The Backlash in Europe

 

A backlash against high levels of immigration is underway in Europe. Denmark now wants to send refugees from Syria back. If they cannot, they will round them up and put them in camps. Sweden wants to stop accepting refugees. Britain voted for Brexit to cut the flow of immigration, and is now sending refugees to Rwanda. Hungary has built a wall. Politicians have found it necessary to take these positions, which only a little while ago they would have condemned as “far right” and beyond the pale, due to public outcry. 

Politicians in Canada would be wise to take note. This convoy is almost surely headed our way. Those who tie themselves too tightly to the mast of multiculturalism may soon find they have no support.

The problem is not immigration as such; at least that is what the politicians say; and I believe them. We need immigration. It is the failure to integrate. This means social division and high crime rates. It turns out that diversity is not our strength. Strength is from movement towards unity, “e pluribus unum.”

And the problem is not racism or discrimination against immigrants. The problem is that some immigrants discriminate.

Compare Chinese with Japanese Canadians. There has been at least as much discrimination against Japanese immigrants as Chinese—most North Americans can’t tell the difference visually, and if they can, history gives more reason to resent the Japanese. The Chinese were never interred. However, much as I love the Chinese, Chinese do not integrate, and the Japanese do. The Chinese stick together in “Chinatowns.” Japanese intermarry and engage with the culture. There are no, or few, “Japantowns.”

When Europeans move into some other country and then stay aloof, sticking to their own neighbourhoods and not learning the language or culture, we condemn this. We see them as colonizers. 

It works the same way regardless of skin colour. Immigrants who do not integrate are colonizers. They want to change the country they come to to suit them; and this quite properly causes resentment among those already there. They have their own culture, have a right to it, and want to preserve it. Unlike the immigrants, they did not make a choice to change.

An intelligent government can predict and should distinguish among immigrant groups who will strengthen the country, and who will lead to problems. Much is predictable based on cultural characteristics. Chinese, for example, do not integrate well because Confucianism does not recognize any responsibility towards anyone with whom you do not have some formal relationship. Strangers are ghosts. Therefore foreigners are ghosts.

You can also see it from experience. Filipinos are good at integrating. Greeks make good immigrants. Koreans make good immigrants. Sikhs make good immigrants. Jews make good immigrants. Lebanese Christians make good immigrants. They are quickly contributing to the mainstream culture.

Muslims make poor immigrants, for predictable reasons. Islam is not compatible with liberal democracy, Canadian social norms, and religious pluralism. In principle, in Islam, no government is legitimate that is not Muslim, and enforcing Islam as state religion. No law is legitimate that does not conform to shariah law. 

Accordingly, any Muslim immigrant is in principle hostile to the government and alienated from the non-Muslim majority.

You may well argue that this assumption is not fair to “moderate Muslims.” But if someone is prepared to reject the moral code with which they were raised, and which they claim to follow, are they a good bet to be a moral person? Are they not also likely to be a problem, perhaps a worse problem?

I say this with great respect to Islam and to my own Muslim friends. Islam is an admirable ethical system; but it is not compatible with immigration to and assimilation to a non-Muslim nation. Muslims themselves will insist this is so: whenever numbers warrant, they will demand a separate state.

The Way of the Pilgrim

 

Why are we here?

Many people plainly suppose we are here to seek pleasure. A high school friend used to say “we’re just two ends of a gastrointestinal tract.” A hotel co-worker said sex was what made life worthwhile. 

This is the perspective of an animal or a robot. It is also a will-o-the-wisp. Without hunger, food does not satisfy. Without abstinence, sex is just work. It all becomes addiction, and pleasure is gone.

Some people think life is about achieving “success.” Success here means power and social authority over other people. This is actively active evil. And it certainly does not lead to contentment. “Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.” 

Some people say that life is about having children, and giving them a start in life. This is the Darwinian perspective; the Bible too does say “go forth and multiply.” Kids are part of our job, at least. But it does not entirely satisfy. If your life is meaningless, so are your children’s lives. 

Some people say life is about sacrifice of self to the collective: one owes ultimate allegiance to one’s parents, one’s community, and one’s homeland. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” But this is idolatry: one’s nation, one’s government, or one’s parents can be either good or bad. This leads to “good Germans,” Fascism, racism, and nepotism.

Some say that life is about going about doing good to others. And it is, in detail: we are to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, when we encounter them. But this can easily become a form of ego-worship. The Bible warns that if we do good and are seen to do good, we already have our reward; we are acting in self-interest. God does not need you to save the world; realistically, things are already going as he intends. I suspect figures like Mother Teresa. 

The meaning of life is to seek the true, the good, and the beautiful. 

This is necessarily so, because truth, beauty, and good are the only things of value in themselves. They do not derive their value from anything else, and everything else is valuable only to the extent that it is true, good, or beautiful.

These values can be falsified and misunderstood. People often confuse beauty with sexual allure, for example. People misconstrue fact as truth, truth as fact. Facts are only one form of truth, and a trivial form. And people misrepresent goodness in many ways.

It is not public charity. It is also not being “nice,” and getting along with everyone. That requires having no principles, and giving everyone what they want. This is, at best, moral cowardice, at worst devious self-interest. It requires aiding and abetting evil whenever it appears.

True good is justice. Not to be confused with the current leftist concept of “social justice,” a euphemism for injustice. Justice means giving everyone what they deserve on their merits.

How does one, in practical terms, do this?

First, in art. Good art manifests beauty. Art is adding beauty to the world. This is an intrinsic good, even if no other mortal sees this beauty. God does, and with him you are building the New Jerusalem, which the Bible describes to us as a vast work of art. But if possible, the Bible also tells us to “let your light shine,” and be a leaven to those around you.

Good art must also be true. As Keats said, “truth is beauty, beauty truth; that is all ye know, and all ye need to know.” One may speak truth outside of art, but inside of art, you must. And speaking truth outside of art can be dangerous. Jesus warned: “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” So he spoke in parables. Art is intended, as Emily Dickenson said, to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” Those who have eyes to see, will see.

Good art must also serve justice. We are aware of this when, for example, we read or watch a play. We will rebel, intellectually and emotionally, whether watching tragedy or comedy, if the resolution does not serve justice. Karma must come around. No cheap happy endings, and no gratuitous deaths.

Beyond art is something more: the practice of a religion. To bind yourself to a religion is, in effect, to make your life a work of art. Art shows the way; religion IS the way.

But there is no just going through the motions here, no “church on Sunday,” no hypocrisy. We are talking of full commitment, of “prayer without ceasing.” That is the ultimate. That is sainthood.

The End of Abundance?

I cannot confirm it online. But I hear a rumour there has been a sudden drop in birth rates across the world just in the past year.

True or not, it is surely true that birth rates have been dropping in the developed world over the last few years; and in most of the rest of the world too.

Many reasons could be offered. Feminism, pushing women into the workforce and devaluing motherhood. The rising costs of, and requirement for, children’s education. The move from rural to urban; kids are less useful and more costly in a city. The growing availability of contraception. The ability to rely on social security, rather than family support, in old age.

But there is another possibility.

Darwin notes, in The Ascent of Man, that whenever Europeans encountered a local population that was significantly less materially advanced, the fertility rate of that population suddenly dropped dramatically.

Why?

Because their established world view was challenged. They experienced “culture shock.” As the future they expected was removed from sight, they felt there was no future. Why have children?

Our elites have been telling us for years there is no future: global warming will kill us all. Overpopulation was going to kill us all too. Moreover, our elites explain, our world view is wrong. There is no truth, no meaning. The principles on which our culture is founded are racist and misogynist and wrong.

Macron, President of France, recently said publicly that the “Age of Abundance” is over. We will have to learn to do with less.

There is certainly a pervasive sense that we are at the end of something. Exacerbated by thoughts of death from the pandemic.

But we are hearing this from Macron and the elites. What if they are wrong? What if the problem is not with our world view, but with the elites?

I suspect this is the case. In ordinary circumstances it would be odd to hear this pessimism from the elites. Aside from what is real, it is their job to rally morale. They seem to be doing the opposite. THis in itself suggest a problem with the elites.

Perhaps the elites are projecting on the rest of us their sense that their time is limited. Not ours; theirs. They hear time’s winged chariot drawing near.

This is so because the explosion in information technology makes experts less useful, and reduces their ability to control.

Xi in China, or Putin in Russia, look in danger of imminent loss of power. But they have largely brought it upon themselves by attempts increase or consolidate their power. Why did they get so reckless? Might they have been driven by desperation?

So too with Trudeau in Canada, Ardern in New Zealand, and the erratic actions of the media and the Deep State in the US. The dragon, mortally wounded, is thrashing about.

Do we need to fear, or are we overly influenced by the elite here?

Look for signs of vitality and optimism in the world. They do not come from anyone in the established elites. They are all gloom and doom.

Yet I saw a strong sense of optimism and hope in Canada’s Freedom Convoy, and its supporters around the world, last February. Peace and joy seemed to be breaking out all over. I see it in the United People of Canada, who have, perhaps suitably, taken over an Ottawa Church for open discussion from all sides.

The elites fear new ideas. These common people do not. Without new ideas, there is no future.

I see optimism instead of fear of the future in the “populists” who back Trump and “Making American Great Again,” in the US. Brexit in the UK was a new departure, and expressed confidence in the future.

Perhaps this tells us all we need to know. It is not that we have no future. It is that the future does not include the elites, and so they are fighting against it.

But in all likelihood, the future will come. It belongs to those who have hope and optimism.

Behold Man without God

 

Canadian artist William Kurelek suffered severe depression throughout life—ameliorated, in later years, perhaps cured, by embracing Catholicism. 

This was due to childhood abuse by his father.

The experience influences much of his work.

This is a detail from his 1957 painting “Behold Man without God,” done at about the time of his conversion. The figure at the top left is recognizable as his father. His father appears again at the bottom right.

Together, they are a portrait of childhood abuse in the real world. Like most great artists, Kurelek is an astute psychologist.

First, the form of abuse that is featured most prominently in visual terms is verbal, not physical—at the bottom right. He is scourged by his father’s tongue. This is far worse than physical abuse. And worse still, it is not simply criticism or insult: it is bait and switch. A reward is dangled in front of him, here a loaf of bread, but one he will never receive. This is the standard technique of the true abuser, false promises and misdirection. This is worst of all, because it corrodes the sense of what is real and not real, true or untrue, right or wrong.

This produces the sense of disorientation and meaninglessness that is the core experience we call depression.

Kurelek is also shown here pulling his father seated. He is carrying him emotionally. This is the general experience of the family of a narcissist, even when the narcissist himself is mild mannered or favours them: the narcissist will lean on them emotionally. If the narcissist has a bad feeling, it is always the child or spouse’s responsibility to do something about it. The narcissist is emotionally weak, unable to walk on their own.

In the centre of the detail shown, a ring of people are trapped by the head or neck, under a sign that reads “Home Sweet Home.” A commentator on the museum site says this is a “group of abused children.” Not quite; not all are obviously children. As the sign tells us, it is an image of the dysfunctional family. They are all trapped by the head or neck by the shared family dynamic or delusion emanating from the narcissistic parent, even if the narcissistic parent is not present. They are all feebly biting each other and hitting one another with maces, wherever they can. 

This is the family situation the abusive parent will set up: they will deliberately foster enmity among all other members of the family. This increases their power and control. By, for example, promising this child or that child special favour, often in return for turning against a sibling.

Kurelek, the scapegoat, beaten at the top left, seems also to be one of the figures trapped at the neck by the revolving table. He seems to be the figure in the foreground.

That it is revolving is also important: no progress is ever made. It is all set up this way by the narcissist, who fears breaking out of a severely constrained orbit. The outside world, and progress itself, threatens his delusions of his own importance and his control. Any outside contacts or friendships will be discouraged in a dysfunctional family; they will be notably clannish. Any feints towards outside success will be discouraged. Any signs of originality of thought will be punished. One must conform to the family pattern. 

Hence the sense of meaninglessness and an inability to progress that most characterizes what we call “depression.” A sense of being trapped in a horribly banal world, like Dorothy at the outset of The Wizard of Oz. A sense that you, or those around you, are robotic. Because narcissists are.

Happily, Kurelek also points the way to break out of this horror: Through art, that sees the transcendent, and through religion, that takes us there.

British Data on Excess Deaths

 

Confirms what Germany is saying ...

Narcissist in Power

 

It is clear that Joe Biden is a narcissist. The revelations on his son’s laptop and in his daughter’s diary put this beyond question.

Why do Biden’s children have this odd and seemingly self-destructive tendency to leave their secrets lying around? 

It is a cry for help. It is a way to cry for help without being held by the narcissist to blame. 

Ashley Biden’s diary reveals at least a strong suspicion of pedophilic incest. 

This is a common feature of a dysfunctional family.

We think of narcissism as self-love; but what is “self”? Narcissists can be self-destructive. Better to see it as addiction to one’s desires, one’s vices. Sex is pleasurable. A child of the opposite sex readily available behind closed doors makes a target of opportunity.

Another child, readily available behind closed doors, makes a convenient target to vent your bad feelings. It seems, however, that Biden at least did not have this malicious streak. He also had enough self-control, or cunning, not to mess himself up with drugs or alcohol or public scandal.

Scapegoats will be considered wrong no matter what they do. But to those children not selected as scapegoats narcissists are likely to pass on the ethic of indulging every desire. Indeed, this will be encouraged. Children of narcissists therefore often themselves become narcissists. We see Ashley’s and Hunter’s sex addiction and drug addictions.

A narcissist will lie convincingly whenever it is to their advantage. What they desire to be true is more important than the truth. Biden has shown this tendency throughout his career.

A narcissist will worship his own body. It is, after all, the instrument of pleasure. He will expect others to adore it as well. Hear Biden talk fondly about how the hair stands up on his legs, and children like to stroke it. Witness Hunter’s endless naked selfies.

Narcissists are almost always personally charming. Because they lack morals, they are free to say whatever seems in their interest to say. Find someone who has no enemies, and you have probably found a narcissist.

As Confucius said, “If a man has no enemies at court, it is necessary to make enquiries.”

It is therefore alarming how everyone around Washington claims that Joe Biden is a nice guy personally.

Remarkable how the media and the FBI run interference for him, trying to suppress and ignore all the evidence. But this is a familiar phenomenon when dealing with narcissists: the flying monkeys.

At the same time, many call Trump a narcissist. Trump’s kids are evidently well-adjusted, personally happy and successful. Trump is accused of constantly lying. To the contrary, unlike Biden, he is strikingly truthful: he says what he thinks. Lots of people love him, lots of people hate him. This is the sure sign of a man of principle. 

Rather than a narcissist or bully, Trump is a man who stands up to narcissists and bullies. Unlike most of us, he refuses to be a kapo or a flying monkey.

That is why we hate him. He won’t play the game. He is a threat to the narcissists, and he shames the rest of us. 

We are, most of us, cowards. Narcissists will go great lengths to get what they want. If you oppose them, they will set up an infernal howl. If possible, they will bully you. So most of us go along with them immediately, and even help them destroy others. If we do not, we fear ourselves becoming the scapegoat.

It works this way in a dysfunctional family, and it works this way in a dysfunctional nation.

So all the flying monkey gang up against Trump.

We are in a particularly bad situation now, because for several generations, the “experts” have been telling us the most important thing is to make sure children have “self-esteem.” That is, are coached towards narcissism.

Now we have a critical mass, and all hell is breaking loose. And few are available to stop it.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

A Scary Thought

 

The evidence is beginning to look damning: that the COVID vaccines were actually more dangerous, for most of us, than the virus itself.

This explains why many governments, including that of Canada, suddenly around last September became insistent that everyone must be vaccinated, and imposed vaccine mandates even on truckers  There was no medical case for this, even if the vaccines worked and were safe. All that was needed was to vaccinate the most vulnerable. It was an otherwise unnecessary violation of human rights.

I assume they knew by about September, if not before, that herd immunity was not possible through vaccination, that the vaccines did not prevent the virus's spread, and that the vaccines were riskier than advertised. Up to t his point, pushing the vaccine on everyone might have been an innocent mistake. The responsible thing to do then would have been to pull back on the vaccination program. But then they risked being held to account for all those who died unnecessarily due to the vaccine.

Rather than intake their lumps. the safer political path was to try to force everyone to vaccinate, to hide the terrible reality that people who were vaccinated were dying at a higher rate than people who were not vaccinated. This would also explain why Trudeau called a snap election in the middle of a pandemic, which the public saw as unnecessary. It was to get a solid mandate before the truth came out.

No wonder they react so badly to any mention of the Nuremberg Code. No wonder they resorted to the Emergency Act. No wonder they have suddenly gone so authoritarian. They figure if and when this hits the fan, they are in big trouble. They are like burglars doubling down by trying to kill the witnesses...

A frightening thought, but it does seem to explain the facts at a time when government actions otherwise seem bizarre.

What's In a Name?

 

Bruce and Sheila are proverbially characteristically Australian names. But other names seem unique to this or that English speaking country. If you meet a Simon, you know they are from England. So too for Penelope or Fiona. For Scotland, Sandy and Maggie. For America, names from the Old Testament: Zeke, Sam, Beulah, Jem, and the like. Although they are fading. Harvey's an American name. For Canada, Howie or Gord. Which may say something about the legacy of Gordie Howe.

Shocking Description of Chinese Morale

 

For what it's worth, I do not see any trace of this despair in my students. 

The Cultural Revolution Claims another Church as Victim

 

In China, it went so far as cannibalism. 

Why China Won't Collapse-?

 

Serpenza and C-Milk, two guys who spent years on the ground in China, and who married Chinese wives, are both assuring us that, no matter how dire the economic situation in China is looking, Xi and the CCP are not going to lose power.

I have long assumed that they would. It seems the general rule that, once the GDP per person hits about the $10,000 US per annum range, authoritarian nations transition to democracy. A self-sufficient middle class develops the strength to stand up to overly intrusive government at about this point.

Serpenza and C-Milk argue that, with new technology, this is no longer true. China is able to track everyone minute by minute through their smartphones and surveillance cameras. They have crushed all points of possible opposition. It is 1984 and Big Brother. 

This is doubly alarming, because the Canadian government seems to be reproducing, step by step, the Chinese model. Control over the media, including social media. A crackdown on truckers and farmers, the sectors of the population most able to function independent of government. Freezing bank accounts and criminalizing protest. Imposing electronic surveillance with ArriveCan. 

One marvels at how they dare do some of the things they are doing. Don’t they fear an eventual backlash from the voters?

Maybe not. Maybe soon there will be no more real votes or voters.

The same process seems to be moving along smarlty in Europe and the US as well.

I still think C-Milk and Serpenza are wrong, and that they will fail. While the new technology can be used to vastly expand government and corporate control, it also puts a computer and a communications hub in everyone’s palm. On balance, I think the stream of new information will outpace the government’s ability to control it. Thanks also to the “weaponized autism” of the nerds. The increase in authoritarianism is exactly because the bullies feel they are losing control.

I say the whole criminal enterprise collapses, and soon. I suspect China first. All it really takes is for some well-positioned military unit to refuse orders to fire on a  crowd.

At a minimum, anyone who, up until the start of the pandemic, still basically trusted government, now looks foolish.

Aitchison Attacks Lewis

 

The race for the Tory leadership is coming down to the wire. Today, I received an urgent email from Scott Aitchison warning me not to vote for Leslyn Lewis.

It seems an odd thing to waste time on, since Pierre Poilievre has lapped the field, Lewis is probably running third, and Aitchison fifth. Why this fight?

Which makes it less forgivable. It violates Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, to speak no ill of another Conservative (Republican). Criticism of a fellow Conservative feeds the Liberals sound bites for future election ads.

Donald Trump seems to violate this rule. Most recently he called for Mitch McConnell to be removed as Senate leader. But Trump only fires back: McConnell was running down Republican candidates.

Pierre Poilievre has also been harsh towards rivals in this race; but, again, it seems to me that Charest and Brown went after him first, and he was returning fire. Since he has been ahead from the beginning, why would he draw attention to another candidate by criticizing them?

Aitchison does this although to all outward appearances he has little personally to gain; he is not going to win the race. Does he have some overriding moral reason?

Aitchison’s specific concern is that Lewis has said in an email that vaccine mandates violate the Nuremberg Code.

Since I am a party member, I get Lewis’s campaign emails, just as I get Aitchison’s. I cannot find any such email in my inbox, and Aitchison, for good reason, does not link to it in his condemnation. She never said it.

The closest is an email from Lewis on August 19 outlining the Nuremberg Code and historical violations of it in the US, Canada and elsewhere, notably against blacks and natives. She warns that we must remain on the alert. 

She does not mention vaccine mandates.

So Aitchison is not running down a fellow Conservative out of principle. He is lying about them, out of pure partisanship.

He goes on “Leslyn Lewis is comparing the horrors of the Holocaust to the challenges we face today.” 

The Nuremberg Code is not about the Holocaust. It protects human rights from unscrupulous medical experimentation. To object to applying the Nuremberg Code to anything outside Nazi Germany is to object to the Nuremberg Code. 

Aitchison: “A small but growing number of people opposed to various COVID response measures have been making the bogus claim that mandates or policies enacted over the past two years are like what took place in Nazi Germany.”

Really? Rather, some, not Leslyn Lewis, are saying the vaccine mandates are in violation of the Nuremberg Code.

At least, I heard this claim from Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. That’s the only place I have heard it, other than from Aitchison, although I keep close tabs on right-wing media. Erskine-Smith was citing it as a reason for imposing the Emergencies Act—to silence such unacceptable opinions.

Making Aitchison look like a fifth columnist waving a false flag.

Why is it so important to silence this view? If it is clearly false, one ought to be able to refute it easily. If, instead, you want to silence it, and so urgently want to silence it, there can be only one reason: because it is true. If you want to falsify it, it is because you cannot argue against it.

Aitchison sums up: “Let me be clear — being offered a vaccine that prevents serious illness and our governments’ responses to this pandemic are not the same as being tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.”

The issue is not being offered a vaccine, but being forced to take one. And Aitchison is the one equating a medical experiment with a Nazi concentration camp. He, with Erskine-Smith, is the one who ought to be condemned for incendiary rhetoric.

Aitcheson links to the argument that the vaccine is not experimental, because it has been approved by the Canadian government. 

This is circular. That is saying a government can never be held to have violated human rights, because they are following their own rules.

Whether the vaccines were or are experimental must be objectively determined. The argument is that they necessarily are. They use new technology, which without a time machine cannot have been evaluated as to its long term effects. 

It was always a mystery why Aitchison ran for the leadership, and where he found the financial support necessary. He was a political unknown with no visible ideological or regional constituency.

I think we can conclude now that he is bought and paid for by someone who does not have the best interests of the Conservative Party or the Canadian people at heart. Some special interest. 

Biden Cancels Student Loan Debt

 

Joe Biden has unilaterally announced $300 million dollars in student loan forgiveness.

This is a bad idea. It takes from the poor and gives to the rich. Those who could not afford university in the first place must now pay for those who could. Shop hands and factory workers are subsidizing doctors and lawyers.

Further, we have too many people going to university. We need more skilled trades. Sending so many people to university simply unnecessarily raises the qualifications expected for white collar jobs. 

And more and more of what is taught at university now is useless. I do not mean the humanities, as such, not the proverbial degree in Ebnglish lit, which is of immense social value, but I do mean the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, which are purely political indoctrination, and then pop culture courses on things like the history of rap music, Armenians in film, or the like. Pop culture is worth studying, but in such courses, by trying to be contemporary, the students start out knowing more than the teacher. So they are a waste of time in the university setting. 

Many technical or scientific courses present the same problem, and are generally better suited to a technical college. When technology or science is moving fast, by the time one has finished a four-year degree, what one learned in years one and two is probably obsolete. Worse—your professor must have spent nine years or more getting a Ph.D. By then he is so out of touch that almost everything he knows is wrong.

The better approach is to snag two foundation years, then keep learning on the job. If necessary, night courses online.

With so many going to university who are not really suited to university and the life of the scholar, much taught in university could be, should be, and previously was taught in high school. Now there is almost always, for example, a first year remedial writing course.

On top of this, whenever the government puts more money into tuition or higher education subsidies, the universities have the temptation to simply raise their fees. If the average middle class family could afford $5,000, and the government will give them $5,000 for university, why not hike the fees to $10,000? The cost of tuition has been rising for years at an indefensible rate, far more than the rate of inflation. The money ends up not helping kids or families, but in the pockets of an army of university bureaucrats.

This may be exactly what is intended: this is the Democratic Party’s base. But a better plan, if this is not graft, would be a system of vouchers for two years at either university or technical college, along with carefully audited state schools that would provide education for no more than the vouchers pay.

Tom Flanagan on the Residential Schools

Professor Flanagan loves my book, by the way, and wrote a blurb endorsing it.

Order it above or at a variety of online retailers.

Jivani on Wokeness

 

My quibble is that Jivani himself resorts to racism to defend his position by characterising wokeness as "American." As though this is a rap against it.

"New" Treatments for Depression

 

With the collapse of popular trust in the SSRI antidepressants, Dr. John Campbell, who has himself suffered from the black dog, reviews the recent literature suggesting that small doses of hallucinogenic drugs like psilocybin may be an effective treatment.

This should be no surprise. But it has nothing to do with chemical interactions or the lack of certain chemicals in the brain. It has to do with consciousness.

Depression and chronic anxiety are caused by having been indoctrinated with a false world view and false self-image. In the natural course, this is most likely to have been by a malicious or narcissistic parent. It can also afflict an entire society. This is why mental illness is increasing rapidly in our own.

More directly, depression, which is really to say, a sense of meaninglessness, and chronic, omnidirectional anxiety, is caused by a dissonance between the world view and one’s own sense experience, conscience, and common sense. This is deeply disorienting.

Second premise: what we call the imagination is an organ of perception that reveals, if only in small part, the world of universals, of ideal forms as defined by Plato. That is, what we perceive through imagination is not random or “made up,” but universal truths. Jung called them “archetypes.” But he falsely thought they represented something else, something physical. They are simply the real world.

Therefore, the proper and necessary cure for the distorted world view that causes depression and anxiety is the exercise of the imagination. This can and ideally will restore a sound basis to our thought.

Shakespeare, great psychologist that he was, presented this as a “green world” in which his characters’ problems, generally caused by an error in self-image, were resolved.

Traditionally, this reorientation or reprogramming is done through the arts, through prayer, and through meditation, “mindfulness.” Pagan societies might treat mental illness with a masked dance. It has also long been noted that mental distress can be soothed by travel, by “getting away from it all.” As a result, “ships of fools” reputedly used to sail constantly up and down the Rhine.

All these are ways to develop the imagination and open channels to the eternal world.

This also happens spontaneously through psychosis. Rather than a disease, psychosis, like a fever, is a healthy corrective response to some critical bit of false programming. Tragically, we no longer let it run its course, making mental illness incurable.

The same effect can also be stimulated artificially by psychotropics. We have known this well enough since the 60s. They can force open the inner eye. People often claim to “see God,” and so forth.

Therefore they can cure depression.

The problem is that psychotropics are undirected. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy. There are demons and new darknesses as well as fairies and rainbows. Using psychotropics is like letting psychosis run its course. Most often, it will cure; but some will only get more deeply trapped. Just as some psychotics stay psychotic indefinitely.

One needs a spiritual guide, who will reliably direct towards the light.

Some materialist in a white coat has no idea how or where to spiritually guide.



The best treatment for depression and anxiety remains the best of the arts, meditation, and prayer. For these are guided, tested and reliable. Small doses of psilocybin or other chemical substances might assist in this process.

Pierre Poilievre on Taxation

 

More of Pierre Poilievre brilliantly channelling Ronald Reagan.

Pierre Poilievre Explains Inflation

 

Poilievre is impressive at explaining things. He is as good at this as Ronald Reagan or Margaret THatcher, with shades of John Diefenbaker. It is a lot of fun to have him around, and I predict this approach will win with the public.

Existential Threat

 

Fun song/video recommended by my son.

Stereotypes

 

George Orwell claimed that his only real talent was the ability to look truth straight in the eye, and speak it.

This is the secret of all the arts. Great artists are simply truth tellers; prophets. Most people, as Churchill observed, if they encounter truth, will pick themselves up and dust themselves off as though nothing has happened.

Because I have made a bit of a splash with my poetry lately, someone was writing my bio for publication. In a print interview, I offered them a variety of details about my life.

It did not matter. They ignored what I had written, and substituted stereotypes. I told them that my father was an engineer, and my mother had been raised on a farm. From this, they got “Both parents grew up on Canadian farms and brought a stoicism to child rearing that didn’t mesh well with Stephen’s innately empathic, sensitive nature.”

The author, a certifiably highly intelligent woman with literary interests, was superimposing on me the American Gothic stereotype of the farmer as salt of the earth, but rigid in his views, together with the nineteenth-century romantic idea of the poet as a fragile, sensitive soul. 

What I actually said had contradicted this. It did not matter. The stereotype must be substituted for the reality.

She also of course pegged me in passing as “an avid reader.” Yawn. True, as it happens, and a reasonable inference, but a cliché. Hardly worth saying, for it does not inform the reader.

Then she wrote “Stephen hopes to inspire others who might feel as alone and misunderstood as he did growing up.” The standard stereotype of the poet speaking “his truth,” “finding his voice.” It sounds like something deliberately bland said by a Miss Universe contestant. And not from me; if it is at least somewhat true, I would never say it. It is no excuse for poetry.

I had told her in the interview that I had lived and worked in half a dozen countries, married a ghost, befriended a Korean princess, witnessed miracles, and had at least three near-death experiences. All of this she left out. She even omitted the name of my home town, Gananoque, in favour of simply saying I “grew up in Ontario.” Anything that might be interesting to a reader, or identify me as a real human being, was avoided.

What is going on here?

And it is not just this author. In my career as a student and a teacher, I am always infuriated at how unnecessarily bland, dull, and stereotyped the material in textbooks always is. Whenever I try to change this in our materials, and run it by a colleague for vetting, they always strike out anything interesting, generally without explanation. Remember the old “Dick and Jane” readers? The blandness is deliberate. It is not due to mere incompetence, inability to do better. Most people are terrified of departing from stereotypes.

As a teacher, I find most students too rely on stereotype and cliché when they write. Not doing so is the dividing line between those who can write and those who cannot.

Most of those who pose as artists, even at the professional level, also deal relentlessly in stereotype and cliché. Most poems and paintings of any age look drearily alike. We can predict what they will be before seeing them. There is no reason for such art, as it is only saying things we already think.

The few who break away shine like diamonds.

Most people are insane. They are intentionally insane; it is a moral choice. They do not want to see reality. Only the small minority of those who consider themselves artists who really are artists are sane; and their core readership. It is a minority within a minority.

Why would anyone choose to be insane? For one reason: the truth would not speak well of them. They have a guilty conscience.

Further, people are driven to delusion, to cling to stereotypes and clichés, because they are afraid of truth. Those who are afraid of truth are afraid because they have a guilty conscience.

“Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” John 3: 19-20.

Aside from being the only ones who tell the truth, artists and poets are the only moral people among us.

By their fruits, as Jesus said, you shall know them. 

Those who have eyes to see, see, and ears to hear, hear.

Paxil In Terra

 

Jesus said to his disciples:

 “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!

There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!

 Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

This, last Sunday’s gospel reading, is an essential corrective to the “gentle Jesus” lie.

My local priest insisted in his sermon that of course this did not mean that Jesus or God wanted division. Jesus indeed came to bring peace. The division was that some would not listen to his call for peace.

Too clever by half. Besides, it contradicts Jesus’s actual words: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.”

Had Jesus really called for peace, he would not have been crucified. The established powers would be delighted, as they embrace that message today.

If all you want is peace, Buddhism is the religion for you. Hakuna Matata. For Christianity, that is cowardice and acedia. Christian existence is an eternal war of good against evil. The Christian is, in St. Paul’s words, to “work out his salvation in fear and trembling.” The goal is not peace and acceptance of what is, but justice and the heavenly Jerusalem.

A Rant from Neil Oliver

 

The one thing that makes me hesitate to agree with Oliver is the fact that he has still been able to say this, and to get it online.

Freedom at Midnight

 

Today marks India’s Independence Day, which friend Xerxes considers the end of empire and the beginning of the era of decolonization.

I think he’s off by a couple of centuries or so. I’d pick July 4, 1776. Not just because that date marked the independence of 13 former colonies, but because the USA then inspired and sponsored decolonization generally. Soon after, most of the nations of the Western Hemisphere declared their independence. I believe Canadian or Australian independence was also inevitable due to the American model. That’s a large portion of the world to overlook.

Moreover, the fundamental revolutionary principle, “no taxation without representation,” if applied anywhere, makes empire impossible. It’s not an empire, or a colony, if everyone gets the vote.

The nations thus formed, on the American model, therefore further refused themselves to have empires or colonies.

The next most important date in the history of decolonization was January 8, 1918. This is when US President Wilson declared his Fourteen Points, which he was more or less able to impose at the WWI peace conferences. This dismantled the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian Empires, another huge swath of the world. Ireland soon broke away from the British Empire. The Korean independence movement formed. The dissolution of remaining empires would have to wait, but the philosophical foundation had been laid. This is the novel idea that political boundaries should correspond to ethnic boundaries---the nation state. This made little sense for kingdoms; more for republics and democracies. When former German colonies were divided among the victors, they were assigned as League of Nations “mandates,” not as sovereign territory. Eventual independence was now assumed—for all colonies.

August 15, 1947, was just the biggest single colony to go.

But the British Raj itself did not end prior Indian independence. When the British arrived, India was under the control of the Mughals, from Uzbekistan. Empire and colonialism was not a European invention. It was the universal norm from ancient Mesopotamia until 1776, or even until Wilson’s Fourteen Points. It is the nation state, decolonialization, and democracy, and not empire, that is Europe’s historic contribution. Or rather, Europe’s and America’s.

Wilson’s ethnic nation states too have brought their problems. The nation state, after all, has given us Nazi Germany, the Young Turks, much strife at partition in India, and similar strife elsewhere—one might mention Ireland, Cyprus, Palestine, Rwanda, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sri Lanka, Burma, Timor Leste, … it is an almost endless list. The EU can be seen as an attempt to return to some of the benefits of Empire. So too NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Were it not democratic, modern India would still be an empire. It incorporates disparate ethnic groups, of disparate languages and cultures, under one government. So too for Canada, were it not democratic. Democracy is the key, not division into ethnic states--national ghettos.

Klavan on Truth

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/lWeYoYQqK6c?feature=share

It's a broken world. Anyone satisfied with it is depraved.

Lies My Country Told Me

 

The War of 1812 as Americans Remember It

A Chinese student wants to talk of Nancy Pelosi. Apparently she is trying to start World War III.

I took the tack that China really shouldn’t care, since Pelosi was just visiting, not declaring Taiwan independent. Why assume hostility? For that matter, why care if Taiwan is independent? America has no problem with Canada being independent.  But I had a hard time getting him to move on.

A colleague laments how everyone brainwashes kids.

Including our own countries and our own schools. I grew up convinced that Canada had trounced the US in the War of 1812. News to the Americans I met in grad school. Canada was involved? They understood that they had trounced the British. 

In China, I was similarly taken aback to learn that North Korea won the Korean War.

So were they brainwashed, or was I? 

A bit of both. I learned from these experiences.

I remember a group of Chinese teachers studying with me in Canada at a time when there was concern over North Korea getting nukes—before they actually got nukes. Without thinking, I lamented the problem. And the response was sharp: “Why does America think only they should have nuclear weapons?”

I had to think long and hard about that one. I think they have a point. Perhaps if every country had nuclear weapons, war would be eliminated as a possibility altogether.

I was in Saudi Arabia when Osama Bin Laden was shot by the US Navy Seals. My officemates were enraged at this murder by the evil Americans. I managed, “Well, at least he died bravely, with his boots on. Not like Saddam.” 

That seemed to satisfy them. I was not the enemy.

An Arab student wanted me to agree that Hitler was really a good guy. At least he did something about the Jews…

My awkward counter was, whether you agreed with him or not, you had to admit that he was a failure, and left Germany in worse shape than he found it.

Again, that seemed to satisfy him. Although I felt guilty for not immediately defending the Jews. It gave me a lot of sympathy for Pope Pius XII.

One of the advantages of the expat experience is that it tends to expose the biases you have been brought up with.

I think the Koreans and the Filipinos are pretty good on this score. They’ve been lied to by their governments so often and incompetently, that they rarely believe anything from anyone. We Westerners may be easier marks.

Raining Shoes

 

Amidst the current chaos, there is a sense that a second shoe has not yet dropped. Nobody seems sure what happens next.

Half of commentators are sounding the alarm about China’s imminent rise to world hegemony. The other half are saying its economy will collapse within weeks.

Half of commentators are saying Russia is winning against Ukraine, and any Ukrainian victory is a pipedream. Half say Russia is on the verge of exhaustion.

Half say Russia is near default due to sanctions. Half say Russia is actually benefitting from them, and the West suffering.

Half are saying the Trudeau government is on its last legs, and the rise of Pierre Poilievre is historic. Half are saying the Liberals are planning a snap fall election to grab their majority, and Pierre Poilievre will reduce the Tories to a fringe party..

Half are saying Trump has finally been caught red-handed, and faces prison time. Half are saying the recent FBI raid ensures he wins the next election.

Half are saying we are entering a period of severe inflation. Half are saying any inflation is temporary. And some are actually saying the problem will be deflation.

Half are saying we are in a recession. Half deny it. Some say it is a historic depression.

I expect this is an inevitable step on the downward slope, once the cognoscenti have declared there is no reality. Now nobody knows any longer what is real.

Add to this the real instability we have been living through; we have come to expect the unexpected.

I hold out hopes that, two years or so from now, Pierre Poilievre will be prime minister, Donald Trump will be US president, Xi will be gone, Putin will be gone, and Pope Francis will have resigned. The COVID crisis passed, the economies of Europe and North America will be booming, while India, Indonesia, Vietnam and others take up the manufacturing slack from a relatively weaker China transitioning to democracy. All appear to be real possibilities, 50/50 in the absence of reliable data. And if they all come true, it looks like a dawning golden age.

The Sun on Trudeau

 

And the sins of the son are visited upon the father's legacy...

Bill Maher on Cultural Appropriation

 

Righteous Anger

 

An important theological point to make, because it is often misrepresented and falsified.

Salman Rushdie

 

Salman Rushdie has at last been gotten to by the Muslim terrorists. 

The perpetrator has been caught, and will no doubt face stiff punishment. 

And nothing will change, more broadly. Someone else will be next.

Muslim terrorism keeps resurfacing, and is growing. Nations with longstanding Muslim minorities, like the Philippines, can attest that Muslim violence has been a fact of life there for centuries. It is growing now simply because there are more points of contact between Islam and the rest of the world. 

Nobody has yet found a way to stop it; although there is the legend that General Pershing, or some other American or British worthy, when informed that it was simply the local Muslim custom to every now and then run amok and behead random citizens, and nothing could be done about it, explained that it was the American custom, when such events occurred, to open fire.

I expect this is apocryphal. The conventional protections and punishments do not work, because we are dealing, broadly, with “suicide bombers.” The assailant does not care about dying. They get a big reward in the hereafter. So what can we possibly do to stop or to discourage them? Execute them? To their minds, and those of their supporters, that just makes them an immortal martyr.

Here’s the way to discourage Muslim terrorism. Each attack, very publicly seize or destroy a mosque. A mosque of commensurate value. If, for example, there was a $5 million fatwa on Rushdie’s head, seize American mosques of equivalent book value. If the target is something like the World Trade Centre, a cruise missile hitting the Ka’aba.

Some, of course, will immediately protest. This is unjust to average Muslims, who have nothing to do with the assaults. This is Islamophobia. This is religious persecution.

Yet, for fair comparison, we have no problem with seizing Catholic Church funds and property to punish the crimes of individual priests and bishops. Obviously, ordinary Catholics did not endorse these sex crimes, had nothing to do with them, and are their primary victims. Yet they are being punished for them.

Surely it is fairer to seize mosques in response to religious terrorism. A pity for individual Muslims; yet after all, unlike the sexual sins of priests, the terrorists are motivated by the explicit idea of advancing Islam. Unlike seizing Catholic Church property, which looks only like religious persecution, seizing mosques might deter future crimes. A prospective terrorist would have to think twice: is he advancing Islam, or harming it? Can he risk the chance of being condemned in the next life instead of rewarded?

Peak Korean

 

Why the World Has Gone Mad

 

Behind closed doors... Mar a Lago front gate.

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago looks like a truly foolish move by the Biden administration. Unless it produces something utterly alarming about Trump, some smoking howitzer, it is most likely to rally support for him and against the Dems just in time for the midterms. And even if it does produce some damning evidence, because of the way it was carried out, and the way damning evidence is ignored in the case of the Bidens, any Trump supporters will probably just assume the evidence was planted. The general public might well too.

The Washington Post suggests the issue had something to do with the nuclear arsenal. That sounds impressive. But even if so, why not a simple request to turn the relevant documents over? At most, a subpoena? Trump had full control over the nuclear arsenal for four years. He has had whatever he now has for two more years. Why is it an urgent problem now?

One explanation, previously suggested in this space, is that there is some blackmail ring forcing powerful people to act against their immediate interests. Trump may have dirt on someone. 

Another is that the American administration has gone insane. 

Here’s how it might have happened. 

As Nietzsche observed, madness is rare in individuals, but the norm in groups. If any one of us wakes up one day and decides we are Napoleon Bonaparte, it will quickly become difficult to sustain that delusion. People around us will tend to ignore our orders, even laugh at us. They may send for the white frock brigade. If, however, a group of people jointly decide that one of them is Napoleon Bonaparte, the delusion is immediately more convincing. Especially if they live in close quarters and cut off the outside world. This is how dysfunctional families work.

This is how dysfunctional governments work as well.

“Cancel culture” is a systematic move by some—by many--to cut off their own sources of information. It is a sure mark of incipient madness. This allows them, within their close-knit circuit, to ignore reality. Within this bubble, they can grow hysterical about the dangers of global warming, or decide that men can become women, or that a prejudice in favour of reality itself is “white supremacy.” They will come to delight in their delusions, because they demonstrate their exclusive group membership, and show their awesome power.

This surely is what we see happening to governments and elites everywhere.

But the real world has a way of finding revenge. Gravity is cruel to those who try to defy it. Those who are prepared to listen to ideas they disagree with over time develop a huge strategic advantage: they know what is actually going on, and the dysfunctional with thumbs in their ears do not. 

The Americans—and everyone else-- thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction mostly because he behaved as though he had weapons of mass destruction. He refused to let inspectors in to find out. He risked war to prevent them. This was madness, if he had nothing to hide.

The simplest explanation for this self-destructive behavior is that Saddam himself thought he had weapons of mass destruction. Dictators want to hear only good news. Accordingly, clever sycophants learn to tell them what they want to hear. As a result, sooner or later, lacking any knowledge of what is really going on, they will make a fatal misjudgment. 

We see something similar now with Vladimir Putin. His underlings seem to have badly misled him about the sentiments of Ukrainians and the capabilities of his armies. We may be seeing something like this with Xi Jinping in China. His economic and diplomatic policies look likely to push China off a cliff. Local officials have been sending in false figures for years.

Closer to home, Justin Trudeau may have been genuinely blindsided by the size and strength of the Freedom Convoy in February. He may have believed this was a “fringe minority.” Disoriented by the sudden flash of reality, he might have believed that this must have been funded by some nefarious foreign power. He then panicked and declared a state of emergency. It was the hysterical reaction of the psychotic whose delusions are challenged.

So too, the Democrats in the US look hysterical about the “Russia hoax.” I do not think they could ever have believed it; but the deluded are lying, first of all, to themselves. It was a way to save face rather than accept that the “deplorables,” the “far right,” the “bitter clingers,” whom they had been refusing to listen to, were actually close to a majority of the American people. They went paranoid again over January 6th. And now the Mar-a-Lago raid.

And so it goes. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. 

Why is it all happening now, and so fast?

Because this disparity between the dysfunctional delusional and the open-minded has been multiplied in recent years by the growth of information technology. In earlier years, while the elite lived in their bubble, so did the rest of us, since everyone’s ability to communicate was limited. Now that we can all, so far as the technology is concerned, both talk to and listen to one another almost without limit, anyone who refuses to listen is at a much greater and more immediate disadvantage.

While the present period of hysteria looks grim, it is liable to lead to a much brighter future soon. It may get much more nasty, but we are witnessing a rear-guard action.

The Devil and Annie Wilkes

 

Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her portrayal of Annie Wilkes. She laments in an interview of her difficulties with the role. Stephen King left her no “backstory.” She and director Rob Reiner had to make one up. They agreed that Wilkes must have been abused by her father.

In fact, through the device of a scrapbook, King gives an extensive backstory for Annie Wilkes: details of her career as a nurse, a former marriage, previous homes, and a series of murders. What more could any reader ask?

Backstory here is a euphemism. What Bates means is that she needed some moral justification for Wilkes’s narcissistic behaviour. Some reason it wasn’t her fault.

I think any perceptive reader can immediately see why King did not include this idea of having been abused by her father. To any perceptive reader it would not have rung true.

King should not have included a justification for Wilkes’s narcissism, because there is none. King, at least, understands human psychology. Narcissism is a choice. It is the choice Lucifer made in the Biblical account. He would make himself God. It is the choice Eve made in eating the apple: she and Adam might become “as gods, knowing good and evil.”

To suppose instead that Annie Wilkes was “mentally ill,” through no fault of her own, and had no choice but to behave as she did, is untenable for several reasons. 

First, it introduces an infinite regression, a logical impossibility. Then why did her father behave as he did? Because of his parents? Why did they behave as they did? And so on to infinity. Occam’s Razor: someone must be responsible for their own actions, and if anyone is, all are.

Second, it is self-evident to all of us that we have free will. We could not function for a moment without this understanding. This is a prime example of a self-evident truth. Therefore, if she is human, Annie Wilkes too has free will.

To assume that Annie Wilkes or anyone else—including Hitler or Charles Manson—killed because they were mentally ill is to dehumanize them. It reduces them to robots.

Finally, to ascribe evil to mental illness is the worst sort of slander against the genuinely mentally ill. It is like ascribing evil to someone because they have a hunchback.

Why the desperate need, not just on the part of Kathy Bates and Rob Reiner, but of so many people, to turn their faces away and refuse to admit the existence of human evil? Often, to actually blame and punish anyone who points it out—as, for example, “judgmental”?

It is transparently to avoid their own consciences. They are aware of sins of their own, and do not want to think about it. It is in effect an admission of guilt, and, worse, a refusal to take responsibility and repent.

This looks like the sin against the Holy Spirit. 

If so, such people—it looks like a good many, perhaps most, people—are hellbent and hellbound.

A sobering thought. But hardly an unbiblical one, or one that violates the traditional religious understanding of the world.

Stephen King's Misery

 

I have never until just now read Stephen King. I remember trying to start on Salem’s Lot once, and then at another time on The Shining, but soon putting them down. Other than the acknowledged great works, I have never felt I had time for novels. They were mere entertainment. And Stephen King has that reputation. Horror: cheap thrills.

Recently, however, I caught Misery streaming on Tubi. I watched idly for a while before bed, figured I’d finish it the next day. But the next day it had been removed from the service. Driven to know want happened next—nobody says King is bad at plotting--I just had to pick up the book from the library.

I now stand amazed at how good a writer King is. Of course he is great at plot—that is why he is so popular. But I discover he is also a master at description, writing dialogue, and, most importantly, characterization. I teach writing. King is a master craftsman, who is a model of all aspects of the trade. Especially characterization. This is the mark of the great writer—to understand human psychology. You need to understand human psychology to know what will keep the reader reading; you must be deeply empathic. And you need to understand human psychology to be able to create characters who seem alive on the page. 

In the character of Annie Wilkes, King gives us a perfect analysis of the narcissist, in their true self, behind closed doors. Having had the misfortune of having to survive narcissists for much of my own life, I found the accuracy of the portrayal haunting. King understands it far better than the psychiatrists. How does he know? I wonder about the details of his own upbringing.

Annie Wilkes, the narcissist, is hopelessly sentimental. Narcissists have sentiments, not emotions. As Jung said, “sentimentality is a façade concealing brutality.” So she is inevitably, in her own eyes, the “number one fan” for Paul Sheldon’s series of bodice rippers. And she cannot tolerate the heroine dying at the end of the story.

Perhaps this is where King learned about narcissism—from fans of his own writing. Although actually written to a high standard, his writing can also be enjoyed by readers at the penny dreadful level.

As a narcissist, Annie is obsessed with exercising power over others. She therefore gravitates to a profession that offers this: nursing. She seeks to control Sheldon to the point not only of kidnapping him, but hobbling him. She decides what he can and cannot write. She enjoys inflicting pain. She enjoys killing.

Like all narcissists, she projects her own moods on those in her power. This is the great evil of living with a narcissist, and what is most disorienting. One minute she is declaring her undying love; the next she turns dark and starts maiming him for his supposed wickedness. 

Like all narcissists, she has her own rigid sense of morality, and presents herself as the arbiter of right and wrong. She burns Sheldon’s manuscript because he uses bad language. But in reality ”good” only means what she wants. Anyone else who does not do what she wants is a “brat.”

Like all narcissists, she is paranoid. Everyone else is out to get her. This may be a projection: she is out to get everyone else. Or it may be because she is, to herself, so important. So everyone else’s thoughts must be of her.

Like all narcissists, she lies and gaslights. In the novel, she kills a policeman, then blames Sheldon for it. It was his fault, for crying for help. That especially rings true. She claims to have been lovers with a tourist she killed; Sheldon finds this improbable, and I think we can assume he is right. More likely, she killed him because he would not make love to her. A narcissist will insist that whatever they want to be true is true. Yet they also know they are lying, for Annie certainly takes care to conceal the evidence of her misdeeds.

Most remarkably accurately, perhaps, Annie smells bad. I have never seen anyone else but King mention this before. But in my experience, narcissists always smell bad. Heaven knows why. Perhaps because they think they’re wonderful as they are, and so see no need to stay clean. Perhaps because their conscience troubles them, so they sweat a lot. But I think no one mentions this because it seems supernatural, and perhaps it is. Perhaps evil stinks.

Now I must read more from King. And I recommend Misery to others.

Tulsi Gabbard Chimes In

 

Night Raid on Mar-a-Lago

 

Julius makes his move.

Democracies are not easy to build, because they depend on a series of gentlemen’s agreement. Should anyone violate the terms, things can collapse.

That has now clearly happened in the US, as it happened in Canada in March. Former presidents are not to be prosecuted. Their homes are not to be raided. This looks like political intimidation, even if there is good cause. Nixon was preemptively pardoned. Nobody has gone after Hillary or Bill Clinton, despite much evidence. Even Ferdinand Marcos was allowed to die in peace. Harass opponents, and they have every reason to refuse to leave power once they get it. Your next election may be your last. Or maybe the previous election.

Some online pundits have referred to this as the Democrats “crossing the Rubicon.” 

Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon led to civil war. 

Perhaps there is some really compelling explanation for the recent raid on Mar-a-Lago. I cannot conceive of one. Especially when you compare inaction on Hunter Biden, for example. Add to this the recent ruinous judgement against Alex Jones for, in effect, expressing an unpopular opinion. Compared to inaction on the “Russia hoax.” Add to this the recent passage of a bill doubling the size of the IRS, as if in preparation for using that agency to go after political opposition. 

As the Canadian government has already been doing, suppressing non-violent protests and freezing assets.

So much for vain hopes of Canada’s salvation coming from south of the border. Maybe after the revolution is over…

For it looks to me more like a pre-revolutionary situation than a civil war. I think people are soon simply going to stop obeying authority. Once this happens, a government may resort to violence, but if a significant proportion of the population refuse to buckle, they must collapse. In China, we see people in large numbers refusing to pay their mortgages. In Sri Lanka, they stormed the presidential palace. Canadians have begun to refuse to use the ArriveCan app or answer questions at the border from the health authorities. Dutch farmers are slow-rolling the roads. 

If and when any one of these resistances succeeds, the revolutionary fever spreads; as we saw in the Arab Spring, or in the fall of the Berlin Wall, or in the revolutions of 1848. The kindling is everywhere, and the authorities everywhere are playing with matches.

We live in interesting times.

The Promised Land

 

Heb 11:1-2, 8-19:

Brothers and sisters: Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen. Because of it the ancients were well attested.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go. 

By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God.

By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age—and Sarah herself was sterile—for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.

So it was that there came forth from one man, himself as good as dead, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the seashore.

All these died in faith.

They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland.

If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return.

But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one.

Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

This was the second reading at last Sunday’s mass. The motto of the Order of Canada, “they desire a better country,” comes from the antepenultimate line.

Ironically, the “better country” referred to is clearly heaven. Not Canada. And anyone who supposes Canada is the goal is scorned here as without faith. “If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had opportunity to return.” The goal is no earthly 

The passage points out that the things God promised to the patriarchs of the Old Testament did not come true during their lifetimes. So did he break his promise? Should they care about what happens to others after their death?

They did, and they accepted the promises, because they considered themselves aliens on earth. This is the essence of faith; as defined in the first lines here. “The realization of what is hoped for, and evidence of things not seen.”

Their true home was the eternal; which is among us at all times as the imagination, and in which we live forever. This is the “promised land” or land of promise.

What May Be Happening in China

 

This might have influence on the housing market elsewhere...

Live from Expo '67

 

In Memoriam

 

An Economic Forecast

I know nothing of economics, and have never presumed to make any such forecasts before. But then again, why not? The experts are always wrong anyway.

Let's see how well I do...

The price of housing in Canada, and no doubt also in the US, must go down. If things cannot go on forever, they won’t. If housing costs so much that people cannot afford it, they stop buying houses, and the price must go down. Currently, the ratio of housing cost to average income is at a historic high.

A mere fall in housing prices response to higher interest rates is not going to change this by itself, because the mortgage costs remain the same, and so the housing is no more affordable. But pushing housing prices down will have a snowball effect.

That costs have gone so much higher in proportion to income suggests that there is a lot of speculation in the market. Why not mortgage to the max, if mortgages are cheap, while housing prices keep climbing? The instant it becomes clear that housing prices will not inevitably rise, and mortgages are not such a great deal, there should be an exodus of much speculative money from the market, forcing prices further down. And each drop has a snowballing effect on speculation.

A lesser and sadder factor is that some people will no longer be able to afford the houses they are in. The rise in mortgage rates is liable to hurt here. In Canada, even fixed rate mortgages last only five years. Some proportion will find they can no longer cover it. Granted that they still will need a place to live, and will still be in the market for some kind of housing, there will be a lot of distress sales, when people cannot afford to hold out for the best price. 

Canadian, and American, demographics is tilting older. That means proportionately fewer new buyers, and more retirees looking to downsize, or dying and leaving their houses empty and up for sale.

Perhaps we are not building enough new houses; CMHC says so. But this is an odd problem, and can only be due to government overregulation. Canada obviously has no shortage of land on which to build. It of all countries has no shortage of building materials. The actions of government are sadly unpredictable, but there is a 50/50 chance things will get better here instead of worse.

So I say home prices in Canada generally should go down for the next few years. And the fall should be rather dramatic.

In other economic news, Kevin O’Leary notes that the figures were are seeing are unprecedented: inflation coupled with recession, coupled with low unemployment figures. These are three things that are not supposed to happen together.

The obvious explanation is that we are in a highly artificial situation, caused by the pandemic and the lockdowns. There seems a good chance things will snap back once these distortions are removed.

Albeit governments, notably the Canadian government, actually seem to be doing their best to prevent a return to normal.

 

Judith Durham, Rest in Peace

 

One of the truly great female voices. Can almost bring tears to my eyes.

I have an oddly vivid memory of listening to "Mortningtown Ride" over some store PA system in NDG long ago. 

I hope Judith is in Morningtown this morning.

The Hellfire Club

 

Scuttlebutt is that Amber Heard ran a prostitution ring in Hollywood. She also videotaped, and blackmailed; and this supposedly explains her hold over Elon Musk, or her own sister.

It sounds fantastic; yet we have heard similar things. What about Jeffrey Epstein—whose clients have never been revealed? What about what we know from his laptop of the life of Hunter Biden?

I suspected that Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was actually an expose. Now I really think so. And wonder whether Kubrick died of natural causes, so soon after filming.

I think we know from Epstein’s untimely and probably imposed suicide that the people involved in these sex and blackmail rings are prepared to kill to keep their secrets, and able to kill with impunity.

The possibility that a large proportion of the rich and powerful are bound together by participation in sex cults, and vulnerability to blackmail as a result, could explain much: the way the Democratic Party seemed able to fix the nomination for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then Biden in 2020. The way Jagmeet Singh formed a coalition with Justin Trudeau, just as Trudeau looked vulnerable to a no-confidence vote, and apparently against the interests of the NDP. The way the Canadian or Dutch governments are so committed to the goals of the WEF that they will act against the interests of their own electorate—and their own re-election. The way the social media companies are so aggressive about censoring content, although it is sure to harm their bottom line. The list goes on.

Francis Dashwood, founder of one of history's "Hellfire Clubs."

It is a conspiracy theory; but experience has informed us that some conspiracies are real.

And really, why wouldn’t it be so? In better times, ruling elites are held back only by their own code of ethics. We know that any sense of ethics or honour has been publicly eroding now for generations. There is no longer, we are told openly by those at the top, any right or wrong. It is just what you can get away with.

Take that view, and this is the inevitable result. What’s the point of having so much money and power if you can’t use it to get yourself sexual pleasures unavailable to the hoi polloi? And why wouldn't some take advantage of the possibilities for blackmail and control? For more of the money and power they have always coveted?

The good thing about conspiracies, though, is that they are vulnerable to collapse. People are not good at keeping secrets. The bigger the cabal is, and the more damaging, the more likely it is that somebody talks. If my suspicions are warranted, it is only a matter of time before it all comes out. Indeed, it is all coming out, despite obvious attempts by the legacy media and authorities to bury it. Probably soon people will hear and realize what they are hearing.

Then there can be no more blackmail. Then everybody talks. Then Jeffrey Epstein, or Stanley Kubrick, will not have died in vain.