Most Disappointing (And Pleasant Surprises) Among Leaders Over Past Decade

Pondered my “most disappointing individuals” list over the past decade (and most positively surprising list). The criteria has to start with my familiarity with them and my sense of their moral character. Thus Anthony Fauci is out since I knew nothing about him prior to the pandemic. 

George W. Bush is sort of the pinnacle of disappointing leaders. 

I would say two that are very high on the list would be Francis Collins, a Christian believer (and liar) at the head of the National Health Institute. He resigned in disgrace not long ago. 

Another would be Bill Barr, who had given a speech at Notre Dame on religious and moral character but who has audaciously lied and covered up over the past few years. Few people are as powerful and as disappointing in combination. 

Some would say Mike Pence, and he certainly would qualify if I thought he was smart enough to be wicked. I think he comes by his being used by the deep state “honestly”, meaning dumbly. But I could be wrong given his naked ambition in wanting to be VP and now running for potus. 

Some would say Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney.  Romney, yes, I suppose although I never trusted him that much to start with given his powers of changing with with the wind. Mitch is mostly about keeping power, so I’m not disappointed in him either. Turtles gonna turtle. 

If you look at the big corruptions of the last decade: Covid, FBI, and elections, you’d have to add James Comey who supposedly is Catholic. 

Jonah Goldberg (now of the Dispatch but it mostly applies to those at National Review too) is high on the list given his total disinterest in the rule of law with regard to Jan 6rs, social media censorship, Russia hoax, etc... As a group were remarkably comfortable with the Deep State as long as it was targeting Trump which as such show they have few principles. 

Biden certainly qualifies since he was so much worse in terms of character and ideology than I ever suspected but he wouldn’t make the top cut since, after all, he’s a Demoncrat. 

Donald Trump surprised me on the upside, so he’s one of the few who were better than I’d expected post-2015 (he benefitted by starting from a low base with me). Matt Gaetz is shockingly better than I ever thought he’d be; I had inadvertently ceded my opinion of him to the zeitgeist and the deep state. Rand Paul I knew was great already and most of the covid-era heroes were unknown to me beforehand. Darren Beattie and Revolver News came out of nowhere so I couldn't say they surprised me. 

In the end I would go with these as the Most Disappointing:  

1. Francis Collins

2. Jonah Goldberg 

3. Bill Barr

4. James Comey

5. Joe Biden 

And I would go with these as Most Surprising to Upside: 

1. Matt Gaetz

2. Donald Trump

3. Epoch Times newspaper 

4. Steve Bannon 

I'm surely missing a lot of people on both lists. 

Does 2024 Election Matter?

Charles Haywood had an interesting response when asked by an interviewer: “I don’t think it matters who is sitting in that [presidential] chair next year, since our problems are so deep-rooted now. Do you agree?” 

He answered: 

Certainly from that perspective - can the person elected solve our problems? - to ask that question is to answer it and the answer is “no”. A person from the Left can’t solve the problems (though he would perceive the problems differently), both because the problems are extremely difficult if not impossible to solve, as well as the problem of controlling the administrative state. The rightwing person has even an bigger set of problems because the administrative state is set against him and even if he were able to promulgate a vision for fixing the problems not a single thing of those things could be done, even if he were more disciplined than Trump. Even if Trump had the discipline and follow-through it wouldn’t have mattered simply because the administrative state was against him.

That said it does matter in the large scheme of things since the presidency is perceived as the ring of power in the American system. What you see historically is that people will struggle over a symbol of power even if everyone agrees it doesn’t have the power to do what they think, because it matters what the symbol is, and it matters that ultimately that symbol might be transmuted into real power.  So while it doesn’t matter who gets elected next year in the sense of who’s going to implement an agenda, it certainly matters as where we’re heading down certain paths we wouldn’t otherwise  go (this assumes that a Tim Scott or Marco Rubio doesn’t get elected, both of whom aren’t symbols of change and have no symbolic value).

Trump, for all his flaws, has the virtue of clarifying where everybody stands. If Trump were to win the election, which doesn’t seem particularly likely, the Left would be unwilling to accept that defeat even though the defeat would be more symbolic than anything else. Trump would accelerate things, reveal certain things about the political situation that no one else would. He would make a difference in the sense that “things would go differently”, rather than “he could make a difference”.

**

Issue 1 got soundly defeated. 57%-43%. Not surprising given that most people want direct democracy rather than a republican democracy (direct democracy, also known as mob rule, allows minority rights to get squashed, meaning in the future religious liberties could be taken away by a slim majority). 

Leftist groups were super motivated given abortion is their key issue and now in November now all they have to do is get 50.1% of the vote to amend the Constitution and make abortion legal.  I figured the issue would fail but not by that margin. Maybe the Republican hope was that they could fly it under the Dem radar but that’s like trying to get dawn past a rooster. Jacob Dreisen says that the simple thing is that there’s not a united opposition to the Democrats, that there’s essentially no representation for those pushing back against the Regime. It’s just tiny pockets of House members and three or four senators. And Trump of course but he needs Congress to do anything substantive.  

Let’s score modern day politics:

2008: Defeat

2012: Defeat

2016: Victory

2018: Defeat (Senate race)

2020: Defeat

2022: Mixed (JD Vance won; Kari Lake loss was big)

2023: Defeat (Issue 1) 

So a mixed record (assuming it even matters). Looking at Ohio results alone: loss, loss, win, loss, win, tie, loss, so Ohio is 2-4-1 over the past seven meaningful elections. The US as a whole is 1-5-1. 

There are plenty of grounds for pessimism which is the easy and broad course to take, which means we have to try to steer towards the narrow course. The challenge is to be prepared to lose a lot but be cheerful despite it. 

Faces of Ireland: 1996

 

Paris 1996

One score and seven years ago I spent a few hours in Paris.  Here are some shots of the street scene:

Zmirak on Morality of Atomic Weapons

 John Zmirak on the nuclear bombs in WW2:

I wish the discussions of "Oppenheimer" by Catholics focused on the moral question of atomic weapons, as used at Hiroshima. Yes, targeting civilians is appalling. But virtually ALL the wars before the 18th century were fought that way, with "laws of war" allowing for pillage and slaughter of cities successfully besieged--with no such clear condemnations from churchmen as we hear concerning Hiroshima. The 100 Years War, Henry V and all, was mostly Englishmen killing and robbing French peasants, to provoke the French kings into open combat (which they'd usually lose).

Just War theory of distinctions between combatants and civilians was not a myth, but a blurry line given the totalitarian conscription of societies in modern war. 

People vaporized by a nuke are just as dead as those burned alive in their cities during the 30 Years War. The firm distinction between civilians and combatants is a WONDERFUL thing. It's just a recent thing, which Catholic triumphalists throwing stones at the US over Hiroshima shouldn't pretend has been a clear and unambiguous Church teaching for 2000 years.

Furthermore, the distinction isn't that useful. Bombing arms factories for instance. Are those civilians or part of the military?

What about when a foreign government arms the whole population and tells it to fight? That's what Japan did.

The ideal moral solution would have been to signal a mass land invasion, make it clear WHERE it would happen, then nuke the whole Japanese army. Then blockade the islands and starve them into surrender.

Probably more civilians would have died, but it would have colored within the lines, if that's any consolation.

People vaporized by a nuke are just as dead as those burned alive in their cities during the 30 Years War. The firm distinction between civilians and combatants is a WONDERFUL thing. It's just a recent thing, which Catholic triumphalists throwing stones at the US over Hiroshima shouldn't pretend has been a clear and unambiguous Church teaching for 2000 years.

Furthermore, the distinction isn't that useful. Bombing arms factories for instance. Are those civilians or part of the military?

What about when a foreign government arms the whole population and tells it to fight? That's what Japan did.

The ideal moral solution would have been to signal a mass land invasion, make it clear WHERE it would happen, then nuke the whole Japanese army. Then blockade the islands and starve them into surrender.

Probably more civilians would have died, but it would have colored within the lines, if that's any consolation.

Is Mercy Harsh?

Pondered a homily heard on Sunday about the Lord not pulling the weeds when evil has planted them. The priest said that that’s a function of God being not just the God of the good, but also the God and creator and lover of those who are evil. God has a responsibility we don’t and he wants them to come to salvation. Unlike the fallen angels, humans can still be rescued as long as they are alive. He said we think of ourselves as waiting on God, but it is God who waits on us - between now and the Judgement - for our response. 

We think of mercy as a good thing and it is but it’s...complicated? The famous book about C.S. Lewis and his short-lived wife was called “A Severe Mercy”. Sounds oxymoronic.  Flannery O’Connor has a line in one of her stories that goes, “even the mercy of the Lord burns.” A commentator said that the “divine is at least as terrifying as the demonic.” 

O’Connor’s biographer followed the roots of her fervent Catholicism and:

“...traces the outlines of a life marked by illness and suffering, but ultimately defined by an irrepressible joy and even hilarity. In her stories, and in her life story, Flannery O’Connor extends a hand in the dark, warning and reassuring us of the terrible speed of mercy....The biography’s title, ‘The Terrible Speed of Mercy’, hints at the connection between O’Connor’s characters’ violent experiences and their readiness to accept God’s grace."

Peter, James and John: Three Types?

Interesting to hear that the three apostles so often singled out - Peter, James and John - have three specific characteristics or reasons to be singled out.  Peter was assigned as leader and first pope, John for being the mystic, and James for being the most courageous.  James died very early as a martyr and that combined with his being a “son of thunder” and wanting to call fire down upon unbelievers, he seems to have had more courage than many of the others including most especially Peter (who denied Christ and later after the Resurrection was worried about what Jews thought of him for eating with Gentiles). Perhaps these are the three types of Christian disciples: the “mystic” (i.e. the monk, Mary, etc..), the courageous (John the Baptist, James, the warriors...), and the leaders. 

Three types of people Plato identified: 


“The philosopher Plato suggested a trichotomy of three types of people: gold, silver, and bronze. These were fitted, by merit, for different roles in the republic: rulers or philosopher kings, the military, and the tradesmen, farmers, cobblers, builders, etc. at the bottom. These were in turn ruled by different parts of the body: the head; the heart, the symbol of bravery and not love in those days and the belly, separated from the heart by the waist. The three types were characterized by their different goals, personalities, and values: respectively wisdom and virtue, valor and bravery, and physical pleasure and sensory gratification."

What if instead of the head, heart, and belly the Christian view is head, heart and mind? Thus the head would be fitted as rulers and philosopher (doctrinal) kings (Peter), heart by courage (James), and the mind by John? 

Or, when Jesus said “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind”, the mind could be Peter (leader, doctrinal king). The heart could be courage (James) and the soul the mystic (John).

How and Why Things Go South

I share Amy Welborn's curiosity of how, when, and why things go bad. She's forgotten more history than I know so I hold her opinions in especial esteem. Here's a money quote for ya:  

One of the things I often think about is how do things go bad – especially institutions, and especially religious institutions. 

The fruit of all that thought is, among other points, the conviction that the key to a healthy religious institution is the awareness of just that point – things can go bad. And maybe even inevitably will. That human beings are weak, flawed and sinful and will corrupt what they touch, no matter how noble the initial intentions. This is the history of the world, of the Church, isn’t it?

I continually seek out explanations for the inexplicable but it likely just comes down to wisdom of "things can go bad". Even (especially?) when started with the best of intentions.

One relatively minor example (in the big scheme) is electronic voting machines. It began after the Bush-Gore '00 lawfare and machines were seen as an improvement that would take human intervention (i.e. identifying chads) out of the process. 

But that was a figment of everyone's collective imagination because machines are even more prone to human intervention since they have programmers (who are 100% human, I was one for decades). Even worse, these programs are hidden behind proprietary walls and coding complexity meaning they are essentially unauditable. (Again, I would know.) Worse, they centralize voting so that fraud can happen in, say, thirty states at once instead of at a county or state level. 

The creation of the CIA was in response to need for intelligence after WW2. 

Originally the US Attorney General was to give advice to the President when requested, such as on constitutionality of bills. From that humble beginning it morphed into the giant hydra-headed monster called the DoJ, from which sprang the bitter fruit of the FBI.

**

But the really fascinating period is 1953-1966. Fourteen years. From Bishop Sheen being a surprise TV star to the famous Time cover saying, "Is God Dead?". 

Let's oversimplify and make it three eras of perhaps impactful milestones:

1954-1959. The Seeds?: Obscenity "Howl" by Ginsberg...Movie "Rebel without a Cause"..."Lolita"...First Playboy centerfold... Jung on Time cover...Teilhard de Chardin becomes popular...First Elvis Presley hit..."Peyton Place" bestseller...Pope John XXIII becomes pope...US birth rate begins to fall. 

1960-1963. Bad Fruit: Birth control pill...Berlin Wall....CIA kills JFK...Madalyn O’Hair sues to remove Bibles in school... Ike exposed as having lied... Prayer banned from U.S. public schools...Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique”.

1964-1966. Evil: Hollywood ban on pornography broken... First changes to Mass made...“Valley of Dolls” ...American Atheists founded...Supreme Court allows contraception...First Roman Polanski film “Repulsion”...Time magazine cover story "Is God Dead?”.. The Church of Satan formed in San Francisco.

Starting after that, violent crime in NYC went up 20% annually through '72...states decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest...gay movement begins in '69, Manson murders, no-fault divorce in CA. SCOTUS was almost a lagging indicator with the '73 Roe v Wade.

The DeSantis Dilemma

The talking point of pro-DeSantis boosters is Trump can’t win the general. They say 2024 is absolutely crucial and so the safe thing is vote for someone other than Trump. I’m thinking that’s an argument to vote *for* Trump ---- if the country is so fragile that it will crash if a Democrat is elected than we surely need a bulldozer (Trump). 

René Girard disciple Luke Burgis recently posted this on Twitter: 

"There's a way of going through life where, for many years, maybe even decades, you can feel as if you're just barely keeping your head above water. Paradoxically, the solution is not to keep struggling but to let yourself drown. The struggle was the wrong one to begin with.”

Not sure I agree, but interesting take.

Maybe our country needs to drown.

**

The thinking of DeSantis backers is that “it’s better for one man to be imprisoned [Trump] than for the nation to perish”. I think DeSantis should burn the boats behind him (ie the establishment) and promise to pardon Trump. 

At any rate, DeSantis has to be a fighter not just on cultural front - which is the responsibility of we the people - and fight the war we are powerless over, namely the justice system and DOJ and FBI.  Consumers can punish Disney or Bud Light, but we can’t punish the FBI. That’s where DeSantis needs to step up. But he can't, because then the establishment would leave him and he'd be a man without a country. 

When Did Churches Worship at the Altar of the 501-3c?

One of the more puzzling facets of modern life is how Christian churches washed their hands of politics even though “man is a political animal” as Aristotle taught.  To wash your hands of politics is like washing your hands of part of your humanity -- like washing your hands of religion (for man is also a religious animal who must worship something). 

Of course the simplest reason Christian churches abdicated responsibility is money: churches want to keep that tax deductible status at all costs since it would presumably result in a crash in donations.  So, in a sense, the government at this point "owned" churches. 

But what’s odd is we have a clear and recent example of what happens when the local church doesn’t want to get involved in politics: Nazi Germany.  It seems hard to imagine Hitler would’ve come to power and been so politically successful had the dominant German Lutheran church taken a hard stand. I assume because of our belief in American exceptionalism and the figment of our Constitution, we figured nothing like that could happen here. 

Examining our history it began, as usual, with good intentions: charities had been given tax breaks since the Tariff Act of 1894. Back then, most revenue of the federal government had come from tariffs.

One of the more evil men ever to become US President, Woodrow Wilson, not surprisingly had a hand in directing that organizations “disseminating controversial or partisan propaganda’ were not ‘educational’ for purposes of qualifying for tax-exempt status...As a result, contributions to these organizations were not deductible from the new federal income tax.”

To try to separate humans from politics is trying to separate where God ends and man begins with regard to scriptural inspiration - they are entwined to such a degree that it’s hopeless to try to disentangle.  Legal challenges came and no clear standard emerged from the court decisions so as a charitable organization you had to guess to the degree you were “controversial” or “partisan”. 

Another very evil man who became president was Lyndon Johnson, and he was eager to ban any political activities even to the point of not allowing the endorsement of a candidate by any group or church receiving tax exempt status. And so continued the building of the wall between church and state that was never intended by the founders. 

Last 100 years of Spiritual Warfare

I think one of the mistakes I’d made about history was that I’d pictured it more as a logical progression from one thing to another, one technology to another, etc... But it’s more of a spiritual tug-of-war with one side gaining temporary victory. That’s the thing I missed - all victories are temporary and all defeats are temporary. The Church is failing now, just as it was succeeding in the ‘50s. It probably happens like that because when you’re winning the tug-of-war you think it’s easy and let your guard down, even though it’s ever fought at a deep and difficult level.

Looking at the decades of the ‘40s-‘80s and you see a tremendous whipsawing back and forth of good and evil. 

The “god” of this world for at least a century has been science, and so it’s not surprising that it has been used as the premiere Trojan horse for evil.  In the 1920s & ‘30s, eugenics was “science” that deemed Jews worthy of death, Down syndrome  babies unworthy of birth, and blacks inferior to whites. Some of this “science” went so far as to be able to supposedly tell murders by the shape of their head and teeth. 

In 1948 “science” was used to create the conditions for the sexual revolution. Alfred Kinsey’s fraudulent sex report was released that year:

“Kinsey's work and research was manipulated so that its results would be indicative of what he himself believed, without any real and tangible scientific support. According to Paul Robinson, one of Kinsey's biographers, Kinsey's work was designed to ‘undermine the traditional sexual order.’[6] Kinsey had his own amoral agenda and hoped to use his research as the scientific base to ‘change society's traditional moral values.’”

But there was help from the good guys. Thomas Merton published a fabulously successful book about his spiritual journey called “Seven Storey Mountain”.  George Orwell wrote a prescient book warning of government overreach and surveillance called “1984”. In 1948, Billy Graham has his first hugely successful crusade. In that same year, a nun (Mother Theresa) received a vision from God to found an order serving the poor in India. 

 Attack - counterattack. Attack - counterattack. 

In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale writes a surprise best-seller advocating memorization of bible verses to bolster positive thinking. The next year an even bigger surprise came when Bishop Sheen was a television star. 

The momentum was all on the side of “team good”. But, the enemy was awakened and a fierce counterattack began.

In 1954, wary of the sudden popularity (and thus power) of Sheen and Peale, LBJ inserts his amendment into legislation that forbids churches from participating in the political process. This is the first step towards a wall between church and state and a de-Christianized society.

In 1956, Playboy Magazine started and “Lolita” was published. Elvis and his hips came on the scene then too. In 1957, an obscene gay sex book “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.was published and the beat poet era began. By ’59 Bishop Sheen was off the air and St. Pope Pius XII had died -- the last good pope until John Paul II came along in ’78. 

In 1960 the Christian charismatic movement began, starting with the Anglicans and making it to Catholics by 1968. But the ‘60s were mostly a series of catastrophic losses. School prayer and Bible studies were banned. The birth control pill was invented and quickly the Supreme Court legalized contraception and then abortion. In ’64 the first movie to break Hollywood ban on pornography appeared and by ’72 X-rated movies were common. The gay movement begins in ’69. 

Then more counterattacks from the good guys. The “Jesus revolution” of the hippies occurs in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and hundreds of thousands are baptized. Jimmy Carter, an unapologetic Christian, is elected president in ’76.  Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” begins in ’79 and helps kick off the Reagan era. John Paul II is elected pope in ’78. The Medjugorje apparitions begin in ’81. It’s a counterattack that eventually fells the Soviet Union and lead to a better U.S. judiciary, one that promised to eventually roll back Roe... 

**

Bill Buckley’s brother Reid was kind of a prophet when he complained in ‘06 about GW Bush not getting his judges and nominees through. In 2016 it was “hold my beer” time given how they destroyed Trump:

“The necessary political concordat of any democracy is .. that its president have the right to their nominees for the cabinet, the bench, and the major bureaus, who are properly rejected only for reasons of incompetence or unethical conduct…and by vote of the full Senate, not a cabal. That this modus operandi has been dissed by the Democratic leadership, establishing an ugly precedent, bodes ill for our republic.”

Buckley went on to say, “Our representatives as a whole, the political establishment, without ideological distinction, though with a few sterling exceptions--are, have become, our republic's assassins.”

He died in 2015 so never got to see how his predictions came true to even a (previously) political establishment lover like me. The failure to accept Trump as duly elected president in '16 broke the legimitacy of our government. 

Weather or Not, Here I Am

Ahh the beach slake. The morning dolphins in the hazy sun, a timpani of waves. Walked dogs in beach at 9 and by 10:30 landed with kindle, coffee and chairs. Feels like it’s been awhile and indeed over 8 months which is decently long for me. My aspiration is ever a handyman for my parents who does Cancun quarterly.

I used a plant identifier app to check out the lush “Gilligan’s Island” collection of plants along an ocean path. A Japanese privet separates two adjoining properties at northernmost point. Along the way: Yaupon hollies, water oaks, Earleaf Greenbrier ivy (also known as Wild Bamboo), Southern Live Oaks (can live for over a thousand years), muscadine grape vines, Chinese tallow (invasive), and Oleander. It looks like a rain forest. 

**

So the weather today was better than pre-reported by the astrologists. Good all afternoon and into the (super long) evening. The good thing about a June vacation is there are 18 hours of sunlight so you’re bound to find a decent stretch of pleasant valley. 

Afternoon thunderstorms were heavily predicted but the timing on weather apps was anything from 11:30am till 5pm. Which is sort of like saying the Reds this season will win between 55 and 90 games. True enough but not particularly useful. Reminds me of how our dog DNA test had a predicted adult weight range between 55 and 90 lbs. 

We listened to a John Piper book, ‘Christ and the Coronavirus” written in March 2020 on the drive here. Better than politics. Later did listen to presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I increasingly like. Cincy native, was valedictorian at St X high school. Yale grad but I won’t hold that against him...hopefully he’s a traitor to his class like Trump?

His message certainly resonates with me seeing how he’s obviously thought about how, logistically, to get rid of the government gangsters and he’s also thoughtful about China. He promises a pardon of Trump which seems the politically smart thing to do given that presumably a lot of people might vote for Trump simply to get him off the hook. (A legal scholar says Trump can pardon himself if he wins office.)

Vivek mentioned former Attorney Gen’l Bill Barr who said that while there is unfairness between how Hillary was treated and how Trump is being treated, the time to fix the rule of law is now by enforcing it against Trump. He must think we’re stupid. Every time there’s a Republican being wrecked by unequal enforcement the argument is, “well we need to do what’s right with what’s right in front of us now.”  

If Barr was serious he’d call for Biden (not Hillary) to go under the knife (of the law). The deal has always been: you give us Joe Biden (not Hunter) and we’ll give you Trump. Instead they give Hunter a slap on the wrist and think that’s a good deal for us. Which is exactly why we Trump supporters have no one else to go to, although I could see going Vivek if circumstances change. 

Of course this is all decorating the house before the hurricane, or arranging floral arrangements after the wedding reception. From a biography of Cdl George: “Cardinal George always spoke about the family as the basic building block of civilization, and he feared the government was no longer protecting the family. The consequences that would come from that, he knew, would be profound.” 

**

Can’t keep the Irish out of me I guess. A book I’m reading says “Irish peasants of the 1800s had a love for big and sonorous words..” 

I using the word “fierce” in a fourth grade poem shows it might be innate...”Fierce sometimes is the rain”.  I don’t think Mom caught that gene given her plainspoken but bracing lyrics, “a bird poo-poo’d on my car”. 

The author of the book says, “I preached to him perpetually the doctrine of simplicity. It was not easy to persuade him that it was better to say a thing was ‘red’ than it was ‘of ruby dye,’ but little by little he learned.”

Oh I like that "of ruby dye". 

The book is from the early 1900s and called “A Cluster of Nuts: Being Sketches Among My Own People” by Katharine Tynan. 

**

I was reading a Saul Bellow novel, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature when that meant something, and he has a character inherit $3 million and thus be considered wealthy beyond measure. Obviously this doesn’t work in today’s dollars. I checked and the book was written in 1958, so I looked at the inflation-adjusted numbers and it’s $30 million today -- which makes much more sense. $30 million is rich by today’s standards. 

Found online: “According to Schwab’s 2023 Modern Wealth Survey, Americans said it takes an average net worth of $2.2 million to qualify a person as being wealthy.”

The average net worth by age in 2019, according to a Federal Reserve survey:

55-64: $1,175,900

65-74: $1,217,700

75 or older: $977,600

Why '24 Doesn't Matter

I was talking over the weekend with my brother about his woeful investment advisor and I said that what helps is to see that there are no experts. A columnist I read has a good line on it: “distrust, but verify”, meaning that the default assumption is that experts are lying to you but try to verify it in case they are telling you the truth. (That writer said that he used to be in the “trust, but verify” camp until of late.)

Talking to him, I was thinking (but not saying) about the covid fiasco, where the medical field revealed itself as something of a joke -- most memorably by Fauci and the CDC tamping down the lockdown for the Floyd rioters, protest apparently being something that should be put above health concerns (apparently religious activities outside of “woke” religion don’t qualify).  There was also the amazing shredding of their credibility by claiming that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory. 

Basically covid was to the medical profession what the priestly pedophilia scandal was to the Catholic Church.  The difference is that the Catholic Church, even with very flawed ministers, is the path to eternal and infinite life while the medical profession is, at best, a way to extend life a few years. Which means the medical profession can be overruled and ignored if you so choose.

Anyway it was heartening to see that he recognizes at least the folly of our fake system of education credentialing. I hope he can do so with journalists, who again get to be “experts” mostly in misinformation or information suppression.

**

I think with Trump the big picture is that a group of un-indicted criminals (the FBI & DOJ) are trying to make Trump a criminal.  Which he may well be, but it’s still ironic. The unjust indicting the unjust simply because the first have the power to do so.

‬It reminds me of how much I liked how objective baseball was, how the rules mattered and applied (theoretically) equally to everyone.  Two players in the minors, one hitting .280 and and the other .250 with equal power numbers meant that the guy hitting .280 would be brought up. Not so if one guy’s name is Trump and the other Biden.  Then it doesn’t matter what you’re hitting.

The problem with our judicial system is that Hillary, Biden, & Trump could all be charged and thrown in jail, and yet only one of them got indicted. The reason? It’s who you know, and who likes you. Years ago I read where the FBI/DOJ get to pick the winners and losers -- and that’s about as far from the “rule of law” as you can get.

**

A European observer has this to say about the ’24 presidential election:

“Whatever you may think of their individual credentials, there is no one currently who can make any fundamental difference as a future US president unless they have a vast support network beneath them including Congress, Pentagon and Langley.”

True, which is why ‘24 election isn’t all that meaningful except as an interesting directional signpost. If the country can be saved it certainly won’t be by Trump or DeSantis let alone Tim "Can't we all get along?" Scott. 

America changed, in 1945, by not scrupulously drawing down its armies and becoming a peacetime republic as we had done in all our previous wars. Instead we became a full-time empire. People say that had to happen since the USSR was expansionist and so there was never a chance to stand down. I guess basically the reasoning is, “we had to become an empire because the USSR wanted to be an empire.”  Which is true, I guess, but because power corrupts, it flows naturally that empires are corrupting. Which means that it was pretty much foreordained that we would become corrupt. It makes me feel better about our decline and corruption since it pretty much had to happen that way in the natural sphere. It will take heavenly, supernatural influence to change at this point. (Imagine an alternative world where Communism didn’t exist and thus there was no Cold War. America disarms, becomes a force for good instead of evil, JFK doesn’t get shot, the Vietnam war doesn’t happen, the CIA/FBI don’t enlarge to target Communists, then Muslims post-9/11, and now moms at school board meetings.)

I recall how in late September of 2001 talking heads claimed that 9/11 would change the world forever. And I thought at the time, “hmm…. We kill who did this and that sends a message not to do this again…how does this change the world forever?”  I guess two forever wars later, the destruction of Christians in the Middle East, and an FBI into surveilling its citizens using the “Patriot” Act, I know now!

Memories of Dusky Days

Let not fair June be squandered! 

So I took the dogs and headed on a 75 degree day to picturesque German Village, their first time in Schiller park. They were in hog heaven with all the new smells -- it being practically a dog park given how many fellow dog walkers were circling. Max extended himself heroically in what (for him, a Nordic dog) was a hot day. 

We went by the statue of the German poet Schiller, erected on a July 4th day long ago in a spirit of German and American patriotism. We walked by the old houses built in the 1800s and I thought about how today’s beauty-nihilists are hypocritical - many of the same people who create and support ugly modern art were living in these architecturally beautiful residences. Beauty is their secret vice. 

Some of the porches in the more modest homes remind me of Aunt Mary’s in Hamilton, Ohio. She was the only person I knew as a youth who lived in a home built before 1940 and thus had no spirit of modernism to it. 

She lived in a “German city on a river”, a twin of Cincinnati in my imagination. Funny that both are named for empires: Hamilton coming originally from England (via Alexander Hamilton) and Cincy from the Romans.  Hamilton means “treeless hill”, of which there are few in Hamilton (St Clair Ave?). Cincinnati means “with curly hair”. Originally Cincy was named “Losantiville”, meaning “city opposite the mouth of the L.” (“L” stood for “Licking River” that joins the Ohio River from Kentucky). Historian Lewis Collins called Losantiville “a pedagogical and unmusical name” and wrote, “The invention of such a name was positively cruel in [founding city father] Mr. Filson.” 

Mary’s house was built in 1926. Others on the street are said to be 1930-1940 builds.  Mary was born in 1913 so the house was not old by her standards; our house is similarly contemporary to me (I was 5 when it was built and Mary was 13 when hers was). If she bought it in, say, 1953 at age 40, then the house was like buying a house built in 1997 today. Hardly “old”. And yet to my eyes, who had only lived in houses built in the ‘60s, Mary’s house seemed antique to say the least. Especially when a lot of her 1970s-era furnishings were decidedly not 1970s-furnishings. More like 1930s?

It’s funny that my “great aunt” was, in experience for me, less a great aunt than an aunt, and less an aunt than a grandmother.  Influence can’t be measured by a genealogy chart, that’s for sure.

Tucker's Back and This & That

A cagey TV insider said this about Tucker Carlson (and Donald Trump's) popularity:

"Tucker’s show worked on cable news because it transgressed the medium he messaged from, and because Tucker is a class traitor. (The latter being Trump’s appeal.) When someone who looked 'old money' said things that were true and forbidden, massive interest followed.”

During his ten minutes on Twitter (already Fox News is calling this a violation of his contract), Carlson said: 

“Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew [the dam] up, just as you would assume they blew up Nordstream, the Russian natural gas pipeline, last fall.” 

And indeed false flags often have a fatal liability of betraying themselves by cui bono questions.

**

Mark Halperin: “Please stop telling me that Michelle Obama is going to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2024.  There is ZERO chance she would accept that assignment. ZERO.”

Would be a boffo miss if he gets that wrong given how many times he has said this, but kudos for taking a stand!

**

What if it’s *not* that establishment GOP figures haven’t been red-pilled yet, but that they have gone beyond that and been black-pilled, and are now just worried about their pensions? In other words, it’s not that they’re unaware of where we’re at but have already concluded it’s not possible to reverse course. 

Sen Ted Kennedy, shortly before he died, understood how we precarious our situation was and how it’s all held together with string and baling wire. If he was already aware of how screwed up we are, then how much more do our leaders realize it now? I think the Dem leaders are just doing an uncontrolled demolition for reasons unclear. Maybe they're European at heart. 

Interesting to hear RFK Jr say in an interview that when he was growing up it was unthinkable that the government would lie to you. Super high trust in the authorities back in the ‘50s. He was asked if there was a seminal moment, maybe when his uncle was assassinated, when he began to distrust the government.  He said actually the first eye-opening moment - a red-pill - was when Eisenhower was given the choice to lie about U.S. spy planes over Russia in 1960. One was shot down and the pilot had been instructed if that were the case to commit suicide but did not. Eisenhower lied and the Russians produced the pilot and the rest, as they say, is history. In 1971 the Pentagon Papers came out and the lying done by our government was shown to be deep and pervasive. 


There’s the old trope, “how do you know a politician is lying to you? His lips are moving.” And yet we want to believe our leaders are truthful and we seem to make that joke but we haven’t really believed they’ve lie to us. Until now, when they're not even hiding it. 

**

GDP statistics are notoriously skewed and flawed. A better stat is PPP, which describes how many goods and services you could buy in a given country if all countries were using the same currency. Basically it tells you the true purchasing power of a country and thus what their real wealth is.  In the latest numbers Luxembourg and Singapore in the top two spots, no surprise there. No surprise either that Qatar and UA Emirates are near the top. But how about little old Ireland in third place? Ireland was as far back as number 14 in 2013, but they’ve rallied every year since and now Ireland is richer than us (we’re at number 10). It seems to help explain why Ireland is so decadent now given how much wealth they’ve acquired so quickly. From the poor house in the 1970s and ‘80s to among the most wealthy in the world today. That would corrupt anyone. 

Another interesting stat is how Japan is said to have had “lost decades” of productivity and zero GDP growth. But it doesn’t seem to have hurt them much at all. They’ve been number 31, 32 or 33 (of 182 countries listed) since 1999. Right in the ballpark with Italy. You don’t hear of riots in the streets, strikes or food pantry needs in Japan despite all the angst about them not meeting some GDP growth measurement. 

Countries in the rear are mostly war-torn African ones, and countries in the middle are like Brazil, South Africa, and Armenia. The European rankings are pretty much what you’d expect but for Ireland - all the white, Northern European countries first (Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Germany), then the mid-tiers (Belgium, France, UK), then the lower tiers (Italy,  Poland, Spain, Greece).  

America has been steadily around number 10 since the 1990s.

Results here: https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gdp_per_capita_ppp/

**

Tweet from a conservative philosopher Yoram Hazony ...:

It took just 10 years to enter a world in which normal people:

1 Don’t believe anything the New York Times says.

2 Don’t think a degree from Yale is worth much.

3 Don’t trust the doctors.

4 Can’t watch Hollywood films.

5 Are comfortable voting for a candidate under indictment.

**

It’s fun to research Bible verses, like the gospel the other day in which Jesus heals the blind eyes of Bartimaeus. Mark makes a special note that he is “son of Timaeus”. 

Coincidentally or not, there was a Timaeus famous in Greek philosophy, and specifically a figure in Plato. From a reference work: “Disturbances gravely impair the soul’s cognitive functioning...The body and its parts were designed to support that functioning, and Timaeus takes the design of the eyes and the mechanics of vision as an important case in point.”

Interesting to see a possible connection between Timaeus and his interest in the design of the eyes and the son of a different Timaeus and his search for vision.