Essays in Idleness

That conversations are taking place, throughout nature, and not only between the water buffalo (see penultimate post), is among the self-evident matters I am still young enough to understand — although not always to translate, from one species to another. For conversations involve nuance. This not only gives native speakers an unfair advantage, but one has to be present to get the joke, as it were. And one has to be listening, carefully, as well as being the creature for whom the language was designed, to grasp the poetics.

Amusingly, the “artificial intelligence” machinists have made some conspicuous discoveries while decoding the symphony of acoustic details with which the air is filled, when avians are communicating. Crows, ravens, jays, magpies, are among the most plentifully intelligent — far more than the bipedal “liberals” — and can best be studied with their cooperation, rather than by insulting or boring them, for instance by compiling statistics, &c. For, unlike liberals, they have dignity, and should be respected.

I learned, many years ago, that crows observe periods of mourning for fallen friends and family, and assemble for the inquests. I was once embarrassingly “mobbed” by crows, in Victoria, B.C., when I was understandably mistaken as the killer of a fledgling, which had suddenly and mysteriously perished, near my feet. It was thanks to the crows’ ability to describe me, that my alleged guilt was broadcast to the other crows, all over the town, together with details of my dress, comportment, smoking habits, facial expressions, &c. Though probably unable to kill me in revenge, I could at least be driven off Vancouver Island. The confinement of my understanding was entirely limited to me, who had never flocked with a “murder” or “parliament” of crows. For we lack the subtleties, in our senses five, to follow the proceedings in any crow investigation. We cannot even remain still for long enough, or endure a crow’s cross-examination.

On some other channel, you may find a little more information about this. But what I have to say is that, no matter how well-intentioned, you, as a human with your clownish ears, will never be able to follow the incredible procession of caws and clicks that are employed in crow conversation.

They are impressive even when restaurant reviewing, as I discovered when putting out food for them when I lived in Kingston, Ontario. Their leading gourmandess came to visit, promptly, but alone, whenever I put something out. I would listen to her detailed judgements, from the other side of a window, from which she knew I never threatened to pounce. Sometimes the proffered food was rejected, with a definitive, contemptuous phrase: “Unnecessarily exotic,” she might say. “Only a human would eat this.”

Now, the education system for their young (they had a school that met on the grass in Artillery Park, just across the street) put all our progressive scholarship to shame. For we classify everything fashionably into degrees of “Left” and “Right” — whereas the crows, like other intelligent birds, know that the categories are rather “Right” and “Wrong.”

“God, I hate white people,” I declared upon arriving at a weekly conference with my respected priest, in recent antiquity. Father smiled indulgently. “I know what you mean,” he contributed.

He went to his death, during the Batflu, sharing most of my more settled prejudices. Both of us were convinced that Canadians have gone quite degenerate, and that reactionary immigrants offered the only relief. Certainly, that’s the only place we can look for Catholics. I proposed that we should recognize this fact, while restoring Christianity to the wind-whistled wastes. We could establish a “Right of Involuntary Return,” for Canadians suspected of voting Liberal, or N.D.Pee. This would create enough confusion to make our deportations run smoothly. The deportees would enjoy the same rights as uncollected bottles to the Liquor Control Board. Where we would send the empties, no one need ask.

Or perhaps we could call it the “Recycling Act.”

I was thinking this again over last weekend when millions of aging, baby-boom, white people were demonstrating at the “No Kings” event, across the U.S.A. Some of them were dancing, even at the risk of a fall. Some media estimated that 90 percent of the participants were white, which means it was probably closer to 100 percent.

While my prejudice is chiefly racial, my bias includes a generational aspect. I began to distrust the “baby-boomers” when I was (innocently, I insist) an under-aged baby-boomer myself, and have retained my baby-boom-o-phobia ever since. But as for “the kids today,” I might easily forgive them. For, to be generous, they still have a chance to grow up. And many of them were raised by typical baby-boom, irresponsible parents. Whereas, the contemporary baby-boomers have, by now, discarded their chances. They have all “matured,” and cannot possibly expect forgiveness. Surely, it is time they were returned.

My proposal to the superintendent of my building, to keep a goat on the balcony of the High Doganate, has met with the usual bureaucratic resistance, and so I am compelled to buy milk at the corner store, where only over-packaged and over-priced commercial milk is available. This is subject to a different regulating authority, but frankly, I do not think a dairy cow would be any more welcome, or comfortable, suspended 99 feet in the air. Dairy cows are, in my limited bovine experience, not to be criticized for this, however. They are a tranquil, and kindly, though not a sentimental, beast; if unpredictable during a panic.

In a more perfect world, however, I could have a water buffalo, or perhaps a pair so they could entertain each other, by telling stories about us behind our backs and (since I am earnestly pro-life) starting a family. I speak of the beloved Bubalus bubalis, or domestic water buffalo, not the wild Bubalus armee, nor any of the ferals, for whose behaviour I cannot knowledgeably speak.

As a child near Lahore, one of these creatures, under the influence of religion I suspect, almost ran me over. I sympathized, for she had been turning a Persian wheel (a wellhead task normally reserved to a draft horse or donkey), and must have been lethally bored. A Thai water (or “swamp”) buffalo, on the other hand, has a more exciting intellectual life; she can understand language and reason — one may tell her “thaad” and “thoon“; or yodel to the dispersed brother-and-sisterhood, as they do in Indonesia.

Still, my purpose in keeping a water buffalo “carabao” would be to milk her, which can be done non-controversially except immediately after she has calved. The milk is much richer in fat and protein than that out of a mere dairy cow. Moreover, the beast(ess) is not subject to dairy board regulations in Canada, so one may legally hide her away from over-curious bureaucrats. This is important to know, for in our movement back to the land we must start somewhere. Only later in the operation will we be neutralizing the government agents.

To return to my celebration of Donald Trump — and why not, it gets a rise out of people — I actually disagree with the man on approximately nine out of ten questions of public policy. However, I disagree with his adversaries even more, and to clinch the matter, I love his brave, waggish humour, and his thrilling, “braggadocio” charm. He rules, largely, by giving affront, and it is those to whom he offers this service who are most indebted to him, for by rendering them powerless, he is saving them from the eternal fire they deserve to be pitched into.

Which is to say, perhaps his largest single achievement, is his overthrow of the scientific ochlocracy. (Peace is nice, but seldom lasts.) Faced with the mob that was costing the society of the West countless billions then trillions, in climate mitigation (“ninety-seven percent of scientists agree”), he did not waste our time further, but rather sounded an angelic trumpet — a deafening tootle over the whole affair. The enemy disintegrates, not only in the United States, but in Canada and Europe, too, as the bewildered masses ensorcell what I first smoaked about thirty years ago, i.e. that we were dealing with a scam, which, like every other audacious swindle in history, was designed to fill depraved pockets with tax money, or equivalent. What perhaps made it special was the extraordinary scale on which this diddle was performed.

Still, “climate change” makes relatively modest claims on our lives, minds, and pocketbooks (compared, for instance, to Islam). And as I say, it is already passing, as things do pass, when they are met by men who defend the truth boldly, and will suffer a few martyrs. Our ochlocratic rulers — the smug mandarin elites above the mob — have not killed nearly as many as their predecessors through the centuries, and those only indirectly. This is perhaps because, before their time, civilization had “progressed” so far, as a Liberal might argue. Whereas, I think that climate scaremongers are, as we used to say in the colloquial, “pussies.” Now, happily enough, their threat is evaporating.

But our foe will be back for more.

Never declare Peace when you are up against the Devil.

It seems that I am pulled down, or sucked up, by “events,” in these essays. I try hard to keep away from them, and to the Buddhist customs of Yoshida no Kaneyoshi, whom the reader may know by his nom-de-pimceau, as Kenko. My mistake may have been not to move into an isolated cabin in the mountains, in which to write my short, insignificant pieces (and paste them harmlessly on the walls); and instead to have cut-and-pasted them into the Internet. Also, to be entirely candid with the reader, I am not a Buddhist monk. But as I have endeavoured to show, “relevance is irrelevant,” and one should have little to say until that moment when one becomes permanently silent.

The Internet is such a loud and offensive source of mindless relevance; and interrupted constantly by advertisements to keep everyone teased, distracted, and worried.

I was reminded, this morning, while consulting Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man. This work exhibits a serene proclivity to coherence; to be brilliantly reasoned, and irrefutable, &c. But no one can take it seriously, as a guide to life and letters, or even as a reminder to brew a pot of tea. This is because it has grown unfashionable, like most other things made too widely available.

Like Pope, Donald Trump is an Anglo-humanist and gentle Jacobite — as we see after adjusting our eyes. Nothing he presents or recommends is a novelty, not even the peace treaties, or the return to sanity and good manners, including non-violence. Had he not been previously enmired in commerce and politics, he, too, might have chosen a life of retirement; it is a tragedy to be known. Let us at least avoid fame and ostentation.

More particularly, we require an heroic effort not to be captured by “events.” No good can possibly come of it. Of course, one may choose to be martyred, in good time, when the chance arises; but to leap at the opportunity to achieve anything by death is to pursue hard relevance, to the end.

It is to be vulgarly topical, frankly.

Well, it could have been worse for Trump. He might easily have won a Nobel Prize. That would have been so utterly distasteful.

Two years have now passed since the gratuitous slaughter of huge numbers of Jews, and many others, by psychotic Mussulmans from Gaza — who had to physically invade southern Israel because the Jews living in Gaza had already been evicted. It is argued, by our “liberal” Left, that many of these hateful people might not have been supporters of the slaughter, but in the pictures taken by Hamas photographers of the terrorists’ homecoming after they had committed these monstrous deeds, it is obvious that the whole population of Gaza was enthusiastically participating. (“Not every German was a Nazi,” the leftoids argue, but categorically, the Gazans had earned what was coming to them.) Now, thanks to imaginative interventions by Netanyahu and Trump, there is some prospect that the Palestinians can be neutralized, and that Hamas and Hezbollah will both be made extinct. Arabs at large, throughout the Middle East, have realized that Israel should be left alone. For the “Zionists” are able to defend themselves. Egypt, for instance, knows how foolish it would be to admit even a single “Palestinian refugee,” though it is hard to imagine where else he might go. (Perhaps “repatriate” him, to revolutionary Iran?)

I wish that Canada, too, and all Western countries, would show such prudence as Egypt has displayed.

It is difficult to insist that something is unknowable, especially when there is constant theorizing about it, and speculation is never relaxed. There must be an answer, some believe, with an earnest, misplaced faith, and unsearchable assumptions, within a fenced enclosure of time. If they “follow the science” (ho-ho!), they will of course get nowhere, because in our understanding science and mathematics were constructed by men; whereas, in the objective spirit of Aristotle, even when knowledge comes from deep within ourselves (as the laws do), they must be discovered. That anything can be known, at all, is the consequence of God’s willing; and in this we find our security.

The reader may think I am a believing Catholic, and I am, but should confess that in at least this one respect I am inclined to be a Coptic Christian, whimsically sprung out of Hellenistic reasoning. With Clement of Alexandria, I understand that the world was not created in time; that time came to be with all that it contains; and that it is perhaps spread, like space, over greater (or lesser) distances than the number of light years our cosmo-physicists have counted. So it may be in a sense finite, and yet infinite, having no definite edge, but is everywhere, wherever it extends. Therefore, in time, we cannot find its beginnings. It does not have a before nor an after, nor befores nor afters except within itself. It cannot have an age for, as it says in the second beuk of Peter, a day is as a thousand years with the Lord, and a thousand years as a day. Note, in the beuk of Genesis, that the word “day” is used in quite a few different senses.

I was first introduced to Clement while visiting Alexandria-by-Egypt, a quarter-century ago, having known of him only by reputation as a theologian and philosopher occasionally in bad odour with Rome, rather like his younger contemporary Origen — an even more breathtaking Alexandrian spectacle.

Another Clement, of Alexandria — a young Scotsman working for the archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur in Alexandria at the turn of the present century — performed the intoduction. Too, I found a crumbling copy of the Butterworth (Loeb) edition of the former Clement among the rubbish in an antique emporium of that city. Ah, those were the days.

That triad of triads — the Nine Worthies of medieval antiquity, from Hector and Alexander to Godfrey of Bouillon (three pagans, three Jews, and three Christians, to whom Falstaff was added by Doll Tearsheet in Shakespeare) — are not celebrated today. We must relearn that, without historical characters much larger than life, our own little lives will shrink smaller.

Charlemagne, one of those Nine Worthies, presided over the Carolingian Renaissance in the VIIIth and IXth centuries, and was among the transformative hinges by which the ancient, or classical, was turned into the mediaeval and modern order of Europe. He is thus a knife edge between ancient and modern: the great conqueror of his age, but too, among the signal guides in the formation of Christendom. The monasteries were already being founded and equipped, the prayers being said, but as Charles told Abbot Baugulfus, they would have to become secular training centres, too. For while his bureaucrats might have the odd clever idea, their Latin was appalling and they could not think lucidly on parchment. They were inelegant. Nor could they read Scripture adequately, in this ignorance, until elegant literacy filled their veins.

The revival of art, and especially of literary art, underpinned the Emperor’s new order. For another dimension of this rekindled beauty was escape, from the fanaticism of the East — from the war between iconoclasts and iconodules that had waylaid Byzantium, retreating before the violent new Antichristical religion of Islam. Charles realized that both extremes were wrong: that what icons were and what icons were not could be found in the Christian dispensation.

It was from this wisdom that the achievements of Romanesque and Gothic followed in the West; and that orthodoxy, in the sense of right belief, could return to the East.

One might look upon our Catholic heritage as uncommonly lucky. Instead, Our Lord intervened, through the King of the Franks. One must however see, how terribly unlucky we will become, if we let barbarism return (rape, pillage, decollation) through Mussulman immigration.

Bitumen would be among my favourite hydrocarbons, for it is a leading constituent of oil sands, and petroleum seeps, which I am determined to cheer on. It is the seeps, especially, that remind us that God created our beautiful world — for as Isaiah said, “Look, He made it to be inhabited!” — and stocked it with everything we could ever need, including many gifts we haven’t opened yet, that will prove necessary in the future. Verily, He, in friendship, left it to us to develop the principles of refining, and purification, and the various receipts and techniques by which things glorious in themselves may be made even better. (Praise the Lord!)

Bitumen gets called asphalt over here in America, including Canuckistan. It is the cousin of crude oil. But whereas the oil flows freely, bitumen is sticky and slow like molasses. It is used mostly as a binder, combined with crushed stone, gravel, sand, and probably microplastics, in different combinations, and spread over roads, race courses, tennis courts, parking lots, aeroplane runways, flattish roofs, &c. I have tried to find the proportion of the world that is wrapped in asphalt, but there does not seem to be a reliable figure. It must be less than 29 percent, as the oceans haven’t been paved over yet; but 20 percent? 25?

Plants do not grow under asphalt covering, but through it, as I have observed. Happily, an increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is now encouraging them.

But I think my proposed universal land speed limit (see previous Idlepost), which would leave our bureaucrats ticketing horses and cheetahs (a purpose for them, at last!) also makes most of these smooth driving surfaces unnecessary. Agreed, for environmental reasons, we should burn off more of our oil supply. But perhaps, with advances in rocket science, we could do most of it far away from our planet.

The widow, Erika Kirk, made a fine demonstration of her Christianity, when forgiving the (alleged) murderer of her husband, during his memorial in Glendale, Arizona, last Sunday.

Typically, you cannot find this simple information in Google or in any other mass electronic site, without exposing yourself to a stinking shitload of vicious, left-wing propaganda, that already clogs the seemingly infinite toilet of the Internet. Not only our children, but everyone, is brainwashed in this way. Fortunately, a few are not easily brainwashed, and maintain the Socratic habit of thinking for themselves.

It is like trying the prompt, “Israel,” in search of impartial news, and finding that both Google and the AI suppliers of virtually all current information, are programmed to rely upon the pro-terrorist news platform, Al Jazeera. It is because “artificial intelligence” is circulating everywhere that you get obvious lies, and “hallucinations,” presented as the truth, from formerly trusted sources. There are alternatives, if one searches more patiently, but one will have to know a great deal about the subject to guess where to look for them. The principle “garbage in, garbage out” applies, strictly, here as well as elsewhere.

Moreover, Jew-hating is “settled science” throughout the soi-disant “educated” classes, and will be for the foreseeable future, wherever it goes unopposed.

But how to oppose anything, and boldly defend decency, without killing the purveyors of “fake news”? For Christ did not propose to slay anyone. Nor, without proper judicial procedures, may we execute or even imprison malefactors. Christians, including Catholics, may own guns, but are instructed only to use them selectively and, as it were, dispassionately.

There is, however, no restriction on telling the truth. All it requires is bravery. This is why it has been protected in all Western legal codes, that were formed in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Criminals, of course, may not obey these codes, but that is what makes them “criminals,” in addition to liberal and progressive. Indeed, in this culture, as well as any other whether Christian or not, a person like Charlie Kirk may be shot, for persistently telling the truth.

His widow may forgive the killer, as her husband certainly would have done, and others in the activist heritage of Christ; and yet the court cases would still proceed, towards securing legitimate convictions, and the wicked man be hanged or whatever, despite this Christian advice. This is because our laws follow another Western eccentricity. We reach a capital judgment on the basis of what we discern to have actually happened, as opposed to anyone’s feelings about what happened, no matter how sincere.

(This, in opposition to the modern pagan procedure of reaching a quick nominal conclusion according to whether the supposed crime is considered “icky” enough.)

We are not, after all, desert savages, and our commitment to biological life is, also resembling Christ’s, not without thoughtful exceptions.

For the human soul is immortal, regardless whether it becomes biologically defunct. It must live forever; which is why it is prudent to avoid the eternal fire.

Since the Left insists that their violent Antifa organizations do not exist, but are the product of an overactive right-wing imagination, Antifa members will not object when we propose to exterminate them. Indeed, as we are Christian, we might take the trouble of formally hanging them for actual crimes, one by one, or use other considerate techniques to compound their non-existence, just as we might do with Communists, perverts, or the Italian Fascisti, after we have grown tired of imagining them.

Verily, who has been doing all the loud shouting on their behalf, or designing their placards and propaganda? “They” (these annoying non-existents) claim to have existed at least since the 1930s, fighting the Nazis who were then flourishing in Germany, so that my Spitfire-flying papa and his gung-ho military friends were all fighting alongside them. However, my papa did not recall ever seeing them, before himself peacefully retiring from this existence (in 2008).

I dreamily wonder, who has been writing their psychotic demands, and who composed their uncirculated manual, Mein Anti-kampf, later in the publishing season of 1925? Perhaps we might ask the Antifa funders and enablers to tell us where they have been hiding, since then. I, for one, would like to hunt them down with numerous, fanciful, armed policemen.

____________

POSTSCRIPTUM. — In truth, Antifa was not founded in another century; this was merely its conceit. It was actually a product of the Obama presidency, like Black Lives Matter and various other radically demented, viciously evil, entities.

It is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year of 5786, or MMMMM.DCC.LXXXVI in Roman numerals, since I don’t know how to get a vinculum (overline) in this typesetting programme, and Donald Knuth doesn’t take emails. It is the first of the High Holidays, a day for sounding the ram’s horn, or shofar — to “Blow Up the Trumpet in Zion,” as we used to sing in Anglican. Henry Purcell’s glorious anthem was, however, written less than thirty-five decades ago. Some things are recent, some things are not.

For us — the people of God, and the Christians also in succession to the Jews — the Hebrew Yom Teruah is a prophecy of judgement, a call to repentance and thus of preparation for the life to come. In our seasonal calendar it falls near Michaelmas — the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels — the day on which fall terms used to begin. It is indeed a day of divine glory, but of ends as well as beginnings. That is the curious thing about the biblical revelation. The Bible — three-quarters of which is Old Testament — tells a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It does not, like other official texts, drone on forever, but has been thorough all the same, omitting trivialities. It makes us familiar with the boundaries of Heaven and Hell in this fallen world, and with the presence of angels and demons. The trumpet blast is, too, the sound of our warning.

The many — apparently millions — who are coming to religious practices for the first time, in America and around the world, in light of the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk, have intuited that something is expected of them. Religion is not just another consumer purchase. The call to church and synagogue can and should be, rather, a new beginning.

As a politician much better than America deserves might add, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Suppose, for the sake of having an argument, that the reader wishes to do something that will change the world — for the better. He shouldn’t be too candid about his ambition, as I first realized when a teenager. Most who accomplish things have a secret. They avoid taking credit for it. I appeared quite a fool, when claiming credit for anything. It got me mocked. Fortunately, my mockers were, at the time, also teenagers, so it didn’t matter much. But I would have preferred praise.

Ambition is something to keep to oneself, but concealing it may require more honest pride than disclosing it. Those who become politicians learn the art of deceiving people, by presenting their ambitions as timely and altruistic. A lot of money can be made by progressive politicians in this way, when they discover that, in every democracy, the people are slow-witted and easy to fool. On the other hand, they are often quite innocent, and their various bigotries are actually rather sweet. A pity for sure, but only that they were given the vote.

The better educated among voters may be tainted with real poison, and smaller minority are “communists and perverts” — the old-fashioned description that placed them in their twin classes with impressive economy.

Ambition, however — and especially good ambitions — are needed, the more when the majority of the ambitious are certainly evil. We have whole parties — Canadian Liberals, American Democrats, and British Labour, for instance — that are entirely given over to the service of demons.

But they have unintentionally created a marvellous opportunity. This is because Christians need only tell the truth, modestly, for the contrast with these demoniacs to become apparent. For their violence and corruption is on full public display. And while it has become physically dangerous to be a “conservative,” or to oppose the Left, we may hope for improvements in policing and investigation.

Moreover, we need never become spiritually corrupt ourselves, by opposing fire with fire. Christian martyrs have always outscored the murderers who slaughtered them, not only in the afterlife, but in this one..

Now, boasting that one will be a martyr is arrogant and in bad taste. You should keep your ambitions to yourself. But becoming a martyr in pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful Christ, is hardly the worst thing that can happen to you. As Charlie Kirk advised, we should try to make heaven crowded.