*Shipwreck: as the answer of the meaning of life

YT

My relationship with God is complicated. Characterized on my part by neglect. Maybe God is waiting. Maybe he's working. I don't know. It's hard to see through the smoke. There was a time when I went to church three times a week. I would have gone more but it wasn't open that much. Bible study. Couldn't get enough. I never mistook it for spirituality. It was just me, looking for truth, for meaning. I did find it. Didn't do much with it. Much that was meaningful, I mean.

Like the parable of the man who sells everything that he might own the pearl of great price. When you have the pearl, what do you do with it? Look at it? Polish it? I own the pearl. I've never figured out what to do with it. What good are pearls? Their good is in their beauty, and the joy that beauty brings. I have very little joy. It must be a small pearl. Or maybe I didn't sell everything I had, to own it. Apparently the pearl gets bigger if the box you keep it in is empty.

I keep my box full of pain, of memories and fear and anger. My heart is broken, and I keep the pieces there. There's blood on my pearl. I want to blame God for that. He didn't protect me. He didn't protect the ones that I loved. He allowed suffering more than I could bear. He must have misjudged me. I only look big. Funny that God could make that mistake. Does he think that we can bear the pain of this world? Did he learn nothing from the suffering of the Cross? Did he get into the habit of forsaking us? Is anguish the only tool he uses to call us to him? Is there any gentleness in his patience? Or is patience just a countdown to wrath.

Worthiness has nothing to do with it. We stake our hope on his promises. He'll love us when we are unlovable. Like me. How my heart yearns for comfort, some comfort other than that false drugged indifference of avoidance and neglect and emotional stupor. Maybe there's something that God doesn't know. We need to be saved more than once.

I am so tired of this world. If there were some way out of it I'd like to know. Other than the obvious, I mean. But everything is death. What, a shipwreck? -- with bodies in the water and survivors clutching onto debris? And the cold and fatigue and thirst and the sharks and despair claim us, one after the other? Because no one gets away alive. The only rescuing we can ever suppose there is would be spiritual. That would be no small thing, since it's all there can be, but it seems only to be a theoretical comfort. Faith floats, and it will keep us warm, and it answers our thirst, I'm told -- but it attracts sharks, faith. And everyone drowns.

Quite a few years ago, I recall, I was talking to a friend. I don't recall how the subject came up -- probably just rose out of my soul's yearning to find light -- but I mentioned that my son would be coming home in not too many weeks, from the military. And the realization flooded over me, that life was always only loss, and that everything we love goes away, and that this was the first time that anything was coming back to me. And I wept. Publicly. For just a moment. I don't pretend to be hard. I'm soft.

I know what it all means, and I know why. My great learning has not driven me mad. It's kept me from succumbing to my madness. There's a way that this is a good thing. But it is not pleasing to God. He wants me broken. I don't trust him to hold me together. How can I trust God? He's so hard. I take his forgiveness as granted. I have no quibble with his grace. But his mercy is so implacable. He thinks our suffering teaches us something, and he thinks we'll turn to him when we've had enough. I don't care about God's compassion, the feeling he has and why he does things. How would that be my business? I want a miracle, to be rescued from myself. 

There are things, though, that we can do and God cannot. I don't believe that anyone gets saved from their body of death. I think that if you're surrounded by a body of death, you die. Tell me where you think I'm wrong, and I'll refer you to the sharks.

I was thinking about how easy it is to love little children, and how unfortunate it is that they become like adults. Apparently innocence past a certain point is just stupidity. Does God look at us, in our depravity, and see us as we see little children? That would be sweet, and a comfort. But a dark realization haunts such an understanding. Not all children are loved. I see myself sometimes as small, and lost, and wretched. What kind of a man is that? I see myself as foolish and useless and as a joke. Poor little me.

If I ask who could love me, well, wouldn't it be arrogant to suppose that I'm unlovable, not loved? It's just that in such an imperfect world, no matter how bright love starts out, it arrives dim. The world is filled with smoke. There is fire on the water. Shipwreck.  Something else to regret.

I can't end there, though. My knowledge won't let me, for all the darkness of my heart. Because I know the answer. I wish it would do me some good. Here's the answer. Since we're in the water, we should be pearl divers. We should risk the depths, that something beautiful might be found and brought up. There's light enough to see the beauty. That's what the fire is for, if we dare the flames.

Jesus, Jesus, come get me again. Reach down and pluck me up from the deep. It's been so long since I could breathe, and darkness twists me so I don't know up from down. I'm hard to love, but pity my wretchedness. Your humanity is my only claim on you.

J

*Why China is WINNNINNNG!!! (24 characters and how usa is stpd)

YT

Deng Xiaoping, paramount leader of China into the 1990s, spelled out the wisdom of the East and the strategic course of the future, in his dictate of "24 Characters": 

        Observe calmly

        secure our position

        cope with affairs calmly

        hide our capabilities and bide our time; 

        be good at maintaining a low profile; 

        never claim leadership.

Four more characters were added later:

      ...and make some contribution.

That was in the clinton Error, so nobody worried, and everyone was happy.  History had Ended.  The Millennium was imminent, and arrived, as obama proved.  obama cured GLOBAL WARMING!!!! after all, until Trump ruined everything. 

United States would have gotten better, not worse, if we had the wisdom to match our power.  But as one declines, so does the other.  I don't mean Chinese wisdom, because different circumstances require different responses.  But analogous.

Alas, the bright American spirit has grown dull. Exponentially more unseriousness and irrational. The pragmatism of the hard-scrabble Yankee farmer has presented its backside for the pleasure of the ballroom popinjay -- is my metaphor inapt?  Inept?  I remember a Greek who once told me, “All American students want to do, is dance.”  That, too, was in the 90s -- so we see the streams of history, albeit Ended. 

America is still, somehow, first among nations, rudderless tramp steamer though it be. I used to think it was like having a dance-happy teenager make all the family decisions. How naive I was.  "Dance happy."  What a mild rebuke.  Pansexual, now.  No need to dance -- it might arouse a hormone other than the ones for being triggered.  No teenagers now -- not even a gerontocracy.  There must be a word for it, "government by the demented".  Oh, yeah, heh heh.  "The biden Admiseration".

So few leaders. Popularity polls to select politicians, and if you recall your teenager days, popular kids are not generally the smart ones. 

Eight years as president may seem like a long time, enough for long-range planning.  And there have been 13 presidents in my lifetime ... and I’m not 104. There is no ruling body of wise human persons, vested with promoting the interests not of some contributors list, but of the next generation, and the one after that. The wrongly-named Senate (supposed to indicate wisdom rather than mere age) -- the Senate OUGHT to fill that need, for sensible planning.  But, everyone OUGHT to be happy and healthy.  

That old fashioned idea of public office as a public trust, an almost sacred position that requires self-sacrifice. The idea is obsolete, disfavored, hateful, patriarchy cis race genital pronouns. Outre.

Societies move like pendulums, back and forth. But it's not vertical movement, upward progress.  Experience shows, almost always, decadence, somehow.  How is that possible. It's like fractals, like Mandelbrot sets -- however depraved things get, there are yet ever deeper hells.

Wouldn't it be grand, a noble spirit taking hold in American governance, and a generation that knows not Pharaoh rising up and casting down the idols, the lingam and yoni interchangeable fetishes, rising and plunging like maypoles and venuses. It has happened before, for all that depravity is a law, a subcorollary of entropy, just identified, by MEEEEEE!!! 

It's mere wishing, though. The hard fact is, this scow of state has no direction, this ferry.  The current feeble hand at the tiller is as likely to fall, lifeless, as to pilot. Captain? O captain, no captain!

Lower and lower in narrowing gyres, downward, drill baby drill, to hell.  It's unseemly, is all.  Unbefitting. Short-term goals, or rather, chaotic. Hatred of energy independence.  Borders open to every criminal.  Unwinnable wars.  Generational blood enemies.  I am too delicate to go on.

There is an irreparable and fatal flaw in our character. Dance baby dance.   

We are a great people because of what we have been. Has been, a star on history's stage, getting the hook.  Powerful, the way someone with really bad intestinal gas has power.

There is an understudy -- a rising star, rather.

 China has ambition beyond Taiwan. What is the Chinese character, counterpart of the American?  Well, simply, authoritarian.  Of all national characters, American is most benevolent, albeit unseriousness.  The world should fall on its face and thank whatever god it worships, for kindly stupid old Uncle Santa.

But these are serious times, yet another hinge of fate, like a trap door, or something aspirational.  There is a checklist that would determine which -- a list of serious problems that need to be resolved.

The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote of challenges and responses. Well? Here we are.   islamism is currently mostly Jew-hatred.  Outspending and having a bigger military just seems like a waste of resources. Hardly even has  any meaning.  It's not working for Ukraine.  Old solutions do not apply. What then? 

Wisdom. A paradigm shift.  Whatever.  The most vapid of generalities. A stranger with his hand behind his back may be holding a club.  Children will take it for a baseball bat.  Can we learn a lesson without it being a 9/11?  All we learned from that is surveillance.

Being the jolly fat guy at the party doesn’t make us loved. Love has nothing to do with it. China gets it right. Plan, plan, plan. And then plan again, and again, and once more. Then some more. Mao called us a paper tiger. He was wrong. We are a real tiger, but a tame one, spade or neutered.

Mao wasn't capable of understanding America. Tojo got it right -- a sleeping giant, dreaming, no higher cognitive functions.  Dreams are not plans.

What then? Wisdom learns and adapts. So:

Observe calmly: let other people be distracted by emotion. 

Secure our position: whether or not the ice is thin, it is slippery. 

Cope with affairs calmly: we’ve been here before. 

These are precepts we should hold. As for hiding our capabilities or biding our time or keeping a low profile or never claiming leadership -- these apply to someone else, who is very serious about following them, and who might gain the whole world for doing so. We shall see. 

Mao was a venomous serpent, a dragon, a child of lies, and anything he ever uttered of truth he did so only by coincidence. Paper tiger? More and more.

As for that final precept, of always making a contribution? Well, that’s what tiggers have done best.  Here, have some money, and citizenship.

And now, the punchline: China has an updated slogan, a fresh set of 24-characters, from Chairman Xi Jinping, for “national rejuvenation” by 2049.

Is Xi just a biden, stammering and muttering and blustering and wandering and stumbling? Peking is not Delaware.  biden's policy is surely succinct -- indeed, only four characters ... maybe five: "Don't".  Don't hurt me, please, sir.  Don't take away my ice cream.  Don't vote for Trump -- WE do all the voting around here.

As for China, observe: 

   沉着冷静 Chenzhuo Lengjing；

   保持定力 Baochi Dingli；

   稳中求进 Wenzhong Qiujin；

   积极作为 Jiji Zuowei；

   团结一致 Tuanjie Yizhi；

   敢于斗争 Ganyu Douzheng. 

In English:

     Be calm; 

     keep determined; 

     seek progress and stability; 

     be proactive and go for achievements; 

     unite under the Communist Party; 

     dare to fight.  

Quote: 

At the National People’s Congress … Xi used strong language against the US '[vowing] to modernise China’s military to make it a Great Wall of Steel, calling on the country to step up efforts to defend national security amid mounting tensions with the United States.'  Xi demanded "greater self-reliance in science and technology, at a time when the US has blocked its access to … cutting-edge technologies".  Xi said, “Led by the United States, the West has implemented all-round containment to suppress China, bringing unprecedented challenges to China’s development".      

That's it then. For the past 30 years, China has been working according to a plan.  Now the plan is updated, responding to a nominal challenge, but actually providing the challenge.  I like China, and Chinese culture.  It's just that they are, as much now as in the 1950s, the clear and present enemy.  We are too busy dancing, with our arms above our heads, to notice.  They're winning.

J

*Butchers Day

YT

Civilization is an idea, not something with material reality, not an object taking up space. Were it mere buildings, then ruins would be a civilization -- say, sacked Carthage.  But it's not. It's not unread books in unattended libraries. It's not more musical artifacts than it is wind wailing through hollow trees. Civilization is an agreement between people about rules. 

At a certain point of degeneration or growth, civilization might and should be imposed by some more benevolent power upon some mere chaos of willfulness and self-seeking.  Barbarians have to be subdued, their barbaric practices suppressed, their savage culture extinguished. Not all behaviors are equal, you see.  We're not speaking about technology, but of sensibilities.  

It's the specifics of culture, modes of dress, hair styles, face painting, shavings, piercings, tattoos.  It's rule of law and, not compassion, but, say, charity, for the, say virtuous poor, and widows and orphans, and those who cannot, cannot care for themselves.  Those who will not care for themselves  - well, the determined will always find a way to destroy themselves.  My 600 Pound Life.

So we are civilized either by temperament and custom, or by force, the way  some children are mild and need few rules, and some are undisciplined, spoiled, and need effective punishment.

I very, very rarely punished my son.  Like, a one minute timeout in the corner.  You sit next to him, and hold his hand,  and have a talk.  Done.  But punishment, for people who are, and who have been surrounded by, stupid people.  Unlearn it.

 I'm saying this because I was hearing news about a certain scum culture and ethos with regard to our neighbors to the south.  Specifically the cartels -- Zeta, Sinaloa, Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Matamoros. Savage border towns ruled by drug cartel anarchy and terror.  Scum.

Unless it's your head on the block, it doesn't matter, the details. It's like knowing the details of the Gestapo compared to the SS  -- maybe a little different, but so what. Yes, that's history, not current events.  But it's just the difference between  a depraved legacy, and a depraved  present -- if you're not affected, as by violence and crime on your very streets, it's practically theory -- like sewer gas that you get used to.  

And so I was thinking about what civilization is. What happens when the agreement falls apart, and there is no power to impose justice? The rules of civilization are no longer in play. You can't play with cheaters. Civilization is not a thing, an object. It is a set of rules that apply only under particular circumstances. When those circumstances change, behavior, responses must change.

So, Los Zetas, the Letter People, whose names must not be uttered, such is their terror, like Voldemort. It's not just that they behead, say, journalists. They sew in penes where tongues once were. Funny!  They took the time and trouble, the care to do that. 

They are to be destroyed through uncivilized means. On a Night or Week or Month of Long Knives, they must be isolated and butchered as one butchers pigs. Not warned, not frightened, not driven away, not reformed, not saved. Slaughtered. Also, their children must be killed, and their wives, and their abuelitas. Genocide, like Joshua son of Nun, against the Nephalim, in the Land of Canaan.  Because there was a point where they became satanic.

No quarter. Is this savage? Of course it is. But civilization, like the Constitution, is not a suicide pact.

Night of the Long Knives was a Naaazi thing.  Soviet purges just swept people up, innocent with the guilty, if there were any guilty.  KGB custom was to come for you at 3 in the morning, the Devil's Hour.

But, no quarter.  A very unchristian proposition, you assert.  Perhaps. Let's examine the point. Jesus could afford to sacrifice himself, offer himself as the archetypal victim, because he was the Son of God. Among other things, it is his nature and purpose to sacrifice and suffer and die. So may it be for every good man, to be selfless. But the family situation of Jesus did not stop only with his Father. Or rather, it did stop there. Brothers and sisters, including some of us,  but he was, you see, not married, and had no children. He could afford to sacrifice himself. No one was depending on him.  Please don't quibble.  My meaning is clear.

It is the first duty of a man to protect his family -- by which is not meant his birth family, the one that happenstance or Providence placed him helpless within.  A man's real family is, becomes the one that he himself forms out of his own character and commitment -- it has dependents. A man who follows his theoretical ideals about helping his neighbor, or the stranger, or the monster, at the sacrifice of his children,  this person is not just a fool -- he is a reprobate.  Help the stranger, second -- perhaps as a way of teaching your children about decency, about civilized conduct. It's not me first, it's mine, first.  On every level of decency.

When society, culture, government, fails to protect from savages, when the social compact is abrogated, disavowed, then vigilantism is not just understandable, it is required as an act of survival.  Honor and manliness, now forbidden, these are civilized and barbarian traits, both.   But self defense is justice. 

To save civilization, the families of monsters will suffer, as, in the decline of civilization the families of the innocent do suffer. 

This is not Old Testament verses New Testament. It is how to save a society in the first instance, and how to save an individual in the second. No contradiction. Different contexts. Evil is not tamed or accommodated. It is contained or destroyed.

You might tame a wild fierce animal -- but do not trust it around children.

That is the battlefield upon which we find ourselves. Savage gangs, cartels, and their filthy corrupt governments, among which I count the current american regime.  

We, who adhere to that highest american ideal, rule of law -- we would be peaceful but must be fierce. Find the multiple heads of the monster and lop them off.  Which follows the cartels' example, only virtuously. Let the guilty suffer.  Perhaps the monster's limbs, the digits, little toes, will fall still. 

Satan cannot be saved. Like the poor, the evil will always be with us. With the poor, we are kind and firm, mindful of compassion, diligent to not enable sloth, a forbidden word -- prudent in our stewardship, grateful for our own blessings. With evil we must be intolerant and judgmental and utterly bigoted, and we must hate it. God loves, but he hates. Jesus rejoices always, but he was angry. Deal with it. Both. Different circumstances call up different reactions, out of a righteous character.

We are at the end of our civilization. Only a Great Awakening could actually save us, understanding that every civilization falls.  Almost all of the kings of Israel were bad, so, what hope have we? 

A politician and presidential aspirant once observed, to great derision, that about half of Americans get an unearned government check. Approx 25 million others get a government check for their employment.  Is that 60% of americans, not counting invaders? -- I'm too lazy and self-indulgent to bother to verify, and do math.  

But, who has the grit to stand against the check-writer? 

European college students have been observed to riot, at the mere suggestion of receiving less than their parents did, regardless of any impending calamity.  Any continent  is doomed, that has had to look to Germans to save it. And here we are, open borders, paying illegals 10k in tribute to their, what, brownness?  Indigence?  Can I say that?  

I'd say the same of Norwegians, if they were invading.  The vikings were monsters.  My people.  Then.  See the point?  Uncivilized.  

What hope? No hope. Or only that which will come from sacrifice -- blood sacrifice, in the case of, say, monstrous drug lords, lords, and their acolytes. And there are not enough men in the world, resolute enough to pick up knives and start butchering the pigs.

I've been vegetarian since I was a teenager, and that's likely before you were born.  I'm not blood thirsty.  I'm starving for justice.

So as I sometimes do, I ask again, am I serious.  Of course not.  You don't kill family. Well, drone strikes,  bombing terrorist compounds.  What's the euphemism?  Collateral damage.  "Collateral" is a word nobody ever uses, except as a modifier of "damage".  Damage, here, is a euphemism for "killing".  And "killing" is a euphemism for, well, fill it in yourself.  Then do the same for "abortion".

People who use euphemisms are not serious.  And that's why I say: kill them.  I want to be taken for serious.

 J

*Book of Job, Chapter Nine

YT

I've re read the Book of Job again, for some reason.  Intently. It never really interested me, except for the first and last chapters.  All that arguing and philosophizing, just going no where.  The history of philosophy is the story of wrong ideas. 

But this time, there were parts where my heart quickened. Was it David who was a man after God’s own heart? David does not speak to me. It was not a king, like King Saul, who afflicted Job -- it was Satan, and it was God. Seems like a bigger deal, than Ahab going after Elijah. Maybe there was some drama in the heavenlies of which we are not informed, where David too is handed over to Satan -- like Peter was, like Judas, like Job. Well, we know God plays favorites. For all that Job was, eventually, blessed, David was chosen.

The book is not easy to follow, all that arguing and poetry. It would have been written long after the events, with much license. Inspired, like constructed -- the way art can be.

Job’s friends, his comforters, are bores, and boring. Job, the man, is riveting. “What is man, that You should magnify him, set Your heart on him, visit him every morning and test him every moment? How long? Will You not look away from me and let me alone till I swallow my saliva? Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O Watcher of Men? Why have You set me as Your target, so that I am a burden to myself? Why then do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust, and You will seek me diligently, but I will no longer be.” 

 It is enough. Too much. Job is doubled over on his knees, soundless, strings of drool undoing a lifetime of dignity. Promises that we are not given burdens greater than we can bear do not ring true. Promises that God will comfort us sound like noises from the other side of a door. There’s something inconsistent, about being both a savior and a judge. “Though I were righteous, I could not answer God. If I called and He answered me I would not believe that He was listening to my voice -- for He crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds, without cause. He will not allow me to catch my breath.” Job’s children were crushed in a tempest; Job’s body was infected with wounds; of course he can’t breathe.

There’s righteous and there’s righteous. We try, and that has to be enough. That’s the deal. We try, and fail, and get forgiven -- then through the Law, now through the Cross. Always, through blood. But there is too much evidence to the contrary, to suppose we’re not pieces on a game board. God may at any time chose to turn our lives into object lessons.

“God destroys the blameless, and the wicked. If the scourge slays suddenly, God laughs at the plight of the innocent. The earth is given into the hands of the wicked. God covers the faces of its righteous judges. If it is not God, who else could it be?” 

We were told right up front that for some untold reason, God gave permission to Satan, to torment Job. If it’s not God’s doing, whose? It must be that suffering doesn’t really matter. Sure feels like hell though, don’t it? But we’re also given the answer, pretty clearly. “God is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him and go to court together. Nor is there any Mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.” Mediator, Reconciler, Councilor. God without Jesus might as well be Satan. A Judge who can only condemn does not need an Accuser.

If it is not God, who else could it be? It’s a complex situation. God uses the wicked as well as the good, and both the weak and the strong. God optimizes, and everyone suffers, and evil doers have happiness perhaps as much as the righteous, right up to the end. Clearly our understanding of justice cannot be accommodating all the variables. It’s nuanced. God cannot tolerate imperfection, yet we’re counted as good enough. That’s why quantum mechanics is necessary -- because particles are waves.

Job, blameless Job in the bitterness of his pain said true things that are not true. God laughs at our pain. But it’s not so much laughter as a chuckle with a shake of the head, as at a crying child who is overly distressed by some small thing. Small, and not small.

The pain of life is like fetish pornography. It’s not at all interesting, unless that’s your thing.  Pain. Otherwise you have to just shake your head, and chuckle, if it’s not too gross. Poor, foolish, wretched creatures. Just get on with what’s important. 

J

*XFace

YT

Xface. You know, like blackface.  Tranzface.  Could be ZFace, GenZ, FaceZ, FaZe. But X.  X it out. X out yer sex.  Bring out yer dead.  How is it different.  Let's say it's a white guy, in blackface.  He's NOT black, but he's attempting to represent, if not simulate, the appearance.  How is it different?  You're not black, not a woman, not a black woman.

Well, there's a surgery, 

if there is, so not as temporary as blackface, with shoe polish, or a tarbrush, maybe with feathers.    

Although a previously completely obscure hiphop bebop Doo-wop Boop-Oop-a-Doop, um, artist? performer? personality? bandwagoneer has partway tattooed himself, toward his aspirational race.  

Vaudevillians like Al Jolson used burnt cork, easy to remove.  Bert Williams

was a black performer who wore blackface.  He wasn't black enough, otherwise. That's a problem nowadays too, not being sufficiently authentically black, not all BLM and Reparational and Democrat. 

As biden would say, you ain't black.

 There are chemical ways to darken, but that would fade, slough off the skin, or the pill or shot would wear off.  Melanin wouldn't be permanently ramped up in cells.  Like the guy who turned himself blue by supersaturating himself with colloidal silver; he's dead now.  

Whereas amputated organs do not grow back.  We're not lizards, most of us, to regrow tails.  Cal Gov Gavin Newsom, 

The Nightmare of California (now streaming on Peacock), might, as he reportedly said, "creep out of my skin for you like the snake that I am.  That's right, sssstupid, I'm coming for you.  Sssscum."  But non-Silurians (or does he identify as Sleestak?) can't regrow penises.  Penis penis penis.  I enjoy my penis, but I depend on my testes -- penis, like the girl you'd party with

 -- or testes, the woman you'd marry.  

So it's not quite the same.  But that is the nature of all analogies.  If there weren't differences, they'd be the same thing.  Blackface, and tranz surgery.

But they're pretending. They've x'ed out their birth genitals, excise, ex-size, shrinking penis into a clitoris, and they're passing as something else -- as the other.  I won't bother to inform you about the ethno-sociological … regrettable? tragic? phenomenon of passing.  

The difference is that race-passing was for social advantage in a repressive state, and sex-passing is about narcissism, dysphoria -- a dysfunctional state, emotional, spiritual.  

We should have compassion for those who are sick.  It's a christian and jewish virtue.  But to believe the deluded is to follow them into destruction.  We know what male and female is because we have eyes and hands, and an awareness of reproductive reality.  It's not belief, it's fact.  A fact is something that can be demonstrated.  Otherwise it's theory, or opinion, or deception, or delusion, or etc.  As they say, someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with a theory, or, moreso, a feeling. 

So, Xface, latinx, hispanix, larynx, phalanx, manx, minx, lynx, jinx, latinx.   Latino, ex out the o, O-face,

X-face.

Xface, a generderized blackface, a pretending to hate the male or female that you are, or actually hating what you are and pretending you're the other thing, or you're something that you just made up, or that you feel, or that you overheard and believed.  We'll hammer out the specifics later maybe, over a sun-dappled brunch of brie and Chardonnay, from Gavin's vineyard.

The Genderfix Bible - all "binary" gender errors corrected! Sample (copyright): "For Gox so loved the world that xe gave xers only begotten donx..."

We haven't been asked to participate in a mass hysteria before ... well, the Salem witch trials ... and the Civil War ... and Covidism. 

Stalinist Russia, 

aside from Stalinism, had Lysenkoism.  The Dutch had tulip-mania.  St Vitus' Dance.  Examples are easy.  Ours now is specifically evil, attacking children, like a hollywood demon movie.

 It is particularly toxic, because wokism is sexual in nature, down past the genetic level, to spirit itself, male spirit in wrong body, or contrariwise.  Wrong chromosome, wrong sex, wrong race, wrong god.  Everything is everything else. Aum, mother-father.

J

*Credo cadere valeo

YT

You know the way ideas can just rattle around in your head.  Unclosed loops.  Even if/when I write them out, which I do less and less nowadays, they're still there.  Far too often it's negative ideas, things I've said that I regret, because they caused pain.  I didn't mean for that, but no excuse.  Jack.  Just keep your mouth shut.  

One of the non-toxic things that keeps worming my ear is the stupid sweet song about how I believe I can fly.  And my rote response is, Really?  I believe you can fall.  I believe in gravity.  I am right, and this is not an example of anything I would regret saying.  There are true things that should not be spoken, or, then again, that should be.  Sane reality is good.

So the toxic cultic dogma that stupid parents poison their victim-children with: you can be anything you want to be. So sweet.  So positive & empowering.  But only if the government or insurance will pay for your tranny castration and mutilation.  

You want to be a girl, because on a non-contradictable level of reality you really are a girl -- evolution, biology and human nature to the contrary?  Well, honey child, then that's what you are.  You're truth.  You being you.  god don't make no mistakes, nor Goddess neither.  

Except of course for the little embarrassing fact, the hanging chad, the loose end,  of your penis and fully descended testicles partially filling your scrotum, confusing folks about how you really are a girl.  Off with their heads.  

So the brain worm is that, should I hear or think of the phrase, I believe I can fly --  I just can't help but complete the idea, if it is an idea:

Really? You believe you can fly?  I believe you can be child-molested by the guy who's singing that song. 

All the more likely, because such children have not been taught about the nature of immutable reality.  I believe I can do any possible thing.  I can climb, and jump, and glide with equipment.  I can walk on a tight rope, if I practice, and the rope is thick, and stabilized.  I can climb an 18 foot rope without using my legs -- did it yesterday.  I can walk on my hands, still, with someone holding my feet for balance.  I could do a backflip, if I practice, with coaching and safety measures.  I have the ridiculous idea that I could still run a 5 minute mile, if I train -- even at my age.  It must not be impossible.  

I do not believe I can fly, or jump to the moon, or read minds or voodoo an enemy.  My emotion, I believe, affects mostly only me, and then, in descending order, anyone who might love me, then care about me, then have to spend time with me, then fall within the radius of my influence -- like you, now.  

And the aforementioned abused children, are abused also because they have not been taught about critical thinking.  Magic, and Santa, and happy endings -- all part of the play of childhood.  As are the revenge killings of fairy tales, and the tummy-aches that follow Halloween, and the itch of poison ivy after a fun day in the woods.  It's all good -- honing the edge and point of one's intelligent apprehending of reality.  Reality reality reality.   

The stupidity and moral turpitude of our current depraved american and western culture can be traced in part to the mindset, the magical thinking that budded in the 60s and metastasized toward the end of the 20th century.  Our myth of the land of opportunity has led to the self-entitled alien invader, claiming our benefits without acknowledging any responsibility.  Elsewhere I've shown the picture of the placard-holder, asserting that "asylum is a right".  Well, maybe.  But it's a right that has a mandatory procedure by which it may be enjoyed.  Otherwise, me having sex with your daughter, or son, is my right, because I want it.  

In this, am I stupid, with moral turpitude?  Yes.  But I believe I can fly.  It's my truth.  Me being me.

J

* The two religions

YT

I say there are only two religions.  Of works and of grace.  But there is only one, of works. Visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and stay unpolluted from the world. Live up to a standard, whatsoever.  When I was hungry you fed me; I was thirsty, you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; naked, you clothed me; sick and you cared for me; I was in prison and you came to me.

The things you do, whatever they are, and the way you treat people. That's what religion is, the discipline of those things.  

It's a word from the Latin, religion -- from either relegere, "to go through again", as in repeated thoughts, or re-reading -- like ritual repetitions, rosary and set prayer times.  Or, from Latin, religare, "to bind", like LIGament, LIGature. You are bound by obligation to a practice. ObLIGation.

True religion is doing these things, caring for the sick etc.  What then is false, or at least not-true, religion?  Selfishness?  Empty rituals?   It's me-first, self-advancement -- including meditation unto enlightenment, unto the very abnegation of self.  False religion, me me me. These are certainly not "visiting the sick".  

But either way, true or false, religion is about works. TRUE, doing good for others. FALSE, doing things for yourself.  Monks sequestered in a life of contemplation. Selfish.  Cell fish.

The other religion, NOT about true- or false-works?  Grace.  You didn't earn it, don't deserve it.  It's the religion that is not a religion.  It has nothing to do with psychology, psuche, soul, enlightenment, nirvana.

Again, I say there are two religions, but there's really only one: things you do for the advancement of the soul -- psuche, animus, nephesh, prana, chi.  These are not exact cognates, but they all refer to that perfectible essence that concerns mystic and ascetics, monks, religionists. 

By this meaning, of working, of works for your soul -- there are, again, true and false religions, in that some methods (works) advance and some inhibit soulish growth.  Religion as an edification to the world, or as a means of power and selfishness, self advancement.  Inward or outward, selfish or selfless.  It's still all pretty much the same -- all about gaining advantage in the world.  Moslem and Hindu and Buddhist -- well, fill in the list.  Shinto. Christian. Orthodox/ Roman Catholic/ Protestant.  Calvinism.  Methodism.   Just ways of acting or thinking that affect the soul.  Methods and beliefs that are personal to the individual, and which differ only in efficaciousness.

Then, again, there's the religion that is not a religion, because it is not about the advancement of the soul.  It's the only one that is not about works and goals, and self. It has nothing to do with the world.  It is entirely about a relationship with God, which is the only means of transcending, extending out of the universe.  That relationship is spiritual, not soulish.  Soulish enlightenment may come with the relationship, but it may not.  In any case, it's grace, not works

Enlightenment -- a process, a goal, a relationship with the world -- is not the point; rather, reviving a dead spirit -- that's salvation, as Jesus taught it.  Saved not from a benighted soul, false ideas, an excess of desire, bad breathing habits.  Saved from a cut-off, a dead spirit.  Separated not from the timeless sea of nonbeing, the eternal cloud of unknowing, but from the transcendent source of life, rather than the natural physics of life. Separated not from the grand, wholistic oneness of the universe, but from the God who made the universe.  

So, there are only two religions, of soul and the universe, and of spirit and God.  Soul is about works and experience in the universe -- a process, and all religions are true, in that they depend on what you do.  

Spirit is not about anything -- it's a relationship that reaches God, by grace.  No one saves themselves by believing and keeping the laws of Moses, the Pillars of Islam, the Paths of Buddhism, the credos of Christendom.  There is no way to save yourself.  You are saved the way a drowning man is pulled from the water.  Because someone is gracious enough to do it. 

 Christianity has three salvations: justification, sanctification, and glorification.  You're justified the moment you are born again -- that opening of your heart to grace, forgiveness.  The price is paid -- your debt is wiped clean.  Thank you. 

Sanctification -- that's the rest of your life, doing good works, spreading grace, being kind and righteous.  Of course we fail.  Do you think God expects otherwise?  But we are pleasing in our effort, as small children are pleasing.

Then there's glorification, and that's resurrection and rewards and paradise and all of that stuff that isn't really our business right now, not really the point, even if it is the destination. 

I didn't mean to go on like this.  The upshot is, again, two religions, of saving yourself, somehow, how ever, whatever works -- or of not being able to save yourself -- being saved. 

J

* Shoot to Kill

YT

The same dudes who blew up some airplanes mid-flight in NY City a while back? … not 1941 … I seem to recall there might have been some property damage too, structural, some "towers" or something, but whatever. 

Anyway, those dudes? The same ones who blow up shoppers on sidewalks and people at parades and commuters with car bombs and van bombs and bus bombs and train bombs and road bombs and plane bombs? What do they have against transportation? It's like a mania.

Well, they do, incidentally, blow up Jews in Israel too. Some Jews -- any Jew will do, for these doods. And not of course just in Israel. And not just Jews, while I think of it. Anyone, really. Any American, or Spaniard or Brit or Indian, Filipino, German, Dane.  Or any Moslem. Any human. These dewds think that humans are for killing. Killing on sight, blow up on sight.  Shoot to kill. And they’re right.

They are right to understand that the implacable, unappeasable blood enemy is fit for only one thing. Alas, they have no such enemy, but they are correct in understanding that such is the proper response, should they somehow encounter a serious foe. Not that they will, necessarily, hiding behind women and children as they are, while targeting women and children.  

Thus, Hamas.  Not the delightful Middle Eastern chickpea spread.  No.  Not garbanzo.  Gar BOMB zo.  Heh heh.  

We live in interesting times.  It's Bush's fault, of course, his and Trump's.   Maga.  

I’ve done a fair bit of reading about the USA a century ago -- and I’m not the first to notice that these times are like those.  Transformational.  Tranz genital formational.  

Telephones and gramophones and automobiles and electricity.  Appliances.  A revolution. For the first time ever, you could listen to world-class music, alone. Think how important music is today. Now imagine that if you wanted to hear music, you had to make it, or have someone make it, or go somewhere it was being made. You see the point. Revolutuionary.

My smaller point is common sense.  

My son always impressed me with his common sense. Probably because it is the same as my own. I raised him to see the black and the white, as well as the shades of gray. And he does. The application here, not just for him but for every non-insane person, is that self-defense is an inalienable right. 

When faced with hitlers, you kill them. Pardon the cliche. I do have a Godwin Rule waiver.

But, I did say, here, not very long ago, we CAN do business with some hitlers. No contradiction. The hitlers who are declared? -- who are marching? -- who’ve heated up the ovens, a Hansel and Gretel witch? These hitlers need killing. The ones who only write books about their struggle? ... well, we live in a world where we cannot conquer every evil. 

So last year the mohammadans tried to genocide the jews, again.  They used their philistine base as a launching pad to attack Israel.  In the aughts,  variously they did the same -- tried to take over Lebanon for the same purpose -- a place from which to launch rockets.  Reports had it, then as now, that Iran was and is behind it. 

Well, it’s only Jews. Who are the Jews, to live in Israel? Put ’em on Madagascar ... or MadaGasOvens. Tee hee.

No.

We’ve been here before, some number of times. Invasions and intifadas, blitzkriegs, Pearl Harbors, 9/11s, 10/7s. Sometimes we realize that the stand we take must be a war footing. Sometimes we just play at it. But challenges must be responded to, no matter the effect on gas prices, or scented candles, or whatever it is we care so much about. I’ll pay the price, and gladly, if paying more for the oil or wax will buy me some more blood. The blood of the enemy. Because the enemy, who murder the innocent then hide among civilians … well, Ralph Peters said perfectly:

“Those who wear civilian clothes to ambush soldiers or collect intelligence are assassins and spies -- beyond the pale of law.

“Traditionally, those who masquerade as civilians in order to kill legal combatants have been executed promptly, without trial. ...

“Consider today's norm: A terrorist in civilian clothes can explode an IED, killing and maiming American troops or innocent civilians, then demand humane treatment if captured - and the media will step in as his champion. A disguised insurgent can shoot his rockets, throw his grenades, empty his magazines, kill and wound our troops, then, out of ammo, raise his hands and demand three hots and a cot while he invents tales of abuse.”

Yes, that just about sums the matter up. War is too the answer. Yes, it most certainly is. The days when armies arrayed in gaily hued uniforms lined up in neat rows and discharged rounds at each other in ordered volleys -- gone. The days when armies wore uniforms -- gone. We have been dragged back into barbarism -- or rather we are met by a barbarous foe, who needs to be treated in kind. 

Reality aside, what Hamas and their fellow terrorists of any description need, is not civil justice.  They need military justice, as on the battlefield. Kill them. Kill them.

Well, that's just a revenge fantasy, like the idiot movies the morons of Hollywood poop out.  

But even so, kill them -- or at least, they SHOULD be killed. Because they are exactly the same people who executed a one-way flight into New York City to such dazzling effect some one score and three summers ago. Remember? Magnificent, wasn't it -- like Hollywood special effects, CGI or something, with super-empowered persons of color claiming their agency. 

Surreal. Remember? Almost like a dream. And they are still weaving their dreams, these terrorists -- not the same individuals, but the same people. I suggest a rude awakening for them, from this dream. I suggest we send swift messengers to whistle through their skulls and usher them into the more permanent reality that they call Paradise and we call Hell.  Kill them. 

But no I couldn't possibly be serious, talking as if there were an actual war.  We're americans now, sort of a sugardaddy playground monitor, crossing guardians of the galaxy.  Serious?  Talk to the hand. 

So, years and years and years ago, why, 2 years ago and one score,  my son, my very son was IN Iraq.  And he did indeed find himself on the blunt end of a rifle with vermin in his sights.  Thank you, son.   Save our lives. Save civilization.

Frightening, isn’t it, to hear a loving father say such a thing. But we have not saved the world from tyranny time and again, that we may now fall beneath the sandals of the Bedouin -- well, not US.  Currently, the Jews, yet again.  

I said here that I expected the islamist hostage taker rapist murderers to celebrate our Thanksgiving or Xmas or New Years, or Valentines Day --  celebrate in their own unique yet reoccurring way. President's Day.   I am so angry that I was wrong about that.  And embarrassed.  But even so, it will come.  It will come.  It did for Israel.  Did and does and will.  

We have not received that torch of freedom -- lit at so dear a price by distant founders, and handed on along an unbroken line of patriots down to our very fathers and grandfathers -- that we should now stand idle and let its flame blow out. Gutter.  There is too much darkness in the galaxy.

And it is the young men who will save us -- under wise leadership, if we are blessed to have that. It is the blood of our sons, as it was of our fathers, that will preserve Liberty. The blood of young Israelis, with that monster crouching at their doorstep.  The blood of our sons, and more, their courage and fierce violence. 

Because there's wisdom, which avoids violence but never at the price of true integrity.  And wisdom looks down the road, for what's coming, for what is needed, looks the way so very very few of the political self-seeking hacks might do -- but no that was sloppy.  Hacks would never be wise.  I'm skirting around it, the word, the idea, of patriotism -- that knows how to self-sacrifice. 

All those years ago, I did not send off my son to die. He volunteered, and the unspoken part of it is that he volunteered to kill.   God blessed his safe return. And in a handful of weeks from now, I am due a grandchild, thank you very much.  My son did his part, to make the future  a place of peace and safety, in honor. It's never really fixed, because there's always a new crop of morons, as there is of decent people.  

What makes for decent people is not softness, kindness, only.  It should be just about the last option, but necessary sometimes.  Yes, yes, young man, son, shoot to kill. And sleep well for it.

J

*How Hamas is exactly like the illegals' invasion: Imperfect & Unsatisfying Solutions

YT

Charles Krauthammer died some years ago. It was a loss.  During the troubled times of the Aughts, he evaluated reality and concluded that Iraqi PM Maliki’s plan to grant amnesty to insurgents was a good idea. That's what wisdom is.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Well, at the time there was also that now-forgotton problem with illegals in the USA.  You know, a horde of  lawless invaders.    

Or am I being all MAGA and white and  shite.  Bush did seem to go for amnesty. ah.

So the idea, nearly 20 years ago, was that terrorists and invaders get a free pass. At the time, the copperheads -- you know, typical democrats -- ejaculated that this migration plan was not, NOT Amnestia.  And, yes, technically, the copperheads were not in that case stinking traitorous scum liars.  “Amnesty” after all means no consequences, and there would be  a consequence they enthused, a nominal fine, by  which the scofflaw invaders would buy themselves to the front of the line and through the door. 

No, it’s not "amnesty".  It was NOT. The word is "bargain".

But the Iraqi amnesty plan was just that – amnesty,  no consequences for past bad acts. Amnesty and amnesia are practically the same word.  We cannot expect consistency.  The democrats loved the idea of more and more illegals -- same as now, only now moreso.  But, weirdly and obviously, then, at that time, so long ago in history, in the aughts, the pol hack dems in the senate -- but I repeat myself-- they were against, yes, AGAINST amnesty for the iraqi insurgent or terrorist or prochoice (of kiling civilians et al).  

The democrats, I say, fetishized the invaders, but absolutely DEMANDED, that the exemplary Iraqi judicial  system deal with the terrorists.  The democrat hacks posed themselves in posture like fat reality show stars, heroic, arms crossed, staring down at the camera -- like a super empowered woman of color on the poster of her own comic book movie.  

 Any terrorist who has been involved in the deaths of Americans must be punished. Such was the sentiment mouthed by certain Dem senators, a generation ago.  But wait, but wait, here it comes.  

NOW, with Hamas, child-murdering rapist monster Hamas -- THEY are the heroes!!! LOL. Laugh Out Loud.  Blow up americans THEN, bad.  Blow up Jews Now, good. What has changed in the past nearly 20 years?  Progressives are more religious, now, believing as they do that female spirits can possess male bodies.  Demons are a religious belief, right? 

If only we lived in a world where iniquity was punished with swift wrath. But wisdom concerns itself  with future peace, rather than past atrocities.  Should we trouble ourselves with inconsistencies?  

The left called that war a quagmire , unwinnable. Completely different, I have to guess, that, oh, say, Ukraine.  Oh. But, uh, if Iraq was unwinnable, how could the terrorists ever be punished? 

My practical solution is that we can do business with some Hitlers. Not very ethical of me, is it. But we have to compromise, in the real world, on everything up to the very most vital principles, whatever those may be for each of us. We cannot hope to convert all adversaries to our way of thinking. We can hope to find some common ground of shared power. I speak, of course, from a historical perspective.

Hack politicians fight not for principle, but for power. Our thirst for justice is strong, but we have more of the camel in us than might be suspected. Thirsty, but we can wait.

Consider Chile, where the crimes of the former authoritarian regime were overlooked, that wounds might be bound and the nation move forward. For the most part, this practical benevolence was a blessing to their society.  The same sort of thing in South Africa, with its  Truth and Reconciliation Commission.   And, most telling for me was the policy of Abraham Lincoln, who wanted the Confederacy to rejoin the Union under the most lenient of conditions. The South had brutally enslaved a race, and started a horrifically bloody Civil War. 

What does justice demand, for these crimes? But Lincoln would have received them back as wayward brothers -- had he lived. With just an assurance of future loyalty.

Hamas.  The bad-faith of the Palestinians -- in Latin -- or Philistines, in Greek -- their bad faith is not the only model from which we draw our expectations of Middle Eastern leaders. Not every leader is an Arafat, steeped in corruption and functional insanity.

I do not, of course, speak of the ideological Islamist monsters -- they should receive a Russian solution. Heads in boxes.  

But relative stability brings prosperity.  And by now, we stupid, stupid stupid americans must finally begin the first glimmerings of observation, and see that culture and customs need not agree, to coexist. Like rule of law, as back in pre biden days, and respect for the privileges and duties of liberty.  Such  institutions and conventions, are benefits.  The proudest traditions of our fading Christian culture teach that there is a way to find mercy even where justice has a claim.  

The only repentance we have any business caring about, is about behavior.  Illegals need to start, start to respect our laws.  Hamas, well, since hamas is about killing jews, it needs to stop being Hamas.  

We live in a world were tomorrow is not promised. All creation groans under the suffocating burden of injustice. No imprecatory prayers against unjust judges may be relied on to bring relief. But in the entirely secular world, I know of no finer words than these, that might apply to this question, of how to deal with the incorrigible, and the repentant: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”  

Lincoln humbles me. It's just that I admire wisdom. He continued the fight, unrelenting, and was gracious in victory.  

We have unwon battles.  In fact, we're losing.  Man up.  Rule of law. Because first comes at least an understanding of justice.  Then, maybe, mercy. Hard, then soft. 

J

hogmany

* Some of My 'Shark Tank' Ideas!!!

YT

• Dog lipstick!  - dog nose bleaching!
• Cat nail polish!
• Feather curling /  waves & bobs / perms!
• Pig tanning booth, home spray-tan service! Treats vitiligo!   - Also pig electrolysis, expandable to other household pets! 
• Fishtank dye! (colored water)!
• Tail ribbons for ALL domestic, wild and feral animals!  - also nose-rings  - human adaptable!

            !!!

• Hyena meat - steaks, burgers, dogs, cutlets, briquette, loaf, shish kabob, bouillabaisse, tartar, bacon, jerky, etc.!  Exotic!  Trending (potentially)!  Perfect for the Foodie!
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• "Pedi-Kyur"!  Foot sanitizer (guaranteed to not sanitize hands)!
•  "Knobs 'n' Homs"!  Knee & elbow sanitizer (front & back!) (likewise, guaranteed NO hand sanitizing!)!

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Amazing board game!  "The Filasufer King!"  Based on Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics"!  Provided: attractive corrugated cardboard playing surface; nine dodecahedral dice (a perfect solid!); ruler and colored pencil.   The only rule is, there are no rules?  Not here!  Over ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY fantastic rules ... plus that ruler, for a ruler!  Makes a great drinking game!  Ages 18 and over!

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J

3 21

* Why I Am Now Pro-Empire and Against War(s)

YT

I am against wars that we do not win.  Duh  

That’s where I’d stop if I wanted to be gnomic and glib. Or I'd say I was "for the war before I was against it".  But it's a sort of important matter. We don’t win wars anymore because we don’t have the will, we don’t have the stomach. Like fools, like teenagers, we get all upset over something and go in to kick some butt. But it’s not about kicking butt, it’s about making changes that result in our benefit, even if in a humanitarian sense -- we have to be true to our humanity. 

War, as Bismarck said, or was it Clausewitz, war is politics by other means. Clausewitz -- Bismarck said politics is the art of the possible. Politics is the opposite of dictatorship -- not the imposition of will, but the outworking of compromise. If we cobble all this into a syllogism, the conclusion is that war excludes compromise; corollary, that war is best prosecuted by a dictator. That’s it then: we don’t win our wars because we are a democracy. Odd, how television did that.

There's something wrong here in the logic of course. Democracies can win wars. The kind where it's about damaging foreign infrastructure and killing enemy combatants and changing regimes. Such wars are meant to increase our own safety comfort welfare prosperity, whatever the cost to the enemy. 

We don’t do that anymore. We have confused, conflated, war with politics. Because you see we are nice guys. Remember just now when I intimated that we were a democracy? More to the point, we are an incipient, hemi-empire, with the duties but not the privileges, and which fact, of empire, is wholly incompatible with our American ethos of fairplay and generosity and liberty. We have lost our way. We should have propped up, were it possible, the British Empire, let them be the figurehead and world police. Such was not in the card or the stars, sadly, and our success is the poison pill of our downfall.

Don’t get married unless you’re going to be faithful. Don’t have kids unless you’re going to be responsible. Don’t start wars unless victory is top priority.

Case in point, the unbelievable stupidity of biden's war, proxy, Ukraine -- it's meant to be a sustainable war -- self-renewing, like abortionism and its forever-war against babies.

 Democratic America in living memory finishes long wars according to variants on one pattern only: airlifting personnel off embassy rooftops. Witness biden's bugout and consequent bountiful baksheesh to the taliban.  Say that three times fast.

Democracy and empire are, surely, incompatible. We need either a dictator -- I nominated Obama back in the day, but he's too old and frail-looking, now.

A dictator, or we need to get our own house in order. Ah. I’ve just figured out the solution to the tribulation heading our way. We need to empire, no, Empire our way out of this mess. Since we have so clearly demonstrated a total inability to govern ourselves in a prudent manner, we need to more completely exploit the rest of the world. 

We have so far been not an empire, but a patron. Supporting the freedom of Europe for lo these many decades. Propping up dysfunctional Third World pathocracies (I just made up that word -- accent on the second syllable). Our debt of 33.1 trillion smackaroos is chump change, if we take it out of the mineral wealth of Africa and America South the way China is getting up to. 

And It’s about time Mexico started to earn its keep.  We are currently providing the unremunerated service of housing Mexico's unwanted surplus population, and we should be paid for that valuable consideration.  What's the current government stipend.  GGL AI tells me that welfare programs cost the "average American household … $9,000" annually.  Okay, Mexico, 5.31 million of your unwanted population here, at 9K per head, that's 47.8 billion dollars you owe, payable immediately.  I will accept delivery personally.  

The future is about empire, as has been the past.  We'll get Latin America -- as a combination colony and heGEmony.  Ironic chimera.  

 Europe is so arrogant and has been warlike, but Russia can have it. Asia to the Chinese, obviously, the cathode to our anode -- and we’ll all squabble over Africa. Australia gets a pass, just cuz. It will be the new Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

We will of course have to abandon our former American character. Oh, wait. Done. So now we need to enter truly into the next, misplaced, phase of the Roman pattern. Usually it’s empire first, then decline. We’re already decadent. Now let’s expand. I think this could buy us another hundred years.

Purely by coincidence -- or perhaps it was my subconscious at work, formulating the ideas that now scintillate before your dazzled eyes -- I was walking through Trader Joes today thinking how odd, the convention to wear pants. Left over from horse-riding days. Do we ride horses? Then I pictured myself striding the aisles garbed in a toga. Animal House echoes aside, I think there’s an argument to be made here. I’ll give it some thought and let you know what I decide.

So that’s why I’m against, say, the biden lost war in Afghanistan. I don’t mind war, where theres a good faith need, and ignoring dogmatic quibbles that there's never a need and never a good war. I hate the losing. I hate the comfort such lost wars give to the enemies of America, foreign and domestic. I hate the damage to the soul and psyche that lost wars do to those Americans who still remain. War is ugly and a failure of humanity. But humanity is ugly and a failure, and sometimes execution is just, even on a mass, albeit monstrous and impersonal, scale. 

The liberal wants to live free from hardship and failure and threat and risk, and opportunity and success. The conservative wants poverty and unhappiness, and wealth and inequality of outcome, as the result of freedom, logic, and unavoidable reality. What is unavoidable is inevitable. War.

The other day, thinking about the 60 years since the murder of President Kennedy, I was thinking that America is always worse after an assassination. We never get over it, like Rome never got over the butchering of Julius Caesar. 

You may be drawing the unfounded inference that just as Caesar’s murder ushered in an imperial age of "Caesars", so an American empire might be brought about by, god forbid, such a presidential death -- a dynasty of, no, not "Obamas" or, a ridiculous joke, not of "bidens" or "Hillaries".  No.  

It would be a collective empire, a gang of four, or an inner council.  Perhaps figurehead.  I suppose that's what biden is, at the moment I'm writing this.  Who knows what a week will bring.  biden is not long for this world, obviously.  I'm predicting a vascular issue in his brain.  It happened before.  And he's too feeble to be clomping up those stairs in front of all those cameras, on a semi weekly basis.

Hopefully the end of our Constitution will be brought about along the electoral, fascist model of Hitler and Mussolini -- rather than a coup. Since the past several generations of Americans are incapable of learning from history, it must be hoped that this time a happier dictator/empire outcome may accrue, despite the pattern of the past. 

As Montaigne said, we know only what we know now -- we do not know what we have forgotten, and we do not know what we have not yet learned.  What we know now is demonstrated in the outcome of the most recent several national elections. Study this paragraph deeply, for the key to wisdom herein may be found. Nothing

So, in conclusion, I’m against wars because under our current system we lose them, and I’m against assassination because America always becomes more incompetent after them, and I’m expecting a literal or figurative tribulation, and in either case I’m expecting an Empire.

J

* Abortion

 YT & YT

Travail


Well.

Well.

Abortion.

I have no words to deal adequately with this thing. What shall I say, to those on the other side? You kill babies? They will say, “No, we terminate unwanted pregnancies.” I will say, by killing babies, and they object, “Fetus, not baby.” I respond that fetus is just the Latin for young one, and they reply that I am very erudite, but etymology is not a biological science.

And we have wasted words.

So I say there is nothing magical about air, that contact with it turns a fetus into a baby. They will say that it is, indeed, a difficult and controversial subject, and that viability is a good criterion – if the fetus is viable outside the womb, then it would count as a baby, but a fetus is not human life. I point out that anything that exhibits metabolism is alive, and they respond that tadpoles are alive. And the fact that these fetuses have human, not amphibian, DNA? --Well, fingernails have human DNA. But, I ask, do fingernails exhibit metabolism? They respond: Is a single cell a human ... are we yeast? I reply: Is yeast "alive," and does a human remain only a single cell? My point seems not to be understood, and is ignored. Instead we quibble about trimesters and technologies, and about hard cases such as anacephalism. There is no resolution.

More wasted words.

I say that we should err on the side of caution – if we are not sure, if there is any doubt at all, then we should count this entity as human. I give the example of a building scheduled for demolition: someone is saying that there’s a child inside, and the building must not be destroyed. Given the uncertainty, we should wait. Life is more precious than the schedule. They say the analogy is not valid, and add that a woman is worthy of mercy too, and the burden of unwanted motherhood outweighs the theoretical presumption that a fetus is a fully human life – that the "building" is "occupied." I reply that between death, and inconvenience, the choice is clear. They demur, and we cannot agree.

Futility.

I say that the fetus of John the Baptist leaped for joy in the womb, when it came into the presence of the newly-conceived Jesus. From this, I assert that everything a person possesses of spirit, he possesses at conception. “Oh, there are so many things wrong with that,” they scoff, observing that superstition has no place in a discussion about science. I take up that theme, pointing out that the system of cells, at any stage of development, has a unique genetic code, very quickly a nervous system, and in more than half the cases, a penis. I laboriously spell out the fact that a woman has only one genetic code, only one nervous system, and no penis at all – it is not “her body,” but rather another body, within her body. They respond that regardless of any other consideration, whatever goes on inside her body is solely her own responsibility. I consider an ethical response, but abandon it as useless.

Useless.

Nazis said some people are more human than others. Racists say that some people are more human than others. Because language is powerful, we strive to control it. I say Hitler murdered Jews, Nazis say he exterminated vermin. I say abortion kills babies, abortionists say choice terminates unwanted pregnancies. Nazis and racists believe in a continuum of humanity, up to a master race. Abortionists, too, believe that we evolve into our humanity – at conception, it is only potential, and we have not yet fully developed into it. Indeed, an infant is not viable, in that it cannot care for itself. A young girl is not fully developed, not sexually viable. Is she then not fully human? Personality is developed, but personhood is innate.

But such reasoning issues like heat into the void.

I recall myself saying as a callow youth in high school that babies were better off dead, rather than born to stupid parents. I was convinced otherwise by the simple thought experiment of picturing an abortion from the perspective of its object. Possessed as I am of some clarity of imagination, the image that rose up before my mind’s eye was sufficiently disturbing that I grew pale and faint, and had actually to leave the classroom. And I was convinced. It’s not right to kill babies. Even unborn babies. Regardless of any consideration about the supposed prospects, the potential quality of life, that may lay in that baby’s future. Babies have a right to a future. There is no appeal to reason, here. Words are useless. Either you get it, or you don’t.

That's all.


J

=====

Another Word



Abortion. Words are useless. Either you get it, see it, or you don’t.

That's all.

Well ... not quite all. Because it holds a strange fascination. I'm of an age where I generally possess enough maturity and self-restraint to simply walk away - but sometimes a thing just draws the eyes to it, and we stare, like innocence at the hint of depravity. So I return, briefly, to the subject again. Abortion. And again, my son of a previous decade teaches the lesson.

In fact, we were outside that self-same store. A health food store, as it happens. On the sidewalk was a fellow collecting signatures. "Would you like to sign a petition, protecting a woman's right to choose." I never did learn the details. How, in what manner, was a woman's right to choose being threatened, that signatures needed to be gathered? I haven't a clue.

There we stood, my little boy and myself, holding hands. And I, being me, just had to ask: "A woman's right to choose what?" Butter wouldn't melt.

He seems surprised, because I don't give the appearance of an ignoramus. "Why," he said, "why, the right to ... it's about reproductive freedom."

"Ah," I breathed. "You're talking about abortion." There's another word for it, you see.

"Uh, yes."

I didn't have anything planned, of course. That's not my style. A lot of my time is spent listening to the wind. I just felt like holding my boy, so I picked him up - him sitting on my arm - you know. I was looking at his hand, and I remembered him as a new baby, noticing his hand for the first time, thinking how perfect it was. Like a five-petalled flower.

"You know," I said, "this is my son. Look at him. Isn't he handsome? Look at how perfect he is." I said it smiling - joyfully, really. "Tell me, sir," I said, "when would it have been okay to abort him?"

Alas, that's where my little story ends. Memory fails, you see. I just don't remember what he said, or what I said after him. I know it wasn't anything dramatic. Again, not my style. I expect that he just moved on to another prospect. And I expect that he got nothing from the exchange. Because he was standing outside a health food store, gathering signatures to protect a woman's right to choose.


J

* Hostage

 YT

Tomorrow I could be killed. I could be crippled. I could be accused of a crime I did not commit, the fates conspire to convict me and I am a fugitive or a prisoner. These things happen, and there no safety in prayer or piety. Tomorrow I could find the people I love gone, disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again - perhaps destroyed. I could slip across the life’s blood of what is dearest to me. 

Tomorrow I could take one last shuddering breath, let go a slow silent sigh before I succumb to the darkness and despair that grips at my heart and crushes my chest. I could repent my integrity, my faithfulness, my salvation, and descend into an orgy of flesh and rage that would turn innocence to stone. I could curse the day that bore me and consign myself to hell.

We are hostage to a fallen world, that lies in the lap of evil, ruled by a dark Principality. God does not govern here - merely intervenes, sometimes. And what we have to sustain us, is a promise. We hope that we will be happy, or that our happiness, if we have it, will continue. We hope there is a hedge around us, to preserve us from a pain beyond our capacity to endure. 

We have been told we will not be tested to the breaking point. But how weak we are, how small. How alone we are, in this evil place of anguish and torment. Yet it isn’t hell, yet. Shall we find comfort, in this?

God calls himself a father, to us. How can we argue against God? We count our pain as chastisement, and it is for our good. For God is our Father. That he is so distant, is our fault. For he is God, and everywhere. 

If we have no comfort, did he not send a Comforter? But this is what I know. He calls himself the God of Consolation. Why am I not consoled? A father reaches out, and you feel his hand take yours. What father doesn’t do this?

Have you noticed it? I can’t be the only one. Because I’m not quite as crazy as the world is. I’m still civilized. But some of these things have happened, and not tomorrow. How will we bear it?

Sometimes, salvation, and sanity, is just a habit.

J