Mama should like this

OK, tripped over this piece, thanks to a very provocative headline.

So, is there a tidal wave of deaths from The Shot coming at us? Many would say it's already here. And, if so, is this a good or bad thing?

Since many of the Left got The Shot because they were told to do so and many on the Right were castigated for refusing on the grounds they'd read the not so fine print on what was going on. The fact that Big Left (Pharma, Gov, Media, Guy) was making tons of money on more and more boosters for more and more variants and Fake News was telling us how the stuff that really worked was no good simply served top reinforce the idea we were being had.

So we are left with several philosophical questions.

First, as I noted above, is this a good or bad thing? I take WWII as a cue on this because, in defeating Fascism, we unleashed (and strengthened) something even worse, Communism. Being careful of that for which we wish has always been good advice and is so here. Is depopulating the world and the country of Lefties automatically a good thing? The Christian ideal that every life is worthwhile would say, "No", but the pollution of the world with an ideology, as Napoleon Solo once so deftly put it, "believes in the 2 party system - tha masters and the slaves", is a lousy alternative.

There's also the fact that such a die-up would play into the hands of the Davos crowd, which can't wait to rid the world of about 7B or so otherwise useless (in their eyes) lives

Second, a lot of otherwise good people had to take The Shot. if they wanted to keep their jobs or go to school. Are they just collateral casualties (and there were plenty of those in WWII) or should something be done to save them (which, of course, the Lefties would demand be used on them, too)? The business of the ants and the grasshopper enters the picture.

Then there's the issue the Demos either hope will save them this Fall or will be used as the blind when they steal (or try to) the election as I think happened in several contests in '22. Brandon has been thumping the tub for the right to abortion so far this year, even though most polls seem to indicate its popularity has ben sliding for a couple of decades. Is this their just deserts, after all the lying and name-calling and murder, and should we feel sorry for them since Conservatives seem to be making good little Trumplicans like it was going out of style? Or do we rejoice because demography is destiny?

Finally, assume there is a big die-up a-comin' and suddenly the Right is in charge and whomever on the Left is left is in a position to get what's been coming ever since the '64 election. Is it justice or retribution? Think Nuremburg.

Stalin never paid for the 53 million he murdered. The Nips never paid the way they should have. And, of course, Mao never paid for the 67 million he murdered.

Robert Taft disparaged Nuremburg because it was the victors persecuting the vanquished (ansd ex post facto, at that). Who put the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command on trial? Or Winnie Churchill for Dresden?

On Dim Bulbs & Hot Pots

 

More Tom Jones, at his finest:

 Tom Jones - I Won't Crumble With You If You Fall - Live @ o2 Shepherd's Bush Empire London (youtube.com)

On Gestures & Acts Intended to Intimidate, Threaten, Degrade & Derail

 

On Bubbles & Bills

 

Remembering OJ Simpson

The final days of OJ

Peek a Honey Boo Boo!

We were ready for the solar eclipse today! We even got the glasses!

It was pretty cool. You could see the whole thing with the glasses that we bought last week. 

Fun.

What the Hell was that!!!!

Did somebody just fart?

And from our You Know You're In Trouble When... file

If you know his work, this says it all.

On Dominion & Ziti

 A while back I mentioned the book Dominion written by Tom Holland, a non-Christian presenting his historical perspective on the way Christianity transformed culture.  Today I was surprised (after following a link on Drudge of all places) to find that book mentioned again in the following from a story entitled, "Christianity’s decline has unleashed terrible new gods" by Madeline Grant: 

"New Atheism assumed that, as people abandoned Christianity they would embrace a sort of enlightened, secular position… New Atheism was mistaken in its diagnosis of what would follow religion’s decline. The rational world we were promised hasn’t materialized and a nastier, less reasonable one is supplanting what was there before.

…New Atheism assumed that, as people abandoned Christianity they would embrace a sort of enlightened, secular position. The death of Christian Scotland shows this was wrong. Faith there has been replaced by derangement and the birthplace of the Scottish enlightenment – which rose out of Christian principles – now worships intolerant new gods

… the thesis of Tom Holland’s book Dominion seems to be winning out, via a growing recognition that the ethics we hold as natural and universal are, in fact, anything but. Much of what atheists ascribed to vague concepts of “reason” emerged out of the faith which informed the West’s intellectual, moral, and, yes, scientific life – a cultural oxygen we breathe but never see. 

I am reminded of Levin’s epiphany at the end of Anna Karenina. Throughout the novel, Levin, a dissatisfied religious sceptic, is plagued with doubt over the purpose of existence. Yet he finally comes to a stark realization about the real roots of his belief, and the limits of a “rational” life."  

Grant closes with a line from this by Tolstoy in Chapter 12: 

"He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them.

Now it was clear to him that he could only live by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up.

"What should I have been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had not had these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have existed for me." And with the utmost stretch of imagination he could not conceive the brutal creature he would have been himself, if he had not known what he was living for.

"I looked for an answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question--it is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, GIVEN, because I could not have got it from anywhere.

"Where could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational."

On Committed & Devout

 

You should never meet your hero's feet.

So we did a lot of landmarks and touristy shit when we went to California. The Hollywood Sign. Beverly Hills. Grauman's Chinses Theatre.

I wanted to find the John Wayne Plaque. You know what is about there right? They put concrete out and the star puts his feet or his hands and signs it with a message to the guy who owned the joint. I looked and I looked but I couldn't find it.

On Visible and Risible