All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to compositions as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Yesterday I watched the video of Robert George giving a speech to the Catholic Information Center. In the audience were some societal heavy weights like Attorney General Barr. Mr. George very clearly stated that Christians had lost the culture wars and that the only way to avoid living as a prisoner of war in our own country is to fight and win back the ground we’ve lost. He explicitly said that the progressives are our enemies and no compromise is possible. Finally. “I was blind but now I see!” Well better late than never.
This got me to thinking about what fighting back might look like. One thing I thought about is the various Christian denominations that have been hijacked from within by radical bishops. If the faithful still have the numbers then they should reassert the authority of biblical teachings and evict the LGBTQ clergy. And that goes double for the Roman Catholics. Their ranks are riddled with pedophiles and homosexuals masquerading as celibates. And they must also purge their ranks of atheists. Leave them to the Unitarians. But even if the faithful portion of the denomination is a minority, they have an option; to leave. They should leave en masse (let’s call it an Exodus). As the Bible says, “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.” And if that means leaving behind the fancy church building, the fat bank accounts and the support of the religious establishment, then all the better. All the clap-trap of the organization is a big part of the problem in the first place.
And another action that the churches can perform is pool their resources and hire some lawyers to pursue judicial remedies for the state and local policies that clearly violate the First Amendment. In the more godless areas of the country this will probably require appeals rising all the way to the Supreme Court but that’s what it’s there for. From my perspective this is one of the first things they need to do.
And the Catholic Church needs to reestablish its control over the schools and colleges that it claims to run and strip them of all instructors, courses, clubs and activities that openly support any practice that the Church knows to be evil. And just doing that will take a lifetime. There are states where the only way to accomplish this is to either to buy out the contracts of professors or wait until they retire. But it needs to be done. And if in the liberal states they aren’t allowed to make these reforms then the Church should separate itself from these colleges altogether. Religious education needs to be distinguishable from the paganism that is on display on every campus in America.
And the churches need to get back to providing support and counseling to the families in their communities. Sports teams, fraternal organizations, festivals and every other community activity needs wholesome and devoted people who have the time and the interest to knit people together. There is a terrible void in the lives of almost everyone in this country and that void is where the churches used to be. That work is a better place to spend money than on stained glass memorial windows.
And the other thing these churches need to do is apologize to their flocks. For decades the clergy have allowed themselves to be beguiled by secular humanists who claimed that cooperation and compromise would bring religious and non-religious people closer together. Instead they just destroyed the churches and drove the faithful away. If these church leaders ever hope to bring the people back, they need to purge their ranks of unbelievers and evil men and search their own souls and pray to God to give them guidance and read their Bibles to learn what they must and must not teach.
So, that’s a few of the things I think they need to do. If they could do half of that it would get us a lot closer to heaven than to the hell, we’re in now.
The ZMan is a self-avowed bad thinker but no one can accuse him of not providing a cogent explanation for how mainstream conservatism ceded the culture to the Left. This is a clear and convincing explanation for how we got to the sorry state we are in today.
I watched this interview that Boris gave to the BBC and I’ll have to say I think he’s making an enormous blunder. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50264395
Claiming that working with the Brexit Party risks throwing the election to Labour strikes me as completely wrong-headed. There are areas of the country where voters would never vote for the Tories. It’s a multi-generational family tradition. But they’ll vote for Farage. He’s one of them whereas Boris is not.
This looks like a case of Boris appeasing his allies and losing sight of the big picture. If he allows enough seats to escape back to Labour then the new Parliament will be just as bad as the present one. This is his chance to think more clearly about what the nation needs than what he wants. He can divide up the districts into those that vote Tory and those that don’t. Any Labour districts that voted strongly Brexit are a natural fit for a Brexit Party candidate and the Tories should leave these districts to the Brexit Party and support that candidate against Labour. And even the overwhelmingly Labour districts should be left to the Brexit Party to challenge. The Tories can replace the ejected Remainer Tories with reliably Brexit friendly Tory candidates.
Boris should be aware that coalitions are standard operating procedure in the British Parliament. Attempting to squash the Brexit Party now will lead to disaster. Sharing space on the Right with the Brexit Party will strengthen the Tories and weaken Labour immeasurably.
Wake up Boris. Time is running out.
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mark Bauerlein has written an article that confirms what many including myself have been saying for a long time. The sleep walkers are starting to awake. Even the most timid of the social conservatives have admitted to themselves that they can’t negotiate their way out of the trap the Left has them in.
He also links to a speech that Robert George gave at the Catholic Information Center that goes into painful detail just how beaten the social conservatives have been by their enemies.
Finally they both say the words they have been afraid of uttering all these years. The Left is the enemy, this is war and if they don’t want to be forced into the re-education camps they’ll have to fight.
Finally.
On the 27th of October 2019 word spread that an opportunity existed for ShatnerKhan 1 to occur on November First. I scrambled to confirm that the resources were in place. I searched for any conflicts that could interfere with the operational excellence needed for such a critical mission. ShatnerKhan 1 was a go!
So much had to be done in such a short window.
The time it took to N/A each of these items on the public domain occasion planning list that I downloaded from a random website was time taken away from the planning of exactly which Shatner masterpieces would be included and which would have to be sadly excluded due to time constraints from ShatnerKhan 1.
When I arrived home that fateful night ShatnerKhan 1 had already kicked into high gear. The delegates, some of whom had travelled from locales almost as far a way as the Andorian, Tellarite and Coridan systems, were attempting to regale Camera Girl with droll anecdotes of their exploits on their far-flung travels. She on the other hand, being a woman and therefore of a practical nature, was more interested in when they intended to leave.
I bounded into the gathering full of enthusiasm and the bright good spirit of camaraderie and feasted on a sumptuous repast of not only wonderful chicken chop suey, marvelous won ton soup and priceless egg rolls but also a mysterious dessert that attempted to predict my future! O Brave New World!
And now sated of our ravenous hunger and perfectly receptive to the cinematic delights we were about to experience we discussed the program. What would be included in this inaugural edition of ShatnerKhan? What would have to be postponed for a subsequent occasion? And what order would we arrange the included courses? I proposed to start off the evening with “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” This seemed a safe and non-controversial strategy. But surprisingly, the delegates were opposed. The attitude of the room was that this was too tame, too familiar. They demanded a more challenging, a more esoteric choice. I knew that some of the delegates had not delved as deeply as I into the less well-known strata of Shatneriana. I resolved to stagger them with something they were surely unprepared for. I played Rocket Man.
For those who had not seen it before, the effect was devastating. By the time the third Shatner appeared there were howls of pain emanating from the audience and shouts to stop the show. I refused. They had sown the wind now they must reap the whirlwind. When the last “long, long time” died out into merciful silence I could see that those who had revolted against the safe choice of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” were now sadder and wiser. They probably wished they could go back in time and undo that revolt. But no one can unsee “Rocket Man.” Their innocence was shattered. Like the victims of a Lovecraftian eruption of eldritch horror, the image of the tuxedoed Shatners was seared permanently into their souls. I contemplated describing here the experience of watching “Rocket Man.” It can’t be done. The experience is inexplicable. You’ve either seen it or you haven’t. It’s like trying to describe green to a blind man. Suffice it say that it is Shatner at the height of his powers, confident, almost arrogant. In complete control of the audience and his cigarette.
We stopped to revive ourselves with licorice and pretzel rods.
If you are toting up the accomplishments of the Trump presidency, different groups will emphasize different things. If you’re a Constitutionalist then you will value most the appointment of so many federal judges, and most critically, Supreme Court justices by President Trump. If your liveliest fear is the loss of American manufacturing jobs to China then the tariff negotiations going on with Mexico and China are your favorite Trump initiatives. If the tidal wave of illegal immigration is what you point to as the existential threat to United States then “build that wall” is your choice. And if you happen to be a struggling young man trying to support or start a family then the booming economy is the most important thing.
Well, all these things are important and all these things should be acknowledged and celebrated by our side of the political divide. But there is actually a much more important aspect to the presidency of Donald Trump that should be emphasized. He doesn’t despise us.
Think about that. The last time the White House had a President, either Democrat or Republican that didn’t loath us either secretly or openly was Ronald Reagan. That was thirty years ago. I was still a young man. That’s more than a generation ago. Think of that, all of the people under fifty have no adult memory of a time when the government wasn’t trying to subvert the values and even the interests of the majority of the people they led. Sometimes we knew this was the case. Clinton and Obama clearly showed by their actions like, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” and advocacy for same sex marriage that they rejected the values and opinions of the American public. But maybe more damaging was the hidden opinions behind the façade of conservatism that George Bush and his son held. They never missed a chance to stab their constituencies in the back whenever it would be most damaging.
Each tailored domestic and international policies that drained the life blood of the working class away, both figuratively and literally. Each disdained to protect the social conservative groups that they claimed to belong to and instead favored the progressive elements of society whenever a choice was presented. And both were useless in a political fight.
Compare this to Donald Trump. Both during his candidacy and during the whole of his term in office he has taken our side. He has not denounced the normal people who live in this country. He has championed our causes and at great cost politically he has resisted the voices even in his own administration and party that exhort him to condemn us. He never puts distance between himself and the least powerful or the least polished of us. In fact, he sounds more like us than some of us do. He doesn’t fill his speeches with graduate school rhetoric. He talks like a guy who worked in the construction industry in New York City thirty years ago. He brags, mocks our enemies, gloats over his successes and their failures and drives them insane. He doesn’t give up. He fights and, best of all, he wins. He gives us a voice.
What is all that worth? Everything. Having your guy in charge, even when we are taking fire from the combined weaponry of the Democrats, the Media, Silicon Valley, the Deep State, the Churches, the Schools, the LGBTQ Mafia, Hollywood and even Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce is worth more to us than you can imagine. Think for just a minute where we would currently be if Hillary Clinton were president. Hell, even imagine where we would be if JEB! were President.
For me all those things I mentioned above are great, judges and jobs, tariffs and walls. But what gives me hope and boosts my morale is having someone who sounds like me telling Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and James Comey and Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren and Barack and Michelle Obama that they’re fake news and he’s the President and go ahead and try to change that.
Donald Trump isn’t a politician, he’s a leader. He’s the head of our gang. He’s the one who makes sure we don’t get stepped on by the other gangs. Of course, this isn’t some school yard in Brooklyn and we aren’t a local stickball team but the theory is the same. He looks out for his own. If you’re anyone who isn’t part of a class protected by the current progressive system then Donald Trump is the only one who has your back. And he isn’t doing this without risk to his life, his freedom, his material possessions and the well-being of his associates, friends and family. He is the biggest target in the world and the most powerful people in the world hate him and will go after him for the rest of his life. Kind of a big deal.
So, what is the value of his presidency to me? What is it worth to you to feel as you do now as opposed to how you felt in the waning days of the Obama presidency while staring down the barrel of the Hillary presidency straight ahead? I can tell you what it’s worth to me. Priceless.
A lady of 47 who has been married 27 years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it for me like this: ‘Love is what you’ve been through with somebody’.
James Thurber