It Comes in a Bottle

 

I keep getting blasted on Facebook by an inane ad for “Jublia,” apparently a medicine for foot fungus. It’s a song, with dancers and the lyrics “Jublia. It comes in a bottle. Jublia. Not a person, it’s a medication. Jublia. Your doctor has more information. Saying what it does-- that would be too much!”

This seems at first glance a ridiculous waste of money. I have no foot fungus; I can’t imagine I have done any searches that might make it seem as though I have. They have targeted their customer universe terribly, then. What are the odds that a random person watching YouTube would have any use for this medicine? And yet they’re pounding it into the ground. I seem to see this ad more often than anything else.

And how can it sell the product without saying what it does? Advertising is to give the potential customer information. Further, an ad should concentrate not on the product, but on the benefit to the customer. So what is the point of an ad that deliberately withholds how the product might benefit the consumer? And instead boasts that it comes in a bottle?!?

I can think of a few reasons why this ad campaign might make sense.

First, it piques the curiosity. How, after all, do I know that it is for foot fungus? Already at a computer, I just had to google and find out. I imagine others would too. So, in this day and age, advertising online, there is really no need to say it. Better yet, Jublia has doubled its advertising dollar or better, getting the viewer to encounter it twice and in greater detail than a quick ad could manage. It has at the same time certainly caught my attention. It made the product interesting; this is not just one more spam ad that passes by the eyes and is not remembered. Not incidentally, by prompting a Google search, it has made the viewer listen carefully for the product name, and type it out. Perfect for memorization.

This still does not explain why it is worth broadcasting this particular product to random viewers, instead of targeting those most likely to have foot fungus.

Part of the programme might be to drop huge amounts of advertising in the media on something, anything, simply to ensure that the media, needing the revenue, doesn’t report critically on this pharmaceutical company, or the industry as a whole. Especially now, when “Big Pharma” is under siege in the media, and terrible things are coming out about the Covid vaccines. In the case of YouTube, to encourage the platform’s algorithms to censor such content.

In other words, it is a payoff, explicitly or implicitly to ensure favourable coverage.

Improbable? That’s exactly what the Kamala Harris campaign did: indirect payoffs to Oprah Winfrey, Al Sharpton, Call Her Daddy, and other news and affairs outlets for favourable coverage.

Trump's Plan for Peace

 

How is it that Trump believes he can keep the peace worldwide, at least without sacrificing US vital interests? After all, broadcasting in advance that you are against war would seem to only give aggressors free license. But he really did keep the peace for the four years he was president before. Was this just luck? And, in anticipation of his coming to office, I notice that Qatar has announced they are expelling Hamas from their country.

I think we can see Trump’s technique. It is the same technique that works in making a business deal. He makes a dramatic threat; if it is ignored he hits swiftly and hits hard. The other side backs down, or, of necessary, as with ISIS, quickly gets wiped out. 

Why was ISIS wiped out so quickly and relatively painlessly? Because he unleashed his generals. No restraints on them. 

Contrast this with the usual American way of war, as we witness it in Ukraine, or what they are requiring of the Israelis in Gaza, or saw in Vietnam, or Korea. You send in men and armament in dribs and drabs, worrying about “escalation.” Certain vitally strategic areas on the other side are out of bounds and mustn’t be touched. 

That looks a lot like a cover story. It is the way to prolong war: feed in just as many troops and just enough materiel to keep the war going at a good pace, without resolution.

And it is responsible for millions dying unnecessarily, not just soldiers but all those women and children they pretend to be concerned about in Gaza.

Why do American governments do this? Are they really so stupid? Still, so long after Vietnam? They can never learn the simple lesson?

Surely it is more sinister. 

Just as the cynics have long said; as Eisenhower said in his farewell address way back in 1960.War is hugely profitable for certain large corporations. Politicians they fund have a huge incentive to encourage war and make it drag on.

This even explains the chaos of the Afghan withdrawal. The abandonment of all that materiel through a hurried withdrawal may have been a feature, not a bug. It would all have to be replaced in the American arsenal. Lots of new defense contracts.

Trump seems to show this suspicion to be true, with his successes. This is probably one big reason they were determined to keep him from office, by fair means or foul. And why their first thought was to try the “Russia collusion” hoax. He doesn’t want war? He is helping our enemies!

The other half of the Trump formula, of course, is not to poke and provoke foreign leaders, as the war hawks do. Not to threaten their interests. Trump will respect and appeal to the interests of the other leader.

This explains why Trump is actually rather popular with the Chinese, with Putin and the Russians, with North Korea, with both the Arabs and the Israelis. They understand the rules of the game, and know that if they follow them, they can say out of trouble. Weakness makes the boundaries unclear; they can easily miscalculate, and face disaster.

For Trump’s system to work, he must of course preserve a credible threat of force; if necessary full-scale war, few holds barred. That is why he needs a hawk at Secretary of State: Marco Rubio, not Tulsi Gabbard. He needs someone who can spit bullets, for a good cop/bad cop negotiating routine. And he needs someone who will build up the readiness of the American Armed Forces.

In Gaza, I expect him to unleash the Israelis to go in and end it quickly. In Ukraine, I expect him to force a deal leaving Russia with Crimea, the Donbas, and a pledge that Ukraine stay out of NATO. 

Born with the Gift of Laughter, and a Conviction that the World Was Mad

 

There is a saying: “never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.” It is often useful to defuse one’s anger.

But is it true? 

It does seem to me that groups and nations pursue obviously bad policies, insist on obvious untruths, and seem impervious to explanations. One obvious example: the persistent insistence that there are mass graves of indigenous children murdered in the old residential schools. Another: that Trump claimed Nazis or white supremacists were “good people.”

Are they simply ignorant of the facts, only repeating what they have heard? No; if told the facts, they do not counter them; they just ignore or suppress them. They react in anger. Can it be that they don’t understand what is being said?

Let’s assume that people are this stupid. They just can’t make logical connections. Wouldn’t the obvious solution, then, be to select out those with the highest IQ’s, and have them run things? 

This is more or less what Plato proposed in the Republic. 

So should we turn things over to the “Experts,” presumably weeded and fostered based on their intelligence and knowledge by the universities?

No; these academics seem more prone to believe obvious nonsense than the general public. This has long been ovserved: the “ivory tower” syndrome. Academics is an echo chamber in which delusions can be mutually reinforced indefinitely without ever being tainted by reality.

How about selecting for raw IQ? 

And this is the premise on which Mensa, the high-IQ society, was founded.

And it did not work, does not work, either. On any given issue, you will never get a consensus among Mensans. They are about as likely to believe the latest obvious untruth as the general public. And hold to it with the same energy. A meeting of Mensans is like herding cats.

(Of course, I face my own logical problem here. How can I be sure it is the other guy who is clinging to an untruth despite evidence? Am I smarter than the Mensans? 

I recall this little poem by Albert Einstein: "A thought that often makes me hazy:/Is it them, or am I crazy?"

But all I can do is look at the evidence and arguments, and use my own judgement. I think it is conclusive if the other side does not counter. Although it might also be that they find the matter so obvious that arguing it is tiresome.)

It seems to me it cannot be incompetence, in most cases. It is deliberate self-delusion. Most people simply believe or try to believe what they want to believe. They believe whatever they find most comfortable or most in their interests to believe, and ignore both the truth and the general good.

I daresay women are more prone to do this than men… They will cover an ugly situation with a pretty word, and it will all be okay.

A case in point I noticed recently: a YouTube psychiatrist advising that you should cut all contact with any relative or spouse who voted for Trump, telling them “How could you vote against my livelihood?” (Sic: surely she meant interests). 

This presupposes that everyone should vote only for their own self-interest. (Given that it is also in one’s self-interest not to alienate one’s relative or spouse.)

And so, I arrive at an important truth about the world: most people are delusional, and people are morally responsible for their delusions.

Which explains why we do instinctively think insanity is not a disease, but a moral failing.

The Bible knows this. This is why, for example, it makes acceptance of the dominion of God the first commandment. Not to see this, to be atheist or agnostic or polytheist, is a deliberate delusion. 

And this, according to the Bible, is the litmus test for heaven: are you seeking truth, or not?

 

The archaic smile: a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.

Had a discussion with the chief of catechesis for my diocese. He reported that Pope Francis is reorganizing the Catholic Charismatic Renewal to focus as one of its priorities on helping the poor. Apparently it was previously deficient in this regard, and said function is not sufficiently covered by the rest of the church and Catholic Charities. 

More broadly, he stressed Pope Francis’s belief that the key message of the church to Christians is joy.

Happy happy joy joy. Bobby McFadden stuff.

This is of a piece with the directive for those catechising children: that the sole message should be “God loves you.”

I have been brooding about this ever since. This is off the rails. We must have better from the church.

Helping the poor is of course good. This is uncontroversial, everyone agrees, and no reason to have a church, let alone a charismatic prayer group. Many secular authorities are on that case. 

“Feeding the hungry” is indeed one of the corporeal works of mercy. However, it does not seem to me to be within the charism of the Charismatic Renewal, which stresses the spiritual, not the corporeal. For them, it looks like a rod shoved in their spokes, a demand for them to turn to the material and away from the spiritual. Their proper concern is the spiritual works of mercy: comfort to the afflicted, forgiveness, prayer.

Ending poverty is not the business of the church, not possible, and not desirable. “Ending poverty” is an idolatry. “The poor will be with you always.” Are we to take pity on and send money to the Franciscans and Poor Clares, who have taken vows of poverty? “Blessed are the poor.” Being poor is, literally, a blessing. 

It is important to notice that what Jesus asks of us is not to give money or aid to “the poor” as such, but to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. The distinction is important. We do this not because they are poor, but because they need something we have far more than we do. Their survival is more important that our comfort.

We are equally obliged to visit those in prison, or in hospital or old age homes. To put sole emphasis on “the poor” smacks of Marxist materialism.

As for the key message of the church being joy—isn’t that callous, when you are also obviously aware there are people going hungry, without shelter, without clothes, sick, old, in prison? Is the essential Christian message “I’m all right, Jack!”?

Jesus said the reverse: “blessed are those who mourn.” Did he ever say “blessed are the joyful”? No, again, the reverse: “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.”

In Athens, I visited museums full of ancient sculpture, and another museum of early Christian icons. The striking difference between the two: the older pagan sculptures showed blank eyes and grins—the creepy “archaic smile.” The images of Christian saints showed faces that seemed sorrowful, eyes like dark wells that seemed grief-stricken at the world.

As one ought to be, once one realizes what should be.

The message of Christianity is not joy, but truth. Truth is harrowing. It is the mysterium termendum et fascinans. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Pope Francis is not Christian. He has not seen the world as it is.

Early Christian icon

Keeping it Under America's Hat

 

Trump’s win is moving the Overton window rapidly in the US. Some people are going to be caught with their pyjamas down. The NYT and The View have caught the smell in the wind, and are trying to shift their tone. Trumpism, is now demonstrably the mainstream, and they risk either bankruptcy or irrelevance. The woke will soon be laughing stocks.

What does this mean in Canada? For Canda, just as for the rest of the developed West, the US sets the tone—more now than ever before, because we are so interconnected. Pierre Poilievre, in particular, has a tricky path. He needs to make rapid policy changes to more closely conform to Trump’s agenda, or start to look stale and conventional. He needs to make some striking new policy proposals to keep people’s excitement. He can’t just talk about the carbon tax.

This is a revolutionary period, and the revolution eats its children. You must race to stay in front of the parade, or be trampled by it.

Is Poilievre, and are the Conservatives, up to it? If not, Maxime Bernier might steal his thunder.

Trump’s drive to cut taxes and regulations and unleash oil and gas is also going to force whomever is in government in Canada to do the same. Otherwise investment will flood out of Canada into he US; the results will be too obvious. Voters will not stand for it.

The Justice League of America

 

The times are bringing forth the heroes we need: the “Justice League” of superheroes that many are recognizing in Trump’s cabinet: Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Trump himself, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, J.D. Vance, and the rest. Even Ron Paul has apparently signed on. 

What do they all have in common? That they bucked the consensus of those around them, in the various fields they are now about to be in charge of, and demonstrated moral courage.

The essence of the hero is moral courage. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, courage is the one essential virtue without which no other virtue is possible. Therefore, to be declared a saint in the Catholic church, one must have demonstrated “heroic virtue.” 

Only when the social and cultural consensus in some time and place is in serious error is heroism either possible or necessary. Bad times generate heroes. Heroes emerge as the social background recedes from them, recedes from obvious truth, need, or virtue, exposing them. 

The 1980s spontaneously generated heroes: Ronald Reagan in the US, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, John Paul II in the Church after years of confusion and managed decline. The Sixties and Seventies were pretty messed up.

Similarly, the crisis of the Second World War forced to the front Churchill, Tito, and De Gaulle.

We are at such a point, and quite evidently at a greater such inflection point than either of these former ones. The gravity of the situation is reflected I the fact of so many heroes emerging at once.

Not just in the US; the rot is everywhere. Milei in Argentina, Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands. Farage in Britain; Poilievre in Canada; and so on. Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Billboard Chris, Tommy Robinson, the pundits and risk-takers at the Daily Wire, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and on and on. The heroes are mustering everywhere.

We are living in a heroic age, and the dark night may be over.

Dracula as Feminist Icon

 

I am tutoring a high school student with his regular English literature course. They are studying Bram Stoker’s Dracula. They have been asked to interpret it using three lenses: a Marxist perspective, a feminist perspective, and a psychological perspective.

What is missing?

The obvious significance of Dracula is religious: it is all too heavy-handedly about the nature of evil and the nature of the human soul. This is not even touched on.

Stoker and his audience might have been familiar with Marx. Feminism or modern psychology would have been unknown to them.

I am told all texts in the course are subject to the same three analyses.

This is not knew. It was true when I was going through college and grad school in the 1970s. Religious or ethical concerns were never whispered at in English lit classes. Even though, as a historical fact, this would have been the primary concerns of any author up to at least the beginning of the 20th century.  I often wondered why the later work of so many authors was ignored. I assumed poets must burn out. Instead, it was because with age they all tended to get too obviously religions.

We had to fill our essays and theses with Marxist, or feminist, or Freudian, or Jungian, or structuralist, readings of each text, knowing that they could not possibly be correct, and that the underlying theories had usually been discredited. A complete waste of time, made bearable only by the excuse to read the texts themselves. Much sound and fury, signifying nothing. While all the time, the meaning we were searching for was perfectly clear by reference to Christian principles.

We are deliberately avoiding religion and ethics in our education system, as though it is the proverbial third rail. Our children and youth are being deliberately directed away from any spiritual or ethical concerns.

And this has spread throughout society.

I have for almost two years been trying to set up a group of “Poets of Faith,” “who believe their craft is in service to a Supreme Being.” Yet over these two years, whenever I get a group together, and start a meeting, someone begins by objecting to the mention of a Supreme Being. The meeting dissolves in chaos, and I must start all over. Sisyphus, move over. Despite the stated purpose of the group, the premise under which it was convened and under which people agreed to attend: “who believe their craft is in service to a Supreme Being.”

I think this is the same problem, the same cancer. Even allowing others to form a group acknowledging the existence of God and some responsibility to him is not to be tolerated. 

It is the same reason churches are being burned down across Canada, and priests assaulted at the altar. And black legends are spread about mass graves near residential schools.

This is no doubt why our arts are moribund and our civilization in decline. It is decadence.

Rubio for State

 

Bad cop

The rumour is that Trump will name Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. This has caused consternation in some MAGA circles. Rubio has a reputation as a hawk, a “neo-con.” What happened to Trump’s commitment to peace? Couldn’t he have picked Tulsi Gabbard, say?

This is faulty thinking. I love Tulsi Gabbard, but she would be wrong for Secretary of State. She is too closely identified with the anti-war position. The only way to keep the peace is through deterrence. Trump needs somebody threatening, a bulldog, someone ready to pull the trigger, and, more importantly, someone adversaries believe is ready to pull the trigger. He needs a good cop/bad cop team.

Note how Trump has handled things before when conflict loomed: not just by rattling sabres or making threats, but by firing missiles and dropping bombs. Once by dropping the mother of all bombs. Then he can make a deal.