Stephen Roney's Blog, page 33

The Statue of Aboriginality

 

In 1909, there was a serious proposal to build a monument to the American Indian in New York Harbour, fifteen feet higher than the Statue of Liberty. It was serious enough that construction began; with much public support. It ultimately fizzled out when WWI came, causing a bronze shortage. 

I mention this because it shows how fallacious the idea is that American Indians have been historically discriminated against. The truth is the exact reverse: they have always been idealized and idolized. But this has not been good for them. It is rather like what happens when you spoil a child: they become dependent.

It is true that, in the US, encroaching settlement made their traditional way of life obsolete. This has never been true in Canada—only a small  fraction of the actual land mass or hunting area has ever been settled. But even in the case of the US, they face a common dilemma: there is no call for coopers or blacksmiths or telegraph operators any more either. One retrains.

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How the Light Gets In

 

(7) By reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that I should not be exalted excessively, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, that I should not be exalted excessively. (8) Concerning this thing, I begged the Lord three times that it might depart from me. (9) He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me. (10) Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.

This, from 2 Corinthians, was the second reading at Mass last Sunday. It is traditional for gay advocates to take Paul’s reference to a “thorn in the flesh” to refer to homosexual cravings.

It seems to me this reading is not just random, but improbable. Why would he refer to a temptation as if a physical pain? Whenever one wants to interpret something in a text metaphorically, one must first somehow exclude a more literal meaning. We must assume a “thorn in the flesh” describes a physical pain of some sort. Perhaps kidney stones, or gall stones, would be a more plausible guess.

Can such things come from Satan? In Paul’s day, it was taken for granted that they could. This is why Jesus could heal physical illnesses by driving out demons. The desert fathers and the Buddhist sages tell us that Satan/Mara comes first to tempt, but, if we resist temptation, then assaults us directly. He torments.

There is a truth here known to mystics and shamans. When a shaman takes a trance journey, he commonly harms himself physically in some way on his return to normal consciousness. Patty Duke says she used to need to be stuck hard on the back to pull her out of a “manic” episode. This is somehow necessary for a safe landing back in the world of the physical senses. Hydrotherapy--a cold dose of water splashed on someone acting hysterical—might work the same way. 

It may also be why, proverbially, you have to suffer to sing the blues; every act of creation comes, as I think Shelley put it, like a pearl comes to an oyster. It coalesces around some source of pain. Inspiration, whether aesthetic or more directly religious, comes balanced with some pain or weakness. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”  

We may not know why, but it is so.

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

The Only Sane People in the World

 

I have lived in a number of countries around the world. One thing I have learned from that—the main thing—is that everyone is insane.

This should not be surprising. Every religion tells us so. Truth, enlightenment, is revealed only to a few. It might come as a surprise only if you buy into modern “scientific” psychology. Lacking any standard for truth or reality, it merely defines “sane” as “having the majority opinion.” That obviously does not work. It is a recognized logical fallacy: ad populum.

We all live on delusions. Francis Bacon classified the common sources centuries ago, and founded empirical science as a way to break through. It has not worked. Churchill once said something like, “Most people, if they stumble upon the truth, will just pick themselves up and dust themselves off.” Bertrand Russel once said, “Most of us would sooner die than know the truth. And most of us do.”

One of the standard sources of delusion, as Bacon shrewdly classifies them, is “idols of the tribe.” These are delusions shared by a social group, the members of which can easily mutually reinforce each other in the delusion. It is hard in isolation to persist in a delusion.  When everyone around you is agreeing with you, it is far easier. These delusions of the tribe are actually encouraged by psychology. Shared delusions tend to define a nation.

Living in another country, especially one with a significantly different culture, reveals these delusions. If unreflective, an expat will after a few months come to the conclusion that they are all mad here. If he is more thoughtful, and more self-reflective, he may conclude instead that he is mad. If more reflective still, he will realize that both are—or at least, he too had been, on this or that matter, before now. 

All that is a lead-in to this: not all nationalities are equally mad. In my still limited experience, North Americans, at least in these times, are profoundly mad. Madder than hatters. Thank me for sharing. The Chinese can always be counted on to be mad. The French are certainly mad. We all know about the Germans and their fits of madness. The Japanese are mad, Koreans are mad. These are beautiful cultures, perhaps the most impressive cultures, cultures in which education is highly valued. And one would expect education to be a cure for madness. Yet it can as easily be the reverse: it can be an education into the shared delusions. And great art can be the individual’s desperate attempt to break through the matrix of thyeir culture. Like the sand in the oyster’s shell that forms the pearl of great price.

 Italians are far less prone to be mad. Greeks are less prone to group madness. This despite their impressive cultures. But perhaps too, it explains why they are not as creative as they once were.

I probably can’t be objective about the Irish, but I think they are uncommonly sane.

But the sanest group of people I have ever had to deal with—and I have dealt with them quite a bit, largely for this reason—are the Filipinos. They are on the whole profoundly sensible, always with their two flat feet on the ground. Among other things, this makes them, contrary to what seems the stereotype, quite unromantic. They are, on the other hand, religious, and take seriously the other world. Being practical and non-delusional means you do take account of the spiritual world. 

Materialism is the greatest of our North American delusions.

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

No Irish Need Apply

 

The racial discrimination in Canada—and the US and Britain too—has become more egregious now than it ever was in the days of the Civil Rights marches. Today I note this line in a communication from the League of Canadian Poets about an upcoming contest:

“Each submission much be accompanied by an entry fee of $20. Discounted entry fees ($5) are available to Black, Indigenous, racialized, and LGBTQI2S+ poets.”

Such statements are  common now. They are blatant violations of both the US Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Which shows the sad truth that such charters in the end only protect already-favoured groups. What is needed is a change in hearts. They are in open violation of the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., that we must judge one another not by the colour of our skins, but by the content of our character—the same moral Jesus gives us in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  They are open violations of the principle on which the US, and modern liberal democracy, was founded, that “all men are created equal,” and have the right to equal protection under the law. But that is another example of how such high-sounding principles end up protecting only already-favoured groups. Somehow the US, demanding equality for themselves vis a vis England’s ruling classes, saw no immediate need to free their slaves. 

We thought we had gotten beyond all this in the 1960s; it has all come raging back. It leads to the conclusion from such bitter experience that all people are inherently racist and xenophobic. This is a tendency we must all consciously fight against, as we must always fight against aspects of our animal nature. We are herd animals. Small children will often show a bad reaction to an unfamiliar skin colour; as a dog will. It is a survival instinct to be suspicious of the outsider, the stranger. Couple to that the universal need for scapegoats.

If we forget it, or, yet more stupidly, start claiming that only one particular racial group is subject to racist feelings, we end up doing horrible things to one another. We end up in Holocausts.

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

On the Fly

 

Events are moving so fast now that I suspect nobody has tometo read commentary instead of watch the news unfold; and I do not have time towrite commentary.

At the moment, it looks as though Biden is going to stepdown in favour of Kamala Harris. The Conservatives are going to suffer a historicloss in Britain tomorrow, and Reform will outpoll them. LePen will fall justshort ofr a majority in France. Justin Trudeau will shuffle Freeland out of theFinance Ministry, bring in Carney, and stick it out for now.

But that’s just the latest rumours I’m reading, like everybodyelse.

Just about anything can happen.

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

Desiderata

 

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Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

We are going through hourly political chaos, but the happy truth is that we are managing, it seems, to make the necessary changes, to dissipate all the public rage, in a reasonably orderly fashion, without the system breaking down. 

The issue is summarized well by Reform’s deputy leader, Ben Habib: it is bureaucratic government against popular, democratic government. The bureaucrats are now losing everywhere.

The British disaffected have Nigel Farage, an effective figure to really around. The bureaucratic state has been using dirty tricks against him, but it does not look as though they will be able to pull it off. He’s not going to win the election coming in a couple of days, but he will change and quite likely control the political conversation over the next few years. He may crush the Conservative Party and emerge as the obvious alternative next time.

The Tories are arguing at the doorstep that if Labour gets the huge majority projected, they will be in power for a generation. The opposite is as likely. When parties get huge majorities, they are heavy with disaffected backbenchers who cannot all be given posts. They almost always fracture into infighting. See how quickly the Tories have fallen from their big majority four years ago. 

In Canada, Trudeau should be smoothly replaced by Poilievre’s Conservatives, channelling the anger in a mainstream party. Canada is, as usual, more orderly than anyone in this revolution.

The likelihood, of course, is that Poilievre’s Conservatives, if they get the projected big majority, will also fracture. But in the meantime, some steam will be let off.

France just voted strongly for the Ralliement National in the first round of legislative polling; the rest of Europe is quickly going anti-woke.

And the US, of course, has Trump. He now seems a shoo-in to win the presidency back. The lawfare against him got severely set back by the new Supreme Court decision that came down today. And the Supreme Court has also struck a blow directly against the bureaucratic state with their recent decision to overturn Chevron.

Everything seems to be going in the right direction. And it is hard not to see God’s hand in it. The future seems clear.

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

The Carney Is in Town

 

Man temporarily dismounted from his white horse.

Yesterday, we wrote a little about the chaos among the Democrats in the U.S. over their leadership. A simultaneous crisis is underway among Canadian Liberals. They have just lost one of the three to five safest Liberal seats in the country, Toronto-St. Paul’s, in a byelection. Their polling is underwater somewhere in Hudson’s Bay. What can they do?

My own local MP, Wayne Long, has just openly called for Trudeau to step down. But the Canadian system is not like the British system. The party leader must sign the nomination papers for all local candidates. That makes him or her a dictator within the party: any sign of disloyalty means the local member is out at the next election. This is very unlike the way the Westminster system is supposed to run; properly, the party leader serves at the pleasure of his or her caucus. After all, the people vote for their local members, not the prime minister. This Westminster system allowed Britain to quickly replace Chamberlain with Churchill in the crisis at the beginning of the Second World War. It could instantly solve America’s problem with Joe Biden’s senility. Losing it also loses the entire point of having debates over legislation in the House of Commons; members cannot vote their conscience. They are just expensive trained seals. 

Something like the Westminster system has been revived in the Canadian Conservative Party, thanks to the efforts of Michael Chong. Without it, they would still be stuck with Erin O’Toole, instead of Pierre Poilievre, as leader,

As a result of this Liberal dictatorship, MP’s do not dare come out against the leader. Wayne Long was able to, because he is not running again in any case. And because he has an independent profile back home. Rumour has it that a majority of Liberal members actually want Trudeau to go. But they do not dare raise their hands. All they can do is vote against their own leader in a confidence vote—leading to an election in which they would be barred from running—or cross the floor and join another party.

Trudeau has no intention, it seems, of resigning. Rumour has it that he plans a cabinet shakeup to try to get the poll numbers back up. He wants to sacrifice his finance minister and deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, scapegoating her for the taxes and rising cost of living that has queered Canadians on him. This is, interestingly, a tactic favoured by his reputed father, Fidel Castro: blame the economists for supposedly giving bad advice. Then Trudeau’s rumoured plan is to bring in Mark Carney as the new finance minister, as part of a wider cabinet shakeup. Freeland, after all, had no background in finance, business, or economics; she was a journalist. Carney has sterling credentials, literally--as in ponds sterling-- a banker and a former governor of both the Bank of Canada and Bank of England. He might calm the public and give the government credibility. Folks might believe better times were ahead, if they just stuck with the gummint.

Many have pointed out a problem with this plan. Carney has no seat in parliament. All the commentators I have heard or read seem to think this is a constitutional requirement for a cabinet appointment.

It is not. 

Senators can be appointed to cabinet. Justin Trudeau can appoint senators. Pierre Trudeau, wanting cabinet representation from the Prairie provinces, and lacking any M.P.’s, appointed Hazen Argue from the Senate as minister for the Canadian Wheat Board. Appointing from the House of Lords is fairly common in Britain; David Cameron is currently serving as foreign secretary from the House of Lords.

So Trudeau could simply appoint Carney to the Senate. Problem solved.

He does not even need to do that. There is precedent for appointing a member of the general public to the Cabinet, on the understanding that they will run for election within a reasonable time. Pierre Trudeau appointed Pierre Juneau to Cabinet from outside Parliament in 1975.

Since the next election is relatively close in any event, and there is no written law on the matter, only convention, Trudeau could appoint Carney to cabinet on Carney’s public promise to run in that election.

So the Carney plan could work. 

Would Carney want to do it?

Would it save the Liberals?

I think he wants it.

I don’t think it can save the Liberals.

But it may be their best shot. 

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

Mostly on the US Debate

 

Events are moving quickly; this is not a quiet summer. The Tories in the UK are in a panic. Reform is in a panic. The Republicans in France are in a panic. The Democrats in the US are in a panic. Things are almost moving too fast for commentary. What I say now may be obsolete in a few hours.

In the US, even all the left-wing commentators have turned on Joe Biden. His performance in the debate was historically bad. The best they can muster is the claim that, while Biden was incoherent. Trump was lying about everything. 

They never cite any particular lie. That perhaps says everything.

I did track down a list on CNN’s web site:

Trump: “Hard to believe, they have some states passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth. It’s crazy.”

Trump went on to cite to the former governor of Virginia, Ralph Northram. Here’s what Northram actually said, referring to his proposed legislation:

“The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

But that legislation was, in the end, voted down in the legislature.

There were other close calls in New York and California, but the bills were amended before being passed.

So Trump was not correct. Directionally true, perhaps, as his supporters often say, but an exaggeration. But it might also be unfair to characterize it as a deliberate lie; Trump was speaking without notes. He may only have been foggy on the details. “Have tried to pass” would have been correct.

Trump: “I say, let the states decide. This is — every legal scholar wanted this to be where abortion should be.”

And of course, not EVERY legal scholar wanted the states to decide on abortion. To begin with, obviously, the justices of the Supreme Court count as legal scholars, and a majority of them voted for Roe v. Wade fifty years ago. A minority voted to keep Roe V. Wade last year. 

But given that the strict literal sense of the claim was obviously false, surely it was clear to everyone that Trump was not speaking literally, but using the common exaggeration, as in “everybody knows.”

The network counts as a lie Trump’s claim that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency: “we didn’t have an attack for four years.”

CNN then cites an attack in New York that killed eight people in 2017, right after his election; and an attack by a lone gunman that killed three soldiers at an army base in Florida in 2019.

Another case of Trump being directionally correct, but exaggerating. He did not mean literally “none.” Just as we might say, “nobody loves a rainy day,” without expecting to be challenged with an example of someone who does.

They also count as a lie Trumps’ claim that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen.” Which is, at a minimum, a legitimate opinion. 

And they counted Trump’s claim that Biden got money from China as a lie because it was presented “with no evidence.” There certainly is evidence of this; although it has not (yet?) been proven in a court of law. 

And the commentators never point out that, apart from not making sense, Biden told many lies. As, to be fair, all politicians do, pretty much all the time. Yet, mysteriously, it is only Trump who is ever accused of this. Biden actually claimed that there were fewer illegals crossing the border now than when Trump left office, and that the numbers are declining. He claimed to have gotten inflation down from where it was under Trump. There was essentially no inflation under Trump. He claimed that Trump initiated the policy of “children in cages,” which was inherited from the Democratic administration in which Biden was vice-president. He claimed that there were people wearing swastikas marching in Charlottesville, and that Trump had called them “fine people.” This has even been debunked by left-wing Snopes.

And so it goes.

Surely Biden now has no chance against Trump. And there is no good way for party insiders and powers to swap him out at this late date.

They did this to themselves, by forcing RFK Jr. out of the primaries and out of the party. Were RFK coming into the convention with a pledged minority of delegates, they could have plausibly coalesced around him at the last minute.

But even if the convention were to turn to someone other than Biden, the backroom powers have tied their own hands. The convention is scheduled for so late in the season that, if the nominee turns out to be anyone other then Biden, it will be too late to get them on the ballot in at least the critical swing state of Ohio.

Bottom line: Biden is not the only incompetent in power on the left.

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

Why We Are Here

 “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”—Genesis 2, verse 15,

This is the verse of the Bible in which we are told why we were created. We were created to be gardeners.

There are two kinds of gardens: vegetable gardens, and scenic gardens. There are gardens = to produce food, and there are gardens to produce beauty.

There was clearly no need, in this case, to work to produce food. This was the Garden of Eden. All plants there, but one, were edible: ““I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” There was no reason to worry for the welfare of animals either. They too could, the next verse specifies, eat every plant, and did not eat one another. The lion lay down with the lamb. The need to labour for food, clothing, or shelter came only with the Fall: 

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
...By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,”

It would be tautological, in any case, to create man only to feed man.

Therefore, our life purpose must be to create beauty, as in a flower garden. Our job is to take the raw material God gave us, “nature,” and transform it into art.

We obviously do not do this by leaving it alone, as in a nature preserve. And it is not about advancement in material comforts. Life is about making beauty.

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

The Revolution Has Begun

Things are coming unglued for the ruling elites. People no longer trust them. This is largely due to the growth of social media: they can no longer force discussion and information within prescribed bounds. This is of course why they have been censoring so openly recently. But that has always been a rear-guard action.

We saw a somewhat similar ungluing back in the 1960s, prompted I think by the nuclear threat and the Kennedy assassination. People began to suspect that idiots were in charge. Or dark forces.

And that, for those of us who remember, was a time of chaos. Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II put things back together.

But this is bigger.

The evidence coming out that the establishment and establishment media lied about everything during the Covid pandemic seems to have been a watershed. Yes, it did leak from a government lab. Yes, it was lab-created. Yes, it was funded in part by the US government. No, wearing masks was not effective. No, social distancing was not effective. No, the vaccines did not stop the spread. No, they were not safe and effective. Yes, ivermectin did work against the virus. Yes, the jump in mortality rates since is due to the vaccine.

Even at the time, the pandemic seemed to me like a flash of lightning showing us all where the zombies were.

Who will ever trust government again?

Now all heck is breaking loose. The woke are waking up.

Mass immigration used to be a third rail issue. Nobody dared object, because they would be called racist. Trump broke the seal with regards to illegal immigration in 2016. Now it has spread to legal immigration as well. It is a key issue in Europe, looking as though it will bring down the governments of the UK and France within the next few weeks. In Canada, Pierre Poilievre has finally calculated it is worth saying, in French and in Quebec, that he will lower immigration levels. Until now, he had been sidestepping the issue. 

“It's going to be much lower, especially for temporary immigration. It is impossible to invite 1.2 million new people to Canada every year when you build 200,000 homes. That's impossible. There is no room. Quebec is at the breaking point.”

People are now also speaking openly against multiculturalism, defying the inevitable accusations of racism. Only a few years ago, Don Cherry was fired for saying everyone should wear the poppy. Now Rishi Sunak is being condemned everywhere for leaving D-Day ceremonies early. How could he? That is some measure of how much how quickly the political climate has changed. 

Even though, awkwardly, disastrously, multiculturalism is enshrined in the Canadian constitution.

“Climate change” is the next likely pin to fall. It was always an improbable claim. It was always based on “computer modelling,” not scientific evidence. Thirty years ago, when the average member of the public still imagined computers were magical, this sounded compelling. We are more sophisticated about computers now. The general public is also realizing that “fighting climate change” through ever growing taxes and regulations is costing a lot of money with no visible results, in a difficult economic time. It increasingly looks like it always really was: a power and money grab by the government bureaucracy.

I think the edifice of feminism is crumbling fast as well. It is now unfashionable on the left, who want to sacrifice it to trans rights, with which feminism conflicts. Others are seeing the effect of feminism in declining birth rates, declining marriage rates, men opting out of all relationships, and growing legions of bitter middle-aged women feeling deceived. There is worse yet to be uncovered.

Confidence in the public school system is already gone. Confidence in the academy is crumbling. Confidence in the objectivity and reliability of science itself is going. Peer review, we discover, does not work. Only certain areas of investigation get funded. Experiments are never reproduced, and when someone tries, they can’t be. Scientists are no longer looked on as semi-divine beings and moral examplars above suspicion of ulterior motives.

I suspect most importantly, atheism, which had become increasingly fashionable over the past 150 years or so, is crumbling. Darwinism, its modern intellectual underpinning, is crumbling. Freud and scientific psychology, religion’s intended “scientific” replacement, has already been pretty well discredited. This is the biggest and most far-reaching revolution currently underway.

Or maybe it is just me.

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