Could someone clarify what exactly is going on with Thiel? I thought he was a leading transhumanist (not to mention an unrepentant homosexual), but Rod seems to consider him an ally of sorts—and he (Thiel) is super into prophecies of the Antichrist? I'm suspending judgment for a minute, but I'm a little confused. How does this all shake out?
Yes. He has money-- oodles of it. And he's a Prince of Technology, which transforms the world more profoundly than any mere legal statute can. Old line billionaires like the Kochs are one thing-- they will use their money to lobby for things beneficial to them (and screw the rest of us). But the tech guys, maybe joined by Media (Hmm, sounds like a scenario from "American Gods") very often want to enact some grand pseudo-Utopian plan upon the world. Hmm-- Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" also comes to mind in this.
It's one thing to seek to fix what's broken-- and yes, that can lead to utopianism too. But when what's broken" is seen as humanity itself and the fix is to somehow transform us-- Just Say No!
It’s mainly the transhumanism—the other thing was only a parenthetical, as you can see. Although I think it’s probably related to his transhumanism, in terms of right relations with the realm of flesh (or lack thereof).
Imagine a Church that cares about where you park your wing wang. Now THAT's enchanted.
If he is transhumanist then he's off the list. I just don't know. All I know is that this Harari man is pretty obviously in touch with dark forces indeed.
Most of these tech moguls display characteristics of being on the Spectrum (TM), which, in my opinion, disqualifies them in the societal trust department. Thiel's socialization skills are perhaps more advanced than others of his ilk but this should not fool us as to his true nature. Like the silent & brooding Martin Bormann, Thiel is an ever-present voice in the minds of those in power.
Gee, I don't know if I agree about the Thiel/Bormann comparison, but Paul, I thank you for the most arresting idea I have had the privilege of seeing in some time.
Once at a dinner party, Zelda Fitzgerald said, "Don't you think Al Jolson is just like Jesus Christ?"
Well it's not just that he's gay but that he's a pretty open predatory gay among tech circles. He tends to glom on to younger interns who mysteriously end up as his lovers shortly after. And his house parties are something you don't want to go anywhere near if you know what's good for you.
Shortly after he "married" his husband, he had a public falling out after the younger guy he was having an affair with angrily showed up at one of these parties he and his husband attended. A little while later the younger guy mysteriously fell off a balcony and died.
I get that Thiel has a lot of money and friends so it makes sense conservatives are teaming up with him. But let's not forget behind the scenes the kind of guy he really is
I am losing my respect for Vance, knowing he associates with these people, not to mention the kowtowing to Trump, although the latter is expected of a VP. I just think he should have stayed an Ohio senator and worked his way up from there.
I think you are, erm, rather trolling Rod, who has been traveling and not reading the comments. You are aware that getting to know Peter Thiel is interesting and not a sin at all.
Something is happening regarding Thiel that people cannot talk about, and it involves ideas about anti-christ, for instance. You remember Rod going to a secret conference in Oxford where Thiel spoke but Rod could not tell us what was said. (He could say it involved anti-christ and much but not all of it was available at the Uncommon Knowledge link he shared.)
If Rod has a way to know what is being said behind these closed doors, I'm glad. Rod is no compromiser with evil, should this turn out evil. But he can warn us of what could stem from whatever he is learning about.
And for all we know, Rod might be a good influence on Peter Thiel. Which would then influence masses.
I feel quite certain that the Antichrist would have to be a homosexual, for (truly, I do not kid) metaphysically important reasons. Those reasons may be found in Chapter III of my book.
I'd think the Antichrist would be asexual, having no use for the things of the flesh. He would be quite the proper Gnostic in that regard. (I recall seeing it said somewhere that the Devil was the first Gnostic rejecting God's creation of a material world as an affront to his angelic pride)
Oh yes. The Anti-Christ will be the inversion of Truth, Good and Beauty. BUT..like any great deceiver, especially one with spiritual firepower, will know how to fake all of the above and ensnare those not prepared or such deception.
For the faithful, there will be tells, as the deception is never perfect. And the Anti-Christ, owing to various aspects of the nature of evil, will give himself away, both intentionally and accidentally. But most (not all) of the deceived will miss it.
Entire post below written as if much of Revelation involves the future, a thing of which I am not convinced...but...
If homosexual, then secretly. I think antichrist's supporters will include many Jews, including Orthodox Jews - thus public homosexuality would not be part of the deal, Jews will l support him at first, then he will turn on them.
(And I am not, not, not saying antichrist will hurt the world through some Jewish conspiracy. Just saying he will have the support of Jews and others at first.)
I think in a post below you imply that antichrist (male) cannot desire sex with wotmen. But there are so many ways for men to desire women and no be in touch with the romance the Logos has built into creation. I think he could be more like Andrew Tate regarding sex, actually
Lord have mercy, Hiro. I wanted to remain agnostic about Thiel's proclivities, hoping that he'd at least remain chaste with his, uh, husband. Apparently you can take the gay man out of the bath house but not the bath house out of the gay man (or something like that).
Growing up in San Francisco, I never thought much about the parallel gay universe. Our worlds didn't really overlap but over time, of course, the queer subculture became "more in your face", forced upon an uninterested public by the LGBT ascendency in City Hall.
One the years I've had gay friends and acquaintances, as well as co-workers and supervisors, and can now state without equivocation that as a group they're generally more unstable than the normies (or "breeders", as we're known). Is it any wonder that in days past the CIA and State Department hounded out the homosexuals among the ranks? It's easy to imagine a closeted Langley spook going ga-ga over a KGB asset with high cheekbones or State analyst in Saigon losing it over a Vietcong boy-toy, in both cases compromising national security.
Re: I wanted to remain agnostic about Thiel's proclivities, hoping that he'd at least remain chaste with his, uh, husband.
The guy is rich as rich can be. That means he can have whatever he wants. For such people the temptation to promiscuity will always be overwhelming because they have no shortage of others willing to canoodle with them. That's very much true of straight men too, and has been since very ancient times. Yes, some rich guys manage to resists temptation and keep it "at home" but this is like the Jesus' words about a camel going through the eye of a needle.
Look, I don't know about any of this, but the whole "marriage equality" wheeze was always a bait and switch, though I didn't have the language to capture it when it was going down. Making "gay" an identity rather than a behavior doesn't mean you want to be equal. It means you want to take away from the love of men and women its normative character, and replace it with your behavior as normative. What replaces the love of men and women as normative is polymorphous perversity-the addition of TBQ demonstrates that. As soon as letters to the editor started appearing beginning with "As a gay man" the battle was lost.
One is God's created order, standard and intent. The other is an inversion, sin, abomination. When the inversion achieves political power and cultural cache, such an assault is inevitable.
The gay thing is irrelevant-- if we chose our friends and allies by requiring that they agree with us on everything and have no sins we'd be awfully lonely.
It's true we all sin. The likely reason homosexuality is criticized so much is because it's a sin that is not only accepted but enabled in some churches. Understandably, that causes concern for conservative Christians.
The other enabled sin would be the teachings of some prosperity gospel preachers. Off hand, I can't think of other sins that are condoned by any Christian churches.
Some politicized churches OK wrath as long as it is wrath at the "right" targets.
Anyway homosexuality is something only a smallish fraction of people have any natural predilection to. As such it is an easy sin for the rest if us to condemn and feel self righteous about doing so as we have no temptation toward it.
Thiel claims to be a Christian, despite being a practicing homosexual. As the parent of a child claiming to be bisexual, I sincerely hope that circle can be squared, but it requires a lot of prayer on my part and trust that the ways of the Lord are beyond my understanding.
Regardless of Thiel's sexual proclivities and his transhumanist and technocratic opinions, the short answer for me is that he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch at the moment.
The other thing is that, like it or not, Thiel, Musk, and the rest of the techbros who have aligned with Trump are also our sons of bitches, for better or worse. I've come to understand that revolutions do not come from the bottom up. The idea that the dirt people will throw off the chains of the managerial elite on their own is a fantasy. The harsh reality is that it is always the elites who bring about change and the lower classes are ultimately along for the ride. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfield, you go to Revolution with the elites you have, not the elites you wish you have. Thiel and friends are the elites our side has.
You have a daughter, right? I hear that a lot of girls who identify as bi are pretty much non-practicing and just do it for the social protection and cache. Girls are smart like that, of course.
I hope. I think that's a big part of it. My kid was always socially awkward through high school, but she had a group of friends that would go out and do stuff and her mother and I weren't concerned.
She started college and things seemed to go downhill. Covid made it worse by driving them all completely online for their socialization. It was during this time that she got her online girlfriend and decided she was bisexual.
And, yes, her girlfriend is a real person. We've met her ourselves. But seeing them interact together struck us as more platonic rather than romantic. It really seems like this is almost social thing that keeps the two of them from having to interact with people day to day. "I don't have to get out and meet new people because I've got my girlfriend in California."
Lesbians have always struck me as kinda pathetic; I feel sort of sorry for the one who’s supposed to be the dude. “You’re trying very hard, but you are, um, unequipped to do a whole lot. . . .” Sodomy, on the other hand, seems disgusting and dangerous at a totally different level.
(This parallels how no one’s complaining about girls using guys’ bathrooms or competing in guys’ sports.)
I don't want to disgust the commentators here too much, but Joseph Sciambra, an ex-gay Catholic, now turned Orthodox Christian, made a post on his blog a couple years back about the irreparable damage he's done to his body (really, specific parts of the body) being part of the "gay" lifestyle.
Based of what he wrote, I really am puzzled why a man would subject themselves to that. I confess that I don't really understand homosexual desire (for a gay man, does thinking about/seeing an attractive man arouse the same parts of their brain as it does when a straight man sees a pretty woman? That really is alien to me).
Hey, Trevor, no worries, I'm disgusted just to be here.
I've looked at Sciambra's YouTube channel once. I admire him. He seems to be a repentant soul.
About your last matter, I'm afraid I think the answer is yes. I'll never forget this poor bastard who tried to pick me up in a movie theater when I was eighteen. He took my paralysis for lack of interest, thank God, thank God. He was about thirty - five, extremely well dressed, definitely from the Northeast I registered, Armenian looking, probably in town ( Houston ) on business with a family back home in New Jersey.
He went away, and I went back to the movie. As I left the theater, he passed to my right, going in the opposite direction, the brown eyes darting to and fro desperately.
It's almost 10,000 words long. And not for the faint of heart.
Highly enlightening about the gay world. I'm surprised he hasn't been targeted for harm after having said these things out loud.
But it's also incredibly vulnerable and insightful about the nature of masculinity, the longing for completion, and the good and proper ordering of creation and even of sexuality. In that sense, it does explain - though certainly not justify! - why he would subject himself to it. It's an unbelievably sad portrait, and yet he ultimately finds redemption in seeing that life for what it is, and in escaping it. Sometimes we see the good in a portrait of its absence.
Yes. Gay men think about men's bodies the way straight men think about women's bodies. In fact, it is possibly more "graphic" many times, but I won't elaborate on that. Read what is available free of Renaud Camus from archive.com if you want an awful glimpse into thoughts. (And of course I did not finish - five minutes of the graphic part was enough.) And for the damage, they try not to, there are techniques. But things can and do fail...
Thoughts - not particularly in response to Trevor -Married gay men can decide to have a monogamous relationship. I think Spencer Klavan might be an example. But gay men in a "committed" or married relationship commonly reach agreements ("it is OK to be with a man other than my partnet under these circumstances....")
There are various theories about Thiel. Good and bad -I think no one knows for sure. Rod won't be able to tell us what he all he discerns once he had a chance to know Thiel better. But I think Rod both has good intentions and will be spiritually protected if that is necessary. And there is nothing wrong, per se, in having dinner with a gay man.
What I don't get is how some guys who were once married and had kids and have now come out managed the whole charade. I mean, I don't claim to be Don Juan, but as a heterosexual man I can function sexually with a female human.
But with another dude, I just don't think I could manage to perform.
So how did these guys who now claim to be gay manage to successfully have sex with women? Why didn't they find it as repulsive as I'd find having sex with a dude, and therefore not arousing?
This wlll probably strike some of the commentators as crass, but from my interactions with lesbians and bi-women, they generally tend towards the "feeling" side of relationships, as opposed to the actual mechanics of a sexual relationship.
I vividly remember asking a lesbian "you say you date women, but do actually fantasize about seeing your partner naked?" Her surprised look makes me think she hadn't considered that part of relationships.
Trevor, America's bull dyke has lived in the apartment next to mine for over twenty years. In those first years, I'd hear things through the thin walls ( our apartments are in a small, Addams family - like house built when Theodore Roosevelt was President ) which I couldn't stand. Several times, I had a violent, mock coughing spell. Eventually, they figured out that if they went into a certain room, I couldn't hear them. Ignorance is bliss.
I say "they" because it's been the same girlfriend for twenty years, though they have never lived together. She's over eighty now, wisping away because of heart disease, yet the younger one shows up almost every day. Maybe it is still for sex. Cole Porter, always promiscuous, is said to have gone into overdrive in the last couple of years of his life. ( There is also wonderful reason to believe he had a deathbed conversion. ) I would like to believe that as perverted as it is, there is some genuine love there.
And yes, what does cause it? In the summer of 2006 I came around the corner onto our block and saw my neighbor transfixed by a group of twelve year old girls in bathing suits playing skip rope in the street.
Female queerness is quite different from the male variety, which is why I have hope for Duke's daughter.
Years ago I dated a "4-year-lesbian" who'd just graduated from Mt. Holyoke, one of the sister colleges. Once out of that milieu, she proceeded to go boy crazy, making up for lost time.
Dukeboy01, I'd try to talk my daughter out of the bi-curiosity as best as you can. Here's the problem (I've used this when my niece was being pressured to go bi- in high school). If one engages in same-sex with a woman, she will forever lose the ability to be in a sexually neutral situation with women again. Both men and women need to be able to be in a socially sexual neutral situation. It is DELICIOuS. Everyone can just relax (women with women, men with men) and it is natural and in God's plan for mankind (which includes women, of course). So tell your daughter she's going to lose the ability to be around women and NOT think about "ah, I'd like to date that one." It's exhausting and an awful prospect. She will have lost one of the four "loves" (see C.S. Lewis)--she will lose the possibility of just, pure, chaste, not-worrying-sex FRIENDSHIP.
Put another way (same point): So here's the 4 loves: love of God (Agape), Love of Family (Affection), Love of Friend (Friendship) and Romantic Love (Eros). She will lose the ability of just loving a female friend as a friend, which is a wonderful experience. (Men like to have their men friends just as much and hang with them). This argument help talk my niece out of "trying out" bi-sexuality. That, and having practicing Christian parents. (She later herself became a practicing Christian.) Tell her: God doesn't want same-sex activity (see 6th commandment). And "you are going to get hurt" ultimately (very common--one of the partners cuts off the other). Lesbians don't stick together. Okay, neither do heteroes, but from what I've seen, they're a little deranged and unpleasant IMO. Look at Rachel Maddow. Is that what she wants to be like or with? Ugh. Look at Rosie O'Donnell. Double ugh.
Now more serious stuff, which I've found from casual observation. It is common for bi-sexual women to "advance" to flat out lesbianism. And lesbians tend to gravitate toward Wicca (farther and farther from Thee, my Lord).
Third, men don't find bi-woman particularly good GF prospects or candidates for marriage. Men don't know how to compete with a woman for their GF's or wife's affections. Most men don't want a bi GF just as most women don't want a bi BF. She is taking herself out-of-the-running for finding and keeping a good man going forward once she starts dabbling in same sex relationships.
Good luck. Nag. I have done a lot of nagging of my children in these matters. So far, so good.
Any relationship needs to have a healthy helping of Platonic love in it. When the passion fades that will remain as long as it's cultivated and sheltered. It's what true long term love is.
Florence King once said that "Homosexuality is the French Foreign Legion of the Sexual Revolution." I think for a lot of girls, taking on a pseudo-lesbian identity is a way of staying out of the contemporary high-pressure sexual arena that they are not ready for.
Women form intimate friendships more easily than men (at least in our culture). In past times people did not look on those bonds as lesbian in nature, even if they got get a bit romantic (but not sexual). I remember my mother and her best friend liked to dance together on their birthdays-- and my mother was definitely not lesbian. These days just about any close relationship (including among those men who do form very intense friendships) is interpreted as homosexual, and people label themselves as Bi even if they never take it into the bedroom.
I will add you and yours to my growing daily prayer list of people in this situation. My daughter came through a similar phase fairly unscathed, but now the challenges of modern dating are the issue, with all 3 of my kids.
One of the really good things to come out of this situation is that my wife and I have become closer and we are highly cognizant of how we "model" our marriage for our kids.
My kids are in their 20's and my words don't "work" anymore.
Sethu, it’s not a matter of “smart.” You seem to be an intelligent, questing soul. I beg of you not to take the line that young girls/women are “smart” to attempt to avoid and escape via claiming bisexuality/same-sex relationships. (What they’re trying to avoid and escape can be personal, singular, societal and multi- causal.) I just don’t have confidence that some long essay of mine could change anyone’s mind. But praying for Dukeboy01’s daughter and others would be a better use of your time than repeating the social-utilitarian view that girls are ‘smart’ to recognize and act on false premises. Young girls are NOT smart about much of anything at all. They suffer for it, and so do those of us who love them and try to guide them in the face of absolute contempt for our motives.
Relax, it’s a type of slang: I mean that girls are typically skilled (relative to guys their age) with respect to reading their social environments and getting on the winning end of status differentials. I wasn’t making a moral judgment or calling it *good*. It’s a claim about the incentive structures present in their social environments, to which they respond, as do we all.
In short, social-utilitarian smart is not a type of smart that I endorse as an actual value. May God save us all from being so “smart” in the wrong way.
I took Sethu to mean some women/girls are just stating what an untrue about their desires, well, you cannot move in America without seeing an ad with a women's body and trying to think those bodies desirable. (Slightly off topic, no revealing billboards, sings and ads here in the country of Georgia - it is noticeable.)
- - When I was 22, I explained to my cousin's wife whilst visiting Tennessee, that I had no desire at all look at women's bodies. She said it was actually common for women to like to look at women's bodies but they should repent. My cousin's wife is supposedly a "sophisticate", a woman of the world, the twice divorced older women my cousin married. The idea she might have spoken the truth to me and that I am naive did and sometimes still does bother me.
- - I will say I think it possible for a good portion of women to literally learn to like women's bodies, well, it is not possible for me, I am not like that, but I think there is a portion, not small, of women who could learn that if they chose.
But one off the biggest motivators is not to be hurt by men. The other big motivators these days is that it is "in" and is thought to prove an open mind I will never forget the evening a gay male friend tried to talk me into finding that I could desire women...ugh...and sort of on the same lines we have Obama's letter to a girlfriend about how he can desire men. It is just the "open" thing to do in highly intellectual circles, I think,
That was only true 20 years ago, and even then only true-ish. The barriers and stigmas are now much much lower. I have 2 daughters in college who report back in on these things. The pornification of the youth have not only removed prior taboos on the matter, but have turned the culture towards active encouragement of fanning even passing desires into identity lodestones.
Re: " the limits of liberal democracy" didn't one of the founding fathers say that the constitution was meant for a moral and religious people and would not work for any other?
Re: Thiel claims to be a Christian, despite being a practicing homosexual. As the parent of a child claiming to be bisexual, I sincerely hope that circle can be squared
Well, we are saved in spite of our sins and not on account of our virtues.
Thiel has waxed poetic about using technological intervention to remove all contingency from the universe. He’s a utopian and so-called TESCREAList. I feel strongly that he is exploiting memes associated with Christianity in order to advance a Baconian/Enlightenment/ungodly ideological agenda. Pray that our author be careful dealing with him.
I've read his books. He's a great businessman and I can say I've learned from him.
But he also has explicitly stated that he's "Christian but not really the orthodox kind". Seems like an MTDer with money who also likes the free market (i.e. more money for him)
Re: Thiel has waxed poetic about using technological intervention to remove all contingency from the universe.
This horrifies me more than anything I've heard about him. Life is very much supposed to have an irreducible element of chance about it. IMO, this is how God has woven freedom in existence.
Thiel is no prophet of God. The transhumanist "gospel" is hubris straight from the Devil. Rod should take some holy water with him and wash his hands with it if he shakes hands with guy.
Thiel has invested in life-extension technology, which is so-far non-existent, and wants people to live a lot longer. I don't know of any evidence he wants to turn humans into Borg or Cybermen or something.
I don't know if you've ever read Tolkien, but the quest to prolong life beyond it natural span was how the Numenoreans fell and ended up becoming disciples of Sauron. Yes, of course, we should try to overcome disease and heal injuries, but there's a time to die also, and that is the will of God. Our hope for eternity is not grounded into cyberspace, but in Jesus Christ.
Sorry, man, but that's glib. Fiction is not "just" fiction, if it is truly great. To believe otherwise is to be a philistine who doesn't know what literature is for.
Jon, you can argue that feeling pain and suffering from cancer are the will of god. I mean, both happen, no? So does that mean that pain medication and chemo violate the will of god? Should we go back to surgery without anesthetic? Where do you draw the line?
In practice, if we find a cure for Alzheimer’s, we’ll use it. If we find how to cure arthritis, we’ll use it. If we figure out how to regenerate damaged hearts or other organs, we will.
And some people will object to any individual technology on religious grounds, but it won’t matter. And they’ll be looked at the same way we look at the weirdos who objected to anesthesia on religious grounds.
The Problem of Evil is vast as the entire Multiverse and I've wrestled with it for almost forty years. Do I have an answer? No. But I know there are no facile ones.
Yes, the lines continue to blur between what it means to follow Jesus (the road less traveled) and being a "Christian." I didn't write about Thiel specifically but I wrote about this trans/posthumanist agenda in Stargate, Part I: Trump's $500bn Venture Promises a Golden Age of AI
"Billionaire Masayoshi Son believes that his 'emotional relationship' with AI, specifically his 'top advisor' ChatGPT, will usher in the BIRTH OF SUPERHUMAN. Son leads Trump's Stargate venture."
And Stargate II: The Golden Age of Billionaires
"AI will totally neuter mere humans for the immortal survival of the top 0.01 percent."
I always focus on: "By their fruits they shall be known" (Matthew 7:16). And also, "Not all who say My name will be saved" (7:21).
Also, did you know that Frost's poem is universally read wrongly? The point of the poem is that both roads look exactly the same, but then we tell ourselves stories about how we picked the special one.
Yes, and “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matthew 7:13-14.
I didn't know that about Frost's poem. It brings to mind The Last Battle, thr last book in the Narnia Cbronicles, which I am reading for the 100th time. They all go in through the stable door and each one sees something different. The Calorman who worships Tash with a pure heart then realizes when confronted with Aslan that it’s always been Aslan he was worshipping. These books greatly influenced my life, having read them for the first time as a child of 10.
No take on Trump pardoning Trevor Milton and commuting the Ozy Media scammer (Carlos Watson)? The former donated more than 1.5 million to DJT's election campaign - nothing transactional there to be sure. Makes Orban seem downright subtle in 'making it rain' for those rural voters.
The best part of these pardons/commutations is that now neither of these scammers has to make restitution of to all those they ripped off. Three cheers for populism!
Then again, I bet Milton and Watson hate wokeness, which as we all know is what really matters when it comes to the rule of law...
He's also on board with "compensating" the Jan 6 guys. Of course if someone was falsely arrested for that fracas when they had no part in it, they deserve restitution. Otherwise, absolutely not. They are wrong-doers and should not be rewarded for it.
57% of Canadians say that they want a change from the previous Liberal government. That statistic, during an election campaign, is historically a very strong indicator for challengers, in any country.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was fantastic as an attack dog against Justin Trudeau. He understands the social media age and is excellent at attacking the Liberal record over the past decade.
But we are not in normal times. Canadians view themselves as facing an existential threat. (Annexation is literally a threat to a nation's existence.) They no longer care who is at fault for the last ten years. They care about their national existence. And Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, is perceived as having the credibility to stand up to Trump, in a way that Parliamentary attack dog and TikTok star Pierre Poilievre doesn't.
Ironically, once the social media star Trump turned his guns on Canada, Canada actually turned away from social media unreality and towards gravitas.
Also, Carney has the advantage of being the incumbent. In times of crisis, very few jurisdictions change leaders.
This is why I feared that Trump would doom the Conservatives even when they were polling 30% (!!) ahead of the Liberals last Fall.
The sad outcome is that we'll get the more of the same problems as before. And Trump will get fewer actual solutions and more reasons (a few real, most invented) to portray Canada as an enemy. Everyone loses.
I'll add that Donald Trump has an acute sense for weakness in his competitors. He probably (rightly) recognized how weak Trudeau was, and figured he could end Trudeau's political career. He was right, and he did!
But in doing so, he saved the Liberal party.
Poilievre and the Conservatives were almost certain to finish off Justin Trudeau's political career, and to give America somebody who would get tough on crime and tough on China. (The Liberal party has been deeply intertwined with the Chinese Communists for decades, and the new Conservative party (since 2004) has taken a much harder line against China.))
Sir, Trudeau was polling so badly on February 1 that an analytical Trump would have wanted Trudeau to stay on as Prime Minister so he could be crushed in an election this year. Trump should not have wanted to end Trudeau's career yet but that political cadaver was going to wreck the Liberal Party.
Trump has a deep (and justifiable, IMO)hatred of Trudeau and also of Freeland.
Credit the media (especially the CBC and Globe and Mail) with throwing the entire country into a fit, having people think that at any moment the Marines will land.
Some are saying that Carney has peaked, but even a Poilievre win might only be a minority government, which would be short lived and not really put the country on the right track. However, Poilievre has been drawing huge crowds as opposed to Carney.
Nah, Poilevre was just like those Toryies in England. Would have provided steady cover for the continued rot of Canada by woke liberal democracy. The existential threat facing Canada is not bullying by Trump but continued mass 3rd world immigration, which Piolievre heartedly endorses. Better that it get worse, faster under Carney.
The English people get the credit for that, not the Tories. The Tories have just been watered down Labor, otherwise. No real change in policy, erosion of public liberties, continued illegal migrant flow, etc.
Johnson accomplished more against the "globalist elite" (through getting Brexit done) than anything Trump accomplished in his first four years. It was a massive and consequential political triumph.
The reason Britain has continued massive migrant flow is because, like everywhere (including God's obviously chosen country, America), its birthrate has fallen off a cliff. Were the Tories supposed to break into married couples' houses and force them to copulate?
American exceptionalism means, almost by definition, that Americans don't have a very good sense of what is going on inside other countries. (Except Iraq, amirite?)
Oh please. You are cucking. Shitting on your pretense at civil rights, including harassing and jailing anyone who has the temerity to bring it up. Get off your ass, Britain illehals/massigration will not save yp
Ou. Brexit was impressive and suggested hope you have some civ spine left. But now you need to take the next steps. Because we are in the "what have you done for me lately? category.
Also, you would presume to cluck at American Exceptionalism (which comes across as butthurt jealousy, especially from America's hat and the folks across the pond who lost their relevance re. all things American in 1776. Yeah, they can still shoot their Limey gobs off, but you've got way too much crap of your own to deal with now to have any cred,) then go on about how "we" don't know much about what goes in other countries. Well, that goes both ways. Also, your own countrymen are telling those tales, for those who will bother to listen.
We do listen. Some of us do care. And when you act like wussy ass turds, like you are doing now, we point and laugh.
>>The reason Britain has continued massive migrant flow is because, like everywhere (including God's obviously chosen country, America), its birthrate has fallen off a cliff.
What? Total non sequitur. Falling birthrate has NOTHING to do with mass immigration from the third world. Throughout history, birthrates have always waxed and waned, and for some reason, governments in the past never deemed it necessary to import millions of alien peoples because birthrates declined for whatever reason. Whenever I hear this argument my suspicions rise, I smell a rat. You're not sincere. You wish to do harm.
The EU was never a serious problem, Brussels could be an annoyance, not an existential threat. Mass third-world immigration (particularly Islam based) is an existential threat to the UK and the Tories aided, abetted, encouraged this invasion through every single year of the past 15 years that they were in power. And they still don't get it. The most you can get from them is that they now speak that immigrants must assimilate (whatever that means). UK is almost certainly facing a very violent future, one that may see open warfare due to Tory fecklessness. All so unnecessary. I pi$$ on Margaret Thatcher's grave.
Trump is not merely bullying: he's threatening to end Canada's independent existence. This is vile! We didn't even do or attempt that in Iraq or Vietnam.
Patriotic about what? About furthering a policy that will place the native Canadians (yeas the white Anglo/Celtic/Franco axis are the native Canadians) in a minority status within 20 years. Some patriotism, not buying it.
In case you haven't heard, Carney's right hand man on the immigration front is Michael (?) Wiseman, who believes Canada's population need to increase from 40M to 100M and that should be done by immigration. Combine that with Carney's proven solution of printing money, his netZero BS and his ties to China and the WEF/EU and this place will be go from teetering on a cliff's edge to off the cliff pretty quickly.
Not sure how much "gravitas" they are actually turning towards if, over a case of butthurt, they keep the libs in power. Trump does not actually represent an existential threat to Canada. The CCCP, whom the liberals have given a significant foothold in Canada, do.
China is much more of a threat than Liberal-voting Canadians realize. That much I'll agree with. And I can even tolerate Trump using some small sticks to push Canada to take that threat more seriously.
But China is not going to land soldiers on Canadian territory. The United States could.
A country's own people are the ones who decide who is an existential threat. Trump has stated IN PLAIN LANGUAGE that he wants to annex Canada. He's called our Prime Minister a "governor". The US has gone to war over provocations smaller than that.
You wouldn't listen to Canadians deciding who is and isn't an existential threat to the United States. Sorry, Americans don't get to decide who is and isn't an existential threat to Canada.
There are 6500 Chinese troops in Canada. Thats half a division, doing maneuvers. China, given a chance, will end you. Trump only offends you. Sticks and stones stop being a pussy.
Trump is not going to invade Canada, and only very silly people take that seriously.
I just fact checked this claim and it is no where corroborated, so I'm going to label it propaganda-- a lie. (Not accusing you, except pf spreading it). The source of this rumor appears to be the loons of good old Qanon.
The armypencil site claims that the Chinese have a military base near Calgary. That claim beggars belief, especially since it offers zero evidence and is not corroborated anywhere else.
(Just because I write on the internet that China has 100 military bases in America doesn't make it true.)
You're only corroborating Jon's claim that you're buying into propaganda.
Yes. And then in 2018 the Chinese troops were kicked out.
I don't disagree that this should have been more widely known anad scrutinized. But that's different from saying that there are Chinese troops stationed in Canada ready to take over.
And he should rub Vicks Vapo-rub on his neck and chest. There is a $1.25 knock-off version of Vicks Vapo-rub at the Dollar Tree in the Health and Beauty section.
This desecration of the Host is not anything new. Your agent never tires of reminding the inhabitants of these boxes that homosexual and feminist "activists" under the aegis of ACT-UP (the organization headed by the sainted Larry Kramer, author of "Faggots"), invaded St. Patrick's in New York on Dec. 10, 1989, and proceded to, as they coyly say, "disrupt" Mass. Take a look. They're proud of it. Evidently these events haunted O'Connor until the day he died.
Activists from that lobby once crashed Easter services at a church I was attending. They made a point of engaging in every physical activity they thought they could get away with, just short of full on public display.
The mass stabber in Amsterdam has been identified as a 30-year-old Ukrainian refugee. One of my fears is that when Ukraine finally collapses, the ultranationalists will join the diaspora and resort to terrorism against targets they deem as traitors to their cause.
I was told here in Georgia (where I currently am) by someone active in supporting Ukraine
- and you can imagine the support here - that if Putin gets land in a settlement, many Ukrainian men will fight to the death. No matter what was signed. No, he did not mean all Ukranian men - but many
Where you never have to worry about the collapse of social order—we never had any to begin with!
Just stay out of Downtown, esp at night, as it starts to look like a zombie movie out there.
If you have time for some scenery, take a tour up around Mulholland Drive (if you never have), it's fantastic views in every direction. As for the beach and the PCH, they might just have all burned down ;) Ooops maybe next time.
There is video of the fight between the leader of the Satanist contingent and one of the Christian counter protestors inside the capital building floating around out there. The Satanist hauls off and punches the Christian and the cops immediately jump on the Satanist with what I recognize from personal experience as genuine enthusiasm for what they're finally getting to do. I remember being there in my younger days, waiting patiently for someone to cross the line wherein the use of physical force is both reasonable and justifiable and the follow-up paperwork will totally be worth it. I imagine that if you could see the cops' faces at the moment the Satanist starts to deliver his punch, you'll see a twinkle in all of their eyes and the briefest of smiles flit across their faces at the realization that they are about to get to be an instrument of the Lord in the physical realm.
Most of what I know (or think I know) about the Canadian election comes from X. From there I gather that most of the Liberal candidate's support is coming from Boomers. Younger cohorts are supporting the Conservative. The question will come down to whether the youths can overwhelm the Boomer vote.
It isn't "socialism" they are rejecting. The rightwing young are not, by and large, good libertarians. Anyone misreading today's zeitgeist as an affirmation of Ayn Rand or even Hayek is serious off the rails.
No, they believe in Big (and Strong) Government benefiting them. Again, they are not libertarians of any sort. Do note that these guys are cheering and foot stomping Trump's every move to aggrandize government power and to perdition with the Rule of Law or Federalism.
Yeah, X and Z are much more concerned with the cost of living than the Boomers, who are more preoccupied with Trump. Have a look sat the graphs in this post:
I think most, not all but most, so called Satanists are not the least bit sincere. They don’t believe in Satan. They just think it’s fun to crap all over Christian sensibilities. Also most so called “Wiccans” are just new age flakes who have no real beliefs of any kind. There is a lot of insincere posturing these days. I had the amusing experience of arguing Buddhism with a flaky dude from California who called himself Buddhist, but knew far less than me about actual Buddhist history and theology.
There are the real ones, though. They look just like the rest of us. The scariest book I've ever read is Malachi Martin's "Hostage to the Devil." There is one thing in that book which is so melodramatic, so damned unlikely, that my instinct is that it did happen.
I tried to read the book in 1977, and couldn't manage it. In 2009, I saw a reprint, bought it, found it hard going, but did read it. Exactly a year later, I tried to read it again, and couldn't.
I have that book, too. I can only take so much of that stuff. I have to be in "the mood" to be scared or bored by turns (which is rare). Satan is actually sort of boring. The exocists have noticed this boring aspect of the devil, too. Everything the devil does is an inversion of God--C.S. Lewis and others have noted this. Meaning, he's not original. Take the Black mass--it's merely the inversion of the mass, which is not original really.
My personal favorite among the space fantasies of Lewis is "Until We have Faces". I've read almost all of Lewis's nonfiction and some of his fiction. I did not read his academic books on the Middle Ages. What a blessing he was and still is!
That is insightful, "Satan is actually sort of boring." On the surface, lots of splash and sparkle, but when you get under that, banality.
Interesting inversion, in that, in fiction, villains can often be more compelling than the heroes, but in real life, it is the good ones who are the interesting, soulful, inspiring ones. The bad guys are kind of meh.
I've seen three, possibly a fourth and a fifth. In a lifetime of almost seventy - three years, that low number isn't indicative of an obsessive.
As an example, over a forty year period, several people, none of whom knew of the existence of any of the others, have combined to cheat me of possibly as much as a million dollars. Yet I don't think any of them is a demoniac. Several are sociopathic, but not, I am convinced, demon possessed.
One is a woman who worked for one of my doctors. I do have reason to believe she is a practicing witch, but her malice has its root in the unfortunate truth that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. As one of my other doctors, who knew her well, commented, almost certainly I had ruined her perfect streak. I have no doubt that she is demon influenced, however. The first time I saw her I had a reaction I had never had to a gorgeous woman, revulsion.
A second is my cousin, who is a recurring minor player for comic effect in things I say here. He hates my guts because I can do something easily which he can't do at all, and it maddens him that he can't. He is of the same stuff as the woman, malignant narcissism, and there is about him an aura of the demonic which leaves me in no doubt that he is demon influenced.
But neither is demon possessed.
The other scoundrels in my would be financial immiseration are characters Dickens would have understood: a wheedling clergyman with a shark's instinct for blood, a crooked administrative law judge, lowlife lawyers ( not a redundancy, there are some wonderful ones ), a spoiled brattish little man of a doctor, and a doctor who broke the doctor/patient confidentiality ethic. Moral and spiritual defectives all, but not a demoniac in the bunch
I don't go around demoniac spotting. I do think that they're more common than you believe. I'm under the impression that you know what happened to me in my childhood. A time or two I've been too indiscreet for my liking here on Substack. I'm sorry about that, for several reasons. But if you do know about it, you can understand why I am as certain as I am of the profusion of the demonic and its carriers in the population.
There are a lot of things I haven't talked about. I will offer my suspicion that for reasons unknown, some people are intrinsically of more interest to the diabolical than most others. The why of it is something I have no explanation for.
Re: Several are sociopathic, but not, I am convinced, demon possessed.
People who full-on possessed are seriously addled, unable to function socially, maybe having difficulties even functioning physically-- some even starve to death if not exorcized because they don't grasp the necessity of eating. Demons do not belong in bodies and don't really do well when they are confined to material flesh. So yes, I would agree that people who go around doing nasty things to others (I've had a few thud into my life too) are most likely sociopaths, even psychopaths, and maybe demon-inspired, falling gladly even to temptations. But not controlled by demons. They are still quite responsible for their own actions. "The Devil made me do it" did not work as an excuse in Eden, and it doesn't work nowaadys.
Re: I do have reason to believe she is a practicing witch
Do you mean "Wiccan practitioner" or some other variety of pagan (not all of whom are happy clappy nature worshipers)? I so follow the older consensus that there's no such thing as witches in the old superstitious sense.
Well, if you believe the Bible, you should believe that witchcraft exists. We have a couple of commenters here, one a frequent habitue, who are dabblers, at least.
In that book, Malachi Martin writes about high functioning demoniacs, as weird as that may sound. These are people who are possessed, know they're possessed, and are unbothered by it, possibly even glad about it because they get everything they want, at least for awhile. Martin believed that some were what he called “perfectly possessed,” not in the least interested in being exorcised. In 2012, I had an interesting encounter with a person of whom I suspect that is true.
You've got the idea that they all end up like the Dwight Frye character in the 1931 “Dracula,” restrained in a cellar and gleeful to eat bugs. Probably many do.
Dr Richard Gallagher's book of a few years ago is quite interesting.
I respect scientists’ desire to go around wearing an intellectual chastity belt, and to be seen doing so, but the real world suggests that things are a bit messier than mechanistic materialism might be willing to contemplate. We might be the more discrete objects under under study—by discarnate intelligence—rather than the probability clouds that Rutherford and Bohr began to notice.
I’ll add to the common observation that “ought” cannot be derived from “is”—in other words, science can tell us nothing about what we should do, beyond practical technical courses of action—so consciousness cannot be derived from “is” either. Echoing Sartre, perhaps, there is an unbridgeable gulf between the en-soi and the pour-soi. And we have faith-and only faith—that other people are similarly conscious beings, “pour-soi” as well. Which then raises the question about just where else we might encounter consciousness. I doubt neuroscience or its related fields have much, if anything, to say about such questions. But inasmuch as they can’t guarantee to me that you are a fellow conscious being or to you that I myself am one, then worrying about what science says here is not terribly important.
And belief isn’t really a factor in considering the realities of atoms. What Bohr and Rutherford, and a whole bunch of scientists since they were working, detected in their data and observations were indeed phenomena that are real and actually existing in the world. And there is nothing surprising in that. Science is essentially an organized tossing of more capital to an investigation, not unlike fitting out three ships to find out what might lie over the western horizon. Same process, really. The knowledge gained is, literally, gain. Engineers can later build on the things that the first explorers discover.
But as I said, the existence either of atoms or the Bahamian islands says exactly zero about our own status as objects in the gaze of others, either of our observable fellows or of numinous beings not ordinarily evident.
We get fewer immigrants from the Middle East and Africa than from any other part of the world. Most of our immigrants come from Latin America/the Caribbean, and, next, from East Asia. Unless there's some sort of mass conversion event the percentage of Muslims will not increase by any significant number in the US.
Of course, the NT Times reported in 2005 that more Muslims came to the U.S. in the previous year than in the previous two decades. In 2010 they were 1.1% of the population and are expected to surpass Jews as the second largest religion in the U.S. by 2040.
On normalizing marginalized sexuality, I’ve been wondering how parents can justify prioritizing happiness and self-fulfillment over the life patterns that produced their own families. I see people my age, who made the choice to be Christian, marry young, be faithful to their spouses, and have children, decide to teach their own children that other lifestyles, ones that would lead to the inability to have children, are just as good as the one they chose, that led to that child having a stable and caring family. They don’t see that they aren’t passing on the very values that led to their own stability. This feels different to me than supporting a child who moves away from the parents’ teaching; of course you would try to maintain that relationship as much as possible.
It's because that is what we were taught. I'm making a massive break with my parents by telling our son that I don't care about where he goes to college, if he goes, as long as he is genuinely happy and able to support a family. At least for myself, I think I was given a very false definition of what happiness is. Man, growing up, I thought the absolute height of my happiness and success would be to break that damn glass ceiling, have a bunch of degrees, maybe be married, and definitely do not have kids so that my pathetic line of the family would die with me. Then, maybe, I'd be a success in my parent's eyes.
I look at my female peers and for them, happiness lies everywhere but family.
This has been taught since before I was born. You too, no doubt.
I recognized the harm done to me, and how I’ve perpetuated it, far too late. Our kids? Any slight wisdom we can impart, we must, though we’re trying to talk over a tidal wave.
Your comment is so poignant. It’s not actually what I was talking about (I was trying not to offend anyone and ended up being too vague) but I can see why your mind went that direction. I was thinking about women my age at my previous church, who had decided to embrace encouragement of the trans lifestyle and teach their kids it was a fine choice, when their own life choices were so different. I’m sorry for the family patterns you described—that’s so much pressure.
I love you Rod, but please don't use Cyrrilic letters that look like flipped around Latin letters in place of the latter. И isn't an N. I read иot and my mind hears "eyot" :P
"... because it’s just too insane to imagine that a British subject would be hauled off to jail for the thoughts in her head." Not really. This is a country that once made it a capital offense for high treason to "imagine the king's death." They've just revived the offense in a different way. https://www.amazon.com/Imagining-Kings-Death-Figurative-Fantasies/dp/0198112920
FYI, in the Lutheran Eucharist I celebrate each week, the consecrated bread and wine are the true Body and Blood of Jesus. Unlike Roman Catholics, we do not use a secular philosophical logic to explain, we simply believe the Lord Jesus when He said “This is my Body” “This is my Blood”.
Just so you know, this is not true of all Roman Catholics. Joseph Ratzinger, no less, proved to not be a wholehearted fan of that 'secular philosophical logic', when he defended the non-use of the words of insubstantiation (for any reader who doesn't know, "This is my body...This is my blood...") in the Holy Qurbana, the Eucharistic celebration of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Church of the East.
Could someone clarify what exactly is going on with Thiel? I thought he was a leading transhumanist (not to mention an unrepentant homosexual), but Rod seems to consider him an ally of sorts—and he (Thiel) is super into prophecies of the Antichrist? I'm suspending judgment for a minute, but I'm a little confused. How does this all shake out?
I second.
Yes, I thought of that; but one wonders what the outer limit to that principle might be.
I hear you.
We don't take out a sponsorship for the Gay Pride parade in return.
There are other ways to pay.
And we could discuss each of them in turn.
OK, but how is Thiel's transhumanism not far worse than anything happening in politics?
Does he have any way to enforce it?
Yes. He has money-- oodles of it. And he's a Prince of Technology, which transforms the world more profoundly than any mere legal statute can. Old line billionaires like the Kochs are one thing-- they will use their money to lobby for things beneficial to them (and screw the rest of us). But the tech guys, maybe joined by Media (Hmm, sounds like a scenario from "American Gods") very often want to enact some grand pseudo-Utopian plan upon the world. Hmm-- Lewis' "That Hideous Strength" also comes to mind in this.
It's one thing to seek to fix what's broken-- and yes, that can lead to utopianism too. But when what's broken" is seen as humanity itself and the fix is to somehow transform us-- Just Say No!
Ok
I'd like to go behind your question. Why do I have to know what Peter Thiel or anybody else does in bed?
It’s mainly the transhumanism—the other thing was only a parenthetical, as you can see. Although I think it’s probably related to his transhumanism, in terms of right relations with the realm of flesh (or lack thereof).
Imagine a Church that cares about where you park your wing wang. Now THAT's enchanted.
If he is transhumanist then he's off the list. I just don't know. All I know is that this Harari man is pretty obviously in touch with dark forces indeed.
Ah, got it, now. Haha.
Most of these tech moguls display characteristics of being on the Spectrum (TM), which, in my opinion, disqualifies them in the societal trust department. Thiel's socialization skills are perhaps more advanced than others of his ilk but this should not fool us as to his true nature. Like the silent & brooding Martin Bormann, Thiel is an ever-present voice in the minds of those in power.
Gee, I don't know if I agree about the Thiel/Bormann comparison, but Paul, I thank you for the most arresting idea I have had the privilege of seeing in some time.
Once at a dinner party, Zelda Fitzgerald said, "Don't you think Al Jolson is just like Jesus Christ?"
Can you make sense of this?:
https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/
It defeated me.
I skimmed it. Seems like it’s just saying that Thiel is a thorough Girardian.
So much a-do about little, then; what an unnecessary torrent of words!
Well it's not just that he's gay but that he's a pretty open predatory gay among tech circles. He tends to glom on to younger interns who mysteriously end up as his lovers shortly after. And his house parties are something you don't want to go anywhere near if you know what's good for you.
Shortly after he "married" his husband, he had a public falling out after the younger guy he was having an affair with angrily showed up at one of these parties he and his husband attended. A little while later the younger guy mysteriously fell off a balcony and died.
I get that Thiel has a lot of money and friends so it makes sense conservatives are teaming up with him. But let's not forget behind the scenes the kind of guy he really is
What is wrong with these people?
They are mentally ill, Laura. They can't help it.
People like Thiel and Harari are exactly like I imagine the Antichrist. Rod has gone over to the dark side having anything to do with them.
I don't think Rod Dreher has had anything good to say about Harari.
Maybe not. It was someone's comment above that set me thinking of Harari, and I tend to lump him and Thiel together.
I am losing my respect for Vance, knowing he associates with these people, not to mention the kowtowing to Trump, although the latter is expected of a VP. I just think he should have stayed an Ohio senator and worked his way up from there.
He's a politician.
Dude, I want to disagree with you, I want to disagree with you...
Rod seems to be totally in league with the Gay Space Fascists.
An extreme case of how everything really *does* sound cooler if you put "space" in front of it.
I think you are, erm, rather trolling Rod, who has been traveling and not reading the comments. You are aware that getting to know Peter Thiel is interesting and not a sin at all.
Something is happening regarding Thiel that people cannot talk about, and it involves ideas about anti-christ, for instance. You remember Rod going to a secret conference in Oxford where Thiel spoke but Rod could not tell us what was said. (He could say it involved anti-christ and much but not all of it was available at the Uncommon Knowledge link he shared.)
If Rod has a way to know what is being said behind these closed doors, I'm glad. Rod is no compromiser with evil, should this turn out evil. But he can warn us of what could stem from whatever he is learning about.
And for all we know, Rod might be a good influence on Peter Thiel. Which would then influence masses.
I feel quite certain that the Antichrist would have to be a homosexual, for (truly, I do not kid) metaphysically important reasons. Those reasons may be found in Chapter III of my book.
Yes, I'm pretty certain of that.
He would not be the Antichrist if he still had any attachment whatsoever to the romance that the Logos had built into the Creation.
I'd think the Antichrist would be asexual, having no use for the things of the flesh. He would be quite the proper Gnostic in that regard. (I recall seeing it said somewhere that the Devil was the first Gnostic rejecting God's creation of a material world as an affront to his angelic pride)
I had a pretty heavily developed idea for a modern fantasy series and that would be a pretty good description of the main villian's general outlook.
Would he feel content with merely ignoring the realm of flesh, though, or would he feel compelled to desecrate it?
Oh yes. The Anti-Christ will be the inversion of Truth, Good and Beauty. BUT..like any great deceiver, especially one with spiritual firepower, will know how to fake all of the above and ensnare those not prepared or such deception.
For the faithful, there will be tells, as the deception is never perfect. And the Anti-Christ, owing to various aspects of the nature of evil, will give himself away, both intentionally and accidentally. But most (not all) of the deceived will miss it.
Entire post below written as if much of Revelation involves the future, a thing of which I am not convinced...but...
If homosexual, then secretly. I think antichrist's supporters will include many Jews, including Orthodox Jews - thus public homosexuality would not be part of the deal, Jews will l support him at first, then he will turn on them.
(And I am not, not, not saying antichrist will hurt the world through some Jewish conspiracy. Just saying he will have the support of Jews and others at first.)
I think in a post below you imply that antichrist (male) cannot desire sex with wotmen. But there are so many ways for men to desire women and no be in touch with the romance the Logos has built into creation. I think he could be more like Andrew Tate regarding sex, actually
To desire woman at all, though, is for a man to still be at least distantly in touch with the created metaphysical order of things.
Lord have mercy, Hiro. I wanted to remain agnostic about Thiel's proclivities, hoping that he'd at least remain chaste with his, uh, husband. Apparently you can take the gay man out of the bath house but not the bath house out of the gay man (or something like that).
Growing up in San Francisco, I never thought much about the parallel gay universe. Our worlds didn't really overlap but over time, of course, the queer subculture became "more in your face", forced upon an uninterested public by the LGBT ascendency in City Hall.
One the years I've had gay friends and acquaintances, as well as co-workers and supervisors, and can now state without equivocation that as a group they're generally more unstable than the normies (or "breeders", as we're known). Is it any wonder that in days past the CIA and State Department hounded out the homosexuals among the ranks? It's easy to imagine a closeted Langley spook going ga-ga over a KGB asset with high cheekbones or State analyst in Saigon losing it over a Vietcong boy-toy, in both cases compromising national security.
Re: I wanted to remain agnostic about Thiel's proclivities, hoping that he'd at least remain chaste with his, uh, husband.
The guy is rich as rich can be. That means he can have whatever he wants. For such people the temptation to promiscuity will always be overwhelming because they have no shortage of others willing to canoodle with them. That's very much true of straight men too, and has been since very ancient times. Yes, some rich guys manage to resists temptation and keep it "at home" but this is like the Jesus' words about a camel going through the eye of a needle.
Look, I don't know about any of this, but the whole "marriage equality" wheeze was always a bait and switch, though I didn't have the language to capture it when it was going down. Making "gay" an identity rather than a behavior doesn't mean you want to be equal. It means you want to take away from the love of men and women its normative character, and replace it with your behavior as normative. What replaces the love of men and women as normative is polymorphous perversity-the addition of TBQ demonstrates that. As soon as letters to the editor started appearing beginning with "As a gay man" the battle was lost.
One is God's created order, standard and intent. The other is an inversion, sin, abomination. When the inversion achieves political power and cultural cache, such an assault is inevitable.
The gay thing is irrelevant-- if we chose our friends and allies by requiring that they agree with us on everything and have no sins we'd be awfully lonely.
It's true we all sin. The likely reason homosexuality is criticized so much is because it's a sin that is not only accepted but enabled in some churches. Understandably, that causes concern for conservative Christians.
The other enabled sin would be the teachings of some prosperity gospel preachers. Off hand, I can't think of other sins that are condoned by any Christian churches.
Some politicized churches OK wrath as long as it is wrath at the "right" targets.
Anyway homosexuality is something only a smallish fraction of people have any natural predilection to. As such it is an easy sin for the rest if us to condemn and feel self righteous about doing so as we have no temptation toward it.
Gluttony , or at least its left unaddressed.
Thiel claims to be a Christian, despite being a practicing homosexual. As the parent of a child claiming to be bisexual, I sincerely hope that circle can be squared, but it requires a lot of prayer on my part and trust that the ways of the Lord are beyond my understanding.
Regardless of Thiel's sexual proclivities and his transhumanist and technocratic opinions, the short answer for me is that he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch at the moment.
The other thing is that, like it or not, Thiel, Musk, and the rest of the techbros who have aligned with Trump are also our sons of bitches, for better or worse. I've come to understand that revolutions do not come from the bottom up. The idea that the dirt people will throw off the chains of the managerial elite on their own is a fantasy. The harsh reality is that it is always the elites who bring about change and the lower classes are ultimately along for the ride. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfield, you go to Revolution with the elites you have, not the elites you wish you have. Thiel and friends are the elites our side has.
You have a daughter, right? I hear that a lot of girls who identify as bi are pretty much non-practicing and just do it for the social protection and cache. Girls are smart like that, of course.
I hope. I think that's a big part of it. My kid was always socially awkward through high school, but she had a group of friends that would go out and do stuff and her mother and I weren't concerned.
She started college and things seemed to go downhill. Covid made it worse by driving them all completely online for their socialization. It was during this time that she got her online girlfriend and decided she was bisexual.
And, yes, her girlfriend is a real person. We've met her ourselves. But seeing them interact together struck us as more platonic rather than romantic. It really seems like this is almost social thing that keeps the two of them from having to interact with people day to day. "I don't have to get out and meet new people because I've got my girlfriend in California."
Lesbians have always struck me as kinda pathetic; I feel sort of sorry for the one who’s supposed to be the dude. “You’re trying very hard, but you are, um, unequipped to do a whole lot. . . .” Sodomy, on the other hand, seems disgusting and dangerous at a totally different level.
(This parallels how no one’s complaining about girls using guys’ bathrooms or competing in guys’ sports.)
I don't want to disgust the commentators here too much, but Joseph Sciambra, an ex-gay Catholic, now turned Orthodox Christian, made a post on his blog a couple years back about the irreparable damage he's done to his body (really, specific parts of the body) being part of the "gay" lifestyle.
Based of what he wrote, I really am puzzled why a man would subject themselves to that. I confess that I don't really understand homosexual desire (for a gay man, does thinking about/seeing an attractive man arouse the same parts of their brain as it does when a straight man sees a pretty woman? That really is alien to me).
Eww.
Hey, Trevor, no worries, I'm disgusted just to be here.
I've looked at Sciambra's YouTube channel once. I admire him. He seems to be a repentant soul.
About your last matter, I'm afraid I think the answer is yes. I'll never forget this poor bastard who tried to pick me up in a movie theater when I was eighteen. He took my paralysis for lack of interest, thank God, thank God. He was about thirty - five, extremely well dressed, definitely from the Northeast I registered, Armenian looking, probably in town ( Houston ) on business with a family back home in New Jersey.
He went away, and I went back to the movie. As I left the theater, he passed to my right, going in the opposite direction, the brown eyes darting to and fro desperately.
It's almost 10,000 words long. And not for the faint of heart.
Highly enlightening about the gay world. I'm surprised he hasn't been targeted for harm after having said these things out loud.
But it's also incredibly vulnerable and insightful about the nature of masculinity, the longing for completion, and the good and proper ordering of creation and even of sexuality. In that sense, it does explain - though certainly not justify! - why he would subject himself to it. It's an unbelievably sad portrait, and yet he ultimately finds redemption in seeing that life for what it is, and in escaping it. Sometimes we see the good in a portrait of its absence.
https://josephsciambra.com/surviving-gaybarely/
Yes. Gay men think about men's bodies the way straight men think about women's bodies. In fact, it is possibly more "graphic" many times, but I won't elaborate on that. Read what is available free of Renaud Camus from archive.com if you want an awful glimpse into thoughts. (And of course I did not finish - five minutes of the graphic part was enough.) And for the damage, they try not to, there are techniques. But things can and do fail...
Thoughts - not particularly in response to Trevor -Married gay men can decide to have a monogamous relationship. I think Spencer Klavan might be an example. But gay men in a "committed" or married relationship commonly reach agreements ("it is OK to be with a man other than my partnet under these circumstances....")
There are various theories about Thiel. Good and bad -I think no one knows for sure. Rod won't be able to tell us what he all he discerns once he had a chance to know Thiel better. But I think Rod both has good intentions and will be spiritually protected if that is necessary. And there is nothing wrong, per se, in having dinner with a gay man.
What I don't get is how some guys who were once married and had kids and have now come out managed the whole charade. I mean, I don't claim to be Don Juan, but as a heterosexual man I can function sexually with a female human.
But with another dude, I just don't think I could manage to perform.
So how did these guys who now claim to be gay manage to successfully have sex with women? Why didn't they find it as repulsive as I'd find having sex with a dude, and therefore not arousing?
This wlll probably strike some of the commentators as crass, but from my interactions with lesbians and bi-women, they generally tend towards the "feeling" side of relationships, as opposed to the actual mechanics of a sexual relationship.
I vividly remember asking a lesbian "you say you date women, but do actually fantasize about seeing your partner naked?" Her surprised look makes me think she hadn't considered that part of relationships.
Trevor, America's bull dyke has lived in the apartment next to mine for over twenty years. In those first years, I'd hear things through the thin walls ( our apartments are in a small, Addams family - like house built when Theodore Roosevelt was President ) which I couldn't stand. Several times, I had a violent, mock coughing spell. Eventually, they figured out that if they went into a certain room, I couldn't hear them. Ignorance is bliss.
I say "they" because it's been the same girlfriend for twenty years, though they have never lived together. She's over eighty now, wisping away because of heart disease, yet the younger one shows up almost every day. Maybe it is still for sex. Cole Porter, always promiscuous, is said to have gone into overdrive in the last couple of years of his life. ( There is also wonderful reason to believe he had a deathbed conversion. ) I would like to believe that as perverted as it is, there is some genuine love there.
And yes, what does cause it? In the summer of 2006 I came around the corner onto our block and saw my neighbor transfixed by a group of twelve year old girls in bathing suits playing skip rope in the street.
Gag me with a spoon, Bobby, gag me with a spoon.
Female queerness is quite different from the male variety, which is why I have hope for Duke's daughter.
Years ago I dated a "4-year-lesbian" who'd just graduated from Mt. Holyoke, one of the sister colleges. Once out of that milieu, she proceeded to go boy crazy, making up for lost time.
Dukeboy01, I'd try to talk my daughter out of the bi-curiosity as best as you can. Here's the problem (I've used this when my niece was being pressured to go bi- in high school). If one engages in same-sex with a woman, she will forever lose the ability to be in a sexually neutral situation with women again. Both men and women need to be able to be in a socially sexual neutral situation. It is DELICIOuS. Everyone can just relax (women with women, men with men) and it is natural and in God's plan for mankind (which includes women, of course). So tell your daughter she's going to lose the ability to be around women and NOT think about "ah, I'd like to date that one." It's exhausting and an awful prospect. She will have lost one of the four "loves" (see C.S. Lewis)--she will lose the possibility of just, pure, chaste, not-worrying-sex FRIENDSHIP.
Put another way (same point): So here's the 4 loves: love of God (Agape), Love of Family (Affection), Love of Friend (Friendship) and Romantic Love (Eros). She will lose the ability of just loving a female friend as a friend, which is a wonderful experience. (Men like to have their men friends just as much and hang with them). This argument help talk my niece out of "trying out" bi-sexuality. That, and having practicing Christian parents. (She later herself became a practicing Christian.) Tell her: God doesn't want same-sex activity (see 6th commandment). And "you are going to get hurt" ultimately (very common--one of the partners cuts off the other). Lesbians don't stick together. Okay, neither do heteroes, but from what I've seen, they're a little deranged and unpleasant IMO. Look at Rachel Maddow. Is that what she wants to be like or with? Ugh. Look at Rosie O'Donnell. Double ugh.
Now more serious stuff, which I've found from casual observation. It is common for bi-sexual women to "advance" to flat out lesbianism. And lesbians tend to gravitate toward Wicca (farther and farther from Thee, my Lord).
Third, men don't find bi-woman particularly good GF prospects or candidates for marriage. Men don't know how to compete with a woman for their GF's or wife's affections. Most men don't want a bi GF just as most women don't want a bi BF. She is taking herself out-of-the-running for finding and keeping a good man going forward once she starts dabbling in same sex relationships.
Good luck. Nag. I have done a lot of nagging of my children in these matters. So far, so good.
That's a very interesting point about the loss of equipoise.
Praying for you.
Any relationship needs to have a healthy helping of Platonic love in it. When the passion fades that will remain as long as it's cultivated and sheltered. It's what true long term love is.
Florence King once said that "Homosexuality is the French Foreign Legion of the Sexual Revolution." I think for a lot of girls, taking on a pseudo-lesbian identity is a way of staying out of the contemporary high-pressure sexual arena that they are not ready for.
Women form intimate friendships more easily than men (at least in our culture). In past times people did not look on those bonds as lesbian in nature, even if they got get a bit romantic (but not sexual). I remember my mother and her best friend liked to dance together on their birthdays-- and my mother was definitely not lesbian. These days just about any close relationship (including among those men who do form very intense friendships) is interpreted as homosexual, and people label themselves as Bi even if they never take it into the bedroom.
I will add you and yours to my growing daily prayer list of people in this situation. My daughter came through a similar phase fairly unscathed, but now the challenges of modern dating are the issue, with all 3 of my kids.
One of the really good things to come out of this situation is that my wife and I have become closer and we are highly cognizant of how we "model" our marriage for our kids.
My kids are in their 20's and my words don't "work" anymore.
Sethu, it’s not a matter of “smart.” You seem to be an intelligent, questing soul. I beg of you not to take the line that young girls/women are “smart” to attempt to avoid and escape via claiming bisexuality/same-sex relationships. (What they’re trying to avoid and escape can be personal, singular, societal and multi- causal.) I just don’t have confidence that some long essay of mine could change anyone’s mind. But praying for Dukeboy01’s daughter and others would be a better use of your time than repeating the social-utilitarian view that girls are ‘smart’ to recognize and act on false premises. Young girls are NOT smart about much of anything at all. They suffer for it, and so do those of us who love them and try to guide them in the face of absolute contempt for our motives.
Relax, it’s a type of slang: I mean that girls are typically skilled (relative to guys their age) with respect to reading their social environments and getting on the winning end of status differentials. I wasn’t making a moral judgment or calling it *good*. It’s a claim about the incentive structures present in their social environments, to which they respond, as do we all.
In short, social-utilitarian smart is not a type of smart that I endorse as an actual value. May God save us all from being so “smart” in the wrong way.
Sigh. I know what you meant.
I took Sethu to mean some women/girls are just stating what an untrue about their desires, well, you cannot move in America without seeing an ad with a women's body and trying to think those bodies desirable. (Slightly off topic, no revealing billboards, sings and ads here in the country of Georgia - it is noticeable.)
- - When I was 22, I explained to my cousin's wife whilst visiting Tennessee, that I had no desire at all look at women's bodies. She said it was actually common for women to like to look at women's bodies but they should repent. My cousin's wife is supposedly a "sophisticate", a woman of the world, the twice divorced older women my cousin married. The idea she might have spoken the truth to me and that I am naive did and sometimes still does bother me.
- - I will say I think it possible for a good portion of women to literally learn to like women's bodies, well, it is not possible for me, I am not like that, but I think there is a portion, not small, of women who could learn that if they chose.
But one off the biggest motivators is not to be hurt by men. The other big motivators these days is that it is "in" and is thought to prove an open mind I will never forget the evening a gay male friend tried to talk me into finding that I could desire women...ugh...and sort of on the same lines we have Obama's letter to a girlfriend about how he can desire men. It is just the "open" thing to do in highly intellectual circles, I think,
It probably follows from the belief in the infinite malleability of human nature.
That was only true 20 years ago, and even then only true-ish. The barriers and stigmas are now much much lower. I have 2 daughters in college who report back in on these things. The pornification of the youth have not only removed prior taboos on the matter, but have turned the culture towards active encouragement of fanning even passing desires into identity lodestones.
Damn, then.
Re: " the limits of liberal democracy" didn't one of the founding fathers say that the constitution was meant for a moral and religious people and would not work for any other?
Yup—that was John Adams.
That's what I've seen. All the bi girls I have known always end up with men in the end. Even the ones who actually dated women.
My husband’s niece went through a lesbian period & now she likes & dates guys.
Musk et al might be your elites but they’re not mine. I don’t side with that kind of dark energy regardless of how they vote.
Re: Thiel claims to be a Christian, despite being a practicing homosexual. As the parent of a child claiming to be bisexual, I sincerely hope that circle can be squared
Well, we are saved in spite of our sins and not on account of our virtues.
Thiel has waxed poetic about using technological intervention to remove all contingency from the universe. He’s a utopian and so-called TESCREAList. I feel strongly that he is exploiting memes associated with Christianity in order to advance a Baconian/Enlightenment/ungodly ideological agenda. Pray that our author be careful dealing with him.
I've read his books. He's a great businessman and I can say I've learned from him.
But he also has explicitly stated that he's "Christian but not really the orthodox kind". Seems like an MTDer with money who also likes the free market (i.e. more money for him)
Re: Thiel has waxed poetic about using technological intervention to remove all contingency from the universe.
This horrifies me more than anything I've heard about him. Life is very much supposed to have an irreducible element of chance about it. IMO, this is how God has woven freedom in existence.
One can be outside of Israel, but still be a prophet of God. Take Balaam from the Book of Numbers.
Moral of the story is be wary of these Thiel/Balaam types of people, they do not wish us well.
You mean Balaam's ass? (donkey)
Thiel is no prophet of God. The transhumanist "gospel" is hubris straight from the Devil. Rod should take some holy water with him and wash his hands with it if he shakes hands with guy.
Thiel has invested in life-extension technology, which is so-far non-existent, and wants people to live a lot longer. I don't know of any evidence he wants to turn humans into Borg or Cybermen or something.
I don't know if you've ever read Tolkien, but the quest to prolong life beyond it natural span was how the Numenoreans fell and ended up becoming disciples of Sauron. Yes, of course, we should try to overcome disease and heal injuries, but there's a time to die also, and that is the will of God. Our hope for eternity is not grounded into cyberspace, but in Jesus Christ.
I’ve read Tolkien. It’s fiction.
Sorry, man, but that's glib. Fiction is not "just" fiction, if it is truly great. To believe otherwise is to be a philistine who doesn't know what literature is for.
The parables of Jesus were fiction too. So we should ignore them?
Jon, you can argue that feeling pain and suffering from cancer are the will of god. I mean, both happen, no? So does that mean that pain medication and chemo violate the will of god? Should we go back to surgery without anesthetic? Where do you draw the line?
In practice, if we find a cure for Alzheimer’s, we’ll use it. If we find how to cure arthritis, we’ll use it. If we figure out how to regenerate damaged hearts or other organs, we will.
And some people will object to any individual technology on religious grounds, but it won’t matter. And they’ll be looked at the same way we look at the weirdos who objected to anesthesia on religious grounds.
The Problem of Evil is vast as the entire Multiverse and I've wrestled with it for almost forty years. Do I have an answer? No. But I know there are no facile ones.
Yes, the lines continue to blur between what it means to follow Jesus (the road less traveled) and being a "Christian." I didn't write about Thiel specifically but I wrote about this trans/posthumanist agenda in Stargate, Part I: Trump's $500bn Venture Promises a Golden Age of AI
https://khmezek.substack.com/p/stargate-part-i-trumps-500bn-venture
"Billionaire Masayoshi Son believes that his 'emotional relationship' with AI, specifically his 'top advisor' ChatGPT, will usher in the BIRTH OF SUPERHUMAN. Son leads Trump's Stargate venture."
And Stargate II: The Golden Age of Billionaires
"AI will totally neuter mere humans for the immortal survival of the top 0.01 percent."
https://khmezek.substack.com/p/stargate-ii-the-golden-age-of-billionaires
I always focus on: "By their fruits they shall be known" (Matthew 7:16). And also, "Not all who say My name will be saved" (7:21).
Also, did you know that Frost's poem is universally read wrongly? The point of the poem is that both roads look exactly the same, but then we tell ourselves stories about how we picked the special one.
Yes, and “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matthew 7:13-14.
I didn't know that about Frost's poem. It brings to mind The Last Battle, thr last book in the Narnia Cbronicles, which I am reading for the 100th time. They all go in through the stable door and each one sees something different. The Calorman who worships Tash with a pure heart then realizes when confronted with Aslan that it’s always been Aslan he was worshipping. These books greatly influenced my life, having read them for the first time as a child of 10.
I agree. Between the fact that he is a transhumanist and extremely wealthy, I wouldn't trust Thiel any further than I could throw him.
Rod -
No take on Trump pardoning Trevor Milton and commuting the Ozy Media scammer (Carlos Watson)? The former donated more than 1.5 million to DJT's election campaign - nothing transactional there to be sure. Makes Orban seem downright subtle in 'making it rain' for those rural voters.
The best part of these pardons/commutations is that now neither of these scammers has to make restitution of to all those they ripped off. Three cheers for populism!
Then again, I bet Milton and Watson hate wokeness, which as we all know is what really matters when it comes to the rule of law...
He's also on board with "compensating" the Jan 6 guys. Of course if someone was falsely arrested for that fracas when they had no part in it, they deserve restitution. Otherwise, absolutely not. They are wrong-doers and should not be rewarded for it.
57% of Canadians say that they want a change from the previous Liberal government. That statistic, during an election campaign, is historically a very strong indicator for challengers, in any country.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was fantastic as an attack dog against Justin Trudeau. He understands the social media age and is excellent at attacking the Liberal record over the past decade.
But we are not in normal times. Canadians view themselves as facing an existential threat. (Annexation is literally a threat to a nation's existence.) They no longer care who is at fault for the last ten years. They care about their national existence. And Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, is perceived as having the credibility to stand up to Trump, in a way that Parliamentary attack dog and TikTok star Pierre Poilievre doesn't.
Ironically, once the social media star Trump turned his guns on Canada, Canada actually turned away from social media unreality and towards gravitas.
Also, Carney has the advantage of being the incumbent. In times of crisis, very few jurisdictions change leaders.
This is why I feared that Trump would doom the Conservatives even when they were polling 30% (!!) ahead of the Liberals last Fall.
The sad outcome is that we'll get the more of the same problems as before. And Trump will get fewer actual solutions and more reasons (a few real, most invented) to portray Canada as an enemy. Everyone loses.
I'll add that Donald Trump has an acute sense for weakness in his competitors. He probably (rightly) recognized how weak Trudeau was, and figured he could end Trudeau's political career. He was right, and he did!
But in doing so, he saved the Liberal party.
Poilievre and the Conservatives were almost certain to finish off Justin Trudeau's political career, and to give America somebody who would get tough on crime and tough on China. (The Liberal party has been deeply intertwined with the Chinese Communists for decades, and the new Conservative party (since 2004) has taken a much harder line against China.))
An own goal indeed.
Trump had nothing to do with ending Trudeau's career. He actually gave it a boost at the end.
Sir, Trudeau was polling so badly on February 1 that an analytical Trump would have wanted Trudeau to stay on as Prime Minister so he could be crushed in an election this year. Trump should not have wanted to end Trudeau's career yet but that political cadaver was going to wreck the Liberal Party.
Trump has a deep (and justifiable, IMO)hatred of Trudeau and also of Freeland.
Credit the media (especially the CBC and Globe and Mail) with throwing the entire country into a fit, having people think that at any moment the Marines will land.
Some are saying that Carney has peaked, but even a Poilievre win might only be a minority government, which would be short lived and not really put the country on the right track. However, Poilievre has been drawing huge crowds as opposed to Carney.
Nah, Poilevre was just like those Toryies in England. Would have provided steady cover for the continued rot of Canada by woke liberal democracy. The existential threat facing Canada is not bullying by Trump but continued mass 3rd world immigration, which Piolievre heartedly endorses. Better that it get worse, faster under Carney.
Hmm....I thought the Tories had successfully stood up the to the entire British establishment and gotten Britain out of the EU.
Perhaps I was misinformed.
The English people get the credit for that, not the Tories. The Tories have just been watered down Labor, otherwise. No real change in policy, erosion of public liberties, continued illegal migrant flow, etc.
Johnson accomplished more against the "globalist elite" (through getting Brexit done) than anything Trump accomplished in his first four years. It was a massive and consequential political triumph.
The reason Britain has continued massive migrant flow is because, like everywhere (including God's obviously chosen country, America), its birthrate has fallen off a cliff. Were the Tories supposed to break into married couples' houses and force them to copulate?
American exceptionalism means, almost by definition, that Americans don't have a very good sense of what is going on inside other countries. (Except Iraq, amirite?)
Oh please. You are cucking. Shitting on your pretense at civil rights, including harassing and jailing anyone who has the temerity to bring it up. Get off your ass, Britain illehals/massigration will not save yp
Ou. Brexit was impressive and suggested hope you have some civ spine left. But now you need to take the next steps. Because we are in the "what have you done for me lately? category.
Also, you would presume to cluck at American Exceptionalism (which comes across as butthurt jealousy, especially from America's hat and the folks across the pond who lost their relevance re. all things American in 1776. Yeah, they can still shoot their Limey gobs off, but you've got way too much crap of your own to deal with now to have any cred,) then go on about how "we" don't know much about what goes in other countries. Well, that goes both ways. Also, your own countrymen are telling those tales, for those who will bother to listen.
We do listen. Some of us do care. And when you act like wussy ass turds, like you are doing now, we point and laugh.
>>The reason Britain has continued massive migrant flow is because, like everywhere (including God's obviously chosen country, America), its birthrate has fallen off a cliff.
What? Total non sequitur. Falling birthrate has NOTHING to do with mass immigration from the third world. Throughout history, birthrates have always waxed and waned, and for some reason, governments in the past never deemed it necessary to import millions of alien peoples because birthrates declined for whatever reason. Whenever I hear this argument my suspicions rise, I smell a rat. You're not sincere. You wish to do harm.
The EU was never a serious problem, Brussels could be an annoyance, not an existential threat. Mass third-world immigration (particularly Islam based) is an existential threat to the UK and the Tories aided, abetted, encouraged this invasion through every single year of the past 15 years that they were in power. And they still don't get it. The most you can get from them is that they now speak that immigrants must assimilate (whatever that means). UK is almost certainly facing a very violent future, one that may see open warfare due to Tory fecklessness. All so unnecessary. I pi$$ on Margaret Thatcher's grave.
Yep. The Tories are only slightly less useless than Labor now.
Trump is not merely bullying: he's threatening to end Canada's independent existence. This is vile! We didn't even do or attempt that in Iraq or Vietnam.
When's the last time you ever saw Canadians so patriotic? I think that's probably the plan.
Patriotic about what? About furthering a policy that will place the native Canadians (yeas the white Anglo/Celtic/Franco axis are the native Canadians) in a minority status within 20 years. Some patriotism, not buying it.
Just a generalized sense of nationhood. Ya know, “Hey, we are Canada—you can’t talk about us like that! Hear us roar.”
Have a look at this...
Mark Carney's wife works as an advisor the Eurasia Group. Justin's best buddy and advisor Gerald Butts also is there.....
https://substack.com/home/post/p-160062518?source=queue
Canada usually defines itself by not being American.
The last time I saw Canada being super patriotic was at a Canada Day celebration before Covid.
I was surprised they could be that patriotic tbh.
In case you haven't heard, Carney's right hand man on the immigration front is Michael (?) Wiseman, who believes Canada's population need to increase from 40M to 100M and that should be done by immigration. Combine that with Carney's proven solution of printing money, his netZero BS and his ties to China and the WEF/EU and this place will be go from teetering on a cliff's edge to off the cliff pretty quickly.
Sounds like Carney just came out of a carney. Also, there are only slightly more Canadians than Texans (of which I am one).
Not sure how much "gravitas" they are actually turning towards if, over a case of butthurt, they keep the libs in power. Trump does not actually represent an existential threat to Canada. The CCCP, whom the liberals have given a significant foothold in Canada, do.
China is much more of a threat than Liberal-voting Canadians realize. That much I'll agree with. And I can even tolerate Trump using some small sticks to push Canada to take that threat more seriously.
But China is not going to land soldiers on Canadian territory. The United States could.
A country's own people are the ones who decide who is an existential threat. Trump has stated IN PLAIN LANGUAGE that he wants to annex Canada. He's called our Prime Minister a "governor". The US has gone to war over provocations smaller than that.
You wouldn't listen to Canadians deciding who is and isn't an existential threat to the United States. Sorry, Americans don't get to decide who is and isn't an existential threat to Canada.
There are 6500 Chinese troops in Canada. Thats half a division, doing maneuvers. China, given a chance, will end you. Trump only offends you. Sticks and stones stop being a pussy.
Trump is not going to invade Canada, and only very silly people take that seriously.
The CBC & co. have driven the silliness index up here into the stratosphere.
I believe his end game is a zero tariff situation combined with increased defense moves and REAL action against the drug labs (many tied toi the CCP).
That would be good. I would know they are actually serious if they kick the Chinese troops out.
I just fact checked this claim and it is no where corroborated, so I'm going to label it propaganda-- a lie. (Not accusing you, except pf spreading it). The source of this rumor appears to be the loons of good old Qanon.
No one cares, Jon. You probably did not try very hard.
Took me ten seconds to find this. Note, we have Canadians above admitting Chinese troops are in country as well.
Really should try to get your head out of our Priors/Ass.
https://www.armypencil.com/what-is-the-chinese-army-doing-in-canada/
https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-communist-chinese-troops-observed-military-exercises-on-canadian-soil
https://richardsonpost.com/howellwoltz/19370/chinese-troops-on-us-canadian-border/
The armypencil site claims that the Chinese have a military base near Calgary. That claim beggars belief, especially since it offers zero evidence and is not corroborated anywhere else.
(Just because I write on the internet that China has 100 military bases in America doesn't make it true.)
You're only corroborating Jon's claim that you're buying into propaganda.
The CCP has had troops in Canada on training maneuvers.
Yes. And then in 2018 the Chinese troops were kicked out.
I don't disagree that this should have been more widely known anad scrutinized. But that's different from saying that there are Chinese troops stationed in Canada ready to take over.
Rod, take Mucinex.
good call
And he should rub Vicks Vapo-rub on his neck and chest. There is a $1.25 knock-off version of Vicks Vapo-rub at the Dollar Tree in the Health and Beauty section.
This desecration of the Host is not anything new. Your agent never tires of reminding the inhabitants of these boxes that homosexual and feminist "activists" under the aegis of ACT-UP (the organization headed by the sainted Larry Kramer, author of "Faggots"), invaded St. Patrick's in New York on Dec. 10, 1989, and proceded to, as they coyly say, "disrupt" Mass. Take a look. They're proud of it. Evidently these events haunted O'Connor until the day he died.
Activists from that lobby once crashed Easter services at a church I was attending. They made a point of engaging in every physical activity they thought they could get away with, just short of full on public display.
I remember that, and the sympathetic article in the NYT.
The mass stabber in Amsterdam has been identified as a 30-year-old Ukrainian refugee. One of my fears is that when Ukraine finally collapses, the ultranationalists will join the diaspora and resort to terrorism against targets they deem as traitors to their cause.
https://www.telegraaf.nl/nieuws/198572203/verdachte-damsteker-die-vijf-mensen-ernstig-verwondde-is-roman-d-30-uit-oosten-van-oekraine
I was told here in Georgia (where I currently am) by someone active in supporting Ukraine
- and you can imagine the support here - that if Putin gets land in a settlement, many Ukrainian men will fight to the death. No matter what was signed. No, he did not mean all Ukranian men - but many
Welcome to LA!
Where you never have to worry about the collapse of social order—we never had any to begin with!
Just stay out of Downtown, esp at night, as it starts to look like a zombie movie out there.
If you have time for some scenery, take a tour up around Mulholland Drive (if you never have), it's fantastic views in every direction. As for the beach and the PCH, they might just have all burned down ;) Ooops maybe next time.
Welcome and congrats.
There is video of the fight between the leader of the Satanist contingent and one of the Christian counter protestors inside the capital building floating around out there. The Satanist hauls off and punches the Christian and the cops immediately jump on the Satanist with what I recognize from personal experience as genuine enthusiasm for what they're finally getting to do. I remember being there in my younger days, waiting patiently for someone to cross the line wherein the use of physical force is both reasonable and justifiable and the follow-up paperwork will totally be worth it. I imagine that if you could see the cops' faces at the moment the Satanist starts to deliver his punch, you'll see a twinkle in all of their eyes and the briefest of smiles flit across their faces at the realization that they are about to get to be an instrument of the Lord in the physical realm.
Good times.
When Buchanan saw the Chicago cops in Lincoln Park August 1968 ready to go on the summer of loverboys he remarked, "They had their game faces on."
A lot of “wooden shampoos that night” my old cop buddy used to say.
Former MP, not civilian police, but yeah. That's the feeling when it happens.
I saw that, the officer went in for that leg grab real quick. Obviously had some type of wrestling experience!
Oh boy! 🥺
What motivated the Norway stabber? The Koran
Most of what I know (or think I know) about the Canadian election comes from X. From there I gather that most of the Liberal candidate's support is coming from Boomers. Younger cohorts are supporting the Conservative. The question will come down to whether the youths can overwhelm the Boomer vote.
https://x.com/truckdriverpleb/status/1904666756117045686
Sounds like what we are told about November's vote here.
Younger people are aware of the dismal future prospects that socialism lite (a la Biden Admin, much of Western Europe, for ex.) offer.
It isn't "socialism" they are rejecting. The rightwing young are not, by and large, good libertarians. Anyone misreading today's zeitgeist as an affirmation of Ayn Rand or even Hayek is serious off the rails.
They are not collectivists nor do they believe in big government, Jon. Quite the opposite.
No, they believe in Big (and Strong) Government benefiting them. Again, they are not libertarians of any sort. Do note that these guys are cheering and foot stomping Trump's every move to aggrandize government power and to perdition with the Rule of Law or Federalism.
In what way? What moves in particular do you refer to that are actually "Big Government," and how in particular do they benefit them? Show your work.
Yeah, X and Z are much more concerned with the cost of living than the Boomers, who are more preoccupied with Trump. Have a look sat the graphs in this post:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-160062518?source=queue
Another example, from north pf the border of the maxim "It's the economy stupid".
I think most, not all but most, so called Satanists are not the least bit sincere. They don’t believe in Satan. They just think it’s fun to crap all over Christian sensibilities. Also most so called “Wiccans” are just new age flakes who have no real beliefs of any kind. There is a lot of insincere posturing these days. I had the amusing experience of arguing Buddhism with a flaky dude from California who called himself Buddhist, but knew far less than me about actual Buddhist history and theology.
I’ve felt the same way. Most of these people are lazy wannabe posers with IQs bobbing comfortably along at the temperature of an early spring day.
But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that they might nonetheless call up infernal powers unwittingly.
There are the real ones, though. They look just like the rest of us. The scariest book I've ever read is Malachi Martin's "Hostage to the Devil." There is one thing in that book which is so melodramatic, so damned unlikely, that my instinct is that it did happen.
I tried to read the book in 1977, and couldn't manage it. In 2009, I saw a reprint, bought it, found it hard going, but did read it. Exactly a year later, I tried to read it again, and couldn't.
I have that book, too. I can only take so much of that stuff. I have to be in "the mood" to be scared or bored by turns (which is rare). Satan is actually sort of boring. The exocists have noticed this boring aspect of the devil, too. Everything the devil does is an inversion of God--C.S. Lewis and others have noted this. Meaning, he's not original. Take the Black mass--it's merely the inversion of the mass, which is not original really.
_Perelandra_, page 123.
My personal favorite among the space fantasies of Lewis is "Until We have Faces". I've read almost all of Lewis's nonfiction and some of his fiction. I did not read his academic books on the Middle Ages. What a blessing he was and still is!
One of my chief inspirations for my budding writing.
That's a space fantasy?—I still need to read it. (I've read the Space Trilogy.)
That is insightful, "Satan is actually sort of boring." On the surface, lots of splash and sparkle, but when you get under that, banality.
Interesting inversion, in that, in fiction, villains can often be more compelling than the heroes, but in real life, it is the good ones who are the interesting, soulful, inspiring ones. The bad guys are kind of meh.
Only God can truly create, and those who participate in Him. And anything other than creation is just a rearrangement, a shuffling of the deck—boring.
Hitler was boring. The banality of evil. Still, the darkness is assaultive to me personally. Others may have an easier time with the book.
No doubt there are real ones. But they're likely the most addled of the addled. And their numbers are probably quite minimal.
I've seen three, possibly a fourth and a fifth. In a lifetime of almost seventy - three years, that low number isn't indicative of an obsessive.
As an example, over a forty year period, several people, none of whom knew of the existence of any of the others, have combined to cheat me of possibly as much as a million dollars. Yet I don't think any of them is a demoniac. Several are sociopathic, but not, I am convinced, demon possessed.
One is a woman who worked for one of my doctors. I do have reason to believe she is a practicing witch, but her malice has its root in the unfortunate truth that Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. As one of my other doctors, who knew her well, commented, almost certainly I had ruined her perfect streak. I have no doubt that she is demon influenced, however. The first time I saw her I had a reaction I had never had to a gorgeous woman, revulsion.
A second is my cousin, who is a recurring minor player for comic effect in things I say here. He hates my guts because I can do something easily which he can't do at all, and it maddens him that he can't. He is of the same stuff as the woman, malignant narcissism, and there is about him an aura of the demonic which leaves me in no doubt that he is demon influenced.
But neither is demon possessed.
The other scoundrels in my would be financial immiseration are characters Dickens would have understood: a wheedling clergyman with a shark's instinct for blood, a crooked administrative law judge, lowlife lawyers ( not a redundancy, there are some wonderful ones ), a spoiled brattish little man of a doctor, and a doctor who broke the doctor/patient confidentiality ethic. Moral and spiritual defectives all, but not a demoniac in the bunch
I don't go around demoniac spotting. I do think that they're more common than you believe. I'm under the impression that you know what happened to me in my childhood. A time or two I've been too indiscreet for my liking here on Substack. I'm sorry about that, for several reasons. But if you do know about it, you can understand why I am as certain as I am of the profusion of the demonic and its carriers in the population.
There are a lot of things I haven't talked about. I will offer my suspicion that for reasons unknown, some people are intrinsically of more interest to the diabolical than most others. The why of it is something I have no explanation for.
Re: Several are sociopathic, but not, I am convinced, demon possessed.
People who full-on possessed are seriously addled, unable to function socially, maybe having difficulties even functioning physically-- some even starve to death if not exorcized because they don't grasp the necessity of eating. Demons do not belong in bodies and don't really do well when they are confined to material flesh. So yes, I would agree that people who go around doing nasty things to others (I've had a few thud into my life too) are most likely sociopaths, even psychopaths, and maybe demon-inspired, falling gladly even to temptations. But not controlled by demons. They are still quite responsible for their own actions. "The Devil made me do it" did not work as an excuse in Eden, and it doesn't work nowaadys.
Re: I do have reason to believe she is a practicing witch
Do you mean "Wiccan practitioner" or some other variety of pagan (not all of whom are happy clappy nature worshipers)? I so follow the older consensus that there's no such thing as witches in the old superstitious sense.
Well, if you believe the Bible, you should believe that witchcraft exists. We have a couple of commenters here, one a frequent habitue, who are dabblers, at least.
In that book, Malachi Martin writes about high functioning demoniacs, as weird as that may sound. These are people who are possessed, know they're possessed, and are unbothered by it, possibly even glad about it because they get everything they want, at least for awhile. Martin believed that some were what he called “perfectly possessed,” not in the least interested in being exorcised. In 2012, I had an interesting encounter with a person of whom I suspect that is true.
You've got the idea that they all end up like the Dwight Frye character in the 1931 “Dracula,” restrained in a cellar and gleeful to eat bugs. Probably many do.
Dr Richard Gallagher's book of a few years ago is quite interesting.
This assumes you believe that infernal powers actually exist.
I respect scientists’ desire to go around wearing an intellectual chastity belt, and to be seen doing so, but the real world suggests that things are a bit messier than mechanistic materialism might be willing to contemplate. We might be the more discrete objects under under study—by discarnate intelligence—rather than the probability clouds that Rutherford and Bohr began to notice.
Belief in actual atoms does not imply infernal powers.
Nothing implies anything unless you want it to.
I’ll add to the common observation that “ought” cannot be derived from “is”—in other words, science can tell us nothing about what we should do, beyond practical technical courses of action—so consciousness cannot be derived from “is” either. Echoing Sartre, perhaps, there is an unbridgeable gulf between the en-soi and the pour-soi. And we have faith-and only faith—that other people are similarly conscious beings, “pour-soi” as well. Which then raises the question about just where else we might encounter consciousness. I doubt neuroscience or its related fields have much, if anything, to say about such questions. But inasmuch as they can’t guarantee to me that you are a fellow conscious being or to you that I myself am one, then worrying about what science says here is not terribly important.
And belief isn’t really a factor in considering the realities of atoms. What Bohr and Rutherford, and a whole bunch of scientists since they were working, detected in their data and observations were indeed phenomena that are real and actually existing in the world. And there is nothing surprising in that. Science is essentially an organized tossing of more capital to an investigation, not unlike fitting out three ships to find out what might lie over the western horizon. Same process, really. The knowledge gained is, literally, gain. Engineers can later build on the things that the first explorers discover.
But as I said, the existence either of atoms or the Bahamian islands says exactly zero about our own status as objects in the gaze of others, either of our observable fellows or of numinous beings not ordinarily evident.
Anton LeVay described his version of Satanism as "Ayn Rand with rituals"
Ha, I remember reading his book when I was in high school, and that's how it struck me. Objectivism, but goth-style.
"We don’t have this problem so much in America, thank God, but boy, is it a problem in Europe."
Wait till the percentage of Muslims in the population increases.
We get fewer immigrants from the Middle East and Africa than from any other part of the world. Most of our immigrants come from Latin America/the Caribbean, and, next, from East Asia. Unless there's some sort of mass conversion event the percentage of Muslims will not increase by any significant number in the US.
Of course, the NT Times reported in 2005 that more Muslims came to the U.S. in the previous year than in the previous two decades. In 2010 they were 1.1% of the population and are expected to surpass Jews as the second largest religion in the U.S. by 2040.
On normalizing marginalized sexuality, I’ve been wondering how parents can justify prioritizing happiness and self-fulfillment over the life patterns that produced their own families. I see people my age, who made the choice to be Christian, marry young, be faithful to their spouses, and have children, decide to teach their own children that other lifestyles, ones that would lead to the inability to have children, are just as good as the one they chose, that led to that child having a stable and caring family. They don’t see that they aren’t passing on the very values that led to their own stability. This feels different to me than supporting a child who moves away from the parents’ teaching; of course you would try to maintain that relationship as much as possible.
It's because that is what we were taught. I'm making a massive break with my parents by telling our son that I don't care about where he goes to college, if he goes, as long as he is genuinely happy and able to support a family. At least for myself, I think I was given a very false definition of what happiness is. Man, growing up, I thought the absolute height of my happiness and success would be to break that damn glass ceiling, have a bunch of degrees, maybe be married, and definitely do not have kids so that my pathetic line of the family would die with me. Then, maybe, I'd be a success in my parent's eyes.
I look at my female peers and for them, happiness lies everywhere but family.
This has been taught since before I was born. You too, no doubt.
I recognized the harm done to me, and how I’ve perpetuated it, far too late. Our kids? Any slight wisdom we can impart, we must, though we’re trying to talk over a tidal wave.
If you see a deleted, it’s because I’m on my phone and I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m glad I’m not alone and I’m glad I’m not crazy.
You are not at all alone. Even if there’s no one living near you, or in your family, who has figured any of this out- you are not alone.
Your comment is so poignant. It’s not actually what I was talking about (I was trying not to offend anyone and ended up being too vague) but I can see why your mind went that direction. I was thinking about women my age at my previous church, who had decided to embrace encouragement of the trans lifestyle and teach their kids it was a fine choice, when their own life choices were so different. I’m sorry for the family patterns you described—that’s so much pressure.
Re: I’ve been wondering how parents can justify prioritizing happiness and self-fulfillment over the life patterns that produced their own families.
Well, many families were OK with kids becoming celibate clergy or monks and nuns.
I love you Rod, but please don't use Cyrrilic letters that look like flipped around Latin letters in place of the latter. И isn't an N. I read иot and my mind hears "eyot" :P
I second this.
"... because it’s just too insane to imagine that a British subject would be hauled off to jail for the thoughts in her head." Not really. This is a country that once made it a capital offense for high treason to "imagine the king's death." They've just revived the offense in a different way. https://www.amazon.com/Imagining-Kings-Death-Figurative-Fantasies/dp/0198112920
FYI, in the Lutheran Eucharist I celebrate each week, the consecrated bread and wine are the true Body and Blood of Jesus. Unlike Roman Catholics, we do not use a secular philosophical logic to explain, we simply believe the Lord Jesus when He said “This is my Body” “This is my Blood”.
What is your point?
Just so you know, this is not true of all Roman Catholics. Joseph Ratzinger, no less, proved to not be a wholehearted fan of that 'secular philosophical logic', when he defended the non-use of the words of insubstantiation (for any reader who doesn't know, "This is my body...This is my blood...") in the Holy Qurbana, the Eucharistic celebration of the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Church of the East.
What makes the philosophy secular? St. Thomas Aquinas outlined much of the philosophy/theology of the Eucharist and is anything but "secular".
This is true for the Orthodox as well. Transsubtantiation is a permissible belief but it is not the "official" Church doctrine.