I’m on the mend, and am back at work today. It’s pretty hectic being away for a couple of days: I was immediately swarmed by young’uns this morning, asking about melodic intervals and the War of 1812.
If only I had a shadow Twitter account, from which I could give myself an emotional boost whenever I’m having a rough-and-tumble, post-recovery morning.
That’s my clumsy segue into today’s topic—Senator Mitt Romney’s latest pathetic act of perfidy, the Twitter account with the hysterical, outrageous nom de plume “Pierre Delecto.”
When I was in college, I formed this ridiculous pseudo-band with a suitemate of mine (who has, apparently, now gone down some dark roads) called Blasphemy’s Belt, which my bio on another band’s website refers to as an “electro-pop humor duo.” I can’t remember how we came up with the name—our music wasn’t particularly or purposefully blasphemous (or good), and while we wore belts, they weren’t outrageous (just to keep our pants up)—but it was apparently catchy enough that people picked up on it.
The Belt never performed live, other than for an annoyed roommate, and a highly grating pop-up concert (at least, that’s what hipsters would call it nowadays) on our floor’s study room, but we generated enough buzz to get people to vote for us in a “Best of Columbia” survey in The Free Times. We didn’t win anything, but it was an object lesson in how enough hype can make people believe you have substance when you really don’t.
After being treated civilly by someone with different political opinions—gasp!—Williamson expressed surprise at how kind Eric Bolling was to her. The bigger realization was that her own side can be terribly cruel, even to its own (of course, conservatives have long recognized the tendency of the Left to eat its own).
I’ve been pondering an important problem facing conservatives and the Dissident Right this week: the preponderance of misinformation percolating in the media and, by extension, the culture more generally. My perception—based on personal experience, reading the scene, and the mere fact that anyone is still voting for gun-stealing baby killers—is that there exists a major misinformation gap between most Americans and the Truth.
While it seems that more and more Americans are gradually taking the proverbial “red pill” and are awakening to the grim reality of progressive cultural and political dominance, most are still blissfully ignorant of what is happening to the country. High-profile events or issues—a terrorist attack, for example, or a kid tranny giving lap dances to grown men—can stir the masses temporarily, but there’s no thoughtful connection of such events to the broader cultural, political, and historical context.
For those unfamiliar with Tommy Robinson, he is a journalist-activist. Robinson was jailed once before, ostensibly for contempt of court. In fact, his “crime” was calling the defendants in an then-active child grooming trial “Muslim child rapists.” For having the pique to critique Islam, Robinson was jailed.
Some time ago, I somehow ended up subscribed to daily updates from Quora.com, the website where users can submit answers to other users’ questions. Apparently, I told Quora that I like dinosaurs, because most of the featured questions in my daily digest are about evolution.
Lately, however, I’ve been receiving more questions—and answers!—about astronomy. I love space exploration, and I dream of one day walking on the surface of the moon. It’s an outlandish dream, and one that I know is unlikely to ever be fulfilled, but I yearn for that opportunity.
So I was thrilled to see the kind of question that the science scolds on Quora hate—qualitative, rather than purely quantitative, in nature. The question, simply, was thus: “What is the creepiest planet in our solar system?”
I’ve been fan-boying a great deal lately about Richard Weaver. He’s one of my favorite authors, even though I’ve read comparatively little of his work. Weaver died during the prime of his academic career, but before his premature death he managed to bequeath a rich heritage of scholarly works about literature, religion, and his beloved Dixie.
As I’ve written again and again, I always enjoy rereading the introduction to Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences, and hope to reread the entire book again soon. The introduction sums up the modern West’s maladies starkly and clearly, tracing their origins to the nominalism of William of Occam.
I found one podcast in which two conservative commentators summarize and discuss the book, chapter-by-chapter; it’s a good, quick overview if you’ve got fifty minutes in the car:
That said, while I reference Weaver quite a bit, I actually have not written as many posts about him and his work as I thought. Nevertheless, while I’m in the midst of my annual Weaver Fest, I thought it would be the perfect time to give the great academic his own Lazy Sunday:
1.) “Capitalism Needs Social Conservatism” – a #TBT post from the TPP 2.0 era, this post was part of a series on social conservatism, which I dubbed the “red-headed stepchild” of modern conservatism. The post is more inspired by Weaver than it is about him, but I mention the paradox of prosperity near the end when I discuss Weaver’s drunk.
That’s my phrase for a metaphor Weaver employs near the end of the introduction to Ideas Have Consequences in which he compares modern society to a drunk. The more inebriated and alcoholic the drunk becomes, the less capable he is of doing the work necessary to feed his addiction. So it is with modern man—the more he luxuriates in excess and comfort, the less willing he is to do the uncomfortable work necessary to sustain his opulence.
2.) “Back to School with Richard Weaver” – the subject of last Thursday’s TBT, this little piece was from a 2014 Facebook post in which I quoted from “The South and the American Union,” an essay from Weaver’s Southern Essays. It contrasts the Southerner’s “Apollonian” worldview of fixed limits and “permanent settlement” to the ceaseless striving and progression of the Northern, “Faustian” worldview. It’s a fascinating dichotomy that, while controversial, certainly rings true to Southerners like yours portly.
3.) “The Portly Politico Summer Reading List 2016” – my classic, original reading list; naturally, Ideas Have Consequences tops the list! As I wrote at the time, if you’re going to read just one book this summer, make it Ideas Have Consequences!
That’s a level of creepy beyond merely selling your data or using an algorithm to use facial recognition software. That’s creepy, to be sure, but when it’s some faceless formula it doesn’t seem as bad. When a living, breathing humanoid is pouring over your voice conversations (salacious or otherwise), it adds a whole other layer of skin-crawling chilliness to creepiness factor.
Teachers reported back yesterday at the little private school where I teach, so things are about to from busy to insane for yours portly. Amid the hours of training sessions and diversity seminars, I came down with a bit of a cold yesterday afternoon.
The congestion and general wooziness that comes with it is not exactly conducive to mental activities like blogging, but some expired children’s Dimetapp, a hot shower, and Vick’s Vapor Rub helped immensely. Toss in a good night’s sleep and some early morning ibuprofen, and I’m already feeling better.
That’s all to say that I don’t have much to write about this evening. We’re still amid the summer news slump, wherein the smallest non-troversies grow startlingly out of proportion.
The world has been on fire this week because—in the absence of any real news—President Trump said something on Twitter that’s funny.
The hand-wringing over President Trump’s tweet about “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” returning to their home countries to fix them up has had the Left and the Right scurrying to condemn the president. Ben Shapiro, whose podcast I quite enjoy, dedicated an entire hour to excoriating the president over the Tweet, and another hour to analyze it further.
Shapiro is wrong on this one, and more than a tad disingenuous, which is unusual for him. He claims that President Trump tweeted that these women should be “sent back” to their countries of origin—which, as far as I can tell, he never said or wrote! When a crowd at a rally in North Carolina began chanting “Send Her Back!” after the president ran down a litany of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist, pro-Islamist statements, that seemed to exacerbate things, the president quickly stated that he did not like or agree with the chant.
The Portly Politico 