The Trump Verdict and the Next Election

 

The prisoner in the dock

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. 

The conviction of Trump in the recent New York felony trial makes it a patriotic duty for all Americans to vote for Trump next November. It does not matter if you don’t like Trump. I myself was inclined to Ron DeSantis at the start of this cycle. Trump is always chaotic, and that was not attractive to me. But once they started persecuting him, it became necessary to move to Trump.

The problem is, if the Democrats get away with this, they will do it again. America will never have another honest election. Even if Trump wins, but only narrowly—the Republicans will be tempted to do it, as payback, and the practice of lawfare to fix elections becomes established. Trumps needs to win resoundingly, so that both parties get the message that this tactic will not work, but will blow up in their face.

Since February 2021, it has been a patriotic duty for all Canadians to vote for the Conservative Party and Pierre Poilievre. The message must be clear to both parties—to all three parties—that declaring the Emergencies Act to suppress dissent will not work. Otherwise Canadian democracy is finished too.

Poilievre is not perfect; you might not like aspects of the Tory platform. But the vote must coalesce around one candidate for the Liberal defeat to be decisive. Poilievre is the only available vehicle. Not Singh, who has allied with Trudeau; not Bernier, who has no realistic chance of power. It must be Poilievre.

Vote for your children, and your children’s children. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

To Whom Do You Listen?

 

Who do you trust? Now that all the conventional authorities are shown to be liars?

Who are your favourite commentators among the streamers? A topic at a recent meeting I was unable to attend.

I recently watched a “Backstage” round table from the Daily Wire, and was impressed with the intellectual level of the conversation. This is what university ought to be like, and isn’t. Daily Wire has been taking a lot of criticism lately from other parties on the right: Candace Owens, Steven Crowder. I suspect this has mostly to do with the greater antisemitism: Daily Wire is just too good and too successful. It provokes envy among others on the right.

I especially love to listen to Michael Knowles. I am a liberal; he is a conservative. But it is fascinating to hear the conservative position. He has a background in Italian literature. He is schooled in theology and the traditions of Western thought. I learn from him. But he is also soothing to listen to: he always has an upbeat attitude.

I love Andrew Klavan. He obviously also has a strong background in the Humanities. I loved to hear him arguing with Knowles about what Dante really meant. He adds great wisdom; in part, I expect, from his more advanced age. I do not always agree with his take on Christianity and Christian ethics; but then, he is an Anglican. They tend to be pretty loose on these things. His monologues are always intensely funny.

Ben Shapiro is great. Everyone knows Ben Shapiro is great. He talks fast and never wastes your time. He can always hold my complete attention. Because he is deeply schooled in Judaism, he can often teach me new things and new perspectives. What Would Moses Do?

Speaking of talking fast, I love to listen to Brett Cooper. She doesn’t have nearly as much to say; her purview is more pop culture and relationships. But like Michael Knowles, she has a sunny attitude, and rock-solid common sense.

I am put off by Matt Walsh. His gruffness irritates me; his tone is authoritarian. I think his instincts are authoritarian. I also seem to learn nothing new from him; perhaps in part because we agree on so much. This makes him less interesting to listen to. 

Jordan Peterson: an associate at Daily Wire. I admire his courage; but I have always found Peterson vague and philosophically ungrounded; not intellectually rigorous. He is, after all, a psychologist, and all psychology is like this. A clear thinker would not have entered the field. So time spent listening to Jordan Peterson, I’m sad to say, is time wasted.

Candace Owens has always put me off. Now that she is feuding with Daily Wire. I think categorically that she is in the wrong. She is infected with the poison of antisemitism. She is also not on the same intellectual level as the others; she is prominent because she likes to fight. The point is to stir things up, not to seek the truth. Yellow journalism.

Which brings us to Alex Jones. Like Owens, but more so, his main interest is in stirring things up and being controversial. He is a brilliant entertainer, and a lot of fun to listen to, so long as you understand what he is about—I just don’t have the time. But attempts to ban him or sue him are pure evil. 

Steven Crowder is also primarily an entertainer. He is often fun to listen to; but he is not particularly deep in his analysis. I generally do not have the time.

I find myself listening often to Tim Pool—and wondering why. I find him irritating, for the same reason I love Ben Shapiro. Pool always takes five minutes to say what should take one minute. And most of that is just repeating the same point in other words, and expressing personal opinions. His strength is that he is first with a comment on each news story. He is a news source.

Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, is good for keeping tabs on what is happening in the UK. He seems well grounded in the classical tradition. The main problem is merely that we do not hear from him that often.

Also from the UK, I like Calvin Robinson, from what I have heard; but I have not heard enough from him to say anything definitive.

Canadian commentators? I do want to see anything new put out by JJ McCullough. JJ is not that well schooled in a classical sense, but that is not his thing. His specialty is cultural literacy, meaning in his case pop cultural literacy. This is a special interest of mine, and relates to my work. He is also a great presenter.

Viva Frei is the best of Canadian streamers on politics and current events. Like Ben Shapiro, he talks fast, gets to the point, and does not waste your time. Even better are his sessions with the American lawyer Barnes. Barnes seems always to have an unexpected perspective on things, he is clear and unambiguous about it, and he is often right when I was wrong.

Whatsherface is absolutely brilliant for a comic take on the news. I must see each new video of hers as soon as it is out. Not deep analysis, nothing new learned, but both useful as an overview of the week and highly entertaining.

Mr. Sunshine Baby. He is all clickbait, all the time. But like Tim Pool, his strength is that he is always first on the scene. I often find myself watching his videos despite the low quality, for the news value.

Some other streamers worth mentioning: Joe Rogan comes across as a regular guy with common sense and street smarts. As an interviewer, he stands in for the average guy; nobody has ever done this better than Rogan. He seems to have no prejudices; you get the straight goods. I only wish I had more time to listen to his “long form” interviews.

Megyn Kelly often shows up in my feed. This is no doubt because she is highly active. A good news source, the straight goods, not great analysis. 

Everyone knows about Tucker Carlson. Enough said; a must-watch.

Bill O’Reilly is back with his own videocast. I have caught it recently, and find it worthwhile. I think he is a bit of a blowhard. But he has been around the block, and so can have some unique insights.

Dinesh DeSouza: do not like. I catch someone in a lie, and they lose me forever. DeSouza is not honest.

This is also why I’m soured on Scott Adams. He is at least honest about the fact that he is trying to manipulate you. And I am myself a student of rhetoric, and love it when it is well done. But truly good rhetoric must be strictly honest, and not manipulative. Adams manipulates. This also means he takes a great deal of time to make his points. More time than  I have to spare.

William Lane Craig: his purview is narrow, the issue of the existence of God, but he is the best at it. He is also a model of a fine debater—speaking of my interest in rhetoric. My one complaint is that he is too ready to appeal to authority.

Bishop Barron. I’d rather see him pope than Francis, and he often has valuable insights. But he turned me off like a switch with the declaration early in his series on Catholicism, the one that made his public name, that we are destined to become gods. That sounds to me satanic. He has since famously claimed that “we have reason to hope” that everyone ends up in heaven. Sounds like the same tendency to human arrogance.  So he is unsound on doctrine.

I usually make a point of listening to Jimmy Dore when he posts something new. He is a leftist; our basic attitudes and assumptions are different. That makes him interesting to listen to. Other than poisoning the well with terms like “war pig,” he does seem to try to be honest about things. 

I often find myself listening to Styxhexenhammer. Did I spell that right? His views on religion are apparently the opposite of mine, and he tends to be repetitious and to draw things out. But like Jimmy Dore, he is interesting in order to hear a different but thoughtful take on things. 

I’m sure I’ve missed some great ones. Please, by all means, add your own suggestions in the comments.

Bellevue House Decolonized

 

In a recent discussion among the hosts at Daily Wire, Andrew Klavan rightly argued that antisemitism is not like other forms of racism or discrimination. It is something special, and infinitely worse. The other hosts, even Ben Shapiro, the orthodox Jew, did not see this. 

As Ben Shapiro did point out, however, it is the form of discrimination most likely to end in genocide—arguably the only one.

In other forms of racism, the outsider group is considered inferior. Jews are hated, however, because they are perceived to be superior: “too powerful.”

You do not hate people you think are inferior to you. You are likely to feel sorry for them, and to reach out with. That is the actual experience of blacks or indigenous people. Granted, you don’t want them marrying your daughter. But you don’t hate them, and otherwise wish them well.

You only hate those you think are better than you. These are the people you want to harm or kill.

It is the story of Cain and Abel, repeated endlessly; the second sin of man. God seems to favour this people. Left alone, they always seem to succeed. They seem more intelligent and talented than you. 

Therefore, they must be kept down, or killed. 

To want to harm or kill another because they are more talented or intelligent than you is uniquely and gravely, as Klavan points out, a sin against God himself. God bestows talents. Antisemitism is perhaps the purest proof that someone is a bad person.

Not only Jews, to be fair, are Jews. While they are the obvious historical example, other groups are similarly hated for their accomplishments and talents. The Hakka Chinese in Southeast Asia. The Armenians in the Middle East. I suspect—I may be prejudiced—that this is behind the longstanding English determination to wipe out the Irish. It is clearly behind the current hatred of “straight white males.”

It is behind the Marxist/ socialist hartred for the rich, and ascription of all ills to “rich capitalists” and “greedy corporaions.”

And it directs hatred towards any unusually intelligent or talented or successful individual. Such as Sir John A. Macdonald.

The current frenzy of tearing down statues, renaming streets, and desecrating museums is the same impulse. Sir John A. Macdonald is hated not for any crime, but precisely for his accomplishments. It is worth pointing out that he was one of the greatest advocates in his day for Canada’s native people. As was Egerton Ryerson, another man whose statues have been torn down. Yet those who, like George Brown, actually opposed aboriginal interests, do not receive criticism. Their buildings are not renamed. Macdonald is actually envied for his greater moral goodness. Henry Dundas, similarly, was a leading abolitionist in England; yet he, and not the slavers, is condemned for slavery, and his name erased.

We live in an evil age. What is happening to day is what we will later have to apologize for, and will shamefacedly want to erase from our history books. Like the Cultural Revolution in China, or the Nazi period in Germany.

Farage the Islamophobe

 

There seems to be a firestorm in the UK over Nigel Farage’s recent comments that the UK is letting in too many immigrants who do not support “British values” and “loathe what we stand for.” He is being accused of “Islamophobia” for saying this.

Watch the original interview. It seems to me Farage is perfectly right, and the interviewer dishonest. He is trying to poison the well; Farage is not allowed to cite simple facts, or he is “Islamophobic.” This shuts down debate and leads to bad policy.

Farage here shows himself, once again, a true leader. He will not be intimidated.

Surely it is self-evident that Islam is a set of values. Are these values the same as traditional British values? Are they compatible with them? If not, is British culture and are British values worth preserving?

Let’s take these necessary questions in turn.

Are Islamic values the same as British values? 

They are not, in one essential way. Islam demands sharia law. Nothing, not even the English language, is more central to British culture than British common law; including the principles of Magna Carta and all the rest. 

Next to that, little is more central to British culture than parliamentary democracy. Islam demands a theocracy. There is a reason why there are no functioning democracies in the Muslim Middle East. 

Britain is an officially Christian country; the King is head of the church. Islam is obviously a different creed. Granted, freedom of religion is also a mainstay of modern British culture. But Islam is also doctrinally opposed to freedom of religion: death is the punishment for apostasy. Blasphemy laws apply to non-Muslims; no one may deny the truth of Islam. 

Can these Muslim values coexist with British values? 

On their face, no. And the history of Islam everywhere suggests they cannot. Because of the requirement for sharia law and theocracy, Islam must rule. If there is a substantial Muslim population anywhere, there is an immediate demand for segregation and independence: they will not integrate. 

Are, then, British culture and British values worth preserving?

Just consider the objective accomplishments of British culture. Science, democracy, the Industrial Revolution, Shakespeare, William Blake, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, Dickens, the Brontes, Orwell, football, cricket, rugby, and so on. Suppose it is not the best culture in the world. Even so, surely it is worth preserving. Surely every people has a right to exist, to their culture.

But also consider the quality of the average person’s life in the UK, say over the past few hundred years, with that of the average countryman elsewhere worldwide. Look at the raw economic statistics, or the relative absence of violence and social turmoil.

The answer is obvious. If British culture is lost, it is unlikely to be replaced by something better.

All of these same considerations, of course, apply to Canada; or the US.

This is nothing against Islam. Different countries and different  cultures all have a perfect right to exist. Muslims are free to be Muslims in Muslim countries. British people simply deserve the same right.

Pope Francis Lays It Out

 

Pope Francis has condemned “conservatism” as “wanting to cling to something, and not seeing beyond it.” “It is a suicidal attitude.” “Being closed up inside a dogmatic box.”

Merriam-Webster defines conservative as “support of established institutions”; “tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions”; “marked by moderation or caution.”

Francis is misdefining “conservative” to mean “obsessive.”

But he obviously intends to malign real conservatives. 

He is, therefore,  objecting to and condemning support of established institutions, existing views, and conditions. And he objects to moderation and caution.

This means the pope stands in opposition to the Catholic Church: there is no more established institution. He stands against the “deposit of faith.” The reason for the church to exist is to preserve and spread dogma, this set of revealed truths. He calls it a “dogmatic box.” And he stands against the virtue of prudence, aka moderation or caution, which both Aquinas and the ancient Greeks considered the mother of all virtues.

"Prudence is the foundation of all these things and is the greatest good. Thus it is more valuable than philosophy and is the source of every other excellence.” It is “the cause, measure, and form of all virtues.”

So the pope stands against the Catholic church as an institution, against Catholicism as a faith or set of beliefs, and against virtue. 

Is the pope Catholic?

Clearly not.

The Real World of Economics

 

Jagmeet Singh and the NDP organized a boycott of Loblaw’s supermarkets for the month of May, in protest over high prices and “corporate greed.” 

This made little sense on many levels, and much sense on none. 

Why Loblaw’s? Its profits were lower than those of some other chains.

Then the Conservatives uncovered the fact that Singh’s brother was a lobbyist for a competitor.

The standard evidence of Loblaw’s price gouging was that prices on comparable products were lower at Dollarama. 

But if so, why boycott? Just buy at Dollarama.

And attributing the rise in prices to “corporate greed” is anthropomorphising a corporation. Can an abstract concept or mechanism feel greed? This, from the side of the aisle adamant that corporations are not persons.

As for greed from individuals, the free market is our protection against it. Raise your prices, and your competitor takes your business. Greed bankrupts you. The places where greed has free rein, and where we need to worry about it, are those not held in check by competition: government bureaucracies, the professions. In sum, the Liberal and NDP constituencies. Making this talk of “corporate greed” look like cynical misdirection.

In other news, the Red Lobster chain has just gone under. At the same time, complaints are rising at the high cost of fast food. “Ordinary people just can’t afford to eat out any more.” Wendy’s is in trouble for trying to introduce “variable pricing,” lowering the price of their meals at slower times of the day. Apparently there is something unfair about this. Everyone should always pay the same price. And again we hear this all framed as a fight against “corporate greed.” 

No doubt the rising cost of ingredients is a part of this. In Canada, the carbon tax is also forcing up the cost of everything. But the same thing is happening in the US; and the rising cost of ingredients should hit home cooking as much as restaurant dining.

The real story is that the fast food chains, and midrange restaurants, are being priced out of their market by the rise in the minimum wage. Anyone could have seen that coming. We are, as a result,  by and large going to lose the convenient option of grabbing a quick meal on the go. Main streets and malls everywhere, already emptying out due to the move of consumers to shopping online, are going to lose their last potential tenants and revenue stream, restaurants. And huge numbers of workers, especially young people on their way up, are going to lose their jobs and their future.

As always, hardest hit will be the poor. The children of the well-off can go to university or community college and be qualified for jobs immediately on graduation. But those who cannot afford higher education enter the market with no skills. They must learn on the job and work their way up. They need these low-paying entry-level jobs. Now what? A life on welfare?

Are there any honest souls on the left?

 Or do they really just not understand economics?

A Turnip by My Side

 

If wishes were horses here’s what I’d ride:

The voters of the United Kingdom are in a terrible spot. The Conservative Party has let them down tremendously; but the only viable alternative is Labour, which is bound to be worse on the wokery.

The outcome I would hope for in the current campaign is for the Conservatives to be surpassed by Reform in the popular vote, so that at least at last a real alternative might exist. Then get Farage, Tice, Johnson, Truss, Rees-Mogg, Braverman huddled together there. Such shifts have happened in the past; Labour took out the Liberals long ago on the left.

America has reason to hope for a Trump win; and that is good. But even better if Kennedy were to actually outpoll Biden, and so free the American left from the backrooms and special interests. There used to be an honourable, hopeful, genuinely progressive left, in the days of JFK, of John XXIII, of the fight for civil rights, of the folk revival. It would be glorious to see it live again. 

In Canada, we are lucky. We are on track for the best result: a historic humiliation of the Trudeau Liberals at the hands of a competent and genuine opposition in the CPC. Should the CPC turn out to be a sham, like the UK Tories, we have the PPC at their heels. I feel it is vital to Canada’s future as a healthy democracy that Trudeau not only lose, but lose badly enough that he becomes a cautionary tale of how not to behave as prime minister; like Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon are remembered in the States. This looks as if it is likely to happen.

Can we have, after that, a rejuvenated Canadian left? Are there any honest leftists, in the Kennedy mold, still alive in Canada? Anyone left in the honourable if misguided line of David Lewis, FR Scott, Bryce Mackasey, Eric Kierans, Lester Pearson? Singh has destroyed the legitimacy of the NDP; no sparks there. There is Elizabeth May, Jane Philpott, Jody Wilson-Raybould, maybe Tom Mulcair. But they all seem now like figures from the past, not possible futures.

In the Vatican, I could wish for Pope Francis to have a conversion experience—we are, after all, in the business of miracles. That would be best. 

Second best, he dies soon or resigns. The conclave, aware of the problems, picks someone quite different; someone charismatic in the mold of JPII, with the doctrinal clarity of Benedict XVI.

I do think all of this is possible, if not likely.

What Have You Done for Jesus?

 

A cardiologist who sees many people revived after heart death believes that 50% of near-death experiences are bad ones. So much for the claim you sometimes here that everyone experiences gardens and flowers and a complete lack of judgment. That’s just what we want to believe. He thinks these bad trips are less often reported for obvious reasons: people are reluctant to tell others they have been judged evil and are bound for hell. But immediately after people revive, their reactions are less filtered. Terror is apparent.

We also hear often from hospice nurses of how people approaching death have visions of dead loved ones welcoming them to the next world. And we hear how comforting these are. But one study suggests that 30% of them are not comforting, but disturbing.

These are things we do not want to hear. But they conform with the wisdom of the ages. 

One man studying medicine when he had a “near death experience” was confronted by a figure in white whom he understood to be Jesus; and the figure asked him, “What have you done with your life? What have you done for me?”

And he was told that studying to be a doctor did not count.

What are we supposed to do with out lives? What does count?

We have written elsewhere of the commission Jesus gave to those he identifies in the Beatitudes as his own: 

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

As discussed elsewhere, “being salty” and “letting your light shine” has to mean the creation of art. Heaven is the New Jerusalem: it is an artifice, a town built on a hill. We build it together with God.

But what if we have no talent?

I came across a letter to Dear Abby recently, from a housewife who laments that she is not actually very good at anything. She has nothing to offer the world, so what is the point of her life?

Surely there are such people. Gifts are gifts; they are given to some, not to all. And God must have a plan for those he does not give gifts as well. Indeed, it must be at least as honourable.

And the mandate for those without talents is perfectly obvious. 

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

That is what all of us “do for Jesus.” Moreover, as the Beatitudes make clear, there is no cause for those without talents to feel mistreated or disfavoured by God. The blessed given talents are given suffering to go with it: poverty, mourning, rejection, spiritual hunger.

Abby gives this distraught housewife just the right advice, and it applies to all of us who might feel our lives are meaningless: get involved in volunteer work with some charity. 

Speak No Evil

 

“Denny went to Catholic school; Denny had tattoos. Even though the Catholics frowned on tattoos, Denny did not seem to resent this.”

This paraphrased from an unpublished manuscript I have been asked to look at.

Something is wrong here. Not just that the Catholic Church does not consider tattoos sinful. Suppose they did. Isn’t the rational response, for Denny, to wonder whether his tattoos were a good idea, and seek to justify them to himself; rather than trying to decide whether he can still tolerate in silence his teachers, his colleagues, presumably his parents who sent him to a Catholic school. and the accumulated wisdom of his ancestors for the past two thousand years?

Noting that nothing in religion is compulsory: nobody is making him do anything. His personal freedom is not at issue.

This seems to illustrate the narcissism and intolerance of our current postmodern milieu. 

You can see how this attitude might lead to violence; might lead to assuming the right to shoot up the school for not conforming to your wishes.

We see it spreading to matters other than morals. Now you can condemn your doctor for suggesting that you are morbidly obese, and your health is in danger if you don’t take steps. That’s “fat shaming.” How dare he?

How soon before doctors dare not diagnose cancer, for fear of prosecution?

The Reality of Medical Assistance in Dying

 

Why Now, Rishi?

If only it were Justin Trudeau instead of Rishi Sunak. Unexpectedly, trailing by over 20 points in the polls and with some months to go in his mandate, Sunak has called a snap election for July 4. In the rain.

It has taken everyone by surprise, and it makes no sense in usual political terms. The conventional thing would be to hold on in hopes that polls might improve. As they say, a week is a long time in politics. Even at worst, holding off means a few more months to exercise power and to look for your next job.

It has to be that Sunak knows something we don’t know. The more so since this has all the appearances of being a rushed announcement, as though there is some emergency. Cabinet ministers were summoned to a sudden meeting; some of them had to cut trips abroad. Tory backbenchers were not consulted or informed. The announcement was not well staged: in the rain, without an umbrella, with opposition loudspeakers blaring. Sunak did not seem to have any particular campaign theme or message prepared.

It surely has to mean that something dreadful is likely to drop in the next few months. Sunak needs to get the election over with quickly, or the Tories will fare even worse. 

What is likely to be that drastic?

My guess is, it has to do with the Covid vaccines and the rise in mortality since the epidemic. Something may be about to come out; something worse that we have yet heard. Sunak may have seen a preliminary draft of some report.

Not Light Yet

 

“I've been down on the bottom of the world full of lies
I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes.” – Bob Dylan, “Not Dark Yet”

Theodore Sturgeon once said “ninety percent of everything is crap.” He was referring to literature; but perhaps everything really means everything.

One explanation for why the world has seemed recently to go so weird is that, with the improved information flow through the internet, the crap that was always there is becoming more obvious. And the liars more desperate to stop the information flow.

Surely ninety percent of all political speech is lies. “Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”—George Orwell. Almost everything spoken by a practicing politician contains a familiar logical fallacy. Nobody is seeking what is best for the community; only angling for power by whatever means necessary. Most government money seems misspent.

Surely too ninety percent of academics is nonsense. When you read almost anything written by a college professor, you realize that it is written as obliquely as possible, to withhold and obscure information, when the entire point of the academy is to discover and convey information. Someone has pointed out that whenever a major new scientific discovery is made, it takes a generation for it to be recognized and accepted by the academy. The current generation of professors has to retire. They will have vested interests in the previous paradigm. There is a reason why Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity as a patent clerk, the Wright Brothers cracked flight from their bicycle shop, and college dropout Steve Jobs created the first personal computers in his parents’ garage.

Probably ninety percent of organized religion is also fake. The Bible itself says so: pharisaism and hypocrisy.

Everyone knows, of course, that business and corporations are greedy and dishonest and trying to sell you junk. The irony is that this is the one place we have the best protection against such lies and fraud.

In sum, we all live in a world full of lies. 

This is an argument for the existence of an afterlife; C.S. Lewis made it.  We have a yearning for truth. How can we yearn for, or even be aware of, something that does not exist? That must mean it does exist somewhere …

One might suppose that, in the case of science fiction and literature at least, the great mass of crap is due to incompetence. Not everyone can write well.

Perhaps not so. Perhaps everyone can.

Perhaps the artist is really someone who insists on seeing the lies around him, and feels morally driven to speak the truth. Then he will find his medium. He is a prophetic voice crying in the wilderness. He speaks obliquely, in parables, because those in charge are determined to suppress truth. “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant/ Success in circuit lies”—Emily Dickenson.

There are endless stories about how many times this or that famous book or great author was rejected for publication. Why? When it is so obvious to everyone that this is a great book, how can it not have been obvious to all those trained and seasoned acquisitions editors? 

Perhaps the trick is to slip by the censors. Pretend it’s just fantasy. Pretend it’s about sex or thrills. But sneak truths in.

So too for visual artists. I see what contemporary drek is shown in the public galleries. Then I see what fine work appears in internet feeds from amateur artists who cannot sell their work. Great artists of the past were also rejected by the academy and the galleries. Van Gogh never sold a painting. How account for that?

The vast bulk of art is bad not because there are not enough talented artists. It is bad because it is not telling the truth. Like Hollywood movies these days, empty formulae without purpose at best, at worst deliberately lying about the world.

Orwell understood this when he said that his one talent was really in simply being able to face truth. Most people run screaming from it.

The Trump Veep Stakes

 

No Noem

Trump is cannily keeping speculation going over who he will choose for his running mate. It’s like The Apprentice. Gets a lot of earned media. 

Who would I pick if I were Trump?

Best pick: Ron DeSantis. He has the executive skills to carry forward Trump’s legacy four years from now. I think Trump is right that the VP pick doesn’t move polls much. The more important thing is to groom someone who could take the torch if and when it is passed on.

Next: RFK Jr. Could blow a permanent hole in the Democratic Party. That could be an important legacy too. It would also be a unifying pick, and America needs that. I believe Kennedy has already been offered the slot, however, and has turned it down.

Next: Tulsi Gabbard. Again, pulls in independents and independent-minded Democrats. Also a unifying pick. 

Next: Vivek Ramaswamy. Like a younger Trump; therefore, good for passing on the legacy in four years. He’s great at getting out the message, great in tussles with the media. After four years as understudy, I think he could handle the presidential job. 

Next: Tucker Carlson. A straight talker; having him on the ticket would help reassure the public that the corrupt cartel is no longer in control. The only problem is, I think he might be of greater value as a media voice than silenced as VP.

Next: J.D. Vance. A voice for all those overlooked and neglected working class whites.

Next: Ben Carson. He lacks political experience, but projects a sense of being utterly sincere, calm and responsible, without being weak. He does, to my mind, give off presidential vibes.

I could get really excited about any of those picks. Below this level, I would feel at least a twinge of regret at lost opportunity. The current rumours are that it will be Marco Rubio. That makes sense in terms of cementing the support of Hispanic voters, but that also means Rubio is being picked largely because of his race. Bad practice, bad example for the nation. There is also something about Rubio that makes it hard to picture him as president. Some people got it, some don’t. He has a bit of a reputation for pandering, too. 

Christie Noem is surely definitely out by now. I would never have been happy with her selection. She doesn’t have the resume, and would only be on the ticket because she’s a woman. Same with Kari Lake.

Doug Burgum? Why is he being mentioned?  He has no charisma, and is not eloquent either. Make him chief of staff, maybe.

Tim Scott? Again, lacking in charisma, and like Rubio, he does not have the presidential aura. He feels like an empty suit.

Of course, there are other possibilities. But these are the names most commonly mentioned.

Who Killed Raisi?

 

I have no inside information here, but I asked an Iranian friend who is deeply involved in the democratic resistance here in Canada for his view of the death of Iran’s president and foreign minister. He says they generally think it is an assassination, and an inside job. Part of a power struggle at the top. It may be because Raisi was too obvious a candidate to succeed Khamenei as Supreme Leader. Not pro-democracy forces, not the Israelis, and not the weather.

Will the death of Raisi bring good news for the Iranian people and the pro-democracy forces? Unlikely, he thinks. 

The Evils of Supply Management

 

It has always been a cruel transfer of wealth from the poorest Canadians to big corporate operations.It has always been a cruel transfer of wealth from the poorest Canadians to big corporate operations.

The Veil Has Been Torn Open

 

The reaction on the left to Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College makes clear that we are dealing in modern political life with a straight contest between good and evil.  How dare he publicly praise the benefits of home and family life? Of motherhood and apple pie?

This might sound extreme; but the same was true in 1933-45, from the perspective of Western Europe. Wasn’t the same true during the Cold War? Wasn’t the same true during the fight in the US for Civil Rights? The fight against slavery? Isn’t it the usual or even eternal condition of man?

The president an foreign minister of Iran just went down in a helicopter crash. Search efforts have been hindered by snow. In May. 

God is in His heaven. The Devil is powerful, but everything must turn out well in the end.

All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

Waterloo Village

 

This is a video by a local YouTuber about the slums of Saint John. Locals claim it is the worst slum in Canada, although I doubt that.

What most prompts my reaction is the interview with “front-line worker” Melanie from a non-profit. She stresses that the real problem is poverty; she repeats this for emphasis. Yet she also says, correctly, that homelessness, drug use, and mental illness are a growing problem everywhere, “around the world.” Is poverty growing everywhere? According to the statistics, just the reverse.

Why then does she say such a thing? 

Firstly, because she is ideologically motivated. The system is not broken, she explains. The system was designed wrong from the start; it is all about colonialism, oppression and misogyny.

But where does this ideology, in turn, come from?

Melanie reports with satisfaction that at last the government seems to be listening to the front-line workers, that the solution is to “bring us to the table,” and hear what these workers say they need.

Not the addicts or the mentally ill, note. The front-line workers.

In the real world, this is probably a bad approach. The jobs and power of the front-line workers depend on there being a continuing problem and “clients” to “serve”; their interest is to ensure that matters never get better.

Hence they usually turn to ideology about “the entire system.” That guarantees permanence of employment. Poverty as explanation works the same way. As Jesus rightly says, “the poor you will have always with you.” At least in relative terms, poverty can never be eliminated. So, a good job until retirement.

They will also have incentive to exaggerate the problem; and gradually redefine terms to make everyone officially poor, addicted, and mentally ill.

In sum, if you want to make sure a problem never improves, set up a government bureaucracy to fix it. Witness the troubles of indigenous Canadians.

So what is the solution? 

The veteran in the video seems to think the need is for more money for mental health. But Jordan Owens, the interviewer, hints at the problem: mental health treatments have not worked. They are also hugely costly, when our heath system is in crisis. Just a wealth transfer from average taxpayers to highly-paid medical professionals.

Given that the immediate problem, and the problem that is growing, is drug addiction, how about attacking that directly? Make it illegal, and throw them all in jail. Thus the current controversy over whether hard drugs should be recriminalized in B.C.. Although “decriminalization” has clearly been a disaster in BC, I cannot support making drugs illegal, on the grounds of bodily autonomy and the right to the pursuit of happiness. As a practical matter, I also don’t see how it does much. In N.B., and elsewhere, police have largely stopped enforcing the laws anyway. They do not have the resources. They arrest some junkie, the matter works its way through the court system, they perhaps spend some time in jail—they can’t pay a fine—and then are back out on the street. All at great taxpayer expense. Given that many of them are mentally ill, with delusions of persecution, having the police harass them is not a great idea in order to achieve compliance. It is almost sure to create an escalation of tensions and public disorder. And certainly not good for homeless, mentally ill, addicts.

The problem is that the real problem is despair. How do you cure despair? These are people who have given up on life, on the world, and on themselves.

If I were in government, I would set up a sanatorium away from the city, and so away from kids and temptations to steal—as well as from their problems. Maybe convert some of the many motels that are no longer prospering since the road trip declined in popularity. I would send these people there for as long as they want—any who wanted shelter. No medical interventions, no pokes or prods. Three squares and beyond that left alone, in a quiet room to themselves. But no drugs on the premises. Art supplies, writing materials, Bible, Talmud, donated religious literature. Chaplains encouraged to visit; a common room for services.

The mad thing is, this is just about exactly what we had two hundred years ago, sitting on top of a pastoral hill overlooking the Reversing Falls. And the cure rate was quite high. We abandoned that for a materialistic medical model. Things have been going downhill ever since, and we are now in the maelstrom at the foot of the Falls.

The Balance of Nature

 

A student recently lamented how human technology can disturb the balance of nature. This is a widespread idea, the balance of nature, that mankind upsets by his existence. Yet this is a nonsensical idea.

Nature without man is not steady state. One wet spring, a given species will proliferate. This will provoke some other species to reproduce with abandon. Next year, conditions will change; there will be mass die-offs. 

The one factor that creates balance in nature, year over year, is man. Man gardens, or farms, or manages nature, mending eroding riverbanks, irrigating, making it predictable and preventing sudden shocks to the ecosystem.

We speak of environments being “damaged” or “destroyed.” Barring some disintegrator beam, what we mean is environments changing suddenly and dramatically. Man sometimes does this, to make some environment more suitable for man; but it also happens more often in nature.

As Others See Us

 

The Depopulation Bomb

 

The lack of children being born is an emergency situation worldwide. Entire nations are dying out. Economies are stalling and descending into unsupportable debt to pay for social services.

At the same time, governments are still enacting policies to discourage people from having children, making the situation worse.

What measures could reverse this?

Some are obvious, but politically unpopular.

Ban abortion.

Ban birth control. 

Ban pornography.

This presumably pushes people to get married, stay married, and anticipate children in order to have sex. Nature meant it to work this way. We messed with that at our peril.

Encourage women to choose childrearing instead of some career outside the home. For sixty years, of course, we have done the opposite. One way to do that is to ensure that men make more than women for doing the same job; ideally double, so they can support a wife at home.

End no-fault divorce. Put a cap on child support, alimony and property division, favouring the chief wage earner. It should never be in a woman’s financial interest to divorce. This would encourage childrearing by removing a major factor preventing men from marrying in the first place

End requirements for car seats for children. This sounds trivial, but it limits many families to two children. There is no room for a third car seat in a typical automobile.

Repeal laws against spanking and other traditional forms of child discipline. The danger of being hauled into court for assault, or, conversely, being unable to control your children, is a disincentive to having kids. Of course, real abuse should be illegal, but spanking is not abuse; our grandparents were not sadists.

Allow parents to choose their children’s school. This will prevent the schools from working against the parents’ interests, as the public schools do now. People are unlikely to have children if they are likely to function in the family as a fifth column imposing state control.

Promote and defer to religion and religious organizations. This can be done without favouring one denomination or another, and so is in perfect conformity with the right to freedom of conscience. Religions promote responsible parenthood and discourage seeking sexual pleasure in the moment.

This is no doubt all highly controversial, and I may be called names. But, put simply, we do this or we die.

Land Acknowledgements

 

It seems most public gatherings in Canada now open with a “land acknowledgement.” Here are two that showed up recently in my email, prefacing messages:

“The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick acknowledges that the land on which we live, work and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq Peoples, and we honour the spirit of our ancestors’ Treaties of Peace and Friendship.”

“I respectfully and humbly acknowledge that I live and create on land traditionally inhabited and traversed for centuries by the Piikani, Siksika, Kainai, Tsuut'ina and Nakota peoples, their antecedents and their descendants.”

I understand this is also common in Australia; but not in the US.

I find these “land acknowledgements” offensive and ahistorical. I must always bite my tongue. I fear that, sooner or later, I will myself be forced to read one out, violating my conscience.

They are racist. They assert some special privilege for one racial group over others. That’s especially harmful in a multi-ethnic nation like Canada. They further imply a ruling class, an atistocracy by right of birth. We should all be equal, and advance on merit.

If the point is merely to recall the history of the place, how can they, in the case of New Brunswick, exclude mention of the Acadiens, or the French and British crowns, both of which also declared this their territory at different times.

Is it the claim that the territory was never ceded that makes a difference? 

Granted, the French and British did formally cede their claims to sovereignty by treaty. But so did the indigenous groups: in the same way, by treaty. 

Is the claim that sovereignty was ceded, but not the land itself? That the indigenous groups still  hold property rights, as individual Acadiens might still own their farms under Canadian or British sovereignty? 

But wait. Notice that multiple groups always need to be mentioned. This is because no one aboriginal group had secure possession of any territory; each might pass through. Accordingly, for none of them was it ever “their” land in the legal sense: property ownership requires secure possession, not merely passing through a place, even at regular intervals. Hence the legal doctrine of “squatter’s rights.” 

In fact, the land acknowledgements are inevitably discriminatory among indigenous groups themselves. In the NB acknowledgement, the Passamaquoddy are not mentioned: they too claim NB land as their traditional homeland. There were Iroquois in the Rocky Mountain foothills; yet the Alberta acknowledgement ignores them. Members of almost any tribe might have been almost anywhere at any given time. You can’t tell whom you should name.

Is it about who was here first? We do not know who was here first. All we know is that the named indigenous groups were the ones here at first contact with Europeans. That is an arbitrary point in time. Go back a few centuries further, and we have no idea who was here. We know that indigenous groups moved, expanded, contracted, and disappeared continually. They were, after all, nomadic.

And if being here before some other group establishes special rights or privileges, how does that work for more recent immigrants? Should those of English ancestry be shown similar deference by Italians or Hispanics? And is that second-class or third-class status eternal, generation after generation?

Stop it, Canada.

Depresssion and Its Cure

 

It seems plausible that the reason for the rapid rise in depression and other mental illness has been the growing use of seed oils. 

But this relies on the premise that depression is a “chemical imbalance in the brain.” That looks like a categorization error, mistaking something spiritual for something physical, the menu for the meal. It is like supposing that doing a dance wearing a false face will scare away cancer. It actually can work—witness the placebo effect—because mind and body do interact. But it is going about it the long way around.

What is depression really? It is not particularly related to feeling sad. “Depression” is a misleading term. The older word, “melancholia,” is better. Often more like an emotional numbness, and as often anxiety.

It is best described, perhaps, to those who have not experienced it, as like being in a maze. And in that maze, there is a minotaur. Any way you turn is probably wrong. But staying put is also wrong.

The obvious way to understand that, is that you have lost your moral compass. You have lost your sense of right and wrong.

Not in the way psychopaths are supposed to. Psychopaths seem to have the opposite experience, that nothing is wrong, and you are free to do what you want. The depressed feel instead that nothing is right; which paralyses them.

Most likely either is the result of an immoral upbringing, an upbringing by a parent who themselves had no moral sense; a parent who is either a psychopath, or chronically depressed.

The more dramatic experience we call schizophrenia seems adjacent in kind. Here the problem is not just what is right or wrong, but what is real. Probably produced most often by a parent who chronically “gaslit,” to use the currently popular term. And here, too, there are logically two opposite forms: either anything I want to be real is probably real; or anything I don’t want to be real is probably real. The former produces what we call narcissism. The latter produces what we call schizophrenia. 

So what is the proper or probable cure?

Where do we go to discover what is genuinely right and wrong, and what is genuinely real? Where do we go to reprogram our minds out of this trap?

Obviously, to philosophy and to religion.

Seed Oils

 

Mikhaila Peterson, Jordan’s daughter, says she and her father cured themselves of chronic depression by going to an all-meat diet.

I’m sceptical. For one thing, rates of depression have skyrocketed since the post-war years. Were our diets more meat-oriented before the war, and have they become less so since? I would think the opposite: with growing wealth, especially nouveau wealth, people tend to add more meat to their diet. I have also read many studies that claim the “Mediterranean diet,” or the traditional Japanese diet, cure depression. These diets are the opposite: little or no red meat, only vegetables and seafood.

So the data seems all over the place, and inconclusive.

But wait--the real problem might be seed oils: corn oil, canola oil, “vegetable oil” generally. Going carnivore eliminates the use of seed oils, in favour of animal fats.  So does going Mediterranean; you use only olive oil. Traditional Japanese cooking relies primarily on sesame oil. This is indeed a seed oil, but it may have unique properties. Some studies show it has anti-depressant effects. 

“Seed oils” have become far more common postwar. Everyone switched from bacon fat to oils in frying. Everyone switched from lard to Crisco in baking. Everyone switched from butter to margarine, and, influenced by concerns over cholesterol, specifically to vegetable-oil based margarine. 

The chart shows the rapid growth in the use of seed oils. It associates this with the increased incidence of diabetes. But what else has skyrocketed over the same time period? Auto-immune diseases, allergies, obesity, and mental illness.

Yikes. Seems possible.

What I Learned at School Today

 

No doubt all of this video is worth watching. But I post it in particular for what Matt Walsh says at the beginning about sexual abuse in the public schools. I've been saying this for years: any problem with sex abuse by either Catholic priests or by teachers in the old Indian Residential School System, real as it was, is a hiccup compared to what has been going on in the public schools. With no outrage apparent.

After all, if you are a sexual predator, it is just easier to get what you want, into a position where you are in charge of young people and able to make them do your will by becoming a public school teacher than by joining a religious order or becoming a priest. Most priests or nuns get little contact with children. If a monk or nun is assigned to teach, it is not their choice; it is decided by a superior. The strategic placement for predation is guaranteed to a teacher. 

And there are moral tests in place to keep sexual predators out of holy orders. They must, after all, take a vow of celibacy, which they must visibly honour, more or less guaranteeing they lack a strong inclination towards and interest in sex. They must also often take a vow of poverty, another test of their sincerity. And they are vetted as much as is humanly possible by their superiors and their organization for good moral character. Under twenty-four hour observation. 

Which is exactly why, traditionally, the job of teaching was assigned in any Catholic school to monks and nuns. 

None of these safeguards are applied to public school teachers. It is as if we want predation. Which seems increasingly obvious in these days of SOGI: "Sexual orientation gender ideology." 

We don't care about children. We hate them/.

The New Beatitudes

 

Xerxes, my friend the former left-wing columnist (who seems to have decided to clip his wings), wants the Beatitudes revised. He feels they no longer apply in modern times.

Are there indeed new problems or issues to which they should refer, but do not?

Xerxes cites drug overdose deaths. This is indeed currently an epidemic problem, but in principle, not new. Alcohol was a drug, and potentially a deadly drug, available in Jesus’s time. Not to mention hemp or opium, which seem to have been known. We must assume that Jesus did not consider this a moral issue, or an important moral issue.

In fact, he actually seems to have aided and abetted drunkenness at Cana.

Surely the more interesting question is, why did he not? Is it a moral issue? Or is addiction a symptom of something else?

Xerxes then notes that the Saviour would surely have had something to say about fossil fuel emissions. Granted, fossil fuel was probably not known in Jesus’s day; perhaps coal was sometimes used. But why is fossil fuel an issue? Carbon emissions, surely. So the same issue existed when people in his day burned charcoal or wood to get warm or cook their food. Jesus could have mentioned it; apparently he did not see fit to mention it. 

Is it a moral issue? Or is it an engineering problem: what is the best fuel to use?

“Would he have harsh words for those who know their product does harm, and keep doing it?” Xerxes asks.

People have always produced and sold products. Jesus was a carpenter; Paul a tentmaker; Peter a fisherman. Jesus could have mentioned this, but did not.

No question, this is a moral issue; but selling harmful products, a rotten fish or an unsound cabinet, is obviously and self-evidently wrong to the human conscience. There is no need for God to incarnate to tell us so, and no cause to bless anyone simply for not doing so.

“He talked about those who are persecuted. By the Romans. Or by other authorities. But I wonder what he would say about persecution by the social media, where individuals taking unpopular stands are hounded by hate messages and death threats. “ 

Jesus said “blessed are those who are persecuted.” He did not restrict this to persecution by legal authorities. It applies just as well to social media.

Yet he did restrict his blessing in another way: he did not bless simply for being persecuted. It was for being persecuted for righteousness. 

The distinction seems important. If you advocate the extermination of the Jews, raping women, eating children, or kicking puppies, you might indeed be unpopular, even persecuted. But this does not put you on the side of the angels.

So, in sum, there does not seem to be any demonstrated need for new Beatitudes. Why invent some?

Now, take it from the other end. Is there a case for any of Xerxes’s proposed new Beatitudes? For of course, he goes on to propose some.

“Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are those who doubt, who aren’t entirely sure, who can still be surprised.”

This jumps out as obviously contradicted by the title of C.S. Lewis’s famous spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Surely this contradiction needs to be addressed.

If God is a person, with whom we can have an ongoing relationship, if he is not some abstract concept or cosmic watchmaker, he can be full of surprises. Just as a friend or romantic partner is in any vital and living human relationship. The world of faith is one of wonders and miracles, because everything is a conversation with him, and everything has meaning.

An agnostic, on the other hand, is one “who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.” Sounds like a pretty dead and boring life. For the agnostic there are no surprises; he can never be surprised by anything except perhaps what’s for dinner.

And it of course beggars belief that Jesus would bless us for not believing in him.

“Blessed are those who have nothing to offer.”

If this is simply a restatement of “blessed are the poor”—blessed are those who have few material goods to offer—fine; but nothing new. If not, it contradicts what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, immediately after the Beatitudes: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” We all have much to offer; if we do not offer it, we are hardly to be blessed.

“Blessed are those who have buried loved ones, whose tears could fill an ocean. Blessed are those who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.

Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried. 

Blessed are those who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.”

Fine, and it all sounds noble and empathic. But surely these are just specific cases of “Blessed are those who mourn.” Best not to single out specific sorrows; it shouldn’t be a competition. And causes for sorrow are too varied and complex to all be enumerated in this way.

 “Blessed are those whom no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at school lunch tables. The laundry staff at hospitals. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers. The homeless guy sleeping in a doorway.”

One of these things is not like the other ones. Five are already covered by “blessed are the meek.” The unnoticed, the lonely kid, the laundry staff, the night sweepers, the homeless. But are soliciting prostitutes meek? Are they trying not to be noticed? And do they generally go unnoticed? Do they generally lack companionship?

There were of course prostitutes in Jesus's place and time, and he might have declared them blessed if he saw fit.

But what happened to our wish to condemn those who sell harmful products?

“Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented.”

Blessing the unemployed contradicts Jesus’s admonition to “let your light shine.” Of course, if unemployment is not a choice, it is a hardship. But why would doing nothing be blessed in itself? 

Similarly, why would being unimpressive be blessed? Jesus says of those he beatifies, “you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.” That sounds like being impressive. Having no talent is not a sign of holiness; our very term “talent” comes from Jesus’s parable of the talents, reflecting the assumption that our talents are given by God, and are there to be used. To go out and impress.

“Underrepresented” seems simply too vague to be meaningful. Represented where, and in what sense? If the intent is to apply race and sex quotas when putting together any representative body, per “DEI,” why is this meaningful? Why are race and sex so important? As opposed to, say, being left-handed, or bald, or having green eyes?

As the makers of the current series The Chosen insist on pointing out, there were surely black folks passing through Judea from sub-Saharan Africa in Jesus’ time, as well as Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Phoenicians. pagans, Zoroastrians, and of course many women. Not to mention various classes and social strata. Yet when Jesus chose his twelve apostles, there was no race, sex, ethnic or religious diversity: all “white” Jewish working class men.

Presumably Jesus was not against diversity; but “seeing yourself represented” was not important.

“Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard.”

This is already in the Beatitudes; almost their entire point. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” 

Xerxes: “Blessed are those without documentation.”

Why is someone blessed simply because they do not have ID? I presume the intent is to bless “illegal immigrants.” Which is a dubious sentiment: bless those who break the law? Unjust laws, perhaps. But Christianity assumes a duty to obey the law in most circumstances. Jesus told his followers to pay their taxes.

“Blessed are those who make damaging business decisions for the sake of people they serve.”

This is difficult to parse. An employee of a business enterprise serves the investors in that firm, and has a fiduciary duty to make business decisions that are not damaging to their interests. That business, of course, also serves its customers. The employee has a duty to serve their interests as well. But if in doing so he damages the business, harming his employers, his position is morally ambiguous.

Jesus actually addresses this problem in the Parable of the Unjust Steward. It is, the parable seems to say, always in the self-interest of a business to be as helpful as possible to their customers. 

“And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

And it is in the interests of its customers, in turn, for a useful business to remain in business. 

Thus the conflict never actually arises.

Adam Smith pointed out the same thing.

“Blessed are the burned-out social workers and the overworked teachers and the pro-bono case takers”

Why not just “blessed are the overworked”? That Beatitude might have some traction. But the claim here seems to be that some occupations are more blessed than others. If so, teachers and lawyers are not the groups Jesus singles out for praise. “Teachers” and “lawyers,” awkwardly enough, translate in his day to “Pharisees” and “scribes.” He was actually not too keen on them. “Social workers” are probably also subsumed under “Pharisees.”

The proper and more interesting challenge is to understand what the Beatitudes mean. Why are these groups in particular blessed? And what does it mean to be blessed in this sense?

Xerxes actually responded to my dissents from his proposed new Beatitudes. He argued, firstly, that just because Jesus did not mention a thing did not mean he thought it was unimportant. Second, that he might have said many things, in his three years of ministry, not included in the Bible. And finally, that the Beatitudes as preserved by the Catholic Church needed to be amended because they excluded some from feeling blessed; they too should feel part of the flock.

This is a shift in his ground from his original argument, that Jesus would have said these things were he speaking today, but they were simply not present in his time. Apparently that point he concedes.

I do think it is a fair inference, however, that, if Jesus—or anyone else--did not mention something, that thing was not part of his core message. Otherwise, you could impute anything to anyone.

Jesus could have said these things, but they were not recorded? 

But we have four accounts. Assuming the sermon on the plain and the sermon on the mount are the same event, we have only this sermon, which we must therefore assume, by consensus of those who were there, included everything in Jesus’s core message. If there were other sermons, he must have said the same things in them—as is demonstrable if the sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain were different events.

As with any text, we must go with what the text actually says, and not put words in anyone’s mouth. Once we do that, anyone can make anything say anything. No point in even reading the Bible then; or Shakespeare, or the Constitution, or any text.

Xerxes’s concluding argument seems to be that Jesus should have said these things, because nobody should feel “outside the fold,” that everyone should “feel blessed.”

But this is not Jesus’s message; he was making it clear that not everyone is in the fold, not everyone is blessed. Only these people cited in the Beatitudes. Luke pairs his four Beatitudes with the Four Woes, in which all those not covered by the Beatitudes are called out and excluded from God’s favour. 

“But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
   for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
   for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you, 
for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Elsewhere, of course, Jesus speaks of the sheep and the goats—goats, being goats, are not “in the fold.” Jesus speaks in parables so that those outside the fold will not understand—here he calls them “swine.” Elsewhere, “vipers.” 

He is, in the end, alarmingly judgmental. Of the living and the dead.

That’s the text.

A Theory for Why the World Seems Mad Right Now

 

Here’s a unified theory of why governments around the world seem in the last few years to have gone mad and turned on their own citizens. Despite the obvious electoral risks of doing so.

It all seemed to start visibly going off the rails in about the Fall of 2021. It was well understood by then that the Covid vaccines did not halt the spread of the virus; and that we could never achieve herd immunity through vaccinations. Yet it was at that point that governments began to demand that everyone must get vaccinated. 

Unless I have missed something, this was the first obviously illogical and malicious move by governments. 

Others followed: 

Cracking down on long-distance truck drivers, demanding they in particular must be vaccinated, or lose their livelihood. Why? They rarely came in contact with anyone, alone in their trucks. And at the very time that we were facing a supply chain crisis due to the Covid lockdowns.

Cracking down on medical personnel, insisting they must get vaccinated or lose their livelihood. Granted, they came into close contact with the unwell; but we already knew the vaccines did not prevent the spread, and they were uniquely qualified to make their own decisions on their personal health. This at the very time when emergency rooms were supposed to be facing a crisis of overcrowding with Covid cases.

Insisting that children all be vaccinated. Even though herd immunity was not possible, and they faced no real risk themselves from the virus—and obviously some risk from the vaccine.

Insisting everyone stay indoors long after it was established that the virus spread better indoors than outdoors.

Suppressing any talk of cures or treatments other than the vaccine; even though some cheap and widely available drugs showed much promise.

Suppressing any warnings about dangers associated with the vaccines.

Then the weird overreaction to a peaceful demonstration by truckers in Ottawa.

Then they went after farmers, and the use of fertilizers—just as food prices were spiraling upwards due to inflation and interrupted supply chains.

In Canada, they then started raising exponentially their “carbon tax.” Effectively a tax on everything, just as inflation was going out of control.

Then they kicked the immigration doors wider open, a lot wider open, in the middle of an unprecedented housing crisis; and a crisis over health care availability. And just as studies were showing that mass immigration harms rather than helps the economies of receiving nations.

Then, in Canada, draconian measures to silence and punish dissent, and withdraw basic civil rights to do so. Similar initiatives seem to have arisen at the same time in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, former bastions of the free speech tradition, and just about across the developed world. In the US, unprecedented and open attempts to rig the next election and suppress the political opposition.

I have probably missed a lot.

Occam’s razor suggests this explanation: the governments panicked over Covid, and grossly overreacted. The lockdowns killed more people than the virus would have, on top of the economic devastation and personal loss. The virus itself was engineered, and recklessly, and several goverments were responsible, not just China. They saw that this was going to come out, it was a huge scandal, and they anticipated that their publics would turn on them. 

They knew too by September that the vaccines they had hastily approved and encouraged everyone to get had dangerous side effects, worse than Covid itself, and also were not effective.

The truth must be worse than we yet know: so bad that they not only fear losing power. That is routine for democratic governments. The truth must be so terrible, they fear worse than this: revolution, serious criminal charges once they leave office, perhaps the guillotine.

Mudh of this, I suspect, is instinctive rather than planned. But if true, it seems to explain everything. 

Once they knew the vaccines were harmful, it might well have seemed in their interest to have everyone vaccinated. This might mask the issue: there would be no control group. Truckers and farmers had to be targeted, because they were least likely to see the need for the vaccine, and most able to avoid the government’s demands. Farmers can be self-sufficient more or less off the grid; truckers can flee the jurisdiction. Health professionals need to be bullied into it, because they can raise the alarm.

Other measures, like the rising carbon tax and the mass immigration, look like pre-emptive strikes against their expected future enemies, the public. Good idea to import a large body of new people who will not blame them for the vaccinations, not having been here at the time, and have reason for gratitude to the government for being let it, and given hotel rooms, social assistance and the like. Who else might stand up for them when the flag drops?

Seatbelts, everyone.

Canada's Totalitarianism

 

Canada is gaining an international reputation for all the wrong things. Elon Musk has chipped in on Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms Bill,” that “This sounds insane if accurate! Community notes, please check.”

Specifically, according to a tweet he reposted, it “will give police the power to retroactively search the Internet for ‘hate speech‘ violations, and arrest offenders, even if the offense occurred before the law existed.”

Is this true?

Apparently so. Community notes responded: it applies if “a person communicates or causes to be communicated hate speech so long as the hate speech remains public, and the person can remove or block access to it.”

So by the letter of the law, you are liable to prosecution, and penalties up to life in prison, if you have not taken down anything you might have written or tweeted in the past, that violates the new law. Including tweets or posts you might not remember.

This is especially problematic, because you can never be sure what violates the present law. Life in prison, for example, is the punishment for “promoting genocide.” But the definition of genocide has become elastic. Almost everyone is currently accused by someone of promoting genocide in one way or another. One can also be punished for anything “if it is motivated by hatred based on protected characteristics.” But who can define “hatred”?

And, speaking of human equality, why are only some characteristics protected, and not others? Definitionally, this is not “equal protection before the law.”

Since these protections are arbitrary, one must keep abreast at all times with what the current law says, and be alert for changes.

The safest thing, of course—the only safe thing; is to just keep your mouth shut on any topic that might be even vaguely political or controversial. This seems to be the intent of the legislation—shut up and do what you’re told.

So who gets to define “hatred”? Or “detestation,” or “vilification,” or ”genocide,”  or the like? That task apparently falls not to a court of law but to the “Digital Safety Commission.” Which means the accused will have no due process. No rules of evidence, no right to confront your accuser or cross-examine, no right to trial by jury of your peers, none of the traditions of our legal system, fought and died for by our forefathers over the years. You are judged by government bureaucrats. If the government identifies an enemy, nothing stops them from throwing him or her in prison for life. “Name the man, and I will find the crime.”

No actual crime need even be alleged. A person can, according to the bill, be placed under house arrest and cut off from all communication devices, if a judge decides he or she is likely to say something hateful in future.

No problem, the government reassures us. No need to worry. Any such judgement would have to be approved by the Attorney-General, and “these provisions would only be invoked in the most extreme cases.” In other words, just trust the government never to actually use the tools they are demanding.

An article in The Independent, a centre-left outlet, apparently doing its best to downplay the threat, quotes the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as saying “Generally speaking, laws don't have a retroactive effect... in Canada … it should not have a retroactive effect; that would be a bad interpretation of that provision, which [we] would stand against.”

In other words, we have to wait and see. The law certainly can be read to say this. The Civil Liberties Association must stand against this interpretation.

The Independent article even includes a veiled threat against anyone raising the alarm over this. Noting that Elon Musk has done so, it then cites a lawsuit against him for defamation, on the grounds of a similar prior post on X asking for information from “community notes” on a similar claim.

So even asking questions is risky. Especially if you’re not rich and powerful like Elon Musk.

Canada is worst, but similar attempts for force silence on the citizenry are rampant across the developed world. Something is clearly going on here.

Right now the Scots, the Irish, and the Dutch seem most determined to resist. And the polls in Canada have turned decisively against Trudeau.

But the way things seem to be going, does that even matter? Governments seem to be showing a growing disregard for their own people and the popular will. What do they know? Given that they are prepared to shut down open debate, will they even again allow a fair election?

Elon Musk on How to Teach

 

... and he's right.

A Silver Lining

 

Small Dead Animals reports that mortgage defaults are rising quickly on commercial properties.

It stands to reason: the rise in interest rates hurts commercial property owners just as it hurts residential owners. But with the growth in telecommuting, and the boost it got from the Covid lockdowns, commercial vacancy rates are 20-23%. People are working from home. We have too much commercial space.

The problem is almost its own solution. Too much office space; too little residential space. We need to convert office buildings to apartments. 

These buildings will generally be high and near the centre of the city, reducing commuting costs and fuel use, creating livable mixed urban neighbourhoods, and supporting more efficient public transport.

Of course, working from home, there will be less reason for living in the city. But an apartment anywhere will be desirable.

What's Happening at Sheridan College

 

Ireland, We Hardly Knew Ye

 

The Irish immigration situation is ironic. The UK voted to leave the EU mostly because the common people were alarmed at the levels of immigration, in particular “asylum seekers.” They felt their culture was being lost. It was urgent to take control of their own immigration policy. They could not so long as they belonged to the EU. 

Ireland cut up a fuss, demanding that the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland be kept open and unrestricted—they did not want a more divided Ireland.

Now the Irish general public is also up in arms. They fought Britain for centuries to establish their independence. And now they are being colonized by mass waves of foreigners? How is this different from what Cromwell did?

And Britain has begun to take command of their asylum seeker problem, by shipping them off to Rwanda. So, unsurprisingly, the asylum seekers are taking advantage of that open border to flood into Ireland, to avoid deportation back to Africa. 

Putting Ireland on the brink of a general uprising.

This is awkward for the Irish. They are instinctively left-wing, anti-British, and welcoming to outsiders. But they seem to have reached a limit. 

So now what?

The leaders of Europe as a whole are going to need to follow something like the Rwanda model. Popular opposition to mass immigration has become a central issue in many countries now, in Sweden and Denmark, in Italy, in Greece, in France. As it was and continues to be in the US as early as 2016, leading to the election of Trump.

It was a bad idea. It needs to be reversed. The question is, will the EU care enough about Ireland\’s problem to do anything quickly enough to save that nation.

I fear Ireland may have to act unilaterally, perhaps in defiance of the EU, and take the consequences. If the borer is to remain “soft’, they must have the same asylum policies as the UK. They must negotiate their own flights to Rwanda.

Downfall

 

The common wisdom is that Justin Trudeau’s poll numbers are collapsing now because people are tired of his government. There is a natural cycle, and nobody stays in for more than about ten years.

That’s what the established punditry wants you to believe. Because they like Trudeau’s policies, and hope they continue.

I think this is wrong. Canada is actually unusual among democracies for keeping governments and leaders they like in power for a long time: Mackenzie King, Ontario’s Big Blue Machine, Smallwood in Newfoundland, Hatfield in New Brunswick, the Tories in Alberta, Duplessis in Quebec, and so on.

Second, Trudeau was never popular. He squeaked in twice by merely coming second in a three-way race. 

Third, only being tired of him does not tally with such a dramatic poll collapse. It looks more like some pent-up anger is at last being allowed expression.

Until now, quite simply, nobody offered an alternative. Scheer and O’Toole promised to govern the same way he was. They effectively endorsed Trudeau. All you got was a new face. The NDP under Singh was also indistinguishable on ideology. Much as they may have hated Trudeau’s policies or approach, they despised Scheer or O’Toole or Singh as much as Trudeau, or more, for denying them that choice.

Poilievre is their first chance to vote against6 Trudeau. They are excited about it.

Peterson on the Ed Schools

 

You want the truth? Resentful radical leftists took over the Faculties of Education in the 1960s.

Now they control the entire K-12 system and half (half!) of all state budgets.

The Ed schools are among the worst faculties in the increasingly demented universities. Every bit of the "research" they have conducted in the last sixty years was a lie: whole word reading, multiple intelligences, self-esteem. Nothing but destructive.

Their students are by and large lazy, unintelligent, uninterested and ideologically captured.

The worst of them become administrators.

These are the people to whom we give our children, and much of our tax money. And we've done it for four generations, with no end in sight.

The Faculties of Education should be eliminated. They have done a worse than terrible job, and they are destroying our culture. Intentionally. Starting with your kids.

Jordan Peterson on X (Twitter)

All true; I agree 100% and have been saying the same thing for some years. We must abolish the Ed Schools. Having graduated from one should be a disqualification, not a qualification, as a teacher. They deliberately teach how to teach badly, so that any homeschooler can actually produce better results than their "professionals." And this is measurable.