Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

The Best Response to the Dodgers: Eucharistic Processions and Hostile Work Environments. Update: No @LOSDodgers posting?

Posted: May 23, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, catholic, catholic devotions, culture
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The LA Dodgers had scheduled a pride night and had invited the anti-Catholic “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” a drag group that attacks the Catholic Church. After a letter from Marco Rubio noting the offence to Catholics the “sisters” were disinvited.

Gay groups whose hatred of faithful Catholics is only slightly eclipsed by the sisters threatened to pull out and the Dodgers caved like a wet blanket.

It goes without saying that if this had been a drag group that made fun of Islam the Dodgers would have run from these guys and denounced them publicly as bigots, but as it’s the Catholic Church the Dodgers are all in on hate.

What remains is what the response should be, I think it should be two fold, one spiritual and one secular.

The spiritual response that I would suggest is a Eucharistic Procession to and around Dodger Stadium, much like the one that took place in DC last week:

Over the weekend, the nation’s capitol saw a Eucharistic procession, the first of its kind organized by the Catholic Information Center (CIC), to bring “Christ’s Real Presence onto the streets of our downtown D.C. neighborhood.” 

Fr. Charles Trullols, director of the CIC, said that he was inspired by the Eucharistic processions of Pope St. John Paul II, who led processions through Rome’s streets for seven years. He continued to say that the U.S. needs God to be put back into Americans’ lives, hoping the procession would help the country, including those in the White House. 

“The CIC houses the closest tabernacle to the White House, and I have absolute faith in the many graces God will bestow onto our country when Christ’s real presence is carried through the streets of D.C. The procession will express our belief that Jesus is passing by and bestowing his love and help on all of us,” Fr. Charles Trullols said

I’m sure the Hispanic community of LA would really get into such an event, perhaps even bearing a banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe the Patron of the Americas. But the real advantage is that whenever you have the Eucharist you have the body blood soul and divinity of Christ and whenever you Christ to a situation you are working toward the good.

Of course a secular response might be appropriate too and there is a very simple one that might stop this in it’s tracks.

I’m sure California has laws concerning creating a hostile work environment and I’m also sure that there are more than a few devout Catholics who work for or play for the Dodgers.

Imagine if one or more of them filed a complaint with the appropriate agencies noting that inviting a group openly hostile to their faith as official guest constitutes a hostile work environment. Imagine the lawsuit that could follow. Imagine if this is promulgated in the largely Catholic countries that the dodgers recruit from.

The Dodgers have sown, let them reap.

In fairness all of this is consistent with the warming of Christ at the last supper:

“If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.

Remember the word I spoke to you,  ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin.

Whoever hates me also hates my Father.

John 15:18-23

We’ll see much worse before it gets better.

Update: I just noticed that while the Dodgers put out their announcement on the twitter feed it’s not included in their spanish language twitter feed @losdodgers

I wonder why?

Review, Black Knight on Netflix

Posted: May 21, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment, media
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By John Ruberry

A little over a week ago Black Knight, a six-episode dystopian series set in Korea, began streaming on Netflix. 

It’s 2071, decades earlier a comet struck Earth. The Korean peninsula is now a dunes-covered desert, only one percent of the population survived the disaster. Earth’s atmosphere is poisonous. Most of landmass of Earth is underwater,

The government is a corporatist dictatorship. The corporation is the Cheonmyeong Group, led by Chairman Ryu (Nam Kyung-eub), but run by his evil son, Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon). The Republic of Korea–presumably North Korea and the Kim family didn’t survive the blast–is led by a president (Jin Kyung), but Ryu Seok is really in charge. He’s a Rahm Emanuel-style “Never let a crisis go to waste” type. 

That tiny population is divided into four groups, castes really, and the top group is the Core, which consists of the Cheonmyeong Group and the top tier of the government, and a couple of middle classes, General and Special. But the majority of the survivors are classified as refugees, who for the most part scrape out a miserable survival in the ruins of the former city of Seoul.

The Core of course enjoy a luxurious existence. 

All but the refugees have coveted QR codes tattooed on a hand that allows them entrance into restricted areas–and to purchase desperately needed supplies, especially oxygen.

Is there a way out from the misery for the refugees? Yes, the legit path is to become a deliveryman, a truck driver for the Cheonmyeong Group, transporting those vital supplies. Think of Mad Max in The Road Warrior driving a semitrailer as the wheeled army of Humongous follows him around the Wasteland, only for a post-apocalypse Korean Amazon. The greatest of these deliverymen is 5-8 (Kim Woo-bin). In the post-apocalyptic Korea, deliveryman eschew their birthnames in exchange for the numbered district they service. By the way, there are some female deliverymen.

The other way for the refugees to escape their bleak lives is the criminal path–becoming Hunters. Once again, think of the mobile gangs of the Mad Max franchise. These Black Nights fire back–and 5-8 even electrocutes a pair of them who make the mistake of climbing onto his truck. 

Yoon Sa-wol (Kang You-seok) is a mischievous refugee teen who idolizes 5-8–he even plays a 5-8 computer game–and he and dreams of becoming a deliveryman. Sa-wol is illegally living with two sisters, one of them is Major Jung Seol (Esom). The sisters, I believe, are classified as Special, one notch down from Core.

Sa-wol is an orphan–so yes, he’s yet another “chosen one,” along the lines of Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Frodo Baggins.

Predictably, the paths of 5-8, Seol, and Sa-wol cross. 5-8 has learned that he has much more to offer Korea than being a deliveryman, even one who is already a folk hero.

Black Knight is an enjoyable Netflix diversion. There is of course an abundance of action but also some subtle humor. For instance, 5-8, despite breathing poisoned air, still smokes cigarettes. 

More direct humor is offered by Sa-wol’s pals, with the unusual names of Dummy (Jung Eun-seong), Dumb-Dumb (Lee Sang-jin), and Useless (Lee Joo-seung), who live with a clever mechanic and inventor, Grandpa (Kim Eui-sung).

But if you are looking for a romantic storyline, look elsewhere. There are no love stories in Black Knight.

If you are a connoisseur of compelling cinematography and sharp CGI, then you’ll love Black Knight. 

And if you drive a delivery truck for UPS, a grocer, and especially Amazon, then let your imagination run wild and dream away as you watch, and presumably love, this series. 

Black Knight is rated TV-MA by Netflix for violence and smoking. It is available for viewing in Korean with subtitles, in English, and several other languages. I watched it in Korean.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Schlichter Nails it in one Sentence: Lords and Serfs

Posted: May 15, 2023 by datechguy in culture, Uncategorized
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I — I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen”

Among gentlemen a blow could be wiped out only in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word.

C. S. Forester: Hornblower and the Hotspur 1962 p 301

If you want to know why the left in California are not bothered by what is happening in San Francisco Kurt Schlichter nails it in one sentence in an excellent paragraph:

As in California, all the good ones are leaving. There are a lot of complaints about blue state denizens shifting to red places and bringing their clown show politics with them, but in my experience it’s the red people who are saying “The hell with this” and checking out. The poor libs can’t move and the rich ones don’t need to – their little enclaves are relatively safe. The subways may be a concrete jungle where freaks with meat cleavers wander and you might get pushed into an oncoming train by some schizo with 100 arrests and no real jail time on his rap sheet, but the cops are still empowered to act in the well-heeled precincts. People ask how I can stay in LA, but I’m not actually in LA – I’m in a city by the beach where the cops actually cop. The chaos is for the poors on the uncool side of the 405; my neighbors vote for Ted Lieu and let the consequences of their moral preening fall on the people who don’t work via Zoom

Emphasis Mine

There is a word for this. It’s not “socialism” it FEUDALISM.

I’ve been writing about the left’s actions as Feudalism for over 10 years: and it’s become more and more clear that what the left really wants is the status that comes from being better than those who they consider beneath them. After all if everyone has peace and prosperity what makes you special?

As I said a decade ago:

Can’t the doorman and driver understand that, like the Lords of old, the Pelosis in Washington like and the Mahers in Hollywood seek power and status simply for the good of all? Don’t they realize if they support the great Lords in DC and Hollywood, as trusted retainers, they might expect advancement from the state, a better job in a growing federal government? Don’t they understand that by keeping an underclass on assistance they provide protection to the retainer like themselves to keep them from revolt (remember Occupy)?

And if such assistance goes to the 2nd or third generation it is a good thing because like those who came before them, they are repaying their bounty with votes that keep the enlightened lords in power.

This entire philosophy & mindset is contrary to the entire march of Western Civilization from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence. It is the idea that some laws can be enforced while others are not, why some standards apply to some and not to others. It’s the idea that the rights are granted by other men, the elites like themselves and not from God

American Greatness nailed it three years ago as well:

If one were to examine the concept of California as a feudal state, all the pieces would be identifiable. The aristocracy is the wealthy billionaires and the titans of the high tech industry. The knights and the nobles are the public employees. The clerisy consists of the academics and the nonprofit activists, which include environmentalists, homeless and low-income housing advocates, and social justice warriors. Everyone else would be serfs.

California’s serfs would either be members of the state’s dwindling middle-class and small-business owners, paying crippling tithes to the feudal regime, or they would be low income workers and the unemployed, who would rely on alms from the nobles for their sustenance.

You can’t be a lord without serfs, California is returning to it’s Spanish and Mexican roots, Caballeros and Peons and the money that is voted to allow the peons to have drugs and the willingness to let them steal without consequence, that’s today’s version of Noblesse Oblige.

It’s just that it’s not that “noble” and it’s done using other people’s money.

A “local” story that needs to go national: Chicago cop murdered because girlfriend of accused killer needed money for a barbecue

Posted: May 14, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, local issues, local stuff, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics, race card
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By John Ruberry

When does a local crime story become a national one? Outside of a mass shooting, a local crime story becomes a national one when there is a race element. 

On May 1, a deranged homeless man, Jordan Neely, was threatening passengers on a New York subway train. A former marine, Daniel Penny, aided by two other passengers, placed Neely, who by the way had 42 prior arrests, in a chokehold. Penny has since charged with second-degree manslaughter. I’m sure that you know these details: Penny is white, Neely is black.

The mainstream media, to use an old radio term, still has the Neely killing on heavy rotation.

On May 6 a much more troubling homicide occurred on Chicago’s South Side. Aréanah Preston, a Chicago police officer, had just finished her shift. As she exited her car in front of her home, Preston, who was still in uniform, was shot to death. Jakwon Buchanan, 18, two 19-year-olds Trevell Breeland and Joseph Brooks, and a 16-year-old, Jaylen Frazier, have been charged with her murder.

Preston, 24, was to have been awarded her master’s degree from Loyola University on Saturday. 

Here is the headline about the arrest of the alleged murderers from CWB Chicago, 4 people, all with extensive juvenile criminal backgrounds, killed off-duty Chicago cop during armed robbery: prosecutors.

By now you probably know why the murder of Preston is not a national news story. Preston, and the alleged killers, are African American. If the accused murderers were white, reports about this homicide would dominate the news outlets, particularly MSNBC and CNN, who would introduce each segment on the cop killing with a custom graphic and somber music. 

There are additional chilling details about the alleged perpetrators, all of whom are in jail, bail has been denied.

Their crime spree began early on the morning of May 6, according to a Cook County assistant state’s attorney, because the girlfriend of Jakwon Buchanan needed money for a barbecue. That’s right, a barbecue. Buchanan, by the way, has a pending carjacking case in juvenile court. 

First, the four teens, who were dressed in black and wore face masks, stole a Kia Forte, after robbing a woman of her charge cards, her smart phone, and a Louis Vuitton belt. As for the youths’ look and their criminality, think Alex and his “Droogs” from A Clockwork Orange crossed with ninja warriors from a 1980s action film. Next, a 62-year-old woman and her son’s girlfriend were robbed by at least three of the teens of a phone and a Coach purse. Then two of the accused allegedly robbed a man as he was leaving his car.

Then Preston was murdered. Her gun was taken and one of the accused allegedly sold her weapon.

I can describe the four accused killers with two words, ones that the holier-than-thou media has deemed racist: “Career criminals,” despite their youth, and “super-predators.” Remember how CWB Chicago portrayed the four, “all with extensive juvenile criminal backgrounds.” And CWB Chicago, citing a law enforcement source, said of two of the accused, “Brooks and Buchanan ‘are by far in the top 10 for prolific juvenile carjackers over the last two years.'”

Here’s another recent story from CWB Chicago about two different thugs–that’s right, I said it, thugs: Chicago boys charged with 16 armed robberies and carjackings. They’re 15 and 16 years old.

On Monday, Brandon Johnson, a Democrat who is essentially a creation of the far-left Chicago Teachers Union, will be sworn in as mayor of Chicago. Until his mayoral campaign began Johnson was a “defund the police” guy. Among other things, Johnson favors sending social workers, instead of cops, to domestic disturbances. After a riot last month in downtown Chicago, the mayor-elect had this to say about the creeps, “It is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

Sheesh.

If people do demonic things, they can expect to be demonized.

A few days later, Johnson doubled down on those initial remarks about the rioters. “They’re young,” Johnson said. “Sometimes they make silly decisions! They do. So we have to make sure that we are investing to make sure that young people know that they are supported.”

Investing? 

Johnson is a big proponent of summer jobs programs for young people. I don’t believe such employment would cause youths like Buchanan, Frazier, Brooks, and Breeland to alter their destructive life decisions for $15-an-hour make-work jobs.

Chicago is stacked with career criminals and super-predators. My solution to the city’s crisis is simple, aggressively prosecute these lawbreakers and imprison them when they are found guilty. Johnson, Cook County’s so-called prosecutor Kim Foxx, and Cook County Circuit Court chief judge Tim Evans don’t agree with me. They’re “root causes” people. 

Sadly, even though some moms rise to their challenge, there is one root cause the media and left-wing politicians refuse to discuss. Over eighty percent of African American births in Chicago are to single mothers. 

I don’t know what the solution to that problem is. But admitting there is a problem is the first step in confronting it. 

On Wednesday, four days after she was to receive her master’s diploma from Loyola, the funeral for Preston will be held.

John Ruberry regularly blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

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