One further note.

I expect to write about church matters very sporadically, if at all. I've said all I can say, and there are few left to be persuaded. 

Strike that: there are few left who can even be spoken to.

While it's hard to believe after the Conciliar Gospel Hour dropped no-fault quickie annulments on us (note especially the pernicious et cetera), 

October's Vatican 2.5 may prove a rude shock to some people, and maybe then it will be worth broaching again.

Other than that--screw it.

Sounds familiar.

The events of the fifties [1850s] offered a telling demonstration that the attitudes of various groups in a society toward upholding the law is in direct proportion to their approval or disapproval of the law which is to be upheld.

--David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 296.

So, anybody want to talk about politics?

I'll start.

 

Saddest Three Word Poem, Michigan Edition.

Same/
Old/
Lions...

The Cubs of the NFL, and the reason I'm relieved to have other things to do on Sundays.

On the other hand, I have cause for hope down the I-94 in Ann Arbor, which is more than welcome. Still, the Wolverines will exceed my expectations if they win 8 games this year, so realism is the order of the day.

 

From the Moral Relativism Files.

Our nation's leaders have deemed that those who intervene to prevent or punish the rape of boys in Afghanistan must themselves be punished:

“'The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,' said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. 'But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.'

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

After the beating, the Army relieved Captain Quinn of his command and pulled him from Afghanistan. He has since left the military.

Four years later, the Army is also trying to forcibly retire Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Special Forces member who joined Captain Quinn in beating up the commander.

'The Army contends that Martland and others should have looked the other way (a contention that I believe is nonsense),' Representative Duncan Hunter, a California Republican who hopes to save Sergeant Martland’s career, wrote last week to the Pentagon’s inspector general."

So, I was asked...

"Are you over 50?"

--The ticket-seller at my eldest son's football game yesterday.

Sigh...

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'/

We are not now that strength which in old days/

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are...

 

 

For the curious.

I have deactivated my Facebook account. The medium became toxic and I need to dump it for the foreseeable future. To crib a phrase: it is a wretched hive of smug and stupidity.

Social media has its merits, but--for me, at least--they are far outweighed by the negatives. If you need to get in touch with me, here's the e-mail: dhprice2@hotmail.com.

Back to blogging--maybe. 

Fun with memes.

I'm not sure how I feel about Kim Davis, but here's my rebuttal to the too-cute-by-half "did their jobs" meme.

Unfair comparison? Sure, Godwin's and all that. But can we at least agree that there comes a point where you cannot leave your conscience with your timecard when you punch in?

If our sensibilities are going to be entirely utilitarian in these uncertain days of the Republic, then we will only be hastening its end. Careful what you bay for.

A side note: what's interesting is that the "do your job" folks overlap a lot with the people who call her a c--t or laugh at the thought of her being raped in prison. One of the things that really poisoned me about social media.

It's been an illuminating summer.

A horse is a horse, of course...

One of the benefits of a semi-classical education is that you can find in the ancients metaphors for our times.

Anyway. My family is well and the books are still being indexed. A lot of Civil War-era reading of late, spurred by an excellent Teaching Company course on Lincoln's rhetoric. I finished an excellent biography of Grant, a solid-if-imperfect biography of Sheridan and a where-was-your-editor biography of Lincoln.

If you want to know about the run-up to the Civil War, you will never do better than this masterwork by the late David Potter. In addition to being a superb historian, he was also an excellent, sometimes even puckish, prose stylist. Discussing the horrific flare-up (and almost-as-rapid flame-out) of nativism in the mid-1850s, he describes the risible Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk as "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of nativism."

That might sound bad except that Potter forthrightly states that the titanic success of Uncle Tom's Cabin has nothing to do with that book's decidedly modest literary merits. I'm not quite done with The Impending Crisis yet, but it is utterly superb so far, quite worthy of the Pulitzer it won (sadly for Potter, posthumously).

"Theology of Love," eh?

Theology of the Boner is more like it. If you're ever curious about what you can get away with and still call yourself Catholic, take a look at the Huns--it's a lot. Just take it easy on that whole love of Tradition thing, Cryptolefebvrian.

Me, I'm just kicking back and watching it burn this year. Heather and the kids are doing well, I've only obliterated one lawnmower blade so far this year, and we've got stuff to read. 

And even my fifteen year old Buick Regal has stopped trying to poison or rattle me to death. Though I destroyed one of its tires on I-94. And I do mean destroyed:

Oh, and I lost and miraculously found my smartphone along Eight Mile Road last week. An age of technological wonders...which I enjoy. 

Coupled with burgeoning human wilfulness...which I don't.

 Sounds exciting!

So, how y'all been?

The political landscape, going forward.

Hey, social conservatives, good news, bad news. You want the bad news first?

OK.

The bad news is the Left wants to destroy you. 

The good news is that the GOP will stand right by your side and tell you why you deserve it.

The elites know what is best for you, and you’ll like it. 

Say what you will about Adulterous Arnie, it is crystal-clear he's speaking for the establishment.
And if you keep supporting people who are willing to sacrifice you in the name of expediency, then you will deserve it, at least in part.

So stop supporting them. The GOP establishment--policy-setting and control of the party machinery-- is entirely in thrall to corporate interests.

The Republicans stand for the following principle: they will faithfully wield power on behalf of corporate interests. Full stop. Everything else is negotiable--and usually negotiated away at the first hint of inconvenience--meaning, bad press. Conscience rights, abortion restrictions, state control of health care, fiscal sanity, doing something about ending the stream of exploitable workers in the worst labor market in history--all of that is merely boilerplate to keep you going to the polls, donating to them, stuffing envelopes and manning the GOTV machinery. 

The entire platform consists of empty word service and screaming "Hillary, Booga Booga! You don't want that, do you, rube?! Vote for us and we'll protect you from the Bad People!! Hillary!"


And then you dutifully elect the GOP and they turn around and round file your concerns, fund/administer everything enacted by the Bad People!! and happily cut deals with them on behalf of the Corporate Masters.

If you're looking for some greater principle, you're going to be disappointed. It's become painfully, grotesquely obvious by now. If you keep settling for getting stabbed in the back because you somehow rationalize that it's better than being stabbed in the front, again, you deserve it. When push comes to shove, they shove you. Right out of the picture.

If the corporate string-pullers don’t like it–they don’t like spending limits, abortion restrictions (gotta keep the underpaid women in the office) or the slightest control of the border, either (need that exploitable labor)–it doesn’t happen.


The GOP has spoken, and they want to be moderate-ish Democrats.

So, stop being a cheap date and start actively fighting them. Support a living wage--Walmart, et al are happy to sacrifice your rights, so kick them in their dangling bottom line, good and hard. Plus, it's the right thing to do, and you can usually get the Dems to agree to exclude the smaller employers. 

The financial sector is sitting on a monstrous pile of money, borrowed from your grandkids by Ben Bernanke to prop up People Who Count, murdering the finances of people who have the slightest sense of thrift. Start taxing it back. Make them disgorge it. 

Too big to fail, my ass: time for a new, robust dedication to anti-trust. Yes, you'll find yourself on the side of the Bad People!! But you will sure as Hell have the horrified attention of the GOP. 

It's not the left you have to teach to fear you--they're insane, and could care less. It's our former routine backstabber "friends" who have to learn a hard lesson. Starting right now. Oderint dum metuant.

 And you just might make the world a better place in the process.