Stephen Roney's Blog, page 127

Is China the Emerging Hegemon Already?

 

Although it has often been quoted for scare value, perhaps we have paid too little attention to Justin Trudeau’s open assertion, years ago, that he admires China’s “basic dictatorship.”

This sentiment might manage to explain a series of otherwise seemingly irrational acts not only by Trudeau, but by other leaders around the world. Why limit fertilizer use just as the world faces famine? Why prevent fracking, tax carbon, and force an energy shortage? Why impose vaccine mandates and force mass firings of truckers and medical professionals in the middle of a supply shortage and a pandemic? Why are governments so keen on payments to stay at home, and universal basic income, in the middle of a critical labour shortage? It all makes no sense except in this context: a top-down revolution trying to impose a Chinese-style system. The apparent plan is to make people dependent on the government, and afraid of the government.

Even without being in the pay of China, a lot of politicians seem to want to emulate China’s basic dictatorship.

The thought has been attractive, perhaps, because China has seemed to work so well. Just as, a few decades ago, business execs were all talking about importing “Japanese management techniques,” back when Japan seemed to be developing faster than anyone else, and had the cachet. In more recent years, it has been China. Even if they were not prepared, like Trudeau, to say so openly, “Chinese management techniques” might have looked attractive. China could, as Trudeau further observed, turn on a dime in terms, of, say, meeting its environmental goals.

One indication that China is the model for other governments now is how almost everyone else quickly mimicked the Chinese response to COVID; the lockdowns.

Of course, the key Chinese management practice is dictatorship; along with Fascist collaboration between government and the big corporations. For this, the common people must be cowed into submission, by whatever means necessary. Voluntary associations, civil society, must be attacked and humbled. Occupations allowing too much personal freedom, like trucking or farming, must be suppressed. 

Then matters can be left to the mandarinate, who, of course, think themselves smarter than the average working stiff. A plausible enough argument, one relied on by Confucius, or Plato, before Marx. It is all for the public good.

How to get around the inconvenience of democracy? No doubt there are ways. Control the media. Threaten opposition with seizure of their assets. Make public demonstrations illegal. Introduce new voting procedures open to tampering, like voting machines and mail-in ballots. As Stalin said, it does not matter who votes. What matters is who counts the ballots.

We are seeing these things happen before our eyes.

On the other hand, the growth of information technology is exposing incompetence in the mandarinate. This makes them vulnerable, and some of their overreach may be due to fear. No government can stand if the people will no longer obey. Here too, China might still seem a model to a panicked elite. They have kept their people under their thumb. 

Governments everywhere are undergoing a stress test as they in effect declare war on their own people. There seems a decent chance that the government of China will collapse first, discrediting the whole enterprise. There are runs on the banks and tanks in the streets. Big developers are defaulting. Will the CCP be able to paper it all over and hold things together?

It would be a happier time if we could point to at least one clear counter-example, of a government opening up further to the people. If it then clearly succeeded, a new paradigm might emerge.

Perhaps we see something of this in Ron DeSantis’s Florida. There is hope we might see it in a Canada led by Pierre Poilievre. 

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Viva Barnes Interview Dr. Christian Warning about the Vaccine

 

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Jordan Peterson and Michael Yon

 

Very scary predictions...

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Is Climate Change Real? These Prominent Scientists Say the Science Is Not Settled.

 

"The theory of anthropogenic climate change has no reliable scientific basis."

It's not about science. It's about grabbing more power.

That's why they're targeting the truckers and the farmers: the occupations most able to resist government control.

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Apologizing to the Waves

 

As predictably as the spring rains, Pope Francis’s apology for the residential schools, delivered in Edmonton only two days ago, has already been rejected by many native leaders, notably Senator Murray Sinclair. And the media refer to it as, at best, a “first step.” All the previous apologies have been rejected—there have now supposedly been no steps before this. No surprise that this one too is rejected. By obvious implication, there will never be a last step. Every step taken will ever remain a “first step.”

It never mattered what the Pope said, or whether he came or not. Someone is not acting in good faith. The last thing the aboriginal leaders or the left ever want is reconciliation, and they will always refuse to be reconciled. The moment reconciliation is achieved, they lose their funding. And they lose their scapegoat.

Is the pope such a fool that he could not see this? I, for one, think he slandered the Church, and the residential schools, with his apology. Is this helpful? The media quote some attendees triumphant at the supposed fact that the pope has now “admitted” that “native spirituality” was right all along, and the Catholic Church was wrong. This puts native people in peril of their souls.

The media have been aggressively complicit, as usual, in this con game. For example, the CBC asserts that Lac Ste. Anne was an ancient sacred site to the Indians, “God’s Lake,” long before the first missionaries arrived. By implication, Christianity and the Ste. Anne pilgrimage are an imposition on the authentic “native spirituality.”

No, it was not called “God’s Lake.” It was called “Devil’s Lake.” That is how the HBC factors translated the Indian name, and this translation is more accurate. The place was feared and avoided, because there was believed to be a great monster in the lake that devoured people. The lake became sacred when the first Catholic missionaries consecrated the waters to St. Anne and drove away the monster.

The confusion, or deliberate misrepresentation, comes because the native groups had only the one word, “manitou,” for any spiritual being. God is of course a spiritual being; so he would in theory be a “manitou.” As were the pagan gods of Greece and Rome. However, the only spiritual beings the First Nations were aware of in their environment before the coming of Christianity were hostile toward man. “Manitou” to them was something to be feared, not to be worshipped. “Devil” or “demon” is the English equivalent.

I hope, probably in vain, that the Pope’s visit, and the immediate refusal to accept his apology, may end up calling the bluff of the swindle. It may open eyes to the fact that the left is not honest. The optics of immediately refusing to accept the apology of an aged and infirm pope may be damning. The left’s arrogance may at last be its undoing.

-- Written by a day school survivor.

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Signed, Sealed, Delivered

 

Stephen Harper has just come out and endorsed Pierre Poilievre.

This should end it. Harper never endorsed anyone in the last two leadership contests. 

And this should make it easy for Poiliever to achieve party unity once he officially wins.

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We Can't Return; We Can Only Look Behind, from Where We Came

 

A magical thing has happened: Joni Mitchell did a concert at the current Newport Folk Festival.

These are the songs of my own youth. And to my ear, Mitchell's voice is still strong. In fact, I prefer her deeper register. Jazz-style singing, with its low volume and low impact, is one genre that can hold up through old age. Compare Willie Nelson, who also still sounds great.

"Both Sides Now" really sounds more apt at her age than when it was written. Almost brings tears.

Scratch "almost."

I almost wish her partner, who does a great imitation of the early Mitchell, would be silent so we could better hear the richness of Joni's current voice.

This next song was my slender lifeline to get through one awful summer job in a plastics injection factory

The wind is in from Africa

Last night, I couldn't sleep...

I wonder if people who did not live in Toronto during a certain period know what a "big yellow taxi" actually is.

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Pandemonium

 

Canute explains global warming to his courtiers.

It is exhausting dealing with other Canadians; because most Canadians are insane. They believe in delusions. We noted the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness last post. It is nonsensical at best, yet over 85% of Canadians buy it.

Other examples abound. The average Canadian accepts as true that there has been a huge conspiracy in all cultures throughout history to oppress women. But they scorn "conspiracy theories" out of hand.  They believe that homosexuality is inborn, although this violates the Theory of Evolution, which they also believe. Any gene for homosexuality would be bred out within two generations. They believe that American Indians lived in peace and comfort until the evil Europeans arrived with their agriculture, technology, and law enforcement: the “noble savage” myth. They believe that building schools for the Indians was oppressive, demanding apology and reparations. They believe that a man can decide to be a woman; or be a woman because they believe so. But even though it is all in the mind, and biology doesn’t matter, it is still essential to give hormone blockers and cut off their genitals to suit. They believe, as King Canute never did, that the government of Canada can order the tides not to rise, or the equivalent: "global warming." Canada can apparently fix global warming with a carbon tax, though industry can simply move to China. They believe that by raising the price of carbon, the tax will cause everyone to use less of it. But a minimum wage, by raising the price of labour, will not cause anyone to use less of it. 

They believe, and will say in so many words, that there is no objective reality. 

This is the definition of insanity. It means no rational conversation is possible. How does one respond when talking to a madman? Just nod your head and back away? The main concern is that they may become violent.

Not a pleasant intellectual climate.

I think Jung had it right that the human mind is easily drawn by “archetypes” away from reality.

I may be too optimistic, but I feel not everyone is as crazy as Canadians are. I lived in the Philippines for years, and with a Filipina longer, and I do not think Filipinos are nearly as crazy.

I think the clue is in Chesterton’s observation that “those who stop believing in God will believe in anything.” We need meaning, and if we reject God, we will deify almost anything: science, nature, sex, Adolf Hitler, you name it. Call them archetypes, idols, pagan gods; it is the same thing. The Filipinos avoid this because they still, most of them, believe in God. Those who don’t are still kept relatively sane by those who do.

Most of the rest of us are spinning out of control. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

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The Empire Gets Struck Back

 

I attended an exhibition yesterday at the Art Gallery of Ontario: “Faith and Fortune: Art across the Global Spanish Empire.” Faith was a draw for me; and my wife is from the Philippines. I have a thing for Hispanic concepts of beauty. So I had to have a look.

They had paintings by Goya, and El Greco, and Velasquez. Not great paintings by Goya, El Greco, or Velasquez, and none of them are much to my taste. Nevertheless, the artistry was magnificent. The religious statuary was exceptional. This is a Spanish and Portuguese specialty, in my experience. I would have liked to see more examples of cultural mixing, especially from South America. This felt oddly lacking; perhaps because it would be “cultural appropriation.” Perhaps because it would suggest that the Spanish and the various native peoples were not in constant conflict and struggle for power. They had a room full of early daguerrotypes of the Philippines. I was not impressed; daguerrotypes are designed to be looked at in print, not in an exhibit hall, and are more accessible online, without bending and squinting. The audio guide explained that they were taken by Spaniards, and so there was a need for Filipinos to “decolonize” and take possession of them. 

Martha and Mary

In the real world, of course, most Filipinos have some Spanish or European ancestry.

The audio guide was jammed with Critical Theory. The Spanish Empire was unambiguously an evil exploitation and corruption of indigenous cultures. This ignores the basic principle that any government, and an empire more widely than others, keeps the peace. The Roman Empire ushered in a millennium of “Pax Romana,” sorely missed when it fell. The British Empire produced a century or so of “Pax Britannica.” Even if you accept the Edenic myth that the happy natives were not, on the whole, enslaving one another, starving in large numbers, committing genocide, fighting endless wars, and so forth—something the exhibit expressly dismisses as Imperial propaganda--the Spanish imposition of peace and commerce over such a large area was probably to most people’s benefit.

I note also that, rather than similarly condemning the Muslim conquest of Spain, ended only in the year Columbus discovered America, the audio guide simply notes that “Muslims arrived in the peninsula in 711.” This particular empire, the Muslim Caliphate, supposedly brought peace and happiness in which all lived together in peace and harmony. 

Only Christian empires are bad, apparently.

Christianity is referred to as a “Western” doctrine, supposedly imposed on Spain’s new subjects. No awareness, it seems, that Christianity itself comes from Asia, and, from the Spanish perspective, the distant East. 

While there were, inevitably, religious statues and images of all sorts in the exhibition, the signage and the audio never spoke of faith. It was all about power. Saints were identified, towards the bottom of the signage, but in a cursory way. “Saint Michael represents good fighting evil.” “Saint X was martyred during a time when Christianity was illegal.” 

In one display box, four statues were identified as the four possibilities after death: heaven, purgatory, hell, and a skeleton to represent “the death of the body.” This was to my mind the most striking piece, and the one used for the Exhibit’s promotional materials.

The four fates of the soul.

But one of these four is not like the other ones. And Christianity does not ultimately believe in the death of the body, for those who go to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Rather, as the curators of the exhibition were presumably too theologically illiterate to know, the skeleton probably represents those who die unbaptized but without personal sin—the animal death.

The audio guide features a local artist of Filipino extraction and unconventional sexual preferences—all the voices heard were from non-Spanish ethnic minorities, and several of them identified themselves as gay or queer or the like. He (or she, or whatever) was celebrating the fact that Santo Nino, the patron saint of the southern Philippines, is sexually androgynous. This is counter to fact: Santo Nino is the baby Jesus. There is no room for sexual ambiguity in the very name: “Santo Nino” is masculine. The feminine would be “Santa Nina.”

Leaving, I had to thread my way through walls of gay pornography. “Blurred Boundaries: Queer Visions in Canadian Art.” 

Great idea—take your kids to the gallery and develop an appreciation for art?

No longer. Grooming.

Our established institutions have become illiterate and immoral, and we can no longer trust them to tell the truth.

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Tom Cruise Vindicated?

 

A new metastudy from the UK finds no evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin levels--the theory on which it has been treated since about 1980. The theory over 80% of us still believe with a religious fervor.

“The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”

Prozac and all the SSRIs work as placebos. The dirty secret nobody wants to point out is that placebos do work.

But the “chemical imbalance” line was always a con. Michael Knowles pointedly wonders how Tom Cruise, an actor, knew all this years ago. 

It should have been obvious to any thinking person all along that it was no explanation at all. If chemical balance causes depression, what caused the chemical imbalance? If depression is associated with low serotonin levels in the brain, which is cause, and which effect?

If he hadn’t figured it out for himself, Cruise knew this because he was a Scientologist. Scientology has been calling out psychiatry on this for decades. 

Scientology has been dismissed everywhere as a dangerous cult; but Leonard Cohen, no less, although he did not himself become a scientologist, is on record as saying that they had the real deal. Dangerous, perhaps—but to whom? They might have been unjustly tarred because they were telling inconvenient truths, the way the powers that be now tar any dissent as “racist,” “white supremacist,” or “alt-right.” When someone or something is too generally and broadly condemned, we have a right to be suspicious. Remember Goldstein and the two-minute hate.

The “chemical imbalance” line worked because it was something people wanted to believe. It was a placebo, like the pills themselves. First, it offered a simple cure—just take a pill. Second, it sounded suitably materialistic and amoral, and so “scientific.” Third, it absolved everyone from blame.

It has always been a popular idea, long predating science. It is the theory of the humours: mental problems are/were caused by some imbalance of fluids in the brain. They were restored to balance by drawing bad blood, giving enemas, or cutting a hole in the skull to let the vapours out. SSRI pills supposedly work the same way.

And pills worked because we are conditioned to believe in pills. They seem properly medical and scientific, and science is our religion. The proper cure for spiritual distress, aka “mental illness,” is always faith healing. That is to say, faith.

This is why people cling to their preferred psychological theory with a fervour only seen elsewhere in religion; and not indeed in religion since perhaps the 18th century. It is as though denying another’s psychological faith, whether it is in “chemical imbalance,” the Freudian subconscious, Jung, or Abraham Maslow, puts one at risk of auto da fe and then eternal hellfire. Perhaps you, like I, have repeatedly seen this.

L. Ron Hubbard, being a science fiction novelist, understood the imagination and the willing suspension of disbelief. He understood faith healing. Cohen, as a poet and songwriter, recognized the insight. Scientology tends to appeal to artists and actors generally. They see that imagination is the key, and Hubbard and Scientology have worked out a satisfying cosmology—far more complete and satisfying than the barren cosmology of conventional science, although Hubbard is shrewd enough to claim a scientific basis. We are conditioned to worship science.

Still, when it comes to truly combatting mental illness, neither pills nor a consciously constructed fantasy world can really compete with actual faith. And Hubbard omits the essential moral dimension.

Cohen ultimately found that Judaism worked better. Like the other universalist faiths, it has a complete and coherent account of human experience, and includes the moral imperative.

And that is what is needed to cure mental illness. Mental illness comes from a loss of meaning.

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