"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy,
And the dogs that bark revolution.
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies!"
(Robinson Jeffers)
I’ve been open about being a “racist” according to the common usage of the term. That having been said, I’m not convinced that there’s a conscious, organized campaign afoot to eliminate the white race. And that having been said, I’d like my Gentle Readers to view the following video:
Yes, it’s about twelve minutes long. Please view it.
Red Ice, a group dedicated to the preservation of the white European racial identity, argues that such a campaign does exist, that its objective is the elimination of the Caucasian race, and that it’s accelerating with the cooperation of the news and entertainment media. Over the past two years I believe I’ve witnessed developments, especially in broadcast entertainment, that support that contention.
I’ve also noticed a considerable increase in the representation of homosexual couples in television dramas. While that needn’t be related to any campaign against Caucasians per se, it could be significant for another reason: homosexual couples don’t reproduce the way heterosexual couples do.
So I’ve resolved to ask my Gentle Readers: Do you believe there is a campaign in progress to discourage intra-Caucasian marriages and reproduction in favor of interracial matches? Does Lana Loktieff have the right of it, or is there counter-evidence to her representations? Moreover, do you know of evidence that the other recognized races are being encouraged to dilute themselves through intermarriage? If so, are you willing to tell us about it here?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments. And no slurs, please. Any such will be deleted.
There’s no substantive subject urging me to rant about it this morning, so I thought I might just...get it all out.
If you like it, want it, or need it, before you can blink it will cease to be available. Moreover, you won’t be informed in time to do anything about it. My most recent encounter with this corollary to Murphy’s Law was with a window I needed to replace. Before that it was a pair of running shoes I particularly liked.
Do you tend to save keys? I do. It’s a bad habit: the one you need will somehow find absolute and impenetrable concealment among the many you ought to have thrown away a decade ago. There’s a padlock on one of my fence gates that I can’t open for that very reason.
When the C.S.O. and I are up and about, our dogs are almost guaranteed to be soundly asleep. However, they’ll reliably awaken during the wee hours and demand to be let out back. The consequences for not obliging them can be...disgusting. I’m told babies can be like that, too.
One of our cats, Zoe, has some disturbing habits. She chews on wires: specifically, the wires required to charge a handheld device such as a cell phone or a Kindle. She’s ruined quite a few of them, and two pairs of Bose computer speakers as well. More, she relocates towels. Many are the nights I arise in response to the promptings of my bladder and nearly break my neck by stepping on a hand towel or washcloth Zoe has decided was not where it should be. She also steals small, loose garments and makes them disintegrate, as the C.S.O. has discovered to her sorrow.
Zoe’s sister Chloe cannot abide a closed door. She’ll sit before one and yowl until it’s been opened, regardless of the door or hour. In consequence, all the closet doors here at the Fortress of Crankitude are open all the time. She’s also taken up a strange avocation: stealing office supplies. The C.S.O. theorizes that she’s attempting to write the Great Feline Novel (Domestic Shorthair division). I hope she has more luck than I had at securing a publisher.
Does anyone’s lawn grow at a uniform rate?
Some complaints about matters fictional:
The covers of too many fantasy and science fiction novels feature a shapely babe, often wielding a weapon. It suggests deeds of daring in a realm of high adventure. Then you open the book and discover that it’s basically one long sex scene. Most such books are written by women. I can’t imagine why.
The dearth of originality remains a serious problem. Space wars, galactic empires, time travel, and so forth are old hat. So are vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, and quests that involve some magical artifact. Surely there are other adventures, other wonders and terrors with which a writer can thrill his readers. Yet you would hardly know it from the books being hawked to me at Amazon.
Now for a few shafts at common misuses of the English language.
Concerning vocabulary:
Reign is what monarchs do; rein is what a rider uses to control a horse.
Proven is an adjective. It is not, not, NOT the past tense of prove. (That’s proved.)
Discreet means quiet or covert, so that others might fail to notice; discrete means separate or unitary.
A principle is a rule of right action. Principal is an adjective that denotes high status or priority...unless it refers to the chief administrator of a grammar or high school, in which case it’s a noun.
Lightning is what shocks you and starts forest fires; lightening is what your hair colorist does to your tresses.
We pray to our supernatural protectors, in the hope that we will not become the prey of some predator.
The town’s marshal carries a gun. Marshall is a man’s name.
Please learn the proper uses of their, there, and they’re. Also learn the proper applications of to, too, and two. The mistakes made with these words are especially annoying.
Concerning possessives:
The possessive of a singular noun is normally formed by adding an apostrophe and an “s.” For example, the possessive of Charles is Charles’s.
The possessive of a plural noun that ends with an “s” is formed by adding only the apostrophe. For example, the possessive of priests is priests’.
The possessive of a plural noun that doesn’t end with an “s” is usually formed by adding first the “s” and then the apostrophe! For example, the possessive of children is childrens’. There are exceptions to these rules, but they’re rare.
In contrast to the above conventions about possessives, the possessive of it is its. The contraction it’s means it is.
A few frequently encountered errors with verbs:
The past tense of lead is led.
The past tense of spit is spat.
The past tense of sink is sank.Sunk is only used in pluperfect constructions.
The past tense of stink is stank.Stunk is not a word.
However, the past tense of think is thought, not thank as the above might have led you to believe!
The nominative and objective forms of pronouns seem to bedevil everyone:
Nominative singular: I, he, and she.
Objective singular: me, him, and her.
Nominative plural:they
Objective plural: them
Case-independent possessives: my, his, her, and their.
(And don’t let me catch you using they, their or them to refer to a singular noun! The generic singular pronouns are he, his, and him, and be damned to the feminist harridans!)
Writers may consider the following to be grace notes. Virtually everyone gets them wrong, such that the conventions described here have largely been superseded by colloquial constructions.
First, here are the predictive uses of shall and will:
“I shall” and “we shall.” (Negations: “I shan’t” and “we shan’t.”)
“He will,” “she will,” and “they will.” (Negations: “He won’t” and “she won’t.”)
Those forms merely indicate some predicted or intended action. However, to indicate determination or a command, the uses of “shall” and “will” are inverted:
“I will” and “We will.”
“He shall,” “she shall,” and “they shall.”
Thus, the accident victim would say “I shall die; no one will save me.” By contrast, the deliberate suicide would say “I will die; no one shall save me.”
Now for an old favorite: the subjunctive mood. Essentially no one remembers this rule any more.
English has three moods:
Indicative, sometimes called declarative. This refers to ordinary statements that describe real-world events and conditions, whether past or present, and simple predictions. For example: “Last year’s corn was good, and this year’s corn will be even better.”
Imperative: This refers to commands given to a presumed listener. For example: “Make sure the corn is good.” (It suggests that if the corn proves to be garbage, there will be unpleasant consequences.)
Subjunctive: This is sometimes described as “stepping into fantasy.” The subjunctive is used to discuss possibilities: both past possibilities that didn’t occur, possible developments to come, and conjectures about conditions that don’t currently exist. For example:
“Had last year’s corn been good, we would have planted more of it.”
“Should next year’s corn be good, we would have a good market for it.”
“If I were a good cyclist, I’d enter the race next week.”
“If Cynthia were tall, she would make a good model.”
The subjunctive mood makes use of could, should, and would. It also uses were as illustrated above to indicate that one is speaking about an unreal condition: Cynthia isn’t tall, but if she were...
Virtually no one handles the subjunctive mood properly today, so if the above strikes you as pointless scholastic fiddling, you’re not alone. But if you learn to use it properly, it will make your writing stand out.
UPDATE: WHOOPS! I remembered one of the possessive rules backward. Specifically, this one:
The possessive of a plural noun that doesn’t end with an “s” is usually formed by adding first the “s” and then the apostrophe! For example, the possessive of children is childrens’. There are exceptions to these rules, but they’re rare.
That SHOULD have read:
The possessive of a plural noun that doesn’t end with an “s” is usually formed by adding first the apostrophe and then the “s”! For example, the possessive of children is children's. There are exceptions to these rules, but they’re rare.
Apologies for the error, and applause to longtime reader Daniel Day, who caught it and brought it to my attention.
Please forgive me, Gentle Readers. I’ve overlooked a condition I really should have noticed long before this.
Until about three weeks ago, Blogger would send me email to notify me that someone had submitted a comment to a post here at Liberty’s Torch. For the past three weeks, I’ve received no such emails, which I naively took to mean that no one had submitted any comments. Silly me.
Just yesterday, longtime reader Pascal wrote to ask me why I hadn’t approved any comments in so long. I replied that it might just be that no one had submitted any. Pascal wrote to inform me that he most certainly had. Silly me.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I just went to the Comments in Moderation section of my Blogger control panel and approved comments that go all the way back to May 24. I have no idea why Blogger didn’t email me about them. Research must continue.
Comment away, Gentle Readers. I’m “back on the job.”
It’s easy to get lost in the thickets of aimless rhetoric founded in circular “logic” when discussing “the meaning of life” or “Man’s purpose.” The reasons are not far to seek:
Very few people can cope logically with what “meaning” and “purpose” mean.
Virtually everyone who orates about these things has an axe to grind.
There’s a lot of self-justification and self-exaltation involved.
So when I encountered this John Hawkins piece, I braced myself for another ton and a half of those three undesiderata. And I got it.
But we Certified Galactic Intellects have our duties, don’t y’know. One of them is to “sift the fly shit from the pepper” in such matters. Hence the following essay.
“Martha, what is the meaning of life?”
“What? Why, what a stupid question!”
“He did not ask it stupidly.”
“It’s a psychopathic question, unlimited, unanswerable, and in all probability, sense-free.”
“I’m not so sure, Martha.”
“But—Well, I won’t attempt to argue with you outside my own field. But it seems to me that ‘meaning’ is a purely anthropomorphic conception. Life simply is. It exists.”
“He used the idea anthropomorphically. What does life mean to men, and why should he, Hamilton, assist in its continuance?”
“Meaning.” Meaning what and to whom? Doesn’t meaning require an interpreter? Some entity capable of ratiocination to ask the question, and to whom the answer matters?
But why should “the meaning of life” matter? Why, as Martha Mordan asserts in the passage above, can’t we just it accept it “as given?”
Claude Mordan provides the answer, even though he doesn’t quite trust it himself. The interpreter is the individual asking the question – and the question, properly formed, isn’t “What is the meaning of life?” but rather “What does my life mean to me?”
Until we reach that level of personalization, the question is too poorly formed to be answered. However, even once it’s been delimited as I’ve proposed above, there’s work to be done in answering it.
What does your life mean to you? Do you ever think about it, or are you too busy actually living to trouble yourself with that question?
Consciousness imposes certain burdens upon us. We appear to be the only members of the animal kingdom capable of examining our own thought processes, which involves us in what Douglas Hofstadter called a “strange loop.” We ask ourselves “why did I do that?” in the aftermath of many of our decisions: a clear indication that our minds embed processes that resist penetration. Yet they participate in our decision making, sometimes crucially.
One of those processes is the one that seeks meaning. We seem to need it. However, we resist admitting to ourselves that meaning is something each of us must create for himself.
A great part of the reason faith in God is so important is that God is the ultimate Interpreter: He Who assigns both meaning and a “final grade” to each human life. Individuals “borrow” that meaning by their adherence to (or divergence from) His Commandments. For many of us, that’s all the meaning we need; more is not required.
But atheists and agnostics need meaning too. They have a harder row to hoe, for the only interpreter the non-believer has available is himself. Still, the job is doable.
Meaning arises from one’s chosen purposes, how one chooses to pursue them, and what costs and sacrifices one is ready, willing, and able to make in the process. Felix Hamilton, referred to in the quote above from Beyond This Horizon, feels that “life” is meaningless. In part that stems from his choice of occupation: game designer. He does it to satisfy an unarticulated urge, but he doesn’t respect it:
“You don’t understand me. I’m not interested in games. Have you ever seen me waste a slug or a credit on one of my own gadgets—or any other? I haven’t played a game since I was a boy. For me it is already well established that one horse can run faster than another, that the ball falls either on red or on black, and that three of a kind beats two pair. It’s that I can’t see the silly toys that people play with without thinking of one a little more complicated and mysterious. If I am bored with nothing better to do, I may sketch one and dispatch it to my agent. Presently in comes some more money.” [Ibid.]
At that juncture in Heinlein’s story, Hamilton has no love to cherish, no family to protect, and “work” he chose for himself but doesn’t respect. Of course his life lacks meaning!
The realities of human nature, our needs and desires, and the choices that flow from them are as absolute as any other metaphysical fact. Two above all confine us beyond all hope of escape:
We must work to live and flourish;
We need to love and be loved.
He who rejects either or both of those facts is insane in the most fundamental sense: he denies the reality in which he must live. He who exhorts you to doubt or deny them is emphatically not your friend.
“He who exhorts you to doubt or deny them” will be the one to pose questions to you about “the meaning of life.” They reveal his intent: he wants you to question the meaning of yours. But you’ve probably been creating meaning for yourself through your conscious choices for many years: your choice of occupation and avocations, and the persons you’ve chosen to love and protect. Those choices may entail necessities and difficulties. Perhaps the work you do is your only way to earn enough to meet your obligations, or is utterly unappreciated even by those who benefit from it. Perhaps the people you love are difficult, or don’t love you back. Both those conditions are common enough for all of us to be aware that sufferers exist.
But the meaning of your life lies in those choices and nowhere else. Through them you defined your purposes. By pursuing those purposes in your chosen manner you made them – and yourself – meaningful, both to yourself, to those your work has benefited, and to those who’ve had your love.
And no one else’s opinions about “the meaning of life” matter at all.
For further reflections upon this subject, I can do no better than to commend to you my short novel The Sledgehammer Concerto. The Heinlein novel is pretty good, too. With that, it’s time for Mass. Be well.
CrossFit executive Russell Berger was fired for tweeting that "pride" is sinful in the context of planned LGBTQ "Pride Workouts" at CrossFit gyms.
This was the response:
CrossFit immediately distanced itself from Berger's tweets and fired him on Wednesday. CrossFit CEO Greg Glassman told BuzzFeed News, “He needs to take a big dose of ‘shut the f–k up’ and hide out for awhile. We do so much good work with such pure hearts — to have some zealot in his off-time do something this stupid, we’re all upset.” Note the harsh language used. Glassman didn't just say something corporate like, "his comments are a distraction" or "his comments have no place at CrossFit" — he told Berger to "shut the f—k up."
They're getting bolder.
I had not been following this, but, apparently, June is Gay Pride Month. That's convenient, as the K-University systems traditionally take off school during that time, so will be available to use the kids to increase their numbers when they participate in the marches, rallies, and parades.
Like the Parkland 'protests'.
What's interesting about the list of cities is that most, if not all, are in cities with a large college or university. They are NOT in the cities that might have resistance from larger churches, like Charlotte, NC (The Billy Graham organization is located there).
The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision has the whole homosexual “community” up in arms about homosexuals’ “rights” — specifically, their right to impose themselves on people who want nothing to do with them. The decision and its inadequacies to one side, the case pulls into focus the utter lunacy of any sort of “assertive right:” i.e., a right to impose oneself on others without their consent.
This is what you get from “nondiscrimination” laws. This is what you get when an assertive group with an agenda that requires the destruction of some other group gets such a law at its disposal. And please, keep any BS about “civil rights” behind your teeth. If there’s a “civil right” to compel another person to work for you at a task of your choosing, what does that do to the Thirteenth Amendment?
No doubt a lot of the folks decrying the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision are totally against conscription. So what’s the difference?
Eventually, probably sooner rather than later, Christians (and Jews and everyone else who holds to the biblical view of sexuality and marriage) will be asked to cheer for the cultural revolution—with gusto. And for many, their enthusiasm (or lack of it) will determine whether they'll be able to keep their job. How will you choose? Will you obey God rather than men? If you choose to be obedient to God, there will be a price to pay for your faithfulness. This is nothing new for Christians, of course. We're called to take up our cross and follow Jesus, no matter the cost. Joshua's charge [to] the Israelites should be a sobering reminder to people of faith:
Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:14-15)
Choose today which side you're on in the cultural revolution.
Choose and act on your choice before it’s taken from you. Only a mobilized, energized mass of millions of Americans can halt this obscenity in its tracks – and by “obscenity” I don’t mean homosexuality itself. Another person’s sexual behavior is a personal election in which no Christian should presume to meddle. But neither should anyone be compelled by law to labor at another person’s behest, regardless of the specifics of the case.
Look, either you want media that accurately represents your needs, desires, and interests, or you don’t. I’ve heard enough complaining about how all the major media are fully enlisted in the anti-man, anti-masculinity agenda. So pledge your support to Lincoln & Grant! What better chance for your voices to be heard and trumpeted by sympathetic media do you expect to get?
We’ve been hearing quite a bit about the current “populist” moment in American politics...mostly from the political elite and the major media, but also from a few persons associated neither with the elite nor with the media. I’d like to spend a few minutes on this word and its implications, and give my Gentle Readers the reasons why we should reject and deny it.
populism: any of various, often antiestablishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.
Note the juxtapositions in that definition. Compare them to the connotations of “populist” and “populism.” These are terms through which the elites elevate themselves over us the hoi polloi. We’re “anti-establishment” and “anti-intellectual.” Our notions appeal to the “common person,” with emphasis on “common.” Doesn’t that evoke memories of the “Know-Nothings” of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries? Doesn’t it just scream that we ought to have more respect for the superior erudition and intellects of our “betters?”
Note how many of the detractors of our “populist moment” are willing to see us grubby groundlings suffer, if it will result in our rejecting Trump and his agenda. Bill Maher, that fount of left-wing venom, has openly wished for a recession to "rid us of Trump.” Nancy Pelosi has promised to cancel the Trump tax cuts should the Democrats retake Congress in November. Others have expressed the hope that Trump’s upcoming sit-down with Kim Jong Un will be a colossal failure, perhaps even a catastrophe.
Note also the persistence of prominent conservatives and Republicans among the “NeverTrump” brigades. Note in particular their openly expressed preference for a continuation of the “Deep State” over the “Trump State.” [Bill Kristol]
Whether peaceful or bloody, a rebellion will always be disparaged by the establishment as somehow unworthy, ill-mannered...vulgar.
At one point during the early part of the 2016 presidential campaign, I voiced my concerns over Trump’s temperament to a friend who supported him. The friend listened until I ran down, then said quietly, “You have to give him this: he loves America.”
It wasn’t quite enough at that point to allay my fears. Yet as the campaign progressed, it became ever clearer that whatever one might have to say in favor of any of Trump’s competitors, he listened to the yearnings of ordinary Americans – and he respected them. His huge rallies were a confirmation that he’d “connected” with the common citizen. The attempts by the Left to disrupt them were another – and a sign that the Hillary Clinton camp was aware of how out of touch it was.
Americans had nurtured a sense that the federal government was less concerned with our well-being than it was with the “interests:” the establishments in industry, commerce, finance, the media, and above all else the government itself. Trump resonated to that sense, that desire to see a little more “government for the people.” Clinton, arguably the least attractive politician of the Twentieth Century, could barely stand to address us, much less to speak sympathetically about the things we genuinely care about.
The Left and the Democrats characterized us as “deplorables.” The insinuations of our racism, sexism (of course), and xenophobia came from every corner of the media. Little attention was given to the swelling of Trump’s support. Still less was given to the specifics of his proposals or why his supporters found them good. Of the Republican Establishment, which did everything it could to prevent the victory of its nominee, nothing more need be said.
And when on November 8, 2016 we flocked to the polls and dethroned the lot of them, it guaranteed their illimitable and unending enmity. That they’ve chosen to camouflage their hatred as ill-concealed supercilious disdain for “populism” changes nothing.
It's fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen and ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.
The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age do allow,
Through groves of white blossom, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true love.
The fields they are empty, the hedges grow free,
No young men to tend them, all pastures to seed.
They've gone where the forests of oak trees before
Had gone to be wasted in battle.
Down from their green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There's a fine roll of honour where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
There's a row of straight houses in these latter days
Are covering the Downs where the sheep used to graze.
There's a field of red poppies, a wreath from the Queen.
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
And the ladies remember at Whitsun.
[Austin John Marshall, “Dancing at Whitsun,” 1918]
War is of particular importance to both the prevailing sentiments and the elites’ disdain for “populism.” Wars aren’t fought by the elites or their children, but by common men who’ve chosen to serve in America’s military. Not since the Civil War (a.k.a. the War Between The States / War Of Northern Aggression / Late Unpleasantness) has America gone to war over anything that mattered even slightly to the common American...and one could question the logic that powered that nightmare as well. A case could be made that those wars were fought, and Americans’ blood and treasure spent, for the benefit of the political elites and their hangers-on and no one and nothing else.
President Trump’s desire to see the U.S. reduce its military involvement in other lands might be the most “populist” element of his agenda. May God bless and keep him for it. Our sons have died in enough foreign conflicts to make us extremely skeptical of talking heads’ representations that some “national interest” is at stake in some distant, mold-and-mildew-ridden land presided over by a “little tyrant with a military uniform and a funny hat.”
How vulgar of us to want our children’s lives not cut short by wars in which America has no stake. War means jobs, don’t y’know.
And so to close, have a somber bit of music about a tragedy from the war whose strategies, tactics, and politics I studied for twenty years, straining to comprehend the incomprehensible, and a nation that’s second only to America in my affections: Australia.
Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915 my country said: Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers
We sailed off for Gallipoli
Well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk, he was ready, oh he primed himself well
He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell
He nearly blew us back home to Australia
And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
And we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again
Those who were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, and I wished I were dead
I never knew there were worse things than dying
For no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me
They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thanked Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity
And the Band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away
So now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Renewing their dreams of past glories
I see the old men all tired, stiff and sore
The weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But year after year, their numbers get fewer
Someday, no one will march there at all
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
Posting by me has been light the last few days. The Colonel went to the E.R. four days ago and was diagnosed with an enlarged ego.
We're dealing with this as best we can but a strict alcohol diet is working wonders just now. More scanograms and hypodermic needles that look like ski poles are in store for us this week. Frankly, our mission here on earth is NOT complete so many more years of caustic commentary, lame jokes, and mundane insights from us can be expected.
During this time, the world's greatest German shepherd thought it was fun to dig up and otherwise destroy the lawn sprinkler system out back. The urge to kill is strong.
To the rest of the G7, the US is engaging in isolation if they aren't handing out trade deficits left and right. Trump knows how to handle these pussies.
Comment by infotechsailor on “Trump Top Advisors Lash Out At "Double-Crossing" Trudeau: "Special Place In Hell" For Him.” By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, June 10, 2018.
For today, June 8, until midnight, my Onteora-Hollywood romance novel Love in the Time of Cinema will be free of charge at Amazon.
Jana Tyrell, a world-famous yet lonely actress looking for "substance," spontaneously descends upon Tim Beaufort, an unsuspecting middle-aged engineer from Onteora County, NY. They discover to their mutual surprise that they belong together despite the differences in their ages, stations, and trades. It changes both their lives in ways neither could have anticipated.
(Granted it’s usually only $0.99, but there are people who won’t spend even that much on one of my books, so...!)
No matter who you are or what you do, you’ll always face temptations to violate your personal standards, or a standard to which you’ve subscribed as a member of some group. As an engineer, I faced innumerable temptations to cut corners for the sake of saving a little money or meeting an externally imposed deadline. As a supervisor, I often faced temptations to cut one subordinate an amount of slack I’d never allow to another. And as a writer, I’m often tempted to turn out a piece of schlock simply to get onto some currently popular bandwagon, or to hurry through some part of a story that stands between me and the part I really want to write. Character is one’s only defense against those lures.
But there are temptations, and then there are temptations. Some of the most seductive are baited with money.
There’s a dangerous movement at work in America today. The Left is demonizing men and diminishing the vital roles they play in families and communities. From a New York Times headline claiming men are becoming obsolete, to Hillary Clinton proclaiming that the future is female, the Progressive Left has declared a War on Men and Masculinity.
However, they cannot hide from the facts. 63% of youth suicides, 71% of all high school dropouts, and 85% of youths in prisons grew up in homes without a father. The idea that our families, communities, and country would be better off when men are marginalized and pushed to the side, just doesn’t make sense.
That’s why we’re launching a new media company called Lincoln & Grant. Our mission is to inspire men to pursue excellence and fight back against the war on masculinity. It’s time to bring hard-working, successful men back to our families and communities.
Please read it all.
I mention the Lincoln & Grant project for two reasons: first, because it’s a very worthy – indeed, a necessary – project that deserves to be brought to the attention of as many people as possible; second, because it presents a striking case of a project whose initiators clearly intend to maintain a high, strict standard and are guaranteed to face temptations to depart from it. The lure will almost always be money, whether directly or indirectly available.
Potential high-dollar backers will suggest an admixture of inappropriate content. Potential advertisers will seek tie-ins that crosscut the magazine’s goals. Potential contributors well known from their labors in other venues will suggest other departures.
The organizers and operators will need all the strength of character they possess to resist some of the lures that will be tossed their way.
I intend to back this project at a high level, to gain the maximum degree of visibility into its evolution. The opportunity to watch it take shape, and to study its reactions to the temptations that persons and institutions with other agendas will float toward it, is irresistible. Though I sincerely hope it will succeed mightily, should it fail the process that corrupts it will be massively instructive.
There are temptations baited with lures other than money. At this time the one of greatest importance is a negative one: the avoidance of confrontation and conflict.
American society is beset by a sociopolitical disease. The infection is aggressive. The fatality rate is high. No reliable cure is available. The implications for the success of the American experiment are ominous.
The disease vectors are individuals of leftist political stances whose aim is to impose their politics on every organization and institution in America. They’re not mindless viruses; they do what they do deliberately, with malice aforethought. Indeed, malice is in many cases the fuel that drives them: their hatred for anyone who dares to disagree with them.
When persons of that stripe manage to gain entry into an organization, they immediately start to work at politicizing it in their preferred direction. It doesn’t matter whether politics has any relevance to the purpose of the organization. The infector’s purpose is politics and nothing but politics, regardless of whatever pretense they used to gain access to it. Often their intentions are opposed to the organization’s goals; they actively seek to degrade it, even if that would mean the loss of their positions, salaries, and status.
They gain entry because good-hearted persons are seldom able to imagine not-good-hearted persons: i.e., persons whose agenda requires that others suffer loss. For example, an interviewer for a commercial company is unlikely to bother about a potential employee’s political orientation. External recruiters – personnel placement agencies – are wholly unconcerned with such things; they merely want their fees. This unawareness of the threat makes infiltration possible. Once infiltration is an accomplished fact, the good-hearted are often moved more by their desire to avert open conflict -- to maintain tranquility in appearance – than by their sense for what’s best for the company, or their standards of right and wrong.
When the disease has attained a sufficient degree of penetration into its target, the organization’s nominal standards, whatever they may be, become secondary to the imposition of political conformity on the organization: all its people and all its practices. That aim is why the vectors strive for positions from which they can influence policy.
I’ve written about this process on several occasions. Here’s the most recent example. Regardless of anyone’s particular politics, the disease itself is deadly to the standards of American organizations. No one can maintain his standards when political issues have a higher priority. He will be compelled to compromise them until nothing remains of them.
If you have standards of your own, you would resist the idea of working for a company, or participating in some other group activity, that would compel you to set them aside. Yet that is what’s being done to uncounted good-hearted persons and their organizations.
And so I look at the Lincoln & Grant proposal, and I ask: How will the disease choose to attack this brave new undertaking? You know it will; the Left cannot allow even one bastion of American values to remain uncorrupted – and this effort would oppose everything the Left strives for.
The news is terribly static just now. At times like these, I dive into my reading stack and look for gems I can recommend to my Gentle Readers – and boyohboy did I ever find one:
The overarching story concerns the emergence, in an alternate-reality world, of four Great Powers: China, the Soviet Union, Greater Germany (which occupies nearly the entirety of Europe), and the United States. All four are nuclear-armed. Though there are two nominal alliances – America plus Germany, and the Soviet Union plus China – it cannot be accurately said that any of the Powers are genuinely friendly toward any of the others. The conflicts among them are conducted almost entirely by biotechnologically enhanced super-agents called Levels.
Alixandra Nico is a nineteen year old Level 4 in the employ of the Extreme Operations department of the CIA. She’s quick, aggressive, eager to move up, and a little naive. She suffers the twin drawbacks of her youth and her parentage: her father is the legendary Philip Nico, one of only four Level 20 ExOps agents in the history of the department and the inventor of a hefty fraction of the biotech used to enhance the Levels. As Blades of Winter opens, Philip is believed to have been captured and executed by Greater Germany for his participation in an atrocity eight years earlier. Alix’s adventures weave in and out of her family’s unique history as she fights her way through the Middle East and Greater Germany on various missions for ExOps.
Among the major motifs that help to power the plots of the Shadowstorm novels is Greater Germany’s treatment of the Jews. While Hitler’s Reich did conquer Europe, Hitler didn’t last: he was taken out by saner members of his regime shortly after active combat concluded. Those who rose to power after him decided that Europe’s Jews would be more valuable as slaves than as crematorium ash. America’s alliance with Greater Germany is highly uneasy for that reason among others. Eventually, ExOps is tasked to use the conflicts Jewish enslavement has produced as a counterstroke against the Reich and its stranglehold over the oil wealth of half the Middle East.
These are G. T. Almasi’s debut offerings, as far as I know. He has the chops of a first-class thriller writer, and he displays them in all three books. The action is unrelenting, the intrigue dense and at times next to impenetrable, the cast of characters various and well colored in, and the sociopolitical backdrop for the strange, mostly sotto voce pseudowar among the Great Powers of Almasi’s alternate history exceedingly evocative.
Former Republican House majority leader, John Boehner recently observed that, “The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.” And what a disgusting phenomenon that party was and is. With a few notable exceptions it was and is clueless about this rare thing known as “the interests of the American people.” When Boehner took over in 2010 I thought that a unique opportunity had been handed to the Republicans and that now we would see some serious pushback, some coordinated counter offensive.
But no, it was the usual GOP deer-in-the-headlights instant stall into ineffectual irrelevance. It was, sad to say, much the same stillborn hope I had that Trump would pull out all the stops on sealing the border with troops then in Sand Land. They would be brought back to patrol our OWN freaking borders instead of Abdul’s was my absurd thought but it wasn’t Trump’s.
Pat Buchanan aptly captures the gist of the Republicans as useless, sellout artists pursuing vaporous but ruinously expensive missions to straighten everybody out. America as God’s gift to the world and the GOP as His vicegerent:
Consider. That GOP was dedicated to free trade, open borders, amnesty and using U.S. power to punish aggressors and “end tyranny in our world.” That GOP set out to create a new world order where dictatorships were threatened with “regime change,” and democratic capitalism was the new order of the ages.
Yet, Donald Trump captured the Republican nomination and won the presidency — by saying goodbye to all that.
How probable is it that a future GOP presidential candidate will revive the Bush-Boehner agenda the party rejected in 2016, run on it, win, and impose it on the party and nation?
Bush-Boehner Republicanism appears to be as dead today as was Harding-Coolidge Republicanism after 1933. And if Trumpism is not the future of the GOP, it is hard to see what a promising GOP agenda might look like.[1]
Mr. Trump is an improvement on what passed for a political something on the “right” but we’re not out of the woods. More war on Syria, confrontation with North Korea, ratcheting up the level of needless tension with the Russians, and drinking Israel’s bathwater where it’s fake paranoia about Iran is concerned were not what I envisioned for the first months of his administration. But, there it is.
So where will America go now? It’s effectively leaderless in the ideological realm with Trump exhibiting little interest in or understanding of the Constitution. He has discovered the phrase “health care” in Article I, Sect. 8 to my amazement and seems indifferent to the presence of the bit about Congress having the authority to declare war. A 15-year-old Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq isn’t what is required constitutionally as it no more authorizes U.S. military force to be used in Madagascar than it does in Syria. But there we are.
And as I’ve said before, Trump is clueless about the importance of free speech and all the ways in which the left seeks to take it away. He recognizes no fundamental threat to public order in the AntiFa slime that appear regularly to attack decent citizens. Public order and defense of our freedoms is a core responsibility of government at any level but Trump shows more interest in petty tweet storms than in understanding and articulating just one or two of those aspects of public life that are imperiled by the rise of the ultra left and the descent of the Democrat Party into the pit of identity politics. Expect leadership from Trump on economic and regulatory issues but don’t expect him to use the Justice Department to deal with California’s de facto secession or any other of the centripetal forces that plague us. Is a 230% increase in border crossings consistent with Trump’s vaunted concern for sealing the border?
Look not to Trump but, too, look not to the GOP where Ryan and McConnell were its public face. The Republic is indeed adrift with the very concept of “citizen” abandoned in favor of open borders and theft of jobs from the 95,000,000 million Americans currently out of work. Look for nothing but surrender from the old crowd on all that.
Note to GOP: Clean up your act and fight for something other than for surrender to every foreigner on the planet, or be replaced.
As Buchanan correctly observes, the old GOP is history and the choice for the next flavor of the GOP is Trumpism or something else, something unpredictable. The Alt Right is like a hint.
Personally, I don’t see any kind of a renaissance in American thinking. The growth of the federal leviathan and the judicial tyranny that makes that possible have gone unnoticed by all but a few. The presence of millions of illegal third-world immigrants and the job theft this has entailed has engendered no fury. Trump’s election was a close thing not a landslide. Foreign wars and the ruinous expense of pointless foreign wars coupled with gigantic trade imbalances together with the above mark America as a nation of chumps. There’s an excellent chance we’ll follow in the steps of our British cousins and let freedom slip from our grasp. I just don’t see that that many Americans give a damn. Cable TV will mock their standards and celebrate multiculturalism and diversity and they’ll eat it up and enrich those who mock them.
April Ryan isn’t going to show restraint simply because her rudeness has been pointed out to her. Indeed, to the extent she’s allowed to get away with it, she’ll continue – and more and more of her colleagues in the press room will emulate her.
Ryan has supporters outside the press room, too:
If those supporters multiply – and given the number of media figures who both seek to promote black racialism and hate the Trump Administration, you know they will – what remains of the pretense of courtesy and civility in the White House press room will vanish.
This must stop. It must be stopped: the White House press office must publish a set of rules that explicitly forbid shouting, interrupting, and talking out of turn.
First Offense: the offender is not recognized at that briefing or at the next briefing.
Second Offense: the offender is expelled from the press room by security and his credentials are pulled for a period of one year.
Third Offense: the offender is barred from the White House and its grounds permanently, and his institution is forbidden to send a representative to the White House press room for one year.
Should the assemblage of reporters erupt in defense of an offender, the briefing is cancelled at once and the press room is cleared by the Secret Service.
There is no conceivable reason for White House personnel to tolerate abuse, especially when the abuser is openly hostile and the abuse is openly intended. That should apply to the “ladies and gentlemen of the press” just as much as to anyone else.
Mind you, I don’t do “bodice rippers.” These are also known as “sweet savages,” in the tradition of the Rosemary Rogers novel that inaugurated that particular subgenre. I prefer greater realism...well, when not writing about anarchist colony worlds, alternate Creation myths, or bizarre developments in biotechnology. I consider love too important to be other than realistic about it, no matter how many young women and middle-aged spinsters dream of being carried off by dashing buccaneers or ravished by devastatingly handsome vampires.
But there’s this about love, or at least about romance: Danger tends to render us more susceptible to its lure. So there’s a natural place for romantic themes in stories that feature some sort of adventure.
I see no reason to explore the psychology of the thing. What I have in mind on this 74th anniversary of the Normandy invasion is the gradual infusion of romance into the “dangerous” genres over the past few decades. It’s stirred up a lot of dust, especially among “traditional” aficionados of those genres. Many of them have reacted negatively, as if “their” readers’ habitat were being invaded by something that doesn’t belong there.
I don’t get it, myself. The yearning for love is one of the most powerful of the human drives. According to Maslow, it comes in just after the quest for security – and I’ve sometimes wondered whether the two drives are really distinct. Why shouldn’t it have a place in stories from the “dangerous” genres?
The subject has become especially heated in discussions of fantasy and science fiction.
What constitutes “real” fantasy or “real” science fiction is a debate to which there is no final answer. The arts are like that. (I may not know anything about what I like, but I know art.) Consumer preference is all that matters; if it sells, that’s sufficient justification...at least, to the creator thereof. Still, you can encounter a squabble about the issue at any F&SF convention. Sometimes they’re organized as panel discussions. Sometimes they’re “organized” as fist fights.
I’ll allow that when a genre becomes popular, writers that aren’t selling well will be tempted to try to wedge their stuff into it: square pegs jammed into round holes by main force. I recall a rather humorous story from an agent about a writer of Westerns, a genre that’s been on the skids for some time, trying to rewrite his most recent Western as an SF novel. The protagonist even strove to head off the bad guys at the Horsehead Nebula. This is good for a giggle, and perhaps for the occasional parody, but not for much else.
But merely to incorporate a romantic element into a novel is no sin. Indeed, many a rather dry story has struck me as demanding an admixture of emotion. It often comes down to the questions “Why does the protagonist (or antagonist) do what he does?” and “What is he looking for?” If these questions aren’t answered adequately, the relevant figure is under-characterized. Under-characterization is almost always a failure by the writer to connect the character to the most important human drives, the ones we all share whether or not we manage to satisfy them.
(A brief digression: Some drives can be transformed from a constructive and approved form to a destructive and highly disapproved form. I don’t have a word for this. The term for the opposite is sublimation. But consider if you will the character of Tiny from On Broken Wings. I submit that Tiny displaced his yearning for love into a need for dominance. I’ve known real people like that. End of digression.)
Romantic possibilities can be approached from either of two directions. For example, one of the most striking characters in recent thriller fiction, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher, regularly wrestles with his own yearning for love. It manifests in just about every Reacher novel. He encounters an appealing woman in the course of the action. At some point they connect emotionally (and usually physically as well). However, by the end of the tale Reacher’s determination to keep moving prevails over his need for intimacy. It gives him a strange, anti-romantic dynamism that’s part of his appeal. I keep wondering when he’ll meet the girl whose appeal for him is enough to get him to give up the road life. I’ll bet a lot of Reacher addicts do.
This is on my mind because of the book I’m currently struggling to write. It’s a sequel to Innocents. It also features several of the characters from my futanari stories (“A Place of Our Own,”“One Small Detail,” and “A Daughter of the County”). The story treats with the current foofaurauw over transgenderism, with particular attention to the sociological and psychological aspects. Inevitably, it must address matters of love and sex...and inevitably, I’ll get a few reviews such as this one:
Unsatisfying mil action, unrealistic romance. Marty Sue hero who ends up forced to do the thing he wants but knows he shouldn't.
Let’s just say I’m braced for them.
I know a few high-octane writers – indeed, some very good ones – who shy back from those subjects. They prefer to concentrate on things they know better: technology, combat, political and social strife, or what-have-you. I appreciate the importance of “writing what you know.” I certainly wouldn’t counsel anyone to write about what he doesn’t know. But I’d suggest to those writers, and to many others who share their aversion, that that doesn’t invalidate romantic themes and motifs as elements in stories such as theirs. They might want to try wetting their feet in those waters. It can do quite a lot for one’s powers of characterization.
After all, what moves a man to risk his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor more often than love?
That was Watergate time. The hearings, leaks, shifting stories, and cover-ups all combined to invade my life, from first thing in the morning to bedtime. It was, frankly, one of the most exhausting times of my life.
Part of that was the watchfulness that I started to exhibit. The tales of government spying, undercover activists/leakers/tools, and the endless hearings - all led to a twitchy paranoia that permeated our lives.
You've probably heard the saying,
It's amazing that the Trump administration manages to function.
