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

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

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

Artist-Over-Art and Becoming What One Despises

Carlos Greaves’ recent McSweeney’s piece (which satirizes authors writing novels about contemporary communities they do not belong to) is one for the history books. Within it he manages to straddle the very delicate balance of espousing an opinion the political left-wing, particularly the Twitter left-wing, would wholeheartedly agree with, without coming off as a triggered snowflake exposed to right-wing lampooning. He does this with blatant, self-aware strawman-ing (watching Desperate Housewives as sufficient research) and by sharing the satirical ire among the intended authors and their effete publishers and reviewers (Ricky Martin and Antonio Banderas as the sycophantic critics of the dubious novel). While I doubt Mark Twain would endorse Greaves’ message, I suspect he would acknowledge its fine craftsmanship.

Without intending to kill the enjoyable catharsis of comedy by over-analysis, one can’t help but take the piece a bit literally since it comes so close on the heels of the American Dirt debacle, wherein authors have arguably called for the censorship of another author on identity-politic grounds. The offender is a “white Latina” who apparently isn’t Latina enough to write a novel about Mexico. Whether there are actual, factual inaccuracies in the book that add to the validity of these criticisms, I do not know. But I do know that I utterly detest what this phenomenon represents on a grander scale: Artist-Over-Art.

“Blind” submission processes exist for a reason–good art is good art regardless of who made it. If Hitler painted a decent architectural scene, that painting remains decent no matter how indecent the man. This is one of the many ‘unwritten rules’ of Western civilization that postmodernists (or Marxists-about-Starbucks, as I call them) would like to do away with, for it is impossible to enforce equality within any unconstrained–and thus Darwinian–space. Their argument, of course, is that inequality has been enforced by historic socio-cultural racio-religious norms, and thus that they are merely attempting to restore an equitable balance by subverting oppressive tradition. My casual reply to this is basically that I do not consider a Harrison Bergereon reality to be more desirable than a Hunger Games reality–and indeed, it seems to me that a Hunger Games has greater potential to cause unintentionally noble outcomes. And with ever-increasing numbers of presses and literary agents feeling the need to stipulate who they want to publish more-so than what they want to publish, it appears that they are well on the way to dethroning the identity-impartiality of artistic creation. Social justice, it seems, is not blind.

I suspect this outcome will be most pleasing until an ethno-state decides to appropriate it–then will there be much weeping and gnashing of teeth as the ‘antifascists’ realize that they were the ones to renew a core tenant of fascistic speech restriction. In the developed world’s smug self-satisfaction, we have utterly forgotten a crucial realization born of World War 2: whether the man with the gun is wearing the Deathshead and calls you a filthy Jew, or is wearing the Hammer-and-Sickle and calls you a filthy capitalist, he is still going to shoot you. Or, perhaps we have not forgotten it; perhaps we only care which side of the gun we are on.

I also find it odd that many of the masons who are busy paving this road to hell continue to delight in calling others Uncle Tom’s. I am afraid that the historical social-cultural racio-religious origins of that expression are from Harriet Beecher Stowe–a white woman writing about African Americans. So, per your own insistence that persons who are not from a particular community may not write about a particular community, kindly invent your own invective. Mrs Stowe isn’t the only casualty to the feminist authorship cause either: Pearl S Buck’s wonderful The Good Earth has got to go, seeing as she wasn’t Chinese. And we can’t just pick on the ladies, either. Where did that Frenchman get off critiquing Americans, anyway? There goes Democracy in America. In fact, the entire genre of travel literature can be done away with. Cya, Marco Polo. Julius Caesar contribute to our understanding of Gaul? Please! Come to think of it, we better just start burning books to be safe.

Despite these and many more unintended consequences, I don’t think I would be nearly so irked by these social justice fixations if their proselytizers seemed just a tad more genuine. Surely that’s the key to being a successful extremist or fundamentalist; you at least have to come across as consistent and committed. Think Che Guevera. While Fidel hammed it up in the 5-star hotels, he was off to the next jungle. But these callousless hands clutched about Apple products, likely shaking from their ever-burgeoning collection of antidepressants? Why, I wouldn’t follow them into a Chuck E Cheese, much less a battlefield. Unfortunately, it is those very hands that are going to start determining elections in the near future. Voyeurs who breath the air of the real world without ever having dipped a pinky within it are soon to control it. The meek shall inherit the Earth indeed; but unfortunately it seems they are not meek about letting institutions do their dirty work for them.

‘Transgender’ Children: A Little Clarity Amidst the Chaos

Rather than focus upon any particular case of ‘trans’ children–both because I have yet to exhaustively research any specific case & because I believe we will be seeing many more such cases in the future–I’d like to explore the topic in general. I’ll save those who cannot bear differing opinions some time and disclose that my politics are moderate, trending right. However, as with my more formal writings, I hope to offer nuance that may be lacking in the mainstream discourse, some of which may offend conservatives as well as liberals.

The broaching of this topic within the mainstream has cleared up a mystifying matter for me. For years I have asked anyone who would listen why it is that LGBTQ(XYZ?) proponents have insisted upon parroting the “born this way” cliche. In other words, why is it so crucial that every instance of non-heterosexuality be a case of nature rather than nurture? Or, to put the ball more squarely in the progressive court: Who are you to say that one cannot choose (for example) gay sodomy over straight intercourse? And by saying one cannot choose, aren’t you also subtly suggesting that–if it were possible to choose–it would be wrong to do so?

I have never received an honest answer. I don’t believe most of those I have asked know why they cannot or should not answer–but now I may. It is likely over this. You cannot defend pumping children full of hormones–and possibly taking the knife to them–if there is even the slightest possibility that one or both of their parents has pressured them into choosing to transition. You can only defend the practice if we live in a world where non-heterosexuality is 100% a matter of nature, to the utter exclusion of nurture.

This, of course, is bullshit. One need only consult prison sexuality, to pick one example–where many otherwise heterosexual males engage in homosexual activity as the only present alternative to celibacy–to see that persons who were not born gay can choose to be (or at least to act) gay. There are also numerous non-prison instances, such as the infamous Carl Panzram, who, by virtue of being a blockhead, concluded that though he preferred girls, he might stand less chance of getting STDs from boys (hopefully I need not expound).

I am of course not saying that everyone is bi- or pan-sexual, for even in cultures like Ancient Greece where bisexuality was the norm, the existence of persons like Pericles (a staunch heterosexual) was acknowledged and accepted, however eccentric he may have seemed. I am merely illustrating that it is ideology, not fact, which motivates the LGBT[ad nauseam] fundamentalism of insisting that sexuality is always and only inborn.

If a society accepts the premise that anyone who is presented to them as ‘trans’ (i.e., is effectively trapped in a wrongly gendered body and yearns to be freed) was born so rather than potentially being made so by any confluence of factors (and let’s be honest, most all of the potential factors are starkly negative), then, per neighborly empathy they have nothing to do but clear the way to the stainless-steel table.

But if one recalls the gender dysphoria of yore (yore being a couple years ago) as a mental illness which could be present either at birth or brought about through a host of childhood traumas, then things are not so clear-cut. Suddenly one wants to look at transgender suicide rates as well. Suddenly one wants to look at how many ‘transgenders’ de-transition and spend the rest of their lives as good ole fashioned gay people. Heaven forbid one might even look up the name “John Money” and learn what sort of person popularized the idea of transgenderism.

In other words: if even a single provable instance emerges where a deranged parent brainwashed their child into “wanting to transition,” then the entire ideological house of cards is at stake. For there is much to lose beyond whatever perverse pleasure one takes in sexualizing children (more on that in a second); once the inborn premise is called into question it will quickly spill over into the already-broiling subjects of whether or not males-transitioning-to-‘female’ ought to continue being allowed to break female athletic records (or maim born-female athletes in combat sports). And I dare not even attempt to summarize the “TERF” Civil War that is currently raging among feminists; you have Twitter for that…

So, whether or not the ‘trans’-child agenda (truly, I know not what else to call it, for a sudden explosion, as if out of a void or vacuum, of a phenomenon hitherto almost unheard-of, is either 1. a miracle or 2. a mania, and per Occam’s Razor, I’ll take #2) succeeds is once again not a matter of how well the far-Left argues its point, but how conciliatory and spineless the center-Right continues to be. Deep down, I believe the vast majority of the certifiably sane still know that children, beyond what toys they prefer to play with and who they might play-pretend is their future spouse, DO NOT obsess about their own appearance, gender, genitals, orientation, sexuality, etc, and that any child who makes these a recurring theme of conversation, much less the focal point of their young existence, HAS BEEN TAMPERED WITH (mentally, if not physically). Psychologists of yore (again, yore meaning a few years ago) knew this to be a warning sign of abuse.

I must confess to you now, dear readers, that I doubt whether we have the cojones necessary to do the right thing here. I doubt it because of what we have already let our ‘family’ courts and ‘parenthood’ centers become. I doubt it because our pastors either say nothing or continue conceding in order to keep the offering plates full. We have been so dead-set on being open-minded as of late that our brains have fallen out. Perhaps it’s time to give Sharia law a chance.

I’ll leave you with this for now: is “the slippery slope” still a fallacy? Or was it ever?

P.S. Have or haven’t progressive circles decided that circumcision is child genital mutilation? Because, unless I am very much mistaken, the surgical coup-de-grace of “transitioning” is somewhat more invasive than circumcision. (I am aware that the idea, at least for now, is merely to outpace puberty by administering hormones, with surgery as a decision for the future 18-year-old to make. Nonetheless, I believe the point stands). This may prove a very sticky wicket indeed–to only be offended by genital mutilation when God has something to do with it. Lord knows what mental proclivities that indicates.