The Mark of Zorro Ranch

 

We will probably be hearing more from the Epstein files for years. Given three million pages, it will take some time for folks to mine it all, even if no more files are released. There will be books written, on different aspects and on the paticipastion of different figures. Already the files seem likely to topple one world leader, Kier Starmer.

A few initial comments from this seat in the peanut gallery.

I see the claim online that Epstein worshippedor ironically pretended to worship the pagan Philistine god Baal. His strange  blue and white island temple structure was referred to by some as a “Baal shrine,” and he had some bank account using “Baal” in the name.

Here I can contribute a bit of knowledge other commentators seem not to have; although it seems simple and obvious enough. This is not conclusive, because Epstein was Jewish and so knew basic Hebrew. “Baal” in Hebrew is a title, not a name. It means “lord” or “master.” A Christian praying in Hebrew would pray to “Baal.” A courtier would call his king “Baal.” We cannot tell from this what god Epstein intended, if any. He might have been referring to himself. 

My next observation at this early point is simply to note that “pedophilia” used to be represented as a problem virtually unique to the Catholic church. While it was indeed a problem in the Catholic church, there was never any reason to suppose it was more common there than elsewhere. By now we know it was at least as common in sports leagues, the Boy Scouts, the public schools. It seems to have been everywhere, at every level of society, and especially common among the loudest critics of the Catholic church.

Perhaps Catholics deserves some reparations; for all the reparations they have already paid out. Why were they charged and persecuted, including the entirely innocent laypeople in the pews, and no one else?

My third observation is deep suspicion to hear that aside from the notorious island, Epstein also owned a remote ranch in New Mexico. It was apparently here that the worst things happened.

That rings a bell.

I have long theorized that Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was an expose.  Kubrick wanted to blow the whistle, but did not feel it was safe to say it outright. And perhaps it was not. He died unexpectedly soon after finishing that movie.

I indeed have previously pointed out that Eyes Wide Shut also did not seem to be the first time Kubrick was trying to blow the whistle on some Hellfire Club among the elites. His 1961 film Lolita was also about pedophilia. In the film, the underage Lolita is spirited away by a group of Hollywood pedophiles—to a remote ranch somewhere in the West. Perhaps New Mexico?

Here is the passage from the book:

“Curious coincidence—…took her to a dude ranch about a day’s drive from Elephant (Elphinstone). Named? Oh, some silly name — Duk Duk Ranch — you know just plain silly — but it did not matter now, anyway, because the place had vanished and disintegrated. Really, she meant, I could not imagine how utterly lush that ranch was, she meant it had everything but everything, even an indoor waterfall. 

…He was a great guy in many respects. But it was all drink and drugs. And, of course, he was a complete freak in sex matters, and his friends were his slaves. I just could not imagine (I, Humbert, could not imagine!) what they all did at Duk Duk Ranch. She refused to take part because she loved him, and he threw her out. 

‘What things?’ 

‘Oh, weird, filthy, fancy things. I mean, he had two girls and two boys, and three or four men, and the idea was for all of us to tangle in the nude while an old woman took movie pictures.’ (Sade’s Justine was twelve at the start.) 

‘What things exactly?’ 

‘Oh, things… Oh, I — really I’ — she uttered the ‘I’ as a subdued cry while she listened to the source of the ache, and for lack of words spread the five fingers of her angularly up-and-down-moving hand. No, she gave it up, she refused to go into particulars with that baby inside her. That made sense. ‘It is of no importance now,’ she said pounding a gray cushion with her fist and then lying back, belly up, on the divan. ‘Crazy things, filthy things. I said no, I’m just not going to [she used, in all insouciance really, a disgusting slang term which, in a literal French translation, would be souffler] your beastly boys, because I want only you. Well, he kicked me out.’

…  ‘Fay had tried to get back to the Ranch — and it just was not there any more — it had burned to the ground, nothing remained, just a charred heap of rubbish. It was so strange, so strange —'"

This seems an odd coincidence. Surely Kubrick, and indeed Vladimir Nabokov before him, could not have known then of Epstein’s “Zorro Ranch”? The novel was published in 1955. Epstein reportedly bought his “Zorro Ranch” only in 1991. 

But Epstein might not have been a one-off, some solitary evil mastermind. More likely he was raised and groomed to his role, plucked from obscurity, by some pre-existing group or invisible institution. He might have been following an established template. 

From 1957 to 1960, Kubrick was under contract to Kirk Douglas. By 1960, they had a bitter falling out.

Recently, following his death, the sister of Natalie Woods has publicly claimed that Douglas sexually assaulted that actress in 1955, when she was only 16.

Was this a one-off? During the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic church, we were assured that pedophilia was never one-off. Pedophiles were incurable. This was why it was culpably wrong of the church to accept claims of repentance and simply reassign accused clergy. The only solution was chemical or physical castration, we were told.

So it seems fair to assume the same of Kirk Douglas. He was presumably a serial pedophile, and a member of a pedophile ring in his day.

Probably then there was some attempt, while Kubrick was under contract, to introduce Kubrick to the ring and its activities. As with the Epstein operation, this would have been a kind of initiation, allowing for blackmail later if anyone strayed from the established path. And so Kubrick became aware of what was going on.

Kubrick broke with Douglas, as noted, in 1960. The next year he filmed Lolita—then left for England, never to return. That move to England might have been career suicide—he deliberately took himself away from all the action in Hollywood.

Perhaps out of disgust. Perhaps fearing for his safety.

An interesting timeline.

Beauty Is Our Duty

 

Today’s gospel reading:

"You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
You are the light of the world.
A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.
Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket;
it is set on a lampstand,
where it gives light to all in the house.
Just so, your light must shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your heavenly Father."

This is a critical passage in the Sermon on the Mount, following immediately after the Beatitudes, in which Jesus identifies his flock, the good people of the earth. It is, therefore, the very core of the Christian message.

No sermon I have ever heard gets it right.

What does it mean to be the salt of the earth? What good deeds cause your light to shine?

Not moral deeds, like helping old ladies cross the street, or volunteering at a soup kitchen. You might think so. Everybody seems to think so. But this interpretation is not tenable. For in the same sermon, a few verses on, Jesus says 

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. ... But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6: 1-4.

Now, obviously, God is not going to contradict himself. The deeds he is speaking of doing in full view of as many as possible, letting your light shine like a city on a hill, are obviously not these deeds of righteousness. For all that it is good to do what is morally good, this is not what he is speaking of here.

What else counts as a deed?

Simple hard work? Hard manual labour? This does seem to be the meaning some take from this. But most jobs do not seem to shed light over the world, or give it more flavour. And Martha was told that Mary, in not pitching in with the housework, had chosen the better part.

What is it that gives savour to the world? What introduces taste to the world? What makes the drabness of the world seem brighter?

The obvious answer is beauty. Beauty brings grace, light, and savour to our lives.

Which is to say, Christians are commanded to produce art. By these fruits you will know them.

It is what we can do, as individuals, to genuinely improve the world. By having an attractive front garden, we are giving joy to every passerby. By painting flowers on the wall of the laundromat we operate; by singing in the choir; by composing rhymes; and, ideally, by letting our light shine as far as possible, by doing it in as public a way as we can. Unlike deeds of charity, best done in secret, in the case of art, exposing the work of beauty to as many people as we can increases the value of the deed.

Jesus is also telling us we have it in us to be artists, if we are God’s people, those described by the Beatitudes. It is significant that Jesus says “you are salt,” not, “you can be salt,” or “you should strive to be salt.” Necessarily, if you are one of God’s chosen, you have been given this gift, the ability to create beauty. 

It is your duty now to use the talents you have been given. See the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30.

You should also cloth the naked, feed the hungry, and visit those in prison. This is also commanded. But this is not enough to justify our existence.  “The poor you will have always with you.”

The Secret Agenda behind "Synodality"

I increasingly sense a great awakening in the culture. Everyone turning back to Christianity and even specifically Catholicism. I see it among celebrities in my internet feeds, and I see it daily among people I encounter. There has been a general collapse of standards in the culture. Many institutions are being discredited by the increased availability of information through the Internet; the Epstein files are now delivering one more mighty blow. People are craving the eternal verities, by which men are men and women are women, and some things are sacred. That is what Christianity, an Catholicism, are there for, and all about. It is the moment for that light to shine from the mountaintops.

And it is unspeakably frustrating that, at this very apocalyptic moment, the church itself is, with Pope Francis’s “synodality,” throwing any and all its traditions into question in favour of following the “continued workings of the Holy Spirit.” No direction, just when the flock is pleading for direction. What can they be thinking?

And under Pope Francis, the Vatican began more aggressively suppressing the traditional liturgy of the church, the Latin mass. Just when people have been flocking to it, when the traditional Latin mass parishes have been the centres of growth within the Church.

 A friend of mine, prominent in the local diocese, condemns “traditionalism” outright, in favour of the “charismatic movement.” As if they are opposed. Traditionalism must be suppressed because it supposedly is intolerant of “the charismatic movement.”

THis came as a surprise to me, as I have always thought of myself as both a traditionalist and a charismatic.

Making me suspect that “charismatic movement” is being used here as some kind of euphemism, a code word for something that dare not speak its name.

In my own parish, a “Beta” course advertised as intended to deepen parishioners’ understanding of their Catholic faith turns out to be a repurposed set of “Life in the Spirit” videos, designed for a charismatic prayer group. They say nothing at all about either doctrine or liturgy, nothing about the sacraments, nothing about the Catechism, but instead stress over and over again the immediate experience of divine forgiveness, the unconditional love of God, and the need to forgive others, with no mention of repentance.

And the catechists for kids in the parish are instructed that they are to convey one message, and one message only: that God loves you.

Why this abject failure of the church hierarchy to read the room and the zeitgeist? Why this failure in the church’s evangelical mission?

I think I suddenly understand why. 

In a recent interview, I heard Milo Yiannopoulos casually claim that all Catholic bishops should be assumed to be gay.

Yiannopoulis is a controversialist; he makes wild claims. And he was himself, until recently, openly homosexual. It is my impression that gays imagine they see fellow gays everywhere.

On the other hand, he has connections, both gay and Catholic. He may well know of what he speaks.

Today, I was listening to a John Henry Westen “Faith and Reason” panel, including one priest, and one panelist remarked, without objection from the others, that probably 70% of the clerical establishment is indeed gay. Westen’s panels are traditionalist, but not sensationalist; he tries to convyr the sense of being fair and balanced.

And if this is true, doesn’t that explain everything? What if the great majority of the current church hierarchy are themselves actively gay. And they are there, in large part, perhaps primarily, for sex. For them, the actual church tradition must be a burden, and in particular a burden on their conscience. It cannot feel good to know you are a hypocrite. 

So they have a vested interest in downplaying and discounting and ideally dispensing with tradition.

 “Synodality” and “the charismatic movement” are their perfect alibis: never mind all those troubling rules and doctrines. They are going with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is alive and always working; he supersedes tradition, for he is God himself. How can that be wrong?

Fortunately for them, it is easy to conflate “listening to the Holy Spirit” with going with any of your natural urges in the moment. 

And of course, they want to stress that God loves us all unconditionally, as we are; even if this is not Biblical. That means they can continue being actively gay, consciences free. The bad guys are those who would focus on sin. Aren’t they refusing to forgive? Aren’t they denying the infinite love of God?

This all makes sense, too, of the recent history of the church.

In the crisis of faith produced by Vatican II, there was a great falling away of vocations. In that time of “free love” and “if it feels good, do it,” the seminary ranks were probably largely filled with active gays. I know this to be the case for one graduating high school classmate of mine. This generation of novitiates did not take the religion seriously; this was a party opportunity, like joining the navy or merchant marine. But the church needed priests, and was also no doubt influenced by the freewheeling atmosphere of the times.

Under Paul VI and John Paul II, the hierarchy averted their eyes.

This, however, led to the “pedophilia” scandals. The problem was never heterosexual pedophilia. It was homosexual predation on post-adolescent boys, by members of this new cadre of actively homosexual priests. But nobody could say that; it was not politically correct to blame homosexuals.

Faced with the scandals, the cardinals then elected Benedict XVI to restore order and lay down the law. In his sermon to open the conclave, he aggressively condemned pedophilia. And at around this point, according to what I was hearing at the time, the clergy was still only about 30% gay.

But the Sixties and Seventies generation was rapidly rising to become bishops and cardinals and the leaders of seminaries. Within a few years, they were able to neutralize Benedict. He told a visitor that his real authority went no farther than his office door. Finally, he felt obliged to resign, and promise to go along with whomever else the cardinals wanted to choose. The velvet mafia had tipped the balance of power.

Whether or not gay himself, Francis was chosen to take the opposite tack: to support the gay clerics in their “charismatic” approach. And so we now have “synodality” and the suppression of the Latin mass.

The good news is that this may be a generational thing. The Baby Boomer generation of clerics may have been the problem, and now they are aging out of the hierarchy and the net conclave. Granted that they will have done their best to recruit other gays into the priesthood during their tenure. But a shortage of vocations has continued to be a problem, and the seminaries have generally had to take all comers. Meaning, I hear, that young priests under 35 now are almost solidly traditionalist, reflecting the mood of the flock from which they come. Moreover, being gay is now so mainstream that gays have little incentive to become priests as some kind of cover. I hear there is a growing shortage of “progressive” priests to elevate to the hierarchy.

The Holy Spirit may indeed be moving.

The Problem with Democracy

Winston Churchill famously said that democracy was the worst possible form of government—until you consider all the others.

It is not, objectively, a good system. Most people are not wise. Realistically, leaving decisions to the average person will lead to only average results. 

Plato, Confucius, and the American Progressives argued instead for rule by experts, educated to the role. But this runs into the problem of who polices the police; a self-appointed clique with their own vested interests can take over; they can skew the standards to control membership. We see the results in the modern university, or in the PRC: not great.

In a way, democracy really just works as a check and a balance: the experts, the clerisy, inevitably actually control the levers of power. A democratic vote every few years does something to keep them in line.

But can we do better? How about some objective metric to limit the franchise? IQ tests are supposed to be pretty objective and tamper-proof; that’s one option. But it does not sound just: what about the principle of “no taxation without representation”? If a man or woman is paying taxes, they have a natural right to vote on how that money is spent.

It makes sense to use IQ testing to choose immigrants. Not education or income, as is often now done—that favors the elites from poorer countries, where many or most people cannot afford much education. This means we are not really selecting the best. Moreover, poorer countries are generally poor because of a corrupt ruling class. And using these criteria means we are importing that very corruption. IQ by contrast is a decent objective measure of future potential, and the ability to succeed and to contribute. And to vote wisely.

As for current citizens, let’s flip the script on “no taxation without representation.” There is a logical corollary: no representation without taxation. Only those whose tax returns show they are net contributors to the public accounts might get to vote. This is some measure of intelligence, and of sound judgement. 

This would also strengthen the check on the expert clique. Those whose income comes from government would not be eligible to vote by this standard. Allowing them to do so is unfair: they are in effect voting on their own performance.

There is, perhaps, also a necessary tweak to this. We have a problem of depopulation: women are not having children. And basing the vote on income gives them some further incentive to pursue career instead of childrearing. Not good. So we might add an alternative criterion for the vote: having borne or raised two or more children, without resort to public assistance. This, like paying taxes, is a contribution to society at large, and implies a commitment to it.

I suspect this might produce at least marginally better government. And this matters, not just to the quality of life of citizens, but to the future of the nation.

Faith and Reason

 

Descartes, before becoming hoarse

I have recently been accused of cynicism.

Actually, I feel recent revelations in the wider world have taught us all we have been too trusting of what we have been told by authorities of all kinds. Do I need to enumerate examples? The greater availability of information thanks to the internet is showing a lot of our trust to be misplaced: in the media, in “the science,” in the church hierarchy, in the government, in politicians, in the medical establishment, and on and on.

More generally, there is no virtue in just accepting what we have been told is true. I suspect this comes from a perversion of Luther’s concept of “salvation by faith alone.” It is obviously wrong that we are saved by belief, because there is no moral value in that. Choosing a belief is like flipping a coin. And how can we know, without examination, that this or that belief is not from the Evil One?

I embrace Descartes’s approach, Bishop Berkeley's approach, or that of the Buddha: doubt everything it is possible to doubt. This is the moral stance. For unlike arbitrary belief, it requires effort. It is heroic.

Since God is ultimate truth, we are morally obliged to seek truth to the best of our abilities. Reason and free will are of our divine essence, that which elevates us above the animal soul. Reason is the organ that permits us to seek truth, as free will is the organ that permits us to seek the good.

Not to exercise our reason to the fullest extent possible is to turn away from God, and towards some convenient idolatry.

So what is the role of faith? 

Faith is trust, not arbitrary belief. Faith is trust in God. Faith is beyond reason, but never a replacement for it.

No Easy Walk to Freedom

 

I recently shocked someone by pointing out that the ultimate goal of Buddhism is suicide.

“Wait,” she objected. “Isn’t it enlightenment?”

No, that is not Buddhist terminology. The Buddhist goal of the eightfold path is “nirvana.” Nirvana actually means extinction: like the snuffing out of a candle. Actually the opposite of enlightenment.

What you are snuffing out is the self—anatta, anatman, “no self.” 

Hence, literally, the goal is suicide.

This gets complicated when you believe in reincarnation. It is not a simple matter of shooting yourself in the head; you’ll just be born again. It takes many lifetimes to accomplish the task.

I am not sure Buddhism would be as appealing in the West if more Westerners understood this. I think too many embrace Buddhism because they imagine it is an easier path than Christianity. People (wrongly) imagine it lacks a moral code and so any pesky feelings of guilt. 

On the Impatience of Eve

A Catholic friend, whom I could characterize as a Bergoglian, that is, a follower of Pope Francis, asserts that the original sin was impatience and a failure to appreciate the full depth of God’s love. Had Eve only waited, God would have given her and Adam the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. She simply jumped the gun.

I asked at the time if he could give any scriptural support for this claim that God would have given them the fruit later. He demurred.

It makes no sense to me. If God intended all along to give them this fruit, what was the point of first withholding it? Was he training them for obedience, as you would a dog? Does God love us like a pet? Isn’t that rather insulting? It is certainly manipulative.

And what about the pronouncement by Bergoglio himself that God does not, and would never, lead us into temptation, would never tempt us? Surely prohibiting this one tree, for no particular reason but to teach obedience, would be exactly that?

Not an entirely good and loving God, then. Eve would have reason to be suspicious.

Why then did God reserve the fruit of the tree? It cannot have been so arbitrary. It must not have been only to tempt. It must somehow have been necessary.

And it was. God cannot give us free choice, cannot give us free will, without allowing wrong choices to exist. If we cannot make a wrong choice, we cannot make choices. We would indeed be no more than pets or AI bots. Not full persons.

Therefore, in the Garden, there had to be one wrong choice available. It was inevitable, and it is inevitable in the case of each of us, that we will sooner or later make a wrong choice. Eve in this was each of us. Given the ability to think of ourselves as gods in our freedom, it was inevitable, and it is inevitable to each of us, that we sooner or later turn away from God and elevate our ego instead.

It was all inevitable and in the plan.

“O Happy Fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer!”