Month: August 2021

Despite the fact that it would be better for me to be somewhere else, doing something else, I am going to indulge myself in a further meditation on my previous post.

I don’t really recall how I became interested in a life of the mind, in “thought work”, as I have come to call it, but I remember a few things.

One was Thoreau’s “On Walden Pond”.  That book moved and surprised me in ways I didn’t expect.  It really changed my life.

Another was an English teacher.  Hell, I will give you the name: Mike Heller.  He fostered in me intellectual curiosity and a love for good literature.

And a third was my friend Richard, who as I have mentioned seems to have gone on to lead the team that developed the iPhone under the more or less direct supervision of Steve Jobs himself.

Richard was always reading things like “The Canterbury Tales”, or Madame Bovary, or Gibbon.  That sort of thing.  That impressed me.

Back then, all that went with listening to NPR and being a Democrat.  Democrats were the ones defending REAL culture from the savages on the Reagan Right, who wanted only religion, who were secretly–without admitting it–working for a theocracy, and the marginalization of all good literature, which was to be burned, one assumed, in a Bradburyan fire by conservatives.  The “fire” trucks in Fahrenheit 451 were run by Reaganites.  The woods where everyone wandered reciting their rescued books: all Democrats.  All Liberals, happy in their learning, happy in their culture, happy to live in well chosen words composed in noble and noteworthy stories.

How things have changed!!!  What DOES someone who is “well read” read nowadays?  The Dead White Men are passe and politically incorrect.  But what is left of quality?  Almost nothing.  Almost nothing.  The classics are classics for a reason.  You can’t generate great literature easily, and it doesn’t happen often.

So who defends good books?  Nobody, as far as I can tell.  Nobody even reads any more, left or right.

I have reached out to Richard on a couple of occasions asking him if he thinks human culture has benefited or lost from his invention, but he has not responded.  I was drunk the last time I corresponded with him, so that no doubt did not help.

But where can we find grounding?  Church and religion are about all that is left and not daily negotiable.  The “culture” of books and plays and older movies IS negotiable.  What you love today may be Verboten tomorrow, and you have to be prepared for this emotionally by not holding anything sacred, or being too attached to anything, or even anyone.

Where, in our world, can sober, serious, erudite and OPEN people sit together and say intelligent things together?  If you find such a place–even on the internet–let me know.  What I see is manias, fear, derision, closed-ness (of the sort Bloom described, in a book you are not supposed to read), and an hauteur originating solely from perfect conformity.

I have visions in my mind from time to time.  I’m not literally seeing things in the outer world, but inside my skull.  I don’t really make any effort to decide if they are real or simply something assembled in my unconscious.

Be that as it may, I saw Osama Bin Laden in my mind the other day.  He was cautiously happy, and he asked me: why do you think we attacked you?

The answer was more or less “because your culture is disgusting”.  You DESERVED to be attacked.

And for my part, I can’t say he was fully wrong.  I look around me, and I see decadence, stupidity, complacency, degeneracy, and an utter lack in most quarters of that spine and loyalty which makes a culture a culture, and a community a community.  We ARE decadent.

Watch this video, that I saw in my gym yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TdaXhpjHws

Ponder that while we are living like this, our soldiers are out in dozens of countries killing people, some of whom on any reasonable account deserve it, some of whom don’t, and some of whom are completely innocent and killed by accident or cruelty.

The people who manipulate this system have so enslaved us to radical partisanship that none of this can be discussed.

And I would ask, too, where are the left wing commentaries on culture, on our decadence, on our lack of intellectuality, of intelligence, of literacy?  It has disappeared, has it not?  Even our academics find themselves unable to say anything intelligent about nearly anything.  They REPEAT.  They write cant, and the lost and lonely who read it repeat it by rote, until it changes.  Since they don’t understand it–since they CAN’T understand it, since it is utter and complete nonsense–it doesn’t matter when the story changes.

It is literally like being told what clothes to wear each day, and DOING IT, while pretending that you chose your outfit, which just happens to match that of everyone you know.

I remember the 70’s and 80’s.  There were self identified Leftists who had at least coherent critiques.  There were people talking about the superficiality of our culture even then.  Most of those people were people like Ray Bradbury, who dreamed of a world dedicated to good literature.

Do you think Kamala Harris has read a good book in the past year, that was not patently political, or from Oprah?  I very much doubt it.  And I am very sure Joe hasn’t.  He was never even remotely intellectual EVER.

But where are these people?  Where are the people asking where we are going, what we are doing, who we are, and who we are becoming?  They have been ritually decapitated.  They are repeating the same slogans as everyone else.  The smarter ones are running the cult and advancing its agenda, but nobody anywhere is asking any HUMAN questions about any of this.

There are a few outliers–certainly people like Jordan Peterson, who has become a phenomenon for speaking common sense in a world denuded of it–but far from enough.  They are not part of the mainstream the way they perhaps once were.  I just feel like I heard a lot more smart things when I was younger.  Now it is one set of slogans shouting at another, and a concerted effort at censorship and shutting down everyone with anything unique and different to say.

I have given up trying to save the world.  The world will be better for it.  All the same, that is not to say I may not try and create a small oasis at some point.

I seem to have finally ended whatever it was that made me binge drink.  That is progress, progress I am trying to build on now.

I am going to indulge myself in a brief comment: I have no doubt that the take-over of the country by the Taliban was inevitable once we stopped actively supporting the Afghan military, particularly with air power.  No doubt.

BUT what was NOT inevitable was that we would relinquish our primary airport prior to securing the safety of large numbers of Americans–and other foreign nationals–that WE KNEW WERE THERE.  That had NOTHING to do with Trump.  It was pure mistake, and I think any sane person looking at this has to reach that same conclusion.

The intelligent–which is to say the OBVIOUS–approach would have been to warn all Americans six months ago that we were pulling out, and that they needed to finish whatever they were doing, get themselves to Bagram, and get the hell out.  Anybody left six months after a warning like that is on their own, and rightly so.

But this war has been under control for a long time, so much so that a group of HIGH SCHOOL students from California went there on summer vacation.  Presumably there is a lot to see, including both Greek and Buddhist archeological sites.  These people would not reasonably have foreseen a collapse this fast.  Joe Biden HIMSELF said it was unlikely less than 60 days ago.

Yet here we are.

And as Lara Logan, in an instant classic, pointed out THIS IS THE OUTCOME WE WANT.  The Taliban comes from Pakistan.  Pakistan is nominally our ally.  We know the valleys they are taking, and they are very vulnerable to bombing.  We could have stopped this at any point.

Joe Biden, and important elements of our military WANT THIS.  Why, I can’t say.  To point out that we are being sold out by traitors is to repeat myself I don’t know how many times.  To say that people loyal to this country do not run this country is obvious.  I can say I have no idea what their real, long term agenda is, or if they even have one.  Greed is obviously one important goal.  Is handing global power to the Chinese another?  I don’t know.  All I know is that Joe and Hunter Biden seemingly took a BILLION dollars from the Chinese, who invested in a company that seemingly doesn’t do anything, but which Hunter controls.

Everywhere I look I see the actions of lunatics.  I see no signs of honest Americans in leadership positions doing honest things of the sort I would consider “American”.  Maybe we were never “America”.  Maybe it has ALWAYS been asshats and liars.  But I don’t think that is true.  Patriotism used to be common in our leaders, even if none of them were fully honest.

But right now I scan the horizon daily in vain for honest, competent, relevant people.

I don’t think there are any inherent moral laws built into the universe, as we would normally understand them.  You can do anything.  Literally anything.  And in this life, you might even be rewarded.  Certainly, evil often pays, and rotten human beings are currently on the ascendant, as far as I can tell.

But this does not lead to “if God is dead all is permitted.”  God can be very much alive and still permit everything, because the “God” of the Church is not at all the God of Reality.

Here is what I will propose: one of the key spiritual tasks is understanding WHY things which past moral and religious and spiritual teachers have taught we must do, or should never do, are important, or why they should be avoided.

We need to understand what we call “morality”, not as a set of rules, but as an extended, deep perception of the totality of forces and energies and consciousnesses in play, and how we interact with them.

What is wrong is OBVIOUSLY wrong, once you reach a certain level.  It doesn’t need to be discussed.  Anyone else at that level will see what you do.  It is not a matter of reason, but of the OBVIOUS.  THAT, to use a Taoist formulation.

But all of this requires openness.  It requires perseverance, curiosity, faith, and a willingness to be confused for long periods of time.

All of these are hard work for most people, and most people do not want to do hard work, at least not without an obvious, short term, and tangible reward, with things, sex, and power being the most obvious normal goals.

And clear, unchanging answers are precisely what Ideology, writ large, provides.  As I have said often, the particular content of Left wing practice and belief can change on a dime, change daily, and change in large ways.  That is not the point: as long as you CONFORM to those changes, you cannot lose your way.  You will be shown that day’s way, and another tomorrow.

And although I am a patriot, and partisan of the American way, of American history, and American ideals, the ideology of patriotism can become problematic too.  I think many of us have been blinded to the pointlessness of our recent wars by the trained belief that we were “protecting freedom”.  This is a powerful meme, a powerful thing, something deeply evocative and meaningful for people who have embraced this form of ideology.

But we made Afghanistan WORSE, after a lot of death, effort, and money spent.  I’m not hearing anything about Iraq, but it is hard to say the blood and treasure was worth it.  Certain people made TRILLIONS.  They did well.  They are the ones pushing our buttons and spinning us around like tops.

I will stand by the view I articulated around 2010 that we should have drawn down then–Obama chose “the Surge”, while working on getting his Obamacare passed–and taken a 20 year view.  Small numbers of soldiers, effective air power, and organized hearts and minds campaigns are the approach we should have taken.  In the metaphor I offered, it was a pot that we could not keep from boiling from time to time, but could keep from boiling over without excessive risk of life or treasure. I still think that was true, although I have never been there, and to the extent of my recollection never met an Afghan.

But Ideology is the religion of the modern age.  It is the religion suitable for a post-religious society.  It binds (Religio-) people together.  It binds their behavior into coherent wholes, even if those wholes are in aggregate ludicrous.  No one in a mob is ludicrous, in their own mind, if they are doing what everyone around them is doing.

All these things have been said many times, by smarter people than me, and no doubt in better ways.  It still feels appropriate to say them, again, today.

COVID is with us permanently.  There are 7 Coronaviruses: 4 cause the cold, 1 MERS, and 1 the first SARS.  The latter two were naturally occurring and not all that infectious.  They died out easily enough.

But COVID is now a seasonal cold.  It’s not going anywhere, no matter how horrific the crimes inflicted on innocent humans, and particularly our children.  This FACT needs to be made clear, and accepted by all, and integrated into public policy.

SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus which is highly contagious, and for which no truly effective vaccine exists.  While it is true that smallpox and polio and the like were eliminated by vaccines, those vaccines CONFERRED IMMUNITY.  Once you were vaccinated, you would not get the disease in question.

COVID “vaccines”, in contrast–in addition to having a host of side effects that are most likely in aggregate vastly more dangerous to human life than the disease itself, even in the short term (and we have no way of predicting the long term, WHICH IS WHY WE DO LONG TRIALS BEFORE APPROVING EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINES)–do not confer immunity.  They don’t prevent infection.  They don’t prevent people from transmitting the infection.  They don’t prevent hospitalization, and don’t prevent death.

Moreover, I read that this disease can reside in what are termed “animal reservoirs”, which is to say even when an outbreak is not occurring, it can hide in all manner of creatures.  If it is a bat virus, why not mice and rats?  Why not dogs and cats?  Why not squirrels and rabbits?

WE CANNOT ELIMINATE SARS-Cov-2 NOW.  It is with us permanently.  The COVID “vaccines” cannot be compared to those given our children, to mumps and measles and rubella, to chicken pox and in my own youth smallpox.

The logic of the psychotic criminals in Australia and New Zealand ruining, AGAIN, the lives of the majority of its citizens, is that these diseases can be destroyed.  EVEN IF THAT WERE TRUE in island nations like Australia, what about international travel?  Are they going to become permanent hermit nations?  Do they really think testing will prevent COVID forever?  And to what point?  Ivermectin works well.  Vitamin D sufficiency prevents nearly all serious complications.

This whole thing reeks of a fevered madness in which delusional megalomaniacs have been looking THEIR WHOLE LIVES for the chance to impose their personal boot print on the human race, all in the name of safety and “sound public policy”.  They have longed to pronounce absolute rubbish as policy, which destroyed the  mental and emotional and economic health of millions, and do so in calm, measured tones which showed the world they were not really the nasty, horrific human beings that in fact they are and always have been.

I ask myself daily how any of this is even possible.

I read something yesterday talking about how most modern nations really reward bureaucratic expertise, which in turn amounts to ALWAYS going along to get along, no matter what the question, and no matter how patently absurd the policies and people pushing them may be.

Me, I don’t mind being alone.  If my choice is being with patent mediocrities, I vastly prefer solitude.  It is really a choice of solitudes in any event: one in which I can find and hear my own counsel, and the other in which I have to pretend to give a flying fuck what some idiot wants to repeat to me that they heard or read somewhere.  Since there is no mind or heart there, I am still alone in any event.

Are “vaccines” necessary or sufficient to any valid medical purpose?  No.

They are not necessary: this disease can and in the overwhelming majority of cases humanity wide has been fought off without them.

Sufficient?  Laughable.  They are not sufficient to prevent infection, to prevent spread, or to prevent death.  They are sufficient for nothing.

Masks?  Necessary?  Of course not.  The Swedes did without them and achieved a better outcome than most of the West.

Sufficient?  To what purpose?  None I can see.

Now, Vitamin D sufficiency.  Necessary?  Categorically.  Without adequate serum Vitamin D the cytokine storm and all the systemic damage that follows in its wake becomes vastly more likely.

Sufficient?  For survival?  Most likely.  To it I would add Zinc supplementation, particularly during the course of the illness.

As I continue to say, it is far from clear that the future will contain an accurate account of this period, of this past we are living through.  But if it does, it will hold people like Fauci and Wallensky in utter contempt, as reprehensible criminals pushing the opposite of science for all the wrong reasons.

I look out my window and I see clowns and circuses laughingly shouting “SCIENCE”, and imbeciles everywhere nodding as if they understood.

Perhaps this song is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83JR2IoI8k

The American people had more right to be in the halls of Congress than any other group of rioters had to be in any private business in Washington.  Congress BELONGS TO US.  It is where OUR REPRESENTATIVES make laws, purportedly ON OUR BEHALF, AND FOR US.

The narrative being spun is that those halls are sacred.  That is the opposite of the truth.  They are the proper place for the feet of plebians too.

Our Founders were clear that a government which does not fear the people, will grow tyrannical, as indeed has happened.

These people carried no weapons.  They attacked no one.  The only deaths were caused by police officers who still have faced no reckoning for pointless and completely excessive violence.

All available evidence is that the crowds were LET IN by Capital Police, led by FBI agents, and who did no harm once in.

Why are we holding dozens of political prisoners in dungeons?  Why are we allowing the Capital Police to withhold the evidence they POSSESS which would exonerate them?

It’s obvious this successful political trick is being used politically, to mobilize support for aggressive tyranny directed against people who still believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people.

There is no limit to these people’s capacity for disgusting lies, cynicism, and the most abusive evils.

I think I’ve eliminated the emotional roots of this blog.  I’ve silenced ambition and sentimentality and am awaiting something new.

I do think the essence of spirituality being in the feeling in the morning that life is special and worth living.  Most of that work consists in purifying and amplifying this feeling.  I would suggest anyone who can feel it strongly enough can pass it along to others, where it is certainly needed and welcome.

Two more comments:

1. Donald Trump should have found his way out of the box by now.
2. Joe Biden took a lot of money from the Chinese.  Are they getting their money’s worth in our abject failure in Afghanistan?  They could literally be paying him to help them in their own propaganda efforts, oriented around regional alliances, and the eventual–perhaps soon–imperial conquest of Taiwan. They could be blackmailing him too.   The two go together, and this would be particularly true if they helped him cheat his way to victory.  That is why it is so vital we find out what happened last November.  We may lose more Americans dead in the last month of the war than the previous 20 combined, and all for no reason.

Thoughts pass through heads, right?  Things you can say?  Well, emotions–what I will call here emotional logic–passes through me sometimes too.  If I am unique-ish in this regard, it is only because I pay attention to it.  I am very sure it happens to all of us.

And it struck me today that destroying something FEELS like the first moment of growth.  There is that time where you decide to abandon who you were, and become someone else.  There is that time you decide to destroy old habits and build new ones.  There is a time when you decide that what was, will be no more.  That is destructive, and preparatory to building.

But would it not logically–emotionally logically–be possible to get addicted to that feeling of beginning without the pain and work of the following finishing?

I think yes.  Always beginning and never finishing is ever-hopeful, no?

I do think this process, though, over time, proves frustrating, and eventually hope is–with considerable justification–lost.  This is where you get genuine Sadism, and truly reckless self destruction.

Up up up, and down down down: all one day at a time.