Out Of The Armchair: County Collecting In Missouri

Last year I visited every county in Tennessee. This year I visited all 114 counties in the less-than-great-but-moderately-decent state of Missouri. With Tennessee I made a point to avoid interstates and really get the feel of each county — this time I didn’t bother with that to the same extent. Nor did I need to, as Missouri’s counties blend together, whereas each Tennessee county is a little unique.

In my own judgment, I would say that Missouri could be divided into three distinct regions: the southern mountains, the northern corn fields, and the eastern river lands. Each of these has a major anchor city: Springfield, Kansas City and St Louis.

“But what about Columbia and the eastern Ozarks and –”

I’m not trying to crunch census numbers. I’m talking about geography. And anyway, Columbia doesn’t have a metro area like Springfield does, especially if you include Joplin.

Springfield is “the Queen City of the Ozarks”, Kansas City is very much a corn-and-steers city, and St Louis County is literally defined by three rivers. Columbia is the dead-center of the state, and they have a thug university where you’ll get stabbed, but otherwise it’s the middle of nowhere.

There are subtle differences in the architecture in each region, if you’re inclined to pay attention to something like that. I found this very interesting. The eastern river and southern mountains had the architecture that looked the most like “The South”.

The eastern river region could be very hilly, especially in the north. This is where Mark Twain is from, and Tom Sawyer described caves on the side of the river. Twain’s hometown of Hannibal made a big show of how Tom Sawyer-y they were, but you could tell the architecture goes back to the 1940s. Clarksville however looks exactly like how Mark Twain described Tom Sawyer’s village. It had a gorgeous old main street leading to the river, and on the hillside above it were old antebellum houses.

But if you go one county west of the river, and it’s totally flat.

In the southern part of this region, it’s mostly flat farmland. The Ozarks sort of butt against the Mississippi River south of St Louis, but then they cut away further south. Southwestern St Louis County in the lower slopes of the mountains, and the rest of the county is pretty hilly. Jefferson County directly to the south is considered entirely to be in the Ozarks, but I don’t think that’s totally accurate. But as with Appalachia, there can be some debate about where mountain ranges actually begin or end. On I-44 heading into St Louis, you will go downhill for some 20 or 30 miles as you leave the mountains.

The Ozark mountains are mostly plateaus, so it often doesn’t feel like you’re in the mountains. Then you’ll come upon these huge vistas and realize they put the highway on the edge of a cliff. It was nighttime when I got to Branson, but it seemed like the entertainment strip was on top of a narrow ridge you could easily fall off of.

It seemed like Springfield was very spread out, that you didn’t have the mass of sprawling suburbs like in most cities.

Another thing that stuck out to me is that the Ozarks are mostly divided into two plateaus. Generations ago, geographers took the effort to make this distinction and map everything out. Today I doubt very few of the locals are aware of this. As I drove through, it seemed that the farther west into the Ozarks, the more flat and less wooded the terrain became and the more ranches I saw. But it’s not like I could draw a map. This knowledge that was so painstakingly synthesized by our ancestors has been lost with the advent of the highway system.

The northern farmlands have the most historic connection to the old Confederacy, particularly along the Missouri River and the broader area around Kansas City. The Civil War in Missouri was absolutely insane. Eventually the federal government just decided to evacuate and burn down four counties for no reason. Learning about it made me realize how Civil War history tends to focus on the Atlantic states.

Suffice it to say that I don’t have any sympathy for bleeding Kansas. Those red-legged bastards got everything they deserved. I hope Donald Trump rounds up all the Somalians and Aztecs and dumps them in Kansas so that they can feel the strength of our diversity.

In western Missouri between the Ozarks and Kansas City there was some really nice “Big Sky Country”. It looks like what I always imagined Wyoming looks like. There were definitely more cattle and horse ranches than corn. I guess this is point in the Heartland states that “the Old West” and cowboys begin, like a prelude to the Southwest. Having driven through Oklahoma earlier this year, I would definitely consider it to be Southwest.

The northern towns weren’t as run-down and forgotten as those in southern Illinois, but they were a strong competitor. There were still some absolute treasures I very much wish I had grown up in, even though this part of the state seemed the most economically depressed.

I made it to Iowa. I drove three miles in, pulled over, and got out with the car still running. I then stood upon Iowa soil, contemplated what it means to be in Iowa, reached down to feel Iowa, and then went back home.

Then another time I just missed my exit and ended up in Iowa by mistake.

I really hate that I grew up in Generic White Suburbs in Mid-Size City, USA and attended Your Community Mega-Church with Standard-Issue Broken Family. I would give anything to have grown up in Chillicothe, Missouri with a nuclear family. I would trade the last eight years of Orthodox Christianity and have remained a dumb evangelical if I could have had that childhood.

Like if instead of whoring around with another pastor’s wife at a missions conference, had my Baptist pastor father moved to Chillicothe, Missouri, and then my mother homeschooled us (and if she didn’t have an IQ barely above your common negro) and took us to the park on Highway 65 and always cooked dinner with fresh ingredients from the farmer’s market and didn’t buy into the low-fat diet the FDA was pushing. And we could all walk to the local community Baptist church and sing beautiful old hymns instead of soft rock worship pop and we would only use the King James Version. And I would have had the normal emotional-social development everyone else got, and so I wouldn’t have been at odds with all the other children.

It probably would have cost me ten IQ points (I firmly believe that childhood trauma positively affects IQ), and I wouldn’t be an Orthodox Christian today or have a blog or do anything noteworthy with my life beyond selling insurance to farmers, but I would trade everything for that.

Notable small towns in Missouri that I particularly liked:

• Clarksville
• Ironton
• Glasgow
• Chillicothe
• Fulton
• Pacific
• Camdenton
• Sainte Genevieve
• Rolla
• Lebanon
• Adrian
• All of Jefferson County

And probably some more that I can’t remember. It was a lot of night driving, and the interstate is just a lot of franchise restaurants anyway. So I’m not saying that Sikeston isn’t worth noticing — just that I didn’t notice it beyond the sign on the road telling me which gas stations are available.

So this was a lot less rewarding than my Tennessee travels, but I’m not from Missouri, so I don’t really care. I’m a transient migrant here to absorb their resources and move on.

I also found that there were a lot of potentially interesting things I skipped because I was hurrying along to finish before sundown. So I feel like, while I saw a lot of hills and fields, I didn’t really see Missouri. I am probably over-thinking this point.

This realization bothered me so much that I went back to see several cities in the southern river counties that I had glossed over on the interstate. It turns out that Sikeston isn’t worth noticing after all.

Is Missouri part of “The South”? No, not at all. In fact, the bootheel was supposed to be part of Arkansas, but the people complained that they have more in common with the people further north up the river.

I make a point to pay attention to accents. Throughout Missouri people had a bland American accent, even in the southernmost part of the mountains. Then a mile across the Arkansas state line the people have the thickest southern twang. It seemed that in western “Big Sky” Missouri people might have had a variant on the stereotypical redneck/cowboy accent.

Missouri had slaves because they had fertile farmland, not because they had old aristocracy and landed gentry and hard-knucked mountain men. I mean, yes, they had some of that for sure, but it’s not the same. You can’t quantify culture. Delaware also had slaves, and no one except the US Census considers that to be “The South”.

Missourians don’t even have the right to work. Despite being heavily Republican, Missouri is also heavily union. Even in rural Ozark counties, you will see signs in people’s yards saying “Proud Union Home”, as though a lack of agency isn’t a mark of shame. The South is mostly Celtic-descent, and Celts hate authority.

Missourians largely don’t care about college football. For months I looked forward to Mizzou playing Tennessee so that I could be a jerk to my co-workers, but when the time came, almost no one cared.

Furthermore, you can buy liquor at gas stations, which is insane. Whereas the South historically and to this day has a lot of dry counties. I asked someone at a gas station what time they quit selling beer, and he said he didn’t understand the question.

Another major difference between Missouri and the South is that the South doesn’t have race riots.

However, Missouri is definitely the Bible Belt, even more so than the actual Southern states.

People here aren’t bad drivers — they are asshole drivers. They do this thing where if you’re going too slowly, they’ll get on your tail and flash their lights at you, as though that makes me want to do them any favors. They will ride your tail and flash their brights even if it’s pouring rain at night and they could easily pass you.

One time I watched eight people run a red light just because they could. You’ll miss your exit on the interstate because no one will let you over. I hate them all. They deserve their Muslims.

My theory is that it’s the descendants of the Germanic immigrants. Germanic people are bitter and self-absorbed. The mid-Atlantic is the most grumpy region for the same reason.

I had barbeque all over Missouri. I mean, it was maybe half a dozen places, but they were from various regions. There was some of the worst barbeque I’ve ever had, and a few that were extremely decent. My guess would be an 80-20 split between the horrific and the passable. I’m told that Kansas City barbeque is “90% garbage and 10% out of this world”, which is about what I would have guessed.

The gas stations were mostly owned by White people. Back-country North Carolina was full of Hindus and Aztecs, but I didn’t see many of those in rural Missouri. The White flight suburbs of St Louis County are definitely full of Hindus and Moslems, but I see almost no strip mall Mexican restaurants in St Louis County.

Despite all of my Missouri travels, while I’ve been through Kansas City, I never actually went to Kansas City. The internet says that there’s a zoo and some kind of off-brand SeaWorld. There’s some history and music museums that are probably glorified tax scams like most non-profits. I don’t know why museums exist in the age of Wikipedia.

There is also, and this isn’t even me being racist, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. That’s what it’s called in a day when the president won’t even use the phrase “Black people” because it sounds too outdated. Are White people allowed to call the museum by its name? Will you get stabbed for saying it? Currently KC has the fifth highest murder rate in the country. Do White people there look over their shoulder and then whisper, “I’d really like to tour the n-word baseball museum”? Because you know that Blacks don’t care about that history anymore than they care about Robert Johnson or Chuck Berry. Black history — and any Black music older than a couple months — is for White people.

The Mormons have a bunch of stuff in KC, but I’ve always thought it was dumb how Protestants will tour the Vatican and marvel at its beauty. So I make a point to not care about what the Mormons did in Missouri.

KC sounds like Memphis Midwest. I’m pretty sure I would just wander semi-drunk around downtown trying to see if the barbeque is worth anything and listening to local musicians pretending to keep alive a dead genre for White tourists. And then months later I would decide to make a second visit to see the museums, but all I would do is spend $30 on a plate of soul food for White tourists at the same restaurant I went to the first time and then walk around downtown heavily buzzed listening to live music by failed rappers who realized they could make a career singing R&B cover versions of CCR songs. Again, just like Memphis.

While on the subject of music, for those of you who know what I’m referring to, bebop was a misguided movement that should have never happened. There were exactly two musicians in it worth anything: Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk. Everyone else was a hack selling noise to stupid White people who thought it was exotic. Some things never change.

*****

Where should I visit next? The most logical choice is Illinois, but I’ve already been there far more than I ever planned in my life. Illinois is a mass of empty land, and occasionally there will be a little woods or stream or town where you can buy crack and get shot.
I was sort of working on North Carolina before I moved to Missouri. I had half of the Appalachian counties.

I really want to do Arkansas, Louisiana and Kentucky, but each of those would require taking a week off of work and saving up several hundreds of dollars.

I probably won’t do another county collecting excursion. This one left me kind of disappointed. It reminded me of graduating college, that you have all this information you planned to horde, and when it’s finally over I didn’t even attend my graduation or pick up the diploma for several months.

Actually, I think I’m going to quit this blog altogether.

I turn 30 in less than a year. I think I should leave Blair Naso in my 20s and in this decade. I’m out of things to say, and I’ve slowly lost interest in this blog. I rarely write it anymore. Occasionally I’ll have a burst of inspiration and write eight articles in a few days, and then I’ll space them out over several weeks. But really, I don’t think about this anymore. If I ever publish a book, I’ll try to let you guys know.

I might publish another blog post about the above thought on how, looking back almost a decade later, my conversion to Orthodox Christianity was because I couldn’t fit with the evangelicals and because of childhood  trauma  and not because I took a courageous examination of truth at any cost.

There’s a line from Bojack Horseman where the racehorse in the movie says, “People confuse greatness for goodness.” Sometimes people on the internet tell me I’m a good person, that I’m a real Christian. And maybe I’m better than average, but you don’t want to grow up to be like me. I’m bitter and lonely, and I spent the last ten years trying very hard to not be bitter and lonely, and while I’ve gotten slightly less bitter, I’m even more lonely.

Don’t be a Blair Naso. I type this in the dead of the night because I can’t sleep. I have no internet. The room is totally dark aside from this computer. I live in a slum far away from home. The only family member I talk to is my mother, and that’s mostly because I feel bad for her. I write this blog because I’m bored with life, and people think I must be some kind of guiding light to save America and deliver truth in a world that accepts either no truth or a substitute for truth, but really I’m just a directionless millennial bleeding out from emotional wounds. My hobbies are driving around rural highways alone in the dead of the night and texting racist memes to my friends. I’m not a prophet. I’m not courageous. I’m not a culture warrior. I’m a bitter, lonely, racist alcoholic with a small internet following.

I don’t know what you should do with your life. I don’t really know what I should have been differently with my own life, as all of this seems to have been inevitable. But don’t be an Austin.

Predictions For The Next Decade

The roaring 20s are quickly coming upon us. Here are my predictions, either for this upcoming decade or the 30s.

The Democrats will take power, either through traitor Republicans, the subversion of the electoral college or demographic replacement. Then the Soviet purges will happen. They will claim that “not respecting sexual identity” (the word “homophobia” is quickly passing away) or “White nationalism” is a “security threat”. The actual definition of these words is and has always been irrelevant. (See here and here.) No liberal actually cares about gays and coloreds — these are just an excuse to destroy civilization.

These people already hate you — do you think they will find restraint and a consistent moral code for the first time as soon as they gain power? No, once there are no longer consequences to not showing restraint, the progressive will allow himself to be his true self.

Once the purges begin, states will not secede. I used to think secession (in all regions of the country) was just a couple decades away, but now I strongly doubt it. We have already sold our souls for material gain, and we’re not about to stop. If states were going to secede because of gross constitution violations, it would have happened already.

The states will whine about persecution of Christians and conservatives, but ultimately they will do nothing, just as they did nothing about racial integration, abortion or gay marriage. They probably will not even use the term “White people” when describing the purges.

What the purges will look like and how bad they will be, I don’t know, but within my lifetime people will go to jail for saying that sexuality is only for procreation. Our society worships meaningless sex above anything else (including money), and it will not tolerate blasphemy against the god.

The older generation may have ruined the nation, but they are also the ones holding it together. With every generation the political divide becomes more polar. It maybe be a while longer, but once the baby boomers begin to die off, there will be no one left who wants to keep the system in place. Then everything will accelerate faster.

I know people who are preparing for social collapse. They bought 20 acres in the mountains or have stockpiled supplies in their basement. This will not change much. The world is smaller now, and you cannot hide.

During the actual Soviet Union, they could not just kill all the Christians, as that was a majority of the country. But they could kill the leaders and silence the rest of them. The American progressives don’t need to kill everyone who doesn’t share the Marxist vision — they only need to successfully neuter them.

Most Americans are cowardly enough to go along with it. They’ll decide to focus on other aspects of the gospel and no longer preach sexual morality. Most Christians already no longer believe that sexuality is only for procreation, so this won’t be a huge leap. We’ve already softened our teaching on divorce.

But soon it won’t be enough. Once the progressives get tired of the gay agenda, they will find another reason to persecute Christians. They will find another angle in the Bible. Perhaps they will say it is opposed to science and therefore child abuse. Perhaps they will say it is misogynistic, even though most Christians sold out on that issue long ago. They will say that it is capitalist because of Jesus’s parables of landowners. Ultimately this is not about progressives — it is about Satan.

Ephesians 6:11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

As I’ve written before (and you should definitely click that link), the progressive has the same psychology as a demon, so they are useful puppets for Satan.

Most importantly, if you don’t believe any of the above, then at least believe this:

Things will not get better. It is in the nature of the world that things cannot get better. Things can only degrade.

Some time in the near future, North Korea will collapse and be reunited with South Korea. Will things get better? No. I don’t know what will happen, but it will not be a new time of peace and prosperity.

Whatever happens in the next decade, just remember that it will be worse, likely in ways you cannot imagine.

So decide today what you will do. If you wait until the Soviet purges to decide how you will respond, then you will only respond with cowardice. Today is the day to decide what you will do when faced with jail time for your beliefs. If you don’t know why you are living, then you won’t know how to handle death. You will beg and plead and offer anything to avoid death if you never thought about death until the moment when it has the potential to trap you.

Or maybe not even death — the slightest discomfort, the loss of a job opportunity, social ostracization — most American Christians are not willing to sacrifice anything for these now in our times of ease. They will certainly not find their lost courage in times of difficulty.

Make up your mind now how you will respond to the progressive mob, and then when the time comes you won’t need to make a decision. One could say that this decision will come upon you like a thief in the night. Be vigilant and sober-minded.

It will be in these martyric moments that God’s judgment will come upon you, but you will have the golden opportunity to decide how He will judge you. So make that decision now. Choose wisely and reap the eternal reward. Give in to your fears, and you will only delay the suffering.

Revelation 21:8 But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Read Next: A Charlie Brown Christmas: A Christian Allegory

Creating A Vocabulary: Harry Potter Morality

Today’s popular morality could be called a lot of things. I’ve previously called it “the morality of permission”, but if we’re going to create a vocabulary, we need something that’s instantly understandable. I think a much more punchy term is “Harry Potter morality”.

Out of the five things I hated most about Harry Potter, number one would be the morality. It’s this overly simple world of team good and team bad. Team good can never do anything wrong, and so the reader is supposed to laugh along as Gay Gandalf tortures Harry’s heterosexual family. (The whole book series is a metaphor for secret gay teens, which I already detailed before.) Never is the reader supposed to question if invading someone’s house and terrifying them just for fun is wrong, because the bigots deserve whatever they get.

Harry Potter is unitarian ethics at their very most shallow, but it is not alone. Marvel movies are the same way (I would assume so, but I haven’t seen one since the original Avengers). Most movies of the last hundred years have been. What I loved about The Hunger Games and A Series of Unfortunate Events is that they rebelled against this notion and showed that we are all Voldemorts.

Most of our society follows Harry Potter morality, and if we’re going to make America great again, we need to fight against it. There is no team good or team bad. There are all kinds of nuances that make most people both good and bad. We are all selfish, conceited people.

Yes, the Jews and Democrats and coloreds have done a lot to ruin this country, but it’s White people’s fault for letting it happen. It’s our fault for thinking you could have both progress and tradition. We have all contributed to the decline.

So, kids, don’t be a Dumbledore. That guy’s a fag.

St Louis County Doesn’t Have The Money

As I reported before, St Louis County has been ordered to pay a queer police officer $19 million because he was told to be less annoying if he wants a promotion, even though this isn’t illegal in Missouri.

(A coworker told me that it’s illegal if it’s a government position, but I’m not seeing that in the news. It’s possible that she’s right and the journalists didn’t do their job.)

On Wildhaber’s sex discrimination claim, the jury on Oct. 25 awarded him $1.98 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages. On his retaliation claim, the jury awarded $990,000 in actual damages and $7 million in punitive damages.

“Sex discrimination”. What do I keep telling you? Language matters. These laws were about “sex” in the sense of male and female, not the action of having sex.

If the county had to pay Wildhaber the full amount awarded by the jury, it would appear to have insurance coverage for the first $12.5 million, according to records obtained by the Post-Dispatch through a public-record request.

So the county is going to go bankrupt. But wait. It gets better. I mean, worse.

The county also has a “special excess policy” with Starr Indemnity & Liability Co., of Dallas, that appears to cover $10 million for wrongful acts, after a $2 million deductible. But Jennifer J. Keating, deputy director of the county’s administration department, said in an email, “there is always the unknown of how the insurance company will treat the claim, which could result in a different funding scenario.”

Meaning that we only have $2.5 million. But that’s not the better part.

The county could also argue that Wildhaber doesn’t have standing to sue as a gay man in Missouri. State law doesn’t include protection from workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and Wildhaber made a successful argument to get around this limitation.

It’s unlikely the county will pursue this line of argument, though. The county executive — who believes discrimination based on sexual orientation should be outlawed — has said he is uncomfortable making that case.

Yes, the county will choose to bankrupt itself out of loyalty to the gay ideology, and all the local queers and fag hags will cheer them on even though it’s their county going bankrupt too. Psycho-sexually healthy people aren’t the only ones who use roads.

What about the art museum and the zoo? All of that is subsidized by the county. Are the Democrats going to let the arts and sciences die out to show their loyalty to the gay agenda? You already know the answer to that question.

It is treason to not pursue every possible way to avoid paying. But this is what the people have chosen, so I don’t have any sympathy for them.

I also don’t really care, because I’m just a transient migrant here with no connection to the land. Missouri can burn once I soak it for its benefits and go back to my homeland.

There is the possibility that the county can appeal for a lesser amount, as the second article says.

The Short-Sightedness Of Libertarianism

People are only libertarian when they are out of power. In the 80s and 90s, gays just wanted to live in safety and be left alone. Now they own both political parties.

The Church of the first 300 years wanted to be tolerated to worship in peace. Within a century of Constantine, they were tearing down pagan temples.

Libertarianism is not an ideology — it is a strategy for minorities and outsiders. You’ll notice that today’s Black activists no longer give speeches about White and Black children having lunch together.

In the 60s, the left-wing wanted freedom of speech for pornography. Today they punch Nazis.

Feminists wanted the right to have careers — now our schools teach that women should prepare for any and everything except motherhood.

Atheists wanted to be allowed to live under their values without discrimination. Now they are slowly making Christianity illegal.

This could be a whole essay in itself, but I think it’s simple enough to not write 5,000 words of filler. Yesterday’s freedom fighters are today’s tyrants. This is always the case regardless of century, continent or ideology.

News Item: We Are All Sodomites

I haven’t been writing much lately because I’m out of things to say. I only had two posts last month, both of which were adaptations of emails I wrote.

I’ve been living in St Louis County since March. Although it’s not so liberal as to have the hysterics of Chicago, this is probably the first time I’ve ever lived in a place that is comfortably progressive on social issues. I lived in Charlotte a few years ago, which is kind of borderline.

St Louis the city is totally independent from St Louis the county. It’s kind of weird how people will say, “I live in the ghetto, but it’s not in the city.” There are something like a million people in the county and 300 thousand in the city. This is just a quirk of language that needs explaining if I’m going to write about St Louis.

Recently a sodomite police officer in the county won $19 million in a lawsuit, claiming that he had been passed over for a promotion because of his sexual dysfunctional. As far as I can tell, there are no laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation in either the state or the county. The articles I’ve read have not cited any laws broken.

The gut reaction is to say, “That’s a waste of tax dollars stolen from the citizens to pay for some pervert,” which is true. But this is what the people here have chosen.

Twice a year the St Louis County Public Library system hosts drag queen story hour. The branch closest to me has a LGBT book section in the children’s room. There are a few protestors at these events, but it seems most people have learned to just live with it and accept that it’s the new normal.

It seems no one cares. The state government is solidly Republican, yet they do nothing to keep the pedophiles out of the library. I know someone who was recently arrested for child pornography, and some mutual people we know said they would pummel him if they ever ran into him again. Yet no one has burned down the library, which is doing far more harm than just looking at pictures.

This city is a crumbling pile of bricks. For decades otherwise conservative, working class White people have voted Democrat because of the union support. Blacks tend to be socially conservative, but they vote Democrat because of the financial rewards. The Republicans are terrified of confronting the homosexual agenda.

So St Louis and Missouri in general has chosen this. They sold out their values for financial gain, and the result is that the sodomites and Aztecs will be allowed to openly rob them, and the only allowable response will be to say, “Thank you, we value your diversity”. The wealthy suburbs of the county are full of Moslems and Hindus. It doesn’t seem like anyone here has anything in common with anyone else except for the local sports teams.

In general, people here are neither liberal nor conservative. Most people I meet are totally apathetic. They kind of dislike Trump but don’t care. They kind of dislike gays but don’t care. They kind of think blacks and unions have ruined St Louis but don’t care. No one seems to notice that St Louis has become a major battleground for the abortion war that the rest of the country is fighting.

Missouri has chosen to compromise on homosexuality and take the libertarian stance, and in response the county is out of $19 million for some fag who couldn’t get promoted because no one liked working with him, and I don’t have any sympathy for people who complain.

Except that no one complains, because no one cares. I found out about this through the Daily Stormer, not other Missourians. The same with the Planned Parenthood clinic across the river. One would think these would be important issues that divide people like everywhere else in the country.

Speaking of broadly, people pretend to like gays because they really aren’t that different. Most people think procreation is only a possible feature of sexuality. Most people value careers over family. Most people just want a life of entertainment. We are all sodomites, and our alleged conservative values and anger over the latest social progressive victory is our drag performance. None of us actually believe in our beliefs.

Reflections On The Minor Prophets Of The Bible

I recently read through the Minor Prophets of the Bible for the first time in several years. The quotes are from the Asser translation of the LXX, which is no longer readily available online. It’s kind of like the Wycliffe Bible, passed along in PDFs with questionable legality.

Some notable passages stood out to me.

Hosea 9  11Ephraim is flown away like a bird; their glories are from childbirth and travail and conception. 12For though they bring up their children, they shall be bereaved of people; yea, woe also is to them; My flesh is of them. 13Ephraim, as I saw, gave their children as a prey, even Ephraim, to lead out his children for piercing. 14Give them, O LORD; what wilt Thou give them? a childless womb and dry breasts. 15All their iniquities are in Gilgal, for there came I to hate them; for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of Mine house; I will love them no more; all their princes are disobedient. 16Ephraim hath suffered; his roots are dried up; he shall bear fruit no more; yea, though they bring forth, yet will I slay the desirable fruit of their womb. 17God shall cast them away because they did not hearken unto Him, and they shall be wanderers among the nations. 

So what this reminds me of is something I often say that usually makes people upset, and that is that most parents don’t love their children. There’s nothing sacred or special about a mother’s love. It’s just animalistic attachment.

We see here in verse 13 that Ephraim (which I assume is code for the ten northern tribes) has used his children as bait for his own gain instead of taking care of his children. My oh my are the paralells with our society glaring.

In the early 1960s this country was the most prosperous society on earth with a chicken in every pot and limitless opportunity to make a decent living, and within fifty years it was all gone. At this point it is almost impossible to support yourself on a single income, even without children. My generation has the widest gap of opportunity promised and actual opportunity, and we are mad as hell about it. The older generation who ruined everything is totally unsympathetic. Half the reason I’m so racist is because I know it upsets the old people who flooded my country with third word savages.

But anyway, the Bible clearly says that just because you produce children doesn’t mean that you actually care about them. Whole nations, in fact, can use their kids as a means to an end. And what is the result? The complete barrenness of the nation. Verse 16 is where America is at right now. Verse 17 will happen within my lifetime.

And yet earlier in the book,

4 10And they shall eat, and not be satisfied; they have committed whoredom, and shall by no means prosper, because they have left off to hold fast unto the LORD. 11Whoredom and wine and strong drink have taken hold upon the heart of My people. 

Israel had become a sex paradise and yet could not sustain a birth rate. Again, the parallels shine like a beacon.

The passage continues,

12They asked counsel through signs, and by his staffs they declared unto him; by a spirit of whoredom have they erred, and gone a whoring from their God. 13They have sacrificed upon the tops of the mountains, and upon the hills have they sacrificed under the oak and white poplar and thickly shading tree, because the shade thereof was good. Therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your daughters-in-law shall commit adultery. 14And I will not shew My care for your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery; for themselves mingled with harlots, and they sacrificed with initiates, and the people that did not understand embraced an harlot.

And later on,

13  5I tended thee in the wilderness in an empty land 6according to their pastures. And they were satisfied to the full, and their hearts were exalted; therefore have they forgotten Me. 7Therefore I will be as a panther unto them and as a leopard according to the way of the Assyrians. 8I will meet them as a she-bear that is perplexed, and I will rend the caul of their heart, and there shall the young lions of the thicket devour them; the wild beasts of the field shall tear them in pieces. 

It’s often said that Orthodoxy doesn’t believe in an angry God like the prots do. I’m just not seeing that. Israel is clearly sinners in the hands of an angry God. God is saying that he is like a mother bear towards people who have broken his covenant.

However, I think the dominant narrative of the Old Testament is not anger but patience. Atheists often say that the God of the Old Testament is far more angry than the God of the New Testament, but I have always seen it the opposite way, that New Testament God is much more quick to bring judgment for much smaller infractions than he was in the Old Testament.

And if God doesn’t get angry, what reason is there to fear him? If Judgment Day is just a formality, then why worry about it?

So again, the prots are correct but in the wrong way. God is angry, but it’s not the anger of a hurricane, nor does the anger need to be satisfied by a replacement. It’s the anger of a husband whose wife is whoring with the coloreds downtown. Which is the exact metaphor the Bible uses, that Israel has abandoned the bridegroom to sleep with other nations. Basically, ancient Israel is a coal-burner and a mudshark.

The inherent disgust white men feel for their daughter sleeping with a negro or an Aztec is the same disgust God feels for Christians living in sin. That’s the exact metaphor used. And what happens then? We saw what happens in chapter 9 — the end of the nation. You give your children away to another nation, and your grandchildren won’t be the same race as you. You let your children (especially your daughters) marry protties and papists, and your grandchildren will be heretics who think you’re a superstitious old fool. You send your children to college, and they will come out in four years as a communist and an atheist.

Wouldn’t that make quite the Sunday morning sermon?

Amos 2 10Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you about forty years in the wilderness to inherit the land of the Amorites. 11And I took of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for consecration. Are not these things even thus, O ye sons of Israel?’ saith the LORD. 12‘But ye gave the consecrated ones wine to drink, and commanded the prophets, saying, “Prophesy not”. 13Therefore behold, I shall roll under you, as a wagon is rolled that is full of straw. 14And flight shall perish from the runner, and the strong shall not hold fast his strength, neither shall the warrior save his soul. 

Again, the parallels are striking. So the philosophy of the American founders wasn’t totally Christian, but this was still a “one nation under God” kind of thing, and the Enlightenment tried to see reality as it really is, whereas today’s secularists try to distort reality to be whatever they wish it to be.

America had the potential to be a super Christian country, and for a while we sort of were. We had a great economy, we had the ability to create and invent and reach the height of human potential. We had total control of our government. The arts and sciences flourished. Every possible blessing that could be given to a nation, we had.

It wasn’t the same kind of covenant that Israel had, but there was still no lack of opportunity. We didn’t have the Orthodox Church, but we had the Bible mass produced, and the protestantism of the 1800s wasn’t that bad. We have no excuses. We are not the theoretical “good man on the Ganges River”.

And what have we done with it? We used these great gifts to create an air conditioned Babylon. American values aren’t freedom and apple pie. If you want to know what actual American values are, look at the Democrat debates.

The Republicans are no different. They are calling for red flag laws, they have done almost nothing about internet censorship, they have pushed for amnesty, and Trump has bragged about coercing other countries to decriminalize homosexuality. They certainly don’t want to end welfare. How are the Republicans any diffrent than the Democrats of the 1990s?

A people gets the rulers they deserve, and this is especially so in a democracy, so I have little sympathy for the complaints about the two party system. The reason people like Barry Goldwater and George Wallace don’t run anymore is because they can’t win. The kinds of candidates who can win are George Bush and Barack Obama.

So yes, God took our sons for prophets and our young men for consecration, and we gave them wine to drink and commanded the prophets to not prophesy, and now God will destroy our country with earthquakes, hurricanes and the feral “people” of the third world. God will mow us down like a tank, and there is nothing we can do to stop it except repent, and that’s not about to happen.

And what do we hedge our bets on? That if we give enough money to Israel then the rapture will happen and we won’t have to die. That’s what Christianity has turned into.

I think this is what the Minor Prophets are about. You aren’t supposed to understand them — it’s supposed to be a warning. It’s supposed to make you fear God.

These kinds of passages, though, always beg the question of whether this is a prosperity gospel. After all, the New Testament sees suffering as a good thing. An abundance of suffering teaches you how to become a saint. A lack of suffering is a sign that God is not working with you. 

I think the issue is that these promises of blessing and curse are for entire nations, not individuals. The Old Testament never promises that every righteous Israelite will be wealthy, and the law makes provisions to take care of those who are not wealthy.

These promises are also looking at the long term, so while a nation may be wealthy or poor right now, that doesn’t mean they will stay that way in the future.

And because the Holy Spirit hadn’t come yet, God had to appeal to people’s most basic drives. The law is written in such a way that it will naturally teach you humility if you merely follow the externals of it.

7 Thus hath the LORD God shewed unto me; and behold, a breed of locusts coming at the early morning; and behold, one caterpillar, Gog the king. 2And it came to pass, when they had made an end of devouring the grass of the land, that I said, ‘LORD, O LORD, be merciful; who shall raise up Jacob, for he is very small? 3Relent, O LORD, at this.’ ‘And this shall not be’, saith the LORD. 

Famine. We don’t really have famine do we? Well, we do.

The food we eat is garbage. It’s not at all the food we were eating a hundred years ago, and it’s almost impossible to eat healthy today. You would basically have to buy all your food at the farmer’s market. I did that for about two weeks. It’s not easy.

In America our poor don’t starve — they get obese. Either way their poor diet kills them.

But it’s not just the poors. We all eat this way. It’s almost impossible to avoid. Soy is in everything. Our grains and dairy are mad science distortions of what they used to be. Eggs don’t taste like they came from a farm. Everything has sugar in it. Even the packaging is poison.

We’re dying from our food, and it’s because drunk on our own hubris we played God and tried to manipulate the food source for short term economic gain, and the cost is our children.

Further on in the same chapter,

17Therefore thus saith the LORD: “Thy wife shall become an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be measured by a line, and thou shalt die in an unclean land, and Israel shall be led captive out of his land”.’ 

Where are we in America? Our women are all whores. We kill our children through abortion and contraception, or if we decide to let them live, we kill them spiritually and emotionally in the school system. Our land is being overtaken by invaders (“thy land shall be measured by a line”). Our cities are crumbling, trash lines the streets and there is graffiti everywhere (“an unclean land”).

“All of this is kind of racist. How would this make Mexicans feel?”

Well it’s not Mexicans’ land, so their feelings don’t really matter. They are the invaders. And anyway, the Mexicans who have been here for generations or who were legal immigrants generally hate the illegal immigrants. I saw a poll where a majority of Hispanic voters, including those who voted for Hillary Clinton, support building the wall.

Our nation is being invaded by feral “people” who have nothing in common with us, and it’s because of our own sinfulness. The descendants of the original founders of this country are dying out and being replaced.

Chapter 9 9‘For, lo, I give commandment, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the Gentiles, like as that which is sifted in a sifting pan, and not the least corn shall in any wise fall upon the earth. 10All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword, which say, “Evil shall not draw near, nor come upon us”. 11In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down, and I will build again the ruins thereof, and set up those things that have been broken down, and build it up as in the days of old; 12that the residue of men and all the Gentiles upon whom My name is called may earnestly seek Me,’ saith the LORD, Who doeth all these things.

God is going to kill all the gays and feminists and race hustlers, and only the fundamentalists who have ten children will survive. And then those of us who actually want a civilization will have the liberty to create one.

Micah 2  2 They devised troubles and worked evils upon their beds, and with the daylight they practised it, because they have not lifted up their hands unto God. 2And they desired fields, and spoiled the fatherless, and oppressed families, and spoiled a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance

Atheists talk about how Christianity is a bunch of rules that don’t matter, but what God really wants is you to show respect for other people. Notice God isn’t like, “You said some dirty words.” What he’s saying is, “You’ve exploited the poor.”

This idea that Christianity is a bunch of arbitrary rules is ridiculous. Christianity is justice.

Occultists and liberals delight in being the opposite of Christianity. This imagery is all through their music, art and literature. So what most secularists are really supporting is landlords refusing to maintain slum apartments or sweatshops using child labor for pennies an hour. Which makes sense, since these things become more common the more secular society becomes.

3 5Thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that lead my people astray, that bite with their teeth and proclaim peace unto them, and when nothing was put into their mouth, they raised up war against them: […] 7And the seers of night visions shall be ashamed, and the prophets shall be laughed to scorn. And all the people  shall speak against them, because there shall be none to hearken unto them.’ 

How can you tell when a prophet is false? A false prophet tells you what you want to hear. He tells you that humanity can become gods. A real prophet will always tell you what you don’t want to hear.

This is near identical to an anti-Christ, someone who sets himself up as a Christ substitute. Pope Francis is an anti-Christ. Barack Obama was an anti-Christ. Mark Zuckerberg is an anti-Christ. Hillary Clinton wants to be an anti-Christ, but no one pays her any attention.

5 14And I will execute vengeance on the heathen in anger and wrath, because they have not hearkened.’ 

Again, yes, the protties are right that God is angry with all those who do not fear him. He is still patient and loving, but that does not diminish his wrath.

What they misunderstand is that this wrath is not an essential trait of God’s that must be vented somewhere. It is the same wrath that a father has when someone mistreats his child. It is the wrath a righteous judge has when someone breaks the law and harms other people. It is the wrath a king has when someone close to him leads a coup. It is the anger of giving money to a homeless man, only to watch him spend it on crack cocaine. We are but sinners in the hands of an angry, patient and loving God.

10Is there not fire and the house of the wicked heaping up wicked treasures, and that with the pride of unrighteousness? 

The pride of unrighteousness. What is the single most defining virtue of the sodomite community that they self-identify with? What’s the word they use? It’s on the tip of my tongue.

11Shall the wicked be justified by the balance or deceitful weights in the bag, 12whereby they have filled their riches with ungodliness; and they that dwell in the city have spoken lies, and their tongue hath been exalted in their mouth? 

Justified by false weights. This is the rationalizations we use to create modern ethics. “It’s okay for me to divorce my husband, because I’m not the real me when I’m around him.”

16For thou hast kept the statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye have walked in their ways that I might deliver thee to utter destruction and them that inhabit the city to a hissing, and ye shall bear the reproach of nations. 

I think a good modern equivalent of this is our love affair with Islam. For decades we have angrily shaken our fist at God, all the while petting this scorpion, and then every time a Musloid does the predictable thing they have done for centuries, we have the gall to say, “Thoughts and prayers.”

Like with Constantinople in the 1400s, I do not care in the least about these terrorist attacks. No one else takes them seriously, so why should I? It’s what we’ve chosen. We’ve abandoned the real God for the pagan gods of the desert.

Last week at work I told a teenage girl she should marry wealthy and have seven kids. She said she only wants two children. I told her that whites are well below replacement rate and that birth control should be illegal. She said that’s a horrible idea, because people shouldn’t be forced to have so many kids. I told her not to have sex if she doesn’t want to have kids and that society is about to collapse. One of the male waitresses said I sound cynical. I told him I’m definitely pessimistic about the future.

7  5Trust thou not in friends, and put not your confidence in guides. Beware of thy wife, that thou commit not any thing unto her. 6For the son dishonoureth his father; the daughter will rise up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s enemies are all those in his house. 

The end times are marked by a dissolution in what should be unbreakable bonds of loyalty. People have no loyalty. Your best friend for years will decide he’s bored with you and will quit answering your messages without warning. As we saw above, most parents don’t love their children.

8Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, for I have fallen, yet shall I arise; for though I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. 9I will bear the anger of the LORD, because I have sinned against Him, until He make good my cause. He also shall maintain my right, and bring me forth to the light; and I shall behold His righteousness. 

Micah both hopes in God’s salvation and realizes that he has been part of the problem. No one is innocent. We are all collaboraters.

11During a day of daubing of brick, that day shall be thine utter destruction, and that day shall utterly abolish thine ordinances. 12And thy cities shall be levelled and parted among the Assyrians, and thy strong cities shall be parted from Tyre even to the river, and from sea to sea, and from mountain to mountain

During your demeaning labor working at a convenience store for a wage less than you can live on despite your years of education, the Mexicans will conquer California and Texas, the blacks will take the mid-Atlantic, and the Muslims will have the upper Midwest.

13And the land shall be utterly desolate, together with them that dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings. 

Have you seen a picture of Seattle lately? And that’s without the immigrants. Imagine what a couple million Aztecs could do to the Pacific Northwest.

18Who is a God like unto Thee, removing iniquities, and passing over the sins of the remnant of His inheritance? And He hath not kept His anger for a testimony, for He delighteth in mercy. 19He will return, and have mercy upon us; He will sink our iniquities, and they shall be cast into the depths of the sea, even all our sins. 20He shall give blessings truly unto Jacob and mercy unto Abraham, as Thou didst swear unto our fathers according to the former days. 

Thus the book closes with a glimmer of hope, that while we are all guilty, God’s anger will not hold against the penitent. In chapter four there is a section about how there will be world peace.

Which reminds me of something in chapter four.

4 5For all the people shall walk every one in his own way, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever. 

That’s the difference between hell and heaven. No need to read C S Lewis to discover the Orthodox concept of hell — it’s right here in the Bible. Hell isn’t merely punishment for being out of communion with God — it is walking in your own way by your own rules for all of eternity.

Obadiah 8In that day,’ saith the LORD, ‘I will even destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau. 

This makes me think of academia. We have all these wise men with wise thoughts and wise book deals. Our wise congressmen and bureaucrats listen to them and make wise decisions based on the, and like with the Edomites, it will only lead to our own ruin.

15For the day of the LORD is near upon all thee. As thou hast done, so it shall be done unto thee; thy reward shall be returned upon thine own head. 

Again, the Orthodox concept of hell. Actually, it’s not “the Orthodox concept”. It’s the Biblical concept.

We all like this idea, of people getting what they deserve in the eternity, but we all think that applies to other people and not to us. Yes, George Soros will (probably) go to hell, and perhaps we can rejoice at the justice, but the more important question that’s not asked is if we will join him.

I think it’s also interesting in these minor prophet books the tie between faith and works. These two things are inseparable. You can judge the amount of one by the other. The text doesn’t even really focus on motivation. It’s sort of implied that if you have respect for people then it’s because you see the image of God in them.

Jonah 1 14And they cried unto the LORD and said, ‘Forbid it, LORD, let us not perish for the sake of this man’s life, and bring not upon us righteous blood; for Thou, O LORD, hast done according to Thy pleasure’. 15So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging. 16And the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD and made vows. 

So God’s wrath can do a lot to bring people to repentance. I’m seeing a lot of secular people look at the way the far left has gone and how the mainstream narrative has changed and virtually all of this is unopposed, and these secularists are realizing that Christianity was right all along. Chateau Heartiste, Andrew Anglin, Roosh V, Jim Goad and Stephan Molyneux are some of the more famous examples of anti-liberal secularists who are at the least sort of defensive of Christianity and at the most have totally converted in recent years. I also know some people in my personal life.

Wouldn’t it be nice that every time you did something you shouldn’t have done, God would send a storm? Things would be so much more clear. Though that wouldn’t make much of a difference. Ultimately repentance is an attitude, not a logical proposition. The Pharisees had no shortage of evidence. Neither did Pharoah. This relates to my point about chapter three.

3  9‘Who can tell if God will relent and turn from His fierce anger, and so we perish not?’ 10And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways; and God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not.

I am of the belief that everyone believes in God. There are no atheists, no agnostics, and no pantheists. Everyone on some level knows that there is one God and that Jesus is his son. The athys and the Jews rage against the Christians, because the Christians by their mere presence and identity are a painful reminder that the athys and Jews aren’t having the integrity they claim.

So you can’t argue someone into faith. People convert by choosing repentance.

This is what it means in Exodus about “hardening the heart”, that when someone who hates God is forced to be around God, it causes that person’s hatred to flair up into an uncontrollable rage. The more miracles Jesus did, the more the Pharisses wanted to kill him. This story repeats itself in early martyr stories, that some saint would survive whatever torture the Roman government did, which would only make the governing official devise an even more cruel torture.

And again in Zephaniah 1,

12And it shall come to pass in that day that I will search Jerusalem with a lamp, and take vengeance on the men that despise the things that are committed unto them; but they say in their hearts, ‘The LORD will not do any good, neither will He do any evil’. 

This reminds me of Jesus’s parable about the wicked servants who assume the master will not return from his voyage.

Continuing on in this book and chapter,

14For the great day of the LORD is near; it is near and very speedy; the voice of the day of the LORD is made bitter and harsh. 15A mighty day of wrath is that day, a day of affliction and distress, a day of desolation and destruction, a day of gloominess and darkness, a day of cloud and vapour, 16a day of the trumpet and cry against the strong cities, and against the high corners. 17And I will greatly afflict the men, and they shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the LORD; therefore shall He pour out their blood as dust, and their flesh as dung. 18And their silver and their gold shall in no wise be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD’s wrath, but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy, for He will bring a speedy destruction upon all them that dwell in the land. 

I understand that this specifically refers to something in the Old Testament times (I’m assuming the captivity to Babylon), but if we see this as a statement about God’s general nature, I find it very comforting. The day is coming when God will no longer hold back his wrath, and all those who thought they could live without the fear of God will understand that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

This is not me rejoicing in bloodlust like Jonah. This is me seeing how the world is broken and knowing that God will fix it, that the ways in which people have ruined that which was supposed to be and easily could have been good and beautiful have not gone unnoticed. The day is coming when those who were supposed to do the things that were committed to them but despised these things, who believed that the Lord will not react with praise or condemnation, that these people will fall into the hands of the living God. That which is broken will be made right. God is not the absent clockmaker he often seems like.

2  8‘I have heard the revilings of Moab, and the reproaches of the children of Ammon, wherewith they have reviled My people, and magnified themselves against My borders. 9Therefore as I live,’ saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, and Damascus shall be left as an heap of the threshingfloor and desolate for ever; and the remnant of My people shall spoil them, and the remnant of My nation shall inherit them.’ 

Now that Eugene Peterson is dead, here is my own The Message interpretation for today’s audience:

I have seen the subversion of California and the persecution by New York, by which they have persecuted the Christians in the Southeast and Midwest and forced their godless ideology upon the regions which still try to hold to Christian morality. Therefore as a I live, California will be destroyed like Sodom just as the New Yorkers will be like Gomorrah, and Seattle will be left as a pile of used heroin needles on the sidewalk and will be abandoned forever, and those who practice traditional family structures will take their place.

Except that Damascus was not desolate. It eventually became a Christian and then a Muslim city. Maybe this just means the pagans there. Though Islam is pagan. So I don’t know.

“You shouldn’t wish death and destruction on people.”

So I shouldn’t wish for God to do the things he said he would do? Is God making a mistake? Does God not understand what it means to turn the other cheek?

3 8Therefore wait ye upon Me,’ saith the LORD, ‘until the day that I rise up for a witness. For My judgment shall be upon the gathering of the Gentiles, to draw kings unto Me, to pour out upon them all My fierce anger; for all the earth shall be consumed with the fire of My jealousy.

Wow, sounds like God is angry with “all the earth”. And what are we to do in the meantime? “Wait ye upon Me unitl the day that I rise up for a witness.”

All I ever do is wait. Like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpking to give him his Halloween gift. Sitting alone in the cold, clinging to faith while feeling like the only idiot in the world.

19‘Behold, I will work in thee for thy sake at that time’, saith the LORD, ‘and I will save her that was oppressed, and receive her that was rejected, and I will make them a praise and honoured in all the earth. 20And they shall be ashamed at that time when I shall deal well with you, and at the time when I shall receive you; for I will make you honoured, and a praise among all the nations of the earth when I turn back your captivity before you,’ saith the LORD.

I don’t know why people say that the Old Testament God is full of anger. These are books of hope.

You would also think that the liberals would like this God, whatwith all the stuff about justice for the poor and taking down wealthy landowners and bankers. But instead they prefer the pot-smoking Jesus whose best friends were homosexuals, abortion activists and negroes.

Zechariah  3 3Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. 4And He answered and spake unto those that stood before Him, saying, ‘Take away the filthy garments from him’. And unto him He said, ‘Behold, I have taken away thine iniquities; 5and clothe ye him with a robe of a full length, and set a clean mitre upon his head.” And they set a clean mitre upon his head, and clothed him with garments;

This reminds me of the parable of the wedding garments. So again we have the Orthodox/Biblical concept of heaven. Only those who have been cleaned can join the wedding. Those who are not clean have to stay outside and wallow in the mud. 

I think part of the indignation people have over hell is the concept. American Christianity sese sin as breaking rules, not as something with a nature to it. In reality, all hell is is sin fully manifested in its nature. If you’re a sinful person, you belong with sin. You can’t show up to a wedding dressed like you’re going to a tavern.

Reflections On The Godfather

I recently watched The Godfather again for the first time in maybe a decade. Obviously my worldview has refined a lot since then. This review will assume the reader has seen the movie.

Remember the scene in Sicily where Michael courts the girl. At no time are they alone until the wedding night. This is traditionally the norm in Greece and among Arab Christians, and it’s still common among the very religious. Keep this concept in mind.

I feel like, murder aside, Vito Corleone is an excellent model of what it means to be a Christian man. We will see more of this later on.

Opening scene. Very first words of the movie.

I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but — I taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boyfriend; not an Italian. She went to the movies with him; she stayed out late. I didn’t protest.

This seems to be a common sentiment among immigrants. They come to America for the money and accidentally trade their souls. They think they are holding on to the traditions of their home country but don’t realize the dissonance. Within a generation or two their children are regular dumb Americans.

Keep in mind this movie is in the 40s before rock n roll had been invented. Before what we think of as “women’s liberation” and “the sexual revolution” of the 60s.

Two months ago, he took her for a drive, with another boyfriend. They made her drink whiskey. And then they tried to take advantage of her. She resisted. She kept her honor. So they beat her, like an animal.

These patriarchal standards of the Mediterranean don’t exist for no reason. They are like a fence that is very annoying. It’s in the way. But if you take it down, you may not know what it was holding back.

Don Corleone asks why the man, Bonasera, did not come to him before the police. Bonasera says that he wanted to avoid the bad reputation of men like Don Corleone. You know, like a good American.

Which is such an immigrant thing. They come here believing all the propaganda of the land of opportunity and the equality of the American justice system. I remember working at a gas station and tricking the Mexicans into buying lottery tickets, telling them that I know they are winning tickets.

So while Bonasera says that he values the Italian community, clearly he is willing to shed that identity to be an American. And his daughter took that to the next level. She wasn’t even dating Italians anymore.

For any of you looking for a “trad wife” by becoming an Orthodox Christian, Greek girls work the same way.

You will also notice in the films that whereas Vito Corleone has four children, his son Michael only has two plus an abortion and a divorce. The Corleone family also sold their souls for American values.

(I’ve never seen the third movie, but I assume it was as bad as the second.)

Our values as Americans are divorce and birth control. You can rant up and down about greed and the need to have real human relationships, and everyone will agree with you and think you are being counter-cultural. Preach a sermon where you say that divorce is another form of adultery, and the people will throw stones.

So eventually Michael Corleone marries an American girl, who later gets an abortion and a divorce, and while those were her choices, not his, he obviously contributed to her making those choices, because he’s a dumb American, not an Italian.

Bonasera himself has only one child.

Notice the names. Vito is a very foreign name. His kids are named American things — Sonny, Michael, Connie and Fred.

The wedding scene continues on. The crooner comes and sings. The girls go insane. Again, you see these images of the sexual revolution before what we think of as the sexual revolution.

Further on, Vito Corleone talks with the heroin dealer, Sollozzo “the Turk” (though I’m pretty sure the character is Italian, not Turkish). Sonny interrupts, and Vito cuts him off. Sonny immediately gets quiet.

Vito is the kind of man who inspires respect in people by nature. They trust his wisdom, so they have no hesitation about doing what he says. Men like that are rare these days. People try to gain respect through fear or flattery or by their status, but rarely does anyone gain respect by wisdom anymore.

He accuses Sonny of going soft from his side mistress (despite being married with children). The same seems to be true of Fredo. When Vito is shot in the market place, Fredo drops his gun.

Vito didn’t understand the transition from Italian to American. He didn’t understand that it’s not merely enough to talk to your kids about values and to model those values, because your kids won’t understand the difference either.

I find this really interesting, that despite the way he lived his life, none of his kids carried on his values. At best they all carried on a parody of his values. Michael tries to be a family man but doesn’t know what that means.

Wikipedia has tons of information on who runs the various mafia families across the country, which you would think would be a secret. I looked up the St Louis mafia. A mafia boss was the head of the St Louis construction union (LIUNA) and went to prison in the 90s. Why oh why does that not surprise me?

Then I remembered the cartoon F is for Family where a union boss was affiliated with the mafia, and I realized that all of this is probably common knowledge across the country except in the South. This film makes reference to Vito having a lot of control of unions.

One thing I’ve learned in the Midwest is that union people are thugs who will bully a small business just because they can’t afford their exorbitant rates. They have professional protestors who do nothing but stand outside a local restaurant all day, and Missouri people are stupid enough to give moral authority to them. The protesters are always smug baby boomers, they don’t have real jobs, and they think ruining a local restaurant is contributing to the better of society. This seems pretty mafia to me.

And Missouri voted down right-to-work on a plebiscite vote 2-1. You see billboards here telling you to not watch the NBC affiliate because they angered IBEW.

So, Michael kills Sollozzo and the police chief and flees to Sicily. He sees his future first wife taking care of children. He is “struck by a thunderbolt”. She is somewhat angry at this kind of stare and walks away, because she has modesty. She doesn’t invite attention. She keeps to herself and lets the men deal with these things.

Michael and his men unknowingly meet her father. The old man says, “The girls here are beautiful … but virtuous.” There’s pride in that statement. Women of the village don’t whore around like American women. They don’t listen to jazz and invite men into their hotel rooms like Kay does. They don’t sleep with married men like Sonny’s side girl does. Instead they understand the importance of family in the same way that Vito Corleone does.

Michael tells the man who he is and says, “There’s a lot of men who would pay a lot of money for that information.” He sells out his security and his family in New York for the chance at a beautiful woman. Again, he’s acting like an American. Sex above all else.

For whatever reason, the man allows Michael to court his daughter. This seems like a plot convenience.

Notice the contrast between this scene and the opening scene. “I raised my daughter in the American fashion.”

Life was so much simpler when you knew what was expected of you. You become an adult, you get a job so you can support a family, and then you start a family. It was all very simple. There was little choice involved, and so there was no choice agony.

Today we glorify choice as the greatest value one could have, and we stress when we go to a restaurant and can’t decide between the beef and the chicken. Picking a career or a spouse is paralyzing.

Next scene. It’s revealed that Vito’s daughter, Connie, has been beaten by her husband, Carlo. This is the American fashion. Sonny tracks him down, beats him and says he’ll kill him if it happens again.

Michael has a traditional Sicilian church wedding that his family never finds out about. Again, his unevenly developed family values.

Then we get his wedding night scene. So far there has been some sex in this movie. Namely, Sonny with his mistress standing up against a door during the wedding reception at the beginning. Which was all just casual fun. But it’s in this scene alone that we see “making love”. That is, a real relationship built on values and understanding and not on sex.

Next scene. Kay shows up at the Corleone compound. She’s still in love with Michael. No one knows he’s married.

Next scene. Connie finds out that Carlo is cheating on him. All these scenes with different concepts of love and family are pushed right next to each other. She breaks the dishes. He beats her with a belt.

That’s what happens when you marry “in the American fashion”. When your relationship is based on infatuation, you don’t know what to do when the infatuation cools down.

This scene is the opposite of Vito Corleone’s respect. Carlo doesn’t inspire respect. He’s a coward whom no one trusts. He gets angry easily. He views his wife as a means to an end instead of an end in herself, and so she is unable to respect him.

We see in the 40s, before “women’s liberation”, the traditional dynamics between men and women dissolving. It’s the American fashion. You don’t find this in third world countries. It’s a product of our American wealth.

Like Carlo, Sonny is quick to anger. But unlike Carlo, his anger is never without a reason, and he’s not a coward.

And with that anger, he rushes off to get revenge and is murdered at the toll booth. Which is also a plot contrivance that doesn’t make sense. They sort of explain this later that Carlo set them up, but that would involve perfect timing and planning. You can’t get twenty mobsters together in a toll booth in twenty minutes before Sonny rushes across town. And then they shoot him and totally miss each other. And the toll booth people are just okay with this.

But whatever, that’s not the point of the movie.

None of Vito’s kids are at all prepared to take over the business. None of them have Vito’s calmness. Sonny is rash, Fredo is cowardly and Michael is naive. All of them are controlled by sexual lust.

Sonny’s dead. Fredo is in Las Vegas, staying out of the way, because he can’t do anything right. The only hope for a dynasty is Michael. So Vito brings him back and spends the rest of the film trying to communicate to him what it means to be a man. But that’s not something that can be communicated through words. Michael never understands it. He didn’t struggle like Vito did. Michael was handed everything.

Michael reminds me of a lot of pastors’ kids. Even and especially the good ones who want to be a pastor too. I had a Baptist pastor who had a master’s degree in physics. His son was homeschooled, went to a Christian college, then went to seminary, and then got a job at a church. The closest thing to a secular experience he’s ever had was a college job at Chickfila. I don’t know how he will ever be able to relate to working people.

Vito senses something is wrong. He doesn’t run from bad news. He seeks out Tom Hagen and gently demands to know what’s going on. Vito is of course upset at the news, but he doesn’t get emotional. He keeps cool and immediately gives out orders.

I want no acts of vengeance. … This war stops now.

Something no one else except maybe Tom would have said. No one else was able to truly separate the business from the personal.

And then he hugs Tom. Always thinking about the people under him. That’s why they love him so much. Vito is a father to everyone, and they love him like a father. I think there’s kind of an image of God in this, that your “fear of God” comes out of a fear of disappointing your father.

There’s a lot of complaints that young people don’t respect our elders anymore, but I think that’s more of a reflection of the kind of people our elders are. Elders aren’t respected because they are old — they are respected because they have things to teach the young. Instead our elders give us bad advice and then laugh when our lives don’t turn out how theirs did.

Vito brings Sonny’s body to the morgue and tells the owner to clean him up.

I don’t want his mother to see him this way.

Vito takes the burdens of his family. There’s no “gender equality” here. Vito spares his wife from the pain of seeing her son with bullet holes.

Next scene. Sicily. Michael’s wife dies.

Meeting of the five families. Vito foregoes vengeance on Sonny but assures them there will be hell to pay if something happens to Michael. This is the Austin Method, done to perfection. Better than I ever do the Austin Method. What is the Austin Method? It’s to be blunt and honest and let fall what happens. The Austin Method is about radical integrity, and while people think I’m being an asshole, you would be amazed at the results I get through the Austin Method. Jesus regularly employed the Austin Method, and Donald Trump became the first political outsider to become president through it.

Vito says what it is and lays out the terms exactly as they are. And they know that, unlike his children, Vito would never lie or set up something on false premises, no matter what the reason.

Michael returns to America. No resolution with his father-in-law is shown. He marries Kay without any passion. This appears to be the cold rationalism of his father, but it’s not. It’s another imitation. He doesn’t love Kay. Or at least, he thinks of love only in the American sense. He doesn’t understand how Vito can love his wife while being dispassionate.

In the scene where he sees Kay again for the first time in several years, she is teaching school outside. This echoes the scene where he first sees his Sicilian wife, in which the girl was herding children. You can see the distance between the two scenes. The passion (in both the American sense and the Orthodox sense of the term) from the Sicilian scene is gone. With Kay he’s just matter-of-fact, in imitation of his father in the last scene, but without the inherent trustworthiness.

I’m pretty sure if I ever have a son, he will end up just like Michael.

Like Vito, he refuses to talk business to women. Except that he’s dishonest. He tells her that the family business will be “completely legitimate in five years”, which is obviously a lie. He also tells her that he loves her, which is also a lie. She knows he’s being dishonest, but she goes along with him anyway. She never got over him.

The wedding is never even shown.

Michael is moving to Las Vegas. He’s rootless. Leaving the family compound that his father built. If you’re familiar with the hero’s journey, this is sort of that, that the hero undergoes his change in exile, returns to his home, and then leaves if he cannot readjust.

All of Michael’s incompetence is highlighted like a beacon in the scene where he meets Moe Greene. This scene is done brilliantly. Just in general, I feel like the people who wrote this film (and the book) accidentally produced a masterpiece and didn’t mean to put this much depth in it.

Half an hour before the end of the movie, Vito gives some amazing advice. The casual way he does it so great. It really shows that this wisdom is just part of him. It flows from him naturally without him having to think about it.

I spent my life trying to not be careless. Women and children can be careless, but not men.

And you get the impression that the screenwriters thought he was being a sexist old man out of touch with “the American fashion” instead of this being a pearl of wisdom.

The final scene. Michael screams at Kay to not ask him about his business. See, the women never asked Vito about his business, because they trusted him. They didn’t need to worry about it. But no one trusts Michael. Women don’t want to have to worry about business, but men like Michael force them to.

Kay knows in her heart that Michael killed Carlo. She pries into his business to learn something she knows is true but wishes isn’t. She knew what she was getting into when she married him — he was honest about working for the mafia. And now when the reality of that manifests, she buckles and begs him to be something he’s not.

So he lies to her and says that he didn’t kill Carlo, which she believes. Women are expert lie detectors until it comes to the delusions they wish were true, and then they will fall for any scam.

So these are both terrible people — or at least, very foolish, very American people — who deserve everything that happens to them.

We’re a nation of Michaels and Kays.

Read More: Sexual Complementarianism As Platonic Ideals

Mad Science: Social Surrogacy

Which is when a woman chooses to have another one gestate her egg without any medical necessity.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/having-a-child-doesnt-fit-womens-schedule-the-future-of-surrogacy

It costs $150,000 to have a baby this way. “If social surrogacy was more affordable, more women would be doing it, absolutely. There’s an advantage to being pregnant, the bonding, I understand that, and from experience I can say that most women love to be pregnant. But a lot of women don’t want to be pregnant and lose a year of their careers.”

Yeah, and Donald Trump is going to make America great again so that we can all have enough money to pay a LEGAL immigrant from the third world carry our babies.

What really matters to women is wage slavery. Creating life ex nihilo and then nourishing the future of humanity is kind of an inconvenience. Women would rather have a career as an insurance representative than get pregnant.

[Dr.] Sahakian describes himself as a feminist.

Of course he does.

Feminism is not an ideology. There is no core of beliefs. There is no objective measure by which to determine what is feminist and what is misogynist.

Feminism is a weapon to de-stabilize society so that you can rob one group of people at the expense of others. Whatever they claim to believe is just convenience. The feminism of the 1960s is today’s Republican party. The feminism of the 1920s is today’s Nazis.

“Every day I see how prejudiced this society is, how male chauvinistic it is, how women are judged.”

In fairness, I am very judgmental towards women. I will give him a point.

This is more than the unfairness of men being able to have careers and babies at the same time, when it is so much more difficult for women.

Is that society or biology?

It’s not a social construct that women get pregnant for nine months and men have no physical affects.

I thought these people worship Evolution. Shouldn’t they be blaming Science for making women the life-creators?

“If you are a 62-year-old man and you come here with a 38-year‑old woman, no one asks why you’re having a kid at 62. If you come here as a 55-year-old woman trying to have a kid, they tell you you’re old, you’re a grandma, you’re crazy.

Yeah, because all men have to do is get hard. A trip to that store off the interstate can fix that. But women have this whole biological system thing that defines their whole existence so much that they count their months by it. This is just how Evolution created everything. Clearly Evolution did this because it’s in the best interest of the fittest of the species. Why should we question the wisdom of Evolution?

Also, old men shouldn’t have children. It’s definitely screwed up when you’re 80 years old at your kid’s graduation. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger both have young children, who will basically be orphans raised by single mothers once their fathers die.

Really, I don’t think old people should have sex in general. Once you get to something like 30, maybe 35, just go gently into the good night. Sex is for teenagers. “When I was a child, I thought like a child, reasoned like a child, and acted like a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I understand that it’s controversial, it’s borderline unethical for some people, but put yourself in the shoes of a 26-year-old model who is making her living by modelling swimsuits. Tell me something – is it that unethical, to say let’s not destroy this woman’s career?”

I feel so sorry for 26-year-old models who want to keep the party going forever. They have hundreds of thousands of dollars to blow on blow and every man in the world wanting to put a baby in them, and they’re all like, “Yeah, but I could keep going until I’m 29.”

One of these days, society will come to terms that you cannot both be a devoted parent and a have a full time career as a world-travelling model. That day will come when all the blacks and Aztecs finally murder the last white person.

Then, in 2006, Sahakian became responsible for the oldest woman in the world on record to give birth. Maria del Carmen Bousada, a retired sales assistant from Cadiz in Spain, had her twin boys the week before her 67th birthday. Bousada was diagnosed with cancer less than a year later, and died in 2009, leaving her toddler sons orphaned.

See, that’s not society saying it’s messed up for a social security dependee to be raising children. It’s Death itself saying so. The reason old people don’t have children is because they die so easily. Just one bad winter day is all it takes.

Here’s a picture of her looking all old and disgusting:

Oh but the doctor has an excuse for that too:

He feels no responsibility for her twins in Italy. “That’s why I wouldn’t treat a 67-year-old woman. She was a perfectly healthy 57-year‑old. She died from cancer, so she didn’t have a pre-existing condition. You can get cancer at 28.” He has since cut his upper age limit to 55, but still doesn’t ask his clients for conclusive proof of age.

Here’s an ethics question. What happens if the surrogate mother decides she wants to keep the baby? Is she legally obligated to hand him over?

The word “want” appeared 21 times in the article.

Creating A Vocabulary: Ancient Science And The Heart

More and more I’m starting to understand the wisdom of ancient science.

I believe in the four elements. Our bodies return to dust and are full of water — therefore we are made of earth and water. And we describe angry people as being fiery, and fire seems to be alive in a sense, so maybe we are also part fire.

You’ll notice that even in modern science these four elements correspond to the four states of matter — solids, liquids, gases and plasmata.

I’ve already written about how I believe in the four personalities, which are tied to these elements. (Interesting links to a series by herbologist Rebecca Altman which keep disappearing and which I will someday plagiarize here, here, here and here.)

Just looking around my room. My television set is made of plastic — which is derived from the earth — and uses electricity — which is a kind of fire. My guitar is made of wood, which is from the earth and was nourished by water and sun — which is a kind of fire. My glass is made from sand — earth — and refined by fire.

*****

Astrology is retarded, though. Some people claim that it predicted their personality, but those things are written vaguely enough that they will fit most people. Just for kicks and giggles, I took one of those tests. It gave me a Sagitarrius, when actually I’m a Virgo. They connected this to the four personalities, so I looked that up. Virgos are melancholic personalities. My brother and I were both born in early September — I’m a strong choleric and he’s a strong sanguine.

So Astrology is for stupid people looking for truth in a world without God. No surprise there.

Then I looked up what a Virgo personality is specifically. I get that these are just pop websites for bored housewives, but it’s probably rooted in some kind of tradition if there actually is one. It at least correlates to the melancholic personality like Wikipedia said.

So a Virgo has attention to detail and a great memory and is a perfectionist, naturally humble, creative, loyal and patient. Wouldn’t most people describe themselves as that?

I’ve half-assed most things in my life. The only exception I can think of is my writing. I’m not usually described as being humble or patient. Loyalty is just a value, not a personality trait.

I picked the Gemini sign at random to see what its traits are. Would you describe yourself as versatile, smart, not-sensative-to-emotions, playful? Then you might be a Gemini! Maybe I’m a Gemini, and my birth certificate is wrong.

Except that all those describe the choleric personality, and the website says that this is an air (sanguine) personality.

If you want to know the kind of person who is into astrology, it’s the kind of person who would read or write this paragraph:

The hot tip for hot sex for Gemini is Sagittarius (indeed, there isn’t a sign alive that a red-hot Saggie can’t warm up, even chilly Gemmys). Gemmy and Saggie are like two naughty, daredevil, party-hard freaks who will dare each other on and on to greater height of sexual adventures… it’s exciting (but probably not long-lasting)!

Ten bucks says the writer thinks Christianity is outdated.

*****

St John Damascene had some interesting thoughts on ancient science in his second book of An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, though it seems weirdly off-topic from everything else. The part about the seasons being different levels of heat and dryness was something I had never thought about. He talks a lot about winds; apparently they have names.

I’m not sure how much I believe in all that, but I kind of hate that it’s lost knowledge. Like, we look at the sky, and it’s just a random mess of dots. The same thing with plants. People used to see weeds and trees and know what medicine they were for — now we don’t know the difference between an oak and a hickory. Maybe there’s more to the winds than we realize. I’m not going to judge a topic I know nothing about, unless it’s astrology.

I don’t know what that means, but the part about winter being the melancholic cold-wet season of nighttime and north is probably something significant that I’ve never thought about. I have no clue what that has to do with the bull, the page, the body and “confusing”.

*****

Most importantly, I don’t think the heart is an allegory. It’s often thought that any talk about the heart being connected to the soul is just poetic, as though this organ was chosen at random.

I’ve come to accept that there’s more to the heart than pumping blood. I mean this literally.

When you get angry, your blood pumps faster, and you lose your ability to think rationally. When you are in extreme sadness, particularly over love, you can feel the pain in your chest, especially where the heart is.

Something about the heart is connected to your emotions. The line between the spiritual and physical is thinner than we think. It can’t be an accident that the heart has been used poetically for so long.

Nor is this just a Western thing. A friend of the blog is of Eastern Indian descent. (Yes, I have colored friends — I’m just not racist enough to brag about them to prove I’m not racist.) I asked him if this imagery of the heart is also present in his culture. He writes,

To be honest, I really can’t say. I know in Malayalis movies they use language like “He broke my heart”. But I think this is because of westernization more than anything. Like I don’t think that movies 40 years ago would have that sort of language. But in terms the heart being associated with love, I think there is a connection. I know in Kerala Christianity there is, and I’m certain there is a connection in Hinduism. I don’t know about romantic love though.

I looked it up and there is a Sanskrit word for heart called “hṛd”. It can also refer to soul, spirit, and mind as well as the actual organ

I don’t know exactly why or how it works, but I’ve come to believe that the heart is the house of the soul. Why not? Everyone else seems to think so.