Posts Tagged ‘reality’

The Dear School of Experience Visits A Survivor of Kibbutz Nir Oz 

Posted: December 15, 2023 by datechguy in culture, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, Uncategorized
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K’Mtar: [Alexander has just dropped an opponent in the Holodeck] Po’tajg! Po’tajg! Finish him. [Alexander drops his bat’leth and walks away. The Hologram Klingon gets up knife ready to kill him from behind] Freeze program. [To Alexander] You should have killed him when you had the chance.
Lt. Worf: Why did you not?
Alexander: I don’t know.
K’Mtar: Look at him! He did not care that you showed him mercy. He was going to kill you.
Lt. Worf: K’mtar, that is enough.
K’Mtar: If this was real, he’d be dead by now. 

Star Trek TNG Firstborn 1994 via chakoteya.net

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Ben Franklin Poor Richard Almanack 1758

Yesterday I talked about the problem of Gaza post Hamas, over at the daily links at Elder of Ziyon I saw this story and video that emphasizes that problem, a story that is both heartbreaking and maddening

“We thought that Palestinians are good people. All they want is peace and prosperity,” Lahav told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview from a hotel in this Red Sea resort city where she and most of her community were temporarily relocated. “It’s just that Hamas is forcing them to be in this aggressive situation.”

When terrorists first shook the door of her safe room on Oct. 7, Lahav was sure that she and her 22-year-old daughter were about to be killed. But a makeshift lock she had fashioned out of an oar and a vacuum cleaner thwarted three separate break-in attempts. The women lay in the darkened room for about 10 hours listening to sounds of automatic gunfire and grenade explosions. At one point, they heard a group of teenagers robbing their house.

Later, Lahav learned from other Nir Oz survivors that Gazan women and children as young as 10 years old had followed Hamas terrorists into the kibbutz, looting, helping the armed terrorists, and apparently enjoying themselves.

Here is the video

It’s heartbreaking because better than one in four of the people in her Kibbutz were killed or kidnapped. But it’s also maddening because this woman is in her 60’s and the evidence during her entire life has been that the Palestinians have wanted them dead, have cheered when terror attacks had taken place and only saw the Israeli peace camp as useful idiots to be exploited.

Yet it took the slaughter of her neighbors for her to learn this lesson and the only reason she and her daughter lived long enough to learn that lesson was that her makeshift lock held out.

How many of her neighbors would still be alive today if they had learned that lesson before Oct 7th?

And let’s ask two more important question to folks here in the states, questions whose answers I believe are just as clear:

  1. How many of those protesting in the streets today in NYC, DC and elsewhere would kill the Jews they encounter here if they thought they could get away with it?
  2. Is there any reason to believe they would or will stop with the Jews when they are done

I submit and suggest that the answer to question 1 is “Yes” and the answer to question 2 is “No” and the only reason you will not likely see this happen in the US is that the citizens of this country are the most heavily armed civilian population in the world today, possibly in history.

Which explains why the left wants us disarmed.

May Israel grow wiser from these event and may the west profit from this horrible example. Finally to those who don’t think this could happen here, I wish you the best of luck, may the dear school of experience never take residence in your town.

Update: She wasn’t alone in her naïveté and her reeducation

Why The Answer to Britt Hume’s Question For the Left is Easy (But not for the reason you might think)

Posted: October 6, 2023 by datechguy in Blame Biden Administration, culture
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Screwtape: If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance is increased tenfold.

C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters #12

Today I’ve been re-importing my hundreds of Big Finish Doctor Who CD’s that I’ve gathered over the last 15 years and in between I’ve been taking a peek at the news and noticed this excellent tweet from Britt Hume vis Twitchy concerning General Miley’s insistence that Joe Biden is “Alert” and “Sound”

Let’s for the sake of this piece stipulate that the General is using the same definition of “alert” and “sound” that Mr. Hume is (which given the Democrat/Media/Deepstate left’s redefining words for their purposes might be a leap) and let’s further stipulate that a leftist who sees this tweet also uses the same definition of said words that Hume is.

With those stipulations one might think that the answer to Mr. Hume’s question is rather obvious.

It is not.

That would seem an odd or even impossible thing to say. Given the evidence at hand it would seem impossible for any reasonable person to believe the general’s words, but you must understand that even if we did not live in an age where objective fact is under attack there is a choice to be made here for any leftist who seriously considered Mr. Hume’s question.

If he believes his eyes then such a leftist must acknowledge several things.

  1. That Joe Biden is not fit for office due to his mental state likely caused by age
  2. That the media/establishment left has been lying to him about said state for years.
  3. Conservatives who have been saying this for a while were telling the truth.

It is those last two things that are the real struggle here, because to acknowledge this opens up a Pandora’s box of questions about things that the left has believed without question and disbelieved without question. They would have to acknowledge their complicity in not only believing the lies but in advancing and promoting them socially.

In short they would have to see themselves in the light of truth and that light might not be a flattering one.

But consider the alternative:

If they choose to ignore the evidence and believe the General vs their eyes then none of those beliefs need be questioned. They can remain in their bubble and enjoy the social affirmation that said bubble offers and insures, free from guilt, free from responsibility, free from the need to look in the mirror and see themselves as they are. To quote Screwtape: “His aim will be to let sleeping worms lie.”

To many that might seem incredible and impossible but remember just this week the girlfriend of Ryan Carlson who saw him murdered right in front of her refused to give the police a description of the murderer for “social justice” reasons.

In short apparently the answer to Brit’s question for the left is in fact obvious not because the answer reveals an obvious truth, but because it supports a convenient lie being told to themselves. Unexpectedly of course.

Rather sad actually

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Serious Irony Alert Rapture and Bronny

Posted: July 25, 2023 by datechguy in catholic, Church doctrine
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Today I was thinking on what I was going to write when I saw yet another story about people thinking the “end times” or “rapture” will be this year.

Back in the 1970s, I used to joke that someone was going to write a book titled, Jesus Is Coming Back in the 1970s, only to publish a new and revised edition a few years later titled, Jesus Is Coming in the 1980s.

Little did I know that on January 1, 1988, Edgar Whisenant, a former NASA engineer, would publish 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. Hundreds of thousands of books were sold or given away, creating a national frenzy.

There is actually a long history of this (think the Millerites who became the 7th day Adventists when they stopped predicting the day the world would end) you would think that Christ explicitly saying:

But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.

Matt 24:36

would have put an end to this but it hasn’t so the foolish and the grifters continue to play “the end is near” game.

When I saw that piece I tweeted out what I always say to those preparing for the end times and the great tribulation:

If you are practicing your faith properly then the end times will have no fear. So stop worrying about the world’s end times and live the type of life that prepares you for your own.

Less than one minute after I tweeted that out News broke:

For those who don’t know Bronny James is the son of LeBron James the greatest playing in NBA history who is currently active (I’d take Bill Russell over him as the Goat). His father is one of the richest and most famous athletes in the world. Thanks to his skill and hard word he has achieved great things ins sport and was in the posittion to give his family all the best of everything. It’s been widely assumed that he was staying in the NBA so that he could play his final year with his son after he was drafted.

I suspect he would give all of that up to reverse today’s breaking news.

I wish the best for young Mr. James and his family but let this be a big reminder that not a single one of us, no matter how rich, how connected or how famous is promised tomorrow so the best advice in the world remains this: Get Baptized, Go to confession! Get yourself right with God today because it may be too late tomorrow.

Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven.

As Michigan’s “pronouns” bill advances, free speech is threatened

Posted: July 9, 2023 by John Ruberry in culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

“Most times you can’t hear ’em talk, other times you can
 All the same old clichés, is it woman, is it man?
 And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand.”
 Bob Seger, “Turn the Page.” 

Those lyrics, from legendary Michigan rocker Bob Seger, may turn out to be prescient, because the Michigan House of Representatives, which has a Democrat majority, passed a bill in June that, among other things, will impose a hefty fine or imprisonment, if a person maliciously refuses to use another person’s preferred pronoun. 

The bill, HB 4474, expands on a Michigan law that covers religion, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Newsweek noted that Dylan Mulvaney, a man who claims to be woman, said in a video a while back about people like me who misgender him, “I feel like that should be illegal, I don’t know. That’s just bad journalism.”

No, it’s not. Mulaney, an internet influencer who has done to Bud Light what Eric Idle’s S. Frog character did to Monty Python’s fictional Conquistador Coffee, is wrong, as he is on so many things, What I wrote in the previous paragraph is good journalism because it’s the truth. Sorry, wokesters, but men who “transition” into women do not have ovaries, do not have menstrual periods, and do not undergo menopause. Women who do the opposite do not have testicles, a prostate gland, or Y chromosomes. I could go on, but I don’t have to.

Some people need to simply follow the science. 

Except, maybe soon in Michigan, if its Senate passes HB 4474 and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, signs it into law, following the science and speaking out about it might get someone like me fined or worse. 

In her Senate confirmation hearing, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not–or in my opinion, would not–define what a woman is. But according to HealthyChildren.org, at around age two, toddlers know the difference between the two genders. Again, follow the science.

The headline of this blog post is colored red. How do I know? Because when I was at the age when I figured out what males and females are, my mother probably said something along these lines to me, “That color is red.” And that information was confirmed to me when I attended kindergarten.

Some things are that simple.

Well, it should be that simple. Transgendered people complain about being bullied. Well, bullying is wrong. I suppose Mulvaney considers it bullying when internet trolls visit his Instagram page and comments, “You’re a man.” Oh, a word for you trolls. Don’t you have anything better to do? Surely there is trash on a roadside near your home that needs to be collected.

On the flip side, in regard to gender, we are at a stage in America when someone says, “Dylan Mulvaney is a man” in mixed company–especially at work–it has to be spoken in whispered tones, sotto voce as the French say. 

Being labeled a transphobe–phobe, by the way means irrational fear–can get many people in trouble on the job. Or maybe soon in Michigan, getting fined or being imprisoned. And it’s not an irrational fear to lose out on a promotion or getting fired for being deemed a transphobe.

I call that bullying. 

As regular readers know, my wife was born in the Soviet Union, in Latvia. At school a number of decades ago, repeatedly, her teachers told her that Latvia, along with Estonia and Lithuania, voluntarily joined the USSR in 1940. Of course, that was a lie. Her parents knew it–and so did every adult in the Baltic States at that time. Yes, that includes the teachers. But my wife didn’t discover what really happened in 1940, beginning with learning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, until she reached adulthood.

During my wife’s childhood, adults in the Soviet Union were afraid of the repercussions of telling the truth. So my wife’s parents never discussed the USSR seizing the Baltic States with her until Mikhael Gorbachev was the Soviet leader.

In the New York Sun, Dean Karayanis, reminded me that Soviet citizens faced prison if they were caught spilling coffee on a picture of Joseph Stalin. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the Gulag Archipelago, spent eight years in the Gulags for criticizing Stalin in private letters, even though he took the precaution of using a codename for the dictator.

American society isn’t at that more frightening point yet. But Michigan just took a baby step in that direction. 

Or maybe we are there. Remember that Seger song? “And you always seem outnumbered, so you don’t dare make a stand.” Well, I’m making one. Is anyone else with me?

Fortunately, the new Michigan “pronouns” bill will almost certainly be challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. 

Which is another reason why I’m grateful for the 6-3 conservative majority on the US Supreme Court.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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