Month: March 2005

An attempt to explain tyrrany

Interesting post on governmental “distributed stupidity” over at Samzidata. Read it, then come on back and read my response. I’ll wait.

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OK, back now? Here’s my response to both the post itself and a comment made by a reader on the site. I think you can figure the context. I’m too lazy to re-write it, so you’ll just have to take the comment as I made it on that site.

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“I don’t like the idea of ‘entrepreneur’ being used to describe such people. I get the idea and I agree with you, but an entrepreneur is someone who satisfies a need or want which is noble and hence valued whereas the products of the people you describe are shunned.”–Bernie

Matt MacIntosh (someone else leaving a comment) rightly points out that the problem is that the products of the political class are not shunned. And neither is the political class itself. And it’s not a right or left “fervor” problem. It’s simply a political class problem created by and encouraged by a lazy, sub-literate, greedy electorate that continues to reward such behavior by the political class. Sure, some of the rascals get thrown out—”Dascheled” as it were—but only the most egregious examples and only when it’s not going to impact political business as usual. And yes, every now and then cream rises, but how rare and shocking is the idea of a decent person of unusual ability entering the political class?

This idea of “distributed stupidity” is nothing new, of course. A good term for the over-arching subjects of “Departmental Ditties” and Barrack Room Ballads”? The concentration of evil and stupidity in the political and civil servant class is something Kipling dealt with extensively. Particularly apropos might be these lines from “A Servant When He Reigneth”—

Looking for a recipe? Go away.

This isn’t a recipe but a description of a process and some ingredients. If your OCD is outa control and you absolutely have to have a recipe for Whatever Stew, go away.

I wanted to make some stew. Here’s what I had.

Some leftover dregs of a moderately good chili. I’d already gotten all the solids (whatever beans and meat were left) out of the bottom of a pot of chili and made burritos. Since it’d been a “wetter” pot of chili than usual, I was left with a buncha juices. Beef, bean and even pork (from the beans which were leftover pintos cooked with ham hocks) juices with delicious Anaheim chili and cummin and all the other good chili stuff.

I also had plenty of garlic, onion, celery, canned (diced) tomato, red potatoes and other odds and ends.

I dug some frozen “Italian” meatballs outa the freezer, cos I wanted at least a little meat in it and I didn’t have any roast beef handy–well, I had a little left over from chili makings, but not enough.

See how this is shaping up?

5-6 medium potatoes chopped into big pieces. Half a yellow onion (it was left over from garnishes to a couple of different meals, slices for hamburgers, etc.). One large clove of garlic.

Rabbit trail: One of the times when I’ll abandon mincing garlic with my chef’s knife is when I’m making stew. A garlic press really “juices” the thing nicely, really bombing the stew with LOADS of garlic flavor. Nice.

Carrots? Chunk ’em in. LOTS of chopped celery. No, more than that. No, use more.

🙂

All that other stuff mentioned above. Just dump it in and add water to where you’ll have enough. How much? Don’t ask me; this is NOT a recipe; it’s a process.

Rest of the process? Oh, brought it to boil in an 8-quart “waterless” pot. Turned the burner down to “it this thing still on?” and let it stay warm for a couple of hours. Went back and added a can of whole green beans I’d noticed sitting all on its lonesome in the pantry. Cranked in a little freshly-ground pepper. Black and pink. (The pink is halfway between green and black in “ripeness” and has a kinda flowery overtone. Nice.) Don’t ask me how much pepper. It’s not a recipe; it’s a process. (Actually, if you have to ask how much pepper, just use more. You’ll grow to love it. Or not.)

I guess that’s it. I suppose I ought to pop some corn muffins in the oven or dump the fixings for a loaf of wheat bread in the bread machine, now. I’ve already tasted this rendition of Whatever Stew and it passes muster.

Yum.

Carnival of the Recipes #29 is Up

Check it out at Rocket Jones. Rounding up the usual suspects for another tasty plot.

I know I’ll be cokking some of Triticale’s Crockpot Breakfasts. And the slideshow of Helen’s Roast is pretty compelling, too. The Beercan Chicken, Shepherd’s Pie and—shoot, lotsa recipes that fit my criteria (tasty, nutritious and not a lot of fuss). Just check it out.

So the Imperium has released Martha Stewart. Now what?

I know no one who states the case better:

“Lest we forget: She was jailed for making false statements, not under oath, to Federal Officers. One of those statements was to protest her innocence of a crime she had not been indicted for, much less convicted of. Even more interestingly, it turns out that what she denied doing was not a crime whether she did it or not. So: for denying, not under oath, doing something that was not a crime to begin with, she is sent to prison at great expense to her and considerable expense to the Republic. Are we all safer?”
–J.E.P.

Just so you know. Defying, even politely, the minions of our rulers is grounds for imprisonment. Protest your inocence of a crime the feebs don’t even intend to pursue and cannot prove? Fine. Go to jail.

We are no longer a nation of laws and rule of law, if people can be jailed for simply not being humble and bowing to petty bullies. And let me be clear: I don’t particularly care for Martha Stewart. Her manner and the obsessions of her life just give me a 9figurative) rash. But that’s not the point. Being an irritating, arrogant broad isn’t a legitimate reason to imprison someone, anyone. Unless you’re a feeb functionary and have the power to make it so.

What i do not understand is the jury that was stupid enough to let the feebs pull the wool over their eyes. Well, yes, I do understand it. The sheep are stupid enough to be ruled by dogs.

Arggghhh! I hate injustice, even when practiced against an irritating broad like Martha Stewart.

But now, she’s out. Sorta. Wearing electronic chains, as it were. Quite some few bucks leaner, and after many, many of YOUR tax dollars spent harrying her.

Makes me wanna hold a tea party in Boston. But make the “tea” by dunking feebs. Won’t do it, of course. I have more scruples and a higher morality than that. Just think of the polution. *shudder* Feebs contaminating the water. Not good. *sigh* Have to give that idea a reluctant pass.

See? Once again the feebs get away with another crime against humanity… (Yeh, Martha’s—barely—human.)

Sometimes childhood memories ought to be refreshed…

The post I made earlier wherein I did a riff on C.S. Lewis’ “Men Without Chests” (which means both more and less than the meme Hanson cited), spurred me to take my lunch time and reread the essay.

*whew!* Lewis really lays the barbarism of our age bare! This brief clip illustrates but one (perhaps close on to central) problem with so-called “public education” in these ever more and more homogenized States:

“St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought. When the age for reflective thought comes, the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science. Plato before him had said the same. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful In the Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart.”

Indeed. The cultural and moral and ethical wasteland that is our popular culture owes much of itself to the destruction of a sense (and appreciation) of beauty and finding pleasure in good things that “prison for kids” (AKA “public schools”) seems bent on doing at every turn. It seems as though those who design, fund and run our “prisons for kids” do indeed intend that the end product be the “trousered ape[s]” and “urban blockhead[s]” Lewis decries. It must be so, because despite more and more money, despite ever louder railing against the methods and procedures that continually turn out more and more of this debased product, the so-called education establishment is determined to continue to do more of the same.

For more money, of course.

Thus is one foundation stone laid in the war to destroy Western Civilization: coarsen the youth, bend them to depravity so that they cannot even see things of real value as having value. Enslave them to the accretion of stuff as the only “true” value?regardless of that stuff’s worth: junk CDs filled with non-music; clothing that is “old” and “worthless” as soon as some trousered ape on MTV wears something less attractive and more worthless, but “new”; bigger house (to put more stuff in?); better car (more “bling”?another worthless criterion), etc. The new materialism: valued junk.

And where is Beauty, Honor, Justice, Love (no, not those animal slaverings pop culture misrepresents as “love”)?

Ahhh! That’s all relative…

I found The Abolition of Man, which includes “Men Without Chests”* essay and others, online here. I strongly recommend reading (or re-reading) it. Much of his writing therein is eerily prophetic.

(BTW, “Men Without Chests” includes as essential the idea: men without hearts… For a heart that has only the shallow draft of modern dulled sensibilities is no heart at all and provides nothing for the chest to hold or protect… What use a chest in that case, anyway, eh?)

Or perhaps not

(Wherein your humble—ha!—author emulates J.E.P. “It’s a daybook.” It’s not well organized or well-edited. It’s just stuff that occurs to me to jot down. Notes, to myself as much as anything else.)

One of the best reads of my teenage years was C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man. I was lucky it was included in an addendum to The Great Books, or I might not have read it, even though I was already familiar with some of Lewis’ other books (The Narnia Chronicles and the space trilogy).

At any rate, recently as I was reading an interview Arthur Chrenkoff did with Victor Davis Hanson, I was reminded of the first essay in the Lewis book (Hanson made eliptical reference to the meme birthed by Lewis’ “Men Without Chests”). Of course, my mind, being what it is, came up with a vision entirely at odds with the meme, though strangely complementary to Lewis’ thesis…

“Men without chests”—sure, that describes well the majority of men in our society who lack manly virtue (while embracing every manly and/or every effeminate vice), but is also brought to mind women who attempt to be the “men with chests” they seek to supplant or need to supply.

Two different things, those, but both equally destructive. On the one hand we find femi-nazis who thump their ill-constructed-for-thumping chests in ape of manly agression and on the other women who—very necessarily—take up the slack for the wusses who ought to be men in their relationship (marriage, family, whatever).

“Women with chests” really ought to comjure up some other image than that of either twin-turreted spouts of vitriol or strapped-in-the-harness workhorses. But with men mostly abdicating manhood, women will fill in the void of both manly vice and manly virtue while those who ought to be men slink off into a corner and form their various boys’ clubs.

Re: the TSA and other governmental abominations

“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” — Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857

Or, “Do the little things.”

This phrase, taken from what has been traditionally acredited to St David’s last sermon, characterize the life and faith of

“…St. Lily, surnamed Gwas-Dewy, that is, St. David’s man, [was David’s] beloved disciple and companion in his retirement.” (*)

St Lily apparently took to heart the lessons he heard and learned from his mentor, since he is honored (still, primarily in Wales) for his faithfulness to David’s teaching to

“Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about… ” (**)

Augustine also echoed Christ when he said, “To be faithful in little things is a big thing.”

“He who is faithful in very little things is faithful also in much.” – Luke 16:10

slapping a silly person silly is just… silly

Found a comment that sums up my inner response to fake optimism:

…whenever I hear someone say “Everything is perfect” — while their facial expression indicates otherwise — my inner Groucho usually replies, “Well, I’m glad to hear that, because I just stepped in some dog perfection and I’m tracking it all over your rug!”

As much effect in England as Patrick in Ireland, perhaps more…

I speak, of course, of St Nun, the mother of St David, who is honored the day after St David’s Day, that is, today.

Happy St Nun’s Day!

(No snarky comments. I’ll have…. um, none of that.)

Look out for tomorrow: yet another Christian pioneer with strong ties to David of Wales.

(Who needs St Patrick with all the Welsh pioneers honored in March?)