This Week in Reaction (2015/04/03)

Good Friday today in the Western Church, so gotta lead with that. In other news, it was Hoosier State Week this week in This Week in Reaction®… Not by my own doing, mind you. How many different ways can you say Progressives are shrill, fanatical idiots? Let us count the ways.

Wasen has some timely thoughts on Travelling in Indiana, and Other Violations. Just a shred of honesty would be nice:

We should pause here for a moment to congratulate Indiana Governor Mike Pence who, on Thursday, revealed himself to be a “stupid worthless kulak [who] thinks he can fight back, which he can’t, for five minutes.” Grantland is owned by ESPN which is owned by Disney. We are therefore the ruling class. Gays are protected by the ruling class. Kulaks aren’t, and if you keep it up, the result will be a shit show of the very first order.

If an American Elite signals in the forest, does even he himself believe a word of it? Speaking of elite signaling, Matt Briggs lampoons it thoroughly.

Kakistocracy has Sober Reflections on the immense toll of human suffering just waiting to be caused by the Indiana Religious Freedom Law.

Undoubtedly related (and if you really want to ruin your day) read Jim’s The stupid elite. He links to Michael Ferguson’s very compelling essay The Inappropriately Excluded—which makes a good attempt both to quantify and explain what many have long expected: The neurologically gifted are dramatically under-represented in elite professions. (Henry also links to it below.) Also from Jim extended ruminations on anime, few of them complimentary. And Chimp politics and Cromwell’s puritanism. Liking Cromwell seems a bit like liking Stalin: you admire him mostly for standing in place of what might have been.

In view of the Indiana Shrilliness, Dreher brings up The Benedict Option again. And goes on to consider The Post-Indiana Future for Christians

Over at The Mitrailleuse, Neovictorian tries to take a more sanguine view and wonders whether there really will be Christians in the Closet. Well, the absolute value of traditionalist social capital, e.g., guns in conservative hands, revulsion for homosex, remains high. But one must consider the first and second order derivatives of these metrics. So long as social status, i.e., wealth and power, is tied to holding anti-civilizational (and utterly stupid) ideas about equality and sexual identity, those higher order derivatives are not going to change.

Donovan considers the Urge to Purge as a human universal in Release the Hounds.

How do you make the purge an effective ritual for dissipating their emotion urges without causing collateral damage? How could you time it so that it happens at a very particular time in controlled circumstances? Better yet, how could you set up a system that neutralizes panics before they begin while still granting people the release they need?

I dunno. Let’s ask Social Pathologist… Slumlord is doing some high-test social theorizing Down Undah in Describing the Sefton Effect. He talks about this every need for a scapegoat that develops with “System 1” thinking. This is a top contender for NRx Social Theorist of the Week. RTWT.

Nydwracu follows along to contend for Slumlord’s crown in Against Conservatism in which he takes on “Inclusive Conservatism” which appears to be the latest intellectual approach to the discard of baby in defense of increasingly murky bathwater.

But inclusive conservatism is not just conservatism. Conservatism at its best rejects the rationalism implied in the label inclusive: its claims about grand, sweeping policies are purely negative. The conservative (unlike the neocon) does not believe that ‘this is how we all ought to do things’ for any value of ‘this’, does not take a stance one way or the other on how the whole world ought to behave—except that it ought to set up structures, unencumbered by any predetermined conclusions unnecessary to their survival, for finding out what works and what does not. The essence of conservatism, long lost to the demands of democracy, is the refusal to claim to know anything from any source other than experience—which leads necessarily to federalism, to structures that allow experimentation. Let one state do one thing and another do another, let the American revolutionaries perform their Great Experiment, and gather the data as it comes in.

Also on his notes blog: an interesting twist to Holier Than Thou: Wartime Edition in How George Formby dealt with a pressure group.

Dante gets pulled up above the fold this week for his excellent A Quick Guide to Entryists.

Free Northerner takes on the proposition that Religion is Absurd. Certainly some religious proposition may be absurd, when they contradict what is plainly obvious to everyone. But religion is only absurd per se when considered through a metaphysical lens which rejects the type of reasoning necessary to arrive at eternal truths, which is more question begging than any sort of intellectual assault on religious belief per se.

Nick Land says thanks to Cochran for neatly flaying the idea that poverty causes Shrunken Brains. Apparently it was not an April Fools joke. Also notes on the sad state of Capitalism Today.

Unterrorist takes note of the fact that Nature is Bloodthirsty. Well, I’m certainly not going to be signing on to save all those frog eggs, but I think I’d argue that living with and in view of the natural unfairness of the world is the crucial step to “saving” not everyone, but as many as it is in man’s power to save.

This Week at Social Matter

Neoreactionary Poet Laureate E. Antony Gray stops by over last weekend to deliver an original poem Midnight Oil, with a helpful prosaic guide, offered with some apologies, for sake of the poetically tone-deaf.

On Monday, Bryce Laliberte stopped by to tell us how The News Is Important Because It’s News… when a man may have, the purveyors of news fervently hope, actually bitten a dog.

Tuesday, Henry Dampier explains How Appealing To Diversity Fails. Namely, because…

Encouraging human cooperation is difficult. There’s no technology that solves this problem instantly. Wishes can’t make people cooperate better. Repeated sloganeering can’t make people perfectly homogeneous, even if they’re the same race, gender, religion, and from the same region. It just helps if the people that you’re grouping together share a common background.

Mitchell arrives at Social Matter on Wednesday with Bringing Freedom and Hypocrisy to Yemen, courtesy of the US Department of State and its Saudi errand boys.

And on Friday, John J. Glanton pens a movie review of the First Twenty Minutes of King Arthur. Needless to say, he didn’t like it. But his dislike is very entertaining.

The audience is supposed to gather that Arthur is a good guy because he talks about “freedom” and the “equality of all men” at every given opportunity, whereas the Saxon is a bad guy because he’s racist. I wish I were exaggerating. But they really did put liberal democratic talking points into the mouth of a fifth century Roman, and they really did make a point to underscore how prejudiced the warlord of the Saxon invasion was in his first few lines. There’s a scene where the Saxon fellow comes across one of his soldiers in the process of raping a native Briton. He prohibits the coupling the grounds that his superior race shouldn’t mix with the inferior peoples they conquer and then kills the solider and the woman both. Him allowing the rape of the inhabitants wouldn’t have been evil enough. They had to go bigger, better—really evil. They had to make him a eugenicist.

LOL!

This Week in Henry Dampier

Over the weekend, Henry proposes Flanking Republicans from the Right. The GOP must be seen as a left false flag operation to absorb vast quantities of useful opposition money and energy and convert it into harmless incoherent noise. Embrace real power, however and wherever you may find it. Abjure the simulacra:

The better way to think about it is that voting is to power as pornography is to sex. Power over territory is what the Amerikaners want — seek that, instead of the cheap substitute which lacks the substance. The democratic process is all about providing the vicarious fantasy of power to the average man. The real thing is better.

Then a genuinely frightening article Are Smart People Being Inappropriately Excluded? Frightening because quantification of the problem. Perhaps more frightening because we appear to have designed our social system for just this sort of outcome, i.e., one in which da Vincis and Teslas will wind up frustrated, under-performing losers. But, hey, everyone will feel sooo much better about getting that Outstanding Participant Medal, so maybe no one will notice.

Monday brings us thoughts on Neoreaction and Political Action. Henry’s advice: Don’t do it! Well, at least don’t do it in the sense of mass politics…

To the extent that debate is useful is the extent to which it persuades a sufficient number of leadership caliber people to defect from the progressive stairway to Heaven, which is really upside-down, because it leads straight to Hell.

To the extent that there is a political goal, it is to bring about successful secession. If that can’t be achieved, then it is to organize an exile on good terms.

Henry takes note of the astonishing growth /r/DarkEnlightenment in The Dark Enlightenment Doubles. Lots of data there plus some advice on how to create web value.

Wednesday brings thoughtful cultural commentary on The Cult of the Virgin Mary and Romance. This was exactly right:

Romance simply makes no sense at all outside of the framework of virtue in which it was conceived, because a moral framework in which absolutely everything is permitted is one in which it loses all of its coherence.

In the deracinating cauldron of modernity, things have lost their connections—their moorings: ideas to reality, effects to causes, accidents to essences. Where everything is permitted, nothing is very enjoyable anymore. Whither passion? Whither Virtue?!

Filed under: Finally! Thursday’s book review is of Laliberte’s What Is Neoreaction? Henry makes better sense of Bryce’s writing that I was able to. I am now inspired to make another try!!

A twofer on Good Friday. First a hearty recommendation of Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation series. This was a 13 part BBC2 documentary from 1969, just at the high-water mark of Western Civilization, when Lords of the British Commonwealth could still be high minded, talk all upper-crusty, and still be taken seriously by their inferiors. I watched the first episode and although it focused principally on the past, it was infused with a sense of prophecy and urgency that, almost 50 years later, is quite haunting. Second, a more blog/click arcana piece: Economist Deputy Editor Standage on Digital Media.

So… what was ol’ Son of Brock Landers up to, eh?

This Week in 28 Sherman

Is it my imagination of is there a pattern where SoBL’s longest and deepest articles come over the weekend? Anyway he tackles the fact that Our Media Cannot Cover Long Stories. At least not well. Not as a single story. Does an attention challenged viewership create attention challenged coverage, or is it the other way around? (12 stars that still look hot over 40… 9 worst plastic surgery fails… I was gang raped at White Privilege U.) Well, the news media are writing the first draft of oh look a squirrel. But boy-o-boy they can sure get us to emote. So emote is what they’ll be getting us to do. Forever.

On Monday SoBL talks about Missing the Hillary-Libya Boat. I had envisioned 8 grueling months of non-stop “We came, we saw, he died <CACKLE CACKLE>” I imagined that would literally sicken most, and all decent, Americans and put them off voting for her. But “principled” Republicans and Fox News have now been handed a “gift”: Hillary’s fast and loose email practices. They’ll run with that instead.

Tuesday, we have a big book review of The Power and the Glory. Sounds like there was a lot to like:

Mexico’s attack on the Church is a memory hole era for progressive history. You are not going to believe this, but after a revolution, a bunch of commies created a constitution that explicitly attacked the Church and its power. Note the mandatory, secular education system the constitution mandates. I have to love how even Wikipedia says the constitution influenced the Soviets and the Weimar constitution. Nothing says success like those two nations. Of course they would go after the Church, and this dragged on for decades, with a peak in the Maximato era. It’s the same playbook, just a different nation. “Destroy all non-prog groupings that create bonds and social power not through prog approved channels”. Oh wait, the Mexican leadership was fascist, so they were not “communist” just a different branch of leftist focused on state power. The Church survived, which Greene did not know in the ’30s, but we know now. It is cliché but this book drills the point home that a Church is not the beauty of its cathedrals, but the faith within the hearts and souls that build those temples to God.

Moar please…

The politics of the book should not take you away from noticing the beauty of the book… There is joy in the simple and small, and beauty in the rustic. There is a way Green does not condescend to reveal their world, and it is in showing the loyalty, the shared experience, and the faith that these people have. You can understand their tough lives, but not pity them. The honor and pride they feel in experiencing mass is clearly expressed, and if anything, it helps us 21st century readers see that mass and Christ is not about you. It is about serving Him, honoring Him, and experiencing it within your community. When you have nothing, you still can have that community experience and those rituals. All cultures have priests of some sort, and as the progressive attack on religion ratchets up in America, we must remember it is not just the priest that makes the experience and community, but it is the community of believers. The priest, for all his faults, becomes the momentary anchor for each town he visits. Greene works this well, draws you in, and gets you invested on that little priest making it to safety.

To be honest, this review reminded me of of For Greater Glory, which I liked. A lot. And whenever I think about that movie, I think about Eva Longoria. As well as how much I hate commies.

SoBL tackles the neverending, and anecdote rich, problem of reconciling historical memories with counting systems based on 10 fingers: The Framing of Decades.

Rounding out the week, SoBL plays the old Joni Mitchell, Memory and Song Association game. You’ll have to read the particular associations yourself.

This Week in A House With No Child

Good grief, Mitchell is in his Portuguese Perch just blogging like crazy: Really, Things Are Going To Get Colder. The EU Will Not Fight A Land War. He has notes on Busy People And Common Lessons. (Yeah, Mitchell, is busy. I can’t keep up.) Here’s some video of an Excellent Take On Ukrainian History.

Mitchell has a book review of 50 Cent’s The 50th Law. He actually liked it:

The central idea of the book is be fearless in a calculated manner, which means be willing to be the person to escalate things to a new and unpredictable level. I learned this lesson young under a psychologically brutal upbringing and subsequent problems with troublesome characters. Who who pushes and will go farthest is always the victor.

Upon meeting certain religious teachers of mine this lesson was further engraved as I witnessed tiny people cow known murderers with only the look in their eye backed by enormous will to escalate. A very impressive sight, you can imagine.

Cultural Crisis of Our Times is extended commentary on this award-winning Reed Perry post at Social Matter.

The only way to attain any measure of real and lasting happiness, which comes gradually, is to understand human nature and subordinate it. It is not a subordination to reason, but a subordination to the whole soul of unified man. Man is divided into many parts. The parts despise communicating with one another, for it is a painful process. They prefer delusion, comfort, and ease. By understanding human nature and beginning the process of subordination, man begins to see the little pieces of himself. If he is lucky and tireless in his labor he can begin the process of purifying and then united the various parts of himself into a single real being.

So say we all! Also Mitchell finds Even More Weight Against ISIL/ISIS-American Collusion. (I think he means weight for said collusion.) This was really good: The Importance of Group Loyalty.

On Friday, Mitchell links to a video that gives a good overview of American Foreign Policy in 10 Minutes—refreshingly honest. And finally a Ukraine Update: Military Preparations (Again)

So let’s see… what else happened this week?

This Week… Elsewhere

Friend of this blog, Peter Blood has inaugurates his blog Blood Flows with a declaration that he is European.

Another brilliant and apposite jeremiad from CWNY: Where We Ought to Hate. “The liberals do not believe in the devil, which makes it quite easy for the devil to make them do his will.” Making anti-racism a crucial dogma of the modernist church?

This is called saving Christianity by eliminating the cultural baggage of a racist past. But white people cannot be dismissed as collateral damage in the great battle to save propositional Christianity. By denouncing incarnational Europe in order to save their speculative theologies, the church men have handed organized Christianity over to Satan. He can make the church men jump through any Babylonian hoop he wants them to jump through if the faith belongs to the men of reason. One of the devil’s favorite gambits is the hatred gambit. He knows that a man who does not hate where he should hate cannot love where he should love; therefore, he tells the white man, through his liberal adherents in church and state, that it is wrong to hate…

Antidem formalizes Glanton’s Law. To whit:

“When making general statements, it goes without saying that degrees, exceptions, outliers, and edge cases exist. It also goes without saying that the existence of these in no way invalidates statements that are true the overwhelming majority of the time. As such, when making general statements, there’s normally no real reason to bother bringing those things up.”

So say we all. I’m probably one of those folks who tends to hyper-qualify, and have my mojo messed up by it. So if you catch me hyper-qualifying, feel free to mock it. Gently. So that I may be corrected.

Also, on Good Friday, Antidem goes all philosophical over the problem of Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? It seems inescable that the enternal communion of Holy Trinity was itself rent for a time, so that God himself could suffer for sins.

Speaking of Bay Area Nooz… Watson pens I, Government: Blue pills soaked in Red #12. If no one person knows how to make a pencil, just imagine how rare it is for one person to know how to make a government. A problem made infinitely more difficult by allowing a crack team of 180 million experts to each take their best shot.

Inspired by yours truly, humble scribbler of TWiRs, Matt Briggs has started a series: This Week in Doom. Briggs is going to sift out all the juiciest bits of social and intellectual collapse porn so you don’t have to. Also, I can’t believe I ever let my kids watch Bill Nye, The Science Guy. What an idiot.

Kristor is his usual awesome self in Ignorance, Responsibility, Forgiveness. It’s sort of a guide to understanding our lack of understanding of the evil and good that we occasionally do.

Kakistocracy wants to ask the Pope, inter alia, Do You Believe in God? Oh, I think the Pope believes; the question is… why doesn’t he tremble?

Filed under He’s Neither Stupid nor Dishonest: Ted Colt’s Why I Abandoned Christianity. I think he’s wrong, but that’s gonna take more than a blurb.

This Week in Not as Absurd as You Might Think Hypotheses… Atavisionary discusses Hybridization Theory? I mean… ducks and beavers getting it on is one thing, but pigs and primates?? C’mon!! Also we find Atavisionary is working on a book on cognitive differences between the sexes. #NRx2015: A Year of Books is coming along quite nicely.

Skyagusta continues, after quite a spell, with another installment in his series The Roots of Modern Southern Leftism, Pt. 2: The New South—in which it seems Yankee efficiency was borrowed kick social deformation into overdrive.

Mr. Roach has some thoughts on best of the worst GOP candidates in Cruz, Eh. After reviewing how bad each of the various GOP options are, he closes with some interesting thoughts:

That all said, a Hillary victory is simply too much to bear. It would signal the end of politics as a useful field for conservative resistance and the need for an entirely different strategy, and it would do much to hurt the lives of ordinary Americans, the esteem of its institutions, and the possibility of any future renewal.

With all due respect, Roach says “signal the end of politics as a useful field for conservative resistance” like it’s a bad thing. To be honest, if a Hillary win is what it takes to signal that which has already been signaled for at least a generation, if not a century, then signal SIGNAL away! Please!! Also at mansizedtarget: Freedom or Equality (choose one).

I thought this was pretty good: Tin foil hatters and Blindmen. Just ‘cuz you’re wearing a tinfoil hat does not mean the aliens aren’t trying to mess with your brain waves.

Donovan has up his Friday Fragments—80’s-Kicked-Ass-Heh-Mebbe-Greeks-and-Romans-Really-Were-Africans-All-Along Edition.

Welp, I was on The Daily Shoah last Monday. What a bunch of Wild and Crazy Guys!!

Well we’re watching Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth this holy-day weekend. I am captivated by the beauty of Olivia Hussey in her portrayal of Mary, Mother of God. An experience marred somewhat by the brief baring of her 17 year old boobs 9 years earlier in Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. I’ve long believed that Mary, having been saved from the effects of original sin from conception, must have been the most beautiful mortal creature in the universe. Olivia Hussey, despite some faults, does not disappoint in playing that role.

Extremely late adder: Ash Milton has moar excerpts from Carlyle’s Latter Day Pamphlets.

Welp, that’s all I had time for (and a bunch more I didn’t have time for because it’s the middle of the night right now). Happy (Western) Easter everyone. Keep on Reactin’! Til next week… TRP, over and out!!