Whedon Sits on a Hornet’s Nest

I’m kind of disappointed to see what’s happening with Joss Whedon.

To those who have never heard of him, Whedon is the man who wrote the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. He was also in charge of the series, and he now has a big TV/movie empire. He’s a big player in the Avengers movies, and he is also behind Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. Whedon is what film critics call an auteur. He’s like Kevin Smith, only not long-winded, not as aggressively filthy, and much better at writing action scenes.

Whedon created Firefly, my favorite sci-fi series. The network destroyed it by rolling episodes out in sort of a random order. Too bad.

If you haven’t seen Firefly, it works like this: the Democrats take over the solar system. They interfere in people’s lives, pretty much the way they do in real life. The aim is to produce a lovely classless society in which everyone loves whales, never secretes testosterone, and never puts recyclables in the trash bin. The Democrats, known as the Alliance, mean well, but like our own Democrats, they don’t understand that totalitarianism is bad.

The Firefly solar system is full of tiny asteroids which have been converted into earth clones. Miraculously, and to the extreme indignation of Sir Isaac Newton, these little worlds have exactly the same gravity as earth, and they are able to hold onto gaseous atmospheres.

Not everyone loves the Alliance. Future space Republicans form a confederation and fight back, and they lose. After that, most assimilate, but certain hard core right-wing individuals continue resisting. They live on fringe worlds and make money doing various illegal things.

The show takes place on a ship (a “firefly”) captained by Malcolm Reynolds, who was a sergeant in the rebellion. Malcolm is clearly conservative. He hates the government. He wears a six gun. He grew up on a farm. He’s ex-military. He is aware that he’s male, and he’s in love with a woman. Who was born a woman.

Reynolds is supposed to be a hero, but Whedon himself admitted he and Reynolds probably would not have much in common politically. You know what that makes Whedon. A conservative in denial. He’s like Chris Rock or the pre-conservative Dennis Miller. I don’t think he’ll ever come out of the closet, because the force of denial is strong in this one.

Incidentally, Reynolds is not really a hero. The premise of the show had a lot of problems, and one of them is this: there was never any reason why Reynolds couldn’t go home and go back to farming. In the show and the movie based on it, he killed people and risked lives to keep his ridiculous ship in the air. Okay, space. He never had the slightest justification, until the movie came up with a Democrat plot to conceal a utopia experiment that turned genocidal.

Reynolds would have hated giving up, but it would have been better than stealing and killing for a living. Whedon never confronted that. Liberals are good at cognitive dissonance. It makes their existence possible, just like the atmospheres on little asteroids.

Anyway, Whedon has been going nuts on Twitter. He accused Trump of raping a 13-year-old, which came as news to me. On the night of the election, he put up a snarky meme, pre-celebrating Hillary’s non-forthcoming victory. We all know what he saw the next day, when he turned on NPR or visited The Daily Kos. That must have hurt.

His latest misadventure, over which the Twits are tearing him apart: posting a “humorous” meme with cancer patients in it. Paul Ryan, who, according to most experts, is not Donald Trump, met with some ladies who beat cancer, and Whedon said this: “Tonight on White House Wife Hunt, Donny makes host P. Ryan give 2 more contestants the ‘Not a 10′ card.”

There are a number of problems with this, beyond the strange Ryan/Trump conflation. Whedon is saying Trump would not marry any of the cancer patients because they are not “10’s.” That’s not all that funny, and it wouldn’t be funny even if people didn’t see it as cruel. Whedon is very talented, so it’s not clear why he would post a lifeless, unclever joke. On top of its overall weakness, the joke only works if you accept the premise that the women are not good looking.

You can see how this worked. Whedon, who is a suspiciously, deliberately conspicuously ardent fan of powerful women, is so angry at Trump, he lost sight of the fact that his unfunny meme was an oblique shot at the appearance of several very vulnerable women. Feminists are never supposed to mention womens’ appearance, except to say that all women are extremely, extremely beautiful, even if they’re clearly not. Whedon disparaged the looks of several women, and not only did they qualify as protected individuals by virtue of their exalted gender; they were cancer patients who, presumably, need all the help and reinforcement they can get.

Whedon exposed himself as an insincere feminist, or at least a feminist with troubling undercurrents running around in his skull. Maybe that meme was really a Rorschach test.

That being said, I think the reaction is a little overblown. I don’t think he sat down at the computer with the intention of being cruel to sick people. He was simply addled by Trump Derangement Syndrome, which is what Bush Derangement Syndrome turned into at some point during 2016 (much to the delight of George Bush). He was blinded by his strange hatred of conservatives.

He probably still thinks he didn’t do anything wrong.

People are talking about boycotting Marvel. Yeah, okay. I’ll get right on that. I think the last two movies I saw in theaters were Iron Man and Logan, and they were around eight years apart, so I believe I can commit to a boycott lasting around…eight years. I also promise not to watch Marvel movies on cable, unless nothing else good is on, and while I do record the SHIELD show, I will try to feel really bad when I watch. I always zip past the commercials, so in a way, I’m boycotting the show WHILE watching it.

I promise to stop buying comic books, ASAP. And I won’t go to cosplay conventions. These aren’t things I actually do, so abstinence should be a cinch.

What Whedon needs isn’t a boycott. He needs to sit down in a cool, dark room and ask himself why he created Malcolm Reynolds. His characters are all about guns, military weapons, martial arts, killing, and blowing stuff up in the name of America. One of the big things that drives Reynolds is his hatred of God and Christianity, and Whedon gave him a preacher father figure to help him work that out. Whedon is not Lena Dunham. Somewhere inside him, there is the stunted seed of a Ted Nugent. He just won’t admit it and come to terms with it.

He can say his movies are just fantasy. Isn’t that what pre-arrest pedophiles say about their picture collections and chat rooms? If conservatism isn’t in you, why is it coming out in your screenplays?

If you’re really a conservative at heart, who knows? You might even have a thirst for God. That wouldn’t be cool, and it wouldn’t help your career, but a relationship with God is better than the phony love of West Coast sycophants who will happily eat your gutted corpse the first time you stumble badly enough.

It has to be hard to listen to reason when Hollywood is paying you trillions and telling you you’re a genius. Camel, needle, et cetera.

I have to wonder if Whedon’s involvement with occult shows and movies opened him up to demonic influence. Toward the end of the Buffy shows, he seemed to turn into a demon rights activist. A lot of his energy was devoted to lambasting human characters who were against demons. In the Whedon scheme, demons are a race, and being against demons is bigotry.

Demonic influence would certainly explain Whedon’s irrationality. When things don’t make sense, I look for a supernatural cause.

What interesting days we live in. Thank God I don’t have a Twitter account, myself. I’m glad I’m not involved in this mess.

Familiar Face in the News

Benny Hinn is in the news.

Yesterday I read that the IRS raided one of Hinn’s operations and carried out files. No word on the rationale. Of course, the news outlets were electrified. You know the drill “Bad Christian Proves Faith is a Lie; Stupid Trump Voters, Wake up!”.

I saw another interesting article about the kerfuffle. A young man whom Hinn claims to have healed is mad. William Vandenkolk is 25. He is blind. When he was 9, he appeared on stage with Hinn, and was alleged to have received a healing.

The article describes Vandenkolk as “legally blind,” which is a vague term. Back when the Miami Dolphins were actually a good team, one of their best players was legally blind. His name is Manny Fernandez. I don’t recall exactly how it worked. I assume he was able to correct his vision with glasses, to the point where he was able to play. Anyway, “legally blind” and “blind” are not the same thing. The article doesn’t say how well Vandenkolk sees today.

The article is interesting, because Vandenkolk, a hard core Hinn critic, doesn’t say he wasn’t healed. He says that when he appeared onstage with Hinn, “he felt he could see people’s faces clearly in the crowd.”

That sounds pretty miraculous to me. It must have been a huge change from Vandenkolk’s usual condition, because it meant enough to him to motivate him to call it a healing. At the same time, it looks like the change was temporary.

The article puts the world “healed” in quotation marks: “Man ‘healed’ as child by televangelist Benny Hinn speaks out.” What’s the gist? Is the writer saying Vandenkolk wasn’t healed? Vandenkolk’s testimony suggests that he was. If the healing didn’t last, it’s unfortunate, but let’s be real; in the natural course of events, blind people don’t even have brief moments when their vision works. A fleeting miracle is still a miracle, isn’t it?

Is the writer suggesting Vandenkolk is lying? Is he trying to say Vandenkolk himself isn’t sure whether he was healed? The matter should have been explored and explained clearly.

What is Vandenkolk’s beef with Hinn? The temporary nature of his healing? The story doesn’t say that, but it does say Vandenkolk thinks Hinn ripped him off. Hinn’s ministry allegedly raised a lot of money to help Vandenkolk, and Vandenkolk says he never received it.

It would be hard for the government to go after a faith healer whose miracles didn’t work, but it’s not so hard to nail a charity that steals from the people it purports to help.

I don’t like Benny Hinn. He’s a prosperity preacher, and the prosperity gospel is a lie that makes people poor and prevents them from getting closer to God. He teaches Steve Munsey’s ridiculous, ineffective, Biblically illiterate get-rich methods, which serve primarily to enrich preachers. I think Hinn knows he teaches lies. That being said, it’s not impossible for a person to be healed at a Benny Hinn meeting just because Hinn is a disgraceful grifter.

Vandenkolk could have been healed by his own faith or the faith of someone present, other than Hinn. Who knows? I think a real journalist who did not have an axe to grind would have acknowledged the big story here. It’s not news if someone like Hinn takes someone’s money, but it’s very big news if a blind person receives his sight supernaturally, even if it doesn’t last.

If Hinn’s star falls because of this, fine. He is not a good person, and his ministry is toxic. But it will be a net loss if Christianity itself is disgraced through this scandal. How many people have been separated from God by their anger at crooked preachers? Hundreds of millions, at least. If Hinn implodes, we need other ministries to rise and fill the hole. I hope God will raise up sincere, powerful ministers to take the places of people like Hinn and Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes. When God took Pharaoh off the backs of the Jews, he didn’t leave them wandering around on their own. He gave them Moses.

I have no sympathy at all for Hinn. The sooner his poisonous, fraudulent act is put to rest, the better.

BYE

Thanks for the prayers and kind thoughts regarding the move out of Miami. I really need those prayers.

Today I’m trying to figure out where to put my tools. If the deal goes through, I’ll have a 900-sq. ft. garage and a frame outbuilding the same size. I’m thinking I should put my metalworking tools in the garage and most of my woodworking tools in the outbuilding. Woodworking makes a real mess.

The new garage is 33 feet across the front and 25 feet deep. I have to decide where to put things. I feel like I only have to worry about the big compressor, the mill, and the lathe. Everything else is on wheels or light enough to move.

I’m thinking the lathe should be positioned so the tailstock faces a garage door. if I ever have to turn a long part, I’ll be able to open the door for clearance. Right now, my mill is in a corner (the classic Bridgeport location), and I’m tired of it. The space behind the mill is inaccessible and useless. I think I should put the mill along the same wall as the lathe. That will allow me to use the space behind the table for carts and so on. I could put a cart back there and put my heaviest rotary table on it.

I’m not sure about the compressor. I suppose the location should be sort of central, but I don’t want it out in the floor. I guess I could put it along the back wall in the middle.

The garage will have to have A/C. I can’t sit out there in 90-degree heat. I guess that means a split unit, and that won’t be cheap. A wall unit would probably be too small. I’ll also need upgraded power. I can’t run a 7.5-HP lathe on 15 amps at 120 volts. I’m wondering what a 3-phase run would cost. A lot, I suppose.

When all this is said and done, my big table saw, which I love, will be 100 feet away from my machine tools. So will the big vertical band saw. That’s inconvenient, but I don’t want to ruin a big new garage by cramming woodworking tools into it.

The house has a barn. I think that would be a good place for the tractor. It would really open up the outbuilding. I will never have a horse (I hope) so it’s not like the barn will be unavailable.

I don’t even know if the seller will talk to us after getting lowballed. You have to have a backbone when you buy expensive stuff, though. You can’t just give someone a hundred grand to make them like you.

The realtor asked about earnest money. That sounded odd, in the context of a cash sale. The purpose of earnest money (a deposit) is to put a buyer’s head in a vise so he will have motivation to get a loan. If you don’t get it done, the seller keeps your money. If you’re planning to pay cash, it should be enough that the seller knows you have the loot. When the deal closes, it’s a simple sale contract. As soon as the inspections are done, you write a check. You’re already obligated, if you screw up, the seller can sue you, and he knows you’re not judgment-proof, so what’s the purpose of a deposit? An executed contract should be enough.

If this deal doesn’t work, the next one will. I will escape Miami’s gravity well. The joy of leaving this place for the last time may be too much for my system to cope with.

Everybody hates Miami. I mean, nearly everybody. If you speak no English at all, and/or you’re extremely rude and coarse, and you love taking 15 minutes to drive three miles, it’s the place for you. Otherwise, no.

I will post updates as things change.

Time to Chop Miami’s Stubborn Tentacles

The house hunt has moved into a new stage. I made an offer on the green house I wrote about a while back.

I am not what you would call a savvy real estate buyer, even though I was a realtor in a past life. I did mostly rentals. While I was part of some sales, real estate is boring, and I forgot a lot of what I had learned. I did the best I could this time around. I picked my dad’s brains. He has bought a ton of real estate. In fact, he’s buying the new house. That was the deal we made. I would not leave Miami until he did, and he would buy a nice place where we would both live. He needs looking after these days, my mother has been dead for 20 years, and there is no one else who will do it.

I considered hiring a single-agent realtor. Ordinarily, realtors look out mainly for themselves. They deal “fairly” with buyers and sellers, but if you’re a buyer, they’re not on your side. There are things they won’t tell you, and they don’t care if you lose your life savings. A single-agent represents you alone and has a fiduciary duty to you.

The problem with hiring a single-agent realtor is that they get a big fee up front, and they can’t show you any of their own listings. That’s not good, if your agent works for a big company. Also, you’re kind of stuck with the agent you hire. I decided to forget about it and negotiate and so on for myself.

I don’t know a whole lot about northern Florida house prices, but after looking at a bunch of places, I got a feel for the situation. The house we liked seemed overpriced by around 15%. The sellers paid even more for it, so they got burned, and they were still burning me after pricing the house to take a loss.

I decided to get an appraisal. I may not be much of a buyer, but I’ve been involved in a lot of sales, and an appraisal just seemed like common sense. I had a listing agent, a transactional agent, and a seller, all trying to get as much money as possible, and none of them represented me. I paid some guy to appraise the place, and lo and behold, the price came in slightly lower than my own guess. The listing price is 18% higher.

The agent was amazed that I had it appraised. He said very few people do that. Seriously? Do people really make bids on houses without getting appraisals? I can’t comprehend that. How do you know what to offer? Asking prices are fantasy figures. Realtors make a little effort to look at comparable sales, but in the end, they guess. Appraisers aren’t like that. They take measurements and use tables and so on, and THEN they factor in other sales. No price is carved in stone, but an appraisal means a whole lot more than an asking price.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but it seems crazy to make an offer on something without knowing the value. The appraisal was expensive, but compared to the difference between the asking price and the appraised price, it’s microscopic. Seems like a good investment.

The agent was trying to tell me I couldn’t get burned. He said his contracts always say the deal is off if the house doesn’t appraise for more than the purchase price. So you’re supposed to make an offer based on nothing and then pray the bank’s appraiser proves you’re right? With real money you actually worked for?

I think the sellers are old. The house has two lift chairs in it. By that, I mean they boost you to your feet when it’s time to go watch Judge Wapner. God rest his soul. Young people don’t have lift chairs. Maybe they’re old and rich and don’t care at all about money. There must be some reason why they spent way too much on the house and equipment and then never felt like they had to visit.

I don’t know what the story is. I’m not all that optimistic about getting the house. The asking price and offer are nearly $200,000 apart. They may just tell us to jam it.

It would be nice to make a deal. The house has a fantastic attached garage plus a detached garage big enough for all sorts of stuff. I can put a split air conditioner in the main garage and stick my machine tools in there. I’ll never leave. It’s almost a thousand square feet. The lot is big enough to feel relaxed on, although sooner or later someone will try to build on the pasture next door. Maybe we should try to pick it up.

I can’t imagine life with no traffic. What’s it like? I barely recall.

I don’t think I’ll be able to shoot out back. The lot is pretty flat. Maybe if I put up a berm.

I feel good that I made a move. It makes me nervous, handling my dad’s money. He’s all for it, though, and both of us hate Miami. I needed to break the ice and start something moving. Now if this deal doesn’t work, I’ll be less stiff about starting the next one.

What will I miss about Miami? There must be something. Fishing was fun, but I’m over it. Boating to the Bahamas was a neat experience, but I’m old, my dad can’t be allowed to steer the boat, and there is no one to go with us. Also, the Bahamas are all about drunkenness and fish. I don’t care if I never see another fish again, and I have developed an aversion to bars.

Miami has no culture at all. The restaurants aren’t great. The air smells like damp socks. There is no twilight, because of the latitude. After May 1, it never gets cool at night. The traffic is getting so bad, in a year, everything may have to arrive by drone. All the ethnic groups hate each other. Gas is expensive. Food is expensive. Politics are getting more and more liberal; young Cubans want to be social justice warriors and teach their conservative parents a lesson.

Horrible things happened to my family in Miami. I can’t even drive up I-95 without thinking about the past. I remember my dysfunctional childhood and the decades of misery we went through with my sister. I remember my mother dying in Baptist Hospital, after a short, bleak life in which not one of her dreams came true. She was treated very badly. She was never appreciated. God did her a favor when he took her away from us.

I never have anything to do with the people I went to high school with. They remind me of a terrible time in my life, and I was never close to any of them anyway. I thought I had a few friends, but I didn’t know what real friends were like until I got older. If I were in a mall right now and I saw someone I went to high school with, I’d turn away and wait for them to move on.

I should be able to think of something I’ll miss if I work on it long enough, but right now, it’s not coming. Even the churches here treated me badly.

Let’s be honest. I won’t miss Miami at all. That’s my nature. When I cut the cord, it’s really cut. Ask any of the many people I’ve abruptly ejected from my circle. I expect to be glad I’m not in Miami, every day for the rest of my life.

People in Marion County will not turn out to be the answer to my prayers. I know that, or at least I think I know that. But they’ll speak English, they’ll be polite, and they’ll have a lot more in common with me in terms of religion and politics. That’s good enough. I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home on earth, but some places are better than others.

Because this will be a cash deal, I could conceivably find myself moving stuff north before summer starts. I didn’t think about that until today. Generally, closings take a long time because of mortgage delays. Man. This is starting to feel real. Ack. God will get me through it.

Prayers would be appreciated.

And I’m “Peaked in 2000” Ann Coulter

I made a big mistake yesterday. I watched some clips of a Comedy Central roast. Depraved, vicious, unimaginative humor at its best. Not a positive contribution to my life.

You will want to know who they roasted. Answer: Ann Coulter. The problem is this: they claimed they were roasting Rob Lowe.

Rob got quite a few zingers; no doubt about that. But if you look the roast up and see how people reacted to it, you will find that most of the venom was heaped on Ann Coulter. Lowe faded into the background, as if his presence were an afterthought.

If you look at Youtube and check out pirated clips of the roast, you will see an endless array of watchlists and videos with titles like, “ANN COULTER DESTROYED AT ROB LOWE ROAST!!!!!!!!!!!” People who hate Coulter have carpet-bombed Youtube with their videos. It’s almost as if an old Nazi collaborator from Hungary were paying them to do it. It’s relatively difficult to find clips focusing on the other attendees. The Youtube hive, with its editing, did its best to make Coulter’s weak performance seem like a Hindenburgian disaster. That’s something of an exaggeration.

I didn’t see the whole thing, because, why would I? To call it mean-spirited would be like calling Rosie O’Donnell a tomboy. All Comedy Central roasts are mean-spirited, and they’re also extremely tasteless. If you want to watch third-tier comedians you dimly remember call each other things like “whore” and, well, other things I don’t want to repeat here, Comedy Central roasts are right up your alley. If you’re looking for clever, relatively gentle ribbing, forget it.

There used to be something called The Friars’ Club, and they put on roasts. Dean Martin was the host, I think. They roasted people like Sinatra and Milton Berle. The roasts were funny and clean. The meanest person who appeared was Don Rickles, and if you think Don Rickles was mean, you completely missed the point of his act. What Comedy Central does now is much different. It’s as if a bunch of mentally ill teenagers broke into the Friars’ Club studio while Dean was away. On top of the crudeness and hostility, the performers tend to be people who have a hard time finding work. David Spade, Lisa Lampanelli (who?), Jeff Ross (who?), and other D-listers show up, probably to get money to pay for groceries.

The shots at Ann Coulter were really something. Some were well within the expansive bounds of Comedy Central roast standards. Others were so vicious, they were too disturbing to be funny.

The thing the performers, writers, and professional audience failed to understand is this: roasts are only funny when you pick on people you don’t actually hate. When Norm MacDonald picks on David Spade, it’s fine, because they get along in real life. When people who truly want to see Ann Coulter die insult her, it’s an off-putting glimpse of real hatred, which is not funny.

It’s strange; it sounds like I’m endorsing their usual standard of abuse. I’m not. They have no concept of boundaries. I’m just saying that whatever limits they generally recognize were violated egregiously when Ann Coulter showed up.

Here’s the meanest thing they did to her: when she took her turn at the end of the roast, a lot of the people in the room refused to laugh. Some just stared at her. It was obvious that they decided, in advance, to see to it that she bombed. That’s a very cruel thing to do to an entertainer.

Here’s an interesting thing about comedy: it only works when the audience consents. If the audience isn’t with you, you WILL bomb. It doesn’t matter how funny you are. This is true of all performing acts, but it’s particularly true of comedy.

I remember seeing Steve Martin perform when I was in high school. His opening act was John Sebastian, the singer who wrote “Welcome Back” and “Coconut Grove,” among other circa-1970 hits. Nobody wanted to see him sing. It was a mistake to book him. He had a tape machine with him instead of a band. He went through his whole set while people screamed at him, booed, and gave him the finger. No encore. He looked like he wanted to grant the audience’s wish and disappear. When the tape ended, he was dying to get off the stage. Steve Martin came out, did his set in a hurry, and left as soon as he could without violating his contract. He seemed furious.

That’s what the Coulter roast was like.

Coulter is a tough bird, but she was clearly knocked off balance by the toxic deluge of abuse. Even Jewel, whose stage persona is an inoffensive, girlish waif who sings about love and daisies and so on, said this: “I do want to say as a feminist that I can’t support everything that’s been said tonight, but as someone who hates Ann Coulter, I’m delighted.” This was after an SNL cast member named Pete Davidson called Coulter the c-word.

Coulter’s delivery was slow, and it sounded as if she had been drinking. Her jokes were not great, but they seemed much worse than they were, because so many people in the studio had decided to punish her with silence.

Coulter’s performance was marred by her choice of material. Years ago, her buddies got together and wrote a Fox News comedy show called “The Half-Hour News Hour.” It featured people like Manny Coto (who?) and Mike Rowe (no threat to Dave Chappelle). The show was really bad. After the roast, she said she and her friends had written her jokes. Naturally, I thought of the Fox show. I strongly suspect the same crew was the engine behind her Comedy Central bus plunge. “We’re going to roast Major Strasser. Round up the usual suspects.”

Conservatives hate new talent. They’re all about promoting people who already have a piece of the pie. They support hacks. The Fox show was a great example of what happens when a movement eats its young. Coulter gets exposure, P.J. O’Rourke gets exposure, Tucker Carlson (unbelievably) gets the Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly shows, Mike Rowe gets called in to write things, but talented people who haven’t made it yet are ignored.

Remember Allahpundit? Excellent writer, right? Where is he now? Writing for Hot Air. A contrived corporate blog. We will never see him on TV. He will never be asked to write for a major TV show or a conservative movie comedy. Jeff Goldstein never made it. Moxie never made it. What’s-his-name at IMAO never made it. Nobody gets called up from the minors except for untalented tokens who prove how diverse we are.

Of course, Coulter bombed. The whole room hated her, and she was playing in an NFL game backed up by a squad of midgets. Okay, not NFL. More like a college team on whatever level is below MIT.

I sound like I support Ann Coulter. I don’t. I got over that years ago, when I saw how nutty she really was. I’m just marveling at the cruelty of the left and the foolishness of Team Coulter and the conservatives who decide who makes it and who doesn’t.

For all her faults and errors, which are substantial, Ann Coulter is brilliant. She’s the one who labeled illegal aliens “undocumented Democrats.” She has an extremely rare ability to think on her feet and cut opponents to the quick. On Comedy Central, she looked like an amateur who was out of her element. Nice job, leftists and GOP-approved Coulter stooges.

I don’t actually care about what happens on pity-inducing TV roasts staffed by performers we feel sorry for. What really interests me about the story is the Christian angle. While Coulter is the farthest thing from a preacher, and while she is not a good role model for any Christian, she belongs to the faith, and she sometimes promotes our beliefs. People on the left hate her for that. They can’t tell a saint from Judas Iscariot. We’re all evil in their minds, and all cruelty toward us is considered justified. This, not her harsh humor, is the main reason she was treated so badly.

I sincerely believe there were people on the dais who would publicly celebrate if Ann Coulter were burned alive in a house fire. I think some of them would happily beat her to death with their own fists. Their hostility is representative of the general mood of leftists. Right now, lynchings are illegal, so leftists content themselves with beating Republicans at political rallies. In the future, they will have more “flexibility,” as Obama once put it. When those days come, we will see people act out, with their bodies, the hostility the roast performers heaped on Coulter with their tongues.

In 1900, no one would have thought the civilized, orderly Germans and Austrians capable of shooting babies or pushing Jews into gas chambers. At that time, they were not allowed to do things like that. As the government became more supportive of violence and hatred, people showed what they were really capable of doing. We’re going to see that level of brutality here, before long. We’re already seeing it at Trump rallies. Think how bad it will be when the gun-grabbers disarm the prey. The violence will come to our doorsteps, even in places like Florida and Texas.

What a strange time to be alive.

Many times, I’ve thought to myself that Jews in prewar Europe should have known what was coming. I’ve wondered why they didn’t leave while they could. Now I look around at American Christians, and I ask similar questions. Don’t we know what’s on the way? Why aren’t we leaving big cities and blue states? When the real violence starts, the TV segments and Youtube videos won’t come from West Virginia and Wyoming. They’ll come from places like L.A, D.C., and New York City. Conservatives in those places are already afraid to go out in public with conservative gear on, and they’re afraid to expose their beliefs at work. If things are already that bad, why stick around?

Jews are going to get the worst of it. Christians can move to the country, but Jews are city people. Orthodox Jews are literally incapable of surviving on their own. They have to have synagogues, yeshivas, kosher butchers, and so on. They’re not allowed to hunt. Look where they concentrate. Chicago, New York, L.A., Boston, and South Florida. Liberal areas with big, angry ghettos. Not a promising picture. At least the Jews in Florida can carry guns.

When the mobs come for Jews, most Jews will be surprised. “We voted for government programs! We voted for ‘immigrants’! We rode with the Freedom Riders! We fought poll taxes and literacy tests!” It won’t matter. Persecution isn’t based on your behavior. It’s based on God’s love for you. Anything God loves is hateful to Satan’s children.

It’s sort of like the Army’s hatred of Clevinger in Catch-22:

Yossarian had done his best to warn him the night before. “You haven’t got a chance, kid,” he told him glumly. “They hate Jews.” “But I’m not Jewish,” answered Clevinger. “It will make no difference,” Yossarian promised, and Yossarian was right.

I don’t care what happens to Ann Coulter’s career. She is not helpful. But I do care what cruelty to Ann Coulter presages.

Oh, well. I’m on my way out of this place. I’m going to move to an area where you have to have Amazon Prime to get a bagel. If riots go mobile and start visiting red areas, I won’t have to use my guns to protect myself. My neighbors will beat me to it. I should be safe much longer than anyone in South Florida.

Killing O’Reilly

Bill O’Reilly is out! How about that?

What a tragedy. I use “tragedy” in the classic sense, sort of, meaning a story of a person’s self-inflicted, predictable downfall. O’Reilly is the author of his own mess.

O’Reilly has been hit with numerous harassment complaints over the years, and he and/or Fox shelled out millions to shut them down. He admits no wrongdoing and claims the payoffs were motivated by a desire to protect his kids from scandal. There are two problems with that claim. First, as Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton demonstrate, a large number of accusations of bad behavior toward women, from credible accusers, is, in and of itself, strong evidence of guilt. Second, one plaintiff included transcriptions of recordings of his obscene phone calls in her complaint. Unless she and her lawyer were eager to face perjury charges, sanctions, bills from O’Reilly’s lawyers, and disbarment, those recordings exist, proving his guilt.

If O’Reilly isn’t guilty, it’s the best frame job in the history of frames. The logical conclusion is that he is an unrepentant serial abuser, upon whom punishment and disgrace make no impression at all.

What a victory for feminists, right? Wrong, of course. Feminism had nothing to do with this. If mistreatment of women in the workplace meant anything to feminists, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, Dick Morris, and a whole lot of other Democrats and Democrat employees would have been taken down years ago. This crusade wasn’t about feminism. It was about silencing a conservative. It was 100% hypocritical.

Is it sad that the crusade worked? It’s sad that anyone would work so hard to prevent another person from exercising his right to free speech, but it’s not sad that O’Reilly got the boot. It’s not right to subject someone to constant verbal violation on the job. Harassment is bullying. It’s a big deal. No one in his right mind would want his sister or daughter to work with a powerful man who called her on the phone and told her about things he wanted to do to her in the shower, as O’Reilly apparently did. No one would want his sister or daughter to think her livelihood depended on sucking up and taking it.

I know, without checking, that many conservatives are up in arms today about this giant loss. I disagree. Conservatism doesn’t depend on one man’s television show, and a conservative who makes a mockery of Christian beliefs while carrying the standard of old-fashioned morality makes liars out of us.

For a long time, I’ve written about the conservative media zero-sum mentality. A few people have made it as conservative pundits and writers. Instead of bringing up new talent (apart from blacks, gays, and pretty girls who make us look inclusive), we protect the queen bees at the top and keep new talent down. The kingmakers who work behind the scenes aren’t interested in princes; they behead them in private. They direct too much of their energy to propping up relics who totter and wheeze on their thrones. It’s not about the cause; it’s about greedily hanging onto little bits of turf. Conservatives think there can only be so many right-wing successes, so they shoot down newcomers.

The O’Reilly mess is a great example of the zero-sum mindset in action. Many, many people can do what O’Reilly does, as well or better. He didn’t make the time spot. The time spot made him. Look at Tucker Carlson. For all his mediocrity, he is ruling in Megyn Kelly’s old spot. I thought he would flounder, but conservative viewers have nowhere else to go at 9 p.m. Put a reasonably competent conservative on at 8, and butts will still fill seats.

O’Reilly is a very good entertainer, but anyone who knows what Youtube is can turn on a PC and find ten individuals, working out of basements, who could do his job just fine. He’s not a great thinker. He’s not a great debater. He’s just a guy with a B+ wit and a talent for pleasing a crowd.

They say Eric Bolling might get Bill’s job. That will work fine. Gutfeld is smarter and funnier, but he’s annoying and immature, so I don’t see it happening. He would probably be a smash hit, though, because he’s a better troll than O’Reilly, and the 8 p.m. slot has been a troll slot for 21 years. Give him a sharp producer and a few strong lectures about manhood and gravitas, and he could be transformed into a prime time powerhouse.

I strongly suspect O’Reilly’s production team deserves more credit than he does. If that’s true, they can put just about anyone in that chair and make it work.

I wonder what happened to Andy Levy. He could do it. He would certainly get more respect than Gutfeld. Jon Scott could replace O’Reilly. Laura Ingraham wouldn’t be too bad, but she can be annoying.

How about Jeanine Pirro? Sometimes she seems a little off the wall, but then so does Bill. She’s confrontational without being off-putting. She’s smart, by journalist standards; she was a federal judge. She would be harder for liberals to pick on, because she’s a woman. Maybe she’s the best choice. I can really see that working.

Losing Bill O’Reilly is a positive. The only way this can hurt Fox is if they turn left. They should not put Shepard Smith in there. They should not kiss up to the left with a hire that will make conservatives retch.

I used to be a big O’Reilly fan, but some people do not grow on you. I don’t know if he got worse with age or if I just became more sensitive to his faults. He talked over people. He was a blowhard. He got way too emotional. He could not admit error. I think I stopped watching him regularly in around 2000. Watching him was a little like riding a motorcycle into a hailstorm without a helmet.

There is a religious angle to all of this. I used to wonder what Jesus meant when he said, “Agree with your enemy quickly, when he is in the way with you, or he may hand you over to the judge.” A preacher named Andrew Wommack gave me a good answer. He said it meant to admit fault when accused, instead of letting the matter fester until it comes up before God. We know the enemy can approach the throne with our sins and ask for the right to harm us. If we repent, we can avoid that. It certainly looks like O’Reilly handed himself over to his enemies by falsely maintaining his innocence. You don’t have to make gross remarks to your coworkers, and you definitely don’t have to continue doing it after being caught and sued numerous times.

Here is what Psalm 32 says:

When I kept silent, my bones wasted away
because of my groaning all day long;

day and night your hand was heavy on me;
the sap in me dried up as in a summer drought. (Selah)

When I acknowledged my sin to you,
when I stopped concealing my guilt,
and said, “I will confess my offenses to Adonai”;
then you, you forgave the guilt of my sin. (Selah)

This is what everyone faithful should pray
at a time when you can be found.
Then, when the floodwaters are raging,
they will not reach to him.

Waters are voices that rise against you. If you are honest with God, he will rebuke them and keep you safe. If not, sooner or later, you will start to sink.

This idea is on my mind all the time. God keeps showing me my disgusting problems. I work to confess them to him, and I ask him for his help with that. I used to think I was a pretty good guy, but I was deluded. I am not good at all. I am lucky so many things have been kept out of the light. I keep asking for patience and correction.

It’s like God gave me a relativey clean barn when I was born, and I spend decades shoveling manure into it. Now there’s a whole lot of hardened manure, and I can’t move it out without help.

I hope Fox makes a good choice, but I’m not going to get agitated, because the welfare of this country depends on our relationship with God, not the secular blather of TV commentators.

Once again, I’m glad I’m out of the conservative blogging mosh pit. If I were still getting 3000 visits per day, I would be buried in critical comments today. I don’t miss that nonsense at all.

Christian Apathy and Self-Righteousness Feed Persecution

Fascinating news on the persecution front: a reporter from Mother Jones has criticized the police for failing to prevent liberal goons from beating Trump supporters in Berkeley.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it. You can look at the story for yourself.

Before I go on, you should know that Mother Jones is a disgraceful far-left rag. It’s named for a woman who helped found the IWW, a socialist labor organization. It’s not Infowars, Zerohedge, The Blaze, Hot Air, or WND. Mother Jones is not an organization that favors the right or even treats us fairly.

For some reason I can’t fathom, Trumpers decided to have a rally in Berkeley. This is a little bit like the Anti-Defamation League protesting in front of the Fuhrerbunker. When a conservative demonstrates in Berkeley, knowing he will not be allowed to bring arms, he is almost demanding a beating. I’m not saying it’s okay to beat conservatives; just that they knew or should have known what was coming.

The rally was set for noon, and like most modern conservative functions, it was attended primarily by violent leftists. They arrived hours early and waited for the victims to show up. The rally started, the beatings began, and the police sat by and watched. Their participation was very limited.

The reporter’s name is Shane Braun. He shot a video of two cops sitting around watching the riot. Here’s a partial transcript:

“I’ve been watching all day people get beat up pretty bad and I haven’t seen you guys around much,” Bauer said.

“Okay, and?” the officer responded.

You can see the whole story at The American Mirror.

One Trumpite was surrounded by a mob and beaten with fists, feet, and a skateboard.

So what’s my take on this? Anger? Outrage? A call for conservatives to beat up liberals? Not really. I’m here mainly to criticize conservatives.

First of all, most of the red hat wearers seem to be unaware that we brought this problem on ourselves. Christian or not, conservatives are beaten because the left hates God. In the leftist mind, we are associated with Jesus, and Jesus is against abortion, drugs, uncleanness, insolence, pride, free contraception, and the division of Israel. Even if you’re a conservative atheist, if you get a beating from a leftist mob, it’s rooted in persecution of Christians. Strong Christians get a lot of protection from God. Weak ones raise up and feed their own enemies. Our rebellion and pride caused the goon organizations to form and strengthen, and we also gave power to the spirits that encourage mayors and cops to get in on the persecution.

Second, we are losing battles God never asked us to fight in the first place. Remember the Bible? When God sent his servants into battle, and they were in a state of obedience, they won. When they got into squabbles on their own, or they went into battle spiritually naked, they lost. Does anyone seriously think God told the demonstrators to go to Berkeley? Of course he didn’t. This wasn’t his operation, so he had no obligation to provide air support. Like a good friend of mine likes to say, “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

Third, where is our spiritual warfare? We’re having ridiculous rallies all the time, but where are the huge prayer meetings and mass repentances? When things don’t go our way, we’re supposed to come before God with contrite spirits and ask him to correct us so his blessings can flow. I’m sure some people are doing that, but I haven’t seen it on the news. If there was a movement of repentance and prayer, we would know about it, just like we know about the pointless rallies.

We never stop blaming the godless for what’s happening in America, but aren’t we supposed to be the ones who have the most power? We haven’t used it. Instead, we’ve attached ourselves to the mob. We participate in their sins. We admire them. We fawn on their nastiest celebrities. We listen to their corrupt music. We elect abortion lovers. If we had been praying and repenting daily, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

We’ve let ourselves down, and we’ve also let the godless down. Many of them can be saved, but we’re too busy acting just like them to pray for them and provide an example.

If you think I’m wrong, and that numbers and might are all that matter, consider a few things. In Genesis, eight people defeated the entire human race and came through its destruction unscathed. After that, Lot and his daughters walked out of Sodom unharmed. Gideon and 300 men wiped out the Midianite army. Samson killed a thousand men by himself. David, who was too small to wear a man’s armor, killed Goliath with a sling. Jesus walked unharmed through a crowd of people who wanted to throw him off a cliff. The Jews couldn’t touch him until he gave himself to them.

If it seems shocking that the police would allow masked criminals to beat peaceful demonstrators, wake up. Who is the God of this world? It’s not Yahweh. He’s an absentee owner. Satan rules this planet, with limited interference from God. Things are going to get worse, not better, and the answer is not to study rioting and become as proficient as those who hate us.

We’re supposed to do well because of grace, not hard work or the power of our own puny arms. We don’t get grace, because we teach each other that God helps those who helps themselves (the opposite of Biblical teaching). Every time one of us gets a stick across the face, it’s because we told God, “We got this,” and God folded his hands and said, “Fine with me.”

I get way too upset with the left. That’s silly. They’re not in the camp. They’re doing what they’re supposed to do. Satan’s children are supposed to be willfully stupid, violent, and deluded. They’re not going to change because we fight them or criticize them. Generally, they’re going to hell, and God is not overly concerned about their behavior. Our concern should be with our own hearts and minds. We should be thinking about our own shortcomings and repenting.

Don’t ask me to go to a rally. Even here in Florida, where I would be allowed to take guns, I wouldn’t go unless I felt God wanted me there. I don’t want to be identified with the people who think screaming and fighting are the way to win.

I have to say that it would be a different picture if leftist criminals attacked a conservative demonstration in a state with sane gun laws. In California, we see what happens when only criminals have guns. Has leftists ever managed to beat Trump supporters at rallies in Texas or Florida? I wonder. Criminals go where they know they’re welcome.

Living in areas where Satan’s children have complete dominance is a bad idea. My best guess is that God wants most of us out of such places, just as he wanted Lot out of Sodom. We’re not going to win the Bay Area or Key West over. We’re never going to get anywhere in Baltimore or Chicago. If you stay too long, you’re just putting God to the test, expecting him to save you from your own bullheadedness.

Most Christians who live in godless areas aren’t there because they want to convert people. They almost always have carnal reasons. The climate. The schools. The culture. No one moves to Miami Beach to get closer to God.

I was so stupid to come back to Miami, where maybe 40% of the population actively worships demons. But I suppose God put me here because it’s where I belonged at the time. I was rebellious, so I belonged with the rebellious.

Persecution will increase, and people who insist on subjecting themselves to it unnecessarily will continue riding in ambulances. I want no part of the battle for the sidewalk.

I’m not Actually Allowed to Say “Nuthouse”

If I could send a letter to heaven, it might say something like this:

Dear Mom:

Hi from earth. I’m glad you’re in heaven, but I wish I could five more years with you, to treat you better. Life down here is interesting.

Donald Trump just got elected president. No, really. Also, homosexual marriage has been recognized legally for several years, and if a Christian baker refuses to make a gay wedding cake, he can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and have his business destroyed.

Do you remember Bruce Jenner? The guy on the Wheaties box? He has been castrated. He paid a doctor to do it. He didn’t have cancer. He just thinks he’s a woman. I know how crazy that sounds. The really weird part is that the medical establishment backs him up. There are a lot of people like him now. If you’re a man, you can just decide you’re a woman, and they have to let you go into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms and undress in front of little girls. You don’t even have to have surgery or shave your beard.

I’m not joking. Ask Jesus.

I read that Bruce is worried that heterosexual men won’t want to date him. I don’t know what to say about that, except that I think his fears are well-founded.

Remember Sonny and Cher? Remember their little blonde daughter Chastity? She says she’s a man now. She had her breasts amputated. Cher was always a full-throttle leftist, but she flipped out when she found out Chastity was a lesbian. I guess the whole thing seemed more appealing when it was other people’s kids.

The North Koreans have nuclear missiles now. They don’t work very well, but they keep working on them. Remember how Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter let them have nuclear reactors and said they were only going to be used for peaceful purposes? That worked out about as well as I expected.

The guy who ran North Korea died, but his son is in charge, and he’s just as deranged. He’s threatening to nuke us right now. Trump is trying to do something about it, but don’t be surprised if you see a sudden wave of new arrivals from the West Coast, Japan, and South Korea in a year or two.

The government takes all our emails now and stores them. They say it’s to prevent terrorism. In 2001, Muslims flew two jets into the World Trade Center and murdered 3000 people. Since then, Americans have completely abandoned the notion that they’re supposed to be free, except when it comes to strange sex acts, obscenity, abortion, and drugs. We do whatever the government wants. For a long time, we had x-ray machines in airports, and they took naked pictures of us as we were headed for our planes. I am totally serious. We still have uneducated security officers putting their hands all over travelers, including their crotches.

The government also keeps records of all our phone calls, without warrants. They have computers to make transcripts and check them to see if we say things the government doesn’t like. It kind of makes you wonder why we sent 405,000 men to die in World War Two. We thought we were fighting for the Bill of Rights, but we’ve given it up in exchange for fancy portable phones and safety from terrorist attacks, so I suppose it would have been smarter to let the Nazis take over without a fight. The end result would have been similar in many ways. We did help end the Holocaust, though.

Our phones have cameras in them now, and the government can turn the phones on without our consent. They can listen to us and film us. How about that?

Our highways have lots of cameras on them, and many also have mysterious sensors every half-mile. We have things in our cars that tell the government when we pass through toll gates, and the government keeps the records of where we go. Cop cars have cameras that read our license plates all day and check them against government databases. No one seems to mind.

Public nudity is legal in many places now, and many people seem obsessed with it. You can go to a parade in a big American city and see naked men walking around. There are lots of very vocal women agitating for the right to go around topless, although no one has managed to explain why this is necessary. Some are doing some really gross things involving confronting the public with their monthly biological cycles. I am too embarrassed to elaborate. It won’t be too long before sane people and their kids are only safe in their own houses. I think that’s the goal, though. To drive us out of public places.

Cash is disappearing. We pay for everything using credit cards, bank cards, and even our cell phones. It won’t be long until the government convinces us cash has to be abolished. When that happens, I don’t know how we’ll be able to hide wealth or keep it out of the government’s hands. If they get mad at us, they’ll be able to find all the money we have and freeze it instantly. I’m sure they would never do that, though. Not unless they had a really good reason. We can always trust the government.

I hope that last part made you laugh.

Here’s something interesting: Satanists are putting statues and other stuff up on public property. If you’re a Satanist, and you complain enough, you may be able to put a statue of Satan up at a courthouse. Can you imagine what would have happened if someone had done that when you were a kid?

Creepy false religions are doing very well, but Christians have a lot of problems. Anyone who won’t renounce God’s condemnation of homosexuality is pretty much ineligible for a high-profile secular job. They call us “homophobes.” You don’t have to be an activist to get in trouble. Just sitting in the back of a church will get you canned.

The latest Pope is a socialist. Not a big surprise, I guess. Catholicism is what it is. He is constantly criticizing conservatives, gun makers, capitalists, and anyone who believes in secure borders. Oddly, he lives in a palatial fortress which is also a country, and it has a huge wall around it. The people who guard him carry machine guns. I assume he is aware of this.

The Confederate flag is gone now. When you were still here, as you know, a lot of Southerners used it as a symbol to show they loved the South. There were even black people who liked it. About two years ago, a strange spell fell on people, and we instantly decided there was no difference between a Confederate flag and a swastike. I know you will find that hard to believe. You can’t have one on a car tag or a T-shirt now, unless you want to have all sorts of problems. If a kid wears a shirt like that to high school now, he will be sent home and suspended. And all this happened almost overnight. It makes you wonder what else can happen that fast. Next time it may be the cross.

White people are under attack these days. Colleges teach courses about the “problem” of whiteness. I guess next they’ll be talking about the White Question and the Final Solution. The weird thing is that this is happening while we’re in the majority, and we’re participating in it. Thank God everyone else is perfect, right? I think the rest of the world would miss us if we disappeared. Judging by what goes on in places where there aren’t many of us, I mean.

We can’t complain. If you complain, society labels you racist. Which is a little weird, since a complaint would be a response to racism. Do you remember the “political correctness” craze of the Eighties, and how funny it was, and how Americans laughed about it when it was over? It’s back, and this time, no one is laughing. This time, it’s here to stay. Everyone is offended, all the time, and society assumes that anyone who is offended is right except for Christians, men, conservatives, and white people. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.

Fighting won’t help, but then you know that, because you know God’s heart. Fighting is carnal, and it makes things worse. The answer is to turn back to God and get his help, but we are not going to do that. We have more faith in Donald Trump than Jesus Christ. Trump is very angry and forceful, so he makes a lot of Christians feel like they’re winning. We love our secular messiahs. They fight for us and don’t expect us to change.

Quite honestly, I would like to join you soon. I enjoy life, but people like me are being painted into a corner. Every day is like a little Kristallnacht. There is no future for us here. Things are going to get worse and worse, and the most disgusting, cruel people on earth are going to be in charge of us.

I think about the Jews who left Europe in the Thirties. They were the smart ones. I would do the same thing, but we only have one planet! Where would I go? My plan is to move somewhere safer than Miami and hope I am allowed to come see you before things get too bad.

We still haven’t found a way to extend human life, but people keep trying, and they think they’re getting closer. What on earth is wrong with them? Seventy years in this place are enough, don’t you think?

It must be nice up there. Perfect health (you must look younger than I do) and safety. No hateful, ignorant people spitting at God all the time. No disagreement. No one forcing you to say perversion is a virtue. No one forcing you to call men women. No one coming into your country with hostile intentions and demanding to be allowed to stay. If there’s one place that has secure borders, it’s heaven!

I miss you, but I’m glad your sentence–your tour of duty–is over. You weren’t treated well, and you never got the things you should have received. I wouldn’t bring you back to this place for a billion dollars. I’m glad you’re surrounded by love, and that the people and spirits who mistreated you can’t reach you or even communicate with you.

Thanks for all you did for me. I finally appreciate it.

The Devil is no VIP

Today I was looking at the Bible, and I decided to try to get the answer to an old question. When Jude and Peter complained of preachers who spoke evil of “dignitaries,” what, exactly, were they talking about?

Jude contrasts them with Michael, who, when arguing with Satan over the body of Moses, refused to make a “reviling accusation.” Instead, Michael called on God to rebuke Satan. Based on this passage, some people believe Jude and Peter were criticizing people who said mean things about fallen angels. The idea is that such beings are still “dignitaries” in heaven.

I dunno ’bout that.

Most people believe Beelzebub or Beelzebul is Satan. In any case, just about everyone believes he’s a fallen angel. The names the Bible give him don’t mean “dignitary.” Quite the opposite. Depending on who you ask, they mean “Lord of Flies,” “Lord of Garbage,” or “Lord of Feces.” Even if it means “Lord of Flies,” the word “Flies” connotes feces, because that’s what flies feed on. “Beel” is just “baal,” or “lord.”

How can God warn people against insulting Satan while permitting them to call him “Lord of Feces”?

In 2 Kings (as Trump and I call it), Jehu defeated Ahab and Jezebel, who worshiped Baal. Then he proclaimed a solemn assembly to honor Baal, and he called for all Baal worshipers to meet in Baal’s temple. Once they were inside, he told his troops not to let any escape, and that anyone who let a man escape would have to be killed in his place. The idolaters were killed, the temple was burned, and Jehu turned it into a public toilet. After that, untold thousands of Jews went there and relieved themselves all over it, with God’s approval.

In Ezra 6, Cyrus decreed that the temple would be rebuilt. The penalty for resisting his edict was to be hanged on a timber from your own house, and to have the house turned into a public toilet. To harm God’s house was to harm your own house.

In Jerusalem, many Jews worshiped Moloch, whose name is thought by some to mean “King of the World.” The consonant trio MLK is found in the Hebrew word for king. Melchizedek was the king of Jerusalem. The man whose ear Peter cut off was named Malchus.

Moloch was the Planned Parenthood of the Mediterranean area. If you wanted to succeed in life (sound familiar?), you would take your baby to a priest of Moloch, and the priest would put it in the hands of a bronze statue representing the false god. Under the hands there was a flaming brazier. The baby would fall into it. According to Jewish history, the pagans played drums to drown out the screams so the ambitious parents wouldn’t pity their babies. They roasted live babies just as the priests roasted clean sacrificial animals.

Moloch worship took place in Gehinnom (Gehenna), a valley next to the city of Jerusalem. When God’s servants overcame the pagans, Gehinnom became a place where Jews dumped their excrement and garbage. You can’t keep excrement in a city with no sewers. It’s where Judas fell when he hanged himself.

There is a pattern here.

The Bible makes it plain that we’re not supposed to gloat over defeated enemies, and I believe it also shows that we’re not supposed to ridicule them. But it seems permissible to call them what they are, and Beelzebub’s unflattering title is apt.

Some people who claim to have visited hell say it stinks. They say the stench is unimaginable. Rotten flesh, garbage, feces…you name it…multiplied by a thousand. They also say Satan and the demons and fallen angels have authority in hell, even if they can’t keep Jesus out or keep the saved in. Hell is like Satan’s headquarters. That makes sense, if you think of the connection to excrement and garbage. If God made Satan’s earthly house a place of filth, surely he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing to his palace under the ground.

I think it’s fine to call Satan the Lord of Dung and to say he’s unclean. Those are facts, not slurs. If that’s true, then who are the dignitaries the apostles refer to?

I agree with people who say “dignitaries” means God’s anointed human servants. Preachers who serve the enemy have a millennia-long history of reviling and slandering God’s people. The preachers Jude and Peter referred to do the same things. They’re with us now. If you don’t believe me, go to a prosperity gospel church, as I did, and see what they say about you when you talk about their errors. The people at Trinity Church had secret meetings about me after I left, and the pastor of New Dawn started yelling at a friend of mine in the parking lot, interrogating him about me.

Michael and Satan are similar beings. They’re on similar levels in the hierarchy of creation. Michael was not entitled to hurl slurs at Satan. Similarly, one human being shouldn’t hurl slurs at another human being. That, I believe, is the point of the comparison. We probably shouldn’t hurl slurs at anyone. The Bible says the kingdom of God won’t come to revilers.

People who are controlled by evil spirits often surround themselves with filth and darkness. I have a couple of relatives who love the dark. One allowed her house to fall apart as she sank into depravity. The walls became coated with mold. The floor was coated with a film of urine and feces from rats and a dog. Bugs were everywhere. The house stank. You could smell it from the yard. It was dark inside. The shades were always down, and she kept most of the lights turned off, even when her electric bills were paid through a charity program. It was like this for years, even after the dog died. Think about it: it’s a picture of hell. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

She hated having the doors opened or the shades drawn. That’s not normal. The natural reaction from a person in a house like that would be to welcome fresh air and light.

I don’t know if the spirits turned the house into a facsimile of hell to make themselves feel at home and to torment the owner, or whether God allowed it to happen so they would have to work in a nasty sty befitting their supernatural status. Anyway, the resemblance to accounts of hell is obvious.

Here’s something interesting: when people sacrifice or give prayer to God, it fills heaven with pleasant smells. Look it up. If that’s true, given the symmetry of the supernatural, shouldn’t the curses on the spirits in hell make it stink?

I don’t think the spirits that oppose God are entitled to much honor. It wouldn’t make sense, considering how filthy they are. They love evil and hate good, and filth is evil.

I suspect that the lion’s den in the story of Daniel was a picture of hell. Think about it. There were no water hoses in Babylon. Standards of animal care in the ancient world would have been low. They wouldn’t have kept the den very clean, and it was full of huge cats that relieved themselves at will. The den would have been a dark pit full of dry bones (like hell), and the smell would have been beyond description. Daniel was able to visit, but he couldn’t be tormented or held there, just as Jesus visited hell and could not be held. Interesting.

By turning away from God for most of my life, I made myself a sort of outhouse for the wicked. I gave up protection, success, peace, and honor. I allowed myself to be filled with dead men’s bones: the spirits of the children of the angels. I let supernatural bullies move in and torment me. They sent their human servants to overcome me. I loved darkness and filth and hated light and cleanliness. I seemed okay by earth standards, but then so did the hypocritical priests who hated Jesus. Whitewashed tombs look fine from outside.

If you’re like me, my situation should sound familiar. Abusive people (mostly “friends” and relatives) used me like a toilet. When they wanted this or that, they walked over and defecated their problems into me and walked away relieved. Then I was left with the mess, and it festered inside me. I was like a diaper they passed around. Do you have an addict, a molester, an abusive boss, a friend who puts you down all the time, or a wife-beater in your life? Has someone spent your inheritance? Does someone who claims to love you make you pay his gambling debts? You should be familiar with the sensation I’m describing. The reason you’re in this position is your failure to align yourself with God.

Now I’m going through the slow process of having God wash out the filth I packed into myself over the course of decades, and the feculent abusers in my life are being driven out and beaten, as they should be. I hit plateaus. I slide backward from time to time. It’s not instantaneous, and it can be fatiguing. That’s all my fault. God never slipped up. I did. I won’t complain. In spite of the setbacks, it’s wonderful.

The Bible says the kingdom of God is inside us. The supernatural realm is symmetrical. If the kingdom of God isn’t inside you, then hell must be. The Bible says you can’t be neutral.

It’s a very good sign when a prosperity preacher condemns you and calls you a traitor. It’s an undeserved honor. No one should be discouraged when it happens. These people push others into hell, and they keep them out of the presence of God. Peter and Jude warned us about Joyce Meyer and Benny Hinn and the rest. It shouldn’t upset us when we see their prophetic words proven true. We should see it as encouragement.

I don’t have anything nice to say about Satan. He rules the universe’s septic tank, and one day it’s going to be pumped out. It can’t happen fast enough for me.

Plus Wild Guesses About Foreign Policy

I am trying to make sense of the Syria bombing.

I think it’s safe to say that most Trump voters want the US to spend less time being the adult in a room full of children. We have spent a lot of time trying to save nations that didn’t deserve or consent to be saved. To provide two examples, the Somalis and Afghans aren’t ready for civilization. The South Vietnamese weren’t unified in support of freedom and capitalism. The Iraqis are still pretty wobbly. We assume everyone loves democracy, but a lot of people in Iraq actually prefer a dictatorship; something about having a big, strong scary warlord look after them.

Trump the candidate was against intervening too much in the affairs of other countries. Trump the president just bombed Syria over a completely internal matter: the gassing of Syrians by the Syrian government. What a bizarre week this has been. Many liberals actually took a break from vandalizing Ivana Trump shoe displays in malls to back up Trump’s Syrian adventure. Many conservatives are wondering if Trump has gone native in liberal, globalist DC.

To add to the complexity, Trump greatly offended Vladimir Putin when he bombed Syria. The baseless leftist narrative up till now has been that Trump is Putin’s puppet. Somehow, Putin bribed a billionaire to run for president and do his bidding. Because it’s so easy to find things a billionaire can’t get without Putin’s help. Such as…???

Trump gave up billions of dollars in potential earnings to become president, yet we’re supposed to believe he has some venal motive involving compensation from Putin. What compensation could Putin offer that would begin to make up for what Trump gave up voluntarily? No such compensation exists.

Liberals could not understand that, so they pushed the ridiculous Russian Connection. What can they say now? That it’s an inside job? That Putin got Trump to bomb Syria to cover up their ties? It looks like the Russia canard is finally dead, except among the truly insane.

Maybe nuclear war will convince the stragglers Trump is sincere.

Some conservatives like the fact that Trump showed courage and initiative. Obama’s foreign policy consisted mostly of apologizing and selling out American workers. Trump realizes he’s our president, not China’s or Mexico’s. It’s good that Trump is not letting us get pushed around quite so much. I can see why people are happy he took some sort of stand on something.

I’m not sure what to think of the attack. I don’t read the news as much as I used to. My overall impression is that what Trump did will work out well, provided he stops now.

It’s hard to argue with anyone who sends 59 affordable missiles, with no boots on the ground, to kill totalitarian goons who use poison gas on civilians (or anyone else). You can argue that every nation in the world has an interest in deterring the use of gas. But now the Syrians, no doubt with Russia’s help, are attacking the gassed area again, with conventional weapons. Trump needs to let that slide. When you go from punishing the use of gas to punishing other countries for suppressing rebels, you cross the line from reasonable intervention to overweening nannyism. All over the world, various nations are attacking each other with conventional weapons, and we need to understand that it’s not always (or often) our place to jump in and break it up. Often, it’s not even possible to do an effective job. We just waste money and lives, and we make the world resent us even more.

If Trump stays out of Syria now, in my opinion, it will show he knows what he’s doing. If he decides to be the Lone Ranger plus the Magnificent Seven, it will suggest he’s winging it and forgetting all about his campaign platform.

Whatever he does, he needs to coerce the Muslims to accept Syrian refugees. It’s amazing that we’re expected to take them when the Saudis are afraid of them.

It’s hard to guess what he’ll do. He has been a conservative for less time than it takes paint to dry, so for all we know, he could morph into Obama this year. How sincere is his conversion? No one knows.

If he goes all New World Order on us, at least we got Gorsuch out of it, and we stopped Hillary Clinton. Unless two Supreme Court justices die in the near future, we should have a relatively sane panel up there determining our fate. That’s a big deal. One more Ginsburg would almost be grounds for mass suicide. Cuba-style property seizures and the internment of conservative undesirables would be less than a decade away.

Here is how I feel: Ronald Reagan and George Washington didn’t run in 2016, so we voted as well as we could. Trump is much better than the president we deserve, so I am content.

In other news, I am planning to make an offer on a house. My dad and I made a deal a long time ago, and now he’s holding up his end. He’s going to get a place up north, and I will go with him and look after him. For what we are willing to spend, given the location constraints you get with an elderly person, we are pretty much limited to properties under 25 acres. We found a neat place in northern Florida, and I am hoping we can work something out with the sellers.

I can put up a photo or two. The green paint is not what I would have gone with, but it’s helpful if it discourages other buyers.

The place comes with a big outbuilding, a small horse barn, and a lonnnnnnnng driveway with a sturdy steel gate. You can see a grand total of one other house from the yard. There is a big 3-car garage which will be perfect for machine tools and a split air conditioner. I would rather have 300 acres farther out, but this is good enough. It’s a whole lot better than what I expected.

The property appraised for much less than the asking price, so that’s a concern. The sellers got royally taken when they bought the farm, and they may not realize that yet. When they get their own appraisal, maybe they’ll see things our way.

Some people are surprised I paid for an appraisal already. I don’t get that. How else would I know what to offer? Realtors pull listing prices out of thin air. Also, appraising is not a guessing game. There are rules and tables and so on. You have to be trained and licensed. It’s much better than relying on your gut instinct. That being said, my gut instinct was pretty close to the appraised value.

If I lose a few hundred bucks because the sellers won’t listen to reality, good for me. It beats overpaying by a hundred grand.

Obvious.

I don’t think anyone should criticize me, given that the sellers overpaid by maybe $200,000.

I can’t wait to leave Miami. There is literally nothing here I will miss. You don’t have to worry about me turning into a pillar of salt. To me, “goodbye” means “goodbye.” Ask anyone I’ve cut loose. I don’t come around a week later asking to be taken back. I amaze people with my clean breaks. I don’t miss the friends I cut off. I don’t miss anyone I dated. If I decided to rid myself of you, it was because you made me miserable and made my mind up for me.

My dad has had it with Miami, too. The traffic is much worse than it was even five years ago, and the people are as rude as ever. He can’t really get around any more; he forgets where he’s going. If he has to go anywhere other than a few very familiar places, I have to drive him. Maybe in northern Florida, with its simple grid and low traffic, he would be able to do a little more driving without fear of becoming a silver alert.

The other night, I was lying in bed, and I started imagining how nice it would be not to have the neighbors’ security lights shining in my window, and to be awakened by the alarm clock instead of construction crews and garbage men playing rap music on their truck radios. I can’t even imagine it. And what does a dark sky look like? What does twilight look like? Do they have twilight in northern Florida? We don’t have it here. It’s sunny, then a little grey appears in the sky, and then BLAM, it’s dark. Then, if it’s Saturday night and you’re trying to sleep so you can get up early for church, the loud salsa music starts.

If this property doesn’t work, I’m going back to the list to check the next two options. I will not waste time.

What’s happening is the breaking of a stronghold. I chose Miami. I chose rebellion. I chose to turn down a life of prayer. I gave myself to the filthy spirits that run South Florida, and they held on tight. Then I wised up, and it took me quite some time to break the chains I had put on myself. You can’t expect God to jump up and rescue you instantly when your problems were caused by rejecting him. It will be very kind of God to save me at all. I’m not upset that it took so long. I’m just glad he’s willing to do it while I’m still alive and relatively able.

Maybe if the Norks bomb Miami and Atlanta, I’ll be far enough away to avoid fallout and grow my own food. The farm has a well and a generator. Whatever happens, it will beat being in Miami, surrounded by God-hating throngs of people who will gladly invade my house and take what I have just because I’m an old white Christian who supports Israel and voted for Trump. Miami is mostly ghettos, and ghetto people don’t take care of themselves. They let other people care of them, in exchange for votes. They are not prepared for an interruption of the food supply. They don’t save money. If life gets hard, they will invade homes to loot, and if they find the residents inside, they will punish them as 1% oppressors.

You don’t have to be a white supremacist to be concerned about anti-white racism. It’s very real, it’s widespread, it’s extremely cruel and ruthless (because it’s based on a victimhood mentality) and it’s nothing to take lightly. It simmers all the time, but as I personally witnessed after Hurricane Andrew, disasters make it boil over into plain view. We can’t change it, but we can make some effort to protect ourselves with distance. And there are some places where whites, blacks, and Mexicans are not at each other’s throats, believe it or not.

After Andrew, many people had to sit in their front yards holding firearms. And that was just a hurricane. The looters still had food, and the government was busy helping them with their needs. They didn’t loot because of need; it was just sorriness and meanness. A lot of people are just waiting for an excuse to hurt others.

No one, regardless of race, should live within 20 miles of a ghetto. I’m about two miles away from two ghettos, and seedy, violent downtown Miami is only five miles away.

I would appreciate prayers regarding my choice of geographical location and the purchase of a house. I don’t know what I’m doing. Only God knows where I should be.

Thanks for any help you can give me. I look forward to blogging my move.

A Stupid House is a Happy House

I have a smartphone. Sometimes I wish I didn’t. If it’s not the Mark of the Beast, at the very least, it’s his friendship ring. I gave in and jumped on the smartphone wagon, but I do not want a smart house.

To some degree, I’ve already bought into the smart house paradigm. I’ve had a couple of Internet-connected burglar alarms hooked up. They’re for rental properties. I’m not that concerned about the problems a tenant might have with Big Brother. I suppose in the case of tenants, Big Brother is me. I don’t want to sink any farther into the quicksand, though. I don’t want smart appliances or a smart air conditioner. After reading about a company called Garadget, I don’t want a smart garage door opener.

Garadget sells a garage-door-opening system that hooks up to the web. A customer bought it, and then he could not get it to work. Filled with the kind of fury one can only experience during divorce or when rendered impotent by an intransigent computerized device, the customer went online and left some abusive reviews. He told other people not to buy the product.

Mr. Garadget himself, one Denis Grisak, responded by taking control of the garage door system. He cut the customer’s access to his server, and the customer was no longer able to open his own garage door using his phone.

Think about that. You come home from work, you want to pull the car into the garage, you try to open the door with a gadget you paid for, and you can’t do it, because some jerky nerd a thousand miles away has taken control of your opener. It could have been worse, because Grisak wasn’t able to disable whatever system was in place before Garadget was installed, but still. You don’t treat customers like this, and at the very least, you give them prior notice.

When the public became aware of Grisak’s disturbing behavior, a certain percentage were smart enough to take the consumer’s side, and Grisak had to yield. Although he gave in, he seems completely unrepentant. A customer insulted his product, and he seems to feel entitled to blockade the customer electronically and deny him the use of something he paid for.

Here’s something crazy: a lot of people–maladjusted tech types, I assume–think Grisak was right to do what he did. This is the scary thing about the story. People are too brainwashed and ignorant to understand how serious it is when a stranger who is legally obligated to look out for you betrays your trust and turns on you.

When Garadget took the customer’s cash, it assumed a duty to him. It accepted a position of trust and responsibility. Grisak may not get that, but it’s true. Think of it this way: when you buy a “dumb” garage door opener, the person who installs it has a clear obligation to refrain from using his skills to lock you out and force you to lift the door manually. That obligation doesn’t change just because the equipment is a little different.

I’ve written about this before: tech people have no oversight. They have almost no regulation. As a lawyer, if I represent a client, I am forced to assume a position of near-total loyalty. If I get out of line, I can lose my license and possibly go to the penitentiary. On the other hand, what if I run a hosting company? I can do just about anything I want. I remember a well-known blogger complaining that a cantankerous host company operator went through her emails during a feud. In that situation, the blogger had no one to run to except possibly a very expensive lawyer. Nerds have no bar association or department of professional regulation. Most don’t have to have licenses.

Here we are, in a world full of potentially devastating technology, depending on immature people with small hearts and no right brains.

What could possibly go wrong?

The CIA and God knows which other government agencies can wake your smartphone up right now and listen to you. Presumably, they can turn the camera on; at least one school district (presumably less savvy than the CIA) has done it with student laptops. That’s terrible, but we put up with it, because Americans don’t really care about liberty. As bad as it is when the government does things like that (and they do it around the clock), it’s worse when it’s some 23-year-old kid who makes six figures handling other people’s sensitive data.

In four or five years, you won’t be able to buy a vehicle the government can’t shut down at will. Count on it. Ten years later, you’ll probably need a permit to operate a car that isn’t self-driving. The government will be in the system, and when you tell the car where you want to go, if Uncle Sam doesn’t agree, you will have to walk.

No matter what I do, the lamprey of technology is going to consume more and more of me, but I don’t have to make it worse by inviting strangers to spy on my washing machine.

The great mass of sheep are helping Big Brother shove this stuff down our throats. They’re extremely excited about gadgets, convenience, and safety. They’re too stupid to know what liberty is or why it’s harmful to lose it. When the TSA took nude photos of us at airports, the indignant sheep bleated, “Would you rather be blown up?” When private companies give us gadgets in exchange for liberty and privacy, they say, “Would you rather have things the way they used to be? Do you want to go back to [insert minor inconvenience here]?”

About 400,000 Americans sacrificed themselves in World War Two, in exchange for things like privacy, freedom of movement, and freedom of speech. Obviously, to generations past, liberty was very, very important. No one seems to understand that now. There are worse things than dying in a terrorist bombing. Similarly, there are worse things than having to operate your home’s thermostat by hand, exhausting though it is.

Grisak isn’t an outlier; he represents a large segment of his colleagues. If you know nerds, you know I’m right. Most people who are technically inclined are deficient in other areas. Most physicists would have a hard time finishing a crossword puzzle (I know from watching them.). People who devote their lives to technology tend to lack empathy, love, and mercy. They thrive in an artificial online environment that promotes cruelty, dishonesty, and pride.

We used to think nuclear weapons were our big existential threat. It turned out it wasn’t that hard to control them. Until Clinton and Obama demonstrated extraordinary incompetence by allowing the Norks to arm themselves, the world managed to rein in nuclear aggression. The tech community isn’t like that. It’s impossible to control. It has no location. It has no government or identifiable leader. It has a million ways to escape detection and defy authority. And here we are, pulling its tentacles and claws into our houses. Technology will succeed where bombs failed.

It’s unfortunate, but the second we get the power to do a thing, we usually decide we need to do it. We “need” to be able to look at the contents of our refrigerators before we drive home from work. We “need” cars the manufacturers can unlock or shut down remotely. Grisak’s customer “needed” an Internet garage door opener, obviously. In reality, much of this junk wastes our time and money and leaves us no better off.

Technology gives us the illusion of omnipotence. Humans have always wanted the power of gods with none of the pesky moral obligations.

I remember Hurricane Andrew, which may seem irrelevant until I explain. Andrew hit before the Internet was part of most American lives, but it came between us and the technology we had at the time. The power was out for weeks. So was the water. So were the phones. We couldn’t watch cable. We couldn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t physically present. For a number of days, we couldn’t even drive. The thing is, we survived, and it wasn’t that bad. Once you found a cool place to sleep and a place to shower, you were okay. You could read books. You could talk to other people. You could eat reasonably good food out of a cooler or fresh off a grill. The point I’m making is that we clutter our lives with a lot of crap that only seems necessary. A natural disaster will help you understand that.

I’m not saying we should give up all of our toys, but a lot of them convey worthless benefits and have hidden costs that are truly obscene.

This problem is more acute if you’re conservative or Christian. Tech people, overwhelmingly, dislike Christianity and Republicans. They really hate Trump. The polarization of American society is becoming more and more venomous, and in the tech area, people who hate us hold most of the cards. They’re already abusing the power. Facebook is notorious for persecuting us. Twitter goes after us. So does Google. Ebay and Paypal banned firearms sales. So did Craigslist.

The government, putatively, is required to be impartial with regard to religion, and it’s supposed to keep its hands off political speech. Unfortunately, private entities aren’t bound by the Bill of Rights, and as we become more dependent on them, we give them power the government never had. Many people depend on tech nerds for their livelihood. Many people make a living on Youtube. People use Facebook to promote their businesses. We are deeply plugged in, and there is no legal guarantee that we can’t be unplugged without our consent.

To shut down someone’s Youtube channel or Facebook page arbitrarily is, in some cases, more damaging than any restraint the goverment could impose, yet it’s completely legal. Remember what happened to Milo Yiannopoulos? He depended on Twitter to feed himself, and he got the boot. He had no recourse whatsoever. He still had freedom of speech, but it lost most of its value because he lost his ability to be heard. I’m not saying I miss him, but if he’s vulnerable, so are you.

For many people, the liberty to use online services is just as important as the liberty to travel and speak, but there is no way to protect it, because we are not legally entitled to it. No one has a Constitutional right to a Facebook page. Right now, greed is our only protection. The tech Borg will try not to offend us too much, because they need our participation in order to make money. If they ever decide stifling us is worth the financial sacrifice, we will be in trouble.

I’m glad no one else can control my garage door, turn on my sprinklers, or stop my truck in the middle of the road. I’m going to try not to give more control to the nerd collective than I absolutely have to. They have so much control already, though, I wonder if there is any point in resisting.

At least I’m aware of what’s happening. That counts for a lot.

I hope this Grisak person has a moment of self-awareness and comes to understand how wrong he was. A person a bad temper and a control-based mindset has no business in a position of trust.

It’s Like Al Franken has Gone to Heaven, and We’re Forced to Watch

I made conservatives mad when I gave up on Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent, and if anyone had known about it, they probably would have been mad when I said I didn’t support Milo Yiannopoulos. I guess I’ll continue doing what I do best: Bill O’Reilly is not helping us.

Leftists are digging up dirt on O’Reilly, pointing out that he has been accused of sexual harassment on a number of occasions. He has been sued for it, successfully. Fox has paid out eight figures in hush money. O’Reilly doesn’t admit fault. At all.

Conservatives are saying it’s a witch hunt (like the Bork hearings or ridiculous attacks on Trump over Russia, which were and are bona fide witch hunts). They’re saying O’Reilly is the victim here. Come on. Be serious.

To anyone who says leftists don’t care about harassment, and that the O’Reilly siege is only about silencing a prominent conservative, I say, “I agree.” Leftists don’t care about the many women Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Stephanopoulos, and the rest of the Clinton Gang destroyed or at least soiled. They don’t care about them any more than they care about the millions of women who have been pressured into abortions they didn’t want. That’s true. Doesn’t matter. If O’Reilly is guilty of the things of which he has been accused, he should be released.

Is it really that big a deal if the office horndog makes advances toward disgusted women? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not. It depends on the facts. Merely asking someone out is not harassment. But O’Reilly is accused of far worse things. He is accused of extremely gross, persistent advances, and of coupling them with threats and attacks. His accusers say he followed through on his threats. He is accused of using his power to make and break careers to push women into the sack with him.

That’s a whole lot worse than a few inappropriate come-ons.

No sane person would want his mother or sister to have her career wrecked by a creep who sees other people as disposable receptacles, and seeing them give in and allow themselves to be violated would be even worse.

As for the advances themselves, at least in the case of former producer Andrea Mackris, they were pretty bad. In her complaint, she said she had recorded him, and the transcribed portions are extremely graphic, prolonged descriptions of the sex acts he wanted to perform. The recordings must have existed, because no lawyer on earth would willingly make up transcriptions and submit them to a court, knowing he would be forced to come up with actual recordings later. Disbarment would only be the beginning of his problems.

If the recordings hadn’t existed, Fox would have forced Mackris’s lawyer to admit it, and Fox wouldn’t shell out $13 million to settle frivolous suits it expected to win. It seems likely that O’Reilly told his counsel the recordings existed, and Fox buckled and paid the plaintiff off.

I am tempted to remind everyone that O’Reilly is not indispensable. He can be replaced easily. He’s not really that good at what he does. But to talk about his value to conservatism would be to take the position that a highly successful ally should be permitted to profit from egregious, malicious wrongdoing simply because of his value to a cause. That’s wrong. If a lowly copywriter would be fired for what O’Reilly did, then O’Reilly should be whacked with the same axe.

If we’re going to talk sympathy and patience, where is the sympathy for the women? Losing your career is a whole lot worse than losing one gig.

To argue that O’Reilly’s supposed value to the right justifies letting him ruin women’s careers is to commit the sin of the O.J. jurors, who would literally have permitted Simpson to cut his ex-wife’s throat in the courtroom without repercussion. “I’m on your side, and I’m successful” is not a good excuse for destroying people in the name of base, lower-brain drives.

If I’m against O’Reilly, why am I not against Trump? Mainly because Trump has not been accused of harassment. He has been accused of adultery (consensual) and putting his hands on willing women (also consensual). Leftist propagandists have accused him of sexual assault, but they based their claims on a video in which he described consensual contact. Also, Trump has not been accused of linking women’s careers to their pliability. O’Reilly and Trump and very different.

I’m not thrilled that a serial adulterer is in the White House, but I don’t go around crusading for adulterers and fornicators to be fired. That standard wouldn’t leave many people standing. That would be a very personal standard based on my religious views. My stand on O’Reilly is pretty much the same standard the vast majority of Americans would observe.

I can be a good Christian and not insist every person who commits gross sexual sin be fired, but I can’t see myself pleasing God AND insisting a persistent destroyer of weaker people should keep his job.

If the poop on O’Reilly is true, and it looks like much of it is, then he may a very bad guy. It’s easy to excuse inappropriate flirting, but ruining people who turn you down is sick and cruel. It goes beyond lust, which is something everyone has to fight with, and into the realm of viciousness. It is also blatant corruption.

What if he decided to come clean and change his ways? What if he apologized on the air and said he intended to turn over a new leaf? Would that justify keeping him? I don’t know. There has to be some punishment for what he has done already, and merely losing a job is not a penalty commensurate with the offenses in question.

I say let him go. He has had plenty of chances to turn this around, and it hasn’t happened.

That’s the memo for today. Name and town, if you wish to opine.

Wishes Aren’t Horses

I read some interesting stuff this weekend, and it got me thinking about the leftist obsession with lying about history.

First off, the Niihau Incident.

Niihau is one of the main islands of Hawaii, and it’s privately owned. During the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese thought it was uninhabited, and they instructed fighters with damaged planes to set down there and wait for rescue. A pilot named Nishikaichi did just that. He crashed a Zero there.

When Nishikaichi landed, the first person to see him was a Hawaiian named Hawilo Kaleohano. Mr. Kaleohano didn’t know about the filthy attack on our naval base, or the piles of dead bodies, or the garbage cans full of amputated limbs, but he knew our relations with the Japanese were bad, so he took the pilot’s papers and pistol and refused to return them.

The Hawaiians were polite to Nishikaichi and threw him a party, but they absolutely refused to hand over his belongings.

Three interpreters worked with the Hawaiians. The first was a Japanese-born resident named Shintano. He walked off abruptly and abandoned the effort. The next two were an American-born couple, Yoshio and Irene Harada. Obviously, they were American citizens.

The Haradas turned on the Hawaiians. They bickered with them, insisting, without success, that Nishikaichi’s belongings be returned.

Shintano also turned on his neighbors, offering them $200 for the items Nishikaichi wanted. He claimed it was a matter of life and death.

The Haradas and Shintano helped Nishikaichi escape and recover his pistol. They helped him remove two machine guns from the plane and take them with him. With their assistance, he was able to take a hostage and demand his items. In the end, the Hawaiians had to attack and disarm him, and in the process, one received three non-fatal gunshot wounds. Thankfully, the wounded man and his wife were able to crush Nishikaichi’s skull with a rock and slit his throat.

Mr. Harada was so distressed, he shot himself to death on the spot.

Why is this interesting? Because not too long ago, a Japanese-American group succeeded in getting the Haradas’ treason expunged from an exhibit at a museum. The island was (still is) owned by a family named Robinson, and the Robinsons generously donated the Zero’s remains to the Pacific Aviation Museum in Pearl Harbor. The Robinsons donated the Zero with the understanding that the Haradas would be mentioned in the display, so they are not happy.

Michelle Malkin, an American of Asian extraction, wrote about this incident in her head-exploding book, In Defense of Internment. At the time, leftists were flipping out over profiling, which, in retrospect, turned out to be a great idea we needed to implement. Malkin’s thesis was that, yes, foreigners and even the children of foreigners DO sometimes turn against us in times of war, and it makes perfect sense to give Muslims added scrutiny. Instead of focusing on the only group likely to perform major acts of terrorism, our addled keepers took naked pictures of every person who tried to board a plane.

When human beings plan their actions, they generally look to the past for guidance. That only works when they have all the facts. Garbage in; garbage out. If we are going to hide history from ourselves, how are we supposed to learn from it? The Haradas were unquestionably traitors. The Niihau Incident should have been considered and publicized when we were falling all over ourselves, pretending terrorism was not primarily a Muslim issue. We should be talking about it today when we discuss Trump’s travel bans and the idiocy of making blue-eyed old Christian and Jewish ladies submit to groping at airports.

Here’s the other thing I read about: the real nature of Robert Stroud, better known as “the Birdman of Alcatraz.”

Stroud was not really the Birdman of Alcatraz. He was the Birdman of Leavenworth. He was jailed for beating a man unconscious and shooting him in the back of the head, and he also stabbed a prison guard to death and stabbed another inmate. During his time in Leavenworth, a progressive warden allowed him to raise birds, and he became something of an authority on diseases of pet birds.

He was eventually moved to Alcatraz because he was so dangerous to inmates and prison workers, and because he used his lab equipment to distill alcohol. At Alcatraz, he wasn’t allowed to keep birds.

He was the subject of a ridiculous movie starring Burt Lancaster. In the movie, Stroud seems like a fine person who has repented. All he wants to do is keep his birds and continue studying, but the mean old prison system is against him because, well, it’s just bad!

Burt Lancaster was a very handsome man. He looked great in the movie. He seemed like a reasonable person. In short, he was very different from Robert Stroud.

Stroud’s first known victim was a bartender. Stroud was pimping his own girlfriend, and the bartender engaged her and paid her two dollars instead of the standard price of ten. He also gave her a beating. This is why Stroud beat him. Shooting the unconscious man–an execution–was just an added service.

In prison, Stroud shanked another inmate for telling the guards about a minor rule infraction. He stabbed another who was working with him in a scheme to get drugs. He attacked a hospital orderly who reported him for threatening violence in order to get morphine. He helped start a riot. He also murdered a guard, in front of over a thousand prisoners, for reporting a rule violation.

I just can’t see Burt Lancaster doing those things.

Stroud was filthy. He kept a huge number of birds in his two cells, and he never cleaned up. He was also something of a nudist. He refused to wear any clothes at all in warm weather. To make the picture even worse, he used to shave his entire body, head to toe, which is why he has such short hair in some photos.

Stroud was also a sexual predator. He wrote pornographic stories about kidnapping, raping, and murdering children. He received letters from children after he became famous, and he got in trouble for making sexually suggestive remarks in his responses. One of his prison friends, mobster Alvin Karpis, said Stroud talked constantly about raping and killing kids, and Karpis said Stroud intended to do it if he ever got out.

At Leavenworth, he was confined to the hospital because he was aggressive in his homosexual advances to others. In other words, they confined him to keep him from raping other men.

In the movies, sweet old criminals mumble and shuffle and plead at parole hearings. Stroud was different. He told the board he had a long list of people to kill, and he had a short time to do it.

When the movie came out, simple people screamed for Stroud’s release. Film historian Alan Royle put it this way: “What the public really wanted, of course, was to see Burt Lancaster released, not Robert Stroud.”

You can read more of Royle’s thoughts concerning Stroud here: The real ‘Birdman of Alcatraz.’

Here’s the obvious question: what if the movie had told the truth?

Let’s see. A naked Burt Lancaster, shaved from one end to the other, gets dressed and leaves his filthy cells to go have lunch. Along the way, he threatens to rape a few guys, and they duck into doorways. While standing in line, he talks to another prisoner. He grins and his eyes light up as he describes himself raping a child and cutting his throat. He is clearly aroused. Then he notices a guard who turned him in for a rule violation, and he shoves a sharpened spoon through the man’s heart.

Yay. Let’s have a protest. Free Bob! Free poor old Bob the bird lover!

I don’t think so.

Why on earth would anyone make a movie that made this psychopath look good? What was the point? Obviously, the people behind the film were agitating to get Stroud released and prisons reformed, but if you base your notions of reform on gigantic lies, how can they be anything but disastrous when implemented?

Conservatives and Christians are ostracized in the press and entertainment, so the world sees things through a very small and distorted lens. That’s not okay. It causes real harm.

Leftists can’t seem to understand that evil people exist. They think everyone is basically good, and that we can get our enemies to treat us well simply by hugging them and finding out what the world did to them to make them bad. How, then, do you explain people like Ted Bundy? He killed girls, dumped them in the woods, and then returned to their dead bodies over and over to have sex with them. When he was interviewed, he said his parents were fine and that he had a good childhood. According to Psychology Today, Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis “BTK” Rader had good upbringings.

Many people simply enjoy evil. They prefer it. They’re not doing it because no one understands them. They’re not looking for a reason to avoid harming others. They’re looking for opportunities and excuses to harm us. Harming us isn’t the final result of a desperate search for relief from injustice. It’s their primary, most fundamental motivation.

Serial killers keep things like body parts, videos, and weapons so they can look at them when they pleasure themselves. Seeing a rock with hair and skin on it, or a tiny pair of bloody, torn panties excites them sexually. I don’t know if there is a leftist alive who understands that kind of depravity. For some people, life without parole and execution are the only logical solutions. Even God would admit that. He created hell, and he’s the one who puts people there every day. In Noah’s time, he killed the entire human race. Sometimes you have to give up on people.

Yesterday I read about a highly prolific killer named Carl Panzram. He claimed he had raped about a thousand men and boys. He talked about beating a 12-year-old victim until brains came out of his ears. He was happy about it. He killed people because he enjoyed it, the way a normal person might play the guitar or throw a frisbee. When he was sentenced to death, he threatened to kill people who tried to reform him. On death row, he wrote this:

In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.

After that, when he was hanged, he insulted the executioner. Wouldn’t you love to see Phil Donahue or Barbara Walters sit down with him? He’d have to be pried off of them with crowbars.

Revision of history to fit the naive notions of people who knowingly reject reality is not a good thing, even when people think they’re doing it with good intentions.

I am disgusted by what I’ve read. Unfortunately, the stories of Niihau and Robert Stroud are just part of a monumental smoke screen that covers the world. There is not much that can be done about it.

In the next world, truth will be all I see. I look forward to that, and until then, I will just have to put up with the nonsense I see here.

Another Bad Choice from the Clueless Rightt

I guess I’m behind the curve again, because I just heard about Based Stickman.

If you are blessedly ignorant of the Based Stickman phenomenon, here is a spoiler to protect you: I am about to tell you what I know. If you would rather not hear about it, move on.

Leftists in this country have become very violent. They have a dismal, consistent record of vandalism and battery. They have completely lost the ability to separate concepts such as “protest,” “civil disobedience,”, “riot,” and “lynching.” They don’t think it terms of sit-ins or peaceful marches. They think that every political loss justifies putting on masks and beating innocent people. They no longer understand civil disobedience, which, itself, should always be a last resort. These days, they go to Defcon 1 immediately, and their disobedience, by default, is uncivil.

Conservative activists aren’t completely pure, but anyone who can use Google can confirm that the protest-related craziness that is sweeping the country is, overwhelmingly, a leftist phenomenon.

Black Lives Matter nuts burn stores and shoot cops. They even go after journalists, who are probably their best friends on earth. Anti-Trump people show up at Trump rallies in gangs, wearing masks, and they attack people who are simply speaking and waving signs. On Youtube, you can find all sorts of security videos of leftists stealing Trump signs from people’s yards. It’s hard to find similarly incriminating material featuring right-wing criminals, because by and large, conservatives are more peaceful and respectful of the law.

Liberals make fun of Trump for having a sparsely attended inauguration, and for issuing blatant exaggerations of the crowd’s size. Well, think about it. Washington is a black city. It’s not a little black; it is overwhelmingly black. When people decided whether to attend the event, they had to decide whether to face the high risk of violence, in a violent town populated by people who hate their kind. No wonder people stayed home. And sure enough, conservatives were physically attacked.

The goal of liberal violence (strange term) is to keep conservatives from gathering and speaking. If you can shut people up and keep them off the streets, you can create the illusion that their numbers are small, and that leads others to dismiss them and join the other side.

It’s a bad time to be a conservative at a public event, and naturally, some conservatives have decided the smart move is to respond to violence with violence. This, I believe, is the reason for the existence of Based Stickman.

“Based” is clumsy slang for “emotionally and mentally anchored.” “Stickman” just means “guy with a stick.” Based Stickman is a conservative who shows up at events, holding a stick, refusing to be pushed around by leftists criminals. He carries a wooden shield with a flag on it, along with a baseball helmet, knee pads, and what looks like a Home Depot respirator.

One of the big problems with Based Stickman (Can I call him “BS” for short? No, I think I’ll go with “Mr. S.”) is that he gives dishonest leftists a nail to upon which to hang their ridiculous “Conservatives are violent” canard. Unlike most leftists who get physical at events, Mr. S. doesn’t hide his identity, and he doesn’t try to blend into the crowd. Unlike leftists, he doesn’t intend to commit crimes, so he has revealed himself. As a result, he’s like a big, conspicuous officer leading a patrol in the Battle of the Bulge. He’s a great target for pot shots.

Propaganda stories are popping up, using the scary Mr. S. to decry the obvious (yet nearly nonexistent) wave of conservative violence.

Earlier this month, Mr. S. was involved in a scuffle. Leftist criminals wearing masks were going after conservative activists, and one rushed Mr. S. at high speed. Mr. S. cracked him on the head with a stick, breaking it on the skull’s narrow point. There was an arrest, but Mr. S. was not charged.

Of course, liberals are calling for his re-arrest, prosecution, deportation, dismemberment…whatever they can get. They don’t seem to have a big problem with the guy who attacked. They are using Mr. S. as a brush to paint us all with guilt. There is a good chance it will work. It will definitely work among simpletons, and let’s face it: the simpleton bloc is a big chunk of our population.

Here’s another, probably worse, problem with Mr. S.: he is convincing other conservatives that they need to get costumes of their own and beat up the criminals sent to beat conservatives up.

I completely understand the desire and need to protect protesters, even if the police don’t. I can even understand taking a shield, a stick, and a helmet to rallies. As defensive tools, they can save lives and discourage attacks. What I don’t like is the notion that we should to go rallies hoping or intending to commit acts of violence. Liberals do that as a matter of policy, and it makes them morally inferior. We should not completely abandon the moral high ground.

Once we start doing adopting liberal shock-troop tactics, there will no longer be such a thing as a pro-Trump rally. There will only be gang rumbles, and everyone involved will look like a moron. The natural consequence of a situation like that is a state in which the US is simply a battleground where political opponents mass and try to kill each other. I don’t think it could turn into a bona fide civil war, but we could end up with a pointless, endless guerilla war, resulting in martial law and an even greater destruction of personal liberty. The violence would certainly spill out of rallies and protests and into our daily lives.

The reason leftists have so much power over us isn’t that we’re not violent enough. It’s that we aren’t close to God. A people which is close to God will be dominant, without the need for brutality and bloodshed. Leftists are the enemies of God, so it makes sense for them to rely on pepper spray, cowardly masks, fists, and boots. Conservatives are closely identified with Christianity. We should be battling in prayer, and we’re not. If you go to God with your problems (preferably before they arise), you get help. If not, you should go get yourself a stick, and while you’re at it, change sides, because you’re not helping the team at all.

I always write about the hard times ahead. I tell people leftists are going to win. There are places where they aren’t completely in control, and we can retreat to them, but they will get there eventually. We’ll see naked people in gay pride parades in places like Idaho and northern Florida, and our guns will be taken away and melted down. It’s going to happen, and I am resigned to it. But I don’t tell people to fight it in the streets. That will never work.

A lot of conservatives think we can win. They think we’re doing really well. They point to the Trump victory, the high number of GOP governorships, and our control of Congress. They’re dreaming. We lost the popular vote, and the politicians we call conservative are actually moderate enemies of God. They are moderate socialists, enemies of the Jewish state, enemies of Christianity, and, generally, supporters of gay marriage and every type of sexual sin. How can people not see this?

When Trump tried to get rid of Obamacare–a socialist Ponzi scheme–he didn’t try to end it altogether. He tried to replace it with a different socialist scheme. Trump is more supportive of Israel than Obama (i.e. more supportive than Yassir Arafat), but he wants to divide the Jewish state and hand much of it over to Muslims. Trump has no problem with gay marriage, and he and Congress are doing nothing to protect women in locker rooms and restrooms. They are doing nothing to protect Christian businessmen from nuts who insist they work at events they find morally repugnant.

We’re at a party in our own end zone, hosted by the other team, and we think we made a touchdown. Come on. We already lost the game.

The delusion of conservative hegemony is strong even among liberals. What are they smoking? Well, we know the answer to that. But anyway, if they think they’re losing, they’re completely wrong. They beat us. We abandoned God, and he stopped fighting for us. Anyone can beat us now. Liberals should be dancing in the streets instead of moaning about Trump.

Leftists won, and they are in the process of swallowing and destroying us. Dressing up like Captain America will not help. It just shows how proud we are, thinking we can beat our enemies with our own strength. It makes things worse. God resists the proud, and he helps the humble. That’s what the Bible says. Relying on effort and violence will accelerate our defeat.

You should have guns in your houses, and you should get away from big concentrations of the cruel and entitled. That’s just common sense. They’re going to come for us, and we will need to protect ourselves as long as the government permits it. But thinking we can band together and crush them in the streets is insane and counterproductive.

It’s good that no one reads this blog any more, because if I had a big readership, I would attract all sorts of abuse from carnal conservatives. I remember how they swarmed me after I rightly criticized Ann Coulter, Ted Nugent, and PJ Media. The blather of the blind filled my comments, and they wrote ridiculous things about me on their own blogs. They’re gone, and I say “good riddance.” Talking to them was like taking goats and pigs to the Louvre.

Imagine the nonsense I would have to put up with if my former readers were here. I’d be getting death threats from junior stickmen.

I am not a fan of Based Stickman. I’m not even a fan of conservative demonstrators. I think it’s good for people to defend themselves, but maybe at this point, instead of going to demonstrations where we will be beaten, we should be having huge prayer rallies with security to keep liberal criminals outside.

In other news, I learned something surprising about my old church, Trinity in North Miami. According to the grapevine, they are circling the drain. For years, the business (“business”) has run on fumes, but it wasn’t until recently that the main pastor, Rich Wilkerson, stood up in front of the church and admitted the church had severe financial problems. Key people have been leaving for years, and I am told that the services have shrunk to the point where they don’t even use the overflow room that used to fill up during 11 a.m. services.

Here’s the thing: Trinity is a money church. It’s a prosperity gospel church. They teach that if you give God money (God needs money?), God will make you not just successful, but rich. They teach Steve Munsey’s ridiculous lies about God rewarding offerings given on Jewish holidays. If Munsey is right, then how could Trinity fail financially?

I am told Wilkerson admitted the church was in big trouble, but that he hasn’t mentioned the big elephant in the sanctuary. He hasn’t stood up and said, “I had been told the prosperity gospel was a crock, but I taught it anyway to get offerings, and God has just proven it does not work. So let’s repent, and please stop impoverishing yourselves to prop us up.”

Trinity is a corporation, so presumably, no one there who took a salary or other benefits will have to shoulder the church’s debts. I explained that to a friend of mine. I said the pastor’s family was probably protected from liability because of the corporate structure. Running an unsuccessful corporation can be a great way to get rich. You overpay yourself until the company fails, and then you keep what you took and tell the creditors to get lost. Call me cynical, but I dimly suspect prosperity preachers are aware of this.

Doesn’t the Bible say the blessed will give and lend instead of borrowing? Debt is a curse. It’s a form of slavery. When you take on debt, you agree to keep working to pay it off, even if you hate your job.

Trinity used to meet in a smallish church on 125th Street. At some point around 2000, the pastors bought a big office building farther north, and they turned it into a church. I believe the price was something like $10 million. Anyway, it was expensive, and it was not suited for use as a church. They spent a ton of money remodeling it, and then they expected their low-income congregants to pay for it. They should have bought a modest warehouse somewhere. I suppose now they’re reaping what they sowed.

If God tells you to buy a building you can’t afford, then he will also bring the money to support your ministry. If you buy it without consulting God, it’s your baby, and God will not help you.

It is my belief that they knew their doctrine was fantasy, so I don’t feel sorry for them at all. It’s a shame they led so many people into discouragement and failure. It’s bad to harm the rich, but promising the poor help and then leaving them worse off is a greater offense.

Right now, if you look at their Facebook page, you’ll see them doing what they always do: fundraising. They have an Easter play called “Jesus of Nazareth,” and it’s always a huge production. They used to have free admission, but now they charge. They’re advertising the play on their Facebook page right now. That page has always been loaded with ads and promotion. There has never been much there about Christianity. Now that they’re in trouble, instead of using social media to repent and call for prayer, they’re doubling down on raising cash.

The inner circle folks viewed me as a disloyal and toxic person for my public criticism of the Munsey nonsense. Some people who merely attended the church agreed.

Who was right, and who was wrong?

I did my best to pass on the helpful things God told me. I know other people did, too. The inner circle should have listened.

Steve Munsey’s foreclosed church is known for the Starbucks Munsey put in the lobby. Trinity didn’t have a Starbucks, but under the Munsey influence, they tried to run a cafe. A friend of mine–I can’t believe she did this–accepted a position running it. I’m talking about a great person who ostensibly had a fine career with a good company. Now I’m being told the cafe isn’t being funded any more.

The better you do in your walk with God, the more you have to deal with seeing your friends and relatives suffer from bad decisions God could have prevented. I can almost hear Noah yelling, “PREACH!”

Trinity could have been a wonderful church. Oh well.

If you’re going to buy a big stick, don’t take it to rallies, and if you’re going to preach the prosperity gospel, make sure you incorporate first. That’s my advice for today.

Refer Madness

When I was a kid and I thought about evil, I pictured obvious things. I thought about murder, stealing, violence, genocide, and so on. It didn’t occur to me to think about sexual perversion or a general abandonment of reason.

I didn’t know much. For example, I didn’t know homosexuality was extremely common among career criminals, or that this was why rape was a big deal in prisons. Later in life, when I read books like The Onion Field and In Cold Blood, and when I found out the Birdman of Alcatraz (sanitized and glorified in a movie starring Burt Lancaster) was an unrepentant rapist of boys, I started to get a clue. I didn’t think of reason as a big threat to evil, though.

I suppose it should be obvious that reason works against evil. Good ought to make sense, after all. It would be a funny world if righteousness caused problems and evil fixed them.

In his book Slouching Towards Gomorrah, witch-hunt victim and brilliant judge Robert Bork wrote presciently about the coming age of irrationality. He wrote of liberals who promoted the insane notion that reason itself was a Eurocentric, patriarchal construct. It sounded a little nutty at the time, but…here we are. Bruce Jenner is a woman, and illegal aliens are “immigrants.” Craziness rules.

Leftism doesn’t work, so in order to promote it, you have to fight reason. Leftism conflicts with itself. For example, leftists have to be pro-union, pro-minimum-wage, AND pro-illegal-immigration, even though illegal immigrants bring wages down and erode unions. Leftists have to be pro-woman AND pro-perversion, even though letting male “women” compete with female athletes takes victories, records, and money away from women. Men keep outdoing women at traditionally female activities. Leftists have to be pro-expression, but they also have to be against “hate speech,” which is necessarily defined by small groups of people prone to bias. Leftists have to hate the objectification of women, but they also have to love pornography. They have to hate slavery and human trafficking, but they have to love “sex work,” which is generally slavery.

According to an Internet source, “Cognitive dissonance” means “the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes.” Without cognitive dissonance, the left can’t function, but because of the dissonance, the left will eventually fail. This is what Jesus was talking about when he predicted the eventual destruction of the kingdom of evil:

Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?

Right now, a guy (ostensibly) named Pablo Gomez, Jr., is under indictment for killing three people in Berkeley. I don’t know if he’s gay or what. People say he is, but news stories omit mention of his sexuality. Here’s the really interesting thing: he insists on being referred to using plural pronouns. When you write about these guy (???), you have to say things like, “They were indicted on Tuesday.”

You would think leftists would wake up at this point and say, “Man, we look crazy. This is just one person. Calling him ‘them’ is grammatically wrong.” But that’s not what’s happening. They’re standing behind them. Those. “Ellos”? “Los Pablo”? They’re excoriating sane people for pointing out their insanity.

How much more deranged can people get? How can anyone defend this position? And what on earth does plurality have to do with being gay? If he is gay, I mean. Whatever he is.

Even if you’re the gayest man alive, you should have some understanding that language has to work. The need to communicate should outweigh the need to control other people’s words.

Think of the confusion we’re going to have in the coming years, as pronoun madness goes mainstream. How will we address each other? We’ll be afraid to talk. More than we already are, I mean. You’ll say something like, “That guy went downstairs,” and an angry person with female genitals, horns, and a full beard will start shrieking, “THEM FEMEN WENTED DOWNSTAIR, YOU PIGS!”

Think how hard it will be to fill out forms. Where there used to be one box, there will be fifteen. Then someone will sue, claiming having only fifteen boxes is a microaggression.

The Bible calls gender fluidity “confusion.” Years ago, I did not understand that. Now, I get it. I really get it.

I wonder what full-blown persecution is going to look like. Most Americans thought it was horrible when Hitler jailed or killed people for political or racial reasons. We thought it was irrational. What are Americans going to think when leftists are killing us for standing up for good grammar? I can answer that. Most Americans will think it’s fine, just as most Germans and Austrians thought Hitler’s crimes were fine. Most Americans will suffer from the victim delusion, and they (he?) will see killing Christians as justice or self-defense.

The anti-Christian and anti-Semitic outrages of prophecy can’t come true until delusion becomes normal and widespread. That has to happen. We’re seeing it now.

Yesterday, I thought about my blogging, and I spoke of it as writing “things that will be used against me at my trial when they decide to kill me.” I was trying to be funny, but I believed what I said. The devil has no statute of limitations. The inquisition is coming, and the Internet is preserving our heresies.

Well and good. When things get that bad, I will look forward to death. Maybe I’m saying that, not to whoever reads this blog today, but to the loons who will be in charge of me years from now. “On March 28, 2017, you yourself admitted you preferred to die!” Make whatever you want of it, ladies and/or hermaphrodites of the tribunal. You can’t take anything away unless God puts it in your hands.

What are English classes in elementary schools like now? “Johnny, use pronouns correctly in a sentence about your dog.” “Us throws the ball for my dogs Rover, and then they goes and fetches them.” “That is correct. Here is their participation prize.”

Maybe I have a bad attitude about the rest of my sentence here on earth. Every time I read about a Christian who just died, I have the same thought, instantaneously: “Man, that must be great.” No hate, no disease, no taxes, no jerks, no death, no work…that’s for me. I guess I’m okay, though, because Jesus said, “He who loves his life will lose it.”

It sounds nutty to look forward to dying, but here’s what’s really nutty: being highly excited about a life which ends, after a short time, with the loss of everything you have. Human life ends with slow physical and mental deterioration. You lose your talents and abilities. You lose your looks. You fall apart. People start to ignore you. Then you lose everything. At best, you have about 50 reasonably good years, and those years pass quickly. After 40, they seem to fly by. Then you’re all done. If you haven’t lived for God, what have you invested in? Your retirement account is empty. Living for that future is not rational at all, so if people contemn my values and desires, I contemn theirs right back. In fifty years, they’ll be just as dead as me, and we’ll see if their contempt mattered.

When I think about the foolishness of clinging to earthly life, I always think about Madonna and Cher. They got everything they wanted on earth, and then they lost their looks. As old women go, they look okay, but to be frank about it, compared to women years younger, they are not merely faded but completely unattractive. They built their lives around youth and sex appeal. Now those things are gone from them, forever, and they’re ignored. When Madonna exposed herself thirty years ago, boys got excited. Now they make faces and say, “Ewwwww!”

Madonna is very upset about her new situation. She’s very bitter. She keeps exposing herself, which is gross even to fans, and she keeps complaining because her audience is shrinking. She thinks people owe it to her to lust after her and admire her. Think how bad it will be in fifteen years, when she doesn’t even look good from a distance in a grainy photo. She’ll be climbing the walls.

Cher and Madonna have had so much plastic surgery they no longer look like normal human beings. They look sort of like accident victims who have had extensive reconstruction with limited success. It bespeaks desperation and denial.

Things are only going to get worse for Madonna. She’s going crazy over aging now, but this is as good as things will ever be for her. What kind of life is that? She spent her years corrupting people in exchange for money and attention, and the only things that make her happy are things she will never have again.

Me, I see death as an escape and a new birth. I see it as redemption and a chance to start over, doing good things that will last forever. Whenever I feel anything funny going on in my chest, I always say the same thing: “I am ready to go!” The haters and the rebellious can have this place. It was worn out anyway.

I read a book by a lady who said she visited hell. In hell, she saw a woman who had been dead for hundreds of years. The woman was in a cell, in a chair. She was very beautiful. Over and over, her flesh deteriorated, rotted, and fell off, and then it regrew. Over the course of a few seconds, she went through what Madonna is going through now. She was a big deal on earth, and she led people in idolatry for her master, but in hell, Satan tormented and ridiculed her for believing him. I can’t swear the book is true, but the punishment makes a lot of sense. Aging is very painful for shallow, attractive women who misuse their looks. Aging over and over again would be a terrible torture for such a person.

I wonder how crazy people will get. I am tempted to say, “Maybe they’ll worship the devil openly,” but they already do that. We already have witch celebrities. Madonna and Beyonce use demonic imagery in TV appearances. Katie Perry is a witch. Dan Aykroyd–the kindly, roly-poly son from Driving Miss Daisy, has said he was sending “hell energy” to people. I suppose celebrities who worship devils are not as open or confrontational as they will be in the future, though.

For the sake of the people who will be persecuted, I hope we’re not far from the end.

This morning I read about Lot. He lived in Sodom, and he was burned out from the filthy ways and speech of the people around him. God decided to destroy the city, but Abraham got him to agree to spare it if God could find ten righteous people there.

Two angels went Sodom to look for the righteous, and Lot invited them to his house for their protection. The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were famous for abusing travelers. Homosexuals gathered in the street outside and demanded that the angels be brought out so they could rape them. Lot was so mortified, he offered to give them his daughters instead. The response? The homosexuals said they would do worse things to Lot than to the angels. They intended to rape him, too.

It was a lot like a modern prison riot. Prisons and wars are little pictures of hell.

The angels pulled Lot inside and blinded the homosexuals. Then Lot tried to get his family to leave the city. His sons-in-law, as blind as the gay mob, thought he was joking, so he had to leave with only his wife and two daughters.

What happened to Lot is a picture of what’s coming to the world. God will permit people who know him to suffer a certain amount of abuse, but at some point he will draw a line and remove us. After that, there will be no good people on earth to motivate God to show restraint, and his anger will fall like burning sulfur.

God is the worst enemy you can have. When he decides to punish you, there is nowhere to hide. No weapon or ally can save you.

How well a Christian will do toward the end will depend on his closeness to God. If you’re a worshiper of Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen and the other “prosperity Christians,” you won’t have much power to look after yourself. The same thing goes for people who go to churches that deny the Holy Spirit. That’s why Jesus said, “But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!” He was talking about weak Christians who are like unweaned babies. A man can swing a sword. A baby, not so much.

These are interesting times, as the well-known curse puts it.

I will keep an eye on the pronoun front. I’m sure something even weirder will happen shortly.