This Week in Reaction

Jim is giving us lessons from popular culture this week. Here he identifies movement in the Overton Window as witnessed in the evolution of Tonto & the Lone Ranger:

Even in its original form, when Tonto (Silly) was merely a comedy relief sidekick, the Lone Ranger was already left wing propaganda, being absurdly non violent, and having lovable injuns. But, as the overton window moves ever leftwards, has to become even more left wing.

Also, Jim is at his magisterial best with All I Ever Needed to Know About Game, I Learned in Shakespeare. It really is a wonder that Taming of the Shrew is performed at all these days. The slightest hint of modern egalitarian reinterpretation would render the story senseless and profoundly unfunny. A straight interpretation would ignite a class-5 shitstorm. I laughed out loud (LOLed) for about twenty minutes last night over Jim’s correct, if blunt, interpretations of one of the The Bard’s scenes:

Kate’s father interrupts the activity while his daughter’s chastity is still more or less intact. From the dialog, it sounds as if he is in the nick of time. When her father interrupted them she was about to jump Petruchio’s bones and ride him like a motorcycle over nine miles of bad road.

“Ride him like a motorcycle over nine miles of bad road” is going into the archives. Lzlllzoollozlllzozzll.

It’s actually refreshing to see that a few on the Catholic Right are to the right of Michael Voris of Church Militant TV. I have a horse in this race. Both of them actually.

To be honest, while I understand the psychology of it, I don’t understand the a priori and abject refusal, in principle, to criticize the Pope. The Pope is a bishop, and Voris criticizes bishops all the (freakin’) time. Harshly. Deservedly in my opinion. Of course the pope is more than just a bishop. He is an icon of unity in the Church. In that role, he should strengthen his brethren by exercising his teaching authority well. If he refuses to teach or teach well (i.e., clearly), actions guaranteed neither by theology nor abundant experience, it is both reasonable and justified to at least piously wish that he said nothing at all, i.e., remained an icon, like a senile king. We can all still love and rally around him, provided he opens not his mouth. I would take actually take a bit of comfort from knowing that the Holy Father was becoming senile. My genuine concern is that he is not.

A story from Fr. Z about St. Gabriel Possenti, Patron of Handgunners. Face facts, Catholic Proggies: The Catholic Church has way too many embarrassing saints for you to edit out of her history. Just become Episcopalian. I’m sure they won’t mind.

Spandrell has more to say on groupthink:

[Jonathan Haidt] writes [in The Righteous Mind] how people’s morality is based in fact-free, a priori intuitions reached by emotion and sloppy thinking, and reason is a language based coating applied after the fact to rationalize one’s decision with one’s peers. He makes the point here in this EconTalk podcast. But all this awareness of how moral intuitions work doesn’t stop him from saying out loud how he agrees with Paul Krugman’s economics even though he knows nothing of the subject! I just couldn’t believe he’s so lacking of self-awareness. Perhaps he’s just advertising his cognitive dissonance as promotion for his book. Think my thinking is fucked up? Buy my book and you’ll know why!

Spandrell links to this Anthony Watts article. It shows us, first, that the perpetually aggrieved Abe Foxman appears not to be aggrieved with likening “global warming skeptics” to “holocaust deniers”. It would not surprise me, however, if Foxman someday puts the kibosh on that—reserving the word “holocaust” for only The Holocaust, the greatest conceivable evil ever to have occurred in the world, and denying the word ever had a definition before that. The more alarming issue to me is how powerful and widespread this meme, which doesn’t bear up under any scrutiny, has become among the quotable “elite”. “Smart” groupthink is way more dangerous, and arguably way dumber, than the dumb, mostly harmless, prolely kind (cat in a microwave, God making the world in 6 literal days, etc.).

I’m pretty sure groupthink is unavoidable, and probably at normal, quiescent levels is somewhere between benign and beneficial in human societies. But it is exacerbated almost beyond measure by egalitarian (i.e., false) ideology and demotic policy which arises naturally from it. In the very early years of the American Republic, this phenomenon was palpable to De Toqueville in his quote on right side bar.

Assistant Village Idiot links to this Monkees’ video:

Of course, I never take politically aware music very seriously. (“If you take your politics from popular music, you’ve got bigger problems than merely taking your politics from popular music.”—NBS) But in the universe of politically aware music, the Monkees deserve a higher rating than most and far higher than they are widely given credit. And besides, the video is pretty trippy. Long ago, a band I was in covered the Monkees’ Door into Summer. I think the song had a pretty edifying message. I am not embarrassed for having performed the song (tho’ I might be, IIRC, for how I was dressed).

Mangan chimes in on the question of Are We Getting Supider?. I think it inarguable that trends in birthrates have been dysgenic for a long time. Whether that genetic trend has been compensated fully by environmental effects is a far more complicated question. What this means at the right edges of the distribution, and what impact it may have on technological advancement is the hardest and most important question of all.

Land advertises and amplifies a nifty reactionary subversion idea. Not sure I completely understand it, but subversion is pretty much the only thing we got going right now. Poe’s Law is sure to be challenged in such an effort.

SoBL has a novel and indeed modest proposal: If we’re going to give people carrots, cannot we at least tie them to moderately strong sticks? Of course it would work. But it’d be totally racist. So let ’em all die so we can feel moral.

Aimless Gromar (becoming so after the untimely death of “Amos”) reports upon CPAC; points out the eerie Hiterlishness of “Hitler Tests”—an irony which, if perceived at all, will no doubt be moralized away by the Cathedral’s 20 million (and growing) hamster powered psychological engine. Worthwhile also are Gromar’s thoughts on reform.

Holy S-h-o-o-t! Captain Capitalism linked to me and instantly doubled tripled quadrupled my traffic. I shall have to return the favor, but, as the old saying goes, he needs clicks from me like a dog needs fleas. I suspect we agree on much and are fellow travelers in The Reaction®. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the “Enjoy the Decline” attitude, tho’ I certainly understand and sympathize with it. The incentives are sucking pretty bad right now. I do prefer the maxim: “Fuck the Decline & do Something the Hell About It (and oh yeah, win-or-lose, enjoy it as much as you can)!” I think the Ole Captain is doing something—a whole lotta something—about it. So I let this minor quibble slide.

Speaking of Clarey, here’s a rant about loathing this USS of A. As for me, I love my country… I just hate my government… along with all the institutions, educators, psychologists, talking heads, pikers, sycophants, slackers, clergypersons, thugs, and morons who keep it in power. There remains a lot of ruin left in this country. Who knows whether something of it might be saved? Also, this was good, but should be taken with a dose of humility at least two hours before bedtime and not less than one hour before operating heavy machinery.

Via Matt Briggs, America is a Communist Country—the meme that only grows in strength, whenever you try to debunk it. That’s hashtag: #AIACC.

Dalrock may be a one-trick pony, but it is one awesome trick:

The idea of a wife following her husband is contemptible to the modern woman because feminism has taught women that men are oppressors. The only way to make submission palatable to the modern feminist woman is to distort Scripture beyond all recognition. The right answer is not to explain that the Bible secretly agrees with feminism, but to be honest that the two are in irreconcilable conflict. Thus the modern Christian woman has to choose between faiths; she can either hold on to her feminism and follow Friedan, etc. or she can follow Christ.

Amen.

Gonna put this up early on account of I’ll be OOO tomorrow morning. Hello, Captain’s Readers, and Welcome.

Keep on Reactin’! ‘Til Next Week… TRP Over. and. Out!