Tiny Bubbles... In the Baltic

Many talking heads are saying Russia is behind the Nordstream pipeline sabotage. And, whoever did it, it is being called a “terrorist act.”

Seems to me this is a classic example of the general principle that when they decide to lie, people will assert the very opposite of the truth.

Russia has no motive to blow up their own infrastructure and source of income. 

And “terrorism” is the use of terror to achieve a political goal. If nobody takes responsibility for the act, and we can only guess at the motive, this is not, by definition, terrorism. 

I have seen the argument that this protects Russia from financial liability for cutting off gas supply to Germany. But they had already cut off supply to Germany. If necessary for legal purposes, they could use the excuse of generator problems, for example, without actually damaging their future earnings.

What is the benefit to Russia, in any case, of cutting off gas supply to Germany? Germany loses, but they lose too. The only value is to pressure Germany to stop sending aid to Ukraine. For this, two things are essential: Germany must know that the lack of oil or gas is due to sending weapons to Ukraine, and Russia must be able to turn the supply back on if Germany stops sending weapons to Ukraine. 

Blowing the pipeline anonymously fails on both these counts. Instead, now Russia has lost its ability to pressure Germany. And, after the war, Russia is going to have a much more difficult time getting back on its feet.

That leaves the US as the likeliest suspect.

If so, this was a profoundly reckless act, probably a war crime, and to some extent a betrayal of allies. Which is why the US is not taking responsibility for it.

I expect this truth will out, or already be out, on the Internet and in government channels, if never acknowledged to the general public.

There will be hell to pay for the US in international prestige, and this ought to be an impeachable act. 

Some Speculations on the Nordstream Pipline Explosions

 

Back in the Saddle Again

 

Xi has re-emerged in China, apparently fully in control.

My guess is a failed coup attempt behind the scenes. But who knows?

Sabotage in the Baltic Sea

 

Reuters

In our latest reports from the apocalypse, the Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 pipelines have both sprung leaks at the same moment. 

There seems to be no question that this is an act of sabotage. And no one but a “state actor” could do it. A state actor with significant naval capabilities. 

I say it was either the Americans or the British, probably using a submarine.

No immediate problem for German supply, since the pipelines were barely in operation. But makes it harder for Russian supply to resume in the near future. 

Seems to me it’s a way to hurt Russia. It also helps the US’s oil and gas industry, because they can theoretically replace Russia as supplier. Canada can as well.

I imagine Germany or Denmark, near whose waters it happened, have to be unhappy about it. At least for public consumption. Hence the need for stealth mode.

Why now? Perhaps in retaliation for the Russia callup of reserves. Perhaps as a shot across the bow in response to Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons. 

Others suggest it was Russia. I don't see the motive. 

The Matriarchy Strikes

Delacroix, "Liberty Leading the People" 

Protests are happening now in many places. The golden thread that connects us with our governments has broken. The social contract has broken. Not just in one or two countries, but in many, most, maybe all. All hell is about to break loose.

In many places, these protests seem to be led by women. In Iran, the focus of the protests is the demand to wear the hijab, which only affects women; and it is the death of a young woman in police custody. In Dagestan, and elsewhere in the Russian federation, it is mostly women protesting in the streets. There is a practical reason for this: young men protesting will be hauled off to the front lines in Ukraine. Young men are keeping out of sight. In the US, suburban moms are showing up in droves at school board meetings, alarmed at what their children are being taught. If this group swings decisively away from the Democrats, they are doomed.

In Italy, a woman has just won election as prime minister. She leads a party supposedly further to the right than any previous postwar government; a protest movement. In Canada, a woman, Tamara Lich, organized and led the Freedom Convoy in February. A woman towards the right of that party is now running the UK Conservatives.

The women in particular are rebelling. What does it mean?

In the normal course of things, women prefer security to freedom. They want peace and order. This means they are the natural allies of government and continuity. When women rebel, it is especially significant. And the men naturally defer to them.

You might protest that feminism is a radical movement, hardly in favour of the established order, and we have been living with that for ages. But feminism was never radical, never against government and never against the established order. Feminists were never wild in the streets. Instead, feminism has always demanded bigger government and more social control. It was, moreover, always a movement of the upper and middle classes; bored suburban housewives. Those already in control. And it was, from the start, enthusiastically endorsed and supported by government and the establishment. Nobody ever fired at a feminist in the street. Nobody ever even prosecuted one—at least until Johnny Depp.

It therefore says a great deal when women are genuinely out in the streets, and protesting government and the established social order. Women are the glue that holds society together. They are the natural supports of government. If they are in opposition, society as a whole has turned. Women always get to decide.

I have said before that the crisis point in any revolution is when the military is called out to disperse the crowd, and they refuse. Then government has lost control.

But there is an earlier and almost as important crisis point: when that crowd is largely women.

The army, being male, is particularly unlikely to fire on women. They are likely to join with them instead. Women rule. If the soldiers do fire on women, all hell breaks loose. If men die, even a lot of men, nobody much cares. If women die, it is intolerable to most people, men and women. Now the population will be impossible to control.

So once the crowd is mostly women, the government is doomed.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 happened when the women rioted for bread. The Imperial troops would not fire on them; the Czar fell.

In the EDSA revolution in the Philippines, in 1986, the crucial moment came when the marines were sent in tanks to break up the crowd. A line of nuns knelt in their way. They halted. The army and air force began to defect en masse.

In Argentina in 1980, the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo” pulled down the military junta. They could not be dispersed.

Examples could be multiplied.

When the women are in the streets, the regime is likely to fall. It has lost any regime’s essential support.

We are seeing that happen now.

Latest from China

 This time from a fairly authoritative source...

SOMETHING is going on.

Mysteries of the Hundred-Acre Wood

 

Preferred pronoun: "xi"

Is something going on in China? There is still no indication in the mainstream press; just rumours on Twitter.

That does not mean nothing is happening. It took a week before the mainstream acknowledged the protests currently going on in Iran. The Clinton-Lewinsky affair was first leaked on Drudge Report. For two years, the mainstream media refused to acknowledge the Hunter Biden laptop story. 

This is not, at least in this case, a rap on traditional journalism. It is irresponsible to report unsubstantiated rumours. It is hard to know what is really happening in Iran, or in the Chinese government. It is expensive to find out; and it is all happening far away.

These days, however, for good or ill, we still hear the unsubstantiated rumours, whether the legitimate press picks up on them or not.

Sometimes such rumours are true; where there’s smoke, there is often fire.

I think some power struggle is indeed ongoing in China. That’s little more than a gut instinct. It makes sense that it would, given China’s economic turmoil, the upcoming party congress expected to confirm Xi in power forever, recent harsh convictions of some of his rivals, and his recent trip abroad.

Chinese leaders have a habit of being deposed while they are on a trip abroad. A rash of harsh convictions of rivals can trigger a Robespierre effect—get rid of the tyrant before he comes for you too. By taking such total control and encouraging a personality cult, Xi has taken responsibility for whatever goes wrong. If things are really bad, the quick fix is to scapegoat him. And then there is the Julius Caesar effect: stab him before he makes himself emperor, and becomes too powerful.

I think the cancelled flights are confirmed by reputable sources. I see the videos of long military columns heading towards Beijing. Perhaps nothing has come out publicly, because the end is still in doubt. Nobody has anything yet to announce.

Xi may still be in the game. Or it may still be unclear who replaces him.

Lazarus and Job

 

The reading at mass was the story of Dives and Lazarus. Yet the sermon was on Job. The gospel reading was taken merely as a warning that bad things can happen to good people. We must not always expect sunny skies. 

This was only half right, and being half right, wrong. It is at least an antidote to the demonic idea of the gospel of prosperity, and the “happy happy joy joy” form of Christianity. But it is not the point of the story. It ignores Dives in hell, and does not explain why Lazarus suffers in this life, or why Dives does in the next.

In the story, suffering is not random--it actually isn’t random in the Book of Job either. Job is sent suffering BECAUSE he is a righteous man. Suffering in this world is a mark of God’s favour.

“Woe to you who are rich,

    for you have already received your comfort.

Woe to you who are well fed now,

    for you will go hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now,

    for you will mourn and weep.

Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,

    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”

(Luke 6: 24-6)

Conversely, blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the persecuted.

Abraham explains to the rich man: “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”

Not necessarily that Dives is being punished for being rich. That would not seem fair; although lack of charity is worthy of such punishment. But compare Lazarus: there is nothing to say he has done any thing to deserve heaven, either--it is a pure reward for his suffering. Suffering in this life must be seen as a sign of God’s favour. God sends us only the crosses we can bear, and Dives was not strong enough to bear any cross. 

As St. Ignatius says, if God sends you suffering, it means he wants to make you a saint. 

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

 

The notorious story of the transgender teacher in Toronto that is now getting international coverage may not be what it seems. A tweet suggests this is a guy who was getting pressure from the administration for not being woke enough, so he is trying to troll them.

This is more believable to me than a transvestite shop teacher who wants to wear cartoonish prosthetic breasts.

Video from Beijing

 

Looks as though SOMETHING is happening!

Now This Is Interesting

 

Why the Jews?

 

The CBC of course uses the death of Queen Elizabeth as an opportunity to slam the British and the monarchy. Just as Easter is always an occasion to question the divinity of Christ.

Both speakers simply assert without argument that empire was a matter of “looting and plundering” the colonies. ”Forty-five trillion dollars of wealth stolen just from the Asian subcontinent.” Even defenders of the monarchy and the British are inclined to argue only that the indecencies of the Empire were long ago.

Yet this is a point that needs to be established. Was government by the British more costly to the colonials than local government? There is no reason to assume so. In fact, historians often suggest that the reason the British, and other European, empires broke up after the Second World War was that the European countries could no longer afford them. They were being subsidized, then.

Were local industries suppressed? India commanded a larger portion of world GDP under the Raj than it did for many decades after independence. That does not sound like a suppression of local industry.

Of course, the issue of slavery is raised. Yet, as Don Lemon learned in a recent interview, if slavery is the premise, it is probably the British who deserve reparations. Slavery was universal. Britain was among the first nations to abolish it, they ended it in all their possessions, and they spent a great deal to end the practice everywhere.

The CBC interviewee actually blames Britain for ending the slave trade, on the grounds that they paid for the slaves’ freedom, instead of paying the slaves.

We have probably all had ancestors who were slaves, and ancestors who were slavers. Who pays whom? The one group who seem more deserving than the rest of us are the British, who ended slavery, fought the slave trade worldwide, and were still paying to end slavery as recently as 2015. That means most Britons still living today.

Surely it is they who deserve reparations. 

The interviewer suggests the Koh-I-Noor diamond should be returned “either to India or to South Africa.” But a half-dozen countries in total claim the diamond. They all say it was stolen from them by one of the others. So whom to “give it back” to? England obtained it by a peace treaty, in return for other concessions. If it is returned to India, other elements of that treaty must properly also be renegotiated. In effect, then, it must be bought back. And what if some other country wants to offer Britain more for it?

The interviewee even blames the British Empire for the Caribbean’s sovereign debts, and for climate change.

I doubt any of that sovereign debt was racked up by the colonial authorities. I doubt the British Empire had much effect on greenhouse gases today.

It all reminds me of an old Yiddish joke. A couple of Nazis stop a Jew in the street, and challenge him.

“Who is responsible for Germany’s problems?”

The Jew knows they want an excuse for a beating.

“The Jews,” he answers. “And the bicycle riders.”

“Why the bicycle riders?”

“Why the Jews?”

The answer is simple: because, like the British, they are envied.

Renazification

 

Help me out here, gang.

Is it just me, or is Canada rapidly turning into not just a Fascist, but a Nazi hellhole?

Protests in Iran

 

As seen on Twitter.

More.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1572350814882267137

https://twitter.com/i/status/1572716326535462913

Digging for Mass Graves

 

Kamloops Residential School

Here’s a website by a landscape engineer who has dug into the Kamloops claims of a mass grave, so to speak.

Indigenous “oral histories” are necessarily no more reliable than urban legends. That is what they are. As urban legends, they tend towards the genre of horror. They reveal more of human psychology than history.

The "mass graves" detected by surface radar are probably excavations for an old septic tank.

Silver Linings Shining Through

 

I have felt for some time, intuitively, that we are on the cusp of something this fall; that the old order is passing away. Not just fading, but about to collapse. 

I see more signs of this in the day’s news.

Things are getting hot in Iran. The trigger was the death of a young woman in police custody.

One would not normally expect such an event to lead to mass protests; a lot of young people have died suddenly and mysteriously of late. That it has shows the people of Iran were tinder waiting for a match. This might be the end of that oligarchic regime.

In response to Putin’s mobilization of, at last report, one million conscripts, there is also turmoil in the streets of Russia. There are reports of long lineups at the borders, and overbooked flights out. This might be the end of that oligarchy as well.

American generals interviewed seem to agree that this call up sounds like desperation, that it is unlikely to turn things around in Ukraine, but carries huge domestic risks.

If the people are in the streets in Russia and Iran, and especially if one of those governments goes down, it is likely in this globalized world for the protests to spread. The next likely candidate is China, where people have been growing restive and economically desperate.

In Canada, the Twitter hashtag #TrudeauMustGo is becoming a phenomenon reminiscent of the Freedom Convoy. It seems to have caught on with the public, with over half a million Canadians at last count joining in. They—we--post a short bio and demand Trudeau’s resignation for calling us misogynists, racists, and the like.

If only half a million is not enough to turn out a government, Canadians value their social peace and quiet. If the message gets out that a large body of their fellow citizens are outraged by Trudeau, and they all have friendly, human faces, the likely conclusion in the minds of the Canadian majority is that, for social peace, Trudeau must indeed go. The unrest is not the fault of some deplorable “fringe minority.” These are ordinary, honest neighbours.

One of them is even Trudeau's half-brother.

I feel that things are moving fast. The government of Canada may also be gone soon. Nanos says recent polls show the NDP sucking support from the Liberals, This gives the Dippers a motive to pull the plug on the minority government. They can increase their seat total. At the same time, a closer split between Liberals and NDP is likely to throw seats to the Conservatives.

Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Trudeau Must Go

 

I am a retired college professor, father of two biracial kids. I have lived in the Far East and in the Persian Gulf for two dozen years. I married a Muslim woman. I am published on Buddhism in Korea, and on Hinduism in India. I am triple vaxxed. I have never worn blackface....

I believe in human rights, including the right to control one's own body. This makes me, I am told, xenophobic, Islamophobic, and a racist. I may not even have a right to occupy space. #TrudeauMustGo

Canadian Rhapsody

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1572660992005259264

Unfair and Unbalanced

 

Friend Xerxes laments the decline in journalistic ethics since the dawn of Fox News and talk radio. We are now increasingly vulnerable to “misinformation.”

But the problem with journalistic ethics does not start with Fox News. The original slogans of Fox News were “Fair and balanced,” and “We report—you decide.” They obviously resonated with the public; Fox rocketed to news dominance. Clearly, there was already a public perception that the media were biased. Fox was the antidote.

Fox has dropped these slogans, as more of its schedule has been taken up by commentary. But commentary is not supposed to be neutral—the opinion is why you watch. Xerxes is similarly wrong to accuse “talk radio” of bias. The shows we call “talk radio” are opinion shows, not news. The news side is still, at Fox, pretty unbiased. The same cannot be said of the “legacy media.”

News outlets must decide what to report. The legacy media tend not to report anything they don’t like politically. Even back in the 1980’s, I noticed that whenever the Toronto Star ran a report of a murder, and the suspect was not “white,” no race was mentioned. If, on the other hand, it was a “Caucasian male,” that was always reported.

I recall a few years ago, a pro-life demonstration in Washington that set new records for attendance. It was not reported anywhere I could find in the legacy media. 

The “Freedom Convoy” seemed to most of us to come out of the blue—because the media was not reporting on it as it gathered.

The bias is worse than this. 

In journalism school, you are told that, whenever you report on a controversy, you quote prominent spokespeople on both sides of the issue.

The legacy media almost never to do this anymore. You never hear two sides on issues like the climate debate, or the efficacy of ivermectin for covid, or the efficacy of wearing masks, or the possible risks of the vaccines, or anything involving Donald Trump, and so on. An obvious breach of ethics.

In journalism school, you are also told to check every fact with three independent sources. Legacy media never seems to check a fact any more if it supports the “narrative.” Things are published as fact that a simply Google search could disprove. It is charity to see this as mere negligence. One example: the Covington kids.

An egregious current example: media always refer to the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa as an “illegal occupation.” I even saw an anchor correct an interviewee who referred to it only as a protest.

In fact, whether it was illegal has not yet been determined in court. 

Properly speaking, the media should probably be sued for this. Perhaps, in the fallout, if it is ruled to have been legal, they will be.

Mandates Dead in Canada

 

Gone in ten days.

Myocarditis in Thailand

 

More disturbing evidence...

Why Are People Dying?

 

Dr. Campbell must choose his words carefully. But what if it turns out that, from about September of last year, from about the time that governments, including Canada's, were unaccountably imposing vaccine mandates, from about that time, the vaccines were killing more people than the virus?

There may be hell to pay if and when this gets out.

This may be why Trudeau wanted to call an election last fall--to grab a safe majority before the truth came out.

This may be why his government became so insistent that everyone be vaccinated at this point--to eliminate any control group to reveal the problem with the vaccine.

This may be why there are rumours Trudeau wants to call an election against this fall--for which he seems indeed to have been campaigning all summer.  Because they feel there is still a chance, if they move quickly, to grab a safe majority before the word gets out.

With a majority, at worst, they get four more years in power before they get cashiered. At best, they can manage and control the flow of information. Let someone else into power, without a vested interest in keeping all this quiet, and things could get much worse for them./

Okay, a conspiracy theory, but anyone who does not believe in conspiracies by now seems naive.

Jordan Peterson and Bjorn Lomborg

 

A sobering assessment.

The State of the Academy in Indiana

 

How to speak good English...

One of my Korean students has just started classes at the University of Indiana. He is confused that all international students from countries in which English is not the official majority language must take an extra course in English as a Second Language. He accepts the need in his own case, but notes that some of these students speak impeccable English; some seem, to his ear, to have better English than the professor. And no entrance test was administered: all must take the course, depending only on their place of origin.

This seems to be discriminatory, and to make no sense.

But it makes more sense when we see the topic for his first homework assignment. It is to summarize and compare two short essays. One is by a Chinese-American lamenting that her father is foolishly proud to have lost his Chinese accent. She considers that he has thereby lost part of his ethnic identity, and it is due to cruel social pressure from the majority population. The cruel social pressure being, in part, his being complemented on speaking English well. The other is by a woman of Ojibwe ancestry, who laments that her ancestors had the language taken from them, by having learned English. None of her relatives speak to her in Ojibwe; it has been reserved for prayers. As a result, she must learn it as a second language, in order, in her mind, to reconnect with the thinking of her ancestors.

So the point of the course is apparently not to improve the students’ English. It is to discourage them from improving their English. English, although the course is given entirely in English, is the enemy.

Political indoctrination is plainly the point of this course. But this is actually secondary. The problem in the academy actually goes beyond political indoctrination. To justify their existence, many academic fields and many academics must spend their time in teaching nonsense. If they stuck to the sensible and true, there would be nothing to teach in many fields. Everyone knows, for example, that learning something new is a good thing, to the student’s benefit. If you spend a year simply teaching that it is useful to learn English, you have no course, and no job. 

So why not teach actual content? Why not teach how to write better?

To quote a certain plastic doll, “math is hard.” This requires that the field actually knows anything; and that the professor has learned it. The expansion of the academy into new fields has meant the creation of many new fields without substantial actual content. And in many other fields, the academy is not the proper venue.

In homeschooling my own kids in Canadian history, I read them a sequence of reports from the Kingston Standard of 1832, on the arrival of cholera from Europe. I thought it was especially interesting to compare it with our own recent experience of covid. But the comparison prompted a different response from them:

“How come the writing in newspapers then was so much better?”

This for what was a small-town newspaper, by modern standards.

It is because in those days, people were hired to write for newspapers because they could write well. In our day, people are hired to write for newspapers because they have graduated from journalism school.

Writing cannot be taught in the classroom. This is equally true of other fields: the arts in general, and even teaching itself.

At the same time, teaching correct English, at this level, it is only too likely that students will know more than the professor. That is a frightening prospect for a professor. Best to steer clear of that subject.

So you have to invent something to teach that nobody is likely to know. It therefore has to be something so absurd nobody would have thought it.

And so we get so many of our lunatic “woke” ideas, generated in the academy.

It is wrong to point to a problem without pointing to a solution. The solution is probably already spontaneously in progress. The conventional academy must die, and be replaced by open competition among online courses. The Harvards and McGills may survive by offering comprehensive testing to certify knowledge in a field.

The Winter of Our Discontent

 

We are living through a chaotic time. But this is not necessarily a bad time. Change for the better also brings, for a time, chaos.

We ought to properly appreciate the apparent miracle that happening in Ukraine. As things stand, this relatively smaller nation looks set to defeat the world’s second greatest military power, Europe’s greatest land power, on land, right adjacent to its borders. The impossible appears about to happen. Other nearby nations are growing restive.

We ought to notice the growing economic problems in China. It seems unnecessary to worry about China becoming a new totalitarian world hegemon. The danger of other regimes imitating the Chinese “success” looks suddenly more limited.

 Closed systems can look good over the short or medium term, but they are self-limiting.

The same moral might apply therefore to wokedom, which relies on putting your fingers in your ears and shutting down sources of information. Like the Wizard in Oz, it looks strong so long as it can intimidate the silent majority into silence, the unthinking into thoughtless assent to the loudest voice. As noted here, it is crashing as we speak, largely due to the anonymous “crowdsourcing” possible with the internet. Wokery is getting voted down online, and the big corporations are beginning to worry and respond.

We are insufficiently celebratory on the fading of COVID. It is ending not with a bang but a whimper, which robs us of an inflection point, a V-J Day to celebrate. But that nightmare is over. We are already beginning to forget.

We are now all alarmed by inflation. I am no expert on economics, but it seems to me this has to be temporary. The underlying trend is deflationary.

Let me explain. Inflation is too much currency chasing too few goods. Improved technology means more goods, produced more efficiently. We are in the middle of a major industrial revolution, thanks to computerization, and a quantum jump in efficiency. It is for this reason that, up until two years ago, inflation was not a concern, and the interest rates were historically low. 

Now the supply of goods has been disrupted by covid and the lockdowns. In the meantime, buoyed by their ability to do so without penalty in recent years, governments just started printing money to help people through the lockdowns. This has caused a jump in inflation, but it was artificial. As supply chains come back, and if the government stops handing out money, the matter should correct.

The only problem is that governments have not started to cut back yet. Nothing could be more insane that Biden’s recent program in the USA: spend more money to stop inflation. Except the Canadian government’s idea of raising taxes on carbon, imposing vaccine mandates, and restricting fertilizer during a supply crisis.

But perhaps that too has a silver lining. The cost of living crunch coming now may discredit this approach for some time to come. Sweden has just tossed out their left-leaning government for a right-leaning one. That may be the start of a general trend.

The malaise of the Carter years in the US, after all, were immediately followed by the golden age of Reagan. Carter’s failures made Reagan’s election possible, and the people and congress prepared to consider his policies.

It may be a tough winter.

It may be a glorious spring.

Tucker Carlson Gets It

 

Eerily germane to my most recent post.

The Sins of Pierre Poilievre

 

Watching CBC’s “At Issue” panel and Eric Gernier’s “The Writ” podcast, I learn that the heckling at Pierre Poilievre’s first press conference was actually all Poilievre’s fault. He should somehow mysteriously not have reacted, or something. He somehow invisibly lost his composure and showed aggression and weakness. He is also at fault for MP Alain Rayes leaving caucus just days after Poilievre was elected leader. Although both of these look like attacks on Poilievre, they are actually attacks on Rayes and David Aiken, the journalist, by Poilievre, who is intolerant and violent.

This is what cognitive dissonance, or narcissistic rage, looks like.

The argument in either case is the same: “I know Rayes/Aiken personally. We all do. Everyone does. He is a decent guy. He should be given the benefit of the doubt. Any criticism of Rayes/Aiken is illegitimate.”

The talking heads are here simply confirming the perception that there is a “Laurentian elite,” a Family Compact, running the country. They all know one other, speak only to one another, never to the general public. They live by different rules, and will close ranks, like the Freemasons, against outsiders. They are a ruling class.

One of Grenier’s panelists actually said, of Poilievre calling Rayes a “Liberal heckler,” “It shows you’re losing when you criticize the referee.” This means she thinks the established media are the proper government, as referees are in a sports competition, and ought to be immune from criticism.

Not how democracy is supposed to work.

The Rayes case is a bit complicated. Rayes announced he was leaving the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent, because he could not accept Poilievre as leader. Conservative HQ then sent a text message to party members in his riding suggesting that they contact his office and urge him to resign his seat. Rayes went to the media and complained that his constituency office was being flooded by calls. He called this “intimidation.” The Conservative Party then quickly issued a terse apology: “The Conservative Party of Canada apologizes for an automated text message sent out earlier today to party members in the riding of Richmond-Arthabaska.”

It is generally considered an act of disloyalty for a party member to refuse to back the new leader of their party immediately after a leadership contest. It is also true that voters generally vote primarily for the party, not the local candidate, when they go to the polls in a general election. It is therefore more honourable, although not required, when a member voluntarily leaves their party, to resign the seat and run again to take it in their own name. All the more so in this case, since the majority of Conservative members in Rayes’s own constituency backed Poilievre in the recent leadership vote. So Rayes was acting dishonourably, and the Conservative HQ was acting honourably. Calling on him to resign, now that he had declared himself an opponent, should be no more controversial than calling on Trudeau and the Liberal government to resign.

Moreover, there is something obviously wrong with objecting to a call for a popular vote. There is something obviously wrong with calling the expressed opinions of his constituents “intimidation.” Rayes does not hold his seat by divine right. 

The only problem was that the party quickly apologized. That, too, was an honourable thing to do, if done to soothe any hurt feelings. It was a peace offering. But, predictably, the Laurentian elite simply exploited this as proof that the party was in the wrong. After all, they admitted it!

This is in turn a dishonourable response to an apology. 

Those in power are without honour and without ethics. The only possible justification for a ruling class is a higher code of ethics. With this ruling group, we have the opposite. They must fall.

The media are demanding right out of the gate that Poilievre show proper deference to them, show he is going to play by their rules, or they will go all out to destroy him. 

The problem is, however, that if he plays the game by their rules, those rules dictate that he must always lose. He must surrender his principles, betray his voters, and still lose the election. Witness O’Toole, Romney, McCain—or Boris Johnson in the end. 

One hopes Poilievre is smart enough to see this, to battle the establishment media and rely on the new media to get his message out. It will take nerves of steel. It will take a true leader.

Looking forward, one of Grenier’s panelists saw the future as being “simply bad.” Unnamed parties lacking maturity—they keep talking about maturity, the subtext being that most people other than themselves are and should be treated like children--working in tandem with the Conservative Party, would now be spreading irresponsible falsehoods (or did she say “misinformation”) that the public should not be allowed to hear.

In a democracy, of course, there is nothing the public should not be allowed to hear. It is up to them to decide what is false.

These talking heads so casually say outrageous things, and then all nod their heads in agreement. They are never challenged, in their small bubble.

That bubble must be popped. It will be, sooner or later.

Trudeau Derangement Syndrome?

 

Trump Derangement Syndrome has been a growing social problem for some time. People become irrational when discussing Trump.

We now also seem to have Poilievre Derangement Syndrome; demonstrated by a Global journalist at his most recent press conference. Any sane person would have seen that his was odd and improper behavior. 

Those who suffer from Trump or Poilievre derangement syndrome insist that Trump and Poilievre lie.  But the opposite is true. They are speaking truths we are supposedly not allowed to speak. And they say it clearly, so it cannot be ignored; they are good communicators. 

Precisely this is a problem to people who are trying to impose and live some lie. 

The spontaneous reaction is to claim it is Trump, or Poilievre, who are lying. Confession by projection. 

Another natural reaction is incoherent rage: this is the “fight or flight” reaction. M. Scott Peck and other psychologists have noted this when narcissists are confronted with their falsehoods: “narcissistic rage,” which can look to a sane observer like a psychotic break. They will say or do objectively crazy things; they lose control of themselves. Like the Global reporter.

Another accusation is likely to be that Trump or Poilievre are “bullying” or are being “violent.” When all they are doing is speaking the truth; and with a sense of humour. More confession by projection: resistance feels like bullying to those trying to bully. The cheerfully peaceful freedom truckers faced similar accusations.

But that is not what I write about today. Today, I want to examine my own Trudeau Derangement Syndrome. I can no longer abide the very sight of Justin Trudeau; the sound of his voice is like the proverbial chalk screeching on a blackboard. 

Is this the same thing?

I think not. 

To begin with, I’m pretty confident I do not have outbursts of rage or irrational speech or behaviour as a result. I just turn off the video. I do criticize in print, but I think I do not accuse Trudeau of saying what he did not say, or doing what he did not do. I think I make an effort to preserve context. I think my response is more in the pit of the stomach than in the synapses of the brain. It is disgust more than fear.

And it is not tribal the way TDS seems to be. TDS seems to be caused by only one side of the political spectrum: those who react so passionately to Trump seem to do so as well with Poilievre, or Tucker Carlson, or George Bush, or Ben Shapiro, or Jordan Peterson—all more or less on the right politically, all rough ideological allies. 

I, on the other hand, have the same reaction to Erin O’Toole as to Trudeau. I had the same reaction, in his day, to Richard Nixon, or to George Bush Senior, or, for that matter, to Dinesh D’Souza. These people are not all on the same side.

My core complaint, in my own mind, is that they are liars. This resembles TDS. But I think my claim is generally objective and provable. It is not what they say, but that I have caught them in an actual lie. Nixon and O’Toole were quite open about running on the right for their party’s leadership, then moving over to the centre to contest the general election. In other words, they lied. 

George Bush Sr. famously said “read my lips-no new taxes”; and then raised taxes while in office. Surely that was an unambiguous lie.

I have caught D’Souza and Trudeau in similar lies. When I do, a curtain goes down for me. Lying blatantly is unforgivable—until and unless an apology is offered.

I would not mind so much if they are artful about it. I can forgive a genial rascal; such lies are largely for entertainment value, like tales of Paul Bunyan. Diefenbaker used to lie like that; Trump does. I do not accuse a stage magician of lying, either. 

But these guys, Nixon, Bush, and the rest, were perfectly flat-footed and open, without even trying to be charming about it. That suggests contempt of their audience.

And that, in the end, is what galls me most about Trudeau. He is obviously at all times acting, putting on a performance, not saying what he really thinks. It is his only skill; he is, after all, a drama teacher. 

But he is such a bad actor. His performance is so awful it is insulting to suspend disbelief. He is just a clown in whiteface, just as he is in blackface; mugging for the camera and saying “look at me.” A good actor instead disappears into the character.

A particularly annoying tic is that, when he is openly lying, he signals it by saying “ah” at almost every second word. It is as if he wants to make it clear by this that he is calculating what he is going to say, rather than speaking spontaneously. In other words, he is asking us to give him license to act, to lie. He is making no effort. 

Compare Trump. Trump ran in the general election on exactly the same platform as in the primaries. In office, he made an effort to do exactly what he said he would do.

We desperately need the Trumps and the Poilievres right now—assuming Poilievre pays out and does not prevaricate. Our society has become increasingly delusional and narcissistic.

What If Russia Cracks?

 

More tentatively good news: the attack by Azerbaijan on Armenia.

Not that this is good in itself. 

But the subtext is that Armenia is a Russian client state. Now that Russia is preoccupied in Ukraine, it is pulling resources from other areas, and its weakness is exposed. Other restive areas may similarly be emboldened. This could push the Russian regime towards general collapse. It could also overturn several other unsavory regimes.

The regimes in Kazakhistan, Belarus, and Syria all recently faced civil unrest that probably have overthrown the government had Russia not sent in troops. This might appear to many there as the ideal moment to try again, or launch a new offensive. Georgia might try to retake breakaway territory Russia seized from them.

Other vulnerable Russian client states: Mongolia, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Transnistria.

Within the Russian Federation, there are 22 “republics,” ethnically distinct from Russia, which might seize the chance to split off. Often they are ethically linked to a neighboring country, which might be happy to assist in this process. Or, for that matter, invade.

We may be watching a snowball starting downhill.

While for a time things might get chaotic, the result might be major gains for liberal democracy. And a unified Europe stretching to the Urals.

Underwater

 

There is a lot of opposition online to the new Disney trailer for a live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid.” Last I checked, it had over 1.5 million “down votes.”

My initial reaction is surprise. There is so little to the trailer; so there seems little to object to. Just a lot of underwater scenery, then a closeup of Ariel singing a few bars of a song, from a sitting position. No hint of action, character, or plot.

That may be the problem: there is so little here. Comments seem to emphasize this, ironically, by referring to the part they liked best, yet citing dialogue not in the trailer. The point is: there is nothing here.

Yes, Ariel in the clip is black. Who cares? What colour is a mermaid’s skin?

With the framing, Disney seems to offer no other reason to see the film but to see Ariel as black. That, however you cut it, is dull, an insult to the audience’s intelligence, and offensively racist.

More on Residential Schools

 

Tom Flanagan points out that nobody has ever actually done research to determine whether the Indian Residential Schools did any harm. Nobody has compared the life outcomes of those who attended with those native children who never attended. Why not?

As with the “mass graves,” the powers that be simply want a particular narrative, and will ignore or suppress any evidence that does not support it.

British Confirmation of Ukrainian Gains

 

Poilievre Takes the Canadian Conservative Leadership

 

The good news continues to build. Pierre Poilievre has won the Tory leadership with over 68% of the vote.

The talking heads on CBC of course insist that he cannot win an election. He has to “pivot to the centre,” and his positions have been too radical to do that.

But if he is going to pivot to the centre, what was the point in dropping Erin O’Toole? What was the point of electing O’Toole instead of McKay? What is the point of voting Conservative instead of Liberal? What is the point of even voting? Do we all just leave it to the entrenched elite and the deep state to carry on as they have always carried on, without any awkward disruptions? The particular politicians in power just put a smiley face on the same policies, deluding the people into thinking they have made a choice and have a say.

Pivoting to the centre is not just immoral. It is bad electoral advice for the right or those out of power. The need is to make your point. The need is to lead.

Poilievre seems to be a great communicator. That is the essence of all great leaders. That is the essence of Zelenskyy in the Ukraine today. That was the essence of Winston Churchill. That was the essence of Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher. That is the essence of Donald Trump. Trump did not win by moving to the centre; he moved the centre to him. He reoriented the public agenda. If you cannot inspire, you cannot lead.

And another secret: you cannot be a great communicator if you have nothing to say. A great communicator must always have a message that sounds startling, new, radical. This was the tragedy of Boris Johnson. With magnificent pipes, after Brexit, he had no message.

Poilievre is a great speaker. He is great, like Thatcher and Reagan, perhaps better, at explaining economic concepts in clear terms. In his speech last night, there was the great illustration of ten loaves of bread, and ten dollars in the economy. Make that twenty dollars, and there are still only ten loaves of bread.

Yes, those he opposes say he sounds harsh. That’s how you always sound if you are winning the argument. To those who are losing, you are always going to seem worse than Hitler. As Harry Truman had it, “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth, and to them it sounds like hell.”

Poilievre is also great at social media, like Trump, so that he can bypass the media gatekeepers. The lack of this talent has hindered Maxime Bernier.

It turns out his wife is also photogenic and great at giving a speech, at least based on her performance last night.

During CBC’s coverage, Chantal Hebert noted that Poilievre is more comfortable in French than any Conservative or PC leader since the later incarnation of Joe Clark. In the leadership vote, he carried every Quebec riding but six, running against a prominent native son. His wife is also fluent in French.

He necessarily has a united and energized party behind him. Nobody’s going to soon start an internal insurrection against someone who commands 68% of the party membership; it would be political suicide. And any party opposition to him is not united: 17% for Aitchison and Charest, on his left, and 14% for Lewis and Baber on his right. Either side would rather see Poilievre than the other.

I rather hope Trudeau is arrogant enough to call a snap election this fall or spring. This would follow the old Stephen Harper playbook of defining an opponent and taking him out before the public got to know him. So he and the Liberal operatives might think this clever.

I think it would be a grave misjudgment of the moment. The Conservatives are all fired up, and it feels like a movement—Poilievremania.

Postcolonial Poverty

 

With the death of Queen Elizabeth, much is inevitably being said of the evils of the British Empire.

It is an interesting fact that Columbus discovered the New World the same year that the Spanish finally expelled the Moors. In other words, Spain began its greatest, most glorious era the very year it slipped the yoke of colonization itself.

The Dutch repeated the trick: they built an overseas empire just as they were casting off the Spanish yoke in turn.

The Jews, we know, are notably successful. Within living memory, they were hunted and killed throughout Europe.

In 1930, under the British Empire, India was responsible for 6.42% of world GDP. Five years after independence, it was down to 3.8%. In 2010, it was at 4.2%; it has risen in the last few years to 7.19%.

In other words, places like Africa and South Asia cannot blame their present poverty on having been oppressed three generations ago. Modern American blacks cannot blame their present poverty on slavery a century and a half ago. It does not work like that.

More Good News

 

Keeping track of the good news: reports from Ukraine suggests major gains against the Russians. At last report, the Ukrainian forces near Kharkov are advancing at a walking pace, twenty kilometers a day. They are through the Russian lines and, for now, moving more or less at will. It looks like blitzkrieg. 

I would have thought this impossible with modern missile weaponry—unless, that is, the Russians are out of missiles. It is possible the Ukrainians will soon cut off up to 20,000 Russian troops. They have fled so fast the Ukrainians are capturing large caches of weapons and ammunition intact. 

If Russian morale is as low as has sometimes been reported, this might lead to general collapse—on the front lines, and perhaps, in Moscow.

It is all going better than could have been expected.

A Quick-Step in the Right Direction

 

Liz Truss legalizes fracking in the UK

Signs in the Sky

 

I'm not sure whether I find this significant or not.

But it seems eerie.

Justice Denied

Andrew Klavan makes a point I have been waiting to hear someone make for some time. Although Bill Cosby is a serial rapist, he did not get into legal trouble for being a serial rapist. He got into legal trouble for expressing conservative views. Up to the moment he did, he was perfectly free to rape as many women as he liked. But he called for social responsibility, and so went to prison post haste.

Unlike all the folks on Jeffrey Epstein’s list of clients. Unlike whoever offed Jeffrey Epstein. Unlike Hunter Biden. Unlike the Clintons. 

These are only a few example of how politically perverted the justice system is, in the US or in Canada. The guy who recently stabbed ten people to death in Saskatchewan, and wounded another fifteen or more, had been released on parole after 59 convictions, some for violent offenses. Although in violation of parole, he had been at large for three months. Tamara Lich, by contrast, was denied bail having never been convicted of any offense, and having been charged only with mischief. She simply had the wrong political opinions. A nationwide manhunt was called for her over supposedly violating her bail conditions, a bogus claim, even though she was sitting in her sister’s home all that time.

Many of the people who wandered into the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, are still in detention, without trial. Few who participated in the looting, killing and burning of the summer of 2020 have been charged. For they did not support Trump.

The essence of justice is equal protection under law. Biased application of the laws had much to do with the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany.

 Our current system is not a justice system. It is an injustice.

The Double Rainbow

 

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

A double rainbow appeared in the sky as Queen Elizabeth died. As a monotheist, I must believe this is significant. While many things look grim, we may be on the verge of a golden age.

One cheerful note: Ukraine seems to be succeeding in their counterattacks. Imagine them pushing the Russians out. Then imagine the possible consequences inside and outside Russia. Imagine this as a civil war, between democrats and autocrats. Imagine Russia going democratic, as did the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Isn’t this the inevitable march of history? Imagine a Europe that includes Russia.

Britain has a new prime minister. For all we know, Liz Truss may turn out to be an especially good one. Margaret Thatcher wasn’t Margaret Thatcher either, before she became Margaret Thatcher. She is making the right noises.

In a day or two, the Canadian Conservatives will have a new leader, almost surely named Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre has stirred up a lot of excitement. Remember Trudeaumania? We are seeing something like that now. This means people are hopeful again and full of energy for Canada’s future. We saw such an outburst of hope too in the Freedom Convoy. Since we have a minority government, an election might be forced at any time, and the worst rascals swept away.

King Charles III is not immediately popular. People blame him for the breakup with Diana; I have always thought he got a bum rap. His relative unpopularity may give him the humility to shut up: the sole necessity to do a good job at his peculiar post. If he can do this, people will warm to him. And the transition after so long a reign feels like a new beginning.

The American midterms are coming up, and the Republicans stand a fair chance of taking both houses. This could end the mad inflationary spending we have been seeing. Investigations could be opened into the corruption of the Biden family, the FBI, and the Deep State. In the days of Watergate, with the Presidency diminished, even before Nixon’s resignation, senators and representatives took up much of the role of leading the public debate. That may happen again, and Biden fade into irrelevance. 

The media landscape is shifting quickly in the US. CNN is firing all their ideologues. Warner Brothers and Netflix seem to be awakening from wokeness. New “woke” movies and TV shows seem to be bombing badly. Fox News is dominating the airwaves. Daily Wire is growing daily more powerful. Joe Rogan is moving daily further to the right. There is a tipping point, and things can change suddenly once “everybody knows” something new.

Things are crumbling in China. Many are alarmed at the effect this could have on the world economy. But if this causes the CCP to fall, the longer term geopolitical effect could be much better—like the fall of the Soviet Union. And I expect it to fall. Over the longer term, there is no way central planning can do better than market forces.

If it does not fall, it is going to stall. The magic of development will move on to Southeast Asia, India, and Africa. Where now it is more needed, and can do more good.

We are facing energy crises in Europe and in California, and no doubt other places. Bad as this may be over the coming winter, it may also discredit the “global warming” hysteria and usher in more sensible energy policies.

And if the world is desperate for oil, we have lots in Canada. This ought to be good news locally. The energy crisis is entirely artificial, and so it should be easily fixed. Now maybe we will build the GD pipelines, the refineries, start fracking in the UK, build new nuclear plants, and stop wasting money tilting at windmills.

There seems to be a housing crash in progress. While this is destabilizing, housing prices have grown unrealistically high. It is a good thing if they come down. Speculators have been investing in real estate when it would have been better economically to invest in productive industries. 

We seem to be through the pandemic. I have said from the start that, once this happens, we will quickly forget all about it as though it never happened. I think we are already starting to do so.

Since the pandemic was an extraordinary event, it should have little lasting economic effect. The bounce back should recover the lost ground, over the next few years. This seems to have been the case after the Spanish flu. That it has not yet is a measure of the incompetence of current governments. Incompetence, or malice.

If our governments and elites have been showing incompetence and behaving badly, they have probably always been incompetent and behaved badly. What is new is that we are seeing it clearly, thanks to improved technology. The first step to solving a problem is seeing it. Things may not be getting worse, except for the elites—they are getting better. The leviathan is thrashing about; but these may be death throes. The Freedom Convoy suggests that we can run things better without them.

Pope Francis has been hinting at retirement. Cynics are saying this would make no difference, since he has chosen most of the cardinals who would vote on his replacement. But historically, conclaves elect someone the opposite of the previous pope, particularly if their papacy seemed troubled. Even if the cardinals are cynical careerists, this would make sense to them. They will want someone who is convincing on doctrine.

Unfashionable as it may be to say so, our route out of this or any mess is spiritual revival. We need to recover our bearings. That means, for most of the world, Christianity. There are glimmers of a spiritual revival in the American pop culture. There are rumours that, if the lid came off, there would be massive conversions to Christianity in China, as there have been in Korea since the lid came off postwar. There are rumours of massive conversions to Christianity in Iran. There are massive conversions to Christianity in Africa. From a distance, it is obvious to these cultures that Christianity is the key to everything.

When the spirit descends, dramatic changes can be almost instantaneous. Situations that look hopeless can turn around. 

That may be what the double rainbow promises.

Excess Mortalities

 Dr. Campbell has to speak carefully here due to censorship, but the implications are concerning.

Vaccines at this point look more dangerous than Covid.

What's Behind Lobotomy

 

It is generally taken as given that we love children. Dictators wanting to look good always open a children’s park.

But as in the case of dictators, is it often or even usually a sham? After all, honestly, how often do we have sex in order to produce children, and how often do we do it just for physical pleasure? Aren’t kids usually a dubiously welcome byproduct?

We pretend to love kids. Some of us do; some of us are good people. But a lot of us love ourselves. We do not want to waste such effort on the benefit of some other. What’s in it for us? How does the kid earn his keep?

Such bad people will of course pretend to love children. Because if you are going to get away with being a bad person, you have to pretend to be a good person.

Abortion statistics are a preliminary measure of how much we love children: last I checked, 25% of North American women had already had at least one abortion. Most of us insist on a right to abortion, according to polls. So most ofr us don’t have scruples about killing them, do we?

That is not to suppose that those who make it to birth are going to be well treated. There are other reasons to have children than for their own benefit. Small children can make good punching bags. They can be fun to bully and dominate. It is exciting to have complete power over another. Or they can be a welfare ticket, allowing a life of idleness.

This is not new. Most pre-modern societies practiced infanticide. Many practiced child sacrifice. A convenient alibi: “the gods made me do it.”

The current drive to encourage children to get “gender reassignment surgery” looks to me malicious. The demand that children get vaccinated for Covid looks malicious; the vaccine is likely to be more dangerous to them than the disease. Our wild deficit spending suggests we don’t give a damn for the children. Much of what we teach in the schools seems designed to hold children back; it is not what they would need to achieve any kind of power. It turns them into useful drones. This includes the current relentless drive for STEM. We set up elaborate and unnecessary barriers to entering almost any trade or profession.

And then there is “mental illness.” The evidence really has been clear all along that what we currently call “mental illness” is in most if not all cases a result of childhood abuse. Writers, artists, even psychologists have been pointing this out for centuries, millennia. It is the essential message of almost every fairy tale, for example; if you go behind the Disneyfied versions.

Even Freud pointed this out. He was then forced to invent his “Oedipus complex” as a socially acceptable substitute. It would not do to blame parents; he had to find some way to blame the victim. Society would not tolerate the truth.

And this is the continuing problem. There is a general social conspiracy to look the other way, and venerate “family values” and “motherhood.” Consider the Indian Residential Schools. They functioned largely as a place to care for abused and abandoned children from alcoholic homes. There is every reason to believe that the average student was far better off there than at home. Yet they are blamed for everything, and Indian children, including obviously troubled children, are now always forced back to their birth families.

Even for the general population, there is actually evidence that the average child who grows up in an orphanage has a better adult life than the average child who grows up in a family. We just assume, or insist on believing without evidence, that families are better. All we can really say is that two-parent families are better than one-parent families.

In practice, the entire social construct of “mental illness” is an alibi used to conceal child abuse. And not just to conceal it: society almost always sides with the parents and family against the abused child, even joining in the fun of abuse. Lobotomy is a good example. 

The Queen in Canada

 

At RMC, Kingston

Today at Windsor Castle:

At Expo '67:

Quebec Pavilion, with Daniel Johnson.

RIP

 

The news has come.

Paint It Black

 

BBC One has suspended regular programming. 

London Bridge Is Falling Down

 

News is breaking as I write that the Queen’s family is gathering at Balmoral. This surely means they think she is likely to die, perhaps within hours.

Only a couple of days ago, she seemed well, accepting the resignation of Boris Johnson and the appointment of Liz Truss. Although she had a dark bruise on the back of her hand, of the sort one can get from an IV.

The very speed of this decline suggests the worst.

The death of the Queen will mean little in practical terms. But it feels deeply symbolic; especially at a time of general turmoil. I had been posting that it feels as though we are at the end of an age.

The View from India

 

A sign of how remarkably much Trudeau and Freeland have damaged Canada's image abroad.

Wild Bells in the Black Dawn

 

Until the COVID epidemic, I trusted those in authority to be usually trying to do the right thing. They could be misguided, and sometimes gave in to corruption, but in general, I supposed they were on the side of the right, at least in Western democracies.

After the last few years, I feel I was naïve. I should have known better, too, because the Bible warns on this point. The Devil is the lord of this world. The good people are always the ones out of power, as in the Beatitudes. Perhaps this is only just: you get what you want in this world, or you get it in the next; not both.

I think the governments have now been reckless, and overplayed their hand. Ivermectin worked, and they suppressed it. The vaccines had serious side effects, and they suppressed this information. Vaccine mandates were never medically necessary or advisable. Many have died.

Why were they so reckless? Perhaps because they already heard approaching footsteps. Thanks to improving communications and information technology.

Various governments are now becoming more authoritarian, and more openly against the common people, because they realize they will have lost legitimacy, or will soon. Their only chance now is to cow into obedience through fear.

Will this work? I think it will not. The present order is about to end. I think by now we all sense it. It is not clear what will follow.

I Love It When Glenn Beck Steps up to the Chalkboard

 

And this tallies with my own suspicions.

Death along the Saskatchewan

 

We don’t know much yet about the multiple stabbings in Saskatchewan. The presumed perpetrators are still at large. The latest body count is ten dead, fifteen wounded. 

But perhaps a few points are already evident:

1. Banning guns will not stop mass killings.

2. Mass killings are not, as often claimed, an exclusively “white” crime. These perps are aboriginal.

3. Mass killings are not done by “madmen” because they are mad. If this were not already obvious, it is not plausible that two random guys go psychotic at the same place at the same time.

4. Mass killings are not caused by overcrowding and alienation from neighbours in cities or the increasing complexity of modern life. Rural Saskatchewan does not fit that bill.

What does cause mass killings?

I’d blame the decline of religion. Nietzsche said that if God is dead, everything is permitted. Atheists often disagree with this, and insist that atheists are moral. But all that matters is that some people do believe this. If there is no God, and life is meaningless, why not just go berserk and kill everyone you can?

See too atheist Russia, atheist China, atheist North Vietnam, atheist Cambodia, and pagan Germany. Why not just kill people?

This may be a growing problem especially on native reserves, since the real or imagined residential school and “mass graves” scandals serve to discourage faith among young native people.

It is a growing problem in Canada generally, and in Western society. Now we have free and unrestricted abortion, and Medical Assistance in Dying… euthanasia; coming soon to the merely poor or inconvenient. We are becoming a “culture of death.”

An Alarming Warning

 

... from Jordan Peterson.

The Coming Winter

 

I feel a tipping point has been reached. If my instinct is right, the tipping point was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The crazy woke left and the bureaucratic elites have held things together with bullying and fear. But the problem with that tactic is fragility. Once the dam starts to crack, things can happen fast.

The dam is starting to crack.

The latest big-budget movies and TV shows peddling the left-wing message have bombed spectacularly: She-Hulk, Rings of Power. People aren’t buying it any more. Shia Labeouf has just released an explicitly religious pop song with Kanye West. Tim Poole’s pop song is currently number two on iTunes. Polls suggest young people are going conservative in Canada. CNN is firing all their overtly left-wing on air “talent.” 

This winter is predicted to be rough. That is further going to turn people against those in power, on a charge of incompetence.

A new era is about to begin.

Of course, not as epochal as Cohen suggests in the clip above. 

More from Poilievre on Plain Language

 

A winning issue with me.

Huge Brazilian Ivermectin Study

 

... shows it highly effective against COVID. 

Darth Biden

 

Biden appeared last night before a darkly lit blood red backdrop, with marines at attention behind him, and declared “MAGA Republicans” an existential threat to American democracy.

People are calling this tone-deaf. After all, it made him look and sound like a dictator.

I don’t think this was unintended. It is too obvious. 

The idea is to intimidate. 

It is of a piece with what Biden said earlier that day, mocking gun rights: “you need something more than guns to fight the government. You need F-15s.” 

That was a threat. Just try to come at us, little people.

Biden’s America is following Trudeau’s Canada, Ardern’s New Zealand, Witte’s Netherlands, Xi’s China, in rapidly becoming authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist. In turning on their own population.

They would not do this if they were not scared. This is the “fight or flight” response.

Something is going to give, I think within the next year. Things cannot go on much longer in the direction they are going.

Governments are going to fall.

Does the Bible Endorse Sin?

 

Jephthah's daughter

Something puzzles me. 

In a recent column, friend Xerxes claims that the Bible endorses child sacrifice, because in it Jephthah sacrifices his daughter; it endorses incest because Lot has sex with his daughters; and it endorses prostitution because Tamar prostitutes herself.

To be fair to Jephthah and Lot, as the Bible tells it, they do these things unintentionally. An unintended action is not sinful.

But the broader point is that, because the Bible reports a thing happened, does not imply that the Bible endorses it. The Bible says that Adam and Eve ate the apple; does that mean they should have? The Bible reports that Herod killed the innocents. Does that mean he should have? It reports that the Romans crucified Christ. Does that mean it endorses the crucifixion of Christ?

When I called him on this, Xerxes did not make the argument; but perhaps in his own mind he was making a distinction between those the Bible presents as protagonists and those it presents as antagonists. If so, the Bible also endorses murder; both David and Moses murder people. Adam was the Bible’s first protagonist, the first patriarch, and he was hardly without sin.

To lengthen the list of sinning protagonists would be tiresome; the Bible does not represent anyone but perhaps Enoch as without sin. That’s what cheap novels do. The Bible is not a cheap novel. That is the ugly world of plaster saints.

Xerxes’s defence, rather, was that to claim the Bible was simply reporting, was reading the Bible just as one would a newspaper. And this amounted to a denial of the special sacredness of the Bible.

For the life of me, I cannot see his point. I imagine that, in his mind, there is some radical distinction between “truth” and “Truth.” I can see none. But then too, I can see no distinction between soul and consciousness, and many seem to want to make the soul something mysterious.

I suspect that any hard line between truth and Truth is an attempt to claim a license to lie. Any attempt to make a distinction between soul and consciousness is an attempt to deny the reality of the soul.