The Little Red Blog

This Week's Roundup

{This and that from here and there, as is my wont.}

Rest assured that, even though Rod Dreher up and moved to Hungary a few years ago, The American Conservative soldiers on. This week, Peter Tonguette, a contributing editor at TAC, accuses Barack Obama of being a “condescending totalitarian” on the basis of, well, this:

Obama said, on Tuesday night, that “a lot of Americans don’t believe that government can help.” As expressed in his remarks at the DNC, Obama regards it as within the government’s power and purview to get involved in housing, or, as he put it, to “build more units.” Obama said that Harris would work to “limit out-of-pocket costs” in health insurance. Most ominously, Obama said that Harris “won’t be focused on her problems, she’ll be focused on yours”—a scary prospect and perhaps the best-ever argument on behalf of libertarianism.

Tonguette is upholding the Ronald Reagan “government is the big bad wolf at your door” mantra. Is he not aware that the federal government has been “involved in housing” for at least the last seventy-five years? Does he not know that the Republican Party’s current nominee takes credit (deserved or not) for capping out-of-pocket insulin costs and for empowering Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies? How would Tonguette react if Obama had said, “Kamala Harris won’t be focused on your problems, she’ll be focused on her own”?

Lastly, I trust there is no need to explain what the word “condescending” means when applied to Barack Obama; right-wing dogs across America recognize that particular whistle when they hear it.

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Barack Obama Is Still a Condescending Totalitarian - The American Conservative

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At American Refugees, Roger Simon—who used to write genuinely entertaining mystery novels—explains Communism 2.0 and how that label fits the Democratic Party:

If we are to ask whether today’s Democrats are a communist party, we must first define the term ‘communist’ that has become rather different in our era, though no less ominous and, in my view, potentially more successful globally. Communism today is far from what Karl Marx envisioned sitting on his ample derriere in the library of the British Museum, not that his concept of the future was particularly accurate then. 

In today’s China, a good deal of Marxist rhetoric is employed for show or to keep the masses from getting untoward ideas, but communism itself, even more ironically, has evolved into the most advanced, autocratic and perverse form of capitalism yet devised—”one party only” capitalism, you might call it, with the obvious benefits of the market available exclusively to party members. Socialist economics might have its problems, but autocracy can really pay off.

In other words, and I hope I am neither misunderstanding nor oversimplifying Roger Simon’s analysis, “Communism” is now “autocratic capitalism” with a few verbal flourishes. Simon then implores Donald Trump to “take the opportunity to explain this transition to America, not just hurl insults.” I don’t know if Simon is aware of the hilarity of suggesting that Donald Trump could possibly “explain” anything to anyone.

Anyway, in conclusion: Democrats are communists if you redefine the word “communist” to mean something else entirely. And Roger Simon should go back to writing novels.

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Are the Democrats a Communist Party? (substack.com)

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George Weigel (at First Things) implores us to “turn our attention to a question of major—even transcendental—import: Are we in the Golden Age of Baseball? Or was that the 1920s–1930s? Perhaps the 1950s–1960s?” Keeping in mind that Weigel is almost as old as I am, it is no surprise that he leans towards the latter choice: “Willie [Mays], Mickey [Mantle], and the Duke [Snider]; Jackie Robinson; Ted Williams; Sandy Koufax; Frank and Brooks Robinson; Bob Gibson; Stan Musial; Hank Aaron; Ernie Banks; Roberto Clemente—the list goes on and on, buttressing the case that what some refer to as baseball’s “Silver Age” was really its Golden Age.” To his further credit, Weigel also takes a shot, in passing, at a recent change to the rules: “Today, the “ghost runner” at second base in the tenth inning contradicts baseball’s metaphysical and moral architecture.”  This comes long after the “designated hitter” atrocity (which Weigel does not mention) compromised the game’s integrity.

My only disagreement with Weigel is his complaint that ““Pride Night” at the ballpark is another corporate surrender to woke pressures and political correctness,” when it is in fact just another money-making ploy by management, no different than Ladies’ Night, Kids’ Night, Veterans’ Night, etc. If it makes Weigel any happier, the Baltimore Orioles recently hosted their very first Faith Night at the ballpark, in the course of which several highly paid athletes bravely risked getting canceled for speaking out publicly about God’s presence in their lives. So much for the “naked public square”!

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When Was Baseball’s Golden Age? | George Weigel | First Things

                                                Penalty: too many men on the field!

 

Wednesday with Pascal: Ripping Off the Red Mask!

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat occasionally receives queries from readers on subjects that have piqued their interest. While habitually ignoring such queries, Pascal now and then deigns to respond. Just don’t expect it of him too often.}

“Dear Mister Pascal the Cat,

“How are you? Fine, I hope, and I am too, thank you for asking. Recently I heard Charlie Kirk say that ‘Kamala Harris wants to see the elimination of the United States of America.’ Kirk insists Harris and the Democrats are ‘communists who hate America and are going to do things to destroy the country.’ Is Kamala Harris really a communist? Where does Charlie Kirk get his information? (signed) A Very Concerned Swing Voter.”

Is Kamala (pronounced “Ka-ma-blah”) a Communist? She is a member of the Democrat Party, QED, she is a Communist. Why are we even discussing this? Every Democrat since 1932 has been a Communist. Democrat policies—Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare, daycare, school lunch programs, Obamaphones—were all designed and endorsed by Karl Marx, the Fiend himself. For confirmation, let us turn to a Trusted Source—in this case, the once and future POTUS, Sir Trump. “Biden,” Sir Trump has explained, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits, and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy. If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me.” ¹

They’re all Communists, Swing Voter. As Stephen Miller observes of Tim Walz, the Democrats’ pick for Vice-President, “This man—they call him Tampon Tim -- is a full-blown, radical left communist. He is left of Bernie Sanders. He is left of Rachel Maddow. He is left of Ilhan Omar. He is left of AOC.” Walz, says Miller, will introduce “socialist communist economic policies,” as he has already done in Minnesota (new state motto: Property Is Theft!). ²

Chiming in on the unmasking of Tim Walz is Rob Schmitt of Newsmax:

“Tim Walz is a communist who doesn't know anything about history. Tim Walz, the former high school history teacher, is the snake that turns your 15-year-old into a communist.” ³

Pierre Polievre is the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, and he, too, knows a Communist when he sees on, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

The latest image shared by Poilievre depicts a cycle with a series of arrows in a circle, starting with “rob or kill the successful,” followed by “force the rest to work for free,” then “run out of food,” “starve to death,” “say it wasn’t ‘real’ communism,” and finally, “establish a new communist utopia.” ⁴

There are, of course, those who disagree. “Invoking Marx in relation to [liberals] is silly to say the least. It betrays a conservative childishness and a simplistic understanding of both liberalism and communism.” But they would say that, wouldn’t they? The first rule of Marxism is, we do not talk about Marxism. But that subterfuge no longer fools anyone. As the experts on communism at Hillsdale College point out, “Cultural Marxism is destroying American society. It has led to the rise of racial tensions, radical feminism, transgender ideology, open borders, fiscal irresponsibility, the unequal protection of the laws, and the loss of our basic rights. The effects of Marx’s ideas have already been seen in the histories of the Soviet Union and China. Yet Marxism remains popular among those who shape our cultural, academic, and political lives and in the popular movements pushing equity and diversity.”

Speaking of equity and diversity, let us return to Concerned Swing Voter’s question: is Kamala Harris a Communist? Is “DEI” an anagram for “Die”? Well, Elon Musk seems to think so: “Kamala Harris is quite literally a communist,” he recently X-ed. “She wants not merely equal opportunity, but equal outcomes.” ⁶ Elon, of course, is one of the world’s wealthiest men, and he therefore cannot afford to be mistaken about who is and who is not a communist, because communists will kill him (and eat him!) at the first opportunity.

Kamala Harris has actually said, in public, these remarkable words: “We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen”. How much clearer could she be about her desire to fundamentally transform America, i.e., to turn it into an American Gulag? James Lindsay, who has selflessly made a career of exposing cultural Marxism, has plainly stated, “Kamala is a low-level Communist functionary, and I’m tired of being told we have to pretend she’s not.” ⁷

Make no mistake, Concerned Swing Voter: all these people who accuse Kamala and Tim Walz of being Communists cannot be lying, mistaken, deluded, or living in some bizarre right-wing thought bubble where anyone to the ideological left of Herbert Hoover is a Bolshevik—can they?

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¹ Retread scare: Trump and other Republicans evoke another era by calling Democrats ‘communists’ | PBS News

² On Newsmax, Stephen Miller says "Tim Walz's job is to be the Jack Kevorkian for America" | Media Matters for America

³ Newsmax host: "Tim Walz is the white guy with a white wife and white kids who hates white people" | Media Matters for America

⁴ Stop the Nonsense: Justin Trudeau Is No Marxist (jacobin.com)

⁵ Marxism, Socialism, and Communism | Hillsdale College Online Courses

⁶ Elon Musk on X: "Kamala is quite literally a communist. She wants not merely equal opportunity, but equal outcomes." / X

⁷ Harris says 'everybody needs to be woke' in unearthed clip spreading like wildfire on social media | Fox News

Wednesday with Pascal: The Wolves Are Coming!

{I have no idea how Pascal the existential Russian blue cat managed to find a copy of ‘Pagan America’. He certainly didn’t get it from me. Regardless, he does seem to have had some fun with it, and what more can you ask from a book published by Regnery Publishing (motto: Losing the Culture War Since 1947)?}

Not everyone seems to have internalized the message of the classic fairy tale about the boy who cried wolf.

For instance: John Daniel Davidson, who writes for The Federalist, apparently spends a good deal of time pondering the approaching wolfpack. He shares his wolf-related thoughts in his book Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Davidson's alarum is so far off the charts that he believes Rod Dreher is "too optimistic." Dreher, of course, now resides in Viktor Orban’s Hungary; maybe Davidson should consider relocating. ¹

Davidson’s three-hundred-page manifesto is predicated on his belief that “Today, a new pagan empire is rising up amid a once-Christian people—an empire born of a betrayal of the faith, centuries in the making, which will take a century or more to defeat.” When Davidson says “pagan,” he doesn’t mean spiritually eclectic New Age types like Marianne Williamson; he means spawns of Satan. As he notes, the early Christians believed in the existence of demons, devils, fallen angels, powers of darkness—call them what you will, but they were the entities whom pagans worshiped as gods. From Biblical times, these evil spirits had brought, according to the Church Father Irenaeus, “teachings of wickedness” to women: “They brought them the knowledge of roots and herbs, dyeing in colors and cosmetics, the discovery of rare substances, love potions, aversions, amours, concupiscence, constraints of love, spells of bewitchment, and all sorcery and idolatry.” ² It was not only women who were bedeviled and corrupted; the demons left no one untouched. Davidson recites, in gruesome detail, the horrors in which typical pagans engaged at the incitement of their demonic overlords: human sacrifice, bestiality, infanticide, progressive taxation, and other crimes against humanity. 

Such atrocities are not only happening again, says Davidson; they are on the rise. In fact, they are the new normal. The chapter headings of Pagan America indicate the pagan threats ranged against Christian America: “Abortion and Euthanasia”; “Transgenderism and Pedophilia”; “The Pagan State”; and, most ominously, “AI and the Pagan Future”. The final chapter is “The Boniface Option,” which amounts to a direct challenge to Rod Dreher’s best-selling The Benedict Option. Inspired by the foundational Christian monk St. Benedict (and by Alasdair Mac Intyre), Dreher counseled a discreet withdrawal by beleaguered (white, conservative) Christians from the wicked pagan culture, sort of like creating gated Christian communities inside Sodom and Gomorrah.

Davidson prefers to follow St. Boniface, martyred missionary of yore; he wants to go down fighting, and he is not afraid to be melodramatic about it. “We are called to fight,” he writes, “and die if we must.” He quotes St. Boniface, who said, before being “cut down by a pagan raider”:

“Let us continue the fight on the day of the Lord. The days of anguish and of tribulation have overtaken us; if God so wills, let us die for the holy laws of our fathers, so that we may deserve to obtain an eternal inheritance with them. Let us be neither dogs that do not bark nor silent onlookers nor paid servants who run away before the wolf. Instead, let us be careful shepherds watching over Christ’s flock.” ³

To which Davidson adds, striking a Dreher-like tone, “We need barking dogs and shepherds now more than ever. The wolves are coming.” The wolves are coming to America’s workplaces in the form of DEI trainers under whom (white) employees “will be forced to confess their own racism and to perform penances”; they are coming to universities which, “long a hostile environment for even mild conservatives, will simply refuse to hire Christians.” They are coming to the public schools, which “teach gender ideology and Critical Race Theory as normative and factual,” and in which “discrimination against teachers who are Christians is an existing threat.” The neo-pagan wolves are creating “a future in which Christians who send their kids to public schools will have those kids taken from them for opposing gender ideology or for refusing to affirm white guilt.” The neo-pagan state “will have no qualms jailing dissidents who refuse to perform the requisites of pagan public morality.” It will establish “an apparatus of censorship and control that will criminalize opinions that challenge or refute the reigning pagan orthodoxies.”

John Daniel Davidson solemnly pronounces, “The primary task of American Christians in the generations to come will be the preservation and propagation of the faith at all costs. This will require being prepared to be poorer and more marginalized, but it will also require being prepared to be arrested, and imprisoned, and martyred. Christians in America should teach their children about martyrdom.”  

“Absent a miracle from God,” Davidson concludes glumly, “things are going to get worse before they get better.” Spoken like a man who doesn't believe in miracles from God! To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, what can a poor boy do except cry "wolf!" at the top of his lungs? The odds are that, sooner or later, a wolf is bound to show up somewhere; I wonder what the wolf situation is in Hungary.    

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¹ Rod Dreher, for the uninitiated, is an American Conservative writer whose columns have for years warned that, if you happen to be white, conservative, and Christian in 21^st-century America, “They’re coming for you.” Which, one assumes, is why Dreher moved to Hungary.

² By way of burnishing Irenaeus’ credentials, Davidson notes that the second-century Bishop of Lyon was a disciple of Polycarp, who had been a disciple of John the Apostle, who was one of Jesus’ original twelve apostles: Six Degrees of Jesus!

³ Saint Boniface - Wikipedia

Moloch the God
(not to be confused with Moloch the Entertainer)

 

Friday Tidbits

Depending on your point of view and your frame of mind, John Daniel Davidson’s essay “Hell Is Empty and All the Bots Are Here” will be either the scariest or the funniest thing you’re likely to read today. Davidson shares at some length his concerns about artificial intelligence and its potential for making humanity obsolete. His thesis is that “Artificial intelligence is a new pagan god,” and he does not mean that metaphorically; “Today,” he informs us, “the techno-capitalists building AI talk openly of ‘creating god,’ of harnessing godlike powers and transcending the limits of mere humanity. In his recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan said the prospect of a super intelligent AI would amount to the creation of a ‘new god.’ 

No one sciences like Joe Rogan! And Tucker Carlson wouldn't let Rogan say it if it wasn't true!

After cherry-picking a few (possibly apocryphal) incidents of AI chatbots going off the deep end, displaying personality disorders, or falling in love with their users, Davidson cites the neo-pagan/eco-primitive philosopher Paul Kingsnorth, who, according to Davidson, “has argued that AI and the digital ecosystem from which it has emerged are more than mere technology, more than silicon and internet servers and microprocessors and data. All these things together, networked, connected, and communicating on a global scale, might, he says, constitute not just a mind but a vast body coming into being—one that will soon be animated.”

Needing no further encouragement, Davidson takes it from there:

Maybe it already has been, and the shape it has chosen to take is the shape of a demon. From the persistent appearance of the demonic Loab images in one AI, to accounts of AI chatbots identifying themselves as fallen angels or Nephilim, there seems to be a strong element of the demonic at work in these things, or at least in their operation.

There is no point, says Davidson, in trying to fool ourselves:

We should be honest enough with ourselves to recognize, here at the dawn of a new pagan epoch, that what we’re really doing with AI is creating a god that could destroy us, and at whose feet we might someday be compelled to worship.

Hell Is Empty and All the Bots Are Here - The American Mind

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Our other Friday tidbit comes to us courtesy of the always helpful Media Matters (I have, of course, added my own color commentary):

It seems that American conservatives, especially those who appear on Fox News, understand the threats we are facing from the enemy within, and the oranges origin of those threats. As Sonja Shaw, President of the Chino Valley (CA) School Board, recently explained, in discussing DEI mandates and Pride Month activities:

"Lenin said it best, and I will sum it up for you: You are not, like, we don't have to worry about the bombs being thrown, the way that our enemy is going to beat us is by destroying our, you know, everything that the United States was meant to be; anything of our ethics, our morals, values, and that's what they are doing.”

Never has Leninism been distilled so concisely, so eloquently, and with such analytic precision! It is good to know that the Chino Valley PTA School Board is in such good hands, and that students in Chino Valley are receiving erudite tutelage from very stable geniuses like Sonja Shaw.

Fox News guest claims DEI and Pride activities make U.S. vulnerable to terror attacks | Media Matters for America

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Loab or Lenin? You decide!

Friday Double Feature

{For ideological balance, I have chosen one excerpt from column A and one from column B. The reader should have no trouble discerning which column I prefer.}

Although I found no mention of Obamacare—the Affordable Care Act—in Robert Kuttner’s infuriating essay “Fantasyland General,” I couldn’t help but think of how the ACA was supposed to be a first step towards simplifying and making transparent our byzantine fee-for-service healthcare system. Mission not accomplished, it seems, not even with the passage of subsequent legislation like the “No Surprises Act” of 2021 that further regulated medical pricing and billing practices. It remains the case that profit-driven individuals and corporations continue to find ways to milk our for-profit healthcare system for their own enrichment. Conservatives love to say that, in economic transactions, money is never left on the table; they usually fail to mention that “economic transactions” include emergency medical procedures, or that “the table” includes the operating table in your local hospital. 

Kuttner concludes, sensibly enough, with this: “The fact that universal socialized systems have no counterpart to the U.S. system of price manipulation, with all of the money spent on administration and gaming, goes a long way toward explaining why the U.S. spends upwards of 17 percent of GDP on health care and the typical OECD country spends about 11 percent. That difference—6 percent of GDP—is about $1.5 trillion a year. Just imagine what else we might do with $1.5 trillion a year. The only solution is to get rid of prices entirely by treating health care as the social good that it is.”

It is infuriating that we are still debating this issue.

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Fantasyland General - The American Prospect

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In a mercifully brief article (at RealClearHistory), Howell Keiser performs a clever bit of intellectual prestidigitation: he links contemporary environmentalism to slavery and contemporary environmentalists to slaveholders.

Watch him pull the rabbit from the hat:

Like antebellum Southerners who, according to historian David Silkenat, used the fear of “environmental destruction” to elevate their low-population agrarian philosophy, environmentalists today see the “impact of population” and industrialization as combining to “deplete natural resources and degrade the environment.” Population and industrial growth, therefore, must be controlled.

See? The rabbit is slavery, and the hat is concerns about industrial activity and its effects on the planet:

But how can this be achieved? Vice President Kamala Harris stated that “when we invest in clean energy, and electric vehicles, and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” Of course, Harris leaves the best means of implementing depopulation and regulating economic freedom unanswered.

Ultimately, the perspective put forward by Vice President Harris is not entirely different in principle from some of the solutions offered by leading slaveholders.

There you have it! We should note, of course, that the phrase “not entirely different in principle” is doing quite a lot of work on behalf of Keiser’s “argument”. 

In fact, the only solution ever offered by slaveholders, “leading” or otherwise, was that they be allowed to continue holding slaves; whatever else they may have said was mere rationalization. In any case, I will go out on a limb here and say that Vice-President Harris is not recommending or condoning slavery; she is recommending cleaner energy sources (i.e., non-fossil fuels) and birth control (which, for the record, is not the same thing as “depopulation”).

Keiser’s ominous reference to “the best means [of] regulating economic freedom” is the same chestnut that defenders of the free market have been roasting over the open fire of their fearmongering for the past century. Economic freedom is always imperiled, it seems; every proposed regulation is potentially the last straw that will send entrepreneurs en masse to Galt’s Gulch.   

Keiser is correct in noting that, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concerns were expressed by individuals of various political and ideological allegiances over industrial capitalism and its consequences (e.g., the degradation of the environment and the exploitation of labor); nor was the rapid growth of the planet's population merely a Malthusian obsession. Such common concerns did not erase the ideological differences, nor did they render all suggested solutions morally equivalent. 

It was none other than Russell Kirk, the revered Squire of Mecosta and an iconic figure for modern American conservatives, who famously noted that antebellum Southern resistance to industrialization resembled left-wing concerns about capitalism; this led Kirk to dub John C. Calhoun “the Marx of the ruling class,” but even Kirk knew better than to call Karl Marx “the John C. Calhoun of the proletariat.” Defending slavery by criticizing industrial capitalism is not the same as criticizing industrial capitalism by advocating revolution by the working class.

Keiser’s tactic of guilt-by-innuendo against environmentalists (and liberals in general) is all too typical of the modern American Right, which takes innocuous statements uttered by someone on the Left and insinuates that the speaker is a nascent Pol Pot and that genocide is on the horizon. Such insinuations are, quite frankly, both juvenile and tedious. American conservatives have apparently reverted to what Lionel Trilling called “irritable mental gestures” to camouflage their complete inability to make coherent arguments.   

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Past Informs the Present | RealClearHistory

Have as many as you want! Just don't expect affordable healthcare.

Wednesday with Pascal: Two Guys in a Bar, Talking

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat rarely strays from his philosophical turf, but now and then, while he is out and about, he chances upon events that demand to be memorialized. This is the story of one such event.} 

So, the other day I sit in one of the dives on Railroad Street, one of those places where faces along the bar cling to their average day and the lights never go out and the music must always play. ¹ Anyway, there I am and suddenly I overhear two guys at the end of the bar talking about Fox News, which apparently they both used to like and which one of the guys (Eric) even says he used to work for, but now they’re not happy with Fox because the network doesn’t seem to respect Donald Trump like it did before. So, Eric is like, what’s with that and why are they so mean to Trump? And the other guy goes:

It's because they want a puppet in the White House. It's not about fighting for conservatives, they're fighting for their billionaire class, and they put, you know, neocon RINOs like Paul Ryan on their board. ² They don't represent hardworking, conservative Americans. That's not at all what they want. They want that power. They want the proximity to power because that benefits them like it does all of the elite. Again, Trump is the antithesis of that, because he's the only one of those people, the only one of those politicians or the people, perhaps considered in that group, that doesn't actually need those people's money, doesn't need their love, their attention, and that's why Donald Trump is the only threat to that deep state, to the establishment who's been failing us for far too long.

Spoken like a man of the people, I thought, and I tried to get a better look at who this hardworking blue-collar character was, but the bar lighting wasn’t good enough. Anyway, the Eric guy says, “I was hoping that, given the announcement that Rupert Murdoch was stepping down last Thursday as chairman -- he's handing his board seats over to Lachlan, James, Elizabeth, and Prudence -- that maybe the new era of Fox would be a little bit more welcoming of Trump--” And his buddy slams his bottle of Bud Lite down on the bar and snarls, “Hey Eric, I got news for you. My eyes are rolling in the back of my head so hard. I mean, you know, half of those people are just, like, devout Bolsheviks. I mean, they're left of the most radical people in the world.”

I am concerned that this guy might be having a seizure, but I am also intrigued by this bit of “information” he has disclosed—half the Murdoch family are devout Bolsheviks? I didn’t know there were devout Bolsheviks anymore! And aren’t the Murdochs filthy rich? Aren’t they Australian? You're telling me there's a family of rich Australian Bolsheviks? I move surreptitiously down the bar to see if I can identify this guy, who keeps on ranting:

“If they're on the board of Fox, I imagine it's not getting better. It's only going to get significantly worse. You know? The wives are just, you know, avowed leftists. You know, you can say what you want about the others, but, you know, RINO, at best, in my opinion. And yeah no, it's not going to get better. It's not going to become more objective or fair. You know, they may come around if Trump wins the nomination, because that's what's best for them and their wallets, and whatever that may be, but, you know, they're not fighting for actual conservatives or for conservatives across America even a little bit.”

And Eric just shakes his head, muttering something I don’t catch about “a damn shame” and then what sounds like “Second Amendment remedies”. Eric’s buddy stands up, and yes, he looks familiar--dark hair slicked back from a forehead you could fit a billboard on, punchable face disfigured by a permanent sneer--but I just can’t place him. He says, “Thanks for inviting me on, Eric,” and Eric, still seated at the bar, says “Always my pleasure, Don. You know you’re welcome on the show anytime.” I think, “Don”? Then I think, “show”?

I watch Don as he heads out the door; I see there’s a car waiting for him, and a buxom dark-haired woman gets out of the car and walks up to him, teetering clumsily on her high heels, and hugs him. Damn it, I think, she looks familiar too! I open the door just in time to hear the woman say, in a simpering tone but at full volume, “How is my little Donny-Wonny today?” The Don guy glares at her and snaps, “Shut your pie-hole, Kimberly.” He gets in the car. I’m in the doorway, taking in the scene, and Kimberly looks directly at me. “The best,” she shrieks, “is yet…to come!” An entire murder of crows shakes the branches of a tree as they flee the horrendous sound. Kimberly gets in the car and cuddles up to Donny-Wonny, who seems to recoil, and they drive away.

I go back inside. Eric seems to have passed out, his head on the bar, drool coming out of his mouth. I catch the bartender’s eye and he shrugs; “Defenseless under the night,” he says, “this guy in stupor lies.” ³ Is he quoting a poem or something? I ask for another Cold Smoke—motto, The best damn beer in the whole damn world—and when the bartender brings it, I ask him if he knows Eric or Don. He looks at me like he’s not sure if I can be trusted with whatever he’s about to say, then leans on the bar to get closer to me: “Those are the guys,” he whispers, “who recovered Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

I polish off my Cold Smoke as quick as I can, and I get the hell out.  

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On Newsmax, Donald Trump Jr says "half" the Murdoch family are "devout Bolsheviks" | Media Matters for America

¹ W.H. Auden bears no responsibility for my borrowings from his poem, “June 1, 1939”.

² Neocon RINOs: best band name ever!

³ See footnote #1, above.

Your Weekly Charlie Kirk

{The following is presented as a public service.}

In his inimitable way, the right-wing wunderkind Charlie Kirk explains it all:

There is an orchestrated fix that is in against Joe Biden right now. It is coordinated. There has now been an established war room to get Joe Biden out of the way. They're terrified the Republican base is consolidating. The immigration thing is failing. The inflation thing is failing. There is going to be an attempt to take out Joe Biden. To take him out first like Richard Nixon, and maybe if they have to do the JFK thing they will. I don't even know if that's a thing, but we'll see.  They're gonna try to take him out. The deep state is tired. It's over. They said, we'll play this out. We'll try the lawfare. We'll try the incumbency thing. It's easier said than done, because once you open up the Game of Thrones, once you cut off the head of Ned Stark, war happens.

Is America’s deep state on the verge of cutting off the head of Ned Stark (or perhaps of Ned Flanders)? Is it planning to do the JFK thing, if that’s a thing?

Charlie Kirk reports and we--well, let's say, we give him all the respect he deserves. Stay tuned for updates as they come in. 

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Charlie Kirk claims the "deep state" will "take out" Biden, "first like Richard Nixon, and maybe if they have to do the JFK thing they will" | Media Matters for America

Deep State gonna get you if you don't watch out!

 

Friday Feature: Jeers in Heaven

“Our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the Powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Paul the Apostle)

From the show Prophets and Patriots (streamed on Rumble):

ROGER STONE (GUEST): On the morning of January 6, I was in the shower. The Lord came to me in the shower. Over the New York Times — You want to make fun of me? Go ahead. A voice clearly told me, do not go to the Capitol. And I did not go to the Capitol. Yes, the Lord does send you a message. He does speak to you. And you need to speak to him. It is — and then, of course, the day after the election, I was in Memphis. I was headed to Mike Lindell's studio. The car that I was riding in with two security guards was broadsided. The car was demolished, was totaled. They were both injured. I walked away without a scratch.

STEVE SCHULTZ (HOST): Praise God, praise God. 

STONE: So now I'm praying for one more miracle. Not for myself, but for the nation. ¹

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The LORD checked His latest incoming prayer-texts and sighed. “One more miracle?” He thought. “What does this Roger Stone fellow think I am—his personal Mak-a-Wish vending machine?” Looking over his Father’s shoulder, Jesus reminded Him, “Abba, I’m pretty sure Roger Stone sold his soul to the Rival years ago.” Father and Son turned to the Holy Spirit, the keeper of the Eternal Archives: “Is that true?” the LORD asked. The Spirit nodded. “At the age of eight,” He explained, “Roger Stone attempted to influence his fellow students to support John F. Kennedy for President. Mr. Stone has stated, ‘I remember going through the cafeteria line and telling every kid that Nixon was in favor of school on Saturdays. It was my first political trick.’ In 1972, Mr. Stone, having officially turned to the dark side, was hired to work for Nixon’s ‘Committee to Re-Elect the President’—CREEP. Shall I continue?” the Spirit asked.

The LORD asked, “Wait a second--isn’t Stone the joker with the ridiculous Nixon tattoo on his back?”

“You are correct, Sir,” said the Spirit.

Jesus spoke up. “Also, Stone sometimes dresses up like a 19^th-century Victorian dandy. Not that there is anything wrong with that,” he added; "I mean, who am I to cast stones?"

The LORD waved His hand irritably. “Did I really speak to Roger Stone while he was in the shower? I mean, wouldn’t I remember something like that?”

“Well, Sir,” the Spirit responded, “You do tend to manifest yourself in unlikely places—you recall the Burning Bush, do you not?”

Shaking his head, the LORD insisted, “If I was with Roger Stone while he was taking a shower, I think I would remember it--if only because of the Nixon tattoo.”

“I bet,” said Jesus, “that if you had seen Roger Stone in the shower, you would have told him, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’” The LORD and the Spirit both groaned; Jesus, when incarnate, had developed what humans call ‘a sense of humor’. It did not play well in Heaven.

“Do either of you have any idea what Stone means by ‘one more miracle’ and ‘not for myself, but for the nation’?” demanded the LORD.

“Ask not what the Almighty can do for you,” Jesus recited; “ask what the Almighty can do for your country.”

“Shut up,” said the LORD. “You’re not helping.”

The Spirit cleared its throat. “This archival material may be relevant. It was published by the Huffington Post in December 2022. I quote:

Long-time Donald Trump confidant and informal adviser Roger Stone insists he has witnessed a momentous phenomenon: A “demon portal” above President Joe Biden’s White House.

It’s “swirling like a cauldron,” he claimed in an interview earlier this week with conservative radio host Eric Metaxas, who pointed out that the observation by his guest “sounds insane.”

The portal — apparently a direct connection to hell and Satan — was first spotted months ago and even captured on film, according to Stone. “It’s still there,” he declared. “I think that a portal, a demonic portal, opened above the White House around the time that the Bidens moved in,” Stone said. “This was brought to my attention by a Christian who lives in north Florida who sent me a bunch of photos, a bunch of documents and also a bunch of notations from the Bible about portals.”

Stone said he was initially skeptical. But he has examined photos of the spot and scrutinized “live cam where you can actually see it in real-time, and there does appear to be something above the White House.” ²

“That’s enough,” interrupted the LORD. “For once, I agree with Eric Metaxas; Roger Stone sounds insane.”

“Would you like me to drive out his demons?” Jesus asked. "Or not," he hastily added; "I mean, not my will but Thy will be done, right?"

“There aren’t enough swine in the world to hold that many demons,” replied the LORD, “and I certainly don’t want those particular demons on the loose, especially with the election only a year away.”

“I thought, Sir,” the Spirit politely interjected, “We had agreed to leave politics to the Rival, since he owns all the candidates anyway.”

“The point is,” declared the LORD, “I wouldn’t touch this Roger Stone guy with a ten-trillion-foot pole, much less talk to him in the shower. He wants a miracle, does he? How about this: it’s a miracle that he and his cronies aren’t in jail!”  

Somewhere far below could be heard the sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth, accompanied by the plaintive, feeble cry, “Trump won…”

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¹ Roger Stone claims that on January 6, "the Lord came to me in the shower" and "clearly told me, do not go to the Capitol" | Media Matters for America

² Trump Confidant Roger Stone Says He Saw Swirling 'Demon Portal' Above White House (yahoo.com)

Note: I had intended to illustrate this post with a photo of Roger Stone's Nixon tattoo, but Typepad would not allow it, which is understandable. However, it also refused an image of the demon portal over the White House, which is inexcusable. 

 

Friday Forays

At Plough, Zena Hitz offers a leisurely essay (“What Is Time For”) about the importance of leisure. “What is leisure," she asks, "and why is it necessary for human beings? The leisure that I am interested in is not the first thing you may imagine: bingeing Netflix on the couch, lounging at the beach, attending a festive party with friends, or launching yourself from the largest human catapult for the thrill of it. The leisure that is necessary for human beings is not just a break from real life, a place where we rest and restore ourselves in order to go back to work. What we are after is a state that looks like the culmination of a life.”

With her sources ranging from Augustine’s Confessions to David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, Hitz has some insightful things to say; for instance, “A human being is not reducible to his or her social uses. The commonplace diminishment of working people such as building supervisors or cleaning ladies does not suppress the splendor of a human being, or it does so only superficially.” And this: “We think of American culture – a culture shared with much of Western Europe – as a culture that values work. But it is not in fact work that we value. What we value is money and status, no matter the cost in other human goods. It is its connection with money and with status that allows work to become addictive or compulsive.”

What is curious is that, while Plough is an explicitly Christian publication, and while Hitz’s references to Augustine and Ambrose suggest her affiliation (or at least familiarity) with Christianity, she makes no reference to Josef Pieper’s post-war classic Leisure, The Basis of Culture. Pieper was a 20^th-century Roman Catholic philosopher who helped revive interest in the works of Thomas Aquinas; alas, for all his philosophical acumen, he proved susceptible, in the early 1930’s, to Nazi propagandizing. He later attempted to distance himself from the Hitler regime, but his earlier statements continued to dog him—which may be why Zena Hitz does not mention him or his book.

In any case, she concludes that “We seek out distractions in order to hide from this terrifying emptiness that can only be filled with God. The emptiness is our dependence on what comes from the outside, our need to wait for God to act. This dependence and this need are objectively terrifying.” Atheist that I am, I must respectfully disagree with that framing, though I don’t deny the existential dilemma Hitz attempts to address; “All of humanity’s problems,” wrote Blaise Pascal, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

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What Is Time For? by Zena Hitz (plough.com)

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Another long but worthwhile read comes from Canadian philosopher Christine Sypnowich (at Aeon) who argues that liberals, for the most part, have abandoned the egalitarian ideals of classic Socialism and Marxism, settling for compromises with the seemingly impregnable regime of neo-liberal capitalism. Surprisingly, Ms. Sypnowich enlists on her side the late Iris Murdoch, a 20^th-century British novelist and moral philosopher who is frequently, and favorably, cited by the Right for her attacks on Jean-Paul Sartre, among others. Sypnowich must have glimpsed a different side of Murdoch: 

In 1958, the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch complained about the paucity of progressive thought in the Britain of her day in the essay ‘A House of Theory’, which appeared in a collection of radical political writings. Murdoch, along with her fellow contributors, bemoaned the decline of socialist conviction, the loss of energy and vision on the Left. Murdoch’s lament is no less relevant today. Recent trends in liberal egalitarian political philosophy, for all their influence in the West, have fallen short of adequately defending the ideal of equality, showing a lack of imagination in just the way noted by Murdoch. Furthermore, the influence of liberalism, in political philosophy, and in Western capitalist societies, is such that thinkers on the Left too often assume the necessity of these parameters.

Sypnowich, like Murdoch, proposes “a radical vision of egalitarianism as furthering equality of human flourishing, or wellbeing.” Going well beyond income redistribution (what R.H. Tawney dismissively called “the details of the counting-house”), the vision is radical indeed:

Human wellbeing pertains to where and how we live, whether we have autonomy and self-realization in our work, our means of transit, the support we have for raising children, the shape of our leisure time, our physical and mental health. People can fail to flourish because they lack meaningful relationships; alienation and loneliness are rife in our times, where many lack genuine friendship and love, for all the opportunities for Facebook ‘friends’, dating apps and options to sext or hook up. Murdoch anticipated these issues back in 1958: ‘A stream of half-baked amusements hinders thought and the enjoyment of art and even of conversation.’ As we become aware of issues of depression and anxiety, and that many of us, particularly those on the autism spectrum, struggle with social connections, it seems especially urgent that we attend to inequality in wellbeing in all its dimensions. True, some of us cannot help but be sad sacks, with a tendency to cheerlessness. Nonetheless, we should be attentive to how inequality in wellbeing is the result of factors over which society can exert considerable influence.”

“Equality without Compromise” is a stimulating, challenging essay. With its emphasis on human flourishing and well-being, it recalls nothing so much as Karl Marx’s vision of communism: equal opportunities for unequal—that is, not identical—individuals to shape their lives and their destinies.

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We should return to the bold egalitarianism of Iris Murdoch | Aeon Essays

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I have saved the worst for last.

Charlie Kirk, who turns thirty in October, is a right-wing thought leader despite never having completed his stint at Harper Community College (Illinois). He has provided an, um, interesting analysis of the devastating fires in Maui:

Liberals are earth worshippers. They're pagans. Oh, you can’t say that, they don’t worship the earth, no, no, they believe in magical elements. That they worship the sun, the moon, the sky, the water. Don’t believe me? They didn’t turn the water on, things burned, this guy told landowners they couldn't use water to fight the fires while the fires were still small. Is it because he believed that water was sacred and we must worship the water? Or is it because of equity, was it because there were certain peoples’ homes burning that he wanted them to burn? 

They believe, in pagan Hawaiian culture, we must worship water, not life. Wokeism is just a return of an old god. The Bible was written as a refutation, it was obsessed with challenging this idea – specifically of Egypt. This is no different. You believe — they believed the Nile was holy. And they believe water is so holy that you can't use it to fight a fire? That’s what he’s implying here, that guy who did not allow the release of the water. This is the one thing that is coming clear in Maui. And the media couldn’t care less, because I think they’re afraid of what they’ll find. That this is not climate change, not global warming, not carbon emissions. This is left-wing ideologues that allowed the island to burn. That there is blood on the hands of the water worshippers. Christianity broke us free of pagan slavery. So did the Hebrew Bible, by the way. Challenged this idea of worshiping the earth, that God is not in nature, that God created nature. Could it be that Maui did not have to burn if they didn’t believe such wacky, goofy, pagan stuff?

Kirk’s screed, offered between claims that the Left is trying to provoke a civil war and warnings about what will happen if the Wokesters "come after our children," is of a piece with his usual calm, lucid approach to current events; in other words, it is full-tilt bozo unencumbered by either facts or logic.

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Charlie Kirk blames Maui wildfires on "pagan Hawaiian culture" | Media Matters for America

[What would we do without Media Matters to keep us up to date on right-wing lunacy?]

I didn't start the fires. They were always burning...

Blowing in the Idiot Wind

{I have been cautioned repeatedly not to engage with or even acknowledge right-wing idiocy, lest I somehow encourage it. I try to abide by that caution, but there are limits.}

Has the intellectual bar ever been set as low as it is on Fox News? The following transcript of a recent Fox exchange is from Media Matters, and it should be preserved in a time capsule and stored in the Museum of Morons:

HARRIS FAULKNER (FOX ANCHOR): As you're talking, I'm thinking about it this way. The minute we let someone, them, they, decide that they were going to wash away faith in schools, that was the beginning of us as parents losing our power. I really do believe that because I think if they would look at this from the ground of, when the Lord gives you children or a child to take care of, right, that is your single job to provide for that life. And if we all looked at it that way and we were steeped in that conscience of, I only am really responsible for one and to one, I think things would be different, and that's as closest [to] prophesizing I'm ever going to get, but I do believe it.

TAMMY BRUCE (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): That's true. That's an interesting kind of ground zero of certain things because that is a value within the American household. So, if you are at home and your parents are saying one thing and then it is contradicted by its absence at school with other authority figures, then suddenly there is a divide. Now what do we have? We've got teachers and school boards telling kids, your parents are the problem. Enough is enough of this. Americans have had it. That's another reason why parents are a threat. Because parents make this country run.

FAULKNER: We do. We have to figure out how to pay for all that high food this president has given us.

BRUCE: And our children go to war and our children sign up. ¹ Our children are first responders. Our children are doctors. ² That's the difference. 

The Algonquin Round Table, this is not.  

You cannot argue with these people. You cannot even have coherent discussions. Their brains do not work the way other people’s brains work. They pull their talking points out of thin air (“alternative facts”) and repeat them endlessly with no evidence and no concern for accuracy, logic, or common sense. Not one of them could pass a basic civics test or an 8^th-grade history exam. They know nothing at all of what they speak; they are avatars of ignorance, poster children for the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's a wonder they can even feed themselves.³ Sadly, their audience tolerates their gibberish, and worse, too often believes it.

As U.S. presidents often say, God help America.

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Fox anchor: The separation of religion and education was "the beginning of us as parents losing our power" | Media Matters for America

¹ Joe Biden’s late son Beau signed up and went to war. He was awarded a Bronze Star, but probably didn’t deserve it.

² Joe Biden’s wife Jill is a doctor, but not the good kind.

³ Bob Dylan.