagine if a White man kept two Hispanic women in that state for that time?
Whites: The Most Foolish People On The Planet.
---
Obamanation continues
The Benghazi cover-up. The IRS attacks on the Right. The DOJ about AP phone records.
And to think that Richard Nixon resigned merely over a single political robbery...
And why did Alberto Gonzalez resign as AG?
Behind the Curtain: D.C. turns on Obama - POLITICO.com:
One can only hope.
---
And to think that Richard Nixon resigned merely over a single political robbery...
And why did Alberto Gonzalez resign as AG?
Behind the Curtain: D.C. turns on Obama - POLITICO.com:
One can only hope.
---
Yahwehs Behaving Badly, again
On Killing Canaanites: One Simple, Hardly Worth Mentioning (but I feel that I should) Thought:
I followed a link to a discussion --mostly among Bible-Only evangelical types, poor things-- about God's orders to the Israelites to commit what we currently call genocide and which we consider an atrocity and a crime against humanity. It's an old old old problem for Christians about the Old Testament.
Marcion simply decided to cut and run, dropping the Jewish scriptures entirely. The orthodox Church kept both Testaments and then proceeded to grapple with the perceived difference between Jesus' Father, the God of the Sermon on the Mount, and the fairly regular bloodletting which Jesus' Father mandated in his "earlier" life. And it's been grappling for two thousand years. In ancient times it was the question of how to contain both the very anthropomorphic deity of the Bible with the Uncaused Caused and Ultimate GoodTruthBeauty of Greek thinking. It's the conflict between Pascal's "God of the philosophers" and "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
The farther I move away from the Liberal bubble in which most people live, the clearer its outlines and boundaries become. All these nice Christians are like fish in the waters of modernity, what I might call post-war UN moralism. All kinds of grand and highminded pronouncements about rights and such. The farther away I move, the thinner the discourse becomes. Although, as young Dr. Richwine can tell you, the liberal snake still packs a deadly venom if you cross him with taboo and heretical notions.
Part of what I have kept from my encounter with Gnosticism, and my earlier and more fundamentally transforming encounter with AIDS, is that God cannot be innocent of the structures of the universe which he has created. Sin did not create death. God did. I don't see any way around that. And that tells you something about God that you might not want to know.
One of my observations about Christianity's acceptance of scientific evolution is that it has, I think, failed to absorb the full shock not only how immense in time and space, but how violent is the structure of this created world. Think just of all the creatures, on this planet alone, who were engaged in the bloody and savage business of eating each other to death even before hominids appeared. And on this planet alone, how many die-offs were there before Homo Sapiens? Suffering and death are built in. And God did it.
Think again of all the ways in which human beings have died and continue to die every hour, even as I write this. About one every second of every minute. And think of the centrality in the Gospel of Love of one particular and central death, a gruesome episode of torture and crucifixion. Clearly, despite the plentiful goo in Christianity about love and peace and joy, etc., savagery is central to it. And to its God. After all, don't these pious evangelicals believe in Hell?
A couple of thousand murdered Canaanites is therefore hardly exceptional.
--
'via Blog this'
Some day
"All men are created equal" will seem as antique as The Divine Right of Kings.
HT to a rightwing traditionalist.
'via Blog this'
HT to a rightwing traditionalist.
'via Blog this'
Huh? Huh?
Asia Times Online :: Snaking the Scotch:
Spengler, who is actually Reb David Goldman, begins his article with this ironic sentence:
Ethnocentrism is the snake in Christianity's garden.
In this highly ethnocentric article, he then suggests a causal link between support for Israel (which he equates with pro-Jewish attitudes) and the prospering or demise of various Gentile groups.
I am finding the narcissism of some Jews as irritating as the gay variety, where everything is always about "us." Blacks are past masters at this game.
I am either differentiated or confused about Jews. The "typical aggregate impact", in terms of politics, is hugely leftward and therefore deeply unwelcome. I would take Israel over its surrounding sea of barbarous Arabs any day. And I know Jews as people, in family and out, who are quite decent human beings.
But for an obviously ethnocentric Jew, in an article about Israel, the ultimate Jewish ethnocentricity, to attack Christianity for ethnocentrism....a double Huh?
'via Blog this'
Spengler, who is actually Reb David Goldman, begins his article with this ironic sentence:
Ethnocentrism is the snake in Christianity's garden.
In this highly ethnocentric article, he then suggests a causal link between support for Israel (which he equates with pro-Jewish attitudes) and the prospering or demise of various Gentile groups.
I am finding the narcissism of some Jews as irritating as the gay variety, where everything is always about "us." Blacks are past masters at this game.
I am either differentiated or confused about Jews. The "typical aggregate impact", in terms of politics, is hugely leftward and therefore deeply unwelcome. I would take Israel over its surrounding sea of barbarous Arabs any day. And I know Jews as people, in family and out, who are quite decent human beings.
But for an obviously ethnocentric Jew, in an article about Israel, the ultimate Jewish ethnocentricity, to attack Christianity for ethnocentrism....a double Huh?
'via Blog this'
Monday, May 13, 2013
Smooth criminal
A 27 second video I made from a movie has been removed from my YouTube site for copyright infringement. And to get access to my account, I had to take a copyright law test! I am being a bad boy today.
--
--
Role reversals
Along with the Phallic Females and Numinous Negroes who have long populated the fictional world that the Bien-Pensants want us to believe is both how things are and how they ought to be*, Precocious Brats are another character set which should be waaaaaay rolled back. This is the child --usually, though not always, a girl-- who is the family Alpha Dog, to whose mood swings, cartoon ideas and snappy rudeness the adults in the family defer. Or whose superior emotional insight puts the oldsters to shame. The "adults" appease, coddle, explain and justify. It's revolting.
Unlike the women and Blacks in these roles, who are far more rare in real life, the Precious Brat is common enough.
--
A rightwing thinker recently wrote: "We set up entire social systems and ideologies at odds with our most basic instincts, and wonder why the world seems to have lost its mind."
Unlike the women and Blacks in these roles, who are far more rare in real life, the Precious Brat is common enough.
--
A rightwing thinker recently wrote: "We set up entire social systems and ideologies at odds with our most basic instincts, and wonder why the world seems to have lost its mind."
Declining made personal
Aside from getting some very unpleasant financial news, on my way home from that meeting, a guy yelled at me from his car as I finished crossing the street, "Get a move on, grandpa!"
--
--
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Sunday nite TV
No Dexter for a while, so the quality is iffy.
High points in the past have been X-Files, then Six Feet Under and Sopranos, Rome, Deadwood and Carnivale, all terrific. I skipped Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Nihilism does nothing for me. (Especially the Larry David style. He's a symptom all by himself.) True Blood started out well but degenerated into a manic soap opera, as do most series who overstay their natural course. Speaking of blood, that's pretty well all Spartacus had going for it. Even the wall to wall muscle and testosterone couldn't save it.
Game of Thrones. The mediocrity continues along its gruesome way.
The Borgias. If you thought it couldn't get any worse, you were wrong.
On weeknights, Hannibal has its moments. Elementary is excellent.
===
High points in the past have been X-Files, then Six Feet Under and Sopranos, Rome, Deadwood and Carnivale, all terrific. I skipped Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Nihilism does nothing for me. (Especially the Larry David style. He's a symptom all by himself.) True Blood started out well but degenerated into a manic soap opera, as do most series who overstay their natural course. Speaking of blood, that's pretty well all Spartacus had going for it. Even the wall to wall muscle and testosterone couldn't save it.
Game of Thrones. The mediocrity continues along its gruesome way.
The Borgias. If you thought it couldn't get any worse, you were wrong.
On weeknights, Hannibal has its moments. Elementary is excellent.
===
Hard to please
Ex Cathedra can be judgmental.
Pope Francis canonized new saints today: two nuns --zzzzzz-- and 800 men who were slaughtered by the invading Muslims in 1480 at Otranto, on the heel of Italy's boot. After sacking the town and murdering the upper classes and the bishop, they rounded up the men remaining alive and "invited" them to accept Islam. (This is the Muslim technical term. If the invitation is refused, you are fair game as a "disbeliever.") The men were led by the town shoemaker, who said they'd "rather die a thousand times than become Turks." They were beheaded or sawed in half, one by one. Their bones and shrine:
The Turks apparently dispute this, but then they deny the Armenian genocide. And the most popular Turkish film, Conquest 1453, presents a pro-Turk cartoon version of the end of the Christian Roman Empire. Self-criticism is hardly a Muslim virtue.
In his homily, and in the official document, we hear about the "Ottomans" as the perpetrators, but no direct mention of either the words Islam or Muslim. And the Pope said over 800 "people" died (persone). They were 800 men, not politically correct "people". Francis made a generic reference to Christians suffering "violence" today.
He was much more effusive and detailed about the do-gooder nuns. That's apparently his thing.
Pussy.
Pope Francis canonized new saints today: two nuns --zzzzzz-- and 800 men who were slaughtered by the invading Muslims in 1480 at Otranto, on the heel of Italy's boot. After sacking the town and murdering the upper classes and the bishop, they rounded up the men remaining alive and "invited" them to accept Islam. (This is the Muslim technical term. If the invitation is refused, you are fair game as a "disbeliever.") The men were led by the town shoemaker, who said they'd "rather die a thousand times than become Turks." They were beheaded or sawed in half, one by one. Their bones and shrine:
In his homily, and in the official document, we hear about the "Ottomans" as the perpetrators, but no direct mention of either the words Islam or Muslim. And the Pope said over 800 "people" died (persone). They were 800 men, not politically correct "people". Francis made a generic reference to Christians suffering "violence" today.
He was much more effusive and detailed about the do-gooder nuns. That's apparently his thing.
Pussy.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
More scattershots
Having taken a peek at a few Jungian sites this morning, I find that their utter embeddedness in the leftliberal worldview continues.
From the movies, why on earth Harry Potter likes Ginny Weasley is beyond me. She's a humorless prig. I have never once seen her laugh. She'll smile, but no laughing.
The smoky black ink effects in the movies --with the Death Eaters or with the memory fragments in the pensive--are really good.
I wish Richard Harris had lived to complete the Potter movies. With his gravitas, Dumbledore's lately revealed being gay would have felt different.
Beautiful light, sky, sun, breeze, trees in San Francisco on a May afternoon. What a nice planet.
Re-doing my therapy website, I find myself writing that, from the point of view of our post-feminist culture, while women may have problems, men are problems.
Simple things make good food: hard boiled eggs, garbanzo beans, black pepper, anchovies, olives, tuna, lemon juice and Caesar dressing.
And here it is, May, and I suddenly have a yen for mince pie.
==
From the movies, why on earth Harry Potter likes Ginny Weasley is beyond me. She's a humorless prig. I have never once seen her laugh. She'll smile, but no laughing.
The smoky black ink effects in the movies --with the Death Eaters or with the memory fragments in the pensive--are really good.
I wish Richard Harris had lived to complete the Potter movies. With his gravitas, Dumbledore's lately revealed being gay would have felt different.
Beautiful light, sky, sun, breeze, trees in San Francisco on a May afternoon. What a nice planet.
Re-doing my therapy website, I find myself writing that, from the point of view of our post-feminist culture, while women may have problems, men are problems.
Simple things make good food: hard boiled eggs, garbanzo beans, black pepper, anchovies, olives, tuna, lemon juice and Caesar dressing.
And here it is, May, and I suddenly have a yen for mince pie.
==
Oooooh, scary Right Wingers
Jason Richwine, Heritage immigration expert quits
Another one thrown under the bus for his realism.
You can see how dangerous the Right Wing in America is. Not.
"If you want to know who your real masters are, discover who it is that you are not allowed to criticize."
'via Blog this'
PS. My very liberal GayJewishNewYorker office mate, from whom I lease my therapy space, has reduced my rent. He joked that I could send the extra money to the Heritage Foundation. Not bloody likely.
Another one thrown under the bus for his realism.
You can see how dangerous the Right Wing in America is. Not.
"If you want to know who your real masters are, discover who it is that you are not allowed to criticize."
'via Blog this'
PS. My very liberal GayJewishNewYorker office mate, from whom I lease my therapy space, has reduced my rent. He joked that I could send the extra money to the Heritage Foundation. Not bloody likely.
Bumper Sticker Brains
Jonah Goldberg, agreeing with me. As does Thomas Sowell, about words like diversity.
Wow, a Jew and a Black agreed with Ex Cathedra. That must mean...that since both of them are straight males, I remain condemned as a homophobic misogynist.
Oh, well. Time for another cup of coffee.
(I mean, really. If you were told at age seven that your sins, yours, little man, were what caused the crucifixion of Christ, how can a few PC epithets throw you off course?)
Wow, a Jew and a Black agreed with Ex Cathedra. That must mean...that since both of them are straight males, I remain condemned as a homophobic misogynist.
Oh, well. Time for another cup of coffee.
(I mean, really. If you were told at age seven that your sins, yours, little man, were what caused the crucifixion of Christ, how can a few PC epithets throw you off course?)
---
It's hard to be consistent
I have been known to hold opinions that, on the surface at least, seem incompatible. Well, it's part of the inductive lifestyle.
But I was struck once more today at the hugely contradictory attitudes liberals espouse about nature, or Nature. A not simple idea, to be sure. But.
Their worship of Gaia and natural ecosystems is, well, worship. The liberal attitude is nothing if not deeply religious when it comes to endangered owls or CO2 levels or the evil of plastic bags. Nature is a pre-existent and inviolable whole which requires reverent compliance and absolute respect. It is not at all uncommon to hear liberals speak of humanity as a virus destroying the planet and to fantasize wistfully of how our species' demise would return our mother Gaia and her other children to her natural and unregulated paradisiac state.
But when it comes to human nature, all bets are off. Let the social engineering begin. And any appeal to things like the structures and functions of the human body --especially as a binary sexual difference--as a clue to identity or purpose, well, that's just essentialist concretizing, totally lacking in either anthropological or socio-historical sophistication.
------------
But I was struck once more today at the hugely contradictory attitudes liberals espouse about nature, or Nature. A not simple idea, to be sure. But.
Their worship of Gaia and natural ecosystems is, well, worship. The liberal attitude is nothing if not deeply religious when it comes to endangered owls or CO2 levels or the evil of plastic bags. Nature is a pre-existent and inviolable whole which requires reverent compliance and absolute respect. It is not at all uncommon to hear liberals speak of humanity as a virus destroying the planet and to fantasize wistfully of how our species' demise would return our mother Gaia and her other children to her natural and unregulated paradisiac state.
But when it comes to human nature, all bets are off. Let the social engineering begin. And any appeal to things like the structures and functions of the human body --especially as a binary sexual difference--as a clue to identity or purpose, well, that's just essentialist concretizing, totally lacking in either anthropological or socio-historical sophistication.
------------
Who's worse?
Carnegie Mellon University Files Charges Against Half-Naked Pope Parody Student:
The bloviating language is suffocating.
The bishop buys the same crapola:
I am choking in beauty, sacredness, uniqueness, decency, self-respect and esteem.
Air...supply........low.......
'via Blog this'
The bloviating language is suffocating.
The bishop buys the same crapola:
freedom of speech and freedom of expression do not constitute a freedom to dismiss or disrespect the beauty of anyone’s race, the sacredness of anyone’s religious belief or the uniqueness of anyone’s nationality.
Dialogue, disagreements and even demonstrations must be conducted in an atmosphere of decency, self-respect, and esteem for the community in which we live and those who live in it.
I am choking in beauty, sacredness, uniqueness, decency, self-respect and esteem.
Air...supply........low.......
'via Blog this'
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