Pierre Poilievre Defines "Woke"

 

It is a joy to have Poilievre around, if like me you enjoy fine rhetoric. He rarely fails.

The Stigma Attached to Narcissistic Personality Disorder

 

My bright fifteen-year-old asks “Is it right that there is a stigma around narcissistic personality disorder”?

I don’t know what she has been reading or listening to on the Internet. In these times, the world is an open book. 

Short answer: yes.

“Narcissism” is the modern term, distorted by the history of psychiatry, which began by seeing everything based on sex. 

What is narcissism really? Morbid self-love. 

What is the old term for excessive self-love? Pride. 

What was Lucifer’s original sin? Pride. He thought he could be God.

What was Eve’s or Adam’s original sin? Pride. They thought they could “become as gods.” 

Pride, narcissism, is the first and greatest deadly sin, from which all other vices emerge. If there is no stigma attached to narcissism, there is no stigma attached to sin.

What is the old term to refer to someone in the grip of a vice? “Vicious.” That is the appropriate stigma.

But, narcissists will complain, they are “mentally ill.” They can’t really control it. 

A perfect alibi, from their point of view. Gets them off the moral hook.

And there is some truth to it. Once you give in to vice, it is hard to turn back. That is why these sins are called “deadly.” They lead to spiritual death. You have made a pact with the Devil, as Eve did, and surrendered your will to his. 

The vice most people have the easiest time understanding is alcoholism. The confirmed alcoholic seems unable to control himself. “First the man takes a drink; then the drink takes a drink; then the drink takes the man.” And people like to speak of alcoholism as a “disease” as a result. But ultimately, the alcoholic is responsible. If he cannot now control himself, this is based on a conscious moral choice he made in the past. For comparison, if I murder someone, my guilt does not simply go away with the passage of time. Especially if I keep murdering.

This is why there is no redemption for the Devil. He has made this irrevocable moral choice, to set himself up as God. This is why he is condemned to hell. This is why anyone who is condemned to hell is condemned to hell: because, once you surrender yourself to a vice, once you sin against the Holy Spirit by setting yourself up as your god, you cannot escape. You have sold your soul to the Devil.

That is how Adam and Eve committed the original sin, which passed down through the generations: that is how hard it is to escape a settled vice. It requires a dramatic divine intervention to escape.

But, in sum, there should be no stigma more permanent and complete than the stigma around narcissistic personality disorder.

Hockey Night on the CBC

 

According to this piece from the CBC, NHL players are “ostracizing” gay and transgender people by not wearing rainbow “gay pride” jerseys. We should perhaps be happy they do not go so far as to call it genocide. Brian Burke, of the Pittsburgh Penguins, insists that resistance on religious grounds makes no sense. He was, he says, born and raised a Catholic, and “I don’t see any conflict” between Catholicism and affirming—not just tolerating, but affirming, or, to use his exact word, “honouring”—gay sex.

Anyone who knows the catechism of the Catholic Church knows he is simply lying, or apostate. 

Paragraph 2357: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Paragraph 296: “Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.”

The CBC interviewer, supposedly neutral, asks two gay advocates the leading question, “do you think religion is being used to disguise bigotry?” No advocate for religion, or for the dissenting players, is invited to give their point of view.

But one of the gay spokesmen gives the game away. Cyd Ziegler emotes, “I grew up Christian. I grew up hating myself, because I was gay. Because I felt that I would go to hell for eternity.” Bayne Pettinger agrees with him an endorses what he just said.

Obviously, then they know perfectly well that they are in opposition to Christianity and Christian beliefs. They know that Christianity teaches that gay sex, or endorsing gay sex, leads to hell. They are not prepared to live and let live; they want to ostracize Christianity from the NHL, or crush the conscience of individual Christians.

Cyd Ziegler insists otherwise: “The players have the right not to wear the jersey, if their teams allow it. But guess what? I have the right to criticize them.” 

This is a false parallel. The players are not criticizing gay sex. His demand is that they affirm it, or face criticism. There is a difference between objecting to speech, and objecting to silence. He wants compelled speech.

For a proper comparison, think of requiring the players to wear a scarlet A to affirm their support of adultery, or requiring them to endorse on camera theft or the telling of lies. Or, conversely, imagine him as a gay man required to come on the CBC to condemn gay sex; or risk losing his job and his livelihood.

The important and most interesting question here is why homosexuals and transvestites cannot be satisfied with tolerance, and insist on universal public affirmation. Why do they need to compel assent? Why, for that matter, do they need “gay pride parades”? Why do they even need to “come out of the closet”? Straight people, after all, have no parades on the topic of sex, and are content to and expected to remain in the closet their entire lives, keeping their sexual interests behind closed doors.

It is presumably because they have a guilty conscience. Gays and transgenders must constantly be reassured that they are not doing anything wrong, precisely because they at least suspect they are doing something wrong. And because the problem is their own conscience, they can never be satisfied by any speech or action taken by any other. Their demands will just keep escalating. And they will grow more hysterical, beginning to speak of “revenge” and “genocide.” Ultimately, quite possibly, leading to egregiously violent action, like shooting small children in a Christian school. For the Erinyes pursue them, and they are relentless.

Orestes pursued by the Erinyes

Bananapants

 

I think I have evidence that Leslyn Lewis follows this blog. Her response here to being accused of meeting with Christine Anderson is close to what I suggested ought to have been Pierre Poilievre's response to the charge when first raised.

What I suggested:

“Christine Anderson is a democratically elected representative of the German people. Not to entertain and to respect her shows contempt for the German people, our good friends and allies. It does not mean we agree with all her views. Cooperating with those with whom we sometimes disagree, on matters of agreement, is the lifeblood of democracy. It is the lifeblood of civil society. Much of the ill-will and suffering in Canada today is caused by a Prime Minister who refuses to even speak with those with whom he disagrees, who simply calls them names and slanders them, as ‘racists or ‘misogynists’ or ‘antisemites’ and the like. 

This man who danced around in blackface with his tongue out and a banana stuffed down his trousers.

We Conservatives do not want that kind of Canada, nor that kind of world. We respect people, the people of Germany and the people of Canada, and we welcome those who come here from abroad.”

The original post is here.

Mr. Sunshine Baby liked it:

The Nashville Wakeup Call

 

In the wake of the Nashville shootings, I think there is an awakening, at least on the right, to the idea that “transgender” people are potentially violent.

It stands to reason. Transgenderism is narcissism. It is, firstly, a demand for attention; this is why they must act out so flamboyantly, why they need to preen, to promenade, to twerk in front of children. This will never be satiated; it will escalate until stopped. Transgenderism is, secondly, an attempt to impose the will on physical reality itself. 

Such narcissism, if frustrated, will not stop short of violence; why would it, if reality itself is no barrier to the will? They will feel they have the inherent right to use violence. Violence, moreover, gets attention; violence exhibits their dominance. And we can guarantee that they will feel frustrated, as reality and the rest of the world do not bend readily enough to their wishes.

Given a rising tide of people identifying as “transgender,” things look likely to get more violent. On the other hand, when it comes to blows, it is hard to imagine the impetuous and undisciplined “transgenders” winning. Like spoiled children, their urges are ultimately self-destructive.

The Real Genocide

 

Moloch: the pagan attitude towards children.

I can’t locate the clip, but Stephen LeDrew recently did a three-minute interview with Brian Lilley in which they lamented a teacher who was fired for questioning whether the Indian residential schools were so bad. I suspect it has actually been pulled. Too controversial?

Both Lilley and LeDrew took care to make clear in the interview that they themselves thought residential schools were bad—but why can’t we discuss the matter?

They ought to know why. When an opinion or viewpoint is suppressed, it is usually because it is right. Because those who oppose it, and are in power, do not believe they can convincingly argue against it. Nobody cares to silence claims that the earth is flat, or that the US never went to the moon.

Lilley does point out that he has interviewed many “survivors” who remembered the schools fondly. This despite the fact that anyone who attended has a financial incentive to say they were as bad as possible: compensation is being offered. Lilley also notes that he has read the historical documents, and knows that, when they were set up, they were the “progressive” option. They were intended, if mistakenly, to help the Indians. There was no genocide in mind.

Most of them were mostly orphanages: refuges for kids whose parents had died, or who came from a profoundly dysfunctional family, or whose parents were too poor to properly care for them. And the Indian family is still broken. Simply closing them, without offering an alternative, is in callous disregard of the interests of Indian children. This is the real ethnic genocide, and it is happening now. Scapegoating the residential schools looks like a cover to get away with it.

We pretend we have no idea why there is this problem of “missing and murdered indigenous women.” We keep demanding more investigation and more commissions. The answer is obvious: most of them are adolescent women fleeing some intolerable situation at home. We pretend we have no idea why there are so many suicide pacts among young people at remote reservations. The answer is obvious.

We don’t give a damn about Indians. We don’t give a damn about young people in general. Whether consciously or not, we want to kill them all. We abort them, we surgically mutilate them, we mock mothers who spend their time raising them, we will not give them a proper education, but force them into factory schools and indoctrination centres, we declare them “mentally ill” and refuse to listen if they say they are abused at home.

To most of us, in our post-Christian society, the young seem only to be an unwanted consequence of our sexual pleasures. Just a damnable inconvenience, and to be punished for it.

For Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven

 

Can you recognize this princess?

A model essay in a current text begins, I long thought oddly, “Almost everyone knows how the story of Cinderella ends, but do people actually think about how she spent her days before she met the prince? Her daily routine was not glamorous.”

I would have thought everyone knew very well how Cinderella spent her days. It is, after all, in the title, “Cinderella.” It is the story of an abused childhood.

And yet, our writer apparently assumes no one remembers. And, in fact, a grad student who actually specialized in children’s literature once remarked to me, “I wish I could have a life like Cinderella’s.” And isn’t it true that every little girl feels the same; don’t they imagine themselves as a “Disney princess,” either Cinderella or Snow White or Belle or the like?

We seem collectively to take no notice that all, that almost all fairy tales, are primarily stories of child abuse. Which we read lovingly to our children.

All these “Disney princesses” had appalling lives, in the original tales, up until the final happy ending. Snow White was hauled out to the forest to be murdered at age seven, at the command of her mother. She survives; but as a small child abandoned in the wilderness. Like Hansel and Gretel, and many others in these tales. Her mother finally tracks her down and does murder her. 

It turns out okay in an improbable ending, in about the last paragraph. 

So too with Cinderella. She is saved from her private hell only by divine intervention, a “fairy godmother.” And Belle volunteers to be devoured by a beast. Instead she agrees to marry him. Up to the last moment, her future life does not look enviable.

Yet nobody seems to remember most of the story as important. Only the happy ending. This strikes me as a justification for all the evil in the world. These stories may have been written for this purpose, to reconcile suffering children to their fate. These stories show, we can accept and do not care about even extreme suffering, so long as there is a happy ending. In other words, all the sufferings of this world are justified if we end up in a blissful heaven.

Consider the matter for yourself. Would you accept Cinderella’s life? Would you prefer it to your own? Most little girls obviously say yes. They want the suffering, for the same of the happily ever after.

So long as there is a heaven, and it in there we are bound, the suffering does not matter on the way.

Yet why, you may ask, do some people have to suffer more than others? It may be that not everyone is bound for heaven. This is what Matthew, and especially Luke, suggest. Suffering on earth earns us heaven, and is a sign of God’s preference. Woe unto those of us who have it too easy. God is treating us like brute beasts, without a soul to save.

Observe as well in life that those of us who suffer greatly in childhood are generally given a clearer view of heaven in this life; of imagined wonderlands. The world to us is more transparent, as for Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl. It is for those of us who suffer that the stories are written; we are those who have ears to hear, and eyes to see. We are more engaged by the stories; we are apt to create them. We are apt to come up with new ideas generally to make the world better; because we see how it should be.

And so we have a hope of true happiness.

Poilievre on Nowruz

 

Say what you will--Pierre Poilievre knows how to give a speech.

I bet this gets him the Iranian vote.

Eucharistic Miracle in Connecticut

 

Following so soon after the Asbury REvival, is this a further sign that something is going on, or about to happen, spiritually in the USA?

God knows we need it. Perhaps he is listening.

A Dark Age after History

 

Went downtown for a medical appointment on Thursday. I rarely go downtown. 

At Spadina and College, there is a Project Bookmark plaque on the sidewalk with a poem by Milton Acorn.

Knowing I live in a dark age before history,

I watch my wallet and

am less struck by gunfights in the avenues

than by the newsie with his dirty pink chapped face

calling a shabby poet back for his change…

And I see it has been defaced with green paint.

You know a civilization is dying when it defaces art, when it torches religious buildings and pulls down statues. This is a culture committing suicide.

Why do cultures commit suicide? For the same reason, no doubt, that people do. Because of a loss of meaning. Because people feel there is no point to anything. Except perhaps the moment’s gross physical pleasure: eat, drink, and be merry, for there is no tomorrow.

Downtown Toronto these days feels like the Cities of the Plain. 

Han Solo

 

Canadians will by now probably all know the name Han Dong. Foreigners may not care, or may need some background. I ask them to Google it. Or just think “Benedict Arnold,” or “Quisling”—accused, not proved.

Dong’s tearful speech in parliament yesterday has convinced some—notably Althea Raj—of his innocence. This is soft-headed, naive. He has reason to regret damage to his career and reputation, and to his family, whether he is guilty of the charges or not. Indeed, he has more reason if he is guilty.

One word he spoke makes me think he is guilty. He referred to these “absolutely untrue claims.” An innocent man doth not protest so much. I remember O.J. Simpson saying that he “absolutely” did not kill his wife.

Another reason to believe the charges true: if the charges are false, Global News and the Globe and Mail risk not only their credibility, but possible lawsuits. The whistleblower at CSIS risks his career and a prison term. 

What is the evidence that led them to make such a dangerous move? Given the nature of the claims, the evidence almost must be a wiretap. That would be compelling evidence; my guess is that they have this in hand.

And, if the matter was indeed brought up to the government long ago, they too could have heard this evidence. Yet they took no action. In other words, they were actively colluding with the Chinese government against Canadian interests. The government.

Whether Dong is innocent or guilty, it is now essential to hold a public inquiry. If he is innocent, this is necessary for him to clear his name: he has a right to his day in court. If he is guilty, the public must know the truth. There may be no specific criminal charge possible; the necessary punishment must be political, and for this the grand jury of the Canadian people must know the evidence. 

He and his cabinet are stalling in every way they can, but I cannot imagine Justin Trudeau still being Canadian prime minister a year from now.

Senator Richards in Epoch Times

I'm a sucker for fine oratory.

 https://www.theepochtimes.com/sen-david-richards-battles-are-won-before-they-are-fought_5126863.html?utm_source=OP_article_free&src_src=OP_article_free&utm_campaign=opinion-2023-03-22-ca&src_cmp=opinion-2023-03-22-ca&utm_medium=email&est=qzy8ejX5BeQUM24xulAmgPkHLaShT3H9MBV7tWRL6uFNCdINK0spYDkD%2BXiOfGQ%3D

Bad Parenting and Unconditional Love

 

Huckleberry Finn and father.

A model essay in a current school text outlines the two styles of parenting, strict and lenient, with their pros and cons. This seems to be the universal issue, at least since my own childhood and Doctor Benjamin Spock. And the politically correct position is that parents should be lenient. Indeed, spank your child, and you risk losing them to the government.

 This utterly misses the point. I think deliberately; I suspect another of many attempts to avoid all moral questions. Being strict or lenient is a secondary consideration. The obviously more important question is what the rules are, whether they are clear, and whether they are enforced consistently.

I suspect the term “lenient” is being used as a euphemism. It should mean not exacting punishment, or not exacting severe punishment. Instead, I think it now means not having any rules.

The Catholic Church, for example, is a model of lenience. It never exacts any punishment for sin. All that is needed is admission of guilt, and the matter is not mentioned again. Home free. Yet it is commonly condemned as strict.

In other words, “strict” means simply recognizing a difference between right and wrong.

Children need clear direction from their parents. Childhood is their time to learn. They suffer terribly without it. Moral ambiguity is the great danger, and the worst possible form of child abuse. 

If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

If a parent is strict, that is no big problem for a child: they simply do not do the prohibited thing. If a parent is lenient, that’s fine too, so long as the rules are clear. Children naturally want to please their parents, often above all else. But if a parent does not tell you what they want, is unpredictable, erratic, unjust, or encourages things against your conscience, there is an insurmountable problem. You cannot avoid trouble. 

I suspect this very form of abuse is the root of most of what we call mental illness. 

Which is of course growing now by leaps and bounds.

Connecting the Dots

 

The execution of Robespierre

There have been three apparently unrelated bits of surprising news recently. Although they seem to point in opposite directions, I think together they mean the same thing.

First, the reputed impending arrest of Donald Trump.

Second, the exposure of Chinese influence on Canadian elections by the Globe and Mail and Global News; a story that seems to be growing rather than swept under the CBC rug.

Third, an initiative by some members of the South Carolina legislature to impose the death penalty for abortion.

Together, I think they suggest that we are at or near or possibly just beyond an inflection point. Wokeism is dying.

The arrest of Trump shows desperation. By all accounts, it is not legally defensible, and the charges will not hold up in court. The most likely result will be to increase sympathy for Trump. It establishes his bona fides as an enemy of the establishment. It might be deliberately provocative—Trump supporters who come out to protest might be branded as another “insurrection.” But that attack looks risky, as the original “January 6th” alarm seems to have been discredited.

One may suppose it is just one rogue prosecutor out to make a name for himself. But this is a Democratic prosecutor in New York; in that milieu, he is not going to be thinking in a vacuum. Groupthink is the usual situation on the left. He has been at the cocktail parties, and apparently nobody is telling him it’s a bad idea.

It looks like a Hail Mary pass, an act of desperation to prevent Trump’s candidacy. Or even like a case of using the power to the hilt before you lose it. Like those folks who, told the Second Coming was at hand, went out and copulated on the hilltops.

The Canadian media establishment seeming to turn on Trudeau seems to argue in the opposite direction. They are bought and paid for and have until now been reliable in running cover for the Liberals. Now they’re all turning on him at once. The simplest explanation is that they have decided there is no way they can cover for him this time; that he is going down regardless. So the best tactic is to cut their losses, try to recoup some credibility, and perhaps forestall the new government turning off the money taps. They no doubt know more than we of what is coming; they need to get on the winning side.

And then there is the South Carolina bill. It will surely not pass, but it also looks like terrible politics. It seems to confirm the fears of the left about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Abortion has until now been considered a third rail; safest to steer clear of taking a stand. But this is like an open challenge to the woke; a declaration of war.

How do these puzzle pieces fit together?

Most people are not moral. They are concerned only with themselves and their personal welfare. If some group near them raises a cry of injustice, their first instinct will be to shut them up: crush them if necessary. They are being troublesome. If, however, the irate group wields significant power, the instinct is to give them what they want; in hopes they will settle down, and leave the rest of us alone. This is the instinct to appeasement, and it has proven profitable to many interest groups. But if the interest group persists for too long, and makes too many demands, a tipping point is eventually reached, at which it looks safer and less disruptive to declare all-out war than to continue to appease until they come for your own stuff.

This was the calculation that ended Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. Eventually, everyone else realized their only safety was to get rid of Robespierre. This was the French and British calculation when Hitler invaded Poland: if they did not finally take a stand somewhere, Hitler was not going to stop until he was powerful enough to devour England and France.

I think the left has recklessly and greedily pushed things to this tipping point. As a result, not just people on the right, but perhaps the amoral great bulk of the people, see that appeasing them is the greater danger. They can seize your bank account. They can lock you in your home. They can invade your bathrooms. They can mutilate your children. They can arrest and imprison you indefinitely on fake charges. They hate you for your skin colour, and there is nothing you can do about it. 

No surprise if the mood of appeasement and compromise vanishes. No surprise if there’s a rising. No surprise that there is no mood now for half-measures and compromise on abortion. People are already in the streets in France and the Netherlands. 

I only hope bodies hanging from streetlamps and the like will not happen in Canada. It will happen somewhere, but elites in many other places may learn the lesson by example before they too are engulfed. That the media here seems to be turning, and Pierre Poilievre seems to offer an orderly alternative, bodes well for Canada. But the situation is fluid.

Writers, Artists, and Prophets

 

Born with the gift of laughter, and a conviction that the world is mad.

The mask of mental illness, the mask of the fool, is one way to get away with telling the truth. Another is to tell a story. 

This is why Hemingway said the one essential qualification for becoming a writer is to have had a terrible childhood. It gives you the need to tell the truth. The same could be said of the other arts.

That is why we have myths and fairy tales. They are “the stories”; the literal meaning of the word “mythos.” They are the distilled truths of human nature and the world of man, told obliquely. The common run of humankind use the terms “myth” or “fairy tale” as synonyms for “not true”: this is a perfect example of denial. Pay close attention to the stone that is rejected.

Jesus spoke in parables; and warned the rest of us, the good people, not to speak plainly to the mob, not to throw “pearls before swine.” 

“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.”

Or crucify you.

Some people are not people. They are dogs or pigs. Consider the symbolism of these two animals. Dogs go along with social authority, no matter what. Pigs go with their natural urges.

Heartbreakingly, most people read Jesus’s parables in ways the text makes untenable. My father actually believed, or pretended to believe, that the moral of the tale of the prodigal son was that children should never leave the parental home and strike out on their own. He ignored the meaning of the word “prodigal.” Many seem to believe that the tale of the good Samaritan was simply about helping others in need. Of course we should; but we did not need the tale of the Samaritan to know. They ignore the meaning of the word “Samaritan.” And so it goes; the Pharisees can always quote scripture to their purposes. 

The postmodernists, the vanguard of the lost, even insist that no text has any inherent meaning. You are free to have it mean whatever you want. Supreme denial.

On one Facebook group, two hedonists were snickering about stupid Christians playing Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at their funeral. Didn’t they realize that it was a paean to sadomasochistic sex? The “Hallelujah!” refrain indicated orgasm; and the lines “She tied you to a kitchen chair; she broke your throne, she cut your hair” were female domination sex play. 

And then there are the snickerfests at Ishmael and Queequeg sharing a bed in Moby Dick; or Huck and Jim sharing a raft in Huckleberry Finn. This is pig thought.

I used to despair at this. What is the point of creating art, what is the point of telling parables or fairy tales, since nobody ever seems to understand them anyway? The Pharisees just co-opt it all and pretend they wrote it.

Jesus’s response is “let those who have ears to hear, hear.” One’s real audience is probably a small minority of the literal or physical audience. The rest enjoy a story, as an “escapist” exercise of the imagination, a few hours of not thinking of your problems. Or they like a painting because the colours go well with their other possessions.

A very few will understand; but then they will understand they are not mad, and are not alone.

That is perhaps the best we can do in a fallen world.

Madness and Civilization

 

Why do we fear and shun the “mentally ill”?

Michel Foucault suggests mental illness is historically a replacement for leprosy as a social scapegoat. We need someone to despise, some untouchable caste. 

But still, why the mentally ill? Why not the bicycle riders?

The question came up in relation to a book I am reading with my students, A Separate Peace. A friend of the narrator becomes psychotic in the army, and deserts. He tries to confide in the narrator. The narrator tells him to shut up about his experiences and literally flees. 

This feels typical.

My students initially suggested it was because we fear violence from the “mentally ill.” This is of course a common idea; it is in all the papers. Whenever a violent crime is committed, the perpetrator is said to be mentally ill.

Yet, statistically, this is not true. Statistically, those classed as mentally ill are slightly less likely to be violent than the general population. Far less likely, if you exclude the narcissists and psychopaths. They are, on the other hand, far more likely to be the victims of violence. 

Someone who is genuinely depressed, after all, would not have the strength of purpose to do anyone harm. Someone who is truly psychotic would probably not be able to coordinate his actions well enough to be dangerous. Not sure what is real, he could not coordinate acquiring a lethal weapon, or formulating or executing an effective attack. The most he might do is swing wildly. If you count narcissism and psychopathy as mental illnesses, yes, they are violent, skewing the statistics—but these are the very people who will not appear to any casual observer to be mentally ill. 

Moreover, in the novel we were reading, there was no question of the friend suddenly becoming violent; rather, our narrator assaults him.

So the idea that the “mentally ill” are violent looks like an alibi, not an explanation.

When this explanation seemed not to make sense, and informed by the circumstances in the book, I think my students hit upon the real reason. It is because we fear that a crazy person might tell the truth. Not in full command of themselves, they have slipped the social constraints that generally prevent the rest of us from so doing. Being anywhere around them is therefore frightening to anyone invested in lies.

This works two ways. Anyone honest enough to always tell the truth will be soon declared mentally ill, as an excuse, if a delusional excuse, for refusing to listen to them or accept their claims. And anyone driven by conscience to tell the truth may accept the label, even believe it, as a survival strategy. It is easier to accept that they are insane and just imagining things than that everyone around them are, or that they are all lying.

A thought that often makes me hazy:

Is it them, or am I crazy? 

    -- Albert Einstein 

This seems a sufficient explanation for all mental illness, as much as for the general fear of it. It is the same reason that they crucified Christ. Those who dwell in darkness fear the light.

Solzhenitsyn maintained that, if at any moment one person had determined one morning to speak only the truth, the old Soviet Union would have collapsed in a day. He was unreasonably optimistic. Some of course tried.  They simply were declared insane.

This is the case in any community, from the global culture down to the level of the family or couple; to the extent that they are based on lies, anyone who speaks truth is declared mentally ill. True mental illness is never an individual phenomenon.

And this explains the growth in the incidence of mental illness in recent years. The madder the culture, the more must be martyred to the psychiatric prisons.

Check Your Apple iWatch--Is It 1619?

 

Got any fire water?

One of Xerxes’s correspondents (Xerxes being my anonymous friend the left-wing commentator) writes: “The British importation of enslaved Africans and the treatment of Native Americans by British colonists embedded racism, White Supremacy, and Christian Nationalism as the unholy trinity in the DNA of the United States of America 150 years or more before such a country existed.”

Welcome to the 1619 project and the nonsense peddled now as history.

Leave aside that tiresome and racist cliche “in the DNA.” What strikes me more is anachronism. It reminds me of Whoopi Goldberg insisting that Hitler could not have been a racist because Jews are not black. The term “white supremacy” popped up in print only about 2016. Nobody uses it except the left, as a term of condemnation. If nobody uses it to describe their own beliefs, and the early English settlers in America would not know what it meant, is it sane to use it to describe their opinions? If you are obsessed with skin colour, it does not follow that everybody else is. They were more concerned with your religion than the depth of your tan.

But as to religion, I’ve only started seeing “Christian nationalism” pop up in the last year. Again, it is used only on the left, to tar people they disagree with. I presume it means wanting a nationally established church, as we see in England. Not something anyone advocates even today, in America. Although it also does not seem an especially troublesome idea.

Since many of the early settlers in the US had come to seek religious freedom, because they dissented from the established church in England, calling them “Christian nationalists” is the opposite of the truth.

You might argue that many of them sought to run their governments in the New World on a religious basis. But why is this a problem for anyone? In the context of this new world, anyone who dissented could simply move on and found their own colony on their own principles beyond the next headland. Which is, historically, what they did.

Were they “racists”? The term “race” only developed its modern meaning with Darwin. Before Darwin in The Descent of Man presented man as just another animal, competing with other animals for survival, race was not a thing. Breeding was, true—that is, being well brought up. That had to do with education.

Why did some of the early settlers at least consider it fair game to enslave Africans in the New World? Even though this was against established Christian principles, and would not be tolerated back in England? Not because they thought them an “inferior race.” It was because they considered them uncivilized—not well brought up. They enslaved one another, for one thing. They ate one another, for another. They knew nothing of God or Christian morality or settled agriculture. Buying them, already enslaved, out of Africa was justified as rescuing them from this toxic culture. 

No doubt there was cynicism involved; but having them continue to work as slaves was justified as a process of civilization, which given the continuing influence of parents and cultural traditions was bound to take several generations, and justified as well as supporting the costs of this vast rescue mission. The logic may have been wrong or self-serving, but nobody spoke of “white supremacy.”

The issues in dealing with Native Americans were similarly not racial; neither the Indian nor the settlers thought of themselves or one another in racial terms. In principle and in practice, anyone could join any Indian tribe, be they black, white, blue, Iroquois or Eskimo. The European settlers did not see themselves as a race, but as a community united by religious values. The two groups often intermarried. The issue was that the Indians travelled in gangs like the tribes in the Mad Max movies. The settlers wanted to establish peace and order. They sought to establish governments to protect rights of property and security of the person. Nobody was thinking in terms of “white supremacy.”

We may disagree with their actions, or their attitudes. But we have no right to fight straw men.

Who Else?

 

I think it is clear by now that Joe Biden has for years been in the pay of the CCP in Beijing. I think it is also pretty clear that Justin Trudeau has been in their pay.

I think we are beginning to see a modus operandi here. Why wouldn’t the Chinese government, with their immense sums of cash, buy foreign leaders if sufficiently corrupt and of some strategic value? 

Other leaders whose actions make me suspect they are or were in Chinese pay: Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Roderigo Duterte in the Philippines, Moon Jae-in in South Korea, Jagmeet Singh in Canada.

Stephen Crane on Narcissism

 

Writers are the real psychologists. To make a character live on the page requires a deeper insight into human nature than you will ever see in the writings of Freud, or Jung, or in a therapist’s office.

In The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane portrays the secondary character, Wilson, initially as “the loud soldier,” full of boasts and self-assurance. Then he cracks in the face of actual battle and becomes convinced he is going to die. After the battle, having survived, his personality is utterly different. Now he is kind and attentive to others. And brave.

Crane’s narrator ponders the change:

“The youth reflected. He had been used to regarding his comrade as a blatant child with an audacity grown from his inexperience, thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. A swaggering babe accustomed to strut in his own dooryard. The youth wondered where had been born these new eyes; when his comrade had made the great discovery that there were many men who would refuse to be subjected by him. Apparently, the other had now climbed a peak of wisdom from which he could perceive himself as a very wee thing. And the youth saw that ever after it would be easier to live in his friend's neighborhood.”

This is what growing up is. Adversity teaches us perspective. 

Narcissists are those who do not learn this lesson. They are, for the rest of their lives, “thoughtless, headstrong, jealous, and filled with a tinsel courage. … Swaggering babe[s] accustomed to strut in [their] own dooryard.”

Usually, such people have been spoiled as children. Their parents no doubt believed in “self-esteem” and “unconditional love.” Or favoured this particular child over their other children. They have never faced adversity and seen themselves as a wee thing. They will be demanding towards others for the rest of their lives, and they will crack under pressure.

Wilson was lucky to have been sent to war while still in his teens. This saved him, and perhaps saves many.

Those who experience adversity in childhood, on the other hand, those who are abused by their parents, learn empathy, becoming what is called, in the popular psychology of the self-help groups, “empaths.” They become deeply sensitive to the feelings of others. Often this makes them writers, able to make characters come alive on a page.

This is the opposite of what psychology has been saying for a couple of generations. This is the opposite of psychological received wisdom, as reflected in this exercise from a high school textbook. Everything it says about bullying is the opposite of the truth:

The professionals, following Alice Miller, have been insisting that children grow into narcissists because they are abused. This is no doubt because those who most loudly complain about being hard done by will be the narcissists, because that are always demanding and never satisfied. The truly abused are more likely bullied into silence, and will speak of these things only indirectly or by talking about someone else.

Or writing books.

Larry Elder on the Lies around January 6th

 

Thou Shalt Not Mock the Five and Dime

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The five and dime is important to me

The five and dime is where my dreams once were

Until Delia on Cumberland Street.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The velvet paintings of Niagara Falls

The shallow display drawers full of the smell of pink erasers

And bottles of LePage’s mucilage secretly made, we knew, from melting down old horses.

The paint-by-number portraits of Rin Tin Tin

With his tongue out

Showing two shades of pink

The little metal wind-ups from Japan.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The kissing gouramis who will not kiss for me

And live for only a week

Even if I feed them a lot.

The painted turtles from the Mississippi

I think I will take one home and name him Albert

And mother will scream if he gets loose

And dies under the couch.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The tiny tins of chrome paint and paint with gold shimmers

And whitewall stickons

And fire-tongued racing decals

For that real custom car show Roger Barris effect

And Billy Bishop biplane balsa wood and tissue paper makings

To shoot down enemy zeppelins in the attic.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

The praying hand Virgin Mary night lights that glow green in the dark

Because they are actually radioactive, like Hiroshima.

And we were not really scared of the dark

Not that much.

Except for if the closet door was open, maybe.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime.

The stereo viewfinders and slide wheels of the Seattle World's Fair

And laughing hyenas in technicolour.

The metal taps we could screw to the bottom of our shoes and walk down the street

Sounding important.

Even if we were littler than the other kids.

And bola bats and big marbles with little pinwheel things inside you could see through 

That were really pretty but you never knew what to do with

And jacks that hurt to step on

That maybe girls did things with

We did not understand.

And groucho glasses with eyebrows attached

That girls thought looked stupid

And Pez dispensers that you bought

Though you didn't like Pez that much

But because Ricky Steinberg had one.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime

There once were wonders there

The portraits of unshaven sad-faced clowns

With a broken flower in their hat.

The multicoloured cancelled stamps from Scarborough foreign missions.

Thou shalt not mock the five and dime.

Once this was my world.

It was a big world.

I lost something there many days ago.

On that creaking wooden floor.

It rolled under a counter and disappeared

Like the last dime of your allowance.

I fell to my knees

And still I could not find it.

I fall to my knees

And still cannot find it.

Now the five and dime is dark and shut and shuttered.

And I have not found the like of it again.

--Stephen Kent Roney

Lighting the Gaslamps

 

A fine example of gaslighting this week in CNN's Weekly News Quiz. THis is question eight, a way to test yourself on how well you followed last week's news:

False depictions? The eyes deceive? If so, how do we know they are lying this time, but were telling the truth for the video released by the January 6th committee up to two years ago?

Are they going to get away with this?

Some More Video from January 6, 2021

 

Pretty shocking...

All Hell Has Broken Loose

 

The cities of the plain

The trans community is all narcissist. Justin Trudeau is a narcissist. Joe Biden is a classic narcissist. Megan Markle is a narcissist. Amber Heard is a narcissist. Jada Pinkett Smith is a narcissist. Was narcissism always so common, and we are just beginning to notice it? Or has something changed?

Something changed. This is one more disaster among so many that we can assign to the social sciences.

Narcissism is, to begin with, an alternative to religious faith: if you turn from God, one obvious alternative is making a god of your own desires. The social sciences from the outset sought to take the place of religion. Its influence on society in general has grown, especially in the past sixty or seventy years. Freud insisted that the goal of life is to satisfy your animal desires. More recently, the social sciences have aggressively advanced the dogma of “self-esteem,” and “unconditional” love in parenting. This is grooming for narcissism. 

But this is not the only, or the worst, thing the social sciences have produced. Here’s a partial list.

1. Mental illness generally. There is a reason that the incidence of mental illness has grown by leaps and bounds in the past sixty or seventy years, on pace with the growing influence of the social sciences. The very concept, of course, of a mental “illness,” comes from the social sciences. Earlier generations would have talked of demonic possession. But was the thing itself, however it was defined, common before the social sciences? Not really. In the ancient world, it seems to have been a problem—witness the demoniacs of the New Testament. But not in Christian Europe. In pre-modern times, Bedlam hospital, Britain’s only facility for the insane, had at most a few hundred occupants. Moreover, mental illness was understood to be curable. But to psychiatry and psychology, it is incurable—all that can be done is to manage it with pills. According to a large study in the Seventies by the WHO, mental illness is still curable in the Third World. It is generally something temporary, like fever. So the true case of mental illness is social science. As to why this is, probably all of “mental illness” is caused by a perceived loss of meaning. That is a direct product of the social sciences stripping God and the spirit from our world view. Social science produces a wholly inadequate understanding of the world, that cannot account for much of human experience. When human experience refuses to conform to the model, “mental illness” is declared. This is probably the worst holocaust in human history, causing the most suffering and death.

2. Racism. There has always been xenophobia, and prejudice, and discrimination over “breeding” and ancestry. But race as such is a scientific construct. It emerges from Darwinism’s view of the human as just another animal, classifiable into physical subgroups the same way horses or pigs are. And Darwinism justifies racism, as the imperative of “survival of the species.” It simply stands to reason in a Darwinian world that our own race is locked in a life and death evolutionary struggle with all other races. It is kill or be killed. People pretend that “social Darwinism” is some perversion of Darwin’s theory. It is not. Darwin himself was a social Darwinist. It was the topic of his second great book, The Descent of Man. Race had no meaning or significance in the Roman Empire, and no meaning in Christianity. While there would remain excuses for discrimination, without the social sciences, race would be removed from the mix. And worst examples of genocide in history have been based on race. The term “genocide” is itself from “genus,” a biological concept equivalent to race. Without the social sciences, we would not think in these terms.

3. Marxism. Marx is often called the father of the social sciences. Marxism is “scientific socialism.” It offered a supposedly scientific explanation of human history. Chalk up the dead of the Holodomir, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields. 

4. Fascism and Nazism. Fascism is a form of Marxism, admixed with social Darwinism. The associated artistic movement was called “Futurism.” Chalk up the dead of the Holocaust.

5. The two world wars, and the Cold War. Both the first and the second war were primarily initiated by Germany on the premise of social Darwinism. The social sciences were especially influential in German culture, home of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. It is the German proclivity for social science that Kipling warns about in 1897 in the poem “Recessional”: “For heathen heart that puts her trust/  In reeking tube and iron shard,/ All valiant dust that builds on dust,/ And guarding, calls not Thee to guard.” Christian morality had no place in this brave new world of scientific objectivity: it was survival of the fittest, meaning in this case the most powerful nation. Chalk up tens of millions more deaths. Had the Cold War gotten hotter, this could in turn be laid at the feet of the Marxist social theory of class warfare.

6. The decline of civilization and culture. Education is how civilization and culture is passed on. Education has since the early 20th century, on a German model, been declared a social science. This means our civilization and culture is no longer passed on. It is supplanted in the classrooms with crackpot theories like Marxism, Freudianism, racism, feminism, and Fascism, if this latter not by name. A civilization and culture that is not passed on dies within a few generations, and we are back in the forests of the night.

7. The death of romantic love. Feminism killed all romance, re-imagining interaction between the sexes as being about power. All is either dominance or submission, and the fulfilling of animal desires. There is no room for altruism or beauty. Feminism derives from Darwin; a Marxist analysis traceable through Freidan to Engels; and a heavy dose of Freud.

8. The death of the family. Feminism killed women’s traditional role of nurturing the next generation. Abortion is only the most direct expression of this, an overall devaluing of and contempt for children. A contempt for children seen also in the current promotion of sex change operations on the underaged, and a growing grooming culture in the schools. Children interfere with the Freudian dogma of satisfying animal impulses. If they are not themselves of some utility for sexual gratification, what purpose do they serve? Again, the suffering and death this is causing is incalculable. It is a larger ongoing holocaust than Hitler could have imagined. Moreover, the direction this leads is the gradual extinction of humanity itself.

All this is the Devil’s work. The social sciences are built upon an initial pact with the Devil. The social sciences treat human beings as objects; this “objectivity” is essential to science. Yet human beings are not objects; they are subjects, and morality requires us to see them as such, as ends, not means. All possible horrors follow from this violation of the second most basic moral principle: to love your neighbour as yourself. 

The solution is a religious revival. We can only hope and pray that God is intervening.

On Taking Tucker Carlson off the Air

 

In the current reaction among Democrats to the release of the Twitter files, and to Tucker Carlson’s airing of the January 6 videos, we are seeing the phenomenon sometimes called “narcissistic rage”; and perhaps gaining insight into why it occurs.

It happens when a liar is caught straight out in a lie; if the liar is a narcissist. What is he or she going to do? Not admit the lie; that is obviously too much to expect. Instead they will start shouting and making demands. They will project their own crime onto whoever threatens truth; they may even become apparently delusional, insisting that the evidence of our own eyes is a lie. “Gaslighting.”

Consider the recent speech of Chuck Schumer demanding that Tucker Carlson be taken off the air.

This sort of attempted bullying is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. The narcissist is fragile. He or she cannot bend or admit wrongdoing without breaking. 

What we call “narcissism” is more properly someone committed long term to vice; someone who has sold their soul to the Devil. If they then admit a lie, that reality is a thing, that there is an objective morality, they lose, in their own mind, everything. That is why the transgenders insist that, if you do not refer to them by their preferred pronouns, you are “denying they exist.”

Rather than admit the lie, they will resort to the most vicious language, and even to violence. 

We have seen this of late in Justin Trudeau.

Take heart; it is a sign that the beast is in its death throes.

March: Book 1

 

As part of his high school curriculum, one of my students is reading March: Book 1, by Lewis, Aydin, and Powell, in English class. This graphic novel has little literary merit: the characters are all of cardboard, and the plot is spoiled from the start for anyone who knows the history. There is no new information, no new insights, just a series of historical name-drops. To compare it to Spiegelman’s Maus, the success of which it no doubt was written to capitalize on, is to see how superficial it is. It really does not belong on the English curriculum.

It is perhaps an engaging way to read history. But, being ghost-written with a participant, it gives only one perspective, not acceptable in historical studies. Perhaps this is why it has been smuggled into the English curriculum instead.

As history, it is also American history. Canadian classrooms should teach Canadian history, and world history as it affected Canada. What was happening in Canada at the time?

I was alive for some of the fight in the US South for civil rights. It was of some interest, about as much as the uprisings in Iran or Georgia are today, but paled in comparison to concerns about possible nuclear war, the Cold War, Quebec separatism, the FLQ; even the troubles in Northern Ireland were more relevant, and more discussed and debated. Which made sense, in terms of Canada’s history.

The book does not belong on a Canadian curriculum. Are we reading Robert W. Service? Are we reading Stephen Leacock? Are we reading Thomas Chandler Haliburton? Are we reading W.O. Mitchell? Are we reading Mordecai Richler? Are we reading Gabrielle Roy?

Garneau Gone--But Not Forgotten?

 

Justin Trudeau’s attempt to duck or stall a public inquiry into election interference keeps looking worse. As other commentators have said, his plan to, sometime in the coming weeks, appoint a “special rapporteur” who would after some period of study report back to him on whether he should then appoint some kind of panel to investigate himself in private is only a smokescreen and a stall. It mostly puts everything on ice until after the next election, with some assurance that anything that comes out stays secret. And he can refuse to talk about it, on the grounds that it is the subject of an active inquiry and sensitive to national security.

At this point, given his resistance to investigation, we must assume that whatever has been going on in terms of Chinese government interference in Canadian politics is much worse than we have yet seen—and Trudeau is heavily implicated.

Another feather in the wind is the sudden resignation from Parliament of Marc Garneau. Might this be related? It is unusual for someone to resign their seat well after the last, yet well before the next election. Exceptions are if they have been offered some important job elsewhere. Or if a career pinnacle has been reached, and hanging around would be anticlimactic. Neither seems the case here. Granted that he is long in the tooth and past retirement age--he's still youthful compared to either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Why not sit it out until the next election, fulfilling his commitment to the voters of Westmount-NDG, saving the expense of a byelection, and simply announce he will not run again?

I suspect that, as a Liberal insider, and a former Foreign Minister at that, Garneau probably knows the truth, or much of it, of the CCP situation. He sees the roof is going to come crashing down soon now. He has a personal reputation and legacy to protect: he was Canada’s first astronaut. He does not want to be tarnished by the tar when it hits the wind turbines. Or, to throw another metaphor in the Mixmaster, time to get off this sinking ship.

Having in the past had leadership ambitions, he might also want to be away at arm’s length, untarnished by association with the discredited regime, just in case there is an option to take up the Liberal mantle when Trudeau falls. This same calculation probably dooms any future leadership hopes for Chrystia Freeland; she’s too closely associated with Trudeau. Removing himself from politics and waiting in the wings worked for John Turner, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin. The elaborate praise and bonhomie Garneau expressed to all others in the Chamber, on Parliament Hill, in the media, and in politics generally suggest a man not burning any bridges. He wants to be remembered well and welcomed if he happens to come back.

My guess is that, if a proper investigation is eventually held, it will find that Justin Trudeau himself has benefitted financially, and substantially, from some connection to the Chinese government. He was in on the attempt to juke the elections, whether or not it made a substantial difference.

And what if an investigation finds that it really did make a substantial difference?

Lutherans and the Alt-Right

 

"Green Lives Matter"

Xerxes, my larboard columnist friend, is impressed of late that President Harrison of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the US has come out in opposition to the “alt-right,” condemning it in members of his congregation. Xerxes thinks this is impressive because the LCMS has a reputation as a conservative denomination.

Xerxes is wrong to be impressed. It is no surprise if a conservative Christian denomination denounces the “alt-right.” This is dog-bites-man. 

There is a reason why the “alt-right” calls itself and is called the “alt-right.” Because it is an alternative to the right. There is no reason for a conservative denomination to love it.

Conservatism means wanting to conserve established traditions. In the US that means, pre-eminently, equality and civil rights: respecting and preserving the ideals of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. American conservatism is thus necessarily liberal, in the true sense of that word. It believes in democracy, equality, and limited government. It is anti-authoritarian. An authoritarian or totalitarian American right is therefore a contradiction in terms. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism is a plausible position only on the left. Hence the term “alt-right” for those eccentric American individuals who embrace ideas of a non-orthodox-Marxist but autocratic regime. Not to say that, even in European terms, Nazism or fascism are clearly on the right. An autocratic monarchy might be.

There’s not a big constituency for making America a kingdom.

Accordingly, in condemning the “alt-right,” or “Christian nationalism,” President Harrison of the LCMS is doing nothing surprising or bold; any more than coming out against vampires and werewolves. 

There is nothing so alarming about Christian nationalism. It is the status quo in such liberal democratic countries as the United Kingdom or Denmark. Because of the First Amendment, it has no support among conservatives in the US. I am a news hound, and regularly sample media outlets often accused by the left of being “far right,” like Fox News, Daily Wire, Small Dead Animals, Instapundit, and so forth. Nobody there is talking about Christian nationalism. Nobody there uses the term. The concept seems to exist only on the left.

President Harrison, in condemning the perhaps two or three members of his denomination who are alt-right and have active Twitter accounts, cites advocacy for “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, and genocide.”

Most of what is considered the alt-right is actually trolling; it is practical joking by juveniles to make authorities look foolish for taking it seriously. It is fun, at a certain age, to show up your elders as gullible idiots. Actually, it is fun at any age. I’d guess that is true of all the items Harrison lists here—someone is pulling his leg. 

More alarming than this semi-mythical “alt-right” is the tendency on the left—and not some tiny “alt-left”--to associate such absurd gag views with anyone who is—to quote Xerxes’s own charges--“pro-Bible, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-newcomer, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-Trudeau.” 

This is far more nefarious. Take the charge that anyone who is “anti-Trudeau” is “alt-right.” This means calling the majority of Canadians alt-right, and charging them with supporting slavery and genocide. After all, a super-majority of Canadians are anti-Trudeau. They always have been; they have been for the past three elections. 

Being opposed to the current government, and organizing to bring it down, is how democracy works. Oppose this, and it is you who are demanding a totalitarian, fascist government. Not as a gag—in all seriousness.

All Canadians also have a right to freedom of conscience, as the right would insist, and therefore a right to hold and proclaim pro-Bible views. Since all major world religions teach that homosexual sex is a sin, they have a right to hold and proclaim this view as well—just as anyone else has the right to argue the opposite. Feminism is a particular political ideology, a set of political demands, with which, in a free society, people have a right to disagree, and have a right to resist. In a non-totalitarian society, politics may be openly discussed, and people may dissent. So too with abortion; it is an issue we must legislate on, and must discuss, if we are a democracy. So too with immigration levels. Finally, we have a right, as the right insists, to decide for ourselves any medical treatment; this is security of the person. 

It is those on the left who seem to be subverting our rights and freedoms. This is creeping fascism; or perhaps galloping fascism.

The Three Phases of Culture According to J.J. McCullough

 

J.J. McCullough divides art into three categories, pre-modern, modern, and postmodern, and opines that now, after postmodernism, there is nowhere else to go.

Pre-modernism, he says, is characterized by beauty, craftsmanship, and religious values.

Modernism is defined by rationality and efficiency, rejecting beauty, craftsmanship, and religious values.

Postmodernism is defined by the rejection of rationality and efficiency. “Subverting whatever art is supposed to be.” “Weird for the sake of weird.”

McCullough sees these as the only possibilities; and we have exhausted them. So from now on… he suggests perhaps we will see a mix of them all.

His analysis seems flawed. To begin with, it takes no account of non-Western art. And restricting ourselves to Western art, there is a strange imbalance in his timeline. Pre-modern goes up to the late 19th and early 20th centuries; postmodernism appears in 1917 with Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” Leaving perhaps 17 years for modernism. McCullough suggests that postmodernism too is now exhausted and done.

If these really are the three inevitable approaches to art, why is it that only one of them ever occurred to artists in the millennia up to 1900? Why wasn’t art always a mix of them all, as McCullough suggests it should be in the future?

Rather than three approaches to art, it looks as though we have art, then two failed approaches to it. Art is craft plus vision; it means to convey the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Rejecting craftsmanship and religious values means, then, rejecting art.

If, as McCullough says, modernism is about rationality and efficiency, “form follows function,” we have a problem. Art performs no obvious function. Again, this is a rejection of art.

As is postmodernism, as McCullough says, it is “subverting whatever art is supposed to be.” That speaks for itself.

What we have is a collapse of the arts about the beginning of the 20th century, which has since then progressed to the point of nihilism. Not three approaches to art, or even two, but just one. Duchamp’s “postmodern” “Fountain” actually appeared three years before Eliot’s “The Waste-Land,” from which modernism dates in poetry.

The real difference between modernism and postmodernism is simply that modernism lamented the loss of art; postmodernism celebrates it.

Which is why there is now nowhere to go. The last embers of the gallery have been burned down to ash.

It is the suicide of a culture.

Is the Real "Woke" Awakening?

 

How is it that Canada, the US, and the Catholic Church are all saddled with historically terrible leaders at the same time?

For that matter, how is it that, back in the 1980s, Britain, the US, and the Catholic Church all suddenly got great leaders at the same time? One might add Gorbachev in the USSR, Deng Xiaoping in China, perhaps Helmut Kohl in Germany. Whether you loved them or hated them, none of them were doing business as usual. All did something historic. Against the backdrop of the digital revolution in business, the first personal computers, Steve Jobs and Apple.

The simplest solution is to accept that God—and the Devil—are active in history. Who runs a government is normally, according to the New Testament, left in the Devil’s power. The three great enemies of the soul, after all, are “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” The social consensus is “the world.” Saint Paul says our battle is against “the principalities and powers of this world.”

But God will step in when things look hopeless. We can and should hope.

Something is happening at Asbury College in Kentucky. The film “Jesus Revolution” has just been released. Mel Gibson is due with “The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection” next year. Films can have great influence in modern life.

I always thought the counterculture of the Sixties got hijacked, by Marxists, yuppies who were only cosplaying as “hippies,” and abusive parents. It should otherwise have ended in a massive revival of Christian spirituality. The rock and roll was really gospel music, borrowing the same religious energy, thinly hidden behind inane or trivial lyrics. The folk music was often explicitly religious: Michael, row the boat ashore. The answer is blowing in the wind. Children, go where I send thee. The drugs were a key to spiritual experiences. The sex was often a juvenile craving for love, by children who had never experienced it. The counterculture as a whole was a rebellion against the materialist culture that Firesign Theatre mocked as “More Science High School,” against the denial of the spirit that behaviourism or structuralism or modernist architecture advocated and conveyed. A culture that “had no soul.”

At the time, I wasn’t involved in the “Jesus Freak” stuff. I was investigating Eastern religions, still at arm’s length. Just as I stayed at arm’s length from the politics, and the drugs, and the sex. I’m cautious by nature. But I ran into Jesus Freaks, and I felt they were often the best of that generation.

We almost got there sixty years ago. We have lost two generations. Maybe this time the spark will take and the kindling will be set ablaze. At a minimum, we all can feel the yearning.

What'sHerFace Gets In Yer Face

 

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said somebody. The original source of the well-known quotation is uncertain. 

In 1836, John Wilkinson wrote:

“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist: another, perhaps equally fatal, is to make them fancy that he is obliged to stand quietly by, and not to meddle with them, if they get into true silence.”

In 1856, William Ramsey wrote:

“One of the most striking proofs of the personal existence of Satan, which our times afford us, is found in the fact, that he has so influenced the minds of multitudes in reference to his existence and doings, as to make them believe that he does not exist; and that the hosts of Demons or Evil Spirits, over whom Satan presides as Prince, are only the phantasies of the brain, some hallucination of mind. Could we have a stronger proof of the existence of a mind so mighty as to produce such results?”

Baudelaire said something similar. The first quotation is usually attributed to him.

It is so true and evident that it has occurred to many minds. Most people will adamantly deny the existence of evil, on the apparent premise—a classic example of denial--that if they ignore the Devil, he will ignore them. Examples abound: the silly notion of “rape culture,” that some men rape women because they do not know better, and need the matter explained to them. The idiotic pacifist idea that any conflict springs from some “misunderstanding,” and war can be averted by negotiation and compromise. That if there is a conflict, the victim must be in part to blame. That anyone who does something unquestionably immoral, like taking a gun and shooting up a school, must be insane rather than evil. Or it must be the gun’s fault. Or it must be society’s fault, or the system’s fault, or religion’s fault, or capitalism’s fault.

And in What’sHerFace’s talk, it manifests as the idea that we who fight for liberty and fairness ought to and can strive for unity in the present political circumstance. And should avoid offending. Peace is not possible; there is no chance of compromise between good and evil. It only ends in Munich, betrayal, and unilateral disarmament. 

We cannot honestly pretend that men can decide to be women.

We cannot honestly agree that “white” people are inherently evil.

We cannot honourably or safely compromise on free speech.

People like Scott Adams are waking up to this, it seems.

The Manchurian Candidate

 

On the surface, the current scandal about Chinese government interference in Canadian elections does not look too serious. Intelligence officials have reassured the public that it did not affect the outcome of an election, including in individual ridings. A parliamentary committee is already looking into it. However, polls and pundits seem to be seeing it as a big deal. Why?

One reason is that whoever, in CSIS, leaked the documents alleging election interference was risking both their career and a prison sentence by doing so. They must have thought it was serious, that something gravely wrong was going on. It might be, of course, that they are just politically partisan, and want to see the overthrow of the Trudeau government for its policies. But if so, they must also believe that investigation will lead to something worse than we have seen. For what we have yet seen does not seem enough to be worth the risk.

The second reason is that it seems to fall in line with and affirm a growing public perception that Justin Trudeau is a communist and totalitarian at heart, and is not governing in the interests of Canadians. Famously, he declared publicly years ago that he admired China’s “basic dictatorship.” He does seem keen to impose autocratic measures. He does seem to easily express contempt for ordinary Canadians, like the Freedom truckers. He did squander Canada’s research on a COVID vaccine by collaborating with China, who then absconded with the data. Was this naivete? Unreasonable Sinophilia? Or intentional?

Being in Chinese pay seems like an explanation for it all.

On the other hand, Chinese leader Xi Jinping famously dressed him down as “naïve” in a recent encounter of world leaders. The Liberals played this up as Trudeau standing up to China.

But it looked at least as much like the reverse: a boss dressing down a subordinate. Perhaps Xi felt he had the right. He was not confronting Trudeau as a supposed adversary, but scolding him for a blunder.

It is also true that Canada has been unpopular in China in recent years, because of the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Huangzhou. But Canada was forced into that by treaty obligations to the US, once they had let her plane land. The Trump White House may have forced Trudeau into that; Canada cannot afford to violate treaties with the US. That the anger in Beijing was directed at Canada, rather than the US, who had called for her detention and extradition, might suggest they thought they had a right to expect otherwise from Canada. They could not pressure the US; they could pressure the Canadian government.

The third reason is that Trudeau seems to have a record of bending the rules on influence peddling and being bought: by the Aga Khan, by Lavalin, by We Charities. Would he resist being bought by Beijing?

The fourth reason is that Trudeau just looks like a front man. He is an actor. We have long felt that someone is controlling him. The question is, who?

The final reason, so far, that the matter may be more serious than at first glance, is that Trudeau is resisting an independent inquiry. Despite calls from his informal coalition partners, the NDP, on whom he depends to stay in power.

If there is nothing further to see here, if there is no substance to it all, Trudeau ought to be content to agree, to clear the air and reassure the public. Yet he is risking the fall of his government to prevent this.

This above all suggests there must be something very bad we do not yet know. 

Christine Anderson Replies to Justin Trudeau

 

I think her point about gaslighting is exactly right. Trudeau is a classic narcissist, and his public pronouncements are often clear examples of gaslighting and what it looks like.

Narcissism is, naturally enough, a common problem with rich kids.

We will be lucky if Canada survives his premiership.

Dilbert Quits

 

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, has just gotten himself cancelled. Dilbert has been pulled from the newspapers, his syndicate has cut him loose, and his book publisher will no longer publish him. He is still, for the moment, on YouTube.

This is because Adams on his daily YouTube broadcast cited a poll in which something like 47% of blacks could not agree with the statement “it’s okay to be white.” He says this shows that identifying as black now means you are a member of a “hate group”; he is sick of seeing videos of blacks beating up non-blacks on YouTube. He advised whites to stay away from blacks as much as possible.

Adams always calculates what he says. He knows what he is doing. He did this deliberately. He was being deliberately provocative. Those who say, "okay, he's right that there is a problem with black racism, but he went too far and should not have phrased it in such harsh terms" have missed the point. Adams wanted to create a stir. One does that by being provocative. One does that not by saying politely that buses really shouldn't be segregated, for example, but by refusing to give up your seat on the bus.

I think he was tired of drawing the daily comic. He has all the money he will ever need. He is ready to retire. As long as he is going to retire anyway, he might as well do something useful, and force a conversation on the growing problem of black racism. And on the growing problem of censorship.

I think this is part of a larger sense on the right that accommodating to the forever expanding demands of the left, as Adams has tended to do until now, is no longer tolerable or really even possible. It is appeasement, and it works no better now than it did with Hitler. Their demands simply grow more outrageous. 

The left has been at war with civilization, with “whites,” with America and Canada and “the West,” with reason and objectivity itself, for a long time. They are like children throwing tantrums; they will never stop. It is time that the right recognized this and stopped trying to get along.

Adams is right that there is a growing problem of racism in America, it is primarily anti-white racism, and it is primarily among blacks.