Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Not Judging The Media / Social Elite Who Fear Henry Hill’s Fate

Posted: January 10, 2021 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine, culture, media, Vive L'Empereur
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Apathy in the face of tyranny turns out not to be a German or Russian characteristic. I just never thought it could happen in America.

Denis Prager

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the memorials of the righteous, and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have joined them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’

Thus you bear witness against yourselves that you are the children of those who murdered the prophets;

Jesus Christ, Matthew 23:29-31

In the sermon on the Mount one of the hardest but most important charges Christ give is this:

Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.

Now this command refers to the state of one’s soul and in accompanied by the injunction in the Our Father (also known as the Lord’s Prayer) to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Or to put it simply, if you want to be forgiven, forgive.

This came to mind as I finished my piece on courage and freedom being the exception and not the norm and it got me thinking about something.

There was a time I had thoughts of being able to earn a living as a blogger commentator perhaps even breaking into media. I had one local Fox appearance, a NY Post Op Ed. Had been credentialed press for several events, the tip jar was rocking and things were on the rise.

All of it seemed to crash and at once, it took years to get me back to where I am today and I recognized that I’d likely never be able to much more than I am today. That’s fine, I’ve done things and seen things that most people in their lifetime have not and it’s been a great thing to share my thoughts with you who have kept the bills paid around here with perhaps a little extra to spare each year.

But what if I had made it, broken into media with a good paying gig or as I considered back in my twenties, gotten into government and perhaps even as far as congress. What if I was in the place those in the state legislagtures, or the courts or the congress or the media are today when the axe is falling down and the choice is being made?

Robert Ingersoll once said of Abe Lincoln:

“If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy.”

There are a lot of folks in media who are making six figures or more, who have comfortable lives, who have children who have a chance to live in comfort because of their jobs.

There are a lot of folks in politics who are making good money, who have the potential to make a lot more when they leave, who have the chance to see that they and theirs are comfortable for the rest of their days.

There are a lot of folks in entertainment and academia who are in the same boat. They are comfortable, they are honored, they are given deference.

And for every one of those people who have made it there are hundreds perhaps thousands of those who are striving for that brass ring.

Now comes the day of testing. They are being told that unless they play ball, unless they tow the line giving exactly the message that is desired by the deep state all of those things are going to be taken from them, and any secrets they have will be exposed. They will go from having the potential for anything they want at any time to being at best a regular nobody or at worst a criminal to be punished.

Cue Henry Hill

It’s the last line in that speech that says it all.

I’d like to think that given the choice of doing the right thing or protecting my prerogatives and my family’s prerogatives I like to think that the way I was raised and the way I raised my children and that I could do this and my family would be willing to endure the loss of income, of position, prestige and the scorn of those around me, but thanks to a merciful God to whom I daily ask “Lead me not into temptation” I don’t have that choice, or to put it another way, all I’m risking by speaking the truth is to remain the average working still that I am while being online by people who don’t know me and will never meet me and perhaps treated in a condescending way by some folks I know.

I’m likely old enough and grounded enough to handle that.

But would I with money in the bank, a bigger mortgage than I have now, with kids going to expensive schools and a chance for them to be set for life, would I have the courage and character to risk all that for the truth to face the fate of Henry Hill who ended his speech saying:

Henry Hill: I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my live like a snook.

Good Fellas 1993

Would my faith and trust in God be enough if I had that much to lose? Remember there’s a reason why Christ said how hard it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

That’s why I’m going to do my best not to judge those who did not come through on any level. I suspect many of them in their own minds and hearts are already judging themselves because cowardice is as C. S. Lewis said:

Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful – horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember

So instead I will try to take to heart these words from Our Lord:

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy

Matthew 5:7

As a person who needs God’s mercy may I take that command to heart

Conservatives need to defend others in free speech battle

Posted: January 3, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

Free speech is under harsh attack in America courtesy of wokeism. Such warnings about free speech are nothing new–but in the past much of the danger has been imagined. For instance I was in college when The Clash released Combat Rock. On the opening track, “Know Your Rights,” Joe Strummer sings of those rights, “all three of them.” The third right is “free speech,” with a caveat. That right could be used if “you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.” Assuming that Strummer was addressing his core audience, American and British youths of the early 1980s, what he said was at best a gross exaggeration.

Not so in 2021.

I received the inspiration for this post by listenening to Ben Shapiro’s December 24 podcast, Goodbye, 2020.

Shapiro is among the many commentators who predict a purge–my word, not his–of dissident voices, meaning conservative ones, on social media such as Twitter, beginning with Donald Trump as soon as he’s not president.

Absurdly, people like Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, still claim that social media is a neutral conduit of information. Twitter for a while prevented the posting and distribution of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story on the microblogging platform claiming that the laptop details were hacked and illegally obtained. Wrong on both counts. Twitter had no problem with Tweets linking to the New York Times story about Trump’s income tax returns–those returns may have been obtained by hacking. Regardless how those returns were accessed the person who did so broke the law.

What to do?

Forge alliances.

“Well first of all we’re going to have to rely on people, believe or not, who are moderate liberals,” Shapiro said in that podcast, “who are sick of watching the Overton window shut.”

And that means conservative have to defend those liberals who cross the cancel culture.

An incident on Twitter comes to mind. Three years ago in this space I reviewed the documentary XTC-This Is Pop, which was about the spectacular rock back that emerged in England in the late 1970s. That post got a lot of retweets, including one from the XTC Fans Twitter page, run by the now-dissolved group’s former leader, Andy Partridge. A committed liberal, Partridge’s Tweets, although often sarcastic, were entertaining and usually well-thought out, whether it was about music, religion, or politics.

In 2019 some people with too much time on their hands accused Partridge of anti-Semitism after a series of Tweets–not well-thought out this time–about American Middle East policy that devolved into an online shouting match about Israel and religion. Partridge, a strident atheist, went a little too far, I admit, but taken into context with his overall sardonic attitude, those Tweets weren’t a big deal to me. I planned to write a blog post on Marathon Pundit defending him, but then Partridge cancelled himself on Twitter by deleting the XTC Fans account and I moved on to other things.

One of those Twitter accounts Partridge engaged with was “Jon Devin Nunes’ Prostate.”

You know, some people take Twitter too seriously.

Back to Partridge. No one knows why he deleted his account–perhaps he decided that he was spending too much time on social media. He certainly broke a Twitter rule of mine: Never feed online trolls.

I believe if Partridge wasn’t an older white male a Twitter mob would not have bothered to object to those controversial Tweets. For instance the media, with a few exceptions, have not called to task Georgia US Senate candidate Raphael Warnock for his anti-Israel comments.

There will be other efforts to silence dissidents on social media. Mostly against conservatives. But against liberals too.

Conservatism must embrace free speech. And that means relying on for allies, not just the moderate liberals that Shapiro spoke of, but also center-line liberals too in order to fight this crucial battle. And keep in mind no political ideology is always correct.

As for the fundamentalist far-left, the tiny tail wagging the cultural dog these days, I believe they’ve already isolated themselves, as Isaac Asimov said of the 1960s radicals, into a “no-man’s land of the spirit.” Think of the bleating sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

But right now in the culture wars the far-left is winning.

Fight back.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

A Reminder of What America’s Soul And Who Your Neighbor is. (Screwtape frowns)

Posted: December 18, 2020 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine, culture
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There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”

He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Luke 10:25-29

A few months ago the house next door (You know the one Paulo worked so hard on) was bought and a new neighbor moved it. She is a statuesque black woman with three kids from age 9 -18 who was working from home even before the covid stuff took place.

My wife and her hit it off as did we. I liked seeing her boy riding his bike in the neighborhood playing with other kids, we found ourselves talking and chatting all during the summer about the plans for our homes, what going on with our kids etc.

About 5 months ago a Black Lives Matter sign went up in front of her house. I don’t know how familiar she is with the actual origins of the movement but as she moved from the south shore it was not odd to think a person from there would be politically to the left. I didn’t like it but it’s her house and what she puts on her property is her business. I wanted a Trump sign long ago myself but my wife has for years told me no political signs in the yard and that’s not a hill to die on (see tip #15) anyways these days a flag is as good as a Trump sign and frankly any person who knows, reads or googles me knows where I stand as I’m not particular shy about it.

Well Wednesday night the blizzard came, I drove home at midnight from work doing 30 on the highway and was relieved when I saw my wife’s car in the driveway since as a nurse she would have had to do a double if her relief didn’t make it in, The next morning the snow was still falling but all of us had to be to work so we started outside shoveling while my son with the bum leg got out the snow blower. The blower died after two minutes and no amount of tinkering could make it go for more than 10 seconds and there was still a bunch a lot to do and we all needed to leave

Enter our new neighbor. She said bluntly, to DaWife: “Don’t worry about it, do enough to get your cars out and I’ll snowblow the rest.

Sure enough when I got back home after working my to midnight shift everything I didn’t get in the back and all of the fount was snowblowed out which means that I actually have a day off today rather than a day of shoveling before me.

I’ve been very angry about this election, I’m angry about the theft of it (that theft isn’t from Trump it’s from me and 80 million others like me) I’m angry about the openness of said theft and the cowardice of those unwilling to call it out, I’m angry at the courts and the legislatures who have the power to stop it from I’m angry at the thought that I don’t know if my vote when cast actually is being counted for the person I’m voting for and as a Computer Science major, someone familiar with higher level math and as a Sicilian I’m particularly angry at those those who insult my intelligence by pretending or insisting it didn’t happen while the mathematical, statistical and physical evidence is in front of my face.

But I know this much, The Christian charity that my neighbor showed me yesterday demonstrated that while she may have a “Black Lives Matter” sign next to her front door, she decided a pair of old white Trump supporters mattered enough volunteer a hand to help us out in a moment that we needed it.

That is exactly the message of hope that I needed to see and the type that gives a devil like Screwtape fits:

The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. 

C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters # 6

Charity to those around you that you actually meet. As as long as I live in a neighborhood, a city and a country where stuff like this takes place (and I suspect it takes place a lot more than people realize) then regardless of how things turn out over the next four years (and how angry it makes it) American at it’s heart and in its soul will be OK.

The AMA dumps “Do No Harm”

Posted: December 15, 2020 by datechguy in culture
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There are many depressing things about what is happening right now but of all of them one of the worst is this.

 The American Medical Association (AMA), in a surprising move, has officially rescinded a previous statement against the use of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in the treatment of COVID-19 patients, giving physicians the okay to return to utilizing the medication at their discretion.

Previously, the AMA had issued a statement in March that was highly critical of HCQ in regards to its use as a proposed treatment by some physicians in the early stages of COVID-19. In addition to discouraging doctors from ordering the medication in bulk for “off-label” use – HCQ is typically used to treat diseases such as malaria – they also claimed that there was no proof that it was effective in treating COVID, and that its use could be harmful in some instances.

Let’s be blunt, the AMA is not changing its recommendation on HCQ because of some new medical breakthrough, they are doing so because now that the election is over it doesn’t matter of President Trump recommended and talked up the drug.

Hey if thousands had to die or suffer to get the result they wanted, well apparently you can’t make an omelet without killing a few Americans.

Via Don Surber who put it well:

The devil owns the AMA now, as he owns so many other American institutions.

In fairness given the abandonment and editing of the Hippocratic Oath and the willingness of doctors to recommend drastic surgery to children who want to change their sex something like this can’t be all that surprising.

Merely depressing.

Welcome to your post Christian society, may our society be happy in its choices choices.

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