Author: christopherleewinn

First Story of 2021 Now Available!

C.S. Lewis once said “I was with book, as woman is with child,” and writing this story has helped me understand his sentiment. While I have certainly experienced an urgency to churn out a final draft before, this project was accompanied by what I can only describe as mortal dread. There was no logical reason to ask such a morbid question, but ask it I did: will I live to finish it–and what if I don’t?! This was also the first time that I was truly able to confess to a confidant, “My characters are saying things I didn’t expect them to say.” I have heard other, better authors describe a similar mid-draft realization that they are no longer in control…Let us hope it portends the same for me.

I hope–and frankly expect–never to experience such literary dread again, because, while I undoubtedly have much room to grow in terms of writing purely entertaining stories, this is likely the most meaningful story that I can muster. On the surface, it is about a near-future, wherein a One-World Leader visits the last person alive who dares to oppose her. But, much like an iceberg, its heaviest mass lies below, in the barbs these mortal enemies trade and the ramifications of their divergent beliefs. I have often thought that fiction writers are merely philosophers who are afraid to be boring, and this piece at least proves it in my case.

I am also pleased to offer two forwards, one by the ambitious sci-fi project VivaEllipsis.com, and the other by my dear friend Professor Hoheisel. I should also add that this work–like most valuable things on Earth–was forged somewhat in tragedy. The person to whom it is dedicated, an esteemed Doctor both of medicine and of philosophy, passed away shortly after reading it. It was he who told me I was capable of, and ought to tackle these subjects, and so I did. Indeed, the last communication I ever had with him was to the effect that he was pleased by the dedication, and looked forward to discussing it in depth. I hope to hold him to that, one day.

Dinosaur: A Dystopian Story by Christopher Winn (2021) [Free PDF]Download

2021 Reading List

I can’t be the only weirdo that plans out their reading ahead of time–can I?

I thought I might share my reading list for the new year, either to inadvertently suggest a few titles for you, or to prompt you to share your own.

P.S. I may only be able to begin, rather than completely finish, the longest of these sets (Library of Presidents), unless I’m willing to bump something else to ’22, which I don’t think I am.

WW1 & WW2:
The History of the First World War Commemorative Edition
History of the World War by Frank H Simonds
The Second World War by Churchill

Pre-World War Combat:
Folio Society’s Middle Ages set
The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler
Bourrienne’s Memoirs of Napoleon
The Complete Josephus

USA:
Easton’s Library of Presidents set
Sandburg’s Lincoln set

Science:
The World of Mathematics by James R Newman
The Book of Popular Science set
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Diamond
The Selfish Gene & The Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins
Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman by Richard Feynman

Novels:
Thousand Cranes by Katabawa
The Ark Sakura by Abe
The Key by Tanizaki
Rashomon and Other Stories by Akutagawa
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
Hunger by Hamsun
The Mists of Avalon by Bradley
Library of America #79, compilation of Raymond Chandler
Story of the Eye by Bataille
House of Leaves by Danielewski
Kafka on the Shore by Murakami
Snow Crash by Stephenson

P, Q, ‘Cuties’ & Weimar 2.0

In the ’90s and early 2000s, conservative politicians frequently made what was widely deemed to be a gaff, by equating homosexuality with even rarer sexual proclivities such as pedophilia. If we humor ‘gay rights,’ what’s next, they worried? (Anecdotally, this seems to be around the time that the concept of the ‘Slippery Slope’ had a word appended to its end: Fallacy). This, moderates and liberals replied with conviction, is a false equivalence; your average homosexual is no more likely to engage in pedophilia than your average heterosexual. This seemed fairly reasonable, and the case was closed.

Until the acronym ascended. LGBT. Suddenly Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals were all in the same category. Instead of remaining separate and sovereign, these ‘communities’ were all reduced to the same acronym-soup, which really just means one thing: not hetero. Thus the acronym constantly expands to absorb any sexual ‘orientation’ that doesn’t (without scientific intervention) perpetuate the species. But there is a notable exception thus-far to the acronym that only a few Twitter-verse extremists have dared to append: P.

Due to the acronym’s all-consuming, non-hetero nature, P-for-pedophile certainly fits the bill. It’s just not nearly as marketable as the others, due to the little problem of consent. This has already been worked out somewhat with the acronym MAPS: minor-attracted-persons. MAPS is an attempt to argue that just because one is born-like-this does not necessarily mean one acts-like-this. First prediction: a big feature film featuring a MAPS main character as a pitiably tragic figure persecuted by a hetero world is on the way. I give it five years max. This film will not show the character acting upon their impulse; rather, the character will be rendered heroic by some stoical refusal to act upon their impulses. A great big bow at the end will be taken–yes, I care about consent so much that I sacrificed my own sexuality out of altruism. Not a dry eye at the film festival, likely. With that Trojan Horse firmly lodged into the public subconscious (‘MAPS’ are people too!), we can then start the clock on celebratory media about actual, active pedophiles. The old Slipper Slope ‘Fallacy,’ at it again.

The reason I am so confident about this prediction is because the test-run has already occurred, in the guise of Netflix’s Cuties. This French film (ahh, those risque French, whaddaya gonna do?) directed by a black woman (so you know it’s Empowering!), is, in the director’s opinion, a Feminist coming-of-age story, wherein a young girl reconciles her independence with her strict religious upbringing via dance. So it’s a ripoff of Footloose, right? Not quite. What all of this buzzword drivel actually describes is: a squad of prepubescent girls Shaking That Ass in public and posting porn of themselves in private. If summaries are to be believed–as I don’t feel like bleaching my eyeballs just yet–this includes gratuitous closeups ala those 2000s ‘cheerleader’ movies (where airbrushed 25-year-old actresses portrayed highschoolers) and even some onscreen nudity (when it isn’t merely being implied). As a cherry on top, the film’s villain is the burka-garbed Muslim mother of the main character, who dares to try and prevent her child from being an amateur pornstar before the age of consent.

This film, ladies and gentlemen, is a shit-test (gauging How Much Shit someone will put up with before they push back). If you do not cancel your Netflix subscription now, you are all but guaranteeing that my first prediction will come true. Cliche though it may be, Life really does imitate ‘Art,’ in the sense that Hollywood & Madison Avenue are unquestionably the arbiters of what is normal or admirable in the USA. This strategy–of pushing the social boundaries to locate exactly where they are, and then deploying subtler, cleverer messaging to alter them–has played out before with fantastic success. It will be no different in this case, unless Americans decide that this particular line in the sand is immovable.

None of this should be surprising, given Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘suicide’ last year and his female pimp’s arrest this year. Searching his name, along with ‘flight logs,’ tells one everything they need to know about the opinion of the uber- rich, powerful, and famous concerning pedophilia. If you think they will not now endeavor to make their debauched pastime widely acceptable, then you are one camel short of a caravan.

It is rendered even less surprising when one considers that this powerful-pedos-run-the-world ‘theory’ (now more like the Theory of Gravity than the dictionary-definition) has always been a key tenet of ‘conspiracy theory,’ including the Q or Qanon one that gained popularity around Trump’s candidacy. Click to 1:30 at the first video below for the most official summary available, in the least amount of time possible.

The question then becomes, were all those conspiracy crackpots right, and if so, how? Did they manage to discern the terrible truths of this world before concrete evidence emerged? As a student of literature, I certainly believe this is possible. Indeed, I hope to one-day write in-depth about the literary ‘breadcrumb trail’ that may have first led conspiracists to this conclusion. However, there is a simpler, Occam’s Razor-esque explanation to the accuracy of their educated guess: they knew it was and would happen because it had already happened before.

The phenomenon of child prostitution is history’s surest warning sign that an empire is about to fall. It happened in Rome before the barbarians put them out of their misery, and it happened with great documentation in Germany’s Weimar Republic between World War 1 and 2. Indeed, few history books will admit the obvious: the decadence of the Weimar Republic is what made Nazism possible. The veterans of World War 1 returned to a ruinous and despicable motherland where the utter devaluation of their currency forced women and children into prostitution to avoid starvation. Gazing upon this, these vets, including an Austrian named Adolf, resolved to become its exact opposite, and to engage in the starkest reactionary movement possible against the culture that made it possible. Right or wrong, they looked upon Weimar’s media and finance sectors, then generously populated by Jewish immigrants, and decided that they knew who to blame. You know the rest.

Our leftists are very comfortable to continue careening towards ‘progress.’ But they are wholly underestimating the penchant society’s pendulum has for swinging in the opposite direction when it is pushed too far, too fast. Second prediction. If they continue attempting to normalize pedophilia, they will be reminded–be it by a mass movement, or just a ‘lunatic fringe’ (of mostly young men with nothing to lose) that still believe in that antiquated idea called Morality. And at that time, I suspect that I will be reminded of Thoreau’s observation: in wicked times, a man’s only place is the jail-cell or the grave.

Cancelling Netflix is the absolute least we can do. “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded” (Luke 12:48).

Mandatory Vaccination

USA Today has finally let the other shoe drop, and I’d like to commend the authors (three professors of medicine, law, and bioethics) on being frank. It’s refreshing.

Defeat COVID-19 by requiring vaccination for all. It’s not un-American, it’s patriotic.

Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and punish those who won’t be vaccinated. They are threatening the lives of others.

Unlike most opinion pieces today, riddled with intentional and unintentional vagueness, this one leaves me with only one question: what punishment do you have in mind? (They list a few ideas, but none that would totally contain potential spreading).

Because these professors take the example of conscientious objectors versus draft dodgers, I suppose that is where one must start. So we’re probably talking about massive fines (quarter-of-a-million) or imprisonment. Actually, considering most Americans do not nor ever will have that kind of cash on hand (especially since we’ve just nuked our economy due to this very same fear of death), imprisonment is probably the only feasible option.

So, to the professor of bioethics in particular, I would like to further narrow down the question: How is it ethical to imprison unvaccinated persons together during a pandemic? The subtext of course being that this all but guarantees they will contract C*VID19, whereas they would have otherwise been playing the odds, like every other animal during every other outbreak of anything, ever. Or, is the plan a house arrest, and if so, how would it be enforced? We are, after all, in the midst of #abolishthepolice. Are the brownshirt volunteers already organized to guard these house arrests? And how are we going to denote the homes of the deplorables? A spray-painted Star of David across the doorposts, perhaps?

But one doubts the logistics and/or bravery required to enforce house arrest, so we’re back to that insane, crazy, no-good, #cancelled Alex J*nes’s territory with his “FEMA camps will be converted into concentration camps” scenario. Boy, oh boy! Is anyone else just waiting for the 2020 alien invasion at this point? Just to clarify: assuming any such concentration or imprisonment isn’t a death camp outright (a rather generous concession at this point in the nation’s political discourse), all of the filthy unvaccinated will catch C*VID19, so the implied policy is this: If you will not let the government save you, it will do its very best to kill you instead. A nanny state worthy of Casey Anthony. And a fitting homage to Japanese internment–ostensibly permissible this time since it isn’t racial in its discrimination.

I must admit, when I wrote about the American church being wholly unprepared for persecution (and the possibility of the long awaited Mark of the Beast doubling as some vaccine/passport/business license portmanteau) last week, I wasn’t expecting such a sudden manifestation. But such is the world of the singularity, I suppose–a new reality with each morning’s dawning. So let’s get Big Picture again–and this time we’ll deal with being an American in addition to being a Christian.

When the Antichrist comes, he brings peace (albeit one eventually revealed to be false or temporary). So, right off the bat we know that anyone who does not take his Mark is going to fall prey to a Patriot Act & NDAA reasoning: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Worded slightly differently, this simply means: go with the flow or get dashed against the rocks. It’s a kind of National Security gaslighting, wherein the citizens must convince their government that they are not a threat (guilty until proven innocent) rather than the other way around. In philosophical terms, this takes Hobbes’ Leviathan (the state as mutual protector, whom loses the right to fealty in proportion to the external harm it fails to protect its citizens from–or causes to them internally) and inverts it. The individuals whom were to be protected by their fealty must now protect the state’s interests with a self-sacrificial fealty that defeats the state’s very purpose. I would term this inversion, ‘state for its own sake.’

Somewhere in here lies the all-too-real consequences of differing ideologies that our often impotent partisan bickering has obscured over the last few decades. A significant portion of this country is and has been all but begging for a Leftwing, quasi-Marxist ‘state for its own sake,’ wherein they are perfectly content to throw out the Constitution (the mutual protection compact) so-long as doing so accomplishes the unironic utopia that they have in mind. One need only listen to them for a few minutes to gather a few things. One, they are solipsists (other people are not genuinely real to them; they simply react with others on a you-make-me-feel good, you-make-me-feel-bad basis). And two, this solipsistic lack of imagination renders them incapable of understanding the complexities of a society that is inherently comprised of self-interested individuals. In other words, it is easy for them to flippantly say, Just give everyone free food, because they can imagine themselves being gifted a lifetime supply of free food. But what they cannot possibly imagine is the incredible (indeed, currently impossible) collaboration between individuals that would be necessary to achieve such a Star-Trekian feat. Another way of summarizing them would be to say: they know what feels good, therefore they believe they know what is good as a matter of course.

Contrast this, if you would, with the classical view I attempted to sketch in the aforementioned Christianity piece. This is certainly the less feel-good of the two worldviews, for it can be summarized as:

  • the acknowledgement and acceptance of inherent pain/difficulty
  • an economics of scarcity (and indeed, the determination of value via scarcity), be it scarcity of resources, time (i.e., the realization that all flesh must die), or even talent (men are obviously not equal to one another in a literal sense)
  • a belief in Transcendence (something greater than wretched, mortal mankind) derived, not just from religious dogma, but from man’s very desire for Something More, in contrast to all other animals that are truly adapted to this environment and thus do not experience discontent within it

Christianity is firmly planted upon or rooted within this classical view. It differs from the pagan classics only in that it 1. depicts Transcendence coming down to man, instead of man (largely in vain) aspiring upwards to it & 2. in doing so, it offers a vicarious solution, wherein Transcendence gifts itself to us precisely because of our inability to perfectly grasp it ourselves.

Consequently, the political difference between these two views can be summed up in one word: Trust.

The Constitution, while not inherently Christian, at every opportunity elects the classical view: Men are fallible and corruptible, entropy and degradation are the rule rather than the exception, and, in spite of (or even because of) this, Transcendence may flourish when cultivated and guarded. This abject lack of trust in human nature is not self-flagellation, but vigilance: if we are going to lay our hands upon the Good and True, we must remain ever aware of the fact that we are not naturally good or truthful. This ‘Transcendent Cynicism’ is particularly evident in Benjamin Franklin, whom to the question of what sort of government the United States would be, famously responded:

A republic…if you can keep it.

He was the oldest of the founding fathers; indeed, compared to the others he was more a founding grandfather. He had seen more politicking as ambassador to France than many of the others put together had or ever would see (remember, quite a few of them retired from their posts back to their farms, as opposed to the current life-long bureaucrats we’ve become accustomed to). In this he was as internally balanced as his external ‘Renaissance Man’ accomplishments suggest; he was undoubtedly a hangable Liberal in his time, but he never forgot a curmudgeonly distrust for the nature of man that a classical education bequeaths. Some of the Constitutional whippersnappers were undoubtedly less cynical (the currently celebrated Hamilton being one), but nonetheless they all followed his and Jefferson’s advice about checks and balances, separation of powers, etc.

The consequence of their political distrust is this most prosperous of all nations. Yet, like all comfortable individuals or groups, our vigilance has waned. We’ve grown doughy and dull and drank a bit too much of our own Koolaid about acceptance and diversity and Being Nice at any cost. Those who have studied the fall of Rome cannot help but see similarities; it almost appears that decadent societies willfully commit collective suicide, be it out of despair or to let new mutations flourish. Personally, I cannot help but see this opinion piece as another such example, wherein three men whom have ostensibly flourished at the teat of American classical values (and two of whom likely took the classical Hippocratic Oath to do no harm) call for those very values to be trampled in favor of the State for its Own Sake.

Let me clarify that last sentence, as I fear it’s easy to miss why I so confidently assert that these professors are of the State for its Own Sake. It isn’t just because they are chucking the Constitution in favor of what’s currently in vogue among Coastal elites / the DNC. It’s because they trust the motivations of their State and themselves in this matter wholeheartedly. In other words, these men (whom are, at least in their careers, clearly capable of parsing great complexities) have here treated of an incredibly complex issue–perhaps the most complex we have faced since the Civil Rights movement–in roughly ten pithy and self-assured paragraphs. They write as though they are the God they almost certainly do not believe in. The tone of their confidence is so perfect that it at first reads as though they are totally devoid of ego (a trick of masterful rhetoric, not unlike Lucifer’s dialogue in Job). One would think that such intelligent men would approach this grim subject with a certain trepidation, perhaps even fear and trembling. But no, they have the solution and they’re here to bequeath it to the otherwise helpless plebs. This is the best evidence of their anti-classical, State for its Own Sake persuasion. The same may be seen from Marx all the way down to Alinsky: prose without compromise, concession, quandary, or, to an eerie degree, curiosity. They do not set their pen to paper until their minds are wholly made up. For them, writing is not an exploration but a declamation. A single word for this might be, simply, propaganda. (All sides of political arguments utilize propaganda as the dictionary defines it, but, as you are currently witnessing, the classical persuasion is far more likely to make concession and generally not act as though it is God’s Satan’s gift to the world).

This clinical form of persuasion puts me in mind of T.S. Eliot’s quip about the world ending with a whimper rather than a bang. It strikes me that, if some Antichrist figure were to arise in the present moment, it would most likely not be Nostradamus’s ‘great squawker Hissler’ (H*tler). That style is too militant and demanding to seduce our obese and anemic collective. No; if he were to come today his would be a voice that states with sultry bedside manner, ‘Please remain calm; there’s nothing you can do. Just leave it to the professionals.’ Certainly that is what is being asked in the USA Today piece. Stop resisting. Just do it. Be reasonable. We’re just doing our jobs. A standard-fare speech to the guards of every gulag ever.

To tie a bow on all of this mess…

  • I don’t know if the C*VID19 vaccine will actually be mandatory.
  • I don’t know if it will be based on Pasteur’s theory of antibodies, or the gene-editing of the mRNA approach.
  • I don’t know if it will be a one-and-done or endless boosters as antibodies fade and mutations form.
  • I don’t know if there is anything truly special about C*VID19, or if we’ll start mandating similar vaccine regimens for anything and everything that could possibly send human beings where they are going (the grave) a little earlier than expected.
  • I don’t know if the labs developing these vaccines are ethical and moral, profit-driven, or a mixture of both.
  • I don’t know if these vaccines are actually safe, or if we’re going to be guinea pigs for side-effects that won’t be fully understood for years to come.
  • I don’t know if taking such a vaccine is significantly less dangerous than just taking my chances with C*VID19.
  • I don’t know but that I might feel the same even if C*VID19 were considerably more fatal.
  • I don’t know if this would be THE Mark of the Beast or just a dress rehearsal (conditioning a populace to the general idea).

Here’s what I do know:

  • I don’t trust strangers or human nature in general.
  • The only entity I trust unquestionably is the Lord God Almighty.
  • I am definitely going to die, one way or another, now or later.
  • Some values are more important than prolonging a life destined to end anyway.
  • Between being ‘patriotic’ with a pulse or dead with a deity, I’ll take the latter, considering life is ‘a single page bookended by eternities…’

  • A man chooses. A slave obeys. -Andrew Ryan, Bioshock

 

 

The Last-Century Church

I. What Matter of Man Is This?

Consider Socrates. We know of his existence 2nd and 3rd hand, because he did not write down his own teachings. We can feel confident that he existed, because various independent sources confirmed him even though they disagree in other respects. But we cannot, for example, but sure that Plato’s Apology, which is written as though it is an exact reproduction of Socrates’ words, is actually a word-for-word quotation. Yet, few philosophers or historians are bothered by this uncertainty, because the gift which Socrates left us–the Socratic method–retains its power regardless of how accurately we know the man himself. Indeed, the Socratic method would remain just as relevant even if the man known as Socrates were revealed to be a fictional character.

The same is patently untrue of Jesus Christ. The relevance of Christianity depends upon Christ’s historical reality. ‘If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain,’ (1 Corinthians 15:14) summarized Paul. Jesus’ resurrection–history’s one and only instance of death itself being defeated–is the proof of his teachings. Without the resurrection, Jesus would at best be rendered a mere Buddha-lite on the philosophical scale, since he would have claimed the power to defeat sin and the wages of sin (death) for us vicariously without actually demonstrating that ability. C.S. Lewis rendered this matter definitively in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Thus ‘belief in Christ’ is inextricable from belief in the historical reality of his resurrection. Anything else puts one in the category of Thomas Jefferson–taking a razor to the Bible to excise the miraculous passages, leaving only some tatters of ethical advice that, frankly, can be got from other, earlier sources.

I mention all of this to pose the following question. Why, if the historicity of Christ’s resurrection is crucial, do today’s theologians neglect to consider his historicity in general? By ‘in general’ I mean this. There was something about Jesus that struck a chord with many of the pagan Romans that he encountered. First, a centurion at Capernaum (Matthew 8) asked for his servant to be healed, and the way he asked it was with such decorum that Jesus ‘marveled’ that his was a greater faith than he had seen in all of Israel. Then, Pontius Pilate interviewed Christ and thereafter declined to have him executed, even though ego, peer pressure, and mere convenience said to do otherwise. Finally, a centurion at the site of the crucifixion (likely someone who had seen many a Jew hung upon a cross) was overheard to say ‘Truly this Man was the Son of God!’ I would like to pose that very few Christians today, especially in the developed world, and especially again in the United States, could even attempt to provide a historical explanation for this phenomenon, because Jesus is so rarely considered in a general, historical context by pastors or the endless churn of modern Biblical commentary books.

Here is how I would briefly attempt to answer the question. The vast majority of pre-Christian and/or non-Christian classical literature is tragic in nature and genre. Be it Mesopotamia’s Marduk and Gilgamesh, Egypt’s Isis-Osiris-Horus-Set, Greece’s Zeus and Heracles and Achilles, Hinduism’s Arjuna and Krishna, India & China & Japan’s buddhas, etc., all of them basically have the same formula (even more basic than Joseph Campbell’s summary).

  • The world is extremely hostile and painful.
  • Only a rare few (heroes) can excel in such an environment.
  • Even those rare few lose everything in the end.

To take this a step further–these stories are a summary or starting point for the philosophy of the ‘Mystery Schools,’ or the inner workings of the ancient religions themselves. This could perhaps be cursorily re-rendered as:

  • Accept the hostility, pain, and transience of the world.
  • Become a hero (aka, the exception to mediocrity/normalcy).
  • Those who do so reap a reward for doing so outside of the world/after death.

The latter step is often lampooned by atheism as both unprovable and immoral, since to the untrained ear it sounds as though one is being told: ‘be moral in return for cash and prizes.’ However, anyone who studies the Mystery Schools for long, and in particular the people they were known to produce, comes to suspect that this cause and effect are inseparable. In other words, there is no room here for disingenuously doing good, because the ‘reward’ for doing this good involves, or is primarily about, becoming good. Summarized in a phrase, the reward sought by the Mystery School is a ‘spiritual evolution.’

From this one can determine that most every culture before a certain date thought:

  • The world is inherently tragic
  • And there is something very wrong with us that needs to be fixed/improved.

(Those fringe groups that disagreed with these points and instead, looking at man’s existential situation, concluded ‘I see nothing wrong here,’ were considered devil-worshippers and deviants.)

Their solution to the world’s tragedy and man’s flaws?

  • Try very hard to fix yourself.

This was, to say the least, found wanting, although the Mystery Schools and their broader religions saw no present alternative. Thus even Judaism’s King Solomon–blessed (?) by God to be the Wisest Man in the World–penned Ecclesiastes, perhaps the most depressing book in the world, whose recurring refrain is:

Everything is meaningless!

Now consider the three Magi whom followed the Star of Bethlehem and (eventually) found the young Jesus. They were, though lesser than Solomon, arguably in the same philosophical boat. They had trained all of their lives to transcend the tragedy of existence and attain the awaited ‘spiritual evolution.’ Yet one strongly suspects that none of them felt they had actually succeeded in doing so. Then one day, the stars told them something that had never been told before. How to render what they ‘read’ in the sky likely requires a better mastery of astrology and Zoroastrianism than I have, but I imagine it was roughly this:

  • An exception to the tragedy of the world, and the imperfection of men, has arrived.

And this, I would argue, is precisely Christ’s general historicity. He is The Exception in Mankind’s Story. Note: Mankind’s Story is accurate, and he is an Exception to it. An exception does not invalidate a rule, unless the rule states that it cannot be excepted. Indeed, if Christ were not the Exception to a verifiable status quo, he would not be significant. To recognize The Savior is to recognize that the world needs saving.

To be fair, current Christian theology often skirts this theme with the idea of Faith versus Works salvation, and it is possible that some pastors take care to note that every spiritual-religious tactic before Jesus Christ was Works-based. But on the whole, I feel that the developed/American church has so frail of a grasp upon the classical world (both the world before and during Christ’s lifetime) that this fine point is rather easy to miss. And my evidence for this missed point is unfortunately far more than mere conjecture.

II. Who Do We Think We Are?

The legacy of Christ’s disciples and the 1st century church is of faith during persecution. Of Christ’s 12 disciples, only one did not die tragically as a direct result of association with him: John, the author of Revelation (we’ll get back to him). Other, regular believers met their end at the Roman coliseum in its now unimaginably gory games. The three Apostolic Fathers, men who were ordained by Christ’s apostles to great effect, were:

  • Polycarp…burned at the stake
  • Clement I…drowned at sea
  • Ignatius of Antioch…fed to lions

This legacy continues unabated to this day in the undeveloped and developing worlds. Christ predicted numerous times that this would be the case, even summarizing his call to salvation fatally as “Pick up your cross and follow me.” So, if anything were capable of surprising Christ about his own church, it would arguably be that some portion of it would enjoy a period in the absence of persecution.

If the world is tragic, and man is imperfect, and Christ is The Exception to the status quo of mankind’s world, then it stands to reason that Christ’s followers will be persecuted as an aberration. One might even say that a Christian’s mundane existence ought to be more tragic than that of nonbelievers, in the same way that a Christian’s transcendent existence is far richer, since they have already been granted the ‘spiritual evolution’ through faith in Christ rather than paganism’s works.

Thus, a lack of persecution is actually a troubling sign. It signals that a portion of the Church has come back into alignment with the world to the extent that the world no longer finds it overtly abhorrent. This concern reaches a fever pitch when we consider that the Bible calls Satan ‘the god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) and does not appear to contradict the validity of this offer (Matthew 4):

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Yet, American Christianity has become downright notorious for:

  • its insulation from persecution
  • the great expense of its campuses (indeed, the conflation of physical buildings with the metaphysical Church)
  • the hefty salaries of its staff, sometimes comparable to or exceeding the private sector
  • cramming donuts and coffee down one’s throat before worshipping, then rushing out to lunch after worshipping
  • Irreverence during worship such as gossiping with fellow believers
  • Displays of monetary or sexual status upon the guise of ‘dressing up for church’
  • Nationalism (flags upon the dais as though God is on America’s side, rather than the other way around)
  • selective legalism, wherein homosexuality is wrong but divorce is fine, etc
  • the extremity of the ‘Health & Weath’ gospel, as though our homeless carpenter-messiah wants you to have two vacation homes and a luxury sedan
  • the insidious subtlety of ‘Optimism with a side of Jesus’ theology, wherein believers are taught to always look on the temporal bright side…while living in the world ruled by Satan

Thus I am forced to conclude that the American church has perfected the art of having Too Much of a Good Thing. We have managed to reduce the sacredness of John 3:16 to a trite meme, wherein–because we have “fire insurance”–everything is rendered fine and dandy, and we’re free to frolic like puppies through fields of wheat and StAcK tHaT cAsH mOnEy. We then have the audacity to wonder why young Americans are no longer interested in going to church. It’s because our churches aren’t particularly different from anywhere else in the country–excepting that their entertainment factor isn’t really up to snuff, and the wifi’s a bit slower.

This leads me to ponder what would happen if the Mark of the Beast came on the scene tomorrow. The excuses for taking it are obviously going to be colossal. If none may buy or sell without it, then refusing it will initially result in becoming socially marooned, with the tools and calories at one’s immediate disposal constituting one’s only options. For Americans, this will likely be the first time they’ve experienced such a thing. In this existential paralysis, the fear of death will onset. Suddenly people who suspect to varying degrees that God wants them to be happy here on earth will realize that their faith is about to get them killed. Not just they but their family members may starve or be murdered if they do not take it. All of their neighbors are taking it. Everyone on social media is taking it. Some of their church friends are taking it. Maybe even their pastor is telling them to take it. The Rapture hasn’t happened yet, so this can’t be It? God wants the best for you–‘plans to prosper and not to harm’? Etc.

Of course, some theologians attempt to write off John’s eschatological prophecies as symbolic of his own time…but that does nothing to eliminate all of the other Biblical portions, including the Red Letters themselves (Matthew 24), that deal with the massive persecution of believers during the End Times. To say that the American church is in danger of getting caught with its pants down (‘like a thief in the night’) seems an audacious understatement. In fact–how many American Christians even know Revelation well enough to recognize its signs if they were to occur? How many pastors have been crystal-clear that:

  • An Antichrist will take Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and declare himself to be God
  • He will compel all to take his ‘Mark of the Beast’
  • Those who do not take it will die or be killed as a consequence
  • Jesus has not returned unless it is in the heavens with an angel-army and reality-rending terror upon earth (anything else is an impersonation)

…much less the other relevant details of John’s visions?

Brothers, sisters…The entire world was just ‘shut down’ for the first time in history. ‘Smart tattoos‘ or ‘drawn-on-skin technology‘ are about to be the new Must Have accessory. There is talk that a gene-editing (mRNA) C*VID19 vaccine should be a mark so as to easily attest to immunity. Microsoft has patented ‘060606‘ for cryptocurrency payments based on body activity.  Elon Musk thinks we have just five years until Artificial Intelligence begins warping reality beyond human control. His solution is Neuralink–inserting a chip into the brain to become symbiotic with A.I. None of these things definitively spell ‘Mark of the Beast’ yet, but they sure do rhyme. I recommend making your decision now before necessity forces it upon you. It is not unreasonable to plan for the eventuality that you are the Last-Century Church.

If you are not a believer and instinctively recognize what is being said here, please follow these tried and true instructions (Romans 10), then share them with those who will listen:

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

 

NMAAHC & The Pendulum

I was recently amused to learn that Washington D.C.’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has taken it upon themselves to define ‘whiteness‘. My first thought was, surprisingly, from the leftist parlance: cultural appropriation. My next thought: Please tell me no Anglo-Saxon-themed museum has responded to this by defining ‘blackness.’ Yet, however ill-conceived or ill-fated this attempt to define may prove, my knee-jerk reaction to it was ultimately unbefitting of the attempt’s gravity. Like individuals in Sherlock’s presence, a great deal of useful information can be extrapolated from them, despite the fact that it is not the information they hoped to convey.

Perhaps the most visceral part of the definition, a graphic titled ‘Aspects and Assumptions of White Culture in the United States,’ has very recently been removed. Thankfully, I had a suspicion that this might occur, so I saved it in order to reproduce it here under Fair Use. You may find it at the end of this post.

To summarize that graphic, it defines the main aspects of whiteness as: individualism, the nuclear family, the Scientific Method, Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian/European culture, Protestant work ethic, and (paraphrasing to condense) capitalist ambition/competition.

Despite the fact that there is nothing controversial or surprising within these aspects, I found myself having to re-read them several times. After all, I was not reading a web page by a white supremacist group–this was produced by an organization rather the opposite (one hopes, anyway). So why, when I was expecting to be chastised or at least criticized for my ‘whiteness,’ was I being complimented at every turn? I considered and quickly ruled out that I was being patronized. No, the authors are quite sincere. The plain fact of it is that the NMAAHC meant for me to feel critiqued by these aspects. To them, these aspects are insults. Cue Led Zeppelin’s ‘Communication Breakdown.’

Rather than laud any of these aspects–seeing as how they have already been so thoroughly explained and defended in Tarnas’s Passion of the Western Mind, Pontynen and Miller’s Western Culture at the American Crossroads, and (less intellectually but more viscerally) in the cultural triptych formed by the King James Bible, the Complete Shakespeare, and the Lives of Plutarch–I would like to briefly dwell on their opposite or alternative. I would render this list as: collectivist, unscientific, anti-work and/or anti-goal-oriented, pagan, socialistic, no emphasis on the value of time in accordance with its finite nature (RIP supply & demand), group AKA mob or vigilante ‘justice,’ and devoid of logico-literary-communication.

Now, perhaps it is just me, but when I stare at the list of anti-‘whiteness’ aspects we’ve just constructed, it seems to me that we have merely described the Bronze Age. Now, I have nothing against that Age objectively. Subjectively I would only return to it kicking and screaming. But objectively I suppose I’m glad it happened, what with the linearity of time. I’m not going to dwell on this Bronze Age issue much more, because I don’t want to strawman the NMAAHC by pretending they are calling for the opposite of their ‘whiteness.’ Certainly they are not, because by their own definition of ‘whiteness,’ American museums themselves are arguably a product of ‘whiteness’, and thus they as an institution would have to disband in order to accomplish their own strawman-goal. Since they have not, we may assume that is not their goal (unless they are blatant hypocrites).

None-the-less, the fact remains that they are either:

  • passive-aggressively critiquing the aspects of ‘whiteness’ without providing viable alternatives
  • or, implying the alternatives to ‘whiteness’ by defining ‘whiteness’ and leaving one to imagine its opposites as we just have.

In the first case, they would effectively be those pseudo-revolutionaries who know how to destroy with no intention or ingenuity to create afterwards. In the second case, they would be akin to what I can only render as Rousseauian primitivists–viewing the Bronze Age as more romantic than the USA’s present situation, while lacking the character to voluntarily abandon their present situation ala the Amish, or Chris McCandless, or immigration to another country closer to their ideal. I will go no further in psychoanalyzing them, since it is impossible to narrow down which option is more likely from afar.

Besides, these two possibilities are roughly comparable in the following sense. The first is like a petulant child that breaks but cannot fix; the second is like a petulant child that dreams but will not do. Both, in adults, are states of spiritual dwarfism, reeking of the resentment that Nietzsche lampooned as:

You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors thus out of you for equality: your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue.

Actually, pagan Nietzsche perhaps doesn’t go far enough. I believe there is another quote more consistent with the latent resentfulness herein, when one considers the absolute havoc that would portend a Bronze Age-ified United States:

So farewel Hope, and with Hope farewel Fear,

Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost;

Evil be thou my Good…

That, of course, is Milton’s Lucifer speaking.

It dawns on me that this is probably why the political pendulum is never static for long. The Rightwing in power becomes a trite broken record, fretting over how to endlessly Conserve values when those values have no valid threats. The Leftwing, on the other hand, develops a moral panic or maladaptive perfectionism that ultimately eats itself, because Progress’ing eventually becomes the sole value, even when it calls for Progress’ing away from crucial victories already attained. Thus those who wholly depend upon and exist by virtue of, say, free markets or scientific methodology or Justice Systems (Hobbes’ Leviathan?), come to feel very clever indeed when critiquing those things as though they can do better, without having demonstrated even the slightest evidence that they can in fact do so. This is perhaps, as the Brits say, on the tin, since ‘Critical Theory’ suggests the pitiable state of being a critic…

Critic. n.

A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

-Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary

In parting, I would like to concede the following.

1. I do not believe that the presence of melanin or lack-thereof can actually/literally/Objectively be assigned any metaphysical quality. In other words, in the same way that I do not believe a black Labrador has ‘blackness’ beyond the fact that it is colored black, or that a white Labrador has ‘whiteness’ beyond that fact that it is colored white, I do not believe that much of anything is conveyed by the coloration of human beings beyond the utility of ‘look at that white guy over there’ or ‘look at that black guy over there.’

2. Insomuch as one disagrees with #1, I consider one to be bigoted, regardless of what coloration they are pretending to elaborate upon.

3. However, insomuch as the NMAAHC’s description of ‘whiteness’ could be accurate if they were correct–I would admittedly be proud to have or be that ‘whiteness.’

4. Yet, seeing as how this ‘whiteness’ is obviously a metaphysical construct separate from mere unalterable coloration, one must concede that these are qualities any person could potentially possess, meaning it is a matter of character rather than ‘race,’ and thus should not be called ‘whiteness’ (unless one wishes to reference the Biblical use of whiteness as symbolic of innocence and/or redemption).

5. Insomuch as the NMAAHC has made any person whom is not ‘racially’ white feel that they are disqualified or less qualified to achieve the aforementioned characteristics of ‘whiteness,’ I consider them to be a net negative upon humanity that ought to cry themselves to sleep each night in shame.

6. This recent collective resurgence of racial obsession is just a byproduct of the economic ruination caused by the coronavirus lockdown. Per historical norms, the lower classes are beginning to blame and scapegoat one another for the ruin brought upon them by their upperclass overlords. Insomuch as anyone perpetuates this blame-game, I find it stunning and regrettable that you were the quickest sperm.

whiteculture_info_1

Moral Tourism: A New Hobby at the Edge of History

Many have pondered whether George Floyd would have received any justice if his death hadn’t been recorded. I’m tempted to take this question a step further: would it have received any indignation at all if it hadn’t been recorded? As I’ve stated previously, it seems as though the Silent Majority of Americans (and perhaps the developed world entire) are incapable of mustering up emotion for anything except the most gruesome of imagery–the towers’ collapse during 9/11, for example, which garnered just enough outraged enthusiasm for ‘W’ to invade several countries that had nothing to do with it. If Floyd’s death had not been captured on video, the newspaper synopsis likely would have read: intoxicated man with extensive criminal record dies after chokehold arrest; police were alerted by a cashier after he passed a fake note. With the race of killer and killed expunged, it seems doubtful any further information would have been demanded.

Being moved solely by imagery is a consummate example of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Thus many a Westerner has suddenly, almost miraculously realized their deep-seated feelings of empathy (or guilt) towards African Americans in the late hour of 2020; unfortunately, they have not yet discovered it for any of the people-groups whom are actually enslaved TODAY. That realization would require effort beyond scrolling through social media feeds, and it might prove inconvenient indeed, for one would risk realizing that the Iphones which captured Floyd’s death were made by ChiCom slave labor on Apple’s behalf. But, since enslaved Chinese, including the Hong Kongers currently being divested of their liberty, and the Chinese-Muslim Uyghur minority currently being tortured in ‘reeducation camps,’ have little relevancy to ousting Trump, they are for some strange reason not receiving the same funding as BLM & Antifa from the likes of George Soros. Could this explain why the last time anyone heard these organizational acronyms before Floyd’s death was 2016?

One may rightly note that none of this changes the fact that African Americans have been treated unfairly. Indeed, it was very unkind of the likes of the Ashanti dynasty (of that textile design), or the Muslim pirates of the Barbary Coast, to auction their fellow Africans off to white traders. To see the stain of sin solely upon white hands during these sordid transactions is willful, expedient ignorance. If there is anything exceptional at all about the role American whites played in the vast history of slavery, it is that they were willing to fight & die over the matter in a Civil War. And in order to extrapolate a truly exceptional racism from this, one would have to believe that the majority of Southerners who risked their lives in that war were willing to die for an economic luxury they themselves did not possess. If you are not in the mood to risk your neck for billionaires’ right to keep their private jets, then you have understood my point. Those mystified should reread the 10th Amendment.

My intent, beyond the pleasure of snark for its own sake, is not to dissuade the newfound champions of civil rights; merely to ask that they remain consistent instead of, I don’t know—taking selfies at a rally, donating once or twice, then getting back to the ole Netflix binge with fresh assurance that they are a good little boy or girl. For the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. If we are going to give free money and emotional support to African Americans, I expect to see the same for interned Japanese and the truly decimated Native American tribes next, to name but a few. The business of righting historical wrongs is never-ending, and likely to bankrupt us all—but private & central bankers have already done that in slow-motion, so what the heck?

However, good luck parsing out which pale boogeymen are actually responsible, because, being Emma Lazarus’s melting pot, there are plenty of white Americans walking about whose dust-reduced ancestors were never afforded even the theoretical opportunity to own slaves, either because they were too historically late, or impoverished, or were themselves looked upon as inferior to W.A.S.P.s (see Catholics of all stripes, especially the Irish). I would also like to meet the daring soul who will audit African American ancestry to make sure none of the families of those freed slaves whom then purchased slaves for themselves are afforded a piece of this immaculate pie. Heritages of mixed race will also prove difficult in this regard (will it be the Leftwing that instigates a ‘one-drop rule’ this time around?).

In the meantime, a word of friendly warning to anyone who hopes to live to spend their reparation money. No law enforcement means no enforced laws (beyond whatever local protection rackets pop up). So, good luck enacting anything involving reparations at the same time that law enforcement is abolished. (Cue ‘Defund the Police doesn’t mean Defund the Police’). Furthermore, seeing as how the African American community is beset on all sides by ‘institutionalized racism,’ I should take great care to be sure that there is not some ulterior motive behind banishing police from all communities that cannot afford private security as a substitute. Now, I’m not saying that Margaret Sanger’s eugenics program, aka Planned Parenthood, has proven too slow for Them, and thus They (They being whoever institutionalized the institutions, I suppose) have resolved to speed up the process with some variation in stratagem…but I am saying, stranger things have happened. And this would be a particularly effective approach since no one seems to care about black-on-black violence. Indeed, even citing it currently merits a one-way ticket to the Racist category. For example, a journalist was recently pilloried for reproducing this quotation from an African American he interviewed:

I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?… Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of…

The answer, of course, is that our concern is not Justice (for she is Blind), only social justice. We care not to rectify present evils, only those which are already long passed. This is textbook, almost passe, Divide and Conquer–to agitate and foment historical resentment between different tribes to distract from current wrongs and lay the foundation for even worse ones in the future. I’m reminded of a Frankie Boyle joke that went something along the lines of:

Black and white people shall finally live together in harmony…in Chinese concentration camps.

I’ve tried holding off comparing our current state of affairs to the Maoist Red Guard’s Cultural Revolution, but a recent anonymous letter from a Berkeley history professor has caused me to think it might be now-or-never. That this ‘person of color’ (God, what a horrendous expression–does that mean I am a ‘person of non-color’?) knows they would lose their job for signing this piece is bad enough. The individual points themselves seem to terminate inexorably at the question: if a violent far-left ‘cultural revolution’ were to occur in the United States, what other warning signs would you possibly desire?

However, if that is in fact what is occurring (and I certainly hope it isn’t), I remain skeptical that it will ‘work’ as any of its adherents would wish. As I understand it, even the likes of Antifa merely want a political ‘anarchy’ in which they are still alive and fairly well. But any earnest attempt to force the U.S. in a socialist/communist direction that involves discomfort on the part of taxpayers would assuredly result in a distinctly apolitical anarchy. If some puppet-master would take the pains to…

  • automate, outsource, or otherwise disappear the majority of American jobs
  • prevent the federal government as-is from instituting a reactionary Universal Basic Income
  • THEN use leftist students to rabble-rouse ala Les Miserables

…we might see a homogeneously far-left USA. Otherwise, any such all-or-nothing bid is simply going to burn the whole place down like the Biblical Babylon due to the populace having not been disarmed beforehand.

Assuming (perhaps out of wishful thinking) that this unthinkable outcome will not occur, I maintain two assumptions about the future. The first is thanks to the astute commentary of @Cernovich ; the second is my own.

  • Urbanization is finished; anyone with a fulltime job, or a family, or a base-level appreciation of survival is going to flee for the suburbs or country and buy guns.
  • BLM/Antifa is but the first wave of a new hobby at the edge of history: moral tourism. The social media zombies, rather than craving brains, crave crisis. This is the only stimuli sufficient to jolt their fried nervous systems into feeling alive, however temporarily. Faux-outrage at spoon-fed, IV-dripped realizations that the world is imperfect will be their pastime in lieu of productive or lucrative work, in-person or functional families and friends, or any socio-cultural-historical value system whatsoever. Eventually no statues will stand, for they will all have been pulled down by the suspicion that anyone who did anything worth remembering must have been evil, compared to the immaculate innocence of their utter, grave-obliterated mediocrity. The rich (meaning anyone with private property) will horde the books which this mob would burn, having discovered a new status symbol on the grounds that ‘this, at least, cannot have been tampered with.’ It is even possible that the use of social media (I would not yet go so far as to say the Internet entire) will grow akin to being a Prodigal Son. ‘Poor child, they chose that poison over Real Life.’

There is no telling how many the moral tourists will kill in their first few bouts of Dionysian frenzy, but eventually this new class-based segregation will solidify. Suburban and rural taxpayers will learn to defend themselves, and tax-dependents will stay in their rotting cityscapes except when paid or goaded into kamikaze attempts with political motives. We’ll have done all those sci-fi/dystopia authors real proud.

For those regular persons of any race or creed wondering what to do in this chaotic interim, I recommend consulting Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago (even the Harper abridged edition to save time). It’s a masterful summary of how these waves of memetic violence ebb and flow, and it concludes on the whole that the only way to prevent its worst potential outcomes is total noncompliance when and if Someone shows up at your door. In hindsight, it is painfully obvious that WW2’s Russian kulaks and German Jews should have put their axeheads between the eyes of anyone who came to round them up; if they had done so they would have saved millions of lives and perhaps even their own. In the case of the United States, no force on Earth can forcibly subdue such an armed citizenry–eventually you run out of people willing to volunteer for the abduction detail, since their zealot friends keep coming home in boxes. Farmers with rusty rifles and makeshift explosives have kept the world’s best killing force occupied in the desert for decades now–if we do not do better, it will only be by choice.

How to Lose when You’re Ahead

Roughly 48 hours ago I predicted with confidence that police would emerge from the George Floyd backlash empowered, due to the dismal optics of protestors-as-thieves-and-arsonists. However, I did not account for the post-traumatic collage of excessive force that they have since gifted to the media. A male-on-female groping, resulting in her recoiling, which provokes a beating; shooting out the eye of a homeless wheelchair-bound man with a rubber bullet; shoving the frail Martin Gugino to concrete for daring to stand in their presence, & then quitting to show solidarity with those officers disciplined for said action.

I have since watched the latter clip in slow motion several times, transfixed by the body language and telegraphed motion of an officer who appears to want to beat Gugino with his club after he has fallen, only to be casually dissuaded by another. Not only is Gugino in no danger of getting up; blood is clearly flowing from his ears. Nonetheless the instinct is to ‘finish the job,’ like a rule from Zombieland.

How could anyone want to show solidarity with that? The answer is, I fear, quite simple. The officer is genuinely ‘just doing his job.’ He is an outsourced violence specialist, salaried with the tax dollars of American citizens who would rather not do their own dirty work. It is not we who should be mystified by his actions. It is he who should be surprised that we have so suddenly resolved that we no longer require his sanguine services.

Or so we like to tell ourselves. In truth, the average American citizen has never been further removed, logistically or mentally, from the actual monstrosities that we have (up to May 25th, 2020) tasked our law enforcement with facing. Some of it, certainly, can be remedied in a more intelligent fashion (drug legalization would evaporate drug cartels, for example). But the fact remains that there is a massive ‘out of sight, out of mind’ at play here. Having police be little more than glorified customer service representatives may work in homogeneous and/or unarmed populations. But to defang and declaw law enforcement in a country as contentious and heavily-armed as this is, at best, a way to make sure only robots are crazy enough to take a policing job. At worst, consider what happened in Little Village, a predominantly Hispanic portion of Chicago, but on a much larger scale. Seeing no particular reason why their stores should be emptied and burned, or their Abuela terrified in her own home, just because George Floyd was killed, the Village quickly became a No-Go zone ala Europe–except those who were being ‘told’ No were African Americans and white Antifa instead of police.

I would like to humbly suggest that causing heavily-armed white areas to ‘police themselves’ by dint of defunding actual police, is probably not the best way to reduce racial violence.

How to Lose a Revolution Before It’s Begun

It wasn’t until I impulsively clicked on an MSNBC livestream out of Santa Monica that it dawned on me. I had assumed the position of effete American leftists–especially in the media–would be to endorse an attitude of ‘anything goes’ regarding the George Floyd backlash. But there they were, bemoaning the destruction of The Sake House and gasping as rioters tried to pull a hose out of a firefighters’ grasp. A guest commentator even noted that every box of free sneakers carried out of shattered windows is another few thousand new votes for Trump. In short, their take (that these are bad optics with the potential to put civil rights back incalculably) was indistinguishable from the take being given on Fox News.

Homogeny among MSNBC and Fox, I pondered? What is this–9/11? Traumatic imagery seems to be the only way to shift the fairly indifferent Silent Majority of U.S. moderates in a particular direction. Just days ago, one would have assumed the imagery in question would be, and would remain, Floyd’s murder. The total destruction of a Minneapolis police precinct came and went without batting an eye. Fair enough, the collective consciousness whispered. But the ensuing footage, like B-roll from The Purge, wherein familiar streets and amenities are pillaged and plundered against the Floyd family’s wishes has proved a bridge too far. The message is clear:

BLM, Antifa–you can burn police stations if you want; they can fend for themselves. But don’t you lay a goddamned finger on my Starbucks & McDonalds.

The uniquely leftist way of saying this is, arguably, “Sure, Black Lives Matter–but can’t they Matter without inconveniencing me?”

This reaction, though surprising even to a cynic such as myself, isn’t at all unprecedented. The American psyche is not at all as unpredictable and bipolar as its political extremists sometimes make it seem. At the end of the day, it is a corporation-country. Sometimes you have to indulge a strike, maybe even some Luddite sabotage, but eventually everyone is going back to work, or else.

The fact that the National Guard has not yet been ordered to open fire on looters (despite hollow tweets to that effect) perhaps signifies that the corporation’s patience still has reserves. I think this patience is due–sad to say–to the arguable fact that the role of these looters within said corporation is to wind up in prison. And wind up there they shall, no matter how many times our benevolent bosses decide to let them go. Even if a few get to keep their new plasma TVs and stay free long enough to enjoy them, what is that compared to the astounding budgetary benefits police are going to gain from these temper tantrums? We thought they were militarized before? What do you suppose they will look like once every station is outfitted to repel a city-wide assault? We may have meant to say to police, ‘look here, stop killing unarmed civilians!’ But what they heard was, ‘hey, become so terrifying that you don’t have to kill unarmed civilians.’

As for Trump, the only way he doesn’t get 4 more years* is if he is no longer corporeal (and if that happens, the Republican fallback may well be the Fascistic nightmare that American leftists have long fantasized Trump is). He is getting his Conservative Supreme Court, the NRA is going to eat other special interest lobbyists’ lunches for decades to come, and any newfangled economic recovery methods he (or should I say Jared) thinks up is getting passed. Optional: Israel finishes its plans for Palestine, knowing they will never have a better opportunity again.

Walking to a vandalized church, Bible in hand…God, that’s good. Our Left have been so worried about ‘institutionalized racism’ that they forgot the possibility of causing its far more personal renaissance. They spoke of the devil until he appeared. Although, this time around I expect it will be far more class than color based. The days of the bedsheet wearers are behind us; the days of those with something to lose making sure they are ready to dispatch any irksome have-nots has only just begun. The corporation is restructuring, and our urban department is about to get downsized.

RIP George Floyd. RIP Tony Timpa.

 

*…OK, if they hijack Biden at the convention with an Oprah/Obama ticket, it won’t be that easy.