Stephen Roney's Blog, page 219

Uninformed Commentary on the Uninformed

 

I have a basic rule for this blog: unless I have some special insight, I do not comment. Why waste your time?

I’m breaking that rule right now.

I have no idea what is going on with the polls in the US right now. They all show Biden winning handily. It makes no sense to me.

The favoured explanation on the right is “shy Tory” voters. Voters afraid to admit they like Trump, in this current climate in which admitting as much risks losing your job or getting shot. But even if the polls are somewhat wrong, I can’t see why Trump isn’t walking away with this election.

I had long thought that Biden was the wrong candidate to run against Trump. You shouldn’t run a buffoon against a buffoon. If people want a buffoon, Trump is best at it. If people want a return to normalcy, you want a candidate who suggests quiet competence.

You might respond that the Democrats don’t have any such candidates. Sure they did. These are the very candidates their establishment turfed out of the race: Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. Mike Bloomberg might have worked. But Gabbard or Yang could also have contrasted with Trump on youth versus age.

On top of being a bad contrast to Trump on persona, Biden is evidently senile. How can anyone responsibly vote for a senile president?

On top of that, there are the allegations of groping and rape against Biden. I have always felt that sexual misconduct is irrelevant to public office. Nevertheless, how to justify the double standard? Whatever happened to #Metoo?

Biden has barely been campaigning, while Trump is holding mass rallies. When Biden does show up, few voters seem to. At a recent event in Arizona, featuring both Biden and Harris, campaigning together for the first time, nobody showed up. Trump gets large crowds. How does this tally with the polls?

Nobody is paying much attention to Biden’s platform. Nobody can really know what he will do in office, because he has changed many positions even since the primaries. If he has broken all previous promises, why would you expect him to keep any now? Voters are essentially giving him a blank cheque.

Biden will not even give a position on packing the Supreme Court. “You’ll find out after I’m elected.” In other words, he and the Democrats are actually explicitly demanding a blank cheque. How can a responsible voter accept this?

Biden offers no sense of unifying vision or theme. No “hope and change,” no “make American great again,” no “morning in America.” Nothing, at least, that resonates. He has “build back better.” Which is mostly an appeal to the past. It seems to be only “vote for me, and return to the status quo ante, because I’m not Trump.” By the standard rules of political persuasion, this should not work. People want optimism and a sense of purpose.

Studies of the positions of the two parties show that the Democrats have moved away from the centre and further left over the last few years. The Republicans have not moved, and are on the whole closer to the centre. If Biden is fairly moderate, Harris is not, and Biden is not obviously in command of his party. By all the standard assumptions of politics, this should mean the Democrats lose support; they should not have gained support since 2016.

Trump won in 2016, many say, because he broke the taboos of political correctness. And people were fed up with it. Political correctness has become more demanding since, and polls show the general population is at least as opposed to it as ever. So why would the general population turn against Trump now?

The core reasons Biden gives to justify his candidacy are that Trump is a racist, and that Trump botched the response to COVID-19.

But neither of these charges are coherent.

Biden’s evidence that Trump is racist, at least his core example, repeated often, is that Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “fine people” after the Charlottesville demonstrations. Yet Trump actually said that neo-Nazis and white supremacists “should be condemned totally.” There is video; there is a transcript. How is he getting away with this? How has this not been generally exposed, and why has Biden’s campaign not imploded as a result?

Meantime, Trump is making an open play for black and Hispanic votes, and reputedly doing better than any other Republican among them. He is pushing school choice, the ultimate solution to the plight of African-Americans, and something most African-Americans want. He has moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. How can this charge of “racist” stick?

Biden’s second charge, that Trump botched the response to COVID-19, also makes no sense. Nobody knew what we were dealing with or how best to respond. Why would Biden have done better? Biden’s stated plan for dealing with the virus is actually, in all details, the same as Trump’s. All Biden has is the slogan, “listen to the experts.” But the experts disagree on everything, and their advice changes by the week.

Biden and allies have made much of the Woodward revelation that Trump “knew” the virus was airborne and highly infectious already in early March, and did not tell anyone. This is nonsensical, because the CDC and WHO still will not confirm that it is airborne. If they do not know now, how did Trump have some privileged information then? Where did he get it, of not from them? How would he have known more than Congress, or the CDC, or the WHO? Or if they all did know this, why was it incumbent on him to tell everyone, and not on them?

Can’t anybody think any more?

Until COVID hit, Trump’s record was impressive. Despite unprecedented harassment from the House of Representatives and the “deep state,” the Russia hoax and the partisan Ukraine impeachment, Trump has presided over a great economy and record low unemployment at home. Abroad, he is the first president since Carter to engage in no new wars. Despite this, he wiped out ISIS as a territorial entity in weeks, without a single US casualty. He has cut new trade deals with Canada, Mexico, and China, apparently improving the US position. There are signs of a breakthrough to general peace in the Middle East.

Objectively, aside from partisan considerations, who has ever done a better job in their first four years?

It should be obvious to anyone that Trump bears no responsibility for COVID itself: it came from China, and everyone in the world has been hit. It makes no sense that COVID should change our perception of this record. Yet Biden has actually accused Trump of responsibility for every single American who has died of COVID. How can he get away with it?

There is widespread disorder in the streets. Biden and the Democrats have been, on the whole, encouraging and supporting it. They have called for defunding the police. Trump is calling for a reimposition of order. I cannot fathom how people cannot be alarmed by this. Why are they not supporting Trump on this basis? How can Biden get away with blaming Trump for violence against Trump? Are Americans really going to vote for a protection racket?

There are reports and poll results showing Trump with record levels of support, for a Republican, among African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. Why does this not show up in the general polls? Is it really plausible that he is losing, at the same time, a larger number of white voters? Are white people who voted for him last time really less likely to vote for him this time? His personality has not changed; and his record since seems to be one of accomplishment.

If this is all explained by “Shy Tory” voters, they must be present in unprecedented numbers. But perhaps they are: we have never before seen a climate as poisonous as this one, for those who do not toe the “progressive” line. At the same time that the “progressive” line has grown narrower. The times are unprecedented.

It might also be that those opposing Trump are low-information voters, unengaged and unaware. They haven’t really been paying attention; they are only reacting to finding Trump’s manner abrasive, or to what they hear everyone on the mainstream media telling them they are supposed to think. They may not even have seriously looked at Biden.

There are signs the Democrats are making this assumption. For example, when Biden actually refuses to give his position on the issues because this would be a “distraction.” And the cynical ploy of redefining “pack the court” to simply mean appointing judges. They seem to be assuming their supporters are not going to know the difference, or bother to look it up.

It is terrifying, and an indictment of democracy, that such voters might determine the election. If they can determine this one, they presumably determine all of them. And they are easily conned.

I have never understood the idea that people should be urged to get out and vote, or should consider it their civic duty. It seems to me the opposite is true. If you do not have a good command of the issues or the candidates, your civic duty is to abstain.

On the hopeful side, this type of voter is indeed less likely to actually get out and vote. They may show up in the polls, but not at the polls. Especially given the fear of COVID.

New rules have expanded the ability to vote by mail instead. This is an awful idea on several levels; but the process for doing so correctly is apparently complicated. This may also weed out careless or uninformed voters.

I have no insight here.
It looks something like a national IQ test; and, sadly, as someone once said, you never go broke by underestimating the intelligence of the general public.





'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Gods of Clay

Atheists seem always to refer to the Judeo-Christian God as an old man sitting on a cloud, a divine father. It is this God that they usually reject. They usually seem to make a point that it is this God that they reject, generally as “childish.”

But this is not the Judeo-Christian God.

Christianity has this thing called the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The father figure is only one. You are equally free to envision God instead as a friend, or a baby, or a bird, or a flame. All except as a friend are purely symbolic representations: it is as a friend that he chose to reveal himself to us. The point is to develop a personal relationship of love with God; use the image that works best in this way for you. It is no more intrinsically correct to imagine God as a father than as a lover: a metaphor found in the Song of Solomon, in St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul, and in devotional Hinduism’s Krishna Gopala cycle.

If atheists insist on seeing God as an angry father, and themselves as a child, this probably says something about their family relationships growing up; and perhaps our society’s devaluation of fatherhood; not about Christianity.

As for Judaism, conceiving of God an old man with a long grey beard is blasphemous. God himself is beyond our comprehension, and we must have no images of him.

Feminists, of course, make much of making God feminine; a divine Mother. They miss the point. Unless they are lesbian, Christian women have the traditional advantage. It is sick narcissism to think that it is about gaining power by making God in your own image.

How much power did Christians gain by imaging God as a crucified criminal, then?



'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Wild Geese

 

Dulac: Beauty, of "Beauty and the Beast."

Our civilization is collapsing because we have been failing to pass it on to succeeding generations.

When we left the land and moved en masse to the cities, we cut the roots of the extended family: no grandparents around helping to educate the children. Then we decided that all mothers should enter the regular workforce: now nobody had time to tend to the children’s upbringing. They were abandoned entirely to the professional “educators.”

The educators, meantime, have not just abandoned any attempt to pass on cultural wisdom: they teach against it. Not just denigrating our history, as in the 1619 project in the US, or the myth in Canada that Sir John A. Macdonald was an anti-Indian racist. There is also a very systematic movement in critical pedagogy to subvert all the old stories, the fairy tales, to make the dragon or the ogre the hero, and the heroic knight or princess the villain.

Not so long ago, nobody went to school. These old tales, along with the Bible and the Catechism, were what passed on all the wisdom of civilization. They were our guides to life. By reversing valences, children are being taught to act like ogres, poison apples, and jump into pots of boiling oil.

This is the way you destroy a civilization. And here we therefore are, with rioting in the streets, rising suicide and drug addiction, and no shared norms we can unite around.

In the meantime, with the cutting of the ties of the extended family, a lot of retired people are feeling abandoned.

Some have found that it does old folks in retirement homes a world of good in terms of their morale if a pet is introduced: a dog or cat. But this is only a weak substitute for what nature obviously intended: to have young children around. Old people are often bursting with wisdom they want to pass on before they die; doing this is their function in almost any other society. And they are being warehoused and ignored at the very same moment that young people are dying for lack of direction.

I propose enlisting a volunteer corps of retirees to simply read aloud the old traditional stories, unexpurgated and unaltered, to neighbourhood children after school. The stories just as they are, in Grimm, or Perrault, or Andersen. With the life lessons fully intact. Surely schools, local libraries and community centres would cooperate; or could be forced to cooperate.

Or we might arrange for the same in retirement homes: kids could come in for it.

I call it the Mother Goose Militia.

The progressives will inevitably object that this is all indoctrination in “white supremacy” and “the patriarchy.” They will object in principle to any attempt to preserve and pass on civilization, because to them civilization is by definition “white supremacy” and “patriarchy.” Even though these tales are always of someone who is oppressed winning through.

They must be ignored.

They will object that it is all “white” culture. But the fairy tales are from all over, and essentially the same tales are found all over the world. Cinderella’s plot can be traced to ancient Egypt, and is familiar in China or the Yucatan. The heroes in the Thousand and One Arabian Nights are obviously not European. I have spotted an incident from Jack the Giant Killer in a collection of traditional North American Indian tales.

It is artificial in any case to claim it makes a difference if the setting is Iran or Atikokan: fairy tales take place in fairyland.

Who’s with me?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Auf Wiedersehen, Mein Herr Trump

 

I was watching videos of Liza Minelli singing the title song from Cabaret; Christopher Isherwood had come up in a work connection. Then it occurred to me to also recap “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”

We are, after all, living through a similar time. The analogies with the Weimar Republic are overwhelming.

First a period of libertinage; “there is no right and wrong.” Then some organized group emerging, and asserting power for the sake of power.

My sister observes, “beautiful, if you’re not Jewish.”

The two songs are not just ominous for Jews. Most of the people the Nazis outright murdered were not Jewish; and this does not include the tally from the war, not just of combatants but of civilians. Millions died in places like Leningrad or Silesia of starvation. Millions were seized as slave labour. And, had the Nazis won that war, uncounted millions more would have died. The Germans themselves suffered as much as anyone; those young people we hear singing might all be dead within ten years.

But that’s what makes the songs so powerful: because we know how it all turned out. We know where Elsie and Sally’s attitude to life is going to lead, and we know where the young Nazis’ dream led. True beauty is not pretty or pleasant. It must include the sublime. High art must always have an element of sheer terror.

Compare Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love.” The reference is to the bands the Nazis had playing as they herded people into the gas chambers.

What makes the cherry blossoms so beautiful is knowing that in a week they will all have rotted.

But I digress. The poignancy is especially powerful now because we are now seeing the Nazis rise; in America, a far more consequential nation than Germany in 1933. And not only in America, either.

The parallels are astounding, and everyone is sleepwalking through it all.

No, it is not that Trump is Hitler. He is more Churchillian, conservative, gruff, passionately hated by many for his bombast, with many public vices. Hitler, by contrast, was a radical, an obscure figure, the opposite of a conservative, and had no visible vices. Incorruptible, vegetarian, apparently celibate. He was not hated so much as not taken seriously. Who could be seriously frightened by a little Austrian tramp with a moustache like Charlie Chaplin?

Biden is not Hitler either: he is a Hindenberg, or a Petain, a doddering old figurehead behind whose reassuring familiarity the consequential business of conquering and controlling the government apparatus can be done without interference.

Not, I suspect, by Kamala Harris. She not as Hitler either. She is too corrupt to be dangerous. She is perhaps a Goering or a von Papen, someone prepared to hire out her reputation to Hitler’s cause, for some emolument or chance for graft. Biden can be handled, and she can be bought.

By whom? 

The Hitler will emerge from relative obscurity; he usually does. As Hitler did. Probably someone no one saw coming, some faceless bureaucrat with no particular record like Putin, or some lower-ranking officer like Gaddhafi. Someone obscure enough that no one thought to defend against them. He or she is probably already in position and pulling strings. Someone engineered the nomination for Biden. Something has been going on behind the scenes in the FBI. Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.

Antifa and BLM are, of course, the military wing, the stormtroopers, sowing the discord in the streets. Germans in 1933 figured that the way to stop the chaos was to vote for their political masters. Many Americans in 2020 seem to be making the same calculation, and backing the Democrats to stop the rioting. The instincts of the average man seem always to run to appeasement.

We live in interesting times.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Terminator

 

Basically too busy to blog today. Which is a good thing.

Just a quick note that Pence won the debate last night. Harris did nothing wrong, but Pence gave the strongest performance I have ever seen in a political debates. The man is a lethal machine. He murderated her.

Will it matter? It might.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Political Poetry in Fredericton

Jenna Lyn Albert


There is a controversy in Fredericton over the city’s poet laureate, Jenna Lyn Albert. She recited to city council a poem describing an abortion. Some councillors found it too political.

The poet laureate herself admits it was political in intent:

“With the impending closure of Clinic 554 … I felt it was really important to share a poem about the importance of abortion access."

She is also quoted as saying “Poetry is inherently political. It would be lacklustre if you were to take that aspect out of creativity and of the art form away from it."

She is wrong to say that poetry is inherently political. Take the example of Leonard Cohen, Canada’s preeminent poet. Does anyone really know his politics? Or take Shakespeare. Perhaps in his superheated environment, he did not find it safe to reveal his political opinions. Regardless, he managed to produce a respectable body of work.

What are the politics of Al Purdy’s “The Country North of Belleville”?

Can you cite a famous poem that is overtly political? Perhaps Yeats’ “Easter 1916”; but only in the sense that it refers to a political event. In the poem, Yeats’s own opinion on the event is ambiguous.

Poetry surely has the right to express political opinions. It is just not a good idea. Poetry is an attempt to speak of truth and the eternal. Political issues are transitory and about power. They are more or less incompatible. Write a political poem, and it is probably not going to be that successful; and not likely to endure.

We have, moreover, an endemic problem in Canada currently, that poetry and the arts in general have been coopted for political purposes by one side of the political debate, the left. It is difficult to imagine a strongly anti-abortion poem being read in Fredericton City Hall; or published in any major poetry journal. This one-sidedness is poisonous to our political discourse, and poisonous to art. It is probably largely why the general public has lost in poetry. It is no longer very good. It has not just that poets rise within the craft not for ability, but for espousing the right opinions. It is also that the poems they produce become predictable, repetitious, and without new insight. As Orwell has aptly explained in “Politics and the English Language,” political sloganeering is the opposite of insight.

Moreover, it seems obvious that a poet laureate does not have the right to express partisan political positions in that official capacity. Even if poorly paid, the poet laureate is on the public purse: he or she is an unelected public official. It is therefore improper for him or her to express opinions on political issues of the day just as it would be for the Governor-General, a Lieutenant-Governor, or for any other public servant.

The poem was pretty weak, too.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Chronicling the Collapse of Civilization

Or that is how it is beginning to feel.

Item: two leading Italian newspapers report that Cardinal Becciu, recently dismissed from his Vatican position by Pope Francis, actually put 700,000 Euros of Church funds into bribing witnesses to get Cardinal Pell of Australia charged and convicted of child sex abuse. This was because Pell was in charge of cleaning up Vatican finances. It was to get him out of the way.

If true, it sounds as though the Mafia had taken over the Vatican. It seems good news that Becciu was ousted, but disturbing that he got this far. We have discovered recently that we cannot trust even cardinals: they are entirely likely to be criminals.

But at least we can trust the Pope, right?

Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, while perhaps theologically unobjectionable, looks very political in its interests: “The document focuses on contemporary social and economic problems.” It calls for a world government and open borders. It calls for reform of the UN. Francis writes, disapprovingly, “Certain populist political regimes, as well as certain liberal economic approaches, maintain that an influx of migrants is to be prevented at all costs.” And the timing looks like an attempt to influence the US election.

This reinforces a growing sense that Francis’s primary concerns are political, not spiritual. He is a politician, not a religious man. And his politics lean left—in an essentially irreligious direction.




'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Parable of the Tenants

 

The Stone that was rejected.

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people:
"Hear another parable.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.
Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
When vintage time drew near,
he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,
another they killed, and a third they stoned.
Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,
but they treated them in the same way.
Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking,
'They will respect my son.'
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,
'This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’
They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?"
They answered him,
"He will put those wretched men to a wretched death
and lease his vineyard to other tenants
who will give him the produce at the proper times."

Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures:  

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?  

Therefore, I say to you,
the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit."

The obvious interpretation of the parable is that it is directed towards Jewish authorities who rejected Christ.

But this is not satisfactory; if so, it would hold no meaning for us today. It must also apply to Christians, or there is no reason to include it in the Bible.

Each of us is given our various gifts: intelligence, fortunate birth, physical beauty, athleticism, and so on. Since we are not responsible for this, they are on lease from God. God gave them to us, rather than someone else, for a purpose. If we fail to return the owner’s share of the produce, if we fail to use them to bear fruit, we are like the tenants in the parable.

This surely means something more profound than simply tithing or giving to charity. It means that our overall intent must be the greater good; that whatever our special circumstances or talents are, these are applied to making the world a better place.

A second significance: whoever is being beaten, killed, and stoned, for their own morality—these are the servants of God, and our duty is to support and respect them. These are the cornerstones on which God is building the New Jerusalem. This echoes the Beatitudes: “blessed are you when you are persecuted for my name’s sake.”

No doubt many think and hope they are doing this when they support “Black Lives Matter,” or feminism, or “Idle No More,” or gay or transgender rights. This is delusional. Demonstrably, African Americans are not being persecuted, women are not being persecuted, and aboriginals and gays and transvestites are not being persecuted, in North America. Governments are mobilized to their advantage. More or less by definition, the persecuted will not have governments or popular opinion on their side.

So who are the persecuted? Who is actually being punished because they are acting morally? Think about it.

One way most of us can build a better world, most obviously, is in parenting. In that one situation when we are most responsible for the wellbeing of another.

Hence perhaps the appearance of the landlord’s son.

This need not refer only to Jesus: every child born is a child of God, leased to their biological parents as wards. How we treat our children is the ultimate test: are we passing on what we were given, or trying to keep it all to ourselves?

The issue of abortion springs to mind. The issue of child abuse. The issue, in particular, of parents possibly punishing children for acting morally or for their innocent faith.

How much care have we been taking to educate our children properly, especially in religious and ethical matters? Especially with both parents working, as is now the rule?

The civilization that does not devote its greatest effort to raising the next generation in its religious and ethical traditions is a civilization in decline. That vineyard will soon be given to other tenants.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Growing Menace of White Supremacists under Our Beds

Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys


In her farewell speech to the Green Party convention, Elizabeth May warned of the need to stay alert to the growing problem of white supremacy. Trump was asked by the moderator during the recent debate to denounce “white supremacists.”

This to me sounds delusional; while Black Lives Matter and Antifa are burning and looting American cities night after night, complaining of “systemic racism,” the problem is “growing white supremacy”? In recent years, I have never even seen a white supremacist sentiment stated publicly. Or, I think, spoken privately. If there are such things as white supremacists, they have been conspicuous by their absence in the recent rioting, or, if you prefer, for the sake of argument, “mostly peaceful demonstrations.” If they were really such a danger, and such a major group, you’d expect them at least to be out there cracking Antifa and BLM heads in response.

A clue to the puzzle is that, when asked by Trump to name a white supremacist organization, Biden said “The Proud Boys.”

Proud Boys are explicitly not white supremacists.

From what appears to be their official website:

Proud Boys‘ values center on the following tenets:

Minimal Government
Maximum Freedom
Anti-Political Correctness
Anti-Drug War
Closed Borders
Anti-Racial Guilt
Anti-Racism
Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment)
Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment)
Glorifying the Entrepreneur
Venerating the Housewife
Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism

Though these are our central tenets, all that is required to become a Proud Boy is that a man declare he is “a Western chauvinist who refuses to apologize for creating the modern world.” We do not discriminate based upon race or sexual orientation/preference.

Totally and explicitly nothing to do with “white supremacy.” In fact, the opposite.

In part, what appears to be happening is that those on the far left are simply labelling anyone to their right as “white supremacists.” Just as they use the term “fascist.”

At the same time, they are conflating culture with race. Anybody who believes in the overall superiority of Western-European culture is a “white supremacist.”

This is a dangerous, indeed an essentially Nazi, thing to do. It leads directly to such conclusions as that black people are genetically incapable of making decisions for themselves, Asians are unsuitable as immigrants, and Jews are not fully human.

The racists have simply redefined terms to make racism mean anti-racism, anti-racism mean racism, and anti-fascism mean fascism. 



'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

No Trump

Since it is the big news, a word on Trump’s contracting coronavirus: I expect him to make a full recovery. It was caught early, he has access to the best treatments, and he seems to have a strong constitution.

More concerning are some of the public reactions: people openly applauding the fact that he is ill, and even hoping he will die.

I had hoped at the beginning of the COVID epidemic that it would bring us all together against a common enemy. Those hopes were obviously vain.

My conclusion is that the Bible is right, and all else is denial: there are good people, and there are people who deliberately embrace the wrong. These latter abandon all humanity.

It is no doubt wrong to call them irredeemable; but they willfully refuse to be redeemed.



'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.