Stephen Roney's Blog, page 194
July 3, 2021
Bird in a Gilded Cage
I find the Britney Spears conservatorship horrifying. If someone is mentally ill, the odds are that they were driven to it by their upbringing, by their family. The worst thing we can do is to deprive them of their rights and give all control to their family.
But that is exactly what we systematically do. If we merely stopped doing it, that alone might end much of the problem of mental illness. They might need help to look after their affairs; even if so, it would be far better to appoint some random stranger out of the phone book.
What happened to Britney Spears could happen to anyone, and once it happens, your life is over. This should not be possible in a free society.
I am excerpting passages from a piece by Ronan Farrow—that Ronan Farrow—and Jia Tolentino in the New Yorker.
Butcher had been told that she would be required to give more testimony and answer questions. Instead, according to Butcher, Lynne told her, “It’s taken care of.” The judge, Reva Goetz, who has since retired, arrived and announced that the conservatorship had been granted. “The whole process was maybe ten minutes,” Butcher said. “No one testified. No questions were asked.”
Spears’s relationship with Jamie [her father], who could be domineering and hostile toward his daughter, was strained. Butcher recalled Lynne replying that the conservatorship would last only a few months, and that it would be best for Spears to resent Jamie, rather than her, when it was all over. But, after they joined Jamie in the conference room, Butcher said, Lynne began talking about her hopes for how the conservatorship would be managed, prompting Jamie to shout about his control over his daughter’s life, including Lynne’s access to her. At one point, Butcher recalled him bellowing, “I am Britney Spears!”
Three psychiatrists were asked to provide a necessary declaration confirming Spears’s lack of mental fitness. The third, James Spar, provided it. (Earlier this year, Spar said of Spears, on a podcast, “I don’t know why she still has a conservatorship.”)
From the earliest days of the conservatorship, Spears appeared to chafe against her constraints. While hospitalized, she had contacted a lawyer named Adam Streisand. He represented her in a court hearing on February 4th, attesting that Spears had a “strong desire” that Jamie not be a conservator. But the judge, based on a report from Ingham and testimony from Spar, ruled that Spears had no capacity to retain an attorney.
In the following weeks, Jamie wore Spears down. “He would get all in her face—spittle was flying—telling her she was a whore and a terrible mother,” Butcher said. Spears was told that she could see her kids again only if she coöperated.
Jamie got rid of anyone his daughter had been close to.
In behind-the-scenes footage of workdays and rehearsals, she gets visibly tense whenever Jamie is in the room. At one point, she does an impression of her father, adopting a thick Southern accent: “You know, she don’t listen to me. I scream at her and she gets onto me about screamin’ at her, but I can’t do it. You’re just gonna have to talk some fucking sense into her.”
Over the holidays, a woman came to perform a “psych test,” and then her father told her that she had failed it and needed to go to rehab. “I cried on the phone for an hour, and he loved every minute of it,” she said. “The control he had over someone as powerful as me—he loved the control to hurt his own daughter. One hundred thousand per cent, he loved it.”
This is all pure evil. Perhaps the experience of Britney Spears will expose the injustice.At least it may get the public's attention.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Orwell Just Got the Date Wrong
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
-- George Orwell, 1984
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.July 2, 2021
Some Questions on Residential Schools
Studying on the quad at Assiniboia Indian Residential SchoolIt is surprisingly hard to get reliable contemporary information on the Indian residential schools. A lot of people are playing politics. To get the facts, one has to go back to original documents.
One assertion often made is that Indian families were obliged to send their children to a particular residential school. It was all done against the Indians’ will.
I suspect this may be no more than a reference to the general Canadian law that parents must send their children to school; the law against truancy.
For I find references in the Truth And Reconciliation Commission final report to concern about Indian parents pulling their children out of the schools.
“Student complaints about food hurt recruitment. Kuper Island school principal J. N. Lemmens pointed out in 1891 that it was very important to provide the students with good food and clothing at his school on the British Columbia coast. He said that, unlike First Nations in other parts of the country, coastal First Nations ‘did not suffer for want of food.’ Their children were ‘used to being well fed at home.’ If the quality of food provided at the school was poor, the school might fall into disrepute” (TRC Final Report, Volume 1, pp. 488-9)
The same concern is expressed in a government report in 1907: that student attendance at the residential schools has been falling off, as parents did not want to send their children so far from home. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 16).
For this to have been a concern, attendance at any particular school must have been voluntary.
Indeed, how could it not have been? The schools were generally denominationally run. Wouldn’t it have been obvious and necessary to send Catholic children to a Catholic school, regardless of their home address, and Anglican children to an Anglican school, and so forth? Meaning parents would have a choice of which residential school to have their children attend, by declaring their denominational preference. Even if students had to attend some residential school, the schools would be in competition for students. Meaning they would have a need to keep the students, and their parents, satisfied.
And it is not logically possible that Indian students were even required to attend a residential school. Because only about one third of Indian school-aged children ever did, even at the height of the residential schools.
It is also obvious that the government itself would prefer they not attend: at a residential school, the government had to pay for the student’s food and lodging. If they attended regular day schools, or just stayed at home, the government spared considerable expense.
The simple fact that parents could withdraw their children seems, at a stroke, to discredit most accusations of abuse, starvation, or cultural genocide.
Now as to those unmarked graves so much in the news recently.
We have always known there was a high mortality rate in the residential schools. For whatever reason—and science cannot agree on the reason—Canada’s First Nations have always been highly vulnerable to tuberculosis, among other diseases. A 1907 survey of schools across the Prairies reports: “of 1,537 pupils returned from 15 schools which have been in operation on an average of eleven years, 7 percent are sick or in poor health and 24 percent are reported dead.” All of these deaths were believed to be from tuberculosis. (P.H. Bryce, Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the North-West Territories, Department of Indian Affairs, p. 18).
Can the schools fairly be blamed? There was no cure for tuberculosis until 1946. Granted, bringing students together to educate them might cause the infection to spread to previously uninfected students; but what was the government to do? Not educate the children? They could and did turn away any students showing active symptoms; but TB can remain latent for a lifetime. The rate of tuberculosis in the schools ended up being only half that on the reserves, so the average student was still safer there than at home.
What about the charge that the schools tried to destroy Indian culture by requiring students to speak English or French?
There are several reasons for this requirement that have nothing to do with “cultural genocide.” First, given that the schools were in the business of teaching English or French, the best method is by immersion. Anyone who has studied in a language school will be familiar with this “English only” policy. Second, in almost no cases would the students at a school all be from the same language group. Speaking their first language instead of French or English would freeze out any minorities. Third, why would learning a new language cause you to unlearn a language you already knew? Does learning geometry make you forget your arithmetic? Granted that it is possible, through lack of practice, we have never considered this an important argument against further education.
Finally, the evidence is ambiguous that this prohibition on using one’s first language was either widespread or, when imposed, was strictly enforced.
Many Indian children, no doubt, hated school. Me too. Perhaps we all deserve compensation.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
July 1, 2021
The Kamloops Cemetery in Perspective
Suspects Identified in St. Jean-Baptiste Arson
https://www.conservativebeaver.com/2021/07/01/city-2-arrests-in-morinville-catholic-church-arson/
Only one source so far. May be fake news...
Canada Day in Winnipeg
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2021/07/01/winnipeg-today/
Is Morinville Burning?
The most beautiful church in Alberta, perhaps the most beautiful building, has burned down.
You may not have heard.
St. Jean-Baptiste rose like a miracle from the flat prairie landscape, its silver roof reflecting the strong prairie sun. It was the centrepiece of Morinville. I used to marvel at it each time, on the way into Edmonton: this perfect piece of old Quebec in northern Alberta.
Alberta, sadly, has few old, historic, or traditional buildings of any kind. Now St. Jean-Baptiste is gone.
It is probably a case of arson. The local priest says he fears for his life. A number of Catholic churches, some others as historic, have been burned to the ground or vandalized across Canada in the past few weeks. You probably have not noticed. It is hard to find information in the Canadian media; there is nothing about any of this, for example, on Canadian news aggregator Bourque Newswatch. The best sources for the story I have found so far are from India and the Philippines.
It looks like a gathering anti-Catholic pogrom; and this news, if not suppressed, is being mostly ignored by Canadian media and politicians. At the same time, all it seems they can talk about is the discoveries, one by one, of the graves of indigenous children near the sites of the old Indian residential schools.
This “news” tends to foment hatred towards Catholics, since the Catholic Church ran most of those schools. It looks almost like a coordinated campaign,
And the “discovery” of indigenous graves on indigenous reserves is not news. Every community in Canada has a cemetery; people die. In particular, in the 19th and earlier 20th century, children died. One estimate is that one third to one half of all Canadian children died before their fifth birthday.
Everyone has always known of these particular gravesites. All that was not known was the number of interred; local bands apparently kept no records, and the official government records were lost to a recycling drive in Ottawa.
Reporting on their “discovery” is fake news. It seems crafted to foment hatred against the Catholic Church, and to turn people away from faith.
One almost suspects something cynical in the demand that everyone wear orange on Canada Day in supposed solidarity with the native people. Why orange? In the Canadian context, the colour orange meant and means opposition to the Catholic Church.
Canada had the world’s largest membership in the Orange Order, an organization formed in explicit opposition to Catholicism. It used to control local politics in places like Toronto, “the Belfast of North America.”
Take a short walk in any direction at this time of year in Ontario, and you will see beds of blossoming orange lilies. The reason they are there is probably forgotten by most modern owners, but those beds were originally planted to show allegiance to the order; by tradition, they bloomed by July 12, in celebration of the Battle of the Boyne.
Doubt any cabal is consciously plotting all this. It is the devil’s work.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
June 30, 2021
The Evil of the Residential Schools
Lejac Residential SchoolIt is surprisingly obvious, given the general outcry, that the official “narrative” on the Indian Residential Schools in Canada is false. There was no attempt to either wipe out the Indians, deprive them of their culture, or abuse or neglect Indian children. It is all a wild conspiracy theory. The actual report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the press releases of the Indian bands in Kamloops and Marieval, although trying to mislead, judiciously avoid telling any actual lies, on which they could, after all, be called out.
Nevertheless, the media and the politicians seem to want to give a megaphone to the lie that something nefarious was going on in the schools as schools, as opposed to the inevitable presence of some individual bad personnel. They get excitable should anyone openly doubt this.
What is going on? Are they mad?
My thesis until now has been the consciousness of guilt over abortion produced a felt need to scapegoat. Ideally some scapegoat who supposedly mistreated children. Ideally the very same moral authority, the Catholic Church, that has been calling them out over abortion. “I know you are, but what am I?”
But the recent Leger poll, reported here yesterday, suggests there is something else going on. The average Canadian apparently does not feel such shame, perhaps does not feel responsible for abortion, and is not going along with the masquerade.
Another possible explanation is that the secular power elite hates religion as an alternative power centre. This was the reasoning behind Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He wanted to smash Confucianism and the Buddhist temples. The band chiefs may hate the Church as the sole check on the reserves against their absolute power. And the power elite in the rest of Canada may also hate those meddlesome priests; the existence of an accepted moral code is the only thing that ever keeps a ruling class in check. THis would be why they hate as well as the statues of moral exemplars of the past, the Dundas’s, the Gandhi’s, the John Paul II’s. They want to discredit anyone with a high moral reputation. These offer the general public models against which their own acts can be measured and found wanting.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
June 29, 2021
On Cancelling Canada Day
There are many calls in the media to cancel Canada Day this year, because of the unmarked graves of Indian children found in Kamloops and Marieval recently.
I am pleased to see a new Leger Poll finds no support for the idea. Scott Adams regularly observes that, no matter what cockamamie question you ask the shuffling public, a steady 20-25% will vote for anything. But not even this lunatic fringe is on the bandwagon for the cancel-Canada-Day parade. Asked the question. “do you feel with all the questions about Canada and its historical record, it would be best to cancel Canada Day this year?” only 14% answered yes. Even though salesmen say when forced to choose, people always prefer to say “yes” than “no.”
The ruling elite has gone stark bonkers. Canadians in general remain resolutely sane. In fact, this smells like a popular tsunami lurking just below the surface.
June 28, 2021
The Crimes of Henry Dundas
Sir Henry DundasAs Kingston pulls down its statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, a severe self-inflicted blow to a tourist town that can claim being Macdonald's home town as a major attraction, Toronto is poised to rename Dundas Street, currently the city's centre (as Yonge and Dundas, and Dundas Square) on the grounds that Henry Dundas, after whom the street was named, was a proponent of slavery.
Initial estimates are that the name change will cost Toronto taxpayers 5-6 million dollars; not to mention the cost to private businesses.
One is surprised to learn, on checking Wikipedia, that Henry Dundas was actually a lifelong public opponent of slavery, and advocate of abolition. But then again, Macdonald was a proponent of Indian rights, and wanted to give them the franchise.
The notion that Dundas supported slavery is based on the fact that he inserted an amendment to Wilberforce’s bill abolishing the slave trade, calling for this to be “gradual.” Dundas himself claimed this was a tactical necessity, as a sudden total ban without proper preparation would simply create a black market trade. And as an immediate end could not get the votes to pass the Commons and Lords. Historians are divided on whether this was true, or whether his intent was to prolong the trade.
Dundas had up to that point been a leading abolitionist, responsible as a barrister for the legal prohibition of slavery in Scotland. And, of course, calling him a supporter of slavery requires us to call him a liar.
The interesting question is why the at least relative good guys, like Dundas or Macdonald or Langevin, are targeted, and not dubious or openly racist figures like George Brown or the Famous Five or Tommy Douglas, who continue to be commemorated without controversy.
The simplest explanation is that the racists are now in charge. It is simply not politically expedient to call racism racism, so, in an obvious ruse, it is called by its proponents "anti-racism." But the deeper explanation, I suspect, is guilt: when people feel guilty over something, anyone who has acted morally in some significant way is to be pulled down and disparaged.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
