Stephen Roney's Blog, page 83

RFK Jr.

 

I can’t help being excited by RFK Jr.’s presidential bid. I think, at a minimum, he is going to change the popular discourse dramatically—I think he already has--and ensure that Biden does not win a second term. One way or another, this is going to be historic.

As things stand, Biden and the Democratic Party are trying to fix the nomination for Biden by moving the South Carolina primary up to become the first contest. Iowa and New Hampshire are naturally enough unhappy with this. Moreover, the New Hampshire constitution mandates that NH must go before anyone else. 

So all the Biden campaign can do is refuse to run in these first two contests. That means Kennedy sweeps these first two contests. This gets him media and momentum. Since the Republicans are running primaries at the same time, they will not be ignored. Calculating that the Biden campaign can block this momentum with a big win in South Carolina is a gamble.

Meantime, the charges of corruption are gathering around Biden. Meantime, the signs of mental decline are multiplying. But by backing Biden and keeping everyone else out of the race, the Dem establishment has no backup, if Biden falters or becomes unelectable.

They are trying to keep RFK out of the media. But this is not likely to work as well as it did: alternative outlets like Joe Rogan now get much more viewership than the old “mainstream,” and on these alternative platforms, RFK is sought and active. He is highly articulate, he comes across as utterly sincere, he has a compelling case and a compelling personal story.

I myself find it hard to resist the personal story. Those of my generation were permanently traumatized by the assassination of JFK. It was when the postwar promise of America seemed to end, when everything started to go wrong. RFK looked like a chance to get back on track, and then he was assassinated too. It was hard not to believe a conspiracy was involved. Now RFK Jr. looks, to us old fogies, like a possibility to, even at this late date, make it all right again. 

They can try all the dirty tricks they used to keep Bernie Sanders from the nomination, twice. But each time they do this they take a grave risk of alienating their base. They covered for that last time by having Biden adopt a large part of the far-left agenda. But I think they miscalculated. People did not support Bernie Sanders because of his platform. They supported him because he seemed sincere and not a part of the establishment. A lot of strong Sanders supporters are now accused of being on the right: Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard.

Now RFK has that same ground. It is probably a majority of Democratic voters. Sanders should have won, had he not been blocked, and Sanders was not an attractive candidate—too old, and unknown before he ran. RFK is more attractive, with more compelling issues, and with Kennedy charisma.

Block him as they blocked Sanders? No doubt they can do it, but if they do, I expect they will have gone to the well too many times. RFK comes into the race already looking like a martyr; because his father and his uncle were martyred; because he has been censored for his views on vaccines. Strike him down now, and the consequences could be dire for the Dems. If their base does not defect to the Republicans, Cornell West is running. Rumours are Joe Manchin may run too. That gives alternatives to both left and right. Many more could simply stay at home.

In the meantime, Kennedy is forcing a debate on the Covid vaccine and the lockdowns, which is devastating to the establishment. People will want to vote against the establishment as a first priority. If not RFK, their choice is not going to be Biden.

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Mindfulness and Art

 

The creative writing text from which I am currently teaching advises that anyone who aspires to be a writer must develop “mindfulness”: meaning they must always be alert to exactly what is happening around them, mentally recording every sight and sound.

I think this is exactly wrong. And depressing. Real writers are incapable of doing this. Real writers are usually incapable of earning a driver’s license, because they cannot pay attention to what is happening around them. They live in their imagination.

The author gives an example to demonstrate her point, a “flash” essay chronicling a writer’s morning on her balcony watching a neighbour watering her plants. Only mildly interesting, not worth the time to read it: my primary impression as a reader is of self-indulgence. This is someone who thinks a thing is of immense importance simply because it happens to her.

“Realism” in art is a blind alley. 

Shakespeare is partially to blame for this misunderstanding. In Hamlet, he refers to art as “holding the mirror up to nature.” People assume this is a mandate for “realism,” for describing things just as they appear to our physical senses. Isn’t that what nature is? The physical world?

But of course, we do not need a mirror to see nature in this sense. We can look at it directly. Were this the point of art, there would be no point to art. 

Shakespeare here, as is clear in context, means “human nature.” Art holds the mirror up to our souls. “The play’s the thing/ With which to catch the conscience of a king.” Art shows truth, not mundane sense perceptions. Art should be unlike everyday life. Art is the escape from that. Art also should not be “self-expression”; it is the escape from self. 

Art should be vivid, not “realistic.” 

Consider Kafka’s short story, “Metamorphosis.” Has he ever had the opportunity to carefully observe what it would feel like to be a giant bug and to have many small legs that are difficult to control? Or crawling on the ceiling? Yet it is intensely vivid; we can imagine being Gregor Samsa ourselves. That is vividness, not realism. A thing is vivid if it appeals to the imagination.

Consider too fairy tales—the most enduring and popular of all literature. They never give authentic-sounding sensory detail. Some modern authors have tried to rewrite them in realistic terms—and the results are unreadable. One does not want to hear Cinderella contemplating a hangnail, or searching the prince’s palace for a toilet.

Sometimes verisimilitude to a common actual sensory experience helps make a passage vivid; usually not. Sometimes precise physical description is a means to this end; usually not. Certainly art should not editorialize or comment on the side; it should be visual, it should speak in images, not ideas: but that is not the same as sense perception. “Image” is the preserve of the imagination, not the senses. Art speaks through symbol and example, not discursively.

This is all also a misunderstanding of the originally Buddhist concept of mindfulness. Western materialists always reverse the meaning. This Western “mindfulness” is really emptying the mind of all thoughts--mindlessness. Anyone who aspires to be an arhat must learn to shut out what is going on in front of their eyes, and see instead with the mind’s eye. That’s why you sit still with your eyes closed. You shut out sensation, including the sensation of breathing or any ambient sounds, in order to ponder your memories and your imaginings; what Buddhism calls the “storehouse consciousness.”

Perhaps it is best to illustrate as a poem:

Mindfulness

The rain pings like loose change on the Chivas Regal sign across the street
Like the climax of a spaghetti Western
Heard through a drive-in speaker.
I do not know the dog sleeping mindfully at my feet
The karmic pinball machine has thrown us together for this moment
For reasons beyond comprehension.
The confused yellow butterflies of August 
Are grounded by the mild turbulence.
They do not tumble after one another.
The dog body wakes, raises his head
And stares at their absence.
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Joe Biden Lays Down the Law

 

(1) Simon Ateba on Twitter: "No comment https://t.co/ta81bgePkc" / Twitter

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Clown World

 

So what are the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, recently controversially honoured by the LA Dodgers, all about?

The Dodgers, and their other deenders, will say they are a charitable organization. Which they are—they promote AIDS education and hand out free condoms. But this does not excuse them if they are also promoting hatred towards some identifiable group. The Taliban also does charity work. The Mafia did. So did the Nazi party. It’s good PR for wicked people.

According to Wikipedia, the group was founded in 1979, as a performance troupe. Their public performances and public protests, then, are their raison d’etre. They diversified into charity work once the AIDS epidemic began to ravish their homosexual community. And their proposed solution—essentially, use a condom—is arguably not the best advice. It might have caused more deaths than it prevented.

Their performances, their name, and the nun’s habit are obviously meant to ridicule the Catholic Church.

But why whiteface? 

Had they chosen blackface, the charge of racism would have been obvious.

You might argue that they were trying to look like clowns, not white people. But then, why do clowns have white faces? When old-time entertainers put on blackface, wasn’t it to mock black people, to make them look foolish? They were blackface clowns. Isn’t the principle the same for whiteface clowns?

But, you might argue, aren’t the perpetrators themselves already white? Are they mocking their own race? And if so, isn’t self-mockery okay?

Not all ”white” people are particularly pale. The English, let alone continental Europeans, are markedly darker in complexion than those living further north, the Irish, the Scottish, the Scandinavians. Are they mocking themselves by making their faces paler, or one or another of these other racial groups?

Why does the classic clown have red hair? Isn’t this mockery of a genetic characteristic concentrated in Northern Europe: in the Irish and Scottish in particular?

Clarabell the Clown

Of course it is. Whiteface clowns are racist if blackface clowns are, in the same way. The Irish have traditionally been held in contempt in the English-speaking world. 

In particular because they are Catholic.

Bozo the Clown

Live public performances in clown makeup of course have an additional benefit: they attract children.

Is it all starting to make a perverse sense?

Ronald McDonald




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Thought Crimes in Canada

 

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Removing Books from School Libraries

 

Bathsheba

Friend Xerxes is amused that state laws meant to give parents the opportunity to object to books in grade school libraries have now been used, in a couple of instances, to ban the Bible, for containing sex and violence.

He points out examples of sex and violence in the Bible.

To suppose that the issue is sex and violence, however, is to obscure the issue. The problem is that we pretend that morality does not exist. Which reduces us to talking about sex and violence as “inappropriate.” Of course, the Bible contains sex and violence. Heck, it describes someone being executed slowly on a cross, his genitals on public display. I remember throwing up at the description in grade school.

Traditional fairly tales too are violent, even though they have in recent centuries, unfortunately, been bowdlerized. The wolf eats Grandma; the Wicked Queen poisons Snow White. Hansel and Gretel are abandoned twice by their parents to be eaten by wild animals. A witch tries to eat them. And what about  Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner cartoons? There is little about sex in children’s literature, true; but that is plausibly because children would not understand what is going on without elaborate explanations. And probably would not be interested.

Many parents want some books removed from school libraries (not “banned”) because they teach immorality; they encourage children to experiment with sex. 

The Bible, of course, does the reverse.

If Xerxes or others want to argue that parents have no right to teach their children morality, or guard their children’s morality, or protect their children from sexual predators, they must also object to parents interfering with what their children watch on TV, or explore on the Internet, or discuss with strangers on the street. That is an uncommon opinion, and probably needs to be justified.

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Simply the Best

 

Being materialists, we are inclined to think of memories as not being a real. Of course they are not material: but consider the possibility that the memory is a real, objectively existing place, where everything goes and stays when it is not present to our senses. Because, literally, we know that this is so. Nothing actually fades from memory; its existence is not dependent on our consciousness of it, on our perceiving it. This is what objective existence means. 

Yes, we may for the moment not remember. But we know that every memory is still there, and can arise again to consciousness unpredictably at any moment—perhaps inspired by the smell of lilacs, a tune on the radio, or the taste of a madeleine.

Can we then also remember things that happened to someone else? 

Why not, since memories are objective? And this could explain the many uncanny reports of remembering “past lives,” and the many apparently collective memories described by Carl Jung, which he calls the “collective unconscious.” The evidence is there; we only ignore it because it does not fit our prejudices.

We also know that people we remember can do things we do not will them to do, or that we do not expect. In dreams, for example; or in our waking fantasies. So in the case of remembered people, their consciousness, their will, also survives.

Most cultures have thought this. This is the foundation of their belief in an afterlife. In Korea, there is a mudang who channels the soul of Douglas MacArthur. She even has the corn cob pipe. MacArthur is not gone; he lives in memory, and occasionally speaks through her.

Properly speaking, all memories are immortal. They are in some vast storehouse somewhere. But there are actually two things we call “memory.” There is this storehouse, and there is our ability to recall items from it. If someone is not recalled easily, their existence in memory is lacking in energy. They are indistinct and wraith-like: literally starved for attention.

Some people, by the force of their personality or their talents, are uniquely memorable. They are not necessarily good people; just memorable people. And these are the ones Chinese Taoism, or Korean shamanism, will call “Immortals.”

This is why people keep thinking they see Elvis at the drug store, or Hitler in hotels in Brazil. They are too memorable to fade from immediate consciousness. 

This is why Roman emperors were commonly declared gods at death, and given sacrifices. This is why the Greek gods demand sacrifices. This is why the Chinese burn paper gifts for their ancestors, and put food at their graves. Our remembering them is their food.

I suspect that Tina Turner is immortal in this sense.

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They/Them

 

The leftists/WEFists holding effective power in Canada and in the US and in the EU still seem to be aiming, as one Fox news banner briefly put it, for a “wannabe dictatorship.” However, I believe the moral ground has shifted. Their resort to overt bare-knuckle tactics, if anything, proves it. When moral force fails, what you have left is physical force. It’s old Bull Connor turning the fire hose on the freedom marchers.

They have lost the high ground, and the moral high ground is everything. 

There are multiplying evidences. 

One is that friend Xerxes objects, in his latest column, to the pronoun “they.” 

This is, in the first place, a 180 for someone on the left; they (sorry) have been promoting “they” for decades—first as an alternative to the offensive “he,” more recently also to the offensive “she.” And Xerxes was never concerned when “they” referred to some vague “patriarchy,” or “white supremacy,” or “corporate interests,” or “post-colonialism,” or “the system,” or, to use his own term, “Bible thumpers.”

It’s a problem for him now, I suspect, because the “they” he sees as liable to be criticized in good company is the group I call above the leftists/WEFists; the “Woke” elite. With whom, through his columns, he is associated. He seems at least in the first stages of pulling away. This is a miracle I thought I would not live to see.

Xerxes is right that we should be more specific. People should always be seen as individuals, not as members of some group. That is prejudice.

The problem is, the woke mob themselves hide behind anonymity. Avoiding personal responsibility is part of their ethos. 

To begin with, they literally wear masks. 

They also hide behind figureheads. Biden is nominally US president. But we know he is not really mentally capable of being in control, and we do not know who is. Trudeau is nominally Canadian prime minister. But we know he is unqualified, just an actor playing a part, only a front window mannequin. Someone is pulling the strings; we do not know who. Rishi Sunak was arbitrarily installed as UK prime minister. We do not know who is running him.

They also use moles. Erin O’Toole pretended to be a “True Blue Tory.” He was not; he was controlled opposition, an agent for the other side, whoever they are. Mitt Romney, who claimed, awkwardly, to be “severely conservative,” was the same in the States.

So they deliberately muddy the picture. If we cannot be too specific about who “they” are, nobody knows who “they” are, except, presumably, “they.” But there is clearly some kind of group think, relying on NPCs, people just going along with the agenda to avoid either being targeted or thinking for themselves. This latter group too deserves some blame as “they.”

It is this mass of NPCs who could suddenly turn, if it is more profitable or safer to argue the other side. They will then deny having ever been they. Then the walls come tumbling down.

The candidacies of Cornell West and RFK Jr. should hasten the fall of they. I assume “they” will not allow RFK to get the nomination, and he is a strong candidate with a strong case. They are going to have to play dirty to prevent it. RFK is sincere, articulate, and eagerly invited onto all the alternative media. When he is shut down, it will be obvios, and there is likely to be increased moral revulsion on left and right. His family history already gives him the moral patina of martyrdom and reminds us of the era of Martin Luther King.

Cornell West is an unusually prominent figure to be running for the Greens. He too will be listened to, and, being himself black, his candidacy may reduce the black tendency to vote Democrat as a matter of course. A legion of NPCs may turn.

The recent LA Dodgers “Gay Pride Night” was apparently sparsely attended, and there were boos when the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were introduced to receive their award. There was, reportedly, a much larger crowd outside, praying and holding protest signs.

The ground has shifted, and morality is coming back in fashion.

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Born with the Gift of Laughter, and a Conviction that the World Is Mad

 

Most of the world is mad. Most of the world is in denial of reality. 

I have lived in more than a few cultures now, around the world. As an outsider, it is easier to see collective delusions. Koreans think all evil comes from foreigners, especially Japanese. Arabs commonly believe the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Americans, whether conscious of it or not, tend to think the rest of the world does not really exist. Chinese think the current authority is always, necessarily, right. Don’t ask me about Canada. That would take too long. 

All the countries I have lived in are insane except for the Philippines. I suspect from visits that Ireland and Italy are also sane. Although, counter to this, Italy did go with fascism not that long ago.

I spent many years in higher education, naively thinking that there I would find truth, or at least the search for truth. But, as with most things in this fallen world, the reality was the reverse of the claim.

Example: in first year philosophy, the lecturer discounted this or that philosophy with the statement that, by this premise, one would have to believe that unicorns are real. “But of course, unicorns are not real,” Case closed.

Wait a minute, I thought even at the time. That’s begging the question.

How about that: a philosophy lecturer teaching a logical fallacy.

But then, the philosophy class never taught us to detect logical fallacies of any kind. No class I ever took did. Why not? 

Unicorns are, of course, real. They are not physical. That is not the same thing.

Example: when I formally studied the New Testament, all scholarship began with the premise that any miracles in the New Testament were lies and inventions; our goal was to get to the “real man,” Jesus of Nazareth, an ordinary carpenter. And when I studied the life of the Buddha, the premise was the same: the goal was to recover the “real” historical man behind the supposed legend.

But this is tautological. If Jesus is divine, miracles are to be expected. The miracles are recorded to prove his divinity. And the same for the Buddha.

Example: in the history of philosophy, there are dozens of proofs of the existence of God. Nothing could be more firmly established. Yet these proofs were never directly addressed in philosophy classes, nor in nine years of formally studying religion. Instead, they were literally ignored even when they were plainly present in the texts being studied, and the existence of God was presented as a highly dubious and arbitrary matter of “faith.” One was supposed to look down on anyone who so professed as an intellectual weakling. As someone who rejected “reason”—even though reason evidently required the opposite, the admission of God’s being.

Example: William Blake’s religious ideas are essential to understanding his poetry. They were his core interest and intent. Understanding his religious beliefs is essential to understanding Yeats’ poetry. These two are arguably the greatest poets in the English language. Studying literature for nine years, I noticed that Blake and Yeats seemed to be largely avoided, at least in comparison to their merits. And when they were discussed, their religious beliefs were ignored. What, I wondered from an early age, was going on?

The case was most obvious with Blake and Yeats; but it was also obvious with other poets. Gerard Manley Hopkins was given short shrift, and when his “terrible sonnets” came up, the conventional claim was that his suffering was no doubt due to his being a devout Catholic. Shakespeare’s religious views were generally ignored, even though it is impossible to make sense of Hamlet without them. Instead, that play was just declared a “problem.” Oscar Wilde’s Catholicism was ignored. And on and on.

Similarly, the curriculum always seemed to concentrate on poets’ early work. The Romantics conveniently tended to die young; but we also rarely looked at the later poems of Eliot, or Auden, or Blake, or Ginsberg. I assumed for a long time this was because poetry was a young man’s game, like mathematics; that the gift usually faded with age.

But this makes little sense. Poetry is mostly about insight, into the human psyche and the human condition, and in the natural course, insight into life and human nature expands with age. It’s a thing called wisdom.

Rather, I come to conclude that the later writings of the greatest minds have generally been avoided because in our later years we become more concerned with metaphysical insights and speculations. In youth, we are biologically driven to focus on sex and reproduction. In age, these distractions lessen. We start to speak truth; people do not want to hear it. Aged poets become awkwardly religious. We’d rather talk about sexual longing.

We deny the “supernatural” or metaphysical out of hand. This is illegitimate. You have not demonstrated that it does not exist: you have just closed your eyes and stuck your fingers in your ears and begun to sing loudly to yourself. You are in denial.

And denying the supernatural is not honestly possible. Man is supernatural in his essence: “nature” is, literally, what exists where man is not present.

All along, through my years of academic study, I knew perfectly well that there were metaphysical realities. That is why I wanted to study religion and literature in the first place: because these realities were denied everywhere else. Yet I was compelled by the pressures of social authority to hold my tongue. If I said unicorns were real, would I be declared mad? Was I, in fact, mad? This used to be a real fear, causing me immense anxiety. Chronic anxiety, for which I had to take tranquilizers and anti-depressants.

Why is everyone in denial of the self-evident? 

Guilt. We must control and deny reality, because reality is dangerous to our self-esteem.

Everyone is aware of their sinfulness, even if we are sinful to greater and lesser degrees. And there are two approaches to an awareness of guilt. Deny and be damned, or repent and be saved.

The majority choose denial.

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Shared as a Public Service

Were they wise to set Tucker Carlson loose?

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