Chateau Lloyd

I know that the anniversaries ending in "5" and "0" are supposed to be the important once, but all of them count for something.

I entered the Catholic Church on Pentecost all those years ago, and I am still a work in progress.  There is a lot going on in the faith, and just when you think you've got it all, you find even more.

I get why my grandparents continued to study religion right up until the end.  There was so much to learn.

To put it another way, I have changed a lot since 2006, and that applies to faith as much as anything else.

Religion did not particularly interest me when I was young.  It was boring, judgmental and anyway God was probably a nice guy and cut us all some slack.

I don't that view was purely a function of youth, by the way.  I think society was objectively more moral than it has become.  Back then, transvestites were mocked and men who entered the women's rest room were subject to arrest, not praise.

Things happen for a reason, and it's increasingly clear that we all needed an awakening of sorts.  We certainly got one.

I will say that the pontificate of the late Francis showed how damaging a bad pope could be, but also the limits to that damage.  Pope Leo is a completely different sort, very much his own man, but his faith is deep, profound and respectful.

He is the type of pope who would have been unremarkable but for Francis, and so we are treasuring him all the more.

I think that is true of a lot of our traditions and prayers.  There is a hunger to get back to basics, and rediscover what has been temporarily misplaced.  I see that Europe is now seeing huge crowds of young people hiking to cathedrals and record numbers of conversions.  That's the hunger we need.

I'm more than halfway through Brant Pitre's The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ, and I'm already speed-running it.  Normally, I do that on something that I don't really enjoy and want to just get out of the way, but in this case, Pitre's arguments are so solid, so well-reasoned, that I need only glance at them to see how valid they are.

What draws me forward is a desire to see the next way he will take a rhetorical axe-handle to the arguments of bogus "Bible scholars" like Bart Ehrman.

Four years ago the Lord of Spirits podcast highlighted the intellectual dishonesty and obvious bias of these fake academics, and it's refreshing to see them get pulverized using chapter and verse.

This continues to irritate me, in large part because if the same "scientific" method were applied to secular histories, nothing could be authenticated.

One of the critiques Erhman and his cohorts use against the Gospels is the (shaky) assumption that they were written long after the fact, and therefore suspect.

I hate to break it to Herrdoktorprofesser Erhman, but most histories are like that.  There is no reason to doubt the factual content of Walls of Men simply because I wasn't alive 4,500 years ago.  There are things call "sources" and also oral traditions that are extremely valuable in determining what happened in the past.

I swear, these knuckleheads what photos of the Apostles holding up a newspaper from AD 34 to verify their claims.

Anyhow, it's a quick read, and worth the effort, especially if one wants to shut down an modern know-it-all atheist.

The other day I saw a report that Xi Jinping's daughter is a Harvard grad who now lives in Massachusetts.

Given the current friction between the two nations, this is somewhat remarkable, and I think it points to the fact that for a great many mainland Chinese, the US (and Canada) are being viewed as sanctuaries as well as geopolitical rivals.

It is extremely difficult to get reliable news out of China.  When I was working on Walls of Men, I deliberately avoided doing any kind of detailed analysis of Communist China's equipment or capabilities because these are simply unknown.  The recent aerial combat between Pakistan and India generated more smoke than light.  We know aircraft were downed, but not how many or how.  There are competing versions all over the place.

Similarly, the Chinese government has been increasingly evasive with official numbers, to the point that its total population is now in dispute.  Economic measures like GDP, unemployment, industrial output, are all increasingly vague.

What we do know is that the mainland faces strong headwinds, both politically and economically.  China's government bases its legitimacy on economic development, and plants being relocated to the US greatly weakens that.  After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, the CCP has been openly embracing traditional culture and the greatness of past Emperors, and the Mandate of Heaven is once more in play.  Should China's export-driven economy start to come apart, the strain may be too much.

The death of Pope Francis also brings additional challenges, since the shameful concordat engineered by Cardinal Parolin will likely not be renewed.  At that point China will have double down on repressing Catholic converts, which will result in protests and disruptions.

There are veteran China experts who have been predicting collapse for decades, but just because the time frame is off doesn't mean they were wrong.  The Soviet Union was assumed to be permanent right before it collapsed, proving all the alleged experts wrong.

Clearly the ideological divide is not as great as it was in the Cold War.  There is also far greater economic integration, but that is clearly fading.  Much is made about how China's industrial might now surpasses that of the US, but this can (and is) being slowly reversed.  In the mean time, how will Chinese factory towns adapt to the coming Rust Belt?

I first encountered David Horowitz through his "Heterodoxy" newspaper, which was distributed around campus in the 1990s.  It was a breath of fresh air, and part of the intellectual current that pushed me into a more independent - and often conservative - point of view.

I've always been something of a reactionary, and while I entered college as a Democrat, by the time I graduated, I was deeply dissatisfied with the party, which was already abandoning its principles to political expediency.

I next encountered Horowitz's work online, and regular read him for many years, but it was not until comparatively recently that I purchased Radical Son, his autobiography first published in 1998.  Horowitz was a classic "red diaper" baby, raised from birth by his Jewish Communist parents to carry out the long-awaited revolution.

In a sense, it's a secular conversion story, but what sets it apart is the penetrating analysis of the mentality behind the politics of the New Left.  Marxism is a rival religion, not an economic or political program, which is why people who believe in it have a quasi-religious zeal.  Horowitz laid out very clearly that the reason why so many American Jews "lived like Episcopalians but voted like Puerto Ricans" was because the synagogue had been replaced by the Party committee room.

This is still true today.

Many people of his generation followed the same path, and American popular culture reflected this drift through TV shows like Family Ties, where a hippy couple end up with apolitical or even conservative children, all the while living the middle class lifestyle they once condemned.

Having found his new faith, he carried it forward with zeal, and it is interesting to note what while many 80s conservatives turned against Trump, he instead embraced him.

Horowitz was a minor influence on my intellectual development, but an important one.  The seeds planted by reading his paper in the dorm cafeteria took deep roots and have remained with me ever since.  May he rest in peace.

Old trade paperbacks are more than a good value; they're often a time capsule.  Yes, there's the text of the book, but the blurbs, the quotes from reviewers and even the advertisements in the back that really set it in a specific time and place.

I bought A Burnt-Out Case simply because I wanted to read more of Graham Greene.  I knew nothing about the book, but the pull-quote featured on the cover assured me that it was his best work.

Well, I've only read three of his books and, I think it's in third place.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it.  It's quite the page-turner and if I had been able to read it on a reliable basis, I would absolutely have gotten more out of it.  When you're reading a novel, taking days off at a time really disrupt the flow.

The plot is interesting if a bit contrived:  a famous Catholic architect grows tired of the world and seeks seclusion and meaning at a leper hospital in the Congo.  The title is derived from the name the doctors give to lepers who have lost all their fingers and toes and have become disease-free.  Such a person is a "burnt-out case," and it soon clear that the main character (known only as "Querry") is spiritually the same.

It is full of vivid description and Green's affectionate satire of Catholic clergy.  It starts slow, and picked up speed as it moves towards yet another unpredictable ending.  I appreciate Greene for that.  His endings are surprising, but never contrived.  They could have been "just so," but are not.  I'm looking forward to reading more of his work.

Over the weekend someone recommended this lengthy essay about mental illness in general and delusional behavior in particular.  It is a long, repetitive read, and the summary version is that an increasing number of people seem unable to deal with reality and resort to creating delusions as a way of avoiding reality.

I think there are two reasons why this kind of behavior is even possible.

The first, and probably the easiest to fix, is that we live in a secular society driven by materialism.  As the pandemic lockdown showed, most of our elites regard religion as a secondary thing rather than a first thing.  Religion to them is a form of self-help, fine so long as it doesn't challenge the secular materialist worldview.

This is why the UK feels it appropriate to ban prayers near abortion mills.  Prayer is not a human right, it's a thing you are permitted to do only if no one else objects (unless you are Muslim, of course).

Restoring religion - and in particular, Christianity - to its rightful place at the center of Western civilization has seemed like an insurmountable challenge, but we are now seeing a wide-ranging revival, in part because Christians have ceased trying to be "nice" and are returning to moral language and moral condemnation.

Surging Bible sales are another indicator that people feel the "faith of things" has failed.

To bow before God is to be humble and remain grounded.  Christianity teaches a rational and ordered worldview, and also that good people can - through no fault of their own - experience bad things.  The key is to understand why, to learn from them, and continue in the faith.  I will say that I am having the worst Lent of my life.  Between sickness, a painful medical procedure with lengthy recovery, and the normal fasting, I'm not having a good time.

On the other hand, I'm having a great time, because this is some serious Lenten suffering.  What a blessing to offer up all this misery to God!  I have taken so much for granted and as I heal, I rejoice in so many small things.

This leads us to the larger problem, which is that society is increasingly alienated from actual work, and our connection with the natural world has been severed.  The woman in the essay is a programmer, which means her labor has no direct connection to her pay.  She pushes buttons and gets (digital) money in return.

This is a far cry from tilling a garden and watching it crow, or raising livestock.  All of her relationships are built around an artificial Californian society that was built in a couple of generations without any roots or continuity.  It is no accident that Hollywood dwells so much on suburban alienation.  Few, if any, have the sense of rootedness one finds in middle America.

As the lockdowns slowly lifted, I went to northern Michigan and sat on the beach at Rogers City, watching waves come crashing into the shore via a strong north wind.  I sat there for about an hour, watching the sun set over a vast sky and darkening horizon.  The enormity of it all exposed how futile it is think that we are worth of CIA surveillance or trans-national hit teams.  In the greater scheme, we are as insignificant as one of the rocks on the shore, and as fleeting as a frothing wave.

When you are in the world, interacting with it, you become aware of how many other stories are taking place around you.  The prayer intentions at Mass sketch out other hardships, deaths and illnesses.  The baptismal announcements and weddings also point to new things emerging, seemingly spontaneously.  You didn't will them, had nothing to do with them, yet there they are.

For a time, people are able to function in the abstract, God-free environment, usually because they are preoccupied with building up their wealth and status.  They are worshipping the god of the two-car garage, and it can be quite fulfilling at first.

But after a while, the pursuit of things and status rings hollow and is no longer fulfilling.  Without any spiritual formation or connection to tangible things, the mind will start roving, seeking meaning in any way it can.

The author stresses that people can't be forced out of a delusion, but there are two answers to this.  The first is that one can't replace something with nothing - you cannot take away one vision without another to replace it.

In addition, modern American society has uniquely evolved to cater to these people through cheap transportation, easy movement, and our boundless affluence.  Whether one mooches off of wealthy relatives or exploits public assistance, it's remarkably easy to start over, and repeat the cycle without learning anything, and the essay shows this quite clearly.

The American obsession with individualism - even when it is deeply harmful - buttresses this.  We used to lock people up for their own good, but that became viewed as totalitarian.  It is now seen as better to tolerate sidewalk encampments than put people in supervised living where they do various chores to renew their understanding how work is connected to fulfilment, and labor can have a tangible, immediate result.

Society itself now labors under several delusions regarding fantastic Russian conspiracies, hidden Nazi cells, and the notion than men can actually become women.  These beliefs substitute for actual faith, and lead to still further fantastic notions that allowing one's lawn to grow wild in May will please Gaia or something.

And yes, there is a spiritual aspect to this as well, because demons love souls in torment.  The wrath and energy that comes with these delusions helps sustain them.  It is like a drug, and a great many people are addicted to it.

The upshot is that these people don't have a single thing go wrong, and many of them have multiple factors that drive them into insanity and keep them there.  Reason is useless, and in many cases I think an exorcist is more effective than a therapist.

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.

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.

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.