Stephen Roney's Blog, page 94

Some More Video from January 6, 2021

 

Pretty shocking...

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

All Hell Has Broken Loose

 

The cities of the plain

The trans community is all narcissist. Justin Trudeau is a narcissist. Joe Biden is a classic narcissist. Megan Markle is a narcissist. Amber Heard is a narcissist. Jada Pinkett Smith is a narcissist. Was narcissism always so common, and we are just beginning to notice it? Or has something changed?

Something changed. This is one more disaster among so many that we can assign to the social sciences.

Narcissism is, to begin with, an alternative to religious faith: if you turn from God, one obvious alternative is making a god of your own desires. The social sciences from the outset sought to take the place of religion. Its influence on society in general has grown, especially in the past sixty or seventy years. Freud insisted that the goal of life is to satisfy your animal desires. More recently, the social sciences have aggressively advanced the dogma of “self-esteem,” and “unconditional” love in parenting. This is grooming for narcissism. 

But this is not the only, or the worst, thing the social sciences have produced. Here’s a partial list.

1. Mental illness generally. There is a reason that the incidence of mental illness has grown by leaps and bounds in the past sixty or seventy years, on pace with the growing influence of the social sciences. The very concept, of course, of a mental “illness,” comes from the social sciences. Earlier generations would have talked of demonic possession. But was the thing itself, however it was defined, common before the social sciences? Not really. In the ancient world, it seems to have been a problem—witness the demoniacs of the New Testament. But not in Christian Europe. In pre-modern times, Bedlam hospital, Britain’s only facility for the insane, had at most a few hundred occupants. Moreover, mental illness was understood to be curable. But to psychiatry and psychology, it is incurable—all that can be done is to manage it with pills. According to a large study in the Seventies by the WHO, mental illness is still curable in the Third World. It is generally something temporary, like fever. So the true case of mental illness is social science. As to why this is, probably all of “mental illness” is caused by a perceived loss of meaning. That is a direct product of the social sciences stripping God and the spirit from our world view. Social science produces a wholly inadequate understanding of the world, that cannot account for much of human experience. When human experience refuses to conform to the model, “mental illness” is declared. This is probably the worst holocaust in human history, causing the most suffering and death.

2. Racism. There has always been xenophobia, and prejudice, and discrimination over “breeding” and ancestry. But race as such is a scientific construct. It emerges from Darwinism’s view of the human as just another animal, classifiable into physical subgroups the same way horses or pigs are. And Darwinism justifies racism, as the imperative of “survival of the species.” It simply stands to reason in a Darwinian world that our own race is locked in a life and death evolutionary struggle with all other races. It is kill or be killed. People pretend that “social Darwinism” is some perversion of Darwin’s theory. It is not. Darwin himself was a social Darwinist. It was the topic of his second great book, The Descent of Man. Race had no meaning or significance in the Roman Empire, and no meaning in Christianity. While there would remain excuses for discrimination, without the social sciences, race would be removed from the mix. And worst examples of genocide in history have been based on race. The term “genocide” is itself from “genus,” a biological concept equivalent to race. Without the social sciences, we would not think in these terms.

3. Marxism. Marx is often called the father of the social sciences. Marxism is “scientific socialism.” It offered a supposedly scientific explanation of human history. Chalk up the dead of the Holodomir, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Killing Fields. 

4. Fascism and Nazism. Fascism is a form of Marxism, admixed with social Darwinism. The associated artistic movement was called “Futurism.” Chalk up the dead of the Holocaust.

5. The two world wars, and the Cold War. Both the first and the second war were primarily initiated by Germany on the premise of social Darwinism. The social sciences were especially influential in German culture, home of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche. It is the German proclivity for social science that Kipling warns about in 1897 in the poem “Recessional”: “For heathen heart that puts her trust/  In reeking tube and iron shard,/ All valiant dust that builds on dust,/ And guarding, calls not Thee to guard.” Christian morality had no place in this brave new world of scientific objectivity: it was survival of the fittest, meaning in this case the most powerful nation. Chalk up tens of millions more deaths. Had the Cold War gotten hotter, this could in turn be laid at the feet of the Marxist social theory of class warfare.

6. The decline of civilization and culture. Education is how civilization and culture is passed on. Education has since the early 20th century, on a German model, been declared a social science. This means our civilization and culture is no longer passed on. It is supplanted in the classrooms with crackpot theories like Marxism, Freudianism, racism, feminism, and Fascism, if this latter not by name. A civilization and culture that is not passed on dies within a few generations, and we are back in the forests of the night.

7. The death of romantic love. Feminism killed all romance, re-imagining interaction between the sexes as being about power. All is either dominance or submission, and the fulfilling of animal desires. There is no room for altruism or beauty. Feminism derives from Darwin; a Marxist analysis traceable through Freidan to Engels; and a heavy dose of Freud.

8. The death of the family. Feminism killed women’s traditional role of nurturing the next generation. Abortion is only the most direct expression of this, an overall devaluing of and contempt for children. A contempt for children seen also in the current promotion of sex change operations on the underaged, and a growing grooming culture in the schools. Children interfere with the Freudian dogma of satisfying animal impulses. If they are not themselves of some utility for sexual gratification, what purpose do they serve? Again, the suffering and death this is causing is incalculable. It is a larger ongoing holocaust than Hitler could have imagined. Moreover, the direction this leads is the gradual extinction of humanity itself.

All this is the Devil’s work. The social sciences are built upon an initial pact with the Devil. The social sciences treat human beings as objects; this “objectivity” is essential to science. Yet human beings are not objects; they are subjects, and morality requires us to see them as such, as ends, not means. All possible horrors follow from this violation of the second most basic moral principle: to love your neighbour as yourself. 

The solution is a religious revival. We can only hope and pray that God is intervening.

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

On Taking Tucker Carlson off the Air

 

In the current reaction among Democrats to the release of the Twitter files, and to Tucker Carlson’s airing of the January 6 videos, we are seeing the phenomenon sometimes called “narcissistic rage”; and perhaps gaining insight into why it occurs.

It happens when a liar is caught straight out in a lie; if the liar is a narcissist. What is he or she going to do? Not admit the lie; that is obviously too much to expect. Instead they will start shouting and making demands. They will project their own crime onto whoever threatens truth; they may even become apparently delusional, insisting that the evidence of our own eyes is a lie. “Gaslighting.”

Consider the recent speech of Chuck Schumer demanding that Tucker Carlson be taken off the air.

This sort of attempted bullying is not a sign of strength, but of weakness. The narcissist is fragile. He or she cannot bend or admit wrongdoing without breaking. 

What we call “narcissism” is more properly someone committed long term to vice; someone who has sold their soul to the Devil. If they then admit a lie, that reality is a thing, that there is an objective morality, they lose, in their own mind, everything. That is why the transgenders insist that, if you do not refer to them by their preferred pronouns, you are “denying they exist.”

Rather than admit the lie, they will resort to the most vicious language, and even to violence. 

We have seen this of late in Justin Trudeau.

Take heart; it is a sign that the beast is in its death throes.

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

March: Book 1

 

As part of his high school curriculum, one of my students is reading March: Book 1, by Lewis, Aydin, and Powell, in English class. This graphic novel has little literary merit: the characters are all of cardboard, and the plot is spoiled from the start for anyone who knows the history. There is no new information, no new insights, just a series of historical name-drops. To compare it to Spiegelman’s Maus, the success of which it no doubt was written to capitalize on, is to see how superficial it is. It really does not belong on the English curriculum.

It is perhaps an engaging way to read history. But, being ghost-written with a participant, it gives only one perspective, not acceptable in historical studies. Perhaps this is why it has been smuggled into the English curriculum instead.

As history, it is also American history. Canadian classrooms should teach Canadian history, and world history as it affected Canada. What was happening in Canada at the time?

I was alive for some of the fight in the US South for civil rights. It was of some interest, about as much as the uprisings in Iran or Georgia are today, but paled in comparison to concerns about possible nuclear war, the Cold War, Quebec separatism, the FLQ; even the troubles in Northern Ireland were more relevant, and more discussed and debated. Which made sense, in terms of Canada’s history.

The book does not belong on a Canadian curriculum. Are we reading Robert W. Service? Are we reading Stephen Leacock? Are we reading Thomas Chandler Haliburton? Are we reading W.O. Mitchell? Are we reading Mordecai Richler? Are we reading Gabrielle Roy?

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

Garneau Gone--But Not Forgotten?

 

Justin Trudeau’s attempt to duck or stall a public inquiry into election interference keeps looking worse. As other commentators have said, his plan to, sometime in the coming weeks, appoint a “special rapporteur” who would after some period of study report back to him on whether he should then appoint some kind of panel to investigate himself in private is only a smokescreen and a stall. It mostly puts everything on ice until after the next election, with some assurance that anything that comes out stays secret. And he can refuse to talk about it, on the grounds that it is the subject of an active inquiry and sensitive to national security.

At this point, given his resistance to investigation, we must assume that whatever has been going on in terms of Chinese government interference in Canadian politics is much worse than we have yet seen—and Trudeau is heavily implicated.

Another feather in the wind is the sudden resignation from Parliament of Marc Garneau. Might this be related? It is unusual for someone to resign their seat well after the last, yet well before the next election. Exceptions are if they have been offered some important job elsewhere. Or if a career pinnacle has been reached, and hanging around would be anticlimactic. Neither seems the case here. Granted that he is long in the tooth and past retirement age--he's still youthful compared to either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Why not sit it out until the next election, fulfilling his commitment to the voters of Westmount-NDG, saving the expense of a byelection, and simply announce he will not run again?

I suspect that, as a Liberal insider, and a former Foreign Minister at that, Garneau probably knows the truth, or much of it, of the CCP situation. He sees the roof is going to come crashing down soon now. He has a personal reputation and legacy to protect: he was Canada’s first astronaut. He does not want to be tarnished by the tar when it hits the wind turbines. Or, to throw another metaphor in the Mixmaster, time to get off this sinking ship.

Having in the past had leadership ambitions, he might also want to be away at arm’s length, untarnished by association with the discredited regime, just in case there is an option to take up the Liberal mantle when Trudeau falls. This same calculation probably dooms any future leadership hopes for Chrystia Freeland; she’s too closely associated with Trudeau. Removing himself from politics and waiting in the wings worked for John Turner, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin. The elaborate praise and bonhomie Garneau expressed to all others in the Chamber, on Parliament Hill, in the media, and in politics generally suggest a man not burning any bridges. He wants to be remembered well and welcomed if he happens to come back.

My guess is that, if a proper investigation is eventually held, it will find that Justin Trudeau himself has benefitted financially, and substantially, from some connection to the Chinese government. He was in on the attempt to juke the elections, whether or not it made a substantial difference.

And what if an investigation finds that it really did make a substantial difference?

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

Lutherans and the Alt-Right

 

"Green Lives Matter"

Xerxes, my larboard columnist friend, is impressed of late that President Harrison of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in the US has come out in opposition to the “alt-right,” condemning it in members of his congregation. Xerxes thinks this is impressive because the LCMS has a reputation as a conservative denomination.

Xerxes is wrong to be impressed. It is no surprise if a conservative Christian denomination denounces the “alt-right.” This is dog-bites-man. 

There is a reason why the “alt-right” calls itself and is called the “alt-right.” Because it is an alternative to the right. There is no reason for a conservative denomination to love it.

Conservatism means wanting to conserve established traditions. In the US that means, pre-eminently, equality and civil rights: respecting and preserving the ideals of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. American conservatism is thus necessarily liberal, in the true sense of that word. It believes in democracy, equality, and limited government. It is anti-authoritarian. An authoritarian or totalitarian American right is therefore a contradiction in terms. Authoritarianism and totalitarianism is a plausible position only on the left. Hence the term “alt-right” for those eccentric American individuals who embrace ideas of a non-orthodox-Marxist but autocratic regime. Not to say that, even in European terms, Nazism or fascism are clearly on the right. An autocratic monarchy might be.

There’s not a big constituency for making America a kingdom.

Accordingly, in condemning the “alt-right,” or “Christian nationalism,” President Harrison of the LCMS is doing nothing surprising or bold; any more than coming out against vampires and werewolves. 

There is nothing so alarming about Christian nationalism. It is the status quo in such liberal democratic countries as the United Kingdom or Denmark. Because of the First Amendment, it has no support among conservatives in the US. I am a news hound, and regularly sample media outlets often accused by the left of being “far right,” like Fox News, Daily Wire, Small Dead Animals, Instapundit, and so forth. Nobody there is talking about in Christian nationalism. Nobody there uses the term. The concept seems to exist only on the left.

President Harrison, in condemning the perhaps two or three members of his denomination who are alt-right and have active Twitter accounts, cites advocacy for “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, and genocide.”

Most of what is considered the alt-right is actually trolling; it is practical joking by juveniles to make authorities look foolish for taking it seriously. It is fun at a certain age, to show up your elders as gullible idiots. Actually, it is fun at any age. I’d guess that is true of all the items Harrison lists here—someone is pulling his leg. 

More alarming than this semi-mythical “alt-right” is the tendency on the left—and not some tiny “alt-left”--to associate such absurd gag views with anyone who is—to quote Xerxes’s own charges--“pro-Bible, anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-newcomer, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-Trudeau.” 

This is far more nefarious. Take the charge that anyone who is “anti-Trudeau” is “alt-right.” This means calling the majority of Canadians alt-right, and charging them with slavery and genocide. After all, a super-majority of Canadians are anti-Trudeau. They always have been; they have been for the past three elections. 

Being opposed to the current government, and organizing to bring it down, is how democracy works. Oppose this, and it is you who are demanding a totalitarian, fascist government. Not as a gag—in all seriousness.

All Canadians also have a right to freedom of conscience, as the right would insist, and therefore a right to hold and proclaim pro-Bible views. Since all major world religions teach that homosexual sex is a sin, they have a right to hold and proclaim this view as well—just as anyone else has the right to argue the opposite. Feminism is a particular political ideology, a set of political demands, with which, in a free society, people have a right to disagree, and a right to resist. In a non-totalitarian society, politics may be openly discussed, and people may dissent. So too with abortion; it is an issue we must legislate on, and must discuss, if we are a democracy. So too with immigration levels. Finally, we have a right, as the right insists, to decide for ourselves any medical treatment; this is security of the person. 

It is those on the left who seem to be subverting our rights and freedoms. This is creeping fascism; or perhaps galloping fascism.

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

The Three Phases of Culture According to J.J. McCullough

 

J.J. McCullough divides art into three categories, pre-modern, modern, and postmodern, and opines that now, after postmodernism, there is nowhere else to go.

Pre-modernism, he says, is characterized by beauty, craftsmanship, and religious values.

Modernism is defined by rationality and efficiency, rejecting beauty, craftsmanship, and religious values.

Postmodernism is defined by the rejection of rationality and efficiency. “Subverting whatever art is supposed to be.” “Weird for the sake of weird.”

McCullough sees these as the only possibilities; and we have exhausted them. So from now on… he suggests perhaps we will see a mix of them all.

His analysis seems flawed. To begin with, it takes no account of non-Western art. And restricting ourselves to Western art, there is a strange imbalance in his timeline. Pre-modern goes up to the late 19th and early 20th centuries; postmodernism appears in 1917 with Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.” Leaving perhaps 17 years for modernism. McCullough suggests that postmodernism too is now exhausted and done.

If these really are the three inevitable approaches to art, why is it that only one of them ever occurred to artists in the millennia up to 1900? Why wasn’t art always a mix of them all, as McCullough suggests it should be in the future?

Rather than three approaches to art, it looks as though we have art, then two failed approaches to it. Art is craft plus vision; it means to convey the Good, the True and the Beautiful. Rejecting craftsmanship and religious values means, then, rejecting art.

If, as McCullough says, modernism is about rationality and efficiency, “form follows function,” we have a problem. Art performs no obvious function. Again, this is a rejection of art.

As is postmodernism, as McCullough says, it is “subverting whatever art is supposed to be.” That speaks for itself.

What we have is a collapse of the arts about the beginning of the 20th century, which has since then progressed to the point of nihilism. Not three approaches to art, or even two, but just one. Duchamp’s “postmodern” “Fountain” actually appeared three years before Eliot’s “The Waste-Land,” from which modernism dates in poetry.

The real difference between modernism and postmodernism is simply that modernism lamented the loss of art; postmodernism celebrates it.

Which is why there is now nowhere to go. The last embers of the gallery have been burned down to ash.

It is the suicide of a culture.

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

Is the Real "Woke" Awakening?

 

How is it that Canada, the US, and the Catholic Church are all saddled with historically terrible leaders at the same time?

For that matter, how is it that, back in the 1980s, Britain, the US, and the Catholic Church all suddenly got great leaders at the same time? One might add Gorbachev in the USSR, Deng Xiaoping in China, perhaps Helmut Kohl in Germany. Whether you loved them or hated them, none of them were doing business as usual. All did something historic. Against the backdrop of the digital revolution in business, the first personal computers, Steve Jobs and Apple.

The simplest solution is to accept that God—and the Devil—are active in history. Who runs a government is normally, according to the New Testament, left in the Devil’s power. The three great enemies of the soul, after all, are “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” The social consensus is “the world.” Saint Paul says our battle is against “the principalities and powers of this world.”

But God will step in when things look hopeless. We can and should hope.

Something is happening at Asbury College in Kentucky. The film “Jesus Revolution” has just been released. Mel Gibson is due with “The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection” next year. Films can have great influence in modern life.

I always thought the counterculture of the Sixties got hijacked, by Marxists, yuppies who were only cosplaying as “hippies,” and abusive parents. It should otherwise have ended in a massive revival of Christian spirituality. The rock and roll was really gospel music, borrowing the same religious energy, thinly hidden behind inane or trivial lyrics. The folk music was often explicitly religious: Michael, row the boat ashore. The answer is blowing in the wind. Children, go where I send thee. The drugs were a key to spiritual experiences. The sex was often a juvenile craving for love, by children who had never experienced it. The counterculture as a whole was a rebellion against the materialist culture that Firesign Theatre mocked as “More Science High School,” against the denial of the spirit that behaviourism or structuralism or modernist architecture advocated and conveyed. A culture that “had no soul.”

At the time, I wasn’t involved in the “Jesus Freak” stuff. I was investigating Eastern religions, still at arm’s length. Just as I stayed at arm’s length from the politics, and the drugs, and the sex. I’m cautious by nature. But I ran into Jesus Freaks, and I felt they were often the best of that generation.

We almost got there sixty years ago. We have lost two generations. Maybe this time the spark will take and the kindling will be set ablaze. At a minimum, we all can feel the yearning.

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

What'sHerFace Gets In Yer Face

 

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said somebody. The original source of the well-known quotation is uncertain. 

In 1836, John Wilkinson wrote:

“One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist: another, perhaps equally fatal, is to make them fancy that he is obliged to stand quietly by, and not to meddle with them, if they get into true silence.”

In 1856, William Ramsey wrote:

“One of the most striking proofs of the personal existence of Satan, which our times afford us, is found in the fact, that he has so influenced the minds of multitudes in reference to his existence and doings, as to make them believe that he does not exist; and that the hosts of Demons or Evil Spirits, over whom Satan presides as Prince, are only the phantasies of the brain, some hallucination of mind. Could we have a stronger proof of the existence of a mind so mighty as to produce such results?”

Baudelaire said something similar. The first quotation is usually attributed to him.

It is so true and evident that it has occurred to many minds. Most people will adamantly deny the existence of evil, on the apparent premise—a classic example of denial--that if they ignore the Devil, he will ignore them. Examples abound: the silly notion of “rape culture,” that some men rape women because they do not know better, and need the matter explained to them. The idiotic pacifist idea that any conflict springs from some “misunderstanding,” and war can be averted by negotiation and compromise. That if there is a conflict, the victim must be in part to blame. That anyone who does something unquestionably immoral, like taking a gun and shooting up a school, must be insane rather than evil. Or it must be the gun’s fault. Or it must be society’s fault, or the system’s fault, or religion’s fault, or capitalism’s fault.

And in What’sHerFace’s talk, it manifests as the idea that we who fight for liberty and fairness ought to and can strive for unity in the present political circumstance. And should avoid offending. Peace is not possible; there is no chance of compromise between good and evil. It only ends in Munich, betrayal, and unilateral disarmament. 

We cannot honestly pretend that men can decide to be women.

We cannot honestly agree that “white” people are inherently evil.

We cannot honourably or safely compromise on free speech.

People like Scott Adams are waking up to this, it seems.

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

The Manchurian Candidate

 

On the surface, the current scandal about Chinese government interference in Canadian elections does not look too serious. Intelligence officials have reassured the public that it did not affect the outcome of an election, including in individual ridings. A parliamentary committee is already looking into it. However, polls and pundits seem to be seeing it as a big deal. Why?

One reason is that whoever, in CSIS, leaked the documents alleging election interference was risking both their career and a prison sentence by doing so. They must have thought it was serious, that something gravely wrong was going on. It might be, of course, that they are just politically partisan, and want to see the overthrow of the Trudeau government for its policies. But if so, they must also believe that investigation will lead to something worse than we have seen. For what we have yet seen does not seem enough to be worth the risk.

The second reason is that it seems to fall in line with and affirm a growing public perception that Justin Trudeau is a communist and totalitarian at heart, and is not governing in the interests of Canadians. Famously, he declared publicly years ago that he admired China’s “basic dictatorship.” He does seem keen to impose autocratic measures. He does seem to easily express contempt for ordinary Canadians, like the Freedom truckers. He did squander Canada’s research on a COVID vaccine by collaborating with China, who then absconded with the data. Was this naivete? Unreasonable Sinophilia? Or intentional?

Being in Chinese pay seems like an explanation for it all.

On the other hand, Chinese leader Xi Jinping famously dressed him down as “naïve” in a recent encounter of world leaders. The Liberals played this up as Trudeau standing up to China.

But it looked at least as much like the reverse: a boss dressing down a subordinate. Perhaps Xi felt he had the right. He was not confronting Trudeau as a supposed adversary, but scolding him for a blunder.

It is also true that Canada has been unpopular in China in recent years, because of the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Huangzhou. But Canada was forced into that by treaty obligations to the US, once they had let her plane land. The Trump White House may have forced Trudeau into that; Canada cannot afford to violate treaties with the US. That the anger in Beijing was directed at Canada, rather than the US, who had called for her detention and extradition, might suggest they thought they had a right to expect otherwise from Canada. They could not pressure the US; they could pressure the Canadian government.

The third reason is that Trudeau seems to have a record of bending the rules on influence peddling and being bought: by the Aga Khan, by Lavalin, by We Charities. Would he resist being bought by Beijing?

The fourth reason is that Trudeau just looks like a front man. He is an actor. We have long felt that someone is controlling him. The question is, who?

The final reason, so far, that the matter may be more serious than at first glance, is that Trudeau is resisting an independent inquiry. Despite calls from his informal coalition partners, the NDP, on whom he depends to stay in power.

If there is nothing further to see here, if there is no substance to it all, Trudeau ought to be content to agree, to clear the air and reassure the public. Yet he is risking the fall of his government to prevent this.

This above all suggests there must be something very bad we do not yet know. 

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