*Dick

YT

Don’t you just hate him? Fat loser. Disgusting. He’s the human pig who planted a bomb at the ’96 Atlanta Olympics, and then pretended to be a hero by warning people away from it … just before it exploded!!!! Golly, he musta bin so smart and brave and observant!!! Attention, everyone! Lookit me bein’ a real-life genuwine heeero!!! What a unabomber. Somebody shoulda unatweezed his unibrow. 

So they caught him, and it turns out he was just as much of a loser as we know he was. Lived with his mommy. Wanted to be a cop but couldn’t hack it. So he settled for rent-a-cop. And then he died, of being so fat, , age 44, heart attack of course. Disgusting.

Yep. 

Oh. Did I say he was guilty? My bad. Heh heh. Turns out he was innocent. Richard Jewell.  I don't actually know if he went by "Dick."  Does it matter, facts like that?  Should i have stated it correctly, right up front -- taken the trouble to check?  

I mean here I am pretending to be all outraged about something that happened nearly 30 years ago or whenever, and I can't even be bothered to get his name, well, whatever. 

Anyways, he was falsely accused, by the sages of virtue in the media. Hopefully in the past nearly 30 years things are much much much better, with the media.  And government agencies, law-enforcement and shiz like that -- more integrity now, hopefully.

The NYT did some inconsistent CYA, in Oct 96, claiming or reporting, whatever, that "a number of law-enforcement officials have said privately for months that they thought Mr. Jewell had been involved in the bombing, even though there was no evidence against him and some evidence seemed to rule him out".

 FBI agents -- and the shine is certainly off that apple, and its worm asexually multiplied enough to fill a can -- the FIB tried to trick Jewell into waiving his Constitutional rights.  Trickery … treachery.  

The US Attorney in Atlanta, Kent Alexander, issued a statement claiming the "Justice" Dept "regretted" "leaking" the investigation.  Later, three FBI officials were censured by the Department of "Justice".  Is that aspirational justice, or putative justice.

These three traitors to their presumed oath of office should be named, so:  

• Woody Johnson - Head of FBI Atlanta office -- nicknamed Woody because he's turned on by dead bodies, it is rumored, by me; 
• David Tubbs - Head of FBI Kansas City office -- nicknamed Tubbs because he likes to immerse himself in tubs of fresh pig feces. That is, pig feces that is fresh, not feces from fresh pigs, like they've just had a good scrub.  I think I've learned to try to be more accurate, what with that irresponsible mistake I made a while back about Richard Jewell's name, being, maybe Dick; and 
• FBI agent Donald Johnson, Head of just being incompetent scum, and a well known part-time male prostitute.  I'm sure I might plausibly imagine that detail was leaked somewhere, sometime, from a source, maybe Dan Rather, if he's still alive -- nobody can ever really know a claim like that, if Dan Rather is still alive, if he ever was, rather than being a fictional character, like other well-known betrayers, like 

Cain, or Judas, or Benedict Arnold, who also were not censured by the "Just Us" department of the federal government, of the United States, a country based on the rule of law and reliant upon the integrity of the persons entrusted with administering such laws. 

The news hounds, or is it pigs, who also have a fantastic sense of smell -- I don't mean they smell fantastic, I mean their capacity for accurate olfactation, which might be a word, but I can't be bothered to check.… Anyways, the news hounds, but I also mean the bulldogs (an old-time criminal underworlds slang term, or "argot", for police etc (the way "pigs" was too, back in hippy days (but I always thought that was very rude and unfair, since individuals should not be judged as groups))) -- the dogs, I say, had no problem sniffing out Dick's private details and dragging them all across the news. Dick is also an old time term for criminal investigators -- if false accusations even are criminal ... maybe they're civil.    

Jay Leno called him the Unadoofus (a callback to the then-still relevant Unabomber). His mother was, inevitably, the Una-mamma. Tee hee. Jump in, boys. The blood’s fine!  Shark is a term for -- not slimy, not greasy -- accuracy is important … disreputable lawyers, but I repeat myself.  

The real bomber? Eric Rudolph, who later bombed a couple of abortion mills and a LGBTQplus nightclub, in those days that sort of club were still allowed to be strictly noninclusively and undiversely lesbian. I hardly know what to say. Can’t see a connection. The Olympics are gay? Abortionists are gay? Abortion is gay like the Olympics? I don’t get it. Gays should be aborted at the Olympics? Huh?  Dude's crazy.

Fun Fact: Real-killer Eric Rudolph lived as a fugitive for five years, hiding in the woods of the Appalachian Mountains where he ate acorns and salamanders, and lizards and beetles and grubs; raiding vegetable gardens and grain silos, and rummaging through dumpsters. He was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster.  He was wearing new sneakers at the time, and could not produce a receipt, yet he was NOT charged with shoplifting, which in those days WAS a crime.  During his wilderness years, Rudolph had squirreled away 250 lbs of dynamite.

Bonus Fun Fact: Eric’s older brother, Daniel, deliberately severed one of his hands from his body with a radial-arm saw and mailed it out as a videotape (a primitive precursor of the internet); the video included a narrative explanation that the act was designed to "send a message to the FBI and the media." The hand, the left, was reattached surgically.

Rudolph published his memoir in 2013.  The U.S. Attorney General seized $200 toward paying off Rudolph's million dollar restitution fine.  

Conman congress person, but I repeat myself, George Santos, homosexual republican, in a historic precedent, has recently been expelled from office -- precedent because he has not yet been given an actual hearing or trial, and, yet, also, has not denied the numerous accusations, which include, (according to the "mostly factual" Pink News, which must be legit) "wire fraud, money laundering and one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States".

Histrionic bigot fraud actor -- but I repeat myself,  Jussie Smollett who loved to pretend to be a victim of black maga thugs, was convicted but remains shameless.  

One of these things is not like the others. Themedia whores don’t care about guilt or innocence. They care about news, by which is meant agenda, fame and profit, in that order, for themselves. One of the whores, by the name of Tom Brokaw, "reported" of Jewell that "speculation is that the FBI is close to making the case. They probably have enough to arrest him right now, probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict him as well. There are still some holes in this case." 

"Holes" in this instance must mean "innocence." Brokaw is probably a poet, to use words so elliptically, probably an ax-murderer poet -- a drug-addict, child-molesting ax-murderer poet. In the future everyone will be falsely accused for fifteen minutes. That's not the difference.

The former congressperson (which spellcheck thinks is one word) and the former actor are unrepentant. Jewell was guilty of nothing. His record includes saving the life of a choking baby. The former actor pretended to be a race-victim.  Jewell was an honest to God hero. 

The poseurs and frauds have cut short their  careers as surely as if they'd  used a radial-arm saw. Jewell died because of damage done to his heart.

Jewell sued and settled several libel suits.  Most of the money went to lawyers and taxes, so liars and corrupt government, per history and observation.  But he was grand marshal of parades, and gave speeches.  He has a sort of monument.  And Clint Eastwood directed a film about him in 2019.  In terms of boxoffice, it was Eastwood's worst opening-weekend in 40 years

So now we’ll take another look at

Richard Jewell, and we’ll see a good man, for all we know, and one certainly worthy of our public praise and respect. If only we could know about such things before it was too late. But who will inform us? The media whores? Better to know nothing, than to know lies.

J

* Nothing & Nowhere

YT

I never have trouble seeing the other side's side. That won't stop me from asserting my side if I perceive the need. It comes down to the fact that balance is static, and anything else activates the tipping point.

Of course balance is also dynamic, given the nature of the universe, entropic, changing: universally for the worse, albeit locally things can improve.  So it's both.  Of course, again.  Not ambiguity -- complexity.  Like all communication, if and when we expand our perspective.

So, disagreement does not require passion, or even conviction. Disagreement should require, or include,  clarifying your ideas. 

George Will, whom I have quoted before quoting someone, once made an apposite observation. He said Balfour, the British statesman, whose name is so tightly bound up with the current state of Israel -- that is, with the state of Israel and its current state, and indeed its very existence, what with the 1917 "Balfour Declaration" ... cf the limpid pages of Wikipedia, a well-known internet reference site (the internet is a well-known reference too (like a library, as a collection of reference books (a library is an old fashioned repository or storehouse of books (a book is an old-fashioned means of storing information, of scholarship and entertainment)))).  

Bethatasitmay, Balfour said that some certain rival's clarity was a liability, because he had nothing to say. 

George Will goes on to quote impeached former-president bill clinton on the 1991 Gulf War (that's 74 years after the Balfour Declaration).  Clinton said, "I guess I would have voted with the majority if it was a close vote. But I agree with the arguments the minority made." Such nothings say everything.   

clinton's wife, a persistent community activist, would have disagreed.  It's actually funny, picturing these two past-masters and -mistresses of triangulation, squaring off in such an elliptical way against each other. It's a lesson in 3-dimensional geometry. Euclid would be proud, except that he required axioms, principles, unchanging.  

Which puts me in mind of Archimedes, who could have moved the world, given a place to stand. The clintons did try to move the world , taking no stand at all. This is the value of history: being able to use the example of figures from the past to bring clarity to the present: clarity, even in the murk and blur of politics, through their negative example, like negative space, or the dog that did not bark, something should be happening, that isn't.    

As one of the truly great thinkers of this or any other age has said, in sublime poetic form:

            A clinton's a wonderful being,
            That knows all there is to of seeing
                    All sides of a matter,
                    On which it can chatter
            Without ever stopping for breathing.

Thank you, thank you very much.  

Superb. Email your praise to me privately. I don't want to overload this platform, denial of service. There are after all only so many terabytes.  Affter terabyte comes petabyte. Then exabyte, zettabyte, yottabytes, then jarjarbinksabytes.  The more you know...       

A digression. 

Bethatasitmay, political issues.  

A mere heartbeat ago it was about which candidate believed in God or Evolution.  That heartbeat is irrelevant now of course, stopped like that of an unwanted fetus.  Likewise, gay marriage, and unicorns, and gender -- reality is whatever you want it to be.  Now, in this current moment of relevance, it's weather.  Not whether or not a man is a woman … rather, the kind of weather that is barometric, metric,  measurable, like science, with testability and validated predictions.  

Like Al Gore's completely true and Oscar-winning prophetic movie, An Inconvenient Truth, that totally All Came True, Perfectly -- rather than Not At All.  I seem to recall that the world DID end in 2012, as promised.  Here we are in the After Life.  Isn't it wonderful? 

But I said, or implied, just now, that it's not a debate anymore about a man being a woman.  Politically, that's settled, settled politics, like settled science, like vaccination, an issue I am generally uninformed about, except philosophically it seems on a par with abortion, a matter of personal choice, and of privacy, like between a woman and his doctor.

Point is, no debate. They're all marching in lockstep, goosestep, sieg heil mother-father, because what is a mother?  

Bethatasitmay ... then again, bethatasit maybe not. Because it has to do with taking a clear stand. Part of that clarity isn't just in speaking, but in first principles, axioms. We don't have to be right to be honorable. We do have to be, at some level, somewhere, forthright. clinton, and his nominal spouse, are as irrelevant as statues of founding fathers and civil war generals.  Likewise the Busheses and obamees.  What's past is proletariat.  

In this highly relevant age of biden, and his highly relevant age, which is not at all about age but degeneration and encroaching dementia, and breathtaking blamification -- a tactic perfected in the long-past era of the oblame-a occupancy of the ovary office in the Rainbow House ... should I say that again slowly -- just reread it a few time … blame, I say, rather than clarity or leadership, from the anything-but White House.  

Borders, homeless, drugs. The Lefty dream of the Unified State of Dystopia is slouching toward us out of the South, and out of closets and streetcorners of whores and drug dealers, although my metaphors are outdated, because everything is digital and streaming now.  Streaming out of Babylon, eager to abort.  

Newsom, and Harris, and all these balloonists of narcissism and juggling, have mastered the art of self-generating gas, which combined with their lack of substance or sense-of-direction, because what is up, or down, is naught but a social construct of the patriarchy … I'm not sure if I'm digressing now … like penguins or emus, birds of a feather, left wing, perfectly qualified for a joy ride in the hot air drifting direction they've plotted out, like a plan, like a conspiracy, rules for radicals, the opportunity of crises, borders, drugs, hamas, jews, perennial favorites of any burgeoning revolution.  

Thar she blows like a volcano, snowless Kilimanjaro, carbon neutral, gender neutral, I'm talking like this with full and natural immunity because everything is everything else, and LOGIC is almost an anagram of GO kILl, and "anagram" is an anagram of "a rag man".  And if you don't see the point I just feel sorry for you, so here's a tent, and some drugs.  

J

* What You Should Think about 9/11, 10/7, 12/7, etc

YT

Grief and anger are never far apart.

It’s easy, and right, to hate your enemies.

Jesus said love your enemies, yet Jesus comes again with a sword. There he is, Jesus, on his final Monday, his wide strides kicking up the dust as he rushes up the Temple Mount road, cold rage burning in his eyes, his fingers busy knotting together the strips of leather he is braiding into a whip. What is he planning? And he descends upon the moneychangers like fire from the sky, scourging them with his special purpose, handmade whip.  He whips them not as severely as he himself would soon be scourged, but it's no less violent for that.

A violent and peaceful man. Contradiction? Of course not. Wisdom. What does “hate” mean? — and “love”? What does “enemy” mean? There is a hate that is simply the emotion that goes along with the craving for justice, and the willingness to exact it.  Am I the only one who's ever felt that?

As for “enemy,” consider the Indian tribe battling the US cavalry in the west. Here comes the cavalry riding over the hill, first thing seen is the American flag. That flag was not a symbol of freedom and justice to those Indians. It is to me. It wasn’t a symbol of rescue, to the Indians. To the wagon train, to the settlers, yes. To me, our flag represents the highest attainments of mankind. Not to the Indians. And they were right. To them it was death, or oppression, or injustice, or at best ultimate defeat.

A tragedy? In the classical sense, yes – a man, or culture, undone by the flaws in his own character. But its not a tragedy, in that there are forces of nature, and of history, that are inevitable, and their outcome cannot be called tragic without expanding the word beyond meaningful limits. Hurricane Katrina was not a tragedy, but a calamity. If a soldier aims his rifle at a brave, and kills a child instead -- yes, a tragedy, if an accident is the same as a tragedy. 

Yet there is somehow the idea of necessity, bound up in tragedy. Surely accidents aren’t necessary. The death of a child is so very many things, and there is no simple answer, and any answer there is, is not clear. How complex.

But this I know: 9/11 was not a tragedy, 10/7, the Hamas outrage, was not a catastrophe. If there were no better words, then perhaps. But there are better words. Atrocity. Deliberate, planned, brutal. What do we do with such monsters these? Monsters, to us -- heroes, to themselves. 

But what do we do? Love them? I will love them, as God loves those he sends to hell. I believe God does love them. But he loves justice too. Eventual justice. The traditional symbol of justice is a pair of balances – a glancing acknowledgment of a multiplicity of factors, too many for meaningful calculation. So all those variables are collapsed into just two plates of the scale, because eventually all answers resolve into  yes, or no.  Otherwise they're not answers.

So we simplify and use symbols. And our love for them, the enemy, must be complex - if we are to survive.

What is necessary cannot be wrong. In this, perhaps we stumble upon a sort of key to the problem. If we are commanded to love, then to love is right. But how to love? What to forgive? There is no emotion, nor any instinct, that is wrong in itself. But when they are perverted, well.

Capitalism may certainly contain the seeds of its own destruction, per Karl Marx – a man who has far more blood on his hands than Christ – other people’s blood, that is.  Capitalism, and Western Civilization, might certainly fall prey to some greater force of history, some force that is truer to human nature and emotion and instinct, truer to the laws of nature and of nature’s God – if there should be such a truer force. 

But given the inevitability of hurricanes and volcanos and droughts, it's only location and timing that makes the difference between God's wrath, and the merely random. Antartica has many storms, and none of them are judgments from God.  

That's how it is, with all calamities. They will occur. As will tragedies. And atrocities, and injustice, and the demand for the redress of injustice. The most descriptive term I can find for this universe is "entropic." entropy.  Things just wearing out, in time.  Maybe replaced, for a time.  Justice is supposed to restore order, for a time.

The Indian mother holding her dead child, weeping tears of grief and rage – her prayers went unanswered. The families of those killed in falling buildings or crashing planes, or flames, or rains for bullets – the dead remain dead.  The guilty are outside our power to avenge – or they're in our power, but unlikely to exhibit the remorse and repentance we so much desire. Perhaps we should love our enemies most, when they are outside the reach of our justice. This would have the virtue of obedience to God, while preventing our souls from curdling.

Jesus, tradition has it, was a carpenter -- after his adoptive father. Perhaps Jesus made the cross of his own crucifixion, if it was a recycled cross. What is certain is that he made the whip he used on the backs of the moneychangers. It may be that he had the right to be a whipmaker, or rather a whip user, because of his use, on the cross. I don’t know. It’s too complex. What I do know is that moneychangers, as lawbreakers,  need whipping. And we should allow neither anger, nor grief – nor any other instinct or emotion – to pervert the craving, not for revenge or vengeance, but for justice.

J

* Hating Your Country

YT

What I've noticed is a tendency in people to generalize non-specifics. That's clear, isn't it. "Generalize non-specifics." Sounds almost like it means something. The specific non-specifics I'm referring to are culture and religion. "Your religion is bad, because your culture is bad." As if there need be a meaningful correlation. 

Let's take America, for example. What is American culture? Is it hard work, thrift and rugged individualism? Is it tolerance and foreign aid? Is it McDonald's, violent entertainments and ugly angry music? Fashions of outerwear that include allow or demans the clear delineation of the vulva?  Sort of a female codpiece?  

And what of religion? Is American religion truly Christian, or Protestant, or, like, whatever?  That's where the problem of "non-specifics" comes in. There is no "American culture" or "American religion." There is a Japanese culture and religion -- a Norwegian culture and religion -- an Arab culture and religion. Ah! -- you see the connection? The definitive term here is not culture or religion, but Japanese, Norwegian or Arab. We're talking about race, or, if you prefer and it is more specific, ethnicity … which really just means race, as from the Greek, ethnos, nations. And there is no American race.  I'm questioning if there is even an American nation.

 To imagine that what we see on TV or in movies is "American" is to imagine that our planet is mostly water. No, its surface is mostly covered with water. An entirely different thing, than the "planet" "being" mostly water. I do not love the "culture" of America as Hollywood imagines it. But that's as much as to say I don't love something that's not real. Who loves what is not real? Who loves lies? Beyond the people we know and love, what else is there to love? 

Ideals. Principles. The "this is what I stand for" sort of thing.

So I do not need to defend against anyone's incorrect words about what they imagine. In logic, there's the idea of the "straw man" -- set up a false argument or position, then knock it down. One of the things I learned, by teaching it to my son, was to never argue about opinions, and to never argue about facts. Why argue about opinions? -- blue is better than yellow! No, yellow is better. No, blue. No, yellow.... And on and on. Why argue about facts? A fact is something that can be demonstrated -- so rather than argue, demonstrate. Simple. Everybody has the Library of Congress in their pocket, as a device.  No need for arguing.  Fact check.  Simple.  

And my son laughed, and summed it up: "In other words, never argue." Right. What a wonderful son. You don't argue, you present information and logic.

America is beautiful, to me. It's not, to you? There's your opinion, and there's mine. I shall not argue. It really boils down to this: anyone who doesn't love their mother, is not admirable in this. Even if she had many faults. Even if she was a whore. You still should love her. Everyone's country has blotches on its record. But everyone should love their country, because it is the banding-together of the families who live there, and because it is the entity ordained to look after our general welfare. Of course there are criminal regimes, kleptocracies and totalitarians and the like, that simply exploit. But those are governments, not countries.

So when I hear certain people or parties in America revile her in their speech, I hear disloyalty and what is shameful. Even if your mother is a whore, you should honor her, and try to help her. For aliens to hate America is their right -- even though they're wrong, if they are. For enemies to say your mother is a whore is to be expected, whether she is one or not. America is not a  whore -- she is Justice, and Liberty. 

That's the ideal I was talking about. The reality is that the ideal is polluted with humans and their corrupt human nature. But there you have it -- even the healthiest of men breathe in viruses with every breath.

After we subtract the built-in guarantee of failure, because people are involved, the question everyone has to ask themselves is this: how noble, how upright, how honorable is the system we live in? I think the American Constitution is the most perfect human document ever composed, not because it wasn't flawed -- it took a Civil War to expunge the odious but necessary compromises on enslavement -- but because it recognized so perfectly the corruption of human nature, and ensured against it with checks and balances, with separation of powers, with such superb decentralization and federalization.  Has it been corrupted?  Absolutely. That's not the Constitution, though.  That's human beings, and depravity, and degeneration.  

Where else in the world has there ever been such wisdom? Japan? Norway? Any of the Arab nations? No race could have done such a thing. But America has its origins in something greater than race. And the thing that gave the Founding Fathers their wisdom, is their insight into human nature. They were, all of them, to varying degrees, well-versed in the Bible. 

And in Western culture and western liberty.  The anglo-saxon -- and I'm not anglo-saxon, but you have to admire the tradition of rule of law.  

Distill all of that down, with an unblinking awareness of the corruption of human nature, and come up with systems as best you can, write them down and follow them.

Well, that's our problem.  We have not been following the rules.  And I guess I'll have to leave it there.  If we don't follow the rules, we can't play the came.   

                   

J

* Class Cams

YT

Climate religion, gender religion -- how widespread is the abuse?  Woke "teachers" indoctrinating children into a religion obnoxious to the parents?  Are any statistics available?  I won't even say I should think the number would be small.  I don't know.  Universities are toxic.  So why not elementary schools, up to high schools?  

It's been many years since I've been in a classroom.  Things were still under control in those days.  But in those days "gay marriage" wasn't even a topic for late night comedians.  

We've seen it before, we humans.  How teaching as a profession becomes revolutionary.  Soviet Union and Red China teachers were just an arm of the party.  And the point that I've been building to is this: teachers were the profession most represented in Nazi Party membership.  

There must be something about having huge influence on young minds that swells weak characters into monstrous and conscienceless egotists.  The former-principle and now-quaint notion of in loco parentis cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, when the marketplace is a socialist or wokalist cooperative.  

We don't want your kind around here, parent! Your child?  Ha!  My child, in my classroom, under my values.  Now where did I leave those puberty blockers...

So an obvious necessity now is for classrooms to be equipped with cameras, with sound.  There have been objections about this, regarding privacy.  But whose privacy?  Not from parents -- we give our kids baths.  Not for teachers -- they are hirelings, like babysitters.  And in a public school there should be no secret curriculum, hidden agenda.

Student-teachers are not infrequently observed by mentors or administrators.  Department heads audit classrooms.  Teachers are observed for evaluation.  Parents sometimes sit in classrooms.  So...?  I find no substantive valid objection.  

Cameras then, accessible to parents.  Only parents, or appropriate administrators.  Etc.  Common sense.  

Bodycams for police are widely used now.  There was a lot of pushback originally, but my not very well informed impression is that a significant majority of officers support bodycams now.  My own opinion is that it is a superb idea, protecting officers and citizens alike.  Even criminals should benefit -- fewer lies is good for the soul.  

Hardly anyone nowadays is camera shy. Think of it as you staring in your instagram or tictoc or whatever page or account or channel or whatever. It's the future already, and everyone is a star.

J    

3 23

* The Great Satan & the Value of Shame

 YT

We find our lessons where we can.  However unlikely.  Perhaps in the hamas terrorist tunnels?  The raping terrorists, one of them, comes into contact with his, what, inner child?  Well, he would have been raised in kindergartens and Sunday schools, but of curse make that Friday schools, where the teaching tales told about killing Jews.  I remember from when I was six, Zacchaeus Was a Very Little Man. Our hypothetical transformed terrorist would have sung of a tree that called out for the beheading of the jew, hiding behind it.  Ah well, different strokes.  

I hold out this foolish fond hope, of reclaiming humanity, because such a thing is not, not entirely, without precedence.  So, dear friends, draw nearer and attend to my tale...

Once upon a time, long long ago, why, you were just a child! -- some monsters came creeping and lurching out of their tunnels and attacked women and children at a shopping mall!       

Yeah, I'll shift voices now.  

Precisely 10 years ago masked islamist terrorists ... but I repeat myself ... took over a shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya. These masked heroes of Allah let the moslems go, and of course kept and killed the Westerners.  Nearly 200 wounded. 67 killed.  

All these guns, always killing people.  But to be fair it's not guns that kill, it's bullets.  Or do I mean gunpowder.  But really it's insufficiently bulletproof skin that gets people killed. And necks, that are too easy to chop.

Well.  It's just more of the same, one after the other, if we edit out the boring bits of the news.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.  Just the human comedy.

But wait.  No, it seems I'm wrong.  Something unusual did indeed happen.  During that African time of evil and dull terror, one of the monsters shot a woman, English woman.  In front of the eyes of her six year old daughter, and four year old son.  Well that's nothing unusual.  What's unusual is what followed.  The little boy stepped in front of his fallen mother and his sister, and faced the gun-toting islamist terrorist, and said, “You’re a bad man! Let us leave!”

The way a very little boy would say it.  

This, in itself, makes my heart swell with pain and with love.  And the moslem islamist terrorist must for that moment have seen the child before him.  And the terrorist follower of Mohammad then said to the little English boy, “Please forgive me.  We are not monsters.”  Then, the islamist terrorist gave the child a Mars bar, and allowed the family, wounded mother too, to get away from their hostage-taking terrorist murdering moslem captors.  The moslem terrorist instructed the mother that she must convert to Islam, which of course the American media informs us is religion of peace.  

What lessons shall we learn, from this.  Well, itr might be that there is hardly any human heart so totally depraved that it cannot respond humanly to a child's purity. I expect it hardly ever happens, that monsters act human -- it is permissible and therefore common in the moslem east to sodomize children, per the islamist Ayatollah Khomeini, in his Little Green Book.

But it happened here, a faint stirring of humanity in the corrupt heart of a moslem monster. We must be deeply thankful for such a thing, so rich in meaning.

Here's a picture of the little boy, and his sister, and

the Mars bar, I think.

Yes, Mars bar.  Two, in fact.  Windfall.  One for the sister?  How thoughtful.

I wonder if they will ever be eaten.  Sell them on Ebay?  Give them to the Smithsonian, or the UN? The black museum?  Probably eaten, kids being kids.  I wonder if a Mars bar has enough tensile strength to pull an islamist moslem terrorist out of the Lake of Fire in Hell.  Life line. 

The media did not report that it was two, TWO Mars bars. Is this breaking news? After a decade? You heard it hear first. Typical Western Anti-islam bias at work, no doubt. 

We'll just let it go unnoticed, that anonymous dead body in the center of the frame, perhaps, what, 5 feet away from the children?  

Is that blood on the little boy's shirt?  I love New York too.

The Ayatollah, mentioned by me just a few short seconds ago, he famously said the United States was Shaytân-e Bozorg, the Great Satan.  Israel was the Little.  

Huh.  It is not Satans, big nor small, that we have to concern ourselves with. It's not guns either.  It's individual people -- nowadays, disproportionately, moslem islamist terrorists, Hamas most currently but that's just a detail.  People, I say, because the only monsters that there are, are people.

These islamist moslem monsters were  Americans. Three of them. Somali-Minnesotans,  American born, teenagers, radicalized somehow and given airfare.  Maybe they saved up, from their paper route money, or their drug-dealer money, or by selling their food stamps for under the counter cash.  Or a Go Fund Me.

I have to wonder if anyone who needs to think of themselves as Hyphenated-American is any kind of American at all.  I will accept Constitutional-American. 

Opposed to those Satan-American teens who acted out in African malls, shoplifting Mars bars and littering and whatnot.  Or just this week, where a teacher had to barricade herself in a classroom because she supported Israel.  From a  pro-palestinian student mob.  

It's all too stupid for words.  

We're in a concentration camp.  We find a daisy in a dunghill, and find the hope to continue on for a while longer. For a moment, a monster was not a monster. He remembered the "american" part of his hyphenated- identity.  Terrorist-american.  

Shall we think of it as Evolution?  What about the moments that follow?  Life is not a daisy chain.  No one can say what life is.  It's too stupid for words.       

Islam is just islam.  Like america is just america.  It does not have to be controlled by scum.  

That little 4 year old boy, had perfect communication.  He identified the problem, and gave the solution.  "You are a bad man.  Let us leave."  

J

* The Racism of Winning

YT

I was trying to think of who wins.  But more interesting is who is doomed.  The american aboriginals, "indians" or "native" "americans", were doomed.  The europeans were as numerous as the leaves of the trees, per Sitting Bull after Custer was sent to his own place. 

The Central Powers of WWI had a chance, Germany etc, but they/it was/were central because they, yes they were surrounded.  Custer eventually, finally learned that being surrounded is bad. The Allies, us, need not have had any natural affinity -- no compelling shared self-interest.  Which of these things, allies is like the others: Russian, um, Portuguese, British colingualists (yes, that is a word ... now)?  It's arbitrary.

The Aztecs, so called, were a conquering minority oppressive warrior imperial aristocracy.  So, fitting forefatherx of the racist La Raza Supremacists, MEChA -- their vulture logo is holding dynamite.  I wish we could hear more about that, from biden and his minions -- he can continue calling all conservatives "White Supremacists", because some ignorance is invincible.  But open it up a little, Joe, inclusiveness -- like the way Hell and america have expanded their borders.  Boarders pay.  'Minion', from French mignon, meaning darling or lover, and earlier dainty or gentle -- cf 'fillet mignon'.  

Words mean more than they mean, but they mean what they mean.  So I am a native american. I am not aboriginal, a word that sounds hard, but it's easy.  Original.  Not that any surviving aboriginal is authentic.  Virtually everyone is here, wherever, because they have displaced someone previous.  Corporately, that is, as in corporate guilt.  We hear too much about guilt, and not enough about shame.

Remember (as if you ever heard of it) the genocidal Bantu expansion further south in Africa.  Reduced the Khoisan peoples into mere clicky freakshow hottentot Bushmen.  The gods must be crazy.  Survival of the fittest, though.  To the victors go the spoils.  But will African Americans pay reparations to the peoples their ancestors enslaved and exterminated?  Just saying. 

Try to cancel me.  Bitches.

The supposedly aboriginal Clovis culture -- 12,700-13,400 years before present (BP) -- did it ... absorbed, displace and exterminated.  They evicted, replaced, appropriated any number of earlier oppressed minorities.  Who? Which? -- Well, paleontology does not acknowlege individual personalities, but, speaking Hemispherically (like some obedient critically racist theoreticians), the evil racist Clovis culture monsters exterminated (what else?) ancient authentic cultures from perhaps 14k to almost 50k years ago.

• Cueva Fell (Chile)  12k-14k BP,  
• Paisley Caves (Oregon)  14.3k BP,  
• Buttermilk Creek complex (Texas)  15.5k BP,  
• Meadowcroft Rockshelter (Pennsylvania) 16k-19k BP,  
• Cactus Hill (Virginia) and the 
•    Topper site (South Carolina)  16k-20k BP, 
• Monte Verde (Chile)  18.5k BP, 
• White Sands (New Mexico)  21k - 23k BP,  
• Pedra Furada hearths (Brazil)  32k-48k BP

Are these sites significant?  Sometimes it's just a very few artifacts.  But under the next stone might be found the treasures of Atlantis or Lemuria or Mu.  It's like cockroaches.  If you see one, you know there are unseen thousands. 

Are these dates real?  As real as assumption allows.  There's inevitably major controversy in this fascinating but minor discipline, because the field worker who uncovers the oldest artifacts gets a sort of limited fame, textbook fame, news-byte fame, and the previous record-holding scholar is going to object.  It's not objective, it's competitive, ego plus plausibility.  This sort of truth is not about reality -- it's about consistency.  

Point is, there's always someone who came before.  Sometimes that's an advantage, and sometimes it's a genocide.  Do not take my dogmatic assertion as gospel.  An easy read is, say, the Book of Joshua.  God orders multiple genocides.  Don't even need to read about it though.  The Flood -- all the human race wiped out, almost.  On purpose.  That's the universe we live in, and the God who made it, and allowed it to Fall. Don't complain about it, and don't lie.  Redeem it, in your own life ... that's the second part of the Book

If first, the first to set foot on the soil, if that really mattered, Antarctica would be Russian and the moon would be American.  Except that any number of hapless mariners will have been cast upon the frigid shelves and floes of the utmost antipodes.  Cretans and Phoenicians and Vikings and Polynesians and Odysseuses and Saint Brendans -- the empire of castaways.  As for the moon, everyone knows the nazis got there first. 

 

The Jews didn't prevail -- they persevered.  The fact that there were always new oppressors simply means that the previous oppressors faded away.  So there it is.  Outlasting is the same as winning.  

J

* Extinckoreneous, or, Gays for Gaza

YT

I'm having a lot of promiscuous sex nowadays, unprotected of course.  It's part my Occupy Wall Street revival -- you don't hear much about it anymore, but that's cool cuz I'm totally diverse and all that shiz. I love to join. I'm a joiner.  Inclusive.  

I don't always keep my membership cards up to date, and sometimes it's honorary, and this is only a partial list, but in no  particular order, I'm a past or  current member of  

Occupy

AntiFa  

NARAL  (National Abortion Rights Abortion Lovers) 

SLA   slash 

   BLM (BLaMe)

MEChA

Media Matters

Shining Path  

Rainbow Coalition

Black Panthers

Wobblies

MeToo

Church of Satan 

California State Assembly

ISIS

MoveOn 

Baader-Meinhof Gang

Red Brigade

NAMBLA

Weather Underground

People for the American Way

Khmer Rouge

DNC

Gang of Five

Wokianty Now

I like the ones that are more than one word but pushed together and with capitals.  MeToo, MoveOn.

We've not found a good acronym. But we'll underline it with ClimateChange! -- maybe SaveThePlanet!

Oh I forgot … the Anti-Jew Majority -- but we're not sure about the name.  All the good ones are taken … antisemites, pro-palistinian, Nazi…  

We're looking at 

Gays for Gaza!

Homos for Hamas!

Panzies for Palestine!

Tranz for Terror!

Queers for al Qaeda  (heh, a BLAST from the past!)!

And … uh, I'm just spitballing here, um, Lezbos for ... uh, um ... 

Lesbollahs for Hezbollah!

Yeah, that's good.  

So with Occupy, all that sex I'm having is to dramatize how the Bankers want to screw us all. Also, I don't bathe, to demonstrate how dirty they all are. And I'm using a buttload of drugs, to demonstrate their greed and lack of self control.

I defecate publicly -- that's just me ... sometimes I don't even drop my pants -- or when I'm in a toilet for some reason there's no need to flush, cuz I do it on the floor. I never buy anything from the store, cuz capitalism is evil. I just  shoplift, to share the wealth, and it's reparations.  I am owed, because my ancestors built the roman coliseum as slaves.

My "gig" is to recite spontaneous poetry, accompanied by mandolin and bongos, while specifically asexuals  dance with scarves. Here, let me make one up now, totally extempore.

Ooooh 

woooooooo!

Hugahfuhbuh

hugahfuhbuh hugahfuhbuh

hugahfuhbuh

flap!

Oh u man wit duh big briefs ... case --

think ur so macho but u ain't the shiz!

Bulging in ur pants like that all

beefy

&

bulging

but nobodyz looking at u hot cakes

&

ur money don't make u no man!

Big man! Dat

BULGE

itz in duh back!

uv ur pants!

U carryun a wad all rite ...

of shiz!!!

HUGAH  FUHBUH!!! FLAP!!!!!!!!!

Thank you. Thank you very much. 

I call it Wad Man, no, Wad Street Man, yeah. To symbolize how phallocentric they are, and how they want us to live in the streets. I think I'll submit it to the New York Review of Books. I was a  Gender Studies Poetry Major, before I dropped out because Major is so militaristic and homophobic.

Oh, another poem:

Occupy Movement!

Occupy ur moment!

ur street

ur sheet

ur bowel movement

ur toilet moment

ur tp role

ur single-ply street!

Write on the wall, street!

Right on! Rite on! Write one ply

ply ur trades

all day

triple play

okay no way

in ur tie and ur brief

brief

double cross

case!

Thank you. Thank you very much. That one was in danger of actually becoming good, so I had to stop.

But that obama, he was the bess prez ev, and biden too!

Now excuse me while I shiz.

---

[60 years and 3 days ago, JFK was murdered, subcatagory, assassinated.]

---

H

* Blink

YT

Monsieur le Docteur Joseph-Ignace Guillotin did not invent that instrument which bears his name. Such devices had been in use in Europe for two centuries. But the times being what they were, some such mechanized expedient was called for. Or perhaps the contraption's excellence cried out for use -- a better mousetrap and all that.

There would be much to recommend such a device. Avoid a reprise of the Mary, Queen of Scots debacle, whose neck took three great whacks and still she didn't lose her head -- the discomfited headsman had to saw through the last bits of integument with his hip knife before the job was quite done. How embarrassing for him. 

During the interim between the first and the second chops, the poor former queen loosed such a wrenching and protracted groan that the crowd, usually intoxicated in such festive circumstances with blood lust, gaped in horrified silence. So, then -- live and learn, eh?

But what about these heads? Does consciousness survive for some brief moments within the disembodied -- or would it be disbodied -- head? Anecdotal evidence abounds. The heads of two National Assembly rivals were placed into a sack -- when later removed, one had bitten into the cheek of the other so deeply it could not be pried off. The executioner of Charlotte Corday -- who murdered Jean-Paul Marat -- held up her severed head and slapped its cheek; witnesses claimed the face blushed and looked indignant. 

A soldier who witnessed the decapitation of a friend in a 1989 auto accident relates how the head opened and closed its mouth several times, taking on an expression of shock or confusion, then of terror or grief; its eyes moved from the soldier, to its separated body, then back to the soldier -- direct eye contact, then hazy, then absent and dead.

Which brings to mind the report of Dr. Beaurieux, who, staid man of science that he was, resolved one early summer morning in 1905 to settle once and for all the question of whether a severed head retains for any appreciable time some measure of consciousness, and if so, for how long.

Observe, then, condemned murderer Henri Languille, who mounts with notable sangfroid the scaffold to kneel beneath the blade. 

Next, consider his severed head, which fortuitously lands stump-down on the neck, thus perfectly oriented for observation. The doctor notes the eyelids working in irregular contractions for five seconds or so, then they are still and half-closed, the face relaxed. The doctor calls out sharply, "Languille!" The eyelids lift slowly and smoothly, as an awakening, and the eyes focus very definitely upon the doctor's -- clearly, undeniably living. A pause of several seconds, and then the eyes close again. One might almost hear a sigh. Again the doctor cries out, "Languille!" -- and again, smoothly, slowly, the eyelids lift and the eyes fix on the doctor's, with perhaps even more intelligence than the first time. Then a drooping of lids, a fading, a third calling of the name, Languille! but there is no response, and the eyes are glazed, empty, gone. Thirty seconds have passed.

The issue is murky, though. No fewer than three physicians attended the 1879 beheading of one Theotime Prunier, amenable to their end if not his own. The triumverate of medicos immediately snatched up the head and shouted in the face, stuck it with pins, placed ammonia under the nose and candle flames in the eyeballs. No response but a look of astonishment on Prunier's visage, which need have no special significance -- slack jaw and gawking eyes would be expected.

All of it need mean nothing. Two severed heads in a bag need not have been snarling and snapping at each other; one might have been placed sometime after the other, but immediately after its own severing -- and the bite a mere spasmodic reflex. A severed head's cheek might well blush, because blushing is certainly dependent upon capillary blood, but not necessarily upon vascular bloodflow: slaps cause redness.

Expressions of shock or of horror are instinctive and universal to the human condition -- perhaps they have no more meaning than the galvanic twitching of frog legs. Eyes widen at a loud sound -- as it happens in this case, the loud calling of a name. Yes. It may all be true, and at the same time meaningless.

The very idea is absurd, that a severed head should be alive. It takes eight seconds to choke a man into unconsciousness -- as I, the third most dangerous middle-aged man west of the Mississippi, ought to know. A severed head can have no blood pressure whatsoever, so one might think that unconsciousness, if not death, must be instantaneous.

But upon deeper reflection, the oxygen that is present, remains present -- it doesn't just remove itself along with the body. Capillaries do not drain themselves in a great Niagara of gore. So we might expect something like eight seconds of consciousness. Further, what effect does having one's entire body mass instantly reduced to some 10 pounds have on the metabolic rate of oxygen usage? Perhaps when the brain doesn't have to think about running the body, it uses less oxygen. 

And it may be that the concept of consciousness and unconsciousness -- lucidity and dreaming -- takes on an almost incomprehensible meaning, upon the shocking loss of one's bodily appendage. We know the spirit lingers -- heart stoppage isn't death, anymore.

Ah well. It's all speculation. That is, the speculation is speculation. The observations are what they are: phenomena translated into neural impulses within the brain, to manifest eventually as expressions of opinion.

So? Do I have a point? No. I could drag the islamists into it, what with their holy sacrament of beheading infidels and insufficiently subservient women. I could make some bitter correlation between aborted fetuses and still-conscious but not-legally-human-anymore severed heads. I could make it a metaphor for loss and mourning. I could try to blame God for it all. 

 But sometime I just like to chat, share a little of the odd things that have collected in my brain. You know -- the way buddies just talk to each other, sometimes. Let's call this one of those times. Okay? Pal? Because we have voices. We can communicate with each other, in complex ways, with more than just blinking. So that we can know for sure that we're alive.


J

10 8

*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