And Don't Drink Milk, Either, or You're a Racist

 

The Best Rock and Roll Groups

 

Although it is not my number one music pick, sometimes only rock and roll will do.

I don’t mean “rock.” That is a more general term. I certainly don’t mean heavy metal or acid rock. They lack the roll.

To me, real rock and roll is urban and working class. It speaks of the experiences of urban, working class young people. It is musically simple, generally based on a repeated signature or riff. More than three chords is suspect. And it does not end with a finale or have significant variations. It just drives that riff like a motor turning. Life is a highway.

What are some classic examples?

The music of the Beatles is much more diverse than only rock and roll, but when they do rock and roll they can be as good as anyone. They have two great rock voices in McCartney, who can do a Little Richard swoop, and John Lennon, who has a soulful crack in his voice. Both have written great rock and roll songs.

Rolling Stones have long billed themselves as the “world’s greatest rock and roll band,” and I am not inclined to contest the claim. Musically, they are well behind the Beatles; they have only one decent vocalist, and Jagger is no better than decent. Neither Richards nor Wood, nor Jones before him, are really top rank guitarists. Watts and Wyman were great, but neither a bassist nor a drummer can carry a band. Still, this is rock and roll, a kind of folk music. Exemplary musicianship is beside the point. The point is if you can strike the right tone consistently. The Stones have kept it up longer than anyone.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are more versatile, but when they do rock, they really do rock. Springsteen is magnificent as a lyricist, and writes very much from the working class urban viewpoint. I love their use of saxophone and keyboards. Rock and roll should not be limited to guitars.

ZZ Top has just the right groove too. Billy Gibbons is genuinely a top-rank guitarist. But his guitar work has the right mechanical grind. His voice too is mechanical and grinding. Made for rock and roll.

My brother, who prefers jazz, always objected that Creedence Clearwater Revival was too simple. That’s what rock and roll is supposed to be. The hallmark of true rock and roll, for me, is that I can listen to a song again and again and never get tired of it. This seems paradoxically more often true of simple songs. There is no better rock song than “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

Travelling Wilburys: the greatest of supergroups. As with the Beatles, you have the great swoop of Roy Orbison’s voice on the high notes. You have great rock songwriting, largely from George Harrison. These guys were having fun together, and that energy is what you want for rock and roll. You want the feel of busting loose.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets sound a little too bouncy and upbeat for contemporary tastes, but they deserve special recognition as pioneers. The songs still hold up, although Linda Ronstadt does a better “When Will I Be Loved” than Holly did. They were experimenting, and so can be forgiven. They must have been mindblowing in their day.

The Animals: I always thought Eric Burdon had a great rock voice, pitched towards the blues. As a bassist, I admired Chas Chandler’s runs, and Alan Price was great on the keyboard. He did marvellous solo work later. I wish the original group had stayed together longer. Burdon went weird when he went solo, and did things that did not suit his voice. They were best when they stuck to classics; but that perhaps limited their repertoire and so their potential to last.

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Some claim Detroit is the true and original home of rock and roll. Sounds right—the home of the automobile. Nobody did the good old straight-up full-tilt rock and roll any better than the Detroit Wheels.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. As good as anyone, and keeping the torch high despite some metal influence. There is something special about seeing a woman who can rock.

Notably absent from my list: 

The Who. “My Generation” has some claim to being one of the best rock and roll songs, but often I find them embarrassing. Trashing your instruments on stage is a cheap gimmick. Swinging the microphone or windmilling your arm to simply play a chord are cheap gimmicks. Keith Moon was too busy showboating on the drums to keep a steady beat, and John Entwhistle did solos instead of keeping the rhythm. That’s not rock and roll; because it’s lost the roll. I call kitsch.

The Beach Boys; are magnificent, but they’re art rock. Too complex musically for r&r.

The Yardbirds too were too musically sophisticated and too artistically ambitious to be truly rock and roll. Led Zeppelin were too metallic. Cream lacked the roll.

Some individual songs from other groups deserve mention. You can’t do better than “Dirty Water,” by the Standells. But they were a one-hit wonder. Same for “96 Tears.” “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits is fine r&r; but Dire Straits generally is too musically complex for rock and roll. “You Really Got Me,” by the Kinks; but the Kinks are more art rock. Manfed Mann could rock, on “The Mighty Quinn.” But more generally, more towards jazz rock.

I’m arbitrarily limiting this to groups. Hence no Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger. I have not forgotten.

No headbangers here. No hard drugs, Just good times, beer, girls, and fast cars.

Tamara Lich Rearrested

 

I am amazed by the stupidity of the Canadian authorities in rearresting Tamara Lich just before Canada Day.

Perhaps they are hoping to stir something up so that they can crack down harder. It is certainly not the move you would make if you were trying for a peaceful and unifying Canada Day.

But how are they not going to come across as the villains? How are they not going to be remembered less fondly than Orval Faubus, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, or Francis Bond Head when the histories come to be written?

You could not come up with a more attractive figure as the face of the opposition to government overreach if you were a PR firm. Lich is a woman, attractive without being so attractive as to provoke envy, and Metis. Can’t plausibly tar her with the usual “white supremacy” and “misogyny” lie. Unlike Rosa Parks, who was chosen for PR value, she actually was a leader of the protest. She has just received a Jonas Freedom Prize, and is reputedly being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And yet the government wants to give her more prominence, by arresting her, on no visible grounds, just before Canada Day?

And after their invocation of the Emergency Act against her has been shown to be fraudulent? Do they really want to remind everyone?

I suppose there are two possibilities here: either extreme stupidity and arrogance, or extreme fear. Of the two, I think it has to be stupidity and arrogance; for there is surely nothing worse for them to fear than losing power in a new election.

The Real World of Canadian Indigenous Peoples

 

There are a lot of misconceptions of the history of Canada’s indigenous population. Some of them appear in the latest column from Xerxes, my weathervane for understanding the leftist hive mind. He laments that all Canadians are “trespassing” on indigenous territory.

To begin with, indigenous people are not who Xerxes, or perhaps you, think they are. Indians are not, of course, actually indigenous, but came, like the rest of us, from somewhere else. And I do not just mean across the land bridge from Asia. Most tribes were nomadic; they did not remain in one place, and had no ties to any one place, but were in constant migration. In this sense, settlers are more indigenous than any native group. 

Studies suggest that 50% of the population of Quebec, and 50% on the Prairies, have some native genes. I do not have figures for other parts of Canada. Meantime, essentially everyone living on reserves has some European blood. Any racial distinction is nonsense, unless we are talking about recent immigrants. Do we want a distinction between “pur laine” Canadians and recent immigrants?

Why is it ever okay to make two tiers of citizenship, based on who was here first?

As for those folks arbitrarily separated from the rest of us and living on reserves, nobody seems to notice that indigenous land claims were settled over a century ago, in treaties signed in Ontario, the Prairies, Western and Northern Quebec, and the Northwest Territories. All legal claims to the land outside reserves were waived, by mutual consent and with payment. For comparison, does your home still belong to the previous owner? Are you trespassing?

What about the Atlantic Provinces, lower Quebec, or BC? No specific land settlements, as opposed to surrender of sovereignty, were signed there. 

In the St. Lawrence Valley, the indigenous population are unambiguously the Quebecois, even apart from intermarriage over the centuries. When Champlain brought the first French settlers to Quebec and Montreal, there were no indigenous people in the area. The Iroquoian culture Cartier had encountered sixty years earlier had disappeared without a trace.

As for the Atlantic Provinces and BC, there were indigenous populations. But―brace for impact—they did not own any land. “Aboriginal rights” elsewhere in Canada were bestowed as a gift by King George III in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. They applied only to the Indians living in the lands draining into Hudson’s Bay, and to the area of the Great Lakes. It did not cover the Atlantic Provinces, the St. Lawrence Valley, or BC.

In common law, and in natural justice, nobody can actually own land any more than they can own the air or the water. God made these things for all mankind. Nobody has a right to appropriate any of it to themselves and exclude others. One rightfully only owns one’s labour, and the products of one’s labour.

“Land ownership” occurs only when one’s labour is sunk in the land in such a way that it cannot be easily separated from it; for example, if you build a house on the land, or if you till it, tend it, work it. This is why “squatter’s rights” are recognized. If nobody else was using the land, you get the right to it if you put your labour into it.

Most indigenous groups put no labour in the land. They built no permanent structures, and they simply lived off its fruits. Ergo, no ownership was established—applying the same rules in America as would be applied in Europe.

This might still seem unfair. The Indians were accustomed to living by hunting and gathering, and if the land was taken for agriculture, they would at least involuntarily lose their way of life. But 89% of Canada’s land is Crown land even today, and not under cultivation. Indians retain the right to hunt and fish and scavenge on it. If anyone is minded to live the same way indigenous people did before Champlain arrived, they can. 

Of course, they do not. Instead, they find it preferable to live in one way or another off the presence of the newer settlers.

Meantime, something is to be said for the fact that now tens of millions are being sustained in greater prosperity on a fraction of the land mass.

All recognized native groups have also been given free land, the reserves, adequate for them to farm if they do not want to continue to live by hunting and gathering. If they have been given a bad deal, it is better than the Europeans got.

Xerxes misunderstands the concept of terra nullius, cited disapprovingly by Indian activists (often not themselves particularly Indian) as the legal doctrine under which Indian land was “taken.” He thinks it means that a land has no inhabitants, or that the inhabitants are not human. Of course it does not mean  that; how prejudiced we are prepared to be against our own ancestors. It means a land with no government—“with no master.” A state of virtual anarchy or gang rule. When such a situation is encountered, it is a humanitarian duty to introduce law and order—to protect the rights cited in the US Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”

A near-total absence of government is a fair description of the prior state of most Canadian indigenous tribes. The term “tribe” more or less asserts this, as an anthropological term. Which is why the left insists on the word “nation,” incorrectly, for what are effectively extended families. As the French used to say of their native neighbours, “sans loi, sans roi, sans foi.” In such a state private property could not exist. Possessions, or the fruit of one’s labour, could be stolen at any time. Since we were speaking of land ownership.

In other words, if any Indian today owns land, they have the European settlers to thank for it.

A few “indigenous” groups had a relatively developed social structure, and so were able to farm—the Iroquois, the Huron, the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. But their societies always operated in violation of human rights: practicing torture, genocide, slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. As a matter of morality and international law, and based on the doctrine of human rights and human equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence, a government, which violates rather than protects human rights, needs to be suppressed or overthrown. This doctrine has been reaffirmed as recently as Kosovo and Rwanda. The French and English came to impose peace. If they are honest, few Indians today would really prefer to return to the risk of torture, slavery, or violent death.

Xerxes repeats the claim that the doctrine of “terra Nullius” comes from a Bull issued by Pope Urban II with reference to Muslim lands. This is a myth. Urban wrote no bull by this title or on this subject. He then blames Pope Alexander for the “Doctrine of Discovery,” which supposedly divided the world between Spain and Portugal, refusing to recognize the sovereignty of any non-Christian lands. But this is obviously nonsense. If the Treaty of Tordesillas really did not recognize the sovereignty of the Aztecs or Incas, it equally did not recognize the sovereignty of England or France, or any other Christian lands. The pope was simply trying to keep forces apart to avoid war between two nations in conflict.

It seems to be the real case that British and French control of Canada came about by and large as a matter of mutual consent; by the native people embracing the social contract.

But let us suppose it came about instead by conquest. If so, the experience of the Indians would hardly be unusual in world history. And yet we seem to treat it as a unique injustice. Are the English trespassing on what once was British land? Why do we make no land acknowledgement to the French, from whom Canada was taken by conquest? Are the Texans and Californians trespassing on Spanish territory? These cases are at least far more clear-cut examples of involuntary conquest than the Canadian Indian experience.

If a Pakistani family moves next door, do I get reparations?

Even after I marry their daughter?

Read more in my book Playing the Indian Card.

Depopulation

 

I've been warning about this for at least thirty years. I recall a piece I wrote for Report Newsmagazne back in 2002.

But many people still believe the opposite...

What Are Guilt and Shame?

 

Xerxes and his readers have spent the last week trying to decide what the words “guilt” and “shame” mean.

This is superficially odd, of course, because both words occur in the dictionary.

The obvious reason is that they do not like the dictionary definitions. Because they imply the existence of good and evil.

From the Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate authority:

Guilt:

The fact of having committed, or of being guilty of, some specified or implied offence; guiltiness.

The state (meriting condemnation and reproach of conscience) of having wilfully committed crime or heinous moral offence; criminality, great culpability.

Shame:

The painful emotion arising from the consciousness of something dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or circumstances (or in those of others whose honour or disgrace one regards as one's own), or of being in a situation which offends one's sense of modesty or decency.

Whenever folks start tinkering with the meaning of words, you know they are up to no good.

The worst culprit here is psychology, the main intent of which is to strip modern life of moral considerations. Thereby actually generating rather than healing most of what we call mental illness.

A therapist writes to Xerxes, “Guilt is an uncomfortable feeling resulting from the commission or contemplation of a specific act contrary to one's internalized standards of conduct."

By this definition, a Nazi who kills Jews is guilty of nothing. Indeed, we must all strive to be psychopaths.

And the issue with shame, according to her, is not that we have done something wrong, but that it might cause us to withdraw from others. We ought to be more shameless.

And a parent must never say to a child, “shame on you.”

A perfect recipe for breeding psychopaths. We are now beginning to see the results of this sort of parenting in society at large. It has been forty years—two generations—since the publication of The Drama of the Gifted Child. Narcissism is everywhere, and social norms are breaking down.

A Christian—presumably Protestant—respondent writes: “We are assured in our absolution each Sunday that God removes both our guilt and shame.”

No he doesn’t. He removes the consequences. The eternal punishment for sins is waived, and only if you feel shame. We are still obliged to do penance, in this world and the next. 

Anyone who declares themself righteous, who ignores the mote in their own eye, is a Pharisee. This is the high road to Hell.

It seems that many people are now on it.

Kathy Shaidle

 

Belatedly stumbled across this obituary on Kathy's husband's blog.

I am sure it was written by Kathy herself, and therefore serves as a fit obit for a great Canadian.

The Ottawa Is a Dark Stream

 

A recent writing exercise asked to try to remember the first words that struck you as beautiful, that pulled you in to the world of words.

What first occurred to me was this:

Do not forsake me, Oh my darling

On this our wedding day.

I cannot have been older than seven when I first heard it, on the TV; the theme to “High Noon.” I heard it once, and it stuck with me so powerfully that in adulthood I was able to connect it with the movie. Probably the movie had something to do with its power for me.

But what a sad two lines.

Another quotation from TV, from about the same time, that I have not been able to trace. It was from some movie. I do not remember the exact wording.

That is not distant thunder you hear

Those are the big guns. They are coming closer.

Again, dark, and mysterious.

Another bit of lyric verse, often sung by my grandmother, always caught my fancy:

East side, West side, all around the town

Ring around the rosy, London Bridge is falling down

Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke

We tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.

It was the last two lines that connected. “The light fantastic” suggested a portal to a world where things were as they were meant to be; although I knew this was not literally meant. It was the world of art—of dancing, music, and poetry.

Some years later, lines brought home by my older brother:

The Ottawa is a dark stream;

The Ottawa is deep.

Great Hills along the Ottawa

Are wrapped in endless sleep.

The poem spoke of a chance encounter with a beautiful little girl, who simply curtseyed and said “M’sieu.” But she too represented the mystery of art, of beauty. Somehow, this lead-in struck me more than the climax. It was the sense of mystery, of moving to a different dimension of experience.

Compare the tripe I got in school at about the same age as these words were entrancing me:

"Oh, oh!” laughed Dick. 

"Here are Sally and Puff. 

See funny white Puff.” 

Sally laughed, too. 

She said, "Puff is pretty. 

Puff is not yellow. 

Puff is white. 

I can make Puff look pretty. 

Pretty, white Puff.”

School texts are deliberately made boring, as though the intent was to prevent education.

Traditional fairy tales—the ones not adulterated by Disney--are full of dark corners and dangers, and lots of gore.  These are the real education.

It would be so easy to make school better.

The Growing Problem of Systemic Racism in Canada

 

The Toronto Star has published a piece on why Canada is racist.

 “In a Facebook group, a white woman responds to a post about new government funding for clean water at an Indigenous reserve, complaining that Indigenous people already get too much support and should do a better job of looking after themselves.”

A point worth making. Local government is responsible for clean water. Why are we blaming and billing the federal government, and not condemning or at least investigating the band council?

“At a bar, a man of European descent joins a discussion about police treatment of Black people and insists that racism and racial profiling happens in other countries, but not in Canada.”

It is incumbent on the author to demonstrate that racism and racial profiling is common in police treatment of black people in Canada. Otherwise he is simply begging the question here, assuming what he claims to prove.

The author then cites a survey of 6,601 participants on how they would respond to a white person who was:

• Speaking up when someone tells an insensitive joke;

• Appropriating Indigenous or Black attire;

• Asking where an Indigenous or Black person came from;

• Claiming racism doesn’t exist in Canada;

• Intervening when an Indigenous or Black person is hassled in public;

• Making a derogatory comment on Facebook; or

• Making a racial gesture at a hockey game.

Notice, to begin with, that the survey is interested only in the actions of white people. This is racial discrimination from the start. Can you imagine a survey that asked respondents to judge and condemn the actions of black people?

- Speaking up when someone tells an insensitive joke.

What counts as insensitive in a joke is entirely in the ear of the perceiver. We may simply be measuring the respondent’s lack of a sense of humour.

- Appropriating indigenous or Black attire.

“Cultural appropriation” is civilization. Is it wrong for “Whites” to buy records by black artists? Should Aryans refuse to patronize Jewish doctors? Is it, conversely, cultural appropriation for indigenous people to wear pants instead of loincloths and paint? Ought we to object, and insist on them having to wear distinctive dress? Perhaps for the Jews gabardine, a yellow star?

- Asking where an indigenous or Black person came from.

By definition, if someone is asking an indigenous person where they came from, they are not aware that they are an indigenous person. Therefore, this cannot be evidence of prejudice towards indigenous people.

If a black person is asked where they came from, how do we know this is because of their skin colour, as opposed to their having a foreign accent? To show this to be racial discrimination, you would have to control for this variable.

- Claiming racism does not exist in Canada.

Another perfect example of begging the question. If systemic racism does not exist in Canada, this is a correct observation. The present article claims to demonstrate that systemic racism does exist in Canada.

- Intervening when an Indigenous or Black person is hassled in public.

Surely this is a good thing, and understood to be so here. But to be evidence of racism, this would have to be compared to the likelihood of intervention when a white person is hassled in public, or an Asian person.

- Making a derogatory comment on Facebook

This is moot, because Facebook will block any racially “derogatory” comments. In other words, those who answer yes to this question are simply shown to be unreliable witnesses. Then too, what is “derogatory” has to be clearly defined to make this meaningful—for Facebook or here.

- Making a racial gesture at a hockey game

Bizarre to include this, since hockey is pretty racially homogenous. Why would anyone make a “racial” gesture at a hockey game? What exactly counts as a “racial gesture”?

Further down, the article gives an example: “a vigorous tomahawk gesture with a loud whooping cry.”

This is a traditional fan gesture for the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs. Wrong country, wrong sport. Again, anyone answering yes is probably only showing themselves to be unreliable. And, of course, the American fan gesture is not racist—it is meant to express support and solidarity, not condemnation.

On the evidence of this article, racism is indeed a problem in modern Canada. 

Racism against “whites.”

A Historic Day

What can I say? The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. This may be one of those days everyone remembers where they were at the moment they heard.

I believe the legalization of abortion is the alpha point for all the discord in  American society and Western society today. You cannot allow what half the population believes is mass murder and expect social tranquillity. Any more than you can allow slavery and expect it.

I anticipate a time of turmoil, but we have at least begun on the road to peace. Not to mention justice.

,

Abusive Relationships

 

Discovered by my daughter, a song written from the point of view of a man trapped in an abusive relationship.

Why would anyone tolerate this? Or even, as in the song, at least half desire it?

It comes, as in Johnny Depp's case, from being raised by an abusive parent. 

We are pre-programmed to love parents, and to assume they love us. If the parent is abusive, we are most often doomed to spend the rest of our life accepting being abused is an expression of love.

As a result, we are drawn as if to a magnet, or like a moth to a flame, to some new abuser.

Hint: anyone who abuses you does not love you.

It is a hard cycle to break out of.

Studying Dead White Men

 

When parents object to Critical Race Theory in the schools, a standard riposte is that they must be opposed to teaching the real history of Canada/America. 

This is ironic, since the schools have been cutting back on history in favour of “social studies” for years. And when they teach history, the history that is taught is often not the real history.

Why study history? Because, in the words of Santayana, “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

We study history to learn about human nature and about how best to organize society. History is the real social studies. We study to learn from the successes and mistakes of our ancestors. We do this through history, not current events, to avoid vested interests and hence bias. This is why, in the old days, only classical history was studied.

The modern trend is to study instead “women’s history,” “black history,” insert your ethnic group here, or else “oral history” from ordinary people who lived ordinary lives through events. This to redress some supposed imbalance, that history has heretofore unjustly been all about “dead white men.”

But recording the lives and experiences of ordinary people does not give us any lessons. Ordinary people did not make decisions the results of which we can reliably see; precisely because they were relatively powerless. We generally have little data on their lives, and this leaves too much room for imagination or for falsification. 

As a result, this “history” is no more, and no better, than idle gossip.

We study the actions of great men; not because they were men or because they were white, but because they were great. That is, they made the decisions the results of which we can study, and the records of which are extensive and preserved.

Pollution

"Plastic Islands," Madrid, Spain

I read in a textbook from which I am teaching that a fountain in Madrid, Spain, has been filled with 60,000 plastic bottles as an art exhibit, “to raise awareness of the environmental impact of disposable plastics.”

A similar idea is behind the civic sculpture “Pollution,” that has graced the Kingston, Ontario waterfront since 1973. It is just two large green concrete cylinders vomiting forth a formless mass.

"Pollution," Kingston, Canada

Either illustrates well the decadence of contemporary art.

The point of art is to reveal beauty, one of the three transcendental values, along with truth and good. Without beauty, it has no point, and is not art. It is just stuff. 

“Beauty” here does not mean mere prettiness. That would just be kitsch. Beauty is something more profound and honest than that, including the sublime. Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” is not pretty; Colville’s “Horse and Train” is not pretty. They are troubling. But to just display ugliness, to make the point that it is ugly, is the opposite of art. It is just what it calls itself, visual pollution. If you like art, you must oppose it. And, if you oppose pollution, you also must oppose it.

Neither sculpture serving any possible educational purpose either—not that it is the business of art to educate. Didactic art is tiresome and plodding. It is likely that every single person who has walked by that sculpture on Kingston’s waterfront over the past fifty years already knew that pollution was unsightly. It is pretty much what the word “pollution” means. The sculpture taught them nothing. Most who stroll past the installation in Madrid probably have previously seen empty disposable plastic bottles. There is a good chance they are already against leaving them in public fountains. If they were not, there is no reason to suppose that leaving them in public fountains some more will change their minds.

Once, a group of Queen’s students painted the two cylinders of “Pollution” to look like a can of Coke and a can of 7-Up. This was derivative—of Warhol—but a vast improvement. But it counted as “vandalism.”

Angry mobs have demanded the removal of a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s founder, nearby; yet there is not call to remove this eyesore.

Our society has gone mad.

Statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Kinston, Ontario--since removed.

Joe Biden the Pedophile

Ashley Biden.

Apparently a diary of Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden has surfaced, and reveals he showered with her as a child. This, in her own estimation, caused her to develop an addiction to sex.

Another piece of the narcissist puzzle. Biden is a classic narcissist. The narcissist puts the greatest worth on satisfying their desires. As a result, they are highly likely to indulge in sexual activities that violate norms. In fact, aside from the pleasure derived, this reinforces their sense of superiority: the rules do not apply to them. This often means incest: their own child is highly available, highly vulnerable, and in their control. And this completes their control.

It is a troubling fact that the US is being run by a narcissist; and Canada is as well. Narcissists tend to destroy those with whom they come in contact. This was the traditional basis of Greek tragedy: hubris is what they called narcissism, and the hubristic protagonist generally left the classic stage piled with corpses, and the land devastated.

To some extent, this is probably deliberate. And it is hard to account for some of Biden's or Trudeau's actions in government without assuming they want to destroy their respective nations.

After all, to the narcissist, they must be greater than the nation.

Pierre Poilievre Making Sense

 

The Pride Parade

 

June is “Pride Month.” It used to be “Gay Pride Month,” but now it’s for pride in general.

Why does every town and city, even smallish ones like Kingston Ontario, hold an annual pride parade? 

It is not, after all, that there’re are so many gays.

But that’s just it. 

Imagine the problem for gays. You are physically attracted to people who, at least ninety-nine times out of a hundred, are not going to be attracted to you. More often the reverse; they will be repulsed at the thought of sex with you.

Not great for the old morale. How on earth are you going to hook up?

For this, the Pride Parade is most useful. There you are, out in public, advertising your availability. Or, if you lack the nerve, in the crowd, seeing who might accept an approach.

This is why we are disproportionately inundated with gay culture. If you’re gay, you gotta advertise. 

In the modern age of Tinder and such dating apps, the need to parade in public semi-nude ought to abate. And perhaps we can all get back to our dignified inhibitions.

The Narcissist Smirk

 

Demonstrated by Chrystia Freeland.

Beware.

Jordan Peterson on Transgenderism

 

It is a new form of child sacrifice.

Whether we see it or not, our modern society is in the business of wholesale genocide against the young. And this is no new thing--it is an eternal temptation throughout human history.

To too many, children are resented as damned inconvenient; an unfortunate byproduct of the sex act.

Solving Homelessness

 

This is exactly the point I was making in the recent Ontario provincial election.

My idea was to quickly convert the many declining or derelict motels.

When Amber Heard Speaks, Who Is Talking?

 

Amber Heard keeps educating us about narcissism.

The narcissist often betrays the truth inadvertently—demonstrating, for one thing, that they are not truly delusional. They know they are lying.

Asked by Savannah Guthrie whether she lost her defamation trial because Depp had better lawyers, Heard concedes “they were better at distracting the jury from the real issues.”

Which, if you think about it, is a backhanded admission that the job of her own lawyers was to distract the jury from the real issues. 

Heard appeals more than once to the fact that she is a human being—that the jury, the general public, and those on social media must remember this and treat her with kindness.

For most people, this ought to go without saying. That Heard feels she must say it implies that she sees others as humans like herself only with some conscious effort. She sees other people as “randos.”

Some listeners might feel she failed to treat Johnny Depp with kindness or consider his feelings.

Accused of faking emotion to the jury during her testimony; of, in the words of Depp’s lawyers, “putting on the performance of a lifetime,” Heard responds, “said by the lawyer for the man who convinced the world that he had scissors for fingers.”

This is how the narcissist thinks. The narcissist lies with ease because they deny a moral difference between lying and an artistic performance. This is why, in general, they cannot appreciate either art or jokes. You simply invent your “narrative,” and declare that it is true. Were this not the way Heard habitually thinks, she would have known how bizarre this comment would sound to others.

To the narcissist, everything they do is a performance, calculated for effect. They always only play themselves.

Asked if she ever instigated violence, Heard responds “I didn’t need to.” This is an inadvertent admission that the violence was her idea. If she did not always initiate it, she always provoked it.

Asked whether she herself was violent, Heard pointed out that, faced with abuse, one’s moral sense is distorted: one cannot see right and wrong clearly “as you or I can.”

This came so close to an inadvertent admission that Heard had not been abused that it was cut out of the final version of the interview, no doubt at the insistence of her lawyers.

Why are narcissists like Heard, in the end, so bad at lying? Why do they drop such clues?

This is the operation of the conscience, and proves that we all have one. Any narcissist is at war with themself, as if they have two distinct personalities. Hence the concept of demonic possession. 

Forever Amber II

 

Amber Heard is helpfully giving us all a master class in narcissism. Predictably, she has not gone silent or backed away after losing her court case. This illustrates the common observation that narcissists are incurable, and cannot be reasoned with; that a narcissist will never change. Heard is actually risking being sued all over again for defamation. 

But a narcissist cannot let go. Failure of any kind cannot be acknowledged, or, in their own minds, all is lost. To them, it is kill or be killed.

This is why the generally recommended strategy, cutting all contact, may not work. It will not work unless you can effectively disappear from their consciousness; which is a hard thing to do, and necessarily highly disruptive to your life and livelihood. Once they have targeted you, the narcissist is likely to come after you; and to slander you to anyone they come in contact with.

The only exit for Depp is if and when the media lose interest in listening to Heard.

The incorrigibility of narcissism is no doubt why hell is understood in Christianity to be eternal. Once you have chosen self as your God, there may be no going back. 

Canada's Shame

 

Monument to "Evangeline," Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.

Friend Xerxes speaks in his latest column of Canada’s “shame”:

“The difference between guilt and shame becomes relevant in our time, in the troubled relationship between white settlers and indigenous peoples. ‘We’ – that is, people like me – took their land. Incarcerated their children. Tried to wipe out their language, their customs, their culture.”

None of this is true. The relationship between white settlers and indigenous people in Canada was mostly harmonious; at a minimum, more harmonious than most relationships among the First Nations themselves. European settlers “took” no indigenous land. All was done by treaty and by consent. If there ought to be any corporate guilt or shame about taking land, try what was done to the Acadians. Yet for them, we make no “land acknowledgement.” Why no land acknowledgement to the King of France?

Indian children were not incarcerated. They were sent to school, like other Canadian children, and as requested by the Indians in treaties. There was no desire and no attempt to wipe out native languages, customs, or culture—aside from a few customs, like the potlatch or the sun dance, or torture, or cannibalism, which were seen to violate human rights. The schools were designed, perhaps unfortunately, to preserve Indian uniqueness.

This generally honourable part of Canadian history has been systematically falsified.

A Prediction

 

I think Justin Trudeau will be out of power by Christmas.

His use of the Emergency Act has been revealed to have been illegal. Inflation and the economy are in a death spiral. Actual food shortages are predicted for late summer and fall. Trudeau is pig-headedly clinging to COVID mandates. Bill C-11 should hurt him; it is opposed not just by all the independent YouTubers, but also by Google and the like.  And he is ramming it through. These policies are self-destructive of him, but fit his adolescent mind set. Like a kid caught with his fist in a cookie jar, he is going to double down rather than pull back. It is going to be increasingly hard for Singh and the NDP to support him, and share the blame. If, as predicted, the Democrats go down in flames in the US midterms, that will have repercussions in Canada too.

Out of money or not, the NDP’s only hope of continued existence may soon be to turn fiercely against the Liberals, and belatedly try to claim credit for bringing that government down. They will have lots of opportunities for plausible cause.

After September, the Conservatives too will be at least as eager to have an election, with a groundswell of optimism behind their new leader; who is almost sure to be Pierre Poilievre.

In a campaign, I expect Poilievre to be an extremely effective campaigner for an electorate in a mood to throw the rascals-out. I think the Canadian electorate has already been in that mood for two election cycles, but the Conservatives did not offer them a clear alternative. Now there is tremendous pressure built up behind that dam.

It will be a historic defeat.

Racism in the Toronto Police Force

 

The Toronto Police have released a report that “Toronto police officers use more force against Black people, more often.” 

“Our own analysis of our data from 2020 discloses that there is systemic discrimination in our policing,” [Acting Chief of Police] Ramer said. “That is, there is a disproportionate impact experienced by racialized people, particularly those of Black communities.”

Acting Chief Ramer has issued a public apology, which predictably has not been accepted by any of the spokespeople for the local black community interviewed by the media.

In fact, the statistics do not prove discrimination. An important variable has been omitted: do blacks commit crimes in disproportionate numbers? Are they disproportionately likely to be violent? If so, they would of course have more dealings with the police. Yet nobody even mentions this possibility.

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that such a question is out of bounds. It must be accepted as an article of faith, on grounds of human equality, that specific demographic groups cannot possibly be committing crimes at higher rates. To suppose so would be racist.

Very well. Then we have a bigger problem than discrimination against blacks. Police are overwhelmingly more likely to confront and to use force against men than against women. 

How can we ignore this? How can we compound the offense by apologizing only to blacks, and not to men?

Or, if you insist, let’s admit that different groups might offend at different rates. If so, the evidence in the present report does not support the racism interpretation. If the problem is “white” officers being prejudiced against other races, why would the problem be for blacks specifically? Why wouldn’t they be equally or at least similarly prejudiced against other visible minorities?

The report does say other groups were also overrepresented in the statistics:

“If you are Indigenous, you were more likely to be subjected to a strip search, a highly invasive police practice; and members of the Latino, Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian communities were also more likely to have force used against them.”

But what about the Chinese? What about the Japanese? What about East Indians, aka South Asians? They are visibly not “white,” more visibly so than Middle Easterners or Latinos. And yet they do not seem to have been disproportionately harassed by police.

“Southeast Asian” presumably means Vietnamese; possibly Filipino or Thai. Are they really visibly more distinct from the “white” majority than Chinese, Japanese, or Korean Canadians? Having lived in Korea, China, and the Philippines, I can attest that the typical East Asian cannot themselves consistently tell the difference among these groups by physical appearance. How can the racist police?

I also doubt that a typical racist cop could consistently tell the difference in a brief encounter or an emergency situation between a Hispanic or Middle Easterner and someone from Bangladesh or North India; or between a black and someone from South India. If they did, it would be on the basis of speech and behavior, not on any racial characteristic.

This leaves greater levels of crime based on culture as the obvious explanation. Some cultures are more inclined to crime, and violence, than others. We all know, for example, of the Italian Mafia. So too ISIS and Al Qaeda, the Mexican drug cartels, the Vietnamese Triads.

Is the police chief, and are those in authority generally, too stupid to see this? One would hope not. 

But then, why are they deliberately promoting this slander against their own police department?

It has to do with class prejudice. This report and apology will make policing harder and more expensive, and increase the rate of crime. It will particularly be harmful to the working class, including the “racialized” poor, who must live in high-crime areas.

But it has one great advantage: it increases the power of the bureaucracy over the ordinary police officer, who is scapegoated. It increases the power of the ruling class over the working class.

Divide and conquer. 

God help the fools who fall for it.

A Sinking Ship

 

Garner

One more sign that the Patrick Brown campaign is in trouble: Maclean’s magazine reports that Michelle Rempel Garner is considering running for the provincial Conservative leadership. Having supported Brown, and given his unprecedentedly sharp attacks on Poilievre, I suspect she realizes she has no future now in the federal party. Whether or not she runs provincially, she says she is no longer actively supporting any leadership campaign. This leaves Brown with the support of only one sitting MP. 

Meantime, the Poilievre campaign is accusing Brown’s campaign of buying votes, and calls for an investigation. I don't know whether they have a smoking gun, but I bet they’re right. Brown has a shady reputation, and I doubt there has been any groundswell of popular support for him, a relatively obscure candidate. More likely there has been some deal-making with ethnic voting blocs.

The Times Are A-Changing

 

Times are changing. To begin with, the turmoil that began in early 2020 is continuing. 

Next up, famine. Credible sources say that crop yields will be poor this summer across the Northern Hemisphere, due to a shortage of fertilizer. Add this to the supply chain problem and the high cost of fuel.

Inflation will accordingly also get worse.

And Biden, Trudeau, and the left will get the blame.

There is a good chance that, in the turmoil, some governments and regimes may fall. Putin looks vulnerable. So does Xi. So does Boris Johnson. So does Justin Trudeau; people are assuming he’s safe until 2025 because of his coalition with the NDP, but actually, the NDP can pull out at any time, and it is in their best interests to do so as soon as possible—as soon as they think they can afford an election. If they keep supporting an increasingly unpopular government until the next election, they will be obliterated. 

Biden seems secure, due to the difficulty of removing a president, but will probably be presiding after November over Republican majorities in both houses. It could be a different world in a year.

Netflix went anti-woke recently. CNN has warned it will fire its partisan personalities. Twitter is going anti-woke under Musk. The solidarity of the left has broken. The Hunter Biden scandal is exposing Joe Biden. The Durham report is exposing Hillary Clinton. The Depp trial has exposed the Me Too movement. Black Lives Matter is being exposed as a scam. Zoom classes have exposed Critical Theory in the schools. Trudeau’s declaration of the Emergency Act is being exposed as illegitimate. Jeff Bezos has rounded on Joe Biden. The legacy media are being exposed on brief after brief: Depp, Rittenhouse, Covington, COVID, the Wuhan lab, the Russia hoax.

The dominoes have begun to fall. As with the First and Second Estates joining the Third at the outset of the French Revolution, this can all shift swiftly. Most of the madness we have lived with from the left is held together with intimidation. We are getting close to the point where people will no longer feel intimidated. Then the Bastille goes down.

Hunter Biden and Narcissism

 

It is wrong to think of a cause for narcissism. Narcissism is a personal choice. There are, however, circumstances that can tempt one to it.

One is having a highly successful parent. There are two relevant Chinese proverbs here: “Greatness costs a family three generations”; and “a happy family is one in which the son is smarter than the father.” 

The Chinese pay a lot of attention to family. They know.

Imagine the situation of a son of a particularly successful father. Imagine, say, Hunter Biden. What their father has accomplished looks beyond their abilities, so they give up trying early. And they may be right. Genius is rare; if their father is a genius, they may simply not have the mental powers to do as well as their father did. 

In Hunter Biden’s case, nobody can accuse his father of genius. But Joe Biden rose well above his level of competence through luck. Hunter Biden cannot expect to have such luck. 

In such a case, the son’s ego must suffer. Whatever they can accomplish, with their inferior mental equipment, it will look like failure, to them and to their parents. The bar is set too high.

The temptation then is not just to go limp and not try anything, but to retreat into a personal fantasy in which they really are brilliant and capable. This is narcissism: in addition to elevating the self, it assumes to the self godlike powers, to create “reality.” 

Such a person will also have an eternal chip on their shoulder, against all those who do not recognize their greatness, or seem to challenge it by their mere existence. They are likely to have a grudge against the impressive parent, in the first place; but a secret or concealed grudge, for the sake of their self-interest. They are likely to have a grudge against their children, who, carrying the same genetics as the genius parent, are liable to excel them. The mythological model here is Cronus, who castrates his father, then devours his sons. Three generations. The Bible too says, “the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons unto the third or fourth generation.”

They will have a grudge against anyone who does anything impressive. 

I have seen this dynamic many times. It is not the inevitable origin of a narcissist; being spoiled seems more common. But it produces an especially malicious form of narcissism: an angry narcissism with a sense of grievance.

Send Out the Clowns

 

Graffito, Paris, 1968

Although she claimed on the stand that all she wanted was to put it all behind her, and she wished Johnny could do the same, Amber Heard refuses to put it all behind her. She continues to dog Johnny Depp on social media, claiming her defeat in court was a grave injustice to herself and for all women. Important elements of the legacy media, including the New York Times, seem to be taking the same stand. Ignoring the judgement of nine jurors who heard the evidence, and indeed of the vast majority of those who watched the trial online, they still insist that Heard was abused by Depp.

The problem is that, to the narcissist, the only definition of good and evil is that “good” is whatever is good for me, and “evil” is whatever is not. Accordingly, it is good to maintain that something untrue is true, if the lie is good for me. If it is best for women that we should believe all women, any evidence to the contrary must be declared evil and shouted down. And it does not matter what happens to any male as a result.

The issue is obvious to me because I grew up with narcissistic parents. I recall as late as my late twenties still trying to reconstruct, in light of my childhood, what “good” really meant, and what “real” meant. Any child of a narcissistic parent is bound to be confused on this, because what they have been taught is both wrong and, to anyone other than the narcissist, incoherent. What is good is whatever is good for my parent? What is real is whatever my parent says is real? Despite my senses, despite reason?

Living in the latter half of the 20th century, or the 21st, does not help. There is a narcissistic philosophy permeating society and its institutions, postmodernism or critical theory, sometimes called cultural Marxism. I can trace it back at least as far as the Frankfurt School. I think the Frankfurt School was a continuation in turn of a philosophy found in Nazism. A bit of graffiti seen during the Paris uprisings in 1968 read “Beware! Even the ears have walls!” The rebellion was against any concept of reality itself. Freedom meant freedom to invent and have “your own truth.”

Graffito, Paris, 1968

“Reality is a function of belief.” I remember that as a watchword back then; I thought it came from Kierkegaard, but perhaps not. Or Blake: “a firm persuasion that a thing is so, makes it so.”

It was seductive, and I was myself at least half seduced in grad school.

But thinking this is insanity, straight up; and sanity is being aware of the good and the true. 

We live today in a world gone mad.

Damn the Truth

 

A discussion with Terry Glavin about the delusion of the residential schools mass graves.

The Canadian Baseball League

 

Summer is here, and it is just a darned shame there is no Canadian Professional Baseball League. Contrary to popular belief, the game is as old and as ingrained in the land in Canada as in the US. The first documented game of baseball was in Beachville, Ontario in 1838. Labatt Park, in London Ontario, is the world’s oldest baseball stadium.

It is a cultural failure that we have allowed the game to decline north of the US border.

Going to a baseball game is a really great cultural experience in a country like Korea or Japan. It could be in Canada too. 

Issues on the Minds of American Voters

 

... according to Rasmussen. The issues do not look favourable to the Democrats. Can ballot box stuffing be enough to save them?

The State of the Conservative Race

 

Since more than half of the current membership of the Conservative Party have been recruited through Pierre Poilievre’s website, the strong presumption must be that he is going to win the Tory leadership on the first ballot. It is now unlikely that any Conservative politicians are going to see a future in attacking him publicly; or, indeed, supporting his rivals. We may be at the point of inevitability. 

The strategy of Jean Charest and Patrick Brown until now, of attacking Poilievre with unprecedented venom, now looks very bad for them. Especially for Charest, who has the bigger reputation, and more to lose. Given that Brown reputedly signed up 150,000 new members, Charest looks likely to come no higher than third on the first ballot. That’s especially an embarrassment for someone with his stature. Thinking only in terms of his own political future, I would bow out now, declare my enthusiastic support for Poilievre, and make much of calling for party unity. Even start actively campaigning for Poilievre. He could then look like the kingmaker, and could claim to have made a personal sacrifice for the party. If Poilievre wins the next election, he might hope for an important cabinet post. If Poiiievre loses, he has now paid his dues and would be well-positioned to run as his replacement.

If Charest drops out, will others stay in? Brown might not. Lewis might as well stay on as a spare in case emergency, and to keep it interesting; but will stop attacking the frontrunner. Baber and Atchison might as well stay in, as they were always only in to raise their profiles.

But it’s liable to be a quiet race from here on in.

The Conservative Groundswell

 

The Pierre Poilievre campaign claims they have signed up over 300,000 new members to the Conservative Party through their website. The Patrick Brown campaign claims 150,000 more. The Poilievre figure alone more than doubles the number of members of the Conservative Party--without yet taking into account those signed up by the other campaigns, or who signed up directly, as I did, at the CPC website to participate in their leadership race.

Something important is happening in Canadian politics.

Rather than being impressed or acknowledging the historic nature of this groundswell, a panel of politicos hosted by the CBC warned that Pierre Poilievre was "playing with fire,” appealing to people who would not go along with a move to the centre for the next federal election.

Assuming Poilievre had to move to the centre for the general election.

No concern that it was dishonest to run on one platform for the leadership, and switch up for the general election. No concern that this large number of committed people supporting Poilievre deserved to be represented. The general public was, to these politicians, cattle, to be deceived and controlled. And this was spoken openly, and not hidden.

To be fair, you might argue that they are only being realistic; that to get the most votes, you need to straddle the ideological middle. However, this assumption, although it seems logical, is not borne out by the facts. Mike Harris in Ontario, Rob Ford in Toronto, Ralph Klein in Alberta, Francois Legault in Quebec, all proved highly successful in elections while maintaining a hard right position, at least rhetorically. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Stephen Harper, Donald Trump all were successful with a hard right stance. Erin O’Toole, Mitt Romney, John McCain all fell short lunging for the centre. 

It is a losing proposition for an opposition party to try to take the centre ground. What is considered the centre ground is largely defined by the party in power. If the electorate likes their policies, they are going to stick with the government. If they do not like their policies, they are still not going to see any reason to vote in a new party that promises the same policies

This is equally true for the left or the right. In the recent Ontario election, the Liberals and NDP agreed with the ruling Tories on everything. Result: win for the Tories. In 2015, Tom Mulcair’s NDP made a lunge for power by moving to the centre. Result: win for the Liberals, who ran uncharacteristically further to the left.

I assume political operatives know their business. They realize then that the idea that the Tories must move to the centre is electoral bunk. Rather, they are demanding it as an obligation to fellow members of the ruling class that everyone take the approved stand on all the issues, and not allow the common hoi polloi a say.

This is what “the centre” really means. It really means “the party line.” Only in such a situation can at leasthalf the electorate be declared “far right,” and "populism" be called "far right." That necessarily implies that “the centre” is actually well to the left on the spectrum of actual popular opinion.

The American Constitutional Crisis

Apparently over 70% of those who see Dinesh D’Sousa’s new documentary “2,000 Mules” are convinced that the last US presidential election was illegitimate.

This puts the American system in a predicament. In the Westminster system, the Queen or Governor-General could dissolve Parliament and call a new election. America has no mechanism to rerun an election, so far as I can see. All they could do is impeach Biden. But that would not correct the error; the presidency would be thrown to his vice-president, elected at the same time by the same suspect vote.

And impeaching is difficult. It must be done for cause, there must be a formal trial, it can tie the legislature up for months. It is much simpler in Westminster. Boris Johnson is right now undergoing a caucus revolt, and they might vote him out as of this evening.

Update: Johnson survives with 59% of the vote.

Terry Glavin Defends Reality in the National Post

 

In the cont4ext of the residential schools "mass graves" fraud.

What about Whitney?

 

There are credible reports that Amber Heard regularly abused her sister Whitney. So why did Whitney testify in Amber’s defence, and apparently perjure herself on the stand for her? And against Depp, who had been good to her?

This is not surprising. It is the usual case, when one has been abused in childhood. Nineteenth-century French “alienist” Auguste Tardieu reports the experience of a Dr. Nidart, called to testify against the parents of an abused girl:

What Dr. Nidart discovered, to his evident puzzlement, was that Adelina would invent stories of what had happened to her, in order to cover up the crimes of her parents against her own person, imagining falls and accidents, rather than allow others to know the horrible truth of what had been done to her. As we shall see, her parents had kept her literally hermetically sealed off from the real world outside, and in a pathetic, heartbreaking gesture of tenderness toward her own tormentors, she wished to protect them ... from the world.

This is probably why Freud abandoned his original “seduction theory” of the cause of mental illness, in favour of the Oedipus complex. After being so certain of the former, he never explains what made him abandon it for the latter idea, that the sexual molestation was all imagined by the child. Except to say that patients did not stay in therapy when he propounded the seduction theory. True or not, they would not hear this criticism of their parent. 

Freud developed a contempt for his patients.

This phenomenon is obviously also related to the well-known “Stockholm syndrome,” a tendency of hostages to take the side of their captors over time.

But why does this happen?

The best explanation, it seems to me, is that we have a God-shaped hole in our psyches. We are born with a craving for certainly. Every child seeks truth and right; no child, as the founder of Boy’s Town observed, wants to be bad. When this is not satisfied by an awareness and acceptance of God, the psyche must latch onto something. As Chesterton wisely said, “Those who do not believe in God will believe in anything.”

Narcissists ultimately believe in themselves as God. A narcissistic parent or older sibling will do what they can to impose that belief on those around them, impressionable others in their power: a child or a kid sister.

Among the things they will inevitably do is to seduce their charge into some form of immorality. This becomes a test of their true allegiance. Once accomplished, it holds the victim more completely in thrall. The helpless little fly can now no longer hope to appeal to the true God for aid, or to the concepts of right or justice, or to the world outside. Everything depends on the approval of the parent or sibling, who holds their secret.

The child, even once an adult, will then commonly sacrifice their own interests for those of the narcissist, and will desperately defend their false god against all comers.

The cure for mental illness, as a result, is true religion. AA has it right: one must acknowledge and submit to a “Higher Power.” Those who do get well. Those who do not do not get well. Jung said the same.

And do not think of the Whitneys as mere helpless victims. There is good reason why the prohibition on idolatry is the First Commandment. It is the sine qua non of all morality. One is morally culpable for idolatry. It is the one unforgivable sin, the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. If worshipping yourself as God is the worst sin possible, worshipping another as God is only marginally better.

The Biden Smirk

 

Biden smirks a lot.

Guess who doesn't smirk?

Donald Trump.

The Narcissistic Smirk

 

It is a bit disappointing that Johnny Depp did not get a settlement of $50 million, and Amber Heard nothing. That would have felt more like justice. I think Depp had a reasonable case that he had lost as much as $50 million in career damage. And there seems to me no logic in finding defamation against his lawyer, who had good reason to believe he was speaking the truth. And if he didn’t, is Depp responsible for what he said?

But in a way, this outcome is best. Had Depp gotten more than he did, sympathy might have moved towards Heard, which would be the worst outcome. Many would feel sorry for her despite what she did.

Reputedly, she will not be able to cover the present settlement. She is supposed to be worth only $2 million. Odd, though, since she got $7 million from Depp a few years ago, and has not donated any of it to charity. Where did it all go?

The bottom line is, the jury found that Johnny Depp did not abuse Amber Heard; that her claims that he did were lies. That is a great victory for all the victims of narcissists, and especially for abused men. It reassures me that there is some justice in the world.

I hope now he gets his career back. 

Another advantage of the trial is that it revealed to us who the good people are in Hollywood: those who stuck by Depp. Oddly enough, they tend to be celebrities I always suspected were nice people.

Many observers have noticed that Heard had a tendency to “smirk” during proceedings: a distinctive half-smile in which only one side of the mouth goes up.

This facial expression, for whatever reason, is absolutely characteristic of narcissists. Perhaps it shows their own internal confidence in their superiority; they believe they are putting something over on the world. It is familiar to anyone whose life has been cursed by a narcissist.

Watch and think carefully: Have you ever seen this expression in another? If you ever see this expression in another, habitually, you see a red flag. Get away if you can.