Margin of what?

When we look back at the ways our ancestors lived, there’s no getting around it: we are tribal primates. We are exquisitely designed and adapted by evolution for life in small societies with intense, animistic religion and violent intergroup conflict over territory. We love tribal living so much that we invented sports, fraternities, street gangs, fan clubs, and tattoos. Tribalism is in our hearts and minds. We’ll never stamp it out entirely, but we can minimize its effects because we are a behaviorally flexible species. We can live in many different ways, from egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups of 50 individuals to feudal hierarchies binding together millions. And in the last two centuries, a lot of us have lived in large, multi-ethnic secular liberal democracies. So clearly that is possible. But how much margin of error do we have in such societies?

Here is the fine-tuned liberal democracy hypothesis: as tribal primates, human beings are unsuited for life in large, diverse secular democracies, unless you get certain settings finely adjusted to make possible the development of stable political life.^[1]

I am no stranger to folly. In fact, we go back a long way. However, it’s best when one’s life’s record contains entries reflecting only episodic instances of impressive mistakitude.

Ditto in spades in the societal context. Immigration is meant to be a considered affair that takes place for a concrete reason not simply for reasons that reflect a mindless acceptance of the idea that we’ve always done it this way. I.e., nationofimmigrants!!! Frans Timmermans – tied for the “Most loathsome Man on the Planet” award with Peter Sutherland and George Soros – just waved his wand one day and let us know that diversity is the destiny of mankind.

I admit I didn’t know that and wonder how he arrived at this conclusion. Sutherland announces that “nationalism” was the cause of the world’s troubles pre-1945. Here I thought it was totalitarian leftism.

There you have two influential men who, all on their lonesome, let us know that cultural/racial homogeneity and the nation state are passé. “Trust me. I went to college.” Neither even bothered to wave those stellar ideas over a warm George Soros voting machine.

Well, that’s arrogance squared and it ranks right up there with the destructiveness and viciousness of those who beat their chests over the class struggle and the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat. We know how that turned out. Well, actually, “we” don’t, if you include the Western educated classes.

Timmermans, Sutherland, and Soros are examples of the “what margin of error?” school of thinking. Advocates of unlimited public debt, socialist redistribution, monetary debasement, fawning over minorities, hate speech laws, 1930s-style street thuggery, and lunatic feminism are the same. If a little is good then ten tons of it must be excellent. Like kebabs and chop suey? Great. Lets import millions of Middle Easterners and Chinese. Nirvana, baby. Coming soon to a theater near you: shariah patrols, industrial-scale rape, and minority status in your own country.

Relationships on an individual level as well as a societal level are delicate balances of habit, love and tolerance. People who engage in adulterous affairs often do not anticipate what the reaction of the injured spouses will be. There are, in short, subterranean aspects to our lives that influence them profoundly, and disruption of the normal, the accepted, or the routine is a perilous undertaking. All the more so as the enormous changes that come with immigration begin to be visible and work their corrosive magic.

But this is Greek to the Beautiful People. It’s clear that Western elites have no grasp of the concept of margin of error. Timmermans blithely announces possibly the most poisonous doctrine ever to appear on this earth – the idea that your personal, social, and political arrangements are entirely at the whim of governments and the millions and millions of foreigners who may and must be imported to live cheek by jowl with you.

Say what?

Throughout all of human history the foreigner has rightly been viewed with suspicion and tolerated only in limited numbers and circumstances. Now it’s “what could go wrong” raised to the status of holy writ. The official answer being, of course, “why, bugger all.”

Notes
^[1] "The Age of Outrage. What the current political climate is doing to our country and our universities." By Jonathan Haidt, City Journal, 12/17/17.

UPDATE: I finished the rest of Prof. Haidt’s essay after posting the above. The excerpt I quoted is a good one so far as it goes but Haidt proceeds to give voice to a boat load of liberal inanity about how slavery "was written into the Constitution," Newt Gingrich increased divisiveness in Congress and that “Fox News and the right-wing media ecosystem had an effect on the Republican Party that is unlike anything that happened on the left. It rewards more extreme statements, more grandstanding, more outrage.” Well, ugh. He’s correct that the current “political climate” is bad but at this point someone who serves up warmed over, colorblind liberalism and slobbers over the benefits of immigration has little to add to an understanding of what ails America. Apparently, everything would be peachy in our Constitution-free land if only the Republicans wouldn’t be so mean to those well-meaning and sainted Democrats who long ago embraced virulent leftism.

I give the essay 4-1/2 stars on the barfometer.

Just for Funny, But - Other Things As Well

I'll be out of town for a few days, so I thought I'd schedule a post for Friday. Below are some funny memes/pictures I found, on My Favorite Daily Things.

Like a lot of people, I find it difficult to understand how we can spend so much more money every year on poverty, yet - according to official reports - still have so much of it.

Wonder no more - it's basically an accounting trick.

I Wanted To Kick Back, Really I Did

     ...but some stories are just too good not to share:

     Marlon Jensen, 36, was arrested a Sunday morning when NYPD stormed his home. NYPD received calls from the fraud victims that someone had sold them “Bitcoins”, only to find out there actually was no tangible bitcoin currency available. NYPD found $1.1 Million of cash inside Marlons home. According to police, Marlon had scratched off most of the Chuck E. Cheese engravements on the coins, and would write “B” on each coin with permanent marker.

     A lot of people got a big, righteous jolt out of that story...but the Huzlers.com site where it originated is a purveyor of made-up funny stories – it bills its offerings as “Trending Fauxtire and Satire Entertainment” – and this is a first-class example.

     What makes this memorable is my favorite, albeit unconfirmed, story about the origin of the common term bogus as meaning fake or counterfeit. According to that story, in the early Nineteenth Century, when there was still a certain laxity about American currency, in the western territories a man named John Bogus contrived a machine to produce "dollars." After he had used his “dollars” to make purchases from some exceptionally naive fellow citizens, he was arrested and hauled before a court. The judge that presided held Bogus harmless, on the grounds that his “dollars” bore so little resemblance to the real thing that any sensible person should know them to be counterfeits without having to be told so by some “authority.” (From MORE: The Rediscovery of American Common Sense, by Armington and Ellis.)

     If this story is historically accurate, at that time the courts did not consider themselves the protectors of idiots or fools.

     With that, it’s back to my previously scheduled agonies. Have a nice day.

     UPDATE: Having thought about the above for about 5 picoseconds, I have decided to make an offering of my own. How would you like to own the original, often imitated but never duplicated:

The Holy Grail!

     Yes, friends, this is it: the very cup with which Christ offered His Precious Blood to the original twelve Apostles. Certified genuine by the Fraudlein Mint! And it can be yours for only $1,000,000,000!

     Don’t miss this opportunity to own the most treasured relic in all of world history, God’s own Passover goblet which once contained His Blood!

     “Yes, I’ve been dead for almost two thousand years, but this not-to-be-repeated offer is so spectacular I just had to come back and tell you: Don’t miss out!” – Pope Peter, originally Simon the fisherman from Galilee.

     Operators are standing by for your call. Cash only, please. (Bitcoin not accepted.)

News you can use.

DEVELOPING: CNN, WaPo, NYT anonymous sources say Vladimir Putin may have ties to Russia

"News we just don’t have time to write about." By Oleg Atbashian, The People’s Cube.

Assorted

     Happy Yuletide to all the Druids out there. Have a smattering of random observations and references.

---

     Via Power Line, we learn that German economic forecasters are able to perceive what American Democrats deny:

     German investment in the US is expected to rise by €39 billion because of lower US corporate taxes.

     While Americans are anxiously awaiting full details of the tax bill now being finalized in Congress, German economists are warning that the changes sought by President Donald Trump mean that significant amounts of new investment and jobs will shift from Europe to the United States.

     “The tax competition will have a new dimension,” said Christoph Spengel, chairman of the corporate tax department at the University of Mannheim. Mr. Spengel, who is also a research associate at the Center for European Economic Research, and a group of tax experts at the university have done a detailed comparison of the two countries’ tax systems and published a report under the heading, “Germany loses out in US tax reform.”

     Clemens Fuest, who heads the Ifo economic think tank, also said he believed German business would suffer. “Investments and jobs will migrate to the US,” he said.

     Why yes, they will. The U.S. corporate environment of the Trump Era is appreciably friendlier than it was a year ago. Greatly reduced taxation and regulation will render American enterprises better able to compete with their foreign counterparts. But be not afraid, Germany. It’s not as bad as all that, really: the net increase in American economic activity will make possible increased consumption of goods no matter where they’re made. Atop that, Americans with a little more cash in their wallets might just find it worthwhile to invest in foreign firms. That, of course remains to be seen.

     But of two things we may be quite sure:

1. There will be accelerated economic growth in these United States;
2. It’s making the Left absolutely furious.

     (Giggle cackle snort!)

---

     The antics in the United Nations, long a source of puzzlement to many men of good will, have made their basis plain with the recent Security Council vote to censure the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The animus against the Jewish state, the only reasonably free nation in the Middle East and America’s sole reliable ally, is no longer concealed in any way. To those nations that seek to castigate us for siding with Israel’s right to declare its own capital city, there will be consequences:

     U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to cut off financial aid to countries that vote in favour of a draft United Nations resolution calling for the United States to withdraw its decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

     "They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we're watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We'll save a lot. We don't care," Trump told reporters at the White House.

     The 193-member U.N. General Assembly will hold a rare emergency special session on Thursday - at the request of Arab and Muslim countries - to vote on a draft resolution, which the United States vetoed on Monday in the 15-member U.N. Security Council.

     The remaining 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which did not specifically mention the United States or Trump but which expressed "deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem."

     U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in a letter to dozens of U.N. states on Tuesday seen by Reuters, warned that Trump had asked her to "report back on those countries who voted against us."

     Seldom have there been any consequences – any negative ones, at least – for the U.N.’s habitual kowtowing to its Islamic bloc. This is long overdue. I hope President Trump follows up sharply. As it’s in perfect keeping with his “America first” guideline, I expect he will.

---

     I’ve been probing various groups connected to the Alt-Right and white identity movements, and I find a disturbing commonality among them: anti-Semitism. Whereas at one time I thought I might align myself with those communities, I cannot do so as long as hatred of the Jewish people is part of their ethos.

     Granted that American Jews are generally left-aligned. That’s not because they hate America, American principles, or American norms, but because the Jews’ own history of relentless persecution has made them highly sensitive toward (and overly accepting of) claims of oppression or persecution made by other groups that have even a shred of historical justification for them. The Left claims – dishonestly – to champion oppressed groups. The political consequences should be obvious.

     The Jewish people aren’t just the group with the longest and most sorrowful history of persecution. They’re also the most accomplished and resilient people on Earth. And they are nearly all Caucasian -- white. To deem them enemies of the “white race” is to commit an unacceptable redefinition and an unforgivable injustice.

     I will have no truck with any person or group that commits that fault.

---

     Today, December 21, is the winter solstice: the date on which the sunrise comes latest and the sunset comes earliest. It’s the historical reason for many a festival. What many people aren’t aware of is the place of those historical festivals in the religions of the pre-Christian era.

     The winter solstice was at one time also called the dark of the year. The Sun, it seemed, had receded from the Earth. To peoples who held that the behavior of astronomical bodies was actively controlled by sentient superhuman entities – the deities of those times, though not of the sort we recognize today – it was a spur to the propitiation and petition of those imagined persons. Thousands upon thousands of our ancestors joined in fervent prayer to whichever “god” determined the motion of the Sun to bring it back again, that life might continue.

     We don’t pray for that today. Instead we celebrate the feasts of the Christian and Jewish traditions. I can’t say why Chanukkah was sited at this calendric locale, but I do know why Christmas was put near here: to replace the feast of Saturnalia, one of the great revels of the pagan Roman calendar. Saturnalia replaced even earlier sun-propitiation rites, which is why it was positioned at this time of year:

     In Roman mythology, Saturn was an agricultural deity who was said to have reigned over the world in the Golden Age, when humans enjoyed the spontaneous bounty of the earth without labor in a state of innocence. The revelries of Saturnalia were supposed to reflect the conditions of the lost mythical age, not all of them desirable.

     Even if only subconsciously, we recognize the importance of the Sun and the light and warmth it provides. Many persons, especially in the more northern latitudes, are acutely aware of this because they suffer from sunlight deprivation that they must take care to treat with sunlamps or other supplements during the winter months.

     Christians, of course, celebrate the coming of the Son rather than praying for the return of the Sun. (We’re fairly confident about both.) Yet there is a parallel there, for He who opened the gates of salvation for Man shed a great light over the world, a light that had been known only indistinctly and to a small number before His coming. Our joy at that light shines brilliantly in the most beautiful Christmas hymn of all:

“A thrill of hope,
The weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks
A new and glorious morn...”

     My posting will likely be sparse until after the New Year, so allow me to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. God bless us, every one!

Is It Impossible To Go On Offense?

     There are certain modern innovations of which your Curmudgeon is, to put it gently, not a fan. However, fair consideration has caused him to conclude that it’s not the innovations themselves but the ways in which they’re exploited that leave him cold.

     The one your Curmudgeon’s longtime Gentle Readers surely expect to hear about first – and with excellent reason – is the smartphone. Yes, this seemingly miraculous device, which packs the power of a mainframe of old into a package that fits a human hand, is near the top of your Curmudgeon’s Hate Parade. As he’s raved against the pernicious phenomenon of “absent presence,” in which whatever the afflicted one is doing with his smartphone takes priority over the reality around him then and there, on at least two previous occasions, he’ll forbear to assault your eyes with it this morning. Still, the smartphone deserves at least this brief mention.

     Another, which your Curmudgeon’s Gentle Readers probably do not expect to see mentioned, is the Internet itself. No, not the way it’s put all of human knowledge at one’s fingertips. Not the way it makes possible the dissemination of news and opinion near to instantaneously to the entire globe. And not the way it facilitates these periodic dissipations of bile lest the accumulation perturb your Curmudgeon’s cherished serenity. Rather, the way it’s used by vicious, small-minded persons to harass those with whom they differ from behind an anonymizing moniker.

     This article is the morning’s stimulus. The first sentence should suffice to tell you the essentials:

     Four prominent conservative women who support gun rights have been targeted with death threats, rape threats and threats to their children simply because they have championed the right to own a gun for self-defense.

     Please read the entire article. If you reach the conclusion without doubling your blood pressure, check your pulse: you may have died and not noticed.

     Because the Internet makes the concealment of one’s real name and locale so easy, barrages of vilifications and threats such as the ones Corban, Loesch, Jacques, and Washington have endured are effectively impossible to counter. While it might be possible, given a lot of time and effort and the cooperation of generally indifferent law enforcement authorities, to ferret out the identities of a few of the attackers, the price of the effort plus the number of assailants make it unlikely that anything of the sort will be done. Thus, the one effective response to such a hateful phenomenon – going on offense to hunt down the miscreants, bring them to book, and punish them severely – is denied to these women.

     And the Internet is what makes it possible.

     When person-to-person communication was limited to letters and landline telephones, a campaign such as the one the women above have suffered could be redressed by law enforcement. Letters could be traced back to their senders. Phone lines could be monitored. Law enforcement’s ability to sniff out the offenders made it next to impossible to get away with sustained harassment. The Internet has eliminated that course of action in the name of a specious “right to privacy” whose dark side is dark indeed.

     The funny thing about that “right to privacy” is how easily it’s used to destroy the lives of completely innocent persons. You’d think a “right,” which should be something all persons can enjoy simultaneously without engendering conflicts that can only be resolved by the use of force, would present a more innocent aspect. However, the conundrum can be answered simply: There is no right to privacy divorced from the rights of property.

     What “right to privacy” inheres in an individual outside his own home? Passers-by can see him, note his appearance, and watch where he goes. Those with whom he speaks can remember and record his words. Cameras that monitor the street can retain his image indefinitely. Merchants who interact with him can make records of the transactions. If he makes a purchase with a credit card, his identity is stamped onto that transaction and its details forevermore.

     Any privacy an individual can sensibly enjoy begins and ends at his threshold. When he emits a signal intended to reach the world at large, he loses any imagined “right to privacy” over the information carried by that signal. Why, then, have we fetishized the “privacy” – really, the anonymity – of the Internet attack squadrons that have made the lives of Corban, Loesch, et alii a season in hell?

     One of your Curmudgeon’s most valued colleagues has chosen to conceal his identity behind a moniker. He has good reasons: he and his family have been scurrilously attacked by persons who disagree with his views, which are conservative and patriotic. His wife is of a delicate disposition and cannot endure the stress from such things. He also fears for the safety of his children. Yet he would not have had to resort to a pseudonym were it impossible for his attackers to do so.

     Your Curmudgeon is on record as saying that he respects those who choose to stand behind their words far more than those who don’t. Plainly, attaching one’s right name to one’s emissions is integral to that choice. Yet the Internet’s privilege of anonymity in expression has made it effectively impossible for many persons to express themselves under their right names. They cannot expose their attackers and haul them up for public shame and disgrace.

     Perhaps there is no legal or technological solution, though your Curmudgeon, who was a communications specialist before he retired, finds that proposition dubious. But the cancer that has made it risky to express an opinion for public consumption has already had a poisonous effect on our public discourse. Present conditions continuing, it will only get worse.

Stealin’

     Certain pathways in logic are irresistibly seductive. One of them, which forms the core of today’s screed, is the following:

“If it’s okay for him, it’s okay for me.”

     Now, as logic, there’s very little wrong with it. The crux of the matter lies in that insidious little word if.

     Part of the social binder usually called respect for the law arises from whether the law is applied uniformly. A law that some persons are allowed to violate with impunity will elicit little or no respect, at least in a society that doesn’t recognize a privileged class. Shortly after the people realize that some law is being enforced against some but not others, there will arise a personal ethic that treats that law as something to be broken when it’s advantageous, as long as the penalty can be eluded.

     A society in which a great many laws are known to be selectively enforced will lack respect for the law in general: i.e., the lack of respect will not be confined to a particular set of laws. Over time the privileged ones will become bold: they will openly use their privileges for personal enrichment and aggrandizement at the expense of others. The ambitious man will strive to enter their ranks, or to emulate them from without. The “little guy” will sense that he’s become prey for the mighty; he will bend his efforts away from production and toward evasion and concealment. It’s then that Hari Seldon’s assessment looms large for that society:

"The fall of Trantor," said Seldon, "cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort. It can be hastened easily, however. The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds." [Isaac Asimov, Foundation, emphasis added.]

     Isaac Asimov was writing about the extremely far future...or so he thought.

---

     I have two articles in mind today, one of which is a month old:

     The father of the UCLA basketball player who was arrested in China for shoplifting sunglasses appears on CNN to explain why he feels President Trump did nothing to help his son get released from Chinese authorities.

     I can’t blame anyone who disdains to watch the video above. It’s long and irritating, and most of it is disposable. But the fuel for the furor it evoked lies in LaVar Ball’s assertion that Stealin’ be okay, no big deal:

     “As long as my boy’s back here, I’m fine,” LaVar Ball told ESPN. “I’m happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, ‘They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes.’ I’m from L.A. I’ve seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses.”

     Where do you suppose LiAngelo Ball got that attitude? Where do you suppose LaVar Ball got it?

---

     I’ve written before about the role of privilege in creating a class structure. Indeed, privilege, whether de jure or de facto, is at the heart of social class. The representations of the SJWs, the redistributionists, and miscellaneous bleeding hearts notwithstanding, it has nothing to do with one’s income level:

     A class is defined by its legal and social privileges. The aristocrats of medieval times were not distinguished by their lineages or their deeds, but by the things they were allowed to do, without penalty, that commoners were not. There is reason to believe that the majority of medieval aristocrats were fairly responsible stewards of their lands and of public order within them. That does not justify the creation of a class of men who could wield high, middle, and low justice over others, but who would normally escape all consequences for deeds for which a commoner would be severely punished.

     The American response to the failings of traditional aristocracies was the Rule of Law: the fundamental principle that the law must treat all men impartially, regardless of their identities or station in life. The old shorthand for this principle was "blind justice," meaning that the law must not see one's person, only one's deeds. In a society that respects the Rule of Law, a king would stand in the same dock as a trash-hauler, were the two accused of the same offense. All that would matter would be the evidence for their guilt or innocence.

     In the absence of a scrupulously observed Rule of Law, classes with differing degrees of privilege will emerge. The flourishing of the members of each class will be influenced, often heavily, by the class's privileges and how effectively they can be exploited. Men being what we are, we will be moved to use those privileges in our own interest, both against competitors within our class and against other classes.

     I cite that passage with a distressing frequency. I can’t avoid it; it’s a fundamental element in the grand explanation of why American society is disintegrating.

---

     But wait: there’s more! The GOP’s tax reform package has elicited a lot of talk about that perennial shibboleth of the Left, “fairness”...but this time, they’re concerned with “fairness” toward the already well off:

     I turned to the personal financial adviser, who had begun to offer his two cents.

     “It’s a disaster. I mean, it’s what you would expect from Trump and the Republicans. It rewards rich people and hurts poor people.”

     “As I said, I haven’t paid attention to the specifics. What does it do?”

     “Well, I don’t really know yet, but I know it’s going to hurt poor people in California. It takes away the mortgage tax deduction and it no longer allows us to deduct our state income taxes from taxable income for our federal income taxes. It’s so destructive.”

     Further inquiry revealed that, when he said “poor people in California,” he actually meant that it was going to be a problem for him, personally. For laudatory reasons that I won’t divulge here, he’d extended himself financially to live in our middle-class-by-Marin-standards neighborhood, so he has a large mortgage compared to someone in, say, Bakersfield or Abilene.

     Bookworm lives in California’s Marin County, an exceptionally well off region. I hear a lot of the same crap from my Long Island neighbors.

     The tax laws have been used to privilege debt incurred for home ownership – mortgage debt. That constituted a more or less explicit subvention to the most prosperous Americans. It becomes more explicit when we consider this facet of it: Second “homes,” even if used only as vacation getaways, are included in the deduction. Indeed, a mortgage undertaken to finance a trailer or motorhome would qualify for the deduction.

     So those who have benefited from this provision of the law are squealing like stuck pigs about its curtailment.

---

     Smart people know when they’re getting away with something that others aren’t. Most such people are, shall we say, other than candid about it. All the same, theft through the action of a third party remains theft – and “If it’s okay for him...”

     The federal government has taught us something about getting away with theft: Let us do it for you. Privileges pertaining to taxation and finance have been piled one atop the next until it becomes impossible to square the aggregate with any conception of either property rights or respect for the law. But the moral effect on the nation cannot be averted merely by transferring the agency of theft to a well armed third party. He who receives the stolen goods is morally complicit in the burglar’s deed.

     I was recently ejected from a local “social network” for daring to say what you’ve just read. Ponder that for a few moments over your coffee.

Incentives And Impatience

     All right, enough with the frivolity, seasonal or otherwise. It’s time for another serious essay, and your Curmudgeon is here to fill the need.

     Our social, cultural, and political orders are displeasing to anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. They’ve been displeasing for some time: at least thirty years. Over that time, nominal conservatives and others of a generally pro-freedom, pro-civility bent have thrice achieved dominance at the federal and state levels. Yet those periods passed without significant changes for the better. Indeed, despite its hegemony, in some cases matters got worse by the standards of the Right. This has engendered considerable frustration, such that even sober-minded people are seriously discussing radical moves such as secession and rebellion.

     You’re not alone in feeling such frustration, Gentle Reader; your Curmudgeon is there alongside you. But a pair of complementary dynamics has brought us to where we are. One of them has produced our sociocultural and political distresses. The other has robbed us of the requirement for correcting them.

---

     First, a thematic quote from a rather impressive movie:

     "I nursed him through two divorces, a cocaine rehab, and a pregnant receptionist. God's creature, right? God's special creature. I've warned him, Kevin. I've warned him every step of the way. Watching him bounce around like a fucking game. Like a wind-up toy. Like pounds of self-serving greed on wheels. The next thousand years is right around the corner. Eddie Barzoon...take a good look because he's the poster child for the next millennium.

     "These people, it's no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire. You build egos the size of cathedrals. Fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse. Grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green gold-plated fantasies until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god. Where can you go from there? As we're scrambling from one deal to the next, who's got his eye on the planet? As the air thickens, the water sours, even bees honey takes on the metallic taste of radioactivity... and it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There's no chance to think, to prepare; it's buy futures, sell futures.. when there is no future.

     "We got a runaway train, boy. We got a billion Eddie Barzoons all jogging into the future. Every one of them is getting ready to fistfuck God's ex-planet, lick their fingers clean, as they reach out toward their pristine, cybernetic keyboards to tote up their fucking billable hours. And then it hits home. You got to pay your own way, Eddie. It's a little late in the game to buy out now. Your belly's too full, your dick is sore your eyes are bloodshot and you're screaming for someone to help. But guess what, there's no one there! You're all alone, Eddie, 'CAUSE YOU'RE GOD'S SPECIAL LITTLE CREATURE!" -- "John Milton," played by Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate, describing the milieu that gave rise to his doomed partner Eddie Barzoon.

     Much has been said about the demise of willingness to defer gratification in service to some higher priority. The late M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist of great insight, noted that the willingness to defer gratification is one of the four indispensable tools of personal growth:

     What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively that I call discipline? There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. As will be evident, these are not complex tools....Yet presidents and kings will often forget to use them, to their own downfall. The problem lies not in the complexity of these tools but in the will to use them. For they are tools with which pain is confronted rather than avoided, and if one seeks to avoid legitimate suffering, then one will avoid the use of these tools.

     There is more wisdom in those hundred words than you could find in any other book, the Bible excepted.

     The most conspicuous of all the traits that have risen among us these past eighty years is the “I want it now, and by God I’ll have it now” insistence on the immediate gratification of every desire. Virtually no one is willing to wait for anything any longer. In an irony too profound for your Curmudgeon to capture in a net of words, the most intense expression of that trait is the insistence that suffering is always bad: Not only should one never accept suffering; every sort of suffering in progress must be alleviated at once.

     The will to persevere in suffering, confident that it’s the only road to eventual healing, is especially conspicuous by its absence from our political order.

---

     Much has been said and written about the “short time horizons” of professional politicians. Their vision stops short at the next election. What will keep them in office is good; what might impede their tenure there is bad.

     Governmental careerism is indistinguishable in its incentive structure from private-sector careerism. Yet in our republican order, in which officials are chosen by democratic electoral processes, the careerist dynamic depends on another, more widely distributed characteristic: the unwillingness to tolerate suffering even when it’s provably inevitable.

     Consider the deterioration of the U.S. dollar as a case study. The dollar has lost more than 90% of its purchasing power over the century behind us. Anyone capable of making change without a calculator will immediately see that this is a bad thing – that persons whose incomes and savings are denominated in dollars suffer as a result, and that persons whose incomes are fixed will suffer worst. But the dollar’s fall is a consequence of federal borrowing from the Federal Reserve Bank, a process that automatically inflates the number of dollars in circulation, thereby reducing the value of each one. Congress borrows to make up the difference between its revenues and its expenditures: the annual deficit.

     Clearly there are two and only two ways to halt this process:

1. Increase federal revenues;
2. Decrease federal spending.

     Both courses are fatally unpopular with the electorate. Either one would cause suffering among some sectors of society that the public is unwilling to tolerate. Therefore, Congressmen determined to remain in their seats will never vote for either one. Indeed, given the pressures focused upon Capitol Hill by special interest groups that command the loyalties of significant blocs of votes, the more plausible road to re-election is to increase federal spending each year, regardless of federal revenues. Therefore, the slow but steady decline of the dollar will continue indefinitely.

     No one wants to vote for suffering, especially if it would be his own.

---

     If We the People have earned a certain suffering-debt for our previous sociopolitical sins – never mind that we were set upon our sinful courses by an earlier We the People, who passed their accumulated suffering-debt down to us – then our choice is simple:

1. We could accept the penalty, endure it, and come out healed;
2. We could reject the penalty, which would compound the ultimate suffering.

     Since World War II at least, the public has preferred politicians who will “kick the can down the road.” In consequence, government has gone ever further astray and our accumulated debt of ultimate suffering has compounded year by year. At some point, though the moment is difficult to predict, the debt will be paid. If it’s grown large enough, it will destroy our society completely.

     But a payable sociopolitical suffering-debt is like a prison term: it’s finite. It will end. It can and should be endured, especially if the alternative is to raise it to an unpayable level. Our unwillingness to accept and endure the penalties that have already accrued is propelling such debts toward the threshold of sociopolitical bankruptcy.

     What debts does your Curmudgeon have in mind? Five in particular:

1. Government: We have allowed the federal Leviathan to expand beyond all Constitutional borders, and to extend its tentacles into every area of human life. Unlimited power is incompatible with any degree of human freedom.
2. Politics: Owing to the item above, the stakes in political contests have become so large that the contestants have cast aside all the rules: legal, ethical, or prudential. Every election is a battle to the death in which there’s no such thing as an unthinkable tactic.
3. Social Intercourse: The importation of persons hostile to American norms and the rise of victimism-as-social-currency have made it almost too hazardous for persons of different races, sexes, religions, or ethnicities to share a community. Social trust is gone; each of us is at the mercy of “the other.”
4. Family Bonds: The collapse of the earlier bonds that held families and societies together, particularly the obligations that traditionally united each generation to its parents and its progeny, have created a pervasive sense of vulnerability that flacksters for innumerable causes and movements can exploit.
5. Personal Indulgences: The insistence on the immediate gratification of our desires, coupled to the lack of will to accept the costs and endure the suffering, has foreshortened individuals’ vision of the future, what it might hold for them, and how best to prepare for it.

     The incentives We the People followed brought us to where we stand. Most potent among those incentives was our inclination to defer the suffering we and our forebears had already earned. For the generation that emerged from World War II, the term of suffering might have been fairly short: a few years of privation and social adjustment as we relearned Constitutional constraints and the many wisdoms set aside during the Progressive Era. Today the term would encompass at least an entire generation, perhaps two. That is:

1. Millions of “civil servants” would have to find productive work.
2. There would be an end, probably through term limits, to life tenure in elective office.
3. We would need to accept two unfairly condemned social necessities: segregation and discrimination.
4. Families would be forced to care for their own helpless and vulnerable members.
5. Individuals would be denied the ability to “finance” their desires.

     Each of these things would involve suffering:

1. Some former “civil servants” would prove unable to work at real jobs, and would become mendicants.
2. Some politicians would starve right alongside them. Moreover, lower polities would be compelled to accept burdens previously carried by the federal government.
3. The natural segregation of our people according to race, creed, and ethnicity would resume. Members of each camp would discriminate in favor of “our own” at least until “the other” had earned trust by adopting and displaying compatible language, conduct, and values.
4. Needy families would be thrown upon the charity of their neighbors and communities. Some would not receive the help they need to stave off great personal suffering and loss.
5. Many things cavalierly treated as “needs” would become unaffordable.

     The suffering – happily, a relative matter in a nation as rich as the United States – would persist for anywhere from twenty to fifty years. But at the end we would be healed – whole – and immune, for a little while at least, to the diseases we had left behind us.

---

     “If something cannot continue indefinitely, it will stop.” – Herbert Stein

     Ultimately, we know what we ought to do. Yea verily, even “progressives” are aware that we cannot “kick the can down the road” indefinitely. The problem is a lack of will, or framed through its inverse, our impatience with the term of our suffering.

     The trends of the postwar decades have sapped our will to endure by increasing our will to believe that all suffering is avoidable. Concurrently, the debts have accumulated. Never before have we owed so much...and never before have we been so ready to avert necessary suffering by passing our debts along to our children.

     Have a nice day.

Pearls of expression.

Call me a sentimentalist, but I liked the days when FBI agents went undercover as subversives better than today when subversives go undercover as FBI agents.

"FBI-Gate: Deep State in Deep Spit." By Daniel J. Flynn, American Spectator, 12/15/17.

Silly Story Contributions Have Arrived!

     In response to this rather silly piece, two of my Gentle Readers have stepped up to the plate and taken mighty swings.

     The first is from longtime reader jb:

---

     It was a small cell. The food was horrible - there was no other way to describe it. He was charged with a felony reserved for terrorists. Poisoning the water supply. He desperately hoped his treatment had worked. The judge would be a woman, In a day and age where feminists ruled the roost, as it were, his hopes were slim. He was married to the world's worst shrew . . . or used to be . . . he thought back . . . +++      Sweet basil, more specifically, the balanga plant, ground up and liquified, was the "magic." He knew of its restorative powers - lowered fever, digestion, bacterial infections and getting rid of intestinal parasites. He had pondered that, and wondered if there might be even more to it in larger doses.
     The larger doses had proved ineffective on his bride. He had sneaked them into various sauces he made - since he was also the "chef" of the household. Never took. So he began to experiment. Smaller doses did not seem to work either. His blender was on its last legs before he found the formula. Boil the results of the blender's work, and then reduce. He slipped that into the pasta sauce one night.
     He had never experienced the marital embrace on the level he did that night. She exhausted him. And then, did so again when he had managed to recover a bit. He remembered thinking to himself "This is insane!" - but he wisely, and to his great pleasure, refrained from saying so. He also remembered thinking - "Is this what Adam knew with Eve before the Fall?"
     Even being alone, he blushed just thinking about it. But everything had improved. Getting naked - yeah - that had become a bit of a dream, and one to which he desired to continue "dreaming" to no end, but everything else had become so much more "livable." His two sons had brightened to their mother's "new" mood.
     "Dad - what's wrong with Mom?" He managed to close his eyelids before he rolled his eyes. It didn't occur to him at the moment to say she had returned to her intended normalcy; nor did he want to give away his secret. "Guys - she's happy. Enjoy it!"
     As a Pastor and marital counselor, he had wrestled with the forces seemingly aligned against the union of man and wife. It was laden with all manner of sacramental realities - procreation - actually working with God to create new members of the Kingdom; the Eucharist itself, in which Christ takes His faithful into Himself, calling them his Bride - all of which Scripture specifically said the satan attacks. The tranquility - the peace that passes all understanding - he was simply amazed at what his somewhat clumsy efforts had produced. But after a few weeks, the thought hit - "Why not share this?" He thought of the old Stephen King story, written under a pseudonym, about the time the demons went on strike, and things starting to go right in the world. +++      That thought created all the problems. +++      No matter what happened, he would not implicate his friend and Church member. The guy had 6 kids, and the contract to supply the city's water supply with chlorine. He had shared his find with him. His friend was never under suspicion. He made sure of that! His mistake had been a posting to Facebook about the results of his find. He couldn't accurately measure the amount necessary for the city's water supply, but what he did estimate seemed apparent that it had the effect he had hoped. Men were returning to Church in numbers unimagined. Women were friendly again. A local columnist (a woman, no less - had written about the transformation. Civil discourse was as it was decades ago - before the present angst. Another wrote - albeit being of another generation - about it being a "step backward" into a much better time. +++      Unfortunately, the changes it brought about had alarmed Her Honor the Mayor, an avowed lesbian, and one thing led to another, and now the biggest feminist in the entire state, although married, was his judge. His ministry was ruined, his counseling on the side likewise. His wife was back to her old self, and had managed to turn his sons' one visit to him in prison, into a family fiasco. She had converted them into hating him. All because he really loved his bride more than anything but His Lord.
     The irony was not lost on him. +++      His lawyer understood he was damned if he did, damned if he didn't, and went along with his client's decision for a decision from the judge alone, sans jury. Both of them understood the dire ramifications. +++      His lawyer came up with a rather unique suggestion. Prepare some canned pasta sauce with the balanga plant, formulation, and we shall give it to the judge to try before she makes her determination. "It's our only real shot" said his lawyer. His bail had been beyond normal, but his house had secured it. He went home and began his preparation. +++      His lawyer hesitated for a moment before he presented the jar of sauce to the judge with the suggestion that she or her husband plan spaghetti as dinner. The judge was taken aback. His lawyer did not beg, but politely pleaded. The judge, against all hopes, agreed, and postponed her judgment until the next day. +++      The news was electric. Feminist everywhere were denouncing the judge, the mayor was all over the local news denouncing the decision. But the judge, in an interview, defended her decision:
     "He did NOT poison the water supply. My husband convinced me of that fact last night." ==<O>==

---

     Our second contribution comes from longtime reader furball, a.k.a. Tim Turner:

---

JANUARY 27th, 2047
     Michael Whedon lurched up from his computer and raced past his cat to get to the bathroom before he yaked all over his $3600/month Silicon Valley's apartment floor.
     He made it.
     The pizza and beer he'd consumed hours before ejaculated themselves into his toilet in an impressive display of biological imperatives that Michael was ill-equipped to appreciate. His articulated op-ed sounded something like, "Blecccchhhh!" with numerous coughs afterward, as he tasted the acid flux of his tummy and kneeled in front of his toilet.
     But he'd done it! Even as he passed out and his head banged against the rim of the toilet, he smiled, thinking he'd proved that the Higgs Boson wasn't massless and *did* have a non-zero constant value in vacuum!
     Even in his sex-deprived, pizza-laden and drunken stupor, Michael - "Dweeb" to his closest friends - had the thought, "I *did* sort of cheat that co-sine, though, right?" *** JANUARY 27th, 2053
     The latest poll results glared up at Gerry Martin from his data cube. There were numbers skewed for sex and political bias and party affiliation and values (whatever the hell those were) and heck knows what all that showed. . . he was gonna lose. In fact, he was gonna lose the Caifornia Senate race in Biblical proportions. Gerry took a moment to look up from his I-Pod 38 to look out the window of his limo and shiver.
     But such is the determination of men of faith, determination, money and corruption that, within weeks after reading an obscure scientific article by one Michael Whedon, G.M! had become the proponent of galactic (a metaphor) conquest!
     Gerry Martin, dapper (idiot) junior Senator from California, became the spokesperson for the "Enter Galactic Project," [sic and sick] and succeeded in securing a $1.3 trillion contract for intergalactic exploration. *** January 27th, 2059
     $1.3 trillion has become $5.2 trillion. Nobody's really complaining because California fires and sexual scandals are garnering headlines. *** March 18th, 2081
     The crew of the Far Horizons, the ship built on the drunken, deluded and defiled imaginings of Michael Whedon, and funded by the power-hungry sociopathy of Gerry Martin just 28 years before, zoomed towards destiny.
     Here's the thing: people do get what they deserve. There is an invisible hand. God might have a sense of humor, and boy, are you in trouble if he does, because that means he knows what you were thinking and you're gonna get it. *** March 19th, 2081
     ZONK! BLATT! BOOP! WHACKA WHACKA WHOA! OW! BAD! DANGER!
     Every light and meter and metric and science-looking thingy on board the Far Horizons bleeped.
     I mean, they just went CRAZY!
     The captain looked in alarm at his instruments and then was sucking on an ice cream cone that resembled his memory of his mother's teats. The First Officer. . . well, imagine what you will of German sausages. It got worse from there.
     The Far Horizons had found and apparently penetrated a Higgs Boson - based black hole. . . and she didn't like it one bit. *** WHEN?
     "Thus, milords, we can see that the crew of this ship, while - let's face it - are idiots - were just serving other idiots who, if they were left to continue their idiotic ways, would sooner or later destroy the universe!"
     There is a mist. You thought you figured it out and knew what was going on. Morgan Freeman kind of appeared, right?
     "SIRS! If I may! Allow me to speak for...
     ZAP! DEAD!
     smoking remains of Morgan Freeman.
     This is fairly serious. *** NOW.
     Paying attention to the date, are we, now? Ok.
     Look. It seems official. There's a pretty powerful-looking judge up there. And if that wasn't enough, Morgan Freeman is a little pile of ash on the floor, ok? These guys are serious.
     There's a jury over there. I can't tell who they are, but they look like a combination of pop-tarts, the thing Bill Cosby used to advertise for, and icky, bony, fleshy, wormy things that would leap down your throat and go for your intestines, lungs or bowels or whatever parts of your body that make you gag, ok?
     And they're pissed.
     "Milords!" says an incredibly persuasive robed figure suddenly striding in front of you: "THESE PEOPLE," and he points and turns at each of the crew members of the Far Horizons, "have destroyed the arrow of time."
     His voice drops into the mist of thought as the resolution of everything you've ever believed.
     "God's plan . . . " (the dramatic pause almost makes your heart stop) "IS time!"
     Who can argue with that? jees What?
     Turning to YOU - every member of the Far Horizons crew - he points a finger and says, "YOU broke God's law, you broke time!" He strides a bit and then turns to YOU - personally - one more time, and says, "You know that don't you?"
     Behind you, a guy you didn't pay much attention to during the voyage says, "Wait!"
     Now you know you're in some sort of weird thing because he looks like Elmer Fudd and he walks toward the angelic figure and says, "Ma'am? If I understand things correctly, you gave us free will. And if that's true, we can't be tried for anything we're doing, because we are being the creatures you created us to be." *** NOW
     "You know that's not all of you all the time," says the creature from the bench.
     She then smiles such a beatific smile on you that you melt and remember every trip you ever made with a hopeful heart:
     "I know you didn't know where you were going. I know some of you were guided by greed, power and lust. But I know you - as a people - are guided by curiosity and wonder."
     "MILORDS!" shouts the guy that you know recognize is the son of a bitch that's trying to put you away forever.
     Pointing an imperious finger at the Elmer Fudd crewmember, the prosecutorial vision intones, "Free will is NOT a get out of jail free card! IF a man chooses to break a law, the argument that he is exercising free will is not a legitimate defense. The law was created before the man! It is its own sanctity. It IS the law and free will is no excuse! Instead, breaking it is PROOF that the man is a renegade and deserving of punishment!"
     Damn. *** THEN March 29th, 1981
     Who could have imagined Elmer Fudd would . . .
     The prosecutor turned to the judge and said, "My Lord, it is obvious that these humans have transgressed the will of God."
     The Elmer guy stood there, crestfallen and shame-faced.
     The woman - that beatific vision that is more than I can ever express, describe, aspire to or comprehend, said:
     "I AM NOT SURE!" Then, she looked down with an imperiousness beyond measure at the little Elmer Fudd guy and demanded, "What were you doing when you embarked on this trip? Why did you try to undo the laws of everything God hath made?"
     "Ma'am," he said. "I was just checking." ==<O>==

The Winter Of All Discontent

     Yes, “The Winter of Our Discontent” is the title of a famous John Steinbeck novel. But it’s also from the opening of one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, the one whose villain-protagonist was Richard III of England, who rose to power shortly after the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses.

     Before I get into the meat of this morning’s tirade, let’s put calipers on that strange term villain-protagonist. How does a candidate qualify for inclusion in that set? Here are my criteria:

• He must be in the public eye, whether by his own doing or another’s.
• He must be consumed with desire for something to which he has no right.
• His motives must be entirely self-centered.
• He must succeed in driving events, whether successfully or not.

     In Shakespeare’s tale, Richard of Gloucester engineers a complex plot rife with betrayals and murders to become King Richard III of England. He is Shakespeare’s archetype of a pure sociopath, to whom all other individuals are either tools or obstacles and nothing more. His personal calculus omits consideration of “right” and “wrong.” All that matters to him is his objective. Richard III’s objective was unchallenged and absolute power.

     There are a lot of villain-protagonists running around loose these days. I’m not about to list them all for you; that’s what the newspapers are for, even if they habitually get it wrong. But then, the Legacy Media should properly be numbered among them, which serves to explain why their lists tend not to satisfy.

---

     Never before has so thick a torrent of accusations been mounted against individuals in the public eye who were previously generally admired. The great majority of those accusations, as my Gentle Readers will already know, are about conduct related to sex. Moreover, the media have been treating the accusations as truthful in nearly every case, even when there’s a total absence of evidence and sound reasons to believe that the accusation is insincere if not totally untruthful.

     Such accusations aren’t a brand new phenomenon, of course. Indeed, the foundation for them has been under construction for decades, perhaps since Tawana Brawley. Their veracity is of essentially no importance. What matters about them is their ability to command public attention, to cast doubt on the characters of the accused, and to add fuel to the fires of militant feminism, which suffered a heavy defeat on November 8, 2016.

     Sex is one of the principal battlegrounds of the day. It didn’t become a battleground because people have come to hate sex. It did so because the Left hopes to make political gains by militarizing it.

---

     Everyone’s familiar with the “Black Lives Matter” nonsense, and the flurry of claims that “white cops shoot blacks on sight and get away with it.” That’s not true. It never has been true. Today, for a white policeman to shoot and kill a black man, whether justifiably or not, is an almost guaranteed career-ender. Ask Darren Wilson.

     The BLM types know it isn’t true. But the accusation is tactically golden for them. Every time a black suspect dies at police hands, the tumult is amplified, and their “cause” gains power. It gains from sympathetic media treatment. It also gains from an amplified reluctance on the part of police and the authorities to which they answer to act against black criminals. And it’s been going on for longer than most people are aware.

     Crystal Gail Mangum wasn’t shot by anyone, but she grasped the media trends and hoped to capitalize on them. So did the disgraced Michael Nifong. And the Left, especially in its academic strongholds, was overjoyed by it all, while it lasted.

---

     Just now we’re seeing a host of revelations about anti-Trump machinations within the Justice Department, both during the campaign and afterward. Some are utterly shocking. Others are of lesser though still disturbing magnitude. All point toward an unpleasant conclusion: that the DoJ has been thoroughly politicized. Its barons appear unconcerned with justice as ordinary people understand it. Rather, they seek to assure the ascendancy of particular politicians and policies: left-liberals in every case.

     Well, why not? If “the personal is political,” as the Left has maintained for decades, why should “justice,” that bourgeois phantasm that protects only the interests of the white capitalist patriarchy, be allowed to stand in the way of the Left’s agenda? Does it make sense to demand that accused individuals be treated fairly, given a presumption of innocence an the right to confront their accusers, rather than just asking Martin Y. Latsis’s questions?

     Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.

     It’s clear which course the Left, the Party of Omniscient, Omnipresent, and Omnipotent Government, has chosen.

---

     I hope you’ll pardon me for what follows. It strikes me as a resuscitation that’s long overdue: a piercingly profound summation from a writer and thinker whose profundity sometimes led him into the darkness, yet who always managed to return to the light. I must quote at some length from his best known novel.

     A plague is ravaging the Algerian city of Oran. The gates of the city are shut; no one is permitted to leave. Jean Tarrou, who has been composing a journal of the plague and will soon be cut down by it, tells physician Dr. Bernard Rieux, alongside whom he has worked to care for the infected, of his life before coming to Oran. He speaks at length of his father, with whom he had good relations throughout his childhood. But he came to view “that worthy man,” a prosecuting attorney, as “a red-robed murderer:”

     “In his red gown he was another man, no longer genial or good-natured; his mouth spewed out long, turgid phrases like an endless stream of snakes. I realized he was clamoring for the prisoner’s death, telling the jury that they owed it to society to find him guilty; he went so far as to demand that the man should have his head cut off. Not exactly in those words, I admit. ‘He must pay the supreme penalty,’ was the formula. But the difference, really, was slight, and the result the same. He had the head he asked for. Only of course it wasn’t he who did the actual job. I, who saw the whole business through to its conclusion, felt a far closer, far more terrifying intimacy with that wretched man than my father can ever have felt. Nevertheless, it fell to him, in the course of his duties, to be present at what’s politely termed the prisoner's last moments, but what would be better called murder in its most despicable form.”

     Tarrou resolves not to be a murderer, but his inclinations lead him astray by involving him in bloody revolutionary struggles throughout Europe:

     To my mind the social order around me was based on the death sentence, and by righting the established order I'd be fighting against murder. That was my view, others had told me so, and I still think that this belief of mine was substantially true. I joined forces with a group of people I then liked, and indeed have never ceased to like. I spent many years in close co-operation with them, and there's not a country in Europe in whose struggles I haven't played a part. But that's another story.
     "Needless to say, I knew that we, too, on occasion, passed sentences of death. But I was told that these few deaths were inevitable for the building up of a new world in which murder would cease to be. That also was true up to a point, and maybe I'm not capable of standing fast where that order of truths is concerned.”

     The horror of the thing grows steadily within him:

     “I came to understand that I, anyhow, had had plague through all those long years in which, paradoxically enough, I'd believed with all my soul that I was fighting it. I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people; that I'd even brought about their deaths by approving of acts and principles which could only end that way. Others did not seem embarrassed by such thoughts, or anyhow never voiced them of their own accord.
     “But I was different; what I'd come to know stuck in my gorge. I was with them and yet I was alone. When I spoke of these matters they told me not to be so squeamish; I should remember what great issues were at stake. And they advanced arguments, often quite impressive ones, to make me swallow what none the less I couldn't bring myself to stomach. I replied that the most eminent of the plague-stricken, the men who wear red robes, also have excellent arguments to justify what they do, and once I admitted the arguments of necessity and force majeure put forward by the less eminent, I couldn't reject those of the eminent. To which they retorted that the surest way of playing the game of the red robes was to leave to them the monopoly of the death penalty. My reply to this was that if you gave in once, there was no reason for not continuing to give in. It seems to me that history has borne me out; today there's a sort of competition who will kill the most. They're all mad over murder and they couldn't stop killing men even if they wanted to.”

     Tarrou’s ultimate conclusion, perhaps the plainest statement of the nature of innocence that can be made, is thus:

     “All I maintain is that on this earth there are plagues and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the plagues. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it's simple, but I know it’s true. You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people's heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clean-cut language.”

     [Albert Camus, The Plague]

     Ponder that for a moment or two.

---

     “Do not join forces with the plagues,” Camus says. And that to that end, one must insist on “plain, clean-cut language.” That’s not the only time that sentiment has been voiced, of course; George Orwell expressed it at about the same time. No doubt others have said similar things both before and after that. But to Camus it was a swordstroke that cut through all the representations and pretensions of all the “revolutionaries” of his time.

     To escape “joining forces with the plagues,” one must see clearly. One must insist that others speak clearly; those who refuse must be dismissed with prejudice, along with all their nostrums. And above all, one must not accept anyone’s rationalizations for deeds the doer would condemn from others.

     With that as the backdrop, contrast Richard III, the sociopath to whom all persons are either tools or obstacles, with the accusers who parade among us seeking the ruination of persons high and low, charging them with every imaginable crime, from tawdry comments to murder, entirely without evidence. Which is more openly and honestly a villain? Which would you find it easier to condemn and oppose?

---

     The fusillades of our time don’t conclude with the lopping off of heads. At least, not often. But they do involve the ruination of public figures, often by accusation alone.

     No standard is maintained in these exchanges of fire. Accusations about conduct alleged to have taken place forty years ago, without witnesses, are treated as if the deeds had been done that very day. Often no item of evidence is offered; some of what “evidence” there is has proved to be falsified. And more often than not, what’s deemed to matter most is the accused’s political alignment.

     Yes, I hold the Left and their media handmaidens principally responsible for the mess, but the Establishment Right has been complicit, whether by cowardice or by its efforts to maintain the popularly rejected status quo. That it should have collaborated, even to the mildest degree, in the Left’s attempt to overturn the clear verdict of the November 2016 presidential election makes it equally guilty of the Left’s crimes. It must not be forgiven – and we will not be forgiven should we let it pass.

     Is it any wonder that Americans have generally retreated from politics? That they disdain to trust in any politician’s claims? That they’ve looked to total outsiders with increasing frequency for an alteration to the status quo? Common citizens have as much as said “A plague on all your houses,” for plagues of abuse – of our intelligence, of our senses, of our memories, and of our credulity – are what we’ve endured from all sides.

     The political establishment has brought judgment upon itself. The media are complicit in their skullduggeries at every stage. To say that we’re “discontented” with the lot of them barely touches the surface of the thing. Many of us want to see them swing.

     Richard III died in the Battle of Bosworth. In Shakespeare’s account, he was slain in single combat against the leader of the insurrection against him: Henry Tudor, Duke of Richmond, who was to become King Henry VII. Historical sources say that there was no such single combat. However, they do attest to his end as a king in battle, leading his own forces: a nobler end than one might have expected for a villain-protagonist. The villain-protagonists of our era must be allowed no such fates.

Some Unemployed Story Ideas For You

     Enough with politics and public policy for the moment. There are plenty of outlets that will oversupply you with those things. We here at Liberty’s Torch are about filling under-served needs. So today let’s address the yawning void at the core of far too many would-be writers: lack of “an idea.”

     Herewith, a few ideas which, to the best of my knowledge, no one has used yet. There’s a reason for that, of course. If you succeed in making use of any of them, I’d be happy to host your story – under your byline, of course – here at Liberty’s Torch.

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1. The Beauty Industry Grinds To A Halt!

     It is 2050, and all the “old” cosmetics are gone at last. Foundation, blusher, mascara, eye liner, lipstick – all are now permanent only, and can only be removed by the use of a specially formulated cleansing agent. At first women were delighted, for they no longer had to fret about anything “running” or “smearing.” But then there was some fretting after all, for mistakes in application do happen, and the cleansing agent is not without cost.

     But wait...what’s this? A devastating terrorist strike against the makers of the cleansing agent? Does anyone else know how to make the stuff? If not, what will happen when the current supply is exhausted? Will women never again know the joy of putting on makeup – or of taking it off?

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2. There Are Laws, After All.

     For the first time in human history, the Far Horizons had succeeded in exceeding the speed-of-light limit...but the jubilation of the crew was short-lived, for almost at once the mighty vessel was wrenched out of temporal reality. Its crew found themselves in a mysterious chamber filled with the accoutrements of a courtroom. The faces in the jury box were veiled, indistinct. At the judge’s bench sat a being of great beauty that could only be an angel.

     What will the penalty be for violating God’s own speed limit? A period in Hell? Community service? Or perhaps just a few decades of the Rosary for all concerned?

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3. “We Want To Be Alone!”

     Australia is gone. That’s right: the Land Down Under has vanished from...well, not from “the map,” as the maps show exactly what they always have. Rather, it’s vanished from the perception of aircraft, ships at sea, even from satellites in orbit over where it’s supposed to be.

     There’s more: Emigrants from the vanished island nation have started to appear at nearby ports. They have no idea what happened to them. One moment they were in Sydney, or Melbourne, or Perth; the next they were on this mysterious, robotically piloted ship with an unknown destination. They share a single common characteristic: None of them were Australian-born. All were recent immigrants to Australia.

     Attempt after attempt to reach the great island inexplicably fail. Radio hails are uniformly met with silence. Has Australia been captured by malevolent alien forces, to be used as a beachhead for the conquest of all of Earth? Or have the Aussies finally decided to tell the rest of the world “G’dae mate, and sod off!” -- ?

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4. No One Must Ever Know.

     Marlowe plies the world’s most controversial trade: “biographical archeologist.” He specializes in unearthing shocking facts about famous historical figures. His books about the ones on whom he’s uncovered something surprising and unsavory have made him rich, internationally famous...and greatly disliked by those who venerate such figures, or hope to be remembered among them someday.

     But Marlowe’s latest discovery is one that could unsettle more than a billion people, perhaps to the point of mass violence: Mahatma Gandhi was fabulously wealthy, owing to his ownership of a chain of steakhouses. Could he bring himself to suppress that discovery in the name of the “greater good?” And if he reveals it, will powerful forces – perhaps the ones that strove to ruin him for revealing that Winston Churchill actually hated cigars – move against him at last?

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5. The “Stepford Plague.”

     It started slowly. A termagant awoke one morning and found herself unable to insult her husband. Another found herself, against all her previous inclinations, being pleasant and accommodating toward her mate. Other wives of their acquaintance experienced similar transformations, despite fighting the new impulses with all their fury. Their husbands were initially wary, unable to believe the evidence of their senses. Yet there it was: their wives were treating them with respect and appreciation!

     The disease spread like wildfire...and a disease it was: a virus that spread from one infectee to the next through ordinary conversation. Practically overnight, millions of unhappy homes were transformed into temples of domestic tranquility where no harsh word ever passed between husband and wife. The War Between The Sexes was coming to an abrupt end, due to a biological agent that could not be countervailed and whose origin could not be determined!

     The divorce industry and the “family courts” teetered at the brink of calamity. Certainly something had to be done before this pillar of the American economy should crumble and fall – but what? And by whom?

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     That’s enough for today, I think. Now all you aspiring writers: it’s time to get to work. Your excuses have expired. I want to see some fiction pronto, and the sillier the better!

"Once is Happenstance,...

Twice is coincidence, the third time is enemy action." James Bond, Goldfinger.

That's where we're at - here's the rundown of "inexplicable" events.

Here's the pair in the most recent chain of events.

Not the first time someone in government was led around by a loose-mouthed woman.

Peter? Just a heads-up - a woman will NOT take the fall for this. She will manage to turn on you, putting you up as the initiator and sole culprit.

Quickies: Figuring On The Downside

     I have the great good fortune to be old, married, and content with my lot. Moreover, I grew up before contemporary, “gender-war” feminism had gotten off the ground. So my memories of my years dating and mating are generally unthreatening ones. But today’s young men are in a quite different environment, sexually, culturally, and legally.

     Many young women have absorbed the notion that “he’s an oppressor,” and therefore deserves whatever she (or any other woman) might do to him. Many others have decided that the only reason to have anything to do with a man is to pump him for what she can get out of him. Still others, having married and decided that they “made a mistake,” see nothing wrong with punishing their husbands, or ex-husbands, for their own errors. Some even derive pleasure from it.

     What percentage of single women fall into those categories?

     An old parable, often used to argue against admitting Muslims to these United States, runs thus: There’s a bowl of M&Ms^® before you. You like M&Ms^® and are minded to enjoy a few...but someone whose word is good has told you that in that bowl of hundreds of M&Ms^® there are ten that have been laced with cyanide, any one of which would suffice to kill you. Do you eat from the bowl, or do you pass on by?

     I think most of us would pass on by, no matter how much we might love M&Ms. The downside is simply too great to risk.

     Now, where you see M&Ms^® in the above, substitute single young women. There are probably hundreds in the neighborhood of any given single young man. How great does the percentage of self-absorbed, evil minded women – women psychologically ready, willing, and able to make a man’s life a living hell – need to be to persuade a single young man to abstain from romantic explorations and “go his own way?”

     Do prevailing cultural currents or the state of “family law” have any bearing on such a decision? What about demographic factors, religion, education, and so forth?

     Discuss!

Parallel Or Orthogonal?

     My esteemed colleague Dystopic, also known lately as Thales – you know, champ, this moniker-shifting would be unnecessary if you would just use your own name – has penned a delightful piece about the Left’s occupancy of a “parallel universe.” Those of us old enough to remember the “bearded Spock” episode on Star Trek are especially tickled by the notion...but maybe “parallel” isn’t the right word to describe the difference in orientation between mundane reality and Leftists’ preferred conceptions.

     Maybe the Left’s habitat is orthogonal to ours.

     Now, for a “universe” of any sort to be stable, its contents must conform to some set of physical laws. Moreover, we would expect those laws to be consistent with one another – i.e., they would not contradict one another’s dictates. After all, if Law X is contradicted by Law Y, the context of application being identical, how could either one be a “law?”

     When cosmologists speculate about a parallel universe, we normally imagine that it would conform to laws much like those in our universe, but with changes in one or more of the various fundamental constants. That’s a comfortable way to speculate; it allows us to import our knowledge of this universe into the one we’ve imagined. But it’s also rather limiting – and if there’s anything the Left purely hates, it’s a limit on them. Leftists demand the absolute and unqualified right to contradict themselves whenever they feel like it.

     Take marriage as an illustrative case. For how long did Leftists sneer at marriage as an outmoded, confining, unnecessary institution? That attitude goes back about a century, to the Bolshevik revolutionaries who seized control of Russia toward the end of World War I. But when homosexuals demanded the “right” to marry within their sex, it became the most important issue of our time.

     Or consider the Boy Scouts. The Left has never approved of the Scouts; it’s too patriotic and Christian-normed an organization for their tastes. But when girls and homosexuals demanded the “right” to become Boy Scouts and Scout leaders, suddenly nothing else mattered.

     Race provides an even better case. Race, to the Left, is denounced as illusory whenever anyone dares to notice and mention the statistical differences between the sexes. Yet the Left eagerly embraces the concept of race whenever it can be used to press for more government spending, or for the invasion of private demesnes on the grounds of “non-discrimination.”

     Finally, consider economics. The Left deems capitalism exploitative and destructive, and wants it condemned to death. Yet capitalism – the latitude of free men to produce and trade with one another – is the one and only source of human wealth...and the Left also wants to “redistribute” huge gobs of wealth, far larger than any welfare state has ever contemplated, to its favored activities and groups.

     If the Left occupies some universe other than ours, it’s a place of absolute and unending chaos. Its ruling “law,” if I may abuse the word this way, is that the Left shall get what it wants, no matter how badly that contradicts what it said it wanted five minutes earlier.

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     Of course, the real problem isn’t that Leftists seek to occupy some universe other than the one we know; it’s that they seek to transform this one into the imagined one of their aspirations.

     In our universe, the thing is impossible. Marriage has a definite purpose and meaning. Boys and girls differ greatly, and developmental institutions must segregate them to some extent. Race either exists or it doesn’t. Wealth that free men have not created by their insight, cooperation, and effort cannot be distributed, much less redistributed.

     None of that fazes the Left. Its demands never cease and never moderate, regardless of any and all demonstrations of impossibility. Indeed, one could easily suspect that their impossibility is why Leftists promote them.

     A multitude of demands that are impossible to satisfy will create the conditions upon which tyrannies thrive.

     I am reminded of H. P. Lovecraft’s conception of Cthulhu, the ancient “god” of evil who waits in R’lyeh for the stars to be right for its return to our world. Cthulhu and his brethren seek to teach men the “freedom” of moving beyond good, evil, and all conceptions of law:

     When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals.

          Then, whispered Castro, those first men formed the cult around small idols which the Great Ones shewed them; idols brought in dim aeras from dark stars. That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

     Of course, the “freedom” of those who are murdered is zero, but what of that? Only small minds would cavil at such a difficulty.

     So it is with the Left: endlessly dreaming of a time when all laws have been set aside, and their wills made omnipotent. The supreme irony, of course, is that it claims to be the “reality-based” community. Reality will never be quite that disordered, the protests and demands of the Left notwithstanding. Or perhaps it will be, in some universe so dominated by chaos that even demands at right angles to one another can be satisfied simultaneously. But as Dystopic / Thales notes, that’s not the universe we live in. God be thanked and praised for that.