Cultural Confusion I Confess

I confess to being confused---no doubt my idealogical adversaries will welcome such an admission---and perhaps make good use of it...nonetheless, what I am confused about and perhaps you can help me, is our sudden puritanical chaste culture that advertises "Truvado" (is it just a linguistic coincidence it sounds like a marriage of 'true' and 'bravado'?) an HIV prevention drug and then the accompanying video proceeds to show two young black men rubbing each other's hands in not so much a brotherly manner if you know what I mean---actually even a man and woman wouldn't have been allowed to be so portrayed in our previous repressed Victorian times.
So I again confess I am confused. I wonder if our culture is suddenly schizophrenic. Or could even something more insidious be going on? The suddenness of the great avalanche of righteousness leveled against the 'sexual misconduct' ---even outside the boundaries of any statutes of limitations---has me rubbing my chin. Claims of harassment have seemed to become quite the fashion. I might have expected such a fight for purity to have come out of perhaps the Religious Right or Jerry Falwell's church, or a Fulton Sheen kind of orthodox bishop; but from the Heffnarian hedonistic bishops of the Left is not what I expected. Maybe it is because I've just been reading too much about Newspeak in Orwell's prophecy. Thus, I might have become a little too oversensitive to it---maybe there really isn't no manipulation of language. But I can't help be puzzled at the word 'harassment' now in many minds, especially how it has morphed into a synonym of 'rape'. I wish I had paid more attention to my linguistics because I thought that the one word Is fairly vague and comprising everything from nodding a hello, asking a phone number/ email, smiling at, winking at, and of course the more egregious offences; and 'rape' on the other hand is a rather specific act and crime. I just wonder what is happening with language. But at least we have gotten a little break in the sudden proliferation of 'harassment' and haven't heard the recent catchwords 'racism' and 'racist' in well it seems a heck of a long time. Yes, even after this rant I confess I am still confused.

Hailing Harassment

I find my social science curiosity is piqued in the volume of news hailing harassment from all corners. And all from the New Moralists ---does anybody see the irony? Irony in that this new phariseeism and harassment hunt is from the very culture-elite that have been preaching in favor of 'sexual misconduct' since the so called 'sexual revolution' and 'free love' and seek at every turn to expose children to inescapable sex---safe sex to be sure---which they could in no way be expected to abstain from---say since they came into that institution called marriage--well, something just doesn't seem to add up. I mean the free love folks are suddenly fanatical about shutting down this wonderful utopian world of what in the old days I can't imagine was at all so common---unless of course one took a Women's Studies course. And yet I believe such folk would still see that the sexual revolution was so necessary for our freedom from our repressing religions. Yes, I'm sure the New Moralists aren't trying to take down the freedom of fun without borders which they had fought so hard for. Yes, such freedoms of course must remain. Such things as casual hookups, friends with benefits, gender transformations, Delilah dress.

All this to say, something strikes me as not fitting what I would expect. I feel a Columbo question coming on. You know we have this sudden crusade for---well not purity---this idea seems not in the vocabulary of the New Moralists---I guess one could advocate for say, harassment free zones. Kind of in the same way that we have created much needed hate free zones. Yes, when harassment has risen to such heights it is good to know that we have the New Moralists making sure we behave ourselves. Didn't we not long ago have a similar crusade against bullying? It is certainly bracing for the spirit to see how we are being directed to be righteous which was at one time long ago religion's domain.

Stuffed Pepper Surgery

Visiting my dad and stepmother yesterday. My stepsister made them both a nice stuffed pepper plate. It was good to see my stepmother eat again without neuralgia jaw pain. She had just had the nerve deadened and was feeling better. It was fine to hear her happy voice again. And it was especially nice to see my dad cutting the stuffed peppers meticulously into the tiny pieces as if he were doing delicate surgery, bringing the knife back and forth until the pepper was into pieces that my stepmother could eat with the least effort. That was a little episode I am thankful to have witnessed. I am glad to have such an act of Ἀγάπη in my mind.

One Less House Sparrow

Today enjoying a good conversation and the birds, all house sparrows until...until a hawk dropped out of nowhere at our feet and snatched one of the sparrows, flew off, six inches off the ground through a maze of juniper. Afterwards my friend and I remarked how it didn't look like a blue jay could get through such a maze---and here a hawk with his prey in his talons through the maze as if he had built-in radar. Amazing the design of the world!

Conspiracy Theorist?

At fellowship after church a parishioner says to me she is "not a conspiracy theorist". She says it in response to the great harvest of harassment claims from women who gain a video-cam memory after decades---all just in time to cripple a candidate for the senate, an appointee for the Court, conservative front-runners during presidential campaigns, mass shootings of casinos and churches that become so deadly quiet after the briefest of news cycles (one might be tempted to wonder why such silence over what were never called hate crimes), the "peaceful" protests that we are told happen organically at so many Trump events before and after his election, the sudden arise of iconoclasts who march upon statues in a secular crusade to clean the South of her heroes, and on and on. I respond with: "First can we ask do conspiracies happen? It seems that not only do they happen but conspiracies are quite common.. When I used to watch the NFL (past tense) I knew that each team every week conspired to get an advantage over the other team. A pitcher and catcher in baseball conspire for a 100 pitches a game to get a batter out. An army conspires with maps and strategy and decoys and spies. A mother conspires to get her daughter ambition enough to tidy her room. Two antagonists in a chess match conspire for checkmate. It isn't at all rare. It is quite the reverse. So I wonder of those that make one feel as though he has become cognitively unbalanced to hold such a view---could even this in itself be part of the conspiracy? Might we indeed be after all propagandized pawns in the chess match?

The USCCB and its Urgency Over America's Runaway Racism

On hearing what the USCCB is currently regarding as their priority, the runaway racism that is endemic here in America, that is the America in which so many people, and many of various colors, seek to come. The Columbo in me has to ask before departing out the door. "There's just one problem, Bishop Kaepernick. I have, something nagging at me. I know I'm not very bright and so if you will enlighten me. Why would such people, the non-Caucasians, risk so much to come to a land of Nazi concentration camps and KKK bonfires? Why would they come to a land where the Gestapo in blue are looking for people of differing pigmentation to eliminate at a simple traffic stop for a blown tail-light? Somehow I get the sense, Bishop Kaepernick, that there is a much more real racism taking place. Might it be that the disposal of the littlest of the human race in clinics in every major city in the country be something that should be a priority---and it goes without saying getting people to know Jesus Christ? In our current priorities might we be taking our cues for our sins from football players and the various Saul Alinskys in our midst? Shouldn't we be bending the knee for and to other things?

Facebook Caution

One can't be too careful these days. So there were a few posts here on facebook I really liked and you know there is that one emoticon of the heart. Well I am no way neurotic about Big Brother (or now I guess one could say in lieu of the harassment accusations "Big Sister") of betraying my likes or loves out in the open. I don't think it's neurotic at all in being cautious in using the heart emoticon. Just makes common sense in our current Scarlet Letter culture. And come to think of it even the 'like' button might be too 'revealing' (I even hesitate to use this word). And don't think I'm going to the realm of extreme paranoia in not ever using the 'angry' emoticon. You use that and chances are very good you go into the database. And because I haven't always been so wise in refusing to use these emoticons that can, I know, be used against me, I've been having recurrent anxiety. I had thought of running for the high office of school committee but I'm afraid to keep my sanity and the instantaneous infamy I will already bow out. I really have to as I do believe I have liked a past post in favor of the 10 Commandments being a good rule for life, and I do believe I might have even 'liked' a few posts which weren't as tolerant and diverse as they could have been. So you can see it is the most prudent choice to withdraw my name that I trust isn't too damaged already. Oh, maybe not for I tilt my head and I can hear the accusations already.

The New Hypnopaedia

In Brave New World, Huxley's Director of BNW mentions hypnopaedia, the conditioning process done to infants in the womb---the constant repetition of ideological 'truths' which implant themselves indelibly in the embryonic minds and go completely unquestioned such as "Even Epsilons are useful". I think we have something similar today. Suggest a slander and keep on suggesting it and say it from different angles and announce it again with a different nuance, and keep using the word 'victim' and show the forty year vintage of tears spilling forth from the perfectly timed tear ducts. And alas you have belief that never even has to go through the filter of oath.

Accusation False

An accusation should it prove false should be a crime worthy of prison time. I do think that would dry many eyes of their tears that have been bottled up for forty years

Whatsoever Things are Good

Reading, writing, hiking. Planting flowers. Raising chickens. Studying the stars. Listening to a little girl reading a fairy tale. Watching a boy play baseball. Taking a walk alone in the woods. Discovering a new tree you didn't know yesterday. Watching birds. Memorizing a sonnet. Thinking about God. How could anyone be bored?

The Evolution of a Football Fan

After the kneeling of some of the NFL players on Veterans day weekend I went from being not a fan anymore to being an anti-fan forevermore.

Stale News and News Forever Fresh

I find it a bit disconcerting that the news of 26 people massacred in a baptist church (was it ever called a 'hate crime'?) seems to have become stale news while so many seem outraged over an accusation against a man that has stood with courage and the loss of career in order that a monument of God's Law would itself go unmolested. I wonder why the outrage for the one seems so ephemeral and the outrage against the other seems to bespeak an age of scarlet letter puritanism from the unlikliest corner of society so many of whom seek to encourage perversity. This strikes me as being fueled by something other than bringing us all to chaste purity and closer to what the poor baptists faithful were doing before they entered into glory.

The New Commandments and Judge Roy Moore

Does any thinking person who isn't soaked thoroughly in the secular ideology imagine that had Roy Moore refused to remove a monument dedicated not to the old stale commandments of Judeo Christian society, but instead one dedicated to the new commandments of our modern libertine lifestyles there would be any of these allegations? Had his commandments been of diversity, tolerance, equality (doesn't this one jarr against the diversity mandate?), he would be hailed instead of hated? Had he labled himself a co-exister, an evangelist for borderless countries, a hate-free holier than thou, a beligerant against the bigots, a dealer in cannibis over tobacco, a pusher of Marcuse's polymorphous perversity, a grammar school teacher teaching the values of safe sex, a devotee of Heffnarian hedonism---we would be hailing him as an uninhibited hero and worthy of all glory and honor. He more than likely would even hold office as long as anyone from say, the worthy country of Chapaquitic.

The Improved Technique for the Controlled

For St Mary's men's group I read a bit from the forward to Aldous Huxley's dystopia. The phrase that I had no need to emphasize provoked great discussion. It was a phrase which the controllers would use: "...a greatly improved technique of suggestion". Seems to ring true today of our own brave new world controllers.

Writing the Scarlet Letter Yet Again

Somehow I find it interesting that allegations against good men never seem to go stale even after fourty years. And I find it interesting as well that Heffnarian hedonists are suddenly so concerned with sexual purity while they advocate sex ed in the schools and pass around condoms like they were candy to our children.

BLM

Baptist Lives Matter. May these dear souls be welcomed into the Kingdom of our sweet Lord Jesus.

My Cousin, Dear Soul

Our family has just had a great loss. My cousin, Laurie, was a dear soul and loved God and one of my favorite memories of her is that I was traveling through South Carolina and visited her in Greenwood where she was doing some religious work and we enjoyed long conversations about God. It seemed we couldn't exhaust our enthusiasm for Him. Another long ago memory was I remember my Gramma would often remark how 'little Laurie' came for a visit when she was very little. It was winter and there was so much snow that only her stocking hat could be seen bobbing over the snow banks when she came for a visit all on her own. I'm also thankful that my cousin, Shirley her sister, and her best friend, Doreen, got to see her before she passed away. Enjoy the embrace of our Lord, dear Laurie. His perpetual Light was what you were in love with.

All too Common At Morning Mass

It seems to be becoming all to common for the first words out of the priest's mouth at morning Mass to be..."We pray for the victims of yesterday's horrific act..." And this latest case was an attack on worshipers in a baptist church in Texas. I will not echo the previous president that God give us wisdom to rid ourselves of the weaponry so present in our country (Mr. Obama didn't seem so concerned to beseech God about the other innocents that get terminated in clinics which I don't imagine God was quite comfortable with) So I must take the previous president to task over his citing weaponry? Really. After all wasn't it weaponry that kept the carnage from being even greater? (Wasn't he perpetrator kept from killing (I prefer this word to "shooting" as hunters shoot, kids shoot marbles)) more by a good man with a weapon?) Do we still think these killings are the result of weaponry? or might it be that there is now an atmosphere of hate created by those who label the religious, those who seek to love God and dare to have opinions about morality, as haters? Isn't it they who have become free game for all the slander and insults and yes, hatred from the Tolerant? I can even imagine in the head of the killer (not shooter---does anyone imagine he would've found another "weapon" of choice had he not had a gun? Maybe a rental truck?) that he would've thought that because of the atmosphere of hatred against the religious, against republicans, against the conservative, against those who represent traditional morality and virtues, that he might have felt he would be regarding as a hero in culling the world of yet more of these superstitious Jesus-freaks. After all aren't we better relieving the world of religion and making morality completely new? I'm afraid we are finding out now what this new morality means.

Yes, the world is changing when hearing the priest at morning Mass give a prelude about the most recent carnage becomes almost expected. Of course few see this trend has anything to do with the anti-theistic atmosphere that has been in progress over the past generations (especially the past 8 years). May we wake to the fact that as Dostoevsky said, "Without God all things are permissible." I'm afraid we are finding out the hard way what these words really mean. The Good News is there is a Solvent out there to sponge out the writing on the wall. And it can be found in the Church's chalice.

May modesty, curtesy, chivalry, morality, virtue, goodness, a man tipping a hat or bowing to the lovely femininity of a maiden, come back into style. May it be so.

 

 

Lucanus's Question

From Miss Taylor Caldwell's Dear and Glorious Physician. (I imagine few publishers (if any) today would have the courage to publish these words of the protagonist, Lucanus. The question, I think, would be fascistly kept from being asked in print. Though Lucanus speaks of ancient Rome his question of the decay of culture seems quite relevant.)

"Lucanus, though a physician, was freshly uncomfortable and embarrassed. So this is what the emancipation of Roman women had led to, this vulgar and unabashed wantonness, this witless shrieking, this half-drunken quarelling, this contentious chatter of business, gossip and politcs, this effrontery, this noisy insistence! He thought of Aurelia and his mother, Iris, skilled in household duties, gentleness, the care of children, the cherishing of husbands. They might have known little of Virgil or Homer, nor could they have discussed miliitary campaigns or legal suits of prominence in the public courts, as these women had done earlier, but they could bring joy and peace to a home, and honor, and their children and their husbands revered them, and divorce and adultery were unknown. Lucanus mused. Did a nation decline and decay when women won dominance and when no door of law, business or politics was closed to them, or did the dominance of women merely indicate that a nation was decaying?" (p. 319)

The Interogation

Another terror attack. This time in New York. This by way of a rental truck which this "soldier of the Caliphate"  plowed into pedestrians on what I imagine the victims had thought was a peaceful bike path. Well this "soldier of the Caliphate" was shot in the abdomen by one of those men in blue who the NFL is taking the knee against. But be assured Sayfullo is recuperating quite nicely under lovely care by the doctors and nurses. He even requested to hang an ISIS flag in his hospital room which certainly seems like quite a reasonable request. Of course only when he is completely well will he have to undergo questioning. We are still trying to figure out why. It is a sublime mystery. Anyway, eventually will come an interrogation. (Please excuse the harsh word).  I couldn't help think what the interrogation might be like given our training in tolerance and diversity and compassion for those who cull the excess population of Americans and, in this case, tourists visiting from other countries. Maybe the questioning might go something like this: 

"You know don't you, Mr. Sayfullo Saipov, that you have been charged to have carried out---shall we say---a rather inappropriate act." 

"Allahu Akbar."

"Yes, I hear you and I respect your religious convictions. I must add too as a preliminary that should you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable or ill at ease or discriminated against, or feel any racial bias, that you will let us know."

"Allahu Akbar."

"Yes, in  no way let this questioning be construed at all as a critique of your religion or even of your status as a guest here. Also these questions I wish to offer in no way question your continued right to reside in this country with all the attendant benefits. And if you feel we are casting any aspersions on the inherent rights of refugees to enter and stay freely and to hang flags of  choice in hospital rooms or on their rented trucks---this can certainly be construed as a constitutional right which you would be completely in your rights to claim. And of course should you feel in the least that you need a lawyer we would get you one of your choice who would certainly be duly paid for by the most tolerant taxpayer. By all means also keep in mind that we, the reluctant interrogators of refugees, ever appear as oppressors, or those who exemplify white privilege, we may call ourselves to account.  For indeed before proceeding I wish to apologize for all the colonization, the evil this country has exported. It is ever a wonder that so many wish to come here!  That set aside, I wish to bring to your attention the media which has already sought to brand this as yet another case of a problematic president. You will be no doubt quite happy to hear that Mr. Trump has tweeted for your execution! This just goes to show that he, and not you, are of the haters. I'm quite sure if we had the eight deceased back they would readily forgive and express a distaste for any of the Islamophobia which we, through the media outlets, are putting our energy into fighting. (I apologize for this too masculine word). Yet, I wish to assure you of your right to present yourself as the true victim in this whole unfortunate event and I too believe that so much trouble can be traced to past Republican administrations. They are the rabid source of the absolutist patriarchy that has chained the Third World to colonial poverty. These of course are the real victim groups that have arisen from our corrupt colonization which originated back with the imperialism of Columbus." 

"Allahu Akbar." 

"Indeed. And all this to say, I wish to couch my questions in completely inoffensive language and to employ "please" not in any way a paternalistic tone but rather as a politeness among equals. Otherwise should any term that proceeds from me to be deemed offensive, racist, derogatory, negative, phobic, intolerant, or without proper deference to diversity, you have all the right to turn me in as the hater. And let me assure you that this place of questioning is a Hate Free Zone, and thus you are free to answer the questions in whatever way you wish for we pride ourselves here to be a relativist people and don't get hung up on absolutist rigidity. Again whatever way you feel you wish to answer will be greeted with a maraschino cherry for your sundae in thanks for your cooperation. Also you will be allowed further free education and continued health care,  and last but not least we would not hamper your return to all the rights accorded to a refugee and guest of our tolerant home.