Chateau Lloyd

Five years ago, I almost died.

It was the Tuesday after Labor Day, and I was feeling awful.  The weekend started well, and I had a slight fever on Saturday, but by Sunday it had cleared up.

In the interim my kids managed to break first the washing machine (by overloading it) and then the dryer (by filling it with dripping wet clothes).  With school about to hit high gear, my wife implored me to fix the situati  Ion by Tuesday.

So that's what I did.  I went online, found a local store that had both machines in stock ordered them to be ready for same-day pickup, and set about dismantling the old ones and hauling them out of the basement.  That done, I picked up the replacements (which required two trips), and got them installed and running by 5 p.m.  

Not a bad day's work.

The next morning, I drove the kids to school, and I was not feeling well at all.  I'd already made up my mind to call in sick, but even driving was a strain.    My arms were tingling, my chest was tight, breathing was difficult and by the time I got home, there was an edge of darkness around my eyesight.  I laid down on the floor and suggested my wife might want to dial 911, which she did.

It wasn't a heart attack, though it presented as one.  It was instead an attack of myocarditis, an obscure affliction in those days before Covid "vaccines" spread it far and wide.  The ambulance crew was polite and professional, and I quickly rallied.  After every test imaginable over the next two days, no clear cause for the attack was established.  One of the nurses in the cardiac unit suggested it was a combination of physical exertion, general exhausting and whatever bug or virus I was fighting off.

It was during my convalescence that I began the research for Long Live Death and the pleasure (and success) of that project inspired me to write Walls of Men.

If nothing else, my literary output benefited from those extra five years.

I've also lived to see all my kids finish high school and welcome two wonderful grandchildren into the world.  I've lost a few friends along the way, made new ones, and reconnected with others.  My faith has grown by leaps and bounds, which is kind of surprising because I thought I was in a good place back then.

Maybe I was, but now I'm in a better one.

Death has its own schedule, and no society in history has expended so many resources and developed such extensive technological means to forestall its arrival.  And yet we also are craving it to a greater degree than ever before, murdering unborn babies, harvesting their best parts and encouraging the old, the disabled and the depressed to kill themselves.

It is something of a paradox.  The world is worse than it was five years ago, but maybe that was also necessary to people to return to God.  I notice Mass is filling back up with younger people.  The vocations in my area are strong and healthy.

As for me, I'm more attuned to my health, and have had to reluctantly accept that I'm not in my 30s anymore.  This is a realization that is also a paradox because knowledge of my limitations has made me more reasonable about getting word done and I stress less on things outside my control.

In any event, I think it's a good idea from time to time to pause and consider where we are and what else we could be doing.

Now that my schedule has loosened up a bit, I'm able to seriously think about writing.  The question then turns into what I should write?

After 11 books, I've covered many of the topics that have interested me.  Scorpion's Pass has scratched an itch from my college days, as have both Long Live Death and Walls of Men.  

Battle Officer Wolf got the whole authorship rolling, and it's got a sequel built into the original concept.

The Man of Destiny series allowed me to work out my Star Wars prequel hate and create a new universe of my own.

Similarly, Vampires of Michigan has the potential to be a franchise if I want do go that way.

Three Weeks with the Coasties was originally intended to be an introduction into semi-autobiographic writings on my military experience.

Finally, there's plenty of space for more game designs and even an update of Conqueror: Fields of Victory.

Given this vast amount of open terrain for creativity, why am I not using it?

The answer, I think, is boredom.  Having done a topic, I'm done with it.  I simply cannot relate to authors or filmmakers who want to constantly revisit their earlier work.

That being said, I'm now looking at things a little differently, and seeing if a story I'm turning over in my head might fit in an existing setting rather than needing a new one.

And yes, there is some commercial element to this as a new title will bring the older ones to the forefront and timed with a discount, could boost my sales.  However, since my motivation is pleasure rather than profit, this is not persuasive to me.

A better argument is that I enjoyed creating my characters and settings and revisiting them could be a fun way to tell new stories about people I haven't talked about in a while.  This is beginning to resonate with me.

American culture borrows heavily from the Puritan tradition, and it's so deeply embedded that even American Catholics have unconsciously absorbed a lot of its assumptions.

This wasn't always the case.  Catholics were once considered outside the American mainstream and targeted for persecution by the Protestant majority.  The "Blaine Amendments" which barred public funding of religious schools were an attempt to cripple Catholic education.  At that time public schools included religious instruction, and it was of course Protestant in nature.

When Catholics began to leave their cultural ghetto in the 1960s, their children quickly assimilated the American Protestant culture and its version of history.

In this telling, the Revolutionary War was about escaping from the sinister power of Rome and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.  The truth was radically different.

The Pilgrims, for example, were fleeing Anglican persecution, not Catholicism.  The Puritans took an ultra-scriptural approach to their theology to the extent that they banned Christmas because it was not explicitly written about in the Bible.

By the 18th Century, the British government was no longer hunting down Catholic priests and burning them, but Catholic subjects were confined to an inferior legal status.  Catholic Emancipation did not take place until 1829, and while the legal restrictions were removed, their remained (and still remains) a strongly anti-Catholic element in British society.

The Revolutionary War of course predated the Constitution, but many of the guarantees in the later document reflect wartime goals - the principles the Patriots were fighting for.

Thus, the Constitution's prohibition of religious tests to hold public office was a repudiation of current British law.

Aleteia has a timely piece on George Washington's friendly stance towards Catholics, and how - despite being a nominal member of the Church of England - he fully supported Catholic aspirations and even donated to the construction of a new Catholic church.

It was therefore an easy case to make for Catholics to actively support the American Revolution, which promised greater liberties for them than virtually any other group.

This episode not only offers additional reasons to admire the genuine greatness of our first president, but is a useful lesson in political pragmatism.  Instead of debating which candidate is more morally acceptable, it may be wiser to ask which one is more likely to leave you free to live out your faith in peace.

It's worth noting that the chief of staff for the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War was Gen. Vincente Rojo, a practicing Catholic whose armies busied themselves in destroying churches and slaughtering clergy.  Whatever his personal belief, he was actively fighting against the Church.

Yeah, it's a meme, but it's also true.  I recently started re-reading Evelyn Waugh's Helena, a small book about the saintly mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (who is revered as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church).

It's a short book, easy to read, and Waugh's central conceit is to treat it as his "smart set" books and have people use the current vernacular. 

Waugh considered it his best book and was hurt by its poor reception and low sales.  It's not uncommon for others to favor their less successful books.  I suppose I'm somewhat of an exception because Long Live Death is both my biggest seller and my favorite work.

I'll do a full review when I finish, but until then I will note that the book has me once more reaching into my Roman reference library and contemplating that long-vanished world that nevertheless left all manner of monuments and important works.

Put simply, if you aren't thinking  of the Roman Empire, you aren't thinking at all.

Last week the trailer for a new installment of the Assassins Creed franchise came out.  I'm familiar with the game, though I've never played it.  Anyhow, my understanding is that it uses the Knight Templars as some sort of ancient conspiracy against their arch-enemies and assassins are good, Templars bad, or whatever.   I'm quite the fan of Umberto Eco's Templar conspiracy tour-de-force, Focault's Pendulum, which I'm sure was at least some of the inspiration for the franchise.

Anyway, the new release is set in Japan, a first for the series, and people were naturally looking forward to actual samurai and ninjas duking it out.  Instead, the titular character is an African samurai, which has a lot of people scratching their heads.

Apparently, there is a mention of an African man reaching Japan during the tumultuous 16th Century.  The actual person was the servant of a Jesuit missionary and a Japanese warlord took an interest in him, taking him into his service as a page or manservant.

To put it another way, he wasn't an actual samurai.  

But facts mean nothing to modern social justice motivated scholars, and so the game publishers are digging in on the "authenticity" of their game.  Some are citing African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan as the authoritative source.  The book has hugely positive ratings, but that's meaningless in terms of whether or not it is actual history.

Long-time friends of this blog will know that when I dug into the Spanish Civil War, I found plenty of "respected" sources that spouted provable lies.  Antony Beevor is - for some strange reason - considered a respectable historian despite his blatant bigotry and complete disregard of the facts.

That tissue of lies has a very positive rating despite being filled with hot garbage, and I noticed that critical reviews of that Yasuke book echo my own audit of Beevor.

To put it another way, there is zero proof that this Yasuke was a samurai, but bigoted Western authors have decided that he was one, and that's that.

At the start of this dispute, both Encyclopedia Britannic and Wikipedia were skeptical of the samurai claims, but once the signal was given both sources rewrote their entries to conform to the new narrative.  They both went full George Orwell.  Never go full George Orwell.

The core problem with this transparent re-writing of history is that it convinces no one.  Skeptics will become more skeptical while fence-sitters will be turned off by the sudden about-face.  The true believers will parrot whatever is given them, which further strengthens the skeptical arguments.

Put simply, it is self-defeating, destroying the authority of once-respected institutions in return for ephemeral short-term gains.  This seems to be the hallmark of our age.

What makes this all so pathetic is that all this revisionism is being done in the service of a video game, one that has already generated overwhelmingly negative responses.  The various authorities that whored themselves out for this endeavor will see zero return on their investment.  Their best-case scenario is for some tech mogul to get a little bit more wealthy for a little while.

Meanwhile, the prestige of Western scholarship will suffer irreparable damage.  

At this point, I'm good with that.  Modern academics are nothing more than credentialed imbeciles.  Indeed, when challenged, they always resort to asserting their authority rather than providing actual evidence.  The faster this corruption is exposed and destroyed, the better for everyone.

My generation grew  up with a very legalistic, regulated view of war.  As a consequence, I don't think many people understand how utterly raw and lawless war actually is.

In the various contemporary conflicts I see accusations of "war crimes," and with that the expectation that some sort of authority will show up and hand out tickets.  It reminds me of nothing so much as complaining to teacher.

But as William T. Sherman observed more than a century ago, war is cruelty.  Efforts to soften it, "civilize" it or regulate it rarely succeed.  Indeed, the past few decades have illustrated that the more rules are put in place, the more they are bent and twisted to permit what are always considered to be necessary acts.

What really regulates the conduct of war is reciprocity - the understanding that escalation will produce a retaliatory response.  While in many ways more savage than the First World War, WW II did not see the widespread use of poison gas for this reason.  Neither side perceived it as conferring an advantage, so neither used it in anything other than isolated situations (I'm thinking mostly of Japan vs China.)

For the last few decades, wars involving Western nations have never reached the existential levels achieved during World War II.  This has led to a certain level of complacency and the assumption is that Western nations must always observe the laws of war even if the enemy conspicuously does not.  The result is usually military defeat, but one without serious consequences.

This "by the book" mentality also assumes victory is not necessary, and that "managing" the conflict is enough.

But when the stakes become higher, the old rules of reciprocity come back, and it's interesting to note that all of the agreements respecting laws of war were originally based on this principle.  If the enemy uses hospitals as ammunition dumps, they cease to be protected areas.  If the enemy refuses to wear uniforms, that the line between military and civilian is likewise eliminated.

No amount of international condemnation or hand-writing by various non-governmental organizations will change this.

Not all wars are savage, and in both of my books, I noted instances of remarkable restraint and mercy, but such things are the exception rather than the rule.

Oh, and the notion that enemy populations have a "human right" to food?  Utterly without historical foundation.  The oldest - and arguably most effective - siege tactic is starvation.  At some point, the garrison either submits or is too weak to resist.  Food has always been a weapon since the days of the hunter-gatherers.  It would be well for people to understand this.

From the moment I saw the first trailer for Civil War, I knew I was not going to watch it.  Instead, I'm going to do an anti-review on it.

What is an anti-review?  It's where I explain why I refused to see a movie that should otherwise be very interesting to me.  This is a great example, because it seems to have many of the elements I like in a film.

For one thing, it's about conflict, and I love war movies.  It's also about civil war, revolution, and political collapse, themes I've used in my novels and of course I've written a book about the Spanish Civil War (Long Live Death) and my military history of China (Walls of Men), has lots of rebellions and civil wars in it.

So why am I skipping this film?  Because it is so incredibly stupid.

Some folks have picked on the setting, i.e. Texas and California teaming up.  I actually don't have a problem with that.  For one thing, there's ample precedent for rivals to join against a common enemy.  Heck, Catholic France rallied to the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years' War.

The scenario was purportedly made that way to focus on the characters' stories rather than the political side.   Which is fine.  If you want to just focus on how war affects people, you can pretty much block out the cause and just focus on people trying to get by.

I think one could make a great story about how civil war would affect hospital workers who are forced into treating casualties or conscript soldiers who are now fighting their countrymen and don't fully grasp why.

The problem is that the heroes are journalists, who are supposed to immerse themselves in these things.  Indeed, journalism is now the most political profession outside actual politics.  So to pretend they're "just following the story" is stupid.

The next layer of stupidity is the characters themselves.  There are no "war correspondents" anymore.  They vanished decades ago.  Martha Gellhorn died in 1998.  The notion that there is still some famous woman journalist documented war passed its expiration date 30 years ago.  The characters may as well be relying on chemical film and using phone booths to communicate.  It's stupid.

Similarly, the emphasis on still photography is stupid.  No one uses still photography in war zones, they stream video.  Writer/Director Alex Garland is lost in a world that no longer exists and died by the time he hit age 30.

His notion of how war works is similarly stupid, and clearly shaped by his work on zombie films.  Indeed, he can't get out of that frame of thinking, resorting to the usual trope of having abandoned vehicles on the highway.

But this isn't a zombie outbreak.  Highways are crucial to keeping people fed and clothed.  If a highway is bombed or strafed, people will fix it and scrap or strip the damaged vehicles.

Similarly, he has the whole order/chaos thing exactly backwards.  He shows that the closer one gets to the battlefront, the more organized things are, even down to neat little tent encampments.

No.  That is stupid.  The closer you get the front, the more chaotic things become, and no modern army builds camps like that.  This isn't 1860, it's a time when cheap drones can fly and bomb tidy little camps like that with almost no warning.

And this isn't secret knowledge, either.  Fighting in Ukraine has been going on for more than year.  Maybe he should leave his zombie bubble.

It is in the rear areas that you have order, as the new government is put in place, and people pick up and carry on as best they can.  Garland has the twisted Hollywood version of American in his mind, where everyone between the coasts is just a bunch of bloodthirsty rubes waiting to kill each other.  It's not like that at all, but he's too stupid to know it.

I'm actually losing interest in typing out all the stupidity because there is just so much of it, so I'm just going to finish with the example of the militia guy who shoots the journalist because he's not American.

This scene is stupidly stupid.  It is a towering monument of stupid, covered with a stupid gloss and shining under stupid clouds.  

Why?  Because no militia person would ever walk around with red shades and only a single magazine in his weapon.  Garland knows no actual gun owners, and has no idea how combat works.  Even people with zero military experience understand that you need a canteen, first aid kit, extra ammo and gear to carry it all.  The dweeb he has standing there is someone who literally cannot exist in gun culture. 

"Hey Bob, cover that road with only 20 rounds and be sure not to wear a hat so you can get sunstroke."

"What if I get thirsty?"

"It's only for this one scene."

Okay, I'm done now.  It's too stupid to go on.

I guess calling everyone who disagreed with you a Nazi isn't working out, so the new hotness is "Christian Nationalism," or even "White Christian Nationalism."

Yes, it's all about politics, which bores me to death, but I am interested in the theological aspect of this - which is to say, the multiple contradictions in the label.

The first is the business about being "white."  I suppose there may be some isolated corners of Christendom that still appeal to the old heresy about non-white people being the Children of Cain or eternally cursed, but they are on the outer edge of the most distant fringe of the faith.

The only large-scale denomination I know of that adhered to this was the Church of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons.  I believe there were some American Baptist sects that did in the 19th Century, but American Protestantism has long been a confusing swirl of various denominations that splinter, recombine, and then split again, and it's hard to keep track.

In any rate, it's an archetypal straw man, a scandalous libel that is easily dismissed by serious people, but since its purpose is to reassure the wavering Yard Sign Calvinists, it won't go away anytime soon.

If there was a kernel of truth in the white smear, there's no substance whatsoever in the concept of a Christian Nationalism.   This should be blindingly obvious to anyone who has ever even glanced at the ecumenical movement.

Even within the various denominations there is spirited disagreement.  How can one form a monolithic Christian state when even the Catholic Church is absorbed with internal doctrinal debates?  The same is true in Protestant circles, with major denominations roiled by controversy over how much sexual deviancy is acceptable and female ordination.

There can be no Christian Nationalism because there is no "Christian Nation."

This is the sort of hysteria that moves people to dress like characters from The Handmaid's Tale, folks who are likely blissfully unaware that the dystopian world of the novel (and TV show) is already here, courtesy of the Democrats, who even now are pushing hard to further normalize the buying and selling of human infants.   I guess mothers for hire (or human incubators) are super-bad when there's a religious element, but compassionate and necessary when used to farm out babies to gay couples.

It is possible that Christian Nationalism is supposed to indicate a fear that there might be Christians who also love their country, though - based on military recruiting numbers - this group seems to be getting smaller by the day.

Is Nationalism a Biblical virtue?  Absolutely.  It is rooted in the Ten Commandments: "Honor thy father and thy mother."  This not only covers respecting them while they are alive but also retaining their customs and culture after they are gone.  

When one mocks one's ancestors, denounces their language, heritage, and casts down their monuments, this commandment is being broken. 

The Bible is the story of a people that becomes a nation, and nowhere in Christian theology is there an admonition to cast aside one's culture and worship commerce, or innovation.

It is a mark of the strange state of the world where loving one's country is now considered subversive and sinister, where honoring one's ancestors is bigoted and reprehensible.

But there we are.

Upon reflection, this isn't that new.  G.K. Chesterton was commenting on it a century ago.  It's just yet another recycled heresy.

If we want to go even deeper, the same situation rose in Republican Spain, where churches were attacked and clergy lynched (even their graves were desecrated) and of course Communist China unleashed the Cultural Revolution that went much farther.  The Killing Fields of Cambodia is the ultimate embodiment of this nihilist belief.

The label is clearly a smear, but also partly cover for people who actually want to erase both Christianity and the nations.  As to what will replace them, I don't think even they know. Remember, Yard Sign Calvinism is never about results.  The pose is the point.

Still, it is interesting to note that the Chinese Communist Party is now ardently promoting nationalism.  I won't hold my breath for columns warning of Marxist Nationalism, but it's both more real and more lethal than White Christian Nationalism.

And yes, I am aware that there are people who are saying "Yes, it exists and it's a good thing!"  This is of a piece with my previous posts about people defending the Confederacy.  There will always be people trying to profit from a hot take on something.

As a practical matter, however, the term exists to discredit what used to be healthy, normal attitudes towards one faith and country.  Pretending it is some sort of radical new thing is nonsense.

Yesterday we hosted a modest gathering by historical standards, but it was a welcome change from the lingering isolation of the pandemic.

In addition to the benefit of companionship, I like having people over because it acts as a spur to clean up the place.  It's easy to get complacent about the state of one's home.  So long as the kitchen sink is clear and the toilets aren't covered in grime, it's all good, right?

No.  I think the accumulation of dust and disorderliness can be felt, even if it isn't consciously seen.  So much stuff get set down here or there and then forgotten and finally buried.  It's nice to clear all that out and replace year-old papers with a plate of snacks.

That's somewhat my feeling about 2023 - it wasn't so much about starting new things as much as clearing out old ones.  While my retirement date was set at the end of 2022, it was not until mid-April that the wrangling with the Air Force was completed.  Only then did I receive my packet, certificates and formal notification.

Similarly, June saw the end of two decades of having kids in school.  I'm finally off the district email list.

Of course, Walls of Men published earlier this year, and due to the current domestic situation, I haven't been able to start anything new.  Walls of Men was something of a commercial disappointment to me.  I figured China's military history was a much more compelling topic than the Spanish Civil War, but I was wrong.

With books being out of reach, I've cranked out quite a few columns for Bleeding Fool, and these are getting more engagement, no doubt a function of their frequency and topics.

While I try to be hopeful and optimistic, I look forward to the coming year with a certain sense of dread.  Politics hold no interest for me, and our electoral system is breaking down.  I've little confidence that it will hold up to the strain.

That being said, God is the prime mover in all of this, and I will continue to work in deepening my prayer life and giving all of my trust over to Him.

Given the age and popularity of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, I don' think there is a lot to add other than an angle I'm pretty sure most people aren't aware of: the influence of the Spanish Civil War on the film.

Yes, it is well known that the climactic three-way duel was filmed in cemetery set aside for war dead, but there are enough features that - knowing more about the conflict than I did when I last watched the film - influence is very clear.

Perhaps the most obvious example is the way the war it portrayed.  The armies on both sides in what was at the time the Far West were little more than volunteer bands, not well-equipped and disciplined armies.  Artillery was scarce, and the war was waged as a series of raids.  Static, attritional combat was simply impossible to sustain.

By contrast, Spain did have sectors of the front that were located in the wilderness but that nevertheless saw continuous low-grade fighting.  The bridge sequence in particular is instructive.  The Union fortifications are extensive and rely extensively on sandbags - unknown in the American Civil War, but common in Spain. 

When Tuco and Blondie tell The Captain they wish to volunteer, his incredulous reaction is also instructive.  Apart from the early months of the war, when volunteers flocked to Anarchist battalions or joined the Falange, both armies in Spain rapidly settled into conscription as the primary means of recruitment.

By contrast, conscripts made up only a tiny portion of the respective armies in the American Civil War, and certainly none would have been sent to a place where desertion would be so easy.

Though they represented the government, the Union troops are clearly modeled on the Nationalists, with strict discipline in dress and movement and it's not much of a stretch that the "blue coats" were seen as Blue Shirts (Falange) to the Spanish crew, who portrayed them accordingly. 

Probably the most obvious example is the backstory given to Tuco when he meets his brother.  It is imply not credible that someone growing up in the west would have no options other than banditry or the priesthood.  This was an era of tremendous population movement, and new settlements were emerging all along the frontier.  Sergio Leone's imagining of the American west as dilapidated and forlorn is iconic, but also inaccurate.

It is, however, what was going on in rural Spain during that time period.  Deprived of opportunity, young people flocked to the cities to find factory work, and many were radicalized by Anarchism and Communism.  That simply was not true in America.

There are other tidbits of course, such as random indirect-fire shelling (unknown in the US, common in Spain) and of course the rope-wrapped wine bottles in place of whiskey or beer.

It's still a great film, and seeing the American Civil War through Spanish lenses provides an interesting take on the conflict.

And the music is outstanding.