Credo in Deum Patrem

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of the saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

A social group to which I belong recently took in a Catholic mass. Discussing it afterward, one participant preemptively announced she was Catholic, and disavowed the Creed, recited at this as at every mass.

“Most Catholics,” she said, “just say the words, but we don’t believe all that stuff.”

I could not contradict her. She may be right. But this is troubling, since the original point of the Creed was to establish who is a Christian and who is not.

My friend Xerxes, a pillar of the United Church, also dismisses God as depicted in the Creed as a “fairy-tale God.”

They seem to take the claims as self-evidently improbable.

The same notion for years powered the “Jesus seminar.” But the logic of it is obviously wrong on the most fundamental level.

First, it takes no leap of faith to assert that a Supreme Being necessarily exists. This various major philosophers have demonstrated seven ways to Sunday.

A Supreme Being is, by definition, all powerful.

It follows that he is perfectly capable of everything in the Creed. There is nothing improbable about any of it. The only question is, would he want to do these things?

Xerxes dislikes the idea of God as a person, who might then so will. He likes to think of God as a force like gravity, or a kind of network.

But this concept too fails right out of the gate. Surely we can agree that a conscious, self-aware being with intent exists in a more complete sense than something unconscious: that, say, a human is a higher state of being than a rock. It is also hard to be omniscient without being conscious; lacking consciousness, God could not be God. A conscious, self-aware being with intent, is what we call a person.

Now, would he will to do these things, or something like them?

A Supreme Being, as Descartes, for one, demonstrated, must necessarily be good, and all-good. Evil is a flaw, a deficiency.

An all-good being would want to do good to man. He would love us, with a perfect love. Accordingly, he would want to reveal himself to us, and lead us to higher perfection.

And so it ought even to be logically expected that God would appear in history at some point. Obvious enough that it is found in Hinduism as well, in the concept of the avatar. Or, in effect, leaving aside some important theological differences, in Buddhism, in the concept of the Bodhisattva.

The only question then is when and where. 

Was it Jesus, or Krishna, or Kwan Yin, or some other, or someone yet to come?

To help us decide, there are also specific empirical facts asserted in the Creed. Christianity is actually to some extent falsifiable, meeting Popper’s criterion for scientific knowledge. It is not a matter of arbitrary belief.

If, for example, it could be shown that Pontius Pilate was not an authority in Palestine at about the time of Jesus, Christianity would be disproven. If a corpse of Jesus were recovered, or there were credible records of one, Christianity would be disproven.

Conversely, the fact that what historical records we have conform with these facts, tends to make the whole more probable than not. The disappearance of the corpse—something attested implicitly by ancient non-Christian sources, which had every reason to wish to debunk Christianity—being the most important.

The same is obviously not true of fairy tales. The existence of fairies is not logically necessary, and fairy tales make no historic claims.

Another Petition to Sign

This one from True North.

Just do it.

Now Is the Time for All Good People ...

I certainly can’t say for sure, because Google’s sinister algorithms pre-screen everything so that it conforms to what it thinks are our pre-existing prejudices. But it seems the coverage of the Don Cherry firing has changed.

For the first day or two, it was all, “why did it take so long to fire Don Cherry?” And “Canada has at last outgrown Don Cherry.”

Now the story seems to have shifted to “the Don Cherry controversy.” And “the Don Cherry controversy just won’t die.” One online petition is nearing 200,000 signatures, and apparently there was a demonstration this afternoon in front of the SportsNet offices.

I gather the media expected the public to take this sitting down. Seems awfully naïve of them. But it has been clear for some time that they don’t get out much.

Surely a Revelation Is at Hand ...

Why was I thinking last night of Lee Harvey Oswald... along with Don Cherry?

It was almost the same time of year, as darkness was asserting dominance in the skies; and it seemed as epochal a disturbance in our shared lives.

To anyone of about my age, the Kennedy assassination was a revelation. We had innocently assumed that the world was good. The obvious empire of evil had been destroyed, a couple of decades ago, and the future could only be brighter than the past. The death of JFK was, to us, the discovery that evil had spontaneously resurrected itself. Nothing was ever the same again.

Although it seemed so improbable that we could not process it, Kennedy seems to have been killed by one lone demoniac. Oswald killed him for one simple reason: because Kennedy was a better man than he was, and so could not be permitted to exist.

The revelation that comes with this sudden career assassination of Don Cherry is that, over the intervening years, we have all become Oswalds. Now Oswald’s voice is coming from not just from the grassy knoll, but from all sides, from the observing crowd.

Or at least, the Oswalds have taken charge.

A Walk in Toronto

Yesterday, out walking, I passed a woman waiting at the bus stop. She gave me a concerned look. I could not tell why.

Buses do not come often on route 70C. Some minutes later, I was walking back the same way, and the same woman was still waiting. This time she addressed me.

“How do you keep it on?”

I could not place it, but she had a foreign accent.

I did not know what she was referring to. “You mean my toque?”

“No, the poppy. I’ve bought three, but they keep falling off.”

I actually had a few suggestions. I have a video on the subject up on this blog.

Try sticking an eraser end on the pin. Try taping it.

“I’ll do that when I get home.”

“Next year. This is the last day we wear them.”

She obviously did not know. But she had seen my poppy, and felt guilty.

Strikes me this was the immediate result of Don Cherry’s complaint on Coach’s Corner.

He may have gotten fired for it, but he made a good point, and some immigrants are listening.

The shame of it is, nobody is telling them about these Canadian traditions, and why Canadians care about them. Nobody is telling them anything about this new culture they have signed on for. They may very well want to know, want to assimilate and contribute. From my own experience, most of them do, and badly. There is a reason why they left their former country; there is a reason why they chose Canada.

But the government is actively discouraging them, and nobody else dares bring the topic up. Because if they do, they will be berated for it. They may even lose their job.

That is our real problem here: multiculturalism.

This Blog's Apple iTunes Podcast

I am informed by Apple that this blog's podcast is now also live in iTunes. You can subscribe and keep in touch.

As with the book, so far there is only one episode--had to see first if this was going to work--but I plan for more to follow.

So now you can listen on your way to work.

Apple iTunes Podcast

The Playing the Indian Card podcast is now available, I am informed, on iTunes.

Only one episode so far, but subscribe and stay tunes. I plan for there to be more.

Vote in the Poll

Should Don Cherry have been fired?

You know what to do.

Sign the Petition.

Another Don Cherry petition to sign.

Sign the Petition

Rebel media has launched a petition to support Don Cherry.

Sign here.

For details, read the post below.

Poppycock!

Demands are suddenly loud for the CBC to fire Don Cherry, because of the following on-air comment:

“You people … you love our way of life, you love our milk and honey, at least you can pay a couple bucks for a poppy or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada, these guys paid the biggest price.”

There are also calls for the head of co-host Ron MacLean, for seeming to agree instead of objecting.

MacLean has now publicly apologized and condemned Cherry’s remarks.

If this transcript is accurate, these calls are, in the literal sense, insane. They are out of touch with the reality of what Cherry said. All he said is that not buying and wearing a poppy is ungrateful. It surely is. To top it off, it seems in context as though he might be quoting someone else, not expressing his own sentiments.

He seemed specifically to be referring, when he used the term “you people,” to the people in downtown Toronto.

Cherry is being accused of “racism.” Yet he did not mention any race. If someone wants to read some specific race into the words “you people,” then any racism is clearly in their own minds, not, so far as we know, in Cherry’s.

It is more plausible to infer that Cherry was criticizing immigrants. If he was, “immigrant” is not a race. To make it about race is still a stretch. And even this much is inference. He might plausibly have been referring to young people, who predominate in the Toronto downtown. Or perhaps young immigrants, but disrespectful because they are young, not because they are immigrants. Or perhaps just urbanites, who think it unsophisticated to wear a poppy.

But even if he were thinking of race, should even this matter? Let’s stop and think for a moment. Why is it fine to criticize young people for being disrespectful of traditions, or to criticize Torontonians, but not immigrants, and not racial minorities? If nobody chooses their race, nobody chooses to be young either. People choose to live in Toronto in the same sense immigrants choose to live in Canada. The cases seem parallel. Yet criticisms of the young, and of Torontonians, are commonplace and considered witty and wise. Obviously, this is not equality: this is giving special privileges to immigrants and on the basis of race.

Criticism of anyone, including any group, must be in bounds. If not, we fundamentally lack freedom of speech, and automatically also equality before the law.

On top of this, this furor is all shockingly disrespectful of Don Cherry, a man who has made a significant contribution to our culture, intimately bound up with hockey as it is. He was, after all, a finalist when the CBC ran a popular vote on “the greatest Canadian.”

And the attack on him is an attack on Canadian culture. Surely a deliberate one.

If it is not simply stark raving mad.

Remembrance Day 2019

The Sky Is Always Falling-- podcast

The Sky Is Always Falling

The Sky Is Always Falling

The Sky Is Always Falling

The well-educated will recognize the story illustrated immediately.

My columnist buddy Xerxes argues that the experts have been warning us of dire global consequences, from overpopulation, climate change, and the depletion of natural resources, for centuries. Since the time of Malthus. Just the other day, a new battalion of 11,000 scientists warned of dire imminent consequences from global warming. “Planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”

He suggests it is high time to start listening.

He is right: we have been hearing this for decades, centuries. When I was finishing high school, our Biology teacher made us all buy and read Erlich’s The Population Bomb. It warned us of a catastrophic world famine coming in the 80s. Since this was our own near future, we had better be prepared for it. Time magazine was warning, at about the same time, of the impending Ice Age. My best friend’s life plan was to emigrate to New Zealand. He figured that would be the last place for the global cataclysm to reach. For we would soon all be killing each other over access to water.

Cut to the chase: every single such prediction of pending doom precise enough to be scientifically tested, since the time of Malthus, has been proven wrong. Instead, the world is substantially wealthier, on the whole, than it was in Malthus’s time, or even Erlich’s.

So why would we believe the experts?

The problem is the problem of the boy who cried wolf.

Heard a podcast from Levitt and Dubner, the folks who wrote Freakonomics, a while ago. Highly recommended podcast. Studies they cite find that expert predictions in any field are usually wrong. They are less accurate than chance, and less accurate than if you asked the average man in the street.

The reason for this is explained in Aesop’s fable. Most times, for most things, in most ways, the future is going to be continuous with the past. Dramatic change is rare; if it were not, it would not be dramatic. But more of the same is not interesting or newsworthy. And it is hard to convince us that we need experts to tell us things are fine as they are.

So every expert has a vested interest in predicting dramatic change; ideally, a doomsday scenario, requiring their urgent help. If they do this, they get the media, they get the grants, they get the academic chair, they get fame and fortune. If they do not, they risk losing their livelihood.

You would think over time expert advice would be discredited for usually being wrong. But here’s another little psychological quirk: people tend to forget false predictions, and remember successes. Again, predictions of dramatic change that did not come true are not very newsworthy or exciting. Predictions that did, if of some dramatic change, are memorable and striking. Astrology, fortune telling, and witch doctoring have succeeded for millennia on this basis.

The moral: we need to spend less time listening to the experts, and more time reading the ancient wisdom.

For example, “Chicken Little” might also apply here.

Steve

Night in the City

As a onetime bassist, I have always loved this Joni Mitchel track for its bass run. Just so fine.

And guess who the bassist is?

Steve Stills.

Had he taken up the instrument, he might have been the greatest ever.

A Glimpse into the Future

An interesting study just published in Science concludes:

“countries with longer historical exposure to the medieval Western Church or less intensive kinship (e.g., lower rates of cousin marriage) are more individualistic and independent, less conforming and obedient, and more inclined toward trust and cooperation with strangers. Focusing on Europe, where we compare regions within countries, we show that longer exposure to the Western Church is associated with less intensive kinship, greater individualism, less conformity, and more fairness and trust toward strangers. Finally, comparing only the adult children of immigrants in European countries, we show that those whose parents come from countries or ethnic groups that historically experienced more centuries under the Western Church or had less intensive kinship tend to be more individualistic, less conforming, and more inclined toward fairness and trust with strangers.”

Put more simply, our high levels of social trust, which allow for individual freedom, democratic institutions, relative social peace, and an efficient economy, are based on historic Christian values.

If the study is right, it follows that:

1. Undercutting or discarding traditional Christian values will probably lead to a loss of freedom, social order, and prosperity.
2. Importing large numbers of immigrants from historically non-Christian countries threatens social peace, prosperity, and democratic institutions. Especially if they are encouraged to preserve their previous traditions, as with “multiculturalism” and a stigma against “cultural appropriation.”

All social science studies are dubious. But this one ought at least to prompt some debate.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Politics

And if you don't like this face, I have another one...

It is alarming how everyone in the media is going after Andrew Scheer for being Catholic. This injection of religious prejudice is something Canada has not seen before—at least until they went after Stockwell Day. And for good reason. In a nation nominally divided about 50/50 Protestant/Catholic, it is profoundly dangerous to civil peace.

The Canadian balancing act.

Not to mention being discriminatory. JJ McCullough makes a good point: imagine the blowback if the media similarly went after Singh for his Sikh beliefs. Indeed, if Scheer were Muslim, this line of criticism would violate the notorious M-103, prohibiting “Islamophobia.”

It also seems to me that this attack encapsulates, quite probably intentionally, terrible practical advice to the Tory party. There is a substantial part of the public who agree with Scheer and the Catholic Church on these issues, roughly 50%, quite aside from the 50% who are nominally Catholic, and may be poked awake to that allegiance. And they are being represented by no other party. A fifty percent vote in Canada guarantees a perpetual majority. The last thing the left should want is for the Conservatives to run on being conservative.

Unfortunately, we cannot count on either the Canadian Conservatives or Andrew Scheer showing either courage or common sense on this matter. Class allegiances seem to trump either self- or public interests.

Scheer was recently asked, not for the first time, “Do you believe that being gay is a sin?”

And he answered:

“We made it very clear during the election, in the last few months and years, that our party is inclusive. We believe in equality of the rights of all Canadians. My personal opinion is that I respect the rights of every single Canadian. And my personal commitment is to stand up — that is my personal opinion — my personal commitment to Canadians is to always fight for the rights of all Canadians, including LGBTQ Canadians.”

The correct answer, for a faithful Catholic, would be a simple “no.”

It is hard to believe Scheer does not know this. 

No, the Catholic Church does not believe, and has never believed, that being attracted to the same sex, “being gay,” is a sin. Homosexual ACTS are sins; the distinction is fundamental.

Nor does believing that homosexual acts are sins mean that, in the words of a recent Global story, “you believe that a significant number of your fellow citizens — even some whom are legislators — are morally deficient, defective.”

This is a gross misunderstanding not only of Catholicism, but of morality itself. Homosexual acts are sinful; so are fornication, masturbation, or using most forms of birth control. So is gossiping, or swearing, or getting drunk. And so on. All of which puts the average person with homosexual inclinations pretty much in the same boat as the average person generally. Nothing very special here about being gay. We all have temptations to sin. The greatest sin, to Catholicism, would be asserting that one is without sin.

It is worth noting that prominent homosexuals have historically most often found the Catholic Church their spiritual home: Andy Warhol, Oscar Wilde, Milo Yiannopoulos, Tennessee Williams, Evelyn Waugh.

Equally obviously, believing that homosexual acts are sinful does not require making them crimes. Nobody is calling for laws against masturbation, or gossip. Crime and sin are very different issues, and this is obvious as can be from the Biblical outset: Jesus was crucified by the state as a criminal. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, unto God what is God’s.”

All of this is no doubt too complicated to go into in a scrum outside a committee room; but why could Scheer not have simply and accurately answered “no”?

The real problem with Scheer is not his beliefs, but that he cannot be honest and straightforward. Even when it is to his benefit. He gives the constant impression of having a hidden agenda; because he has a hidden agenda. In his own mind, he is in the business of conning the people. That is what is hurting him.

We see something similar emerging in the US Democratic primaries. It took far longer than I thought it would, but Elizabeth Warren seems now to be slipping, and Bernie Sanders gaining, on this issue. Asked about her health care plans requiring higher taxes, Warren keeps giving evasive answers. Sanders responds, “of course they will. Nothing is free. But …”

This is the secret of Sanders’ remarkable impact last cycle, and also of Trump’s success. They don’t show contempt for the public. They don’t try to con. “I’m a socialist.” "What's bad about being friends with Russia?"

This is something of which Scheer seems incapable. And he is of course not alone; most of the politicos and the political commentators think along the same lines. They are uniformly urging him and the Conservatives to either change principles or lie more strenuously. Seeing Biden’s prospects fade further south, Michael Bloomberg is putting himself forward. The idea is that, as a “moderate,” he would have the best chance against Trump. 

I suspect that calculation is no longer going to work. If people do not remember what you used to say, they can now look it up. Flips are flops. Principles matter.

Not at all incidentally, this is largely the same problem causing such turbulence for Pope Francis. He always prevaricates, no doubt thinking this is the smart thing to do to keep everyone happy. Instead, this is leading to growing rifts within the Church.

Compare the Catechism of the Catholic Church, produced by popes JPII and Benedict. We can go to it and see exactly what the teaching of the church is on homosexuality. Without it, how would we have countered the false charge that Catholics think being gay is a sin?

Ambiguity on principle is a principal tool of the Devil. It is why John the Baptist came, “to make the ways straight for the Lord.”

St. John the Baptist

On the Giving of Alms

Walking through Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood today, I was buttonholed twice by people asking for charity.

It reflects well on human nature at least that there is a market for this.

On the other hand. I found it troubling, because I doubt either charity was actually doing anyone any good. And that money they are taking could be so useful to so many people.

The first charity was CAMH. It was asking for funds to send people into the high schools, to staunch the growing crisis of suicide among the young.

The problem here is that our current psychiatry/psychology approach has no idea how to prevent suicides. If psychiatry and psychology were effective, suicides should be declining, not growing. The rate of depression and of suicide has grown in tandem with the growth of psychiatric funding.

Someone—Einstein is usually credited—once said that madness is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. By that standard, spending money on more psychiatry is insane: unless it can offer some revolutionary new approach.

The second charity was collecting money to end child marriage, by educating girls in the Third World.

First, there is nothing wrong with “child marriages.” They used to be the norm in Canada too, as in the rest of the world, until a few generations ago. When we began to postpone marriage past the teenage years, we created teen angst. We keep young people all dressed up and with nowhere to go for what seems, at such a young age, an eternity. Leading them to resort to all kinds of unfortunate things: drugs, casual sex, violence, crime, mental illness … and suicide.

One charity here is causing the need for the other.

Second, there is a problem with funding girls and not boys. It is not just discriminatory: it tends to render males useless within the society. The result will be unwed motherhood and families breaking up, and this leads to poverty and worse in the next generation. Along with a lot of angry, idle, desperate young men wanting to break things or kill themselves.

All this is depressing, but there is a deeper issue too. Are people who give money to such charities, which then use it to do harm to those in need of help, praiseworthy for their good intentions? Or are they actually committing another sin?

I think the answer has to be the latter: it is sinful to give to such charities. The motive, in the first place, for doing so is generally cheap absolution. “I’m not a bad guy. I give to charity.” Kind of like going to church on Sunday, then slitting throats in good conscience the rest of the week. That kind of charity seems like buying God off.

It is a moral responsibility to educate your conscience. You need to make an honest effort to determine the likely results of your actions. If you do not, that is a sin of omission, and sins of omission count just as heavily as sins of commission. As it says in the Confiteor:

“In what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.”

There is a reason why it is sometimes said that charity begins at home. It is among those you know the best that you are best able to judge whether your efforts are actually helping or doing harm.

Beyond that, it seems wisest to concentrate on religious charities. They in general stand within a tried and proven tradition of what does and does not genuinely help.

Liverpool Lullaby

A touching lyric about a dysfunctional family

Author: Stan Kelly

Oh you are a mucky kid,
Dirty as a dustbin lid
When he finds out the things you did
You'll get a belt from your da 

Oh you have your father's nose
So crimson in the dark, it glows
If you're not asleep when the boozers close
You'll get a belt from your da 

You look so scruffy lying there
Strawberry jam tufts in your hair
Though in the world you haven't a care
And I have got so many 

It's quite a struggle everyday
Living on your father's pay
'cause the bugger drinks it all away
And leaves me without any 

Although we have no silver spoon
Better days are coming soon
Now Nellie's working at the Lune
And she gets paid on Friday 

Perhaps one day we'll have a bash
When Little ones provide the cash
We'll get a house in Knotty Ash
And buy your dad a brewery 

Oh you are a mucky kid,
Dirty as a dustbin lid
When he finds out the things you did
You'll get a belt from your da 

Oh you have your father's face
You're growing up a real hard case
But there's no one can take your place
Go fast asleep for Mammy

Don 't miss the subtext; the lyricist gets this right. The Mother portrays herself as the hapless victim, but she is as abusive, and "co-dependent." Such families are always tag teams. If she is a good mother, why is the child sent to sleep with "strawberry jam tufts in his hair"?

She calls him "mucky" and "dirty": her own responsibility. In other words, she is scapegoating--scapegoating him too for his father, insisting on improbable similarities. And she is leaning on him emotionally, expecting him, the child, to fix things fer her, the adult: "When Little ones provide the cash."

An insightful take.

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Starting a new podcast based on the book, Playing the Indian Card.

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The Guns of August

On the theme of Remembrance Day, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August is perhaps the finest history book ever written, in terms of prose style.

I recommend it for a sense of the opening moves of the Great War.

Conspiracy Theory and Practice

Francis Dashwood, a leader of the Hellfire Club, by Hogarth.

I hate to comment on the Jeffrey Epstein case, because anything about it is a conspiracy theory. Conspiracies are inherently rare, and it is easy to go off quarter-cocked.

But sometimes conspiracies are real. There really was a Bavarian Illuminati. There really was a Hellfire Club.

There is an alternate danger, too. That, faced with evidence of evil, we avert our eyes and walk away. It is the more comfortable thing to do. And Edmund Burke’s advice still holds: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

It is pretty definite that Epstein was murdered. The known circumstances put the claim of suicide beyond reasonable belief. We now also have the public testimony of a highly respected coroner who was at the autopsy; although couched in typical legal-medicalese. The results were “consistent” with homicide. They were not “consistent” with suicide.

And the murder of Epstein requires a conspiracy.

Moreover, the official autopsy report did not say homicide, and, according to the coroner who has now come forward, failed to include obvious things like a test for DNA. That too seems to require a conspiracy.

Now Project Veritas has come out with a “hot mic” video of an ABC news anchor lamenting that she had all the goods on Epstein and his Fantasy Island three years ago, and the story was spiked by the network. Fear of litigation by powerful people might explain it; but such fears did not stop the networks from reporting quite wild allegations against Brett Kavanaugh or Donald Trump, without much or any corroboration.

Owl of Minerva, crest of the Bavarian Illuminati

Three years ago—that would mean the story was spiked during the last presidential election, more or less. Might have been relevant. Again begins to look conspiratorial.

But then, we already know that the mainstream media is involved in a political conspiracy. That cover was blown years ago, by “Journolist.”

All of this in turn tends to prove the basic truth of the wild allegations regarding what was going on with Epstein’s pedophile ring. There obviously must be some very powerful people who risk some very grave consequences if the full truth comes out. Powerful enough to reach in and control the US Prison Service, ABC, or the NY coroner’s office, as needed. Consequences grave enough to prompt them to murder almost openly—to take such a risk.

Now we must also worry—is it possible to ever get this properly investigated? We no longer know who’s in on the fix, and who is clean. It seems to me too there are other troubling matters in recent years that have been more or less ignored—the matter of Hillary Clinton’s emails, for example. I find it hard to believe that mere incompetence can account for it. More likely, Clinton was deliberately feeding information to some foreign power. The matter of Hunter Biden, China, and the Ukraine looks pretty outrageous, now that Trump has raised it—yet the damning basic facts have been in public view for years. And when Trump calls for an investigation, the Democrats act as though he has done something wrong, not Biden. Then there are longstanding unanswered questions about Juanita Broderick’s rape charges and the “Clinton death list.”

Perhaps sordid things have been going on among the upper crust at all times. Perhaps what is different now is that we have the democratization of information flow thanks to the Internet. No doubt that is at least partly true. On the other hand, the democratization of information has recently been very drastically throttled in again by Silicon Valley overlords.

These sorts of revelations may explain why.

The malfeasance does seem to fall heavily on the left side of the political spectrum. I don’t think I am being partisan here; it’s pretty obvious. If there is the slightest charge, moreover, against a Republican, it is more than thoroughly aired.

This moral imbalance between the sides seems to me to stand to reason: it is the left that has embraced “moral relativism” and postmodernism, in which you get to say or do whatever you decide is in your interest, regardless of truth or morals. Leaving aside Trump, who is at best hard to read, many leading Republicans do tend to at least publicly commit to moral traditions: Pence, Romney, Ryan, Cruz, Huckabee, Perry, Jindal, and so on.

Or, in Canada, Scheer.

Smile or Die

"Mother told me to always smile."

You often hear the advice that you ought to have a positive attitude.

Advice to face the world with optimism is often, in small matters, no doubt good advice. We should meet anyone new with a smile, assuming their good intentions. To do otherwise is prejudice. But that is not the whole truth. Ronald Reagan used to say, “trust, but verify.” Former US Defense Secretary Mattis went further. “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody that you meet.”

This “positive attitude” business easily segues into the current postmodern idea that truth is subjective: talk of “narratives” and “my truth,” and the idea that you can create your own reality.
It goes further back than that, of course—“the power of positive thinking,” beloved by so many salesmen. “Think and grow rich.”

But being unrealistically optimistic is as harmful as being unrealistically pessimistic. The goal should not be optimism or pessimism, but realism.

An example from modern history: the Munich Agreement. Chamberlain was the determined optimist, and insisted on assuming good intentions.

Chamberlain’s approach was wildly popular, and Churchill’s was not. Churchill was dismissed as a warmonger.

This suggests that unrealistic optimism may be a more common human problem than unrealistic pessimism. People naturally WANT to be optimistic, and to believe good things will happen. Nobody WANTS to be pessimistic. And so this is the side on which we are more likely to err.

This is why we need to streetproof children, for example. The instinct is to be too trusting.

Other examples of unrealistic optimism leading to disaster can be easily found in history. The story of the Titanic is that same story. The story of Austria-Hungary starting the First World War by invading Serbia. The story of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor. Both were obviously over-optimistic about their own abilities. So was Germany in invading the USSR in WWII. Or Napoleon in invading Russia the previous century. So was the US in going in to Vietnam, or Afghanistan, or Iraq. Probably every economic collapse ever has been caused by a preceding period of unreasonable investor optimism.

Canadian history? Laurier promised to solve the Manitoba Schools question with “sunny ways.” Everybody bought it at the time. The actual result: no more French or Catholic schools in Manitoba.

Unrealistic optimism is a recurring theme in the Old Testament: a prophet appears and warns of disaster to come, unless the government’s direction changes. And he is ignored as an annoying pessimist. And disaster comes. You’d think we’d been told this often enough to have learned the lesson.

The same theme is in the Greek: Cassandra and Laocoon in the Iliad. Nobody wants to hear anything upsetting.

Unrealistic optimism would seem to be the greater human danger, not unrealistic pessimism. But the real danger is unrealism. Realism is the proper goal.

The notion that we can critically affect by our own attitude whether good or bad befalls us, also has the awful side effect of ending up in blaming the sufferer or victim whenever someone does encounter trouble. It must be their own fault; they had the wrong attitude. If a woman is raped, she must by her attitude have deserved it. And the Jews must have provoked Hitler somehow.

Pushed a little, believing that we can control our own destinies with the right attitude also amounts to assuming godlike powers.

Which is close to Eve’s fatal error—“you will become as Gods.” Or Lucifer’s.

I say not “smile,” but “pay attention.” Look, listen, discern, and decide. This, use an often misused Buddhist term, is the true “mindfulness.”

Bad Times

The Seventies were a grim time. They were a decade of hangover from the Sixties. I gather the Fifties were awful too: soulless scientism and suburban sprawl. And a collapse of sexual morality. Everyone would surely say the same of the Dirty Thirties: mass unemployment and the rise of Fascism.

The twenty-teens seem to me to have emerged as similarly bad. 

The Fifties: artistically kind of sucky.

I wonder if we are in some regular twenty-year cycle?

The nineties may have been another depressed decade—the Clinton/Blair/Chretien years. I do not have a good fix on it; I mostly sat out the nineties in Asia. But that may be itself an indication: I needed to get out. It was too depressing in the West.

By “bad,” I mean depressed in the spiritual, not the economic, sense. These decades have been times in which North American and European society seemed to have lost their sense of purpose and direction. These were times adrift. Economic depression tends to come with this, but it is the sideshow, not the main event; and, I suspect, not cause but effect. Jimmy Carter sensed it, in the latter seventies, when he spoke of a social “malaise.” Kissinger expressed it when he spoke of himself as a modern Metternich, in the service of a declining empire.

The smiling face of the Seventies.

I suppose, being now in such a time, the useful thing to ponder is what in the past has pulled us out of such torpor. The mention of Jimmy Carter reminds us that, in the 80’s, it seems to have been new leadership. It was the strangely almost-simultaneous appearance of several strong leader figures, each in their way promising a new direction and a new beginning: Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Gorbachev, Deng Xiao Ping.

In the Sixties, it was more an artistic and cultural revival: the “counterculture” promised a new beginning, an Age of Aquarius. Rock/pop music, pop art, the Whole Earth Catalog, zines, and so on and on.

Suitable for colouring while on acid.

In the Forties, it was the unity and sense of purpose imposed by the need to take on the monstrous Nazis and their allies. Secondarily, this too led to the appearance of some inspiring leaders: Churchill, De Gaulle, Tito. Note that the major Fascist leaders emerged in the 20s and 30s. They were part of the malaise; they were not inspiring in the proper sense.

After the triangulation and fudgy “Third Way” if the nineties, the oughts restored clarity for a time with the need to respond to 9/11 and the rise of Islamist terror. The seeping of hi-tech into everyday life probably also generated some excitement about the future. That period of relative unity and optimism has now clearly dissipated.

What will pull things back into focus this time? Strong leaders with vision? Thatcher and Reagan, after all, were already visible in the wings in 1979; Churchill was long well-known in the 1930s.

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, whatever else they represent, do not seem to offer any coherent and inspiring new vision. They are comic figures, only declaring the nonsensical nature of what is. I do not compare them with Hitler or Mussolini, as others do, but they still seem part of the malaise, not of the new morning.

Sanders and his like on the left? Perhaps I am unjustly prejudiced; I thought Reagan too was dangerously wrong with his “voodoo economics” before he rose to power. But apart from their pre-K understanding of economics, I do not think there is anything there, because there is no spiritual element or appeal. With successful revivals, there always is. For it is the spirit that must be moved.

I think Mad Max Bernier here in Canada is one figure who might have this inspirational dimension; but that is not yet clear. The “Mad” label is to his credit in this regard. The appeal would not be conventionally religious: rather to a cultural ideal. I think Tulsi Gabbard has potential in the current Democratic crop. Nobody notices, but her commitment to non-violence is obviously informed by her Hinduism. But such figures are for now on the fringes.

So what about religion as the source of our revival? What about the arts? It was the arts in the 60s. John Paul II may have been the one necessary ingredient to the Eighties revival, and just as possibly, John XXIII and his Vatican II was the critical factor that kicked off the 1960s.

Pope St. John XXIII

The Catholic Church, sadly, is currently in chaos. This is most troubling, because it is the single strongest religious voice in the world, let alone in the West. But Pope Francis gives no clear leadership.

Is there a figure in the Protestant tradition, or beyond? A Jonathan Edwards, a John Wesley, a Martin Luther King Jr.? Perhaps: I have one eye on William Lane Craig. To hear him tell it, something is percolating in Departments of Theology and Philosophy.

William Lane Craig

The arts, too, seem moribund. But there is probably something bubbling under the surface, struggling to break free. The arts are currently, as periodically happens, under the iron grip of “The Academy,” the art critics and academics, which do not understand the arts, and enforce conformity and mediocrity. But when this goes on long enough, there tends to be an eruption. An eruption seems overdue. I expected it in the 20-oughts. I expected it in the eighties.

The stuff in the galleries is obviously garbage. No sense of the beautiful, no sense of symbolism or vision or emotional connection, painfully clichéd and predictable. Decor. Generally making some obvious and tedious political statement.

Yet the stuff in the galleries is not representative of contemporary art. It is just the art that bureaucrats like; for bureaucrats control galleries. I follow a Facebook group of struggling visual artists. These folks in the artistic underground are inspiringly good. With the growth of social media, they are bound to break through soon.

So too with writing. I went last weekend to the Toronto Festival of Authors. It was not what it was when I left Toronto in the early nineties. Then, I could hope to see and hear someone I had actually read and enjoyed: Brian Moore, Ken Kesey, Timothy Findlay. There are no longer such figures. One reads new writing any more, it seems, out of a sense of obligation.

I attended the launch of The Best Canadian Poetry of 2019.  Decades ago, I was myself featured in the equivalent volume. It was about as much fun as a trip to the dentist. Several selected poets read their selected works. Each was less a poem than a gimmick: “conceptual art.” And even as gimmicks, painfully predictable. The first poem sounded like a dairy entry by an ordinary person on a perfectly ordinary day. Dull as daily life inevitably is; and that turned out to be the point. The final line was something like “just breathing in and out.” This is anti-art. This is just what art is meant to rescue us from.

The next poem was done as a flow chart. Vaguely interesting the first time I saw it done--back at Expo 67.

The next poem was a reflection on how incongruous it is to be thinking of Virgil in modern Toronto. The only point seemed to be to promote the poet as someone so sophisticated as to have read Virgil.

The poetry was so unpoetical that at one point, when this poet was reading an introduction to his poem, I thought it was the poem.

And the last poem was something intentionally incoherent in which every fifth word or so was replaced by the word “unknown”; sometimes in the plural. This, the poet explained beforehand, was a protest against torture and waterboarding. The target was apparently Donald Rumsfield, and his famous phrase about “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns.”

Leaving aside the fact that the poet completely missed Rumsfield’s point, which could have been an interesting one to consider, the poem was as obviously stale as a newspaper hot off the presses seventeen years ago.

But then, in despair for the state of poetry, I picked up a copy of the West Coast lit mag Geist, available free at the entrance. And it was solid. Subscribe and read.

It is not that the arts are dead; it is that they are suppressed. Something is liable soon to burst free.

And our sight may again be 2020.

Public Service Announcement

Foreword to "Playing the Indian Card"

Knights of the Air

Remembrance Day has always been special for me. It is the one holiday most likely to inspire my sense of my own Canadianness.

I think this book has a lot to do with it. It may have been my favourite non-fiction read as a boy. The stories of Billy Bishop, Bill Barker, Raymond Collishaw, Roy Brown, and the like--real Canadian heroes.

If you happen to know any boys, it would make a great gift this Remembrance Day.

Sticking with Scheer

Some argue he just looks too much like a chipmunk to ever be prime minister.

Everyone is now out to get Andrew Scheer. Odd, since he was the most successful of the three big party leaders in the last election. Trudeau lost votes and seats. Singh lost votes and seats. Scheer gained both.

This, however, follows old and honoured Tory tradition. Since at least the dying days of Diefenbaker, they have ever been quick to form a circular firing squad at the hint of adversity.

It did the NDP no good to dump Mulcair after one election loss. It did the Liberals no good to dump Dion after one election loss. It may as well do the Tories no good again; unless perhaps they have some clear idea that a distinctly different sort of leader and leadership is required. A Churchill, say, instead of a Chamberlain. A Trump instead of a Romney or a Jeb Bush.

But I see no trace of this in the public reasons given for Scheer to go. They seem completely wrong, and harmful as advice. Scheer was a smiling face, and certainly tried to come across as a moderate. Yet according to all the pundits, he failed to do better because of his personal social conservative views, and because he was not enough like the Liberals on fighting climate change.

According to the rolling polls, this is wrong. What hurt Scheer most was simply the public prediction that he might win a majority government. That scared many on the left into the Liberal camp as a strategic move.

As to the Conservatives’ relatively weak showing in Ontario, I hear that their “vaunted ground game” did not materialize this time. As a local deputy returning officer on the day, I found it notable that they managed no candidate’s representative at my polling station for the count.

This strongly suggests that the problem was a lack of enthusiasm. The same thing that killed Romney. It was not that the Conservative platform differed too markedly from that of the NDP or Liberals. It was that it did not differ enough, giving ideologically-driven volunteers and voters little reason to come out.

It is often said by Liberals that they lose whenever they run to the right. We saw the same for the NDP in 2015: they veered towards the centre, the Liberals swung over to their left. The Dippers dropped to third, the third-place Liberals surged improbably to power.

People in general value sincerity and principle more than any specific ideology. This is ever more so in these days of democratized information, or, to use the journalistic cliché, “social media.” Witness the witless rise below the undefended border of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez.

But even going with ideological voting, and a cynical approach based on reading the polls, it makes the best sense for Conservatives to pull right and not left on social issues and climate change. One does not need a majority of the vote to get a majority government in Canada; one needs something approaching 40%. Four parties, the Liberals, NDP, Greens, and BQ, are splitting the vote that supports unregulated abortion, carbon taxes, special rights for transsexuals, laws against “hate speech,” stiffer gun bans, and so forth. Yet polls suggest that roughly half or even more of the electorate do not hold these positions. If any of these became the decisive issue in an election, and the Tories were the only party to vote for if you were on that side, it would actually mean a crushing Tory majority.

But even leave aside all partisan considerations, and consider the health of the Canadian democracy. How good a situation is it when a large portion of the electorate, perhaps even a majority, has no vote—that is, no party to vote for that represents their views? Not great for peace, order, or good government.

That this is so commonly now the case is why we see everywhere else the rise of “populist” parties. We are overdue in Canada—held back, I suspect, because in a way we were the first out of that gate, with Preston Manning’s Reform Party. That led to an unreasonable fear of “splitting the vote on the right.” So we have lapsed right back into the untenable situation that then forced Reform to form: the way, under Mulroney, there was nothing to choose between Tories and Grits, and no one to vote for if you were not keen on Charlottetown or Meech Lake and a new, unamendable, constitution.

If there is a problem with Scheer, it is that he is not forceful enough, fiery enough, in his public persona, to make a populist case. He radiates business as usual. The problem with his view on abortion in the TVA debate was not that he was opposed to abortion, but that he tried to fudge it and be on both sides of the issue. Same with climate change.

But suppose Scheer is jettisoned, who replaces him as Tory leader? Where’s our white knight? Maxime Bernier would have been best last time; but it is too late to turn to Bernier now. He has declared the entire Tory party corrupt. Were he to run, he would automatically lose the principled image that makes him appealing.

Peter MacKay? As a so-called “Red Tory,” a classic conservative, he would if anything further reduce the distance between the Liberal and Conservative platforms, exactly the wrong move by my estimation. MacKay notoriously has no charisma. And he is a model of the unprincipled politician: he captured the PC leadership by a backroom guarantee to David Orchard that he would never unite the PCs with the Alliance. Then he immediately moved to unite the PCs with the Alliance. Political dishonesty could not get much more butt naked than that.

Jason Kenney? He’s just been elected as premier of Alberta. It is way too soon for him to make the jump; it would look too opportunistic. Doug Ford? Same problem, plus his current unpopularity in any case. Brad Wall? Has the problem of not being bilingual. Lisa Raitt? Just lost her seat.

There are certainly possible stars in the caucus and beyond. Candice Bergen; Rona Ambrose; Erin O’Toole; Pierre Poilevre. But nobody seems an obviously better option than Scheer, or suggests a strikingly different style or approach.

Zacchaeus Out of His Tree

Zacchaeus called down from the Sycamore tree.

He entered and was passing through Jericho. There was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, and couldn't because of the crowd, because he was short. He ran on ahead, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was to pass that way.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and saw him, and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house."

He hurried, came down, and received him joyfully.

When they saw it, they all murmured, saying, "He has gone in to lodge with a man who is a sinner."

Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. If I have wrongfully exacted anything of anyone, I restore four times as much."

Jesus said to him, "Today, salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."

--Luke 19:1-10

Zacchaeus is not a real person. The story of Zacchaeus is a parable. The image of little Zacchaeus climbing a tree is too obviously comic for real life.

Zacchaeus means “pure.” It is not really a name. His small stature makes him seem childlike. He climbs trees, as a child would. And as a self-conscious wealthy man would not. For it is publicly undignified, and likely to expose him to general scorn.

So this is a parable of innocence.

Zacchaeus is egotistic in an innocent way, just as a child is. His initial avarice is innocent, unreflective. Who does not spontaneously want to own nice things? Nice things are nice.

Jesus singles him out from the crowd. Just as Jesus elsewhere says, one must become like a little child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Innocence is the key.

But only the key. Jesus opens the door, when he tells Zacchaeus to come down from the tree.

This act of immediate obedience is the test. It equates to repentance. “Get off your high horse.”

Because Zacchaeus does this, wholeheartedly, Jesus comes and dwells with him.

It is surely significant that all this is said to have happened in Jericho: the city that was the entrance to the Promised Land. With such repentance, the walls come tumbling down.

The good man, in sum, is not the man who does not sin. The good man is the man who repents when sin is pointed out. The bad man resists and denies. The difference is the difference between sin and settled vice.

Compare today’s first reading, from the Book of Wisdom: “Yet you are merciful to all, because you are almighty, you overlook people's sins, so that they can repent.” God’s own forgiveness is absolute, but conditional on repentance.

We all sin. We all have avaricious urges. A fundamentally good person, faced with their own wrongdoing, repents and seeks to make amends. A bad person demands “forgiveness” without repentance. That is the difference.

The critical moment in the Garden of Eden was not when Adam and Eve ate the apple. It was when they hid in the bushes, and tried to shift blame.

Haiku of Autumn

The apartment block like a shotgun propped against the charcoal sky.
A solitary slate-grey pigeon turns his back to the wind.

-- Stephen K. Roney 

Medusa's Many Daughters

Visited the Art Gallery of Ontario and, during the tour, heard a brief talk on Ruben’s painting of the head of Medusa. The gallery guide gave a brief account of the legend, explained that the painting was commissioned to shock, suggested improbably that it might have been a barbed reference to Protestantism, and, painfully, explained that Medusa was a “strong woman.”

She added a question for the audience: “What always happened to strong women in Victorian novels?” And she answered it: “they get killed.”

I am not up on Victorian novels. Perhaps this is true. Perhaps it is somehow relevant to Greek myth. But this was eagerly picked up by one of the listeners. She declared that she would use Medusa as a model for her daughters, because she wanted them to grow up to be proper feminists.

Another striking example of how our society is mad. Taking the story as told by Ovid, in what way was Medusa a “strong woman”? In what way was she a model for anyone? 

Athena

To recap the tale, she was “violated” as a young woman by Poseidon in the Temple of Athena. As revenge for this desecration, Athena turned her hair into serpents, so that her very gaze turned any living thing into stone. She spent her life in lonely semi-darkness at the edge of the world, alone, no one daring, obviously, to approach. Until Perseus came and beheaded her. The world’s poisonous snakes were generated from her blood as it dripped.

She is a monster in the legend, not a heroine. It is like advocating Frankenstein’s monster as a role model for your sons.

And a “strong woman”? Her gaze killed things; but in all of this, she appears to have been powerless, the victim of Athena. She cannot have desired this; it made her life hell. Her one voluntary act seems to have been to have sex with Poseidon. In Ovid, it might have been a rape; but this does not account for Athena’s punishment, as Athena tends to be a figure of strict justice. Other accounts, such as Hesiod’s or that of Apollodorus, make the sex voluntary on her part. So that, and only that, was her “strength.”

If you want a model of a strong woman for your daughters, why Medusa and not Athena? 

Lilith

But this seems consistent: feminists likewise venerate Lilith, a similar figure in Jewish legend. Lilith is the mother of all demons; she kills infants in the cradle. So that makes her a “strong woman.” Why not Esther, if you want a Biblical figure? Why not Joan of Arc? Why not Catherine of Siena? Why not Boadicea? Yet such genuinely strong women get no following among feminists. They want Lilith and Medusa.

It seems plain that “strength” is not the real issue. This is a euphemism. What feminists really admire is being boldly immoral, violating moral norms. Medusa or Lilith are attractive because they are killers. And no virgins need apply. This, indeed, was the original meaning of the term “liberated woman”—for “liberated,” read “licentious.”

“Feminism” is just a cover for vice.

The Amazonian Synod without Amazonians

Pachamama Museum, Argentina

The people who are calling for syncretism with Amazonian aboriginal religions in the recent Vatican synod are not themselves aboriginals, and probably have little familiarity with aboriginal religions. The Amazon basin is actually 80% urban; and the local bishops are usually not even Brazilian, let alone aboriginal. Do they ever travel out into the jungle, to the isolated tribes? They are inserted from Europe, and probably because of their romantic attraction to the Noble Savage myth.

Hence the emphasis at the synod on ecological concerns.

The population of the Amazon basin is generally flocking to the Pentecostal denominations, not to any aboriginal religious tradition.

The most reasonable conclusion is that they are going Pentecostal because the local Catholic church lacks spirit, lacks conviction, not because they have too few female deacons or carvings of native idols in the churches. This is all something outsiders are trying to impose on them from above, nothing for which they are clamouring.

Solidarity Forever

The elementary teachers of Ontario have voted to go on strike.

If this were a real bargaining process, the government would have a simple solution. If they will not come in to work, fire them and hire replacements. A recent Ed School grad told me it takes seven years for newly-qualified teachers in Ontario to find a steady teaching job. There is an obvious oversupply; the teachers have no bargaining power in the normal sense.

Fire and rehire, and the government saves a lot of money immediately: the new hires will be at the bottom of the seniority pay scale. Will the new teachers be worse at the job? Probably not—teachers are promoted on sheer seniority, not on competence.

On top of that, the evidence is strong that even having a B. Ed. does not produce any better results with students. Actually, worse results. This stands to reason: anyone who has competed high school has had a twelve year apprenticeship in what works and does not work in the classroom. Are they likely to learn anything new of any value in a year at Teacher’s College?

Just the reverse; in order to have something to teach, the Ed Schools more or less must inculcate their acolytes with new techniques and ideas nobody has used in a classroom they have learned in. And there almost has to be a good reason why nobody will have used a technique before.

Hiring anyone with any Bachelor’s degree ought to work better.

Collective bargaining between two groups of civil servants is, in sum, all a pantomime. Nobody has their own money at risk. Both sides benefit by caving in to all union demands.

But for oversight from politicians.

Why doesn’t the government just do what Reagan did in the Eighties when the US air traffic controllers went out? He fired them all—ending an era of constant strikes by civil servants.

The government will not do it because there are too many teachers, and they are too well organized. Politicos fear their electoral power, and their ability to generate bad PR through their class allies in the media. That, and class solidarity. Broadly, teachers belong to the same professional class as do politicians.

It might be worth doing for a Tory government. After all, the teachers’ unions are all in for the NDP in any case.

AOC Detects Zuckerberg's White Supremacist Bias

This grilling of Mark Zuckerberg by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez illustrates my contention that the mavens and magnates of Silicon Gulley are not really interested in censorship or controlling our politics. They want to invent things and make money. The problem is that the left will not let them. Being located where they are, in the SF Bay area, it is only the far left from whom they generally hear. They hear a constant public outcry, and, not wanting to get involved in politics, they feel the need to do something in response, so as not to alienate their customer base. Not being political, they have little idea there is another side of the issue.

Ocasio-Cortez, for example, berates Zuckerberg for not censoring more aggressively, and accuses him of having dinner parties with “far right figures.” So what is his necessary move, in order to disentangle himself from politics? He is then forced to be political, to try to figure out who counts as “far right,” and shun them. Ensuring he does not hear their views on this issue…

There is no way out.

Ocasio-Cortez actually refers to calling white privilege a hoax as a “conspiracy theory.” That is a perfect inversion: it is the notion of white privilege that is a conspiracy theory. It is like saying that denying the accuracy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a “conspiracy theory.” But this logic is too convoluted for an innocent to handle. Zuckerberg is out of his field; precisely because he is not a political animal, he is easily buffaloed by this sort of bullying.

This is the current problem not just among techies, but artists. They are not engrossed in politics; they want to create. The left will not let them do so; the left will politicize everything, to the point that, in order to pursue their own interests, they must be seen to conform to every new demand for political correctness.

Ocasio-Cortez gives a helpful primer here in how the technique works. She refers to The Daily Caller as a “publication with well-documented ties to white supremacist organizations.” This guilt by association could be as easily used against any individual or organization. The six degrees of separation rule makes this inevitable. All of us have ties to “white supremacist organizations,” or organized crime, or convicted mass murderers. But now she forges on with the notion planted that the Daily Caller is itself white supremacist. The Daily Caller was founded by Tucker Carlson, and features writing from such figures as Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, and Alan Keyes. It is about as white supremacist as the New York Times.

She then extends this guilt by association by one further degree: Facebook and Zuckerberg are now also white supremacists, it seems, because they rely on a fact checker who also works for The Daily Caller.

It now follows that anyone who uses Facebook has documented ties with white supremacist organizations. And so it goes.

Joe McCarthy would never have been so bold or so reckless in his accusations.

The coup de grace: AOC then tries to force Zuckerberg to denounce the Daily Caller’s fact checking, on the grounds that it has “ties to white supremacist organizations.” If he will not do this, presumably this confirms that he is indeed a communist. Sorry, flashback; I mean a white supremacist.

Ocasio-Cortez here is denying the existence of facts. She is implying, and demanding that all accept, that left-wing and right-wing facts are different. She must believe that “the facts” are simply whatever she or anyone thinks will advance their political goals.

It is impossible to have a rational dialogue on such a basis. The modern left is a cancer on the body politic. And on the culture.

The Unjust Magistrate

He also spoke a parable to them that they must always pray and not give up, saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who didn’t fear God and didn’t respect man. A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’ He wouldn’t for a while; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will defend her, or else she will wear me out by her continual coming.’ ” 

The Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says. Won’t God avenge his chosen ones who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them? I tell you that he will avenge them quickly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

This is what a parable looks like: no names, and shocking. God is blasphemously compared to an unjust judge. The parable implies that He can be worn out, get tired; nonsensical for a perfect being.

As usual, the story is actually saying the opposite of what it seems to say on superficial reading. It is all in the last line.

It seems to say God will answer prayer. It is really explaining why God does not answer prayer.

Unlike the unjust judge, God does not disdain mankind and want to be rid of us. Instead, he loves us. The parable illustrates that, if he easily gives us what we want, we will probably go away and forget about him. The last thing he wants us to do is go away and forget about him.

So he will present us with problems and fail to give us what we ask, for the sake of deepening the relationship. To progress, we must learn to be grateful, and to continue the conversation, even when he fulfills our wishes.