Tag: Milo

SubscribeStar Saturday: Chicago

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Here at The Portly Politico, I like to roleplay as some kind of Jeffersonian country squire, overseeing my little homestead while contemplating the grape harvest.  As much as I love living in a small, country town, yours portly is not immune to the allure of the big city.

Naturally, I have little desire to live in one, and most certainly not the one that is the topic of today’s post.  However, there is a vibrancy and energy to large cities that is intoxicating, especially for those of an artistic bent.  Cities can be cesspools of crime, homelessness, and progressive politics, but they also pulse with an electric creativity and a sense of hustle—everyone is working hard to survive and create in a sea of humanity.

Granted, I don’t want to live in an overpriced shoebox, isolated by the sheer size of that very sea.  Some people thrive in that environment, while others should probably live on forty acres in the woods somewhere.  The rest of us are somewhere in the middle.  Most Americans don’t want to live like lab rats in an urban playground.

All that aside, cities are cool—the seats of civilization, as Milo once argued.  Despite its crime-ridden reputation, I think Chicago, Illinois makes for a good illustration of cities as the centers of art and architecture—of civilization.  After all, what is a civilization but the expression of its cultural achievements?  Few cities exemplify achievements in architecture more than that great epicenter of nineteenth-century America, Chicago.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Lazy Sunday CXXVIII: Civilization

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Civilization seems to be taking it on the chin lately, with anti-civilizational forces in various forms scoring victories against the civilized world.  The Taliban’s rapid reconquista of Afghanistan following America’s hasty, disorganized withdrawal suggests that a group of motivated cavemen can topple a well-trained, well-equipped, but artificial regime in a brisk weekend.

Within the gates of the civilized world, we’re going in a decidedly Babylonian route, indulging in wildly hedonistic displays of decadence, while ignoring the fundamentals that keep civilization going.  Even the gates are largely symbolic, as we’re allowing in every paleontological throwback, handing them government bennies and free housing in the process.

All that said, I think civilization is worth preserving.  I’ll write about that in a future post.  For now, here are some of my past scribblings on the topic for this mildly gloomy edition of Lazy Sunday:

  • “Civilization is Worth It” – Here is my initial case for civilization.  I think this line sums it up best:  “Ultimately, I’d much rather live in a world that produced J.S. Bach than a Stone Age pit full of atonal grunting.  It says something about the state of our civilization that the atonal grunts are back in vogue.”
  • “What is Civilization” – This post was based on a discussion between Milo Yiannopoulos and “groypers” Steven Franssen and Vincent James.  The groypers argued that folks should abandon the cities and head to the country.  Milo argued that cities are the heart of civilization, and should be defended.  Both sides make compelling points, though I tend to side with Franssen and James on this one.
  • “Rebuilding Civilization: The Hunter-Gatherer” – This post was inspired by an essay by Stuart Wavell entitled “The next civilisation.”  Wavell suggests that in the event of a cataclysmic, apocalyptic-level event, the isolated hunter-gatherers would be the ones to carry on the torch of humanity.

Well, there’s your dose of civilizational analysis for this weekend.  Let’s all do our part to maintain the things that make civilization worth the effort.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Tip The Portly Politico:  Support quality commentary on politics, education, culture, and the arts with your one-time donation.

***NOTE: This link is NOT a subscription to my SubscribeStar Page; it is for a one-time donation/tip via PayPal. To subscribe to my SubscribeStar page, use this URL:   https://subscribestar.com/the-portly-politico***

Supporting Friends Friday: Review of Rachel Fulton Brown and Dragon Common Room’s Centrism Games

The Portly Politico2 Comments

After sitting with the copy on my nightstand since the book’s debut, I finally sat down and read Rachel Fulton Brown and Dragon Common Room‘s Centrism Games: A Modern Dunciad.  Having read it, my only regret is that I did not do so sooner.

A bit of background is in order:  Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown is a medievalist at the University of Chicago, and is known in our circles as a traditional Christian professor fighting against social justice indoctrination and infiltration of the humanities.

One wouldn’t think the more esoteric realm of medieval history would be a major battleground for the ultra-woke, but it makes sense:  the modern West is profoundly a product of the Middle Ages.  With that in mind, it becomes clear why the progressive revisionists wish to dominate the field:  in rewriting medieval history to fit their woke narrative, it makes the rest of their revisionist project—of casting all white, male, Christian endeavors as inherently wicked—that much easier.

Milo Yiannopoulos’s short book Medieval Rages: Why The Battle for Medieval Studies Matters to America, details that struggle in more detail.  I highly recommend picking it up, as it highlights the length to which the wokesters have gone to silence Dr. Brown.  Correspondingly, it demonstrates Dr. Brown’s incredible courage and fortitude—as well as her cleverly elfish responses to her critics.

Dr. Brown founded a Telegram chatroom, Dragon Common Room, to be a “a place for training in the arts of virtue and poetry. And mischief making for God. We fight the demons with laughter and wit.”  I participate infrequently in chat, but it has become one of my favorites on the platform.  In addition to fighting “demons with laughter and wit,” Dr. Brown and her merry band of righteous mischief-makers wrote, workshopped, edited, and compiled Centrism Games, releasing it as a handsome little volume consisting of seven poems of thirty stanzas each.

The seven poems constitute a mock-epic narrative, modeled after Alexander Pope’s satirical epic The Dunciad.  Whereas Pope’s Dunciad mocked the goddess “Dulness” and her agents, Centrism Games lampoons the goddess Fama—Fame—and her o’er eager knights

Read More »

The Joy of Romantic Music IV: Claude Debussy

The Portly Politico2 Comments

The big news this week is that Milo Yiannopoulos is now “Ex-Gay,” which I intended to write about today.  However, that topic is so huge—much like the personality of the formerly loafer-whitened gadfly—that it deserves a more thorough treatment than I’m capable of producing at present.  Suffice it to say that, based on reading hundreds of his Telegram posts and listening to Milo’s commentary and analysis for years, I think he’s sincerely turning his life over to God completely, and through Christ is cleansing himself of his homosexual proclivities.  It’s a bit of celebratory news akin to Roosh V’s dramatic conversion to Christianity two years ago.

So instead of covering a flamboyant man’s dedication to Christ and consecration to St. Joseph, I’m dedicating today’s post to the flamboyant music of a Frenchman:  Claude Debussy.

Read More »

Lazy Sunday XCI: Questions, Part V

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

It’s another weekend full of questions here at The Portly Politico, as we continue our review of posts that pose a question in their titles.  Each of this Sunday’s posts were written during the heady, violent days of Summer 2020, when the nation was aflame with lawlessness and disorder.  Naturally, they reflect the fears and anxieties of those days, when it seemed like everything was coming apart at the seams:

  • “SubscribeStar Saturday: Civil War?” (post on SubscribeStar) – Perhaps one of my most powerful essays (if it’s not too much to give myself such accolades), “Civil War?” spells out the irreconcilable differences at the heart of the United States today.  I wrote it at a time when local governments in progressive urban centers refused to put a stop to the looting and rioting, and instead tacitly encouraged the destruction.  That mental and physical divide between progressives and conservatives is so profound and deep, I expressed pessimism of any kind of peaceful resolution—though I continue to pray I am wrong.
  • “Law and Order?” – Just as urban progressive mayors failed to address the violence in their cities, so President Trump—who I love as a president—dropped the ball on quelling riots and the ridiculous CHAZ/CHOP experiment.  As I wrote at the time, it seemed that his strategy was wise—give the Left rope with which to hang themselves, allowing CHAZ to fizzle out under the weight of its own insane contradictions—but also undermined the legitimacy and authority of the government, and Trump’s own calls for “law and order.”  Here was a moment where President Trump could have acted decisively with a legitimate display of power, and give proof to his claims to want law and order.  That only comes with the firm smack of power.
  • “What is Civilization?” – As progressive mobs continued to burn cities, Milo Yiannopoulos argued “that by abandoning our cities, we are, essentially, abandoning our greatest cultural products.”  Milo was engaged in a discussion with Steven Franssen and Vincent James, who countered that Americans who fled the cities were not abandoning their civilization, but something that had become alien and foreign.  I tend to favor the latter argument, but the post is worth reading as my summary of the discussion between such intriguing thinkers.

That’s all for this weekend.  Here’s hoping everyone is doing well and staying safe.  Christmas is almost here!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Tip The Portly Politico

Support quality commentary on politics, education, culture, and the arts with your one-time donation.

$1.00

TBT: Support Milo

The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

On Tuesday I wrote a “Giving Tuesday” post to give some shout-outs to conservative and dissident content creators and organizations that could use your support.  In my haste, I neglected to include a man who could always use another leopard-spotted ivory back-scratcher:  Milo.

As a mea culpa to His Majesty, I’m dedicating this week’s TBT to a post in which I urged readers to “Support Milo.”  I think it speaks for itself, so without further ado, here’s “Support Milo“:

I hold a soft spot in my heart for conservative gadfly and Internet provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.  I recall fondly his heyday in 2015-2016, when he championed free speech in the Babylon of Progressivism, Berkeley, California.  I still wish President Trump would appoint him White House Press Secretary—it would be must-see TV every day.

Behind the flamboyant, cartoonish homosexuality and the over-the-top trollery, though, is a talented journalist and writer; indeed, Milo’s work is some of the best long-form journalism I’ve ever read.  His writing, like his public speaking, is engaging and well-researched:  he really checks his facts and his sources, while still delivering that withering Coulterian death strike upon his unfortunate target.

Unfortunately, even fewer Americans will have the opportunity to read his work, as he’s apparently sold his website, Dangerous.com.

I understand that for many conservatives Milo can be a bit much.  I love his public speaking, but you have to realize that the first twenty or thirty minutes are going to be Milo playing his best and favorite character—himself.  Once he’s paraded around in drag and told some incredibly off-color jokes, he’ll get down to the raw facts—where he truly shines.

In the years I’ve followed Milo’s work, I would wager that 90% of his factually-supportable positions are inside the conservative mainstream.  Yes, he’s made some wacky statements before, but these are generally hyperbole in service to the overall experience:  he draws crowds in with shock value, but wins them with knowledge.

But Conservatism, Inc., couldn’t have an effective proselytizer cutting into their racket.  The David Frenchian pseudo-Right—the controlled opposition of neocons who don’t want to ruffle feathers lest their Leftist masters call them “racists” or “bigots”—cut Milo off at the knees.

For years I read National Review, and always heard conservatives pining for a cool, gay and/or minority Republican (because the establishment Right is desperate to prove to progressives that they aren’t racists or homophobes).  Along came Milo—fun, smart, and into biracial man-love—and the decorum caucus suddenly realized that a cool, gay Republican was, by definition, going to be pretty melodramatic.

Read More »

Lazy Sunday LXXXIX: 100 Week Review

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Today marks the 700th consecutive day of posts here at The Portly Politico.  That’s 100 weeks of daily posts, which sounds like a prison sentence for a first-time criminal offender.  Writing the blog daily has occasionally felt like serving a self-imposed prison sentence, but it’s overwhelmingly been a source of joy.  I’ve made a number of great friends, and have accumulated a respectable daily readership, as well as eight faithful subscribers.

According to my WordPress stats, I’ve written 516,512 since 2018.  Those haven’t all been consecutive, but looking at just 2019-2020, it’s still a respectable 459,252 words.  Granted, there are a lot of TBT posts in there, so that pads the stats a bit, but I imagine I’m still safely in the half-million-word mark.

To observe the occasion and still maintain the spirit of Lazy Sunday, here are the Top Three Posts (based on views) since 2018:

  • “Tom Steyer’s Belt” – By now it’s predictable, but this single post brought more traffic to my blog than the next seventeen posts combined.  At the time of this writing, it’s had 2997 views—2560 more than the second most popular post.  Most of that traffic is purely organic, meaning I didn’t encourage people to read it beyond my usual sharing to Facebook and on Telegram.  Basically, the post became popular because Tom Steyer blew a ton of cash airing obnoxious television and Internet ads, and mine was one of the few sources to cover his colorful belt.
  • “Napoleonic Christmas” – This post—with 437 hits—explored an interesting revisionist take on Napoleon from a PragerU video, as well as the idea that not all non-democratic or non-republican forms of government are bad.  There were, objectively, monarchies and dictatorships that were better off—materially, spiritually, culturally, etc.—than democratic republics, contemporary and present.  That doesn’t mean I endorse those forms of government as somehow preferable to a liberty-loving republic, but I can appreciate the argument that Napoleon was a reform-minded figure, not merely an ingenious brute.
  • “Milo on Romantic Music” – One of many things I appreciate about Internet provocateur and author Milo Yiannopoulos is that he is exceptionally erudite.  He might act frivolous and catty—and I suspect he genuinely is—but he’s also deep and interesting.  This post—with 279 views, thanks in large part to Milo sharing it on Telegram—looks at an exchange between Milo and another figure about Romantic music versus Baroque music.  Milo clearly prefers Romantic music overall, (while acknowledging Bach’s essential nature), arguing that it’s “the only proper soundtrack to the trad life.”  Great point!

Well, that’s it—100 weeks!  Thank you again for all of your support.  Keep reading, leaving comments, and subscribing.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Tip The Portly Politico

Support quality commentary on politics, education, culture, and the arts with your one-time donation.

$1.00

Presidential Debate Review

The Portly Politico5 Comments

Last night was the first presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden.  It was a grudge match; “hard to watch” and similar sentiments are the main comments I’m seeing on social media.

As a Trump supporter, I enjoyed the debate for GEOTUS’s zingers and no-nonsense combativeness.  He was aggressive and feisty, and clearly understood the Leftist slanting of the questioning (as Milo Telegramed, “Why are we still talking about climate change?”  Chris Wallace was clearly in Biden’s corner in terms of the tack of his questions, and he didn’t interrupt Biden the way he interrupted Trump.

To be fair to Wallace, Trump was talking over Biden and Wallace frequently, and as the role of a moderator is to moderate the debate, Wallace’s job was to try to keep the candidates to the two-minute rule.  That said, Trump was responding to a number of inaccurate and false accusations against him, including the widely debunked but oft-repeated Charlottesville myth.

I do think on the substance of the issues, Trump hammered Biden.  Trump has facts, history, accomplishments, and morality on his side.  His first term has been wildly successful by any metric.  The irony of Trump’s presidency is that if it were anyone else in his position, they’d be lauded as the greatest president in a generation, but anyone else wouldn’t have had the cajones to accomplish what Trump has.

Unfortunately, for all that I loved Trump’s aggressive attempt to rattle the ailing Biden, I’m afraid it came across as bullying and unprofessional to squishy swing voters.  Trump’s base is with him no matter what (especially after he refused to be maneuvered into denouncing the Proud Boys, a completely benign organization unfairly slandered as “white supremacists”).  He’s got to win over those undecided folks in key swing States who probably love the president’s policies, but find the president personally distasteful.

Read More »

Lazy Sunday LXXX: Big Ideas

The Portly Politico8 Comments

So many of the West’s problems are fundamentally spiritual in nature.  Our politics are no longer the pedestrian, earthy wranglings over how to maintain the roads (clearly not) or what the marginal tax rate should be.  Even the most mundane of political discussions become theological battles about the nature of Truth itself.  It’s ironic given the Left’s wholesale embrace of postmodernism’s rejection of Truth.

As such, it seemed like an opportune time to dedicate a Lazy Sunday to posts about big ideas.  It’s easy to get bogged down in the details—the Devil is in them, after all—but it’s also important to grasp at the makeup of the entire forest, not just its diversity of trees.

With that, here are some of my own stabs at understanding the dark forest in which we moderns find ourselves:

  • “What is Conservatism?” & “TBT: What is Conservatism?” – This post kicked off the first run of my History of Conservative Thought Class, in which begin exploring the ideas of Russell Kirk.  So much of what Americans consider to be “conservative” today is really an abstract ideology, whereas Kirk’s conservatism varied from one society to the next.  It did, however, contain some similar elements across cultures.  Kirk is mostly forgotten in conservative circles today, which is unfortunate; it would behoove us to know more of his thought and work.  
  • “Resist the Black Pill” – It’s easy to get discouraged with the state of the world at present, especially here in the United States. Even with the efforts of President Trump and his MAGA cadre, there are long-term concerns for the future of our country.  The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is one sign of hope, though whether or not the Court will return to true constitutionalism is still an open question.  What we can know is that nihilistic despair is a sin, and our hope comes from the Lord.
  • “What is Civilization?” – This post dealt with a lively discussion between Milo and a couple of groypers, Steve Franssen and Vincent James, about the future of civilization.  It’s an intriguing debate about whether or not abandoning the cities to progressive destroyers represents an abandonment of civilization itself (my answer would be no).

That’s it for this brief Lazy Sunday.  Here’s hoping these posts give you something to chew over as you head into your week.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Donate to The Portly Politico

Support quality commentary on politics, education, culture, and the arts with your one-time donation.

$5.00

Phone it in Friday XV: Blogger Buddies

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s been another crazy week, but the rhythms of the school year are beginning to fall into their familiar patterns.  That said, I’ve put in more hours working this week than any in a long time.

Regular readers know what that means:  another edition of Phone it in Friday, now reaching its fifteenth installment.

It’s been a week for shout-outs to other commentators and platforms, so I figured I’d continue with that theme and recommend some of my blogger buddies to you.  I have to give a big hat tip for this idea to one of my best blogger buddies, photog, over at Orion’s Cold Fire.  He wrote a post—“A Word of Thanks to Our Boosters“—highlighting some of those blogs that routinely link to his page or reference his writing, and yours portly made the list.  Thanks, photog!

So on this rainy, overcast Friday, here are some excellent blogs for your consideration:

Read More »