I have mentioned I went to high school with a kid, the year before me, who was killed in the invasion of Grenada when a hailstorm of Cuban bullets went through the window of the helicopter he was piloting and landed in his face. But at least he died on the spot. He left a wife and two daughters – now adults – who of course never met him.
The worst wounded soldier that I ever met had been walking across a rice paddy in Vietnam when a bullet severed his spine. Right across the back of his neck. Had it missed him by an inch he would have been just fine. Maybe even less than an inch.
Had he fallen forward he would have drowned. Instead he fell backwards and survived. He was 19 years old. I remember thinking if he wondered, “Just what the hell happened to me?”
This talking head spent the next 30 years lying on back in his parent’s home, being turned like a hamburger patty to prevent bedsores, before he died of pneumonia in a VA hospital at age 49.
Speaking of VA hospitals, I have been to them several times. I saw several guys there paralyzed from the waist down in Vietnam, out in the sunshine in their wheelchairs and on stretchers – and younger ones from Iraq and Afghanistan. I never saw the men hidden in the back wards (one of my friend’s mother used to visit them and he told me what she told him) – some of them didn’t have faces and some no arms and legs (these used to be called “basket cases”). I can’t imagine being a nurse in a place like that. How can anyone get used to something like that?
Amazing – sort of – what advanced combat medicine can do these days. Used to be, other soldiers would shoot other horribly wounded soldiers and put them out of their misery. How’s that for a permanent memory? – shooting another soldier because you can’t get any treatment for him. Not that in many cases treatment would have done any good.
The worst wounded soldier I read about from Iraq was a 19-year-old who was shot
point-blank head in the back of the head by an Iraqi soldier – one of those “allies” that the stupid are protesting should be let into the country. He ended up paralyzed from the neck down, blind, and unable to talk. He can hear just fine, though. If he still alive he’s spending his “life” in his bedroom in his parents’ home.
It was about 10 years ago I read about him.
I once saw of picture of Denzel Washington, with a look of great compassion on his face, talking to a woman (I could tell it was a woman because of her long blonde wig) whose face was a mass of burned tissue – from her service in either Afghanistan or Iraq. I remember thinking, “There goes marriage, husband, children, family, happiness.”
Chickenhawk cowards say these guys “made the ultimate sacrifice.” But it apparently doesn’t occur to them these guys have parents and wives and friends and children that have to spend the rest of their lives with these tragedies.
Such tragedies aren’t linear. They spread out like a concrete block thrown in a pond. That’s why they affect so many people.
If I had the ability I’d have all the Chickenhawks switch places with these wounded soldiers so they would be whole again (too bad it can’t be 100,000 made whole for one coward). Then the Chickenhawks can make “the ultimate sacrifice.” I’d have them switch places with Dubya Shrub, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle – none of whom volunteered for Vietnam even though they were the perfect ages to serve. They were plenty good at starting unnecessary wars, though.
Of course none of them would agree to this switch. Others are supposed to be horribly wounded and have no life to speak of – not these arrogant cowards.
”One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” - Old saying
”Political power is the game of playing God.”The Thousand Year War, Richard Maybury
”The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have as little political connection as possible.” - George Washington, 1776
The United States was founded on political and military non-intervention in any other county's affairs (before the U.S. got involved in WWII there was a famous organization called “America First” - sound familiar these days?). All the Founding Fathers had wisely advised this. They knew history in great detail. Engage in trade with other countries but nothing else. It worked just fine for about 150 years – until the U.S. got involved in 1898 in the “Spanish-American” war (which came about because the U.S. had a warship in a harbor in Cuba.). That’s when the American empire started – the one scheduled to collapse someday, as all empires have collapsed, almost always in massive death and destruction and societal and governmental collapse).
Want to fix our problems in the Middle East? The answer is simple. Withdraw our troops from over there completely (Chickenhawks who delude themselves we should stay there and murder/get murdered are invited to get their fat, lazy, cowardly asses over there and put their money where their mouth is).
The Muslim world used to consider the United States its friend/ally until we started
supporting the blasphemous, anti-Christian, anti-American state of Israel (which is a temporary country created in 1948) - which has the most spies of any country in the United States, some of which have been executed for treason and others imprisoned for decades for spying/stealing secrets (and almost all of Israel’s land was stolen from Arabs – imagine that! Jews stealing.).
Trump has not only cut off immigration from Muslim countries (he should include Saudi Arabia, which attacked us on 9-11) but is instead letting in persecuted Christians (this is a Christian country, no matter what lies Muslims and Jews and others tell - and there are very good reasons Jews have been expelled over 100 times from the countries that were stupid enough to let them in – and always for the same reasons: stealing, lying, spying, treason. Even U.S. Grant tried to expel them from his jurisdiction during the War between the States – for attempting to make shekels from treason.).
World War I was just another European war in a very long line of them and none of the U.S.'s business (Thomas Jefferson correctly called Europe “nations of eternal war”). The fact we got involved and screwed it up horribly led to the rise of Hitler (who originally was praised by Churchill and FDR) and the Nazis and the genocidal atheist Jewish Bolshevists in Russia. And we know to where that led – which we are still paying for today).
We aren't going to change the Muslim world and impose the Leftist delusion of democracy on it (or anything else) - which was something the Jew spies and traitors in Shub's administration confidently claimed (one said they would be “singing songs” about us instead of killing and maiming us as they are now doing).
The solution is simple: withdraw from the Muslim world and stop supporting Israel. Let no more Muslims come to the U.S. and deport the trouble-makers. And let no more Jews in the U.S. either (Jews have supplied more spies and traitors to the U.S. than all other ethnic groups combined).
There has been religious wars in the Middle East for 4000 years – and that’s not a war the U.S. can win unless it kills everyone, which we are not going to do. Can’t do. As far as I'm concerned Jews and Muslims can kill each other to their heart's content - over there. Remember - Satan is "walking to and fro and up and down" this earth. And supporting one Satanic religion against another Satanic religion isn't going to work at all. Can Satan throw out Satan?
Problem solved! But that was too easy for an incompetent, cowardly, bullying self-deluded, left-wing messianic nutcase like Shrub (who has been the only dynamic grave digger of the United States in the 21st Century) and his equally cowardly, incompetent and moronic "advisors." All were in thrall to their Monstrous Selves – which meant none of them in their arrogance and self-delusion knew their limitations and lacked wisdom and common sense.
I hope to God Trump has more sense than the moronic Shrub – and thank God the Bush Crime Family has been utterly repudiated by the American people. Fortunately, Trump has been putting America first - so far (which is something the never-worked-a-day-in–his-life, born rich dim-bulb globalist Shrub never did). Like all people intoxicated by political power (which is the power to turn people into corpses) the coward and weakling Dubya couldn’t handle the responsibility (which he said God handed to him). It’s why he’s already gone down in history as a catastrophic President – and has already been forgotten by the American people.
Trump should start closing down the American empire (he correctly called NATO “obsolete”) – and let the nations of “eternal war” support themselves militarily). All empires collapse anyway – which is something the Founding Fathers were well aware of. We can either withdraw or in the long-run collapse. That’s the history of the world, without exception.
No Muslims in the U.S. - no terrorism. No American troops over there - no terrorism. And with no more murdering and otherwise humiliating the Muslim world – no more revenge from them. Anyone who doesn’t recognize this simple truth isn’t just a historical ignoramus – they’re stupid.
”Not a place on earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but trade with them.” - Thomas Paine, 1776
”Never has so much arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it in their interests to go to war.” - Thomas Jefferson
”Political power corrupts both the morals and judgment.” - Richard Maybury
I used to read a lot of science fiction between the ages of 12 and 14. One very famous story I
read at the age of 12 was "Call Him Lord" by the now-late Gordon R. Dickson.
Before I go any further I will also point out I was raised on the wrong side of the tracks and saw
quite a few bad things.
Dickson's story was about a young man who was destined to be Emperor of the Galaxy but had
to undergo a test to determine his suitability. He had to go on a trip on horseback with a man
whose family had always administered these tests - which were about the tester just observing
the boy's behavior in whatever situations he happened to encounter.
The boy in question, who might have been maybe 20, fails these tests. He starts a fight then
runs. But that wasn't the problem, not really. There were other things he did. It turns out he was a bully. At the end he tries, while drunk, to
pull a pistol on the man testing him and the man sticks a knife in his heart. He tells the boy's
instructor what the boy's failing was: "Lord, he was a coward."
It wasn't so much his cowardly behavior but the fact he was a bully. And all bullies are
cowards. And in the mind of a bully and a coward it’s always someone else’s fault – never theirs.
Probably not two weeks after I read this story I was at school in the gym locker room. There was a
bully in there named Don. Don had no sense at all. He had been picking on a wrester
named Phil, who at the age of 12 was about 5'4". But being a wrester he was fit and in shape.
Phil finally got tired of this idiot Don giving him a hard time - so he beat him up in the locker room.
I saw it. Wham, wham, wham, wham with his fists - and Don collapsed completely in about five
seconds. "Stop hitting me! You kicked my ass!" His voice was trembling in terror.
Don was a bully and a coward.
Not more than another two weeks after that I was in the boy's restroom was when about four boys
came in. One of them was a boy named Greg, and he was a catastrophe. Very thick glasses that
made his eyes fuzzy, mousy hair, walked with his mouth open, scrawny, bad posture.
Another kid followed him in there with a big cocky grin on his face. Apparently he had been
picking on this genetic catastrophe Greg and thought he was going to easily beat him up. Hence the
big cocky grin.
The fight didn't even last ten seconds. Greg got this clown in a headlock and tried to pull
his face over the top of his head with one hand made into a claw. The bully collapsed completely. "You kicked my ass! I give
up! Stop hitting me!"
He was a bully and a coward.
I've seen a lot of fights since then and have never seen an exception to the observation
that bullies are cowards. As Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) told Wilmer the Gunsel (a
tiny man who carried two huge .45s to make up for his tininess) in The Maltese Falcon: "the cheaper the punk the gaudier
the patter."
So when I saw Shrub howling on TV, "Bring it on!" and collapsing in insecurity when a
reporter spoke French in front of him I knew about all doubt he was a bully and a coward.
Especially since he avoided volunteering for Vietnam, as did another coward, Donald Rumsfeld,
who told the troops (who were complaining about their poor armor), "You go to war not
with the army you want but the army you have." (So much for the Chickenhawks who used to
tell me we had the "best-equipped, best-trained military").
Shub's entire administration was full of cowards - Cheney, Rumsfeld, him, Paul Wolfowitz,
Richard Perle, Douglas Feith. I thought, "My God, an administration full of bullies and cowards!
They have no sense at all! These wars are going to be complete catastrophes!" (For example, the Wahabis who flew the planes on 9-11 were almost all Saudi Arabians – and Wahabism is from Saudi Arabia and funded by the government. So Shrub and his administrations attack Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia?)
Guess what - I was right. Because I'm an expert on bullies and cowards and can identify them pretty
damn fast.
Amazing what you can learn from someone else’s experience, isn't that? Thank you, Gordon R.
Dickson. After all, art imitates life!
It's obvious that not only was Obama and his destructive policies completely repudiated, but also the massively destructive policies of the anti-American, globalist, leftist RINO Bush Crime Family. That’s why Jeb!’s candidacy was utterly destroyed by the people who rejected him – and no Bush will ever hold political office again. And thank God for that. The American people are tired of them and the death and destruction they have wrought on this country – although it has greatly benefited them financially (they have been involved in business for decades with the bin Ladin family, which is why Shrub flew them out of the U.S. back to Saudi Arabia the after day after 9-11…when all other planes were grounded. Even though the FBI protested since they knew we were attacked on 9-11 by Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan, not Iraq, and wanted to interrogate the bin Ladin family).
Obama didn't do anything but go on vacation and improve his golf game. But at least he was not a messianic nutcase like the incompetent, brain-damaged (from his 20 years of alcoholism) Dubya Shrub. Who I'm sure still thinks God chose this blasphemer to be President. Did he think he was/is the equal of Jesus, who this loon said was his “favorite philosopher”?
Trump isn’t an enigma to me. He’s a patriot and puts America first, which neither
Obama or Shrub ever was or ever did. His talking about “grabbing them by the pussy” is irrelevant except to obese, unattractive leftist “feminists”…the ones who supported rapist Bill Clinton no matter what he did.
Trump at least changes his mind when he’s wrong. I wonder what’s he going to do when he realizes he’s not going to be able to rid the world of Islamic terrorism? Perhaps it might happen when we stop supporting the blasphemous anti-Christian, anti-American state of Israel (which has spies all over the U.S.) – which was when our problems with the Muslim world started.
What happens in the Middle East – where there has been war for the last 4000 years – is none of the U.S. government’s business. I don’t give a goddamn what sand kaffirs do to each other – or the sheep they take turns fucking (which I saw on an attack helicopter’s video) or the young boys they love to sodomize so much. As long as they do it over there.
Whatever we do over there will fail – the way it has without exception for the last 15 years…and long before that.
As I’ve said before, Satan is walking to and fro up and down the earth – and only the completely self¬-deluded think we can stop it.
You can’t change someone’s culture and religion. Many people would rather die and they will kill anyone who humiliates them by trying to destroy their way of life. Turnabout’s fair play, right? That’s a law of life.
What we need, more than anything else, is to have no Muslims in the United States. Europe is learning the hard way when they let these rapists and murderers in.
Anyone who thinks we can rid the world of Islamic terrorism is invited to get their cowardly chickenhawk asses over there and fight. But they never will. Chickenhawks can only run their mouths and have nothing to back it up. Like all cowards, they have no honor or bravery, just cowardice and self-deception.
No Muslims in the U.S. – no terrorism here. It’s as simple as that. And when Islamic immigration to the U.S. is cut off it won’t be temporarily. It will be permanent.
The U.S. is an empire of military bases. And all empires have fallen, without any exceptions. The same thing is going to happen to us. Anyone who thinks it won’t happen is an utter historical ignoramus. We can either withdraw voluntarily or be forced out.
I expect Trump to start withdrawing militarily from the world. That’s why he said NATO was “obsolete.” It is – and let Europe defend itself and stop sucking on our tit. He’s putting America first, the way he’s starting to do economically.
Trump has done more good in a week than Obama or Shrub did in eight years each.
Sixteen years of clusterfucks! We've been involved in the Middle East longer than we were involved in WWI, WII and Korea combined! My God, enough is enough!
One good thing about all those fat ugly leftist/feminist women protesting against Trump is that they are finally getting some exercise. If they keep it up for the next eight years they should finally lose a lot of weight, which should make them happier. At least I hope so.
Women are much unhappier now than in the past. You can blame a lot of that on them being infected by feminist ideology, even if they don’t know they are infected.
I saw some of the protesting women interviewed on TV. Too bad it’s impossible to delete some images from your brains. Fat (or scrawny, sometimes) and unattractive is not a good memory. And such memories are for life.
The first feminist I ever met was in my first semester in college, when I was barely 18 years old. She was overweight, unattractive and loud in class (I remember the instructor told her she was going to “die horny”). As the years went by I realized almost all of them were like her.
The only attractive feminist I know about is Gloria Steinem - and she's nuts. She always has been. Most of them instead looked like the late, monstrous Betty Friedan (who somehow managed to marry a wealthy man and have children, which made her a gigantic hypocrite, as all leftists – in her case, a Stalinist – are. She also wrote The Feminine Mystique while living in a mansion on the Hudson River, attended by housemaids.).
I get the impression - in fact I know - that these women lack love and sex and family and happiness – which they can only get from a man. That's the problem. Some of them have probably never been laid in their lives. A vibrator doesn’t count.
I've said before everyone seeks meaning, importance and community. If a woman is denied love, husband, family and children because she is hostile/overweight/unattractive then she has to find those qualities somewhere else. Like protesting with a group of like-minded women – her “family” - against the “racist, sexist” Trump (Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn correctly defined Leftism as based on “the murder of the Father”).
Spinsters cause a lot of problems. In fact it was spinsters who put Hitler in office (almost all the men voted against him). Hitler purposely targeted such women for propaganda – and it worked! That’s because most women are ruled by their feels, not their reason.
I've said before women shouldn't be allowed to vote unless they are married and have children.
I once wrote an article about how such women should get free plastic surgery, which drew a lot of comments. If this surgery was successful it would save us a hell of a lot of problems. In fact, every woman who has ever verbally attacked me has been unattractive – mostly overweight with thick, unattractive features. The attractive ones I’ve never had a problem with.
Leftism is based on envy and hate. So, if there were no ugly, fat (or scrawny) women, envious and hateful of better-looking women, then there might not be much feminism.
L.P. Hartley once wrote a novel titled Facial Justice, in which all women were required by law to get plastic surgery so they all looked alike. Envious, hate-filled, unattractive feminists would settle for that – if all women were brought down to look like them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is a good reason the “serpent,” (actually
nachash), which is a symbol of envy, in the story of the Garden targeted a woman.
When I was a kid all of us ended up believing to use God's name in vain was to say "Goddamn." Even then it didn't make any sense to me. How we were taught that I don’t remember.
Years later I encountered the correct translation: to use God's name in vain causes. Example: in WWII Germans went to battle wearing belt buckles with "Gott mit uns" on them. That magic talisman didn’t work. It never does and never will.
There are several lessons to the story of the Garden of Eden. One of them is going from unconsciousness to consciousness of good and evil. And from innocence to experience of good and evil. That particular problem obviously runs back thousands of years.
In the last "Starship Troopers" movie it ends with the comment, "God exists. He's on our side. He wants us to win!" Lots of people in many countries believe that.
It has never worked and, again, never will.
Almost all tribes have named themselves “the People” or “All Humans.” The ancient Greeks called the Mediterranean “the Middle Sea” - the middle of the world - and the Chinese called China “the Middle Kingdom.” They believed the gods were on their side and in fact founded their countries and cultures.
The last time the American government used God's name for vain causes was when the primitive mind of the coward and
mass murderer/serial killer/war criminal Dubya Shrub (he said he “didn’t do nuance”, which means he saw things as a narcissistic either all-good or all-bad, which is a very bad thing) started two completely unnecessary wars, both of which as still going on after 15 years. And there’s no end to them in sight.
The self-deluded Shrub was convinced God chose this born-rich loser (who failed at every one of his business adventures) to be President. As I've mentioned before, this is blasphemy. And of course it's using God's name for vain causes!
Innocence to experience? Shrub, Dickless Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were, and are, as innocent as apples of real good and real evil. None of them even knows that the source of evil is Biblical Pride (the Greek Hubris) or my favorite definition - "the Monstrous Self."
The Monstrous Self has no conscience. It’s interested only in power, domination and control. It’s only loyalty is to itself. Other people are just things to be sacrificed to feed the Monstrous Self (human sacrifice, especially war, is always a fertility rite).
Unconsciousness to consciousness? Even now, all are innocent and unconscious
of real good and real evil.
I actually know more about good and evil than anything else, which is why I write about it a lot. I have mentioned that decades ago I briefly met a young woman, about 23, who perhaps two days later was strangled by a serial killer, who not only graduated from the same university I did, but lived not too far from where I lived. Altogether he might have strangled seven women, perhaps more. He won't come clean about it even though serving life in prison. He enjoys the power he has to jerk around the authorities, the way this conscienceless sadistic psychopath enjoyed the power of murdering those teenage women.
I also met and talked to a mother whose two daughters were raped and thrown off a bridge over the Mississippi River (the story is far too long to tell here). Only
one body was found (we used to party on that deserted bridge in high school – several hundred of us).
I also was raised with a family down the street (their two sons were my friends, both of them now dead, one from alcoholism and one from AIDS), whose younger, insane daughter stuck a
knife in her baby's head and killed it (she's now in a locked mental institution for life).
These things are why I talk about Satan "walking to and fro and up and down the earth" and
having a damned good time doing it. And the only Satan I’ve ever encountered is in the hearts of people.
These things have been going on for me my entire life. I have no idea why (what I’ve written about is but a fraction of what I’ve seen).
You think I'd be cynical, but I'm not.
There is such a thing as being conscious of what good and evil are and going beyond it to what you might
call an "experienced innocence." To regain your innocence in the midst of this valley of woe – “to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”
I think perhaps someone like J.R.R. Tolkien had done it. After all, everything he wrote was
about the conflict between good and evil (think The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy), yet he was a happy man. He had regained his innocence. (By the way, C.S. Lewis, one of Tolkien’s friends, suggested evil was just “bent” good. Tolkien’s Gollum, for example, started life as the hobbit Smeagol but was seduced by the power of his “precious” ring. And as I’ve said before, power intoxicates and immunity corrupts.)
Some people never lose their innocence. That's not a good thing. These people, when they gain
political power, are the ones who wreck the world with wars and chaos – and think they are doing good things (hence the saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”).
In reality they've never gone
beyond their childish Monstrous Self – they’ve never grown up. In fact, they revel in their Monstrous Selves and its effects on the world. And they never
give a thought to what they've done. More accurately, they rationalize it as a good thing! (This is why I say lying to your self is one of the easiest things in the world.)
I’ve thought for a long time the best way to understand Adam and Eve is to think of
them as being four years old – pointing to other people and yelling, “You made me do it!”
That’s the problem with humanity. Lots of people are about four years old – pointing to other people and yelling, “It’s your fault!” Innocent but self-deluded and
don’t even know it.
As Thomas Hobbes wrote, “The evil man is the child grown strong.” And it’s true.
"Warriors, mythologically, lift their swords to defend the king." - Iron John, Robert Bly
It didn't surprise me at all that the overwhelmingly majority of those protesting at the Trump inauguration were women (women should not be allowed to vote unless they are married and have children – which is ironical when you realize how many of these unattractive childless women are obsessed with Trump and other Presidents “keeping his hands off my ovaries.” which is a cliche with these women). The few men protesting, well, they’re just manginas.
These women of course are Leftists, and Leftism is feminine. The bad feminine, actually. And Leftists always want to destroy just about everything – and the worst of them believe in Chaos, which is a Hell on earth. The late Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn understood what Leftism is based on: he said it is about "the murder of the Father." The archetypal Father, meaning patriarchy in whatever form (there have never been any matriarchies, contrary to the hallucinations of the invincibly ignorant).
The humorist P.J. made the comment (and it's a true one): "Without men civilization would last until the next oil change" (I have never seen a woman who is even capable of changing a tire). Leftist women think they can maintain civilization, which is amusing because they can’t.
Carl Jung, whom I have quoted before, said women are biologically indispensable because they have the babies and men are culturally indispensable because they created/discovered/invented/maintain everything.
I know some women who attended Trump's inauguration. They said they were "feminists," although none of them have a clue as to what it really means. Not at all surprisingly they weren't very attractive (imagine that!) and of course weren't married and didn’t have children.
Protesting with others is how they get their meaning and importance and community in life. That fact their protesting does no good whatsoever is not the point, although somehow, they seem to think they can effect some change, somehow.
Mythologically speaking, Trump is a king (some have referred to him as "an emperor"). And if those who believe he is somewhat of a mythological king then they also believe he is trying to do a sacred thing in trying to make this country a better place. That’s the power of mythology.
By the way, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn also said a monarchy was more “erotic” in the ancient Greek sense, which meant love, why why I think Trump is really is a patriot. And he’s not going to quit, which is something Leftists desperately hope.
The Mainstream Media, which is Leftist, is never going leave him alone for the next eight years. And to quote Kuehnelt-Leddihn again, Leftists have no honor and lie all the time, which is true of the media. And of course, one of the easiest things in the world is to lie to your self – and people who do it don’t even know they are doing it. They think they are defending the truth instead of lies (Satan is referred to as “the father of lies”).
The Mainstream Media will tell every lie they can get away with for the next eight years. They want to destroy Trump because is acts like the Father and, again, Leftists want to murder the Father. (I’ve also mentioned that Hillary Clinton is an Evil Queen wannabe – and thank God her political career is over. Mythologically she’s the Bad Mother, who wants to oppress and destroy men, as all Leftists want to do).
All this means Trump’s supporters are going to have to support him unceasingly. To
the hilt, you could say.
Amazing what you can learn from the study of mythology, isn’t it? After all, the stories are the distilled wisdom of the human race.
I first noticed the power of celebrity in high school, when I was a junior. Before that I realize now I had seen it but never noticed it.
In high school the only celebrities were the athletes. I occasionally used to go to football and basketball games and was impressed at the huge crowds cheering at the games. I still have a vivid memory of it – the crowds cheering wildly when a player scored.
Even today the biggest celebrities are the entertainers - actors and athletes. The media even asks them their opinions on things they know nothing about. Who in their right mind cares what George Clooney or Lebron James thinks about politics? Or anything else? If they weren’t celebrities no one would give a thought to any of their opinions.
One of the reasons Trump won is that he was far more of a successful celebrity than Hillary Clinton. The Mainstream Media has lost its power to make candidates into successful celebrities, the way they failed with Hillary - and it's driving them nuts. Very few people take them seriously anymore. They’ve lost their celebrity status and their influence.
Society organizes itself around celebrity. Perhaps it always has – think of all the Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses and other heroes of old, and of their portrayal in folk tales (it doesn’t surprise me at all that some people refer to Trump as “an emperor,” which is a version of a king).
Now as to why society does this I really don't know. I do know a lot of people imitated celebrities because they admired them (and even put them into stories as models to imitate), which they do even today. Imitating people means, “I want to be like them!”
Yet when someone becomes a celebrity some people try to destroy them. And they enjoy seeing them destroy themselves, the way Tiger Wood did.
I have mentioned such celebrities as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking and some of my posters have denigrated them. Since they are not celebrities themselves they are eaten up with envy (which they always deny) - and envy always wants to put people down (envy is just a greatly degraded form of admiration, and admiration is the benign form of envy). For example, when I was little my hero was Sean Connery as James Bond, who, as far as I am concerned, is still the best one – and he was supposed to be a hero. A mythological hero.
Celebrity is more about getting attention from other people than anything else. I assume it’s an attempt to seek happiness, what the Greeks called eudemonia (which I’ve written about before) i.e. well-being, which comes about through arête – excellence. And people can’t achieve excellence themselves at least want to watch people who have.
Nobody wants to be utterly ignored. That means not to be taken seriously at all. And everyone wants recognition and appreciation.
I’m sure in the past, now, and in the future, are people who said, “I’ll show them.” And even if they don’t articulate it, or aren’t even totally aware of it, it means to be successful – to be a celebrity.
If you want to want to understand someone all have you have do is know their values.
Some days ago I heard a man interviewed on the radio describe himself "first as a Christian, second as an American and third as a Democrat." Just like that I understood a lot about him. In one sentence!
In a sense, values come first before anything else. A person's values determine their behavior. If you know their values you can often predict their behavior.
Some years ago I saw Kinky Friedman, the musician and author, describe himself first as "a Texan and second as a Jew." He was dressed as the stereotypical Texan - black cowboy hat, black clothes, a string tie and cowboy boots. I smiled over that one (I didn't see his pants but I figured he was wearing black denim).
I have described myself to people a "liberal conservative radical." That says a lot about me. All my friends are the same way - and people hang out with people who share the same values. To quote an Aesop's Fable, "Equals make the best friends."
Everyone seeks meaning, importance and community - and those are values. It's why I and many other people knew that groups of leftists - a community - were going to engage in violent protests at the Trump inauguration. It's how they get meaning and importance in their lives.
I once met a man who entire head was covered with colorful tattoos (he had to shave his head every day). I figured he was pretty much nuts (I also wondered if he had any friends). I also wondered how he got meaning and importance out of what he had done to himself. Attention, maybe?
I’ve always been amused by people like the “evolutionist” Richard Dawkins, who
says there is no meaning to life, yet he gets his meaning and importance from
saying those things in public and refuses to debate anyone who disagrees with him
because he doesn’t want them part of his community.
I’ve also mentioned I knew a rabidly anti-Catholic loon who thought the Pope had
sent had assassins to kill him to stop him from writing a book exposing the
Catholic church and used to call churches to get the priests admit they
were trying to rub him out. And he used to try to convert people to his beliefs so he
would have a community.
If you understand how people seek meaning, importance and community through their values then you understand them. Even the fanatics and the nuts.
Back during Reagan's second term I was a newspaper reporter and got an assignment
to interview a woman (whom I never met and interviewed over the phone) who had written
a novel (self-published, or course) about how horrible Reagan was and how he was
going to outlaw abortion and put women back in the kitchen and also start WWIII.
Even then I knew the woman was immensely self-deluded. I thought, "Just how dumb is this woman?" And I
wasn't even a fan of Reagan.
Now I'm seeing on the news about how a bunch of people (mostly women, of course, many of whom are ruled by their feelings) who are going to
march in protests about the inauguration of Donald Trump. “200,000 people!” the
Mainstream Media blared. Maybe more like 2000 will be there.
These people of course are wasting their time. The only reason they're doing it is to
make themselves feel better. But then, liberals and leftists always do that.
Some years later after interviewing this goofball I read a book by Thomas Sowell called,
The Vision of the Anointed, about policy as "self-congratulation."
I'm sure all these people marching in these protests are congratulating themselves about
"standing up" to that "Nazi/fascist/sexist/racist" now in the White House.
Some people operate only on their feels, although they always delude themselves it's reason.
Not exactly. I actually believe what Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn wrote in
Leftism Revisited: every square inch of this world is continually
being claimed and reclaimed by God and Satan. By good and evil. By the constructive and destructive.
Again, it’s the archetype of the horror story – God attacked by Satan in an attempt to overthrow Him; good attacked by evil, order attacked by chaos. Always in an attempt to overthrow.
I've also been amused by the Biblical descriptions of Satan, such as when
God asks Satan where he has been, and he answers "walking to and fro up and down the earth." And I’m sure having a damned good time doing it (for the weak-minded there is something enthralling about evil – it makes them feel powerful and important, as a cover for their cowardice and insecurity).
Martin Luther also quite correctly called the earth "the Devil's Inn."
And then of course there's the scene where the Devil offers Jesus power over
"all the kingdoms" of the world" and he says, "Nope." Which means politics is of the Devil, which means politics can't solve anything because of the human race's Original Stupidity and instead usually makes thing worse. Sometimes, a lot worse. A lot, lot worse.
Because of this Original Stupidity and the fact Satan is
always "walking to and fro up and down the earth" – that’s the reason
wars will never stop. They will also never solve anything. After
all, how can Satan throw out Satan?
I actually don't believe in any Devil "out there." I've only seen "evil" in the
human heart - and there's plenty of it, enough to go all around the world. And around and around and around.
That arrogant weakling Dubya Shrub (who, like the other cowards in his administration, avoided Vietnam – Dickless Cheney, who took a bunch of deferments, said he had “other priorities” - even though they were the perfect age to serve), who had everything given to him and still failed at all of it, said Jesus was his "favorite philosopher," and also claimed that God had chosen him to be President (he also said he should be dictator). That's blasphemy, which is why Dubya was in thrall to Satan. The Satan in his own twisted, cowardly, murder-loving, alcoholic, cocaine-addled heart, which is why he started unnecessary two wars that led to the maiming and deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Wars that are still going after 15 years.
And I’m sure he enjoyed it immensely. It certainly raised this loser’s “self-esteem” - power! domination! control! grandiosity! - he ultimately sacrificed all those people to his own narcissistic self. Which are exactly the motivations of all serial killers.
Speaking of serial killers, I also ran across the
“walking and fro up and down the earth” description in Thomas Harris
novel, The Silence of the Lambs, in which the FBI agent
hunting serial killer Hannibal Lecter says bitterly, “Doctor Lecter has
to have his fun.”
Shrub was doing Satan's work, not God's. And I'm sure Dubya had a great time, just the way rapist/sexual predator/pervert Bill Clinton said he had "a great time" being President. And I’m sure a big dud like Barak Obama would have loved to run a third time (thank God it’s not allowed, although he would have lost to Trump) – the power and attention is just too alluring (look at the way the Bush Crime Family will not shut up about Donald Trump, who
exposed and destroyed them for the weak-minded leftist RINO fools they are. And in their weakness and powerlessness they can’t tolerate criticism from someone more powerful and more successful and better than they are, so in their envy of him they want to bring him down – especially after he utterly destroyed the inept Jeb!).
Power will do that to weaklings. They become intoxicated by it - power intoxicates and immunity corrupts.
Everyone seeks meaning and importance is their life. For the weak that can mean starting wars to prove their manhood, which is what the catastrophic LBJ did in Vietnam (he said he was afraid his critics would call him “chicken.” Whether or not this was before he pulled out his dick and said “This is why!” I don’t know.). Chris Hedges wrote a book, War is a Force That Gives
Us Meaning. Again, meaning, importance and community.
Shrub did something spectacular but evil. But then, the evil, who have no conscience, always want to do something grandiose and spectacular, no
matter how bad (which they always rationalize).
Every philosopher, every theologian, every thoughtful person, has located the problem in the person. The Greeks called it "Hubris," which they thought led to a kind of insanity which leads to Nemesis. The Bible calls it "Pride," meaning vainglory, which leads to destruction.
All these people have the characteristics of thinking they are godlike and beyond reproach or conscience or repentance.
St. Augustine, before he became a Christian, was a Manichee – there were two gods: a good one and an evil one. In some ways Christianity almost believes in the same thing, except Satan is beneath God and not coequal with him – which is an infinite distance.
I've mentioned before my favorite one is the definition Russell Kirk used to explain the source of all evil: "the Monstrous Self" – an envious self without love or remorse or guilt or gratitude, just the desire for attention and the power to conquer and destroy. And always for personal reasons…like saying God chose you to be President.
You can't get rid of the Monstrous Self with a club. In fact people who continually wield that club become ensorcelled by their own Monstrous Self, which has happened to the entire Bush Crime Family, not to mention Hillary Clinton (whom the childish Dubya foolishly and stupidly said he considered "his sister").
Dostoevsky said it best: "Tyranny...finally develops into a disease. The habit can...coarsen the very best man to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate...the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible."
"Repentance." That means to change your mind and heart, which Jesus said was the only cure. Nothing about using a club on innocent people, which leads to resentment and hate and the desire for revenge.
Humiliating people almost always – for all practical purpose, always – leads to the sometimes obsessive desire for revenge.
It never ends.
As Kurt Vonnegut Jr. wrote: "So it goes." And on and on and on, to and fro up and down the earth.
“Bok, bok, bok, bok” – the universal language that all Chickenhawks understand.
I've met several Chickenhawks in my life, and they're all the same: all they can do is run their mouths but they never, ever join the military. Everyone else is supposed to, though. They can only cheer and give directions from the sidelines. “Throw the ball here! Now throw it over there!”
I used to offer drive them down to the recruitment center but they never took me up on the offer. Cowards and losers, all of them. Terrified to join the military and get in the fight. They were all mouth.
In fact, the bigger the mouth the cheaper the punk.
When I was a teenager I read Gone With the Wind, which actually is a great novel. There were Chickenhawks portrayed in it by author Margaret Mitchell, ones were always ready to give loud unending advice about how the war should be run and what mistakes they were convinced the generals were making but they never, ever made their way to the front lines (or even the back lines, which would have made them REMFs). And since art imitates life…
It's very easy to give advice when sitting safely on the couch on their fat asses, far, far from any danger whatsoever.
The most dangerous men are the ones who don't threaten or just talk, talk, talk like the Talking Heads/Chattering Classes on TV.
I'm only concerned about men who do, not just talk. The ones who do nothing but run their mouths - I've always held them in utter contempt. There is nothing to them - all hat, no cattle. They’re like balloons – empty on the inside.
Big mouths but no balls. All of them.
I’ve occasionally wondered about the psychology of cowards. In every case I’ve found they are ashamed of themselves and so cover it up with narcissistic grandiosity. “Pride is shame’s cloak,” said William Blake.
Such people always want to replace their shame with pride, the way those who feel they have been
humiliated or their lives have not worked out, always want to do - which they delude themselves can be done by talking and pointing to other people to deflect attention from their cowardice – not by doing anything courageous themselves.
I went to high school with a kid who got killed in the invasion of Grenada. He was a helicopter pilot and enemy fire went straight through the window of his helicopter (I still have the yearbook with his picture it). He left a two-year-old daughter behind.
Another helicopter was filming his helicopter when it got hit, so I saw it spin out of control and go down on TV. I thought, “I just saw a kid I went to high school with get killed. Shot in the face.”
I also know a man who fought as a mercenary in the former Rhodesia. He told me one of the men in his platoon was bragging how he going to kick everyone asses in combat but when the first shots were fired he turned and ran straight back to camp without stopping.
Chickenhawks – who again are all cowards - rationalize this helicopter pilot’s death by saying “He made the ultimate sacrifice” – which is something they have no intention of doing.
We should take up a collection to buy these clowns a spine – and some testicles.
I've mentioned before I don't like politics – for some people it’s the meaning of their
lives (everyone seeks meaning, importance and community), but I am definitely not one
of them who seeks it in politics. Politics is based on all the candidates either
being Good or Evil. An angel or a demon.
That's why Trump's opponents see him as a bad man: a fascist, a Nazi, a
racist and a sexist (the Mainstream Media is going to do this non-stop for the next four
years). And God knows what else he's going to be portrayed as for his next eight years
in office (of course, as Hitler!).
It's also why Clinton's opponents see her as the Hildabeast. A criminal, utterly corrupt,
and a pathological liar (which she is, but I don't see her as evil, just a child
who throws temper tantrums).
I can't quite remember who said it: "The evil man is the child grown strong." It was
someone from hundreds of years ago. It might have been
Thomas Hobbes, who also said, "Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for
money.”
I guess all of the above is because of our inborn narcissism, which is the
tendency of all of us to split things into all-good and all-bad (it's why
the incompetent Dubya Shrub talked about "the evil ones" attacking us
"for our goodness," showing his complete cluelessness about it instead being a revenge
attack based on perceived humiliation – and those who feel they have been humiliated
almost always seek revenge, which is an attempt to replace shame with pride).
And then this clown started two unnecessary wars (a complete waste of lives and money) because Saddam Hussein (whom the
United States put in power and supported in his
war with Iran) was suddenly going to nuke the U.S. because he had suddenly turned into
a homicidal maniac! who was obsessed with attacking the
U.S. You know – because he was Hitler!, but then, everyone is
Hitler!
Shrub was a thousand times worse than Barak Obama, who did nothing but go on
vacation and improve
his golf game his entire time in office.
Wars can be started by portraying your "enemies" as monsters. In fact, they
are always portrayed as monsters slobbering to Kill&Main&Destroy. As George Orwell
wrote, “Every war when it comes,
or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a
homicidal maniac.”
Then of course opponents of the wars have to also be portrayed as monsters who want to
destroy the country.
"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." Joseph Goebbels, the
Nazi minister of propaganda said that.
Individuals can be rational and intelligent but when you get people in crowds - or
maybe mobs - the have no brains at all. It's just all feels - vacillating all the time - for
them. Childish feels.
Even Hitler! (that half-insane, half-genius master of propaganda) noticed that.
"Radical" actually means "returning to the root," although these days it means more along the
lines of a leftist who desires "radical changes" (the “neo-conservative” – which means
leftist - nitwit
David Horowitz wrote an autobiography called Radical Son). So if Trump really wants to "Make America great
again" it means returning to the roots that made America great in the first place: small government and political and
economic liberty.
Now to what extent he wants to do this I do not know. He looks to be a good start, but I sure
would like to see the Department of Education abolished. It doesn't look like he's going to
do that, although his pick for that post appears to want to return control to local bodies.
That reminds me. I had a troll who was claiming the Nazis (which means “National Socialist”) were "conservative." No, they
weren't. They were leftist, which means revolutionaries. Destroy the existing order and
replace it with something else. My God, Hitler wanted to wipe out Christianity as a "Jewish
religion."
In that sense Obama is a revolutionary because he apparently wanted to destroy the existing
order in the United States and replace it with his idiocies (that makes him closer to a Nazi - "National Socialist" - than
anything else). That's why he has no legacy and what he did do is
being spurned by Americans.
Also in that sense that buffoon Dubya Shrub was a leftist and revolutionary with his attempts to
destroy the existing order in other countries and replace it with the leftist delusion of
democracy (this makes him close to a Communist - "International Socialist"). That's why it didn't
work, as I predicted right from the beginning, and has in fact made things a lot worse over there.
It was Confucius who once said, "When words lose their meaning people lose their liberty." And
how true that is.
"Conservative" no longer means "conserving the best." Now it means "conserving the existing
order," which means conserving the power and money of the "elites."
"Liberal" doesn't even mean "liberal" anymore. It means "on my way to being a leftist."
How the hell did all of this happen? How did it evolve - or devolve - into these things? I don’t exactly understand how this happened. I’m not sure anyone knows.
I am not a "conservative," although the ignorant have accused me or being one. I am one in the
sense of "conserving the best." I am a liberal in the sense of wanting to change things for the better. I am also a radical in the sense of
"returning to the root" if it means returning to a good root.
Unfortunately there is no such ideology as a conservative liberal radical. But that's just about
what I am.
The late Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn once described himself as an “anarchist of the
far right.” That doesn’t even make any sense unless you read his Leftism
Revisited.
Simple descriptions of things never work. Unfortunately that’s what a lot of
people try to do.
The whole universe appears to be both static and dynamic. It also manifests itself
in politics and society and culture and people - to both conserve and change (everything changes). Unfortunately we
really don’t have the words to describe these things – except static and dynamic. It might be better than a better description than
using
conservative liberal radical to describe yourself.
"Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of
advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!” –
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
The first time I realized there was something wrong with the "Intelligence Community" was when they were claiming the Soviet Union was doing gangbusters economically and then the whole place just completely collapses and disappears. They missed it completely. That’s utter incompetence.
I thought, “Where are these morons from? Harvard? Yale? Princeton?” Schools that should be closed down (I call their graduates, such as C-student born-rich-never-worked-a-day-in-his-life-ran-from-volunteering-for-Vietnam Dubya and Donald Rumsfeld, “high-IQ idiots”).
The second time was when they claimed Saddam Hussein had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" and was going to nuke us in our beds (the only thing he had was some poison gas, and if poison gas in a Weapon of Mass Destruction then so is a machine gun or a 9mm or a car or a truck, as sand kaffirs have demonstrated more than once in Europe).
Saddam Hussein used poison gas on his own people (which is not my problem) and
if anyone thinks it is why did they not volunteer to be in the first wave to invade Iraq and Afghanistan? Why?
Because they’re chickenhawk cowards who think others should fight and die while they give advice from the sidelines. And such people will never, ever get in the game. That’s what having a big mouth and no balls does to people.
They only two things I need to know about a country are the GNP (for the former Iraq about one billion dollars a year, all from oil) and the mean IQ (for Iraq, about 89, which is four points above “moron”). And people that stupid and poor are going
to create nuclear weapons? Give me a break (we have smaller states like South Carolina which have bigger economies than Iraq).
I remember reading an article by Gregory Cochran (who is a well-known nuclear
physicist) pointing out in detail that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons. I thought, Why was the incompetent Dubya Shrub (contemptuously referred to as “Junior” by the men in his father’s administration) not listening to a man who knew what he was talking about (Shrub was a buffoon who had Jew cowards and traitors and warmongers like Douglas
Feith - whom U.S. General Tommy Franks called "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth," - Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz in his administration). He wasn't listening because he had already made up his dim-bulb
mind and was looking to rationalize it (he also said he didn't "do nuance" and should be dictator).
Almost all Presidents have been politicians - and we've had some terrible ones. Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Dubya Shrub, Barak Obama. Catastrophes all. None of them, of course, ever knew it (Dubya should be serving life in prison as a war criminal, in the cell next to rapist Bill Clinton).
I've pointed out before it's easier - a lot easier - to lie to yourself than to other people. It's one of the easiest things in the world to lie to yourself (such people are also very susceptible to believing lies others tell them).
Now they’re babbling about the Russians trying (and failing) to hack
U.S. elections. So what’s new? I’m sure everyone to trying to hack
everything in the U.S. – North Koreans, Chinese, Albanians, some fat
neckbeard slob in the “command center” in his parent’s basement.
Thank God Trump is not a politician. That's a huge plus for him. And he does appear to be draining the swamp, including the swamp of the "Intelligence Community."
"Intelligence Community"? Ha! That's an oxymoron if there ever was one.
All crises, wars, and propaganda have one thing in common: they are based on the archetype of the horror story.
As Stephen King noticed in his study of the horror story, Danse Macabre, all horror stories are based on the concept of Good attacked by Evil, of Order attacked by Chaos.
Lewis Bornheim, as quoted by Michael Crichton, has noted that “a crisis is a situation in which a previously tolerable set of circumstances is, suddenly, by the addition of another factor, rendered wholly intolerable.” The operative word here is “intolerable.” That’s what makes a crisis a horror story.
Two of the oldest horror stories in Western culture are God attacked by Satan, and Grendel attacking everyone until Beowulf put an end to him. Both are Good attacked by Evil; both were crises that were resolved.
All propaganda used by “the State” (which is nothing but several groups of people who have attained political power) is based on telling people that whatever crisis that exists can only be solved by giving them more money and power. It sometimes involves starting a war (and war is a horror story) through the use of propaganda.
One of the main characteristics of propaganda is demonizing or dehumanizing the enemy, i.e., claiming they are insane homicidal maniacs (and the power of these maniacs is always exaggerated until they become evil gods). In a word, monsters - horrors. Ones who wish to destroy and conquer, like Satan or Grendel.
Unfortunately, the “State” itself is a horror story, since, as many people have noticed, when the State expands, it absorbs or destroys everything in its path. It destroys Society. If you define the State as Evil, and Society as Good, then the State can be nothing but a horror story.
So what we have then, is the curious and very dangerous situation of the State (a horror story) using propaganda (based on the horror story) during a crisis (based on the horror story) to expand its power (making it even worse of a horror).
The problem is that many people do not see the State as a horror. They see it as the exact opposite – a good Daddy/Mommy to take care of them. In the past Americans had a clearer understanding of the State. These days many of them do not.
When you start with the way things are in political science, it then becomes a science, capable of predicting the future. Since the nature of the State is a horror, it can easily be predicted that when it expands its power and privilege though crisises and propaganda, Society will always suffer – which means the mass of people.
"No, no, no! It's impossible to exaggerate the formidable qualities of the Jew as an
enemy." - Adolf Hitler
It didn't surprise me at all that Trump's enemies refer to him as a fascist and Nazi and
racist and sexist - and an evil monster who is going to start a nuclear war! If you have enemies you
have to create an exaggerated evil profile of them (look how those evil powerful Russians interfered with
our elections and threw the election to Trump!). Just exaggerate how evil and monstrous they are
even if they're not evil and monstrous at all and watch how many people fall for it.
No one makes enemies of the Amish or the Salvation Army.
You can't make an enemy of someone who is weak or harmless. You have to turn them into an
evil, powerful monster hellbent on destroying you! It's the archetype of the horror story - good
attacked by evil!
I've met a couple of black men who think the Klan still exists and one blamed his failures in
life on them. I also knew a religious fanatic, rabidly anti-Catholic, who thought the Pope had sent
assassins to kill him because he was writing a book exposing the evil of the Church. He,
not surprisingly, was a loser. A demented one.
Look at the way some deluded people refer to Black-Run America (what are they going to
do when Obama leaves office?) or how some refer to ZOG (Zionist-Occupied Government)
or even believe Jews rule the world.
I suppose some people have to find someone to blame their problems on. It is, after all,
the first defense of children - projection, scapegoating, call it what you will. "All these problems
are your fault!"
I read an article recently how one woman didn't want to raise boys in "Trump's America." I
thought, good thing because you'd make a lousy mother anyway. Honestly, "Trump's America"?
What astonishing power Trump has to change the entire county so fast! And he's not
even President yet! And of course this crazy woman was blaming everything on him. "It's not my
fault! I'm innocent! It's someone else's fault!"
Remember the way that the dimbulb Duyba Shrub claimed Saddam Hussein had Weapons
of Mass Destruction and was going to nuke the U.S.? The fact that none of it was true is
irrelevant. Gotta exaggerate the evil qualities of some third-rate tinhorn dictator (whose
country had a GNP of one billion)! Claim he's
going to denonate an atomic bomb in the U.S. and you can start a war to rub out your
enemies before they rub you out!
Paranoia must be inborn in a lot of people. Just claim some monsters are after them and
just them throw hissy fits.
Good thing I have a conscience because if I didn't I could probably cause all kinds of trouble.
"Death is when the monsters get you." - Stephen King, Salem's Lot
I have pointed out before theologians of the past, who were for the most part
smarter and more experienced than people today, realized the theological values of
faith, hope and charity were the highest ones, followed by the intellectual virtues,
with the moral ones at the bottom. Including, as I have mentioned, chastity.
Not surprisingly, my experience has confirmed this ancient wisdom.
The worst people I have known have no faith or hope or charity (I've met people who've
told me they believe "only in me"). And some of them are very bright. Some of them pretty
much lack all the virtues. They lack the theological virtues, the intellectual ones, and the moral
ones. These people have made catastrophes of their lives and sometimes of other people's
lives.
I realized quite a while ago that a lot of propaganda is based on the three theological
virtues. Give people hope, have faith in them, be charitable to them - and they'll follow
you everywhere (even those virtues - and "virtue" means "powers of man" - can be used for
bad things, although charity - doing things for people while expecting nothing in
return - turns them into something good).
Eric Hoffer once wrote a famous book called The True Believer and he
often used the words "faith" and "hope" in it. This is how powerful those words are,
along with another word he used a lot - "change." And he wrote his book in 1951.
People who lack faith and hope and charity believe only in themselves. In fact
they'll sacrifice other people to themselves, to their advantage, even though it's no
advantage at all - it's just a fantasy in their minds.
I'll use a modern example. I knew that Trump was going to win because he gave people hope,
had faith in them, and exhibited charity toward them ("Make America great again"). Hillary Clinton
exhibited none of those traits - she called people "basket of deplorables" (and she's a smart
woman, which is why the theological virtues are above the intellectual ones).
I know it's counter-intuitive that the theological virtues are above the intellectual and
moral ones, but that's what the ancient wisdom tells us. And again my experience has
confirmed it (imagine a world of brilliant people with no faith or hope or charity - it'd be a
hell. And if they lacked the moral virtues it'd be the worst of hells).
People who exhibit all three levels of the virtues are the best people. People who lack those
virtues are selfish, lack sensitivity and have no sense of humor - and those are some of the
scariest people around. They can bring to the world the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
”Power arises only when authority breaks
down” - Power and Community,
Robert Nisbet
There is a curious scene in the Bible (among many curious scenes) that goes like this:
“The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, 'I will give you all their authority and splendor, it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.'
"Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'"
This scene, in Luke 4:5-8, makes it as clear that politics belongs to the Devil, who would have to be interested in
power over others. Political power, which is the power
to turn people into corpses.
The history of the world certainly backs up
that observation, especially since 177 to 200 million people were murdered during State-sponsored wars during the 20th century.
Clearly, politics, and the State, being of the Devil, are illegitimate authorities – power,
not authority. Yet, when Jesus came down from that mountain, he established himself as an authority.
What we're dealing with here are two kinds of "authority." The first, political, is based on force and coercion. It's illegitimate unless one is a real criminal and that means murder, theft and similar offenses.
That illegitimate political force, based on
power and coercion, is the kind Jesus rejected. The
second kind of authority is voluntary and based on
persuasion and the willing submission of the
person. That's legitimate.
Try as I might, I find nothing in the Bible where Jesus tried to force anyone to do anything. Basically he said, "Choose what you want to do...you have to change your hearts and minds willingly."
It's the difference between "I will try to change you, by force, from the outside in" [which never works] as compared to, "You choose to change yourself, from the inside out." (The U.S.
government has found that out the hard way with its
attempts to impose the left-wing blasphemy of “democracy
on Afghanistan and Iraq).
The late Erich Fromm got many things wrong (he thought Freud and Marx made sense) but he asked the right questions about "the human aspect for freedom, the longing for submission, and the lust for power."
Fromm nailed it right on the mark with those three things: freedom, submission, the lust for power.
Freedom is not something given to us by politics and the State; their essence is to make people submit. Liberty is freedom from the State.
Whence lays the "lust for power" of which Fromm wrote? Let's try this again: "I will give you all their authority and splendor, it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
Ever see the movie, 300? All that Xerxes really wanted was people to grovel at his feet and worship him.
The lust for power, obviously, is Satanic. Those with the lust for power (or what Nietzsche called "the will to power") gravitate straight toward the State. You don't have to look any further than Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler. All these little Satans went straight to the State, in hopes of controlling it.
There is another problem, though: the desire people have for submission. People have two paradoxical impulses: on one hand they want to be free, and on the other hand they want to submit to power.
Fromm had an answer to this desire to submit, as did Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and Dostoevsky.
Fromm wrote this, in his book Escape from
Freedom: "The person who gives up his individual self and becomes an automaton, identical with millions of other automatons around him, need not feel alone and anxious any more. But the price he pays, however, is high; it is the loss of his self."
Kuehnelt-Leddihn believed the same thing. In Leftism
Revisited he wrote: "viewed from a certain angle, we are all subject to two basic drives: identity and diversity." Identity he calls "a herd instinct, a strong feeling of community that regards another group with hostility." He said "identity and its drives tend to efface self, tend towards an 'usness' in which the ego becomes submerged."
In the famous "Grand Inquisitor" scene in The
Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky has the Inquisitor say, "For centuries...we have been wrestling with...freedom, but now it is ended and over for good." He was commenting on the fact that many people want to give up their freedom to power. The Inquisitor goes so far as to claim, "they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet."
It's also the basis for fascism, or Communism, or Nazism, or any other form of leftism. It's what Mussolini meant when he wrote, "everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State. In this sense Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State, the synthesis and unity of all values, interprets, develops and gives strength to the whole life of the people."
The Borg, anyone?
There is something in people that wants to submit, to give up their freedom, in hopes of giving up anxiety, in giving up fear. They want to be "safe," to be a cog, to return to the Garden of Eden, to have someone else take care of them and tell them what good and evil are (which frees them from
responsibility and indeed from freedom). Take a look at a televised political convention, for an example. They could fit into Leni Riefenstahl's film,
Triumph of the Will -
thousands of people, cogs all, lost in the delirium of a
crowd (Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn commented it was
a “multiplication of egoisms”).
Unfortunately, many today look to the State for that safety. The problem is that the State, being Satanic, isn't going to bring them safety. Ultimately it will bring them death and destruction. The opposite side of the welfare state at home is the warfare state abroad, in an ultimately hopeless attempt for "homeland security."
Lord Acton wrote that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I think a better saying is, "Power intoxicates, and immunity corrupts." Try reading
The Gulag Archipelago.
Dostoevsky had this to say about power, in his
The House of the Dead, "Tyranny...finally develops into a disease. The habit can...coarsen the very best man to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate...the return to human dignity, to repentance, to regeneration, becomes almost impossible."
On one hand, forced submission to the illegitimate State, and the Satanic lust for power that leads to tyranny, and on the other, voluntary submission to a legitimate authority.
The desire to submit to the illegitimate authority of the State is childish. It's the desire to be "taken care of." Children submit to their parents whether or not they want to they're forced to. In their case, it is for their own good. But adults? It's certainly not good for them.
Liberty is apparently a scary thing for some people, so they try to give it up as fast as they can, even though they don't know what they're doing. But, as Benjamin Franklin wrote, "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The history of the world has not always been a fight between freedom and slavery. It has also been a fight between forced submission to an illegitimate power, and voluntary submission to legitimate ones.
The Truth is larger than all of us. That is the legitimate authority to which all should voluntarily submit. The Truth, as the old saying goes, is that which will "set you free."
”The Children of Darkness are cleverer than
the Children of Light” - Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn,
Leftism Revisited
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.
"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.
