Why do you think the theorists have linked "queerness" and "fatness"? There's a current Target commercial with a lesbian couple, a thin black woman with short hair and an obese long-haired Asian girl. Ticks almost all the boxes, does that one!
Fat is yet another stand-in for the oppression of queers. Nothing more worthy of appropriating as a symbol of victimhood that a fat person. If you really want some high explosives, shame a fat, black, queer menstruator with a speech impediment.
The only bummer about that ad is that the plump asian woman is justified by her devotion to lesbianism. Not because her lesbianism is shameful. No. It is the shameful psychology which insists that her hot, asian fatness is only attractive because she lives the life of a dyke-as- pretense to sell shit for Target.
Aside from that, she could easily be a fat, gorgeous asian woman.
I wish somebody would shoot me. Too much labor is required to make sense.
And yet, this law was deemed "hateful" and "fascist".
Consider this. Nudity and simulated or real sex acts in front of children is considered by many to be legitimate forms of self-expression, and attempts to stop it is "fascist".
It gives me hope that most Floridians support the law.
Though as far as those that label the law as "Fascist", they seem to have enormous platforms--in Washington DC, mainstream news, Social Media, Hollywood, etc.
Do you know who staged children's parades with nudity and simulated sex?
The Aztecs.
They got the kids juiced up on liquor too before the parades began.
And recall how people with advanced degrees recently tried to introduce Aztec gods into the California school curriculum. It's like watching social scientists playing with pornified Rubik's cubes.
Oh yeah. They were remarkable engineers and had a facinating culture. But it is clear the Aztec civilization was evil, thoroughly demonic. The Spanish and Portuguese were not saints, but it is clear that God's "cup of iniquity" had overflown regarding them and they received judgement.
They were fascinating largely because they were thoroughly demonic. Even their engineering skills were employed to further their conquests for sacrificial victims, in the same way that the beauty of a Messerschmidt Bf 109 was tied to the enabling of the Shoah.
I was quite taken with Victor Davis Hansen's writing on Cortez and his men. After fighting his way out of the Aztec capital, he was fearful that the Aztec vassals would descend on his force and wipe them out. But the vassals saw it differently: they saw the Spanish as a power who in escaping had accomplished what they could not, and so they decided their liberators had arrived.
I admitted it was demonic, why are you having a go at me? Their culture being demonic does not take away from their engineering prowess as something to admire, or the interesting aspects of their culture. As you say, the Nazis were up to some heinous stuff, but GErman culture was not defined by the Nazi era. Before, and after, it is great. And their engineering has always been top notch, even when it served the Nazis. It is possible to admire aspects of a thing and still call parts of it evil. It is not an either/or thing. Humans are complex and colorful. Always have been.
Sorry, I didn't think I was going at you. I thought I was just agreeing in a fun way with a minor difference.
But German culture has always been problematic. Nazism had antecedents that reached back centuries, and todays Germans are contracepting and immigrating themselves out of existence. Their science and engineering has been great due to their intellectual power, but so much of their negatives come from that ability also. Much of the worst Christian theology is German, as is the best. As you put, it is complex and colorful.
I once heard a mestizo professor of gender-queer studies, I mean anthropology, go into a half-trance in front of an NPR mic and allow as how yes, the human sacrifice, it's part of my people, it's my heritage, I understand the necessity, the beauty of ripping the heart out of a living man to mollify the god Unpronounceable. I kid you not. Anything rather than admit his white half might have had something going for it.
I used to go every year to watch what was then called the “gay pride parade” in NYC. Late 80s-90s. There were protesters who were boxed off saying the rosary near St. Pat’s. People heckled them but no worse than that.
Rapists are turned on by the fear and terror of their victims. Some even murder their victims while raping them and being inside them. They want to climax at the point of the victims death.
Why do we allow such individuals even a trial? Feed them to a wood chipper.
Correction: there is an exception. Since orgasms are involuntary and can be hijacked by the central nervous system, there are predators out there who know that and use it as part of what they are looking for. This is another evil that damages the victim. “You came, so you liked it and wanted it.” No. Just the body being hijacked by a fiend. Horribly damaging. Again, feed them slowly to sharks.
Ah Rod - I fully respect your views on Trangenderism but... why so angry? This woman, and brave she was, knew exactly what was likely to happen in that volatile environment. Great for protesting. She also knows what consequences are for walking through this crowded area. We can applaud her but why so angry or surprised? These were natural consequences that she was probably ready for.
Sometimes violence is called for. Not an emotional lashing out. But taking warranted, necessary steps to stop monsters. Such as these if they "come for your children."
No, anger is not. Wrath is. Anger is an emotion, a natural part of who we are. Jesus was angry. And expressed that anger, in both word and deed. He never lost his temper, however. He never lost control. Neither did God. When God/Christ acted, their's was a decision and a righteous anger. It is right to be angry against that which offends God. It is not right to try to blow it off
And a disturbing number seem to admire passivity, cowardice and even worse, quail at the idea of calling out this abomination for what it is. Heaven forbid we offend the feelings of those who lust after children.
Basil, I don't see that. What I do see is that normal people can take only so much. Of course, the sad conclusion Rod draws is that there may not be enough people left who do care. I think there are some, though, and that if this boil isn't lanced soon, it will be squeezed madly by genuine violence. I have in mind what the Travis Bickle character does in Taxi Driver. God forbid that anything like that happens, but if the majority of normies are so blotto they can't act in courage, can't demonstrate, can't speak out, be assured that eventually, we will have a Travis Bickle - like response.
The aftermath of that is something I'd rather not contemplate.
Jon, Jesus' breaking up the party in the Temple wasn't a demonstration of anger, then?
Of course, chronic anger against another individual is deadly. It will boil over into emotional or physical violence, or something worse than that, contempt for the person's existence.
But the failure to be righteously angry is a terrible sin. See, this is why I could never be Orthodox. You are not taught to rightly divide the Word of Truth.
Didn't Jesus say "go and sin no more?" Don't recall the part of the Bible where he said, "Go and keep sinning, and insist everyone else celebrate it because otherwise you'll commit suicide"
I've oft heard that heterosexual males find the thought of lesbian encounters sexually stimulating. I have never been such a man, but if I were, the photo of the makeout of the two obese lesbians would have cured me.
He loves his creation. But for the souls who engage in abomination, HIS words, there is wrath. God has destroyed cities, even whole worlds over this. And He specifically has had pointed words to say to those who would hurt children. So may the Living God grant you clarity. And pick up a Bible every now and then.
God is love. But He is also holy, and for those who embrace sin, there is only wrath and damnation. For those who would "come for your children..."
◄ Luke 17 ►
New International Version Par ▾
Sin, Faith, Duty
1Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. 2It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3So watch yourselves.
“If your brother or sister a sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Forgiveness is there, but only for those who recognize their sin and fall on their knees in repentance before a Holy God. Because if you don't, if you do not repent and accept Christ's gift of salvation, there is only God's holy wrath.
"Why so angry? The civil rights protesters, brave as they were, knew exactly what was likely to happen if they went peacefully into the segregated Southern lunch counters and order sandwiches."
The difference is that this lady did not walk peacefully into it. She had a sign and was screaming out the words. And yes, good on her. We need brave people to speak out. But let's not take the side if 'victim'. That's poor protesting and makes us look like the other side. Don't be angry and don't be surprised. This is a battle. Nothing cushy happens in a battle. That's all I'm saying. More and more., the posts I read are divisive. So American really.
The thing is, while we're not surprised, it still shouldn't have happened. I was at Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally in DC in 2010, and there were protesters who ran through, shouting with signs, and no one laid a hand on them. They knew that they had nothing to fear. They also knew, even back than, that if they were to be harmed, they had rights.
What is happening now is that when you have someone "conservative" somehow protest the left, in cities, at the very least, one can be brutally attacked and there is no justice. Then we have half of "our side" denounce the ones who speak up because we all should "know better". Well, then, why even carry any "dissident" thoughts if they end effect is to no along to get along anyway?
How, in your opinion, can one share an opinion on a controversial topic without being divisive? Or, by "divisive," do you mean having an opinion that strays from the Narrative?
Wish I could thank her for her bravery in person. I hope she discovers how many people in forgotten corners of the world are grateful for her voice and courage.
Why so angry? Because he's human and he cares about people other than himself. That's my guess. At least it explains why I'm angry. Anger is a healthy response to having one's own, or witnessing another's rights violated. Anger in the face of child abuse is healthy, natural, and, properly harnessed and expressed, productive. Knowing that one is taking a risk does not mean it is somehow ok to be attacked.
Oh, please. This is the second time I've heard the "they had it coming it to them" wheeze in these boxes and it's a troll at one remove. The First Amendment guarantees that woman the right to say whatever she wants to anybody she wants. I have grave doubts whether it protects freaks (a good descriptive English word) from disporting themselves naked, but that's another matter. We are the only country in the world where speech such as this woman's is protected. Why not head to another where it is not? I suggest Nigeria. And take your great beating heart of he-man charity with you.
Robert, I think it's rather like the age-old debate about when people put themselves into dangerous situations, and where the fault really sits. A classic example is the person openly flashing a large wad of cash in a dangerous neighborhood, and then being mugged. Where does the fault lay?
Obviously with the mugger, who has assaulted the guy with the money, has committed a crime. And for that he should be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed.
Is the guy who was robbd to blame for what happened? Obviously not, in that everyone has a moral right to their own property. And yet...
Should he have known he was in a dangerous neighborhood? Is it ever wise to flash cash even in a safer area? Known how temptation works on hearts, was he inadvertently causing others to stumble? Do we blame the robbery on the victim, and just chalk it off to "natural consequences"?
Should we not feel anger that the guy was robbed? It's tempting to shrug it off. Certainly he was foolish, and while we must not blame him, the victim, we can assign some degree of dereliction of responsibility. Yet is that enough to halt from charging his assailant? It should not be so. Should we be angry if the police shrug it off? Absolutely, as they would be neglecting their duty.
And will these gay parade goons be prosecuted? Unlikely. And for that we should be furious.
When it comes to arguments like these, it is sometimes best to get to the point and showing definitively the cowardly and monstrous just how off-base they are.
"Conscience and freedom are inalienable companions. One is because of the other. If it is'nt we're not going to be a success as a nation. We're not going to have an architecture, we're not going to have anything. We'll crawl, we'll go back to the slime." Frank Lloyd Wright 1954
You keep complaining that there's not much reaction to the extremists going after children (and being increasingly open about it), but I wonder how much the average person actually knows about all this. I'd be very surprised to see major media reporting on the kind of facts with which you regularly engage here, and a very great part of our elite population still relies on the MSM for its facts.
I say this because I had an experience as the pandemic was winding down that showed to me just how powerful media capture can be. I returned to Canada for the first time since before the pandemic, on a trip that took me to a couple provinces. By the time the trip was over, something was bothering me, though it took a couple weeks to put my finger on it: nobody seemed to have any conception that there could be anything negative in gender ideology. For them it was just a question of how open and tolerant you are; a dissenter like JBP is clearly on that account somewhat disreputable. Men in women's prisons? Men in women's rape shelters? Women getting physically intimidated or physically attacked for the crime of speaking in public? Children getting sterilised or having body parts chopped off? (etc.) These issues did not exist at all for almost everyone I encountered on that trip, as far as I can tell. My sense is that educated, well-informed Canadians simply DO NOT KNOW. And why should they? If the MSM mentions any of the stuff I just listed (which they are very much not inclined to do), they'll put it on page C11 and frame it in a way that makes it seem like a minor matter compared to a much needed advance of progress. Total institutional capture is an extraordinarily powerful thing, so long as people still trust the institutions.
For a view of the state of the discourse in Canada, I recommend the following piece by a journalist who has been writing for decades in the Globe and Mail (Canada's NYT), and can thus be considered to be at the top of his profession: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-the-far-rights-persecution-of-the-trans-community-risks-all-the-gains/ (Both the facts that do and don't get mentioned as well as their framing are worthy of note.) If this was your source of information, how would you feel about the issue?
Something similar could be going on in the US for people who are not particularly right wing, and that would go a long way to explaining why there's a muted reaction to the extremists coming for the kids.
Most people have many, many other things occupying their attention-- and often quite necessary things. In normal life I almost never hear anyone talk about any of this stuff. It's an exotic pastime for the social Right and the gender-radical Left, but most people have no connection with it.
And yet, these radicals make US law and policy. The radicals depend on normies not paying attention, and, as you love to do, pooh-poohing those who do notice.
My point was that most people have lives, and assorted personal concerns, and jobs, and for most people those jobs do not involve commentary on public affairs. And that's true of people across the political spectrum. And no, the radical left is not making public policy. Half the states are firmly in the control of the Republican Party and many are making decidedly rightwing public policy (e.g., on abortion and guns). At the federal level the government remains largely gridlocked so not much policy is being made at all. Heck we only barely averted a vast major crisis last month when some members of the GOP House tried to force their agenda on the country by holding the economy hostage.
Yes, people are very busy and distracted and the LGBTQ+ movement has skillfully taken advantage of this fact. School policies are the most obvious example.
If she's worth her salt, she will, in the spirit of Camille Paglia, laugh her ass off at the guy right to his face. Maybe gather her friends around the dude and go in for a good public shaming.
I know very few parents of young children, though plenty of people with adult children. And I do know (online only) a guy whose adult son has just done the MtF change, and yes he's not happy about it. I'm in the Baltimore area for more oral surgery and yesterday I went to myvold church and caught up with friends who do have young kids, and also with the deacon and his wife, also with minor children. This topic has never come up with these people.
I also know (online) a gay guy whose gay male group was just reminded "There are transmen who are gay and they have to worry about getting pregnant" and yes, he thinks that's absurd. As I've noted before there's something inimical between gay and trans no matter how the activist class tries to paper over the chasm
Jon, the topic may not have come up because people are terrified and self-censor constantly. That's why Live Not By Lies was so miserably prophetic: we're all the greengrocer now. As a parent I can tell you that when two parents start talking while their children play, there's a point at which it cautiously dawns upon them that the mutual silence and refusal to interject the usual signals of loyalty to the regime means they may be speaking with a fellow traveler. It's a whole song and dance.
People bridle their speech in certain public areas (and should) but in private they express all manner of politically incorrect notions to friends and kin. I'd be rich if I had a dollar every time I've heard blatantly racist crap spoken by people who assume since I'm white I must be on board with it. Not to mention Trumpist tinfoil hattery so fantastical it makes LOTR read like sober history.
Elsewhere on this thread I suggested we need to look into the biochemistry of the phenomenon, which seems to me a more useful and hard-headed approach than just bemoaning it and bashing each other over it.
I feel pretty confident that it's not about biochemistry. It's a double-edged social contagion: Kids naively see it as an answer to all of their identity issues and dissatisfaction with their bodies, and adults see it as a one-size-fits-all solution for widely varied mental health issues that would require long-term, thoughtful, customized care.
You almost never hear people talking about it, but then you don't hear the anguished conversations over the dinner table when the teenage daughter announces she's a boy. A lot of this goes on behind closed doors as families wrestle with what the hell do to about children who've been captured and eaten by the culture/Discord/etc.
And of course more and more of this is being shoved down our collective gullet.
I've agreed that there's a social fad aspect to this, but I remain mostly convinced that we're seeing the fallout of a great deal of environmental contamination with ersatz hormone mimics disrupting sexual development. No one here seems to want to explore that idea. Mostly they just want to scream about the politics of it.
The fact that the vast majority of teenagers who experience rapid onset gender dysphoria desist if left alone, would suggest that the biochemistry is a minor diversion.
Suicide is also known to have a significant social-contagion component, which is why people in education and child psychologists were so freaked out a couple years ago by the success of "13 Reasons Why," a teen show (based on a novel) that revolved around a girl who committed suicide and left behind recordings to blame others.
There are teens on social media who have, as crazy at it sounds, chosen to act as if they have Tourette's Syndrome. Don't underestimate the power of the Internet and social media to accelerate very bad ideas among very empty people.
I absolutely think there's some chance of that, especially knowing how the complete corporate dominance/takeover of America works: If in fact environmental contamination by ersatz hormones was occurring, the corporations responsible for it - and there may well be many of them - would never admit it, and neither would the government. Instead, we'd get a campaign very much like what we're seeing now, "supporting" people who affected by the phenomenon that never gets acknowledged, pleading for "tolerance" and "celebrating" those reacting to those ersatz hormones. Because the alternative would be admitting fault and ceasing the activity/stopping the very profitable production of the substance causing the problem. And in our corporate-dominated world, that would never happen.
The research would be dismissed because it's Hungary, a well-known opponent of LGBTQWERTY human rights and thus biased.
It's called reality; that "counsel of despair" is where we're at. Ultimately the truth will come out - it always does. But in the meantime this phenomenon is destined to hurt a whole lot more people before that truth comes to light
There's a not insignificant number of us who deal with it every day because it affects our families in a deeply personal way. I usually speak in general terms because (a) my own anecdotes really don't mean much and (b) I want to keep my privacy. But there's never a day when it is not in my face and I cannot choose to ignore it, even if I wanted to.
Jon, this is my experience too. Most people just are NOT aware of this unless they're specifically watching for it. Some are certainly turning a blind eye, but my wife (who is reasonably "plugged in" to current events) was telling me last week that it's only just now becoming real to her how much of a post-Christian nation we are becoming. Just in walking around our little town one evening last week, she was floored by the sheer number of pride flags and other pride crap was just *everywhere*. Our town has a small independent book shop for kids and teens, and its store windows were jam-packed with queer BS of all sorts - the owner of the shop has gone radically all-in on promoting the sorts of garbage that Rod has been highlighting for years (stuff any sane parent of 20 years ago would have deemed offensive). My priest's daughter used to work at this shop and never had any inkling that this was coming - it's like a switch was thrown. This shop, once a very parent and child oriented shop, is now overtly hostile to conservatives and Christians. My wife shopped here frequently until quite recently, and the radical extreme turn of the shop caught her off guard.
My employees likewise largely do not see this stuff everyday. Sure they see the pride flags and "in this house" yard signs in their neighborhoods, but they're not encountering the struggle sessions, race and gender seminars and training, or other crap unless their spouses are working where this is suddenly de rigeur, or they have school aged children (most don't). It's not on the news (if they still watch it - which most don't anymore) unless they deliberately tune in to outlets that cover it. If they do encounter it, it's usually only filtered through stories about "radical" right wingers, so they assume it's still far more fringe than it really is.
I don't believe that, Jon. Maybe it was so ten years ago, but now? Normies have not noticed the freakifying of society? They haven't noticed the break with the living out of most of their lives that June, which used to be known for its abundance of weddings ( hetero, obviously ) is now something called PRIDE month, with billowing multicolored banners in the springtime breeze?
How is anyone who pays any attention to events unaware of the transing of the culture? Bud Light, Target, the Dodgers, et al, and people haven't noticed it?
My mother told me about something that happened to her on D Day. She was a 22 year old, newly married, Rosie the Riveter, with a 6:00 AM - 2:00 PM factory shift. She was up at 5:00, as usual, that day, turned on the radio, and was thrilled to hear that the invasion had begun. At the bus stop, she was alone at first. Then, a nondescript fellow appeared. Bursting with excitement, and wanting to share it with someone, my mother said to him, "Isn't it exciting?"
The man's response to this was to smile inanely and expose himself. My mother sensed no danger from the jerk, but she was furious, and screamed, "Get away from me, you idiot!!"
Idiot. One who knows not. That poor perv was too caught up in his own world to notice, or care if he had, that momentous events were happening. He had "...no connection with it."
Your portrayal of where you think the American public is with the destruction of their society reminds me of that guy.
Brandon Showalter talks a lot about the Media and how they are a huge player in this madness. His work is definitely worth checking out. None of this could be happening without the Media.
Saw two MSM reports on nationwide pride parades, one on CBS news and the other on MSNBC. I think. Both had a lot of video footage but neither showed any of the negative or freaky stuff -- it was all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns. The average person is being lied to, big time.
A fair number knew that things were going on. The upper classes knew enough to get their handicapped relatives out of the care homes before Aktion T4 was fully implemented, the nurses and nuns and deaconesses saw the handicapped kids get taken away, the soldiers on the front saw the atrocities that were being done to the Jews, Poles, Russians, etc. There were the objectors to this, but short of an assassination attempt on Hitler, what could one person do, right? Bishop Clemens von Galen of Muenster preached forcefully against Aktion T4, and his sermons were clandestinely circulated throughout the country. The White Rose picked up on the "flyer" idea and tried putting all these threads together in their appeals - that it wasn't just one thing or another, but a whole litany of outrageous actions of the National Socialist government. They further made the case that the Nazis were an affront to God, going so far as to call Hitler Satan, and really making the point that any German who did not resist it was complicit in this evil and would suffer the eternal consequence.
I think most people in this country are capable of being aware of what is going on, but they'd rather believe it when the newscast says it's sunny than look outside and see the pouring rain. As long as they stay in their house, what difference does it really make?
Do you recall the story of Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos? He knew about the gas chambers because a student from his island had been at pharmacy school in Berlin, and brought the news when he returned. Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Carrer were ordered to provide a list of the hidden Jews for deportation, and the list they submitted had two names: their own. Threatened with death, Chrysostomos told the Germans he would accompany any Jews who were caught and walk into the gas chambers with them. The Germans were shocked into silence by his courage and his knowledge of the Great Secret. Not one Jew of Zakynthos was caught.
“...Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the National Socialist terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war. Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist. Everywhere and at all times demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate. Everywhere and at all times of greatest trial men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil...”
- Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl, the Fourth White Rose Leaflet, July 1942
The "foul-smelling maw of Hell" has me smiling every time! :)
"It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day? If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.
Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now - the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability - are waiting to be hounded to their destruction. So it seems - but it is not so. Rather, by means of gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison."
Hans Scholl & Alexander Schmorell, Leaflet 1 of the White Rose
He wrote one of his most famous poems while sitting under a tree. Not long after someone prophesied that Germany would fall when the tree fell. The grove was cut down in the construction of the Buchenwald concentration camp but the tree was spared due to the prophecy. The camp guards hung prisoners from the branches of the tree that had inspired the great humanist. About a year after the White Rose executions, the US Army Air Force bombed the shops at Buchenwald and the tree burned to the ground.
Another good point, that the corruption was already there - secularism, modernity, neo-paganism were already embedded in German society by the end of the 19th century so there was no structure able to resist the more powerul force of evil that arrived in the 1930s. The Catholic Church's position was precarious and confined to a few regions only.
The devil is doing the same work today, the father of lies twists words to mean the opposite - pride, equity, diversity, equality, love, compassion, tolerance, peace - all mean different things.
I particularly like the argument that Bishop Clemens von Galen used against Action T4: he stated in a homily that the logic of killing the handicapped could be applied to wounded veterans! The plausibility of this logic is the reason the Nazi leadership regarded him as untouchable, until the war was over at least.
I am sorry to start a run on a tangent! The point is that so many people today don't see what they don't want to see. We self select the news items that interest us. When the subject comes up, they will say 'it's all a bit ridiculous and both sides need to calm down' or 'it's just a tiny number of people involved and it's blown up by the media'. Then there are those in business, academia, teaching, sports who know what is going on and fear for their jobs so just stay quiet and hope it will all blow over.
Many didn't. It is well documented that the number of people at the Degesh company who knew their Zyklon B product was being used to kill people could be counted on one hand. However, rumors did get around, see my comment to Katja on Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos. Pope Pius XII found out just months after the mass gassings started from an Italian army chaplain who's unit had been in Krakow just before deployment to the USSR; the story is "he raised his hands to heaven and wept like a child."
"nobody seemed to have any conception that there could be anything negative in gender ideology. For them it was just a question of how open and tolerant you are..."
I have the same experience with my friends and family in Blue America, and I think the reason (for this and for the entire postmodern capture of America) is that in modern discourse anyone who claims to be fighting for a Protected Victim Class is seen as on the Right Side of History, or more simply: the Civil Rights movement set the template for our discourse and morality, and once the narrative is created about a new group of Oppressed leading a new march to Freedom and Equality, the script is written at that point and you have one of 2 roles to fill: either Oppose and share the moral legacy of Bull Connor et al, or agree 1) to be a compassionate non-bigot; and 2) because everyone you know and every actor journalist talking head you trust and like is doing the same.
The genius of the postmodern New Left is that they captured American morality, aligned themselves in most people's minds with civil rights and freedom from bigotry, and once they had morality on their side, the rest of their takeover was just a matter of time.
I can tell you that parents of school aged children do not need MSM to know what’s going on. It’s so blissfully promoted in Canadian schools you’d have to be wearing a blind fold and muting your children to not know.
"Hey, even the Military-Industrial Complex has been queered"
And you know WHY all the companies and institutions have been queered, don't you? It's not by accident. It's not because they have been persuaded of anything or even that they want to 'be kind'.
It's because all the companies and institutions have been roped into a social credit system called ESG and DEI. If the companies don't get the woke points then they don't get the investment.
ESG is the social credit system. They're doing it through companies and institutions instead of through individuals. Presumably because they think that they are likely to encounter less resistance.
Yes, but that didn't arise in a vacuum. What made a whole lot of investors and such wake up one day and begin making ESG a component of an investment decision?
Here's my hypothesis: it is a great way to neutralize left wing opposition and bring progressives into the fold, without doing anything that might actually affect the bottom line.
Yesterday in the Daily Mail Peter Hitchens wrote that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was properly nothing of the sort but a coup d'etat financed by tons (literally! for once a proper use of the word) of German gold. The aim was to knock Russia out of the war. The Bolsheviks prided themselves on their status as a tiny cadre of saint/gangsters. That's what you see going on here. But the leverage is provided by the money.
I asked Mr. Hitchens for a book on, or with a chapter on, that German financial support for Lenin. I've seen reference to this before and I'm prepared to believe it, but I'd like to know of a good source on the matter. Hitchens hasn't supplied one -- can someone here do so? I'd like to learn more.
Any good history of the Russian Revolution would have it. Basically, the Germans picked up Lenin in Zurich and transported him across Germany in a sealed train so the Bolshevik “bacillus” wouldn’t spread in the Fatherland. That’s why he arrived at The Finland Station in St. Petersburg. The money came through a middleman in Turkey called Alexander Helphand (good that).
Thank you for this recommendation. Some time ago, for some reason, I copied some pages from a library copy of Quigley's Tragedy and Hope and put them adjacent to a copy of Lewis's That Hideous Strength! I must have seen someone make a connection. Are there any chapters of this massive book that you would particularly point to? Thank you.
The tyrants need the appearance that everyone agrees with them, because they have nothing else. Because they have nothing else, this appearance must be brutally enforced; dissent cannot be tolerated. Those who stand up against it know this well; they know the costs, and they stand up and do it anyway. This is courage.
In Germany under the Third Reich, there were plenty of people who were opposed to Hitler in theory, but figured that the cost of standing up was too great. They derided those who dared to do anything as reckless and as fools. I think this is the main reason that I've been so interested in the White Rose, and particularly Alexander Schmorell for so many years, because even twenty years ago it was pretty obvious that if nothing significant changed, this is where we would be. "Political correctness" was still lauded in the 1990s as being a way to be "non-offensive", but it didn't take long at all for it to become a weapon. Who knew we'd go from erasing "he" and "him" as the indefinite personal pronoun, that in twenty-five years we'd be trying to erase the concepts of "male" and "female"!
I was at a Catholic silent retreat this past weekend. During the Q and A, the priest said at this point, the only answer is prayer and sacrifice. Referencing the sacrilegious Sister of Perpetual Indulgence at Dodgers' Stadium, he said the Dodgers received a lot of push-back from many Catholic apostolates and parishioners. The Dodgers were made aware of the SPIs depravity but the Dodgers honored them anyway. We can't fight that with activism, this is a spiritual war.
Yes we can. How about we try before surrendering and waiting for the giant smiting God-finger to do our work for us?
I'm Catholic, and so help me, most of today's priests know nothing about sacrifice, and I often wonder about the extent to which they can speak knowledgeably about prayer, either.
I have no irea what you are talking about. Do you think our minds are hermetically sealed from physical influences? If so drugs and booze would have no effect on us.
Yet you are still criminally liable for what you do under the influence. But I certainly accept the truth of your saying "I have no idea what you are talking about."
I think journalism on the whole has become very devisive and I see this is some of the posts. This is not to diminish you, Rod. I believe you are a very talented writer and i can only dream of being as good. I think my opinions are just 'my opinions' but worthy of expressing, nonetheless. I'm trying desperately to see what God sees. I wonder if, apart from anger, he is sad about all the mess.
The reason for the lack of courage from parents is to a large degree related to money. If every corporation is on board with this and if "the internet is forever" then putting your neck out too far can lead to total financial ruin. The people who must be stepping up are the boomers. With enough of them leading them dissenters among Gen X and millennials who are working can be safer. That's the reality here. Billboard Chris gave up his career. His job is now anti trans activism and occasionally shaking the can on Twitter (I have chipped in). We seriously need pissed off grandparents out in full force. One problem is that Fox News, their main source of news, sanitizes this stuff as their leaders are all in favor of it.
Totally agree. Although I'm self-employed, one of my biggest clients (and a large share of the market I serve) is fully on board with trans. You know the type, they change their logo to rainbow colors during pride month. I have not said anything on social media or elsewhere, because my family cannot get by without my income. I believe it could be career destroying for me to be "out" with my beliefs. Is this cowardice? Perhaps. I think there are a lot of people in this situation.
Talk to your parents about this. If they are already retired they can afford to be more vocal. You'd be "safe" if enough of the old people stand up to oppose this as, I am sure, more younger people will be willing to speak up publicly.
My parents, who are temperamentally moderate conservatives, consume mainstream media daily. They read the local paper, WSJ, and watch the big network local and national news every night. It has been interesting to see what this has done to their political beliefs - it has pushed them left on social issues. They are never-Trumpers and were absolutely terrified of COVID and believed everyone at every age should get maximum number of booster. Although my dad still thinks the DEI stuff is ridiculous (he teaches adjunct at a local top tier university), we have never discussed the trans stuff. I wonder what he would think. My parents are not looking to be activists. They are 75 and have health problems. It might be interesting to bring up the trans stuff with them. My gut feel is that the only thing that could turn them into activists would be if there was an active threat towards their grandkids. Like if my daughter was asking for a mastectomy.
I subscribe to The Dispatch and the tolerance for the trans madness in the comments section is stunning. I frequently do the "great point, but look at the left" routine.
Among the writers the guy formerly known as Allahpundit doesn't seem to care. I get the sense that Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson realize the seriousness of the times, that both sides are really really bad, but they ultimately come down on the Trump is worse side. I can at least respect them. Allahnick loses my respect every day that he either ignores wokeism entirely or mocks those who are concerned about it.
When I ran a business in Washington DC, I never let anyone know my political beliefs. My family needed my money. Now that I'm retired, I don't care if Lefties hate me.
I worked for a consultancy in Boston for many years and at the stern behest of of my wife never mentioned my politics, or anybody else's (she's to the right of me). This was at the time the first teaching of transitude made it into the I think Lexington school system. A couple of my colleagues were discussing whether it was appropriate to teach fluidity to little children. They asked me what I thought. I said, "Well, I'm a right-wing nut." And that was that. Never brought it up again.
I'm still "passing" as a lefty here in my 100% Democrat suburb, because I won't be able to retire for a long time, if ever. But it means that I can sneak sensible conservative rhetoric into conversations and not have my motives questioned.
That said, people are figuring out who I am, and I'm enjoying making them nervous, because people here are too polite to ask. One colleague asked me last year, as we did some work near a church, "Are you religious? I'm not." I told her I was and she was flustered, but not in the way I expected. This is someone who respects me and my work and has never had reason to doubt me, so you could tell she was running all sorts of recalculations in her heard to try to figure out how I could be me and not be a doctrinaire progressive. I've also shut down anti-Catholic jokes in work meetings and then resumed business with with a smile on my face. I also dissented visibly from the BLM craze in 2020, which confused my colleagues, because I'm the only one in the group who has an obvious and productive rapport with black clients.
I don't want to talk about politics at all at work, but the Politicizing of Everything has made it hard not to. Some people tiptoe around me, but so what? So I don't get invited to a lunch? I have a family, I have real friends, I have a life. Work is just a job. And it gives me an opportunity to sow doubt in the minds of the many people who know in their hearts that something is wrong about all of this.
Politicizing everything is unpleasant. Sometimes I wish politics was simpler like the cause of bimetalism in 1896. My father-in-law is an old fashioned working class Democrat, a subset dying out. My sister-in-law is a feminist who's never been married, has opinions on marriage and child-raising which are at radical variance of my wife's opinions, and was a subscriber to the Oprah magazine. We engage in a political truce whenever we meet.
Rod, I appreciate you saying so, but I'm not admirable. I'm a wuss. I'm just sitting in the Wussy Wagon and letting others pull it. My joking about the "Boniface Option" is really just a way for me to describe the small ways I'm trying to persuade and undermine, but don't be fooled by my bluster: my efforts are small, and perhaps I think too highly of myself only because I've managed to resist retreating entirely, and I'm exhausted from my tiny efforts. I also haven't been faced with a manager yet who says, "hey, we're updating the website, what are your preferred pronouns for your bio?"
I wish I had the courage to wade into an angry mob. Hell, man, I wish I had the courage to use my real name and not be vague about my life. But all of us can change a mind or two, even if it's only slightly better than doing nothing.
I'm not outspoken but in my one-party state and neighborhood I've called an anti-vaxxer because I've questioned the vaccines's efficacy and lock-down mandates. I've also been called a racist because I did not vote for Obama (nor did I vote for McCain or Romney). But you know what, I think these folks quietly respect me because I say my piece but also listen to the other side (without being persuaded; they're nuts).
Thanks for replying, Paul. The funny thing is, I haven't wavered much from what I used to think were liberal principles, including suspicion of government, skepticism of authority, and a stubborn individualism. No one is more surprised than I am to have gone from being a liberal to a conservative while hardly budging an inch.
For most of the Trump years, conservatives have been in a bubble of their own making. But I feel like conservatives are now getting back to the pre-2016 reality of knowing more of the range of opinions and perspectives on an issue than people on the left know.
Here's another example of how the self censorship is being pushed down to the young.
I am beyond pissed off that they've even ruined high school debate, which my daughter was really looking forward to. Not to mention all the possible career paths she would have excelled at that are now worthless (academia, etc).
The purpose of this type of "education" is to train students on the need to self-censor.
I totally agree. I've experienced several months-long unemployment before and I am the provider for my family. I have a great job now, but I would be a pariah in my neon blue community and endanger my job if I publicly spoke out.
Since I'm not terribly far from retirement (In Sha Allah), I have two consolations: (1) that I will no longer be in fear of losing my job and (2) I will be able to move from this community, whether to another part of the country of even outside of it. And this makes me sad, because I've lived here most of my life and I my dream home.
I also have to question if this makes me a coward...and I don't like the answer.
Exactly this. My family supports each other when it's comfortable and easy to do so. But will not make a major sacrifice like moving house to a closer neighborhood in the same city to help raise the grandkids. I think if I nuked my career to be a conscientious objector they would view it as a terrible unnecessary mistake and blame me for it. They certainly wouldn't come together and try to replace part of my income.
Y'all make very good points. I am aware that it is easy for me to speak out, because I burned every bridge I had to the mainstream media many years ago by the positions I took, and I live in a place now where I'm not likely to be cancelled. I believe that I should use my relatively safe position to say things that many others cannot. I don't expect everybody to be equally as outspoken, for precisely the reasons y'all say. However, there are many people in this country who aren't yet in such a perilous position, and who don't want to talk about any of this stuff because it makes them anxious, and they just want it all to go away. By the time your 14 year old daughter is asking for a mastectomy, you might wish you had spoken out, **even if it is only within your family**, before it got so bad.
I think we can all see how evil takes hold in a society in part by good and reasonable people being intimidated into silence.
I noticed today that the Boston police and the mayor are denying that the firefighters who were first responders to that apartment full of drag queens, sex toys, children, and a dead drag queen body, had seen the things that they did. The firefighters are pushing back, saying no, we saw what we said we saw. At this point, I believe the firefighters, because all the incentives are for them to lie and say they saw nothing bad.
"I am aware that it is easy for me to speak out,...."
Please keep speaking out Rod!
I'm retired and can be more open about my views. Yet, there are few people in my area that share my conservative views. Therefore, I appreciate being able to read your blog (and books) because it provides a sense of an online Benedict Option Community for me. Thanks Rod!
I've heard many a lifelong Dem in my deep blue state tell me they are so because their father was, and their grandfather, etc.-- a conservative sentiment held by temperamentally conservative people. Sadly, they are so unmoored by liquid modernity they have no clue the center is not where their father found it, much less their grandfather. They still have the instinct to defend that leftish relative position, but no way of detecting the center's drift.
They are unlikely to be moved right by anything short of "being mugged by reality," because firstly, they'd rather not think about it, they just want to live their lives, and secondly, they might have to radically reconstitute their basis of self in order to change their political views-- they are after all temperamentally conservative. The best one can do is say to them "I don't believe that's true" when appropriate and leave it at that. I got that tactic from a commenter on the old AmCon blog, I wish I could remember who.
There is still value to demonstrating how to stand against the madness, with focus on the softball scenarios, since most of us will need serious training to be up to the K. Yang level of play. I suspect a fair number of people in deep blue states don't know how to take even a tiny stand against the madness-- even if they're already inclined to it-- because they simply haven't seen an example of how to do it. "Monkey see, monkey do" explains an awful lot of primate behavior.
Last thought-- Wim Hof describes in his book how he rock climbs freestyle, without gear. He says that if he faces a rock and is filled with fear, that means he is not ready. After more training and honest introspection about the validity of the fear versus the worthiness of trust in his skills and abilities, it eventually becomes apparent to him when he is ready. I think there is a lesson here. (This is literally embodied wisdom. Fascinating person.)
You can bet that if I see that the trans social contagion stuff has crept into the (Orthodox Christian) school we just moved our daughter to, and there is a risk of social contagion there, I will speak up, consequences be damned. Tiger mom comes out. I would do just about anything to protect her. Including apply for welfare.
It has already, in the phones of the children.....or in the funny, blue-haired girl in your daughter's class. The one with the "cool" parents. (not trying to be a jerk with this comment but that's been my experience>)
"Then they came for the children and I did not speak out, for I am not a child"
They've been fanatical about killing babies for longer than I've been alive. Social media and ESG are merely accelerating trends. My kids are in a parochial school. I've become active at the church that hosts it and am even in a reading group that includes the husband of the school's principal. I have been sharing news with them and did get them to add a statement on sex/gender to their statement of faith sooner than they otherwise would have. I call into local radio shows and talk about transgenderism with whoever will listen, including woke librarians, but I'm careful to not stick the neck out too far. My woke employer might fire me if they find out that I'm anti trans. I'm doing more than most and I'm not doing enough. I'm serious in my other comment there. The boomers need to rise up.
Indeed, I think your point about killing kids is spot-on. In a culture that meekly accepted abortion on demand, why should the rest of this surprise us?
Rod Dreher, I do take the political and cultural power of the homosexuals seriously. My wife and I moved our family to the rural mountains where the homosexuals have no power. We homeschooled our children so they wouldn't be indoctrinated by the Left. I don't participate in the vulgar popular culture. We have one television for the use of approved DVDs. I have no homosexual or Leftist friends. I vote for the only party that puts up any political resistance. There's little else for me to do short of violence and violence is self-defeating.
Conservatives should write off the cities of America. New York, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington and so on. All are cesspools of degeneracy. The political power of these cities is a combine of blacks, homosexuals, Hispanics, affluent white leftists, government workers and Jews. That isn't going to change and bizarre episodes like you portray in your post card are an important part of modern urban America. To steal from the poster Jon, these bizarre episodes are caused by a bored people.
One of my best friends at church is 86 and was born and raised in the Bushwick neighborhood of north Brooklyn. All of his neighbors were either Italian or Jewish. He was Italian and Sunday supper was a mandatory event that took the whole afternoon. He married a Jewish woman. But over the years almost all the Italians and Jews left Bushwick and the dominant population today is Puerto Rican and Dominican, both of which vote 95 % Democratic because of the alms they receive from the Democrats. The New York of Vincent Impellitteri is as dead as Jackie Gleason, the Shangrilas, Mario Biaggi and Robert Moses. You can't bring back the dead.
Maybe Pride Month should be preceded by Gluttony Month. Could have the same celebrants.
Pride month should be followed by the burning fires of eternal hell month.
I HEREBY ANNOUNCE THE DESIGNATION OF THE MONTH OF JULY TO OFFICIALLY BE THE MONTH OF ETERNAL HELLFIRE DAMNATION MONTH.
Please donate $6.66.00 for membership.
Why do you think the theorists have linked "queerness" and "fatness"? There's a current Target commercial with a lesbian couple, a thin black woman with short hair and an obese long-haired Asian girl. Ticks almost all the boxes, does that one!
Fat is yet another stand-in for the oppression of queers. Nothing more worthy of appropriating as a symbol of victimhood that a fat person. If you really want some high explosives, shame a fat, black, queer menstruator with a speech impediment.
Oh damn! i just gave away my halloween costume for this year! Rats!
P.S.
The only bummer about that ad is that the plump asian woman is justified by her devotion to lesbianism. Not because her lesbianism is shameful. No. It is the shameful psychology which insists that her hot, asian fatness is only attractive because she lives the life of a dyke-as- pretense to sell shit for Target.
Aside from that, she could easily be a fat, gorgeous asian woman.
I wish somebody would shoot me. Too much labor is required to make sense.
You probably hate Lizzo. Fat shamer.
And yet, this law was deemed "hateful" and "fascist".
Consider this. Nudity and simulated or real sex acts in front of children is considered by many to be legitimate forms of self-expression, and attempts to stop it is "fascist".
It gives me hope that most Floridians support the law.
Though as far as those that label the law as "Fascist", they seem to have enormous platforms--in Washington DC, mainstream news, Social Media, Hollywood, etc.
Perverts
Do you know who staged children's parades with nudity and simulated sex?
The Aztecs.
They got the kids juiced up on liquor too before the parades began.
And recall how people with advanced degrees recently tried to introduce Aztec gods into the California school curriculum. It's like watching social scientists playing with pornified Rubik's cubes.
Oh yeah. They were remarkable engineers and had a facinating culture. But it is clear the Aztec civilization was evil, thoroughly demonic. The Spanish and Portuguese were not saints, but it is clear that God's "cup of iniquity" had overflown regarding them and they received judgement.
But? :-0
They were fascinating largely because they were thoroughly demonic. Even their engineering skills were employed to further their conquests for sacrificial victims, in the same way that the beauty of a Messerschmidt Bf 109 was tied to the enabling of the Shoah.
I was quite taken with Victor Davis Hansen's writing on Cortez and his men. After fighting his way out of the Aztec capital, he was fearful that the Aztec vassals would descend on his force and wipe them out. But the vassals saw it differently: they saw the Spanish as a power who in escaping had accomplished what they could not, and so they decided their liberators had arrived.
I admitted it was demonic, why are you having a go at me? Their culture being demonic does not take away from their engineering prowess as something to admire, or the interesting aspects of their culture. As you say, the Nazis were up to some heinous stuff, but GErman culture was not defined by the Nazi era. Before, and after, it is great. And their engineering has always been top notch, even when it served the Nazis. It is possible to admire aspects of a thing and still call parts of it evil. It is not an either/or thing. Humans are complex and colorful. Always have been.
Sorry, I didn't think I was going at you. I thought I was just agreeing in a fun way with a minor difference.
But German culture has always been problematic. Nazism had antecedents that reached back centuries, and todays Germans are contracepting and immigrating themselves out of existence. Their science and engineering has been great due to their intellectual power, but so much of their negatives come from that ability also. Much of the worst Christian theology is German, as is the best. As you put, it is complex and colorful.
I once heard a mestizo professor of gender-queer studies, I mean anthropology, go into a half-trance in front of an NPR mic and allow as how yes, the human sacrifice, it's part of my people, it's my heritage, I understand the necessity, the beauty of ripping the heart out of a living man to mollify the god Unpronounceable. I kid you not. Anything rather than admit his white half might have had something going for it.
I used to go every year to watch what was then called the “gay pride parade” in NYC. Late 80s-90s. There were protesters who were boxed off saying the rosary near St. Pat’s. People heckled them but no worse than that.
Evolution has failed. The goal is to turn and mutilate kids to maximize available sexual partners. When the kids are used up, they will be discarded.
And how, exactly, does it maximize available sexual partners to make children incapable of experiencing sexual pleasure? Do tell.
I suspect the goal is to maximize the sexual pleasure of the other person, not the children's.
A rapist doesn't rape to provide pleasure to their victim.
Rapists are turned on by the fear and terror of their victims. Some even murder their victims while raping them and being inside them. They want to climax at the point of the victims death.
Why do we allow such individuals even a trial? Feed them to a wood chipper.
When you are (falsely) accused of being such an individual yourself, you might appreciate the right to a trial before you are fed to the wood chipper.
Wrong. I consider it liberation.
Anybody caught in the act of raping an individual they are pounding into a corpse should be dragged out, shot, and tossed in the garbage.
Take a white phosphorous grenade and let it cook off between their legs.
The children are simply sperm dumps. Their pleasure is irrelevant. They are jelly holes for the pleasure of the groomer rapists.
Correction: there is an exception. Since orgasms are involuntary and can be hijacked by the central nervous system, there are predators out there who know that and use it as part of what they are looking for. This is another evil that damages the victim. “You came, so you liked it and wanted it.” No. Just the body being hijacked by a fiend. Horribly damaging. Again, feed them slowly to sharks.
I labour to find reasons not to lose my fucking shit.
Ah Rod - I fully respect your views on Trangenderism but... why so angry? This woman, and brave she was, knew exactly what was likely to happen in that volatile environment. Great for protesting. She also knows what consequences are for walking through this crowded area. We can applaud her but why so angry or surprised? These were natural consequences that she was probably ready for.
Nothing "natural" about those freaks.
My the Living God show you his heart towards those 'freaks'.
Anger and violence are two different things. They don't need to go together.
Sometimes violence is called for. Not an emotional lashing out. But taking warranted, necessary steps to stop monsters. Such as these if they "come for your children."
Thank you!
Indeed. Adults who do not act in defense of their children are not worthy to be parents. A civ that will not protect children is doomed.
Anger is one of the seven deadly sins- and despair is also a sin. Say no to both.
We are called to Faith, Hope, and Love.
No, anger is not. Wrath is. Anger is an emotion, a natural part of who we are. Jesus was angry. And expressed that anger, in both word and deed. He never lost his temper, however. He never lost control. Neither did God. When God/Christ acted, their's was a decision and a righteous anger. It is right to be angry against that which offends God. It is not right to try to blow it off
Yep, I just finished Fr. Dwight Longenecker's The Way of the Wilderness Warrior, and he makes that exact distinction.
I don't always agree with you, Jon. But, I think you are right on the mark here. Many on Rod's Substack seem enthralled by anger and violence.
Au contraire, if what these people are doing to children/childhood doesn't make you angry I think YOU'RE the one with the problem.
And a disturbing number seem to admire passivity, cowardice and even worse, quail at the idea of calling out this abomination for what it is. Heaven forbid we offend the feelings of those who lust after children.
Basil, I don't see that. What I do see is that normal people can take only so much. Of course, the sad conclusion Rod draws is that there may not be enough people left who do care. I think there are some, though, and that if this boil isn't lanced soon, it will be squeezed madly by genuine violence. I have in mind what the Travis Bickle character does in Taxi Driver. God forbid that anything like that happens, but if the majority of normies are so blotto they can't act in courage, can't demonstrate, can't speak out, be assured that eventually, we will have a Travis Bickle - like response.
The aftermath of that is something I'd rather not contemplate.
Jon, Jesus' breaking up the party in the Temple wasn't a demonstration of anger, then?
Of course, chronic anger against another individual is deadly. It will boil over into emotional or physical violence, or something worse than that, contempt for the person's existence.
But the failure to be righteously angry is a terrible sin. See, this is why I could never be Orthodox. You are not taught to rightly divide the Word of Truth.
“Be angry and sin not.” God
The hippie peace route has it’s limits.
Watch and learn:
https://dai.ly/x2zspfg
Didn't Jesus say "go and sin no more?" Don't recall the part of the Bible where he said, "Go and keep sinning, and insist everyone else celebrate it because otherwise you'll commit suicide"
We're in Antichrist days.
I've oft heard that heterosexual males find the thought of lesbian encounters sexually stimulating. I have never been such a man, but if I were, the photo of the makeout of the two obese lesbians would have cured me.
Freaks freaks freaks freaks freaks.
That should last you all week.
He loves his creation. But for the souls who engage in abomination, HIS words, there is wrath. God has destroyed cities, even whole worlds over this. And He specifically has had pointed words to say to those who would hurt children. So may the Living God grant you clarity. And pick up a Bible every now and then.
God is love. But He is also holy, and for those who embrace sin, there is only wrath and damnation. For those who would "come for your children..."
◄ Luke 17 ►
New International Version Par ▾
Sin, Faith, Duty
1Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. 2It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3So watch yourselves.
“If your brother or sister a sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. 4Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.”
Forgiveness is there, but only for those who recognize their sin and fall on their knees in repentance before a Holy God. Because if you don't, if you do not repent and accept Christ's gift of salvation, there is only God's holy wrath.
Right -- that's the one thing God cannot do: love the freaks but hate what they do. /s
"Why so angry? The civil rights protesters, brave as they were, knew exactly what was likely to happen if they went peacefully into the segregated Southern lunch counters and order sandwiches."
The difference is that this lady did not walk peacefully into it. She had a sign and was screaming out the words. And yes, good on her. We need brave people to speak out. But let's not take the side if 'victim'. That's poor protesting and makes us look like the other side. Don't be angry and don't be surprised. This is a battle. Nothing cushy happens in a battle. That's all I'm saying. More and more., the posts I read are divisive. So American really.
What do you mean by "divisive"? The divisions are already there -- I'm just noticing them.
The thing is, while we're not surprised, it still shouldn't have happened. I was at Glenn Beck's 8/28 rally in DC in 2010, and there were protesters who ran through, shouting with signs, and no one laid a hand on them. They knew that they had nothing to fear. They also knew, even back than, that if they were to be harmed, they had rights.
What is happening now is that when you have someone "conservative" somehow protest the left, in cities, at the very least, one can be brutally attacked and there is no justice. Then we have half of "our side" denounce the ones who speak up because we all should "know better". Well, then, why even carry any "dissident" thoughts if they end effect is to no along to get along anyway?
I was at that rally, too. Calm, law-abiding, concerned citizens. Oh for those days...
Do you think our mistake was not rioting and destroying the businesses in DC? (kidding, kidding...)
If only we'd known how far it could get us!
How, in your opinion, can one share an opinion on a controversial topic without being divisive? Or, by "divisive," do you mean having an opinion that strays from the Narrative?
You clearly didn't read my comment. I dont like the narrative either.
I read your comments, and they are not clear to me. You expend a lot of text to excuse the inexcusable.
Pass the port, Caruthers.
I've been with K.Yang at free speech events. She is 100% peaceful. She's got a powerfully loud voice and a big presence, thank God.
Wish I could thank her for her bravery in person. I hope she discovers how many people in forgotten corners of the world are grateful for her voice and courage.
Why so angry? Because he's human and he cares about people other than himself. That's my guess. At least it explains why I'm angry. Anger is a healthy response to having one's own, or witnessing another's rights violated. Anger in the face of child abuse is healthy, natural, and, properly harnessed and expressed, productive. Knowing that one is taking a risk does not mean it is somehow ok to be attacked.
Oh, please. This is the second time I've heard the "they had it coming it to them" wheeze in these boxes and it's a troll at one remove. The First Amendment guarantees that woman the right to say whatever she wants to anybody she wants. I have grave doubts whether it protects freaks (a good descriptive English word) from disporting themselves naked, but that's another matter. We are the only country in the world where speech such as this woman's is protected. Why not head to another where it is not? I suggest Nigeria. And take your great beating heart of he-man charity with you.
Yeah, I wish substack had a block option that worked. I'm fed up with some of these commenters.
Robert, I think it's rather like the age-old debate about when people put themselves into dangerous situations, and where the fault really sits. A classic example is the person openly flashing a large wad of cash in a dangerous neighborhood, and then being mugged. Where does the fault lay?
Obviously with the mugger, who has assaulted the guy with the money, has committed a crime. And for that he should be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed.
Is the guy who was robbd to blame for what happened? Obviously not, in that everyone has a moral right to their own property. And yet...
Should he have known he was in a dangerous neighborhood? Is it ever wise to flash cash even in a safer area? Known how temptation works on hearts, was he inadvertently causing others to stumble? Do we blame the robbery on the victim, and just chalk it off to "natural consequences"?
Should we not feel anger that the guy was robbed? It's tempting to shrug it off. Certainly he was foolish, and while we must not blame him, the victim, we can assign some degree of dereliction of responsibility. Yet is that enough to halt from charging his assailant? It should not be so. Should we be angry if the police shrug it off? Absolutely, as they would be neglecting their duty.
And will these gay parade goons be prosecuted? Unlikely. And for that we should be furious.
Yep. She was asking for it. Did you not see that dress?
I thought putting it that way might have been a bit too obvious. Showing too much leg, as it were.
When it comes to arguments like these, it is sometimes best to get to the point and showing definitively the cowardly and monstrous just how off-base they are.
Why so angry? Did you get a look at those f-ing animals attacking her? How can it not boil your blood. I wanna go Dirty Harry on them.
"Conscience and freedom are inalienable companions. One is because of the other. If it is'nt we're not going to be a success as a nation. We're not going to have an architecture, we're not going to have anything. We'll crawl, we'll go back to the slime." Frank Lloyd Wright 1954
'
K.Yang is lucky not to have been seriously hurt.
Hats off for bravery but putting herself in that position was pretty reckless.
If it were safe, it wouldn't be courage.
Ok fair enough.
I have checked her work out. I assumed she got into the middle of that mob without realising how dangerous it was.
But no.
She realises. She's a lioness. She faces down angry men in dresses all the time.
She has my deep respect.
K. is a huge force in this fight. Check out her research and work about the roots and big money of the TQ movement. Yes, she is a lioness!
She was asking for it, amirite?
You keep complaining that there's not much reaction to the extremists going after children (and being increasingly open about it), but I wonder how much the average person actually knows about all this. I'd be very surprised to see major media reporting on the kind of facts with which you regularly engage here, and a very great part of our elite population still relies on the MSM for its facts.
I say this because I had an experience as the pandemic was winding down that showed to me just how powerful media capture can be. I returned to Canada for the first time since before the pandemic, on a trip that took me to a couple provinces. By the time the trip was over, something was bothering me, though it took a couple weeks to put my finger on it: nobody seemed to have any conception that there could be anything negative in gender ideology. For them it was just a question of how open and tolerant you are; a dissenter like JBP is clearly on that account somewhat disreputable. Men in women's prisons? Men in women's rape shelters? Women getting physically intimidated or physically attacked for the crime of speaking in public? Children getting sterilised or having body parts chopped off? (etc.) These issues did not exist at all for almost everyone I encountered on that trip, as far as I can tell. My sense is that educated, well-informed Canadians simply DO NOT KNOW. And why should they? If the MSM mentions any of the stuff I just listed (which they are very much not inclined to do), they'll put it on page C11 and frame it in a way that makes it seem like a minor matter compared to a much needed advance of progress. Total institutional capture is an extraordinarily powerful thing, so long as people still trust the institutions.
For a view of the state of the discourse in Canada, I recommend the following piece by a journalist who has been writing for decades in the Globe and Mail (Canada's NYT), and can thus be considered to be at the top of his profession: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-the-far-rights-persecution-of-the-trans-community-risks-all-the-gains/ (Both the facts that do and don't get mentioned as well as their framing are worthy of note.) If this was your source of information, how would you feel about the issue?
Something similar could be going on in the US for people who are not particularly right wing, and that would go a long way to explaining why there's a muted reaction to the extremists coming for the kids.
Most people have many, many other things occupying their attention-- and often quite necessary things. In normal life I almost never hear anyone talk about any of this stuff. It's an exotic pastime for the social Right and the gender-radical Left, but most people have no connection with it.
And yet, these radicals make US law and policy. The radicals depend on normies not paying attention, and, as you love to do, pooh-poohing those who do notice.
My point was that most people have lives, and assorted personal concerns, and jobs, and for most people those jobs do not involve commentary on public affairs. And that's true of people across the political spectrum. And no, the radical left is not making public policy. Half the states are firmly in the control of the Republican Party and many are making decidedly rightwing public policy (e.g., on abortion and guns). At the federal level the government remains largely gridlocked so not much policy is being made at all. Heck we only barely averted a vast major crisis last month when some members of the GOP House tried to force their agenda on the country by holding the economy hostage.
Yes, people are very busy and distracted and the LGBTQ+ movement has skillfully taken advantage of this fact. School policies are the most obvious example.
The frog is slowly boiling.
A frog named Jon (sorry Jon). I hear the Johnny Cash music in the background.
Well Jon, just wait until a woman you know is confronted by a nude male in a changing room.
If she's worth her salt, she will, in the spirit of Camille Paglia, laugh her ass off at the guy right to his face. Maybe gather her friends around the dude and go in for a good public shaming.
I find this to be the opposite case, that people talk about this a lit, but most of the people I spend time with these days are also parents. 🤷♀️
*lot
Click on the three dots below your post to find an edit button.
And then reload the page to make sure it saved properly.
That option doesn't show up on my phone, unfortunately. :(
Correct, it is a PC/Laptop feature only.
I know very few parents of young children, though plenty of people with adult children. And I do know (online only) a guy whose adult son has just done the MtF change, and yes he's not happy about it. I'm in the Baltimore area for more oral surgery and yesterday I went to myvold church and caught up with friends who do have young kids, and also with the deacon and his wife, also with minor children. This topic has never come up with these people.
I also know (online) a gay guy whose gay male group was just reminded "There are transmen who are gay and they have to worry about getting pregnant" and yes, he thinks that's absurd. As I've noted before there's something inimical between gay and trans no matter how the activist class tries to paper over the chasm
Jon, the topic may not have come up because people are terrified and self-censor constantly. That's why Live Not By Lies was so miserably prophetic: we're all the greengrocer now. As a parent I can tell you that when two parents start talking while their children play, there's a point at which it cautiously dawns upon them that the mutual silence and refusal to interject the usual signals of loyalty to the regime means they may be speaking with a fellow traveler. It's a whole song and dance.
People bridle their speech in certain public areas (and should) but in private they express all manner of politically incorrect notions to friends and kin. I'd be rich if I had a dollar every time I've heard blatantly racist crap spoken by people who assume since I'm white I must be on board with it. Not to mention Trumpist tinfoil hattery so fantastical it makes LOTR read like sober history.
Oh, yes! But it is amazing each time knowing that we're a little less alone! :)
Exotic pastime? You obviously do not have much interaction with teenagers. I only wish I could be as blissfully ignorant!
Sad but accurate.
>>It's an exotic pastime for the social Right and the gender-radical Left, but most people have no connection with it.
And that's why most American, including yourself, are, literally, losers. They lose. On important matters, all the time. Always. Loser.
Grow up, at least past the middle school insult phase.
Elsewhere on this thread I suggested we need to look into the biochemistry of the phenomenon, which seems to me a more useful and hard-headed approach than just bemoaning it and bashing each other over it.
I feel pretty confident that it's not about biochemistry. It's a double-edged social contagion: Kids naively see it as an answer to all of their identity issues and dissatisfaction with their bodies, and adults see it as a one-size-fits-all solution for widely varied mental health issues that would require long-term, thoughtful, customized care.
It is sin. It is evil. Call it such and take a stand accordingly. This does not have a technobabble solution.
It's not an insult, it's a fact. I'm a loser too. My side has lost the culture war. I'm a loser. What natters is how I deal with this fact.
Whether I like it or not, somewhere in the background of my life is Gloria Gainor singing "I Will Survive".
I haven't won anything, yet I'm also not dead like I should be.
You almost never hear people talking about it, but then you don't hear the anguished conversations over the dinner table when the teenage daughter announces she's a boy. A lot of this goes on behind closed doors as families wrestle with what the hell do to about children who've been captured and eaten by the culture/Discord/etc.
And of course more and more of this is being shoved down our collective gullet.
I've agreed that there's a social fad aspect to this, but I remain mostly convinced that we're seeing the fallout of a great deal of environmental contamination with ersatz hormone mimics disrupting sexual development. No one here seems to want to explore that idea. Mostly they just want to scream about the politics of it.
The fact that the vast majority of teenagers who experience rapid onset gender dysphoria desist if left alone, would suggest that the biochemistry is a minor diversion.
Exactly right.
People choose to do this.
Ok, but your point is? People who attempt suicide don't sleepwalk into it, but depression is very real.
So?
Suicide is also known to have a significant social-contagion component, which is why people in education and child psychologists were so freaked out a couple years ago by the success of "13 Reasons Why," a teen show (based on a novel) that revolved around a girl who committed suicide and left behind recordings to blame others.
There are teens on social media who have, as crazy at it sounds, chosen to act as if they have Tourette's Syndrome. Don't underestimate the power of the Internet and social media to accelerate very bad ideas among very empty people.
I absolutely think there's some chance of that, especially knowing how the complete corporate dominance/takeover of America works: If in fact environmental contamination by ersatz hormones was occurring, the corporations responsible for it - and there may well be many of them - would never admit it, and neither would the government. Instead, we'd get a campaign very much like what we're seeing now, "supporting" people who affected by the phenomenon that never gets acknowledged, pleading for "tolerance" and "celebrating" those reacting to those ersatz hormones. Because the alternative would be admitting fault and ceasing the activity/stopping the very profitable production of the substance causing the problem. And in our corporate-dominated world, that would never happen.
Someone labeled me a loser above. I won't call you that- but counsels if despair are a highway to failure.
If such research cannot be done in the US, how about Hungary?
The research would be dismissed because it's Hungary, a well-known opponent of LGBTQWERTY human rights and thus biased.
It's called reality; that "counsel of despair" is where we're at. Ultimately the truth will come out - it always does. But in the meantime this phenomenon is destined to hurt a whole lot more people before that truth comes to light
Come to the Bay Area. The kids here are all marinated meat.
There's a not insignificant number of us who deal with it every day because it affects our families in a deeply personal way. I usually speak in general terms because (a) my own anecdotes really don't mean much and (b) I want to keep my privacy. But there's never a day when it is not in my face and I cannot choose to ignore it, even if I wanted to.
Jon, this is my experience too. Most people just are NOT aware of this unless they're specifically watching for it. Some are certainly turning a blind eye, but my wife (who is reasonably "plugged in" to current events) was telling me last week that it's only just now becoming real to her how much of a post-Christian nation we are becoming. Just in walking around our little town one evening last week, she was floored by the sheer number of pride flags and other pride crap was just *everywhere*. Our town has a small independent book shop for kids and teens, and its store windows were jam-packed with queer BS of all sorts - the owner of the shop has gone radically all-in on promoting the sorts of garbage that Rod has been highlighting for years (stuff any sane parent of 20 years ago would have deemed offensive). My priest's daughter used to work at this shop and never had any inkling that this was coming - it's like a switch was thrown. This shop, once a very parent and child oriented shop, is now overtly hostile to conservatives and Christians. My wife shopped here frequently until quite recently, and the radical extreme turn of the shop caught her off guard.
My employees likewise largely do not see this stuff everyday. Sure they see the pride flags and "in this house" yard signs in their neighborhoods, but they're not encountering the struggle sessions, race and gender seminars and training, or other crap unless their spouses are working where this is suddenly de rigeur, or they have school aged children (most don't). It's not on the news (if they still watch it - which most don't anymore) unless they deliberately tune in to outlets that cover it. If they do encounter it, it's usually only filtered through stories about "radical" right wingers, so they assume it's still far more fringe than it really is.
Again, more evidence of the spiritual nature of this war.
I don't believe that, Jon. Maybe it was so ten years ago, but now? Normies have not noticed the freakifying of society? They haven't noticed the break with the living out of most of their lives that June, which used to be known for its abundance of weddings ( hetero, obviously ) is now something called PRIDE month, with billowing multicolored banners in the springtime breeze?
How is anyone who pays any attention to events unaware of the transing of the culture? Bud Light, Target, the Dodgers, et al, and people haven't noticed it?
My mother told me about something that happened to her on D Day. She was a 22 year old, newly married, Rosie the Riveter, with a 6:00 AM - 2:00 PM factory shift. She was up at 5:00, as usual, that day, turned on the radio, and was thrilled to hear that the invasion had begun. At the bus stop, she was alone at first. Then, a nondescript fellow appeared. Bursting with excitement, and wanting to share it with someone, my mother said to him, "Isn't it exciting?"
The man's response to this was to smile inanely and expose himself. My mother sensed no danger from the jerk, but she was furious, and screamed, "Get away from me, you idiot!!"
Idiot. One who knows not. That poor perv was too caught up in his own world to notice, or care if he had, that momentous events were happening. He had "...no connection with it."
Your portrayal of where you think the American public is with the destruction of their society reminds me of that guy.
Brandon Showalter talks a lot about the Media and how they are a huge player in this madness. His work is definitely worth checking out. None of this could be happening without the Media.
Saw two MSM reports on nationwide pride parades, one on CBS news and the other on MSNBC. I think. Both had a lot of video footage but neither showed any of the negative or freaky stuff -- it was all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns. The average person is being lied to, big time.
At the risk of bringing in the Holocaust so early into a discussion, I can believe now that most Germans didn’t know what was going on.
A fair number knew that things were going on. The upper classes knew enough to get their handicapped relatives out of the care homes before Aktion T4 was fully implemented, the nurses and nuns and deaconesses saw the handicapped kids get taken away, the soldiers on the front saw the atrocities that were being done to the Jews, Poles, Russians, etc. There were the objectors to this, but short of an assassination attempt on Hitler, what could one person do, right? Bishop Clemens von Galen of Muenster preached forcefully against Aktion T4, and his sermons were clandestinely circulated throughout the country. The White Rose picked up on the "flyer" idea and tried putting all these threads together in their appeals - that it wasn't just one thing or another, but a whole litany of outrageous actions of the National Socialist government. They further made the case that the Nazis were an affront to God, going so far as to call Hitler Satan, and really making the point that any German who did not resist it was complicit in this evil and would suffer the eternal consequence.
I think most people in this country are capable of being aware of what is going on, but they'd rather believe it when the newscast says it's sunny than look outside and see the pouring rain. As long as they stay in their house, what difference does it really make?
Do you recall the story of Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos? He knew about the gas chambers because a student from his island had been at pharmacy school in Berlin, and brought the news when he returned. Chrysostomos and Mayor Loukas Carrer were ordered to provide a list of the hidden Jews for deportation, and the list they submitted had two names: their own. Threatened with death, Chrysostomos told the Germans he would accompany any Jews who were caught and walk into the gas chambers with them. The Germans were shocked into silence by his courage and his knowledge of the Great Secret. Not one Jew of Zakynthos was caught.
“...Every word that comes from Hitler's mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is at bottom accursed. True, we must conduct a struggle against the National Socialist terrorist state with rational means; but whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war. Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist. Everywhere and at all times demons have been lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in the order of Creation as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate. Everywhere and at all times of greatest trial men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course. Man is free, to be sure, but without the true God he is defenseless against the principle of evil...”
- Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl, the Fourth White Rose Leaflet, July 1942
The "foul-smelling maw of Hell" has me smiling every time! :)
"It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day? If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.
Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now - the marrow sucked out of their bones, robbed of their center of stability - are waiting to be hounded to their destruction. So it seems - but it is not so. Rather, by means of gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison."
Hans Scholl & Alexander Schmorell, Leaflet 1 of the White Rose
Do you know the story of Goethe's tree?
He wrote one of his most famous poems while sitting under a tree. Not long after someone prophesied that Germany would fall when the tree fell. The grove was cut down in the construction of the Buchenwald concentration camp but the tree was spared due to the prophecy. The camp guards hung prisoners from the branches of the tree that had inspired the great humanist. About a year after the White Rose executions, the US Army Air Force bombed the shops at Buchenwald and the tree burned to the ground.
I had actually never heard of that! Very interesting! :)
Another good point, that the corruption was already there - secularism, modernity, neo-paganism were already embedded in German society by the end of the 19th century so there was no structure able to resist the more powerul force of evil that arrived in the 1930s. The Catholic Church's position was precarious and confined to a few regions only.
The devil is doing the same work today, the father of lies twists words to mean the opposite - pride, equity, diversity, equality, love, compassion, tolerance, peace - all mean different things.
I particularly like the argument that Bishop Clemens von Galen used against Action T4: he stated in a homily that the logic of killing the handicapped could be applied to wounded veterans! The plausibility of this logic is the reason the Nazi leadership regarded him as untouchable, until the war was over at least.
I am sorry to start a run on a tangent! The point is that so many people today don't see what they don't want to see. We self select the news items that interest us. When the subject comes up, they will say 'it's all a bit ridiculous and both sides need to calm down' or 'it's just a tiny number of people involved and it's blown up by the media'. Then there are those in business, academia, teaching, sports who know what is going on and fear for their jobs so just stay quiet and hope it will all blow over.
Many didn't. It is well documented that the number of people at the Degesh company who knew their Zyklon B product was being used to kill people could be counted on one hand. However, rumors did get around, see my comment to Katja on Bishop Chrysostomos of Zakynthos. Pope Pius XII found out just months after the mass gassings started from an Italian army chaplain who's unit had been in Krakow just before deployment to the USSR; the story is "he raised his hands to heaven and wept like a child."
"nobody seemed to have any conception that there could be anything negative in gender ideology. For them it was just a question of how open and tolerant you are..."
I have the same experience with my friends and family in Blue America, and I think the reason (for this and for the entire postmodern capture of America) is that in modern discourse anyone who claims to be fighting for a Protected Victim Class is seen as on the Right Side of History, or more simply: the Civil Rights movement set the template for our discourse and morality, and once the narrative is created about a new group of Oppressed leading a new march to Freedom and Equality, the script is written at that point and you have one of 2 roles to fill: either Oppose and share the moral legacy of Bull Connor et al, or agree 1) to be a compassionate non-bigot; and 2) because everyone you know and every actor journalist talking head you trust and like is doing the same.
The genius of the postmodern New Left is that they captured American morality, aligned themselves in most people's minds with civil rights and freedom from bigotry, and once they had morality on their side, the rest of their takeover was just a matter of time.
I can tell you that parents of school aged children do not need MSM to know what’s going on. It’s so blissfully promoted in Canadian schools you’d have to be wearing a blind fold and muting your children to not know.
"Hey, even the Military-Industrial Complex has been queered"
And you know WHY all the companies and institutions have been queered, don't you? It's not by accident. It's not because they have been persuaded of anything or even that they want to 'be kind'.
It's because all the companies and institutions have been roped into a social credit system called ESG and DEI. If the companies don't get the woke points then they don't get the investment.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmcgowan/2023/06/05/conservative-outrage-over-esg-and-dei-fueled-by-2017-blackrock-ceo-video/?sh=6a6eec47783d
De Santis is correct.
ESG is the social credit system. They're doing it through companies and institutions instead of through individuals. Presumably because they think that they are likely to encounter less resistance.
I wish he would get out more...Scott Adams did a hilarious commentary today on his YouTube channel. Funny but disheartening.
Yes, but that didn't arise in a vacuum. What made a whole lot of investors and such wake up one day and begin making ESG a component of an investment decision?
Here's my hypothesis: it is a great way to neutralize left wing opposition and bring progressives into the fold, without doing anything that might actually affect the bottom line.
Yesterday in the Daily Mail Peter Hitchens wrote that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was properly nothing of the sort but a coup d'etat financed by tons (literally! for once a proper use of the word) of German gold. The aim was to knock Russia out of the war. The Bolsheviks prided themselves on their status as a tiny cadre of saint/gangsters. That's what you see going on here. But the leverage is provided by the money.
Yes, one always has to ask who is bankrolling would-be dictators.
I asked Mr. Hitchens for a book on, or with a chapter on, that German financial support for Lenin. I've seen reference to this before and I'm prepared to believe it, but I'd like to know of a good source on the matter. Hitchens hasn't supplied one -- can someone here do so? I'd like to learn more.
Any good history of the Russian Revolution would have it. Basically, the Germans picked up Lenin in Zurich and transported him across Germany in a sealed train so the Bolshevik “bacillus” wouldn’t spread in the Fatherland. That’s why he arrived at The Finland Station in St. Petersburg. The money came through a middleman in Turkey called Alexander Helphand (good that).
https://www.amazon.com/Concise-History-Russian-Revolution/dp/0679745440/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?crid=167ZZ0BIHNVZB&keywords=the+russian+revolution+a+new+history&qid=1687804656&sprefix=the+russian+revolutiob%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-4
Ha! I own a copy of that book, Theodore. I expect to begin to read it today. Thank you very much!
To the Finland Station...I've always liked the title of Edmund Wilson's book but always add an exclamation point for emphasis.
May i recommend:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/094500110X?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
Thank you for this recommendation. Some time ago, for some reason, I copied some pages from a library copy of Quigley's Tragedy and Hope and put them adjacent to a copy of Lewis's That Hideous Strength! I must have seen someone make a connection. Are there any chapters of this massive book that you would particularly point to? Thank you.
The tyrants need the appearance that everyone agrees with them, because they have nothing else. Because they have nothing else, this appearance must be brutally enforced; dissent cannot be tolerated. Those who stand up against it know this well; they know the costs, and they stand up and do it anyway. This is courage.
In Germany under the Third Reich, there were plenty of people who were opposed to Hitler in theory, but figured that the cost of standing up was too great. They derided those who dared to do anything as reckless and as fools. I think this is the main reason that I've been so interested in the White Rose, and particularly Alexander Schmorell for so many years, because even twenty years ago it was pretty obvious that if nothing significant changed, this is where we would be. "Political correctness" was still lauded in the 1990s as being a way to be "non-offensive", but it didn't take long at all for it to become a weapon. Who knew we'd go from erasing "he" and "him" as the indefinite personal pronoun, that in twenty-five years we'd be trying to erase the concepts of "male" and "female"!
I was at a Catholic silent retreat this past weekend. During the Q and A, the priest said at this point, the only answer is prayer and sacrifice. Referencing the sacrilegious Sister of Perpetual Indulgence at Dodgers' Stadium, he said the Dodgers received a lot of push-back from many Catholic apostolates and parishioners. The Dodgers were made aware of the SPIs depravity but the Dodgers honored them anyway. We can't fight that with activism, this is a spiritual war.
"We can't find that with activism..."
Yes we can. How about we try before surrendering and waiting for the giant smiting God-finger to do our work for us?
I'm Catholic, and so help me, most of today's priests know nothing about sacrifice, and I often wonder about the extent to which they can speak knowledgeably about prayer, either.
Are you familiar with the Order of Canons Regular of the Holy Cross?
Nope.
Yes it is a spiritual war. Look them in the face and rebuke them in the name of Jesus.
Re: When people tell you who they are, believe them.
You may want to rethink that since it leads to the question, If a MTF person Says "I'm a woman" we should believe that?
That is referencing character, values and intent. Not physical, objective reality. But you know this.
I have no irea what you are talking about. Do you think our minds are hermetically sealed from physical influences? If so drugs and booze would have no effect on us.
Yet you are still criminally liable for what you do under the influence. But I certainly accept the truth of your saying "I have no idea what you are talking about."
I think journalism on the whole has become very devisive and I see this is some of the posts. This is not to diminish you, Rod. I believe you are a very talented writer and i can only dream of being as good. I think my opinions are just 'my opinions' but worthy of expressing, nonetheless. I'm trying desperately to see what God sees. I wonder if, apart from anger, he is sad about all the mess.
The reason for the lack of courage from parents is to a large degree related to money. If every corporation is on board with this and if "the internet is forever" then putting your neck out too far can lead to total financial ruin. The people who must be stepping up are the boomers. With enough of them leading them dissenters among Gen X and millennials who are working can be safer. That's the reality here. Billboard Chris gave up his career. His job is now anti trans activism and occasionally shaking the can on Twitter (I have chipped in). We seriously need pissed off grandparents out in full force. One problem is that Fox News, their main source of news, sanitizes this stuff as their leaders are all in favor of it.
Totally agree. Although I'm self-employed, one of my biggest clients (and a large share of the market I serve) is fully on board with trans. You know the type, they change their logo to rainbow colors during pride month. I have not said anything on social media or elsewhere, because my family cannot get by without my income. I believe it could be career destroying for me to be "out" with my beliefs. Is this cowardice? Perhaps. I think there are a lot of people in this situation.
Talk to your parents about this. If they are already retired they can afford to be more vocal. You'd be "safe" if enough of the old people stand up to oppose this as, I am sure, more younger people will be willing to speak up publicly.
My parents, who are temperamentally moderate conservatives, consume mainstream media daily. They read the local paper, WSJ, and watch the big network local and national news every night. It has been interesting to see what this has done to their political beliefs - it has pushed them left on social issues. They are never-Trumpers and were absolutely terrified of COVID and believed everyone at every age should get maximum number of booster. Although my dad still thinks the DEI stuff is ridiculous (he teaches adjunct at a local top tier university), we have never discussed the trans stuff. I wonder what he would think. My parents are not looking to be activists. They are 75 and have health problems. It might be interesting to bring up the trans stuff with them. My gut feel is that the only thing that could turn them into activists would be if there was an active threat towards their grandkids. Like if my daughter was asking for a mastectomy.
Re: Never Trumpers
I subscribe to The Dispatch and the tolerance for the trans madness in the comments section is stunning. I frequently do the "great point, but look at the left" routine.
Among the writers the guy formerly known as Allahpundit doesn't seem to care. I get the sense that Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson realize the seriousness of the times, that both sides are really really bad, but they ultimately come down on the Trump is worse side. I can at least respect them. Allahnick loses my respect every day that he either ignores wokeism entirely or mocks those who are concerned about it.
When I ran a business in Washington DC, I never let anyone know my political beliefs. My family needed my money. Now that I'm retired, I don't care if Lefties hate me.
I worked for a consultancy in Boston for many years and at the stern behest of of my wife never mentioned my politics, or anybody else's (she's to the right of me). This was at the time the first teaching of transitude made it into the I think Lexington school system. A couple of my colleagues were discussing whether it was appropriate to teach fluidity to little children. They asked me what I thought. I said, "Well, I'm a right-wing nut." And that was that. Never brought it up again.
I'm still "passing" as a lefty here in my 100% Democrat suburb, because I won't be able to retire for a long time, if ever. But it means that I can sneak sensible conservative rhetoric into conversations and not have my motives questioned.
That said, people are figuring out who I am, and I'm enjoying making them nervous, because people here are too polite to ask. One colleague asked me last year, as we did some work near a church, "Are you religious? I'm not." I told her I was and she was flustered, but not in the way I expected. This is someone who respects me and my work and has never had reason to doubt me, so you could tell she was running all sorts of recalculations in her heard to try to figure out how I could be me and not be a doctrinaire progressive. I've also shut down anti-Catholic jokes in work meetings and then resumed business with with a smile on my face. I also dissented visibly from the BLM craze in 2020, which confused my colleagues, because I'm the only one in the group who has an obvious and productive rapport with black clients.
I don't want to talk about politics at all at work, but the Politicizing of Everything has made it hard not to. Some people tiptoe around me, but so what? So I don't get invited to a lunch? I have a family, I have real friends, I have a life. Work is just a job. And it gives me an opportunity to sow doubt in the minds of the many people who know in their hearts that something is wrong about all of this.
Politicizing everything is unpleasant. Sometimes I wish politics was simpler like the cause of bimetalism in 1896. My father-in-law is an old fashioned working class Democrat, a subset dying out. My sister-in-law is a feminist who's never been married, has opinions on marriage and child-raising which are at radical variance of my wife's opinions, and was a subscriber to the Oprah magazine. We engage in a political truce whenever we meet.
I really admire you, Jonah, and have for a long time.
Rod, I appreciate you saying so, but I'm not admirable. I'm a wuss. I'm just sitting in the Wussy Wagon and letting others pull it. My joking about the "Boniface Option" is really just a way for me to describe the small ways I'm trying to persuade and undermine, but don't be fooled by my bluster: my efforts are small, and perhaps I think too highly of myself only because I've managed to resist retreating entirely, and I'm exhausted from my tiny efforts. I also haven't been faced with a manager yet who says, "hey, we're updating the website, what are your preferred pronouns for your bio?"
I wish I had the courage to wade into an angry mob. Hell, man, I wish I had the courage to use my real name and not be vague about my life. But all of us can change a mind or two, even if it's only slightly better than doing nothing.
I'm not outspoken but in my one-party state and neighborhood I've called an anti-vaxxer because I've questioned the vaccines's efficacy and lock-down mandates. I've also been called a racist because I did not vote for Obama (nor did I vote for McCain or Romney). But you know what, I think these folks quietly respect me because I say my piece but also listen to the other side (without being persuaded; they're nuts).
Thanks for replying, Paul. The funny thing is, I haven't wavered much from what I used to think were liberal principles, including suspicion of government, skepticism of authority, and a stubborn individualism. No one is more surprised than I am to have gone from being a liberal to a conservative while hardly budging an inch.
For most of the Trump years, conservatives have been in a bubble of their own making. But I feel like conservatives are now getting back to the pre-2016 reality of knowing more of the range of opinions and perspectives on an issue than people on the left know.
Here's another example of how the self censorship is being pushed down to the young.
I am beyond pissed off that they've even ruined high school debate, which my daughter was really looking forward to. Not to mention all the possible career paths she would have excelled at that are now worthless (academia, etc).
The purpose of this type of "education" is to train students on the need to self-censor.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/personal-tweets-lose-high-school-debates?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=eyuci
I totally agree. I've experienced several months-long unemployment before and I am the provider for my family. I have a great job now, but I would be a pariah in my neon blue community and endanger my job if I publicly spoke out.
Since I'm not terribly far from retirement (In Sha Allah), I have two consolations: (1) that I will no longer be in fear of losing my job and (2) I will be able to move from this community, whether to another part of the country of even outside of it. And this makes me sad, because I've lived here most of my life and I my dream home.
I also have to question if this makes me a coward...and I don't like the answer.
The family breadwinner losing his job is not a trivial matter.
If my husband lost his job we would be in serious trouble. It's not as if we have a huge extended family or community that would bail us out.
Nobody would bail us out.
Exactly this. My family supports each other when it's comfortable and easy to do so. But will not make a major sacrifice like moving house to a closer neighborhood in the same city to help raise the grandkids. I think if I nuked my career to be a conscientious objector they would view it as a terrible unnecessary mistake and blame me for it. They certainly wouldn't come together and try to replace part of my income.
Y'all make very good points. I am aware that it is easy for me to speak out, because I burned every bridge I had to the mainstream media many years ago by the positions I took, and I live in a place now where I'm not likely to be cancelled. I believe that I should use my relatively safe position to say things that many others cannot. I don't expect everybody to be equally as outspoken, for precisely the reasons y'all say. However, there are many people in this country who aren't yet in such a perilous position, and who don't want to talk about any of this stuff because it makes them anxious, and they just want it all to go away. By the time your 14 year old daughter is asking for a mastectomy, you might wish you had spoken out, **even if it is only within your family**, before it got so bad.
I think we can all see how evil takes hold in a society in part by good and reasonable people being intimidated into silence.
I noticed today that the Boston police and the mayor are denying that the firefighters who were first responders to that apartment full of drag queens, sex toys, children, and a dead drag queen body, had seen the things that they did. The firefighters are pushing back, saying no, we saw what we said we saw. At this point, I believe the firefighters, because all the incentives are for them to lie and say they saw nothing bad.
"I am aware that it is easy for me to speak out,...."
Please keep speaking out Rod!
I'm retired and can be more open about my views. Yet, there are few people in my area that share my conservative views. Therefore, I appreciate being able to read your blog (and books) because it provides a sense of an online Benedict Option Community for me. Thanks Rod!
I've heard many a lifelong Dem in my deep blue state tell me they are so because their father was, and their grandfather, etc.-- a conservative sentiment held by temperamentally conservative people. Sadly, they are so unmoored by liquid modernity they have no clue the center is not where their father found it, much less their grandfather. They still have the instinct to defend that leftish relative position, but no way of detecting the center's drift.
They are unlikely to be moved right by anything short of "being mugged by reality," because firstly, they'd rather not think about it, they just want to live their lives, and secondly, they might have to radically reconstitute their basis of self in order to change their political views-- they are after all temperamentally conservative. The best one can do is say to them "I don't believe that's true" when appropriate and leave it at that. I got that tactic from a commenter on the old AmCon blog, I wish I could remember who.
There is still value to demonstrating how to stand against the madness, with focus on the softball scenarios, since most of us will need serious training to be up to the K. Yang level of play. I suspect a fair number of people in deep blue states don't know how to take even a tiny stand against the madness-- even if they're already inclined to it-- because they simply haven't seen an example of how to do it. "Monkey see, monkey do" explains an awful lot of primate behavior.
Last thought-- Wim Hof describes in his book how he rock climbs freestyle, without gear. He says that if he faces a rock and is filled with fear, that means he is not ready. After more training and honest introspection about the validity of the fear versus the worthiness of trust in his skills and abilities, it eventually becomes apparent to him when he is ready. I think there is a lesson here. (This is literally embodied wisdom. Fascinating person.)
You can bet that if I see that the trans social contagion stuff has crept into the (Orthodox Christian) school we just moved our daughter to, and there is a risk of social contagion there, I will speak up, consequences be damned. Tiger mom comes out. I would do just about anything to protect her. Including apply for welfare.
It has already, in the phones of the children.....or in the funny, blue-haired girl in your daughter's class. The one with the "cool" parents. (not trying to be a jerk with this comment but that's been my experience>)
"Then they came for the children and I did not speak out, for I am not a child"
They've been fanatical about killing babies for longer than I've been alive. Social media and ESG are merely accelerating trends. My kids are in a parochial school. I've become active at the church that hosts it and am even in a reading group that includes the husband of the school's principal. I have been sharing news with them and did get them to add a statement on sex/gender to their statement of faith sooner than they otherwise would have. I call into local radio shows and talk about transgenderism with whoever will listen, including woke librarians, but I'm careful to not stick the neck out too far. My woke employer might fire me if they find out that I'm anti trans. I'm doing more than most and I'm not doing enough. I'm serious in my other comment there. The boomers need to rise up.
Indeed, I think your point about killing kids is spot-on. In a culture that meekly accepted abortion on demand, why should the rest of this surprise us?
Rod Dreher, I do take the political and cultural power of the homosexuals seriously. My wife and I moved our family to the rural mountains where the homosexuals have no power. We homeschooled our children so they wouldn't be indoctrinated by the Left. I don't participate in the vulgar popular culture. We have one television for the use of approved DVDs. I have no homosexual or Leftist friends. I vote for the only party that puts up any political resistance. There's little else for me to do short of violence and violence is self-defeating.
Conservatives should write off the cities of America. New York, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington and so on. All are cesspools of degeneracy. The political power of these cities is a combine of blacks, homosexuals, Hispanics, affluent white leftists, government workers and Jews. That isn't going to change and bizarre episodes like you portray in your post card are an important part of modern urban America. To steal from the poster Jon, these bizarre episodes are caused by a bored people.
One of my best friends at church is 86 and was born and raised in the Bushwick neighborhood of north Brooklyn. All of his neighbors were either Italian or Jewish. He was Italian and Sunday supper was a mandatory event that took the whole afternoon. He married a Jewish woman. But over the years almost all the Italians and Jews left Bushwick and the dominant population today is Puerto Rican and Dominican, both of which vote 95 % Democratic because of the alms they receive from the Democrats. The New York of Vincent Impellitteri is as dead as Jackie Gleason, the Shangrilas, Mario Biaggi and Robert Moses. You can't bring back the dead.