A Time of Choosing Approaches

Mark Noonan54 Comments

Ultimately, we might be faced with a choice between Franco and Lenin. This is very dangerous, these times we live in.

Me? What would I do? Well, if I had to choose…then just figure that its Spain, 1936 and I’m a Carlist.

I think a lot of people miss what Solzhenitsyn really meant when he said the 20th Century’s problem was that people had forgotten about God. It is an easy statement and most probably think they grasp it…but you have to dig really deep to understand that those who forget about God are incapable of morality. Sure, sure; we’ve all heard the stories of the good atheist. Yadda, yadda, yadda…but doesn’t matter. If you really have excised God from your life then there is nothing to hold you back except purely practical considerations. Mostly: you don’t want to go to jail. But if jail isn’t in prospect, what’s to stop you? You don’t believe in God – indeed, you’ve forgotten about Him.

When we read story after story of rich, powerful men preying upon women and youth, what do you really think that is about? For goodness sake, these are rich men: they can pony up the money and have a bevy of gorgeous women (or boys, if they swing that way) voluntarily do whatever sexual acts are desired. But, they don’t do that, do they? No: they want someone they can abuse. If you pay someone the asked price then it isn’t abuse. It is still just as immoral, but where is the power involved in that? How can you feel a special, elect person unless you can force someone to do something with no worry about consequences to yourself?

Because that is the real mark of forgetting about God: becoming a bully. When we say the phrase “brotherhood of man” we can only say that if we’re the children of God. And if we are all, indeed, children of God then we are brothers and sisters and so we really shouldn’t abuse one another. But if there isn’t any God – if we forgot about Him? – well, then; who are you to me? You are whatever I can force you to be. And there is a delicious pleasure to be had in abusing another person. Don’t doubt me on this.

In ancient America do you think the Aztec priests woke up on Monday going, “oh, geesh, its rip-hearts-out day! Dang! I just wanted to go fishing!”. Nope; it wasn’t like that because it couldn’t be like that. Aztec priests, priests of Baal, Auschwitz guards, NKVD interrogators…all have this in common: to them, it was cool what they were doing. They enjoyed it. And don’t think they didn’t know it was wrong: that is something that can’t be excised from the human heart no matter how much a person forgets about God. How do we know this is true? Because the one thing an Aztec priest and NKVD interrogator would never do is volunteer to be subjected to what they did. You think the guy who ripped out a heart really thought that God was pleased? Don’t be quite so silly: if he really believed that, he’d have undergone it. If you don’t want it to happen to you then you know that you shouldn’t do it. But, still, they did it. Because there is an exquisite pleasure in being cruel. There is a rush in doing evil which the victim is forbidden to stop. That someone is at your mercy is a glorious feeling – provided, of course, that you take that first step in forgetting about God.

The other part of it is the not everyone gets to do it. That’s the flip side of abuse: exclusivity. Fruits that are forbidden to all but the Elect. If you’re in the club, you have the privilege. If you want the most insane ego trip then you want to be abusing in a manner that is denied to most. Joe down the street would long ago have been locked up for life if he did 10% of what some of these rich men do. And that’s the beauty of it for them. To be able to let loose their own perversions upon helpless victims while most can’t is the mark of being at the top of the heap. Of being a special, advanced person who can’t be questioned by the lower orders.

But it isn’t just super rich who have forgotten about God. Nope: plenty of people far down the socio-economic scale, aping the super rich, have forgotten as well. But they do lack the means and the protection to really go to town. So, they do what they can – like, you know, burn down a business during a riot one day and then harass a person for not wearing a mask the next. Place everyone on edge about pronouns and systemic racism. With, you know, only you and the select in the club knowing what is a violation. It isn’t quite like Epstein, but it is still a rush for some low-rent pipsqueak of a nobody to be able to lord it over some shop owner or random person walking down the street.

What we have in America today is a system of privileges assigned by money or claimed victim status. If you’re rich and shovel money out to the right people, you are nearly untouchable. If you can claim the correct victim status, you are also untouchable. But in both cases, you are allowed to touch anyone. Only you get to decide what is good and what is bad and your word, even if it changes by the minute, is law. Everyone who isn’t rich or a victim is your plaything. Their lives are in your hands: you can cost them their job, ruin them socially. Just a bit more pushing and you might even be able to send them to prison for daring to transgress whatever insane rules you thought up just the moment before. And, remember, they think it is fun. They have forgotten about God and so their lives are without hope or purpose: to fill up this vacuum, they’ll shove just about anything in there. And the ultimate thing to satisfy is human lives. They already work towards this, step by step; checking along the way to see if anyone will really stop them. And nobody is…so they just keep going.

So, what are we to do? I mean: those of us who remember God and so have morality and wouldn’t think of abusing anyone?

We’re going to have to relearn an old lesson taught by the Scipios of Rome and Hernan Cortes: you don’t tolerate barbarian bullies. Either they go, or we do.

The time of choosing his rapidly approaching.

The House of Christmas

Mark Noonan1 Comment

By: G. K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Project Veritas put out the proof that CNN is a mere propaganda arm of the DNC – something we’ve all known for a while. But for those a little slow on the uptake: CNN is only just now reporting that China lied about the Chinese Flu. Seriously: news you and I learned in January is now being breathlessly reported on CNN.

If your goal was to rig an election, then you would do just what the Democrats did.

Some are despairing that we’ll never get around this: that the cheat was so large and brazen in 2020, it shows we’ll never be able to win again. This is not the case: the Democrats always cheat. There has not been an election since 1824 when Democrats didn’t cheat. But cheating enough to win the Electoral College is a staggering undertaking and can only be done if you have total control over the voting districts you need. In 2020, because the GOP was caught flat-footed by the scale of Democrat cheating, the Democrats look to have pulled it off. But if they try again in 2024, the GOP will be wise to what they are doing – and, meanwhile, we have a great deal of power over the Democrat controlled areas, as we do in Florida, and can impose controls which will make cheating that less likely to succeed.

What is most important to me – and this is now yet another genuinely Conservative thing Trump has done (and, so, a Revolutionary act) – is that the fraud is very much out in the open now. The Democrats had to shove millions of ballots into the system to drag Biden over the finish line (no one really believes Joe Biden got more votes than Obama did in 2008). And Trump warned about it months in advance – he said precisely what they’d do, and then the Democrats went on an did it. The pressure will now build in areas where the GOP has control to improve processes to detect and prevent fraud.

You might have heard all sorts of worry-stories about Florida and Texas: how the Democrats were going to use voter fraud to flip both blue. Well, Trump won Texas by 631,000 votes and Florida by 371,000 votes. The Democrats did try to fraud there way through both States. They weren’t able to because the GOP got wise to their tactics and simply adjusted the rules to make cheating vastly more difficult. And, remember, even squish GOPers go along with these reforms: no GOPer wants to actually lose his or her race due to fraud. What I’m saying is, fret not! We’re not out of this game by a long shot.

The Chinese are not stupid – highest paid bureaucrat in California has ties to Chinese intelligence. One has to hand it to the Chinese: they are really good at what they do. Read the story: the man in question is an avowed patriot for China. He might be American, but he says his loyalty is to China. And yet he was given this very powerful and lucrative job. Back in Beijing, I’m sure that caused quite a lot of laughs. History is filled with rich Empires purchasing the loyalty of poor barbarian leaders…but I think that China’s purchase of America’s Ruling Class is unique. We are the richer nation, by far and yet they’ve bought us.

This is not just the ChiComs owning Joe: there is no aspect of American life where China hasn’t purchased a controlling interest. Our entertainment industry allows China to censor it. Our Tech companies fall all over themselves to help China develop tools of oppression. Social Media gleefully allows armies of Chinese bots to warp public perception of events. Politicians are paid off to dance around China’s manifest human rights violations. Chinese money flows into radical Left groups in the USA to foment hatred among Americans (they probably fund some of the more screwy right wing groups, as well). China didn’t even spend all that much money to get this: not only is our Ruling Class corrupt, it is cheap…$20 hooker stuff. What angered them all, and I think more than anything else, was that Trump was messing with this. China didn’t like it, either, and I’m sure Chinese intel helped out the DNC/MSM any way it could against Trump. Can we get around this? We’re going to have to or we’ll wind up a Chinese colony. And it will take even sterner actions than Trump was doing to make it happen: China must be pushed out of the United States.

The God in the Cave

Mark Noonan10 Comments

I’m going to post some things about Christmas that I have found interesting over the years. Feel free to share any that you like!

This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passers-by, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end, has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this, that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost derisively exaggerated; and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible; as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true. When that contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy has been repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasised, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled, in a hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals, pictures, poems, and popular sermons, it may be suggested that we hardly need a higher critic to draw our attention to something a little odd about it; especially one of the sort that seems to take a long time to see a joke, even his own joke. But about this contrast and combination of ideas one thing may be said here, because it is relevant to the whole thesis of this book. The sort of modern critic of whom I speak is generally much impressed with the importance of education in life and the importance of psychology in education. That sort of man is never tired of telling us that first impressions fix character by the law of causation; and he will become quite nervous if a child’s visual sense is poisoned by the wrong colours on a golliwog or his nervous system prematurely shaken by a cacophonous rattle. Yet he will think us very narrow-minded, if we say that this is exactly why there really is a difference between being brought up as a Christian and being brought up as a Jew or a Moslem or an atheist. The difference is that every Catholic child has learned from pictures, and even every Protestant child from stories, this incredible combination of contrasted ideas as one of the very first impressions on his mind. It is not merely a theological difference. It is a psychological difference which can outlast any theologies. It really is, as that sort of scientist loves to say about anything, incurable. Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savour of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God. But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinaman, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians, because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones. In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There is really a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Moslem or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope. Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique. Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. G K Chesterton

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

So, you’ve started on Kings and Queen and you suddenly figure out a really cool plot development – one which will just make the story vastly more interesting and fun…and then realize it means you’re going to have to do quite a bit of ret-con on Shadow Army because of it. You smile and do it anyway – because fun is what stories are supposed to be about.

Trump is still battling away. He’s got the next week to get something so strong that the Courts and/or the State legislatures can’t ignore it. We’ll see if he can do this. To me, the obviousness of the steal grows day by day…but I’m not a Court nor am I a GOP State legislator who simply may be chicken. At all events, Biden’s best hope is to crawl into the White House with no real authority and a complete inability to permanently alter anything. Meanwhile, looming in 2022 is what may be a blowout GOP year.

And I heard that Trump is considering appointing a special counsel to look into voter fraud in 2020. To be sure, Biden could immediately fire the guy and the MSM would cheer…but for all fair minded people, that would essentially be an admission of guilt. Here is a good rundown on all the oddities of 2020’s vote.

Looks like the GOP will win IA-02 by six votes. Never doubt that you should vote. There are seven Iowa Democrats kicking themselves this morning.

The GOP – including Trump – are all-in on the Georgia Senate runoffs. I’ve been swatting at GOPers (or supposed GOPers) telling us to boycott the campaigns. That would be suicidal. I know the GOP sucks – but it’s all we got. And we can’t let the Democrats take the Senate. The end.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mark Noonan43 Comments

I got the bird in, so I’m rolling along quite nicely right now. Also got Matt working on the cover art for Battles, which is the awesome conclusion of the Mirrors series. I’m also working on the first draft of Kings and Queen, the concluding book of the two book Shadow Army series. Have I mentioned that I’ve been writing a lot?

Last night, the Supreme Court – with Gorsuch smacking down both Cuomo and Chief Justice Roberts (who naturally joined the liberal minority) – ruled in favor of religious liberty. It was ruled that you can’t put extra restrictions on religious services while letting secular activities to continue. This is simple common sense, but that it was 5-4 shows that common sense is at a premium right now.

President Trump had his hearing in Pennsylvania and it went pretty well for him. He’s also got efforts afoot in Georgia and Nevada. Bottom line: it isn’t over yet. Still a very big long shot, but the main thing right now is the fight. Concede nothing to the Democrats. If Joe manages to keep the steal, fine. We won’t like it and we won’t forget it: but we’re not going to roll over for it. The Democrats have been put on notice by Trump that the new GOP will contest every action.

I hope you all have a blessed day!

No Surrender

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Big Tech manipulated election data to benefit Biden and the Democrats. Of course, you already knew that. The most egregious example of it was the ruthless suppression of the Hunter Biden story.

Trump had everyone and everything against him. Even absent the direct voter fraud, there was not one aspect of American life which wasn’t ranged against him.

And yet he still got nearly 74 million votes, about 11 million more votes than he obtained in 2016. I say this because I do not want anyone to despair (though many are). What we’ve learned in 2020 will be used in 2024 and beyond. We now know that we have to force through election law changes (Florida is the model); that we must have an army of lawyers on the ground before election day; that we have to start using ballot harvesting and other Democrat tactics (the CA GOP did…and it looks like we flipped back 4 seats we lost in 2018). We got this, guys: if the steal stands, all the Democrats will have done is elevate a senile crook to the White House while his understudy is a distinctly disliked hack who wouldn’t even make it out of the Iowa caucuses (she was selected by Team Biden for three reasons: female, POC…and someone no one wants to have in office).

For the moment, nothing stands more important than the Georgia Senate runoffs. Win those, and Biden is crippled from day one. Lose them, and we will suffer a crushing defeat. Do not lose sight of the facts of life: even if the GOP isn’t perfect, it is better.

And, also, winning them will be a tonic to our morale. We need that. And it will be the curtain-raiser for what should be a very strong GOP year in 2022. We’re not at all out of this game, folks: the Democrats as of now have not secured the power necessary to suppress us. And we’re now starting to gain minority and working class support. In other words, hold the line a little longer and keep pushing Trumpist populism…and we’re gonna roll these Democrats. Their core of support is upper class, urban whites. That used to be our core, guys: how well did that work out for us? Right – they are doomed if we just keep fighting.

There will be plenty of time for catastrophe. Don’t rush towards it or even will it to come. If it happens, it happens and we’ll all endure that. For now, the happy warrior is the proper stance. We got cheated out of an easy win in 2020 and we won’t forget: we will learn how to defeat the cheat and then we’ll just roll along.

Ban the Lies or America Dies

Mark Noonan39 Comments

How can we survive without the truth? That is the central question and problem of our times.

As President Trump continues his efforts to stop the steal, the thing that shines out most glaringly is how many lies are generated, so fast and so brazenly. It really is astonishing: plenty of people have unearthed the direct quotes of people who in 2019 – you know, last year – were saying that the Russians hacked the 2016 election and flipped votes from Hillary to Trump who are now saying Trump’s efforts are an affront to Democracy as there is simply no way – at all – that anyone committed fraud in 2020. What set me off this morning was a Blue Check journalist talking about how she and her cohorts in “reality based journalism” must fight tooth and nail against Trump’s lies about 2020 fraud. This goes beyond lack of self awareness and flips right on in to flat out liar.

Another thing which set me off was a journalist (the usual Blue Check, CNN contributor sort) who, in response to the federal execution of an inmate, decided to point out that the jury which convicted the man was all white. I won’t link to the story of the man who was executed – the less said about him, the better – you can look it up. If you do, the first thing you’ll think after reading the particulars of the case is that an all black jury would have fried him as well. The journalist put up a picture of the convict at his most smiling and harmless looking; to build up in your mind sympathy for this poor, black man killed by Trump’s racist AmeriKKKa. In other words, just another pack of lies which the guy knew was a pack of lies when he uttered it…but he’s gonna keep on working for CNN.

On and on it goes like that – lies and then contradictory lies said by the same people without shame. How are we supposed to even function? How can we make any sort of rational policy choices if every issue is hedged in by lies?

For the first time, I really understand why our ancestors burned heretics at the stake. We look back upon it in horror because we believe that the free exchange of ideas – any ideas – is inherently good. Well, not so sure about that any longer. What the Inquisitors were trying to do was not increase cruelty but to protect a society which was built upon certain dogmas asserted to be true in all cases. We now live in a society where the dogmas which built it now have to compete with complete fabrications. How’s that working out for us?

The American Dogma, as it were, is that we are created equal with an inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of these assertions are capable of proof. They are dogmas as unprovable as the doctrine of the Trinity. We asserted them as self-evident Truth and then proceeded to create a set of laws based upon the assertions. All of our rights are based on our asserted truths – none of them have any force if any of the assertions are untrue. And over the past century we have allowed people to exist in the United States who say these assertions are not self-evident truths. We have allowed heretics to convert us. That is, we allowed liars to dispute what we hold as self evidently true. We may as well have provided a seat at the table for people who hold that the Earth is flat.

Those who lie should not have a place at the table. It cannot be. If it is allowed, then the liars will triumph over us. The guy who says there isn’t an inherent right to life – and so abortion and euthanasia are good – is the same guy who will also assert there are 57 genders and that white people are inherently racist and so on. Lies cannot coexist with Truth. Either it becomes all lies, or all truth. They are very exclusive clubs. And if we are to survive – not as America, but as merely civilized human beings – then we are going to have to ban lies. We are going to have to find the courage to say, at long last, “no”.

We can start with something simple: a ban on the propagation of Nazi and Marxist ideology. But we must start, and all the lies must be forced out. Yes, this will take amendment to the Constitution (or revolution; or both) but it is a necessity. The Liberal idea that all ideas must compete has proven itself to be wrong: all that does is allow the worst ideas to gain traction: mostly because they offer easy profit to those who subscribe to them and allow those who envy to dress up their sin as a quest for justice. It all has to go.

Many, I know, will recoil from this. It is so outside our experience. But you can’t win an argument with a liar: he’ll just come up with a new lie as soon as you dispose of his first. Liars are like that, you see? Only by saying to the liar, “you may not speak your lie”, can you stop him.

The bottom line is that any idea which contests with our self-evident truths has to go. If an idea can’t be reconciled with our being Created Equal and having a Creator; with our having an inherent right to life, to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then it must be banned in the United States. The law gets enacted and then if anyone is charged with propagating ideas contrary to our dogmas, we leave it up to a jury to decide if that is the case. But the ideas which are contrary must be banned. Not allowed. Forbidden. Not in our schools and libraries; not in our movies and TV shows. Gone. Out. Only mentioned, if at all, to point out how they are laughably false because they contradict what we know to be self-evidently true.

Tolerance brought us to the point where a man will keep his MSM job even if he directly contradicts what he said before. So, let’s have a little bit of intolerance until we can at least expect a man to say the same thing, twice.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan50 Comments

This week, the rubber hits the road as far as Team Trump’s efforts to Stop the Steal. We’ll see if they can do it. More people are coming around to my theory that Team Biden thought it in the bag (with some fraud already baked in), but then Trump’s Election Day numbers showed a near-landslide win for Trump and so they had to stop the count, manufacture/flip ballots and then hope they didn’t get caught.

Well, they got caught: the amount of fraud was so large that you can’t miss it. All that remains to be seen is if the courts will accept the evidence and act accordingly.

It looks like Nancy’s majority will be 222, maybe 223. Razor thin – and some Democrat House members are salivating at the thought of a Biden Administration cabinet post. It is very dicey for Nancy: she can’t afford to lose anyone and if a seat comes open, even if in a relatively blue area, there’s no assurance the GOP won’t pick it up in a special election. The bottom line is that both the Squad and the few moderate Democrats are going to cause her no end of trouble – the former because they want to push further left, the latter because they don’t want career suicide. You and I get to watch and laugh.

They are ramping up the ‘Rona Panic again and I think it is twofold:

  1. Get your mind off the still disputed election.
  2. Make out that it is a horror show so that St Joe of Biden can save us all.

It is irritating me no end and I’m hopeful we start to get revolt as the Danes did. The masks do not work. The lockdowns mar more than they mend. We’ve got two apparently good vaccines on the way. End this nonsense.

Joe and the Democrats want to forgive student loans. But, please note: not all of it. I think the figure they are passing around is $10,000.00. Now, why not go large and forgive it all? I mean, they are Democrats, right? The cost doesn’t matter…but they know that annulling the debt would put huge pressure on to end the loan program. They don’t want that. And they don’t want the kids to be entirely relieved of debt, either. Debtors hoping for a break are dependents…people you can pressure to do your bidding. And the Democrats don’t dare risk the program, itself, as it is merely a gigantic subsidy for the college Left.

I’ve said for a while that I want the debt annulled (tax credits for those who paid) and then cancel the program. At the very least, I think we should allow it to discharge in bankruptcy seven years after leaving college (by then, they are either making enough money to pay – and so can’t go bankrupt – or they aren’t and likely never will). The whole thing is a scam: a soak the young scheme to keep tenured radicals on the gravy train.

Ted Cruz ripped Jack Dorsey to shreds in a Senate hearing. This is fine: but unless we start to punish these totalitarian propagandists, they’ll keep right on suppressing the truth and serving up the DNC Narrative. I’ll go to my grave convinced that if the mere truth had been told this past four years, Trump would have crested 60% of the vote.