Moderates United

I thought this article worth the read: http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120

You will note that laws have been passed in some States specifically prohibiting mental health professionals from “treating” transgender (or, it goes without saying, homosexual) people, EVEN IF THEY WANT TREATMENT.

This is not about tolerance, or freedom.  It is about the destruction of traditional consensual norms, in favor of what is called tolerance, but which is in fact radical INtolerance.

I will echo McHugh and point out that men cannot be made into women, and women cannot be made into men.  They can merely be made to outwardly resemble them.  You cannot actually change someone’s sex, anymore than a white person can be made black with spray-on tan and a trip to the hair salon.

I don’t think transgenderism and homosexuality are mental illnesses in and of themselves–and certainly not wrong in a traditional ethical sense–but I do think that in a HIGH proportion of cases, there is underlying sexual and emotional trauma which created these outcomes, and which is not resolved through sex reassignment surgery, or a homosexual lifestyle.

The task is always to look to the highest and best good, both for the individuals and for society.  What I think Leftist GroupThink prohibits is an HONEST discussion of the real problems these people have, which in turn prevents an honest and effective amelioration of the quite real unhappiness.

In important respects, invoking the word “hate”–which, like “racism”, has been denuded of content through propagandistic use, and now seemingly simply describes anyone does not agree FULLY and reflexively with the meme of the day–for things like questioning the wellness of men who want breasts and to cut their dicks off, is not different than shaming everyone who wonders just what successes of the Civil Rights Movement we are, now, 50 years later, supposed to applaud.

When you cannot speak honestly, when you must live in fear of well organized hate campaigns (and I am using the word here in its traditional sense) when you fail to toe some line that didn’t even exist yesterday, then you are not only not living in freedom, but you are being forced to participate in the destruction of meaning, of language, of community, and of effective political solutions to real problems.

Leftists don’t solve real problems.  Their only forte is in rationalizing failures.  And given that such rationalizations require frontal assaults on coherence and reason, their on-going successes mean on-going failures whose sources cannot be traced, and which cannot be identified, or corrected.

I don’t think people become better by assuming that Bruce Jenner’s real problem is solely that he (he still has his balls, in my understanding, so he remains a man) wants to act like a woman, and that society rejects him (He just won an ESPY, so that argument is a non-starter); and I don’t think I become worse by pointing out that there is almost certainly an underlying psychopathology that nobody wants to talk about.

Jenner is not positioned to thrive.  Dressing up like a woman and taking hormone injections is like winning the lottery without learning to budget money: one year from now, my guess is he will be just as happy–or, to the point, unhappy–as he started out.  That is when the media will lose its infatuation with him, and although I have not followed him in any of his shows, it does appear that attention is important to him, and when he is past it, melancholy and depression will likely set in.  His change will not alter permanently who he really is.

Nobody wants to say it, but I will.  Goddamn it if just speaking the obvious has not become an act of rebellion.

I say again: lies only help the liars.  They do not help real people.  Anyone who wants to do good in this world must value truth and honesty.

I was feeling today that the essence of manliness is confidence.  As I think I may have mentioned, when I did my second CrossFit certification, I was in a small group that had 3-4 SEAL’s in it, and the one thing that stood out to me was how relaxed and unworried they were about everything.  Obviously, that sort of training constitutes an easy day, but I felt that was how they were most of the time.  How else can you fall asleep waist deep in mud in a row of your fellow sailors, as they do in training? I can’t fall asleep in my bed with a fan on.

I would contrast that with the guys you see in musclehead gyms who are very self consciously trying to look and act tough. If you feel like you need to act tough, you probably aren’t.  You are afraid.  I think this inner fear drives a lot of bodybuilders, especially.

Learning deep relaxation is the first step to both healing and personal growth.  Without it, you cannot go deep into anything.  Your innermost self can never show itself.

It occurs to me that being politically correct means being humorless, and since humor is a primary means by which people moderate and deal with their differences, this means that structurally it amounts to a holding tank for the accumulation of anger.

Witness Jon Stewart.  His “humor” is mean-spirited, and consists nearly entirely in mockery, in portraying people as buffoons and cartoons.  His humor is not meant to build, but to burn.  There are grades of humor, and his is that of witty insult.

Stewart, a Jew, is only one step away from what the Nazis did in their caricatures of Jews.  I mean that sincerely.  I cannot watch him without feeling a strong undercurrent of very unfunny contempt, and latent violence.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/ex-cia-director-government-ignoring-existential-threat-to-the-american-people/?singlepage=true

I found this somewhat enlightening.  It appears the principle barrier to sanity on this topic comes from electrical utilities.  They seem to view these common-sense precautions as inconvenient.

Free nations such as ours fail when everyone starts thinking primarily of their own narrow, parochial interests, and fail to integrate themselves into objectively higher goods.  These executives, and their lobbyists, have no reason to suspect they will fare significantly better than the rest of us if their obstructionism serves, finally, the cause of societal collapse.  Their efforts are, to put it more kindly than the case warrants, short-sighted.

He’s a kind, well-meaning boy, and awfully sensitive…But let me tell you, the whole trouble stems from immaturity and sentimentality! It’s not the practical aspects of socialism that fascinate him, but its emotional appeal – its idealism –what we may call its mystical, religious aspect – its romanticism…and on top of that, he just parrots other people.

And I would add that in the same sense that small children can sometimes be reflexively cruel, so, too, do frustrated idealists become violent cynics, for the simple reason that the world, which does not cooperate with their simplistic and unrealistic visions, becomes hated.

This child never grows up, but he does lose his romanticism.

This quote is from this excellent article: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/12/16/dostoevskys-6-nightmare-prophecies-that-came-true-in-the-20th-century-part-one/1/

I picked Dosteovsky to riff on for a reason.

Edit: I have not read that in a while.  It still fills me with deep emotion.  It was hell writing, but ultimately very therapeutic.  To climb, you need rungs, and that piece served that purpose for me.  We build our own ladders out of Hell.

I am extremely sensitive; very, very sensitive.  I feel the world around me directly in a way I cannot communicate with words.  I have a well developed capacity for dissociation, which is why the psychologist who diagnosed me with PTSD said I would do well in a concentration camp, but at heart, when I am myself, I see and feel everything.

I feel the evil in the world well–I of course also have a well developed instinct for danger–but am only slowly growing to feel the Good.  Just yesterday I had a split second of clarity, and felt how it would be to love everyone I met.  It is not a burden: it is health.  And I am growing healthy.  And I wish you the same.

One day, perhaps, this mass nightmare will end here on Earth, and our potential as spiritual beings be fulfilled.  It is impossible to know, and I am not and never will be in the business of making predictions I cannot defend.  But one can always speak to the truth of ideals, and visions of what could be.

Is universal peace possible?  Yes.  Yes it is.  I work daily in my small way to move in that direction, starting first and foremost with working on myself.

It is impossible to think clearly when one is surrounded by untruths.  Some time in the late 1960’s, our media complex lost its connection to the principle of telling truths, first and foremost.  When Walter Kronkite came out against the possibility of victory in 1968, it was understandable that he did not realize the extent of the defeat which was inflicted on the NVA during the first Tet Offensive.

47 years later, it is impossible for anyone who cares NOT to know about what a devastating blow it was to them.  Senior NVA leaders have written about it.  They have talked about how they thought about quitting, and suing for peace under nearly any conditions.  They have talked about how much moral support traitors–and I use the word clinically and precisely–people like Jane Fonda gave them.  They have talked about how they watched our news nightly, and took great courage from the growth of the “anti-war” (losing a war with Communists does not end war, it merely moves it into the next phase of a war by the State against the people; and in this particular case, it facilitated mass slaughter in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) movements.

This is the world we live in, in which all the congenial lies told over a half century are accepted at face value, with enthusiasm.  Leftists are always the Good Guys, and the task of news is not just to report it, but to INFLUENCE it.  This is all Goebbels did.  The task was always both to report the news, and to report it as accurately as possible. They would even report defeats.  They simply spun everything in a positive way.  You can report failures with absolute fidelity, if you nest that report within an overall narrative or context of progress. Likewise, the successes of your enemies can be made failures.

I look around me, and I remember.  Do you remember Ross Perot, who made our national debt a major priority, who galvanized everyone to care?  Watching our news, one would think illegal aliens and gay marriage opponents are the greatest existential threats facing us.  Clearly, Obama and his cronies have provided shelter and open support to murderers, rapists and thieves, and that is very simply indefensible on any level, and it is impossible for any sane person to look into the eyes of their victims and claim any good has been done for humanity.

At the same time, the interest payments on our national debt will very soon be higher than our Department of Defense allocations.  The interest on the debt is becoming a cancer on our economy.

And Obama is doing all the things Socialists do, that he can get away with.  This always causes economic decay and rot.  Not sometimes: ALWAYS.  There are no exceptions.  Obamacare will cause de facto monopolies in health insurance to form, will cause rationing of actual healthcare, will continue to put stress on small businesses–we have had dozens of restaurants close around here in the past year–and will put stress on the budgets of the middle classes who have to pay for everyone, themselves, and the new welfare recipients Obama is trying to buy with middle class money.

All the Fed needs to do to cause a crash is stop buying our debt, or stop pumping $50 billion or something a month into massive Wall Street banks, or raise interest rates.  I am seeing they want higher Reserve requirements, which is inherently deflationary, at least in good economic times.  Deflation right now would cause a crash.

All the signs are on the table of a massive disruption of our system, even absent something like a major terrorist attack.

And the people who make their livings, and hang their professional hats on, telling us truths we need to hear, are completely absent from their posts.  Quite the contrary: they have sided with the lies.

I got distracted: watched Casablanca with one kid, and Singin in the Rain with the other.

Not much to add.  The film is filled with large, tightly packed crowds.  The message is clear, that there is the crowd, and there is Hitler (with a few followers).  As Rudoph Hess said, National Socialism is Germany, Hitler is National Socialism, Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler.

He did not mention Jews once.  He spoke of the future.  One can see the appeal of control and authority in a nation which had known a great deal of chaos (much of which Hitler’s S.A. helped sow).  Instead of blowing with the wind, he was going to plant “a pole” (Audience: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil).

I think the Nazi anti-Semitism has to be seen, within their awful logic, not so much as hatred of Jews, but love of Germans.  The Jews had to be “dealt with”, there had to be a Final Solution, because the protection of the German race and people necessitated it.  Auschwitz was a proactive defense against the ruin of Germany.

And Hitler was obviously quite proud that his party represented an ideology.  We have come, rightly, to detest and fear ideologues, but I think at the time it amounted to the creation of a socially needed secular religion.

Goebbels was definitely the most creepy guy in the film.

Hess struck me as goofy.  I had not realized just how powerful he was.  It was Hitler, then Goering, then Hess.  It caused me to reread his story, the details of which I had forgotten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess

They kept Spandau Prison open for 20 years with him as the only prisoner.  His was a very odd life, even by the standards of the time, and the group he belonged to.

I have often seen Leni Riefenstahl referred to as a genius, or master propagandist.  I did not see this film as particularly brilliant, although I suppose I have to measure it by the standards of the time.  They did end with a massive audience singing the Horst Wessel Lied.  The whole thing felt like some combination of Oktoberfest and Church.

https://youtu.be/gHO1PprfmkY

We’ve just about reached the point where this isn’t satire any more.  Do you not feel the brainwashing going on all around you?

Gibbon also made the interesting point that Jews reject all other cultures and peoples in a way that was somewhat unique in the ancient world.  I tend to think of them being rejected, as in anti-Semitism, but they equally reject everyone else as Goyim.  I have never really understood anti-Semitism, but it is a fact of human psychology that people do not like people who look down on them, which can be inferred from the fact that no Gentile could be good enough to marry a Jewish girl.

He also noted as one of the reasons for the triumph of Christianity, which first occupied the entirety of the old Roman world, and has since of course spread over the world, was its intolerance.  Competing creeds were banned and quite often punished violently, which had not been the case with Roman religions, which were very pluralistic and syncretic.  We think of Christianity as a creed of love, but its actual history is one of more or less direct imperialism, both politically and culturally.

I continue my 127 hour foray into Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.  We have gotten to Christianity.  His treatment of Judaism was a bit of a treat for its very political incorrectness, and, largely, aptness.

But he made what to me was an interesting point. I’m not sure he intended this idea directly, but I inferred it from what he said.

Jesus died, by the standard chronology, in A.D. (Anno Domini, if memory serves, or CE if one wants to wash history free of Christianity) 33.  The Second Temple of the Jews was destroyed in A.D. 70, some 37 years later.

Here is the thing: much of the Law that binds the Jews centered on that Temple.  They were required, per Gibbons, to “present themselves before Jehovah” 3 times a year, and of course the Temple is where the sacrifices were made.  T’Shuvah, which I understand is a critical Jewish term meaning something like “repentance”, originally involved making sacrifices to atone for sins.  The rabbis–or whatever they were called then–would slit the throats of animals on altars intended for the purpose, and presumably stained with blood.

When the Temple was gone, the Law could no longer be followed exactly.  Here is the interesting point: Jesus was made the FINAL sacrifice, such that the Temple was no longer needed.  Virtue was made of necessity.  Christianity, as it came to be called, was in effect an alternative to the traditional faith which not long after his death was rendered impossible.  As Gibbon has it, it seems many early Christians wanted to keep the details of the traditional Jewish law, but append it to include an end to sacrifice.

We seem to know that none of the Gospels were written within fifty years of Christ’s death, and some much later, seemingly.

We also know–and we can reference documents found from that era–there were many contending stories and doctrines which were not included within the dominant narratives that were created by the Romans, impatient with competition and alternative.

People, and the history they make, are endlessly interesting.  I’m drinking again, and should go to bed, but my dreams don’t stop.  I can just sit, and watch endless and endlessly interesting visions flow through me.  There will be an end to all this, but not tonight.