What Andy Warhol Was Really Up To

 

Returning from a big Andy Warhol exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario:

The interpretive panels from the curators, and the audio guide, insistently aver that Warhol, with his Campbell Soup Cans and so forth, or sticking a French ad in his painting of the Statue of Liberty, was making ironic comments on American consumerism, mocking American pretentions of “liberty” and “democracy.”

I don’t believe that. That is just what the cynical cognoscenti want him to be doing, and perhaps assume he must be doing. There is nothing in the works themselves to signal ironic intent, and if there is not, we have no business assuming one. Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans are unpretentiously beautiful. That’s it. He sees their beauty, and celebrates it, wholeheartedly, just as he does with Marilyn Monroe, or Debbie Harry, or Karen Kain. He is an artist. He is into beauty.

Warhol was consistently and unironically celebrating American consumer culture, which is to say, its truly democratic popular culture and the beauty of everyday life. Everyone needs to eat. It is not conspicuous consumption or “consumerism” to buy a can of soup; this is poor man’s food. In America, everyone can afford a can of Campbell’s soup. Everyone can afford to go to the movies. And the design of the Campbell’s soup can, or the Hollywood movie, created to appeal to the taste of the masses, ought to be appreciated as much as any European high art, created for the tastes of the high and mighty. Accident of birth did not make them better arbiters of beauty.

Coming from a poor immigrant family, Warhol embraced it all. He once said “Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

He also once asked an interviewer, “Is an artist allowed to be a Republican?”

And that is about all we know about his politics.

The exhibit curators also made much of Andy Warhol’s supposed homosexuality, and paint him as a pioneer of gay culture—one of the first celebrities to be publicly “gay,” to be “out.”

Again I think this is bollocks. It is what they want him to have been, for political purposes, not what he was. Interviewed in the 1980s, Warhol claimed to be a virgin. Close friends say they think this was probably true. By proper definition, then, he was not a homosexual. A homosexual is someone who has sex with other men. He was more like a secular monk.

The evidence that he was homosexual is apparently that he dressed distinctively, with a silver wig; and that he did many portraits of anonymous New York drag queens.

He did those many portraits, I submit, not because he was trying to make any political or personal statement, but because he found them beautiful, and in an unpretentious, unsophisticated way. Just as he did Campbell’s Soup cans, or Elizabeth Taylor, or Dolly Parton. No need to see anything sexual about it. He was in open rebellion against “good taste”; that was an upper class, exclusionary, attitude to art. Transvestites were all about beauty without the pretensions of taste. 

If Warhol himself dressed flamboyantly, it was for the same reason.

Curators also commented on Warhol’s “obsession with death.” 

Indeed. Warhol was a devout Catholic, who attended mass daily.

Any good Catholic should have an “obsession” with death. Death is what life is all about. The memento mori is a traditional Catholic meditation, and is highly recommended.

It all makes me despair of art, and feel sorry for Warhol. What is the point of being a great artist or a great writer? You will just be forever misinterpreted by the academicians and the cocktail circuit. They will always put lipstick on your Mona Lisa.

Ontario Place

 

From the CBC

Ontario Premier Doug Ford today held a press conference at Toronto’s Ontario Place to announce plans to rejuvenate the park. This was, to my mind, very good news. Ontario Place had somehow been allowed to fall into disrepair, and in the last few years had become only another nature park. I feared it would remain no more than this.

Nature is a grand thing, no doubt. But Ontario, with almost 90% of its land area undeveloped, is not short of nature. Toronto is not short of green space.

Another rumour was that the site was going to be turned into a casino, or condominiums. Good for government revenue, and Toronto needs housing, but not very exciting.

I am happier to see it continue as it previously was, a family destination; originally it was like a miniature compensation for Montreal, and not Toronto, hosting Expo 67. We need places close to the city where the urban poor can take their kids to get away from it all. We need places where we can meet and form shared memories. there is a kind of urban heritage to be preserved here. Too many people have too many fond memories of Ontario Place from childhood to let it go. That would be painful in the way Montrealers lament the loss of Belmont Park, or Torontonians Sunnyside, or New Yorkers the Brooklyn Dodgers.

We also needed something cheering like this to bring us out of the pandemic doldrums, and to help the tourist trade recover. We need at least the promise of a party.

But one thing about the announcement was both troubling and absurd. It began with a sort of bland sermon by the chief of the Mississagua Indians, whose reserve is near Brantford. Each speaker in turn then began by acknowledging that “this ceremony takes place on the traditional lands of the Mississauga.” The chief spoke again to conclude the function.

In short, this guy, who represents two thousand people in another part of Ontario, was being treated as the feudal lord of the land.

In fact, Ontario Place was never in a literal sense part of the lands of the Mississagua Indians. It is an artificial island, built from the lakebed in the early 1970s. 

But even if it were not, why this special treatment? Like the Indians throughout most of Canada, the Mississagua unambiguously renounced any claim to the lands on which Toronto was built in return for compensation some years ago. Is it sensible to forever commemorate this? What about commemorating the French, and the British, who also once made some claim to this land?

Because, you may argue, the Mississagua, unlike the French, or the British, were aboriginal here.

They were not—literally, no more than were the French. The French moved into the area from their base in Montreal in the Seventeenth Century. So did the Mississagua, coming from their previous lands north of lakes Huron and Superior after the Iroquois had pretty much wiped out the Huron and other Iroquioan tribes living around the lower Great Lakes. Thanks to firearms they got from the Dutch.

Canadians seem to be aggressively adopting an official class system and a ruling class; for no comprehensible reason.

Biden Keeps on Truckin'

 

There’s a lot of current buzz about Joe Biden claiming at a trucker convention that he used to drive an 18-wheeler. Of course he hasn’t—that requires special training and a special license. Why would he tell such an obvious lie?

Senility. Imagining things in just this way is a classic symptom. My elderly uncle insisted in a matter-of-fact way he had seen sea serpents in the Saskatchewan River. More specifically, a senile narcissist. He sees a truck, and imagines it is about him.

Getting an Education at OCAD

 

OCAD's appropriately postmodern architecture.

Noticed recently: a job ad for OCAD University’s English Department. It is jarring to see the courses for which they want instructors. English lit is no longer about what you think it is.

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2003 POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course looks at national and transnational literatures in a comparative perspective, focusing particularly on constructs of nation, gender, colonialism, and difference. Its aim is to imagine multiple literary times and spaces grounded in different parts of the world and in their different histories. That is, rather than creating a snapshot or conducting a literary tour of the world, this course seeks to refuse an easy commodification of Literature as a global product. All texts will be studied in their original English or in English translation.

To look at “postcolonial” writing from non-Western cultures is to severely limit one’s exposure to foreign culture and foreign ideas. These are necessarily drawn only from the postwar period, and are in the Western idiom, written by authors educated in the West.

Students should be exposed instead to Rumi, Li Bai, Basho, the Ramayana, and the like. That would give them a non-Western perspective. That’s the last thing they’ll get here.

And the focus is to be on “nation, gender, colonialism, and difference.” Only contemporary concerns of the political left. No new ideas or new cultural perspectives to be risked here. 

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2011 LITERATURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course takes a close look at the relationship between literature and concerns for equity, sustainability and social justice, focusing on the ways writers, artists and intellectuals work as agents for social change. The course discusses representations of topics such as dis/ability; gender, sexual and racial equity; labour activism; demands for Indigenous sovereignty; critiques of settler colonialism; postcolonial struggles against empire; and calls for environmental preservation. Texts are disciplinarily diverse and may be performative as well as written. Forms include comics, nonfiction, fiction, poetry and more.

All politics, no literature. “Texts may be performative.” 

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2012 TRANS AND QUEER LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: In this course, we explore the ways in which sexualities, gender identities and sexual politics are addressed in literature. Texts will be by transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, queer and asexual creators, and will reflect the complicated nature of queer life. Intersectionality will be a guiding principle, as we examine ways race, gender, language, culture and disability justice intersect within representations of queer life across a variety of literary forms, such as fiction, nonfiction and memoir, poetry, drama and comics.

The subject matter is of obvious interest to, at a maximum, three percent of the population, in aggregate. The texts are also limited to that same three percent. Realistically from only the last couple of decades as well, because before that there was no market for gay lit. Yet this course is apparently offered every semester. One suspects the primary objective is to give sexual adventurers of various types an opportunity to meet, identify their preferences, and hook up.

Then finally something that almost looks sensible. They want someone to teach a course in Children’s Literature. An important and neglected field.

But you have to know that critical theory has a special focus on Children’s Literature. For the obvious sinister reason: they want to indoctrinate, and they think the best approach is to get them as young as they can.

COURSE TITLE: ENGL-2010 CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course aims to answer the question: What is children's literature? The course will survey children's fiction, poetry, and picture-books to introduce students to a wide range of children's literature. We will examine different cultural and critical approaches to this field in relation to cultural interpretations of childhood and gender. As we discuss the social and political visions put forth in these texts, we will consider the effects of publishing and the media (for example, the Harry Potter films) on the field of contemporary children's literature. Our analysis of genre will include the study of the relationship between text and illustration. Course readings may include works by Carroll, The Brothers Grimm, Lewis, Rowling, Seuss, and others.

“As we discuss the social and political visions put forth in these texts.” The important thing about children’s literature is its political vision. Obviously, children and their own interests are of no concern here.

And OCAD is not unusual; I have seen similar course descriptions at Queen’s, for example.

The very least we can do is pull all taxpayer funding.

To Kill To Kill a Mockingbird

 

I am currently teaching Chinese students To Kill a Mockingbird. A book many want banned from North American schools. We are rapidly approaching a point at which Chinese will be better schooled in Western culture than Americans. At that point China will be ready to assume world leadership. China will be the cutting edge of human civilization. America and the West are deliberately throwing it away.

Those who want To Kill a Mockingbird removed from the schools do not understand the book. They are Philistines. Worse, they are racists.

One objection sometimes heard is that the book features a rape; and this is not suitable for young readers. But there is no rape in the book. The real problem here, I suspect, is that the book discusses rape in a way that is not helpful to feminism. It features a woman making a false accusation of rape. According to feminist doctrine, that can never happen. It notes that a rape charge requires some evidence that the woman resisted. Feminism says that is unnecessary.

In other words, the book is inconvenient in its assumptions to the modern left’s political agenda.

Another complaint is about bad language. The term “nigger” is used. But this is ironic, because the book is actually unusually delicate in its language, reflecting the Southern culture it chronicles. It refers obliquely and disapprovingly to “bathroom invective.” Rape is described only as “carnal knowledge of a female without her consent.” It threatens the villain with jail time for using improper language in the presence of a lady. In comparison to the typical current movie, the language in the book is almost humourously genteel. And “nigger,” after all, simply means “black.”

 But the core and more common claim is that the book is racist because it is about white people, and the black characters in it are relative “ciphers.” A 2018 article in the Globe and Mail presents the case.

“There are far better books available for the purpose of teaching race to teenagers through literature.”

“That a 58-year-old book, written from a white woman’s perspective, should supersede award-winning stories from authors who live their racial realities once they put down the pen, is an absurd notion.”

“…We’ll have to let go of the false wisdom of Atticus Finch, and the haplessness of Tom Robinson, if we truly wish to educate young people who live in a world where it’s necessary to remind them that their lives matter.”

The underlying assumption of this criticism is that only black lives matter. To Kill a Mockingbird is simply not about black people. It is an exceptionally vivid bildungsroman of a young white girl growing up in the US South. Why is this intrinsically less interesting or valuable than a portrait of the life of some black person? Why is a “white” author not living her racial reality, but a black author is? Why is a book to be discounted because it is from a “white woman’s perspective”? What comment could be more flatly racist than that?

The book is not about race. It is about growing up, discovering the world is unfair, and how people deal with this: Scout in particular, Atticus, Jem, Judge Taylor, Heck Smith, Maudie, Boo Radley, Calpurnia, Tom Robinson, and so on. To make it about race is to, literally, miss the plot. The plot is about Boo Radley, not Tom Robinson, and Scout is the protagonist, not Atticus. This is clear at the book’s opening, its ending, and throughout. Tom Robinson’s trial is a subplot. The black characters are relative ciphers because they are not the main characters. Mayella and Robert Ewell, the other key characters in the subplot, are equally relative ciphers; but white.

It might be of some value to teach a book giving the black experience in the US South during the time of the Jim Crow laws. But it would be far less relevant to anyone for simply being that than a classic like To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals not with the particular experience of a particular group of people at a particular time in the past, but with universal human experience.

UK OK?

 

It looks as though Britain may be the first nation to achieve herd immunity to COVID. And it was not all that painful. England opened up on July 19. Cases soared. But deaths did not. Now, the rate of infection has begun falling as quickly as it rose—and in the UK, the reporting system is very good. There might be a new spike in the fall; there might be some new variant. But thiis looks promising. Past drops seemed to reflect measures like lockdowns, masking, and vaccines. This time, most folks are already vaccinated, and other measures have been mostly removed. What else but growing herd immunity could be causing it?

The Scream

 

Original title: "The Scream of Nature"

Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” is a portrait of his own anxiety disorder. He describes the experience it represents:

I was walking along the road with two 

friends – then the sun went down 

Suddenly the sky turned blood-red 

– and I felt 

a breath of melancholy 

– an exhausting pain 

under my heart – I paused, leaning against the fence, tired to death – above the blue-black fjord and city there was blood ‹in› tongues of fire 

My friends went on and I stood

there trembling

with anxiety –

and I felt that a great infinite scream went through nature

(Diary, 22 January, 1892)

It is not Munch screaming, not the distressed face in the picture. It is the cosmos around him, the very sky, that is screaming.

This is how real depressive anxiety feels. The real “disorder” is not in the individual soul, but in their environment.

Electing Past US Presidents

 

YouTuber Mr. Beat has revealed which candidate he would have voted for in each US presidential election since George Washington. He has left out those presidents elected in his own lifetime.

This seems odd to me: these are the very presidents on which he would have the most informed opinion. And if he is concerned about revealing his political bias, he already has, with his picks to this point.

I think I’ll fill in the elections since I first began to follow US politics, at the early age of seven. As a non-American, I didn’t vote for any of these folks.

1960—Kennedy vs. Nixon.

Kennedy, hands down. I was an Irish Catholic kid. There could be no question but supporting Kennedy, and putting at rest the ghost of Al Smith. Electing Kennedy felt like the dawn of a new millennium.

1964—Johnson vs. Goldwater.

Goldwater. I had an instinctive dislike and distrust of Johnson. He was a crook. Goldwater seemed a straight shooter. And I think, even in retrospect, Johnson was a terrible president. Goldwater too might have gotten the US bogged won in Vietnam—who knows?—but he would not have made all the expensive mistakes of the “Great Society.” And he would have set a model of honesty. History might have been very different, and much better.

1968—Nixon vs. Humphrey.

I really disliked Humphrey. McCarthy would have been my guy. Humphrey appalled me by speaking, in 1968, amidst the Vietnam War and the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, of “the politics of joy.” And of referring to Nixon’s refusal to debate as “our Vietnam.” He struck me as the ultimate gladhanding two-faced professional pol. But Nixon was worse. I believe I can just look at some people, and see a darkness in their soul. Nixon was the first guy in whom I noticed this. He never looked comfortable, because he never told the truth. He was an almost satanic figure, in my mind.

1972—Nixon vs. McGovern

I had nobody to vote for. I liked Muskie, and I think McGovern stole the nomination by juking the rules beforehand. He was a cloying figure. And he sold out Eagleton; so much for imagining he was principled. But Nixon was beyond the pale. I would have had to vote McGovern.

1976—Carter vs. Ford

Another awful choice. Jerry Brown was my guy. Carter struck me as both utterly insincere and dangerously underqualified for the presidency. But Ford struck me as out of his depth as anything more than the president of a local Rotary. With his idiotic “Whip Inflation Now” pins. Yeah, that ought to do it.  And I felt the Republicans had to be punished for Watergate.

1980—Reagan vs. Carter

Getting rid of Carter felt like a blessed relief. I was not sold on Reagan as nominee, but at least he looked like a leader. I probably would have voted for anyone the Republicans nominated to get rid of Carter. Not because he was a bad man, but because he was incompetent.

1984—Reagan vs. Mondale

Definitely Reagan. Mondale looked to me like the typical unprincipled panderer, an impression sealed by his selection of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. 

1988—Bush vs. Dukakis

I would have voted Dukakis. Bush alienated me with his Willie Horton ad, which I thought was racist. It also made capital punishment a hot button issue. I was opposed to capital punishment, and if this was the issue I had to vote against. Bush also alienated me with a call to make burning the American flag a criminal offense. He seemed to pander to voters’ worst instincts. Dukakis looked like a lightweight, but seemed a decent guy.

1992—Clinton vs. Bush vs. Perot

I felt Bush had to be voted out after breaking his “read my lips—no new taxes” pledge, or no politician would ever feel the need to tell the truth or keep a promise ever again. Clinton was one of the “seven dwarfs,” a historically unimpressive Democratic primary field. He was underqualified, and a huckster. I would have voted Perot, for his concern over the national debt.

1996—Clinton vs. Dole vs. Perot.

Dole. Dole was a bright guy, and I felt he had earned it. He was more qualified than Clinton. It would have been nice to have a president with a sense of humour. And the sleaze of the Clinton administration was alarming.

2000—Bush vs. Gore

Bush. Gore was the originator of the Willie Horton hit. Another guy who seemed uncomfortable in his body, because he was not truthful. Another dark face. And it seemed to me the Democrats needed to be punished for the sleaze of the Clinton years. It was time to clean house. Gore impressed by choosing Lieberman for VP, though. Bush looked like a lightweight, but at least like a decent guy.

2004—Bush vs. Kerry

Bush. Kerry gave me the creeps. Another dark, insincere face. Especially trying to capitalize on his military service, when he was so critical of the military he served. I felt no ambiguity in cheering for Bush, even though I doubted his abilities.

2008—Obama vs. McCain

McCain had been my preference for Republican nominee back in 2000. He seemed like a real straight shooter, and I thought he’d earned it. Obama was seriously underqualified. He’d have been a better president with a few more years’ government experience; and he had lots of time left in his natural career. It is probably a curse to be elected president too young.

2012—Obama vs. Romney

I wanted to see Gingrich get the nomination. But given the choice, Romney. Romney seemed to have demonstrated truly impressive executive competence. And seemed to be a moral character. Let him get in there and tidy up a bit. Get some honesty back in government.

2016—Trump vs. Clinton

I did not want Trump to get the nomination. But since he was nominated, Trump over Clinton. Clinton looked to me like a criminal, and possibly a Russian asset. Were she to be elected, the US would only be embroiled in the need to impeach her.

2020—Biden vs. Trump

So they ended up trying to impeach Trump for the crime Clinton was probably guilty of. The violent reaction of the media and the Democratic opposition to Trump demonstrated the need to have elected him. Something was obviously seriously wrong in government, and we needed an outsider to fix it. This time there was no question in my mind. It was fantastically dangerous to elect Biden, because he was not competent to be president, and would be controlled by some unknown party or parties. It looked like a perfect setup for a fascist government to take over. It still does.

Lamb O'God!

 

I note with surprise that the broadcast mass from the National Cathedral in Washington today included the Agnus Dei sung in Latin. This is the first time I can recall them doing it in Latin. Is this a subtle signal of defiance towards Pope Francis’s restriction on the Latin mass, or a signal of solidarity with traditionalist Catholics?

The Living Dead

Why are zombies so compelling? And not compelling only to me; they have earned a central place in popular culture. 

And if they are so compelling, where were they in the past? Our modern conception of zombies dates only from Night of the Living Dead, 1968.

I think everyone half-understands what the zombies represent. We knew in the 60s. They represent the growing postwar trend to godless materialism. To reject God and the absolute—truth, beauty, and the good—is to lose one’s soul. One is just a walking carcass.

The zombies are antifa, the postmodernists, the critical theorists, the Nazis—see Ionescu’s 1959 play Rhinoceros. All these mass movements that rely on aggressively enforced shared delusions.

And they are coming to get you.

What Equality Does and Does Not Mean

 

Here's a great explanation from To Kill a Mockingbird of what the phrase "all men are created equal," in the Declaration of Independence, is supposed to mean. 

"One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious—because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. 

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

We seem to have lost this understanding--or have deliberately falsified it. Just as we have lost or falsified Martin Luther King Jr.s dream that children be judged "not byh the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Requiem for the Sixties

 

The 1960s was a good idea that went terribly wrong; or at least, there was a good movement underlying it, that then over time got flooded out by a bad one. 

As I saw it then and see it now, the Sixties were a rebellion against the materialism of modern society; behaviourism, demands for conformity, the growth of government and big business control; the rat race. This was headed in a spiritual direction, and ought to have ended in a religious revival. I really expected that to happen. The folk songs were religious, at the start of the decade; everyone was interested in Zen, TM, Eastern Religions. LSD was “mind expanding.” The Byrds publicly converted to Christianity, although no one seemed to notice. Bob Dylan publicly converted to Christianity. Jack Kerouac introduced us all to Zen, and declared himself a Jesuit general. George Harrison went Hindu. The “cults” appeared: the Hare Krishnas, the Children of God, the “Jesus freaks.” I saw it happening; it was starting to snowball.

Politics was there, but secondary. The main thing was to end the war and make drugs legal. That, and civil rights for blacks. But these are libertarian concerns; libertarianism is currently considered on the right. And perhaps was then as well. Kerouac claimed to support Taft; Dylan claimed to support Goldwater. Jerry Brown got hippie support, but this is because he embraced libertarianism: “small is beautiful.” Eugene McCarthy got hippie support, but on the single issue of ending the war. 

There was a Marxist strand too—Marcuse and the New Left—but that was more something you heard about from Europe. That was no more politically mainstream within the hippie movement than “hip capitalism.”

Why did it all go weird? Why were the cults shut down? Why did it all get identified with Marxism, “political correctness,” big tech, and a resurgent demand for censorship, materialism, and conformity?

 At the time, we blamed the “yuppies”; who toyed with the spiritual ideas, but ended up selling out. But the real poison, I suspect, was sex. What we used to call “The Pill” was a poisoned pill.

Perhaps some future generation will do better. Or perhaps such things cannot be left to the young, whose natural urges are so strong. 

The Truth about Dragons

 

Just in case you can accept it now, let me sketch in the truth of “mental illness.”

We all live in bubbles. These bubbles are our assumptions about ourselves, the world around us, and our place in it. Call it our narrative. Outside it is the real world as it is.

We cannot, in principle, experience the real world directly. Kant, for one, has demonstrated this; so have Descartes, Berkeley, Plato. All we can do is strive to make our account of it as accurate as possible: to keep the bubble transparent.

When the bubble instead becomes opaque, like an egg shell, we have a “mental illness.” 

Madness is a matter of being relatively disconnected from objective reality. Didn’t we always know this? Hasn’t modern psychiatry only obscured this?

There are two ways the bubble can become opaque. One is if we choose to believe lies, because we find them more to our liking that the truth. Another is that those around us have been lying to us.

These two possibilities define the two opposite types of mental illness. We might call them hubris and melancholia— to avoid common psychiatric terms, which come with distracting theoretical baggage.

Notice that the hubristic type, who spins lies, is likely to produce the melancholic type, who has been lied to.

Either condition will experience grief and anxiety. The hubristic will be constantly frustrated with and in paranoid flight from reality, which does not recognize to their wishes.  The melancholic will be constantly frustrated by inconsistencies in the narrative, so that reality does not seem to make sense.

In either case, a sudden trauma can precipitate a crisis: that is, if reality suddenly disproves the accepted narrative. A crack appears in the cosmic egg. Then you get violent denial, cognitive dissonance, mental confusion, or psychosis.

The solution, in every case, is to preemptively doubt the entire narrative, and start again from first principles.

This is a terrifying thing to do. It is the ultimate leap in the dark.

Shall we?

Getting Frank about Frank

 

It is a grim meditation, but it is obvious to me that Pope Francis, with his recent motu proprio restricting the Latin Mass, knows he is doing wrong. He titles it, “defenders of tradition’; it is an attack on a traditional form. He says it is for greater unity in the church—he cannot believe this. Restrictions on the Latin mass caused the most recent schism in the church, the splitting away of the SSPX. He says it is to give bishops full power to decide for their own dioceses, and he does this by requiring of them that any new requests to perform masses in Latin must be referred to Rome.

These are the hallmarks of the guilty mind: to claim to do the opposite of what you are doing, is a tacit admission that you know what you are doing is wrong.

So why is Pope Francis doing something he knows is wrong?

I think we must accept that he has been a bad man all along; a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

He just had half his colon removed in a three-hour operation that the Vatican tried to keep secret. He may know he is dying. 

When an unrepentant sinner dies, his instinct is to take the world with him: to do as much damage as he can on the way out. He does not want to be the only one suffering.

That is what this looks like: Francis wants to create a schism. He does not want to leave the church in good order for a successor.

The Street with No Name

 

The renaming of Dundas Street is an injustice to the memory and good name of Henry Dundas, and a frivolous waste of taxpayers’ money. On the other hand, we have an excess of places in this province named after Englishmen and Scotsmen who had little or nothing to do with Canada. It would be nice if we began to commemorate Canadian culture and history instead.

I expect the naming commission will only come up with a worse name. In all good sense, they should not choose the name of a politician, a journalist, or a businessman. To do so is to court divisiveness; these are, by career, controversial figures. They should not name it after anyone living; they might, after all, do something scandalous in the future. Nor should they name anything after anyone whose primary qualification is their race or gender; that is racism. A cultural figure would be best, and ideally someone whose presence in Toronto had a significant influence on the cultural life of the city.

Some possibilities:

Gould Street

Kurelek Street

Callaghan Street

Frye Street

McLuhan Street

A Dog Not Barking

 

Isn't it surpassingly strange that India, where the Delta variant began, has seen a sharp decline in infections, despite the fact that few have been vaccinated? While in the UK, where a high proportion have been vaccinated, the incidence of the Delta variant just keeps going up, now far higher than it was in India even at the peak? And isn't it strange that nobody comments on this?

The obvious reason is that India began unrestricted use of Ivermectin as a prophylactic. And the evidence seems to be that this cheap and common medicine is actually better protection against COVID-19 than a vaccination.

But on the down side, the profit margin is low ...

The Madness of King Lear

 

A correspondent’s son suffers schizophrenia, and is also prone to taking drugs, notably LSD. She laments it all as an “escape from reality.” 

The truth may be more subtle. 

To begin with, is an escape from reality, defined as our daily routine, always a bad thing? We are actually morally obliged to take regular escapes from this “reality. “This is the reason for Sabbath observance, for example. And there is a certain symbolism in the consecration of the wine.

Is taking a vacation an escape from reality? Is watching a movie? In a sense, yes. Both draw us out of our everyday surroundings; this allows us to relax. Simply by “getting away from it all,” we can often evaluate our problems from a new perspective, and perhaps even solve them. Trapped in the daily struggle, we cannot.

Yet to see taking a vacation to Rome, say, or watching a Shakespeare play, or attending mass, as escapism is also perverse: it sees only what we are leaving, not where we are going. It is like walking backwards on our pilgrimage.

It may be fairly common for people to drink alcohol for pure “escapism.” Alcohol dulls the senses, and slows reactions. We are probably less able to deal with our problems intelligently on alcohol. But experimenting with LSD is a different matter. People often think they have learned new things about reality from taking LSD.

I am not advocating LSD use. It is a blunt tool, and dangerous. But psychosis may be similar. The fact that this person, my friend’s son, when he is not experiencing schizophrenic symptoms, wants to take LSD, suggests that the psychosis is giving him some benefit. He is learning something from it, or at least escaping some intolerable daily situation.

Shakespeare, who must be considered one of the greatest psychologists who ever lived, suggests as much in King Lear:

Our foster-nurse of nature is repose,

The which he lacks; that to provoke in him,

Are many simples operative, whose power

Will close the eye of anguish.

…

The king is mad: how stiff is my vile sense,

That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling

Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract:

So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs,

And woes by wrong imaginations lose

The knowledge of themselves.

In either case, simply trying to block the symptoms of schizophrenia, as we currently do, will be harmful. Schizophrenia looks like the working out of some problem.

Latin Doubleplus Ungood

 

Pope Francis has just issued new restrictions on the use of the Latin liturgy. Most strikingly, he will not allow it in any church.

Who else does it harm if some Catholics want mass in Latin?

Personally, I have no fondness for the Latin mass. I prefer to understand what is going on. I feel deeply uncomfortable at a Latin mass. But why drive others from the faith over such an irrelevant issue?

The church, after all, allows a variety of liturgies—Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Greek, Melkite, Maronite, Malabar. Why shoud the Latin mass, alone, be so restricted? And if there is something wrong with celebrating the Latin Mass, doesn’t that say that the liturgy of the Catholic Church was wrong for almost two millennia? 

This is hard to understand in any terms other than an exercise of raw power. Francis is not thinking of the interests of Catholics, or of the Church. He is thinking of how to punish those he views as his enemies inside the church.

Like so much Francis has done, this only spreads confusion and conflict.

Cuba Libre?

I’m going out on a limb: I think the Cuban government is going to fall.

In the past, Cuba could rely on Soviet support in the face of unrest. Then it could rely on Venezuelan. Possibly it can now rely on Chinese or Russian support, but I think it has burned through its nine lives and will not look worth the cost to any such sponsors any longer.

I am impressed too with how quickly the uprising spread. 

If I were the US, I’d be actively helping the rebels behind the scenes. A collapse of the Cuban government would be a big boost for American prestige, and the prestige of this administration. People suggest the last thing Biden wants is a flood of Cubans into Florida, all eager to vote Republican. Even if he is that cynical, the best way to prevent that may soon be to overthrow the Cuban government.

If Cuba flips, it may have repercussions for other remaining Communist regimes. The only ones left: Vietnam, Laos, and China.

Putting Descartes before the Horse

 

Bishop George Berkeley

I pointed out to a correspondent of late that Descartes, to arrive at his famous statement “I think, therefore I am,” had assumed a stance of radical doubt. He then realized that the one thing he could not doubt was his own thoughts, whether or not they referred to anything outside themselves. And if he was experiencing thoughts, then he existed too. It took him several further steps to come to the conclusion that the physical world existed.

And that conclusion was soon successfully challenged by Berkeley. Berkeley points out that there is no logical necessity to posit the existence of any physical world that corresponds to our perceptions, our thoughts. Therefore—Occam’s Razor—it is improper to do so.

I think I am correct in saying that nobody has successfully challenged Berkeley on that point. Most of us just live our lives ignoring it.

My correspondent reacted badly. 

Of Descartes, she wrote, “Descartes could NOT have affirmed rationally that the brain did not exist! All humans who think and behave normally have brains. No humans who do not have brains can think or behave normally. THAT much science was known to Descartes.”

Of Berkeley, she wrote that he was “delusional and lost in the ego-centricity of his right-brain so that he can no longer interact rationally with the rest of the human and physical world.”

What I see here is “cognitive dissonance”: it is a common cognitive dissonance. It is why we commonly just ignore Berkeley. The idea that the reality of the physical world is open to question is so unexpected to us Moderns that we cannot assimilate it. We simply refuse to entertain the thought.

Meaning we are all mad.

It is demonstrably true that the existence of the physical world is debatable; because it has been debated throughout history. Aside from Descartes and Berkeley, Plato and the Neoplatonists doubted its existence. It was only shadows of puppets reflected on the wall of a dimly-lit cave. The thing was so obvious to Plato that he did not even think to make an argument. And Plato has been pretty well-respected throughout the history of Western philosophy. The medieval school of philosophy called “Realism” rejected attention to the physical world in favour of concentrating only on what was “real”—that is, the ideal forms, which exist only mentally.

The Buddhist world, similarly, considers the world of the senses “maya”: “illusion.” “The power by which the universe becomes manifest; the illusion or appearance of the phenomenal world.” So does Taoism. So does Hinduism. The same insight is critical to understanding Canadian indigenous people’s traditional beliefs: far from being modern ecologists, they did not believe that nature was real. We in the modern West are actually in a minority in assuming the importance of the physical world.

Now, realizing that the physical world may not be real is pretty mind-expanding. Real or not, it is an important insight that our experience of the spiritual is immediate and undeniable, but our experience of the physical is indirect and dubious. “Scientism”—our modern pseudo-religion—has this backwards. It is a profoundly inadequate account of reality. Much or most of what we call “mental illness,” I suspect, is caused by this inadequacy. Mental illness happens when we discover our actual experience does not conform with the official world view, or we see flaws and inconsistencies in the matrix, and do not know how to interpret it. It is vital to have a bullet-proof world view—to see the world as it truly is. Our “scientistic” world view has too low a ceiling. Leonard Cohen speaks of a “spiritual catastrophe." 

Even if there is a world that corresponds to our sense-perceptions, we have a second, epistemological problem: how does it correspond, and how can we know that correspondence? Does our experience of the colour “blue,” for example, tell us anything meaningful about the external quality “blue”? Or is the real blue a chuckling demon blinking in semaphore? Do you perceive what I perceive as blue, as what I would call red if I saw with your eyes? For the first thing is mental, a thought in the mind. The second thing remains, in principle, unknown in its essence.

Philosophy is more fun than LSD. And safer. 

More Information on the Mass Graves of Murdered Indian Children in Canada

 

From True North. A bit anticlimactic.

An Inconvenient Truth

 

Small Dead Animals has uncovered a piece from the Regina Leader-:Post reporting on the local Indian Bands protesting the closing of the Marieval Residential School in 1971. The same one at which 750 or so unmarked graves have been found.

Not only did the Indians themselves ask for the schools to be established, they still wanted them when the government wanted to shut them down. 

"The pupils are generally children from broken homes, orphans or are from inadequate homes." They had nowhere else to go.

And the Indians wanted the religious instruction.

"'Children in the residential school get a measure of correction, discipline and religious training and this should be taken into consideration, when plans are under study for the phasing out of the school,' the spokesman said.

While residential schools are not the best, they meet the most needs of the children. Children in foster homes are deprived of correction, discipline and religious training. The older members were disciplined and given religious training and 'we must get back to these old traditions,' the spokesman said."

By Ruth Shaw, Staff Reporter

YORKTON (Staff) – A resolution asking that the Marieval Residental School be kept open as long as the Indian people want it, was passed by the chiefs and counsellors of eight Indian bands at a regional meeting held Thursday.

The meeting was held in the Royal Canadian Legion Hall, with Joe Whitehawk of Yorkton, district
supervisor, as chairman.

Various spokesmen said the pupils are generally children from broken homes, orphans or are from inadequate homes. There is a great need for the school and the need is increasing, rather than diminishing. Many of the children have no other place to stay, as many have only grandparents, who through lack of space, health or age are unable to look after them.

The alternative is foster homes, which will cost just as much money. Children in the residential school get a measure of correction, discipline and religious training and this should be taken into consideration, when plans are under study for the phasing out of the school, the spokesman said.

While residential schools are not the best, they meet the most needs of the children. Children in foster homes are deprived of correction, discipline and religious training. The older members were disciplined and given religious training and “we must get back to these old traditions,” the spokesman said. The spokesman, who is a community development officer, said the Marievale Residential School must be expanded one step further and a junior high school established.

Another spokesman said the Indian people passed a resolution asking that the school remain open and it should not be up to the department to say whether the school should be closed.

Another said that if the request is made it should remain open and “the people should not be bribed to close the place.”

Chief Antoine Cote of the Cote reserve said the people on his reserve are not satisfied with the integration of Indian students at Kamsack.

“They claim there is no discrimination, but there is and we realize there is. One of the reasons of phasing out the student residential schools is so our children can be sent to so called integrated schools,” he said.

How Fake Genocide Claims Support Real Genocide

 

The Rectification of Terms

 

This video is a capsule example of how the left is trying to shut down civil discourse: they will not listen to opinions, arguments, or facts they do not want to hear. This is because they no longer accept the possibility of truth itself. Instead, they reserve the right to construct a “narrative,” and to use any and all means to silence anything that goes against it.

But the most insidious thing demonstrated here, is demanding that speakers use only their preferred terminology. They must say “equity,” and may not use the term “critical race theory.” This is what Orwell warned against as “Newspeak”: an attempt to control thought through restricting language.

How important is this? Confucius, asked what was the first task of government, answered “the rectification of terms.” The meaning of words must not be tempered with, or everything in society falls apart; honest communication is no longer possible. Honest interpersonal relationships of any kind are no longer possible.

In that spirit, here are some grossly dishonest terms currently in common use. I propose a parallel to “Godwin’s Law” here; or rather, to the misinterpretation of Godwin’s Law common on the internet. Godwin stated that any Internet discussion, if it went on long enough, would end in a Hitler analogy. The false version, which I refer to here, is that the first person who uses a Hitler analogy loses the debate.

My proposal is similar to this latter: If anyone uses one of these terms in debate, they ought to be declared to have lost the debate. They are not debating in good faith.

“My truth”

Use of this phrase implies that truth is different for different people. If this premise is accepted, there are no grounds on which to discuss anything. From this point on, it is just might makes right.

“My community”

Unless this means the people living in your neighbourhood, this is always a discriminatory term. You are saying anyone who does not look like you, or think like you, is no concern of yours. It is a mental redlining. Compare Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan.

“Gender”

“Gender” is correct as a grammatical term: nouns and adjectives have gender. Any other usage confuses things terribly. The current usage to mean “having a male character or personality” or “having a female personality” was invented in 1945: “The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one's sex.” (OED) Why was such a term not needed before this time? Because it expresses a theory, that the state of femaleness or maleness is independent of sex. Nobody thought so before 1945; demonstrably, that is debatable. Casual use of the term as if the existence of what it refers to has been established is an attempt to avoid such a debate. 

“Islamophobia”

“Phobia” means fear, and irrational fear. Use of the term implies that anyone who disagrees with Islam does so out of fear, and is irrational. But Islam is itself a set of rational assertions. The attempt to suppress discussion could not be clearer.

“Homophobia”

This is almost as bad “Homophobia” makes no more sense than “pedophilophobia” for those who oppose pedophilia, or “kleptophobia” for those who oppose theft. Homosexuality is a behavior. This is an attempt to suppress discussion of whether that behavior is immoral. The case must be made, not avoided.

“Lived experience”

All experience is lived. The first thing you can say about anyone who uses this phrase, therefore, is that they are not very smart. But because nobody s privy to another’s experience, this is a refusal to discuss the matter. You are simply being asked to take their word for it. This is not reasonable; it is a con.

“Judgmental”

A blood-red flag if used as a criticism. This is an assertion of the right to do any wrong. Judgement is the moral faculty.

“Aboriginal“; “Indigenous”

Wrong when used to refer to groups of people. Reasonable in the case of vegetation. So far as we can tell, no group of people is aboriginal to the place in which they currently reside. It is almost impossible that any are. Using the term is not just scientifically and historically false. It sets up an artificial division among people, almost certainly in order to assign different rights. Our doctrine of human equality is based expressly on the Biblical concept that we are all brothers, all descendants of one original creation. “When Adam delved, and Eve span/Who then was the gentleman?” Deny that, and we lose all human rights and all human dignity.

“Race”

The concept of race is not meaningless, but it is usually worse than useless. Is it ever legitimate to discriminate among individuals on the basis of race? Perhaps when considering the odds of some genetic disease. 

But our current usage is nonsensical. Mary Simon is heralded as Canada’s first Inuit Governor-General. Yet her father was English. Barack Obama is heralded as the US’s first black or African-American president. Yet his mother was European. Kamala Harris is declared the first African-American vice-president. Yet her mother was Indian. Is Tiger Woods black, or Thai? Is Muhammed Ali black, or Irish? Most of us, in the Americas, are of mixed race; it becomes arbitrary to assign us to this or that race. And to what purpose, other than to discriminate?

“Gay”

The term is meant to enforce the view that homosexuals are or should be happy about their sexual preference. This is debatable; there are perfectly practical reasons why they might not be. It is dong no favour to homosexuals, in particular, to suppress that debate.

It also robs the language of a useful word. “Gay” can no longer be used in its original meaning without distracting double entendre.

“Exceptional”

This term is deliberately misleading when used to refer to people with mental deficiencies. And resorting to euphemisms for stupid is like a dog chasing its own tail. The new term soon accrues all the stigma of the old. The only thing that is accomplished is the wrecking of another vocabulary item.

“Mental illness”

Whatever the experiences we call “mental illness” are, they are not an “illness.” That is at best a metaphor or analogy. Declaring them so is an ad hominem attack; it serves to discount the views of anyone so labelled without consideration. A perfect way to strip anyone of their rights. Witness Britney Spears.

Readers may have their own suggestions to add. I’d be delighted to see any in the comments.

The Canadian Genocide

 

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister is taking flak from native leaders for planning to repair and reinstall the statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II that were pulled down by a mob on Canada Day. Victoria’s head was recovered from the Assiniboine River. 

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs released this statement:

“To minimize, romanticize and celebrate the settler colonialism that displaced First Nations from their ancient and sacred lands in the most brutal and heinous ways, the way he did in his comments, is unconscionable and a desecration to the graves of the ancestors on which the legislature is built and on which the City of Winnipeg now lies.”

NDP member Nahanni Fontaine, an Indian, added:

“Canada was forged in the blood of our Peoples, on the bodies of our women and children, and in the theft of our lands.”

It is time to look at the actual history.

Not that I can blame the native people too much for not knowing it. Unless they have done a special study, they know no more about the history than the rest of us. They have been fed all the same pop culture. Their genes do not tell them anything. That said, the Indian leaders show a shocking disregard if not contempt here for their fellow Canadians, and a shocking irresponsibility in not taking the trouble to do the research. We all deserve better of them.

The First Nations of Canada have not been displaced from their lands by European settlement. Eighty-nine percent of Canada is Crown Land. Indians retain by treaty the right to hunt and fish on Crown Lands at will. In other words, for the most part, any indigenous person is able to go on using the land just as his ancestors did before Europeans arrived.

On top of the benefits they are getting from the “settler” government—welfare, free medical care, greater economic opportunities and career options of all kinds, and so forth.

Nor were indigenous groups required by the Canadian government to move. That happened in the US, not in Canada. In the treaty negotiations, they chose the location of their reserves. 

If they had any ancient land, they get to keep it. But probably no Indian group in Canada is currently on “ancient” land. They were nomadic, and Plains Cree, for example, relocated about every two weeks, fighting with other unrelated groups for hunting and foraging territory as they did. Before the coming of the Canadian government, they could count on being displaced. Only now can they expect to retain any lands indefinitely. 

They might have considered some landscape features “sacred,” but would not have owned them, been able to control their use, or happened by them except on rare occasions.

Nor is the Manitoba Legislature or the city of Winnipeg likely to be built on the graves of Indian ancestors. The Plains Indians did not bury their dead in graves, but left the bodies in trees. And moved on, quite possibly never visiting that place again. 

Nor was Canada forged in the blood of native people. There were no Indian Wars, nothing justly worthy of that name. There was no theft of lands. In most of Canada, including Manitoba, the local indigenous people negotiated to quit their land claims in return for compensation—not to mention still being able to use the land. And, in effect, having sold it to themselves, as they became Canadian citizens with the same vote as everyone else, and the same right to own land.

It is profoundly wrong to interfere with the right of all Canadians to recognize and commemorate our shared heritage, and to honour our current monarch, the symbol of our nation. Canada has too little history as it is.

But that is not the worst consequence of this strange historical slander. It actually aids and abets genocide going on today, in places like Xinjiang. 

Mary Simon, Our New Viceroy

 

Canada has a new Governor-General, Mary Simon. On the whole, she seems a good choice. It is awkward that she does not speak French. To my ear, despite a background in broadcasting, she has shown herself in her acceptance speech to be a poor speaker in English as well. It is also unfortunate that she got her start in journalism. Canada is too prone to appoint journalists to posh government sinecures. This undermines journalistic neutrality. But Simon, unlike Michelle Jean, Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy, or Adrienne Clarkson, also had a career in elected office. 

Simon was appointed, as everybody understands, because she is half-Inuit. Everyone seems to think it was time for a GG who is from one of the native peoples.

Most often, appointing someone by race is offensive; it is a violation of the fundamental principle of human equality. But perhaps this is a worthwhile exception. It should be harder for native people to feel alienated or say they are not Canadian, when the Queen’s representative herself is native. 

Relations between native people and the rest of the population are currently strained, and getting worse year by year—in no small part thanks to the mislabeled “Peace and Reconciliation” process. Simon’s appointment, and her tenure, if she uses it well, may be oil on those troubled waters.

The Mantle of Prophecy

 

The mass readings this Sunday were full of advice for prophets. 

Who is a prophet? We are all supposed to be. 

Numbers 11: 29. “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all Yahweh’s people were prophets, that Yahweh would put his Spirit on them!”

We ought to attend.

No, this does not mean we can reliably predict the future. William Blake had it right: 

Prophets in the modern sense of the word have never existed. Jonah was no prophet in the modern sense, for his prophecy of Nineveh failed. Every honest man is a Prophet. He utters his opinion both of private & public matters “/Thus/If you go on So/the result is So/” He never says such a thing shall happen If you do what you will.”

If anyone sincerely seeks and speaks the truth, he is a prophet. These are God’s people. Most people do not do this. Winston Churchill said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”

George Orwell was a prophet in simply this sense: his talent, by his own estimation, was simply in being able to face the truth without flinching. The same might be said of Churchill. Or truly good artists generally.

On to this Sunday’s lesson:

Ezekiel 2: 2-5

“As the LORD spoke to me, the spirit entered into me and set me on my feet, and I heard the one who was speaking say to me: Son of man, I am sending you to the Israelites, rebels who have rebelled against me; they and their ancestors have revolted against me to this very day.

Hard of face and obstinate of heart are they to whom I am sending you. But you shall say to them: Thus says the LORD GOD!

And whether they heed or resist for they are a rebellious house they shall know that a prophet has been among them.”

2 Corinthians 12: 7-10:

“Brothers and sisters: That I, Paul, might not become too elated, because of the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated.

Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.

Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Mark 6: 1-6:

Jesus departed from there and came to his native place, accompanied by his disciples.

When the sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given him? What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!

Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honour except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”

So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.

Let’s try to extract the lessons. If you are a prophet, a truly honest man:

1. Nobody will listen to you. They will not follow your advice.

2. You will endure “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints.”

3. You will be scorned by your own family, and by those with whom you grew up.

Milo on Vortex

 

Scary

 

A Window on the Leftist Mindset

 

Adam Smith's ungraved marker.

A long communication from a left-listing acquaintance gives insight into gauche thinking.

He writes: “I lead safaris in Kenya. There, I do not walk about in major centres alone. White privilege is seen around the world.” 

His evidence here for white privilege is exactly the evidence used to prove black discrimination in America. In America, it is supposed to be white privilege that whites can walk the streets without being stopped or harassed. Yet the need for whites to be careful when walking around in Kenya, or Harlem, is, equally, white privilege. 

This illustrates that “white privilege” is simply assumed. It is non-falsifiable.

Our correspondent then points out that we have actually known for a long time about the unmarked gravesites near residential schools that have recently been probed by radar. To his mind, the scandal is that “individual graves and the person buried has been disrespected and families not treated justly.”

But not treated justly by whom?

Whom do we usually consider responsible for marking and tending graves? In the first instance, the family. Why in this case are they not held responsible, but instead seen as victims?

If no family can be located, or the family is too poor, then it is the government’s responsibility. But this ordinarily means the local government, and certainly would have in the 19th or early 20th century. “The city where the person has died pays for the funeral, and will employ a local funeral home to manage the burial.” (talkdeath.com) 

These gravesites are on Indian reserves. The local government is the band council—indeed, they claim more than municipal sovereignty. So why are they the victims here? Why have they not tended their gravesites?

This illustrates the problem aboriginal people face; it is the same problem we saw in MP Qaqqaq’s recent farewell speech. It is learned dependency. What other Canadians do for themselves as a matter of course, aboriginal people have come to expect a distant government to do for them. This is never an efficient system: this is the way you create a permanent underclass; or a Third World nation. The chronic poverty and despair on reserves is the result.

Which brings us to our correspondent’s description of the Conservative Party: it “has a fundamental principle that small government and lower taxes is the best way forward and the private sector will use their wealth to the benefit of society.”

Which thought he dismisses out of hand. Why would they?

His description is at least partially true: Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” argues that, in a free market, even though everyone is pursuing their self-interest, the actions of all participants will tend towards the general benefit. Goods and services will be as abundant and as cheap as possible. In this sense, each individual participant is using their “wealth,” such as it is, to the benefit of society. 

If Bob, or someone else, finds Smith’s reasoning here flawed, they need to address it; not dismiss it out of hand.

But the simpler calculation, for liberals (currently often, as here, called “conservatives”), is simply that each of us has a better idea of our own needs than some distant government official, however well-intentioned. Therefore, it is less efficient and more expensive to transfer your property to him, and then let him look after us. Even assuming that no government officials take any salaries or have any self- or class interest.

If one is poor enough, granted, one may personally benefit financially. Money is taken from the relatively rich, and given to you. But this is selfish; it is at the cost of the general good.

And the example of the Indians (used here as the correct legal term) suggests where this leads. 

Bird in a Gilded Cage

 

I find the Britney Spears conservatorship horrifying. If someone is mentally ill, the odds are that they were driven to it by their upbringing, by their family. The worst thing we can do is to deprive them of their rights and give all control to their family.

But that is exactly what we systematically do. If we merely stopped doing it, that alone might end much of the problem of mental illness. They might need help to look after their affairs; even if so, it would be far better to appoint some random stranger out of the phone book.

What happened to Britney Spears could happen to anyone, and once it happens, your life is over. This should not be possible in a free society.

I am excerpting passages from a piece by Ronan Farrow—that Ronan Farrow—and Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker.

Butcher had been told that she would be required to give more testimony and answer questions. Instead, according to Butcher, Lynne told her, “It’s taken care of.” The judge, Reva Goetz, who has since retired, arrived and announced that the conservatorship had been granted. “The whole process was maybe ten minutes,” Butcher said. “No one testified. No questions were asked.”

Spears’s relationship with Jamie [her father], who could be domineering and hostile toward his daughter, was strained. Butcher recalled Lynne replying that the conservatorship would last only a few months, and that it would be best for Spears to resent Jamie, rather than her, when it was all over. But, after they joined Jamie in the conference room, Butcher said, Lynne began talking about her hopes for how the conservatorship would be managed, prompting Jamie to shout about his control over his daughter’s life, including Lynne’s access to her. At one point, Butcher recalled him bellowing, “I am Britney Spears!”

Three psychiatrists were asked to provide a necessary declaration confirming Spears’s lack of mental fitness. The third, James Spar, provided it. (Earlier this year, Spar said of Spears, on a podcast, “I don’t know why she still has a conservatorship.”)

From the earliest days of the conservatorship, Spears appeared to chafe against her constraints. While hospitalized, she had contacted a lawyer named Adam Streisand. He represented her in a court hearing on February 4th, attesting that Spears had a “strong desire” that Jamie not be a conservator. But the judge, based on a report from Ingham and testimony from Spar, ruled that Spears had no capacity to retain an attorney. 

In the following weeks, Jamie wore Spears down. “He would get all in her face—spittle was flying—telling her she was a whore and a terrible mother,” Butcher said. Spears was told that she could see her kids again only if she coöperated.

Jamie got rid of anyone his daughter had been close to. 

In behind-the-scenes footage of workdays and rehearsals, she gets visibly tense whenever Jamie is in the room. At one point, she does an impression of her father, adopting a thick Southern accent: “You know, she don’t listen to me. I scream at her and she gets onto me about screamin’ at her, but I can’t do it. You’re just gonna have to talk some fucking sense into her.”

Over the holidays, a woman came to perform a “psych test,” and then her father told her that she had failed it and needed to go to rehab. “I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it,” she said. “The control he had over someone as powerful as me—he loved the control to hurt his own daughter. One hundred thousand per cent, he loved it.”

This is all pure evil. Perhaps the experience of Britney Spears will expose the injustice.At least it may get the public's attention.

Orwell Just Got the Date Wrong

 

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

-- George Orwell, 1984

Some Questions on Residential Schools

 

Studying on the quad at Assiniboia Indian Residential School

It is surprisingly hard to get reliable contemporary information on the Indian residential schools. A lot of people are playing politics. To get the facts, one has to go back to original documents.

One assertion often made is that Indian families were obliged to send their children to a particular residential school. It was all done against the Indians’ will.

I suspect this may be no more than a reference to the general Canadian law that parents must send their children to school; the law against truancy. 

For I find references in the Truth And Reconciliation Commission final report to concern about Indian parents pulling their children out of the schools.

“Student complaints about food hurt recruitment. Kuper Island school principal J. N. Lemmens pointed out in 1891 that it was very important to provide the students with good food and clothing at his school on the British Columbia coast. He said that, unlike First Nations in other parts of the country, coastal First Nations ‘did not suffer for want of food.’ Their children were ‘used to being well fed at home.’ If the quality of food provided at the school was poor, the school might fall into disrepute” (TRC Final Report, Volume 1, pp. 488-9)

The same concern is expressed in a government report in 1907: that student attendance at the residential schools has been falling off, as parents did not want to send their children so far from home. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 16).

For this to have been a concern, attendance at any particular school must have been voluntary.

Indeed, how could it not have been? The schools were generally denominationally run. Wouldn’t it have been obvious and necessary to send Catholic children to a Catholic school, regardless of their home address, and Anglican children to an Anglican school, and so forth? Meaning parents would have a choice of which residential school to have their children attend, by declaring their denominational preference. Even if students had to attend some residential school, the schools would be in competition for students. Meaning they would have a need to keep the students, and their parents, satisfied.

And it is not logically possible that Indian students were even required to attend a residential school. Because only about one third of Indian school-aged children ever did, even at the height of the residential schools.

It is also obvious that the government itself would prefer they not attend: at a residential school, the government had to pay for the student’s food and lodging. If they attended regular day schools, or just stayed at home, the government spared considerable expense.

The simple fact that parents could withdraw their children seems, at a stroke, to discredit most accusations of abuse, starvation, or cultural genocide.

Now as to those unmarked graves so much in the news recently.

We have always known there was a high mortality rate in the residential schools. For whatever reason—and science cannot agree on the reason—Canada’s First Nations have always been highly vulnerable to tuberculosis, among other diseases.  A 1907 survey of schools across the Prairies reports: “of 1,537 pupils returned from 15 schools which have been in operation on an average of eleven years, 7 percent are sick or in poor health and 24 percent are reported dead.” All of these deaths were believed to be from tuberculosis. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 18).

Can the schools fairly be blamed? There was no cure for tuberculosis until 1946. Granted, bringing students together to educate them might cause the infection to spread to previously uninfected students; but what was the government to do? Not educate the children? They could and did turn away any students showing active symptoms; but TB can remain latent for a lifetime. The rate of tuberculosis in the schools ended up being only half that on the reserves, so the average student was still safer there than at home.

What about the charge that the schools tried to destroy Indian culture by requiring students to speak English or French?

There are several reasons for this requirement that have nothing to do with “cultural genocide.” First, given that the schools were in the business of teaching English or French, the best method is by immersion. Anyone who has studied in a language school will be familiar with this “English only” policy. Second, in almost no cases would the students at a school all be from the same language group. Speaking their first language instead of French or English would freeze out any minorities. Third, why would learning a new language cause you to unlearn a language you already knew? Does learning geometry make you forget your arithmetic? Granted that it is possible, through lack of practice, we have never considered this an important argument against further education. 

Finally, the evidence is ambiguous that this prohibition on using one’s first language was either widespread or, when imposed, was strictly enforced.

Many Indian children, no doubt, hated school. Me too. Perhaps we all deserve compensation.