The Tweet of 2024

This is THE tweet of 2024 so far.  Maybe the tweet of this decade. From hedge fund manager (and PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard) Eric Weinstein:

One question I get a lot is "What explains your asymmetrical focus on Democrats and the Left?"

The short answer, after some soul searching and introspection, is simply this: "The Gaslighting of Experts."

I see the Republican party fighting the experts they oppose. I don't see them trying to gaslight them much.

Let's say you are an economist who believes that higher taxes spent on infrastructure would be good for the nation. The right may fight you. They may call you a name like "Libtard" or "Commie". And that is absolutely awful behavior to me. Truly. But they aren't nearly as likely to coordinate behind the scenes in emails to be discovered later and all agree to pretend, seemingly independently, that as a former expert you have committed some unclear moral crime that means you can never be empaneled or invited onto a commission. They aren't immediately going to treat you like a mental patient, a con-artist, or threat to society. They are just going to be asses. That's the dopey game they love: "Happy Warriors" is what they call it.

And the subjects I focus on most tend to be the places where I think dissenting experts are being gaslit:

COVID ORIGINS

SOUTHERN BORDER

STRING THEORY

POTUS COGNITIVE STATE AND AGE

EPSTEIN'S INTELLIGENCE CONNECTION

COVID MANAGEMENT

QUESTIONING UKRAINE NATO STRATEGY

INFLATION/GROWTH MEASUREMENT

MONETARY AGGREGATES AND FED INTERVENTION

VP COMPETENCY

ASYMMETRIC TREATMENT OF CONTESTING ELECTIONS and VIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

VACCINE INJURY DISCUSSION

SEX AND GENDER REDEFINITION

ANDREW YANG / TULSI GABBARD / RON PAUL / ETC. PRIMARY MANIPULATION

SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANY INTERFERENCE

DENIED LEGACY UAP PROGRAMS

HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY

DIRTY TRICKS CAMPAIGNS / DOMESTIC SPYING

NON-CONSENSUAL HUMAN TESTING (infectious agents, radioactivity)

BAILOUTS

MAXIMALIST STRUCTURAL BIGOTRY CLAIMS

LABOR MARKET FLOODING VIA IMMIGRATION

RELIGIOUS TERRORISM

Etc.

In all cases above, there is some absolutely MASSIVE long-term lying and obfuscation. Not small. Not excusable. I am talking about massive lies. Lies that last decades. Lies too large to choke a blue whale.

And they incinerate dissenting experts as pretend neer-do-wells for the crime of dissenting from consensus.

What is the point of becoming an expert Stanford or Harvard professor if you can be turned into a "Fringe Epidemiologist" like @DrJBhattacharya was overnight by some washington insiders like Colins and Fauci?

To an academic: it makes life pointless. Everything we are becomes pointless if that is allowed to stand.

So, this is what I have to say: I appear to be focused on gaslighting of dissenting experts more than politics.

It's not that I don't have political opinions. I do. It's that I haven't been able to focus on them for years. All we seem to do these days is deal with gaslighting on our top line issues above.

And the formula is quite simple. An expert can have:

A) Reach.

B) Reputation.

C) Independence.

but no more than 2 out of 3.

This is a terrible rule. And whoever attempts to enforce that rule, is who I fight. Unfortunately, that group has been my own historic political party as transformed over 30 years.

And, in my opinion, they deserve to continue to hemorrage credibility for that crime against their own until they end this tactic. It's a crime against everything I believe with all my soul. We need DISSENTING experts to right our listing ship on all of the above and more.

Check the above list. That's no small thing. It's about the destruction of a country that I dearly love and which the world needs desperately to come back at this moment.

The New Taboo: Cause of Death

Interesting how cause of death is becoming seen as so private and unshareable. Have seen many people who died unexpectedly at relatively young ages and there are long personal obits but nothing about cause of death. This seems to be a relatively new thing. In the most recent case, a pro-life guy working for the US bishops died suddenly and no cause of death.  It feels unnatural, foreign to the human condition since we've evolved to be curious about dangers to physical health and what could befall us or our family. 

Listing “cause of death” has become the new unmentionable and so instead of praying for the soul of the person I become distracted by wondering what cause of death is. That’s on me, but still...

The Flight Path of a Catholic Leftist

Kind of interesting to follow the career and history of someone “working for the other side”. In other words, how did someone who went to my high school fail so spectacularly? I'll leave out his name as that's not important; he's more representative than anything else. Why does he espouse anti-Catholic values on his Twitter feed with a bloodthirst for pro-abortion policies and LBGT issues? 

He combines a keen intelligence with an early aptitude for politics. At our high school he was Student Council president and given the highest honor by faculty: the medal for being “the most outstanding member of the graduating class in all aspects of his or her high school career.” In short, he’s a tremendous talent that is now being used for ill rather than good and thus representing a huge loss to not only the country but to the kingdom of God. 

Likely all roads lead to his sexuality. The Bible and church’s stand on the issue of homosexuality is one that makes, for many, Catholic faith and conservatism a non-starter. His current hero is an actor in musicals who was presented the 2011 Hero award for support for gay, lesbian and transgender children. 

He went to our school from 2001-2005. Perhaps school leadership is partially to blame. The “bad ol’ 80s” and beyond in which the school was either wittingly or unwittingly a nest of sexually abusing priests seems to have ended in 2003 with the retirements of longtime leadership. Perhaps the timing was not accidental since 2002 was the famous "long Lent" when the gay mafia in the Church was outed. One leader in particular was extremely close to Fr H, who was sexually abused one of my fellow classmates and was later even thrown out of a liberal protestant church for the same. So obviously the culture wasn’t the best during his years. 

His first foray into politics was as a grade-schooler, helping a mayoral campaign. After the win, speaking in the council chambers the mayor recognized him and one can imagine the self-importance and pride he must’ve felt because it was at that moment he wanted to be in politics. 

For Kamala Harris he serves as a really good both in terms of ability and image. Being gay means there’s no danger of him apostatizing to the other side, and it’s a nice brag for her to have a midwesterner with a Catholic background. He goes against the stereotype of liberal atheist Californian. 

His big break came in 2009 when he landed a gig with Democrat Rep Ike Skelton. Skelton was an old-line “labor Democrat”, one very moderate compared to today’s Dems. His district began becoming more conservative and rural and in 2010 he was defeated, a big surprise for the 30-year incumbent.  

In 2013 our alum was active in trying to get gay marriage in Ohio and approvingly retweeted, “"Hell, in six years straight people will be gay married."  (Not inaccurate, alas.) 

His next job was for Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), a full-throated liberal “Catholic” who votes 100% with NARAL and was mentioned in an article in a Catholic magazine titled, “Did the 60 Pro-Abortion Catholic House Democrats Attend Catholic Schools?”.

In 2014 Massachusettes’ Democrat Rep. Seth Moulton was eager to hire him and make him the cornerstone of his staff before Harris plucked him.  His twitter feed is mostly retweets of Harris, along with spicy (if incomprehensible) things like “Joe Biden may be the most transformative president in my lifetime." 

Friday This & That

I miss the era of grandkids under 7. “Five little monkeys” song time. The uninhibited drunken 2s and 3s and 4s and 5s.  A golden age and it almost feels like a death has occurred since they are so much different at their current age than when they were littles. We lost our little kids, just as we lose our dogs and cats. 

They were present but also not present, in the sense of not having a memory of it like we do. Maybe a sliver of a few moments but they won’t remember much from those days. And yet we grandparents were present and in those moments we were communing with them. It’s almost eucharistic: God communes with us under a form that we can’t easily recognize as Him (bread and wine). We don’t “remember” our Communions in the same sense He does, or living them the way He does. He is present but we can forget, neglect, or simply have the human limitation of mostly living in the unreality of our thoughts and distractions.

Watched a mother bird in our treeline relentlessly and tirelessly bring her newly hatched birds (about a half-dozen from the sound) one small worm or insect at a time, all day long. I admire her work ethic. Made me feel lazy. Then I thought about that as an image of God, feeding us the Eucharist day after day. 

**

This explains why I’m so fascinated by our politics: "When lies have been accepted for some time, the truth always astounds with an air of novelty."  --St. Clement of Alexandria

**

Part of the problem for J6rs is they knew too much. Like the man who knew too much but in this case the thousands who did. 

Julie Kelly said: 

"No one ever again say the 2020 election wasn’t rigged. Aside from the voting fraud, the coverup of the laptop by everyone from Barr/Wray to the news media and Big Tech was a wide ranging conspiracy to get Biden elected."

Author Jack Cashill responded: 

“I break the rigging down in my new book: "Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6." The J6ers paid more attention than the rest of us. That's why they went to D.C.” 

**

Journalist, author, feminist Naomi Wolf has always been a lefty until the covid vaccine, at which point she joined forces with Steve Bannon and all the other deplorables. A Jew, she’s discovering God again. She says she had a vision of Jesus about ten years ago but has not converted. She read Jonathon Cahn’s book on “The Return of the gods” and began reading the Torah again. She’d devoted a podcast to reading an old translation from the 1500s called the Geneva Bible. But recently she came across a fellow Jew, a scholar who helped translate the Dead Sea scrolls, who stumbled across a Hebrew version of the gospel of Matthew. It’s from the 1400s but despite coming from the Jewish community - at that time no friend of Christians whatsoever - it is very close to the Greek. This leads some to wonder, including Wolf, if it dates back to the time of Christ. So now she’s reading this gospel (translated to English by a fellow named George Howard back in the 1960s). It’s interesting to catch the little nuances of variances.  The synoptic gospels are so familiar to me now that even the little changes or alterations pop out. Wolf, who knows Hebrew, says the English translation of the Hebrew reads less alien to her as a Jew than the English translations of the Greek. In other words, it makes Jesus more Jewish. 

Mike Lindell Says '20 Election Best Thing to Happen

I think I’m slowly starting to realize 
you can’t force people to wake up. That will only happen via two things: prayer and events. Events like the stolen election in ’20 and the Jan 6 federal-abetted riot.  As Mike Lindell often says, the 2020 stolen election was the best thing that could happen to this country because it woke a lot of people up. There’s no speeding up of the process, God’s got this. Especially in an environment where the media is controlled. Only reality can check unreality. Things must get worse before they get better because that’s the way human nature and the human mind works. God uses negative reinforcement (the stick) only after positive reinforcement has failed (carrot). We can’t really circumvent the process by offering our own negative or positive reinforcements since people understandably don’t want to be manipulated by other people, they want to react to actual events or be moved by their own heart. I see this in my own example as my friend Ron was arguing in 2015 that we lived in a banana republic but it was only until events occurred and I saw the results with my own eyes four or five years later that I believed him. 

The perfect argument is not an argument at all - it’s the results. We ignored arguments about sexual morality and now see the results of sexual promiscuity in the destruction of the family.  We see the results of how gay civil unions rapidly morphed into giving kids sex change operations. Arguing about corruption in government pales before seeing the January 6th federal-led riot and the crazy sentences handed down. 

God didn't argue with his people over whether sin was bad but instead showed the results of it: the death of his Son.

An example of argument is Pope Paul VI when he wrote his encyclical against artificial birth control. He stated all the evils that would flow and they read prophetically now. But he was derided and ignored and in fact things did get worse before they got better. Now many Protestants (including Steph’s old church the Vineyard) have anti-contraceptive views that they never had in the ‘60s or ‘70s.  They’ve moved closer to the papal position, especially on abortion. The reason is they are reacting to what’s happened. And in response to prayer. 

So instead of looking at the glass as half-empty (i.e. “why aren’t more people seeing what’s going on?”) I should look at it as half-full (“isn’t it incredible that almost half the country understands what’s going on despite our press and justice system?”). And how great and encouraging that Billy Cunningham had a J6r on his show!

A 1917 Look at American Novelists

 Miami’s president Alfred Upham wrote a much revered book on English literature in 1917 and in it says: 

"Our own century is entirely too new for adequate analysis or critical estimate...the novel in its present form seems to encourage enormous production of inferior work, and one is likely to be hopelessly confused, and accordingly pessimistic, in the midst of this constant output."

Ha, just wait till nowadays when everyone’s got a book in them! He continues:


“America, in recent years, has produced many novelists, but few of generally recognized greatness. We have welcomed in translation the masterpieces Americans of almost every nation, and in various instances have stamped our approval on foreign authors still unrecognized at home. A few names may be listed of those worthy to be compared with these cosmopolitan artists, having won like them the appreciation of critics here and abroad. William Dean Howells, with his clean and wholesome realism, has long held chief place among our prose artists. Mrs. Wharton is rather generally regarded as one of the best among our novelists of manners. Robert Herrick is notable for his refinement of characterization and finality of structure. Mark Twain is rapidly taking his place not merely as chief representative of American humor, but as an exponent of our energy, optimism, and hatred of sham. There may be others equally deserving. Perhaps, even, the “great American novel’ that philosopher’s stone of the publishers' announcements, may by rare good fortune be discovered in our own generation.”

Or perhaps a past generation that was overlooked? (i.e. Melville).  

Seems faint praise for Twain, whose Huck Finn was about 30 years old and is sometimes acclaimed as the great American novel. This was written before Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, so “The Great Gatsby” was another option for the title. 

Interesting that Herman Melville gets no mention in the book at all in 1917, some 66 years after Moby-Dick!

They Fought for What the Country Was, Not What it Has Become

 Interesting Chesterton quote: 

“I have passed the great part of my life in criticizing and condemning the existing rulers and institutions of my country: I think it is infinitely the most patriotic thing that a man can do.”

Elsewhere this pretty applies pretty well to the USA:  

“There was something, however, that Chesterton mourned. It was the loss of old England. Something new and not English had replaced it. The old England was small enough to be universal. The new England was over-extended and formless. It was too big to be recognizable. He mourned the loss of the ordinary. He regretted what had come to replace it: the love of money, the love of machines, the love of largeness, the mad philosophies of the rich, the mad philosophies that had come out of Germany, being spread by the worst kind of tyranny – the tyranny of professors.” 

Another interesting thing is in his novel Notting Hill, he has them fight a war “not for what Notting Hill has become, but for what it was.”  Kind of inspiring that the participants would fight what would be a losing war for what the country was and cool to still think of America nowadays as what she was rather than what she has become. You can still have gratitude despite the circumstances. 

**

Email exchange with high school administrator on the laudatory article of a Kamala Harris aide. It's the obligatory Pete and re-pete on the separation of politics and religion. Never our twain shall meet. 

The article conveyed an overwhelming sense in it that all is business as usual, that no lines have been crossed. I shudder to think of what lines would have to be crossed in order for even a Catholic school to have “trouble” with the Democrat party. I assume by then it will be far too late, as it was for Germany and Italy in the ‘30s.

But my school's in a very typical spot: they draw nearly equally from Democrat households as Republican. They are only reflecting the views of Catholics in U.S. who voted for Biden in 2020. We can hardly expect leadership in academia where administrators are trained by woke colleges. As long as Catholics as a whole don’t think the Democrats like Harris have crossed any lines yet then it’ll be business as usual - meaning, literally, business. Dollars and pupils for the school.

The school has drawn the line where it’s been drawn for the past 80 years. As long as we were living off the Christian capital we were pretty good. That seems depleted.

They say with regard to wealthy families: first generation makes the money, second generation maintains it, and third generation spends it all. The same with regard to morality: the first generation makes the values (USA through 1960), the second generation has enough moral capital to keep things running (thru 20??), and the third generation (now?) goes rogue. 

My Catholic High School Features Leftist Activist

Today I unleashed my inner “crank” (ok, a frequent occurrence). I issued a strongly-worded letter (much like our feckless congressmen) to the principal of my high school after having read a gushing feature in the alum mag about an alum who is a top aide to Kamala Harris. The aide's twitter feed lauds the Ohio pro-abortion vote and sings of the pro-homosexual agenda. Of course.  

Apparently the "gift" in the article, to we Catholics who adhere to Catholic teaching, is that his job also involves helping pass a lot of bipartisan bills too. Gag me. 

One has to laugh at how unserious Catholics are. We’ll go willingly into the concentration camps one day saying “but there’s some bipartisanship in these camps! Jones over there is a Democrat!” Or some of the conservatives will say, "well, the rule of law was followed and our justice system duly decreed that we go, so it must be legit!" 

The Harris aide was held out as an example of Catholic education when in truth he's a fine advertisement of the failure of a Catholic education. That we take politics with so little seriousness is not a badge of honor but of cowardice. We strain at gnats (bipartisanship!) while swallowing a camel (abortion, threats to religious liberty, jailing of political prisoners). If Catholic school alumni newsletters won’t stand for our values what hope do we have?

Tis true the aide attained a high post -- but at the risk of his soul. Our newsletter, by lauding him, only perpetuates his contempt for our values and confirmation of his decision. 

Worse it seems my high school is a cheap date - he didn't even donate to the school last year. But why would he donate to a school that teaches, if perhaps only in theory, against homosexuality and abortion? Only we reward our enemies and wish them success rather than pray for their conversion and the frustration of their plans.  

Can you imagine Yale magazine applauding alum Eric Metaxas (even prior to the 2020 election debacle)?  

Can you imagine a Jewish alumni newsletter proudly featuring someone working for Ilhan Omar? 

The difference? They ain't dumb. They know there's a spiritual war going on and know they are participants. 

I'm not naive enough to think my school was above the norm but it's pretty discouraging when after all that's happened since Biden and Harris took office there are still Catholics out there who are "impressed" by public service to an immoral regime. It represents a fatal lack of self-protection and remarkable gullibility. Even in mid-2024 alas. 

Miami University's Presidents as Signifier of National Decline

I was googling something and came across a list that Miami U had of all their presidents with biographies. So I looked at it with an eye towards what it shows about when our country declined. 

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that Presbyterianism was crucial to America since it was the only intellectually respectful Christian alternative to Catholicism. Thus it was “safe” for colleges to embrace in our Protestant country, both on religious and intellectual grounds, but when it fell out of favor it really signaled the downfall of all the denominations. We often say, “so goes California, so goes the country” but perhaps it’s more accurate to say, “So goes the universities, so goes the country.” The leading indicator of decline is probably colleges. 

The illustrious list of Miami presidents included ordained minister after ordained minister. From 1824 to 1885 they were all ordained and most were pastors. After the Civil War Miami fell on hard times and had to close down for awhile. But when they opened back up tradition was continued: from 1891 to 1911 more minsters in Miami’s top spot. 

Raymond Hughes was the last president with a public religious affiliation. While not a minister, he was director at Presbyterian Theological Seminary after his Miami presidency. He was president at Miami from ’29 to ’42.  

This all tracks well with the decline of America.

A timeline sampling of ten different early Miami presidents going from more recent to oldest: 

Ordained Deacon in 1899 by Bishop Fitzgerald, Columbus, Kansas 

Was ordained Presbyterian minister.

Graduated from the Western Theological Seminary and ordained by the Presbytery of Fort Dodge, Fort Dodge, Iowa, Home Missionary and Pastor, Odebolt, Iowa.

Graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, ordained to the Presbyterian ministry.

Studied theology, Lane Seminary and ordained by Presbytery of Mississippi, Pastor, Presbyterian Church, Blue Ridge, Mississippi, Pastor, Presbyterian Church, Woodville, Mississippi. Pastor, Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, La.

Studied theology with Dr. Gideon Blackburn and was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of West Tennessee, Evangelist in West Tennessee, Pastor, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Pastor, Dayton Ohio. 

Licensed by the Presbytery of Washington, Pennsylvania, Missionary in North Carolina, Pastor of Presbyterian Church, Pigeon Creek, Pennsylvania, Pastor, Dayton Ohio.

Licensed by the Reformed Presbytery of New York, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Ballston, New York.

Ordained by Presbytery of Philadelphia,  Pastor of the Associated Reformed Church, Milton, Pennsylvania, Continued as Pastor at Milton, Pennsylvania.

Doctor of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, Pastor of Associated Reformed Presbyterian Churches at Ebenezer and New Providence, Kentucky.

The “sweet spot” when America was a decent nation was when her middle west was strong.  A book claims that ‘Peak Midwest’ (meaning greatest political influence and economic success within the U.S.)  seems to be roughly from 1865 to 1917, which coincided (coincidentally or not) with peak midwestern values in America, i.e. thrift, work ethic, religious sensibilities. The 1920s and beyond brought Hollywood values and the east and west coasts became more powerful relative to the midwest. 

So in we have Miami a strong and proud Christian school, at least as represented by her presidents, from 1824 till 1911. Perhaps part of the disconnection with her Christian past occurred around the subject of evolution, which pit religion against science and was certainly a hot topic by 1921 when former congressman and ex-Sec of State William Jennings Bryan became a leader in the anti-evolution movement. There’s also World War I, which discredited Christianity in many minds due to a devastating world war started by Christian countries. American author Gertrude Stein coined the phrase ‘the lost generation’ to reference “those who came of age during World War I, as the war produced disillusionment and experimentation with drugs and immorality for many young men and women.”

Miami now has a string of 80 years of secular rule and surely we’re the poorer for it.

Auron MacIntyre in "Total State" Nails It

He writes on our post-constitutional age: 

There is a serious danger in the myth of constitutionalism. There is great power in the traditions and heritage of our nation that were codified into the Constitution, and we should continue to rally around them, but the document itself will not save us. The founders never expected it to.

A video blogger has compared the attempt to resurrect the Constitution to the phenomenon of the Ghost Dance in the late nineteenth century.  American Indians at that time were watching their way of life disappear as a foreign culture forced them into ever-smaller reservations and made their traditions increasingly difficult to practice. Some of these tribes came to believe that by participating in certain rituals, they could reconnect with the spirits of their ancestors and bring about the restoration of their once great nations.

In many ways, the Ghost Dance did embody what had once made these tribes both vital and powerful. The dance gathered so many warriors that the United States sent a large force to investigate the Lakota, who were performing it. Some of the Lakota performed the Ghost Dance, believing it would shield them from the bullets of the American soldiers. The ensuing clash resulted in the famous massacre at Wounded Knee.

The Ghost Dance might have had a connection to the past, but it never had any hope of defeating the US  military or restoring the Lakota to greatness. Those who performed it ignored reality and made themselves easy targets in the process. Likewise, despite its impressive legacy, the US Constitution does not, and cannot,  restrain our all-encompassing government. The founding fathers were deeply inspiring, but the problem of tyranny has spread far beyond anything they ever envisioned. Conservatives  cannot continue to Ghost Dance, or they will meet a similar fate.