Chateau Lloyd

Back in 2013, we still had a dish, and watched lots of the various streaming channels.  That was supposed the new Golden Age of television, thanks to programs like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Justified, and so on.  While Hollywood was busy getting woke, the streaming services and networks were able to produce long-form dramas without being bound by a 22-episode season.  What was more, it was easy to catch up on a sleeper hit, and when each season was released, one could binge-watch it in a week or so.

That time has passed, but it produced a number of shows available on DVD, and one of them we liked was The White Queen, a series based on Philippa Gregory's historical novels of the Wars of the Roses.

The concept of telling history through the eyes of women is nothing new, and goes back to the beginning of writing.  For every story of a king or warrior, there are parallel tales of the women who influenced them.  Feminists like to pretend that The Patriarchy silenced women, but most have never bothered to read the Bible or Homer or any other ancient work.

Anyhow, the story of Elizabeth Woodville lends itself to this approach and it is one of those remarkable historic events that turns everything upside down.  For those who don't know, one day King Edward IV is riding along after having won a battle  and sees a beautiful young woman waiting by the side of the road for news of her husband, who was a knight on the side opposing Edward (the Lancastrians).  She learns she is a widow, but the King offers to "comfort" her.  Remarkably she refuses his advances and insists that he marry if he wants to get it on.  So he does.

This completely upends the power structure in England, because it is bitterly divided between competing factions vying for control, and Edward was supposed to make a political marriage, not a romantic one.  Anyhow, drama ensues.

This is not a lavishly produced show, but it does a good job of conveying the period, and there's some battles and sword fights because leading characters did die in the conflict.  In fact, the Wars of the Roses were something of a sideshow for the commoners but a bloodbath for the nobility, and many royal lines were 'pruned' from the family tree.

The show has excellent performances, and follows the history reasonably well, but does veer into the all-to-familiar conventions of showing secret witchcraft influencing events and indulging in pretty graphic sex scenes, which at this point my life I find really boring.  It get it, they had sex.  Why is this is any way interesting to watch?

If one knows the history well, it will be maddening at times, but it does try to keep things reasonably close to accurate, and the various personalities are presenting in interesting ways.  The dynamics of the York brothers is well done, as is the way the various factions maneuver for control. 

I will particularly single out Amanda Hale's Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, who comes across as an absolute fanatic.  Given that her son was something like 10th in the line of succession when the story starts, I'm not sure I buy the notion that she thought he could somehow overcome Henry VI, his son Edward, the three York brothers (Edward, Richard and George), and their sons and potential sons.  It think in reality it was more of a "Well, who is left?  You're up, Henry!"

Anyway, I've watched it through a couple of times, and it still holds up well.  Folks who like Game of Thrones will particularly enjoy this, in large part because the ending makes sense.  Indeed, once you see it, you'll realize who derivative George R.R. Martin's work was.

Ash Wednesday holds a peculiar place on the liturgical calendar.  It is not a holy day of obligation, but most Catholics treat it as one.  Indeed, I can think of several holy days of obligation with far less participation.

What is more, Protestants are increasingly embracing it.  In a time of rising Christian persecution (both at home and abroad), it is a bold way to state one's Christian witness, and I'm sure many Protestants want to "reclaim" it rather than let Catholics have all the fun.

What was different this year was how many government officials openly wore ashes.  I don't recall ever seeing this before.  Ash Wednesday was always a local thing, but social media prominently displayed cabinet officials, celebrities, podcasters, etc. wearing their ashes.  It was so blatant that the secularists were quite upset.

The sudden prevalence of ashes is a necessary reminder that human societies are non-linear.  They can peak, fall and then peak again.  Decline is rarely irreversible, and usually leads to a transformation rather than total destruction.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Catholic Church, which survived the fall of multiple empires, plagues, internal dissent, heresy and much, much more.  In the current age, I think a great many people want something old, traditional and proven rather than yet more innovation.  The notion of having ashes placed on you is wonderfully archaic.

This is why I regard the prevalence of "nones" (people with no particular religious preference) as an opportunity rather than a problem.  Many of them likely were raised in the Church, and drifted away due to the scandals and (to be blunt) general cowardice on the part of the bishops.  It is telling that far more hue and cry is being raised about deporting illegal immigrants than lawfully admitted Catholic clergy.  People notice this sort of thing.

Strong, outspoken leadership can easily reverse this, and attract non-Catholics as well.  

As I've written before, "nice" Christianity is a dead end.  People want to be challenged, and they also want a religion that projects confidence in its beliefs, especially the "hard teachings."

Going out into the world carrying an ashen cross is a sign of faith and confidence, and I think both draw otherwise uncommitted people in.

I recently watched Tomorrow Never Dies for the first time since seeing it in the theater.  I had a blast, really enjoyed the movie, but part of that was that it seems so absurd and campy.  The 1990s were a tough era for spy movies because the ultimate showdown of the Cold War was over.  Russia lay prostrate, and who could possibly challenge the triumphant West?

The idea of a media mogul serving as an arch-villain seemed something of a stretch, but it worked, and the fact that he had a stealth catamaran (we were all about "stealth" in the 90s) and vintage-looking henchmen made for good fun.  There was also a nod to Communist China's increasing influence and importance and the naive hope that maybe China might open up more.

Pierce Brosnan is excellent, and the sequence of him driving his car from the backseat is just brilliant.  Tense, bordering on the absurd, and there are a couple of moments when he smiles to himself that almost breaks character, but doesn't because Bond would also be enjoying himself.

Jonathan Pryce's Elliott Carver was a thinly-disguised parody of Rupert Murdoch, long a conservative bugbear to the left (particularly the British left).  The notion that a private citizen should gain the ability to weaponize information against democratic government was somewhat sinister, but nothing compared to what actually happened, which is that oligarchs aligned themselves with governments to subvert democracy at the source.

Since the film came out in 1997, that's exactly what happened, with hoaxes and manipulation rapidly growing in scope and sophistication.  At this point, its pervasive, and one can only look at Carver's plot as amateurish.  Why foment a war between Communist China and Britain if you can simply make Britain into Communist China?

I think this is the only Bond movie with actual social commentary.

Back in 1987, Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers created a huge discussion within the strategic community.  It was a sweeping survey of international power politics using extensive data sets to map out the strengths and weaknesses of the various hegemons.

I devoured it, and was delighted to find that was on the required reading list for one of my classes when I went to college.  I was more than a little smug when I set my battered hardcover edition down on the table, where it stood out from the paperback editions everyone else had picked up at the student book store.  My was a first edition, meaning I read it as a freshman in high school.

Anyhow, in retrospect Kennedy has been spectacularly wrong in his analysis.  "Imperial Overstretch" does not exist.  Empires often rise and fall simply because of a leadership crisis.  As we are seeing in real time, the ongoing decline of many nations is simply a choice of the ruling class.  They prefer poorer, squabbling subjects rather than independent, prosperous one.  The post-war dissolution of the British Empire was not economically or strategically necessary but instead the result of a socialist political agenda.

Of particular note was Kennedy's prediction that Japan would soon displace the US at a global power.  Talk about a miss!  

Anyhow, I do like Kennedy's book as a survey of history and also the framing he used in terms of describing the power structures over the centuries.  He described the 20th Century as the crisis of the great powers and the coming of a bipolar world, which was the one he was describing in 1987.  That note that the US was about to collapse because of the Reagan buildup was widely regarded as absurd, and the facts bore it out.  The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the bipolar world became a unipolar one, with the United States standing unchallenged.

That world no longer exists, and there are three great powers, along with several rising contenders.  The final nail in the coffin to the unipolar world was the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which proved decisively that all the blather about Russia having a GDP the size of the Netherlands was bad propaganda.

In fact, the very measure of GDP is now highly suspect, since it rates government spending as the same as consumption and investment, which is clearly is not.  We need a new measure to measure, which cuts out government spending that does not product tangible things like roads or warships.

The growing understanding in American circles of this strategic reality means that we can perhaps finally put away anti-Russian animus and a Cold War mentality and look at the world as it is.  Russia and China are superpowers in their own right, and will not accept dictation from Washington.  Weaponizing currency and banking only creates incentives go create alternative means of exchange that are less vulnerable to external manipulation.

India is another rising power, though less strategically ambitious.  Brazil remains the nation of the future and always will be (to recycle an old joke).

The upshot is that we are in a new strategic environment where realpolitik and strategic necessity must supersede ideology.   Gone are the days when presidential pronouncements produced immediate and positive results.  The blindness of our leadership greatly increased the risk of miscalculation that could have had catastrophic consequences.

I think the new US leadership understands this, and as a result I'm sleeping a little better at night.

Some years ago I got a copy of Bulfinch's Mythology, which I think was a gift from my father.  He has a copy, and highly recommended it.

This is one of the standard books that every respectable house had in it, along with a Bible, a dictionary, and some Mark Twain.

The original work was from the 19th Century and help bring Greek and Norse mythology alive in a world where only the elites could study them in the original languages.  It has since been edited and provided with a modern commentary, which makes some corrections, but sadly has the typical scholarly viewpoint that all religions are bunk.

What is more, it takes the point of view that similarities in mythology are proof that things were "borrowed," and one sees this particularly in the notion that the Bible was cribbed together from Egyptian and Babylonian faiths.  

The notion that everyone is trying to describe the same spiritual events from different perspectives is of course unthinkable, because no amount of proof is sufficient to convince the scholarly atheists.

I must give credit to the Lord of Spirits podcast, which opened my eyes to the reality of the spirit world.  I have since deepened that by reading further into Catholic mysticism and of course several accounts of spiritual warfare.

What really stood out to me upon digging back into Bulfinch's Mythology was how he was drawing the lines more than a century ago, and using the premise that the Bible was correct.  Of course, one can go back the St. Augustine to find assertions that the Greco-Roman deities were really fallen angels, so nothing is really new.

At any rate, it's inspiring me to write again, though I'll need to read more first before I have my thoughts fully formed.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the debate over migration and immigration is the unwillingness of the U.S. bishops to take an actual position on the issue.  Everything is cloaked in ambiguity, vague references to the "system being broken" and "clearly reform is needed" without actually specifying what is broken and how it might be fixed.

If you ask most Americans, they will agree that the system is broken and that fix is robust enforcement of existing laws and procedures.  The problems of rampant crime, housing shortages, massive increases in public spending (which fuels inflation) would all be solved if the migrants stopped coming and the ones illegally here went home.

This would require less effort from Catholic Charities, however, and it is clear that mission creep and empire-building has engulfed much of the charitable community to the point of warping their perspective.  Instead of discouraging migration, they want more of it, because it grows their little empires.

Many commentators have noted that the American bishops are far less willing to break the law - or even push up to the edge of its boundaries - on questions like sexuality or the sanctity of life.  Are lawsuits being field against abortion clinics on the grounds of poor sanitation?  If so, I haven't heard about  it.  A nominally Catholic president used the full power of government to provide abortion using tax dollars and pushed harmful drugs and surgical mutilation and the Vatican could not only be bothered to write pastoral letter, it implied that was fine for him to continue to receive the Eucharist.

A reasonable observer might conclude that this was to keep the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into episcopal coffers.

There is of course a place for pragmatism, but what positive good emerges from this pact with the devil?  Human life is trashed in both transactions because the migrants are overwhelmingly young men, not widows and orphans, and the cost of resettlement is borne by the poor and working class, who must compete against lower-wage worker for their living.

The open border is also a pathway for dangerous drugs and weapons, facilitates human trafficking and harms other nations by distracting their people and excusing their poor leadership.

There is such a thing as harmful charity, acts that may be well-intentioned but are ultimately harmful.  A classic example of this is giving money to beggars on the street.  Some years ago, some of these people realized that it was quite profitable to hit up people coming out of Mass, since they were naturally in a charitable mood.  What started with good intentions ended up in creating a regular hangout for criminals, who were not content with voluntary contributions and began to break into cars in the parking lot during Mass.

The pastor had to make repeated announcements, both in the bulletin and at the conclusion of Mass that this practice had to stop.  Those who wished to help were urged to instead offer paper bags with some moist towelettes and granola bars, along with the address to the local shelter.

As turned out, none of that was wanted, just money for drugs or alcohol.  I've personally encountered several people who clamed they needed cash for various problems and when I've offered an alternative solution, they get annoyed and leave.

The point is that the bishops are not naive enough to think that only adorable urchins and long-suffering widows are  crossing the border, or that the benefits they provide aren't creating incentives for ever more people to come.

This brings us back to the original question: what is the ideal number of immigrants?  By what process should they be selected?

Pope Francis' letter does not answer any of these questions, and instead talks of human dignity, of which there is precious little in the outlaw communities created by uncontrolled migration.  Indeed, there seems to be an underlying current that open borders are actually a moral imperative, which is not only at odds with the magisterium and doctrines of the church, it is without historical precedent.

It would represent the ultimate application of liberalism, reducing people to isolated individuals driven purely by material needs.  Family, culture, faith - all of these would fall away as people moved to where the work was.  This is in fact the dream of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which sees people only as a factor in production.

It is a vile philosophy, and that is why no Catholic figure can speak it out loud, instead merely dropping hints and obscure references about human dignity.

But what is dignified about being moved hither and yon based on sliding wage scales and the needs of oligarchs?  Where is the dignity in convincing a culture not to reproduce naturally and then replacing them with an alien one of (temporarily) greater fecundity?  What is the human cost in this dollar transactions?

This is why I cannot take the bishops seriously.  Their inability to articulate a logical and moral solution to this problem is a grave scandal.

I'm generally accepting of most hobbies, especially collecting.  Whether postage stamps or model trains, I tend not to judge.

However, the other day I came across Adam Savage describing his prop sci-fi blaster collection and this gave me a moment of pause.  On the one hand, I am the guy who authored a lengthy series on Geek Guns, which was centered on movie prop weapons.

However, the notion behind that article was to discuss firearms rather than the qualities of fictional weapons.

Moreover, film props are - by definition - cheap, the bare minimum one can use to get by.  Molded rubber is a common material, because all it has to do is look good on the camera.  Some years ago I went to the Star Wars: The Magic of Myth prop exhibition and was amazed at how poorly made everything was.  Darth Vader's suit was kind of ratty, whip-stitched together in parts, but it didn't matter because it was so dark, the camera would never pick it up.

That's props in a nutshell - all about creating an illusion.  I can get buying an actual prop because that's a part of the movie set and its history.  Making a costume makes sense, and one would have to have a prop weapon as part of that.

But the notion of paying top dollar for an imitation of a prop seems strange to me.

Also puzzling was Savage's lack of knowledge about what he was collecting.  He mentioned one of the props from Pulp Fiction was a Star Model B pistol, and that he had to work out where to find one.  Well, they are not uncommon and go for cheap.  I know a friend who bought one not long ago for that reason.

Working firearms are of course in a completely different category in terms of function and legal status, and that also adds a bit of weirdness to the discussion as creating a prop from a functioning firearm would require its deactivation, which is odious to me, especially if it is vintage and in short supply.  Go with a foam-injected version with some gubbins!

At any rate, it is interesting to see how collector circles intersect but also diversge.

Watching Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge is something of a Valentine's Day tradition at Chateau Lloyd.  The film came out around the time we were married, is quite fun and creative, and we bought the DVD shortly after our second child was born, so there are many happy memories associated with it.

As the years have passed, however, we've watched it with a more critical eye, noticing various gaffes but also subtleties that we overlooked.

There are some overt references to faith, usually in a humorous way, such as the sendup of "Like a Virgin," however there are some deeper elements in play.

Foremost among them is the salvation message for Satine and of course Christian (what's in a name!).  On the face of it, there isn't much of a story, because Satine is a prostitute, and even though she may care for Christian, one more (final) customer should be no big deal.  But, as "Like a Virgin" illustrates, she now sees the sinfulness of what she did.  She longs to be faithful to him, and yes, part of this is about control.

But it is also a rejection of the lie that sexual promiscuity is liberating.  The "Lady Marmalade" number at the beginning of the film glamorizes prostitution, with the revised lyrics emphasizing its benefits.

Satine's preference for a monogamous relationship can also be contrasted with "Roxanne," in which the titular character is not willing to give up her trade.

The point is that even generally secular films used to have conventionally religious morality in them.  It is difficult to imagine such a film now because Hollywood is determined to push both sexual deviancy and non-monogamy.  Two decades ago, it was still possible to view homosexuality (which is briefly shown or touched upon several times in the film) as deviant and decadent.  

Is Moulin Rouge as Catholic as The Crow?  Of course not.  But in addition to the romance arc, there is also the sense of guardianship over Satine, evidenced by Chocolat repeated coming to her aid in the manner of a guardian angel.

Recent revelations regarding American governmental expenditures have highlighted a long-running concerns among religious people, and Catholics in particular: what is the moral price for getting state funding?

It has long been reported in Catholic media that Catholic charities have been willing to violate Church teachings in exchange for government cash, but the stoppage of funding through USAID has highlighted the problem.  The bishops may lament the result layoffs, but the laity want to know how much was skimmed off the top and what exactly was done with the money.

Liberal Catholics refuse to confront the problem directly, instead claiming dubious moral authority based on selective use of the Scriptures.  Setting aside their hypocrisy in using proof texts regarding immigration but forgetting them when it comes to sexual morality and the culture of life, there is simply no excuse for accepting the sinful strings attached the money.

What used to be the mainstream press is running interference for them, but as the recent election showed, only a minority of people rely on that for information.  The most engaged Catholics - the ones most likely to donate - use independent media and online newsletters, and these organs have been fiercely critical of the Church's leadership.  Put simply, taking taxpayer funds is making a Faustian bargain.  In the first place, it corrupts the moral authority of the Church by compelling violations of doctrine, such as funding birth control, abortion, sodomite pride and legitimizing unlimited migration, including violent criminals.

It also enervates the laity, teaching them that tithing is not necessary because the government is picking up the check.

Again, the usual arguments are being trotted out about 'greater good' and being pragmatic, but the looming shutdown of USAID has indicated that the promised gain sometimes doesn't show up, just the sin.

This has also kicked of a needed debate about Catholic theology regarding the hierarchy of love and the odd modern need to help strangers while neglecting family.  I am not the only one noticing that my parish and diocesan newsletters regularly point to critical shortages for the local food bank while also noting how many foreigners - almost certainly here illegally - are being supported.

As anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of human behavior could point out, you get more of what you pay for, so the Catholic Church's charities are creating incentives for lawbreaking that creates significant costs for the faithful.  While some allege some sort of sinister long game, I think it's a combination of misguided sentiment and good old fashioned bureaucratic empire building.

This episode has echoes of the collapse of the Catholic Church in Europe, particularly in Germany, where the cozy Church-state relationship has cratered Mass attendance but provided lucrative careers in charities that for the moment are flush with cash.  In the long term, however, both are doomed to weaken, and this knowledge is probably why the German clergy are so determined to mimic their Protestant neighbors, despite the obvious fact that they are in even worse shape.

At its core, the problem is that much of the Church leadership has lost the plot.  They have forgotten that their mission is to save souls, and feeding the hungry and clothing the poor are but a means to that end.  By becoming complicit in sin, the whole point of the exercise is lost.

Posting has been light because I was busy finishing off Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory.  It is an absorbing story set during the period of Catholic persecution in Mexico, which led to the Cristero War.

Greene is vague on the details, giving only the most cursory references to time, geography and even characters.  Indeed, the primary character is a troubled Catholic priest with no name - he refers to himself as 'a whiskey priest,' a reference to his alcoholism.  He has also fathered a daughter, and in ordinary times, he would be a figure of ridicule and scorn, but against his will, he is seen as a heroic figure by the faithful who gratefully accept the sacraments from him.

I have to admit that I would have gotten more out of it if I simply read it as any other book, but instead, I found myself analyzing Greene's writing style, dialog, description, plot points and such.  I was therefore unsurprised by some of the plot twists, but Greene's ending was both surprising and satisfying.

Modern writing seems sterile, most juvenile genres, perhaps because people didn't have the wide experiences of travel, war, revolution and of course faith, as Greene did.  The West has been aggressively secularized, and a classic example is how The Force, which was mysterious and spiritual was redefined as a function of biology in the Star Wars prequels (another reason why I hate them).

Greene, like Evelyn Waugh, puts religion squarely in his stories, yet at the same time is not afraid to mock the hypocrisies  of its practitioners.  I picked up a handful of cheap paperbacks by Greene, and will continue to read through them.  They are only a couple of hundred pages, which is refreshing given all the door stoppers I've been reading over the past couple of years.