Social Issues – Blogs For Victory

National Divorce or Civil War?

February 16, 2020M. Noonan26 Comments

The other day I saw on Twitter an article about a Canadian case where a father was forced by a judge to address his daughter as a boy because that is what his daughter claims she is – a boy. This was, naturally, a minor child. It caused a lot of outrage but the real issue here isn’t whether or not a kid should transition or whether a parent should accept such a thing. These are important issues, of course, but the most crucial aspect of it was the judge ordering the father to do something he believed to be wrong – in this case, lie about his daughter’s gender. And that, really, is the point of the whole exercise: to force the lie. Either tell a lie – that your daughter is a boy – or be held in contempt of court and go to jail…where you won’t be able to do anything for anyone, least of all your daughter who is being destroyed before your eyes. But, also, if you agree to say the lie then you’ve just lost the most important thing you can be for your daughter: someone who is fearlessly honest. If you’ll lie about something like that, what won’t you lie about?

Another case that caused some comment was the Utah Senate’s vote to de-criminalize polygamy. From the article:

Sen. Deidre Henderson stood on the Senate floor Friday and asked her colleagues to reconsider a decades-old state law classifying bigamy as a felony and making implied criminals of the state’s polygamous residents.

Rather than deter or eliminate polygamy, the Spanish Fork Republican said, the state code’s threat of harsh punishments had driven polygamous communities underground; cut families off from jobs, education and health care; and given rise to a subculture that gives predators “free rein to prey upon vulnerable people.”

Note how our Conservative Republican is busy Conserving…we have to legalize polygamy because if we don’t let these weirdos do what they want, they’ll be weird. Argument sound familiar? You have heard it before. Its the way Conservatism cements Liberalism…because the real reason they are doing this is because SSM became legal and once that was done, there was no argument to be made against polygamy except the same arguments used to attack SSM…it is against Natural Law (which Conservatives are supposed to Conserve). But we jettisoned that with SSM…and by “we” I mean “we Conservatives”. Not all of us, of course, but a large enough number that made the imposition of SSM a bipartisan event in the United States.

And we were all so happy about it, weren’t we? Love is love, right? Two men. Two Women. Three Woman and a Man. A 40 year old and a 15 year old…hey, wait! What are you saying? No one is advocating for that! You insane, mean spirited bigot! The very idea!

But, you know its coming. I’m sure if I dug around enough I’d find serious scholarship arguing for no age barriers, or at least much lowered age barriers. I won’t look for it because I don’t really want to see it – and if it doesn’t exist at this moment, it will in a short while. And you know it. And the argument which will be made – and eventually by Conservative Republicans Super Conserving Conservatism – is that if we don’t lower the age bars, we’ll be giving predators “free rein to prey upon vulnerable people.”

But still in all that, the worst aspect of it all is that we are not being asked to tolerate, but to actively approve. That’s the real problem here: we definitely live in a post-Christian world which not only lacks a mechanism to enforce morality, but wouldn’t even agree most of the time on what is moral – but it isn’t enough, for those running the show, that we who still retain the old morality to live and let live. No: they insist that we participate and approve. We Christians are rather back to square one, as it were: just waiting to be rounded up and led to the arena to provide dinner for the lions. Because it is going to be like that – the Christians of 100 AD made no effort to stop the storied infamies of 1st century Rome. There was no demand that the Games be cancelled or that the licentiousness be curbed…and yet still the Roman world went mad against Christians and tore them to pieces…because they wanted the Christians to approve of the Pagan lifestyle. When such approval was withheld, off the Christians went to provide bloody entertainment to the offended Pagans. Do you get it? Your lack of immorality offends.

So, what to do?

I’m not sure – but I am inclining towards those who simply want a divorce. That the portion of America which believes a person can change their gender separates from that part of America which doesn’t believe such a thing can happen. It would take some sorting out – how much territory each side gets; divvying up the national debt and military assets; will people have a period of time where they can move freely from America I to America II (and vice versa) with immediate full citizenship status? My guess is that we’d vote by county – and if a majority votes for America I, they are America I…America II, America II. It would make for a bit of a chopped up America II (the Left side) as they have majorities in far few counties but that could be address by negotiation…which would also be a drawn out process.

But, if we don’t divorce, we’ll have to fight. One thing I can’t see is us staying together and at peace when the two sides differ not just on trivia like forms of government, but on basic things like “2 plus 2 equals 4”. For our citizens who really think that “genderfluid” is a thing, 2 plus 2 equals whatever the hell they want at the moment. I’d rather we divorced – because if we fight, then the losing side doesn’t get to live in the America of the winning side. And I mean, at all.

Who’s the Nazi?

December 8, 2019December 8, 2019M. Noonan9 Comments

Lately there has been much back and forth about just who is a Nazi. To be sure, all of us on the right have, at one time or another, been accused of being Nazis of one sort or another. But this latest game of Expose the Nazi is different in that plenty of people on the right are joining the left in the hunt.

I suppose this has been coming for a while – remember how we were all supposed to be in a panic about the Alt-Right in 2015/16? They were Nazis out to set up the Fourth Reich…to be run, as it turns out, by the flamboyantly gay Milo Yiannopoulos. Which didn’t – and doesn’t – make any sense, but the real purpose of the exercise was to un-person Yiannopoulos as having a gay spokesman for the right who was also wickedly funny just wrecked too many Progressive Narratives while also displeasing the Tru-Cons; who have no problem with gay, but do have a great deal of problem with anyone on the right who may actually advance a conservative notion or two.

The latest explosion was caused by a guy named Nick Fuentes. I honestly don’t know much about him. I knew zero about him – had never heard of him – before the explosion and even after looking him up, I can only find that a lot of people really, really dislike the guy. There doesn’t seem to be a political party run by Fuentes and he hasn’t created a political program…seems to me that he’s just this guy and his thing is to make outrageous statements for attention. Among the outrageous statements are anti-Semitic and anti-Immigrant statements. From what I can gather, this makes him out to be an a**hole…but I can’t discern a plan on Fuentes’ part to unify the nation under a Leader, eliminate all non-Aryans (with special attention to the Jews) and conquer increased Living Space for the Aryans. This would, of course, be the plan, if you were a Nazi. Fuentes being a Spanish name, I’m wondering if the guy even has any Kraut blood?

Part of the controversy resulted in Michelle Malkin being fired by YAF for coming to the defense of Fuentes. This is another jarring note in the concept that Fuentes is a Nazi because Malkin is of Philippine blood. It seems these days that “Nazi” is becoming a catch-all for “people I don’t like” and “people I have to get out of the public square because they might win an argument with me”. Good to keep in mind that while all Nazis are anti-Semites, not all anti-Semites are Nazis…unless you want to assert that Ilhan Omar is a Nazi. I somehow doubt that the likes of Fuentes and Malkin are planning a Nazi takeover of the United States.

Does this excuse any statements from either of them which I may consider wrong? Of course not. Either of them may have in the past – or may in the future – say things which I find outrageously wrong. But until they set up a National Socialist party and start trying to take over (while providing a logical explanation for why they’d want a system which would imprison and kill them as Untermensch) I’m not going to call them Nazis, or even think that they might have that goal in mind.

Are there any actual Nazis out there? Yep. I’ve even come across a few of them on social media – briefly, before I blocked them. There are in the world today genuine, dyed-in-the-wool Nazis who want to set up a Nazi system…the only slight variation on Hitler’s Nazism is that most of today’s Nazis consider anyone white to be Übermensch. This isn’t strictly in keeping with Nazi ideology which held that only Germans were the master race and while other white people could be superior in this way or that, none could compare to Germans. But, hey, when you’re running a con about Nazism in modern America, you have to cast a wide net for clicks and donations. I wouldn’t think that more than a few tens of thousands of Americans adhere to Nazi ideology.

There is, though, a larger group which, while not explicitly Nazi, do share a lot of Nazi notions. These people can more broadly be classified as “White Nationalists”. They generally support democratic self-governance. They are not advocating for wars of conquest. In economics, its a bit of a mish mash of welfare State and free market. Many of them don’t even argue that non-whites are inferior. But what they do argue is that whites should be separate from non-whites: that there should be places set aside where only white people live – and part of this desire is that the United States no longer allow immigration. What we have here, in my view, is an attempt to make out that since Malkin, Fuentes and many others on the right are anti-immigration, they are akin to White Nationalists who are, in turn, akin to Nazis…and so Malkin and Fuentes, and everyone who won’t condemn them, are Nazis.

That is an incredible level of nonsense – but it is in keeping with the times. What is really desired here is to make being anti-immigration socially unacceptable. That if you take a position that immigration should no longer happen – or even that it should be highly restricted – then you are acting entirely from base motives. That you are a racist Nazi. Crucial to such a program would be to un-person anyone non-white who is taking the position that immigration should be stopped…and so the non-white voices of Malkin and Fuentes have to go.

I’m not going to do that: I will not let my opponents define me. I still don’t really know who Fuentes is. If he’s making the anti-Semitic statements that he’s accused of, then he’s an idiot and wrong in those statements. But I refuse to go along with deplatforming and destroying him. I don’t care what he says. I have no connection with him and have no moral requirement to prove I’m not like him by adopting positions I think wrong. I’m especially not going to do it because it seems pretty clear to me that the heart attack being had over him is mere political garbage designed to destroy those the Establishment want destroyed. The Establishment wants not only continued immigration, but increased immigration. Their solution to illegal immigration is to make it so easy to immigrate that no one would bother with doing it illegally. I’m not going along with that.

Demonstrate to me that someone is an actual Nazi and I’ll condemn that person. So, too, if you can demonstrate that they are racist, anti-Semitic, in favor of tyranny…prove to me that someone wants wicked things, and I’ll condemn the wicked plans and work to ensure they aren’t carried out. But don’t dare try to call someone a Nazi because you simply want me to run away from a political position. I happen to think that it is time to call a halt to immigration, at least for a period of time. For refugees, I’d set up refugee camps which will have as their goal the return of the refugees to their homeland…a temporary, safe harbor where they can be safe from dying but which is no ways is a step towards becoming a resident of the United States. Rely on it: set that up and you’ll only get people who are in actual fear of their lives showing up…because “camp or death” means “camp” while “camp or just staying home which isn’t so bad” means “just staying home which isn’t so bad.”

I am Catholic. I am part Jewish in blood. I have non-white relatives by blood and marriage. I live and work among non-white people. I am not in any way, shape or form racist and I could never be Nazi – or Socialist or fascist or Communist or any other such evil twaddle fit only for criminals and idiots. I will advocate for what I think is right and I will not be scared off on it because someone out there might slander me. Nor will I take anyone’s uncorroborated word for it that someone is evil. It is time for us on our side to call an end to this game: this “insult to win” garbage the Left – and, truth be told, part of the Right – has engaged in because they can’t win an argument.

What are the Limits of Tolerance?

December 2, 2019M. Noonan28 Comments

A couple things I saw recently struck me with some force. Once was some weird Church out there – used to be Christian, claims to remain so…but, they’re lying very badly – which put up a Garden of Eden picture with same sex couples. Other thing was this nitwit Never Trumper whom I used to respect yammering on about how True Conservatives don’t want Conservative judges because that might overturn Roe. This, plus a few other things, got me wondering: what are the limits of tolerance? That is, in an admittedly pluralist Republic, just how much difference can there be before the whole thing comes crashing down?

I think we’d all agree that, by and large, we don’t care what goes on in San Francisco. Our only real complaint, to this point, has been that San Franciscans seem to care very much what we do and want to force us to be like them. Our theory has been that we can beat them back and they can have their multi-gendered otherkin SJW San Francisco while we have, well, sanity; everyone is happy. But, would we really be? Would they?

I strongly doubt they would – Crusaders out to free the Holy Land would envy the zeal with which our SJW Left pursues it’s enemies. They can’t leave well enough alone – they seem to have a built-in need to harass, hector and bully everyone. When they can’t find out an outright enemy to pester, they simply turn upon one of their own. It is just the way they are – and only the power of God can possibly convert them. We can’t. And even someone officially not SJW Left – like the Never Trumper mentioned above – still revealed a desire to impose…for all his talk about small government, the last thing he wants is a small government out there looking after itself. That is, he doesn’t want you and me getting together to decide what we want in our little corner of the world. Nope: we all have to be the same.

How are we supposed to live with people like that? Also, would we be wise to even try? How smart am I if I commit to the absolute defense of some nutcase “Church” which puts up pictures deliberately to insult me? If I commit to defend people who are then free to undermine my ability to govern myself? We know, with certainty, that a free society will generally produce the best results because when people are able to dare and to dream, they will resolve problems which have bedeviled humanity for ages. So, we know we must have freedom – but does this include tolerating the freedom to destroy?

I’m really just asking the question here. I don’t know the answer. I am hopeful that a bit of debate about it might produce some point I’m missing or enlighten some dark patch in my mind. But as it stands right now, I’m really puzzled as to whether or not we can, as we are, survive as a nation…and whether or not we should.

Yeah, I Guess I’m a Revolutionary

August 25, 2019M. Noonan132 Comments

I got into a slight Twitter tiff with a friend – and no hard feelings, at all. Just a short exchange which made me realize something: we need to have a Revolution.

It had to do with a discussion surrounding Prince Andrew’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein – which seem rather extensive and continued long after Epstein’s first conviction. Andrew, of course, being the second son of Queen Elizabeth…which means you can’t get more social or economic elite than he is. As the discussion went on, I blurted out (as it were) a desire to confiscate the wealth of people like Andrew and distribute it (via lottery) among the people. This rather upset my friend – being as we’re both Conservative and thus defenders of Property. And I do defend Property…but I also despise a traitor. And that is, first and foremost, what Prince Andrew is: a traitor. A traitor to civilization.

And he’s not alone: he is legion among the Ruling Class. Think of all the people who had connections with Epstein for decades, and continued after his conviction. There is a story in the Daily Mail – British papers still engaging in actual journalism from time to time – about a party at Epstein’s after his conviction which included among the guests Prince Andrew, Woody Allen, Katie Couric, Chelsea Handler and the daughter of a former Australian Prime Minister. This was, as I said, after Epstein’s conviction. From the story, it seems that Epstein has pornographic pictures on the wall and liked to blurt out astonishing sexual crudities during conversation. And this is where the son of the Queen of Great Britain said, “hey, bro, cool place to hang out”.

Prince Andrew lives a life of extreme luxury. He’s worth an estimated 75 million dollars and he’s never had to earn a penny of it – and, remember, he’s the second son of the Queen. As soon as Diana pushed out William in 1982, the chances that Andrew or anyone descended from him would ever sit on the British throne became nil. He’s a biological dead end, as far as royalty goes. But, he’s got 75 million dollars…and all of it, ultimately, because a distant ancestor built a castle in Milan in the 11th century and so became the founder of a dynasty which eventually produced George I. Now, one should never fuss about the good fortune of others – envy is a sin, after all. But you’d think that someone sitting on a vast fortune of unearned wealth who has no particular purpose in life would at least try to sustain the civilization which provided and protects his gigantic privileges. But, no: he’s hanging around with the Pimp to the Stars. And so were lots of other people just as rich and privileged (but most not having the lineage).

And I think that is what has been gnawing at me, unspoken, for many years, now: that those who are in charge of our civilization are traitors to it. Not all of them, of course. There are rich people who do try to live decent lives – even some of the old noble houses (the Hapsburgs, long dethroned, do seem to keep their act together); the Koch family (whom I mostly disagree with, politically) seem to be upstanding as well as generous. But time and again we find that the rich are living lives of gross immorality – and if not directly participating in it, keeping their mouths shut about it. They defend nothing which the common people hold dear – not God; not family; nothing…except their own wealth and position, of course; they are fierce in defense of their money…and their private, secluded, heavily guarded playgrounds where, it would seem, quite a lot of the sons and daughters of the poor are brought in to be abused by the layabout sons and daughters of the rich.

But here’s the thing – if they were just destroying themselves, it wouldn’t be any concern of ours. But people with vast fortunes and social prestige have a gigantic effect on everything and everyone else. If I drop $10 into a collection plate, it is only a ripple…a rich person dropping a million dollars is a tidal wave. And if the money is dropped into the plate of a group out to destroy us (you and me, I mean), then it is horribly destructive. That its dropped to keep the anti-Civilization dogs off the backs of the rich just makes such things an insult on top of an injury. What this tells me is that we can’t just let matters be: we’ve got our billionaire on our side in Donald Trump and he’s one heck of a fighter for us…but he’s one guy, and no later than January of 2025, he’s gone. Meanwhile, these malefactors of great wealth (Teddy Roosevelt’s exquisite phrasing) will still be around…being nauseating and still providing money and prestige for interests which want us destroyed. What do we do? Just let it keep on going?

I can’t say that I agree with that – I can’t say, that is, that my defense of private property extends to the defense of private property being used to destroy what I hold dear (which includes property…it isn’t poor people demanding that zoning laws be changed and property seized by government for transfer to rich developers). It is, in short, time for a Revolution – and kicking over the tables and a chasing of the money-changers out of the Temple. We can no longer endure a Ruling Class which is working directly against our interests…they either have to get on board with us, or be removed. And we won’t get rid of the current Ruling Class if they are able to retain their money…money is power; it is, really, the ultimate power, in any form of government. Whomever commands it has absolute power, unless there’s an equally large sum of money opposed…but we see it that, in general, our entire Ruling Class is on the same side, even if they call themselves variously Liberal or Conservative; all of them are at war with us…with what we want. Which is things like common decency; the Rule of Law; equality under the Law; a defense of faith, family and property.

I can’t see how we win the battle if we leave the Ruling Class in possession of their money. If you’ve got a way to leave Soros and his heirs with billions of dollars without their being able to wreck us, then I’m all ears…but unless someone has a way to do just that, then self defense requires us to relieve quite a large number of rich people of their wealth.

We Need to Oppose Evil

January 6, 2019M. Noonan22 Comments

I happened to obtain a copy of Judgement at Nuremberg and, so, I naturally watched it. Who wouldn’t? Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell…and even a small role by an exceptionally young William Shatner. I had seen the movie once before, many years ago, and it was far better than I remembered. What I liked about it is that it didn’t just go for the easy take a movie like that could have. It showed the Germans as all too human. The speech by Schell portraying the German defense counsel pretty much summed up the attitudes of the War generation Germans who emerged from Nazism: boiled down, “if we’re guilty (but we’re really not), then everyone is guilty!”. At the end of the movie, with the Cold War dawning, Spencer Tracy’s character (he playing the chief judge) is urged by nearly everyone to just drop the matter – find the Nazis not guilty or, if guilty, impose mild sentences. None of that: they are all sentenced to life in prison. And he sentences them because evil must be opposed. Which is true. And in that is the real tragedy of the 20th century.

Because evil wasn’t really opposed. Not in any vigorous and consistent manner. The war against the Nazis was a spasm, not a determination. It was only because Hitler forced the issue that anyone fought him. Had he refrained from war in 1939, he would have lived on until his natural death. His regime would have continued. Everyone would have kept trading and negotiating with it. The internal inconsistencies of the Nazi regime might eventually have brought a crisis, but not for decades. Just as the internal inconsistencies of the Soviet Union yet allowed it to live 70 years. And even when Hitler forced the issue and the world went to war against him, it still wasn’t really opposing evil, because the USSR was in partnership in fighting Hitler. If you use one gangster to kill another, you really aren’t fighting against gangsterism.

It used to be that evil would be opposed. The Romans were bloody minded about the Carthaginians because the Carthaginians were evil. Cortez was in quest for gold and glory, but after he and his men found out what the Aztecs had been up to, it became war to the death, because the Aztecs were evil. These days, we barely recognize evil when we see it. Even in our use of the Nazis as the standard of evil, most of the people referring to the standard couldn’t tell you one thing about the Nazis – they couldn’t tell you why the Nazis were bad, that is.

But it is more than just Nazis. They are the exemplar of evil, and deservedly so, but its not like anyone is really trying to do Nazism again. I bring this up because right about the time I was watching Judgement, I saw this series of tweets from a Conservative hammering Tucker Carlson for pointing out that our Ruling Class is doing bad things. The basic thrust of the tweets is that if things are bad, it is because we, the people, made them bad. In response, I tweeted this out:

The outcomes we’ve been having for 60 years have not been the result of the free interplay of public actors. We’ve had things we never wanted imposed on us.

Did you ever vote to legalize abortion? To have millions of illegals here? To have big banks bailed out after they screwed the pooch? When did you pass judgement allowing functional illiterates to graduate high school?

You did none of these things. They happened without your permission. You were promised abortion would be rare: that we’d amnesty and that would end illegal immigration: you were told we’d get better education.

You think it was an accident that you got the opposite of what you wanted? An accident that you’ve got policies that are a negation of facts and logic? No: this sh** was intentional.

And now how do you propose to switch it back? To get a government that does what you tell it to do? By working with the people who, wink and nod, gave you what you specifically didn’t want? Wake the F up

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve long seen that Conservative on twitter and I think he’s probably a pretty good guy. Certainly very intelligent. But, like all too many, he doesn’t recognize evil when he sees it. Think about just one thing I said for a moment: functional illiterates are allowed to graduate high school. You know that shouldn’t happen, but have you realized that it is immoral to allow it to happen? That it shouldn’t have happened even one time? That anyone who allowed it to happen is worthy of severe punishment? And, yet, no one calls for the arrest of those who allow it to happen. We, in fact, have people who insist that we allow such people to continue to be in charge. No one would approve of an illiterate graduating…but, without any consent of anyone, it happens. How? I’ll tell you:

Because those in charge of the education system don’t have your priority in mind. To them, the education system isn’t to provide educated citizens. That takes effort and is a real pain in the neck. No: what those in charge have other priorities. First off, high pay for themselves. Hiring more people like themselves. Making sure no one ever gets rid of them. These are all far more important than making sure Johnny can read. Johnny is a gigantic problem. They’d like to not have him, at all; but that would rather expose the game. They used to flunk Johnny out, but that brought attention to the fact that Johnny isn’t reading. So, now, Johnny gets his diploma. Which action is evil – Johnny and the taxpayers are both being cheated. And the cheaters pass out the bogus diploma and collect the ill-gotten gains. This is what is traditionally known as fraud and theft.

But we don’t call it that. Because we don’t call anything by its proper name any more.

Part of the appeal, for me, of Donald Trump is his willingness to call things by their proper name. Even his gross insults are really no more than calling people what they are. It is this truth telling that makes him hated more than anything else. I remember how ballistic people went when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire”. The phrase was strictly accurate – no one in possession of their senses could argue otherwise. But people were furious that Reagan had said it. Why? Because he was committing that horrible sin (in modern eyes) of calling something by its proper name. That had to be nipped in the bud. Same thing when Bush called our enemies an “axis of evil”; remember how much people hated that, too? But such things were rare until Trump: he calls things what they are 20 times a day.

But we do have to get back to it. To call wrong things, wrong. To call evil people, evil. To refuse to voluntarily provide any power or prestige to those who make and do the wrong things. Only if we see evil and oppose it can it be stopped. We’ve been blind and silent about it for a very long time and so it has eaten very deep into our civilization. We still have, I think, time to purge it – but only if we see it and say it, first.

Thinking About Art

January 27, 2018September 4, 2018M. Noonan30 Comments

So, I’m still writing the novel. Just past 57,000 words, now. I figure I’ve got about 20-25,000 left to go. Very importantly, I figured out how it ends. Meaning, I knew in general how it ended all along, but now I know how to get there. I’ve re-read what I’ve written from time to time…make a few changes here and there, but the main thing is the story is compelling. At least, to me it is. I do hope other people like it. To me, it’s a real page-turner…and I already know what’s on the next page, being the author of it, and all. There will be a lot to do in the re-write after the first draft is done…increasing the descriptions, diving a bit more deeply into character development, making the overall Narrative flow better. I’m having a lot of fun writing it. Though it will take longer than I first thought – originally hoped to have it out in May, but now that will slip by several months. Partly because I got dragooned into working on another project which will absorb some writing time over the next month or so.

The other day the news did what Chesterton pointed out is the primary purpose of the news: telling people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive that Lord Jones is dead. In this case, Lord Jones was Ursula Le Guin. I had never heard of her until I found out she was dead. In case your ignorance matches mine regarding this lady, she was a famed sci-fi/fantasy author…writing lots of books and winning all manner of awards. Someone quoted a passage from one of her books and said this was the most beautiful opening paragraph he had ever read:

Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of the ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moon-driven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

If you like that, then I’m afraid my novel is going to be a terrible disappointment to you. It is just a bunch of words strung together, in my view. I initially thought the guy who posted that on Twitter was joking – and maybe he was (it is hard to tell), but the comments from people about it indicates that some people actually think this is meaningful stuff. Deep. Thoughtful.

Its about a freaking jellyfish drifting with the tide! Its drivel!

It got me thinking about the whole concept of creative arts – and thinking that it is in a very bad way. Ms. Le Guin wrote that on purpose and people read it and gave it awards. I am flabbergasted. I’d be embarrassed if I wrote anything like that. I’m hoping that she wrote it as a joke – that the rest of her writing was better and that she merely put that out once securely rich and famous as part of an “I wonder if they’ll really just buy anything I write?” experiment.

Then I read a bit from Andrew Klavan about how he was viewing the upcoming Oscar awards:

The Oscars as a glamorous, televised, fun event are a relic of the days when film was the central American art form, the way America told stories to itself. When an art form is at its peak — which usually comes pretty early in its life cycle — the greatest works and the most popular works are usually one and the same. The movies, for instance, peaked around 1939 when the nominees included Gone With The Wind, Dark Victory, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, and The Wizard of Oz. All are still rightly considered classics and all were in the top ten at the box office.

I’ll have to agree with that. My Mrs gently chides me for my preference for old movies, but I really find most modern movies unwatchable. There have been a few recent offerings I liked. In sci-fi, for instance, I liked Interstellar. It got panned, but I thought it the most interesting sci-fi movie since, say, Planet of the Apes in 1968. But, mostly I just keep watching old movies. They are just better, in my view. For instance, for most of my life I had ignored Citizen Kane: mostly because I figure a movie that praised couldn’t be as good as people were saying. Then I watched it all the way through. And then watched it again. It is the best movie ever made in my view. I’ve watched Lord only knows how many movies, but I’ve never seen anything as interesting as that – something so crisply done, such great dialogue, such phenomenal acting and cinematography. Klaven has hit upon something – the movies are worn out. So is fiction writing. So, too, is writing in general (Matt and I were most pleased with those who opined Worst was well-written; we really appreciated that…but, I can’t argue against the people saying it…most books written these days are simply badly written…I mean, just terrible, and they are written by people who supposedly went to school and learned how to write. I just started writing in 2003 and slowly got better at it).

It occurred to me that part of the reason I’m writing my novel is the same reason that C S Lewis wrote the Narnia series: he took one look at what people were reading, was appalled and set about trying to write something worth reading. So am I. I don’t know if anyone will read it; I hope they do. But my purpose is clear: to write a story which will be interesting and fun to read.

And I think that is where the modern arts have gone wrong: they aren’t trying for interesting and fun. They are trying for something else…a message, or a moral, or simply to be as weird as they can, because that is where the awards and book contracts are. I’m writing a fairy tale – and that means I’ve taken some average folks and put them in strange, dangerous situations where they can only rely on their courage and each other to triumph over evil. You know – it is a story which you can imagine yourself landing in, and then imagine how you might react. There is no sex in my book; though there is love. There is violence, but not gross violence. No one is depressed. They are, at turns, afraid and unsure…but they aren’t wallowing in self-pity and trying to get to some cosmic truth because they have it hard. Having it hard is just part of life, and you take it with as much grit and good humor as you can.

We need to recapture the sense of wonder and hope which art is supposed to provide us. We’ve had quite enough of weirdos and psychopaths. Maybe my book flops. Doesn’t matter. I’m writing it because it is fun to write…and I’m going to keep on writing it. I just hope that other people will join in – we’ve learned that our experts in most areas are rather dumb. The experts in the arts are no less so. If you’ve got a song in your heart, a story in your mind, a painting that is waiting to be done…do it. After all, the really great art wells up from the people…and perhaps it is time for we, the people, to take back the arts, too.