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They Call Me Mad, But I Am Not Mad Dept.

     Several other bloggers have noted the following emission from Adam Schiff (D, CA):

     “There was one issue we were not allowed to look at and the Senate hasn’t been either that concerns me a great deal and that is the issue of whether Russians were laundering money through the Trump Organization and [if] that is the leverage they have over the president....Someone needs to determine whether those allegations are true or they are not. That certainly would be a priority for me.”

     This is not a man concerned with justice, or evidence. This is a man in the grip of an obsession. It might be an obsession with retaining public attention. It might be an obsession with President Trump himself. Or it might be an obsession with becoming Speaker of the House, as if that were an elevation open to someone who looks as if he’s just wriggled out of a straitjacket. But in Adam Schiff, obsession is present and more than just voting; it’s in unopposed control.

     And being the sort whose memory never fails to amuse him at such times, it’s just tossed this up at me:

     "That's what they called me at Masters and Johnson's clinic, mad. Because I had visions of explorations in sexual areas undreamed of by lesser human beings. It was I who first discovered how to make a man impotent by hiding his hat. I was the first one to explain the connection between excessive masturbation and entering politics. It was I who first said that the clitoral orgasm should not be only for women! They ridiculed me, said I was mad, haha! But I showed them. They threw me out of Masters and Johnson, no severance pay and I had it coming. But I showed them!" [“Dr. Bernardo,” in Woody Allen’s 1972 movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask]

     It might not be entirely on point, but...compare and contrast. (And just look at those eyes.)

Every last one.

Every violent death in Syria is the fault of the US and its allies. The narrative that there is a bad guy who that same alliance needs to protect civilians from is the exact opposite of the truth. The Syrian government is trying to restore stability to a region the US-centralized empire is solely responsible for destabilizing. A sovereign nation has every right to undo the damage that was done to it by western imperialism, and western imperialists have no right to stop it.

"Four Reasons Why Interventionism In Syria Is Crazy And Stupid." By Caitlin Johnstone, 9/13/18.

Trust me. I work for the government.

On global warming:

NOAA’s research supposedly contradicted claims of a pause in global warming since 1998, hence the name “Pausebuster Paper.” But [Dr. John] Bates’ evidence shows that the agency knowingly overstated the speed of warming and falsely reported inaccurate high temperatures. Bates says his NOAA superiors ignored his vehement objections to publication of the faulty data.

Bates, a 40-year career meteorologist and climate scientist, explained that NOAA had replaced the readings gleaned from highly accurate Argo ocean buoys with temperature measurements from ships. The latter are notoriously inaccurate and undependable due to variability in measurement depth and because of heat from ships’ propulsion systems. “They had good data from buoys. And they threw it out and ‘corrected it’ with bad data from ships,” complained Bates. “You never change good data to agree with bad, but that’s what they did — so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.”

* * * *

. . . The U.S. House Science Committee, however, was suspicious of the [“Pausebuster”] paper and issued subpoenas for internal e-mails related to it. Then suddenly, the computer used to store “Pausebuster” suffered a “complete failure,” meaning, says Bates, that no one will ever be able to replicate or verify the data.

"What on Earth Is Happening to Our Temperature?" By Ed Hiserodt and Rebecca Terrell, The New American, 3/27/17.

Fools

     According to the late Barbara Tuchman, folly – the course followed by a fool – consists in knowing better but nevertheless doing worse. While some would dispute Tuchman’s definition, it has applications to several fields of human involvement. One of them, a rather disturbing one, is suggested by this article:

     Why yes, if Jesus Christ was not resurrected from the dead on the third day following His crucifixion, as He repeatedly told His disciples beforehand He would be, then every one of the billions of people who have lived who professed their faith in Him has been a schmuck, a fool, conned, etc.

     This may come as a shock to some, but St. Paul put it rather succinctly at 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”

     That’s the meat and potatoes of the Christian faith: Either He rose from the dead or the whole thing is a pleasant fabrication. But always there are militant atheists who’ll demand proof of the Resurrection – if they stop short there. Some will dispute that Jesus existed at all.

     Trouble is, religion doesn’t deal in proof.

     We have a great deal of evidence that Jesus of Nazareth lived, traveled extensively through Judea and Samaria, was crucified by the Roman authorities, and rose from the dead on the third day of His Passion, fulfilling the prior prophecies and confirming His divinity, but to prove that the event took place, as if it were a mathematical proposition, is beyond our power. There will always be possible explanations for all the phenomena reported in the New Testament that omit the Resurrection — including that the New Testament and all that followed in Church history is pure fiction — and they can’t be disproved either. That, plus its theological assertions, is why Christianity is a faith rather than a mathematical theorem or a scientific hypothesis.

     But that’s not what I’m here to write about.

---

     In Polymath, I had the young skeptic Todd Iverson approach the Christian proposition this way:

     Much of what Todd had learned about Redmond had remained opaque to him. The engineer’s unassuming carriage contrasted sharply with his nuclear-powered intellect and his colleagues’ unconcealed reverence. His material modesty, particularly his inexplicable attachment to an old pickup truck when he could surely have afforded a newer, more glamorous conveyance, was even more mysterious. But more baffling than all the rest taken together was Redmond’s unconcealed devotion to his religion. It seemed to be fixed at the center of his life.
     How anyone so brilliant could get so attached to an obvious fairy tale is beyond me.
     “Quarter for your thoughts?” Redmond said.
     “Huh? I thought it was ‘penny for your thoughts.’”
     “Time was. I’ve adjusted it for inflation.”
     “Mmph. Okay. Well, I was just wondering about...” His courage failed him.
     Redmond turned a final corner, pulled into the Iversons’ driveway, set the parking brake and turned toward him. “About me and the church, right?”
     Todd blushed and nodded.
     “Because you don’t believe.”
     Another nod.
     “And you’re smart and you know it. But by now you know that I’m at least as smart, and it flummoxes you. Because you just can’t imagine how anyone with half a brain could buy into such a load of total nonsense, much less someone who’s as smart as you.”
     Todd remained silent. He fought to keep his expression from revealing his thoughts.
     Redmond smiled gently. “What would you say were the most important words in that little speech, Todd?”
     “Hm?”
     “Would you like me to repeat it?”
     Todd shook his head. “Uh, no, it’s just that...”
     “You’d rather not think about it?”
     Todd’s discomfort deepened further.
     Redmond’s smile turned impish. “Or maybe you’re a wee bit off balance from my having read your mind like a large-print book?”
     Todd started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. In a moment he’d surrendered to a gale of laughter, holding his sides against the spasms from his own guffaws.
     When he’d regained control of himself, he shook his head and caught Redmond’s eyes with his own. The engineer was still smiling gently.
     “Wasn’t it like that for you?” Todd said. “I mean, from everything I’ve heard about you—”
     “From your classmates?”
     Todd nodded. “Sideways, mostly. Some from Rolf and the others in the group. You had to have had the same reaction to...to this stuff that I had. It can’t be true!”

     Later on, Iverson converses with a Catholic priest, and founds his skepticism thus:

     “In the matter of the Christian faith,” the priest continued, “the critical proposition is the Resurrection. If the claim that Jesus’s mortal body died, but that he returned to life three days later, presented himself first to his apostles and then to hundreds of others, and forty days after his Resurrection ascended bodily to heaven can be accepted on any basis whatsoever, then Christianity is acceptable on those grounds.”
     “And that,” Todd said slowly, “is where I’ve always hung up and walked away. Nothing remotely like that has ever happened since then, so why should I believe it happened two thousand years ago?”

     This is exactly the crux Paul of Tarsus delineated in First Corinthians: Either it really happened, or we’ve all been had.

     But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, either.

---

     In the comments to this Mark Tapscott entry at Instapundit, there are many statements about meaning and value: specifically, the meaning and value of human life. Believers find meaning and value in their lives, premised on their faith. Nonbelievers contend that meaning and value are available even if there is no God. But neither set grapples with the questions those two metaphysical concepts demand that we ask:

1. Meaning to whom?
2. Value by what standard?

     For meaning is a consequence of interpretation – and that requires an interpreter. Value is a fundamentally temporal property, arising from our nature as project pursuers; it cannot be usefully applied to supra-temporal and transfinite considerations.

     Let’s tackle value first. Consider the following fictional exchange:

Mugger: Gimme your wallet!
Victim: But all my cash is in there! What am I to do?
Mugger: I don’t care. Gimme your wallet or I’ll plug you.
Victim: (complies) But how am I going to buy dinner or get home?
Mugger: Knock it off. Five years from now this won’t matter to you at all.

     Pretty fanciful, eh? But if you’re at all typical, at some point someone who’s disappointed or wounded you has used the mugger’s exact rationale to “console” his victim. In abstract terms, he’s suggested that the victim forsake his short-term standard of value and adopt one that reaches forward five years. (Never mind that the mugger is obviously applying a short-term standard of value by practicing armed robbery.)

     If the possibility of eternal bliss in the nearness of a benevolent God is real, then there can be no useful standard of value that fits it. Its importance is literally infinite, which nothing in our temporal lives can be. No one who takes that possibility seriously can validly be called a fool for conforming his life to what he believes are the requirements for reaching it. In the recent movie The Case For Christ, believing coworker Kenny London makes that point to skeptic Lee Strobel.

     “Here’s where the chili meets the cheese, my friend. One of my heroes was C. S. Lewis, a man who began as a skeptic, much like yourself. At the end of his journey, you know what he said? If Christianity is false, it’s of zero importance. But if it’s true, there’s nothing more important in the entire universe.”

     This is also the essence of Pascal’s Wager.

     As to meaning, the case can be made that a man can find adequate meaning in his own life, as its most intimate and proximate interpreter. However, the great majority of persons who’ve lived and are alive today treat the meaning of their lives as a trans-temporal consideration. Their question is not “What does my life mean to me?” but rather “What does my life mean in the Great Scheme of Things?”

     That’s a question to which no satisfactory answer can be given without a trans-temporal Interpreter. We who pose the question that way find the true meaning of our lives in how God sees them – one of the blessings of Christian conviction that’s rarely well understood even by Christians themselves.

---

     Proof of supernatural and supra-temporal propositions is simply impossible for creatures trapped beneath the veil of Time. No matter how much we want it, we can’t have it. What we can have are the things that please and fulfill us in this life. Two of those things are meaning and value. Christian belief provides both, along with a not-too-onerous set of rules by which to attain something virtually everyone would like to have.

     The evidence for Christianity is copious, but it can never rise to the level of proof. Ironically, they who demand proof and will be satisfied with nothing less are just as incapable of proving their opposed contention: i.e., that there is no God and Jesus of Nazareth, whether or not He really lived, was not divine. Which is why I smile at the skeptics and reply to them that “You enjoy your religion, and I’ll enjoy mine.”

     Fools? Perhaps. But I’ve made my bet. Have you made yours?

Just How Many Illegal Aliens are There in This Country?

The agreement on the number 12 million may be wrong - DELIBERATELY wrong.

Look at the graph below:

Ask yourself - it it LIKELY that the number of illegal aliens resident in this country began leveling off just as Obama's policies took effect? Right about the time that Obama took office, when the illegals began FLOODING into this country, somehow, inexplicably, the number of illegal aliens not only stopped their trend, but began to decline?

One factor is that the stats collectors are no longer classifying the DREAMERS and not-currently-being-pursued aliens as no longer aliens.

Which, they still are.

The number that the writer of this essay suggests is about double - around 30 million. He makes a persuasive case for that estimation.

The Day After 9/11

We sometimes talk about the day before - I have referred to myself as a 9/10 Democrat. That's someone who had been a Democrat from family tradition, and continued even after it was evident that the party had irrevocably changed into something not recognizable.

But, what is so special about 9/12?

The Battle of Vienna - the day when the Indigenous Europeans kicked the Muslims out of Europe, and stopped them from further predations upon their people.

And, although the origins of the croissant roll are murky (that type of roll has many roots), having some for dinner would be a great way to celebrate today - tearing into the pastry with sharp teeth, symbolic of destruction of the violent Islamic ideology.

UPDATE:

I found this on the Ace of Spades blog. Exciting, and gives more perspective on the history of 9/11 and 9/12.

The Satan Trick

     I forget who originated this notion, but it’s been said for many years that the Devil’s greatest achievement was convincing so many humans that he doesn’t exist. In homage to this insight, I’ve christened the ploy of persuading people to not see evil even when it’s in plain view the Satan trick.

     The Left has been trying to pull off the Satan trick for some time now. Just recently, a Leftist addressed me on Gab with a soliloquy about how the Left “doesn’t exist.” It was a thousand words or so of self-serving, hyper-tendentious (and rather paranoid) nonsense, but he probably figured that was the sort of verbal prestidigitation that would work on a wordy bastard (i.e., me). It didn’t, of course, but you probably didn’t need to be told that.

     The Satan trick also appears in somewhat reduced forms. For example, Barack Hussein Obama, inarguably the most anti-American person ever to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, recently gave a speech in which he claimed that the well known story about the disgraceful inaction of the federal government during the Benghazi episode is “a conspiracy theory.” I have no doubt that his most ardent admirers swallowed his proclamation wholesale. But here’s a bit of testimony from Kris “Tanto” Paronto, former Army Ranger and one of the six principal defenders of the Benghazi CIA station on September 11, 2012:

     This is a particularly difficult case of the Satan trick to pull off, as five of those six defenders are still alive and talking. But leave it to Obama, who’s never backed away from a politically useful lie no matter how implausible it might be, to feed such nonsense to those still willing to listen to him.

     On the more immediately political front, we have the “Russian collusion” investigation. This farce has turned up zero evidence that the Trump for President campaign ever had any dealings with the Russian government, much less colluded with Russian agents in an attempt to sway the election or corrupt its results. What it has turned up is tons of evidence that various highly placed officials in the Justice Department and virtually the whole of the office cadre of the FBI did their damnedest to sway the election by a coordinated “leak” strategy and the use of salacious but totally fabricated rumors about supposed Trump misbehavior. Which federal Democrats have admitted that with such results after a year and a half of “investigation,” the thing should be shut down? None of them: from them it’s a constant drumbeat of “Russia” and “impeachment.” This is the Satan trick protracted to the limits of human endurance.

     “What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” has become a tag line of sorts in political discourse. Sadly, there are many Americans who refuse to see evidence laid out plainly before them. Equally sadly, they condemn those who present them with such evidence as “racists” and “Nazis.” The most extreme of them strive to silence anyone who dares to contradict their dogmas. Between those who ponder evidence and those who swallow absurd proclamations as an act of political faith, there lies a gulf nothing can bridge.

     Yet people still ask why they can’t have a calm and reasonable conversation with persons of the other political persuasion. It is to laugh...hollowly, and with many a tear. Except for Satan: his laughter is genuinely jolly and quite sincere.

The Remora’s Worst Mistake

     Before I attack today’s subject with my leaden rapier, allow me to notify you about a crisis of sorts. Mike Hendrix, the redoubtable master of Cold Fury, is in financial trouble. He’s been hit with a large car repair bill, and as he makes his living with his car – he works for Lyft – that had to come before all else. Unfortunately, Hosting Matters, where his blog is sited, is impatient about his arrears and has suspended his account.

     If you appreciate Mike’s stuff and have the means, please consider sending him a few dollars. His email address is tommygunmike@gmail.com

---

     A parasitic organism cannot afford to do its host lethal damage. That “should” be “obvious,” but as with many similar propositions, the power of wishful thinking can conceal it from us at the worst possible moments.

     An economic parasite that manages to kill its host will sometimes continue on for a while in seeming independence, but unless it secures a new host in short order, it’s doomed to penury and extinction. This is what appears to be happening in the field of fantasy and science fiction.

     The Phantom sets the stage for us:

     Saw this gem today. Everything wrong with science fiction is John W. Campbell's fault.

     Campbell was basically a racist garbage-person.

     Campbell supported slavery. And segregation. And believed black people were inherently intellectually and culturally inferior to whites. You know that whole, "But how could you possibly expect readers to empathize with a black protagonist?" thing? Something Campbell quite famously told Samuel R. Delany, in quite possibly its first documented incarnation. That whole "I don't care if they're white, black, or polka-dotted" thing white people say when they're trying to pretend they're not being racist? Campbell, while making apologetics for slavery no less, which was something he got up to a lot.

     It goes on and on like that. Campbell was a RAAAACIST!!! Heinlein was a RAAAACIST!!! Asimov, Hubbard, Clarke, all RAAAACISTS!!! Sure, baby. Sure they were.

     If you aren’t familiar with the name John W. Campbell, he was the highly influential editor of the great SF pulps Astounding and Analog for many years. He was personally responsible for mentoring (and bringing to prominence) Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and several other greats of the field. He was politically conservative, as far as I can tell from his editorials. Therefore, the SJWs who now dominate traditional F&SF publishing, professional organizations such as the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), and the Hugo Award-granting World Science Fiction convention hate him with a white hot passion and are determined to make him an unperson.

     They’ve already set to work on Asimov, Heinlein, and other luminaries of the Golden Age, and have substantially scrubbed them from the awareness of younger F&SF readers, so why not Campbell? After vaporizing the great writers of the field, taking down an editor shouldn’t be much of an exercise.

     There’s probably no stopping them from carrying on with their pogrom. What will ultimately stop them is the economic consequence of their campaign. You see, they can’t tell a decent story. The lot of them are slowly discovering that no matter who or how indulgent your publisher is, or how many awards your fellow travelers award you, if you can’t or won’t entertain the reader, giving him at least some of what he reads F&SF for, he won’t be back.

     It’s not really about their politics. There’ve been left-wingers in F&SF for half of forever. It’s because along with doing their best to anathematize the old greats, they’ve made political propagandization their one and only aim. Their relentlessness about their politics –especially as regards that contemporary shibboleth “diversity” – has drained the entertainment value from their stories. Were writers in the Right to do likewise, they would be equally unreadable. Heinlein trended that way in his last few years, with the same consequences for the entertainment value of his novels.

     So younger readers are growing ever less inclined to scan the F&SF racks at Barnes & Noble for their entertainment.

---

     As usual, Sarah Hoyt has a pithy observation about the above:

     The vultures are fighting harder and harder over tinier and tinier scraps. And even they can’t convince themselves that they compare in any way, shape or form to the greats of the genre’s past. Hence the screaming. It’s akin to a child covering his ears and shrieking, so as not to hear the denial of his fantasies.

     Indeed. And you can bet your last dollar that the infighting, the finger pointing, and the recrimination will all get steadily worse as the scraps dwindle in number and size. The SJWs made the parasite's worst possible mistake – they succeeded in capturing SF's traditional publishers, professional groups, and award-granting organizations, and drove out the capable, properly focused writers who kept those organizations worthwhile — and they're paying for it in the most appropriate way.

     The independent writers movement will eventually eclipse traditionally published F&SF. Capable storytellers are available there; these days, I go nowhere else for my entertainment. Yes, it’s necessary to filter out a lot of crap, but indie pricing makes that an endurable undertaking. Moreover, indie writers are gradually adopting practices that make it straightforward to avoid most of the crap without having to pay for it, in particular posting substantial snippets of their books free of charge, just as Amazon has done.

     Meanwhile, the SJWs who’ve colonized and conquered traditional publishing, the Hugo Awards, and the Science Fiction Writers of America have some starving and dying to do. It’s what happens when you kill off your host with your poisonous excretions. They could have learned that by watching the demise of Venezuela, or for that matter the ongoing auto da fe of the Democrat Party, but it appears from here that those examples of their folly were of no interest to them.

The Washington Post plumbs new lows.

In an editorial Friday, the Post goaded Trump, calling his response to Assad’s ruthless recapture of his country "pathetically weak." To stand by and let the Syrian army annihilate the rebels in Idlib, said the Post, would be "another damaging abdication of U.S. leadership."^[1]

The Post does in fact weep tears for the actual jihadis (poor souls) but it's part and parcel of the now-official view of Pompeo and Haley who want to broaden the "trigger" for American action to include military operations that involve civilian casualties from any cause, not just supposed Syrian plans to use chemical weapons.

Maybe time has clouded my memory but wasn’t the U.S. ruthlessly attempting to annihilate the “rebels” in South Vietnam? I certainly hope we were, let me just say. To our credit – and contrary to the fond imaginings of the execrable American left – we were, however, acutely sensitive to the possibility of civilian deaths and Johnson inflicted ridiculous rules of engagement on our troops to avoid them, particularly in North Vietnam. In the end, however, we were insufficiently ferocious even under those ROE and stopped just days short of a North Vietnamese capitulation. Thank you congressional Democrats whose like-minded successors infest the Congress of today.

I’ve written of Bruce Catton’s observation on the progressive grimness of the American War of Southern Independence. Writing of the Union Army, Catton noted that the congenial election of leaders at the outset of the war gave way to men being spread eagled on wagon wheels and lashed for disciplinary infractions. No more democratic ordering of affairs. Message: war is serious business. (Lincoln inflicted his own special brand of tyranny on the home front to dampen down mutterings about the war, but that's another story.)

The realities of lining up and facing ranks of the enemy and hails of small arms and artillery fire became well known to the troops. My great grandfather’s Illinois regiment faced Confederate regiments deployed in a solid wall at Stones River and it simply dissolved in the ensuing battle. Same thing at Chickamauga. Swept away by Confederate infantry.

Sherman’s march to the sea more resembled criminal excess than military operation but it was murderously effective in ending Confederate resistance. WWII involved little of the concern for civilian deaths that so exercises the Post now. The Dresden bombings, the Tokyo fire bombings, and our nuclear strikes in Japan were similarly more vengeance than military necessity (not to mention the latter's subtle hints to Stalin about new realities).

So this sudden hand wringing over civilians in one Syrian war zone oozes with hypocrisy. Clearly, the U.S. doesn’t give a fig about civilian casualties in Syria (or Yemen or Mosul or Fallujah or Raqqah) but only about its strategic objectives to (1) destroy Syria and (2) destroy Iran.

Annihilating “rebels” inside national borders is what sovereign governments do. How they do it is especially no concern of the people who have done their utmost to enable “rebel” death, destruction, rape, theft, and torture. We who have facilitated, directly and indirectly, the death of over 500,000 Syrians are not in any position to preach to a leader and an army who are dealing with the Islamic scum involved and who are clearly strongly supported by the Syrian people. A hypocritical daintiness on the part of the Post, Pompeo, and Haley and official ________ coming from the U.S. are demeaning a serious effort to crucify Syrian terrorists whom, SHMG, we are and have been supporting.

Notes
^[1] "Is Trump Going Neocon in Syria?" By Patrick J. Buchanan, AntiWar.com, 9/11/18.

Chekhov’s Law

     (No, not that everything was invented in Russia!)

     You’ve seen me discourse about it before:

     “Everything not essential to the story must be ruthlessly cut away. If in Act One you say that a gun hung on the wall, then by Act Two or Act Three at the latest, it must be discharged.” – Anton Chekhov

     Anton Chekhov was principally a writer of short stories and plays. His sense for the constraints that apply to those forms animated his Law. He applied it as ruthlessly as he commanded the rest of us to do, even in his longer works.

     Myself, I prefer Mikhail Bakunin’s two rules for anarchists:
     Rule 1: There are no rules.
     Rule 2: Rule 1 is not binding.

     Nevertheless, I do appreciate the thought behind Chekhov’s Law. It pertains to dramatic unity: the sense that everything the reader has encountered will figure in the ultimate climax of the tale. And in the construction of a short story or novelette, it’s a far, far better thing to abide by it rather than to imagine oneself free of such a requirement.

     But hearken to one of the foremost storytellers of his time, the late, great Roger Zelazny:

     [A]ny story we tell is as much an exercise in omission as inclusion. Our death sentence reflexes normally take care of this, so that we hardly think of the bits of scenery, stray thoughts, passing faces, unimportant physical details we are leaving out.

     Somewhere, sometime early I came to believe in tossing in a bit of gratuitous characterization as I went along. It seemed to add something to the story as a whole if – by means of a few extra sentences – a stock character could be shown to have an existence beyond his walk-on role. I remember doing this with the civil servant Briggs – and showing something of the bureaucracy behind him – in Isle of the Dead. This I suppose to be a corollary of the Hemingway principle – an indication of the presence of things perhaps important in their own right but not essential to the story itself – actually the reverse of cutting an essential item and hoping that its light shines through. But I believe the effect is similar – in making people feel something more than they understand. It works to expand the setting of the entire piece and to provide evidence of the larger reality surrounding the action by giving the reader a momentary, possibly even subliminal, feeling that there is something more there.

     [“The Parts That Are Only Glimpsed,” in Unicorn Variations]

     Today this matter of “giving the reader a feeling that there is something more there” is pursued mainly by crafting interminable series of novels that feature a gaggle of characters the writer can’t seem to stop writing about. You know, like the Onteora Canon.

     So we have two great writers, separated by many years, on opposite sides of a critical “rule.” One tells us to abide by it; the other says it can be broken to good effect. Where, then, is Truth?

     I’d say it's here, in Uber-Rule Zero:

Carry yourself with enough brass,
And you can get away with anything.

     Note that this rule is far wider of application than Chekhov’s Law.

     I’ve been dancing around the edges of Uber-Rule Zero ever since I started writing fiction. I’ve played with implausibilities of many kinds. I’ve used themes that nearly never appear in contemporary fiction written for a general audience. I’ve contrived plots to which Rube Goldberg would say “Aw, c’mon!” I’ve crafted characters that will strain any reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief: immortal supermen, great geniuses, priests of great wisdom and benevolence, and politicians with consciences to which they actually pay attention. And I’ve done my best to act as if it’s utterly natural, “all in a day’s work.”

     Because the one and only true requirement of fiction is that the reader buy it and derive entertainment from it. That requires that the writer maintain a seamless pretense of auctorial nonchalance, as if his decisions are so swift and unstressed that he need say nothing about them...except for the story, of course.

     A caveat about the above: It’s not a prescription for the novice fictioneer to discard all the wise precepts successful writers have set down for him. Craftsmanship matters. So does a keen sense for the way people really act and speak. A coherent plot requires respect for the motivations of your characters. And of course, you must have a story to tell.

     Still, once you’ve mastered a certain degree of craftsmanship and have learned enough about people to be able to construct plausible stories about them, there’s a sense of liberation about it all. After all, fiction writing, as Lawrence Block has told us, is about “telling lies for fun and profit.” It’s very much like that greatest of all characterological assets for real – i.e., non-fictional – people, sincerity: if you can fake that, you can get away with anything. Really!

Feel the love.

Osaka explained to The New York Times that even though she’s lived in Florida since she was three years old, she made the decision to play tennis for Japan primarily because of funding opportunities: Japan had more money to sponsor her.

Of growing up in a multi-cultural heritage household, Osaka has said, “I don’t necessarily feel like I’m American. I wouldn’t know what that feels like.”

Of her Japanese culture, Osaka said, “Japanese culture? I love everything about it. . . . America, I live here. I train in Florida. . . . And Haiti, if you’ve ever met a Haitian person, they are really positive, and literally if you’re friends with them, then they will do anything for you. That’s something that is a really good trait, and I’m really happy that my grandparents and my dad’s side of the family is like that.”

"Naomi Osaka’s Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know." By Caroline Burke, Heavy, 9/8/18 (emphasis added).

Never forget.

Black Panther Mark Essex burst into a New Orleans hotel, shouting, “I want the whites!” He murdered a young honeymooning couple, hotel guests and staff members, and a number of police officers. Stokely Carmichael praised Essex, saying, “We should study and learn from the actions of Brother Essex. We should understand that Brother Essex carried our struggle to its next quantitative level, the level of science.”

"Senator Booker Quotes Violent Racist Who Urged Murder of Jews, White People." By Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine, 9/10/18.

Pearls of expression.

Everyone I don't like is a Russian-backed NeoNazi, and everyone to the right of Chairman Mao is a far right extremist.

"What's Next For Sweden After Election Nailbiter." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 9/10/18.

Pearls of expression.

Spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, Maria Zakharova:

We have killed, we are killing and we will kill terrorists…whether that be in Aleppo, Idlib or other parts of Syria. Peace must return to Syria …

Commenter Gary Sellars:

The US version is “We have funded, we are funding and we will fund terrorists"

"Russia: We Have Killed, Will Kill Terrorists In Syria." By South Front, 9/6/18.

State of the art M.E. strategic analysis.

Israel REALLY wants Iranian forces and rocket bases out of Syria.

The Saudi's REALLY want that Syrian pipeline route to deny it to Iran.

The US REALLY wants the Russians out of their naval facilities in Tartus.

...So, another "False Flag" by CIA controlled FSA/ISIS forces is coming up.

Comment by Charlie Seattle on "US Says Assad Has Approved Gas Attack In Idlib, Setting Stage For Major Military Conflict." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 9/9/18.

Reductio ad Trumpum.

Future history:

"Assad was on the verge of victory, but being pure evil that he was he just really wanted to gas people, no matter how irrational, or counter-productive his generals kept telling him it would be. If it wasn't for that fatal flaw, maybe Syria could have won against the last few brave freedom fighters selflessly guarding the people of Idlib. Assad gassed a hospital of extreme strategic importance full of orphan children, young women and babies killing 47. Twenty five brave white helmets happened to be close by and caught the whole thing on camera. The white helmets then risked their lives trying to save the women and children but were too late. Luckily none of the white helmets were injured. The world would not stand for this outrage from such a man of pure evil. 137,000 evil Assad supporters died in the invasion that followed."

Comment by Quesnay on "US Says Assad Has Approved Gas Attack In Idlib, Setting Stage For Major Military Conflict." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 9/9/18.

American political vengeance.

No one suggests Richard Nixon was without sin in trying to cover up the Watergate break-in. But no one should delude himself into believing that the overthrow of that president, not two years after he won the greatest landslide in U.S. history, was not an act of vengeance by a hate-filled city that ran a sword through Nixon for offenses it had covered up or brushed under the rug in the Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson years.^[1]

As the anti-Trump coup attempt is showing, viciousness is part and parcel of American politics and Nixon was as hated as Trump is now for having taken on Alger Hiss. Joe McCarthy was also crucified for merely asking, reasonably enough, why so many communists were employed by the federal government.^[2]

FDR made no mention of his ultra-revolutionary intentions in his first campaign and, in fact, campaigned on a platform that was the polar opposite of what he dumped on America afterwards. He did his utmost to provoke the Japanese attack and the suspicious lingers on that he knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming. Saint Franklin. Kennedy liked to pick up prostitutes on 13th Street, NW, in his presidential limousine and screw young women in the White House pool, but he was presented to America as the dernier cri of elegance and class. Camelot indeed. His father’s purchase of critical votes in Chicago is well known but perturbed no known Democrat. Nixon, the patriot and statesman, chose not to put the country through the turmoil of an election challenge but his subsequent common sense “Southern Strategy” made beautiful people apoplectic. How dare that brute appeal to people who thought they were being sold a bill of goods!

Note amazing similarity.

Johnson too rose to the Senate with the help of vote fraud and, while president, did nothing about the deliberate Israeli air and naval attack on the USS Liberty. His disgusting habits in dealing with subordinates in the WH are well known. No incessant outcry about Johnson’s crassness was heard but Trump’s private conversation with some slime ball was splashed across the air waves and a salacious, manufactured “dossier” has been used to portray him as a lowlife caricature of a man. The fires of Hell are not hot enough for a man like him who has called attention the elites' sellout out of the back bone of America!

So what crimes and scandals bubble to the surface in our national politics are the result of a highly partisan and selective process, the spear point being leftist media hyenas crying about contrived garbage like (1) Russian collusion, aggressive expansion, and inhuman military tactics, (2) the Iranian threat to Lubbock, Texas, and (3) Trump obstruction and mental instability. As ever, the real story is in what isn’t demonized. Think open borders, Living Constitution, Propositional Nation, Nation of Immigrants, AntiFa, queer agenda, black dysfunction and crime, legal discrimination against whites, media monopoly, tech giant manipulation and suppression, H1-B visa abuse, vote fraud, feminist lunacy, university capitulation to mob idiocy and malice, illegal and unconstitutional wars, Islamic subversion and savagery, and the gargantuan federal government. Yes, pilgrims. It's "the Russians."

And looking at the process as a whole, as Buchanan does, is instructive in understanding the outrageous, selective attack on our political system that is underway at this moment. Not against any real threat to the Republic but only against threats to the ultra-left, sell-out Deep State.

Notes
^[1] "Regime Change—American Style." By Pat Buchanan, Chronicles, 9/7/18.
^[2]  Jack Cashill describes the uneven application of federal criminal law for smaller fry. Sandy Berger stole as many classified 9/11 documents as he could stuff into his underwear but got a slap on the wrist but Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby took it in the neck for far less serious conduct. People whose names are very familiar to us today were involved back then as well.

Toodle-Loo!

I'm packing - fast - to take off later this afternoon for Cleveland on a one-way flight. I'll be driving my husband's stranded van (Lord, I HATE driving that oversized thing!) back to SC on Monday.

So - likely not blogging, will be working on my own writing - air travel is good for that.

My plan is to use this time to focus on planning and outlining.

This is a Draft - Not a Letter That is Ready to Go

If you look at the 'letter' in the post, you will clearly see that it is NOT a 'all but the signature' letter. It's an early draft - meant to suggest POSSIBILITIES (please excuse the CAPS - I feel that the fools at CNN don't get the point unless they see the emphasis).

So, no - this was NOT a letter ready to be signed - just one that would serve as a basis for discussion.