Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

The NYT GOP 100 the Next Lincoln Project or LCWR I’m betting on the later

Posted: May 12, 2021 by datechguy in catholic, culture, politics
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The rather amusing piece from the NYT via Redstate saying that the GOP risks losing 100 prominent republicans over Trump and start their own party is great fodder for the Time’s readership that wouldn’t know a conservative if it bit them.

The problem for these brave intrepid rebels is that they’re caught between two fires.

If there goal is to be the next Lincoln project and make a bundle for themselves and their family then it’s easy. They can form a party, they can get financed by the left and they can make proclamation that will get some coverage but unfortunately will not be all that newsworthy because they will in fact be a party with no actual voter base, no candidates running anywhere and no people actually bein led.

No what they really want to be are the unfaithful nuns that I wrote about years ago back in April 2013 when the Pope backed up the findings of the investigations (begun under Benedict) on Catholic Nuns in America:

The LCWR will not choose to leave the church, they will go along, slowly, struggling and resisting but they will go along. The moment they leave the church, they change from brave dissenters within the church to just another splinter group with their own set of beliefs and while the media will make a fuss the first day and maybe the first week, they would no longer be worthy of the pulpit that they would raise them on

And a year later I wrote about what Fr. Z said about what happened to one such group that did in fact leave:

Consider if you will the group NCAN, an even more radical splinter group of the LCWR, which has fulfilled Sr. Joan’s dream of being without canonical structure.  Their site is HERE, though it has not been updated since 2009 when they gave their coveted Margaret Ellen Traxler Award to Sr. Louise Lears, SC, whom then-Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis placed under interdict for her support of the ordination of women and her attending a fake “ordination”. These days the NCAN types are reduced to holding chat sessions in gated communities for three cats and a tumbleweed rather than in hotels for hundreds of sisters. For example, HERE is the flyer for a May 2012 meeting with the pro-choice Sr. Donna Quinn.  (See my post NUNS GONE WILD!)

As long as the NYT 100 remain in the GOP, they can speak as party members, attend GOP events and even CPAC with the tag (R) next to them. , you can have them on CNN or MSNBC or quote them as “Republican officials” when they hit the party or Trump or conservatives or any other GOP member who you know actually pushes the agenda that GOP voters want.

They will be the LCWR until they like them begin to die out.

The moment they leave that is no longer the case.

So it remains to be seen if they choose the former or the latter, I suspect they will choose the later because the leftists who would pay them to form their new party can still pay them sub-rosa for speaking engagements or phony book sales to have the money flowing.

Review: Season 1 of Shadow and Bone

Posted: May 2, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, entertainment
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By John Ruberry

Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s there was the hope, egged on by the music media, that soon “the next Beatles” would arrive. The Bee Gees, Badfinger, and the Knack were among those acts who failed to match the hype. And no band could match the Beatles’ level because even when they were together they were already legends. 

In that same time period there were even more “next Bob Dylans” heralded.

No one can supercede a legend.

Late last month the first season of Shadow and Bone began streaming on Netflix. 

And many are wondering if Shadow and Bone is the next Game of Thrones. 

Short answer? No. Longer answer? Not even close. And as HBO’s Game of Thrones has entered the world of legend, Shadow and Bone doesn’t have a chance. 

Call me sadistic, but I knew in the first episode of GoT, “Winter Is Coming,” that here was a series that broke the mold when Jamie Lannister pushed young Bran Stark from a high window ledge so to hide his sexual relationship with his sister, Cersei.

With Shadow and Bone you are exposed to an eight-episode muddled mess. 

The show is based on a trilogy of high fantasy books by Leigh Bardugo, and there are elements from two of her other works thrown in too. To understand what is going on you it seems you have to read all of these books first. And I’ve read none of them.

“Students,” I can see a teacher announcing, “your assigment is to read five books and then, only then, watch Shadow and Bone.” Uh, no.

The alternate world of Shadow and Bone is largely based on Russia of the late 19th century. The costume designers make the most of it and they deserve an Emmy nomination for their efforts. Soldiers wear fur ushankas and papakhas. Women don ornate dresses, the heads of civilian males are often topped with bowlers. While GoT and Lord of the Rings is rooted in the Middle Ages of western Europe, viewers here find themselves in the Russia of the Industrial Revolution. There are guns and a train. But no sword battles.

Ravka (Russia) is in the center of the continent and it’s separated by the Fold, a thick cloud wall inhabited by human-eating volcra, who are a cross between griffins and pterodactyls. Spoiler alert: there are no dragons. The Fold was created years earlier by an evil grisha, that is, a magic maker of Ravka. Maybe I’m a dope but it wasn’t until the third episode that I ascertained that the grisha were magicians. They are particularly adept at fire-starting. The grishas make up one of two armies of Ravka.

The central character of Shadow and Bone is Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), a woman in her late teens and a grisha who is half-Shu Han. The Shu Han nation, which we don’t encounter here, is the show’s version of China and they are enemies of Ravka. To the north is Fjerda, a stand-in for Scandinavia. We see the Fjerdans when they fight the Ravkans.

An orphan–just like Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins–Alina encounters racism because of her foreign looks. She has a puppy love relationship with a fellow orphan, military tracker Malyen “Mal” Oretsev (Archie Renaux), they’ve known each other since childhood. Alina is a mapmaker for the First Army, the non-magical one–and man oh man, could viewers use a decent map here to get a grip on the geography of Shadow and Bone. Only one is briefly shown. More time is devoted to Alina burning maps.

We quickly learn that Alina, like Harry Potter, is a Chosen One. The revelation brings her to a grisha leader, General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), and the capital city of Ravka, where she meets the king, who looks a lot like Czar Alexander III. Alina is declared a Sun Summoner, that’s a really big deal you see, and then begins her training to fully utilize her powers.

Word spreads about Alina–all the way to the island nation of Kerch–which is Shadow and Bone’s version of the Netherlands, complete with its largest city, hedonistic Ketterdam, which parallels another city. Do I really need to spell out which one? We meet three underworld characters there, Kaz Brekker (Freddy Carter), Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman), and Jesper Fahey (Kit Young) who leave Ketterdam to kidnap Alina for a one-million kruge reward. The three criminals have an intriguing dynamic and they are more captivating characters than Alina and Mal. 

If you like elaborate clothes, eye-catching special effects, and being transporated to an alternative yet familiar civilization, then Shadow and Bone could be for you. But if you expect fully-developed characters and a coherent plot line, then stay away. 

If magic and the 19th-century interests you then instead I recommend streaming Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell on Amazon. In this series, among other things, the Duke of Wellington is aided by a magician to fight the French during the Napoleonic Wars. 

As for the grisha–if they are so powerful how come they are captured with relative ease?

Shadow and Bone is rated TV-14 for violence, adult situations, and brief nudity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

DaTechGuy off DaRadio Livestream Spontaneous Podcast the Civil War you don’t want and Cui Bono

Posted: April 28, 2021 by datechguy in blogs, business, crime, culture, DaTechGuy's Quick Thoughts, economy, News/opinion, podcast, trade
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Today I have some free time so it’s time for another spontaneous livestream

You can watch here

Topics will include

  1. The Civil war that you don’t want (or why people don’t understand why this is a bad thing.
  2. The Cold Civil war and what it means
  3. Cui Bono from the Biden Administration
  4. Stalling stalling stalling
  5. Reaping meeting sowing on police protection for Democrat cities

It will all start around 9:40 AM EST hope to see you here

To reign, divide. This is the goal of critical race theory

Posted: April 25, 2021 by John Ruberry in culture, education, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

I’d like to add my thoughts to Christopher F. Rufo’s superb piece in City Journal that attacks critical race theory. First an explanation of what that is. In short, critical race theory is the belief that America is systematically racist. Yes, you’ve heard that term before, systemic racism. White Americans created this nation, according to critical race theory, primarily to perpetuate white supremacy and they are doing so today.

Wrong on so many counts. 

While many of the Founding Fathers were slave holders some were abolitionists. A Civil War–two of my ancestors fought for the Union by the way–was fought to end slavery. But since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 became law, it’s hard to argue that America is systemically racist. Yes, there is still racism among Americans but most of us live, work, and interact with people of other races without incident–even better, many think nothing of it.

When I was a child intermarriage among the races was rare. While Americans still are much more likely to marry within their own race, in 1967, when the US Supreme Court ruled that laws in some states that banned inter-racial marriage as unconstitutional, only three percent of Americans married someone outside their race. By 2015 those numbers had risen to 15 percent.

There is much progress to be made–there should be no racism. 

If America is truly “rigged” or “fixed” for the white man, then why is our southern border being overwhelmed by migrants from Mexico and Central America? Why do immigrants from Asia or Africa continue to settle in the United States?

Critical race theory, which is an offshoot of Marxism, is being taught at our schools. While there is some pushback against this indoctrination but there needs to be more, especially since the Biden administration supports critical race theory. Opponents who speak out against this toxicity should be prepared to be called racist if they are white–or naive fools if they are not. The use of kneejerk false accusations against those with other ideas is one of the many weapons of the left.

One goal of the practicioners of critical race theory is to divide us into oppressors (white) and oppressed (minority). Divide and rule is an ancient tactic of totalitarians. The next step for these self-righteous ones is to divide people into even more groups, making rule by one person, or one idealogy, an easier task. Those other groups could be rural, urban, suburban, southern, western, and more.

Left-handers versus right-handers, anyone?

The use of such tactics ironically mirrors who the “woke” persistently vilifies, the colonizers.

Speaking of the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s on NPR yesterday, former UN senior adviser Elizabeth Nyamayaro said, “And a lot of that also had to do with lots of colonial policies that – you know, I grew up in Zimbabwe, and we were colonized by Britain. And one of the devices that was used to control the massive population was to split us – you know, split us into different groups, give us different rights so that whilst we fought amongst ourselves, you know, those in power would continue to rule over all of us.”

Supposedly in the fifteen century, Louis XI of France said, “To reign, divide.” In the workplace I’ve had a few psychotic bosses who “managed” this way.

Is this the American we want to live in? Us versus them? You versus me?

Never forget, you are not automatically a racist if you oppose critical race theory. You simply are against that divisive poison.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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