As I traversed this massive nearly 900 page work, I sometimes wondered; "Why does one undertake such a thing?". I had previously read "How to Not Be Secular", a "cliff notes summary", so I had the general ideas:
500 years ago we lived in an enchanted, embedded, hierarchical world, while today we live in a disenchanted, disembedded, flat world.
The "standard story" of the secularists is a "subtraction story" -- "science" made it "impossible to believe" in more than matter. Taylor finds the "subtraction story" utterly lacking -- we still believe in love, beauty, justice, consciousness (spirit), and "good" ... none of which can be measured, so therefore do not exist to science. There are lots of other reasons that "subtraction" falls short.
We live as a "Buffered Self" that is cut off from God, family, other people, the past, having "a place" ... again, a LONG list. However we are "buffeted" or "haunted" by our mortality and a sense of "something more" ... "fullness" that tugs at our hearts / souls ????
Many are radically unhappy in this world to the point of suicide. They have FAR more "stuff" than even the kings, lords and popes of 500 years ago, yet their lives are arid -- often to the point of not being worth living. "Stuff" does not seem to be enough.
I'll call those "the biggies" for now. My sense is that the reading of such a book vs "reviews" ... by me or others, is a bit like the difference between being told of mountains, the ocean, falling in love, having children, grandchildren, etc and of EXPERIENCING those things. Certainly, good wordsmiths, poets, musicians, movie makers, etc can all convey significant parts of those experiences, however I doubt that any person that has experienced one of those or thousands of other things would say "I wish that I never did the real thing, I liked the descriptions of it much better"!
Late in the millenium prior to Christ, there were a number of "higher religions" that began to replace paganism -- this is sometimes referred to as "The Axial Age" (Karl Jaspers) meaning "pivital age" because the idea of transcendence was so important to changing human thought. "More than mere matter".
It is tempting for me to head off to read 5-10 referenced works that put even more flesh on the bones of how we have returned to essentially a pre-axial pagan view -- to make the obvious Lennon modification ... "nothing to live or die for, and no religion too ..."
In the words of Evelyn Waugh quoted in the book ....
I think one has to look deeper before one will find the reason why in England today the Roman Church is recruiting so many men and women who are not notably gullible, dim-witted or eccentric.
It seems to me that in the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos…
Today we can see [the loss of Christian faith]…as the active negation of all that western culture has stood for. Civilization – and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe – has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has no significance or power to command allegiance. The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state… It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests…
That is the first discovery, that Christianity is essential to civilization and that it is in greater need of combative strength than it has been for centuries.
Christianity held out in the US for longer than it did in Europe, but we have descended into chaos as well -- pick what date you want, but few deny it today. Yes, the dominant culture still believes that the chaos of Obama was better than the chaos of Trump, however in a world driven only by raw power with no controlling theological, philosophical, constitutional or legal authority, secular life is just a constant scrum for power by any means possible.
My purpose in reading works like this is to "experience the ocean" of a great mind creating a great work. The experience is one of being made both smaller and larger -- like seeing the ocean or the mountains. It isn't really about snapping a few pictures and putting down a few words. There is some minor similarity of why it is critical for a Christian to daily read their Bible -- cover to cover, then maybe just start again, or give the New Testament a second pass before going back to Genesis -- it becomes the constant EXPERIENCE of the Bible. Not "a text", but a connection to the vastness of God much larger than mere text.
Certainly, "Secular Age" pales in comparison, it is but a "shadow" as compared to the Bible -- like comparing going to Lake Mille Lacs with going to see the Pacific Ocean.
The link to "How to Not Be Secular" above, or another highly rated review of "Secular Age" will give you the "talking points", but in my view, not the "gestalt". Secular Age is clearly a labor of love for Taylor to create -- and at least a labor of "deep like" to read. It was worth it for me, and I hesitate to advise anyone else, other than to say that I would expect that anyone will be changed by the experience.
I assume that all BOistanis except a cynical few are rising up today in unison to call for the prosecution of failed Senate candidate Roy Moore! Clearly a ton of people found the evidence amassed against him to be terribly damning to the extent that he has been referred to as a pedophile by many mainstream media outlets and high minded social media posters (poseurs?).
I took the position that their charges were "all about political gain", which certainly many on FB found to be "cynical" as they virtue signaled their high minded morals on Moore's "crimes". Unless they were and are in fact the cynical ones, I would expect a massive wave of demands from media outlets, Democrats and easily led Republicans alike for immediate prosecution! We all know that child molesters are nearly always repeat offenders, so there is little doubt that the prosecution will find a seamy string of sad victims over the past 40 years according to those who only did this for "justice".
OTOH, if there is no outcry -- or even a complete lack of concern for any investigation after this supposed awful man who many said would be "impossible for a Christian to support" just because the election is over, what would that mean? Why would sane people virtue signal about how "good" they were to come out against Moore, even to the point of questioning others religious beliefs if they did not sign on to what they saw as the completely damning nature of these 40 year old charges?
My belief is that we live in an amoral age where actual standards are becoming exceedingly rare. Today's world is ruled by the left wing "Scribes and Pharisees" who are ALL about judgment and virtue signalling, however are in fact "whitewashed sepulchers" -- their only goal is POWER, political and otherwise, and they seek to make their idea of power synonymous with "virtue".
If all those who wasted time virtue signalling on FB and in the media do NOT seek to put this known (to them) child molester behind bars, I think we have pretty solid evidence what BOistan is REALLY about! Same thing with all the fake virtue signalling relative to Trump -- as the link I put above (repeat) makes very clear in the linked Village Voice article, the supposed virtuous elites are anything but!
The BEGINNING of wisdom is the fear of God! Only by constant devotion to Bible, prayer, sacraments, etc, can any of us hope to escape the snare of "the wide road" of being in agreement with the MSM, elites, "the popular ones" through the constant bombarding of media manipulation from all corners.
Perhaps I will be proven wrong and a huge outcry for Moore's prosecution is about to rise. If I'm correct however that it is not happening, do we not all KNOW that the charges were actually just a political smear job? How could they NOT be if the supposedly sanctimonious believers in those charges don't even have a twinge of thought about all the children that they MUST believe that Moore molested over 40 years, and is no doubt molesting today?
Search your heart, you KNOW it to be true at a visceral level that if denied puts your soul in eternal peril!
First of all, it is time to introduce "intersectionality". The link takes you to the wikipedia discussion -- the quick definition is "grievance bundling", with a special need to make sure that white women are dutifully sorry for their "white privilege" before they are really accepted by "the sisterhood".
The biggies are "racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia (country having borders in their parlance) and honoring all other religions except Christianity, with SPECIAL honor to Islam.
Think of an "Intersectional Feminist" as the opposite of a deplorable -- "secular sainthood"! I will tend to refer to them as "IFs" ... seems about right.
The other aspect that you pick up from their writing is yet another new height in arrogant smugness. To the article. I'm guessing that some readers of this blog will assume it HAS to be satire, however I looked around a bit just to be sure -- though a Christian that fears for mens (and even IFs souls), wishes it were -- it's not. No "fear of God" for these women ... er, "things"!
The imaginary vignette of this column is that a "cis male" (identifying as birth gender male) has taken an IF out for a date (hey, men think with the wrong organ sometimes!).
The list of "ten" is largely a misrepresentation ... it links off to specific grievances, each of which has their own lists of many grievances ... patriarchy, rape culture, prison-industrial complex, etc. I'll just include #8 as a representative.
We live on a tiny planet, with land and water within a galaxy surrounded by a universe with an inconceivable number of other galaxies and planets. Yet here we dictate where we are and who is allowed to be where we are. It’s mind-boggling that borders are even a thing, so to call people “aliens” or “illegal immigrants” is so inhumane and despicable.
White Americans stole this land, colonized this land, created so many borders, pushed out, killed and enslaved people of color and somehow they have the audacity to claim that this land is theirs and that black and brown immigrants are stealing their jobs, land, and homes? Miss me with that bullshit.
Well, actually they defeated their opposition by force, which in a world without transcendence is the most morality you ever get. Read the entire list of 10 -- as an IF, you DO have the right to not date anyone who doesn't agree with your opinions because there are a bunch of people that could kick your ass that will defend that right -- including me, who disagrees with pretty much everything you stand for, however still sees your right to make a dating decision without coercion of any sort as being "endowed by your and my Creator".
Transcendence was the idea that there were values beyond force -- "endowed by the Creator". For the general population, that idea is dead, therefore IFs need to find some way to defeat their opposition by force in order to get their ideas to hold sway. The traditional alternative to God is the all powerful state -- set up a bunch of secret police, military, tribunals, gulags, etc, and "re-educate" or kill people that don't bow to your "list of 10". Given the 2nd Amendment still existing even in BOistan, I'd guess the IFs are going to need A LOT of range time to have "a shot" at making much of their list of 10 a reality.
Without transcendence, ideas of "right / wrong / good / evil / better / worse ... etc" come down to might makes right. The issue of who can kick whose ass.`
The physically, intellectually, financially, etc less capable need some method to "incent / coerce / create compassion within" those with more power to protect them. In Western Culture for 2K years, that was Christian Morals -- be kind to even those who hate you, care for those that are weaker, etc -- it worked quite well in general terms.
Women got the right to vote, the lame, the sick, the mentally less abled, etc were cared for, most often in religiously based hospitals. The whole ethic that got Western civilization to the spot where a woman (or what she wants to be called ???) could have a platform to write this was Christianity -- those that lack understanding of human nature might assume that a really big "Thank You!" to Christianity and Western civilization would be in order.
Lose the battle of Poitiers (Tours) in 732, and this woman and billions more might well be wearing burkas, not voting, not driving, not going to school, etc.
Nietzsche hated Christianity as well, especially the idea of "care of the weak".
Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands opposed to the tonic emotions which heighten our vitality: it has a depressing effect. We are deprived of strength when we feel pity. That loss of strength which suffering as such inflicts on life is still further increased and multiplied by pity. Pity makes suffering contagious.
Clearly the writer of the list has FAR abandoned any concept of Christianity, so who is it that will stand up for her against those stronger than her, and WHY will they desire to do this?
Perhaps there are deeper questions for her to ponder.
In the last couple of weeks we have had a a couple of major #fakenews stories that were not just glaringly wrong, they were obviously due to reporters so extremely biased that they seized what they saw as an opportunity to have a devastating "scoop" that might even take down Trump -- in whom they hate.
First we had the ABC Brian Ross report that Flynn was going to testify to being directed to talk to the Russians during the campaign by Trump -- which set twitter on fire, caused the markets to tank, and had all sorts of news outlets screaming "This is IT! We have got Trump!" !!!!!!!
Oops, Never Mind, he was directed to start talking to Russians AFTER Trump was elected -- which is of course exactly the stuff that an incoming administration does! I remember well that one of the common "news" items during the Clinton Impeachment was that "this is really really stupid, the right wingers are roiling the markets over SEX! A "private matter", even at the office, if your name is Slick Wille! Try that at YOUR place of employment and see if it flies.
The entire "MoveOn.org" was set up to "just drop it and MOVE ON" -- nobody cared about sexual harassment, rape, perjury, obstruction of justice, etc when it applied to Slick Willie. "You will scare the markets"!!!! (or maybe the horses).
No concern for that in the MSM these days -- get Trump at ALL costs!
Then, we just had the CNN report that "there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks"! ... oops, there wasn't, the Trump campaign got the access over a week AFTER everyone else had gotten it! Again, CNN, the leader in Fake News is the one doing the retraction this time.
Is there anything that somebody that is a critical thinker is likely to believe the MSM on these days? Certainly nothing I can think of if it is supposed to reflect badly on Trump -- their track record is just too bad!
The following is a quote from the end of the PL link.
I agree with Professor Barnett that this is a constitutional crisis. The most powerful branch of today’s government is the Fourth: the permanent federal bureaucracy that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. The Trump administration can best be viewed, perhaps, as a struggle to the death between American voters and the federal employees who are paid to serve them.
The message of Watergate ought to have been "The Deep State" meets "Deep Throat" -- one of the main actors in ending America was the Administrative / Deep State. The following from this fine article ...
In other words, it looks like a low-integrity, reckless, biased bureaucrat has played an important role in two of the most important and politically charged criminal investigations of the new century. Yes, it’s good that Mueller removed Strzok when he discovered the text messages. No, Strzok is not solely responsible for the conclusions reached in either investigation. But his mere presence hurts public confidence in the FBI, and it does so in a way that further illustrates a persistent and enduring national problem: America’s permanent bureaucracy is unacceptably partisan.
Even FDR declared public sector unions to be completely unacceptable -- "It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government". If we still had a Constitution and a population that paid attention to what is happening in DC, the all-powerful, unionized Administrative State could never exist, and it CERTAINLY could not be part of "the resistance" to the duly elected president!
Oh, and the woman with whom he supposedly exchanged anti-Trump texts, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, worked for both Mr. Mueller and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who was accused of a conflict of interest in the Clinton probe when it came out that Clinton allies had donated to the political campaign of Mr. McCabe’s wife. The texts haven’t been publicly released, but it’s fair to assume their anti-Trump bias must be clear for Mr. Mueller to reassign such a senior agent.
An FBI agent that works to get Hillary off and then switches over to attempting by only barely camouflaged coup to remove a duly elected president.
BOistan makes 3rd world tribal states like BO's native Kenya (see "Dreams" his claim, not mine) seem to be paragons of virtue in comparison.
Naturally the MSM is downplaying NY Senator Schumer's support for Trump declaring the fact that we have all known for a few thousand years -- Jerusalem is the capital of Israel!
Schumer is of course a left winger, however for him, it appears that his faith in God, as well as his acceptance of reality actually "Trumps" his hatred of Trump! My hat is off to Chuck Schumer, and that is not something I say very often!
“We differ in our opinions, left and right,” he said as the speech concluded. “We disagree on the means and the objective. In Israel, we all agree on one issue: the wholeness of Jerusalem, the continuation of its existence as capital of the State of Israel. There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem.”
That speech was given Oct. 25, 1995. On Nov. 4, a far-right student fatally shot him.
The evening before his speech, the Congress of the United States passed a law echoing Rabin’s assertions about the city. Spurred by the desire to act before Rabin’s visit, the House and Senate passed a bill called the “Jerusalem Embassy Act,” which formally recognized the city as the country’s capital and called for the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be moved there from Tel Aviv by 1999.
Support for the bill was overwhelming. It passed the Senate by a 93 to 5 vote, with four Republicans and one Democrat voting no. It passed the House 374 to 37, with 153 Democrats joining most of the new Republican majority that had swept into power in 1994.
Jesus will return to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel -- if you are a Christian, you believe that. If you accept reality, you know that Israel is the capital of Israel.
Arabs don't accept Israel as even existing. Can you imagine being in a fight with someone that refuses to accept your existence? How about if your supposed ally refused to accept that your capital city from time immemorial was your capital city?
Perhaps it is too early for hatred to be "trumped", however recognizing reality is an important step in the path toward truth.
The left has decided to throw FrankenClown under the bus -- naturally, they figure they ought to get A LOT in return for this "sacrifice"! Many of the callers to MPR have indicated that Franken ought to keep his job AND, "Trump, Moore and Thomas" AT LEAST should go, not be seated, etc. Mark Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.
The PL link covers the stupidity of this thought with a lot more attention than it really deserves.
We live in an age of amoral insanity, and have for a good long while. My assertion is that it is completely foolish to think of this current Democrat / media round of faux puritanism as anything other than a desperate political ploy to steal a senate seat and at least imagine they will make headway toward causing Trump to resign or be removed "somehow". If it wasn't for the stupidity of the Republican party, they would have no chance.
As a Christian, I also want to point out that there is no Biblical injunction on who you vote for -- "Democracy" was pretty much unknown in biblical times, Policy seems different. Voting for candidates that support abortion, let alone gay "marriage", or "gender" equality seems to be going out on a limb. None of us as Christians get to decide if it is "too far" for others, however (judgement is beyond our pay grade).
The supposed idea that you as a Christian "vote for the most virtuous candidate" rather than for a candidate that supports Christian policy seems doctrinally indefensible. Christians know that ALL of us are totally sinful, and that the difference between "lusting with your eyes" and actually committing adultery isn't so large in God's eyes as ours because he sees the spirit, while we only see the flesh.
The idea that "Christians must vote for a virtuous candidate" pretty much crept in with with the effort to impeach Nixon ( He SWORE on tape! that killed him in the church I grew up in). It continued with Reagan -- "how can you vote for Reagan when he is DIVORCED and rarely attends church!!!", then obviously became a "theme" as Bob Packwood and other R's were drummed out for "sexual harassment", a weapon to be used by the left without any fear of collateral damage because OBVIOUSLY, "Christians" HAD to "vote their moral conscience" (and Democrats of course did not!).
Really? And Teddy, Slick, Gary Studds, etc, etc were then "proof" that there were no "Christian Democrats"? A sad part of modern Christianity is that MANY people who want to be identified as "christian", and apparently a BUNCH of the sort that rarely grace a church or open a Bible, like to "virtue signal" about how much they are against the "sins" of Trump, Moore, Clarence Thomas, or the next R to get the scarlet "sexual harassment" letter. It's an odd development -- they are OK with very old and serious problems on the D side, yet they are exceedingly proud of their "virtue" when the MSM tells them to tar and feather one of their supposed "own".
You know that Teddy Kennedy left his car parked upside down under water with his soon to be deceased secretary in it in '69, yet the Democrat party kept him seated as the "lyin of the Senate" until his death in 2009. He never changed his MO ... drinking, wild parties, sex with young staffers, rape accusations for his nephew when out with "uncle Ted" in FL ... Teddy set the moral standard for Democrats -- kill the unborn, kill young women if they cause you trouble, have your way with any of them that you want with impunity ... 40 years in the Senate AFTER an actual dead body in your car! The proud Democrat standard has been "If it feels good DO IT!" since the '60s.
The linked column from the Village Voice in 2008 needs to be read by all BOistanis so we can be "on the same page". Once you read it and realize it was PUBLISHED in 2008, you will know that our "sophisticated coastal elites" live to a set of "standards" like the "standards" of Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylon, Rome, etc. The behavior covered in the Voice is simply not something to which the term "standards" apply.
Here is Katie Couric at the roast of Lauer doing a top ten about Matt ...
10. According to his wife, he’s not really an early riser, if you know what I mean.
7. When Katie did the colonoscopy live on television, doctors found Matt’s head.
“2. He loves to eat Curry.”
The room loved that one, and Ann Curry blanched. Great moment.
Here is Gilbert Gottfried ...
He had recently given Today’s Asian-American co-host Ann Curry some lessons in stand-up comedy. “People ask me, does Ann Curry’s pussy go sideways?” Gilbert said to gasps. But he was just getting warmed up.
He finished with: “How do you get a faggot to fuck a woman? Fill up her cunt with shit. Thank you.”
Nice to know what our "betters" really think of Asian women, women in general, and gays isn't it? You probably think those lines sound "bad", which just shows that you are more of a fly-over country prude than a true sophisticated coastal elite! Remember, there were over 1500 people there and this was PUBLISHED in the Village Voice -- they figured that the "lower classes" would "take it wrong", so the blessed TP controlled MSM didn't bother to say anything -- hell, NBC did the roast!
Certainly the people "in the know" in our great Democrat / media complex fully understand that this kind of stuff goes on pretty regularly. Those people are the ELITE! They are above mere petty prurient "morals" --- they MAKE the rules! Let the flyover prudish idiots with their bourgeois values eat cake! (or maybe drink light beer in modern parlance)
So after having a guy that drowned his secretary in the senate for over 40 years AFTER drowning her, they want to tell us there is some "question" about a guy they managed to dig up some 35+ year old "charges" on being SEATED in the same senate???? Hello? This whole sorry nation sat by while Teddy sat in that body for FORTY YEARS after screwing up and ACTUALLY leaving a cold dead body of a young woman in his car!
Show me a body, or at least a 35 year old "love child" that passes the DNA test on Moore! These "accusers" are WAY old enough to be grandmas now and they didn't see fit to bring this up for 40 years? People that had even a minute sense of morality had to live with Teddy sitting in the Senate for 40 years after Chappaquiddick, and the NEW "standard" is supposed to be unsubstantiated CHARGES the same age class as Teddy's aqua parking ticket, and he stayed in the Senate after actually leaving a body?
In a sane world, NOBODY would take that seriously at all. They want the Stupid Party (R) to buy into 40 year old charges as the "new standard"? Let's see, we were supposed to believe forged documents on the "important issue" of how good a fighter pilot W was supposed to have been 30 years prior. OTOH, the fact that BO wrote a book that originally indicated he was a Kenyan, and contained lots of discussion about how his "real roots" were in Kenya and he had dedicated his life to "destroying the colonial powers" along with a few gems about "pussy", "niggers", and "filtering white blood", was not even an issue that needed covering? "Dreams" was just not something that needed to be even talked about! (old news! ... a week old if you are a D, MORE THAN 40 years if you are an R)
It’s easy to see how both Hoke and Clinton might have been imbued with a foolhardy fearlessness and a flatfooted misperception that they were untouchable. Washington was like summer camp, providing a suspension of certain rules and self-consciousness. If a guy knew how to play it, it was a pretty good place to swing.
Those to the manner born who’ve been in trouble -- Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd, for instance, who participated in the famous “waitress sandwich” at La Brasserie in 1985, while their dates were in the bathroom -- have tended to get out of it by claiming that their boyish high jinks had simply gotten out of hand.
As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd's lap, Kennedy jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following a friendly argument between the senators over the check.
The '98 Slick defense article closes with this ...
Now and forever, whatever is happening behind closed doors, what Washingtonians constantly emphasize is the city’s sexless environment, a notion that is partly fact, partly fig leaf. Last week, a giggling Democratic congressman was heard telling a lobbyist that part of him wanted to condemn Clinton. “On the other hand,” he said, “I want a blood transfusion from him.”
At least since Chappaquiddick, the DC ethos has been a very seedy "summer camp". As the article makes clear, lots of Republicans tried to hide out, got caught, and lost their jobs. Democrats didn't bother to hide -- as long as the "Teddy Standard" was in place, there was no reason to. Once the "Slick Standard" came in, it is certainly no wonder that guys like Franken just "grabbed away" -- hell, even perjury in the supposed "highest office" (all be it stained with presidential "emissions") could be excused!
A lot of the "Stupid Party" (R) is happy to go for this sort of scharade, hey, at least they get to "virtue signal". The D's know all about WINNING ... they are going to "sacrifice" the village clown dwarf from loony MN who likes to actually grab private parts (not talk about it like Trump) in order to get another baby killing D in the senate. How many baby killers does it take to make a "moral quorum"?
We don't like to admit where we live. We still like to imagine we live in "America" which once even had CHRISTIAN morals! We don't live there! This has been a disgusting amoral declining state since at least Chappaquiddick, through Roe V Wade, "Borking", the Clarence Thomas Lynching, Slick Willie, gay "marriage", 57 genders ... There really has never been a "culture war", only a cultural retreat so far!
Read the Village Voice article and tell me that the "elites" in BOistan have ANY sort of "morals" beyond POWER -- WINNING--PLEASURE!!! If you find "moral people" in that article, you need to take a long sniff for brimstone and a careful listen for demonic laughter!
The ONLY thing that is going to return us to morality is a Christian revival -- and then, from our knees, we can pray that God restores "America"! DON'T let the Republican party get stuck with the "Moore Standard" -- 40 year old "accusations" never heard before with no other accusations of misbehavior over 40 years are "disqualifying", while the D party returns to the "Teddy / Slick Standard" after their short little virtue signalling scharade!
Never trust the "morality" of a party that believes that killing babies in their mothers womb is "moral". "The Party" (TP-D) is as out of power as they have been since FDR. Both the SCOTUS and the Administrative/Deep State are being attacked by Trump. They are DESPERATE, and amoral desperate people will do ANYTHING!! They still own the Administrative State (the most powerful branch of government that was never supposed to be a branch of government!), most of the media, the popular culture, academia, and even most of corporate BOistan!
Worse, there are a number of RINO R's that rather like the amoral world of TP and the Administrative State -- Trump is very much a threat to them as well, so they would love nothing better than to take him down in some sort of manufactured "scandal". If 30-40 year old "charges" are all it takes, then TP and the MSM (but I repeat myself) will be back on top and forcing you to be celebrating gay "marriage" and 57 genders again VERY soon!
Naturally, liberals are apocolyptic over the tax bill ... anything that has even a TINY chance to allow people to keep more of their own money is "the end of the world" to liberals. This Forbes article claims that the bill is "The End of Economic Sanity in DC" ... assuring us that there HAS been "economic sanity in DC" in the past and "this time it's different" ... ho hum.
A tax form that says "list your income" with a command to "send it in" (for people that make "more" than a given liberal of course!) is the only tax plan they MIGHT find "fair" ... until they start taxing "wealth" while you are still alive at least.
I happen to be reading "The Age of Reagan" right now and as luck would have it, just read past the quotes in the attached column -- they say history doesn't repeat itself, but only "rhymes". This one seems closer to a repeat to me! The following is a good quote from the linked, and the linked is well worthy of reading.
Liberal rhetoric on the issue is revealing. Allowing people to keep more of their own money was called “showering money on the rich,” as though all wealth belonged to the government rather than the people. If not outright egalitarianism, the Democratic attitude is at least rooted in a distributionist fallacy—the idea that wealth is distributed, mostly by government, rather than earned by individuals and apportioned by markets ...
I'm not going to do a ton of work and link everything, but these figures are mostly from my usual sources -- CBO, Wikipedia, etc.
Obama YEARLY deficit 2009 $1.4 T, 2010 $1.3T ... the "stimulus" was spent on things like Solyndra, sending something like $30 B largely to democrat run schemes that knew how to write "green" on a piece of paper. The D's took over congress in '06 and it was downhill from then on.
Over his term, Obama added $10 T to the debt, W added $5 T , and the rest of US history (pre-BOistan) added $5T in over 200 years. If Trump adds less than $20 T on his own, he will be doing "better" by recent standards in which each succeeding president doubles the debt!
As the media and your lefty friends go nuts over the "massive increase in debt", just remember the BO cliff! All that is being discussed here are the question of the pitch of that far right of the chart based on TWO elements of which GDP growth is actually the major one. CBO policy counts all tax changes as economically neutral -- tax increases never decrease GDP, tax cuts never increase it ... even though both typically happen, in order to stay being called "non-partisan", the CBO just leaves the contentious issue off the table in it's calculations.
Why did the BO cliff happen? He attempted to "stimulate" the economy via massive government directed SPENDING, so GDP growth was terrible and and the money largely went to big democrat supporters as a reward for being democrats, vs where it might actually increase growth.
All the howling about the current tax bill is about twiddling the upward slope of the chart below -- the CLIFF is about Democrats actually being in charge.
People that pay attention know we have been to this movie before, with Reagan in '81. Slick Willie didn't get to wreck the economy ... the Republicans took over the House for the first time in 50 years in '94, and paid the price of controlling the RATE OF GROWTH in government spending, while Slick took the credit for a short budget surplus. In terms of how media works here, that is pretty much a "fair deal'.
The REAL test is if the Republicans and Trump are willing to take the hard measures of reducing that rate of growth in spending again ... they do NOT have to make actual "cuts", only reduce the rate of growth, and that chart will trend down again (slowly) as it did in the late '90s providing that the tax cuts have the desired effect of increasing GDP growth!
This is all pretty easy to understand, one would think that a few more people would consider understanding it.
First, a good explanatory article from Victor Davis Hanson; a quote:
What can possibly be Trump’s purpose in appearing so thin-skinned and petty?
Likely it is twofold. Most obviously he seeks to reestablish deterrence: don’t dare attack Trump unless you are willing to be dragged down with him into a netherworld whose rules he has mastered. Just ask Low Energy Jeb, Little Marco, or Lyin’ Ted.
If we have never seen a president stoop to fight with the NFL, we have also never seen the NFL kneel to self-destruct by offending millions of its fans. If the president cannot defend a national tradition of standing in honor during the National Anthem, who else could?
Second, he knows the politicians, media hacks, and celebrities who attack him are sanctimonious bullies by nature. Their professions traffic in self-righteous invective, with the expectation that they will be never be attacked in kind.
Many people are confused by Trump -- "thin skinned, immature, non-presidential", etc. All might be true, however, HE FIGHTS ... he is the first fighting president in the culture wars, and he has done a lot of fighting and a good deal of winning this past year. See Gorsuch as well as court appointments in general, as well as making headway against the Deep State.
The big Christmas gift to all productive BOistanis is Tax Reform. The exact parameters are still in doubt, however if SALT is removed or restricted, the corporate rate drops significantly, AMT is removed or the threshold raised, and there is SOME movement toward lower rates, I think we can expect at least a couple percent of GDP growth to be added on so that they could even quit faking the numbers if they wanted and show REAL GDP GROWTH!
It's been a LONG time since there was much of anything like "optimism" in ether the old America, or BOistan ... like 17 years ago in 2K.
Certainly the constant attacks from "The Party" (TP-D), the Deep State, and of course the media will continue, however in their attempts to get Trump, they are causing themselves a lot of collateral damage, and not only in the area of "Sexual Correctness" ... ABC has suspended Brian Ross for 4 weeks for the Fake News that Trump had ordered Flynn to work with the Russians while a candidate. In fact, he was instructed to work with them AFTER the election when Trump was president elect -- a completely normal and expected interaction. Not that private citizens can't talk to Russians -- the Clinton Fund did A LOT of it for MONEY while transferring 20% of our urainium to them in the Urainium One deal!
Lot's of smoke coming out of the TP and media houses, BOcare at least heavily wounded as part of Tax Reform, SCOTUS, judicial appointments, bleeding from the Deep State, and the constant spectacle of lefty heads exploding.
In many ways, this ought to be in the humor section. Mueller removes an agent on his investigative staff because he is sending anti-Trump text messages (so much for "unbiased").
... But the existence of the text messages is likely to fuel claims by Mr. Trump ththat he is a target of the “deep state” — a term used to describe the notion that government intelligence agencies secretly conspire together.
The discovery of the text messages came at a crucial moment in Mr. Mueller’s investigation. At the time, Mr. Mueller was ramping up his investigation into Mr. Trump’s former advisers, while also coming under criticism for putting many donors to Democratic candidates on his team.
Ya think? You mean just because they send anti-Trump text messages and there are a bunch of people in the Witch Hunt that were Hillary donors, someone might think there is a "bias"???? How paranoid!
The article also covers Trump pointing out that the wife of the FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe took $500K in campaign contributions from longtime Clintonista Terry McCualiffe. Damn! One would think that little "swamp exchanges" amoung "The Party" TP-D and it's operatives / families busy making sure the Deep State keeps all the real power would be bothersome to people!
The bubbles are rising as the swamp begins to drain!
The human tendency for anyone but a hard lefty is to look at guys like Franken and Keillor and be flooded with schadenfreude -- these are guys that have attacked anyone remotely conservative with the darkest venom they could muster with never a thought of mercy. They were SMUG in capital letters, and that was that. They were on the "right" (meaning left) side of history, goodness, intelligence, wealth, power, privilege, etc, etc ... absolutely qualified to put down ANYONE -- as Franken does my Lord Jesus here. Hey, it's "humor"! Add into that the general tone of the callers to an MPR show this AM -- "I'm SHOCKED that you would not stand by good men like Garrison, while TRUMP get's off! I'm done with MPR, you will never see another dime!" In the tribal state of BOistan, we love our own and ONLY our own!
The odd thing is that if Garrson is telling the truth -- and no matter how far left and smug one is, that is always a possibility, then he is out because he put his hand on a woman's exposed back and apologized. AFAIK, that is all that is widely known at this point -- I can't really blame his left wing defenders to be losing an "icon" over a hand on a back.
Do I "believe him"? Well, no, the fact that MPR would "sever all ties" with a man that has been THE face of MPR since I've been able to listen, means to me that we are likely to find that there are LOTS of other tales to be told. He has a giant sense of entitlement and his personal power that "taking a few liberties" would HARDLY be unexpected -- this is BOistan after all, the land of "no controlling moral authority".
Are we really going to sit here and let the whole BOistani system of "Power is all that counts, corruption is king, and if it feels good, DO IT" be called into question? The MPR callers were certainly not -- they want their "icon" back! BOistan is supposed to be the land of ZERO morals, what is going on? (for THEIR side stupid, the conservative side is supposed to be concerned with 38 year old "charges")
"Sexual Harassment" is such a broad term that it includes what Clarence Thomas was ACCUSED of (mentioning an x rated movie and suggesting that there might be a pubic hair on a can of Coke), after which Anita Hill followed him to two different jobs. It also includes charges of rape and attempted rape against Bill Clinton and Harvey Weinstein, as well as LONG lists of grabbing, exposing themselves, masturbating, etc, etc. Justice Thomas will never be forgiven for his ALLEGED words, while Slick is still an "icon" to many today, and if Hillary had been elected, would be functioning as "First Man" with no outcry from the MSM. (clearly, no Trump, no lefty puritanical purge!)
My contention is that "Sexual Harassment" was purposely created to be a weapon for women, with the assumption being that "liberal men" would largely be exempt, and it would be a way to take "sexually repressed, nasty conservative hypocrites" out of public life. The law on Sexual Harassment is that "if she feels she was harassed, she was harassed"! Words, pictures, attitudes, staring too long, etc, etc are ALL part of Sexual Harassment! It might better be called "Sexual Correctness" (SC), since it's enforcement is done very much like "Political Correctness". I cover some more detail here if you have interest.
Take "Pocahontas" in the PC case ... the word could denote a wonderful Disney character, or if used by Trump it could be a "racial slur" -- it is all up to what "The Party" (TP-D) and it's wholly owned media say! What sexual behavior is and is not problematic is up to the same powers. (it's POWER baby!) The busty young lass with the low cut top bends over to pick something up, and the male is caught looking, that can EASILY be "SC"! She can wear whatever she wants, he is not allowed to look if it makes her OR some other woman "feel uncomfortable".
Gays are completely unable to control their sexual desires -- "it's their nature", heterosexual men are completely able to control their notice of exposed cleavage. If you want to stay in good standing with TP, you MUST agree!
Since the early '90s, the SC genie worked pretty much as intended -- when it showed it's face relative to a lefty politician, it was quickly ordered back in the bottle by the MSM and "feminist" women. When it attacked a conservative -- no matter how mild (or ancient) the "charges" as in the case of Clarence Thomas, it was a fearsome genie indeed, destroying many men's careers and political aspirations. (men on the WRONG (right) side!)
In an adult and civil society, women would be well able to deliver a knee to the scrotum, a scratch to the face, a nice scream, or other "scene stealer", and go off to the supervisor, a large male friend, or something similar, and the cad would be put in his place. Slick Willie would have had his famous index finger broken so many times it would crookedly point back at his oft beaten pulpy face in an adult world.
Alas, we live in a feminized society of back room gossip and palace intrigue in the media as well as the halls of government and business. Both manly and womanly honor and virtue are dead, replaced by sneaky, snide, slimy interactions and "cat-fight hissy fits" of the sort that Obama excelled at. The "end of life" for once great cultures is always thus -- Athens, Rome, Britannia ... all ended with deep corruption of all types ... sexual just being one example.
In a world of even minimal honor and virtue, "Sexual Harassment" would leave a "mark" -- the perpetrator bent double, nursing an embarrassing scratch on the face, a black eye, etc. It would be "out" in an instant, because the woman would find her personal honor and reputation to be worth far more than some "career" ... and indeed, the sorts of women that moved up the ladder in that world would be those that were known to be more than capable of standing up for themselves in any situation, as well as likely having male friends that any "masher" would seek to avoid a visit from at all costs.
I continue to detest the world that has been created by the gutless, godless, double talking politically correct vermin that generally hold power in this kindergarten swamp society. Apparently they are often "mean to women", and the women largely take it and stew in their juices for years, thus creating more such incidents for their sisters. One can't feel awfully sorry for them however, since Teddy Kennedy set the standard by killing his secretary and getting off scot free in '69, and then Slick Willie cemented the standard in '99 -- we are left with an amoral feminized society where the slimy tend to prevail. Nearly half the female population has been willing to trade their "virtue" to protect the right to sacrifice their children to the Moloch of "convenience" in abortion.
There seem to be two prospects here as to what's going on?, of the kind that allow a mixture of both:
TP decided that Weinstein was no longer worth protecting with Trump in the WH and the Clinton machine derailed. They gave him up knowing that there would be SOME collateral damage, but grossly miscalculated as to the extent.
TP, the Deep State and the RINO Swampies are in a TRUE balls to the wall panic as the swamp has begun to drain and things are becoming exposed. Strong evidence for this is the ADMITTED $17 million in public funds paid out to cover up sexual harassment since '97! The fact that a group of our congressmen sat down and set up a "slush fund" using public money to protect their own proves what readers of this blog well know -- DC in BOistan is corrupt beyond belief, and that corruption is DEEP in both parties!
Certainly many on the left knew that mustering up 38 year old "charges" to try to steal a long-shot Senate seat reeked of desperation -- however, at least at the WaPo, they figured out that desperation is just where they are at -- tax reform goes through, economy keeps humming, judicial appointments keep rolling, Deep State keeps taking hits ... they feel the icy grip of panic. They have been hammering Trump 24x7 since August of 2016, and he is STILL STANDING! They felt they had to fire all they had at Moore, and they set their own smouldering house fully aflame! It is a bit tough not to feel a LITTLE schadenfreude
I find the MPR / Keillor case to be likely a similar sort of exposure. The fact that they "cut all ties" reminds me of the exit of Bill Kling in 2010 ... this excerpt is from a 2009 article on his $600K salary ...
"Topping the list, of course, is Bill Kling, the president and CEO of the entity officially known as Minnesota Public Radio-American Public Media. He made $373,254 in compensation and benefits from MPR/APM, which for the year grossed $82.2 million. Kling's total take swelled to $606,753, including approximately $180,000 from American Public Media Group (APMG), which controls MPR, and $48,000 from Greenspring, MPR's for-profit arm."
"Non-profit" doesn't mean that certain people like Garrison and Kling don't make LOTS of money ... "officially", Kling took $48K from the "for profit arm" Greenspring. "Follow the money" is often a great piece of advice ... I expect part of the reason for the very quick and very clean separation is that the tax money soaking NPR and MPR (we send money to MPR as part of a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT here in the land of Loons) ... my guess is that someone looking closer at "Pretty Good Goods" and such might find some interesting finances.
I started out on #1, but am shifting toward #2 ... it certainly isn't that Matt Lauer and Charlie Wrangle were not well known abusers.Here is Katie on Matt in 2012 on air ...
Here is Cokie Roberts letting us know that women DC reporters for YEARS knew not to get in an elevator with Charlie ...
"Situational Morals" are NOT morals! For ALL unrepentant humans, the ONLY sort of "standards" are DOUBLE STANDARDS! **ONLY*** by recognition that we are ALL filthy sinners in need of REGULAR repentance and participation in Holy Communion, can we even hope to do better.
Up until the '60's, America was largely a Christian Nation. In a Christian Nation, real standards matter! There was even an expectation that leadership needed to be held to a "higher standard". Starting in the '60s, we seriously abandoned God. Pick your poison ... Chappaquiddick, Watergate, Roe V Wade, "Borking", the Clarence Thomas lynching, Slick Willie, gay "marriage", 58 genders ... your list may well be different from mine, but America gave way to BOistan ... and thus Trump (well covered here).
Political Correctness (PC), Sexual Correctness(SC) are all symptoms of our migration to the sick tribal backwater of BOistan. Trump has barely dented the swamp, but he HAS begun ... some of the measures he is taking are hitting them very hard! Will the current tempest raise public outrage that our own "swamp congress" has spent $17 million of our money to protect themselves, when the protection is SUPPOSED to be that we get a chance to vote them out every two years???? I suppose that largely depends on the media -- we live in a nation where individuals don't dare feel "outrage" unless their favorite media outlet tells them it is OK.
Can we continue to live in a nation where any woman can "feel harassed" and make accusations decades after the fact and be taken seriously? I'll close with this from Power Line ...
Men lie. Women lie. Children lie like rugs. Rose McGowan I believe. Ms. Tweeden I believe, even without the grotesque photographic evidence. But I have grave doubts about some of the #MeTooers. Mark my words: Turning America into a perpetual Salem Witch Hunt where any man can be destroyed just by accusations of incidents that allegedly happened 40 years earlier and can never be disproved will not end well. Ask not for whom the 10, 20, 30-year-old sexual assault accusation tolls, my brothers; it tolls for thee.
Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies built on blockchains have a pretty decent potenital to finally replace fiat currency, which replaced gold, which replaced barter.
This is a pretty good little video on the subject I think:
The "value" is in the whole exchange system, which is decentralized, secure, open, and "smart" (contains logic / algorithms) and best of all, since it seems very likely that the fiat currency providers are all going to collapse, it has no central point of control.
Now, if we get blasted back to the stone age, gold is MUCH better, however, barring that, there seems to be solid potential for this over fiat currency, since "the full faith and trust" of BOistan is really not very comforting!
Not all that expensive to begin bitcoin mining! Like all mining, there is a lot of risk, but on the bright side you don't have to go down in a dark damp hole.
A good little summary of one of the Fake News techniques to fill dead air -- usually with an extremely partisan bent -- ah, the "fire hydrant of youth"! Pissing on each others tennis shoes and calling it "virtue"!
"What mainly drives the events of the “Denunciad,” as the gods do the “Odyssey,” is the media, which has discovered an endless fount of news—a sort of fire hydrant of youth. Suppose that Person X makes an inappropriate remark, and you are a news director charged with covering the story. By itself, it’s liable to fade pretty quickly, yet there are 24 hours of live updates to fill. But there is hope: Did President Trump denounce the remark by Person X? Did he do so quickly enough? Did he do so in the rigidly mechanical terms demanded? What about Senator Y? Did he denounce it full-throatedly? Did he say, verbatim, that “this is not who we are as Americans”?"
It is laughable how this scam works ... there are 100's of entertainers, rap artists, athletes, criminals, etc that are staunch supporters of "The Party" (TP-D) ... in fact, nearly every felon and certainly the vast majority of illegals in BOistan in general support TP. If you are a "D", you can say anything you want as long as it doesn't very directly go against TP doctrine, it is "A OK". And even if it does, as long as you are say black, female, a criminal, or some combination of that above, it is still OK.
Even if it isn't, the powers that be NEVER call on a TP politician of any level to repudiate it -- unless of course it is show for a "Sister Solja moment" as executed so smoothly by Slick Willie.
I often feel like a stranger in a strange land. How rare can it really be to look at a half full / half empty glass and think that there must be at least a few other ways to view it ... the engineering view "twice as big as it needs to be"; the scientific answer: "the glass is full as always, filled partially with gas and partially with a liquid, it appears to be filled with approximately equal parts of both. With testing, the exact quantities and makeup of both can be further determined"; the process engineer: "if filling, half full, if empying, half empty" ... one could go on.
The article author belives they have "proven" that when people feel "safe and secure" (ie. "smug"), they are more liberal. When they realize that they are never completely safe and secure and that they and their loved ones are constantly exposed to threats (eg. disease, accident, smug liberals spending their nation into bankruptcy, etc) they tend to be more conservative. The difference (as it always has been) is reality based or fantasy based!
In both instances, we had manipulated a deeper underlying reason for political attitudes, the strength of the basic motivation of safety and survival. The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel.
Certainly the wealthy students of Yale feel quite smug, so this seems completely reasonable to them, but SERIOUSLY? Can they not for just the merest second picture themselves up in a loud nasty bar in say New Hampshire, when a big bearded guy in a MAGA Hat and a 32oz mug of beer saunters up to them in their Pussy Hat and says, "hey, is that actually one of those Pussy Hat things? Why the hell would one wear one of those?" ... no doubt their amygdala would put on a major growth spurt like the Grinches heart, and they might even be hoping a conservative cop was close by!
Obviously, the super smug don't account for all the liberals, only for the elite. The rest of the liberals pretty much just want free things -- and will vote for whomever promises them the most free stuff to keep them "secure". They either lack the ability or the interest to think about what happens when the bill inevitably comes due on all that free stuff, because that requires facing tough questions and the real world, which is ALWAYS something that makes mortals feel much less smug once they consider it!
"The fear of God is the BEGINNING of wisdom!".
Oh, and being smug is NEVER wise! The level of smugness required to write and publish an article such as this makes me realize why we ended up living in BOistan.
