Stephen Roney's Blog, page 53
January 25, 2024
This Confirms My Suspicions
... of how things work in Washington. It's Eyes Wide Shut.
Tucker Carlson Speaks to Canada
Proud Tories
Recent polls seem to have been accurate—for example, the polls for the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. This after some years during which political polls seemed to get less and less reliable.
Have the polling firms found a way to improve their methods? Maybe; but I have not heard of any such innovation. It is also curious that, in the past, the polls were always wrong in the same direction, underrepresenting the right. And it is curious that all the polling firms seem to have found their groove again at the same time. This argues against some clever innovation; any pollster who had worked something out would want to keep it to themselves.
One theory was that the polling firms were previously in the tank for the left. Maybe they have shifted their political views. But I doubt this; political polling is rarely their main business, only an advertisement for their wares, and it is not in their interest to establish a reputation for unreliable polling.
Instead, I think this may be more evidence that the social tide is turning against the left. I think we are seeing the end of what, in the UK, was called “shy Tory syndrome.” People are no longer intimidated by the woke mob.
In the past, according to this theory, people were reluctant to say to a stranger on the phone that they intended to vote right. People want to say what they think will make the listener happy and think well of them. And they assumed the average stranger would be offended if they admitted they liked Trump, disliked Brussels, or supported the Thatcherites. One knew one was not supposed to express such views in polite company.
Now perhaps the moral high ground has shifted. People are no longer assuming this. The seal of censorship has been broken.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
January 24, 2024
From the River to the Earth's Bounds
The tide is turning against high immigration levels, in Canada and in the rest of the developed world. Back in 2019, I recall a PPC candidate suggesting at a local public meeting that the housing shortage could be addressed at least in part by lowering immigration levels. She faced immediate catcalls, demanding she get off the stage if she had such opinions.
Now that opinion is shared by a majority. According to Nanos Research, a year ago, 61 percent of Canadians were in favour of the current high immigration levels. But by last December, 61 percent felt they should be reduced. Such a rapid turnaround in public opinion is almost unprecedented.
Part of the general snapback against the left agenda; which is now visible, and proceeding apace.
I suspect it is more than the housing shortage. We already had a housing crisis in 2019. Instead, people are waking up to the fact that people from different cultures are not just about colourful dances and new ethnic restaurants, but that they can actually have fundamentally different basic values, which can be antithetical to Canadian values, and cause civil conflict.
I suspect the many “From the River to the Sea” protests, in Canada and elsewhere, since October 7, have played a large part in this turnaround. It has now also become permissible to point out other problems, like immigrant students improperly exploiting food banks.
It is unfortunate if the focus remains on immigration per se. Immigration itself is not the problem. The problem is multiculturalism. It is madness to bring in large groups of people from radically different cultures without an aggressive program of assimilation and equal treatment.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
January 23, 2024
New Hampshire Prediction
New Hampshire is voting today. Lets me get my prediction in just in time to be proven wrong.
I predict Donald Trump gets over 55% in the Republican contest. I have seen a series of major last-minute endorsements; he has lots of media from the Iowa caucuses; and there have been a lot of vicious pundit attacks on Nikki Haley in the last few days. That looks like momentum in Trump’s direction. I don’t see a lot of Democrats crossing over to vote against Trump in the Republican primary, because him winning the nomination now looks like a foregone conclusion. So why waste your vote? And, strategically, would you rather run against Nikki Haley? Why? The same logic should dampen Hailey’s turnout among dissatisfied Republicans. So I expect Trump to outperform the most recent polls, which have him at 52.2%.
Rather than cross over, despite there being no delegates at stake, I can see Democrats wanting to vote in the Democratic poll in order to show their anger at the DNC for cancelling their first-in-the-nation primary and denying them a voice. And the way to do that is to vote, but to vote anybody but Biden. Biden’s campaign has also crippled itself by not having his name on the ballot; they are running a low-budget write-in campaign. So I think Biden will do worse in the Democratic poll than Trump does in the Republican.
Those will be the news stories: Trump triumph, Biden embarrassment.
Now go ahead and prove me wrong, Fates.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
January 22, 2024
Why It Might be Ramaswamy
Trump says he has already chosen his VP.
I had thought it might be Ron DeSantis; or Tucker Carlson. But here are some reasons it might be Vivek Ramaswamy.
1. Glenn Beck reports that Trump phoned him for advice, and Beck suggested Ramaswamy. What sounds significant is Trump’s response: “That’s what everyone is telling me.” So Trump wanted advice, and this is the advice he’s been getting.
2. Trump has said his choice will not be a big surprise. Since everyone has been telling him Ramaswamy, and there were chants of “VP” at the rally where Ramaswamy endorsed him, this points to Ramaswamy.
3. Reports were that in 2016, Trump wanted Newt Gingrich. He took Pence to satisfy party bigwigs. So he prefers someone like Newt Gingrich, and this time, owning the party, he has a free hand. Gingrich himself is too old; but who is most like Gingrich? The striking thing about Gingrich is that he was, like Trump, a bulldog with hostile questioners. Ramaswamy wrestles biased interviewers to the mat the same way Gingrich did. Being a master rhetorician –that is, salesman—Trump no doubt values the art and understands its power. Ramaswamy has the gift.
4. Business execs have a tendency to groom younger men who remind them of themselves. Trump is of that culture and probably fond of the mentorship role—remember The Apprentice. Ramaswamy fills that bill better than any other high-profile contender: a fellow salesman, a fellow entrepreneur. He is, conveniently, not as rich as Trump.
5. Limited legally to one term, Trump will be thinking of someone to carry on his programme after he leaves. Ramaswamy has run on being 100% MAGA. Other obvious names might turn out to be a cuckoo’s egg in his nest by comparison.
6. Indeed, Trump had a problem with appointees turning against him or subverting him in his first term. Most notably, his last VP pick, Pence. He logically ought, as a result, to put a high premium on loyalty and ideological compatibility.
7. It fits his brand, and his pledge to drain the swamp, to choose a non-politician. Choosing a businessman instead reduces the risk that they are compromised by the deep state and the beltway.
8. Trump said he’d made his pick about at the same time Ramaswamy dropped out and endorsed him. Suggesting that event may have allowed him to make his pick. It was at that point that Ramaswamy became available.
What do you think? There’s a comment option. Use it.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
A Tale of Two Democracies
History is destinyThe fundamental difference between the American and Canadian character can be summed up in this way: both are classless societies, breaking from Europe and the Old World with their ideas of privilege by birth. But this means different things in the two places. In America, everyone is upper class. In Canada, everyone is lower class.
This is an artefact of the two countries’ histories.
America overthrew their king. So now, every man is king. Canada did not, but banned any aristocracy locally: so their king and ruling class always lived abroad. Everyone in Canada is a peasant.
This explains why Americans are, by comparison, more boisterous and difficult to herd; Canadians instinctively deferential to authority. They know their place. Americans, being royals, look down on most foreigners as mere commoners. Canadians look up to anyone or anything coming from abroad, and move to London or Los Angeles to “make it.”
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
January 21, 2024
DeSantis Just Folded His Tent
And in a backhanded way endorsed Trump. He needed to go now, before Trump had it all sewn up, so he could get some credit for putting him over the top.
Hard to believe Trump won't smoke Nikki Hailey in New Hampshire now.
Hard to believe Hailey will want to hang on now to be humiliated in her home state. I expect her too to drop out once the NH results are in.
Trump will have his nomination secured now. But Biden may look shaky after New Hampshire.
Call the Midwife
St. Hubert, staggered.One might expect a TV series based on a convent and its charitable work, like the BBC’s “Call the Midwife,” to be favourable to religion. But that is a naïve thought. The world is not like that. One ought not to be surprised that, instead, it undermines religion.
Most people, after all, fear religion, at least in the modern day. That probably includes the writers on such a programme, and the bulk of their audience. I imagine they would lose their audience if they got too preachy and all. Just as most people show such great hostility to evangelical missionaries at their door.
Why? Whether they are deluded or not, a fair-minded person must realize that they are knocking at your door out of love, concern for your welfare. So why the anger?
One obvious tactic, if one fears religion, is to pretend to be religious, but debase it from within. This is the safest way, as an author, to approach a series set in a convent.
This is the tendency Jesus rails against in the New Testament. This is his main opposition, pharisaism. “Hypocrisy”: a New Testament Greek word. It means to wear a mask. It means to feign religion without being religious.
I have seen this in academic departments of religion. It is held there to be clever to mock the faith of the faithful, the traditional codes and creeds, and those who take the Bible seriously. Those who do are simply unenlightened, not deep thinkers. I have seen this too in the upper reaches of the United Church. We have seen it in high Catholic prelates like Theodore McCarrick. We seem to see it now in the Vatican.
One tactic of the hypocrites is to object to religious “extremism.” You see this in the media all the time. Which is to say, it is fine to give religion lip service, to maybe attend a Sunday service now and then, as long as you don’t really believe it, and don’t actually apply it in daily life. As long, in short, as you don’t follow the moral codes. Just keep it on the level of a reassuring bedtime story. Hallmark religiousity. Happy happy joy joy religiousity. Hell is empty and everyone gets to heaven religiousity.
A similar, although superficially opposite, tactic, is to exaggerate or falsify the demands of religion to make being truly religious seem unreasonable. Atheists love to demand, for example, that Christians turn the other cheek as they beat them up.
Jesus said “my burden is light.” In contrast to the Pharisees, who pile unreasonable demands on the faithful.
A common gambit currently is to declare oneself “spiritual, but not religious.” What exactly does this mean?
Religion means “binding”: “binding back.” It is a commitment to a path of life, with obligations, like marriage. This is why people fear religion: it makes demands. It requires obedience to a higher power than self and selfish drives.
“Spiritual” people want numinous experiences, sure; we all want numinous experiences. We are born with a need for God, a craving for meaning. If we do not get it from religion, we will get it from somewhere: scientism, environmentalism and the worship of “nature,” millenarian cults like Marxism promising heaven on earth, aestheticism, alcohol, drugs, worshipping sex or another person or our animal desires. “Spiritual”
people are simply acknowledging that craving in themselves that we all have.
But they don’t want any effort or commitment. They want it to just happen. If Song of Songs describes the quest of the soul for God, they are into hookup culture, one-night stands; thrillseekers.
It is not, in the end, an honourable or a good path. God and holy things are not to be treated as a mere object for our pleasure.
In “Call the Midwife,” the elderly and senile Sister Monica Joan, inspired by the legend of St. Hubert and his vision of Christ as a stag, steals convent funds to buy a train ticket to the Outer Hebrides, thinking God will reveal himself to her there.
And she does encounter a magnificent stag, as she wanders through a small forest of dolmens.
What are the implicit lessons here?
First, to take religion seriously, one must be senile; senility gives her the excuse for such “childish” thinking.
Second, religious experience is not found in the convent, but in nature, and in a pagan setting—the megaliths.
Third, spiritual experience comes not from observing one’s commitments day by day, but by breaking them, and committing sins.
It is like advocating that full sexual pleasure can only be achieved by committing adultery.
The series has the Mother Superior refuse to publicly advocate legalization of abortion because, “when the interests of my patients conflict with my faith, I must go with my faith.” Suggesting that religion stands opposed to mankind, and against true morality. Christopher Hitchens could not have said it better.
The visit to the Hebrides is made an occasion to paint Free Church Presbyterians as pitiless legalists. A boatman refuses to ferry a doctor and nurses to where a lighthouse keeper’s wife is giving birth, on the grounds that it is the Sabbath.
This is of course in direct contradiction to Jesus’s teaching in the Bible.
Matthew 12:
“9 After departing from that place, he went into their synagogue, 10 and there was a man with a withered hand. So they asked him, “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?” so that they might accuse him. 11 He said to them: “If you have one sheep and that sheep falls into a pit on the Sabbath, is there a man among you who will not grab hold of it and lift it out? 12 How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do a fine thing on the Sabbath.” 13 Then he said to the man: “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and it was restored sound like the other hand.”
The sabbath is for man, not man for the sabbath.
Any devout Presbyterian would know this. A prime example of falsifying, indeed, as often as not reversing, religious demands to make them seem unreasonable.
When a Catholic priest appears back in London, he is of course an unctuous hypocrite engaged in an affair with his housekeeper, whom he abandons once she becomes pregnant. No question, there are Catholic priests who are like this, but when you feature only one Catholic priest in ten years, and this is the one, it is fair to suspect an intended message about Catholicism.
A nurse trainee forwarded to the convent from a Catholic orphanage suggests that a Catholic woman might resort to abortion as a way to avoid birth control. Another example of reversing religious doctrine to make it seem unreasonable. Catholic nurse trainee Corrigan, admitting a secret child born out of wedlock, explains that “The Catholic church is good at hiding things. Mistakes.”
The real problem with Catholics is, of course, that like Free Church Presbyterians, they tend to take their religion too seriously. Especially that bit about having moral obligations.
Another nurse, beaten up on the streets, spirals into depression, and is taken off to an asylum.
The implicit message is that the religious are emotionally fragile, naïve about the world, and when faced with its harsh realities, religion is of no use to help them. Modern science, and electroshock, must intervene.
When St. Hubert saw the stag, he also heard this message: "Hubert, unless you turn to the Lord and lead a holy life, you shall quickly go down into Hell."
They leave that part out. I wonder why.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
January 20, 2024
And the Spirit of the Lord Moves over the Waters
Javier Milei’s speech to the WEF makes me suspect something uncanny is happening. Why is it that we abruptly have such powerful rhetoricians emerging on the right? Aside from Milei, Meloni in Italy is, as far as I can judge in translation, a powerful and witty speaker. Trump is masterful, able to entertain a crowd extempore for hours. Ramaswamy has also now emerged as a great communicator. Poilievre in Canada is brilliant. The UK’s Farage is delightful. One might add RFK Jr. to this list.
Some of course worry that this is the rise of personality cults, the opening for dictatorships. “Trump will be a dictator.” But there are critical differences between these folks and a Hitler or a Mussolini.
First, the fascist dictators, and demagogues generally, played to anger, worked their audiences up emotionally in sprays of spittle. These new Demosthenes’s of the right are strikingly calm, cool under fire, speaking, for example, while munching an apple, and rely on humour.
Second, William Shirer observed that Hitler’s speech was always tailored to his audience. He read the crowd and told them whatever they wanted to hear. Famously, he told Chamberlain whatever he wanted to hear. Milei just did the opposite: he chose the most hostile crowd for his speech. Ramaswamy, Farage, Trump, Meloni, are famous for doing the same thing. Farage rose to fame by haranguing the European Parliament on how awful they were. Poilievre, Trump, or Ramaswamy are celebrated for how they handle hostile questioners.
Third, the whole point of fascism was to concentrate power in the government and the leader. The actual programme these modern rhetoricians are calling for is the exact opposite, cutting the size and powers of the government. This is what Trump actually did, and Milei is actually doing, when in government.
Fascism or totalitarianism is not coming from this corner.
One might protest that we have also seen good communicators on the left, and recently. Obama is given credit for great oratorical ability. Bill Clinton was always convincing; he could charm himself out of any scandal. Justin Trudeau is credited with being a good campaigner.
But there is a difference. Obama was tied to the teleprompter: he was simply good at reading a speech and giving it cadence; the tones of an evangelical preacher, actually. This is acting ability, not rhetorical ability. Trudeau, or Clinton, are also primarily actors, able to give an impression of the desired emotion, rather than rhetoricians. Strikingly, Trump, Poilievre, Ramaswamy, are instead at their best in speaking off the cuff, handling hecklers or hostile journalists. They write their own best lines, and are not rehearsed.
If I may point it out, the skills and approaches of a Clinton or a Trudeau are closer to demagoguery. Clinton echoes to his audience or questioner what they want to hear; Trudeau commonly resorts to feigned anger, whipping up the crowd against his opponents.
This is a general truth of the modern right versus the modern left: the left lacks humour and spontaneity. “The left can’t meme.” “NPCs.” The right seems to have a corner on both.
With perhaps the current exception of RFK Jr., who is still theoretically on the left. Although moving right, as so many are recently. Like Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and so many others, he seems to be getting “red-pilled” in real time.
This seems to me to be the working of the spirit: the spirit of prophecy. Just as in the Hebrew Bible, when governments or cities grew corrupt, a prophet would arise. God does not abandon his people. And we are still his people. He is not done with the US or the “West.”
The arts have grown moribund since the 1960s—since JFK or MLK or Diefenbaker spoke with the spirit of prophecy. Inspiration has abandoned us, as our societies have grown corrupt.
Now we see prophets arising. First in the desert; but now loudly in the public square.
Interestingly, perhaps unexpectedly, they seem to be arising in the political realm sooner and stronger than in the arts. It upends Breitbart’s famous formula: “politics is downstream from culture.” But perhaps that was always wrong. Everything starts in God, then in religion and philosophy, and spreads next either to the culture or to politics, depending on the current circumstances. When government and politics become too intrusive, they strangle culture. That stranglehold must first be broken in the political arena in order to allow artistic voices to speak.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
