Maybe segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South were not groundless evil hatred for no good reason.
Do a little research on the increased likelihood of suffering violence if you are a white woman involved with Black men.
---
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Saturday morning, Advent 2015
Every bit of info I learn about the cosmos, the planet, etc. makes me wonder. And it would be a mistake to underestimate the role that computer graphics play in all this, to say nothing of photographic technology. These modalities make arcane bits of scientific inquire into almost revelatory images.
Although I am not a Young Earther or anything of the kind --even St Augustine in the 5th century thought the Genesis days were metaphors-- I find Darwin critics interesting, partly because I resent the arrogance of their orthodoxy. I am a creationist only in the sense that I am a theist, but not on scientific grounds, where my expertise is nil. Yet the Cambrian explosion and the required pre-existence of fantastically complex DNA for the emergence of the "simplest" living cell...I don't think that men of science have any idea of how to explain those things yet. Much less why the Big Bang banged or what was "before" it. Reality always outstrips any theory about it.
On the mundane and very post-lapsarian plane, I briefly looked at a UK spinoff of Jersey Shore, called Geordie Shore, about similarly simian young Brits in Newcastle. My God, I could only take about 30 seconds. What vile and subhuman behavior. As I have mentioned elsewhere, for a culture that foregrounds "human dignity" as one of its great virtues, our entertainment overflows with images of humans at our most pathetically contemptible, where dignity is farthest thing imaginable. Made me think that for people like that, Islam might be preferable.
Switching gears yet again...
My admittedly sentimental wallpaper for Christmas, above, echoes my admittedly sentimental attitude about Christmas. The painting evokes evening on a cold quiet New England hillside: the sea of stars in the black sky, the crunch of snow under your feet, the light and implied warmth glowing from the simple houses..this was how Christmas felt to me as a child...and well after that. Whenever I see the image I imagine myself coming home from school late, or heading back to the house after walking the dog. My siblings are playing in the living room, my Dad is reading the paper and my Mom is cooking dinner. It is clearly the fantasy of an introvert who is stimulated by contrasts: dark/light, warmth/cold, silence/sound, distance/intimacy, presence/absence. If you could do the Twilight Zone thing and imagine yourself into a picture, this would be one I'd want to visit.
Mr B and I both grew up in stable and sane families. Whatever our ups and downs, home was always a safe place. It never occurred to me until I got to know the wider world and especially the years I worked with Black and Latino middle-schoolers that home could actually be the last place you'd want to go to feel safe.
Reminds me of one of the miscreants sent to me for counseling. He was Yemeni and Muslim, coming here with his widower Dad and sister to join a network of relatives, one of whom owned a store where he worked on weekends, underage. His 16-year-old sister did not go to school but stayed in the home. After yet another event in class where he was sent to me for misbehavior, he announced that the family was returning to Yemen because --and I am sure he was quoting his father -- "people here have too much freedom."
I wish all the Muslims felt that way.
Although I am not a Young Earther or anything of the kind --even St Augustine in the 5th century thought the Genesis days were metaphors-- I find Darwin critics interesting, partly because I resent the arrogance of their orthodoxy. I am a creationist only in the sense that I am a theist, but not on scientific grounds, where my expertise is nil. Yet the Cambrian explosion and the required pre-existence of fantastically complex DNA for the emergence of the "simplest" living cell...I don't think that men of science have any idea of how to explain those things yet. Much less why the Big Bang banged or what was "before" it. Reality always outstrips any theory about it.
On the mundane and very post-lapsarian plane, I briefly looked at a UK spinoff of Jersey Shore, called Geordie Shore, about similarly simian young Brits in Newcastle. My God, I could only take about 30 seconds. What vile and subhuman behavior. As I have mentioned elsewhere, for a culture that foregrounds "human dignity" as one of its great virtues, our entertainment overflows with images of humans at our most pathetically contemptible, where dignity is farthest thing imaginable. Made me think that for people like that, Islam might be preferable.
Switching gears yet again...
My admittedly sentimental wallpaper for Christmas, above, echoes my admittedly sentimental attitude about Christmas. The painting evokes evening on a cold quiet New England hillside: the sea of stars in the black sky, the crunch of snow under your feet, the light and implied warmth glowing from the simple houses..this was how Christmas felt to me as a child...and well after that. Whenever I see the image I imagine myself coming home from school late, or heading back to the house after walking the dog. My siblings are playing in the living room, my Dad is reading the paper and my Mom is cooking dinner. It is clearly the fantasy of an introvert who is stimulated by contrasts: dark/light, warmth/cold, silence/sound, distance/intimacy, presence/absence. If you could do the Twilight Zone thing and imagine yourself into a picture, this would be one I'd want to visit.
Mr B and I both grew up in stable and sane families. Whatever our ups and downs, home was always a safe place. It never occurred to me until I got to know the wider world and especially the years I worked with Black and Latino middle-schoolers that home could actually be the last place you'd want to go to feel safe.
Reminds me of one of the miscreants sent to me for counseling. He was Yemeni and Muslim, coming here with his widower Dad and sister to join a network of relatives, one of whom owned a store where he worked on weekends, underage. His 16-year-old sister did not go to school but stayed in the home. After yet another event in class where he was sent to me for misbehavior, he announced that the family was returning to Yemen because --and I am sure he was quoting his father -- "people here have too much freedom."
I wish all the Muslims felt that way.
Friday, December 18, 2015
UnWatchable
For a man of my sensibilities, it is very hard to find entertainment to watch that does not trigger me, that does not shout Pravda West. Potemkin Village and White Erasure, wall to wall with Numinous Negroes and Phallic Females.
In The Expanse, ---aSyFy series, so you know the score-- I just watched a scene where the local head of the Mormon project of finding a new planet to colonize depends --get this-- on the uniquely brilliant skills of an engineer who is....now, wait for it...African.
Cause as you know, the planet is just overrun with them and the whole Mormon church could not find anyone else.
The scene where the White Mormon elder relieves the African Genius of his lead role because of his ties to a terrorist "human rights" organization is vomit-inducing. Mr Numinous reminds him of the sins of "organized religion." Clearly meant to remind us of the LDS sin of not admitting Africans to their priesthood. Mr Ebonic tells Mr Paleface that by relieving him they will lose "all their best and brightest and most reliable". A renowned African reputation. And then kinda threatens to screw up the flight in retaliation.
Lesson? Whites are never to be forgiven for whatever crimes against the (Liberal) Faith they have committed. Neither apology nor atonement nor amendment of behavior will ever be enough.
So my thought then is, why bother in the first place?
---
In The Expanse, ---aSyFy series, so you know the score-- I just watched a scene where the local head of the Mormon project of finding a new planet to colonize depends --get this-- on the uniquely brilliant skills of an engineer who is....now, wait for it...African.
Cause as you know, the planet is just overrun with them and the whole Mormon church could not find anyone else.
The scene where the White Mormon elder relieves the African Genius of his lead role because of his ties to a terrorist "human rights" organization is vomit-inducing. Mr Numinous reminds him of the sins of "organized religion." Clearly meant to remind us of the LDS sin of not admitting Africans to their priesthood. Mr Ebonic tells Mr Paleface that by relieving him they will lose "all their best and brightest and most reliable". A renowned African reputation. And then kinda threatens to screw up the flight in retaliation.
Lesson? Whites are never to be forgiven for whatever crimes against the (Liberal) Faith they have committed. Neither apology nor atonement nor amendment of behavior will ever be enough.
So my thought then is, why bother in the first place?
---
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
The Grand Themes
Last night Mr B wanted us to watch an alt-history series, Man in the High Castle, where the Axis won WWII, dividing North America into a West Coast Japanese zone and an Eastern German zone. Within ten minutes of the opening of the first episode, we have the now-regular trope of Phallic Female Humiliates Male.
Today, the opening episode of the Showcase riff on Arthur C Clarke's 1953 sci-fi book Childhood's End --alien takeover of Earth-- begins with a Numinous Negro astrophysicist named Milo.
As we know, the planet is just chock full of females who, although they cannot meet the regular requirements for combat, can take down with ease both soldiers and martial artists. Same way with the legions of high IQ Africans who dominate the sciences...
The regularity and frequency of this stuff amounts to social engineering propaganda about who really should be in charge.
And when that doesn't happen, it will obviously be Our Fault.
The old Soviet lie-fest Pravda, in hindsight, is looking more and more plausible.
---
Today, the opening episode of the Showcase riff on Arthur C Clarke's 1953 sci-fi book Childhood's End --alien takeover of Earth-- begins with a Numinous Negro astrophysicist named Milo.
As we know, the planet is just chock full of females who, although they cannot meet the regular requirements for combat, can take down with ease both soldiers and martial artists. Same way with the legions of high IQ Africans who dominate the sciences...
The regularity and frequency of this stuff amounts to social engineering propaganda about who really should be in charge.
And when that doesn't happen, it will obviously be Our Fault.
The old Soviet lie-fest Pravda, in hindsight, is looking more and more plausible.
---
Monday, December 14, 2015
Becoming who you are
It's an old Jungian tag, to become who you are meant to be. It's one of the ideas that lives in my therapy practice with men.
And it's one of the calls of that the Gnostics heard and hear...(although extremely few contemporary "Gnostics" are other than ecofemmy New Age Democrats.)
Well, here's another take on identity. I found it quite moving.
HT to Mr Donovan.
And it's one of the calls of that the Gnostics heard and hear...(although extremely few contemporary "Gnostics" are other than ecofemmy New Age Democrats.)
Well, here's another take on identity. I found it quite moving.
HT to Mr Donovan.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
The Founding Fathers
would be so proud, knowing how their costly experiment turned out...
Der Untergang Des Abendlandes
MacBeth. Act I. Scene I.
Legends of the Fall
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the 41st anniversary of my loss of virginity. My reflections on that wonderful event and its consequences are here.
The connection between my eros and my identity has certainly changed over the years. Nowadays pretty well the only thing I like about gay men is that they have sex with one another. The rest of it grows increasingly alien. Mr Donovan's diagnosis was, alas, all too on-point.
But that elemental psycho-physical gravitation between men...I know that 97%+ of the human race finds it odd --at best-- but to me it is as natural as breathing. I cannot really imagine myself otherwise. And having Mr B in my life I am very blessed and grateful to experience it quite regularly. Not just the sex, but the whole range of it. Which, of course, makes the sex exponentially better. I'm quite the lucky old dog.
In The Missing Myth, Gilles Herrada makes one point which is well worth considering, that the monotheistic West has no mythic space for same-sex eros. It can only function as an alien phenomenon. And that does damage to the souls of the homoerotically shaped, which remain homeless and haunted. (Explains a lot of "LGBTQ" culture.)
I forget what his take on gay marriage is but I think he was unenthusiastic for reasons similar to my own: marriage is heterosexual by nature and for gays to try to claim it doesn't change the archetypal fact that it can only ever be hand-me-down and ill-fitting drag for us. The whole "Marriage Equality" campaign struck me as lazy and cheap and, for a group which prides itself on its creativity, staggeringly derivative.
Not only does it erase the specificity of same-sex love, but it makes male-male and female-female partnerships equivalent and indistinct. I have often referred to it as "genderless marriage." IMHO, not only should the ritual form of two men binding themselves together have a different shape from that of a man and a woman, it should also be different from the rites of two women.
The connection between my eros and my identity has certainly changed over the years. Nowadays pretty well the only thing I like about gay men is that they have sex with one another. The rest of it grows increasingly alien. Mr Donovan's diagnosis was, alas, all too on-point.
But that elemental psycho-physical gravitation between men...I know that 97%+ of the human race finds it odd --at best-- but to me it is as natural as breathing. I cannot really imagine myself otherwise. And having Mr B in my life I am very blessed and grateful to experience it quite regularly. Not just the sex, but the whole range of it. Which, of course, makes the sex exponentially better. I'm quite the lucky old dog.
In The Missing Myth, Gilles Herrada makes one point which is well worth considering, that the monotheistic West has no mythic space for same-sex eros. It can only function as an alien phenomenon. And that does damage to the souls of the homoerotically shaped, which remain homeless and haunted. (Explains a lot of "LGBTQ" culture.)
I forget what his take on gay marriage is but I think he was unenthusiastic for reasons similar to my own: marriage is heterosexual by nature and for gays to try to claim it doesn't change the archetypal fact that it can only ever be hand-me-down and ill-fitting drag for us. The whole "Marriage Equality" campaign struck me as lazy and cheap and, for a group which prides itself on its creativity, staggeringly derivative.
Not only does it erase the specificity of same-sex love, but it makes male-male and female-female partnerships equivalent and indistinct. I have often referred to it as "genderless marriage." IMHO, not only should the ritual form of two men binding themselves together have a different shape from that of a man and a woman, it should also be different from the rites of two women.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Jews 1, Vatican 0
Pope Evita's Vatican eschews baptizing Jews.
One wonders why the Apostles went to all that trouble...
----
Years ago , during the worst AIDS years, I was director of an AIDS organization. We succeeded in getting the Minister of Health, a Conservative and no friend to us --this was in the days when people had a choice--, came to visit our offices.
She was a quite large Jewess and well aware of her official majesty. During the Q&A after our presentations, she had the chutzpah to tell us to our faces that " you know of course that this disease is the best thing that ever happened to your community"...or words to that effect. It was offensive and rude.
And it was true.
And because it was 1989, her job was in no jeopardy because of it.
We eventually succeeded in making gay men with AIDS into sacred victims, at least in the eyes of the post-Reagan government in the US and eventually in Canada, too. Thirty years ago journalists and politicians could say what they wanted about gays, etc. without losing their heads. But in the ensuing juggernaut, which I do not think would have happened in the same way without HIV, now one's livelihood and reputation are at risk for not making lesbian wedding cakes.
This by way of prologue for the offensive and rude and equally true thing I am about to say, that what happened to the Jews of Europe during WWII was "the best thing that ever happened to their community."
In the wake of that Part Two of the Great European Civil War, they finally, after almost 2000 years, got their own country again.
And ever since, with their success in making people believe that of the 230 million deaths in the last century or so caused by ideological and/or ethnic wars and violence, theirs were the ones that carry metaphysical and world-changing significance. (The Eurocentrism of this claim is astonishing, don't you think?) Consequently, it has been their great shield against any kind of criticism throughout the West, especially in the religious world.
As with all our Official Sacred Victim Groups, we have to ignore their identity unless they decide we have to pay attention to it. "I'm just like you and how dare you suggest otherwise" can go to "As the child of Holocaust survivors" in a heartbeat. Like gays, and women, and Blacks, and Muslims, etc....this is how the victim game is played. Wymyn, though no numerical minority, are treated like one and act accordingly.
I read as much as I could stand of the Vatican document. It plays out in the inter-religious realm the very same game that the Catholic liberals want played out in the marriage game: while asserting that the doctrine remains unchanged, alter the practical policies so completely that that doctrine becomes a dead letter.
As with mostly everything the Church does or doesn't, it is not as a practicing Catholic that I object, of course, having long given up the right to have an opinion on those grounds. But it is as a Man of the West that I respond with pain and grief, and yes, anger, to every cowardly self-evisceration that I see enacted by men who are supposedly the guardians of a Faith which for 1500 years formed the backbone of the most consequential civilization in human history.
---
One wonders why the Apostles went to all that trouble...
----
Years ago , during the worst AIDS years, I was director of an AIDS organization. We succeeded in getting the Minister of Health, a Conservative and no friend to us --this was in the days when people had a choice--, came to visit our offices.
She was a quite large Jewess and well aware of her official majesty. During the Q&A after our presentations, she had the chutzpah to tell us to our faces that " you know of course that this disease is the best thing that ever happened to your community"...or words to that effect. It was offensive and rude.
And it was true.
And because it was 1989, her job was in no jeopardy because of it.
We eventually succeeded in making gay men with AIDS into sacred victims, at least in the eyes of the post-Reagan government in the US and eventually in Canada, too. Thirty years ago journalists and politicians could say what they wanted about gays, etc. without losing their heads. But in the ensuing juggernaut, which I do not think would have happened in the same way without HIV, now one's livelihood and reputation are at risk for not making lesbian wedding cakes.
This by way of prologue for the offensive and rude and equally true thing I am about to say, that what happened to the Jews of Europe during WWII was "the best thing that ever happened to their community."
In the wake of that Part Two of the Great European Civil War, they finally, after almost 2000 years, got their own country again.
And ever since, with their success in making people believe that of the 230 million deaths in the last century or so caused by ideological and/or ethnic wars and violence, theirs were the ones that carry metaphysical and world-changing significance. (The Eurocentrism of this claim is astonishing, don't you think?) Consequently, it has been their great shield against any kind of criticism throughout the West, especially in the religious world.
As with all our Official Sacred Victim Groups, we have to ignore their identity unless they decide we have to pay attention to it. "I'm just like you and how dare you suggest otherwise" can go to "As the child of Holocaust survivors" in a heartbeat. Like gays, and women, and Blacks, and Muslims, etc....this is how the victim game is played. Wymyn, though no numerical minority, are treated like one and act accordingly.
I read as much as I could stand of the Vatican document. It plays out in the inter-religious realm the very same game that the Catholic liberals want played out in the marriage game: while asserting that the doctrine remains unchanged, alter the practical policies so completely that that doctrine becomes a dead letter.
As with mostly everything the Church does or doesn't, it is not as a practicing Catholic that I object, of course, having long given up the right to have an opinion on those grounds. But it is as a Man of the West that I respond with pain and grief, and yes, anger, to every cowardly self-evisceration that I see enacted by men who are supposedly the guardians of a Faith which for 1500 years formed the backbone of the most consequential civilization in human history.
---
Tuesday, December 08, 2015
Religion and Power
I am, let's be clear, in favor of both. As long as it's the right kind of religion with the right kind of power. Pope Evita's fraudulent mirage of "a poor, dirty, servant Church" is dishonest crap. And every call he makes for this kind of humility is a way for him to inflate his own ego. Typical.
One of the contemptible contradictions within liberals --women especially-- that I noticed many years ago, even before my conversion, was their simultaneous depreciation of power as an evel and their ravenous hunger for it. When White Males had it, it was oppression or "power over", as they liked to say. Especially if it made them feel "less than." But if Official Sacred Victim Groups gained it, it was "empowering." The whole thing was BS. Still is.
Anyway, most people and most peoples, I suspect, embraced their religions precisely as sources of power in the world. Maybe not the original believers, but once a movement got going and you could smell its future, yes.
Why did all those barbarian kings in Europe convert to Christianity? Surely not out of entrancement with the Sermon on the Mount? For the same reason that Constantine had the ChiRho painted on his soldiers' shields: power. They could see that this was the religion of the strong.
When Europe was Christian, even though the very same requirements of love and mercy and forgiveness and blah blah blah were in place, it would never have entered their minds to let Muslims flood into their lands. They didn't even like it when Jews showed up.
Why? Because more important than the actual moral content of The Faith was the moral status they had as the possessors of The Faith. That was the nexus between religion and power. They were God's special people. In real terms, belonging to the One True Church was more important than living out the mendicant lifestyle of the Gospels. And it was right and natural and even theologically correct.
Once Europeans jettisoned the Old Faith for the New One --Enlightened Liberalism-- all that remained was the (impossible) moral content without the protection afforded by the Church and its (quite rational) self-aggrandizing dogmas of exclusive access to truth and God.
And now we are being swamped by the Jihad and the Reconquista and the consummate moron on the throne of St Peter abandons his own people, the tottering children of a spectral Christendom, because for him, as for all liberals, his public moral performance and pathological altruism means more to them than the survival of his own kin.
To hell with them all.
----
One of the contemptible contradictions within liberals --women especially-- that I noticed many years ago, even before my conversion, was their simultaneous depreciation of power as an evel and their ravenous hunger for it. When White Males had it, it was oppression or "power over", as they liked to say. Especially if it made them feel "less than." But if Official Sacred Victim Groups gained it, it was "empowering." The whole thing was BS. Still is.
Anyway, most people and most peoples, I suspect, embraced their religions precisely as sources of power in the world. Maybe not the original believers, but once a movement got going and you could smell its future, yes.
Why did all those barbarian kings in Europe convert to Christianity? Surely not out of entrancement with the Sermon on the Mount? For the same reason that Constantine had the ChiRho painted on his soldiers' shields: power. They could see that this was the religion of the strong.
When Europe was Christian, even though the very same requirements of love and mercy and forgiveness and blah blah blah were in place, it would never have entered their minds to let Muslims flood into their lands. They didn't even like it when Jews showed up.
Why? Because more important than the actual moral content of The Faith was the moral status they had as the possessors of The Faith. That was the nexus between religion and power. They were God's special people. In real terms, belonging to the One True Church was more important than living out the mendicant lifestyle of the Gospels. And it was right and natural and even theologically correct.
Once Europeans jettisoned the Old Faith for the New One --Enlightened Liberalism-- all that remained was the (impossible) moral content without the protection afforded by the Church and its (quite rational) self-aggrandizing dogmas of exclusive access to truth and God.
And now we are being swamped by the Jihad and the Reconquista and the consummate moron on the throne of St Peter abandons his own people, the tottering children of a spectral Christendom, because for him, as for all liberals, his public moral performance and pathological altruism means more to them than the survival of his own kin.
To hell with them all.
----
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