John C. Wright's Blog, page 45
November 10, 2014
Humor
http://kansascitycatholic.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/lenten-fare-2008/
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
November 5, 2014
Mid Term Election
Some thoughts, in no particular order, prompted by the events of last night’s election:
The Republicans have won a signal victory by an craven tactic of announcing no policy positions and making no promises, but merely by standing by and not being Democrats, as the Democrats announced no policy positions and made no promises but threatened women with an imaginary (and straitjacket-levels of lunacy screaming) Republican war on women, and threatened Blacks with the imaginary Republican racism, as demonstrated by such famous Republicans as Bull Connor, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus, Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Democrats historically showed their love for Blacks by blocking anti-lynching laws, opposing Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment, is claiming that Republican proposals to prevent voter fraud are racist.
So, while the Democrat defeat is well and richly deserved because of the mind-boggling stupidity of their campaign strategy, I have heard no national Republican figure, no, not one, vow to abolish Obamacare, nor even to de-fund it. I have heard GOP leaders already make public statements eagerly promising to compromise and urinate the victory away into the gutter.
I have heard no one vow to abolish the EPA, the DOE, the NEA, the IRS, nor to execute by slow hanging Supreme Court Justices from the eaves of the Capitol dome who have betrayed their oaths to abide by the Constitution.
Antiabortion ballot initiatives passed only in one state but failed in two states. The Republicans did not actively support these measures, or, rather, if they did, I heard nothing of it.
Christian gentlemen, these heathens are not our friends, and they do not believe what we believe, and do not believe in Him in whom we believe.
Gentlemen, this is not the victory, but the beginning of the battle. Gird up your loins, sell your coat, buy a sword.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards
While it was published on Halloween, this story will appear for Epiphany in the upcoming anthology from Castalia House, THE BOOK OF FEASTS AND SEASONS. Epiphany is the traditional date of the Wedding at Canae, as well as of the Canticle of Simeon, Nunc Dimittis, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word
* * *
There was no time. That is the first thing to remember. I did not know what was about to happen. That is the second thing to remember.
Imagine a time line. Select a zero point. To one side is an infinity of tomorrow, starting with positive one. To the other is an infinity of yesterday, starting with negative one. But between the positive and the negative infinities, what is there? Less than nothing, less than half of nothing, a pinprick, a dot, a point, less time than it takes to decide to murder them all.
I look into the first moment of negative one: one second ago.
Imagine a frozen moment. The glass of the chapel doors is breaking. Men in tall white hoods carrying shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles are firing. The guests are screaming, falling to the floor. And you, my love, have thrown your tall, strong body over mine, selflessly, lovingly, without a moment to think, without a moment to decide. I am feeling your body shuddering, not with passion as you embrace me, as I yield to your embrace, as we are falling; you shudder with the impact of bullets and buckshot throwing your blood, your living blood, your warmth, in sprays like Rorschach blots across the dark expanse of the expensive tuxedo I picked out, the dark expanse of your warm skin, and across the white satin of my wedding dress, the dress my many mothers sewed.
I cannot see you as you die. You are in the way.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
November 4, 2014
The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards
A story for Halloween for my readers. (I will correct found spelling errors later.) Enjoy.
* * *
There was no time. That is the first thing to remember. I did not know what was about to happen. That is the second thing to remember.
Imagine a time line. Select a zero point. To one side is an infinity of tomorrow, starting with positive one. To the other is an infinity of yesterday, starting with negative one. But between the positive and the negative infinities, what is there? Less than nothing, less than half of nothing, a pinprick, a dot, a point, less time than it takes to decide to murder them all.
I look into the first moment of negative one: one second ago.
Imagine a frozen moment. The glass of the chapel doors is breaking. Men in tall white hoods carrying shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles are firing. The guests are screaming, falling to the floor. And you, my love, have thrown your tall, strong body over mine, selflessly, lovingly, without a moment to think, without a moment to decide. I am feeling your body shuddering, not with passion as you embrace me, as I yield to your embrace, as we are falling; you shudder with the impact of bullets and buckshot throwing your blood, your living blood, your warmth, in sprays like Rorschach blots across the dark expanse of the expensive tuxedo I picked out, the dark expanse of your warm skin, and across the white satin of my wedding dress, the dress my many mothers sewed.
I cannot see you as you die. You are in the way. But I see the flower girl, the preacher’s daughter, with her little pink pillow falling, her little face that will never grow any older, never see her own wedding day. She is falling, and the gold ring not on your finger is flying in the air, catching the beam of sunlight from the broken stained glass window, the one showing Christ turning water into blood-red wine.
My ring is on my finger, a perfect unmarred circle of gold. A ring is like eternity, like the eternal, infinite return of the cosmos from Big Bang to the Eschaton, from Creation to Big Crunch. It is supposed to be as eternal as a vow of love. It is shaped like a zero.
Imagine a zero moment. For all the seconds of the weeks and months before zero, the negative of time, I can see when we met on the bus, when we spoke, when I asked you why you sat in the back, when you smiled, when you touched my hand to help me down the steps at our bus stop in Atlanta and the driver scowled at you, a look of hatred. During all those seconds, my happiness was complete.
During all that time, during my exile from time, I did not know what was about to happen.
Next comes the zero moment itself: You have placed the white gold wedding band on my pale white finger, but I have not yet done the same to you. I have said the words, the two little words no bride can take back if she says them.
I do.
But the preacher it took us so long to find, to find someone willing to marry us, he has not turned and asked you yet.
So I am an uncertain bride. The probability wave has not collapsed. I am in the zero between fiancée and wife.
You are an uncertain bridegroom. I thought it was cute that you were nervous. Had I only known the reason for your fear! Why did I select this time for my exile?
Right next door to the chapel is the hall where the State Democrat Party is having its meeting. There is a big smiling poster of Bull Connor, their national committee chair, hanging over the front door. He is the commissioner for safety. The men in white hoods had come out of the meeting hall with their hunting rifles tucked under their arms. These are not elephant guns, but smaller caliber weapons, not something that could penetrate the hide of a rhino or a charging elephant. That is the third thing to remember. It was the reason why I do what I will do, here in the zero moment, here in eternity. Part of the reason.
All seconds after the zero is nothing but horror and pain and loss. The change is that sudden. Heaven is hell.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Viva Vavra!
(hat tip to Vox Day) As an outside observer with no dog in this fight, nonetheless I cheer and salute and honor and magnify the Gamergaters. Confusion to their enemies!
Why? for reasons like this:
Over the last decade, media were taken over by people who think that their ideals, opinions and way of life are superior to others and so they have the mission to tell others how to live, what to think and what to do. Those people have learned that there is a very easy way of manipulating others with guilt and fake goodwill.
By all means read the whole thing. Mr Vavra was raised under a communist regime, so he recognizes the smell of their leprosy.
What I find continually amazing is the aspect Mr. Vavra touches here: the people who have such a high opinion of their moral and mental superiority. But on what is that inflated self assessment based? It stands on two legs:
First, they believe that to think is a hate-crime, and so they avoid even the semblance of any rational or orderly cognition in their various word-emissions. They are not just stupid and illogical, they are really, truly, deeply, profoundly stupid, stupid in a way an honest man with a low IQ could never be, because they are arrogant jackanapes mimicking the surface features of smartness which they have seen and do not understand, such as the use of obscure words, pompous self-glorification, dismissive condescension, and all such behavior truly wise people (see, for example, Socrates) never actually employ.
They think thinking is self-deception, adherence to a false consciousness or ‘narrative’ and that defining words is ‘too binary’ and ‘too limiting.’ They prefer to think ‘trans-logically’ and not be limited by the tiresome restrictions of, you know, reality and sense.
So their belief in their smartness comes from the fact that they refuse to think.
Second, they think that to be moral is judgmental, and judgment is thinking, and thinking, as we have seen, is a hate-crime. So they support and applaud at every turn foulness and vulgarity in arts and in speech, they support sexual perversion, drug abuse, and anything else that demeans and degrades the human person, and they become oddly (perhaps even sexually) excited at the thought of the ruthless cruelty of the most vicious and reckless killers in history, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Castro, Che. A brief inspection of the history of the Terror in France after the Revolution there shows the addiction to sadism is widespread among the Left, and it resurfaces again in the Russia of the Bolsheviks and in Red China. The Left unerringly sides with the psychopathic evil against the innocent. I suspect this is why they rejoice at the death of the unborn babies, of old people, of women in comas, and why they are allured and fascinated by the poor souls suffering from freakish sexual neuroses.
So their belief in their moral goodness comes from their unalloyed devotion to evil.
These wretches are the people to whom we have abandoned pulpit of the conscience, and the lectern of the intellect.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
November 3, 2014
One Hundred Reasons to Vote
Here are One Hundred Reasons to vote Republican tomorrow.
Even if you are a staunch Marxist professor at a college, or a loyal devotee of Ayn Randian classical liberalism, no matter how badly the RINO offered by the establishment Republican disagrees with you on ten percent of your policy positions, he does not disagree with you one hundred and ten percent, and while he might harm the nation through corruption, or foolery, he is not actively and energetically hellbent on dismantling and destroying the nation. He does not hate and loathe the Nation, nor does he seek the death of you and yours through war and plague and famine.
The Democrats apparently do, to judge by their actions. If you believe these are honest men who merely have a different theory of political economics than you, explain their unwavering support for terrorism, for sodomy, for voter fraud, for legalizing recreational drug use, for blocking education reform, and their fanatical, nay, diabolical support for tax-funded prenatal infanticide.
The Democrat support Obama’s vision of a transformed America. Otherwise, they would not so vehemently support Barack Obama’s administration, whose accomplishments include the following.
I have limited myself repeating this list (the words below are not my own) to a hundred or so. Not mentioned is some additional scandals and betrayals, such as introducing deadly diseases to our shores, the fumbling incompetence of the current campaign against the Islamic State, nor the craven submission to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, nor is mentioned the running up the national debt into the 17-19 trillion dollar range, and other things too painful to mention.
Secret Police spying on the Press: http://nypost.com/2014/10/27/ex-cbs-reporter-government-related-entity-bugged-my-computer/
Violated the U.S. Constitution by authorizing assassinations and drone strikes to kill American citizens abroad — without due process.
Obamacare — A massive and incredibly convoluted bill which exponentially increases the federal government’s control over our personal lives…which neither Obama nor a single Democrat even read before passing, designed to bankrupt the nation, not to mention being starkly and clearly unconstitutional.
Promised you could keep your doctor and your policy; later shown to be a knowing, not an unintentional, lie.
Handed out over 1,200 waivers to politically connected donors exempting them from the onerous requirements of Obamacare.
In both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the Obama campaign purposely disabled the credit card verification system for its Web site donations, allowing anyone from any foreign country to donate with no limit and no proof of identity; in both elections it was demonstrated that people overseas and people with obviously false identities were able to donate to Obama campaign, in direct violation of several laws. To this day it is not known what percentage of Obama’s campaign funds are illegally obtained, since there is no documentation.
Billions of taxpayer dollars gambled on “green” companies like Solyndra, NextEra, Ener1, Solar Trust and many others — all of which went bankrupt.
An intentional refusal to enforce federal immigration laws; an abridgement of Federalism by harassing the state of Arizona into not defending its southern border.
Unemployment at or above 15% actual unemployment throughout both terms.
Operation Fast & Furious — a government-sponsored illegal gun-running scheme designed to purposely go awry so as to induce public outcry for gun control.
Increased the percentage of Americans dependent on food stamps to unprecedented levels (now over 15% of the nation’s population).
Militarily intervened in Libya in 2011 without the Congressional approval required by the War Powers Act — technically an impeachable offense.
Ordered NASA to make one of its top priorities not space exploration or scientific research but “Muslim outreach.”
Used Obamacare as a pretext to greatly increase the size and power of the IRS (which was given 16,000 new agents and additional mandates to penalize taxpayers for noncompliance).
Used the IRS to harass conservative businesses.
Greatly expanding the number of unaccountable “czars,” which essentially amounts to unilaterally adding new federal departments with no congressional oversight — leading to a true “bureaucracy” in the original sense (rule by unelected bureaucrats).
Using taxpayer dollars to bail out the private pension funds of autoworkers’ unions at GM & Chrysler.
Illegally ending the welfare-to-work requirements passed by Congress.
Doling out $800 billion in stimulus cash for “shovel-ready” jobs that didn’t exist — the money just evaporated with no measurable economic benefit.
Alienating and isolating Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East.
Apologizing to Islamists and terrorists for offending them.
After Nidal Malik Hasan massacred 13 people at Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akbar” so as to become a martyr for Islam, the Obama administration refused to classify his action as “terrorism” and instead deemed it merely “workplace violence.”
Under Obama’s watch, for the first time in history America’s credit rating was downgraded, due to his poor economic policies.
Stopped American oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, allowing other nations with worse environmental records to drill instead — thereby managing to both weaken our economy and damage the environment simultaneously.
Set up “Attack Watch” a Web site on which you would report “attacks” on Obama’s proposals and ideology; it was quickly shut down due to outrage and mockery.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
November 1, 2014
Wolfwhistling is Sexist Part Deux
No comment from me is needed:
http://logicd.tumblr.com/post/101456605441
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
How Did We Come to This?
For those of you still wondering why I quit SFWA and why I made as big a public stink about it as I could, please read the following guest post by Fail Burton:
There’s a scene in the film Soylent Green where Edgar G. Robinson looks at a piece of raw steak and some vegetables and says something like “How did we come to this?”, and he starts crying.
Here’s how I see this: anyone who came up the old way reading Heinlein, Asimov, Forry Ackerman, Stan Lee, Ray Bradbury knows the culture, messaging and atmosphere was the complete opposite of a thing like the KKK. There is absolutely no doubt of that.
There was NO INSTITUTIONAL HARASSMENT AT ANY TIME of non-whites, gays or women embedded in those stories, embedded in the messaging. Quite the opposite.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
Wolfwhistling is Sexist, and Complaining about Wolfwhistling is Racist, and Courtesy toward Women is
This was too rich not to share:
video depicting a woman walking around New York City and, through no fault of her own, being intermittently approached or cat-called by strangers has become an Internet sensation this week, racking up hits and provoking outrage across the political spectrum. In the course of just a few days, millions upon millions of people have shared the piece, almost all of them appending to the link their own passionate disavowals and earnest calls to action. Initially, its progenitor, a group named “Hollaback,” expressed the hope that the piece “would make an impact.” Quietly, they must be thrilled with the result: In a single week, the spot has had 15 million views, an achievement that places it firmly in the viral hall of fame. Publicly, however, the outfit has been forced to apologize, its victory having turned somewhat sour. What could possibly have happened?
As it has grown in popularity, the video has been transformed into a blank canvas, onto which America’s brave advocates of hyphenated-justice have sought to project their favored social theories. Evidently unwilling to let the spot stand on its own, Purdue’s Roxanne Gay wrote sadly that “it’s difficult and uncomfortable to admit that we have to talk about race/class/gender/sexuality/ability/etc, all at once.” Alas, she was not alone. Soon, the claims of “sexism” had been joined by accusations of “racism” and of “classism,” Hollaback had been forced to acknowledge that it had upset the more delicate among us, and those who had celebrated the video had been denounced as unreconstructed bigots. By this process was its message diluted and appropriated, the country’s most prominent peddlers of grievance and discord electing to squabble and bicker over its meaning, and to strip it of its value in favor of their own, fringe fixations.
“The fact that the video chooses to showcase the experience of a white woman experiencing harassment almost exclusively at the hands of black and Latino men,” Brooklyn Magazine’s Kristin Iverson proposed earlier this week, “is a pretty clear indication of who the audience for this video is supposed to be, namely, those who seek to protect and defend innocent white women, aka the already existing societal power structure.” This theme was picked up in more explicit terms elsewhere, the less direct references to the “power structure” quickly giving way to overt accusations of white supremacy. “Thousands of satisfied racists are sharing that viral catcalling video,” griped Lindy West at the Daily Dot, lamenting that its creators had imposed “manipulative, specific, politicized constraints on the issue of street harassment” and thereby permitted “the bulk of the audience to divorce themselves from the problem.” Yesterday, the Root’s Dion Rabouin dispensed with euphemism entirely, confirming that “some of the video’s intentional choices seem to play on the Birth of a Nation trope that white women simply aren’t safe from sex-crazed black and brown men.” How that’s for a thumb in the eye for the millions who shared the spot on their Facebook pages?
In the exquisitely calibrated judgment of The Nation’s “racial justice” guru, Aura Bogado, the spot was “deeply problematic,” serving not to highlight the frequency with which women are bothered on the street, but instead perpetuating “the myth of the cult of white white womanhood by literally placing this white woman in neighborhoods where men of color will be the ones who catcall (or, in some instances, say hello to) her.” “Doing so,” Bogado writes, “makes it appear as if men of color are the perpetrators of all that is bad on this planet, which can only be balanced with the exigent need to therefore save white women above all else.” The only solution, she says, is to remake the video with a “universalizing” cast: the camera centering on, “say, a black trans woman.”
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
October 31, 2014
The Queen of the Tyrant Lizards
A story for Halloween for my readers. (I will correct found spelling errors later.) Enjoy.
* * *
There was no time. That is the first thing to remember. I did not know what was about to happen. That is the second thing to remember.
Imagine a time line. Select a zero point. To one side is an infinity of tomorrow, starting with positive one. To the other is an infinity of yesterday, starting with negative one. But between the positive and the negative infinities, what is there? Less than nothing, less than half of nothing, a pinprick, a dot, a point, less time than it takes to decide to murder them all.
I look into the first moment of negative one: one second ago.
Imagine a frozen moment. The glass of the chapel doors is breaking. Men in tall white hoods carrying shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles are firing. The guests are screaming, falling to the floor. And you, my love, have thrown your tall, strong body over mine, selflessly, lovingly, without a moment to think, without a moment to decide. I am feeling your body shuddering, not with passion as you embrace me, as I yield to your embrace, as we are falling; you shudder with the impact of bullets and buckshot throwing your blood, your living blood, your warmth, in sprays like Rorschach blots across the dark expanse of the expensive tuxedo I picked out, the dark expanse of your warm skin, and across the white satin of my wedding dress, the dress my many mothers sewed.
I cannot see you as you die. You are in the way. But I see the flower girl, the preacher’s daughter, with her little pink pillow falling, her little face that will never grow any older, never see her own wedding day. She is falling, and the gold ring not on your finger is flying in the air, catching the beam of sunlight from the broken stained glass window, the one showing Christ turning water into blood-red wine.
My ring is on my finger, a perfect unmarred circle of gold. A ring is like eternity, like the eternal, infinite return of the cosmos from Big Bang to the Eschaton, from Creation to Big Crunch. It is supposed to be as eternal as a vow of love. It is shaped like a zero.
Imagine a zero moment. For all the seconds of the weeks and months before zero, the negative of time, I can see when we met on the bus, when we spoke, when I asked you why you sat in the back, when you smiled, when you touched my hand to help me down the steps at our bus stop in Atlanta and the driver scowled at you, a look of hatred. During all those seconds, my happiness was complete.
During all that time, during my exile from time, I did not know what was about to happen.
Next comes the zero moment itself: You have placed the white gold wedding band on my pale white finger, but I have not yet done the same to you. I have said the words, the two little words no bride can take back if she says them.
I do.
But the preacher it took us so long to find, to find someone willing to marry us, he has not turned and asked you yet.
So I am an uncertain bride. The probability wave has not collapsed. I am in the zero between fiancée and wife.
You are an uncertain bridegroom. I thought it was cute that you were nervous. Had I only known the reason for your fear! Why did I select this time for my exile?
Right next door to the chapel is the hall where the State Democrat Party is having its meeting. There is a big smiling poster of Bull Conner, their national committee chair, hanging over the front door. He is the commissioner for safety. The men in white hoods had come out of the meeting hall with their hunting rifles tucked under their arms. These are not elephant guns, but smaller caliber weapons, not something that could penetrate the hide of a rhino or a charging elephant. That is the third thing to remember. It was the reason why I do what I will do, here in the zero moment, here in eternity. Part of the reason.
All seconds after the zero is nothing but horror and pain and loss. The change is that sudden. Heaven is hell.
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.
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