Wonderful Matters

Felt like pounding out this post while waiting for 60 Minutes  to rebroadcast its piece from last fall, the one that brilliantly illuminated the crushing drug problem in this country right now. There is an opiate epidemic that is literally killing more and more people. I have a feeling they're showing it again because there are reports of a substantial increase in suicides, especially among white middle-aged men. I know why this is happening. 60 Minutes  won't tell you why. They'll address the horrors in all their splendid glory, but they don't know why. There'll be lots of "Why?!"s through the tears, of course. There always is, but the saddest fact is these people abjectly refuse to see the answer. It comes in the answer to the following question. What possesses seemingly sane, wholesome, and very Christianly people to plan, organize, and prepare to participate in a Jericho-oriented demonstration at the California state capitol? Whuh? What does ...

Many try to make the argument against homosexualist things by claiming that if we as a society endorse homosexual behavior and enable the now widespread celebration of it, then there will be little one may say against all the things that come after it: polygamy, bestiality, pederasty, and other more abhorrent forms of sexual engagement. (For review --  homosexualist:   consideration that sexual activity between two individuals of the same sex should be accepted, embraced, or even celebrated, as well as consideration that censure of such behavior must be rejected, condemned, or even prosecuted.) The idea is that there is a "slippery slope" down into things just as bad or worse. It is as if the homosexualist voice is saying either "We're stopping at same-sex adults being allowed to have a fully sanctioned sexual relationship so don't worry about anything else", or "It really doesn't matter anyway because any  form of sexual activity should be acce...

My latest home page piece was largely about the film Spotlight , and I wanted to blog a bit about finally seeing the film. My webzine remarks were based on knowledge I already had about the Catholic Church scandal and standard considerations of journalism's role in society, so seeing the film didn't alter anything shared in the piece. What I did find more striking than I'd previously thought was how well the film was made -- so I want to give it credit for that -- but I was also taken by the breadth to which people live in a state of denial about the most wretched things. Even though there are so many of them . And the breadth of that denial is so harrowingly large. If you think about it, the films Spotlight and another terrific film I'd just seen, The Big Short , are exactly the same. Really, they are. Both tremendously engaging because they're both all about the courage, wisdom, and fortitude required to shine the "spotlight", if you will, on th...

I happened to come across this interesting story , buried deep in the bowels of embarrassing things the Maecenaen sworn expounders don't like shared but still end up making Caesar look good. It was in the New York Times , so it is official, but it was in some arts blog. Turns out the Academy Award winning film Spotlight  did a little fiddling with the story to evoke a bit more dramatic effect, making an actual person seem like something he wasn't. The Roman operative, an educational institution trustee, was portrayed as working on the cover-up, when in fact he was more of a supportive force for making things clean and right with the church. What the story does is degrade the perception of the righteous Boston Globe reporter gallantry in valiantly exposing the Catholic Church's priest-sex abuse situation, but ironically it does so by making Rome's heroes appear even more courageously wholesomely victimized. How pukifying. The truth is Rome's ecclesia actually...

You may want to catch Maureen Mullarkey's piece about the Catholicist Nation in The Federalist . You can learn a lot about truthful matters from a true-believer Catholicist. The first half of her piece is a scathing review of Catholic Church loathing throughout U.S. history. How evil has all that evil loathing been, let's make sure Catholic victimhood is firmly entrenched in the Americanist mentality. The second half is a lucid justification for such a perspective. Guh? Yes, I'm sure Mullarkey's purpose is to say, essentially, "Look at all this Catholic-things revulsion, how rotten, yet now the Pope and the Church are doing things that are genuinely really bad, so we must be afraid of the neo-haters." The Federalist is a fine webzine articulating the benefits of conservative-oriented policy. But Mullarkey as much as confesses a vibrant bewilderment about this current state of affairs. The Pope is now all about opening the borders and prosecuting cli...

The news streamers have had a field day with the battle royale between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and World System potentate Francis I. Trump has said he wants a wall to slow the excessive flow of immigrants coming into the U.S, while Francis says walls are not for Christians, presumably because Christians are supposed to be about being kind and welcoming and hospitable and all that. I mean, after all, he is  "Pontifex Maximus", he is Supreme Bridgebuilder. How magnanimous of him to say all that. Both have since scaled back their vitriol, Trump because he knows so many voters adore the Pope, Francis because it is unbecoming of the World's most celebrated pastoral-oriented individual. So what's the end game with all of this? As it is no one will get it, except for the few who take Scripture seriously. For one thing, walls are not bad things. Everyone has some kind of blockade around their home to keep unfavorable individuals from getting in --...

Today I came across this piece in the Washington Post , and it kind of surprised me. I'd been seeing all this stuff about how great Bitcoin is and will be and let's all jump on the digital currency bandwagon and all our economic lives will be perfectly delightful all the time. Now some have come to see the reality of its lethal inadequacies. The problem is that the author of the piece is still an entrenched World inhabitant, believing if we just got at the algorithm, or, really, I should say The Algorithm , then all our economic lives will be perfectly delightful all the time. Erghck. Not surprised mind you. It is typical folly, I understand. I have nothing against any kind of currency, digital or otherwise -- these are just convenient tools to help with financial affairs. It's all good. The problem is that people are deaf, dumb, and blind to the real  issue. Oh, when I tell you what it is you'll say "Yeah yeah, I know that." When I tell you the solu...