Robert Jacoby's Blog, page 2
September 7, 2019
Review of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency by Andrew McCarthy
Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency by Andrew C. McCarthyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Title: Oh, what a tangled web we weave...
Oh, what a tangled web we weave... And it takes us nearly 300 pages to get there.
Who knows if we'll ever get the real, unadulterated, and complete story about the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. But this book seems like an excellent start. Since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, the Trump-Russia narrative has grown to mythic proportions. Ask someone what they know about it, and you're likely to get a different story from every person you ask, depending on where they fall along the political spectrum, how closely they've followed the story, and what sources they're reading. That's a real shame, as the facts are the facts are the facts. And, boy, does Mr. McCarthy lay out the facts.
McCarthy is a former prosecutor and a meticulous journalist. His reporting here is of a very high quality. And he cites numerous investigative journalists who have done yeoman's work to bring the DNC-Deep State-Legacy Media-HRC conspiracies to light, including John Soloman, Peter Schweizer, Stephen Hayes, Thomas Joscelyn, Lee Smith, Sharyl Attkisson, and The Epoch Times, among many others.
The book covers the generalities of the story of what most people likely already know about the Russia collusion narrative spun by the DNC (HRC)-Legacy Media-Deep State triad: that the Obama administration weaponized its intelligence agencies to spy on the opposition party's presidential campaign; that high-ranking Obama officials (CIA Director Brennan, Deputy Director of FBI McCabe) routinely leaked intelligence material to a willing press; that Obama's DOJ and FBI concealed from the FISA court the fact that the Clinton campaign had funded the Steele dossier; and on and on. That's what most people already know. McCarthy digs deeper, though, and unearths and ties together pieces of the Trump-Russia narrative worthy of the best detective stories. You'll feel like you need a wall-sized board with multi-colored lines of yarn pinned and drawn to illustrate all of the connections. It's quite dizzying!
But, in the end, McCarthy brings clarity to the entire mess:
"Russia-gate in a nutshell: no rumor is ever dismissed because, when it comes to Trump, it is no longer the FBI's obligation to verify information; it is somehow the suspect's burden to show that the suspicions are wrong. And no one is ever exonerated because, when it comes to Trump, it is no longer the prosecution's burden to prove guilt; the accused must establish his innocence" (p. 258).
"The Trump-Russia investigation was conducted under the guise of counterintelligence, but it was always a criminal investigation--a probe of a suspected espionage conspiracy--for which investigators lacked an adequate factual predicate (p. 267). Read that quotation again. Now read it again. And now understand what the Trump-Russia narrative is; which is...it's a fiction. It's made up.
And: "...the Clinton campaign and the DNC used a law firm [Perkins Cole] as a cut-out to conceal their roles in generating anti-Trump research (possibly in violation of campaign finance disclosure requirements)" (p. 275).
If this is your first foray into the world of the Deep State, you are in for a rude awakening. It's like Alice in Wonderland here. Nobody in Washington is clean, it seems, and Swamp monsters abound. McCarthy carefully crafts the picture (sometimes in excruciating detail, because that's where the Devil is) of a rogue Obama administration doing whatever it wants to do to remain in power and (try to) ensure its continuity through its assumed predecessor administration (HRC). The details are welcome, because they're necessary; and I can forgive him the snark and snipes at Democrats because of their subterfuge.
Notice I didn't say "treason." The word "treason" is being thrown around a lot these days, and it really shouldn't be, because it devalues the seriousness of that word and the weight carried it with; after all, a charge of treason can bring with it the death penalty.
McCarthy does a great job of documenting his work, too. The most recent end note I saw was from May 2019, so it's very recently sourced. In other words, if you want to find out all there is to know about Russiagate, and by extension, spygate, and how the deep state operates, get this book, and read it soon.
Before you do, though, you should actually go see the Steele dossier for yourself (on documentcloud.org). It's a central piece of the Russia collusion narrative, after all, and if you haven't read it yourself, you need to do so now. It really is a startling piece of work to see. And I mean that literally: you actually see the pages on which the information is typed. Which makes the Russia narrative all the more a house of cards, because the Steele dossier looks like it was written by a high school sophomore as a 4chan prank. It reads in part like one, too. In McCarthy's words: "By any objective measure, the dossier is a shoddy piece of work; the stories are preposterous." (p. 155). Interestingly, McCarthy doesn't call it what it is until he's out of the chapter detailing the dossier; that is, the Steele dossier is a work of fiction.
It would have helped if McCarthy had dug a bit deeper below the surface stories. For example, he mentions a few times that the mainstream (Legacy/Operation Mockingbird) media doesn't do a good job of reporting on the scandals of the Obama administration, but he never says why. The "why?" comes in a multi-part answer, but it is well worth exploring, or you'll never fully grasp the magnitude of the problem here.
McCarthy details several scandals of the Obama administration, including Uranium One, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, Skolkovo, "Five Eyes" spying techniques, spying on the Trump campaign, the Iran deal; spying on U.S. citizens, foreign nationals, and the Senate Intelligence Committee; harassing and investigating political opponents (he mentions the IRS scandal, but fails to mention that the IRS was asking U.S. citizens about the content of their prayers--which is what the NAZIs did--so are Democrats NAZIs?); monitoring and intimidating journalists; and bullying state and local police departments. (But then he leaves out such high-cost/high-stake Obama scandals as Pigford and the Google Transparency Project. Perhaps McCarthy doesn't know about these?)
Other times he fails to dig deeper into the material he's presenting. For example, when he talks about how the Democrats didn't think Hillary could lose because of her strong polling numbers, he fails to mention that the polls were sometimes manipulated to get those results by over- and/or under-sampling voter populations. McCarthy also poo poos the idea that illegal voting took place in the 2016 presidential election, when, actually, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that voter fraud happened, and is still happening (interestingly, the U.S. is the only major nation that doesn't have a national voter ID law).
In other instances, it's curious to me why McCarthy skates over issues and events.
For example, he claims that Trump was caught off guard, time and again, during the Russia narrative debacle, but he never shares that Trump has always had his own private security and intelligence force, so it's highly unlikely that Trump ever was *really* and *truly* caught off guard; or that Trump has been an FBI informant since the early 1980s. Both interesting facts I'm sure McCarthy knows, but why not share it in your book when it's relevant information?
Another example, he gives a wink and a nod to HRC's involvement in Benghazi without providing key information, such as why the U.S. had a CIA annex not far from its State Department outpost in Benghazi, "the presence of which was never explained..." (p. 56). Really? That's an easy one. Just google "benghazi cia annex arms movement". There's your explanation right there. Why wouldn't McCarthy report this? Americans have a right to know what their tax dollars are supporting. Even more curious: McCarthy wrote an article in the National Review detailing this information, but it's not in his own book talking about this issue? Hmm...
Also, for me, McCarthy is too in love with the FBI. Time and again he writes how the FBI is an admirable institution, but I'm not seeing it. And in other instances, when officials in the Obama administration make official statements about such and such, McCarthy swallows them agreeably. Like when Clapper and Jeh Johnson announce they're "confident" the Russian Government hacked the emails. So, in McCarthy's mind, the FBI can be riddled with underhanded, treasonous people, but other parts of the Obama administration are not? In addition, Obama knew about this supposed Russian hack, but he did nothing about it. Why?
Speaking of the hack: McCarthy is dogged and determined to blame Russia. He does provide some counter theories, such as data analysis suggesting that the DNC emails were downloaded locally to a thumb drive (FAT Anomalies In Leaked DNC Emails Suggest Use Of Thumbdrive, DisobediantMedia.com, February 16, 2019.) McCarthy dismisses this theory outright, though. I have to say: the DNC staffer Seth Rich might disagree on the matter, if we could speak with him, but we can't, since he was murdered. On the streets of Washington, DC. Which is the most heavily surveilled city in the entire world. And his murder remains unsolved. And there's a Podesta email where Mr. Podesta writes: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." (Wikileaks email ID #36082) Hmm...
Curiously, McCarthy never discusses the contents of the hacked emails; but he does quote Obama saying that "there was not anything particularly illegal or controversial about" the emails. Very curious. Those people really do enjoy their spirit cooking and pasta and walnut sauce and pizza: "Hi John, The realtor found a handkerchief (I think it has a map that seems pizza-related. Is it yorus?" (Wikileaks email ID #32795)
So, the other thing McCarthy misses is the "why?" of the matter. Time and time again he drops into the text how high-level officials in the Obama administration hated Trump, abhorred Trump...but in the end one must really ask "why?" To me, their actions during the entire spygate scandal smacks of something much deeper. Much much deeper. Which I think we may catch glimpses of, soon.
The coming weeks and months will likely bring declas, which will show once and for all the wide-ranging treasonous activities of key players in the Obama administration, including former president Obama himself and Hillary Clinton. Maybe only then will it all come out, in multiple investigations, including those on the Russia narrative, Uranium One, illegal spying and deception of the FISA court system, illegal leaks to and collusion with Legacy Media, but also the Awan-DNC server matter, China's involvement and access to Hillary's classified emails, and more.
My sense is that there's a storm coming...
I loved it/It was amazing
5/5 Goodreads
5/5 Amazon
View all my reviews
August 31, 2019
Review of Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution by Mary Eberstadt
Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution by Mary EberstadtMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Title: (Brief) overview of (mostly) current societal problems with no (readily apparent) solutions
I came late to the party on this one (it was published in 2012), and I think I've learned my lesson from now on: reconsider reading a book on the social sciences that is more than, say, two years old. Our times are moving too fast. So, even at 7 years out, I find this work somewhat dated already.
I read this book immediately after reading Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones, and there are certain similarities. Jones and Eberstadt are both Catholic. Both sometimes wear their Catholicism on their sleeves as they write. (Jones more than Eberstadt.) Both drop Latin phrases here and there throughout, so have your laptop or mobile handy for translation services. Both assume much previous reading from their audience; Jones is much worse than Eberstadt in this regard; still, Eberstadt drops such names and terms as the Monyihan Report, Kant, Aquinas, the Anglican Church, Casti Connubii, blog posts and opinion pieces in the popular press, novels, movies, etc ec often providing little or no context. In other words, if you've never heard of the blog post, article, movie, or novel, you'll be lost. And, like Jones, Eberstadt could have used scripture to support her reasoning and arguments more effectively.
And then there's the title. Yes. The title. If you want to put off a majority of your readers at the outset, go for the jugular, is that it? Because most readers believe Adam and Eve is a fairy tale. A quaint fairy tale that pisses them off because of its many-layered ramifications for life, belief, faith (or lack thereof), relations between the two genders (if you still believe there are only two genders), and God (or lack thereof).
Setting all that aside, there's much to enjoy about the book. Eberstadt has done a real service, I think, by simply writing and publishing a book like this, to even question the validity of progressive ideals ("progress" = societal good; in this equation, "progress" generally means tearing down the perceived establishment). For example, for decades, and even today, the normal family unit (father-mother dyad with biologically conceived children) has been the target of feminist-marxist thought leaders and activists. And she does a very good job of collecting together and presenting popular and scientific thought on a variety of related topics (sex, porn, sex education, family structures) and what it all means for society. Mostly.
In some cases she stumbles.
For example, Eberstadt truly seems puzzled by the lack of logical thinking among progressives and The Left, often wondering aloud in the text why they see the bad results of the sexual revolution in front of their faces (in the form of the general lowering of moral standards in Western societies; a rise in infidelity; rise in fatherless homes and the subsequent rise in juvenile delinquency; a lessening of respect for women by men; coercive use of reproductive technologies by government) but yet seemingly don't recognize it. Solzhenitsyn drew the same parallels for leftists in the West who not only failed to see the degeneracy of communism staring them in the face but rather *embraced* it. The same applies today, and there's nothing puzzling about it, I think, unless you're unwilling to recognize it for yourself. And that is simply this: some people love the darkness. Progressives cannot learn because it is not in their nature to learn; they must always be "progressing," always be tearing down some establishment, some established order; because this is what they do. Evidence abounds all around our society of this type of decay. Scriptural application here would be: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly", and: "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness."
Like a good Catholic, Eberstadt is quick to showcase Catholic thinkers, theologians, and popes, but she's short on actual scripture. It's a weakness of her work because she missed some real opportunities to share life wisdom.
And, unfortunately, in later parts of the book her logic becomes convoluted. For example, she quotes the female Roman Catholic philosopher Anscombe: "If contraceptive intercourse is permissible, then what objection could there be after all to mutual masturbation, or copulation in vase indebito, sodomy, buggery..." (p. 150). I had to really pause over this passage to take it in and marvel at it. And I still can't get to a place in my thinking where every sexual act must necessarily be tied inextricably to the possibility of creating human life.
Another example: "By giving benediction in 1930 to its married heterosexual members purposely seeking sterile sex, the Anglican church lost, bit by bit, any authority to tell its other members--married or unmarried, homosexual or heterosexual--not to do the same. To put the point another way, once heterosexuals start claiming the right to act as homosexuals, it would not be long before homosexuals started claiming the rights of heterosexuals." (p. 150)
I had to read that twice to try to understand its logic, but I still can't do it. Better to simply state the obvious points on heterosexuality vs. homosexuality, I think. That is: if everyone in the world were homosexuals practicing exclusive homosexual sex, the human race would die (but there are some extreme progressives who think humans are a disease on the earth, so perhaps this isn't a good example); so heterosexual intercourse is needed to continue the human race. Ergo, homosexuality is not a natural state of being.
Her logical connections between pedophile priests and contraception seem absurd to me.
Is abortion repugnant to me personally as a Christian? Yes, it is. And at the same time I completely understand that public policy must make way for human laziness and stupidity. (Why don't all the people put away the weights at the gym after they're done using them? Because certain people are lazy and selfish.) Thus, some reasonable accommodation must be made in the public sphere on this issue.
In the end, Eberstadt is short on real-world answers and useful solutions, and at times seems simply naive. For example: "Seen in the light of actual Christian tradition, the question is not after all why the Catholic Church refused to concede the point [on contraception use]; it is rather why just about everyone else in the Judeo-Chrisitan tradition did. Whatever the answer, ..." (p. 156). Well, here's the answer: a little leaven leavens the whole bunch. (But, what exactly is this "Judeo-Christian tradition" anyway? Can there be such a thing with such hatred and animosity from one group to the other? See Why Don’t Jews Like the Christians Who Like Them?
Liberalism can’t abide conservative evangelicals. James Q. Wilson, Winter 2008, City Journal.)
And again: "From time to time since 1968, some of the Catholics who accepted 'the only doctrine that had ever appeared as the teaching of the Church on these things,' in Anscombe's words, have puzzled over why, exactly, Humanae Vitae has been so poorly received by the rest of the world." She then lists out a few possible answers--bad timing, the secular media, lack of full explication of the matters, such as addressed decades later in John Paul II's Theology of the Body. She lands on "contraception itself"; borrowing the phrase from Archbishop Chaput. This view is sorely mistaken, though, because it focuses on a man-made invention to sidestep the most fundamental issue: man's broken heart, and man's broken relationship with God. This is foolishness to the unbeliever, of course. Which is why, I think, she's grasping at secular straws to make a spiritual argument. But it won't ever work, because I think you must dig much deeper, to the fundamentals, for the answer.
And again: "What happens when, for the first time in history--at least in theory, and at least in the advanced nations--adults are more or less free to have all the sex and food they want?" (p. 95) This is a terribly misguided statement, considering that women are the gatekeepers of sex (eggs are valued, sperm is not; women are a protected class, men are a disposable class) and that hunger is still a very real issue for 40 million Americans.
In other spots her analogies don't hold, for me. For example, Chapter 7, Is Pornography the New Tobacco? posits that, yes, porn can be compared to where tobacco was in the early/mid 1960s. Creators/distributors are opening new markets (money) by targeting women. The analogy doesn't hold because it's known that "men have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, masturbation, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found. Hence we conclude that the male sex drive is stronger than the female sex drive." (Source: Is There a Gender Difference in Strength of Sex Drive? Theoretical Views, Conceptual Distinctions, and a Review of Relevant Evidence. Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen R. Catanese, Kathleen D. Vohs. Personality and Social Psychology Review. First Published August 1, 2001. Simply stated: women don't like, want, seek, or need sex as much as men do. Armed with information like this, it's hard to see how pornographers are going to make much economic inroads with female audiences. So, no, in the final analysis, porn is *not* the new tobacco.
All in all, though, I found this to be an interesting book with important things to say on the topic of sexual relations between men and women (specifically in the West) and how those have devolved since the invention of the pill. I suppose answers will only be forthcoming, though, when enough people look around and see the host of problems we've created for ourselves with our inventions. But by then it may be too late.
I liked it
3/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
View all my reviews
August 29, 2019
Enter my Goodreads giveaway!
My co-author and I are hosting a giveaway of our new book "Never Stop Dancing: A Memoir" here on Goodreads!
Enter now for the chance to win 1 of 50 free advance reader copies!
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
Enter now for the chance to win 1 of 50 free advance reader copies!
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...
August 22, 2019
My latest book Never Stop Dancing: A Memoir is coming out October 10th!
Nine years ago I started a project that would change my life forever. It was late July 2010, and it had been three months since my friend John’s wife Amy was killed in an accident on the streets of Washington, DC, leaving him alone to raise their two young sons. John’s world shattered, and I was shattered seeing him grieve. I was at a loss thinking about what I could possibly do—what anyone could do—to help him in his miserable situation.
Then the thought struck me: Just do what you normally do with your friend. Be with John; talk with him; listen to him. So I proposed an unusual idea: to interview John over the course of the first year after Amy’s death. My hope was to meet John directly in his experience of sorrow, explore his grief with him, and discover what lessons might be learned.
Born of a year’s worth of candid interviews, Never Stop Dancing avoids clichéd takeaways about grief and healing to chart a deeper, thornier examination of loss and regret. John and I were transformed through our shared experience, emerging strengthened and with an abiding male friendship that cuts against the grain of pop-culture trends of quick fixes and easy answers. This memoir-in-conversation provides hard-won reassurances that one can and does go on after loss.
Never Stop Dancing: A Memoir
A story of grief, male friendship, and healing conversations.
SIGN UP FOR UPDATES about publication and pre-publication specials, sales, and events by visiting never-stop-dancing.com.
Then the thought struck me: Just do what you normally do with your friend. Be with John; talk with him; listen to him. So I proposed an unusual idea: to interview John over the course of the first year after Amy’s death. My hope was to meet John directly in his experience of sorrow, explore his grief with him, and discover what lessons might be learned.
Born of a year’s worth of candid interviews, Never Stop Dancing avoids clichéd takeaways about grief and healing to chart a deeper, thornier examination of loss and regret. John and I were transformed through our shared experience, emerging strengthened and with an abiding male friendship that cuts against the grain of pop-culture trends of quick fixes and easy answers. This memoir-in-conversation provides hard-won reassurances that one can and does go on after loss.
Never Stop Dancing: A Memoir
A story of grief, male friendship, and healing conversations.
SIGN UP FOR UPDATES about publication and pre-publication specials, sales, and events by visiting never-stop-dancing.com.
August 12, 2019
Review of Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones
This book has much to offer, but with a careful eye
"A man," Augustine had written, "has as many masters as he has vices." This is a tagline for Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones, and he keeps returning to this theme throughout this massive work.
This book has something to offer, but with a careful eye. Jones tackles an enormous topic and comes out mostly sideways. He's neither a good scholar nor a good writer. Still, the text is readable and enjoyable, if not a bit like racing through a museum with a curator who's calling your attention to all the things plastered all over the walls and ceilings. But it's what kept me reading to the end.
Jones is part historian, part biographer. He's wide ranging in his approach because he loops in any event or any person he believes to be connected to his current discussion. He unearths minutia that doesn't seem to readily fit the context of his larger issue. He can literally jump back and forth 200 hundred years within a sentence or two. What I'm saying is that reading the book can be a bit dizzying. Sure, each chapter is headed with a city and sequential date, but that often doesn't matter. For example, Part II Chapter 7 is titled "Baltimore, 1916," and the chapter begins: "In the 1930 edition of his famous book..." Wut? You just told me were in 1916. And by the end of each chapter you're sometimes years or even *decades* ahead of where you started. It can be a bit confusing until you get used to it.
Then there's the name dropping, or I should say: lack of tight scholarship. Jones quite often assumes you know who or what he's talking about when he mentions a new name or term or event. I found myself many times re-reading paragraphs above the text where I was in order to see where this name appeared before. But that's just how he writes. He'll often quote other writers writing about events or other people and simply write something like this: "Hitler, according to Igra, was a homosexual prostitute in Vienna." (p. 198) Hitler was gay? Wut? Huh? Imagine your shock if you've never read anything about this in any other book. And who is Igra? Check the notes. Nothing. Check the bibliography. Nothing. Check the index. One instance. On page 198. Google his name. Samuel Igra is the author of a book titled Germany's National Vice. Okay. So this happens a lot. Jones drops names and events without any context. (He's not as bad of a writer as, say, Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, though, which I couldn't get through.) Other books and authors are mentioned in passing, not fully explained, and then left behind. (One of note is The Clam-Pate Orgy; google it; I'm old enough to remember when this book came out. Another is the Moynihan Report of the 1960s. Again, if I had not known of both of these before reading Jones' book, I would have been left staring at the page wondering what and why they were in his book.) And some names you'd think he'd use are never mentioned or lightly passed over (The Frankfurt School, Jews and Hollywood, Operation Mockingbird, Hugh Hefner and Gloria Steinem being CIA assets, among others).
Jones drops a variety of Latin phrases left and right, too, ad nauseam (heh); have your laptop or mobile handy as you read to provide translations. Several times he provides a title of a movie or pamphlet or book in the original language (for example, French or German), without an English translation. Not helpful. I had to search many terms and after a while simply gave up. One was the German word Kulturbolschewismus (Cultural Bolshevism). Now, if you don't know this term you will miss a lot of the deeper meaning of Jones' text. So be prepared to do a bit of your own digging as you're reading the book.
In many cases Jones assumes much from his reader, too. He doesn't go into much detail at all about the decadence and excesses of Germany's Weimar Republic. (And "decadence" and "excess" don't really do the period justice. Look this stuff up for yourself.)
He needed a good editor, desperately. Typographical and grammatical errors abound.
I can't recall Jones using any passages from the Bible to support his thesis, which is a real shame, because it would have illuminated one of the many axes he's grinding here, which is: some people enjoy the evil they do. "The light has come into the world, and people who do evil things are judged guilty because they love the dark more than the light" (John 3:19). It's even more of a shame when he gets so entangled in his Catholicism that he's blinded to the basic tenets of Christianity. His misreading of the concept of the priesthood of all believers is particularly troubling (p. 499). I was also disappointed in what Jones *didn't* discuss: real pornography and its affect on the human mind. He literally skips over the 1950s founding of Playboy and the 1960s, too, and dabbles in it when he gets to the Meese Commission on Pornography.
But there is good stuff. Much of it.
You'll read about such disparate men and events as Augustine, Plato, the Marquis de Sade, the French Revolution, the Illuminati, Nietzsche, Freud, Jews, Christianity, the Bolshevik Revolution, communism, the Armory Show, Margaret Sanger and the early eugenicists, Kulaks, Bernays (father of modern advertising), Madison Avenue, race relations, white flight, contraception, Planned Parenthood, Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, Kinsey (his open marriage, his bisexuality, his self harm issues--an attempt to circumcise himself and his urethral sounding fetish; liberation is fine, but yikes!), Norman Mailer and his essay "The White Negro", Skull and Bones, Aleister Crowley, encounter groups, MK Ultra (the list is nearly endless), and Jones wends and winds and ties them all together. Sometimes not so neatly. But it's always interesting, and he drops gems throughout. Such as:
"Liberalism, by the inner dynamic of its logic, was forced to become an instrument of social control in order to avoid the chaos which it created by its own erosion of tradition and morals. Democratic man could not be left to his own devices; chaos would result. The logic is clear. If there is no God, there can be no religion; if there was no religion, there can be no morals; if there are no morals, there can be no self-control; if there is no self-control, there can be no social order; if there is no social order, there can be nothing but the chaos of competing desire." (p. 187)
"It [feminism] entailed the systematic re-engineering of the morals of women as a way of moving them out of the home and into the workforce, thereby lowering wages and weakening the power of organized labor and the working-class family." (p. 255)
"The state can tolerate only those mores compatible with its system of values... The classical state must foster virtue; the revolutionary state must foster vice." (p. 260-1)
"Those who look at the Betty Page photos fifty years later wonder what the big deal was all about without realizing that the big deal lies in the very fact that the viewer can no longer feel the passion the photos were intended to incite. Pornography is something based on transgression, and the boundaries of 1950 have been so often and so thoroughly transgressed, that no one can see that they were once boundaries." (p. 367)
Written 20 years ago, Jones seems prescient across the culture to what we see today: child drag queen shows (10-year-old drag kid Desmond is Amazing on Good Morning America), Drag Queen Story Hour at your local library, children under 10 transitioning genders and having gender reassignment surgery, suburban moms skyrocketing 50 Shades of Gray to national bestseller lists, off-the-charts STD rates, Sugar Baby/Sugar Daddy websites, NEXIUM sex cult, Epstein Island horror show (dentist chair, baby toys; google actively censors this, so use duck duck go), young women being more promiscuous than men (General Social Survey), children's creepy clothing lines Caroline Bosmans, the UK trying to ban porn for under 18s, cannibalism in our TV shows and movies, and on and on.
How did we get here? A wise man told us 2,000 years ago: A little leaven leavens the whole bunch.
I liked it
3/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
PS: If Libido Dominandi is your type of book, other readings and viewings you might enjoy (and which will help your reading and understanding of it) include Staring into Chaos (nonfiction history), The Kulaks Must be Liquidated as a Class (article, National Review), Bob Fosse's Cabaret (article, The Unz Review), and Century of the Self (documentary).
"A man," Augustine had written, "has as many masters as he has vices." This is a tagline for Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control by E. Michael Jones, and he keeps returning to this theme throughout this massive work.
This book has something to offer, but with a careful eye. Jones tackles an enormous topic and comes out mostly sideways. He's neither a good scholar nor a good writer. Still, the text is readable and enjoyable, if not a bit like racing through a museum with a curator who's calling your attention to all the things plastered all over the walls and ceilings. But it's what kept me reading to the end.
Jones is part historian, part biographer. He's wide ranging in his approach because he loops in any event or any person he believes to be connected to his current discussion. He unearths minutia that doesn't seem to readily fit the context of his larger issue. He can literally jump back and forth 200 hundred years within a sentence or two. What I'm saying is that reading the book can be a bit dizzying. Sure, each chapter is headed with a city and sequential date, but that often doesn't matter. For example, Part II Chapter 7 is titled "Baltimore, 1916," and the chapter begins: "In the 1930 edition of his famous book..." Wut? You just told me were in 1916. And by the end of each chapter you're sometimes years or even *decades* ahead of where you started. It can be a bit confusing until you get used to it.
Then there's the name dropping, or I should say: lack of tight scholarship. Jones quite often assumes you know who or what he's talking about when he mentions a new name or term or event. I found myself many times re-reading paragraphs above the text where I was in order to see where this name appeared before. But that's just how he writes. He'll often quote other writers writing about events or other people and simply write something like this: "Hitler, according to Igra, was a homosexual prostitute in Vienna." (p. 198) Hitler was gay? Wut? Huh? Imagine your shock if you've never read anything about this in any other book. And who is Igra? Check the notes. Nothing. Check the bibliography. Nothing. Check the index. One instance. On page 198. Google his name. Samuel Igra is the author of a book titled Germany's National Vice. Okay. So this happens a lot. Jones drops names and events without any context. (He's not as bad of a writer as, say, Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, though, which I couldn't get through.) Other books and authors are mentioned in passing, not fully explained, and then left behind. (One of note is The Clam-Pate Orgy; google it; I'm old enough to remember when this book came out. Another is the Moynihan Report of the 1960s. Again, if I had not known of both of these before reading Jones' book, I would have been left staring at the page wondering what and why they were in his book.) And some names you'd think he'd use are never mentioned or lightly passed over (The Frankfurt School, Jews and Hollywood, Operation Mockingbird, Hugh Hefner and Gloria Steinem being CIA assets, among others).
Jones drops a variety of Latin phrases left and right, too, ad nauseam (heh); have your laptop or mobile handy as you read to provide translations. Several times he provides a title of a movie or pamphlet or book in the original language (for example, French or German), without an English translation. Not helpful. I had to search many terms and after a while simply gave up. One was the German word Kulturbolschewismus (Cultural Bolshevism). Now, if you don't know this term you will miss a lot of the deeper meaning of Jones' text. So be prepared to do a bit of your own digging as you're reading the book.
In many cases Jones assumes much from his reader, too. He doesn't go into much detail at all about the decadence and excesses of Germany's Weimar Republic. (And "decadence" and "excess" don't really do the period justice. Look this stuff up for yourself.)
He needed a good editor, desperately. Typographical and grammatical errors abound.
I can't recall Jones using any passages from the Bible to support his thesis, which is a real shame, because it would have illuminated one of the many axes he's grinding here, which is: some people enjoy the evil they do. "The light has come into the world, and people who do evil things are judged guilty because they love the dark more than the light" (John 3:19). It's even more of a shame when he gets so entangled in his Catholicism that he's blinded to the basic tenets of Christianity. His misreading of the concept of the priesthood of all believers is particularly troubling (p. 499). I was also disappointed in what Jones *didn't* discuss: real pornography and its affect on the human mind. He literally skips over the 1950s founding of Playboy and the 1960s, too, and dabbles in it when he gets to the Meese Commission on Pornography.
But there is good stuff. Much of it.
You'll read about such disparate men and events as Augustine, Plato, the Marquis de Sade, the French Revolution, the Illuminati, Nietzsche, Freud, Jews, Christianity, the Bolshevik Revolution, communism, the Armory Show, Margaret Sanger and the early eugenicists, Kulaks, Bernays (father of modern advertising), Madison Avenue, race relations, white flight, contraception, Planned Parenthood, Thomas Merton, Jack Kerouac, Kinsey (his open marriage, his bisexuality, his self harm issues--an attempt to circumcise himself and his urethral sounding fetish; liberation is fine, but yikes!), Norman Mailer and his essay "The White Negro", Skull and Bones, Aleister Crowley, encounter groups, MK Ultra (the list is nearly endless), and Jones wends and winds and ties them all together. Sometimes not so neatly. But it's always interesting, and he drops gems throughout. Such as:
"Liberalism, by the inner dynamic of its logic, was forced to become an instrument of social control in order to avoid the chaos which it created by its own erosion of tradition and morals. Democratic man could not be left to his own devices; chaos would result. The logic is clear. If there is no God, there can be no religion; if there was no religion, there can be no morals; if there are no morals, there can be no self-control; if there is no self-control, there can be no social order; if there is no social order, there can be nothing but the chaos of competing desire." (p. 187)
"It [feminism] entailed the systematic re-engineering of the morals of women as a way of moving them out of the home and into the workforce, thereby lowering wages and weakening the power of organized labor and the working-class family." (p. 255)
"The state can tolerate only those mores compatible with its system of values... The classical state must foster virtue; the revolutionary state must foster vice." (p. 260-1)
"Those who look at the Betty Page photos fifty years later wonder what the big deal was all about without realizing that the big deal lies in the very fact that the viewer can no longer feel the passion the photos were intended to incite. Pornography is something based on transgression, and the boundaries of 1950 have been so often and so thoroughly transgressed, that no one can see that they were once boundaries." (p. 367)
Written 20 years ago, Jones seems prescient across the culture to what we see today: child drag queen shows (10-year-old drag kid Desmond is Amazing on Good Morning America), Drag Queen Story Hour at your local library, children under 10 transitioning genders and having gender reassignment surgery, suburban moms skyrocketing 50 Shades of Gray to national bestseller lists, off-the-charts STD rates, Sugar Baby/Sugar Daddy websites, NEXIUM sex cult, Epstein Island horror show (dentist chair, baby toys; google actively censors this, so use duck duck go), young women being more promiscuous than men (General Social Survey), children's creepy clothing lines Caroline Bosmans, the UK trying to ban porn for under 18s, cannibalism in our TV shows and movies, and on and on.
How did we get here? A wise man told us 2,000 years ago: A little leaven leavens the whole bunch.
I liked it
3/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
PS: If Libido Dominandi is your type of book, other readings and viewings you might enjoy (and which will help your reading and understanding of it) include Staring into Chaos (nonfiction history), The Kulaks Must be Liquidated as a Class (article, National Review), Bob Fosse's Cabaret (article, The Unz Review), and Century of the Self (documentary).
June 15, 2019
The making of a book cover design
Lance Buckley, book designer for my new novel Dusk and Ember, made a "Making of..." video as he worked on the book cover. He took my ideas and made them come alive. The cover is beautiful, and the video is really cool, seeing all the elements come together. Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/22GTfxtsMdo
The novel is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dusk-Ember-Rob...
My top reviews:
"Jacoby's prose...is dense and dynamic.... The book is conceptually impressive, ... and fans of epic postmodernist novels may find themselves enthralled by it." -- Kirkus Reviews
"...a smart, fascinating novel..." -- IndieReader
https://youtu.be/22GTfxtsMdo
The novel is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dusk-Ember-Rob...
My top reviews:
"Jacoby's prose...is dense and dynamic.... The book is conceptually impressive, ... and fans of epic postmodernist novels may find themselves enthralled by it." -- Kirkus Reviews
"...a smart, fascinating novel..." -- IndieReader
May 16, 2019
My new novel, Dusk and Ember, is available on Amazon now
"Jacoby's prose...is dense and dynamic.... The book is conceptually impressive, ... and fans of epic postmodernist novels may find themselves enthralled by it." -- Kirkus Reviews
"...a smart, fascinating novel..." -- IndieReader
"This powerful story of a young man wrestling with the most essential and existential questions will touch anyone who remembers that terrible time when the world opens up in front of you and--paralyzed--you have no idea what to do." -- B. Morrison, author
Dusk and Emberhttps://www.amazon.com/Dusk-Ember-Rob...
"...a smart, fascinating novel..." -- IndieReader
"This powerful story of a young man wrestling with the most essential and existential questions will touch anyone who remembers that terrible time when the world opens up in front of you and--paralyzed--you have no idea what to do." -- B. Morrison, author
Dusk and Emberhttps://www.amazon.com/Dusk-Ember-Rob...
May 8, 2019
Pre-publication review of my new novel
"This powerful story of a young man wrestling with the most essential and existential questions will touch anyone who remembers that terrible time when the world opens up in front of you and—paralyzed—you have no idea what to do."
From a pre-publication review of my new novel, Dusk and Ember, available May 15.
Read the review: http://www.bmorrison.com/dusk-and-emb...
From a pre-publication review of my new novel, Dusk and Ember, available May 15.
Read the review: http://www.bmorrison.com/dusk-and-emb...
February 22, 2019
My new novel, Dusk and Ember, coming May 2019
Announcing the upcoming publication of my new novel Dusk and Ember.
Can a life come apart and be rebuilt in one night? 19-year-old Richard Issych is about to find out. One friend is dead—murdered by another friend—and all Richard wants to do is get to the wake, come home, and start a new life. But for one life to begin another must end.
Since graduating high school the year before and not knowing how to live, or even if he wants to live, Richard has wandered into the graveyard shift at a local foundry, a hellish world of molten metal, rote work, and no prospects. Drawn into a downward spiral of motorcycle gangs and easy drugs, he finds himself on the cusp of a decision that will change his world forever.
Part road trip, part boomerang into past and back, part wrestling with the forces that make us and break us, Dusk and Ember is a hard truth coming-of-age tale in dark Americana. This night, Richard grabs hold and hangs on for the strangest car ride of his life with his oddball friends on their way to the wake.
Dusk and Ember is a prequel to There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes, which Kirkus Reviews called “a confident, strongly voiced portrait of despair and the flickering light at the end of the tunnel.”
Coming May 2019.
Can a life come apart and be rebuilt in one night? 19-year-old Richard Issych is about to find out. One friend is dead—murdered by another friend—and all Richard wants to do is get to the wake, come home, and start a new life. But for one life to begin another must end.
Since graduating high school the year before and not knowing how to live, or even if he wants to live, Richard has wandered into the graveyard shift at a local foundry, a hellish world of molten metal, rote work, and no prospects. Drawn into a downward spiral of motorcycle gangs and easy drugs, he finds himself on the cusp of a decision that will change his world forever.
Part road trip, part boomerang into past and back, part wrestling with the forces that make us and break us, Dusk and Ember is a hard truth coming-of-age tale in dark Americana. This night, Richard grabs hold and hangs on for the strangest car ride of his life with his oddball friends on their way to the wake.
Dusk and Ember is a prequel to There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes, which Kirkus Reviews called “a confident, strongly voiced portrait of despair and the flickering light at the end of the tunnel.”
Coming May 2019.
November 24, 2018
Review of Ulysses by James Joyce
Title: A novel not to read so much as experience
LIKE MOST PEOPLE who haven't read Ulysses, I've had this novel on my "to read" list since high school, and that's about 40 years, and everyone hears whispers of it in high school and through college but who actually *reads* it anyone who wants to but it's known as the most difficult book to finish and why is that because there is no narrative arc, no story in the traditional sense, no character development, no tension within the text (I can't say "story" because there is no "story".) and what's it like to read it I had to finish it to see what it said.
YOU START AT THE START and wend your way through like Leopold Bloom wandering a day in Dublin and just like that you're off wandering with him eating tea and biscuits and drinking and the chime of a clock can set you and him both off into any other direction like watching a Fellini movie until any action brings him and you back into whatever narrative there is there is no narrative arc pulling you along because there is no tension because you're simply reading words on the page and other fun stuff in Latin and French and Greek, too, why not because he can because there is no theme beyond the telling of the consciousness like this, yes, right, just that quick, then you're off with him floating away and if you think this gets any better you're mistaken because that's the entire point of what Mr. Joyce intended to do but while he's reaching for depth he left behind humanity and let technique rule his text and drops the n-word (can you believe it it's not the [current year] when he wrote this!) so that there I said it and how edgy can he be with the play's the thing, with crossdressing and transgenderism and feces and drinking urine. So. Such. Much. Chuck. Duck. Don't. So it's not Molly's famous Yes you're after it's you're own No but I'm afraid it's a definite Maybe and the discovery of discoveries is that you're able to read a book when you're able to read a book.
AND WHEN YOU LEARN that he wrote nearly one third of the novel in galley and page proof stage yes! you understand the nature of his Yes! and what he's oh so cleverly doing so that a rhythm begins in your yes reading yes revisions yes yes yes and even Mr. Joyce he himself said he'd earn immortality with the novel because he put so many puns and riddles and newwords and whatnots that it'd keep the professors guessing for centuries about what he really meant because it's a play, too, the play's the thing said Bill S., and Joyce is playing, it's the biggest play on us all and once you understand that you know his game and what a great big lovable mess is James Joyce's Ulysses, not a pleasure to read but a chore to read but read it one must to fight the dust.
IS IT THE GREATEST NOVEL ever written in the English language? I cannot laugh that loud. But he dares to try to capture that most elusive of creatures, Life.
TRY READING The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham as you're reading Ulysses I did and highly recommend it.
It's okay
2/5 Goodreads
3/5 Amazon
LIKE MOST PEOPLE who haven't read Ulysses, I've had this novel on my "to read" list since high school, and that's about 40 years, and everyone hears whispers of it in high school and through college but who actually *reads* it anyone who wants to but it's known as the most difficult book to finish and why is that because there is no narrative arc, no story in the traditional sense, no character development, no tension within the text (I can't say "story" because there is no "story".) and what's it like to read it I had to finish it to see what it said.
YOU START AT THE START and wend your way through like Leopold Bloom wandering a day in Dublin and just like that you're off wandering with him eating tea and biscuits and drinking and the chime of a clock can set you and him both off into any other direction like watching a Fellini movie until any action brings him and you back into whatever narrative there is there is no narrative arc pulling you along because there is no tension because you're simply reading words on the page and other fun stuff in Latin and French and Greek, too, why not because he can because there is no theme beyond the telling of the consciousness like this, yes, right, just that quick, then you're off with him floating away and if you think this gets any better you're mistaken because that's the entire point of what Mr. Joyce intended to do but while he's reaching for depth he left behind humanity and let technique rule his text and drops the n-word (can you believe it it's not the [current year] when he wrote this!) so that there I said it and how edgy can he be with the play's the thing, with crossdressing and transgenderism and feces and drinking urine. So. Such. Much. Chuck. Duck. Don't. So it's not Molly's famous Yes you're after it's you're own No but I'm afraid it's a definite Maybe and the discovery of discoveries is that you're able to read a book when you're able to read a book.
AND WHEN YOU LEARN that he wrote nearly one third of the novel in galley and page proof stage yes! you understand the nature of his Yes! and what he's oh so cleverly doing so that a rhythm begins in your yes reading yes revisions yes yes yes and even Mr. Joyce he himself said he'd earn immortality with the novel because he put so many puns and riddles and newwords and whatnots that it'd keep the professors guessing for centuries about what he really meant because it's a play, too, the play's the thing said Bill S., and Joyce is playing, it's the biggest play on us all and once you understand that you know his game and what a great big lovable mess is James Joyce's Ulysses, not a pleasure to read but a chore to read but read it one must to fight the dust.
IS IT THE GREATEST NOVEL ever written in the English language? I cannot laugh that loud. But he dares to try to capture that most elusive of creatures, Life.
TRY READING The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham as you're reading Ulysses I did and highly recommend it.
It's okay
2/5 Goodreads
3/5 Amazon
