A gentle moment. The old rural Catholics. A bit much. The old age refuses to yieldeth. The stubborn German.

A gentle moment

I was standing in the confession line behind her.  A young man came up behind me.  I realized, as I'd come in and went straight into line (I'm now 62, and well aware of my sins) I'd cut him off, as he came up from praying in the back of the church.

I immediately said "I cut you off, you can go in front of me", but he smiled and said "It doesn't matter".

She was nicely dressed, wearing a full length skirt and a nice one.

He reached around me and handed her something, which I thought was a handkerchief (she did in fact have a cold).  It wasn't, it was her mantilla She put it on.

I thought they were likely brother and sister.  He was very nicely dressed and they were both young, in their early 20s.

When I left, they were in different quarters of the church praying.  I recognized her now that I could see her face.  She's one of the "Mantilla Girls", but one I see rarely.  I didn't recognize him.  They were in fact, not together.  He just noticed she'd dropped her mantilla.

The old rural Catholics

I was wearing, on the day of confession, Carhartt trousers and my very old Carhartt jacket.  I hadn't shaved.  

It was Saturday.

I don't like shaving.  I started shaving when I was 13, and by that, I mean at some point when I was 13 I was shaving every day.  Next year I will have been shaving for 50 years.

When I was 13, I learned to save with a "safety razor".  I, in fact, owned a safety razor at age 13.  I first shaved with disposable head razors in basic training.  It was only a few years later, but there's a lifetime between 13 and 18.

I've recently received, in one fashion or another, a couple of reminders to Catholics in general that they ought to dress appropriately at Mass.  It is, I'd note, sort of a Catholic thing in a way, in some areas, kind of not to.  Not that we're intentionally dressing down, but for a lot of us going to Mass is so common that we in fact dress down, as its Sunday.  In some regions, we don't dress up and indeed, as we're used to going to Mass with college students, blue collar workers, sheepherders, ranchers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen, well, we don't.

The local Priest suggested we ought to dress nicely.  He's from a farm and had a conversation with me regarding sheep on the way into Mass recently.  Fr. Joseph Krupp, who himself often looks a little like a guy who might ride a Harley, and I think at one time did, suggested the same.

They're right of course.

Well, it was Sunday today.  I went to Mass wearing Carhartt trousers and my very old Carhartt coat.

The coat is warm.

A bit much

I sometimes see comments about yoga pants.

I don't pay much attention to such comments.

I ran into the very nice, and quite Catholic, son of a person I know very well the other day.  He's a nice young man.  He was with his girlfriend, who is probably a nice young woman. She is the daughter of an Assemblies of God minister.

She was wearing yoga pants.

They were so tight that, frankly, they left nothing to the imagination.  Absent wearing bikini bottoms, there would have been nothing less appropriate to wear in mixed company than I could imagine. 

And its January.

Makes me appreciate the Mantilla Girls all the more.

The old age refuses to yieldeth

At Mass, to my massive discredit, I ran into somebody, but only remotely, who generally irritates me.

That's probably sinful on my part.

I've known said person my entire professional life.  I knew his sister when we were in high school by which time I'll note he was already a lawyer.  She was a great person and I still lament her tragic death as a passenger in an automobile when it wrecked.  I knew, but less well, one of her sisters who died in the same wreck.

Horrible.

Anyhow, the person in question must have graduated high school nearly a decade in advance of me, which means that he must be over 70 years old now.  He's still actively practicing law.

I've concluded that this is toxic, if you are doing it full time, to your personality.

I also don't like that he holds his hands in the air when certain prayers are said, and he's huge so its hard to ignore.  That's the orans position, and in actuality there's good reason to do that.  That's what the early Christian faithful, who were all Catholics, did when the Lord's Prayer was said.

Well, I don't like it.

And that means I need to work on this.

I'd note that his fellow doesn't particularly acknowledge me at Mass, but then I don't go out of the way to acknowledge him either.  If we run into each other in Court, well. . . we're old pals.

The Mantilla girl and the young man, and the cowboy couple I noted several weeks ago, are better than either of us.

The stubborn German

Germans, it appear, have a reputation for being stubborn.

I have what people perceive as being a very German last name.

I have a very Irish first name.

I've never thought this odd, but then, who thinks their own names odd. For one reason or another, I've always considered myself an Irish American.  

My father didn't like anyone considering himself this or that.  No Hyphenated Americans.  He thought we were all Americans. He'd grown up, I'd note, while World War Two was on, when nobody considered themselves German Americans.

Some people are really proud of that now.

Well, by decent today, I'd be 1/4 German. But genetically, due to the weird way that works, I'm more Irish than a lot of people who live in Ireland.  And for that matter, I'd further note, my father's mother was of 100% Irish extraction, and in Irish American household even when my father was young, the mother's ruled the abhaile.

Father's sacrificed for their families, particularly in Catholic families.

The last name, fwiw, is Westphalian.  A person with it is just as likely to be Dutch, as German.  I was once asked by an Albertan if my ancestors were Dutch, for that reason.  Westphalia became a Prussian possession in 1807, much to the discontent of Catholic Westphalians, who weren't keen in being ruled by a Lutheran emperor. After the revolutions of 1848 a lot of Westphalians departed for the United States, sick of being rules by an undemocratic Prussian.

My Westphalian ancestors left about that time.  I don't know why, they didn't write it down.

Anyhow, genetically, I'm Irish.  

And in my ancestor there were those Irish who, given the choice between converting to Protestantism and keeping their occupation, ro being exiled, chose exile.

Stubborn?

I don't think I am, but I guess people perceive me that way.  I've been told that more than once.

German?

Not really.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 69th Edition. TDS, Vance in the wings. Our geriatric oligarchy. Immigration spats. Banning puberty blockers. Mjuk flicka and the Mantilla Girls.

The really ugly American

Trump’s win shows us who we really are

An excellent, and exactly correct, article.

And who we are isn't very pretty.

Many people worried that the election of Donald Trump, a thoroughly reprehensible man, would mean the end of the American democracy.  It probably won't, but it does mark the complete end of the United States as a great nation in every sense. 

We have no claim, as of this last election, to any sort of exceptionalism.  A certain moral status, hard won and defended in the Civil War and the wars of the 20th Century has been forfeited, and for blisteringly limited self interest.  Indeed, much of the electorate, frankly, proved themselves ignorant, choosing the interests of billionaires over their own, based on mean and vindictive promises and a false vision of the past.  Others, limited in their  minds to a binary choice in which they felt compelled to choose between the threat of progressivism in the Democratic Party, which never saw a gender perversion or mental illness it didn't want to glorify and demand you do too, and a GOP which at least looked to some sort of sanity on such issues.  Yet others chose a narrow issue, gun control, abortion, which they highly valued and made the leap.  Others were simply mad about being lied to for decades by the Democrats and pre Trump Republicans on matters like job exportation and immigration.

Not all Trump voters are alike by any means.

But there's only one Trump.

Since being elected he's insulted Canada repeatedly in a childish manner.  On the day I'm typing this out (originally), he's threatening Panama, suggesting we're going to demand a return of the Panama Canal.  Since then he's been demanding Greenland.

The amazing thing is that in spite of the utter lunacy of these ramblings, plenty have signed on board to back them.  People who wonder how the absurdities of the Nazi Party found acceptance after 1932 now know.

I don't expect Trump to serve out his term.  Behavior like this shows that the nation's incoming Chief Executive is returning to his middle school years, years which caused his parents to send him to military school, and that return is probably organic in a man who is flabby and ancient.  We'll see, of course, but it appears to at least me that the dementia train has left the station, as it earlier clearly did for Joe Biden.  

Merely having a chief executive this age is, frankly, dangerous.

At any rate, I suspect that backers of J. D. Vance are just wanting to give things a decent interval before a cabinet finding of non compos mentis is delivered.

I'm not a Vance fan, but the sooner, the better.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

One of our dear readers, who has I might note a truly excellent blog I keep meaning to link in here, gently noted that this blog suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It's a fair accusation.

As is evident, I just can't grasp why a thoughtful highly intelligent person like our reader would vote for Trump.  I  know plenty of them I might add.  Highly educated, very well spoken, very well read, individuals who voted for a person I find nearly loathsome.

I wish they could explain it to me.

I wonder too if they fear for the nation the way that those of us who recoil form Trump do.

I will note that I perfectly grasp why people didn't vote for Harris, and wouldn't have for Biden.  Biden's descent into incapacity aside, the Democratic Party has just become, well, weird in many ways.  I noted at the time that Obergefell was decided that disaster loomed, and frankly, I was spot on.  Contrary to Kennedy's naive assumptions about his legally bankrupt ruling, Obergefell really opened the doors of a sexual and sexually perverse pandora's box, although frankly that box had been unlocked in the post war by Kinsey and Masters.

By the way, there's actually an article in Psychology Today about TDS.

Anyhow, for the Trump supporters who are routinely insulted by my posts regarding Trump, but stop in to read anyhow, thanks for doing so, and if you can explain your support for the man, I'd appreciate your doing so.

I'll confess.  I feel that Trump should have been tried for sedition and should be in prison, so my view is indeed harsh and unyielding on him.  I hope I'm proved wrong, but I expect him to be a disaster.

Waiting in the wings

Vance in uniform, and not that of a military prep school

As noted, I'm pretty confined J. D. Vance is waiting in the wings, and isn't much more of a Trump fan than I am.  I also think as a National Conservative, he's the real deal.

Love him or hate him, Vance would have made a much better contrast to Harris than Trump.  Vance actually has an intellectual concept of where he wants the country to go, and it doesn't appear in any fashion to depend on Elon Musk personally arresting the decline in the North American birth rate.

Must is a National Conservative, as noted.  He couldn't have been elected in a race against Harris.   The National Conservatives, who ranks are filled by some real intellectuals, know that they have a very limited time to get in their man.. That time is limited to the next four years.  Vance won't be able to pull off a post Trump win in 2028, and they know it.  In order to make the reforms they want, and they are genuine and massive, they need to get Vance in before then, and that depends on Trump being gone.

Age may very well remove Trump, through death.  If it doesn't, my guess is dementia will.  Then we will have Vance, and that will be quite interesting.

Oligarchs.

Drone Bee.  By Guillaume Pelletier - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59927223

A really interesting thing about the incoming Trump administration is the now open and obvious influence of the mega rich on it.  The most obvious example is the overarching presence of the world's most wealth many, South African Elon Musk, but he's far from the only one.

It wasn't all that long ago that Republicans continually suggested that mega rich Hungarian George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg were a big problem.  Even now, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wants to do something about "Zuck Bucks".

Love of money, as we know, is the root of all evil, and and one thing it does is to buy power.  Absolute power, we're told, such as the U.S. Supreme Court has pretty much handed over to the Executive Branch, corrupts absolutely.

Something needs to be done about this and what that something is, quite frankly, includes taxation.  Populists have to decide if they want to be drone servants of their party, or the owners of their party in this regard.

So far, it looks like the drones have it.

The immigration spat

The best argument for doing away with H1B I can imagine.  Also, not only a crude dip into vulgarity, but an unfortunate sexual insult by a man who clearly knows that's now how that actually works, given his many progeny by many willing women.  And explain to me how Evangelicals feel that this camp is moral?

It is interesting, however, how a fight has suddenly broken out in the MAGA camp which is related to this.  The GOP campaign against immigrants in the general election blurred the lines between legal and illegal immigrants.  It was relatively clear that basically many hardcore Rust Belt and rural Trumpies didn't like immigrants in general.

There are, I'd note, real reasons to be concerned about the American immigration rate.  But for immigration, the US population would be falling, which contrary to widespread belief would frankly be a very good thing.  But demonizing immigrants is flat out wrong, and we're not actually having the conversation we should be, which would have a lot more to do with conservation, economics, and yes, culture, than whatever it is that we are arguing about.

One thing now that we are arguing about is H1B, a visa program.  I've seen an immigrant Pakistani Trumpy robustly claim that this program lets in illiterate people who can't speak English in Italian restaurants to, in contrast, Elon Must backing it on the basis that that he came in the country that way and as the world's richest sperm donor, he loves himself, and everyone else should too, as he's good for the country.

He's not good for the country.

Interestingly, there's some lingering questions if Musk violated the country's laws when he came in.  He probably didn't, but it's interesting.  If he did, and I'm not saying he did, that would make him one of those super nasty law breaking immigrants who should be back up and returned to their land of origin.

On other ironies which are worth noting, this spat has really taken weird turns.  Ann Coulter told Vivek Ramaswamy that she wouldn't have voted for him as he's of Indian extraction, which is as racist as can be, but at least honest.  Some Republicans are defending H1B, others are condemning it.  Steve Bannon called Musk a toddler.  Vivek Ramaswamy fought back and claimed American culture worshipped mediocrity, implying foreign cultures do not, which is ironic given that the Freedom Caucus tends to have a deep suspicion that education in general is bad.

Frankly, this debate, if it heads in the direction Ramaswamy is taking it, might be a good thing for the populists.  Populism right now does exalt the stupid and vulgar over the educated and erudite.  He used the example of the "prom queen", which is probably misplaced, unless we regard the Hawk Tuah Girl as the nation's prom queen, which right now she frankly is..  

Ramaswamy has a point.

Trump clearly is okay with some immigrants, such as ones he'll marry.  It makes me wonder what dinner talk is like at the old Trump homestead.

When things hit the news.

On this story, I had the odd experience of having somebody say the other day "I see you are now having trouble up there with immigrants too". They were from Texas, and this was a phone call.

I had to ask what he meant, but apparently the arrest of an illegal alien here made national news.

It's interesting in that this isn't all that newsworthy here.  I don't know why people would think otherwise, but rural states like Wyoming have had illegal aliens just as long as anyone else, and given the blue collar nature of work here, probably longer.

Gerontocracy

Not only are we developing an oligarch problem, it has a gerontocracy problem as well, which this past election certainly pointed out.  We have an ancient (and seemingly impaired) President, and an ancient, and rather odd acting, President Elect.

Trump is 78 years old, of course.  Locally, one of our Senators is 72, and the other 70.  Not young.  Our Congresswoman is a comparatively youthful 62.

Texas Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger is 81, and is now living in a memory care facility.  She hasn't cast a vote since July, which of course makes sense.  

Of note, she spent a year, starting in January 2023, as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.  That says something, and what it says is that mental decline can really be rapid.

Why, as a nation, are we comfortable with this?

On a positive, if perhaps sad note, she did not seek reelection.

The UK bans puberty blockers

The US should follow suit.

The entire "trans" movement is really based on an illusion of epic proportions.  We are, truly, born male and female while some are more masculine than others, or more feminine than others, boys are boys, as they say, and girls girls.  People who are confused on this point are, in reality, very few, and those who persistently are mentally ills.  Almost all teens who claim to be "trans", aren't and the overwhelming majority of them come out of it relatively quickly.  For that matter, adults who claim to be "trans" aren't.  

Puberty blockers are child abuse on the Aktion T4 and there's no excuse for it.

Back to the populists for a second, it's insanity like giving children puberty blockers that helps explain their rise.  In future years this behavior will be regarded the same way eugenics in Nazi Germany is now.  How mass lawsuits have not broken out is beyond me.  

Mjuk flicka.  Soft Girls, Kept Women, Feminist Women, and a More Natural Life.

ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND

This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.  

(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy.  This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)

Mjuk flicka a Swedish term for "a kind pleasant" girl, but it sort of translates as "soft girl".  In this context its a bit of a trend, and one that's worrying feminist.

It probably should.

We've had other threads along these lines, but its fairly clear that a fair number of women have come to the conclusion that the push into the business and working world that came along in the 1970s hasn't really done them as much as a favor as the propaganda then and now would have it.  This recalls the TikTok breakdown some young woman had that's discussed here:

Women at work. "Whoever fought, for women to get jobs. . . . why?. . . . why did you do that?" Looking at women (and men) in the workplace, and modern work itself, with a long lens.

And also here:

A lamentation. The modern "world.*

One of the odd things that the "soft girl" is exhibiting is that she's an example of reinventing old social norms backwards and highly imperfectly, and that is concerning.  Rather than acting as a very traditional wife, she's essentially reduced herself to concubinage.  Her male supporter could sever ties at the drop of a hat.  She's serving in the traditional concubine role, free of any children or responsibility, and providing what we might charitably refer to as companionship.  This is bound not to go well, which reaching back to tradition without the duties of responsibilities associated it, usually does.

I can't help but note the contrast to the Mantilla Girls I continue to run into at Mass, including Christmas vigil. Due to being in a packed church, combined with my wife' s decision making process, we ended up in the cry room.  This followed a brief pre Mass trip to the balcony, where there was room, but then the long suffering spouse brought up 200 other options which sent us back down.  Anyhow, there was room in the cry room, which also contained one extended family with a baby.  The baby never cried.  One of the parishioners in the room was a Mantilla Girl, quite attractive and very nicely dressed.

Its interesting for a variety of reasons, including the contrast to the soft girl.  The Mantilla Girls have a much more realistic grasp of the world.

Mehr Mensch sein.

Related threads:

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.

i nolunt

Young Diognetus in the modern world.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you say you want a revolution?

Labels: 2020s, 2024, Aktion T4, Capitalism, Civil Unrest, Corporate Capitalism, Crime, Distributism, Distributist Lament, Donald Trump, Narodnaya Volya, Populism, Terrorism, The wealthy, Zeitgeist

Ink

 

Kid with ink drawing mimicking tattoos. A lot of the tattoos I saw the other day were no more artfully placed and were equally bad.

I went to two weddings in two weeks.  They were both outdoor weddings.

Weddings in July mean, of course, that people's clothing is relatively light.  Women wearing dresses, generally will wear light ones, although anymore, a lot of women don't wear dresses to outdoor summer weddings.  The nature of summer dresses is such that women therefore are showing more skin than they do in, let's say, January.  This is true for a lot of men as well, although not to the same extent.

One of the guys I know at the second wedding is a year or two out of the Navy, in which he spent six years.  His comment, "geez, with all these tattoos, maybe I should get a tattoo".  It was said in at least semi jest.

That a sailor would comment on the plethora of tattoos really says something.

There were quite a few women with tattoos at the first one, but it was also on a ranch, and probably half or more of the attendees were actual working ranchers or hands of some sort.  Young women at that one were closely associated with ranching.  Tattoos haven't spread, at least here locally, to the agricultural class.

They certainly have to the legal class.  I'd guess about 1/3d of the paralegals, who are usually women, have tattoos and I know some lawyers who have tattoos, which used to be the kiss of death for employment in the law.

Anyhow, never in my life have I seen so many outright bad tattoos as I did at the second wedding.  And I mean horrifically bad.

The best example was a young woman (I'm terrible at guessing ages) who was nicely dressed in a summer dress and who has attractive in the sort of youthful pouty way.  The sort of girl whom, if she'd been that age when I was that age, in the early 80s, would have drawn a lot of attention at a dance.  But the horrific tattoos. . . 

Both arms were tattooed, one with a horrific crying heart, which is just childish in the extreme.  And there was some sort of tattoo of an off-color dead center on her sternum.  Roman numerals?  Initials?  I dunno as the color made it difficult to see, if noticeable, and a person would have had to close the distance to read it.

Do women really want men reading tattoos that are cleavage originated?

The same young woman and an older woman (late 30s?), who may very well have been her mother, had very fresh tattoos that started on their lower side and curbed into their bodies. They were large.  Now, these tattoos were such that they'd have had to have been pretty much completely nude in order to view them, which raises its own question.  If they're just elaborate floral decorations, what's the point, unless you want to show them off, in which case, well, that's its own problem.

One young man had a long arm tattoo that was a set of geographic coordinates.  Why?  Whatever the reason, these remind me of the blood group tattoos that members of the SS had during World War Two, or that Vietnamese Marines had during the Vietnam War.  Both of those tattoos, by the way, gave the person away later on to the victors in those war as to their wartime service.

Some young woman had a huge, but quite well-done tattoo of a water dog of some sort.  It was very artfully done, but extremely large.

Now, I have to be careful here.

I have to be careful as 100% of the female members of this household are now tattooed, the spousal unit having a small tattoo that's a significant signature to her, and the female descendant having one or deep religious significance and the other of personal significance, which are very well done.  The latter aren't visible normally. The former is barely noticeable.  And the male defendant's long time wishes to be betrothed has a colored trout tattoo that's quite well done.  In my place of legal employment, one of the male employees has two tattoos for which I'm responsible, remotely, as I noted the pilgrim's tattoos from Jerusalem when he was on his way there.

I have to admit, if I went to Jerusalem, which I have less than zero interest in doing, I'd get one of the pilgrim tattoos, although that brings up something about tattoos, which is that they sometimes seem to operate like peanuts at the bar.  You have a couple, and then the next thing you know, you've forged on them.  My colleague started with one, then had it added to, and then got a second.  One former female employee of mine was constantly having new ones added.  The pouty girl at the wedding probably started off with one (bad) one before they spread.

Over a year ago, I ran this item:

Percentage Tattooed

 From the Twitter feed of Simon Kuestenmacher:

I admit, I just hate this trend.  And if its 46% of Americans, that means its well over 50% of younger Americans.

I've wondered what it was in the US. Over my lifetime, It's gone from something only certain veterans and members of motorcycle clubs had to being darned nearly universal for people under 40.  I have to confess that while tattoos have gotten better, I hate this trend.

I really wonder what percentage it is now, just a little over a year later, but this is an amazing trend.  That Israel stands at 25% is notable, for example, as tattoos are banned by the Torah.

You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:28.

Indeed, some Christians take the position that tattoos are likewise accordingly banned for everyone, but generally this is regarded as one of the Jewish laws, like ritual cleaning of pots and pans, clothing fiber restrictions, and circumcision that is regarded by most Christians as having been lifted by Christ.*  Indeed, in some Christian cultures at one time, tattooing was common to mark yourself as a Christian.  As already noted, Christians being tattooed in Jerusalem for having made the pilgrimage there is an ancient custom.

Those pilgrimage tattoos set a person apart because they've been on the pilgrimage, which is an important clue, I think, to the popularity of tattoos in our current era.  Tattoos have always set a person apart, while at the same, quite often, saying that you belong to some sort of special group.  Marine Corps tattoos meant that you'd been part, or were part, of a hardcore group of soldiers of the sea, tough men.  Bluebird tattoos on the chest likewise meant that a man had been part of the pre World War Two 25th Infantry Division, which was stationed in Hawaii.  Biker gang tattoos served the same purpose.

When tattoos starting emerging in recent times in the wider population, this was still true.  It might mean, for example, that athe person was a member of a sports team.  Now, however, what they seem to be trying to do is to either express a deep belief of some sort, something important to the person, or to set the person apart, sometimes both.

And hence the purpose. They're a reflection on the fake nature of modern life.  

In prior eras, people lived so much closer to authenticity that tattoos for the masses were basically unnecessary.  Tattoos expressed something unusual, but most of society experienced a wider authentic life.  Not necessarily a pleasant one, but an authentic one.

Now a lot of life just isn't authentic.

The culture has been stripped of its authenticity and much of the most fundamental aspects of it are now reduced to "lifestyles".  In the wider American culture, nothing has much of a value, including people and existential beliefs.  

Tattoos are a strike against that in a valueless society.  Not always effectively, and not always entirely.

An office worker may spend his days in a cubicle, but his arm sleeve of the forest says where his heart is, and where he wants to be.  A mother may spend all day in front of a computer, but the names of her children say where her heart his and where she wants to be.  A bold religious tattoos says the wearer can't get to Mass daily, but that's where her heart his.

Nobody gets a tattoo of a cubicle. 

Footnotes

*Generally, most Christian denominations don't hold anything against tattoos per se today, although some "fundamentalist" Christians do, and some of those can be found in any denomination.

It Catholicism, there's no set rules on tattoos, which is true of most other Christian denominations, maybe all of them. The only time they're regarded as definitely sinful is if they're in the nature of something sinful, i.e., the classic naked lady type tattoo.

Still, some must feel uncomfortable about them as it was recently notice that one of the chapel veil girls at our local parish applies make up to a tattoo of a turtle on her forearm while at Mass. There's really no reason she would need to do so.

Related posts

The Evolution and Rise of the Tattoo.

Percentage Tattooed

Coast Guard Drill Instructor

i nolunt

Radical refusal to consent.

More specifically, radical refusal to consent to the spirit of the times.  It's part of what I admire in them, but it didn't strike me until recently.

John Pondoro Taylor, in his memoirs, recalled having seen Maasai walking through Nairobi as if it simply wasn't there, as they had always done, dressed in their traditional fashion, and carrying spears.  On their way from one place to another, refusing to consent that the development of the city meant anything in real terms.

I was recently waiting in the Church for the confession line to form.  One of the Mantilla Girls walked in.  I've seen this one once or twice before, but not at this Church.  She not only wears the mantilla, and is very pretty, but she carries herself with pride.

They don't all do that.  Some of the younger women who wear chapel veils do so very naturally.  Some sort of timidly, or uncomfortably.  With at least one, and I could be massively off the mark, it's almost sort of an affectation.  But here, you see something quite different.

Or so it seems.

I don't know her.  I could be wrong.  But it's clear she isn't timid and it's not an affectation.  

It is, it seems to me, a radical rejection of the modern secular world in favor of existential nature.

For those who believe in the modern world, in modernism, or the spirit of the times, or who are hostile to religion, that may seem like a shocking statement.  But the essence of our modern lives (or post-modern, if you insist) is a radical rejection of nature, most particularly our own natures.  Wearing a chapel veil indicates that the person deeply believes in a set of beliefs that are enormously grounded in nature.  The wearer is a woman, in radical alignment with biology in every sense, and accepting everything that means, including what the modern world, left and right, detest.  I nolunt.  She's accepting of the derision, and ironically, or in actuality not ironically, probably vastly happier than those who have accommodated modernity.

Moreover, those who think they're reaching out for a radical inclusion of the natural, who don't take the same approach, never can quite reach authenticity.  There can always be a slight feeling that something isn't authentic, and there isn't.  Reserving an element of modernity defeats it.

Related Thread:

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

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New Years Resolutions for Other People

I don't do this every year, and usually when I have, it's been tongue in cheek.

This will try to be, partially, but this one is more serious than most.  Indeed, for the most part, there's no jest in this at all, and I'm going to do it in a different format, partially for that reason.

Donald Trump need to retire and go away.

Based on something I read the other day, in his personal life he nearly has. As the limelight fades away, he's spending a lot of his time at a nearby golf course he owns, rather than at Mar-a-Lago.  

Even Theodore Roosevelt, the Old Lion, reached a point where he really didn't care about politics anymore, and that included his very last run for office.  The fire had gone out.  It'd dangerous to compare Roosevelt, who was a highly admirable man, to Trump, who isn't, but that seems to be happening. 

Reportedly Trump's favorite film is Sunset Boulevard, which I've never seen, but which is reportedly a masterpiece about a fading silent film movie star. Trump, according to the article I read, will rarely pay any attention to anything, including films, but he loves Sunset Boulevard and will sit through it even after having seen it a zillion times.

That tells us something.

Gracefully fading away is hard to do.  Truman did it, I'd note.  Jimmy Carter seems to have done it.  Douglas MacArthur did it, and the odds were against it.

Of course, Trump's problem is that he's disgraced himself and soiled his legacy.

Anyhow, he really ought to simply keep making that golf course trip and leave everyone alone, for the good of the country, and for the good of what little dignity he has left.

I noticed this morning that Elsie Stefanik is taking all sorts of flak due to a Washington Post expose.  There's a lesson to be learned here, but it's probably too late for her to benefit from it. She could still learn from it.

Elon Musk needs to go back to South Africa, and whatever immigration loophole that was exploited to allow him to come in to the country and take up U.S. citizenship needs to be examined.

I can't think of a single qualification that Musk may have legally met to enter this country permanently. Somebody ought to look into that, and if he really didn't meet it, his citizenship should be revoked as a fraud and whatever person assisted this process looked into. And I feel the same way for all of the entertainment figures that hang around in this country as well.  Go back.

Whatever weird, weird, loophole in our immigration system let Musk come in needs to be fixed.  South Africa can use him. Go home, Elon.

Harriet Hageman and Chuck Gray won their elections, fair and square, but based upon the lie that something was wrong with the last election.

Now that they're in office, they have a lot to make up for, given that.

One thing they both can do is stop feeding the bogus rage machine.   The other thing they ought to do is to admit that times are changing and the concept of hanging on to the 1970s economy, which we've only had in this state for the last 50 years, not forever, is dying.  

Hageman, also, who is no dummy, ought to do some serious introspection before raising her right hand, once again, and swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.  She's done that at least once, and yet she was willing, although not at first, to boost a lie in favor of somebody who was willing to, and is stilling willing to, usurp that same Constitution.  Gray probably has taken a similar oath upon becoming a legislature, but I don't know him, and I frankly hold him to a lesser standard.

Hageman when a large number of her fellow bar members reminded her of her duty to tell the truth advanced a really wild fantasy regarding that.  If she believed that, she needs to spend about a week in the hills, perhaps with Thoreau, or perhaps with the Book of Tobit.  It'd do her good.

The Grand Old Party in Wyoming needs a serious shake up, I'd note, but it's not going to happen. The Democratic Party of Wyoming needs one as well. At this point, that's only going to come through Independents, I'm afraid.  My Resolution, therefore, is for them.  I hope, and hope they resolve, to take over the state's politics.  The Democrats have become so mired in left wing goofiness, there's nearly no saving them.

Interestingly, the Libertarian Party, nationally, recently seems to have taken a step to the middle.  Maybe there's hope for them yet.

There's a huge percentage of the country that need to resolve that science is not its enemy, and Newsmax is not the place to get the news.  If the news just fuels your preformed beliefs and, simultaneously, makes you mad, you need to get your news somewhere else.  Actually, what you need to do, is get the news.

Vladimir Putin needs to go to confession, and then go to a monastery.  I'm not joking.  Russia needs to join the modern, democratic, world.  The Russian Orthodox Church needs to end its schism with the rest of the Orthodox, and the Eastern Orthodox need to end their schism with Rome. This has gone on too long.  The German Catholic Bishops, for their part, need to end their drift into wherever they are going.

Something needs to be done regarding the condition giving rise to an epic level of attempted migration into the United States.  If conditions in Central America are that bad, we need to figure out why, and do something about it immediately.

In large part, in many ways, we all need to look forward, by looking back.  Being perpetually angry doesn't serve any interest at all.  Pretending it's 1973 won't either.  Turning to grifters, caudillos, snake oil salesmen, and those selling anger won't work.

We all know that.  It's doing something about it that seemingly is difficult.  But once we get moving, momentum is a force until itself.

Speaking of 1973, left wing American economists like Robert Reich need to realize that they continually espouse another economic option, and then pull back to the current one.  They're basically in the position of being a concerned stranger walking up to a desperate drunk in a bar, giving him a temperance lecture, and then suggesting he switch to beer.  That's not going to cut it in an economy that truly needs adjusting.

On a minor notes, would people on Twitter stop using this stupid cartoon for points they're trying to make:

There are all sorts of version of this, and they're all hideous and bad.  Whatever you think you are trying to prove this way, you are not.

An addendum.

Let's start 2023 with some basic consensus on proved things.  If we do, we'll have a productive year.  

If we don't, it suggests that we really prefer blinding ourselves to truth and arguing for sport/self-satisfaction.

And that would certainly merit a sense of pessimism.

Okay, first of all, some lingering political things.

Donald Trump lost the election.  Believe whatever you want about who should have one, whether the electoral college makes any sense, whether we're a republic or democracy (as if the two are mutually exclusive), but he lost.

There's no point in arguing otherwise, unless you just like arguing, much like the fellow I know who insists the Women's NBA "isn't a sport".  Why, well because a 50-year-old overweight guy who couldn't play basketball against a junior high team can safely take that position for self-satisfaction.  Same here.  Trump lost, and arguing that he won at this point is really just insisting the opposite isn't true.

Vaccinations are safe.  We really don't need to argue about this anymore, but we really don't need to be arguing about vaccinations in general.

Note that I didn't limit this to the COVID-19 vaccination.  People out there who don't vaccinate their kids for things we haven't seen for years, only to have the kids get ill, are acting criminally.  If there's one thing we have COVID-19 to thank for, and I don't believe it is, it's that it shut people up like Jenny McCarthy on this topic.

Let's resolve to follow the science on stuff, no matter how scary that may be, or how much that impacts our self interests, or our narcissistic desires.  If that leads to "you know, what I want isn't okay", or "my own impulses aren't ordered", well, so be it.

Let's also resolve that the end point of being a human isn't to be a consumer.

Let's completely skip altering our natures this year. Whether that's dying our hair some color it isn't, or inflating our boobs, or changing our gender, or whatever.  

Feel that you really want to be in touch with who you really are?  Well, be who you really are, and that starts with the body nature gave you and all that means.

Face the basic fact that you are going to die.  Hopefully not soon, but you will. And that's okay, as long as you are in the right place when you die. Eating the All Kale Diet won't stop it.  Don't accelerate it, please, we need you around, but we need you who you are, and as part of us, as we really are.

Don't be mean.  I've come to realize that there are certain people who revel in being mean.  Don't be one of them.  Don't take joy in other's suffering, or inflict it in them.  Meanness, I'd note, is often masked in arrogance, or self-righteousness, or even ignorance.  

Don't follow the mean, either. If somebody seems perpetually pissed off, there's something wrong in that.

Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life; wherefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.

St. Philip Neri.

Mehr mensch sein.

Appendix II: Down the rabbit hole. (Additional topic references).

 

Down the rabbit hole.

Blog Mirror. Today's Document: John Joseph Mathews, Osage Council Member, author, historian, and Rhodes Scholar, seated at home in front of his fireplace, Oklahoma, 12/16/1937.

 

John Joseph Mathews, Osage Council Member, author, historian, and Rhodes Scholar, seated at home in front of his fireplace, Oklahoma, 12/16/1937. 

Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Series: General Photographs of Indians

Image description: Mr. Mathews sits in an armchair in front of a fireplace, with a dog at his feet. The fireplace and walls are made of stone. Next to the fireplace is a table with smoking pipes on it, and a filing cabinet; on the wall is a framed cover of Mathews’ book SUNDOWN. The mantelpiece has candles, framed photos and certificates, and taxidermied animals. The mantel bears the Latin words VENARI LAVARI LUDERE RIDERE OCCAST VIVERE (To hunt, to bathe, to play, to laugh, is to live).

Source: catalog.archives.gov

Too good not to repost in its entirety.  

And a great motto!

How to loose friends, make enemies, make a bad argument, and discredit everything you stand for. The Transgender issue and a minister in Laramie.

Our friend here again.  As we previoulsy noted, a Morganucodon, our great, great, great. . . . . grandmother or grandfather. Really.  You'll have to read below to get the point.  By FunkMonk (Michael B. H.) - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15356075

I'm not going to post names, as that is what really go this thing rolling in the first place, in some ways.  What I will  note is that when I say "minister", I am referring to a protestant minister and, as will become clear, what used to sometimes be called a "fundamentalist" protestant minister.

Centuries ago, when I went to the University of Wyoming, there were no tables for people advocating things in the Student Union.  The Union was smaller than, and frankly we mostly just passed through it on the way to somewhere else.  The bookstore was in the Union, but it was actually diagonally across from the enormous book store that is now in the Union.  Current students would be shocked to see how small the union was.

On rare occasions something might happen in the union, but it would actually have to be held somewhere else in one of the various rooms in the building.  I recall going to an international students bake sale there, for instance.  And I saw the film Risky Business with a girlfriend in the ballroom once, so they obviously showed movies there on occasion.

But mostly we just passed through it on the way from the lower campus to the upper campus.

Now the much expanded union has tables in it, and various organizations will set up a display.  The times I've been in there, and I still get down to UW on occasion, it's been student organizations of one kind or another.  Most people seem to pass through ignoring them, which is predictable.

Apparently, however, groups from outside the university are allowed to set up there as well.

I frankly don't know what I think about it, but I don't think I like it in general.  This post, however, isn't really about that, but about one person whose been maintaining a booth there.

That person is the minister of a certain protestant church in Laramie.  I know where the church is, as I once had a friend who lived near there.  Oddly enough, it's not a church that I've ever posted a photo of at our Churches of the West blog.  

This has hit the press as the minister put up, amongst other things, a large at a booth he maintains in the Student Union which stated:

God created male and female

"_________________" is a Man.

Now, obviously, the "________________" had the name of a student on it.

So, apparently, the minister sought to point out that a student who apparently is in some aspect of the current "transgender" spectrum, for lack of a better way to put it, is a man, as he was born male.

Which brings us to this.  Rev. Schmidt (okay, I named him) is correct, "___________" is in fact a man.  And, yes, God created us male and female.

And this is just about the worst way to go about arguing in opposition to the transgender trend there is.  Schmidt is hurting himself, his cause, science, and Christianity in general.

Regarding science and Christianity, I'll note right away that Rev. Schmidt's table makes it clear that he's from that non-Apostolic branch of Christianity which is oddly opposed to science to start with.  Apostolic Christians endorse science, and take the position that science and Faith can always be reconciled, and science serves to illuminate the grandeur of God's creation.  We don't oppose, for example, the theory (and at this point it's a theory in name only, it's actually a fact) of evolution.  Schmidt does, based on one of the books on his table.

Schmidt's table was adorned with books taking on all sorts of things in the photos, including taking on Anthony Fauci and, as noted, evolution.  I'm pretty sure, based on that, that Schmidt would be one of the protestants who regard Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which make up the overwhelming number of Christians on Earth, in horror or at least disdain. 

I'll get back to that in a moment, but I mention it here as having a booth in a hall that tells people that something is contrary to a religious tenant works fine if you are engaging in a debate with fellow Christians.  So, for example, if this Reformed Baptists minister seeks to take on American Episcopalians, that argument makes sense, although it certainly could be done in a more articulate fashion.  But if you are engaging the public at large, and not knowing who your audience is, that argument is going to fall flat and with quite a few, actually push them away from Christianity, to the extent that objecting to the reality of the fossil record and feeling that Anthony Fauci is a bad guy isn't already achieving that.

So all it really serves to do is to make a guy who is tainting Christianity feel like he's advancing it when he's not.

Which takes us to St. Paul.

Chances are that Rev. Schmidt like St. Paul and thinks St. Paul would be in his corner here.  St. Paul was a tough guy, and he had a lot to say about improper sexual conduct, including homosexuality and men dressing like women.  St. Paul makes people today squirm and they avoid him.  One lesbian minister here in Casper actually dismissed St. Paul entirely on these matters in a radio interview, saying "well that's just St. Paul's opinion".

That's not the way that Paul presented it.  No, not at all. 

But consider this:

Paul’s Speech at the Areopagus.

Then Paul stood up at the Areopagus and said:

“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.

For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.

The God who made the world and all that is in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands because he needs anything. Rather it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and everything.

He made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions, so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us.

For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’

Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.

God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will ‘judge the world with justice’ through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.”

And so Paul left them.

But some did join him, and became believers. Among them were Dionysius, a member of the Court of the Areopagus, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Ch. 17, Acts of the Apostles. 

Now, that's interesting.  Paul entered a new area, full of non-believers who had never even heard of Christ, and what did he say:

“You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious.

For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What therefore you unknowingly worship, I proclaim to you.

Well, he didn't do what Rev. Schmidt is doing.  He didn't go in and insult the unbelievers and assume they knew the entirety of the Christian message and point fingers at individuals ones of them, a la John Calvin.  No, he engaged them on common ground.

Here the common ground is science.  But chances are that Rev. Schmidt can't engage there.

The science of transgenderism is that its not supported by the science.  A person's gender is actually present in the DNA of every single cell of their body.  Humans, like all mammals, are male and female, and nothing else, right down to every single cell in your body.  Surgery and drugs aside, that remains the case.  It cannot be changed.

And hence our great grandmother and grandfather to the nth degree, the Morganucodon again.  Yes, male and female we were created, but not 4,000 years ago, but millions of years ago.  As we noted when we brought our cute little dinosaur egg eating progenitor up before:

The way it really works, of course, with mammals, which we are, is described here in Wikipedia:

A zygote (from Ancient Greek ζυγωτός (zygōtós) 'joined, yoked', from ζυγοῦν (zygoun) 'to join, to yoke')[1] is a eukaryotic cell formed by a fertilization event between two gametes. The zygote's genome is a combination of the DNA in each gamete, and contains all of the genetic information of a new individual organism.

In multicellular organisms, the zygote is the earliest developmental stage. In humans and most other anisogamous organisms, a zygote is formed when an egg cell and sperm cell come together to create a new unique organism. In single-celled organisms, the zygote can divide asexually by mitosis to produce identical offspring.

Zygote. By Nina Sesina - File:Zygote.tif, CC BY-SA 4.0,

That's how your gender is assigned.  Sperm and egg meet, zygote is formed, and your DNA starts rolling.  Your gender is determined, not assigned, by your DNA.

More particular than that, however, is that your DNA is determined by a long line of evolutionary influences going back to the first life.  Young earther's aside, you go way, way, back in evolutionary terms.

As we've noted before, our species supposedly goes back about 150,000 years, which probably means it goes back 250,000 to 500,000 years. We almost always get that wrong.  

Anyhow, we've noted this story, and this science, before:

Human beings are mammals and mammals.  Of the mammals, primates have the highest sexual dimorphism by quite some measure.  Members of the Homo genus, moreover have the highest sexual dimorphism of the primates.  It's basically off the charts in the animal kingdom.  If you were a space alien and popped down on this planet with no prior knowledge of our species, you'd assume it was two different species the way that you'd note that cattle and sheep are two different species, and one of the things you'd probably note is that one of the species had quite a different body from from the other, and that other was fascinated with it the way that cats are with catnip mice.  The dimorphism extends to our physical bodies in an off the chart fashion, and it also, like it or not, extends to our psychological makeup.

Part of that is that human beings, our species, Homo Sapien Sapien, has the highest sex drive of any member of the primates. So we are the pinnacle, for good or ill, in this category. We're extremely unusual in terms of a mammal, including a primate, in that both males and females are attracted to sexual intercourse outside of the females reproductive receptivity.  Men are, moreover, off the charts on this, and interested pretty much at any time, if the conditions arise.

Your "general assignment", it's tempting to say, was determined 210,000,000 when the first Morganucodon's, the very first known mammals, began to produce cute little babies, but even that really wouldn't completely be true.  It would be true that the path was up and running and, frankly, accelerating as an evolutionary strategy. Warm-blooded, smart, and male and female, they were off and running on raiding reptile eggs and making a general nuisance of themselves to the taxonomic order that had dominated for millennia.

Of course, even earlier than that, around 250,000,000, mammals started to evolve out of reptiles, and reptiles were also male and female, and go back over 300,000,000 years.

In other words, the male and female thing is really baked in.  It goes all the way back, and as mammals came on, "la différance" increased in fashions that matter in many mammals, and in particular in primates, and particularly in primates amongst the genus homo, of which you, dear reader, are a member of.

So there's the reality of it, which can be brought up in a scientific way to students who, at the end of the day, are just that.  Scientifically, the gender is baked in the cake and beyond actual changability. All the genetic behavior that goes along with that is baked in too. Therefore, the current transgender trend and story, which is largely confined to adolescent females who are in the ADHD scale, and who are white and from affluent families, is a sociology and psychological trend, not a biological one.  A person need not bring up God at all in this discussion.

Indeed, the evidence there is distressing in the extreme.  As noted, transgenderism is most female, not male.  It's mostly white, not black or Hispanic.  It's mostly in well-to-do sections of society, and it exhibits itself mostly amongst those female adolescents who have ADHD or something on "the spectrum".  It's appeared suddenly in White Europeans and European Americans as once one member of a clique claims it, it tends to rapidly spread in that clique.  Most of the members of the demographic cohort, moreover, have tended to have been exposed to a fair amount of pornography

And hence the most logical explanation of its spread.  It's spreading in a wealthy European culture.  Starting in the 1960s, we started to jettison the culture itself, leaving it without moorings, as we became wealthier.  Pornographers, including Hugh Hefner, were prosecuted for their actions as late as the 1970s, but that's now stopped completely, save below the age line of 18.  We've steeped children in it, and earlier this past week, a news story broke of a school official somewhere exposing grade school children to implements of what would have been regarded as deviant behaviors not long ago.  Indeed, the recent series on Playboy magazine revealed that when the young women working for Playboy clubs were exposed to the same behavior as part of after work gatherings, they were traumatized, so rare and so disgusting was it regarded as being.

In short, what the young females in the category are doing, psychologically, is fleeing from the role of female in regard to sex. They're not seeking to really change gender, they're seeking to opt out of what they think is the universal adult norm. They don't want to engage in endless sex as an object, they don't want things shoved up their butt, and the like.  

Who can blame them?

This doesn't cover all of this, of course, and it doesn't explain sexual dysmorphia as to males, . . exactly.  But what it does do is this. Scientifically, transgenderism isn't a thing.  So what we're seeing is something else that's not of biological origin.

And not once did we have to mention religion in order to engage in that discussion, now, did we?

Of course, what we did have to do is to reference evolution and biology, and in doing that we're referencing a genetic evolution that's  210,000,000 years old, long before our species, which is at least 250,000 years old, and probably twice that old, came about.  And that isn't going to be something a fellow who probably thinks the world is 5,000 years old and that evolution is some conspiracy by scientists is going to be keen on.  So instead, he's taken to the campus and is reading from the Bible.

St. Paul, in his letters, wrote a lot about Christian conduct and what barred a person from the doors of Heaven.  But he was writing to Christians when he did.  Going into Areopagus, he complimented them on their religious faith, non Christians and even non Jews that they were.

You students, I see that in every respect you are very scientific.

For as I walked around looking carefully at your buildings, I even discovered an some dedicated to biology.

Of course, you have to grasp that you aren't speaking to your own audience in the first place.  And you can't reject vast tracks of reality in order to proclaim other aspects of it either, and be convincing.  And in an era in which resources are so freely available, you might have to go back and take a look at what those early Christians were doing, including St. Paul, a Bishop in the Catholic Church.

Related Threads:

Genetics I: After all the propoganda, this is what actually matters.

Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries that aren't.

Cis

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.