Horror and Politics

I've had an interest in horror fiction probably since about 12, when I read The Hobbit and encountered Gollum. Probably even before that, if you count the folk tales my parents read me as a little kid (folk tales - misnamed "fairy tales - are almost all horror stories - think "Cinderella" and "Snow White," or for that matter, Lord of the Rings or 1984 or Brave New World or Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies - novels read in my middle-school classes).

Since art imitates life, there is horror in life (the purpose of civilization and culture and science and technology is to get rid of that horror as much as possible).

If there was no horror in life there would be no horror stories.

The archetype of the horror story is always the same: Good attacked by Evil, Order attacked by Chaos, always by human monsters (even if disguised as something else) possessed by the demon of Hubris/Pride/the Monstrous Self. (Stephen King, in his Danse Macabre called it the Apollonian attacked by the Dionysian, which, mythologically, is inaccurate).

You can apply the archetype of the horror story to just about everything, including politics.

Politics is always based on perceiving your opponents as evil. That's why those who are horrified by Trump see him as a Nazi and a fascist who is also a racist and a sexist - a monster! It's also why those who oppose Clinton see her as the Hildabeast - a career criminal who is utterly corrupt and a pathological liar - another monster!

I actually don't believe in "evil, not in the usual sense. Most people who use the word evil" use it in the conventional sense since they are unable to analyze what it really means - the Monstrous Self and its various manifestations such as murder. (By the way, the word "sin" comes from the archery word "hamartia," which means "to miss the mark," which is why in the more accurate translations of the New Testament Jesus talks about "You have missed the mark" instead of "You have sinned," just as the more accurate translation of "repent" is "change your heart and mind").

If you want to believe in Good and Evil it would be a continuum and not just either/or, which is the way it is in folk tales. Little kids only understand things as either good or evil, which is why folk tales take the form they do.

Life doesn't take that form. It is never either/or when it comes to good and bad.

Propaganda, unfortunately, is always based on Good attacked by Evil. That's why Dubya Shrub said "We were attacked for our goodness" by the "Evil ones," I get the impression he was dumb enough to really believe it (the imbecile bragged he didn't "do nuance" and should be dictator).

I see "government" as a good thing (anarchists are completely clueless about things getting better if all government was gone). When it goes beyond protecting "life, liberty and property" or the right to pursue happiness) it turns into the State, which just keeps expanding like the Blob (which of course was a horror film).

When it expands it destroy all those intermediate institutions such as family and church (which is why the ministers during the founding of this country wanted government to stay out of religion - they knew it corrupted it).

As for the Manosphere, it exists as a reaction against the State-sponsored monster known as feminism. And if marriage and the birth of babies is disappearing, you can blame it on the interference of the State. It's happened in the past many times.

Monsters are actually "offences against the natural order." Strangely enough, they sometimes can be benign, like Frankenstein, whose problem that he was ostracized and attacked and humiliated and so sought revenge, which always happens - it's an attempt to replace shame with pride.

The State isn't a benign monster. It also creates monsters though ostracism and humiliation of people (think of "Dead White Males") and interference in their lives.

Not at all surprisingly, monsters create monsters. The interference of the State in society will always do that. And then those monsters seek revenge, although they see it as justice.

A Cartoonist and an Unknown Blogger

"Thus imperceptively the man of words undermines established institutions, discredits those in power, weakens prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and sets the stage for the rise of a mass movement." - Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

I can think of two people who predicted Trump's landslide victory - the cartoonist Scott Adams. And me. That fat leftist slob Michael Moore predicted it but not as a landslide - and he whined he wanted the Hildabeast to win (and even was fruitlessly trying to think of ways to overturn the election, which leftists and the Mainstream Media are going to try non-stop for the next four years).

I'm sure there were others but I don't know who they are. I think Baloo might have been one - and he is a well-known cartoonist (he's on my blogroll as "Ex Army." Scott Adams is on it too.).

I mean, what the hell? A cartoonist called it and all those pollsters were wrong? A guy who draws funny cartoons about Dilbert and Dogbert and Ratbert and Catbert beat all those "professional" pollsters? That is actually very funny.

I think this is a case of what Ezra Pound wrote: "The artist is the antenna of the race."

Adams is an artist - he writes and draws and has published several books (I have some of them).

None of the pollsters or anyone in the MSM who called it wrong is an artist - or even has artistic pretensions. They're just talking heads.

When I was in college I took a Rorschach test for a class. It was a lot more accurate than I thought it would be. The tester looked at me when we were done and asked, "Are you an artist?" No, I answered, I just have an interest in it.

I suppose I am an odd sort - both rational and artistic (I'm more intuitive than anything else than seek the facts to see if I'm right. If not then I change my mind.). At least I'm not like the left-wing artists I know - completely nuts. Not to mention overrated.

I am reminded of the late Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind and Enemies of the Permanent Things, who also wrote some very creative and very good horror fiction ("conservatism" does lend itself to horror stories since it's about Chaos attacking Order or Evil attacking Good - you can even call it Left attacking the Right).

All the Nazi bigwigs had artistic pretensions, but none of them had any talent (Hitler wanted to be an architect). They were third-raters. In other words they were politicians. They lack intelligence, humor and sensitivity.

Eric Hoffer, in his The True Believer, wrote about the creative and non-creative "men of words," and the trouble caused by the non-creative.

The MSM is populated by non-creative men of words who think they are smarter and more moral than everyone else. That's the problem with them.

They're superficial and self-righteous. They have no depth. All they are is talk, talk, talk - and rarely do these Chattering Classes say anything worthwhile. They're entertainment, nothing else. Sometimes, even bad entertainment.

Most of the younger people I know don't watch the Mainstream Media at all. They get their news on their smartphones, mostly watching podcasts or reading blogs. Advertising is moving toward these "alternative" news outlets.

I'm no longer sure what keeps the MSM going. I doubt it's advertising, not anymore.

On Carrie Fisher

I never liked Carrie Fisher as an actress. I thought Princess Leia wasn't funny and was abrasive and unfeminine. And there wasn't any chemistry at all between her and Harrison Ford.

But in real life Carrie was very witty and smart - and I've always been attracted to smart,witty women. Her being bipolar didn't bother me - much (I actually had a girlfriend once who was schizophrenic, and as long as she on her medication she was often very funny, although she really had no filters to speak of).

I'm sure I would have adored Carrie if I knew her. From a distance, of course (when you're that nutty relationships never work out - and I know that from personal experience).

I've never read any of her books, although some day I'll get around to it.

The first time I heard her interviewed was on the Diane Rehm show, in which she talked about her father, Eddie Fisher, "consoling" Elizabeth Taylor with "his penis." That one made me snicker.

And she also had a French bulldog as a pet (Robin Williams had a pug, the only dogs I've ever owned. Pugs are the comedians of the dog world, with the Frenchies in second place, although both are notorious for catastrophic gaseous emissions.).

A French bulldog, smart, witty...oh my. Good thing I never met her. I would have fallen right on the spot. Not that I would have ever stood a chance.

I once fell in love with a woman who turned out to be bipolar - and she was smart and witty. I have no idea why I'm like this except like is attracted to like. So I figure I'm not wrapped all that tight myself.

I've also found people with no sense of humor to some of the scariest people in the world. Along with people who don't like dogs. All of them also stupid, which is also a scary thing.

Words Are the Most Powerful Drug Known

Rudyard Kipling said that. And he would have known (I still have a paperback copy of his The Mark of the Beast and Other Stories - which I'd had since I was 12). He knew of which he wrote.

I also have a copy of Mein Kampf, which I was never able to finish except for the part on propaganda. Hitler was half-insane, half-genius, but he understood the power of words.

Advertising, propaganda, the news - all of it is an attempt to influence people by words.

Trump won because of words. "Make America great again." What did the other Republican candidates or Hillary Clinton offer? Nothing. Just insults like "Basket of deplorables." What moron wrote that for her? (When she said that I finally knew beyond all doubt she was going to lose.)

I have been intrigued by words my entire life. When I was about four I found a pencil and began scribbling on a piece of paper. I asked my father if any of them looked like words. He said one looked like "deer" (or maybe "dear). I was astonished. I remember that just as clear as can be.

I ended up as a newspaper reporter then editor, then left the field because most of my bosses (except one) were morons. Most newspaper stories are just filler around the ads. And selling ads is how newspaper make their money.

I much prefer this blog, which maybe nets me $150 a year. Which is fine with me. It keeps me in cigars (I had one woman tell me to stop blowing cigar smoke at the computer screen on Skype).

How people ended up being so influenced by words is beyond me. I know it has to do with telling stories, which is why I write so much about folk tales (misnamed "fairy tales" and myths.

People will always fall for stories, for good and bad.

We no longer have any common stories for this country. Instead we have at least two different cultures, and the the stories of those two different cultures determines how people vote (I guarantee you anyone who is a fan of "Law and Order" voted for Trump).

"Oprah"? Voted for Clinton.

I was 20 years old when the first Star Wars movie came out. It was a lot of fun but I was puzzled as to why it was such a huge hit. Then I found out it was based on the work of Joseph Campbell, the famous mythologist. Stories!

The United States (indeed the entire West) was founded on the stories of Christianity. It still has a powerful influence. The myths of the Greeks and Romans are pretty much gone. The influence of non-Christian stories (Judaism and Islam) has been a catastrophe for the West.

People always seek three things - meaning, importance and community. Anyone who can tap into those three things, by the power of words, can end up as President. Which is what Trump did. And until the Democrats can tap into those things they will always remain a coastal party appealing only to the stories of anti-American Third Worlders.

The Corruption of Religion by Government

"There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a flagrant ursupation." - James Madison

Has not everyone heard of the phrase about the phrase about the separation of government and religion? It's actually not law but is from a letter by Thomas Jefferson, written I think in 1802. Many people think it's in Constitution.

The Founding Fathers knew their history. I can't emphasize that enough. They, and the religious leaders of their time, just didn't want religion to stay out of government, but for government to stay out of religion. Because they knew that each corrupted the other.

They had the whole of European - indeed world - history before them and were very familiar with bloody religious wars. They wanted to avoid all that.

It was only religious fanatics who started wars and then the sheeple went along with it. Who today has not heard some lunatic preacher claim HIV or 9-11 was God's judgment on us? Or that Jesus is going to come back with blood and iron and genocide? Think of those nutty "Left Behind" novels. These people are insane.

Hardly any of the Founding Fathers were religious in the conventional sense. Most were Deists, which doesn't even exist anymore. Thomas Jefferson thought the history of Christianity had been nothing fanaticism and mass murder and corruption and bloodshed and was not a fan of it at all.

Fortunately religious fanaticism has bypassed the United States. I almost never meet any fanatics. The last one, whom by father hired as a carpenter, thought the Pope had sent assassins to kill him because he was exposing "the truth" about the Catholic church - and he used to call Catholic churches and get the priests to admit they trying to kill him. And he wouldn't shut up at work until my father yelled at him.

I haven't seen him for decades. I don't even know if the loon is still alive. If he is I hope he never has children.

Now that I think about it, the first fanatic I met was in college when I was 20. Everyone called him Mad Max, because he ranted and raved in the commons, called women whores, referred to himself as a "living saint," and was fired as a college instructor in mathematics because he wouldn't stop preaching in class.

Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote the essential Democracy in America, was quite impressed by the religious feelings of Americans and how they wanted government to stay out of religion.

We're actually involved in some religious wars with our support of the blasphemous anti-Christian, anti-American state of Israel, and our meddling in the Islamic world. There has been war in that region of the world for 4000 years and we're not going to put an end to it no matter what we do.

This is what happens when you mix politics and religion, and ignoring what the Founding Fathers advised us.

I Wonder If Trump Has His Own Intelligence Service And Files On People

"He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty!" - Luke 1:52-53

I certainly would. Apparently J.Edgar Hoover did, which is why no one could remove him. He knew too much.

I was wondering why Trump had dinner with Mitt Romney. I wondered if Trump was really considering him for a position or just screwing with the backstabber. Apparently he was just screwing with never-worked-day-in-his-day rich boy (at first I was thinking of that old saying, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer").

The same with Newt Gingrich. I don't think either Newt or Mitt will ever have a position in Trump's administration. Both are politicians, and Trump has been hiring military people and businessmen.

Gingrich is especially vile. He's had multiple divorces and adulteries, and divorced his first wife in the hospital after she had cancer surgery - and she put him though college. He once said one wife wasn't "pretty enough to be the wife of the President" (talk about self-delusion if he thought he ever stood a chance to be President).

Gingrich's rational, reasonable demeanor on TV is an act and a con, just the way Hillary Clinton's is, as was Duyba Shrub's (who went to Harvard and Yale and is a war-mongering Massachusetts Yankee) attempt to portray himself as a conservative Texan decked out as a clown in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat (he has no business wearing either).

I don't trust politicians at all. Apparently Trump doesn't either. I consider both Romney and Gingrich to be fair weather friends. Gingrich saw which way the wind was blowing and tried to run to the front of the parade - which is the defining characteristic of politicians.

And after what Romney said about Trump did he really think Trump would either forgive or trust him? I sure as hell wouldn't.

Trump reminds me a bit of Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose party. That one was anti-corporation and anti-Robber Baron - and corporations and Robber Barons is what we have today with the One Percent trying to get even wealthier and trying to crush the middle-class out of existence.

I'm sure the "elites" are horrified by Trump trying to drain the swamp vermin of their money and power. If I was one of them I sure would be.

The Intellectual Virtues are More Important than the Moral Virtues

The church fathers, such as Thomas Aquinas, put the intellectual virtues above the moral virtues - including chastity (which is not the same thing as celibacy). These were smart men and they had a lot of experience with human nature (which is why Donald Trump's comment about "grab her by the pussy" is merely adolescent bad taste and nothing else).

My experience has confirmed their observations. Think of the old saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Most of the "evil" in the world is not done by actual malice, but by those with good intentions gone awry.

Those who do things for "moral" reasons generally are self-righteous, and those who are self-righteous always think they are right. That means they think those who disagree with them are always wrong. Sometimes that means they believe you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, which include people's lives.

Thomas Sowell once wrote a book called, The Vision of the Anointed. His thesis was that those who think they are anointed think they are so intellectually and morally superior to the unwashed masses to they think this gives them the right to rule them and move them around like chess pieces. But more than anything else, they think they are more moral than everyone else.

In reality they are neither smarter nor more "moral" than anyone else. These days these people are called "leftists." Such people lack humility, which more than anything else means knowing your limitations.

People who don't know their limitations suffer from Hubris, or Pride, or what Russell Kirk called "the Monstrous Self." Call it what you want, but it is the worst sin of all and is the basis of all the rest such as envy, greed and gluttony. At their worst they end up as Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler, all of whom were intellectual mediocrities but thought they were more moral than everyone else.

All of them were authoritarians but lacked true authority.

Because these people think they are "godless self-gods" they usually are atheists and in fact hate religion and would like to eradicate it (think of Barak Obama claiming the unwashed masses are "clinging to their guns and religion" - and he meant the inbred hillbilly Nazis in Flyover Land).

Does anyone really believe that Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama or either Bushes are smarter than they are? It really is true - anyone can be President. No matter how ignorant and stupid and destructive.

Martin Luther once called the world "the Devil's Inn" and the Bible clearly states this world is ruled by Satan, who is always walking to and fro up and down in the world and obviously having a damned good time doing it.