Not Light Yet

 

“I've been down on the bottom of the world full of lies
I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes.” – Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet”

Theodore Sturgeon once said “ninety percent of everything is crap.” He was referring to literature; but perhaps everything really means everything.

One explanation for why the world has seemed recently to go so weird is that, with the improved information flow through the internet, the crap that was always there is becoming more obvious. And the liars more desperate to stop the information flow.

Surely ninety percent of all political speech is lies. “Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”—George Orwell. Almost everything spoken by a practicing politician contains a familiar logical fallacy. Nobody is seeking what is best for the community; only angling for power by whatever means necessary. Most government money seems misspent.

Surely too ninety percent of academics is nonsense. When you read almost anything written by a college professor, you realize that it is written as obliquely as possible, to withhold and obscure information, when the entire point of the academy is to discover and convey information. Someone has pointed out that whenever a major new scientific discovery is made, it takes a generation for it to be recognized and accepted by the academy. The current generation of professors has to retire. They will have vested interests in the previous paradigm. There is a reason why Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity as a patent clerk, the Wright Brothers cracked flight from their bicycle shop, and college dropout Steve Jobs created the first personal computers in his parents’ garage.

Probably ninety percent of organized religion is also fake. The Bible itself says so: pharisaism and hypocrisy.

Everyone knows, of course, that business and corporations are greedy and dishonest and trying to sell you junk. The irony is that this is the one place we have the best protection against such lies and fraud.

In sum, we all live in a world full of lies. 

This is an argument for the existence of an afterlife; C.S. Lewis made it.  We have a yearning for truth. How can we yearn for, or even be aware of, something that does not exist? That must mean it does exist somewhere …

One might suppose that, in the case of science fiction and literature at least, the great mass of crap is due to incompetence. Not everyone can write well.

Perhaps not so. Perhaps everyone can.

Perhaps the artist is really someone who insists on seeing the lies around him, and feels morally driven to speak the truth. Then he will find his medium. He is a prophetic voice crying in the wilderness. He speaks obliquely, in parables, because those in charge are determined to suppress truth. “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant/ Success in circuit lies”—Emily Dickenson.

There are endless stories about how many times this or that famous book or great author was rejected for publication. Why? When it is so obvious to everyone that this is a great book, how can it not have been obvious to all those trained and seasoned acquisitions editors? 

Perhaps the trick is to slip by the censors. Pretend it’s just fantasy. Pretend it’s about sex or thrills. But sneak truths in.

So too for visual artists. I see what contemporary drek is shown in the public galleries. Then I see what fine work appears in internet feeds from amateur artists who cannot sell their work. Great artists of the past were also rejected by the academy and the galleries. Van Gogh never sold a painting. How account for that?

The vast bulk of art is bad not because there are not enough talented artists. It is bad because it is not telling the truth. Like Hollywood movies these days, empty formulae without purpose at best, at worst deliberately lying about the world.

Orwell understood this when he said that his one talent was really in simply being able to face truth. Most people run screaming from it.

The Christmas Devil

 

No doubt we all make mistakes as parents. 

The thing I feel worst about is telling my kids that Santa Claus filled their stockings at Christmas.

I probably lost many of you there. You think I’m a grinch.

Deal with it. There is no grinch.

We at least never seriously pretended there was an Easter Bunny or a tooth fairy; that was only pro forma, a joke we all shared. We never restricted what they could read or where they could go online. I remembered too well how psychologically valuable superhero comics were to me as a child, and how some other kids were not allowed comics. I did explain to my son that Santa Claus was really Saint Nicholas. But because he was a saint in heaven, I told him, he could still influence events on earth. That left him with the false impression that St. Nicholas brought the gifts. 

I hope he has forgiven me. I need forgiveness.

To be clear, telling children that Santa brings the gifts is a lie. Telling a lie is always wrong. Telling children this lie deliberately teaches them that lying is not wrong, but clever. It is laughing at them behind their back. It is humiliating them, and trying to establish your own superiority. It is manipulating their emotions. It is despicable.

Moreover, the figure of Santa Claus also looks like a deliberate distraction from the real point of the day; and it shifts the focus from the sacred to the mere acquisition of stuff. Our modern Santa Claus clearly derives in part from the old Lord of Misrule, his red nose from partaking of the wassail bowl, his rotundity from overindulgence.

Wrong lesson altogether; it looks like subversion and acedia.

The Devil says the opposite of the truth: it is precisely these things we claim to be doing “for the children” that most reveal our culture’s hatred for the young.

At the breakfast table this morning, I had a good conversation about death and sex with my sixteen-year-old daughter. She agreed with me that people talk too little of death, because we are afraid of it. She agreed that it is dangerous not to teach children about sex. She agreed that the general bowdlerization of kidlit and fairy tales “to avoid traumatizing children” was harmful. The duty of parents is to raise children to adulthood, not to treat them as pets. They need to learn that wolves eat little girls, you ought not to trespass on a bear’s home, and you should not accept apples from strangers. 

Far worse the newer woke versions, in which ogres are simply misunderstood, wolves are actually vegetarians, fairy godmothers are busybodies, and so forth.

We are positively grooming children for predators of all kinds.

Helicopter parenting, drag queen story hour and genital mutilations are just the latest stages in this progression of hatred towards our children, which has been developing since Victorian times.

Trump's Lies

 

Here’s a riddle. The number one complaint about Trump on the left is that he lies. The Washington Post claims to catalogue 30,573 “lies or misleading claims” over his first term; a “tsunami of untruths.”

Examples:

“He overstated the ‘carnage’ he was inheriting, then later exaggerated his ‘massive’ crowd and claimed, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that it had not rained during his address. He repeated the rain claim the next day, along with the fabricated notion that he held the ‘all-time record’ for appearing on the cover of Time magazine.”

Yet, according to a recent poll, those who support Trump trust him to tell the truth more than they trust religious leaders, their friends, or even their own family.

These views directly contradict one another. How is this possible? Are we experiencing different truths?

Exactly.

The claim that Trump lies is intrinsically dubious. All politicians lie; Joe Biden will say anything. So will Justin Trudeau. So why this peculiar focus on Trump? Surely Trump is being held to a different standard here.

And note the lies the Post first cites to make their case: whether or not it was raining during his inauguration. Whether he holds the record for most Time cover stories. A claim that he exaggerated America’s problems. They seem oddly trivial. Would you call an acquaintance a liar for thinking it rained when it had not?

Here’s how the paradox is solved: the left, those who oppose Trump, are likely to embrace postmodernism and the dogma that there is no objective truth; only “my truth” and “your truth.” So that a man can declare himself a woman, and that becomes incontestably true.

When they say Trump “lies,” what they really mean is that he is not endorsing “their truth”: what they wish were true. He refuses to go along with their preferred “narrative,” which is to say, fiction.

Interestingly, Trump is apparently not entitled to a pass on the premise that he is asserting “his truth.” 

This is a backhanded admission that he is not asserting “his truth,” but truth itself. He refuses to lie, and that is what is intolerable.

The Need to Counter Trump's Lies

 

The Guardian, more often fondly known as the Grauniad for the quality of their copyediting and proofing, has proposed using a “truth sandwich” whenever reporting on Trump. That is, they report the truth, then report what Trump said, then repeat the truth, which presumably contradicts him.

Friend Xerxes, uncharacteristically for a leftist, objects. The problem is, he is a trained and experienced journalist. 

And the Grauniad proposal is a brazen violation of journalistic ethics.

All politicians lie; it comes with the job. The job of a journalist, on the other hand, is to doubt everyone. It is deeply corrupt that a journalist would treat Trump differently than other politicians. We rely on reporters to report, not comment. Opinon is for the editorial page.

The proper approach, of course, if some controversial assertion is made, is to seek and quote a spokesperson from the other side. It is not permissible for the referee to stride to the centre of the ring in the middle of a round and throw a sucker punch.

Sophie Zeldin-O'Neill, the editor recommending the practice, asks otherwise “how to responsibly cover him [Trump] without unwittingly providing the coverage he so expertly manipulates.”

Strip that partial sentence down to plain language: “how to cover Trump without giving him coverage.” In other words, how, as a journalist, to do your job without doing your job.

She laments that Trump tries to use media to his advantage. Just like every other successful politician or campaign manager who ever lived. And every successful company or organization of any kind. If he does it better than others, that warrants admiration, not subversion. 

Xerxes ponders one possible cause for this wholesale abandonment of journalistic ethics. That it is necessary because we now live in “a time when a lie could go viral. When a single inaccurate assertion could go without contradiction to 7.62 billion smart phones.”

We do not live in such a time. Our time is the opposite: a world in which no statement any longer can go forth without risking contradiction by 7.62 private individuals with smart phones, each of which gives them a printing press, a broadcasting studio, and a 7.62 billion-person reach. Lies can no longer go halfway the world, as Mark Twain once lamented, before the truth could get its boots on. Now the truth will show up within seconds; it will be the next triumphant tweet.

The Nazi success with their “big lie” technique depended on being able to control the media. That is no longer possible; although big tech companies and governments are fighting a rearguard action.

So why the unprecedented need to police Trump’s speech? It cannot be because he lies. It can only be because he speaks the truth.

But the attempt to silence him is surely doomed to fail. Truth can no longer be suppressed by silencing any one man. Governments and big tech are trying so hard they are getting blatant, as in this Guardian piece, about it. There are too many smart phones out there. People now hear and see immediately, for example, the riots in Guangdong or Shiraz.

Lies My Country Told Me

 

The War of 1812 as Americans Remember It

A Chinese student wants to talk of Nancy Pelosi. Apparently she is trying to start World War III.

I took the tack that China really shouldn’t care, since Pelosi was just visiting, not declaring Taiwan independent. Why assume hostility? For that matter, why care if Taiwan is independent? America has no problem with Canada being independent.  But I had a hard time getting him to move on.

A colleague laments how everyone brainwashes kids.

Including our own countries and our own schools. I grew up convinced that Canada had trounced the US in the War of 1812. News to the Americans I met in grad school. Canada was involved? They understood that they had trounced the British. 

In China, I was similarly taken aback to learn that North Korea won the Korean War.

So were they brainwashed, or was I? 

A bit of both. I learned from these experiences.

I remember a group of Chinese teachers studying with me in Canada at a time when there was concern over North Korea getting nukes—before they actually got nukes. Without thinking, I lamented the problem. And the response was sharp: “Why does America think only they should have nuclear weapons?”

I had to think long and hard about that one. I think they have a point. Perhaps if every country had nuclear weapons, war would be eliminated as a possibility altogether.

I was in Saudi Arabia when Osama Bin Laden was shot by the US Navy Seals. My officemates were enraged at this murder by the evil Americans. I managed, “Well, at least he died bravely, with his boots on. Not like Saddam.” 

That seemed to satisfy them. I was not the enemy.

An Arab student wanted me to agree that Hitler was really a good guy. At least he did something about the Jews…

My awkward counter was, whether you agreed with him or not, you had to admit that he was a failure, and left Germany in worse shape than he found it.

Again, that seemed to satisfy him. Although I felt guilty for not immediately defending the Jews. It gave me a lot of sympathy for Pope Pius XII.

One of the advantages of the expat experience is that it tends to expose the biases you have been brought up with.

I think the Koreans and the Filipinos are pretty good on this score. They’ve been lied to by their governments so often and incompetently, that they rarely believe anything from anyone. We Westerners may be easier marks.

Mirages Seen on the Banks of the Nile

.. somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man...

  

For many years, something puzzled me: why is it that whatever the majority of people believe is so often the exact opposite of the truth? It seemed so consistent I suspected the existence of some evil intelligence, the Devil, coordinating the many individual opinions. 

I think that is true; there is a Devil, and he is behind this. But a personal devil is not a necessary hypothesis to explain this. It is simply a universal law that, once you start to lie or to do wrong, you fear the truth. Since you fear the truth, you want to get as far away from it as possible. A lot of people are up to no good. Not necessarily a majority, but such people are both desperate and unprincipled. That is enough to cow others into obedience. Few people are actively good. Some are actively bad, and most others just go along to get along. So the grossest lies become standard currency.

Some examples:

The common condemnation of the Crusades as a macroaggression on Muslims based on religious prejudice. In fact, the “crusade,” the holy war, was a Muslim invention: jihad. The Christian Crusades were a response in kind, in imitation of the Muslim practice. The Muslims had overrun the Holy Lands and most of the Byzantine Empire; the Byzantine Empire appealed to the rest of the Christian world for help.

The common condemnation of slavery as a peculiarly American, British, or European sin, and a sin against Africa. In fact, slavery was a near-universal practice--except in Christian Europe, where chattel slavery was nonexistent. It was revived in the new European colonies only as a concession to local practice--through contact with slave-holding societies in Africa and the New World. Later, it was a British mission to eliminate slavery throughout the world.

The common notion that Indians/”First Nations” lived in harmony with nature. In fact, they lived in conflict with nature, pillaging for their needs. It is the settled farmers from Europe who husbanded the land, taking out only what they put in.

I go on about the Indians, because I have researched and written a book on the subject…

The common falsehood that the policy of the Canadian government has been to wipe out Indian culture, notably through the residential schools. The way to assimilate Indians, had this ever been the intent, would have been to put them in the public schools. It would have been to evacuate remote reserves and bring them into the towns and cities. In fact, the policy of Canadian governments has always been to preserve Indians as a distinct group, reducing their contact with others like animals in a game preserve. Out of misguided concern.

The common misunderstanding that Canada is built on stolen Indian land. The land was sold by treaty long ago; the aboriginal groups surrendered all claims on the land in return for agreed compensation. And it is worth mentioning that aboriginal title did not exist in the first place, by common law. It was invented as a useful fiction to gain Indian recognition of government authority. According to the philosophy behind the common law, nobody can really own land. God made the land for everyone. One only owns one’s labour, and this may be invested in the land by tilling and sowing, or otherwise improving it. Since the Indians did not work the land, but merely hunted and gathered, they have no more rights to the land than anyone else. They have the same right to purchase or to homestead or to hunt and gather, so long as the latter does not interfere with someone else’s more intensive use of the land.

The common illusion that the land was sacred to the Indians. The Indians were almost all nomadic. No particular area of land would have meant much to them. It means far more to the settled farmer or even city dweller, who may have spent his life on it, who remembers his childhood here, whose loved ones and ancestors may be buried nearby.

The common condemnation of “European colonialism” and “European imperialism.” In fact, almost all countries have been empires until recent times. The European contribution was not to invent imperialism, but to end it. The unique European creation was the ethnic or nation state. The first nation states were England and France, perhaps also Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. They spread this concept to the world—through their short-lived “empires.”

The common complaint that Western civilization is Eurocentric, and has too little regard for other cultures. This is easily disproven by the simple fact that “the West” refers to itself as “the West.” It is literally not self-centric. Most cultures usually suppose they are. This has led the West to be unusually outward-looking, to put to sea to explore, and to acquire influences and even people from other cultures.

The common fraudulent claim that the left works for the poor, and the right for big corporations. The left likes lots of regulation on business. This works in favour of big corporations, because it prevents market competition. The left will give some assistance to the very poor, but will ensure that they cannot improve their lot; it makes them permanently poor. Most of the money they claim to raise for “the poor” goes instead into the pockets of wealthy “experts,” who have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems.

If you ever imagined the corporations were on the right, seeing Google, Facebook, Amazon, Patreon, PayPal and Twitter all move as one being to suppress voices on the right has to disprove it. 

The common falsehood that women have, throughout history, been oppressed by men. The fact is, men were obliged to go off and work, usually for another, for a living. Women could expect to stay at home and be their own boss. Women were exempted from military service or conscripted labour; men were sent off to be killed. Women were exempted from any dirty, strenuous, or dangerous work, and in many times and places could not be prosecuted for a crime. Growing up, boys are given tough love and hard knocks. Girls are told they are princesses no matter how they behave. 

Following in this time-honoured tradition of asserting the opposite of the truth, in recent years racism has been rebranded “anti-racism,” and refusing to see race is now called “racist.”

There are many more such lies.

But the biggest lie of all is that there is no meaning to life, and no good evidence for the existence of God. Nothing could be further from the truth; yet surely it is the general modern consensus. I think of Monty Python’s rambling movie “The Meaning of Life.” ‘Alas!’ we moderns and post-moderns feign to lament. ‘If only we could figure out why we are here.’ 

Literally everything that exists proves the existence of God. God is the necessary answer to the question, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” What could be more proven?

But wait; there’s more. We have more and stronger logical proofs of the existence of God than of anything else in the universe. Why, other than whistling past the grave yard, this pretense that the matter is in dispute?

And the meaning of life has been well known and accepted across cultures since ancient times, and no doubt before. It is to seek what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful. These qualities are of self-evident value; the value of truth or good or beauty does not need to be justified. Rather, all things are of value to the extent that they are true, or good, or beautiful.

I recently wrote an essay for the national Mensa publication, pointing this out. 

No surprise: it prompted an energetic argument. Two members, and counting, felt driven to write articles asserting that life had no meaning. 

They made no argument that this was so—they simply asserted it, and claimed I had not proven the opposite. In the process, ignoring my arguments.

My experience is that many people very strongly do not want life to have any meaning. 

Especially if that meaning is truth. Truth for many is the great enemy.

It all has to do with a river in Africa.

That Old Hallelujah Chorus

My friend Xerxes recently wrote a column suggesting that the COVID pandemic might go on and on. I do not think so, and wrote so at the time. I think we’ll get a pretty good handle on it by the summer, and we have seen the worst.

But others objected to the column on quite different grounds. One responded, not that Xerxes was too pessimistic on the facts, but that he did not like to contemplate such a dystopian future. A second objected to thinking about COVID because “we become what we think about.” A third, objecting to the gloom her husband was exposing them all to on the TV news, wanted to “vehemently” sing at him “‘I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart ...”

This reveals the sickness in our hearts. Not only are these people grossly immoral, but they are calling morality itself immoral. This is the one unforgivable sin, and all of them are committing it. Our moral duty is to seek the truth. If truth is to us of no value, what exactly are our values?

There is a reason Satan is called the “father of lies.”

Mirrors

 

Scott Adams, in his daily podcasts, has pronounced himself puzzled by the apparent truth of an insight from Tucker Carlson: that whatever the left accuses the right of doing seems to be just what they have been doing themselves.

They accuse Trump’s followers of trying to stage an insurrection; they use this as an excuse to try to stage an insurrection. A second or third insurrection, following the Russia hoax and the Ukraine impeachment. They accuse Trump of encouraging rioting; after a year of encouraging rioting. They accuse Trump of authoritarianism, for considering calling in the National Guard to protect the White House under siege, or for considering calling in the Guard to cities torn by rioting. As soon as they are in power, they call in the National Guard to protect Washington, and keep them there. And plan to impose COVID regulations on the states. They accuse Trump of colluding with Russia; Hillary Clinton was colluding with Russia, Joe Biden was colluding with Russia, not to mention China and the Ukraine. They impeach Trump for supposedly, perhaps, interfering in Ukrainian legal affairs and demanding a quid pro quo for aid. Yet Biden is on video boasting about interfering in Ukrainian legal affairs and demanding a quid pro quo for aid. They have called Republicans Nazis and Fascists for years; that’s the entire “Antifa” thing. Then when Gina Carano tweets a comparison of the left to the early Nazis, this is intolerable. She must lose her livelihood for it. They declare the right “anti-Semitic” while being anti-Semitic. They accuse the right of being racist, while making everything about race. They actually declare not being racist, racist. They claim the Republicans are for the rich and against the poor, while openly expressing contempt for the poor.  It is only too obvious there is a pattern here.

The principle is simple, and known since ancient times. When someone commits consciously to evil, to something they know is wrong, the truth becomes their enemy. They feel the need to get as far away from truth as possible. They will come to consistently say the opposite of the truth, and accuse the innocent of their sins.

The Trouble with Truth

The mainstream media seems not to like Bernie Sanders. He essentially was called a liar in last night’s debate—by the moderators.

He was treated unfairly in 2015 as well, by the Democratic National Committee. Then, it made sense purely on the premise that the DNC was owned by the Clintons, that they maintained great influence in the party.

This time, we need a deeper explanation. It’s not just the Clintons.

It is not that Sanders is feared ideologically and in terms of electability, for being too far to the left. For they have given the same sort of blatantly biased treatment to Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard, with somewhat different platforms. Either would probably better appeal to independents that the candidates the MSM and DNC support.

The clue is in what they just publicly accused Sanders of: lying.

They accuse Gabbard of something similar: of not really speaking for herself, but of mouthing lines fed to her by the Kremlin. Of insincerity.

This is more conspicuous because the big draw for Bernie’s supporters is that he seems so sincere. He has been consistent in what he says, pretty much throughout his career. This is rare in a politician.

This is also what he shares with the two other pariah Democratic candidates: Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang also seem sincere, consistent, and to be expressing their own real views. Gabbard seems to stand on principle. She blew the whistle, for example, on the unfair treatment of Sanders last time, even though they do not closely align ideologically.

It is this very honesty that the party poobahs and the media elite fear and hate.

It is, in fact, also what they hate so much in Trump. They endlessly accuse him of lying, just as they now do Sanders. They accused him of being a Russian puppet, as they now do Gabbard. Same phenomenon. But in fact, Trump has been conspicuous in keeping his campaign promises. And, more generally, for not bending to polls or political correctness, but saying what he genuinely thinks. For speaking the truth as he sees it.

Why do these groups, the media and the Democratic operatives, so fear sincerity? Why do they actually prefer phonies as candidates?

They might and do say, of such candidates, that they are “loose cannon.” Who knows then what they might say or do on a given issue? Seems risky.

But this again is actually the inverse of the truth. Because they do not blow in the wind, because they operate on principles, we really know better how these four will react to any given new event.

The real problem is the one outlined in the Gospel of John. Those who do evil in darkness come to fear the light for its own sake, and will oppose anyone who speaks the truth.

This is why they crucified Christ.

The DNC and the legacy media—our social elites in general--are in a very dark place.

A Penny for the Old Guy

Guy  Fawkes burned in effigy.

Years ago, I was accused on a mixed email list of excluding women for referring to the others as “you guys. This surprised me. “Guys” is informal; but where I come from, it regularly refers to both sexes, This recent piece in Salon confirms that I am right; Merriam-Webster agrees with me, along, it says, with most dictionaries. At the same time, the article repeats some obvious howlers about the supposed maltreatment of women in our society. Got to repond.

First of all, if “guys” for many years referred only to men, this is not, as claimed, a compliment to men. It is a compliment to women. The origin of the term, after all, is the most notorious traitor in English history, a person burned in effigy annually. Later, according to the article, "guy" was muted to anyone “dresseed up in a grotesque costume,” as these effigies commonly were. All very well to refer to males in such generically extremely insulting terms, but women were entitled to greater respect. No doubt one also would not refer to the lord of the local manor as a “guy.”

The piece notes that terms for males commonly become generic, but not terms for women. “Men would not tolerate it,” the article says. This presupposes that men are in charge of language, an untruth the article itself goes on later to dispel, apparently without realizing it, Being generic is not a terribly desirable goal.. Terms for princesses are also not generic. A Korean of my acquaintance said once she hopes she is never introduced to the President of Korea. The grammar necessary to speak to him is so esoteric she has never used and does not know it, although she is a native speaker.

Execution of Guy Fawkes for treason

Is this proof the President of Korea is oppressed?

Later, the article notes the truth that “young women often spearhead linguisticc change.” This is an empirical fact, demonstrable empirically. And it means that in this crucial aspect of human society, in all cultures, women are dominant, Womem also tend to adopt the dialect of the class of men above their own menfolk, while men speak in a dialect a class lower than the women with which they associate. In other words, women are commonly understood, or at least understand themselves, to outclass and socially outrank any men with whom they are in contact.

It is amazing that feminism has for so long been able to invert the significance of all this into its very opposite. The devil at work again,

This works because those who have done wrong, which is to say all of us, commonly, rather than accept and repent the fault, try to obscure it with the lie.And the safest lie is the very opposite of the truth.

John 3:19: This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Feminism is and has from the beginning been a cover for sexual immorality.