Tag: ideas

TBT^2: Climate Hysteria Robs Us of Joy

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Talk about a forgotten post:  I wrote this post way back in 2019, then reblogged it in 2020, and haven’t thought about it since.

When you’ve written and/or edited blog posts for going on 1430 consecutive days, it’s easy to forget some of the pieces you’ve written.  It’s one reason why it’s so foolish to crucify public intellectuals and other personalities for misguided tweets or ancient blog posts.  The nature of the medium is to produce, produce, produce—a constant churning of content.  That doesn’t mean we should be irresponsible with our words, but that it’s easy to forget old posts and arguments.

What brought this post to mind was a comment from the Quora contributor whose answer to a question inspired this post.  He commented over Thanksgiving and asked that I remove his name from the post, which I did.

Here was his comment in full:

I’m the one you’re quoting in this piece, and the connection you’re trying to make is utter nonsense. If you’d like me to explain the difference between trying to drink the ocean and altering the CO2 content of the atmosphere, I’d be happy to do so, but given the utter lack of scientific understanding displayed here, I’m guessing you wouldn’t care.

As a scientist, I’m offended that you’re peddling this kind of misinformation, and using my name to do it. As a Christian, I’m offended that you’re invoking the name of deity (and a diametrically wrong reading of scripture), to argue in favor of ignorance and lack of responsibility.

If you’re going to sell this kind of garbage, kindly leave my name out of it.

I respectfully disagree.  I think the poster missed the point of my piece.  Obviously, drinking from the ocean is not perfectly analogous to pumping carbon dioxide into the atrmosphere, but the two do seem related:  if we meaningfully affect sea levels by taking a collective drink from the ocean, it seems unlikely that we can meaningfully affect the ozone layer.

But the comment proves my point:  here’s a man so enslaved to the dogmatism of scientific materialism, he’s spending his Thanksgiving calling people stupid online.

I mean, I’m no scientist, and I probably am stupid about a lot of things, but I also didn’t shut down the global economy and civil society for two years and demand people trust my authority because I wear a lab coat.  My whole life I’ve heard that “science is our religion now” (probably true) and that “scientists are the new high priests of society.”

Well, they’re doing a pretty lousy job of it.  I wonder how many Westerners will freeze to death this winter because our priestly caste demands we bow obsequiously to Mother Gaia?  If questioning their dogmatic faith is “misinformation,” then I am proud spreader of the same.

With that, here is “TBT: Climate Hysteria Robs Us of Joy“:

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You’ll Get Everything and Not Like It

The Portly Politico9 Comments

Being one of three brothers who came of age in the 1990s—the golden age of watching ribald, edited-for-television comedies on basic cable—I was constantly exposed to humorous quips and one-liners from hilarious movies.  One perennial favorite was the raunchy (again, edited for television) comedy classic Caddyshack (1980), about a bunch of blue-collar kids working at a tony country club’s golf course (and Bill Murray trying to blow up a gopher).

My brothers and I still reference one brief but oft-quoted scene:

Judge Smails irate handling of his ingrate nephew is a classic, and something I have probably said to a student.  My older brother loves saying it to my younger brother’s kids, who, while not rotten, and definitely spoiled (a good bit by their Uncle Portly).

My older nephew, is nearly six, likes to invert the phrase, shouting at his other uncle, “You’ll get everything and not like it.”  It’s one of his many (unintentionally?) Zen utterances.

I was contemplating this amusing bit of familial banter on the way to work yesterday.  My sweet little nephew is right—we Westerners do have everything—and we’re miserable!

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Malfunctioning Robots

The Portly Politico1 Comment

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After two years under the befuddlingly tyrannical rule of a mentally-impaired geezer, our electoral standards have slid to meet the lowered expectations of our time.  Now a mentally-impaired greaseball wants to be the United States Senator for Pennsylvania, and until a disastrous debate performance that was impossible to ignore, it seemed that Pennsylvanians were willing to vote for him.

To be clear, I take no pleasure in the profound illness of another person.  John Fetterman suffered a stroke—a terrible thing—but he is still pursuing public office.  As much as Henry Clay disliked Andrew Jackson in the 1824 presidential election, he wasn’t going to throw his support behind Secretary of Treasury William Crawford of Georgia (the election was thrown to the House of Representatives; Crawford was in third, but had suffered a major stroke and would pass away soon afterwards, with Clay giving his support to John Quincy Adams).

But we’ve grown accustomed to power-hungry wives and political parties propping up brain-dead puppets in public office.  Indeed, the historians of the distant future will no-doubt look back at our time and think of it as The Age of The Impaired.  We celebrate every manner of impairment—transgenderism, paralysis (both moral and physical), gluten intolerance, etc.—as some kind of special mark of holiness.

Of course, we should treat such people with compassion, but we shouldn’t be electing them to public office, no matter how good it makes us feel about ourselves to do so.  Public service is hard, even for the able-bodied and clear-minded.  Being a United States Senator is exceptionally difficult—and a position with incredible amounts of power and prestige.

What we saw with Fetterman—much like Marco Rubio’s glitching out in 2016—was an Establishment robot malfunctioning on live television.  I’m only being mildly hyperbolic—Fetterman can only process incoming sounds via a computer.  That’s a miraculous bit of technology, but do we want a cyborg serving as one of the 100 men and women of the US Senate?  Even if we did, would we want one that was constantly breaking down in stressful situations?

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SubscribeStar Saturday: The Great Coarsening

The Portly Politico4 Comments

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A perennial saw of the conservative pundit is the decline of public morality.  Indeed, it is so well-worn that the ignorant use it as evidence that, because people have always complained about “kids these days,” it must mean that we’re just fuddy-duddies who are painfully out of touch.  Why, elders have always complained about their kids!

Of course, that’s not true.  The idea of a “generation gap” is a relatively modern phenomenon.  For most of human history, children grew up to be very much like their parents (indeed, I would argue that is still the case, just with the addition of angsty, extended adolescence tossed into the mix).  Yes, humans have always recognized the folly of youth—Proverbs frequently refers to children and young people as “fools,” or taken with folly—but it wasn’t considered to be either virtuous or some massive, unbridgeable gap.

But in a world with no connection to the past, one which exists in an eternal Present, it is little wonder that we witness—even encourage!—such a separation from our ancestors.  The United States particularly suffers from the pedestalization of youth:  we have come to believe that youngsters possess all wisdom, being spared the corruption of Reality—of real life.

The opposite, of course, is true.  Yes, there is something admirable about the energy and certitude of youthful moral righteousness, but it is often a quite short-sighted self-righteousness.  That’s not the fault of young people—they are, after all, young and inexperienced—but the traditional expectation was that they would grow out of that sunny idealism as Reality and Truth taught their hard lessons.  We should remain optimistic and thankful in the midst of adversity, but true foolishness comes from ignoring these hard-taught lessons.

That’s all a very long preamble to get to the thrust of this piece:  we are witnessing The Great Coarsening of civil and social life, in every arena:  politics, culture, art, manners, customs, etc.  How often do we hear the F-word dropped casually in everyday conversation—the way Nineties Valley Girls used the word “like”?  As a schoolteacher, I overhear this word frequently, as students and adults treat it as, essentially, a sentence enhancer.

Here is where the charges of fuddy-duddiness are most frequently leveled: “Oh, come now, Port, who cares about some word?”  It’s not the word itself, per se—although that word is exceptionally foul—but what it represents.

Or, rather, what it’s ubiquity represents:  the aforementioned Great Coarsening.

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TBT^2: Things That Go Bump in the Night

The Portly Politico4 Comments

It’s the so-called “spooky season” again, which naturally turns my mind to things not seen.  Lately, I’ve been pondering the pre-modern mind, and how differently pre-moderns saw the world.  It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around it.  What must it have been like to fear God—naturally (as in, without the scientistic arrogance we moderns seem inculcated into at an early age)?  To suspect mercurial forces at play in every tree or lonely bog?

There’s so much we don’t know; so much we can’t see (even if it’s caught on video).  Ironically, for all of our assuredness about how the world works, we find ourselves in an age of constant epistemological confusion, one in which we seem incapable of knowing what is True or not.

Heady contemplations, indeed.  The possible existence of Bigfoot or any other number of odd creatures, corporeal or otherwise, is not insignificant:  if supernatural beings exist, God Exists (or, more probably, because God Exists, there are all manner of spirits and angels and the like at work, just beyond our perception).

Spooky stuff!  With that, here is “TBT: Things That Go Bump in the Night“:

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TBT: The Weather

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Hurricane Ian is swirling about, sending everything and everyone into a tizzy (folks in Florida, please be safe).  It’s also thrown a windy wrench into my schedule, which was already planned down to the minute for nearly every day this week.

Well, no use crying over spilt rainwater.  I’m thankful for the relative safety of the inland, and that we live in a time when we have some advanced warning about the impending meteorological apocalypses that routinely batter us.

This hurricane aside, we’ve been enjoying some pleasant weather here in South Carolina—it almost feels like fall!  The mornings have been crisp and cool, and even required a light jacket one day last week.  Here’s hoping the sweater weather descends soon.

Here’s hoping my readers in Florida and along the coastal regions of the Southeast are safe.  Audre, be sure to batten down the hatches.

With that, here is 29 September 2021’s “The Weather“:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Busybodies

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In casting about for a topic for this weekend’s edition of SubscribeStar Saturday, The Z Man’s latest podcase served as inspiration.  Entitled “Thinking About Athens,” the episode is an extended thought experiment on the nature of Athenian democracy, and the problem of generating consensus in a true democracy.  The problem becomes increasingly intractable the larger the group of participants becomes, to the point that “consensus” breaks down entirely, as everyone realizes that the groups that complain the most and take the firmest stances against compromise end up getting their way in order to maintain the “consensus.”  Yikes!

I often use the analogy of ordering pizza when illustrating this point to my students (usually in the context of the Articles of Confederation, America’s first governing document, which required unanimous consent of all States—each of which had an equal vote—to amend the Articles):  there is almost always at least one student who will not anything but plain cheese pizza.  Some students will only eat pizza with toppings.  Rarely, a student will not eat pizza at all.  But if found ourselves in a world in which ordering one kind of pizza were mandatory, the outcome would either be a.) ordering no pizza at all or b.) capitulating to the lame person who just wants a plain cheese pizza.  In either case, almost no one gets what they want.

Even if someone attempts to “opt-out” of the system, that is a threat to the consensus itself.  By attempting to abstain, those who demand conformity with the “consensus” react with suspicion—why won’t this weirdo eat pizza with us?  It’s not enough that someone might just want to do something else; we must be forced to be free.

I touched upon this topic in an essay from 27 February 2021, “Authoritarian Creep.”  To quote liberally from myself:

Something with which I struggle to wrap my mind around is the authoritarian impulse.  I’m not pretending I’m immune to this impulse—this desire to tell others how to live their lives, backing it up with the threat of force for non-compliance—but the older I get, what little appeal the tendency held continues to diminish.

What I struggle to comprehend is the apparent need to boss people around.  I understand needing to be authoritative with children and students—setting clear boundaries, understanding actions have consequences, molding the child to become a self-governing adult—but this desire to boss around perfect strangers is increasingly foreign to me.

This impulse manifests itself in virtually every facet of our lives.  It creeps in bit by bit.  Modest policy proposals and laws suddenly becomes weaponized Karenism, empowering authorities and otherwise normal people to swagger about with impunity, assured of the righteousness of their cause du jour.

Why do we want to control one another so much?

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TBT^4: The Joy of Autumn

The Portly Politico7 Comments

Today is the first day of autumn.  It’s about dang time!

Granted, I realize that autumn shows up on the calendar the same time every year.  Whether (weather?) or not it makes a meteorological appearance or not, however, is a bit dicey in South Carolina.  It’s very likely to be quite warm today—in the mid-nineties as of the time of this writing.  We’re enjoying some cooler, crisper mornings, with a bit lower humidity, but it’s still very much summer here in South Carolina.

Nevertheless, pumpkin spiced-everything is already in stores, so even if it feels like we’re about to attend a pool party, we can enjoy the tastes of autumn here.

Autumn is my favorite season, even though it is fleeting.  The period from Labor Day through Christmas is a blur of activity, with nary a weekend free for all the fall activities we see on television and in the movies.  Apple picking looks fun, but who has the time?

On the plus side, Halloween will be here soon.  It seems that folks have started decorating much earlier this year than usual—or have I missed something?  Some people had decorations up in August, which seems as blasphemous as hanging Christmas lights before Thanksgiving.

But I digress.  With that, here is 23 September 2022’s “TBT^2: The Joy of Autumn“:

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TBT: The Frisson of the Night

The Portly Politico1 Comment

The night has always been a time of excitement, a time when—as I wrote a year ago—music “lives.”  There’s something exhilarating and fun about the night, which is why I chose the word “frisson” to convey the tantalizing possibilities of the night.

I’m more of a morning person these days, rising early, well before the dawn.  Well, isn’t that just another way of saying “the late, late night”?  There’s not much exciting happening at 5 AM (other than reading the Bible and talking to God), but it’s still pretty dark out.  Try waking up then and you’ll see!

Still, there is a real appeal to the night.  I’m at my most alert and mentally focused in the morning and—you guessed it—at night.  Afternoons would be naptime for yours portly, if I had my druthers—and a schedule that permitted it.

Regardless, night is when everything interesting happens.  It’s the time when things go bump.  It’s probably when Bigfoot comes out to play, too.

With that, here is 15 September 2021’s “The Frisson of the Night“:

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