Category: CULTURE

In the cauldron of what passes for the day’s news is the ongoing pathetic accumulation of stories of  decades of abuse and sexual harassment imposed by the leading figure of Hollywood’s film industry upon untold starlets and aspiring actresses. At the beginning of October, Harvey Weinstein stood like a colossus over the production of cinematic art in the United States.  The industry that had made him a billionaire and positioned him as the “conscience” of Hollywood due to his devotion and monetary support of liberal causes and ever more liberal candidates, suddenly awakened to the raw stories of ruined lives and possibly criminal assaults that had been an “open” secret, but sublimated by payoffs, fear, intimidation, or worse, casual acceptance.  The ‘colossus’ first attempted to deflect the stories, as had worked so many times before, but this time, the sheer volume and profoundly pathetic nature of the actions prevented any coverup from taking root.  For the first time, high priced lawyers with the politically correct belief set were not enough to dissuade the pent up anger and outrage of the many victims from pouring out.  Weinstein, so used to burying such stories, in the briefest of times found himself buried by the avalanche. An attempt to deflect the criminal nature of his acts through the typical liberal weapon of converting himself into a victim needing “treatment for his sickness, sexual addiction” only brought forth more scorn, more stories, and eventually, the wrath of the very entertainment company he had founded and led.

There can be no treatment of Harvey Weinstein for sex addiction, because sex is the last thing  to which this self absorbed power thug could relate.  He is another progressively perverse example of the lack of  human responsiveness in modern society that is poisoning and weakening civilization to the point of collapse.  As outrageous as are the perpetrated violent assaults is the global lack of recognition of his peer community of the anti-human character of such people, empowered by a societal fatigue for the traditional strengths of  human relationships. Weinstein, despite the untold number of sexual assaults predicated on his ability to threaten and intimidate, was revealed to have a sordidly predictable, asexual and profoundly vapid interaction with his victims.  Story after story told of Weinstein entrapping young women into vulnerable environments, only to be asked to passively watch him bathe or pleasure himself, as if they were props in a movie set. Sex, as a human interaction between adults based on mutual attraction, was the furthest thing from this amoral, anti-social character’s psyche.  So self absorbed in the action, he could often not remember, upon later meeting the person, as to whether a positive or negative event had taken place.

Modern society has drawn us into this dark place.  The blurring of genders, the flattening of the importance and responsibilities of masculinity, the outsourcing and perversion of femininity, the relegation of sex into a hormonally discharged act of inwardly directed sensory release has displaced the centerpiece of a healthy society, the mutually projected love of a man and a woman. This core strength of a society to procreate for the purpose of creating its next generation, and linking the act to the positive expression of the human instinct to support and protect towards this purpose, is under massive assault.  The modern culture that has glorified an impersonal sex, directed inward, absolved of  the lack of any meaning beyond physical, celebrates this perversion as an achievement of personal freedom and expression.  The movies that Weinstein specialized in making often promoted such gratuitousness into subsequent expressions of casual violence where pain and loss were whitewashed, societally destructive anti-heroes were celebrated over those with principles, and villains were cartooned on the basis of race or politics to tear down conventions of civility.

We are at one of those tipping points where society has lost its compass to the point that the basics of interactive behavior ultimately defining our humanness are at risk through such casual distain. In Japan, it is estimated a third of the population of procreative age has not had a sexual interaction with the opposite sex, resulting in a population implosion that threatens the very future of a Japanese cultural existence.  In that same society, and in parts of the enlightened west, men look to experience their sexual interactions with idealized robots rather than another human being.  It is all in all a profound loss of understanding for the deeper meanings of existence and the cognitive recognition of the critical role of both the physical and the metaphysical in bringing meaning to life.

Modernity, expressed in such profoundly empty, valueless lives of those who supposedly are the exemplars of our modern societal intellect and self proclaimed projectors of our culture, have ensnared a large proportion of society into their ultimately aspiritual, meaningless vision of existence.  The restorative powers of redemption will not be found in a sex addiction clinic or in paying indulgences.  It can only come from a reinvigorating of our very humanness, and a return, as did the prodigal son, to the healing powers of what is fundamental and good.  We will not find our happiness in the superficial, the dominated, or the passive. We will not find it in amoral equivalences. We will find it, dear Brutus, not in our stars, but in our selves.

Don’t look now but fall is just about upon us.   The oh too short period of  clement weather and bountiful harvest that leads to brief moments of frivolity before the serious impact of winter.  A time for finding a good leaf pile and jumping in for the sheer  escapism and harmlessness. It’ll get serious again soon enough.

Leaf Pile #1:     President Donald Trump in the last several weeks has moved into a mode of what he feels is bi-partisan outreach.  Frustrated with the glacial pace and compromises he has had to abide working with his own alleged party, the Republicans,  president Trump has lurched to the left, reaching apparent agreements with Democrat leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, on controversial issues such as extension of the national debt ceiling, the DACA program, and potentially a larger amnesty agreement that would essentially undermine the entire logic of his Presidential campaign, to block and reverse illegal immigration and Build the Wall.

That would be of course, as Trump has previously referred to them, “Head Clown” Schumer and “Loser” Pelosi.  The same Minority Leader of the Senate and Former Speaker of the House that have accused him of working with Russia to undermine America and would impeach him if they ever returned to power.  Such frivolities!  The multi-dimensional chess the President is playing is to somehow get the Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker of the House Ryan who he has just humiliated, to work with the Senate Minority Leader and former Speaker of the House that want to impeach him, on Health Care, Immigration and Tax Reform that will define his legacy and the nation’s future, as interpreted by a main stream press that wants to destroy him, driven hopefully  by the support of his voters who he has just sold out by his immigration decisions,  organized by a White House staff that has been turned over three times, and in the end, stand astride the achievements like a colossus….that is one big leaf pile.

Leaf Pile #2:  Kim Jong Un is playing a game he has invented called, “Light The Candle”.  Every two weeks he sends up a ballistic missile over the Pacific to see how close he can come to inciting the US, Japan, and South Korea into responding and starting a massive conflict that risks drawing in the participants as well as China and Russia into a cataclysm.  Now that would be shooting a small candle and igniting a whole candelabra.  As Kim is the third generation of Kim  to hold the title of Supreme Destroyer of North Korea, has determined to outdo his father and grandfather in making life a living hell for the poor unfortunate 25 million Koreans who ended up on the wrong side of the 38th parallel in 1953.  In addition to the concentration camps and secret police dominating a cowed population, he is experimenting with the effects of massive sanctions imposed by the other players on his creaky economy in energy products, such that if the people of his country had a job to go to, they wouldn’t be able to get there.  Luckily, the only job to go to, is working for the Kims or the military.  Progressively threatening the largest military power in the world, hundreds of millions of people with nuclear attack, and destruction of four of the world’s largest economies is a strategy that is unlikely to end in stalemate.  Too bad we can’t pull the “go to Jail” card.

Leaf Pile #3:  The plan of genius strategist Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi to take over the world by restoring the islamic caliphate through the armies of ISIS has led to an incredible leaf pile.  Follow closely.  Taking advantage of the Syrian calamity, Baghdadi established his caliphate in Raqqa, Syria in 2013, rapidly subsuming most of eastern Syria and Western Iraq, managing to kill thousands including the genocidal actions on Arab Christians and the Yazidis and displace millions in his drive to Mosul, Iraq, which he conquered in 2014. The caliphate now astride thousands of square miles of territory, now did what it was designed to do, kill Muslims.  The Sunni caliphate  reached the gates of Shia Baghdad, leading the world’s largest Shia nation, Iran, to come to the aid of the Iraqi government. Which lead to the eventual driving out of Mosul of ISIS.  The desperate Yazidis fell back into the hands of the Kurds, who eye Mosul someday for themselves, and are a persecuted minority in Iran. Turkey, which hates ISIS, hates the Kurds more, and alternates between supporting and fighting ISIS.  The Americans, who pulled out of a stable Iraq and ignored the conflict in Syria, were forced to return to support the Kurds and Iraqis to drive out ISIS, but not help too much and give Iran functional control of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.  Russia, whose client Syria, was nearly destroyed has buoyed up the Syrian President Assad, who literally everyone hates, risking direct Russian and US conflict within his own country to reassert control over his fractionated country, where everybody hates each other and hates him equally.  The Saudis, who can’t stand Assad but won’t abide ISIS and are mortal enemies of Iran, are suppling ISIS like troops to fight Iran and are bullying Qatar, who are supporting with Iran  the insurgency in Yemen to overthrow the Saudi supported government.  It’s so bad that the Saudis are now secretly meeting with their stated enemy Israel, to plan against their shared mortal enemy Iran.  The Americans, who support the Saudis and Israel, and are aligned against Russia, Syria, and Iran, are about to blow ISIS out of existence in Raqqa,  who the Saudis support and the Turks see as a hedge against the Kurds.  The Russians, who could care less if the whole region goes up in flames, thereby strengthening their hold on the eastern Mediterranean and energy dominance, don’t want the Americans sticking their nose back in the Middle East

And the Palestinians are mad that no one cares about the Palestinians any more.

Who will come out of this leaf pile is anyone’s guess.

Leaf Pile #4:  The government of Venezuela has mandated that starving Venezuelans look to killing rabbits for sustenance as there are too many starving Venezuelans and too many rabbits, a convenient situation that could potentially solve both issues.  Now, no one  in President Maduro’s dictatorship or his Cuban handlers are eating rabbit.  Their sustenance comes from maintaining the black market and the illegal drug trade that keeps the overlords on the filet and merlot diet.  Most Venezuelans would prefer that diet, or any diet, but Venezuela is a socialist state, and that means everyone must starve so the few at the top can eat filet and merlot.  despite Venezuela sitting on one of the world’s largest oil reserves, the socialist government of Venezuela/Cuba has managed to empty the treasury and re-orient the receipts into the hands of those who should benefit, the Cuban and Venezuelan overseers. The United States does not want to jump into this leaf pile, as it has recently opened relations with Cuba, the co-oppressors, and has a history of being over bearing in Central and South America that has weakened its moral influence.  Besides, the United States has jumped into about 50 other leaf piles around the world. The Venezuelan people, who have been bullied to the edge of tolerance, may be determined to simply light this leaf pile to get rid of it once and for all.  Nasty, sudden government overthrows, even of dictators, are after all,  a Latin American tradition.

Leaf Pile #5:  The United States is leaf blowing a whole new disorder of individual inequality and victimhood.  The pile has now divided the sexes, two for eternity, into over 70 genders.  Once united by the principle of our equality, we now reflect a unique bias to our race, gender, economic status, religion, and historical position.  We are imbuing all our thoughts and actions as political.  Sports, once the great escape from our differences, now must become the stage for our righteous indignation.  Do we stand up or kneel down for our anthem , and what does it say about us?   The President of ESPN, a sports network, has to remind his employees that after years of forcing in politics into every sporting event, they must be reminded that the sports network is supposed to report…sports.  Differing opinions must be eliminated on campus if they threaten a person’s  vulnerable value set, unless there are value sets felt impolitic.  Laws are for some, but not for others.  The government can decide which laws need enforcement and which don’t, leading to the need for new laws to firm the old, and necessarily to arbitrarily suppress freedom further.  This leaf pile once seemed worthy of derision, but has become a generational piling on that looks to suffocate freedom and individual choice.  Involved in so many international leaf piles, the largest and most combustible may be our own.

Heck, look for a good dog, and find your own leaf pile.  We will have to get serious soon enough.

The most telling sign of the horrendous events of  London of the past few days that we as a society have begun to accept such horrors as the status quo, is  the recommendations of the constabulary.  Faced with the sudden and savage assault of terrorists bent on untrammeled, random murder and havoc, the metropolitan police of London recommended the latter of the ancient human physiological response to extreme stress, fight or flight.  A few brave citizens did not get the war plan and threw chairs, bottles, and whatever they could get their hands on in an effort to put up a defense.  The laws that specify that law abiding citizens in England should be unarmed leads to the need to find temporary artillery with temporary stopping power.  The highly restrictive gun laws assume that small firearms are dangerous weapons and the public needs to be protected from itself.  In the case of the helpless citizens of London under attack, the weaponless society as usual exposes the innocent law abiders to the fact that the attacking wolves are assuming the lambs are undefended.  The death toll of 7 dead and 21 critically injured may very well have been unavoidable with a different set of circumstances, such as conceal/ carry as in the United States. But the effect of knowing the immediate response of the citizenry is fight rather than flight, might bring the first hesitations to the next jihadist who  sees an easy prey for their fantasy of the power of death over the innocent.

The United States, though having a unique Bill of Rights that secures in the Second Amendment, a right to bear arms, has a similar aversion to the presence of firearms available for defense in public buildings.  The typical sign fronting essentially every arena, hospital, school and theater is the proud sign securing for the illegal gun carrier or person bent on public slaughter is that the law abiding people and and security personnel will be the ones who will be disarmed.  If one studies the worst of the gun violence statistics in the United States it is the ubiquitous presence of illegal firearms in cities with the tightest of gun restriction laws.  As usual, the criminal or prospective terrorist cares not a wit for the law, only its effect to leave those with something to lose with no means of protecting themselves.  Though, there is …run, hide, and tell.  Not exactly the pronounced societal retort immortalized for all free societies in the response of the brave citizens of Flight 93.

I am not trying to make a ludicrous argument that society’s gun laws have anything to do with the horrific tragedies we are facing in western society today regarding Islamist terror. The ‘losers’ as President Trump so aptly called them are not likely to be deterred in their willingness to do violence.  But we have to be more upfront in our willingness to defend ourselves and make it known we will not cower passively into the dark night. Deterrence is clear when a society declares itself ready to defend, and ready to dispatch the murderers where they stand.  We are a free people, and we will not run and hide. Freedom is not a privilege our governments defend for us, it is our right to defend for ourselves.  It is time for western governments not to run interference for these scoundrels, but seek them out and send them back to places where they won’t have to worry so much about despising a free civilized society.  If these governments don’t, don’t be surprised if people restore the proper balance to fight or flight, and become one with their own physiology.

The Christian world is anticipating the most important days on the calendar.  From Palm Sunday,celebrating the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, through the events leading to the Last Supper, the solemnity of Good Friday reflecting the Passion of Christ culminating in the crucifixion, and the subsequent Resurrection on Easter Sunday,  the believer reflects upon the immense events in reflection towards their own life in faith.  The hunger for meaning in life, once served to overwhelm any situational material deficits or abject circumstance.  We in the West, however, live in an ever more post Christian world, where belief systems and faith are considered archaic vestiges of an earlier age, when science and progress were not available to rationalize one’s life and provide a secure safety net.  The post Christian world makes a virtuous life obsolete, and the countries of Europe now celebrate a world without boundary or differentiating belief system.

America in many ways, however, was uniquely formed on the foundational rocks of  such religious belief.  The desire to find a land unfettered by preconceived notions of rule and open to individual expression of religion was the original driving force of the fragile colonial settlements and their eventual diverse belief systems.  The land was so large that close proximity with an alternative belief system was dealt with simply by moving to another part of the wilderness, then, taking root.  The founding of the country as a country driven to achieve independence and freedom through revolution was an outgrowth of this intense view that Providence had led the immigrants as pilgrims to a chosen place, where they would build their “city on a hill”.   Each man built himself a kingdom of faith and virtue, and looked to his leaders to preserve his right to do so.

This tendency towards individual spirituality set the new America apart from the trends of the larger western world.  Obviously influenced by the great movements in Europe of scientific method, rational thought, and humanism,  the founders nevertheless imbued their new constitution with the very first article of its constitution assuring no interference or bias of the state with religion, to vaccinate the new country against the orthodoxy of an overbearing state apparatus.    Europe, however, caught on the same wave of the Enlightenment, had no individually driven core faith  to suppress its inevitable excess.  The French Revolution surged into post belief rationalism, its Declaration of the Rights of Man devolving into a Reign of State Terror, destroying elements of faith as shackles of orthodoxy, establishing the State as the new authority, the Citizen as its soldier, and even the old calendar eliminated for its reference to a belief system antithetical to the regime.  A year Zero was proclaimed, with its implication of a force greater than the human intellect, and the negation of all past belief systems.   A post Christian world was thus born in Europe and the rattled concept of faith has been under attack ever since.  Over time the churches have emptied.  Anti-individual movements such as communism and its less threatening but equally demanding cousin globalism have installed their new religions, the war on values and virtuous behavior, the elevation of Nature as a God in Climate Change, and the denigration of any path that does not achieve equality of outcome.

Each time America looked into the world of a post Christian Europe, it resolved to restore itself.  These cleansing movements, known as the Great Awakenings, are laid out beautifully in Paul Johnson’s epic one volume history A History of the American People .  The most significant renewals, occurring in the first and last portions of the nineteenth century, were  reactions to the progressive oppression of “science” and “progress” on the concept of individual belief.   Common people spontaneously gathered to hear and experience the word and power of faith and virtue in an ever more secular and faithless modern world.   As a larger civilized post christian world threw off the restraints of virtue, Americans restored it time and time again as a core foundation of who they were, and what they wanted to be.  Through the epic battles to expunge slavery and achieve civil rights, the mantle of a greater belief system then practical reality drove a continuous improvement process.  Virtue as cleansing faith stoked the painful purifications, the central core of American spirituality was emoted in Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
While God is marching on.

The Great Awakenings occurred spontaneously and from below, requiring no organized  religion to drive the yearning for a life restored to fullness through faith.  Our current time, so fully immersed in the material wants and needs of generations never before so free from want and need, has left us vulnerable to those who still hold value in a belief system, no matter how tainted the belief system is with violence and prejudice.  The Islamist looks with disdain upon the lack of core belief of the west, with empty cathedrals, absent morals, paucity of virtues,  and lack of willingness to defend their civilization.  The migrant Islamists wall themselves off from such rudderless lives and demand the dispassionate state support them,  while they await the inevitable collapse of the cratered society that no longer respects itself.

With the strange events of the past year in Western society, perhaps a Great Awakening is again beginning to form and a sense of individual dignity and purpose will surface.  A society that can not define a greater good, can not survive a progressive bad.  To believe in something more than oneself, and to see one’s self as redeemable, is the essence of the Easter miracle.  It requires no regulation or doctrine for guidance, only faith in the message of redemption in a virtuous life.  As the philosopher C.S. Lewis proclaimed:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen:        not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Happy Easter.

The left has always had two emotions. Anger and Outrage.  It was hard enough to listen to their arguments when they were just angry.  When they are outraged, Katey bar the door.  We are witness lately to the seething outrage.  A gay right wing provocateur scheduled to give a lecture at Berkeley incites a full blown riot to stop the event.  The new Secretary of Education is barred by protestors from entering a public school.  Cinematic and music  award shows are blown apart by long screeds of anti-right hatred.  Businesses broadcast they want only “correct thinking” customers purchasing their goods.

The President has been President three weeks.

Victim status has been the calling card for the left since time immemorial.  The aggrieved and the oppressed, however ill defined in today’s world, at one time had legitimacy as a political expression.  There has always been a ruling elite, and there has always been an underclass that served them, from ancient days, through feudal times, to the unconstrained capitalism of the industrial revolution.  The American experiment was something altogether different.  The codified rights and freedoms offered every citizen provided an alternative promise unrestrained by that citizen’s current circumstance.  The one dark blot on that promise, the preservation of slavery after a declaration that all men are created equal, was expunged by a righteous, brutal conflict of one class of men fighting and dying for the promise of restoring rights to another, denied class of men.  A million deaths in four brutal years, and the greater truth that no man would have victim status imposed in a free society was painfully restored.  The progressives recognized importantly however that their work was not done.  Positive societal gains creating suffrage, safety in the workplace, access to hygiene and healthcare, and eventually removal of overt discrimination immeasurably improved society.

Such principled successes have led unfortunately to principle devolution and ever greater anger over ever smaller classes of victims, and obtuse oppressors.   A potential mother is oppressed by her unborn fetus.  A person confused by gender is oppressed by bathroom confusion.  A student is oppressed by an alternative argument or philosophy of life.  A carbon molecule or an animal protein obstructs a person’s security that they are living a cleansed existence from harmful influence.

When anger is insufficient for discourse, it must be replaced by outrage.  Politics, or what passes for politics, must infest every interaction.  Political correctness has become the tool of liberal fascism.  Believe what I believe, or face a punch in the mouth.   See the world my way, or face obstruction, boycott,  and chaos.

Whatever valuable concepts are left remaining in progressive thought, they are swallowed up by inane demands and petty outrage that prevents any structured logic that might advance their aims.  The left is most offended that the President comes from their world, and occasionally retorts with similar heat inflected rhetoric — they recognize a mirror when they see it.  They are offended that they are no longer able to have the exclusive privilege of having everybody have to react to them, and that now they must react and adjust.

The modern left lives in a world where their value set of individual infinite victimhood is absurdly comfortable with a world where a muslim woman can be punished for publicly humiliating her rapist, or where an entire country like Venezuela must starve to preserve a left elite that promotes socialist equality of suffering for all, except themselves.  The constant hypocrisy is a comfort, because the left owns its own facts,is comfortable with only those facts,  and doesn’t let reality get in the way of a meme.

President Trump wont be going anywhere anytime soon.  We are all getting used to his impulsive personality and thought process.  But he seems to hire good people, who are measured in their approaches, and he clearly listens and absorbs their comments — something the last guy found impossible to do.  The fire on the left is likely to burn as bright as their outrage, but like all superheated conflagrations, the fuel eventually is subsumed, and all that is left is the smoking embers.

The job of the rest of the world is to build an appropriate fire wall, and get on with the task of living life.  Our efforts should be pointed toward a better world for those who want it, and keeping the left from doing what their outrage drives them to do — burn it all down.