Rod, people aren't talking about JD Vance's speech in Europe over here right now. What they're talking about is his baiting of Zelensky during the White House gang-up last Friday and they are blaming Vance (who supposedly has SOME intelligence) for starting it instead of Trump (who will always act like a 2-year-old when he can). Vance is being portrayed as just as big a buffoon on Saturday Night Live now as Trump is - and is that where he wants to be not only 2 months into his vice presidency?
I was on a conference call tonight with my congresswoman - along with 7,400 others. Things are blowing up here. GOP leaders are telling members of Congress not to have public townhalls anymore because last weekend all over the country people were screaming at their Republican reps. Layoffs are skyrocketing, as are gas prices. The stock market is plunging. If Vance had a brain, he'd think of a way to save the country from this mess fast or he's going to go down with it.
Nah. Zelensky insisted on coming to the White House to sign the deal he’d previously backed out of *twice*. And he used the high-profile event to try to embarrass Trump and Vance by lecturing them in front of rolling cameras. Vance, rightly, wasn’t having it. Trump, rightly, put Zelensky in his place.
Zelensky pulled this ridiculous stunt for one of two reasons, or both: he hoped either to bend clearly-stated, finally sane US policy to his will, or he hoped to cement European solidarity going forward, by showing everyone that he could stand up to the Orange Hitler.
Also, it appears that Z-man had previously agreed to a deal behind closed doors but then went out in public lying about it, so Trump probably realized that this throwdown had to happen in front of cameras now. The people who have the narrative backward here are pretty much the same ones who have it backward on everything: they can't be won over, and there's nothing that Trump could do that they would applaud. So write them off and leave them be.
I'll happily leave them be. I just think they should mind the things they're good at minding. Which is: Whatever they're all saying at any given moment.
Yesterday I talked for an hour with a liberal woman without revealing my own politics (and evidently it never occurred to her that I might have voted for Trump). It was fascinating and fun—but also kinda sad, to see how the wokist brainwash twists and undermines what could otherwise be a sound mind and soul.
You'd think that they would reason: "Since I know this person isn't horrible, maybe it isn't true that only horrible people support Trump." Nope—instead they'd just think, "He was secretly horrible all along!"
When I owned a business in Washington DC, a liberal Jewish woman who did the books for a local pharmacist came down to my business a few weeks after Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. She looked over at my blue-collar, Baltimore German pressman and said, "I bet he voted for Trump." She didn't even contemplate that everybody else in my business voted for Trump and disdained Hillary Clinton. We were all deplorables.
Given Zelensky's past reverses on the mineral deal, even if he really, really commits to it now, if I were at the White House, there would be no special signing ceremony. It would be DocuSign only for Zelensky.
I can agree that this is a serious PR problem for the White House, but if you watch the entire 40 minute exchange with Zelensky, it is clear that Trump and Vance were baited by him into that blow-up.
Ah -- missed the link. It's good stuff. I've got several UK friends who find it very hard to get J D's vibe. They haven't met many people like him, i.e. a true product of the heartland who's not a Hollywood caricature. I tell them I like him because he's a lot like me in terms of background and views, but I don't know how much that helps . . . .
Appalachain people only have a few analogs I can think of in Europe and all of them are on the periphery. Actual Scottish highlanders (Not the Glasgwegian speaking tourist attractions) to some degree, Laplanders, Basques or Cossacks. JD is two generations removed, but I know his hometown, and it's at least partially an Appalachian colony.
My Michigan home town had a huge Appalachian diaspora of auto factory workers. And I heard Akron OH, when I lived there, called "the northernmost town of West Virginia".
You might want to tell your UK friends that millions of Americans don't get the vibe of English policemen looking the other way as thousands of English working class girls are made prostitutes by Muslims. I just don't get it.
Do you remember history enough to remember the electrifying speech FDR made in his 1936 reelection campaign about his opponents' hatred for him? His response should be Vance's toward Europe's hatred of him: "I welcome their hatred!"
Why wouldn't Europe hate him? He's a believing Christian, if a Papist. ( I always respect my interlocutors. ) That's enough for that degenerate continent to hate him.
Vance also believes Europeans should defend themselves and not look for Uncle Sam to subsidize their welfare states. Vance also believes in free speech even if it is impolitic in the eyes of the establishment.
By and large they are also the people who care little about the immediate context of the meeting or indeed the war. Because, irresponsibly, they assume they don’t have to. They know a “victim” when they see one, and their job is to emote in favor of the victim.
And whoever Trump argues with is by definition a Victim, because Trump is by definition a Victimizer. It's the MO.
People like this come in two types. Those who just don't know any better, and those who do know better but are lying.
There's a "Nobody I know voted for Nixon!" phenomenon in play. That's always going to be a thing, but people need to recognize that.
One of the problems very intelligent people often have is that they know what confirmaton bias is, and they want to believe that because they know that that they wouldn't fall victim to it without actually doing the work not to fall victim to it.
On the point of assigning victimhood to critics of Trump, consider NPR's recent interview with John Bolton, who apparently has been upgraded in the progressive mind from bloodthirsty, right-wing demon to unfairly treated senior statesman.
JD Vance was also right when he pointed out that the tours that foriegn leaders take visiting politicans and journalists on are set up to support their version of events. This is an open secret to the professionals, but it's good that he put that out in the open.
Can you imagine Ronald Reagan losing it like that? Or even George W Bush? An old, old maxim: A man who cannot master himself is not fit to be master of others.
I can't imagine Reagan or the two Bushes losing it like that as president. Reagan did in the 1980 campaign at an event in New Hampshire where he said, "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green." The man's surname was Breen and not Green but Reagan did get his dander up.
Reagan could get testy. I recall press conference where he was obviously annoyed with a reporter. I don't recall him acting like a [rhymes with witch]. He kept the dignity of his office about him. Even when he was shot and was seriously hurt he managed to make a joke of it for Nancy's sake.
Came here to say this. Haha! Are we really using SNL skits to gauge the performance of our president and VP? Well let’s go ahead and get Jimmy Kimmel’s opinion on the matter, while we are at it.
The New York Times puts summaries of "Late Night" and SNL in the top right hand corner of the screen, the off-off lede. I can't tell you how depressing I find this.
Our last president had dementia and could not make decisions, his staff was de-facto running the White House to the point where he had to be told where to sit at events. And, Democrats ask why are JD Vance and Trump such intellectual lightweights?
The Left always does that. Mr D.C. Insider for forty years, Clark Clifford, called Reagan "a well meaning dunce." Clifford had been Secretary of Defense for LBJ's last two years, so the nation was supposed to become enlightened by The Great Man's disgust.
I blame Reagan for being the prime mover in the loss of our middle class, but the well meaning dunce had the insights necessary to unnerve and ultimately undo the Soviet enterprise.
I'm glad Vance is around for many reasons, one of which is that his brilliance is undeniable. The Left will never change. They'll keep calling him dumb. The answer is to just keep letting them pratfall their way into irrelevance.
Clifford became a dunce himself late in life. As chairman of First American Bankshares, the bank was embroiled in the BCCI scandal that included money laundering, bribery, arms trafficking, sale of nuclear technologies, tax evasion and support of terrorism. The old man was indicted but was never put on trial due to his age and poor health. He and his partner, Robert Altman, paid a $5 million fine.
"People" were not screaming at town halls. The democrats flooded the town halls with operatives / activists and invited friendly media to watch the show.
Republicans should take note. It is a great tactic.
Very true. The left is so great at storming public spaces. Republican politicians should go to public places of their choosing without letting the media know.
Given how SNL has portrayed Trump and how his political career has turned out, this sounds like a great turn for Vance, then. To not be liked by SNL: well, to me that sounds like a ringing endorsement of the guy.
Yes. It's what happened about a decade ago with CNN. You watch whatever CNN is reporting, and just conclude the opposite is the truth. It often worked.
"Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election." No. Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia to destroy Trump's campaign.
"White domestic terrorists are the greatest threat to American security at present."
How can Vance "save the country"? Constitutionally he's a cipher. As for seeming a "big buffoon", well, that's what Europeans are trained to think of each and every one of us as, and it doesn't have any more bite. Big buffoons like Frank Lloyd Wright, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. I watched that tape and Zelensky was signaling in clear that he was going to queer the deal they had agreed on and J.D. and Trump lost it. Good. T-shirt Boy has caved, of course.
I saw one of his cars four months ago, a collage of a geometry teacher gone bonkers. I asked one of my sons, "Who makes such an ugly car?" "That's Eon Musk's car," my son answered.
You must be referring to the Cybertruck. Personally, it makes me think of an old game on the PlayStation 1, where the character models were all pointy because the resolution tech wasn't there yet to smooth them out.
When I was young, working men who wanted a cabin cruiser, admirably would spend years fabricating one with their own hands in their yard and out of plywood. The finished product had a certain angularity that was not comely, and screamed "I am a plywood boat." If those guys were with us today, and if they built their own truck, it would be made of plywood, and it would look like the Cybertruck...
I've lately noticed the resurrected Newsweek seems to have taken a surprising turn to the right. I didn't see that coming any more than I foresaw the old TIME magazine going 100% left. They've kind of switched places. Not that TIME was ever conservative, but it was the more so of the two.
Yes she got her nose out of joint a while back when I said that most journalists only see Orthodox Christianity in a poltical context. "You obviously don't know any journalists" (I went to journalism school, so yes I do, and that's not the point anyway), no real substance to her rebuttle other than she personally covers religion.
Her profile also says she "owns" two master's degrees, which is a pretty odd turn of phrase. What, did she buy them? Looks like we're dealing with a credentialist here.
She is (or once was) a "conservative Anglican," insofar as being in ACNA ( with its diocesan option on ordaining women) counts as being "conservative Anglican."
Well, in her defense, things are blowing up around my neck of the woods, but, that's because JoAnn fabrics has closed! They're headquartered here and we had some really nice JoAnn's around. Nice little church ladies running each other over for the last of the sale items (I imagine, I haven't been-healthy sense of self-preservation).
I like Hobby Lobby as well, generally prefer it to JoAnn. They have awesome clearance frames, I usually go and stock up on them and then all I have to do is buy a pre-cut mat when I finish a painting (which I should probably get back to doing...)
I just started drawing again a few months ago. With a 1 and 3 YO running around, it’s not always easy to carve out time for it, but it is well worth it!
I once witnessed a rather heated debate between two JoAnns church ladies, one behind the counter and one in front of it, over whether or not some item qualified as a “notion” and therefore 50% off. I have no idea how that turned out because I too sensed I should keep a safe distance. :)
Trump's most serious problem is the stock market plunging. Through various IRAs, Trump has millions of voters heavily invested in the stock market and they've taken quite a licking this week. I know I have. The concept of tariff wars has the stock market spooked and the idea of a trade war with Canada is foolish. I don't see gas prices rising in my area of the country and instead they have lowered by about fifteen cents a gallon over the last month. The most recent unemployment report had first-time claims declining. Only the coddled bureaucrats of Washington DC are screaming about lay-offs because they might have to find real jobs. As for the public town halls, they are foolish in concept because they allow organized mobs to storm such gatherings to berate the politicians, a sport that the left has been good at for decades. Smarter politicians would better go to where the people are.
I'm afraid to even check my 401ks. They rose spectacularly in the late fall, and held up at least till late last month. Fortunately I got my tax refund this week so won't need to take any more distributions for a little while.
Our gas prices here in FL have been fluctuating in the range of 2.89-3.19 for quite some time. They just went up, rather abruptly, yesterday. Happily I killed up at a cheap station Wednesday night.
Trump really does need to be a lot more careful on the economy. He owes his election in major part to "the economy stupid". If he proves a less prudent stewards of it than Biden the rest of his agenda is destined for the toilet.
I am sorry that Trump didn't dress down Macron or Starmer like he did Zelensky. Both are far lefties as far as I'm concerned. One thinks that Trump might have to pound it into the heads of European leaders that we don't need Europe. There's the Atlantic Ocean on the one side of America and there's the Pacific Ocean on the other side. America is uninvadable except for the millions of illegal aliens. We've been Uncle Sucker for far too long. Our military acts as a subsidy of the European welfare states. It is time to turn off the spigot.
Article 5 isn't an automatic tripwire for a military response from NATO members. Each individual country can decide what it's response would be in the event of external aggression against the alliance. Meloni's proposal is incoherent. The Finnish PM made a similar non sequitur yesterday. In any case, many NATO members would wait it out if bullets start flying. NATO is less an alliance these days than an endless photo op for a revolving door of failed politicians and part-time generals. I can't see it lasting past the remaining decade.
George Saunders is a master. As satirist, he has this key difference from most: he is sympathetic to nearly all his characters, even those he puts through the satirical ringer. This is *very* rare.
Of his work, I still think the very first collection, *CivilWarLand in Bad Decline*, is the go-to. His later collections contain masterpieces, but are more uneven.
His novel on Lincoln, for me at least, wasn’t up to his usual.
Re: the terrible, cataclysmic crisis now descending on our national parks, Chris Bray has some things to say:
I’m not sure I’d support even 90% of Trump’s cuts, but we mustn’t ever, at this late date, listen to hysterical whining from the usual suspects. They. Are. Not. Speaking. In. Good. Faith.
Nota bene, the link to the Chekhov story takes you to one called "The Schoolmistress" -- that is the same story I'm talking about, under an alternative title.
Chekhov didn't know how to write a bad short story. There are very few writers--I mean DWMs--whose images make you say, "I wish I could have met this guy." Chekhov is certainly one of them.
I'm immediately suspicious of 'the national parks are being closed!' stories. Remember, this is the Democrats' tactic whenever there's a budget battle as well. The most camera-friendly, unobjectionable, wholesome face of government is self-slapped to elicit sympathy and undermine principled reform.
The article mentions that 34 *buildings* (not 34 national parks themselves) are being sold or not re-leased. There are (quick search) 63 national parks, and 429 'national park sites' (e.g. national battlefields, national seashores, etc.) in the USA, most of which surely comprise many buildings, so this is hardly a comprehensive shutdown.
And if you read the article carefully, several of the examples cited are buildings in urban areas that host visitor centers that have information about a national park, but aren't actually in a park per se.
Everything you say is true (going back 44 years, remember "ketchup is a vegetable"?) but Musk gets off on an element of performative cruelty in some of these layoffs, and so does the I want to say Mike Cernovich caucus.
I am old enough to remember ketchup is a vegetable. The truth is that most teens hate most vegetables, especially how the inept school cooks make them. I also remember the handouts of free cheese during the 1981-82 recession, the big media portraying it as if America was becoming one big soup kitchen circa 1932. The truth is that the Department of Agriculture still hands out excess food to those in need and some not so much in need. Half the churches in West Virginia give out free food to anyone who shows.
So much of the free food gets thrown out and even the free sandwiches for cold school lunches are inedible. When I used to chaperone field trips when my boy was in a Title 1 school (he was there for the dual immersion program), I used to pack extra snacks to share with the kids in my group who had to have the free lunches. Even I couldn't eat them and in those kinds of situations, I can have a pretty good tolerance for yucky food.
I was certainly no connoisseur when I went to college but even I knew that the chicken parmesgian the school cafeteria was inferior. It was a piece of chicken with a slice of American cheese on top swimming in a mix of grease and ketchup. Foul.
The cafeteria at Johns Hopkins Hospital was also very bad. I thought the food was so bad so as to lend an incentive for sick patients to leave the hospital.
Rod -- you're over your skis on this one, rather like you were with your initial reaction to the Covington kids. I know you're busy, but do a little research before caving to the propaganda. It'll save you time in the end.
Indeed! The article starts with "The Trump administration is seeking to cancel the leases for 34 National Park Service buildings...". Yet the examples they give are NPS "sites" located in other non-NPS buildings. These places aren't shutting down. Take the Mississippi National River and Recreation Center, housed in the Science Museum of Minnesota in downtown St. Paul. The NPS presence there is basically a small tradeshow style kiosk with pamphlets (and staff I'm sure) adjacent to the lobby. I wonder how much NPS is paying to have a kiosk at this location?
Agreed. I read the article and found the concern overblown. IIRC there was another story decrying the loss of ONE park ranger.
Do any of these people grasp what it means that our federal debt is at 125% of GDP and growing? Do they understand what cuts will be needed if we can't both cut spending and our debt? (Clearly, not).
Note also that most of the fired employees are characterized as "probationary"--i.e., in the job for less than a year. So doubtless those parks and facilities operated without these folks a year ago
As always, consider the source. The article was from WAPO, which despite Bezos's concern for "private enterprise and free speech" is totally dominated by the Blob.
They used to do in Ohio when I was a kid…budget impasse would lead to governor closing restrooms on the turnpike. So whomever is running the national parks may be doing something similar with POTUS perhaps unaware.
Rod: Your comments about AI and anti-humanism are why I've been so upset about your participation in ARC. It seems that all anyone has to do is call something "right-wing" or "postliberal," and trad Christians flock there in support.
If we really are living in the last days, as I strongly suspect, I think ARC is probably the work of Antichrist. Heck, Peter Thiel sounds almost like I imagine the Antichrist himself; an exploitative, homosexual, billionaire transhumanist. Only Noah Yuval Harari could possibly be closer. Elon Musk has had a child by surrogacy, please remember. Satan sends errors in pairs, and Christians have rushed over to Scylla from the Charybdis of the transphile Democrats. Peter Thiel has been a guest at The Moorings too, however pleasant the professor and his vicar wife are. ARC and its successors could be what "leads astray even the elect."
I think there's a strong analogy with Christian support for Israel.
"Satan sends errors in pairs, and Christians have rushed over to Scylla from the Charybdis of the transphile Democrats."
Wow. And the pull of your last sentence was not to be resisted.
Seriously, Mike Cernovich. He is quoted in today's Washington Post as "suggesting" Justice Amy Coney Barrett "was put on the bench because she is a woman. 'Another DEI hire. It always ends badly.'” I think he was also trying to "suggest" that she was put on the bench because she's R.C. (Ann Coulter has said so openly, and says it's disqualifying--that's coming out in the open.)
Now, your agent doesn't know much about the law, but I'd bet a steak dinner I know more than "Mike Cernovich"; you know the worst thing these clowns, very much including Musk, do? demand impeaching judges when they rule against pet causes. THAT's scary.
Everybody ought to read the Journal story, however wretchedly edited (when I read it there was no first reference for Bannon). Paywalled, of course.
Agamben is an Italian philosopher, a non-believer I think, but sympathetic towards Catholicism. It's a little book consisting of two essays dealing with Pope Benedict's resignation, and what it might mean eschatologically. Not in an "end times prophecy" sense, but in terms of the worldwide mission of the Church. It's fascinating stuff, and brings to mind Girard's thoughts about "apocalypse."
Rombald, you know I am your friend and well wisher, but Israel is your blind spot. They're in the land in unbelief now, but it won't always be. And any nation's regard for the Jews is an unvarying measurement of its likelihood of survival, let alone, its prospects for doing well.
I'm appalled by the rise in Jew hatred in the United States because it indicates that we're more decadent than we thought we were. A true Dark Age is just ahead if this continues.
Antisemitism is not evidenced by opposition to the policies of the government of Israel. And as far as American foreign policy goes, that should be in our country's interests, and not cobbled together in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Kiev, Moscow, London or any other foreign capital.
The dopamine culture chart is brilliant. I think maybe I would put porn as the dopamine culture item for relationships, not swiping. Otherwise, yes. I’ve spent some time in online circles of people who are trying to get away from things that are dopamine addictions. I think everyone, in one way or another, has one that they experience and have trouble getting away from. It can be something that seems innocuous. Doom scrolling is the latest one I guess, but gaming is also a huge problem for people. Everyone knows about porn and gambling.
It really is a hard thing for people to give up, the constant barrage of dopamine hits our culture provides. If anything, the shallow affect that has become the common mode of thought and communication is responsible for a great deal of personal dissatisfaction. It is impossible to build anything of substance with such a state, because the biggest joy, for want of a better word, only comes from putting the first brick down, over and over, and never making it past that.
The irony is that the design and quality of gaming is going downhill as development is focused more on monetization than game quality. Some of the old games still hold their own against newer ones for that reason.
I go back to the golden age of arcade video games. I was the local Defender champ, and the game blew all its fuses because I was beating the, er, pants off it.
I pushed shopping carts at the now defunct, Waldbaums (a NY local that was bought-out by A & P) supermarket when I was 16. A luncheonette next door had "Centipede" and I had plenty of unsupervised time. I lost about 75 cents per hour, of my 3.15 salary, to that game.
Many games, mostly online multiplayer games, now are engineered specifically to provide dopamine hits and keep people coming back for me. It is really insidious and easy to get hooked into them because of how the micro rewards encourage playing more to get another award.
Are they closing parks or selling some buildings. Per your link, one building is the Klondike Gold Rush Museum in Seattle. The news report cites that the museum is important because Seattle was the embarkation point for people headed to Alaska. So we need this?
Don't like to see anything like that close (it's never a question of "need"), but it seems to me that such a museum could be funded by state and local sources.
It was Rod who introduced me to Aaron Renn. I subscribed. Each month when I would get a reminder of the bill, I would think, "Should I really keep subscribing? Renn's primary areas of interest - Protestantism, American domestic affairs, cities - are not mine." But then there would always be some insight in Renn's writing that was original. And month after month I maintained my subscription. Clearly I am not alone!
The government rents a lot of office buildings from private sector leasing firms. It’s these leases that the Trump Administration is going after, not the inherent government functions currently occurring in those spaces.
This is how the Democrats lie. By scaring people into thinking that Yellowstone is being shut down permanently.
To be analytical about it, here’s the deliberate deception pattern. Trump, who knows the language of real estate and business, orders Musk to look into the government’s many lease agreements with real estate investment trusts (known as REITs among investors), private sector firms that function as landlords for both corporate and government tenants as well as apartment buildings, shopping centers, even golf courses and graveyards. They’re a convenient financing mechanism. A firm or government agency whose expertise lies elsewhere doesn’t have to concern itself with managing property and can instead focus on its core functions.
But these leases can sometimes become too expensive.
What the Democrats are trying to to do is use language like “eliminating centers”, which can mean either cutting the actual government function or simply switching from one lease to another. In the press, the headline that shines through leaves careless readers with the impression that Trump is shutting down all kinds of ordinary, non-controversial government agencies, where he’s really only going after leases that aren’t benefiting the government financially. The government also rents a lot of empty space inadvertently. It’s this kind of thing we’re likely talking about in reality. The administration is too quick to take credit for actual cuts to believe it would weasel any cuts via misdirection in its rhetoric.
Regarding that last little bit about Aaron Renn turning to the manosphere, I entirely understand it.
Based on my own experiences, finding a woman to date and potentially marry in a church setting simply isn't feasible. Women want men *they are already attracted to* to go to church with them, not meet them at one. And so, men respond accordingly.
A secular YouTuber I follow does the occasional "Dating Christian Girls" story, and perhaps the most truthful criticism he has against churches is that they are NOT bulwarks against the modern dating culture that some may wish it was. And frankly, I can't disagree; one of the great puzzles of the manosphere is that for all its grifters and performative machismo, it's also speaking truths to men that they will not hear in certain sections of society.
If I had to guess, it was probably to be some combination of overly polite and deferential in their dating.
Men have the habit of confusing obeisance with attractiveness, and not getting the outcomes they want is what drives them to seek advice elsewhere, from outside the church if need be.
He's written about it extensively on his blog, and his capsule summary is: holiness is not sexiness. The idea would be that holiness tracks with the traits needed to be a good *husband*, but not necessarily the ones needed to draw a woman in the first place and hold her interest, because attraction plays by its own rules.
I'm not sure how a Christian is supposed to feel about that thesis, although it seems clear that as a practical matter, it captures an important reality about relations between the sexes.
Well, this applies to all men, religious or not, but unless you're an unbelievably funny comedian, or exceptionally wealthy, being in shape seems to be a prerequisite for attracting women. And I don't blame them, really; I know I like to see in-shape women, so it's entirely fair that they want to see that in men.
As far as how Christians should feel abou Renn's thesis, this is the case where Christian idealism runs into the brick wall of biological/physiological reality; we're attracted to attractive people, and all we can really do is try to become more attractive, if even just a little bit.
Physical attractiveness is less important to women than it is to men—but sure, it's part of the overall package, along with things such as charm, style, wealth, humor, status. And social dominance, overall.
When I wonder how Christians should feel, what I mean is: if attractiveness is essentially amoral and pagan and not correlated with holiness, then one might ask whether sexuality as such is compromised, and whether it's then true that adhering to a code of celibacy is the only appropriate path for people who want to engage in a single-minded pursuit of holiness.
And the answer might be . . . probably? Maybe? We can't really have it both ways, is all I mean, if we concede that to pursue being attractive is to focus at least some of our energy and attention on things that don't necessarily contribute to greater holiness.
Incidentally, this implication is likely what church leaders would wish to avoid, which is why they continue to pretend (as Renn complains) that a direct correlation prevails between holiness and attractiveness, when that is empirically not the case.
This seems in a similar vein to the discussions around that "too many monks, not enough knights" video that has been going around. Unless we are to go join a monastery, there needs to be *some* attention diverted to attending to the matters of the world. But I think it's a matter of hierarchies: marriage needs to be nested under holiness as a path to it, and sexuality then nested under marriage and family. Making yourself more attractive for your wife (or a potential/future wife) seems to me to be fine. As long as (like anything else you can do), you remain watchful for the appearance of the passions distorting that endeavor.
Celibacy may be a high acsesis for those called to it, but it is hardly the only path to holiness. The calendar is full of saints who were married and had children.
"Courtliness" is the great, nearly extinct word, Trevor. The Devil loves to mess with the language, as we know. His destruction of the wonderful word, "gay," was one of his great triumphs in the last one hundred years.
A gentleman by definition doesn't grovel. It would be beneath him. He is pleased by his mastery of understanding of life's possibilities for courtesy, however, and lives with instinctive courtesy. ( I adore the insight that a true gentleman is never unintentionally rude. )
Courtliness carries with it the unspoken fact that in a couple, the man is supposed to be the more dominant. If a man believes that, he will look for a woman whom he sees as suitable for him. He will exude a quiet majesty which makes alpha maleness look like the pathetic knockoff of genuine maleness which it is.
Your definition of "courtliness" makes me think of magnanimous, a close but not entirely equal concept.
I suppose, in my moral imagination, those qualities you describe I associate with historical figures like George Washington and Robert Lee. If I am thinking of literary characters, then Darcy and Rhett Butler come to mind. I certainly admire those people more than Andrew Tate, or that dude who's always driving in the car or whatever.
I mean, a man capable of exuding “majesty” is by definition an alpha male. There are many ways to advertise confidence and dominance. The “gentleman” archetype is one. There are others. Most of them will successfully attract women, including ones that are much more crass. One of the indelible life lessons every boy ends up learning is that it’s actually very rarely the nice guy who gets the girl, and that jerks tend to be more successful with women than most, unfortunately.
Renn does challenge that last point about being a jerk, though. He suggests that attractive people can *afford to be jerks*, whereas unattractive people cannot, because such behavior will not be tolerated from the latter. So it's not that being a jerk per se is attractive; it's that acting like a jerk might in some cases advertise that you otherwise have assets that compel people to put up with you.
Still, though, the point is that jerkiness itself is not an asset. That's not actually what anyone finds attractive about anyone.
That’s mostly true. Being a jerk and getting away with it is what works, because generally one only does get away with it if one is too tough or dangerous to be put in his place (strong) or too popular/charismatic for anyone to want to cross (high status).
That said, I do think women are actually attracted to acts of dominance, and being a jerk is one. They might not like it, exactly (women tend to at least outwardly dislike it when their date is rude to the help, for example), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t attract them on a deeper level that they don’t have a lot of control over. We like what we like, right?
But the alpha male is a narcissist and therefore a jerk. By definition, jerks lack true majesty. My ideal is the gentleman. A man should have the goal of discerning and avoiding women who are attracted to jerks, which is actually easy if he is a gentleman.
Brother Pedro Haering, who died in 2008, was a Holy Cross monk who taught math in Catholic schools in Indianapolis. He retired ( do monks retire? ) in the nineties, and was moved to the Holy Cross retirement center in South Bend. He started doing six hours a week of broadcasts on WSND, the Notre Dame radio station. He didn't play liturgical music, he played the popular music of his life, excluding rock and everything rock adjacent. If you made a request, he wanted to know about you so he could put you on his prayer list. I consider him among the greatest gentlemen I have ever known.
He loved Sinatra, whom he had been introduced to when Sinatra performed at Notre Dame, and whom he always referred to as “Mr Sinatra.” He thought Hal David's lyric, “Alfie,” for the Burt Bacharach melody, was the most profound lyric for a popular song ever written, and I am inclined to agree. The Alfie character is “successful” with women, and it's the antithesis of what a sane and genuinely majestic man wants.
Married woman here. I don't think it's "majesty", "courtliness" or "dominance" that women find attractive in a potential husband. Rather, it is competence. A man who can earn a decent living, do home repairs, diagnose car problems, fix a bicycle or toilet, and also do some fun things such as fly an airplane, sail a boat or set up a tent does not need great looks or tons of charisma to find a wife.
There's a fantasy women seem to have about reforming a dangerous man to the point that he's good, but still dangerous. That's attractive in the same way that a "rescue" dog is, with the same reality being a lot harder than the fantasy.
The corresponding male fantasy probably has to do with finding a broken woman and winning her love by putting her back together and offering redemption. White knighting, as they call it.
About 20 years ago or so I was in a bad relationship of this type, and I was telling my former priest about it in a sort of quasi-confessional way. After I was finished venting he said, "Funny Rob, but you don't look like God's other son."
My sister used to ask me why I was always attracted to damaged women. I told her that wasn't the case -- it was that they were attracted to me. My problem was that I always ignored the red flags that inevitably appeared and stuck around longer than I should have, trying to fix things.
If you're working away from home you can't prepare lunch at home, though you don't need to eat out- many workplaces have refrigerators and microwaves so you can buy something to heat up.
Maybe we've developed a rather insular Christian Commentariat of our own wherein the stars of substack/podcast see the world only through the eyes of each other and their perception -- however audacious or humble -- of how they might be influencing the broader world, while they become increasingly inured to the world following them. Hence the sense of "negative world" happening simultaneous to an explosion of Christian activity, writing, thinking, and influence.
I remember someone being described: "He walks into a room of adoring fans and can only focus on the one person in the room who doesn't love him."
I am glad to see there was finally push back from Cabinet Heads against Musk in a meeting yesterday. Apparently Trump agreed to let them decide who to cut. That makes more sense than letting Musk come in with a hatchet.
To be honest though where does Musk see his power from in the Constitution? If this were the Obama administration Chuck Grassley would be holding hearings on the Judiciary Committee. Nothing. Again, I like the concept of all this, but I don’t like Musk having this extra power over the FBI Director. I would rather see Trump set some goals and let the departments handle them on their own. Let’s have Musk revolutionize how to build ships for the Navy.
If you can be bothered read what I posted above. Musk will crash and burn, though it may happen behind the curtain. In our system cabinet members don't resign over policy (Cy Vance is the last big one), and while that takes some power from them, it gives them certain leverage as well. Now, Trump is Trump, and he did knife Jeff Sessions, a serious man. But somebody got Trump's attention, and it might have been J.D. Or Susie. Just saying.
Agreed. He is all about his Brand as a guy coming from business. If someone says Musk is hurting your brand then maybe he will listen. His Brand right now is the Border, Drill Baby Drill, and the Economy. Musk is biting into that and taking too much focus away from the consumer and diminishing Trump’s brand.
I paid attention to Bannon's podcast once. That was in early January 2020. He was telling everybody not to worry, that Trump was going to be the next President. That's just Crazy Town.
Bannon and Musk must decrease. Vance and those who exude seriousness must increase. Hitler salutes, dancing on graves in goofy "messaging" t-shirts, and baseball hats, careless use of free-speech by alleged leaders, and embracing figures like the Tates "because we can" is going to land us a doozy of a Dem president in 4 years. This isn't a "win" until the dems are forced to abandon the insanity for good. The stake is not through their hearts. If Trump sets the table for Vance, we may get some lasting, common sense, reform.
I don't get the "drill baby drill". We are already the world's leading oil and natural gas producer. In that much Trump seems to be stuck in a time warp in the 80s when we were dependent on foreign oil.
I think it's mainly about emphasizing that our pursuit of green energy transformation is over, especially insofar as it compromises energy independence.
Maybe, but I find Trump's hostility to "new" energy tech also problematic. This is a "nothing in excess" situation. We cannot and should not rush into things that are not yet ready for prime time. But neither should we concede those markets and that new tech to China or anyone else. Again, Trump seems to be stuck like a Luddite in the past on this.
It looks to me that the Dems just pushed the ideologically driven Green New Deal so hard for so long, and now he's just communicating in equally emphatic terms that that's over. So we'll see what comes next. But I don't think Trump literally hates all new energy sources; that's not the point of his current stance.
You could not be more accurate when you speak about evangelicals not being willing to listen to the Benedict option but being open to Renn’s work. When Benedict Option came out, I read it and then bought a bunch of copies for my elders and church members.
I couldn’t get anyone to take it seriously. They were too stuck in neutral world thinking even though Obergafeld had already swept over us.
The year it came out, I used Renn’s book for a Sunday school and everyone understood the reality of what he was talking about.
The problem now is that many want to act like Donald Trump’s election means everything is all put right. The reality is that we are still deep in negative world in just about every area.
There isn't any political victory that could change that. What politics can do, though, is keep the woke totalitarians at bay and make some sane space, which is definitely not nothing.
Dopamine culture- I see it every day with my students and colleagues (especially my younger colleagues.) No or very little talking but lots of scrolling. No deep conversation or reading. Just TikTok. There is no TikTok but TikTok and TikTok is TikTok’s TikTok. At least there was a young 1st grade teacher who told me a few days ago that she constantly tells her friends to leave their phones in their cars for their own good. There’s hope.
I have 3 massive bookshelves in my classroom holding my ancient history, American history, Soviet history, philosophy, and pedagogy books that I have no room for at home. I used to get asked about the books by many students. Now I might get a handful of inquiries from my top level dual enrollment and AP kids in a year. But I sure get questions about TikTok, which I don’t even have.
There was a story in the New York Post last week about a girl who graduated with honors from the Hartford, CT, school district who's suing because she's actually illiterate. That's pretty extreme and I can't vouch for it's complete veracity, but it does ring a bell, dunnit?
The story never came out and said it, but I suspect the girl was severely dyslexic. She had a legal right to therapy that might have helped her condition but wasn't given it.
Your comment is spot on and reflects my experience as a high school teacher as well. My students admit that they don't watch movies, except for perhaps the latest comic book extravaganza. It's all TikTok and Instagram reels for them. And yesterday during lunch, a young teacher of about 25 spent all of lunch scrolling his phone rather than interacting with us, his colleagues. He is not an introvert; he is usually very gregarious. He just is clearly a product of his generation, which doesn't understand how staring at your phone is incredibly rude to others seated at the table.
I know several 20-somethings who can't just sit and watch a movie or TV show. They have to be effing around with their phones all the while. FOMO is strong with this group.
Fifteen years ago or so, I took my bride out for supper at our best local restaurant at the time during Prom Season. As we ate and drank, three lovely and well-dressed young ladies came into the restaurant escorted by three handsome and well-dressed young men. They sat down and each began playing with their phones. What kind of social event is that?
The young don't seem to read. They watch you tube videos to get information. For instance, if one wanted to know more about the Russian Revolution, I'd tell a person to read Richard Pipes' book on the subject to get all the nuances. The young today would watch a half-hour show on the Russian Revolution with lots of motion pictures and photos.
A friend of mine who is a seminary prof. says that the young people coming in have no understanding of the idea that knowledge takes work, and don't have a clue what it means to wrestle with a difficult or challenging text. He gets constant complaints that the reading he assigns is "too hard." And these are grad students.
My 15 yo son does like to read, both for school (he is homeschooled) and for pleasure. It’s been difficult for him to connect with his own peers, even in friendly environments like the church youth group, because they don’t read books. I had trouble believing it until my husband and I started working with a group of high schoolers last fall, and he’s right—none of them read, though they are lovely kids.
Rod, people aren't talking about JD Vance's speech in Europe over here right now. What they're talking about is his baiting of Zelensky during the White House gang-up last Friday and they are blaming Vance (who supposedly has SOME intelligence) for starting it instead of Trump (who will always act like a 2-year-old when he can). Vance is being portrayed as just as big a buffoon on Saturday Night Live now as Trump is - and is that where he wants to be not only 2 months into his vice presidency?
I was on a conference call tonight with my congresswoman - along with 7,400 others. Things are blowing up here. GOP leaders are telling members of Congress not to have public townhalls anymore because last weekend all over the country people were screaming at their Republican reps. Layoffs are skyrocketing, as are gas prices. The stock market is plunging. If Vance had a brain, he'd think of a way to save the country from this mess fast or he's going to go down with it.
Nah. Zelensky insisted on coming to the White House to sign the deal he’d previously backed out of *twice*. And he used the high-profile event to try to embarrass Trump and Vance by lecturing them in front of rolling cameras. Vance, rightly, wasn’t having it. Trump, rightly, put Zelensky in his place.
Zelensky pulled this ridiculous stunt for one of two reasons, or both: he hoped either to bend clearly-stated, finally sane US policy to his will, or he hoped to cement European solidarity going forward, by showing everyone that he could stand up to the Orange Hitler.
It failed.
I think he might have been showboating for people back in Ukraine.
Or for the Left of the entire West. Or both.
Also, it appears that Z-man had previously agreed to a deal behind closed doors but then went out in public lying about it, so Trump probably realized that this throwdown had to happen in front of cameras now. The people who have the narrative backward here are pretty much the same ones who have it backward on everything: they can't be won over, and there's nothing that Trump could do that they would applaud. So write them off and leave them be.
I'll happily leave them be. I just think they should mind the things they're good at minding. Which is: Whatever they're all saying at any given moment.
Yesterday I talked for an hour with a liberal woman without revealing my own politics (and evidently it never occurred to her that I might have voted for Trump). It was fascinating and fun—but also kinda sad, to see how the wokist brainwash twists and undermines what could otherwise be a sound mind and soul.
This is funny. A lot of liberals think that anyone that they would know can't possibly be so horrible as to support the likes of Trump.
You'd think that they would reason: "Since I know this person isn't horrible, maybe it isn't true that only horrible people support Trump." Nope—instead they'd just think, "He was secretly horrible all along!"
When I owned a business in Washington DC, a liberal Jewish woman who did the books for a local pharmacist came down to my business a few weeks after Trump's victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. She looked over at my blue-collar, Baltimore German pressman and said, "I bet he voted for Trump." She didn't even contemplate that everybody else in my business voted for Trump and disdained Hillary Clinton. We were all deplorables.
Given Zelensky's past reverses on the mineral deal, even if he really, really commits to it now, if I were at the White House, there would be no special signing ceremony. It would be DocuSign only for Zelensky.
I can agree that this is a serious PR problem for the White House, but if you watch the entire 40 minute exchange with Zelensky, it is clear that Trump and Vance were baited by him into that blow-up.
This piece from Unherd has great analysis of why the Europeans hate hate hate J D Vance: https://archive.ph/vEyl7
I put that in today’s newsletter!
Ah -- missed the link. It's good stuff. I've got several UK friends who find it very hard to get J D's vibe. They haven't met many people like him, i.e. a true product of the heartland who's not a Hollywood caricature. I tell them I like him because he's a lot like me in terms of background and views, but I don't know how much that helps . . . .
Appalachain people only have a few analogs I can think of in Europe and all of them are on the periphery. Actual Scottish highlanders (Not the Glasgwegian speaking tourist attractions) to some degree, Laplanders, Basques or Cossacks. JD is two generations removed, but I know his hometown, and it's at least partially an Appalachian colony.
Southern Italians, anybody from what used to be called il Regno. Experto crede.
My Michigan home town had a huge Appalachian diaspora of auto factory workers. And I heard Akron OH, when I lived there, called "the northernmost town of West Virginia".
I understand a lot of that area was settled by Ulster-Scots so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where some of the attitude came from
You might want to tell your UK friends that millions of Americans don't get the vibe of English policemen looking the other way as thousands of English working class girls are made prostitutes by Muslims. I just don't get it.
Chortle! ;-)
I'm British, and I like Vance.
I think Christians like Vance, Rombald. That's what it really comes down to, we both know that.
Do you remember history enough to remember the electrifying speech FDR made in his 1936 reelection campaign about his opponents' hatred for him? His response should be Vance's toward Europe's hatred of him: "I welcome their hatred!"
Why wouldn't Europe hate him? He's a believing Christian, if a Papist. ( I always respect my interlocutors. ) That's enough for that degenerate continent to hate him.
Vance also believes Europeans should defend themselves and not look for Uncle Sam to subsidize their welfare states. Vance also believes in free speech even if it is impolitic in the eyes of the establishment.
By and large the people who see Zelensky as the one who was bullied are the people who dislike Vance /Trump anyway.
By and large they are also the people who care little about the immediate context of the meeting or indeed the war. Because, irresponsibly, they assume they don’t have to. They know a “victim” when they see one, and their job is to emote in favor of the victim.
And whoever Trump argues with is by definition a Victim, because Trump is by definition a Victimizer. It's the MO.
People like this come in two types. Those who just don't know any better, and those who do know better but are lying.
There's a "Nobody I know voted for Nixon!" phenomenon in play. That's always going to be a thing, but people need to recognize that.
One of the problems very intelligent people often have is that they know what confirmaton bias is, and they want to believe that because they know that that they wouldn't fall victim to it without actually doing the work not to fall victim to it.
Shades of Pauline Kael...
When your world is confined to Manhattan, you become a little politically myopic.
On the point of assigning victimhood to critics of Trump, consider NPR's recent interview with John Bolton, who apparently has been upgraded in the progressive mind from bloodthirsty, right-wing demon to unfairly treated senior statesman.
He is almost as beloved as Liz Cheney. Might Dick Cheney be mourned when he passes on to the grave?
To have enough contempt for NPR--it's a bar I just can't reach. Why hasn't the Trump Administration shut it down?
JD Vance was also right when he pointed out that the tours that foriegn leaders take visiting politicans and journalists on are set up to support their version of events. This is an open secret to the professionals, but it's good that he put that out in the open.
Can you imagine Ronald Reagan losing it like that? Or even George W Bush? An old, old maxim: A man who cannot master himself is not fit to be master of others.
I can't imagine Reagan or the two Bushes losing it like that as president. Reagan did in the 1980 campaign at an event in New Hampshire where he said, "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green." The man's surname was Breen and not Green but Reagan did get his dander up.
Reagan could get testy. I recall press conference where he was obviously annoyed with a reporter. I don't recall him acting like a [rhymes with witch]. He kept the dignity of his office about him. Even when he was shot and was seriously hurt he managed to make a joke of it for Nancy's sake.
No way, Saturday Night Live is portraying a Republican politician in a negative light? How will Republicans recover?
Came here to say this. Haha! Are we really using SNL skits to gauge the performance of our president and VP? Well let’s go ahead and get Jimmy Kimmel’s opinion on the matter, while we are at it.
The New York Times puts summaries of "Late Night" and SNL in the top right hand corner of the screen, the off-off lede. I can't tell you how depressing I find this.
I think the technical term for it is a circle jerk.
Glad I wasn't drinking coffee when I read that, brother!
Anyone see Bill Murray on Joe Rogan?
He said that after reading a few pages of Bob Woodward's "Wired" (a John Belushi biography) he said to himself "Oh my God, they framed Nixon".
And Woodward interviewed CIA chief William Casey while he was in a coma.
Our last president had dementia and could not make decisions, his staff was de-facto running the White House to the point where he had to be told where to sit at events. And, Democrats ask why are JD Vance and Trump such intellectual lightweights?
The Left always does that. Mr D.C. Insider for forty years, Clark Clifford, called Reagan "a well meaning dunce." Clifford had been Secretary of Defense for LBJ's last two years, so the nation was supposed to become enlightened by The Great Man's disgust.
I blame Reagan for being the prime mover in the loss of our middle class, but the well meaning dunce had the insights necessary to unnerve and ultimately undo the Soviet enterprise.
I'm glad Vance is around for many reasons, one of which is that his brilliance is undeniable. The Left will never change. They'll keep calling him dumb. The answer is to just keep letting them pratfall their way into irrelevance.
Clifford became a dunce himself late in life. As chairman of First American Bankshares, the bank was embroiled in the BCCI scandal that included money laundering, bribery, arms trafficking, sale of nuclear technologies, tax evasion and support of terrorism. The old man was indicted but was never put on trial due to his age and poor health. He and his partner, Robert Altman, paid a $5 million fine.
Ah, yes. Robert Altman -- husband of leftist Lynda Carter, TV's "Wonder Woman."
When your television career fails, it's good to be married to a Washington insider.
The best (armchair) diagnosis I've seen for Biden is that he has a form of Parkinsons.
"People" were not screaming at town halls. The democrats flooded the town halls with operatives / activists and invited friendly media to watch the show.
Republicans should take note. It is a great tactic.
It’s pure astroturfing. They rely on people not knowing what they’re looking at.
Staging, media, screaming, theater, gossip. What do these words all suggest?
A standard-issue episode of "The Jerry Springer Show"?
Say it with me: "FAKE. AND. GAY."
Very true. The left is so great at storming public spaces. Republican politicians should go to public places of their choosing without letting the media know.
Exactly!
Given how SNL has portrayed Trump and how his political career has turned out, this sounds like a great turn for Vance, then. To not be liked by SNL: well, to me that sounds like a ringing endorsement of the guy.
Yes. It's what happened about a decade ago with CNN. You watch whatever CNN is reporting, and just conclude the opposite is the truth. It often worked.
"Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election." No. Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia to destroy Trump's campaign.
"White domestic terrorists are the greatest threat to American security at present."
Etc.
They sure are reliable—can't take that away from them.
How can Vance "save the country"? Constitutionally he's a cipher. As for seeming a "big buffoon", well, that's what Europeans are trained to think of each and every one of us as, and it doesn't have any more bite. Big buffoons like Frank Lloyd Wright, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. I watched that tape and Zelensky was signaling in clear that he was going to queer the deal they had agreed on and J.D. and Trump lost it. Good. T-shirt Boy has caved, of course.
As far as layoffs go, this story, which isn't being given half the play it deserves, came over the wire yesterday (paywall, but I'd like to alert everybody that the Journal is currently running a dollar-a-week sale):,https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tells-cabinet-secretaries-to-take-lead-on-making-agency-cuts-not-musk-3045b786
You read it here first. This is the first step in defanging Musk and he's not going to like it.
He may think it's just fine. He's killing his car sales by pissing off his customer base.
I saw one of his cars four months ago, a collage of a geometry teacher gone bonkers. I asked one of my sons, "Who makes such an ugly car?" "That's Eon Musk's car," my son answered.
You must be referring to the Cybertruck. Personally, it makes me think of an old game on the PlayStation 1, where the character models were all pointy because the resolution tech wasn't there yet to smooth them out.
To give you an idea: https://shorturl.at/SOLVD
To me it looks like a vehicle for driving on the Moon or Mars. It's such an ugly design but at least it's unique.
When I was young, working men who wanted a cabin cruiser, admirably would spend years fabricating one with their own hands in their yard and out of plywood. The finished product had a certain angularity that was not comely, and screamed "I am a plywood boat." If those guys were with us today, and if they built their own truck, it would be made of plywood, and it would look like the Cybertruck...
The cybertrucks are just plain butt ugly. They actually make the old Hummer look like a work of art.
Oh Julia! The name-calling…the rhetorical hyperbole 🤦♀️ I say this as your everyday, average-Joe, American citizen:
We are tired of it.
I clicked on her profile, and apparently she used to write for . . . Newsweek. Ah, I see.
I've lately noticed the resurrected Newsweek seems to have taken a surprising turn to the right. I didn't see that coming any more than I foresaw the old TIME magazine going 100% left. They've kind of switched places. Not that TIME was ever conservative, but it was the more so of the two.
Yes she got her nose out of joint a while back when I said that most journalists only see Orthodox Christianity in a poltical context. "You obviously don't know any journalists" (I went to journalism school, so yes I do, and that's not the point anyway), no real substance to her rebuttle other than she personally covers religion.
Her profile also says she "owns" two master's degrees, which is a pretty odd turn of phrase. What, did she buy them? Looks like we're dealing with a credentialist here.
To be fair to Julia Duin, she used to write on religion for The Washington Times and wrote very insightfully.
"Used to" being the operative phrase. Trump David-Frenchified her.
I am now picturing Trump in his apron at his McDonalds PR stunt standing in front of the deep fryer
Hopefully Trump would cook with tallow and not oil like Bobby Kennedy suggests.
She is (or once was) a "conservative Anglican," insofar as being in ACNA ( with its diocesan option on ordaining women) counts as being "conservative Anglican."
Well, in her defense, things are blowing up around my neck of the woods, but, that's because JoAnn fabrics has closed! They're headquartered here and we had some really nice JoAnn's around. Nice little church ladies running each other over for the last of the sale items (I imagine, I haven't been-healthy sense of self-preservation).
LOL
Yes, my wife and daughters want to hit JoAnn's for the closing sales. I guess Hobby Lobby wiped them out sort of like Walmart wiped out KMart.
Hobby Lobby is my jam. I get many of my art supplies there. And respectfully closed on Sundays!
But don’t buy their candy at the check out line, it’s old and moldy.
I like Hobby Lobby as well, generally prefer it to JoAnn. They have awesome clearance frames, I usually go and stock up on them and then all I have to do is buy a pre-cut mat when I finish a painting (which I should probably get back to doing...)
I just started drawing again a few months ago. With a 1 and 3 YO running around, it’s not always easy to carve out time for it, but it is well worth it!
I once witnessed a rather heated debate between two JoAnns church ladies, one behind the counter and one in front of it, over whether or not some item qualified as a “notion” and therefore 50% off. I have no idea how that turned out because I too sensed I should keep a safe distance. :)
Trump's most serious problem is the stock market plunging. Through various IRAs, Trump has millions of voters heavily invested in the stock market and they've taken quite a licking this week. I know I have. The concept of tariff wars has the stock market spooked and the idea of a trade war with Canada is foolish. I don't see gas prices rising in my area of the country and instead they have lowered by about fifteen cents a gallon over the last month. The most recent unemployment report had first-time claims declining. Only the coddled bureaucrats of Washington DC are screaming about lay-offs because they might have to find real jobs. As for the public town halls, they are foolish in concept because they allow organized mobs to storm such gatherings to berate the politicians, a sport that the left has been good at for decades. Smarter politicians would better go to where the people are.
I'm afraid to even check my 401ks. They rose spectacularly in the late fall, and held up at least till late last month. Fortunately I got my tax refund this week so won't need to take any more distributions for a little while.
Our gas prices here in FL have been fluctuating in the range of 2.89-3.19 for quite some time. They just went up, rather abruptly, yesterday. Happily I killed up at a cheap station Wednesday night.
Trump really does need to be a lot more careful on the economy. He owes his election in major part to "the economy stupid". If he proves a less prudent stewards of it than Biden the rest of his agenda is destined for the toilet.
Just because James Carville is an old, half-senile crank doesn't mean that his maxim from 1992 wasn't wrong. It's the economy, stupid.
Take a breath, Julia. Only the insane look to Saturday Night Live for validation of their TDS.
I am sorry that Trump didn't dress down Macron or Starmer like he did Zelensky. Both are far lefties as far as I'm concerned. One thinks that Trump might have to pound it into the heads of European leaders that we don't need Europe. There's the Atlantic Ocean on the one side of America and there's the Pacific Ocean on the other side. America is uninvadable except for the millions of illegal aliens. We've been Uncle Sucker for far too long. Our military acts as a subsidy of the European welfare states. It is time to turn off the spigot.
Honest question, why should we give a crap what broke Europoors think? I'm genuinely curious
It's going to be ok. Covid19 is like TDS, time will tell. Let;s just wait.
Article 5 isn't an automatic tripwire for a military response from NATO members. Each individual country can decide what it's response would be in the event of external aggression against the alliance. Meloni's proposal is incoherent. The Finnish PM made a similar non sequitur yesterday. In any case, many NATO members would wait it out if bullets start flying. NATO is less an alliance these days than an endless photo op for a revolving door of failed politicians and part-time generals. I can't see it lasting past the remaining decade.
And that's a good thing.
Bingo!
George Saunders is a master. As satirist, he has this key difference from most: he is sympathetic to nearly all his characters, even those he puts through the satirical ringer. This is *very* rare.
Of his work, I still think the very first collection, *CivilWarLand in Bad Decline*, is the go-to. His later collections contain masterpieces, but are more uneven.
His novel on Lincoln, for me at least, wasn’t up to his usual.
Re: the terrible, cataclysmic crisis now descending on our national parks, Chris Bray has some things to say:
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/writhing-in-agony-and-despair-as
I’m not sure I’d support even 90% of Trump’s cuts, but we mustn’t ever, at this late date, listen to hysterical whining from the usual suspects. They. Are. Not. Speaking. In. Good. Faith.
Nota bene, the link to the Chekhov story takes you to one called "The Schoolmistress" -- that is the same story I'm talking about, under an alternative title.
Chekhov didn't know how to write a bad short story. There are very few writers--I mean DWMs--whose images make you say, "I wish I could have met this guy." Chekhov is certainly one of them.
I'm immediately suspicious of 'the national parks are being closed!' stories. Remember, this is the Democrats' tactic whenever there's a budget battle as well. The most camera-friendly, unobjectionable, wholesome face of government is self-slapped to elicit sympathy and undermine principled reform.
The article mentions that 34 *buildings* (not 34 national parks themselves) are being sold or not re-leased. There are (quick search) 63 national parks, and 429 'national park sites' (e.g. national battlefields, national seashores, etc.) in the USA, most of which surely comprise many buildings, so this is hardly a comprehensive shutdown.
And if you read the article carefully, several of the examples cited are buildings in urban areas that host visitor centers that have information about a national park, but aren't actually in a park per se.
Agree. This is classic Dem rhetoric.
Yes I have the same concerns.
Here. Read it and weep:
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/writhing-in-agony-and-despair-as
Everything you say is true (going back 44 years, remember "ketchup is a vegetable"?) but Musk gets off on an element of performative cruelty in some of these layoffs, and so does the I want to say Mike Cernovich caucus.
I am old enough to remember ketchup is a vegetable. The truth is that most teens hate most vegetables, especially how the inept school cooks make them. I also remember the handouts of free cheese during the 1981-82 recession, the big media portraying it as if America was becoming one big soup kitchen circa 1932. The truth is that the Department of Agriculture still hands out excess food to those in need and some not so much in need. Half the churches in West Virginia give out free food to anyone who shows.
So much of the free food gets thrown out and even the free sandwiches for cold school lunches are inedible. When I used to chaperone field trips when my boy was in a Title 1 school (he was there for the dual immersion program), I used to pack extra snacks to share with the kids in my group who had to have the free lunches. Even I couldn't eat them and in those kinds of situations, I can have a pretty good tolerance for yucky food.
I was certainly no connoisseur when I went to college but even I knew that the chicken parmesgian the school cafeteria was inferior. It was a piece of chicken with a slice of American cheese on top swimming in a mix of grease and ketchup. Foul.
What’s black, white & green every afternoon? A zebra who eats in the school cafeteria! I’ll show my self out……
The cafeteria at Johns Hopkins Hospital was also very bad. I thought the food was so bad so as to lend an incentive for sick patients to leave the hospital.
I can't believe I ate food in my high school cafeteria for 4 years.
No more cruel than telling the miners to learn to code.
Sorry, that's a whatabout. Nobody loathes the Dems more than I, but I want better, not just different.
Nothing wrong with so-called "whataboutism" where, as here, it exposes hypocrisy and double-standards.
Rod -- you're over your skis on this one, rather like you were with your initial reaction to the Covington kids. I know you're busy, but do a little research before caving to the propaganda. It'll save you time in the end.
Indeed! The article starts with "The Trump administration is seeking to cancel the leases for 34 National Park Service buildings...". Yet the examples they give are NPS "sites" located in other non-NPS buildings. These places aren't shutting down. Take the Mississippi National River and Recreation Center, housed in the Science Museum of Minnesota in downtown St. Paul. The NPS presence there is basically a small tradeshow style kiosk with pamphlets (and staff I'm sure) adjacent to the lobby. I wonder how much NPS is paying to have a kiosk at this location?
Agreed. I read the article and found the concern overblown. IIRC there was another story decrying the loss of ONE park ranger.
Do any of these people grasp what it means that our federal debt is at 125% of GDP and growing? Do they understand what cuts will be needed if we can't both cut spending and our debt? (Clearly, not).
Note also that most of the fired employees are characterized as "probationary"--i.e., in the job for less than a year. So doubtless those parks and facilities operated without these folks a year ago
As always, consider the source. The article was from WAPO, which despite Bezos's concern for "private enterprise and free speech" is totally dominated by the Blob.
They used to do in Ohio when I was a kid…budget impasse would lead to governor closing restrooms on the turnpike. So whomever is running the national parks may be doing something similar with POTUS perhaps unaware.
Rod: Your comments about AI and anti-humanism are why I've been so upset about your participation in ARC. It seems that all anyone has to do is call something "right-wing" or "postliberal," and trad Christians flock there in support.
If we really are living in the last days, as I strongly suspect, I think ARC is probably the work of Antichrist. Heck, Peter Thiel sounds almost like I imagine the Antichrist himself; an exploitative, homosexual, billionaire transhumanist. Only Noah Yuval Harari could possibly be closer. Elon Musk has had a child by surrogacy, please remember. Satan sends errors in pairs, and Christians have rushed over to Scylla from the Charybdis of the transphile Democrats. Peter Thiel has been a guest at The Moorings too, however pleasant the professor and his vicar wife are. ARC and its successors could be what "leads astray even the elect."
I think there's a strong analogy with Christian support for Israel.
"Satan sends errors in pairs, and Christians have rushed over to Scylla from the Charybdis of the transphile Democrats."
Wow. And the pull of your last sentence was not to be resisted.
Seriously, Mike Cernovich. He is quoted in today's Washington Post as "suggesting" Justice Amy Coney Barrett "was put on the bench because she is a woman. 'Another DEI hire. It always ends badly.'” I think he was also trying to "suggest" that she was put on the bench because she's R.C. (Ann Coulter has said so openly, and says it's disqualifying--that's coming out in the open.)
Now, your agent doesn't know much about the law, but I'd bet a steak dinner I know more than "Mike Cernovich"; you know the worst thing these clowns, very much including Musk, do? demand impeaching judges when they rule against pet causes. THAT's scary.
Everybody ought to read the Journal story, however wretchedly edited (when I read it there was no first reference for Bannon). Paywalled, of course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/06/amy-coney-barrett-trump-criticism-supreme-court/
Ted, was it you who recommended Agamben's 'The Mystery of Evil'? Read it over the last couple days, and was kind of gobsmacked.
Not I. Tell me about it.
Agamben is an Italian philosopher, a non-believer I think, but sympathetic towards Catholicism. It's a little book consisting of two essays dealing with Pope Benedict's resignation, and what it might mean eschatologically. Not in an "end times prophecy" sense, but in terms of the worldwide mission of the Church. It's fascinating stuff, and brings to mind Girard's thoughts about "apocalypse."
I've been strongly recommended to read it, but I haven't.
Not sure how on-target it is but it's certainly thought-provoking.
Rombald, you know I am your friend and well wisher, but Israel is your blind spot. They're in the land in unbelief now, but it won't always be. And any nation's regard for the Jews is an unvarying measurement of its likelihood of survival, let alone, its prospects for doing well.
I'm appalled by the rise in Jew hatred in the United States because it indicates that we're more decadent than we thought we were. A true Dark Age is just ahead if this continues.
Antisemitism is not evidenced by opposition to the policies of the government of Israel. And as far as American foreign policy goes, that should be in our country's interests, and not cobbled together in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Kiev, Moscow, London or any other foreign capital.
Well said, Bobby.
Musk, with his assorted baby mamas, reminds me of a sultan with plural wives and a harem.
Or Charles II or Edward VII. Actually, I don’t care that much. It’s the surrogacy that upsets me.
From his grave, Henry I wants to be added to the list.
The dopamine culture chart is brilliant. I think maybe I would put porn as the dopamine culture item for relationships, not swiping. Otherwise, yes. I’ve spent some time in online circles of people who are trying to get away from things that are dopamine addictions. I think everyone, in one way or another, has one that they experience and have trouble getting away from. It can be something that seems innocuous. Doom scrolling is the latest one I guess, but gaming is also a huge problem for people. Everyone knows about porn and gambling.
It really is a hard thing for people to give up, the constant barrage of dopamine hits our culture provides. If anything, the shallow affect that has become the common mode of thought and communication is responsible for a great deal of personal dissatisfaction. It is impossible to build anything of substance with such a state, because the biggest joy, for want of a better word, only comes from putting the first brick down, over and over, and never making it past that.
Porn and gaming are addictions. A couple of my sons spend too much time playing these foolish games.
Thankfully I got through that phase when state of the art was Mario Brothers on Nintenedo.
I go way back to Galaga, Boot Hill and Atari's ping-pong.
The irony is that the design and quality of gaming is going downhill as development is focused more on monetization than game quality. Some of the old games still hold their own against newer ones for that reason.
The first game I ever played as a kid was *Super Mario World*, on the Super Nintendo.
I go back to the golden age of arcade video games. I was the local Defender champ, and the game blew all its fuses because I was beating the, er, pants off it.
I pushed shopping carts at the now defunct, Waldbaums (a NY local that was bought-out by A & P) supermarket when I was 16. A luncheonette next door had "Centipede" and I had plenty of unsupervised time. I lost about 75 cents per hour, of my 3.15 salary, to that game.
Many games, mostly online multiplayer games, now are engineered specifically to provide dopamine hits and keep people coming back for me. It is really insidious and easy to get hooked into them because of how the micro rewards encourage playing more to get another award.
As did one of mine - but after years of misery he seems to be in a very good place.
"Why go after national parks?"
Are they closing parks or selling some buildings. Per your link, one building is the Klondike Gold Rush Museum in Seattle. The news report cites that the museum is important because Seattle was the embarkation point for people headed to Alaska. So we need this?
Exactly. A museum dedicated to getting on a boat to go somewhere else. That probably gets literally tens of visitors a month.
Meanwhile the real Klondike Gold Rush National Park is in Alaska, of course:
https://www.nps.gov/klgo/planyourvisit/museums.htm
It probably gets dozens of visitors a month, but at least it's where the actual gold was being rushed to.
Don't like to see anything like that close (it's never a question of "need"), but it seems to me that such a museum could be funded by state and local sources.
The Klondike Gold Rush Museum seems as pointless as that stupid Space Needle.
Come on, at least the Space Needle co-starred with Elvis in a movie:
https://www.tcm.com/video/252071/it-happened-at-the-worlds-fair-movie-clip-seattle-1962
It was Rod who introduced me to Aaron Renn. I subscribed. Each month when I would get a reminder of the bill, I would think, "Should I really keep subscribing? Renn's primary areas of interest - Protestantism, American domestic affairs, cities - are not mine." But then there would always be some insight in Renn's writing that was original. And month after month I maintained my subscription. Clearly I am not alone!
I agree but if I subscribed to everything Rod tells me to, I'd be bankrupt.
The government rents a lot of office buildings from private sector leasing firms. It’s these leases that the Trump Administration is going after, not the inherent government functions currently occurring in those spaces.
This is how the Democrats lie. By scaring people into thinking that Yellowstone is being shut down permanently.
Believe nothing from these people. Nothing.
To be analytical about it, here’s the deliberate deception pattern. Trump, who knows the language of real estate and business, orders Musk to look into the government’s many lease agreements with real estate investment trusts (known as REITs among investors), private sector firms that function as landlords for both corporate and government tenants as well as apartment buildings, shopping centers, even golf courses and graveyards. They’re a convenient financing mechanism. A firm or government agency whose expertise lies elsewhere doesn’t have to concern itself with managing property and can instead focus on its core functions.
But these leases can sometimes become too expensive.
What the Democrats are trying to to do is use language like “eliminating centers”, which can mean either cutting the actual government function or simply switching from one lease to another. In the press, the headline that shines through leaves careless readers with the impression that Trump is shutting down all kinds of ordinary, non-controversial government agencies, where he’s really only going after leases that aren’t benefiting the government financially. The government also rents a lot of empty space inadvertently. It’s this kind of thing we’re likely talking about in reality. The administration is too quick to take credit for actual cuts to believe it would weasel any cuts via misdirection in its rhetoric.
Yes, believe nothing.
Regarding that last little bit about Aaron Renn turning to the manosphere, I entirely understand it.
Based on my own experiences, finding a woman to date and potentially marry in a church setting simply isn't feasible. Women want men *they are already attracted to* to go to church with them, not meet them at one. And so, men respond accordingly.
A secular YouTuber I follow does the occasional "Dating Christian Girls" story, and perhaps the most truthful criticism he has against churches is that they are NOT bulwarks against the modern dating culture that some may wish it was. And frankly, I can't disagree; one of the great puzzles of the manosphere is that for all its grifters and performative machismo, it's also speaking truths to men that they will not hear in certain sections of society.
I am curious in the article Aaron was saying that Evangelicas were giving him wrong advice about dating or how to be a man. I wonder what that was?
If I had to guess, it was probably to be some combination of overly polite and deferential in their dating.
Men have the habit of confusing obeisance with attractiveness, and not getting the outcomes they want is what drives them to seek advice elsewhere, from outside the church if need be.
He's written about it extensively on his blog, and his capsule summary is: holiness is not sexiness. The idea would be that holiness tracks with the traits needed to be a good *husband*, but not necessarily the ones needed to draw a woman in the first place and hold her interest, because attraction plays by its own rules.
I'm not sure how a Christian is supposed to feel about that thesis, although it seems clear that as a practical matter, it captures an important reality about relations between the sexes.
Well, this applies to all men, religious or not, but unless you're an unbelievably funny comedian, or exceptionally wealthy, being in shape seems to be a prerequisite for attracting women. And I don't blame them, really; I know I like to see in-shape women, so it's entirely fair that they want to see that in men.
As far as how Christians should feel abou Renn's thesis, this is the case where Christian idealism runs into the brick wall of biological/physiological reality; we're attracted to attractive people, and all we can really do is try to become more attractive, if even just a little bit.
Physical attractiveness is less important to women than it is to men—but sure, it's part of the overall package, along with things such as charm, style, wealth, humor, status. And social dominance, overall.
When I wonder how Christians should feel, what I mean is: if attractiveness is essentially amoral and pagan and not correlated with holiness, then one might ask whether sexuality as such is compromised, and whether it's then true that adhering to a code of celibacy is the only appropriate path for people who want to engage in a single-minded pursuit of holiness.
And the answer might be . . . probably? Maybe? We can't really have it both ways, is all I mean, if we concede that to pursue being attractive is to focus at least some of our energy and attention on things that don't necessarily contribute to greater holiness.
Incidentally, this implication is likely what church leaders would wish to avoid, which is why they continue to pretend (as Renn complains) that a direct correlation prevails between holiness and attractiveness, when that is empirically not the case.
I feel like we're getting dangerously close to an Augustinian view of human sexuality, but maybe he was more right than we'd like to admit.
Your thoughts track my own on this incredibly fraught but oh so fascinating topic (as it should be! Make sexiness interesting again).
This seems in a similar vein to the discussions around that "too many monks, not enough knights" video that has been going around. Unless we are to go join a monastery, there needs to be *some* attention diverted to attending to the matters of the world. But I think it's a matter of hierarchies: marriage needs to be nested under holiness as a path to it, and sexuality then nested under marriage and family. Making yourself more attractive for your wife (or a potential/future wife) seems to me to be fine. As long as (like anything else you can do), you remain watchful for the appearance of the passions distorting that endeavor.
Celibacy may be a high acsesis for those called to it, but it is hardly the only path to holiness. The calendar is full of saints who were married and had children.
"Courtliness" is the great, nearly extinct word, Trevor. The Devil loves to mess with the language, as we know. His destruction of the wonderful word, "gay," was one of his great triumphs in the last one hundred years.
A gentleman by definition doesn't grovel. It would be beneath him. He is pleased by his mastery of understanding of life's possibilities for courtesy, however, and lives with instinctive courtesy. ( I adore the insight that a true gentleman is never unintentionally rude. )
Courtliness carries with it the unspoken fact that in a couple, the man is supposed to be the more dominant. If a man believes that, he will look for a woman whom he sees as suitable for him. He will exude a quiet majesty which makes alpha maleness look like the pathetic knockoff of genuine maleness which it is.
Sounds wonderful!
Your definition of "courtliness" makes me think of magnanimous, a close but not entirely equal concept.
I suppose, in my moral imagination, those qualities you describe I associate with historical figures like George Washington and Robert Lee. If I am thinking of literary characters, then Darcy and Rhett Butler come to mind. I certainly admire those people more than Andrew Tate, or that dude who's always driving in the car or whatever.
I mean, a man capable of exuding “majesty” is by definition an alpha male. There are many ways to advertise confidence and dominance. The “gentleman” archetype is one. There are others. Most of them will successfully attract women, including ones that are much more crass. One of the indelible life lessons every boy ends up learning is that it’s actually very rarely the nice guy who gets the girl, and that jerks tend to be more successful with women than most, unfortunately.
Renn does challenge that last point about being a jerk, though. He suggests that attractive people can *afford to be jerks*, whereas unattractive people cannot, because such behavior will not be tolerated from the latter. So it's not that being a jerk per se is attractive; it's that acting like a jerk might in some cases advertise that you otherwise have assets that compel people to put up with you.
Still, though, the point is that jerkiness itself is not an asset. That's not actually what anyone finds attractive about anyone.
That’s mostly true. Being a jerk and getting away with it is what works, because generally one only does get away with it if one is too tough or dangerous to be put in his place (strong) or too popular/charismatic for anyone to want to cross (high status).
That said, I do think women are actually attracted to acts of dominance, and being a jerk is one. They might not like it, exactly (women tend to at least outwardly dislike it when their date is rude to the help, for example), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t attract them on a deeper level that they don’t have a lot of control over. We like what we like, right?
But the alpha male is a narcissist and therefore a jerk. By definition, jerks lack true majesty. My ideal is the gentleman. A man should have the goal of discerning and avoiding women who are attracted to jerks, which is actually easy if he is a gentleman.
Brother Pedro Haering, who died in 2008, was a Holy Cross monk who taught math in Catholic schools in Indianapolis. He retired ( do monks retire? ) in the nineties, and was moved to the Holy Cross retirement center in South Bend. He started doing six hours a week of broadcasts on WSND, the Notre Dame radio station. He didn't play liturgical music, he played the popular music of his life, excluding rock and everything rock adjacent. If you made a request, he wanted to know about you so he could put you on his prayer list. I consider him among the greatest gentlemen I have ever known.
He loved Sinatra, whom he had been introduced to when Sinatra performed at Notre Dame, and whom he always referred to as “Mr Sinatra.” He thought Hal David's lyric, “Alfie,” for the Burt Bacharach melody, was the most profound lyric for a popular song ever written, and I am inclined to agree. The Alfie character is “successful” with women, and it's the antithesis of what a sane and genuinely majestic man wants.
Married woman here. I don't think it's "majesty", "courtliness" or "dominance" that women find attractive in a potential husband. Rather, it is competence. A man who can earn a decent living, do home repairs, diagnose car problems, fix a bicycle or toilet, and also do some fun things such as fly an airplane, sail a boat or set up a tent does not need great looks or tons of charisma to find a wife.
The reality is that not many women really want to date Ned Flanders.
Isn't Ned Flanders secretly ripped though? He at least has that much going for him.
"Secretly" is part of his problem, he usually has that hidden under a bulky sweater.
It's like in Parks and Rec. Jerry is married to Christie Brinkley.
https://youtu.be/WaeRM7X_yS4?si=Ou_C6DSSR4bQfqPR
Exactly!
I'm sure Ned's wife appreciates his hidden manly physique.
There's a fantasy women seem to have about reforming a dangerous man to the point that he's good, but still dangerous. That's attractive in the same way that a "rescue" dog is, with the same reality being a lot harder than the fantasy.
The corresponding male fantasy probably has to do with finding a broken woman and winning her love by putting her back together and offering redemption. White knighting, as they call it.
I don't think that one is nearly as common though.
About 20 years ago or so I was in a bad relationship of this type, and I was telling my former priest about it in a sort of quasi-confessional way. After I was finished venting he said, "Funny Rob, but you don't look like God's other son."
Yup—messiah complex.
My sister used to ask me why I was always attracted to damaged women. I told her that wasn't the case -- it was that they were attracted to me. My problem was that I always ignored the red flags that inevitably appeared and stuck around longer than I should have, trying to fix things.
The Razor's Edge. Larry Darrell trying to save Sophie MacDonald, a childhood friend who had gone wayward.
I’ll have to check that out.
It’s a good one.
Vampires were all the rage at one point.....wifey was into it for a few years. Disappointing ....LOL
Dopamine culture:
Three home prepared meals a day --- Fast food diet --- Ozempic
Liturgical Sundays --- Entertainment/Educational Sermons --- Podcast Christianity
If you're working away from home you can't prepare lunch at home, though you don't need to eat out- many workplaces have refrigerators and microwaves so you can buy something to heat up.
Right on with the religious trio you posit.
Maybe we've developed a rather insular Christian Commentariat of our own wherein the stars of substack/podcast see the world only through the eyes of each other and their perception -- however audacious or humble -- of how they might be influencing the broader world, while they become increasingly inured to the world following them. Hence the sense of "negative world" happening simultaneous to an explosion of Christian activity, writing, thinking, and influence.
I remember someone being described: "He walks into a room of adoring fans and can only focus on the one person in the room who doesn't love him."
I am glad to see there was finally push back from Cabinet Heads against Musk in a meeting yesterday. Apparently Trump agreed to let them decide who to cut. That makes more sense than letting Musk come in with a hatchet.
To be honest though where does Musk see his power from in the Constitution? If this were the Obama administration Chuck Grassley would be holding hearings on the Judiciary Committee. Nothing. Again, I like the concept of all this, but I don’t like Musk having this extra power over the FBI Director. I would rather see Trump set some goals and let the departments handle them on their own. Let’s have Musk revolutionize how to build ships for the Navy.
If you can be bothered read what I posted above. Musk will crash and burn, though it may happen behind the curtain. In our system cabinet members don't resign over policy (Cy Vance is the last big one), and while that takes some power from them, it gives them certain leverage as well. Now, Trump is Trump, and he did knife Jeff Sessions, a serious man. But somebody got Trump's attention, and it might have been J.D. Or Susie. Just saying.
Agreed. He is all about his Brand as a guy coming from business. If someone says Musk is hurting your brand then maybe he will listen. His Brand right now is the Border, Drill Baby Drill, and the Economy. Musk is biting into that and taking too much focus away from the consumer and diminishing Trump’s brand.
Exit stage right Musk, enter Bannon...
Bannon's no prize package (he read Amy's "body language" at SOTU), but he's miles ahead of Musk. Musk is meshuggah.
If I were Trump, I'd keep Bannon away. He's the ugly side of populism. Like Musk, he's more interested in himself and Trump is secondary.
Bannon is one of those people who makes me think, "Sometimes physiognomy is real."
I paid attention to Bannon's podcast once. That was in early January 2020. He was telling everybody not to worry, that Trump was going to be the next President. That's just Crazy Town.
Bannon and Musk must decrease. Vance and those who exude seriousness must increase. Hitler salutes, dancing on graves in goofy "messaging" t-shirts, and baseball hats, careless use of free-speech by alleged leaders, and embracing figures like the Tates "because we can" is going to land us a doozy of a Dem president in 4 years. This isn't a "win" until the dems are forced to abandon the insanity for good. The stake is not through their hearts. If Trump sets the table for Vance, we may get some lasting, common sense, reform.
I don't get the "drill baby drill". We are already the world's leading oil and natural gas producer. In that much Trump seems to be stuck in a time warp in the 80s when we were dependent on foreign oil.
I think it's mainly about emphasizing that our pursuit of green energy transformation is over, especially insofar as it compromises energy independence.
Maybe, but I find Trump's hostility to "new" energy tech also problematic. This is a "nothing in excess" situation. We cannot and should not rush into things that are not yet ready for prime time. But neither should we concede those markets and that new tech to China or anyone else. Again, Trump seems to be stuck like a Luddite in the past on this.
It looks to me that the Dems just pushed the ideologically driven Green New Deal so hard for so long, and now he's just communicating in equally emphatic terms that that's over. So we'll see what comes next. But I don't think Trump literally hates all new energy sources; that's not the point of his current stance.
You could not be more accurate when you speak about evangelicals not being willing to listen to the Benedict option but being open to Renn’s work. When Benedict Option came out, I read it and then bought a bunch of copies for my elders and church members.
I couldn’t get anyone to take it seriously. They were too stuck in neutral world thinking even though Obergafeld had already swept over us.
The year it came out, I used Renn’s book for a Sunday school and everyone understood the reality of what he was talking about.
The problem now is that many want to act like Donald Trump’s election means everything is all put right. The reality is that we are still deep in negative world in just about every area.
There isn't any political victory that could change that. What politics can do, though, is keep the woke totalitarians at bay and make some sane space, which is definitely not nothing.
I agree.
Dopamine culture- I see it every day with my students and colleagues (especially my younger colleagues.) No or very little talking but lots of scrolling. No deep conversation or reading. Just TikTok. There is no TikTok but TikTok and TikTok is TikTok’s TikTok. At least there was a young 1st grade teacher who told me a few days ago that she constantly tells her friends to leave their phones in their cars for their own good. There’s hope.
I have 3 massive bookshelves in my classroom holding my ancient history, American history, Soviet history, philosophy, and pedagogy books that I have no room for at home. I used to get asked about the books by many students. Now I might get a handful of inquiries from my top level dual enrollment and AP kids in a year. But I sure get questions about TikTok, which I don’t even have.
There was a story in the New York Post last week about a girl who graduated with honors from the Hartford, CT, school district who's suing because she's actually illiterate. That's pretty extreme and I can't vouch for it's complete veracity, but it does ring a bell, dunnit?
The story never came out and said it, but I suspect the girl was severely dyslexic. She had a legal right to therapy that might have helped her condition but wasn't given it.
Your comment is spot on and reflects my experience as a high school teacher as well. My students admit that they don't watch movies, except for perhaps the latest comic book extravaganza. It's all TikTok and Instagram reels for them. And yesterday during lunch, a young teacher of about 25 spent all of lunch scrolling his phone rather than interacting with us, his colleagues. He is not an introvert; he is usually very gregarious. He just is clearly a product of his generation, which doesn't understand how staring at your phone is incredibly rude to others seated at the table.
Yup. My 8th grader hasn't finished a book in I don't know how long. He skims and just finds the parts he needs to answer the questions.
Part of me can't blame him, books are for tests, not pleasure.
I know several 20-somethings who can't just sit and watch a movie or TV show. They have to be effing around with their phones all the while. FOMO is strong with this group.
Fifteen years ago or so, I took my bride out for supper at our best local restaurant at the time during Prom Season. As we ate and drank, three lovely and well-dressed young ladies came into the restaurant escorted by three handsome and well-dressed young men. They sat down and each began playing with their phones. What kind of social event is that?
The young don't seem to read. They watch you tube videos to get information. For instance, if one wanted to know more about the Russian Revolution, I'd tell a person to read Richard Pipes' book on the subject to get all the nuances. The young today would watch a half-hour show on the Russian Revolution with lots of motion pictures and photos.
A friend of mine who is a seminary prof. says that the young people coming in have no understanding of the idea that knowledge takes work, and don't have a clue what it means to wrestle with a difficult or challenging text. He gets constant complaints that the reading he assigns is "too hard." And these are grad students.
Worse, I fear some of the young don't have a thirst to learn. That's why I like this site. Everybody here is smart and they have a thirst to learn.
My 15 yo son does like to read, both for school (he is homeschooled) and for pleasure. It’s been difficult for him to connect with his own peers, even in friendly environments like the church youth group, because they don’t read books. I had trouble believing it until my husband and I started working with a group of high schoolers last fall, and he’s right—none of them read, though they are lovely kids.