Stephen Roney's Blog, page 89

The Reality of Child Abuse

 

In his latest column, Xerxes the Leftarian condemns “punishment-based systems”—he cites English public schools—and congratulate the Canadian government on Bill S-251, which apparently will criminalize spanking.

I’m not sure whether he is opposing all punishment, or only physical punishments. 

Let’s first deal with punishment in general first:

If punishment is wrong intrinsically, then having laws and a police force and a prison system must be wrong. We should instead simply point out to criminals that their behaviour is undesirable, and all will be well. After all, they are old enough to understand. Pity, too, nobody tried that with Hitler.

Surely that would not work. So why would it work with children?

Moreover, so long as you give kids marks in school, or allow them to play sports, you have a punishment-based system: students who do not do the work, or even are simply less mentally capable, are punished by being shamed, often publicly shamed, with low marks. Kids who can’t skate or swing as well lose the game, and mess up in front of friends, family, perhaps an audience of strangers. Yet we need to have marks in school; we mustn’t think of abolishing grades. For one thing, it is the only way to know whether anything useful is happening in a school. For another, for the same reason that we need specific training and qualifications for someone who is going to work as a doctor, or a child-care worker, or a plumber. Competence is an objective quality. And we need to teach children for the real world, the world they will live in; we cannot keep them babies forever. Children need to know whether they are doing the right thing, and whether they are doing well or badly. They do not know by instinct. To leave them without guidance is the ultimate cruelty. 

You might argue, “Oh, but make it a rewards-only system.” That cannot work, any more than you can have up without down.  Give out any sort of reward, and, unless you give to everyone, the absence of the reward remains damning.

So perhaps Xerxes is objecting to corporal punishment specifically. I suspect so. I suspect he means to assert that this is somehow worse than emotional punishment, say: such as causing a child to feel shame, perhaps in front of fellows or parents, or sending him to his room to brood alone, or making him write something on the blackboard 100 times.

But think about it. Why is it worse? Surely only if you hold the body, the physical, to be more important than the spiritual. This would seem to reverse the proper valences: we should be teaching our children not that their bodies, but their character and their conscience, are the most important of their possessions.

This is actually in part what the tradition of spanking or the like does. It teaches the child not to overvalue their physical comfort, and teaches physical courage. There is the usual revelation; “that didn’t hurt that much.” It is an important lesson, and reduces unnecessary fear forever after.

Even if you do not consider the Bible sacred, it is nevertheless the repository of thousands of years of acquired wisdom. It does not speak out against physical punishment of children. In fact, Proverbs 13:24 says: “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him.”

Chesterton’s warning applies here: do not tear down an old fence because you do not know why it is there. Tear it down only if you know exactly why it is there—and can be sure it is no longer needed.

While seeing no problem with striking a child even with a rod, the Bible does condemn child abuse. And sternly:

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come!”

This is child abuse—not something so trivial as a spanking. It is misleading a child; gaslighting them. 

To characterise spanking as “child abuse” or “bullying” is the perfect way to conceal and enable this real child abuse: either not teaching children moral values, giving them no guidance, teaching them false values, or forcing or encouraging them to go against their conscience.

Like teaching them their body is sacred, but not their soul.

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

Sigiri Maidens

 

Pleased to report that my three short poems "Sigiri Maidens" have been published in the April 2023 issue of Qutub Minar Review, an international poetry journal out of India. Some of the other congtributors are quite impressive. 

Paperback edition: https://www.lulu.com/shop/som/qutub-minar-review-april-2023-issue/paperback/product-vvdkgw.html?page=1&pageSize=4

(To avail 15% discount on paperback use discount code:  WELCOME15  . Discount code is available for all those who wish to support this project.)

E-edition link: https://qutubminarreview.wordpress.com/qutub-minar-review-april-2023-issue/

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

Why Bud Light Blew It

 

How on planet Earth did the VP of Marketing for Bud Light ever think that using Dylan Mulvaney as a brand spokesperson was going to go well? Even on first seeing the Mulvaney spot, my jaw dropped. How could this look like a good idea, given their market? For a March Madness campaign?

I don’t think it was just stupidity. Granted, in an interview explaining her marketing plans, Alissa Heinerscheid seemed capable only of a word salad, just barfing out buzzwords. One got the strong impression she had no idea what she was talking about. Not the brightest bulb in the scoreboard. One might suspect she was incapable of independent thought, and so simply chose Mulvaney and the trans theme because she saw others doing it. Trans was hot and trendy. Edgy, but safe. Right?

But no; nobody is that dumb. She is deluded. Such word salads are typical of narcissists, who only speak to manipulate or impress. And narcissists live on self-delusion.

Here’s how she would have thought it through, assuming she is a narcissist. Bud Light is an extremely successful brand. It is an absolute icon in America, an institution. Rather like those statues of Civil War heroes, or Sir John A. Macdonald, or Queen Victoria. 

Alissa Heinerscheid happily found herself in control of an institution. Now what was she going to do about it?

Problem: she did not create this great success. Simply sustaining success was not enough to make her own role special. To demonstrate her superiority to all who came before her, or may come after, it must be in crisis. Whoever created this original success must be a worm, an utter failure. She must either remake it entirely in her own image, or, failing this, destroy it. A narcissist, like a tomcat, must pee on everything to mark his territory.

And that is what she did, more or less exactly as she intended. If this seems self-destructive—after all, she has lost her job and wrecked her reputation in her chosen field--narcissists can be deluded enough that they expect reality to conform to their wishes. If it does not, it is obviously not their fault. Reality is to blame. Who could have predicted Bud Light drinkers would be such reprehensible transphobes? Shame on them!

Dylan Mulvaney, a fellow narcissist, makes all the same assumptions.

Beware, hallowed institutions. Hire a narcissist, put them in a position of authority, and you are going to pay dearly. 

And there is a current epidemic of narcissism, thanks to generations of “unconditional love” and “self-esteem.”

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

RFK Jr. on Neil Cavuto

 

Watching RFK Jr. interviewed by Neil Cavuto, I am impressed. It certainly helps to see the variety of crosses behind him. It makes him look like a serious Catholic. I am also impressed by his white bookshelves, or they eerily remind me of those in my grandfather’s house, back when JFK was president and all was right with the world. I’m tripping on the Kennedy nostalgia. But he also came across as sincere and intelligent.

He starts of course with powerful name recognition, and with the equivalent of a respected brand. I see that, even though I was not a fan of his father back in the day. He has nostalgia on his side. Many, amid the current chaos, dream of a return to something that seems like normalcy and decency. This was the illusory appeal of Joe Biden. Kennedy has that to an exponential degree—back to the Kennedy years! Back to Camelot! Back to a day when honour mattered!

I think his speech impediment is also an advantage. Like Chretien’s facial paralysis or Churchill’s stammer, it suggests sincerity and evokes sympathy. As do his sunken cheeks, as does the martyrdom of his father. We feel he has suffered. We believe he can understand our pain.

His longtime anti-vax campaign also seems to me to help him. He fought for an unpopular cause—this demonstrates that he is a man of principle. It marks him as an anti-politician. People are craving someone they can trust, and they can’t trust politicians any longer—this was Trump’s great appeal. Kennedy reinforces that by his manner, at least in this interview. He does not give the impression that he is guarding his words, or calculating them. He answers quickly and directly. This also shows his intelligence, in stark contrast to Biden or Kamala Harris, and dispels any concern, given his anti-vax beliefs, that he is some crackpot.

His history of opposing vaccines positions him as the ideal spokesman against the Covid vaccine mandates. This ought to be a vital issue, and a devastating one, and his presence in the race will force it to come out.

He is wisely appealing to unity. That is a message many want to hear, given the current atmosphere of near-civil war. It was the illusory promise offered by Obama, that got him into the White House.

He is also stealing a page from Trump and the populists by railing against the corporate-government axis.

He also profits from the Democrats’ weak front bench. Biden is senile; the US economy is in a mess under his presidency. Not to mention general chaos in the culture and the streets. Anybody would look better. But Kamala Harris looks incompetent and bubblebrained. Gavin Newsom has objectively done an awful job in California—he was recalled, and people are leaving the state. San Francisco is a war zone. Pete Buttigieg has been awful as Transportation Secretary. J.B. Pritzker is presiding over Chicago dissolving into chaos. Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang, their two most promising candidates last cycle, have left the party.

Unless he is blocked by the party machine, as he is likely to be, I think he has an excellent chance at the nomination.

 If he gets the nomination, I think then he has an excellent chance in a general election.

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

Exit Ramps

 

What might have been...

At a recent neighbourhood meeting, several people made the comment “it feels as though the world is coming to an end.” Another comment heard more than once: “it seems that everyone has gone mad.”

How do we get out of this mess, when all the world seems mad and coming apart?

1. Barbarians at the gate. A less civilized, less decadent, more unified force appears from beyond the margins, and establishes some new order. This was the Arabs in the decline of the Sassanid Empire, the Muslims in the case of the Byzantines, the Manchus in China.

But in the present case, it seems to me there are no barbarians left. There are no more margins. Possibly an enthusiastically Christian Africa, or a newly liberal-democratic Eastern Europe, relatively recently emerged from the old margin of the Iron Curtain. Or conceivably, after regime collapse, a China animated by new ideals of liberal democracy, Christianity or Falun Gong.

2. The man on a white horse. A commanding figure that the people in general feel they can trust, who seizes or is given dictatorial power to crack heads and restore order. There has clearly been a craving for this in recent years. This was the appeal of Trump in 2016, of Duterte in the Philippines, of Xi in China. This is supremely dangerous: this is also Hitler, Napoleon, or Robespierre. On the other hand, sometimes it turns out reasonably well: a DeGaulle, for example. Kenyatta, Mandela.

In the present case, is there anyone on the horizon, at least for the US, the most important country? If it is to turn out well, the man on the horse must appear to both sides to be at least an honest broker, to be generally respected if not loved. This leaves out Trump; too clownish. He hardly any longer looks like a way out of chaos. 

In Canada, Trudeau was probably elected for this role, and has certainly been trying to seize autocratic if not dictatorial powers. But he too, now looks like a cause of chaos, not a solution.

LePen might pull this off in France. Meloni may do it in Italy. It may help to be a women. Men are accustomed to defer to women and give them the benefit of the doubt. But it has to be a woman who looks decisive as well, a Thatcher. Kamala Harris does not seem able to fit this bill; she does not inspire respect at all. The craving for a firm hand probably snagged Truss the British premiership; but it seems she moved too fast to soon. Or blinked.

RFK Jr. might fit this role; he is more or less the American equivalent of Justin Trudeau circa 2015 in terms of candidate image. It helps that he is coming from outside politics. It helps that he evokes nostalgia for a more ordered time with his very name. (Although the Sixties were really not well ordered, they seem so in retrospect.) His campaign for the Democratic nomination may go better than expected. He might win the presidency; and that might be good or bad, depending on his character; but working against him is Democratic party backroom that rigs the system against mavericks.

3. Revolution or civil war. Tim Poole speaks of this often. He has experience of revolution and civil war. He may be right.

This too has obviously happened before. Usually it turns out badly, sometimes it turns out well. When it turns out well, it is because there is a competent and organized opposition able to take power. Is there such an uncompromised sector of US or Western culture?

Not the church. Not the corporate world. Not the military. Not the civil service. All have now been compromised, and seem part of the problem. I think we’re in trouble if this happens. Worse chaos likely ensues.

4. One can fantasize, at least, about God intervening. Not necessarily descending on clouds of glory to judge the living and the dead; perhaps through a religious revival. We have seen the Asbury revival recently. Is there a spark? Is there kindling?

Possible historical examples of this working are Christianity in the Roman Empire; or the Chosun (Joseon) Dynasty in Korea, which replaced a decadent Buddhist zeitgeist with Confucian rigor. A seemingly decadent and disunited Britain at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, having lost its first empire, and shaken by the French, American, Chartist, and Irish revolutions, seemed then to pull itself together under the invigorating influence of Victorian morality, Methodism, and the social gospel.

Here's hoping for option four.

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

Father Joe

 

McCarrick. 

I once lived with a Catholic priest, who took his title “father” seriously. He considered himself equivalent to the father in a family. And he once wrote a piece for publication arguing that being a father was a kind of martyrdom, that a father dies every day for his children. His editor tried to convince him not to make this claim; it sounded bizarre. And I agreed with the editor.

Now that I have had a good deal of experience as a father, it seems yet more bizarre. It is the opposite of the truth. We parents live through the eyes of our children. They give us a second, perhaps a third, perhaps a fourth, life. Perhaps more: the chain of descent is a primitive form of immortality.

But Father Joe was adamant. He even mocked his editor for not agreeing. He saw it as an obvious insight. He was a martyr for his congregation, and felt good about himself for it. Accordingly, each parent was also a martyr, being killed by their own children.

I realize now that Father Joe was a narcissist. Many members of the clergy are: it is a role that proclaims “I am better than others.” The Bible calls them Pharisees. 

This would explain the supposed tragedy of parenthood. A narcissist would indeed consider the existence of the child (or parishioner) an affront to themselves, in that it requires them to consider the interests of someone other than themselves, and sometimes deny their own desires for another. Indeed, to demand this is, in the mind of the narcissist, an assault, even murder. Consider the “transsexuals” insisting that if you do not use their chosen pronouns, or let them use their preferred washrooms, you are guilty of genocide. This is the way the narcissist sees the world. This makes them dangerous and capable of violence.

This can then justify the narcissist in any kind of abuse of their children. Or, among clergy, any kind of abuse of young parishioners. They had better be useful to the narcissist in some important way, to justify their existence. 

There is a trope in Greek myth of a parent consulting an oracle on the birth of a child; and being told the child will grow up to replace them. As a result, they persecute and try to kill the child.

Of course, this is always simply true. In the normal course of nature, the child will outlive the parent. So what is the point of this oracle?

I think this is a literary convention to make objective the inner thoughts of the narcissistic parent: children are evil. They require attention, and they are likely to survive him or her. This is an affront to the narcissistic ego. 

Freud’s imaginary Oedipus complex probably springs from the same roots. There is much child hatred in the real world. Look at the numbers for abortion, for pedophilia, and for child sex mutilation.

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

Coming of Age in Canada

 

Last week, I helped a student edit a poem for his high school English class. It was required to be on the theme of “coming of age.” He thought of the metaphor of a ship casting off the lines and leaving the pier for the open sea. I thought it was quite beautiful.

But the teacher was unhappy with it, and without revision threatened a low mark. To begin with, she took the word “tack,” referring to directing a ship, for an error. She was sure enough of herself not to look it up in the dictionary. So he lost marks.

Perhaps to her dictionaries are oppressive, lest they contradict her “lived experience.”

But the bigger problem was that the poem gave no “cause” for “coming of age.” At last we puzzled out that she was expecting some rebellion against parents and society. It was not permissible to see growing up just as striking off on your own. It had to involve rejecting whatever your parents had taught you.

This was a special problem for my student, because he is Chinese. Not Chinese-Canadian. Chinese, attending a Canadian high school. To him, the thought was shocking. Filial piety and respect for your ancestors is among the deepest of Confucian values.

I found it admirable that, on figuring out this is what his teacher wanted, he declared that, rather than accede he would take a lower mark.

But it illustrates how harmful our schools may have become. The agenda of this teacher at least—and she is not alone—is not to educate, but to de-educate, to dismantle anything the student might already know.

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

Poor Scrappy Little Independent CBC

 

Elon Musk has labelled the CBC “government funded media” on Twitter. 

Justin Trudeau has publicly protested. He seems enraged. The CBC has threatened to leave Twitter.

Remarkably, everything Justin Trudeau says about the matter is not only a lie, but the opposite of the truth. It is illustrative of narcissistic gaslighting generally. When you are a convinced liar, it is generally not enough in your own mind to lie. You fear the truth, you generally feel safest getting as far away from it as possible.

You can see such fear in Trudeau’s eyes. Granted, it looks like anger—narcissistic rage—but narcissistic rage is a “fight or flight” response. Narcissists are haunted by their own conscience. It makes them dangerous.

To begin with, of course, the CBC is indeed government funded. This is simply the literal truth, and this is what Trudeau is furious about, and calls an “attack.”

Trudeau blames Pierre Poilievre, leader of the official opposition, for the label. Poilievre did indeed write to Musk requesting this; but Twitter is simultaneously so labelling NPR, PBS, the BBC, New Zealand state TV, Al Jazeera, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It would be odd to expect special treatment for the CBC no matter what Poilievre said.

In the same sentence, Trudeau describes the CBC as an “independent media organization.” Which is exactly what it is not. By insisting that it is, and objecting to the factual statement that it is government funded as an “attack,” Trudeau is admitting in a backhanded way, as narcissists do, that he knows he is in the wrong: he knows there is something deeply wrong with the way the Canadian government is funding and trying to control the media.

He stresses that the CBC delivers “local news and local content,” as if it were some small local operation up against a big impersonal business. But the CBC is the big national operation; and Trudeau is doing everything he can, with Bill C-11, to suppress independent local media and content—the YouTubers.

Trudeau then says that in criticizing the CBC Poilievre is attacking Canadian culture. One common criticisms of the CBC is that it does not promote Canadian culture. Instead, it is all in for multiculturalism, which is to say, foreign culture, and full of “woke” criticism of Canadian culture as racist. Trudeau has actually claimed that Canada has no mainstream culture. 

He accuses Poilievre of, in his supposed campaign against Canadians, “running to American billionaires; the tech giants.” That would presumably be Elon Musk, one billionaire, the chief actual opposition to the “tech giants.” And Musk is a Canadian citizen.

Nice try at fomenting anti-American hatred, by the way.

Trudeau ends with accusing the Conservatives of “always defending the tech giants.” It has been the left in the US that has been colluding to an almost Fascist degree with the tech giants. In Canada, the Liberals just gave the green light to a hi-tech merger of Rogers and Shaw. They tend to be in corporate pockets generally. SNC Lavelin? Power Corporation? The Tories, by contrast, are mostly the party of small business.

This is not an honest or a decent man. And he holds the Canadian people in contempt.

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

Poor Little Independent CBC

 

Elon Musk has labelled the CBC “government funded media” on Twitter. 

Justin Trudeau has publicly protested. He seems enraged. The CBC has threatened to leave Twitter.

Remarkably, everything Justin Trudeau says about the matter is not only a lie, but the opposite of the truth. It is illustrative of narcissistic gaslighting generally. When you are a convinced liar, it is generally not enough in your own mind to lie. You fear the truth, you generally feel safest getting as far away from it as possible.

You can see such fear in Trudeau’s eyes. Granted, it looks like anger—narcissistic rage—but narcissistic rage is a “fight or flight” response. Narcissists are haunted by their own conscience. It makes them dangerous.

To begin with, of course, the CBC is indeed government funded. This is simply the literal truth, and this is what Trudeau is furious about, and calls an “attack.”

Trudeau blames Pierre Poilievre, leader of the official opposition, for the label. Poilievre did indeed write to Musk requesting this; but Twitter is simultaneously so labelling NPR, PBS, the BBC, New Zealand state TV, Al Jazeera, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. It would be odd to expect special treatment for the CBC no matter what Poilievre said.

In the same sentence, Trudeau describes the CBC as an “independent media organization.” Which is exactly what it is not. By insisting that it is, and objecting to the factual statement that it is government funded as an “attack,” Trudeau is admitting in a backhanded way, as narcissists do, that he knows he is in the wrong: he knows there is something deeply wrong with the way the Canadian government is funding and trying to control the media.

He stresses that the CBC delivers “local news and local content,” as if it were some small local operation up against a big impersonal business. But the CBC is the big national operation; and Trudeau is doing everything he can, with Bill C-11, to suppress independent local media and content—the YouTubers.

Trudeau then says that in criticizing the CBC Poilievre is attacking Canadian culture. One common criticisms of the CBC is that it does not promote Canadian culture. Instead, it is all in for multiculturalism, which is to say, foreign culture, and full of “woke” criticism of Canadian culture as racist. Trudeau has actually claimed that Canada has no mainstream culture. 

He accuses Poilievre of, in his supposed campaign against Canadians, “running to American billionaires; the tech giants.” That would presumably be Elon Musk, one billionaire, the chief actual opposition to the “tech giants.” And Musk is a Canadian citizen.

Nice try at fomenting anti-American hatred, by the way.

Trudeau ends with accusing the Conservatives of “always defending the tech giants.” It has been the left in the US that has been colluding to an almost Fascist degree with the tech giants. In Canada, the Liberals just gave the green light to a hi-tech merger of Rogers and Shaw. They tend to be in corporate pockets generally. SNC Lavelin? Power Corporation? The Tories, by contrast, are mostly the party of small business.

This is not an honest or a decent man. And he holds the Canadian people in contempt.

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

Wise Words

 

“If you’re a child and your parents stop loving you, you don’tstop loving your parents.

You stop loving yourself.”

– Senator John Kennedy

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