Casting

Yuri Bezmenov. Jul 24
How To Subvert Subversion with Yuri Bezmenov

Sophie Cunningham should have been cast as Helen of Troy - the point that launched a thousand memes. 

Heil Myself

 When this came out in 1968 it was edgy.

 What is it now?  I have no idea.

Ideological Takeover

When the UU clergy isn't liberal enough for you and you have to purge its ranks, I am assuming you have something wrong with you. The Ideological Takeover of the Church I Loved, by Dr. Kate Rohde, who was booted from the UU clergy after she retired.  

Things began to change dramatically six years ago, when a latina Sunday school director complained of discrimination after a white minister was chosen for a job that she wanted. The Unitarian Universalists’ first latino president resigned in the midst of an internet storm and accusations of racism against his administration. No concrete proof was offered for any of the accusations. In a closed-door meeting, the national Board of Trustees declared that Unitarian Universalism harbored “structures and patterns that foster racism, oppression, and white supremacy.” No evidence was given for this assertion. This was a surprising self-evaluation for a group with a strong civil rights record, including the highest percentage of clergy to participate in the Selma Civil Rights March.

The essay was written in 2024, so I don't think I am going to comment there.  I am sad for the woman, and as frustrating as I find Unitarian Universalist positions on many things, I sense that I would get along with her better than her opponents. Admittedly, I am not hearing their side of the story, and additional facts might cause me to see things another way. Yet this is a familiar pattern by now, isn't it? I am increasingly convinced that for this level of extremism, the issue is never the issue: the Revolution is the only issue.  The sub-causes can be exchanged - we can go to war with Oceania instead of Eastasia without missing a beat.

For the Revolution, Hamas will be discarded, as will Islamism in general (though who will discard whom is always an issue). They could not care less about trans rights or disability rights. Heck, even billionaires as a class may be rehabilitated, as long as they are the right sort of billionaire. Racial grievance is too fertile a ground to stop harvesting, though the pattern of deciding who is black enough or Hispanic enough will only increase from here. The Jews are gone and the Asians are going from the fold unless they renounce and recant. Remember that the issue in 1984 was not whether 2+2=4 or 2+2=5.  In the end, the correct answer was "whatever you say it is."

But it is a bit fascinating that the UU's should be subject to purity reviews this soon. I read this woman's story and wondered what they had done to invite the vampires over the threshold. Near the end she reveals it unwittingly.

I have fought for justice against those who denied women equal rights, denied rights for African Americans, denied rights to gays and lesbians, against those who led death squads in El Salvador, and against those who bled the poor in Mexico. I’m old. I’m tired. I am fighting one last time for my faith, liberalism... 

She has fought for justice she says. but all her examples are of fighting against people. Fighting for something often does required fighting against something else, and that is usually a personified human agent.  But fighting the enemy is supposed to be a tactic, a necessary evil, not the point of the whole enterprise. Yet it seems this is where she invited the vampires over so many years ago. Hating became the point. When that happens there can never be victory, only a change of hatred. They finally came for her.

Old Saying

An old guy - meaning 20+ years older than me in 1970 - said something that was funny and cynically wise then. "Never eat at a place called Mom's, never play cards with a man named Doc, and never date a woman named Caprice."

No one has ever nodded and laughed at that line, so I stopped saying it. I finally figured out it is because the names are dated. This is what happens when one lives in one's own head and never considers that possibility. An updated version might be funnier, but people don't go into saloons to play cards with strangers anymore, and there are too many dangerous female names that are common words now. Destiny, maybe. 

Quote of the Day

"It might look like I'm sitting on my ass doing nothing but I'm actively checking my privilege." Tired Moderate

Men in Packs

Prehistoric hominids traveling in packs suggested the Yamnaya to me, though those were much later - just last week by this time scale.  Men might travel in packs for lots of reasons, trade and hunting being two. But advance scouts out to attack others and take their women was a major one we don't talk about much.  The tribe didn't do that for you until late in human history.  The Genesis accounts seem horribly barbaric to us, of neighboring groups exchanging children - or more likely, just the brides - as a sign of cooperation. But that's actually pretty advanced in terms of human behavior.  Sending the young men out to get their own mates before they could be considered adults was common for millennia.

Lots of them died in the process, sure.  But they were usually the hot-blooded extra crazed young ones anyway, and it was good to send them out to do the bloody work. A couple of women each calmed the survivors down a bit, and you could send out the next age cohort. The men were trained and bonded together, which worked out great for the other pack activities, trade and hunting.

I think of this when I see the reels by young women complaining about patriarchy these days. A few thousand years ago, half the young women were captured and half the young men were killed. And that's not even including disease, injury, and famine. Kids, the wives and husbands available now are a pretty good deal, comparatively.

Save The Children

 From Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine

 

The Obstacle is the Point

Megan McArdle and others have explained why we learn more from failing (oversimplified, yes). It is a good message to teach, that failures are just a setback and resilience is better than talent. Sometimes we learn to try harder, or earlier, or smarter. Sometimes we learn that we have to find a partner with complementary skills. Sometimes we learn that we aren't a pro athlete, but we can make a career as a coach, a YouTuber, a trainer, a writer. I wonder if there could be an educational model that teaches children to pick a goal they are most likely going to fail at - a science project that they can try again next year, a history project that they have to look at differently next year.  It is sort of like the St. John's Great Books curriculum model, but aimed at younger students. The important thing is to not fear throwing things out.  This only partly worked.  Back on the horse.  

This does still carry a covert message of the important thing is to be king in the end, however, if we let it. When my sons were at a small Christian high school, there were a few years where there was great success in sports...followed by a few years of very few wins in any sport. At one of the parent meetings, there was discussion of how difficult this was to go through, but they were glad that their children had learned these lessons young. One parent was having none of it. He worked in a positive-attitude sales field and fired back "Why are we talking about the lessons learned from failure?  Why not teach them the lessons we can learn from victory? Our God is a god of victory!"* There was a Victory Christian School in the area, but we did not consider that for our children. I I think we learn from both Solomon and Job, myself. Many biblical characters had both sets of lessons. 

I don't think the lessons of failure leading to success is the Christian point. The obstacle is the point. God could accomplish these things we strive for almost accidentally with a word. This world is a school, not a factory. The learning does not lead to doing, the learning is the doing. 

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is our friend.  It is an implacable teacher. It may be why we live in this universe and not another. 

*My children and bsking's family might guess who this was. 

Stick Library

 Via "Pineapple Street" on Substack

Recent Links

 The Isle of the Dead It has an evocative sound, doesn't it, like The Well at the World's End and The Young King of the Black Isles? Lewis declared it impossible to write a story that lived up to the title.

 Nehalennia has long remained a controversial figure, with all sorts of theories arising over the years regarding her origin and how she is depicted. Yet the latest research indicates that Nehalennia was a Germanic goddess who had a particular connection with Britain.

The illustration is attributed to Andreas Bonn, but it looks far too modern and nothing like Bonn ever did. That this is a watercolor by Peter Spier fairly leaps out at me.

David Foster reviews Red Plenty

How might this actually be accomplished? Stalin mocked the idea that planning an economy required much in the way of intellectual depth or effort. Get the chain of command right, Stalin seemed to be saying, build it on the right ideological principles, and all that was left was a few technical details, a little bit of drudgery to be carried out by the comrades at Gosplan with the adding machines. But it turned out to be a little more complicated than that. 

The DSA Sweet Spot  Nate Silver looks at who are the voters of the Democratic Socialists, and notes that the strongest group are people with high education and low income.  This has been said before, and discussed.  The finding is consistent across groups in America, which makes it more likely that it is measuring something real, but there's a catch.  The effect is not that large. Education itself is stronger. Note: There is a reference to Omnicause voting.  I interpret that as more social aspiration than ideological.

Colin Gorrie of Dead Language Society is writing a book about English before it was English, that is, from Proto-Indo-European through Germanic through all the subsequent splits to the beginning of Anglo-Saxon, first written down in the 600s.

Bernard-Henri Levy does not agree with Niall Ferguson that historians have lost the war against antisemitism. This is just another chapter in the long war against truth. 

Post-truth was not invented in Silicon Valley but in the Agora of Athens.

It did not come after truth; it was born alongside it, as its shadow.

It is that force which, with the death of Socrates, seemed for a time to triumph and plunged the Fergusons of that age into despair.

And yet.

In the end, it is the spirit of Socrates that prevails, while his opponent Gorgias sinks into oblivion. 

 

Up and Coming

Gout Gout is an 18-year old Australian runner whose parents are from South Sudan. He has stunning speed, but is inconsistent, likely because he is so young. He is on track to pass Usain Bolt and has already broken his junior records, but so many flash out after a promising start.  This is a sport where no one can hand it to you.  I feature him because you might be hearing about him everywhere in a year. The name does rather stick in the mind. 

 

I have mentioned over the last few years that there are too many up-and-coming runners to keep track of. We had Quincy Wilson in the 2024 Olympics, and 2028 is likely to be better.