Interior rooms and Italians, with mirrors

Bruges, 1434; San Francisco, 2009
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Early June

I'm watching a National Geographic program on Great Whites. One of the crew is talking about the expedition and the sharks and I think, "Good looking guy" and then "I know this guy". Turns out he is action actor Paul Walker, who studied marine biology. Good for him.

Watching a History Channel DVD set about Teddy Roosevelt. This guy was a man. I'm impressed with his father: when TR was an asthmatic child, his dad was constant in care and support; when dad decided he needed to become a man and overcome his limitation, he was focussed and formidable. Great combo of challenge and reliability. A good father.

Visited a former workplace last week to get a form signed. I was head administrator there. One of the staff told me my successor left or was fired last month, no one knows for sure. "You lasted thirteen years; they wore her down in less than two!"

My impromptu out of town trip with my friend and his dog, the handsome and very mellow Mauli. The dog is a really beautiful animal: he's half wolf and he looks it. It is amazing how many people stop and comment and compliment and want to talk and ask questions. Old ladies, gang bangers, families, kids, guys at the gas station.

An unpleasant note: there are a lot of fat and unattractive and badly dressed people in Modesto!

We were at my friend's family home, where he was raised. His parents are dead and his siblings live far away; he keeps the place up. On the outside, it's a standard working class house, with trucks and an old Silver Stream RV on the property, a big TV antenna on the roof. Inside it would not win any House Beautiful awards. But it is jammed with books, in every room: history, philosophy, geography, novels, politics, religion. Hundred and hundreds of books. And opera records, vintage records, with librettos and books about all the great operas. Western culture, high culture, living a secret life behind a very ordinary door in the San Joaquin valley.

Last night was a perfect summer evening down there. We sat in the backyard with the puppy, with pizza, chicken wings and beer. Warm breeze, slowly setting sun. Nice. Very nice.

B's two weeks in Shanghai and Tokyo will be over soon and he'll be back in town later in the week. He has made some other trips where I would have loved to have gone with him --Uzbekistan and Italy, for example--, but for some reason China and Japan didn't draw me, so my jealousy level was very low. He's bringing me back some stupid T shirt I specifically and serially asked him not to get for me. I'll forgive him, of course. Senex and puer in a nutshell.

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Burgers and bullshit

Had a memorably good medium rare hamburger with sauteed onions and blue cheese last night, at Burgermeister's in Berkeley.

While there I was treated to a poster which urged good people to write to the evil governor of Arizona and her evil state's evil immigration law and remind her that "she herself is a guest on native Indian land." This kind of unserious bullshit pisses me off. If the people who wrote that really believe it, they are duty bound to help get the land back. Yeah, that'll be the day. Posers.

On the other hand it reveals the suicidality of liberals, who give any kind of credence to that crap. "Christopher Columbus was the first illegal alien", etc.

Who does land belong to? To whoever can keep it. That's the law of Gaia.

How many of the world's peoples live on land that never belonged to anyone else? So, guess what, Red Feather, you lost the war and now the land is called America. Why do people find this so hard to say?

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Is a puzzlement

Yul Brenner as the King of Siam ended his lament over the death of certainty by saying, "But...is a puzzlement."

Why do people of liberal and leftish persuasions rush to the defense of Islam?

Liberals all believe, with varying degrees of clarity and/or passion, in the Seven Pillars of Progress: multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, secularism, pacifism, environmentalism and transnationalism.

How do Muslims score on these values?

Secularism, first of all, is the killer. Islam is essentially theocratic. It recognizes no separate sphere unshaped by religion and, specifically, by Islamic religious law.

Feminism. Despite all the blah blah about respect for women by veiling them and separating them from men, any Western feminist with an ounce of integrity would tell you in a nanosecond that Islam is the most patriarchal religion around.

Pacifism. No way. Islam is a martial religion. Muhammad was a warrior and warlord. Can anyone imagine Muslims apologizing for their use of the sword to bring Islam? Please. Islamic pacifists are rare and local.

Environmentalism. No reason a Muslim couldn't be concerned about that, but you won't find them apologizing to trees or joining PETA (that would make the animal sacrifices at the feast of Eid problematic).

Redistributionism. Well, all I'll say is to take a look at the economics of Muslim countries. I don't notice any of their ruling classes being taxed to fund a welfare state.

Transnationalism. On the surface, some common ground. In theory, the Muslim ummah, or community, is prior to any other governmental arrangement. And the vision of a unified Muslim community under Muhammad's successors, the caliphs, is a big part of Muslim history. It's what the Sunni/Shia split is about. But it is not a secular or non-religious transnationalism; precisely the opposite.

Multiculturalism. Although racial and ethnic strife and discrimination is common among Muslims, that is because they are human, not because they are Muslim. Islam itself provides little support to racism aside from the privileging of Arabic and an ancient animus for Jews. But Islam does make a radical division between believers and non-believers. And there, a further distinction between monotheist unbelievers (the so called Peoples of the Book) and polytheist unbelievers and atheists. Western multiculturalism includes deference toward the religion of Others, regardless of whether it is Buddhist or animist. Islam cannot ignore these things, so while its tolerance of different races as race is unproblematic*, the trouble is that races usually are also attached to a religion as part of their culture. Here Islam is not sanguine...though it has shown itself to be sanguinary.

So here we have culturally relativistic, woman-appeasing, socialist-leaning, pacifist, Gaia-worshipping, UN loving, religion-allergic lefties and liberals showing themselves deferential if not actively supportive of a dogmatically absolute globally-focussed theocracy founded by a lifelong slaveholder, based on male power, celebratory use of force, and an apparently total lack of interest in redistribution of income.

Is...a puzzlement.


*In theory. In practice, various Islamic nationalities have practiced all forms of racial and ethnic hierarchy, what we would call discrimination. But this is their common humanity at play rather than any strong push from the religion.
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Brief seconds, whole worlds

Tomorrow, June 4th, is the 62nd anniversary of my father's death.

He was on his way home to Bladensburg, Maryland after photographing the commencement exercises at Annapolis when his car was involved in an accident and he died. My mother had given birth to me, their first (and only) child, just ten weeks before, in Washington DC.

Because he was where he was, and not ten feet fore or aft, not thirty seconds before or after, his life ended and my whole life was altered. I have a different last name, taken from the man my mom married two years later, and was raised by a different father, and grew up with six brothers and sisters who would have been impossible, never born or imagined, had not my birthfather died, age 28, on June 4th, 1948.

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Let 'em eat cake...or not

Some info has been changed to protect the innocent.

B called me from the Shanghai airport to chat. I told him a story about a married friend of mine, whom he knows. The guy's wife has borderline personality disorder. Drama and chaos abound.

The latest was that she was sick and my friend had been taking good care of her, as is his devoted wont. But the other morning he got up after breakfast to take the dog out for his walk and the wife announced that she wanted a piece of cake. Hubby said that he'd pick some up for her on his way back home.

Kaboom.

Borderline Wife had a tantrum, accusing hubby of loving the dog more than he did his own wife. Consequently she hated the dog and hated him. She rose from her sickbed, (where she had previously been immobile for a few days), stormed out of the house and drove her car to an enabling friend of hers out of town. Hasn't called since.

Wow, say B. That's too bad. So who got to eat the cake?

What cake?, says I, he didn't buy the cake.

No cake?, says B. Oh, wow. You didn't warm me that this story would have a sad ending!



See what I'm up against?

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Strange days

The annual gay beauty pageant and talent contest known as IML has just chosen a female-to-male transgender in a wheelchair for International Mr. Leather 2010. I am not making this up.

It always struck me as odd that the group supposedly the most attracted to masculinity was the group most into beauty pageants.

And the message here, from this "apparently" most-appreciative-of-masculinity gay group, is that when it comes to being a "man", having a cock and balls is irrelevant. Now that's progress...

If I had plastic surgery and dyed my skin dark, who would support me entering the Mr. Black America contest? People would be horrified. Beyond horrified. Yet here we have Mr. Leather, with her plastic surgery and hormones, being feted as a male role model...We accept that you can change your gender, but not your race. We live in a strange time.

Anyhow.

Some thoughts of mine from previous posts on the question, "What's wrong with homsexuality?"



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Whither the West

Unknown soldier statue, Longhua Martyrs Park, Shanghai

Mark Steyn links to a Canadian blogger who finds his grim prognosis for the end of the West thru demographic suicide and dhimmitude too, well, grim. The guy --an immigrant from Estonia--makes a case for the West coming through, but not without some serious cultural change and violence. Civil wars in Europe between the native (white) peoples and the Muslims, for example. A replay of the Spanish Reconquista with consequent expulsion of the aliens? Or The Caliphate, Act 2?

I have to say that if there is Muslim vs Euro war in Europe, both sides will have only themselves to blame for it. Those who act horrified and surprised were, as the bumper stickers suggest, simply not paying attention. It is not the only possible outcome, but it is hardly unthinkable.

Liberals seem to believe that with the advent of their enlightened institutions, like the UN (!), and their doctrines of multiculturalism, human rights and "the global community", etc. the normal business of humanity should come to a stop and people should learn to behave nicely and get along because, well, it's the nice and enlightened thing to do. They act as if inter-group competition, self-interest, hatred and violence are some kind of aberrant mistake; in Obama's words, "a man-caused disaster." Previously, this was called history.

And history, for conservatives, is the best way to learn about the race. Not philosophy, least of all political philosophy (like the Satanic illusion of Marxism), but history. The Founding Fathers studied law and philosophy, but I think they were interested most of all in the chastening illuminations of the study of history.

B writes from Shanghai, in the wake of sending me some pix of monumental statues, that he continues to wonder why the West no longer makes memorials like this (and the one above).

My theory: we no longer make heroic memorial statues because we no longer believe in heroes. And since heroes are idealizations of ourselves, we apparently no longer believe in ourselves.

In the liberal narrative of the world, where there are only oppressors and victims, groups who have been successful must be oppressors. And therefore without moral standing, without right of self-assertion, without the right to live.

The earlier post I put up about the history of the Middle East is instructive. From Egypt until the Ottomans, all the various successful groups were referred to as Empires. But then we have the expansion of Europe titled as "European Colonialism". As if all the others were something else...

I paraphrase again the great James Burham, author of The Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism (1964!): The liberal finds himself morally disarmed in the presence of anyone he deems less well off than himself.

The successful group, aka the oppressor, having power, therefore has no moral right. The unsuccessful group, aka the victim, lacking power, has nothing but moral right. Since the liberal is a moralist, suicide is his only option.


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Rise and Fall

Poor China

B informs me from Shanghai that Ex Cathedra is not available there. (Nor Facebook nor YouTube). The Great Firewall of China. Alas for the benighted inhabitants of Cathay. Alas for poor B, who cannot read my blog wisdom whilst galavanting there. Alas for poor me, for obvious reasons I need not detail.

He noted some bizarre T-shirts he'd seen. Asia is famous for fractured English and worse. Among others, a grown Chinese man with a yellow T that read, "Daddy's Girl."

Speaking of blogs, I visited one by an Irish (probably gay) priest teaching English lit at a Japanese university. Prodigiously prodigiously bright, he is nonetheless fixated on the project of reformed Catholicism known as "the spirit of Vatican II." Which usually means the Episcopal Church, at most. I have occasionally asked hanging-on Vatican II liberal Catholics in what way their vision of their Church differs from the Episcopal Church. That kinda slows them up.

If you want a scary perspective on humanity, pick a controversial topic on YouTube and then read the comments. Someone recently noted that YT comments are famous for being a "mosh pit." At best.

I am a very intelligent man. My IQ puts me in the top 2%. Consequently this makes me something of an expert on the limits of intelligence. It's good for a lot of things but there are a lot of situations where it is neither relevant nor important. I don't like actually stupid people, but there are lots of folks without my level of smarts who are in fact much more successful in a host of ways. What irks me most of all --though it should not surprise me-- is smart people saying stupid things. And there I will confess that I can include myself from time to time.

Case in point, Irish priest noted above has a blog entry in which he names the US Army as "the most abusive organization in the world." Beyond pathetically stupid.

In my own eyes, my worst character flaw expresses itself in procrastination. Today I need to get some things done that I should have gotten done several weeks ago. Story of my life. It may give me longevity, since I will likely procrastinate about dying.

Was on a conference call last night with my five siblings, about how to deal with issues around my mom's health problems. Boy, is she lucky to have these men and women as her children.

My friend J is in town for a few weeks. Back in 2006-2007 I had some of the most transcendent sexual experiences of my life with him. Overwhelming sense of cosmic divinity, practically hallucinatory. If I ever had Faust's choice and would be tempted to cry out for a moment in my life, Verweile doch, du bist so schon...Linger a while, thou art so fair...those times with him would be heavily in the running. The man is a sexual magician. And a good friend.

Jacob wrestling with the Angel

And a very decent man. He recently expressed some misgivings about our connection; he felt he had opened up some regions in me which then enabled me to fall so deeply in love with B. "If things had turned out well for you, I might have considered myself the godfather of your happiness. As it is, I feel a little guilty." A good Canadian Protestant!

Not his fault. My grief is my own doing.


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