*Tisquantum

YT

That's "Squanto's" real name, in Algonquian. Tisquantum. That Indian who helped out the Pilgrims. The shortening can be forgiven -- Algonquian rivals ancient Elamite for its opaqueness. Nquitpausuckowashawmen. No, not glossolalia. That's how Squanto would have said, "There are a hundred of us." Tashuckqunne cummauchenaumiz? "How long have you been sick?" Yep. Tough language.

Of course Squanto could have numbered his tribe, the Patuxets, in several languages. In English, and in Spanish. Alas, there were not a hundred Patuxets left to count: all had perished, to smallpox. He alone survived, like some servant of Job -- as indeed he was, to the hardpressed pilgrims. As for how long Squanto was sick, sudden fever took him the year after he had settled with his new tribe of pilgrims.

He must have been used to being snatched away. He wasn’t kidnapped just once, you understand. In 1605, one George Weymouth whisked him away to England -- whether kidnapped or volunteered, history does not record. For untold years he labored -- well, eight or nine -- until returning to America in 1613 as translator for none other than John Smith. Set free as reward for his service, Squanto returned to his own tribe, only to be enslaved and taken to Spain -- kidnapped in 1614 by Thomas Hunt, a lieutenant of Captain Smith. He escaped to London where he remained until 1619 (interrupted by one odd intermission in Newfoundland), then he joined an expedition to America. There he found his family and tribe all wiped out.

Providence? To find an English-speaking Indian wandering the coast at just the right time to save the Pilgrims? Well, yes. But how many other Squantos have wandered the earth, who never found their mission? -- Jonahs who made it to Tarshish?

To know one's purpose is something to be thankful about. Father, mother, friend -- and to bring light and love not only to those you care about but to the stranger -- well, this is something in which we might make our own providence. The rest of it -- being kidnapped and orphaned and dying young and such -- we count as beyond our understanding, and trust in God to resolve.

Much fiction will have crept into the story of Squanto and the Pilgrims. Of course. It's not that it wasn't a good enough story on its own. It's just that the reality is complex, and myths have a happy simplicity to them. The tales of childhood are for inspiring us to emulate an example of excellence ... since there are hardly any real examples of excellence ... or is that unworthy? It is a fact that having heroes who actually lived requires a degree of selective blindness on our part. We give importance to what is admirable, and choose not to see the flaws -- or at least to down-grade them. This is as it should be. If we saw the chamber of horrors that is the heart of every human, we'd never stop screaming.

So we have myths.

Is America everything it might be or that we wish it were? The question answers itself. The same holds when we inspect any ideal. There are no “ideals.” If they were real, they’d be “examples.” But part of living in the real world is understanding that it is hopelessly flawed. Well, not hopelessly. Fatally. Even in the face of the inevitable fatality of our biology, though -- in the face of ultimate metabolic failure, we need not be hopeless.

And so we have Thanksgiving. It has its own mythology, as does Christmas. But for all that there is the fiction of Santa, there is the reality of Jesus. And for all that the Hallmark and Rockwell images may very well be nothing but a happy conceit -- of convivial Indians supping in sumptuous abundance with the dour wayfarers from across the gray waves of the churning seas -- yet they have the reality of vivid dreams, that might be true, for all that sunlight says otherwise.

The cherished dreams of our hearts have no guarantee of coming to pass. Every prayer of thanks must, must include a prayer of abject supplication, begging God that evil, or greater evil, should not strike us. Thus as a nation we take a day, a single day, collectively to call to mind the many blessing with which we have been blessed. We recall that it need not be so. We understand that who looks for perfection is a fool. We understand that who accepts the inspiration of a myth honors the daylight the visions of night have promised.


J

* "That which I most feared..."

YT   YT  YT

1. Sacrifice and Mercy

Job went every morning and sacrificed to the Lord for each of his ten children, lest they be guilty even in their hearts of even some unknown sin. He was a rich man, and his sacrifices would have been substantial – sheep or goats, and bulls, all without blemish. His bare arms would have been stained and hot with blood. Perhaps the blade was flint, perhaps bronze. Blood would soak the foot of the altar, making the stones shine and turning dust into mud. Being a sin offering, the visceral fat would have been burned. The smoke rose as a sweet savour to the Lord. The stink of urine and feces remained with Job, attracting flies.

On his son’s birthday, his eldest son – his firstborn – various messengers came to Job. This would have been later in the day, after all his sacrificing had been done – after he had washed his hands and arms clean, and sent his blood-splattered priestly robe to its daily laundering. That morning’s sacrifice would have been a special occasion, since his children had all gathered to celebrate the day. Such was their custom, to gather for birthdays, but this was the firstborn, he of the double portion, so the festivities would have been especially grand. All the more occasion for unwitting sin, Job knew, and his sacrificing would have been a spectacle of bloodshed. He was too busy with this matter to observe the day with his children. He knew his priorities, and was not wrong in this.

Did he spy the first messenger, come running from the south? Was he like that other father, of the prodigal son, constantly scanning the horizon for some sign or word? Did Job wonder at the servant’s haste, grow uneasy at the breathless desperation of the man? Was he patient, waiting as the man doubled over before him, gasping for air to utter the words?

Sabaens … oxen and asses … massacre.

Of course Job was angry. He was a ruler of the land. He was greatest of the sons of the east. And his mind would have raced with plans to organize his many men, to pursue the raiders, to hunt them down and kill them and retake what was his. Thus two centuries before did Abram rescue Lot from Chedorlaomer and Tidal, Amraphel and Arioch. It would not stand, and no excuse that years of famine unsettled all the world. Alas, Job had not time for this. Unseen behind him as he listened rushed a second messenger.

Fire from the heavens ... sheep and men all killed.

Had it sounded like distant northern thunder to Job, earlier that day? -- perhaps during his sacrificing? Did he wonder at the pall of smoke dark in that quarter of the sky? Was his soul stirred with unease, knowing his sheep were grazing in those spring pastures? But there would have been no thought of anger at God, in this. It would not have occurred to him. And nothing to be done about it in any event. He would have seen this immediately, and returned to the thought of retaking his herds from the Sabaeans. But immediately, before Job can give any command, a third servant races from the east.

Chaldeans … camels … massacre.

Camels are the beasts of trade -- the foundation of Job’s wealth, dealing in spices and incense and oils and cloths. The Sabaens would have to wait, or at least take second priority. So Job would have been thinking, even as the servant still babbled out his story. But then. Then. A final messenger. From the fourth quarter of the land.

A great wind … house collapsed … all your sons and all your daughters … dead.

Struck from the four corners of the earth in a season of troubled skies and restless nations.

He had shed no tears, felt no grief, before. Even anger would have waited upon justice. But his sons. His daughters. Crushed beneath the stones and great beams of a house that he had built.

Job fell down. How long he lay we cannot know. We know he fell, because he then arose. And being a man of his culture, he tore his clothes. I would have, would have hid my face in one hand, the other across my belly.

2. Integrity and Blame

Satan came before God on a day when the sons of God came before Him. There are, it seems, great and high holy days in the heavenlies, and this was a holy week, for there were several audiences. What would be the name of these days? On the week of Passover, so many things occur.

Satan had been stalking across the confines of the earth, pacing between its pillars. Now he returned to the courts of his banishment. Was he in shackles, paroled from his confinement for a time but wearing his dishonor? Or was his proud, degenerating countenance symbol enough of his state. In any case, from his depredations he was summoned, and stood, or kneeled, before the Lord.

“Consider blameless Job,” invited God. Has Satan never heard of Job? What then is being said? Of course they both, God and Satan, understand that they are being watched. “Adam and Enoch have walked with Me, but from the days of the beginning none surpass my servant Job.”

Satan well remembered Adam, and must have smiled in his heart. Every man has his idol. With Adam, it had been Eve. How he must have loved her, to follow her into death. He would not have her be alone. He had known solitude. Well has Satan considered Adam, and smiles. Satan would have gone to gloat in Sheol, save the shade was sleeping.

As for Enoch, he would have been a presence in that company of angels, and nothing could be said of him.

“Touch Job, O Lord, with Thy blessing, and he will bless Thee in kind.” How clever, the play on words. And so the Lord removed the hand of his protection, and gave his servant Job into the power of Satan.

But after Job fell, and rose to tear his cloths and shave his head and strew ashes like smoke and wind, after, he fell again, and worshipped. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Grief does not crush some men.

When after some days Satan came again, the Lord recalled Job to memory. “You incite Me against him, and he holds fast to his integrity.” So many ways to accuse, there are, yet Satan did not see his chance although the Lord had spoken it.

Instead, Satan turned, returned, to the flesh. “Skin for skin.” He must have said it smiling. Perhaps this is why Adam fell – the tender touch of Eve. And the Lord gave Job, his bone and his flesh, into the hands of Satan.

From crown to sole has Job been struck, a byword of pain as he sits in ashes, blistered like a burnt offering, dripping infection like fat melting over flames. “Would that I had died in my mother’s womb,” he cries. “Would that I had never been born.” But he cannot die, and though he would not cling to life, he holds to his integrity. He is not crushed.

3. Justice and Glory

God, enthroned, receives the worship of his angels. He has contained His glory in a vessel, that all might see. Thus did He walk in the cool of the evening with Adam beneath the canopy of leaves. Thus did he sit and eat in the heat of the day with Abraham beneath a single tree. In the morning too He comes to men, we are reminded, bearing new mercies -- but this is of a different sort, the unseen gift of an unseen God. So is God seen, and not seen. For God dwells in unapproachable light, and none may look upon him and live.

For Job, there was no vision. For Job there was no walk, no meal -- not even wrestling ... nothing he could cling to. Job was not granted the presence of the Lord. He had felt His hand, or its absence, and could bear no more. Job got more wind, the insubstantial wind, which blows where it wills and knocks strong houses down. This is fitting, for dust lives in wind.

If Satan still comes before the Lord, we know nothing of their conversations. If God points out some other Job, we do not know the name. We cannot see when hedges fall. We hear only the wind. What God's purpose might be in this we must wait to learn.

But one sure lesson might be found by those who know to look. Who is this God, with whom men walk and eat? Who is this God who speaks with the fearsome voice of storm? We say 'God' -- a general term, capitalized as a convention. But He has a name, and that not lost between the consonants. Who then is this God, who sought for Adam hiding in the Garden? -- whose feet were washed by trembling Abraham within the grove of Mamre? Who is the God who rendered Job to Satan? What is his name?

Today we call him Jesus.

The Word is what is manifest, and is all of God that can be known. But simply because we know him, doesn't mean he is not to be feared. It is a good thing to have God for a friend. But we must have him also for our God. Jesus comes again, not as servant but as king, not on a cross but with a sword, not to suffer but to judge. He is not meek, now.

What we know, what we may feel certain of, is that the prayers of this God were not answered. The cup was not taken from him. He was forsaken. Yet this is the God who removed his hand from Job. There is a necessity in all this which words cannot explain.

Whether or not hardship is earned is incidental. Every man might feel that he is Job. Yet no answers will be found again in whirlwinds. Do you expect a point? Then consider His servant, Job. Only at the end, however long he waited, do we find Job clinging no longer to integrity. We find him crushed. So did his eyes see, and blameless Job repented.

J

* Creeping Vichyism

YT

During one of the iraq wars -- i've lost count … Iraq, Afghanistan, Isis the Islamic State, Hamas -- I thought, Has this changed us? Are we … imperialist? Then I thought, What about Vietnam? Maybe that’s what changed us. If we’re changed. Then I thought, Human nature does not change, but the nature of a nation can. Then I thought, This war is different. And then, No it isn't.

We're facing Hitler, if he won. And Nazis are still everywhere. Mostly moslems, I should say islamists, but so many collaborators. Not Nazi, mind you, these sympathizers. Far too liberal, Lefty, beyond PC, Woke.  Beyond just being understanding. Beyond broad- and open-minded. Beyond collaborators.  True believers, with their own opposite but identical religion, of intolerance, and so blind.  

This Nazi ... Nazlamist empire isn’t focused in Europe, yet. It has not bred itself into dominance, yet. For the moment, the moment of generations, it rules more to the east, Middle East.  So far. But Vichy is the theme of the day. De rigueur.

Isn’t it strange. Here we were for all these years, decades, generations, thinking that Hitler lost. He lost the war -- the Second World War. But he won the moslems, those of the present, slow, spastic World War. 

No, not all Germans were the enemy, Japanese, Italians. And now, not all moslems. Not all, of course not. Not entirely all. 

But, there is you see a direct, a direct line of descent, from Hitler’s propagandists of the ’30s and ’40s to the islamists of today. 

The ancient undercurrent of moslem Jew-hatred -- 

we can hardly say anti-Semitism in this context -- Jew hatred is now the morning and evening star of Islam.  And it seems so strange that the Left hates Israel too.  There's a way it's obvious, but it's so strange. Of course the Soviet Union, and so the Russian Federation, and of course the UN, hates Israel, and jews.  But it's strange.  Something is wrong with the way we have been educated.

Well, what else is Nazism, if not Jew-hatred as the soul of a society?  Was it some system of economics? Hitler, the Subtle Economist? Nothing unique in the socialism of National Socialism. Are we to suppose that the Nazi glorification of the Aryans is any different than the Soviet glorification of the Slavs? -- or the  glorification of La Raza?  Or the bizarro world of BLM.  National racism is as old as nations. It's clans and tribes.  Militaristic expansionism? Please. No. It's Jew hatred.  Like it's the purpose of history.  

But Hitlerism has not won, quite yet. The Persians have not yet built their nuke. A congressional report says Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon within one or two weeks. Basically, less than a month, and they can achieve the mutual Aryan/Iranian goal, of an Israel-free map. 

They don't care about the land, or the palestinians. It's the hate. They want the Mediterranean to have a new, slightly radioactive gulf on its eastern coast. It will be an exotic fishing spot, in years to come. Many new species of amphibians will appear, no doubt. A good thing. Hitler was a nature-lover, right? 

He would be pleased.  Ayatollahs and imams and mullahs will become sun-bathers, moon-worshipping sun-bathers.  

My point is not that the islamofascists are Islamic fascists. My point is that in the next generation, when the native European population has been substantively replaced by a more southerly-complected race, 

Hitler’s highest aim will have been achieved. No, not racially. I said his highest aim. Jew-hatred, as we know from where he put his resources, even in his most desperate final months and hours. Kill, kill, kill Jews. 

And when that changing of the guard is come to pass -- when the torch has been passed, from north to south, from Hyperborea, from Thule to Dilmun -- ancient mythical homelands?  The effect would be the same if Hitler won. Rachel, weeping for her children.

The Austrians voted Hitler in. The French government handed power over to Marshal Petain, the French Quisling who instantly ceded all real power to the Nazis. And so on. 

The First World War destroyed the manhood of Europe.  What survived of moral authority? -- after the insanity in the blood-drenched trenches and killing fields of Verdun (quarter million dead, half million wounded) and the Somme (three hundred thousand and more dead, a million and more wounded)?  One battle.  A slaughter of youth brought about by the elders of Europe infinitely more heinous than anything Herod could conceive.

From brutalism, then, to cowardice. In fifteen or twenty years, Europe shifted from jingoism to appeasement, from Chauvinism to … Chamberlainism. The legacy is to acquiesce, give in, bend over, to any demand that can’t be put off.  Europe knows and expects that all costs will covered by America. 

It transformed from grim old men eager to slaughter youth, into eternal adolescents 

shirking responsibilities and and going on a joy ride. 

So. Europe is a eunuch. islamism is a rapist. The world is a pimp, a coward and a profiteer. Where is manliness?

Here it is. 

America. America, standing, we must say still standing, now as once did Britain, Great Britain, 

facing the monster across the water.

Hello, old enemy. Do you remember me? I am America. I didn’t recognize you at first. You’ve changed your religion it seems. Your eyes have grown darker in the passing years. But I know you now. Your accent is different, but I know you by your actions. You’ve forgotten who I am. Smiling America, of the open face, open hands, open heart. Slow to anger, merciful in victory -- but unrelenting, eventually. For a hundred years I have stood shoulder to shoulder with every nation that loves justice and liberty. Perhaps I have grown careless, though. Inattentive in my vigil. 

And now you come, the striking serpent at the heel. I thought I crushed your head some time ago. The monster has many heads. Alright. In just a very short time, now, I will have come to myself. I will shake off the idleness of dreams. Truly awake. I will remember who I am, and what I am for. Just strike once more, or twice. That will bring me fully awake. Then I will give you my full attention. Just one more time, or two.

J

*Shadowland

 YT

I've had cause to become familiar with some number of dysfunctional behaviours of mind - we may call it abnormal psychology. I've been reminded quite forcefully recently of the borderline personality, characterized by a pervasive instability of self-image, of affect, of relationships - in other words, the self doesn't interact well with either the inner or the outer world. Reasoning tends to be emotional; judgments tend to the black or white; self-injury is common and self-destruction not infrequent. Somewhere between two and fifteen percent of a typical population may display such behaviour. Perhaps twenty percent of all psychiatric hospitalizations are due to this diagnosis. Not a small or a rare problem, then.

Is it possible that cultures, or religions, might suffer such an affliction?

I cannot say what Islam is. I do not know its existential reality. I do not concern myself with the arcana of its doctrine. I don't care about its times of quiescence - the hibernating bear is of only academic interest. I know only what it shows itself to be. Alas, we are, none of us, judged by our finest moments - praised perhaps, but not judged. We are judged, and rightly, for our failures. How then shall we judge Islam? What is its effect in the world currently? The question is mere rhetoric. Of the seventeen or so wars currently going on in the world at this moment, in every case one of the opposing sides is Moslem. There is a fifty-fifty chance that for any given terrorist event, the perpetrator's name will somewhere include a version of "Mohammed."

Here's the problem. There needs to be a difference between what is offensive and what is incendiary. These two ideas need to be sufficiently distinct that they evoke different responses. Such is not the case, with Islam. There is no offence that is not incendiary. And that is a very troublesome problem indeed. Because we in the West not only make, but rely on, the distinction. In fact, this is what defines us, describes the foundation of our culture. If I'm vulgar enough, some big dude may give me the whooping I deserve. Alas for him, the law does not recognize the concept of "fighting words." A jury may certainly acquit him, and perhaps rightly - but that's just another beauty of our system, where law is balanced by justice and common sense. We tolerate ambiguity.

With Islam as it presents itself in the streets, my intemperate speech requires a whooping - well, a stoning. For what I wrote in "Piss Christ," were I sufficiently important, a fatwah would be issued against me. And really, don't I seem like a pretty reasonable guy? - maybe too opinionated, maybe too sure of myself, but more concerned with being right than with sounding right? And even if I'm just utterly wrong, and even if I'm insensitive, or downright offensive, even the ACLU would theoretically defend me. (Laugh Out Loud.) Point being, the marketplace of ideas has been such a central idea to us - it is the plaza, the agora of our polis. The bazaars of Islam, sad to say, have no offerings, no wares of freedom. What do they have?

In the late 1850s a rumor swept through Bengal and then greater India that the cartridges used by Indian solders under the Raj were greased with both cow and pig fat. I sigh, I shake my head, and point out that the cow is sacred to Hindus, and the pig is anathema to Moslems. And cartridges were held in the mouth. Yuck. So of course the Sepoy Mutiny lasted for several years. Blood blood blood. Key concept? Rumor. Rumor. Rumor. Perhaps it was true. But rumor. The circumstances, the details are different today, but the attitude is the same. Rigidity and the inability to achieve a perspective that is not formed solely by dogma. Reasoning is emotional. Judgments are black or white. Self-injury is inevitable and suicide is a sacrament.

Islam, I'm vulgar enough to say, is a lunar cult - attested still in its crescent. Allah (al-ilah - "the god") was Mohammed's local and dominant moon god, Sin, made grand. Al-Ilah had - has - three daughters: al-Uzza, al-Lat and Manat, acknowledged in the Koran in the so-called "satanic verses"- which were expurgated and repented of by Mohammed - he was, you see, "tempted of Satan" to write them. But I digress. The moon is a universal symbol for the irrational - from folklore to Golden Dawn to Jungian psychology. It may be mere wordplay for me to require a genetic relationship between its occult lunar past and modern - well, current - Islam. But the fragility of Moslem character that at the hint of a rumor must rush en mass into the street and rant and riot and burn makes that case far more forcefully than any words I could string together.

There is in astronomy the phenomenon of the terminator, that line on a celestial body that divides day and night - the eternal glooming that rings a globe. Likewise, the borderline personality forever hovers in the perpetual twilight between psychosis and the merely neurotic. And it is not inapt, I think, to notice that Islam - lunar, crescent moon Islam - as it manifests itself through its public actions finds its most characteristic expression in the shadowland of irrationality, oppression, violence and destruction. The required perspective to see this, however, can only be achieved at a very great distance. Alas, dogma bears no wings.

What then? What hope? I turn to grand old Milton, writing of blinded Samson in his Palestinian agony:

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!

Every poet writes on themes that move him, that speak to his soul and urge, compel his soul to speak. We do not know with what tears these words of Milton were written. We know they would have come from blind eyes - that Milton, the incomparable Milton shared this affliction with mighty Samson. What we can know is this: to speak of what might have been could flood the world with tears. Islam could and might have turned from darkness to light. But prophets of hate have turned that flock to the dark wilderness, and they would make a wilderness of the whole world. Well might we weep - but we must, well, keep our powder dry. Because they are coming, and they bring darkness with them, and they carry long knives. They enjoy killing, and they want to die. I suppose that answers the question. Islam has made itself psychotic.

J

*The Memory of Roses

YT

Love makes us ache.  When pain comes to others -- injury, illness, decline -- this is what anguish is, if we love.  When we speak of it, it doesn't have to be eloquent to be poignant.  

My mother is old, but healthy and alive.  This is no guarantee.  I've read of another man's mother, her long decline into the oblivion of dementia and the final release of death. It fills the heart with inexpressible sadness.  Even more, in its echo of other remembered grief, such as we all have, or will.

We can love people -- opt to love them, volunteer -- people who are not worthy of love, humanly speaking. No need for elaboration. It’s a provocative, for all that betrayal might seem almost commonplace. And we drag ourselves away from such and such a situation trailing most of our courage and all of our hope behind. And being human, imperfect in our capacity for tranquility, we might be infected with rage like a low-grade fever. 

Self-pity is not all bad.  It should come with an awareness of our flaws. But who even has a right to an opinion about the secret flaws in someone else's secret heart? It's not your business. All this is the negative.

And if the ones who work havoc were to fall into the hands of their victims? Best not to speak of it. But the people we have loved, despite their betrayals? Of course we're angry. 

Here’s what we have to tell ourselves.  Quote: I did not love, that it might turn into hate. I did not sacrifice, that it should bring only loss.

To love is an act of will as much as a sort of pit into which we fall. This is what it means when we are told that love does not fail.  It’s not that the flame doesn’t scorch but the light doesn’t fade. The outcome of love is not assured, but it's reality should not be in doubt.

Well.  High-sounding sentiments about the unfailing character of love have little merit if they have no effect in the real world. But we do need soft phrases sometimes, as we need soft touches -- they are comforting. It isn’t only monkeys that clutch onto each other when the skies grow dark. That's a picture of ourselves. We are created to love. We were made that we might count ourselves less, that someone else might be more. There is no human race where this is not true.

It isn’t something that needs to be written in a holy book. It’s written in our hearts -- incised, rather, cut in deep and ragged gouges. This too might make us angry. What sane person wants more pain? But can it be helped? Honestly. We must, must love, and it hurts the way a little child cries when stung or struck. But we cannot escape our nature any more than we can change our destiny -- or rather, as fools and saints attempt, change the destiny of someone else.  The transformative self-sacrifice of love.

The pundit George  Will wrote about his mother's decline.  He quotes ,J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan: God gave us memory that we might have roses in winter. How lovely a thought. There's the saying, pain comes to pass, not to stay. It calls to mind the fact that even in our wrath, we may forgo our demand for justice and discover almost out of vacuum a capacity for mercy, and forgiveness.

So, after a long and blessed life, George Wills mother, an old woman, descend into the darkness and indignity of senility. Her character, so carefully built-up over the decades, might fall away as cities succumb to earthquakes. What is left remains only as a mockery. But it doesn’t remain forever, and when she finally passes from sight, that dimming light might flair up bright as garden sunshine. So may we hope.

In this same way, we can only hope ... if we can hope ... that those who have passed beyond our sight, betraying, after having shed darkness upon our world like Satan in his fall -- they might with the passing of time enjoy a sort of dementia of an evil character -- where repentance works its transformation and nobility is found where only betrayal has been seen.

It cannot be that the world is destined only for decay. There must be some counterbalancing force, where the agony of watching those we love reduced almost to animals, is matched in some measure by the redemption of those who started life as animals, but who discover the very purpose of what humanity is. This would be grace, and a sort of justice too. For to be human is to be condemned to love.

You see the point. We concern ourselves mostly with comfort and prosperity. For what purpose? That we might be a more excellent sort of animal? It's an easy thing to hold out cliches of love and betrayal -- how wise I might seem. But honestly. What matters? We arrive at the answers we believe by going through our lives, like fishermen dragging nets. Maybe we come up with hope, and courage. But it takes strength. We grow strong by enduring trials. That's the point.

J

*Fortune

YT

We cloak ourselves in our various ways -- nowadays, it's outright masks.  But, our clothes, as statements about who we are, how we see the world, what we expect of it -- or hair, or makeup, or tats and piercings or amputations.  

It's like there's a soul or a spirit, buried in flesh, like a pearl swarmed over by ants, or a dragon guarding its gold.  Two different things, is my point, that have to work together, spirit and flesh.  Well, it's worked so far.  We're not extinct.  

But sometimes it doesn't' work.  Either the spirit, soul, is vicious -- the word TOXIC is like WEAPONIZED, over-used and misapplied.  But vice, and vicious -- these are still respected.  ...either the spirit is sick, or the body.  

Sometimes the bodies we're born into aren't quite right.  This is the core doctrine of the transgender cult -- spirit in the wrong body.  But generally they have a great body -- whole and healthy.  Hale.  Bruce Jenner had a world-class body -- one of the truly very best in the world.  I can't speak, for Caitlyn.  I don't have a metric, no frame of reference.  

But sometimes spirits, babies, are born with what is obviously a wrong body.  It's not even judgmental to say it that way, unless it should be said to a tranz-able activist. I trust that it is very unlikely indeed that I should have such a conversation.  

In terms of reality, humor etc is inappropriate, and even bitterness toward God, mankind, parents, society -- it just seems like silence is the most appropriate response. What else is there? We see, and we speak or we are silent.

Saini, 25 miles east of New Delhi, India. The little girl, aged one month, named Lali, meaning "red". The condition is called craniofacial duplication, or diprosopus, and is exceedingly rare, but well documented.

Such infants can have surprising functionality. Little Lali ate with both mouths, and all four eyes blinked at the same time. Said the mother, Shushma Kumar Singh, "She's fed through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. We use whichever mouth is free to feed her."

Her parents refused any special medical treatment for the baby.


Doctors in New Delhi wanted to take a CT scan to determine the state of the infant's internal organs. The father, Vinod Kumar Singh, declined the offer. "I don't feel the need of that at this stage as my daughter is behaving like a normal child, posing no problems," he said. "My baby is fine." At the time Singh was 23, a poor farm worker -- married in February of 2007. The village doctor, Brigdal Nagar, had grown exasperated with reporters. "She is very normal," the doctor once shouted, wagging a finger and shoving the father aside. "We don't need the media here. She's not an abnormal baby. It's just that she has two faces. And she's living a very normal life. And if she dies in the future, it's as God wishes."

The parents saw her as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess of power, Shakti, or alternatively as Durga, the fiery three-eyed deity of valor. They installed loudspeakers outside their home, that blared religious hymns all day.

"Lali is God's gift to us," said Jaipal Singh of the local village council. "She has brought fame to our village." Head of the council was Daulat Ram, who hoped for a temple to Durga. "I am writing to the state government to provide money to build the temple and help the parents look after their daughter." The crowds of pilgrims dwindled, however, local curiosity was sated, and worshipers became rare.

Lali had a cleft pallet -- unreported if it was two clefts, she could not suck properly. Her nutrition was poor -- bottle-fed sugar solution and diluted milk.  Chronic vomiting and infection.  Medical attention was delayed due to extended family and headman discussion. Dehydration became severe, the parents took her to the hospital, against community advice. Her condition started to normalize, but six hours later her heart stopped -- two months old. A temple was built in her memory.  

On the other hand, 

-

consider Lakshmi, here aged 2, of the state of Bahir, India. Analogous situation. Born with four arms and four legs, remnants of a parasitic twin, anacephalic.

Sometimes babies are born with only one body, and two brains.

An Egyptian girl, Manar Maged, victim of carniopagus parasiticus. The identical twin, Islaam, although having no body of her own could still smile, blink, look around and sleep independently, with a reportedly fully functional brain.  The twin was removed successfully, and died, of course, and Manar died a year later, of a brain infection.

Likewise with Rebeca Martinez of the Dominican Republic.

Manar bled to death after an 11-hour corrective operation.

As for Lakshmi, surgeons removed the limbs, transplanted a functioning kidney, and reconstructed the child's pelvis.


After recovering from the 27 hour surgery, Lakshmi was able to stand for the first time in her life, "which is remarkable," said chief surgeon Sharan Patil.

She was taken back to her rural village in eastern Bihar, where, earlier, she had been worshipped by some Hindus as an incarnation of the eponymous four-armed goddess of grace and fortune. After two years, however, she started going to school. No ... she started walking to school.

She developed scoliosis, which can deform and cripple. She had other problems as well -- no buttocks, bladder and intestinal issues, abnormal nerve connections to her spine, pelvic malformations. When she walked, it hurt.

But she walked.

What a pretty little girl.

J

*Why We Communicate

 YT

They say some large percentage of communication is nonverbal. Indeed, even some small percentage of this, written communication, is purely visual. Length of sentence and of paragraph. Typoes and missplelings. Letters that rise above or do not fall below the median. Abbrs. How much more, the ideographic scripts. As for face to face, doesn't that rather depend on line of sight? But even, say, perceived proximity carries its own subtle meaning -- a sort of silent body language, affirming the powerful fact, I'm near you.

It's words, though. I'll often hear the etymology along with the word. I'll remember where I first learned it, and rehearse again the by-now tiresome rote. I'll be thrown into the mood of the thing. Like "contradict." I was in the backseat with my older brothers. My father said something that was inaccurate, and I, eight or nine years old, presumed to correct him. My brother said, in a heavy tone, precise and ominous, "Don't contradict dad." And my father said, in the same cadence, "Yes. Don't contradict dad." What's contradict mean? Same sort of thing, with "seduce": Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me.

Not that words are what they mean. Hysteria: the wandering of the womb throughout the body -- cf hysterectomy. And then it took on other meanings. Well might Freud have wondered, what do women want ... he clearly didn't have a clue. But womb-wandering has a male counterpart in East Asia and in Africa: koro, Buginese for "wrinkled", and more felicitously, Malaysian for "turtle-head" -- the belief (hysterical) that one's penis is shrinking into the body. Fertility, male and female, depends so much on bloodflow. Of course we have a word for eating your own hair -- trichophagia. It only sounds Greek. So there you go then.

Words shape perception. We all know of the dozens of words the ice-dwellers have for snow. Albanians have 54 words, equally divided, meaning mustache or eyebrows. Vietnamese has 18 words for 'you,' yet we had to get rid of thou. Japanese marks the gradations of bowing, from the 15 degree nod of eshaku to the epileptic groveling of pekopeko. On the other hand, a Liberian language has only ziza for red/orange/yellow, and hui for green/blue/indigo/violet. That's a pretty narrow rainbow.

Some of it just makes you laugh. The French coined ordinateur to spare their lips from the vulgarity of "computer": con is slang for "vagina" and pute is slang for "prostitute". Talk about your Xbox. Bakku-shan is Japanese for a girl you think will be pretty when you see her from behind, but in front, not so much. That happened to a friend of mine in high school. "Yum," he said ... but it was a guy. Again, Japanese has senzuri and shiko shiko manzuri, for male or female masturbation; "a hundred rubs" and "ten thousand rubs"-- you guess which is which.

The tune that you can't forget: in German, ohrwurm, "ear worm". Scratching your head to remember: pana po'o, in Hawaiian. Words, like the predictability of the human form, remind us that we are all the same. We count our babies' fingers and toes, and are relieved.

There's the Bantu word, considered the most untranslatable in the world: ilunga -- who'll forgive anything once, tolerate it a second time, but oh, the third... There's German's torschlusspanik -- the fear of diminishing opportunity as you age; most apropos in childless premenopausal women. There's the French esprit d'escalier -- the thing you think to say, too late. There's an Inuit verb, iktsuarpok, that means "to go outside often to see if someone is coming." The sound isn't beautiful, but the meaning tears at your heart. And if you say it slowly, as three hard and lonely syllables, it sounds like what it is.

Such a history of fragility. What words do we have, that for their familiarity have lost their power or poignancy? Anguish. Rage. Loss. Lost.

That's how we communicate. With words. With our bodies. With the arrangement of images and of objects in space. And why?


J

*Poto and Cabengo

YT

Isn't it hard? Isn't it hard, being human? Having a past? Why can't we be recreated with every wakening? Renewed, reformed, regenerated. Resurrected. Why not? Because the past is gravity, and holds the universe together.

Consider, then, Poto and Cabengo. The world would have known them as Gracie and Ginny, if the world knew them at all. But it didn't, until it was, sadly, too late. Two little girls, identical twins, born in 1970, diagnosed early as retarded. Well, not actually diagnosed. The twins had suffered violent convulsions shortly after being born. 

A neurosurgeon told the father that it might be years before retardation could be ruled out. The father failed apparently to hear the nuances in this communication. "A man of his standing knows what he's talking about."

 And so the girls, defective, were left to the ministrations of a severe Prussian grandmother who spoke no English.  They were largely ignored, not sent to school. They did not learn to speak English, nor German neither.

Rather, idioglossia. 

A unique and private language, rarely but usually developed between twins. We would have to assume, twins who are severely neglected by adults.  It's not "twin speech," which is fairly common with very young twins -- a hash of idioms and slurred common words. Idioglossia goes far beyond that; 

it's a kind of creole, a unique language, complete with grammar and syntax and neologisms.

The language of Poto and Cabengo was a mishmash of English and German, gleaned from the impersonal and other-directed speaking of highly neglectful parents, and the German grandmother. All of whom had given up on the retarded little girls. Who used prepositions as verbs, and had 30 different ways to say potato; "pintu" (pencil), "nieps" (knife), "ho-ahks" (orange), "toolaymeia" (spaghetti -- o sole mio). The girls were listening, you see. They spoke no English. They spoke only to each other. "Poto" (Grace), "Cabengo" (Virginia).

The fact that they were of at least average intelligence is neither here nor there. The early label determined their fate. Back in the late '70s, after the girls had been "discovered" and "treated," a speech pathologist observed, "It was obvious these kids hadn't had much exposure to anything. They wanted attention." No duh. They had never seen anyone climb a tree -- a picture of this rare phenomenon provoked bafflement. With attention, their IQs moved up 30 points, to 80. Still awfully low. But it was still the 1970s.

After many months of intensive intervention, the girls were asked by a visitor if they still remembered their language. "Yes," one answered quickly. "No, you don't!" corrected the dad from the livingroom couch. "I don't know why you are lying about that! You live in a society, you've got to speak the language," he explained helpfully. "They don't want to be associated as dummies now."

The girls were born with normal intelligence.  As adults   Cabengo worked on a supervised assembly line at a job training center; Poto cleaned tables and floors at a fast-food restaurant.

Yes. The past is gravity. It crushes us if we're over-burdened, and it keeps us from flying.

Tomorrow I'll be driving my father to some health-related appointment he has. I have not seen him in 14 years. He lives 4 miles away.Should I shine my shoes? 

I've had the notes up for Poto and Cabengo for several months. Every time I turned on the computer, there they were. I wonder why I didn't get to it. There are a few other bits and pieces i want to write about. Something on Prohibition. Something on the Depression.

----

 

So I wrote this 14 years ago, in the 'Aughts.  I drove my dad to the doctor.  And for the next ten years, maybe once a year, or every few years, I'd visit him.  Likewise, a very rare phone call.  I told him once, that he was hard to be around.  Because he was.  

He died nearly four years ago.  Alone, on the floor of his bedroom.  Old, frail.

And I wish, bitterly, that I had been a better man.  Strong enough to forgive.  

So I know what I'm talking about, when I say that the past is gravity.

J

*Obituary

YT

In most sexual relations, regardless of the indeterminate of fluid genders involved, there is generally active and passive -- what we used to think of as male and female. It has been quite some time since Europe was masculine, and these past several lefty administrations have done much to reassign America's gender.  I mean Uncle Sam, not so much Lady Liberty -- she's just ignored. 

The American Left. Feminine. It's a stereotype I don't like, so much, but words have meaning, so, bitchy … the left, escalating to mob or syndicalist violence.  Masked.  

The Left finds its completion not in apposition to the American Right, but in the hard brown machismo of illegalism, and islam, with it's latest incarnation in Hamas, the baby killers.  Actively, aggressively hostile to the feminine, and humanity.

Do Moslem cultures oppress women? Define oppress.  But, yes. I'm talking about the normal ones, excluding honor killings and clitorectomies, and nine-year-old girls in arranged marriages.  We'll count that as NOT normal.

Yet the woke, a sort of undead, march, protest, rally -- rally round the flag, the un- and anti-american flag -- and call jews Nazis while themselves praising Hitler.  

'Ts been a few years sense it was in the news, islamists executing homosexuals.  There are no gays -- that political philosophy and identity -- in islamist controlled regions. It's the behavior that they execute, and the religion of gayness is forbidden.

Yet alphabet sexuals activists LMNOP … support Hamas.

These groups are not stupid as the term is generally reckoned. Rather, the politics of their identity takes second place to the much deeper need, to balance their extremism with its spiritual counterpart. Liberals bend over ... um, backwards for brown … privilege.

It seems not to be possible to have a war without having war protesters.  ... but no, I'm mostly wrong about that.  I seem to think that the Left loves Ukraine -- I sometimes still say THE Ukraine.  I don't know what to think.  Disliking war is a good thing.  War is an overall negative, a lose-lose situation, what with all that death and destruction.

But consider the mindset that protested our involvement against Hitler. The Left then did what it always does, the difference being that in that case they are seen for what they are -- opponents of liberty -- friends of not mere tyranny, but genocidal evil.  Yes, this is my usual broad-brush caricature. But I’m painting a big picture. Specifically, there is a bizarre but predictable blindness to the great trend of the past generation.

Oriana Fallaci wrote The Force of Reason, on the death throes of Europe -- or rather, the birthing of Eurabia.  She interviewed terrorist George Habash in 1972, and quotes him as saying that Israel was not the true Palestinian problem. Rather, Islam’s great conflict was “against Europe and America,” and its true goal was to allow “no peace for the West.” The islamist cause would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”

There is a plan.  It's not like Satan on a throne ... anyways, we're the Satan around here.  They're like Cerberus ... no, call it Hydra, so many many heads.  That was Al Quaeda, with so many, many cells. But, there is the plan, the goal, and like ants, they work relentlessly toward it.  It's just that it takes generations. 

Re how this plan will be realized, Fallaci quotes an Algerian President, who announced to the General Assembly of the UN in 1974: “One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.”

Consider, in Brussels, the soul of contemporary Europe, that the most common name for a newborn boy is Mohammed.  Consider what this means for women. What are women good for? Incubation.

All these super hero universe movies, with their race-swapped super empowered female super hero mutant  women -- not so powerful, in the Moslem hemisphere.  There is an Islam that is sane and honorable.  More power to it.  And more power to the Jews as well ... the power not to be murdered, or not to be murderers.  We'll just pretend that applies equally to both sides.  

That's what the comic book woman hero movies are all about. Pretending.  

In his A Heart Turned East (1997), Adam LeBor quotes a London-based mullah, thus: “We cannot conquer these people with tanks and troops, so we have got to overcome them by force of numbers.” 

Sounds like that plan.

Again, in Oslo, Moslem supremacist Mullah Krekar said that Norway would be changed by Moslems, rather than Moslems by Norway. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim. ...Our way of thinking,” he declared, “will prove more powerful than yours.”

Is this conspiracy-nut-job stuff?  Connecting unconnected sound bites?  The preceding quotes are taken from the review by Brendan Bernhard, “The Fallaci Code.” In his article, Bernhard summarizes Fallaci’s explanation for the Moslem surge.  In the mid ’70s, there was an actual, technical, negotiated

 “arrangement between European and Arab governments according to which the Europeans, still reeling from the first acts of PLO terrorism and eager for precious Arabian oil, made significantly more precious by the 1973 OPEC crisis, agreed to accept Arab ‘manpower’ (i.e., immigrants) along with the oil. They also agreed to disseminate propaganda about the glories of Islamic civilization, provide Arab states with weaponry, side with them against Israel and generally toe the Arab line on all matters political and cultural. ... Fallaci recounts a 1977 seminar in Venice, attended by delegates from 10 Arab nations and eight European ones, concluding with a unanimous resolution calling for ‘the diffusion of the Arabic language’ and affirming ‘the superiority of Arab culture.’”

That's European leaders, conspiring with Arab leaders, to affirm that Arab culture was superior.  That's a suicide note. 

For publishing her ideas, Fallaci would have gone on trial in June 2006 in France, where “Islamophobia” is not just a thought crime, but a criminal crime. Evidence for the truth of her position was not a permissible defense, in France.  There was no trial, because she died.  

The mere assertion of a danger is not proof of danger. And belief in conspiracies, no matter how publicly attested, is still disreputable.  The logic of the matter is obvious.  But many false things are obviously true.  Every religion there is, is false, except maybe one. Because, if they contradict one another….  You know,  logic.  

So, let us eschew conspiracy. Instead, allow me to rehash the obvious correlations. The infertility of the West matches the fecundity of Islam. So, non replacement birthrates.  Also, the moribund patriotism of the West is matched by the sectarian fanaticism of islamism.  Europe learned to stop having religions wars - and their wars became nationalistic.  

But these past several generations, in the West, their passion  extends only as far as the skin. And its a non-reproducing passion.  Moslems have a passion for their culture. 

I speak in broad generalizations, and so I am certainly wrong in the specific. But you will have noticed in your studies of history, modern and ancient, that civilizations fall. All of them. Every one -- excluding city-states. How? Military invasion is never the actual cause. The real cause is always twofold: decadence from within, and migration from without.  

Both are at work, here.   We're seeing it in fast motion, in the Left's (I don't even want to say biden's name) -- in Left's open borders, love of crime, love of drugs, etc.

Hitler in Mein Kampf told the world what he intended. The world did not believe he meant it. Shall we learn from the error of our ancestors? If we repeat the error, our descendants will inherit a third world culture, and those who do not convert to, well, either islam, or catholicism, will live in the servility and oppression of dhimmitude. Or they will not live at all.

Am I overstating this?  Yes, I am.  But if you are sane, did you foresee what a catastrophe the situation is, now?  I vividly remember the '70s, the Carter Error.  This is at least as bad.   

The most prudent course, is, when people say they are your enemy, believe them.  

J

*On Obama's Newly Rediscovered 'Letter to America', Unattractive TacTic-ers, and Racist and Other Commercials … no, I mean "Osama's"

YT

These two, from the late 1960's. I remember them.

I could finish this song:

 

But are they?  Are they racist? They use stereotypes -- the bandito started with a stubble, a gold tooth and pistoleros.  Chicano pressure made the corporation tone it down, and finally threatened an 650 million dollar lawsuit.  A loser of coure, but bad PR, so the corp dumped the bandito.  Tex Avery, the road runner guy, designed the character, and Mel Blanc voiced it -- you know, Bugs Bunny et al.  

So is it racist? I see it as a character, like Santa, or Harlequin.  But it is indeed a negative, a bandito.  But it's not raciest.  It's a negative stereotype.  Stereotypes exist because of a fundamental reality.  There are swishy gays, and authoritatively droning white males -- like me. Although if you call me "white" you're a racist, and also I'm not "male", that's hurtful and dehumanizing to me. Human males are called "men", occasionally seen in their natural habitat.

This would have been from the Jack Benny program I think, probably mid-50s.  Before my time.  Again, stereotype.  And, no, not a very good commercial.  No need to be offended, but we might not be overly-sensitive if we note an undercurrent here.

Dialect humor was screamingly funny in the Golden Age of Radio -- surviving, like the minstrel show, into the '50s and '60s. 

Depicting race is not the same as racism. Neither is exploiting the conventions of stereotype. And there is a difference between race and culture, which fact is one of the great beauties of America.  But if these sorts of images are IT, for Chinese -- than the one-sidedness, the bias -- it's a problem. 

Just as for terrorism, so one man's racism is another man's superiority because of his race.  Even if we define our terms, there will remain a field of meaning -- as in the probabilities of quantum mechanics.  It's not a particle, not definite, not a thing, until the wave function collapses.  That's racism -- it's NOT, until it really IS.  

So the name-callers: first, for shame, for being a name caller ... but shaming the shameless is like squaring the circle, or circling the drain, or draining the monster -- it's just being frightened, or lured by the sound of the words, like the pied piper, and rats, and children, who have a very minimal capacity for critical thinking. The racist name-callers -- by which is meant, calling other people racist -- they function on the level of the lower anthropoid primates.  Monkeys, screeching and flinging feces, because that's who they are.  With no developed capacity to elevate their character via true self-examination, etc.  

Like, I've never seen tic tok, but the current thing about Osama's decades-old Letter to America, and these fetuses who've just discovered it…?  I saw one unattractive youngster who seems to identify as a person with ovaries and a cis vagina, I heard her saying that, "after I had deconstructed christianity, I had a lot of thinking to do" -  and Osama challenges her in the same way.  Because, as an unthinking bigot, she had never before examined her assumptions, biases and bigotries.  That's what being young and callow is -- questioning everyone else's authority and assuming your own existential virtue.  Hey, dude -- you don't have to question your axioms, your assumed truths -- but you do have to be aware of what they are.  

Regarding racism, I, personally, am superior to almost everyone, not because of genetics, or even culture, but because of my superb character -- the good attributes that I have adopted and disciplined enough so that they have become who I am.  That's the REAL truth about identity.  It's not about feelings.  It's about behavior.  

In terms of your psyche-soul, only god, judges, and the people who love you, have any business caring about your psyche-soul. Liberals, mind-readers and the sentiment -- but I repeat myself -- they THINK they know about your soul, but only the way an addict knows about self-control.

And then there was this.  Astonishing. 

 

 

Clearly anti-woman, if "she" identifies as a woman.

The wonderment isn't how we have survived as a species. It's why we'd want to.

J 

*Hand D

YT

That is Shakespeare's handwriting -- a manuscript page of Sir Thomas More, a probably-Elizabethan play  published only centuries later.  Politics.  There's much to say about all this, but, well, not here and now.  What is undeniable is that Shakespeare was a horrifically bad speller.  No insult there -- orthography was fluid in his day.  But even within a few lines of each other, "sheriff" is spelled five different ways, sometimes capitalized, and sometimes  More is spelled More, or Moo, or Moor, or Moore.

This sort of explains how he could have spelled his own name, in its six known examples, six different ways -- three of them in the same document, his Last Will.  Thus, Willm Shakp, William Shaksper, and Wm Shakspe; and  William Shakspere, Willm Shakspere, and William Shakspeare. At least  he knew how to spell 'William.'  You'll hear the Oxfordians sneer at this.  But, abbreviations are not misspellings, so we can discount Shakp --  and just trailing off,  Shakspe, is my own habit -- Ja... Ha... instead of Jack Haytch, my true and full name.  And Shakspere is spelled the same way twice.  So, uh, there's a point there, that proves my point, whatever it is.

I too have been a horrific spellor, and remain a not-very-good one.  (Spellchecker is a fantastic heuristic aid. I still miss sometimes on occurred, and consider.  Hey, got both of them right, first try.  Um, decision.  Yep, that one too!)  Likewise with handwriting.  My own is functionally illegible, even to me, all too often.  Needs to be remembered, as much as deciphered.  It's a bother.

As for Shakespeare's example, above, what a nightmare.  Not just because letter-shapes could be different --  the long s, ſ, that should be familiar to those who have read the Constitution (and his h's and y's are quite something to see).  All that's just the convention of the day, secretarial hand:

And not because of scribal abbreviations (p̱ for pro), or a line over a letter to indicate preceeding letter omissions.  But Shaksper closed his u's and didn't round his r's -- that sort of thing.  m n r i u w might all look the same, just an ambiguous cluster of troughs and peaks.

So, here follows the modernized text.

MORE: Nay, certainly you are;
For to the king God hath his office lent
Of dread, of justice, power and command,
Hath bid him rule, and willed you to obey;
And, to add ampler majesty to this,          5

He hath not only lent the king his figure,
His throne and sword, but given him his own name,
Calls him a god on earth. What do you, then,
Rising ’gainst him that God himself installs,
But rise against God? What do you to your souls          10

In doing this? O, desperate as you are,
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,
That you like rebels lift against the peace,
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees,      
Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!          15

Tell me but this. What rebel captain,
As mutinies are incident, by his name          19
Can still the rout? Who will obey a traitor?          20

Or how can well that proclamation sound,
When there is no addition but a rebel                     
To qualify a rebel?   You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,                   
And lead the majesty of law in line,          25

To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)                          
Should so much come to short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,          30

Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,            
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,—
Why, you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,          35

That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,                         
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants          40

Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think  
To be thus used? This is the strangers’ case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.          44

The  link is Sir Ian bringing life to the matter.

In any case, how, how, how could anyone read the manuscript, the holograph?  Here's a start:

What I have labeled lines 42, 43 and 44.  Here's the decipherment:

but chartered unto them, what would you think 
to be thus used, this is the strangers case.
and this your mountanish inhumanity 

 I recognize a w, and an o.   And his commas are really nice.  Punctuation and capitalization are almost entirely from the editors.

As for the three crossed-out lines of the manuscript  -- 16, 17 and 18  -- they turn out to be:

is ſafer warrs, then ever yo^u can make          16

                                          in in to yo^r obediene.

whoſe diſceipline is ryot , why euen yo^r warrs hurly          17

     tell me but this   

cannot p̱ceed but by obedienc what rebell captaine           18

as mutyⁿes ar incident, …

I have buried the lead, here -- this being of the most interest to all truly intelligent readers.  We see the creative mind at work. So Shakespeare wrote lines 16, 17 and part of 18 (replacing warrs with hurly),  then he crossed out the end of 17 with 18 and interlineated above 17 (preserving   obedience), then he crossed out the interlineation along with 16 and the first part of 17, and interlineated above line 18  and finished that line.   He gave up on obedienc and warr and settled on mutynes.

...your unreverent knees, / make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!  / In safer wars then ever you can make, / whose discipline is riot?  Why, even your wars -- no, your hurly / cannot proceed but by obedience...    No.   ...whose discipline is riot?  In ... Into your obedience...  No.   ...make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!  / Tell me but this: what rebel captain / as mutinies are incident...  

All this is just me, mind you, supposing.  But I am as great a genius as Shakespeare, so I'm undoubtedly correct.

When the hurly-burly's done...

So many lessons here.  About opinions and dogmas and evidence and humility and meaning. I mean lessons in the handwriting and trying to read it.  As for the meaning of the speech, yeah, I suppose that's good too.

I'm thinking of writing The Autobiography of God.  If you have bothered to look at my Jesus as Human Being, you'll have an idea.  If you bothered.  But The Kardashians! is on, so there's that, if they're still a thing.  Is Huny Bubu still a thing?


J