(t) – Judgmental About Joe

I have never watched Joe Rogan’s Podcast, but every reference I see to it looks like some weird combination of recreational drug use, confident ignorance masquerading as wisdom, and cheap slam-dunks with todays most uncontroversial ideas.

Collateral damage while I am firing judgmental pot-shots, I saw that Neil deGrasse Tyson was on that podcast and he has Carl Sagan’s intolerable arrogance and anti-religious smallness. NdGT is filed under the “confident ignorance masquerading as wisdom” category.

There’s nothing fruitful about this screed. It lies tangent to some interesting areas but in itself, this is me being a jerk in public.

Pray for me. Pray for Joe. Pray for Neil.

(r) – @&$#%€!!!

Potentially unpopular opinion: cursing in film, television, books, etc is lazy writing.

Almost certainly unpopular opinion: cursing in one’s speech is lazy thinking.

NB: I am often a lazy thinker.

(e) – Perfection Test

Forgive the short posts–I have a lot of thoughts and a little less time these days.

This is a response to a comment on the Orthosphere. I am trying to keep my critiques a little more segregated–no need to poke the hornets nest, especially since I am just as fallible as other commenters. But I also would like to be direct about what has drawn my criticism, since ambiguity serves to confuse rather than clarify the message. To wit:

If I’d have a son, I’d discourage him from joining the armed forces or becoming a priest. Joining the US military means being an agent of world Satanism. And the Church clearly does not want her sons to become priests, or else they would not spend a decade having psychologists looking for an excuse to weed them out, and they would not force them to operate under overwhelming presumption of guilt of any accusation of sexual impropriety. Until priests are allowed to wear bodycams 24/7, my standing advice is for no man to even consider it.

If compliance to the law is contingent upon the law-givers consistently living by that law, then there is no just exercise of authority.

Yes, the law-givers should consistently live by the law, but so should everyone subject to the law. If obedience to any authority is contingent on some person behaving some way, then one has misunderstood ones role vis-a-vis authority, and ones obligation to that authority.

Rather than applying a perfection test to lawgivers, perhaps we should be more concerned with the lawgivers applying a perfection test to us. Perhaps we should be more concerned with the Law Himself applying a perfection test to us. The Church needs young, bold priests, willing to take on the challenges of their vocation. Shoot, all of us need to be bold in facing the challenges of our particular vocation. How many husbands and wives fail the theological perfection test of the sacrament of matrimony? At least as many people as there are priests that fail in their duty to us as shepherds.

Maybe let’s try praying for our current, future, and former priests, rather than declaring an unwillingness to work to solve the problem until the problem is solved.

St. Paul, pray for us.

AMDG

(b) – Dialectic, Argumentation, and Pig Ignorance

Dialectic: “You and I see things differently. Let’s together attempt to determine what is true by discussing our assumptions and observations.”

Argumentation: “You seem to hold as true something which is, in fact, false. In the following slides I will demonstrate why you are mistaken about your belief.”

Pig Ignorance: “I demand evidence of your claims! First hand! You weren’t there! You don’t have the documents! NUH UH!”

The first two are entirely valid and have an important and worthwhile place in the pursuit of truth. The third knows the first two are words, but doesn’t know the difference.

This has been: Uncharitable Quick-Takes sponsored by Smithfield Hams.

*Afterthought: If this post really was sponsored (it isn’t) I could start doing sports-commentary style snippets with the Smithfield Hams™ Pig-Ignorant Play of the Day.

(z) – Mental Health

What about the Mental Health System needs to be reformed?

• Pharmaceutical Dependence and over-prescription of psychotropic drugs needs to be stopped.
  • Pharma needs to be a last resort. So many fashionable mental health disorders can be fixed by healthy living.
  • Yes, Big Pharma & Big Insurance would have to be tackled as a part of this.
• A system of care for the truly mentally disabled needs to be available.
  • Most people’s default impulse is to think of the mental institutions of the days of yore. IIRC, those weren’t as bad as all the horror movies make them out to be, but also–any time it is someone’s job to care for some number of challenging and unwell people, they will lose the love and care that such a job necessarily requires.
    • Case in point: Old folks homes are considered by absolutely no one to be great success stories in American healthcare.
  • Historically, the mentally unwell and disabled would be cared for in the context of a loving, stable family, which would keep the number of persons in need of supervised, intensive care down to a minimum.
    • Yes, Big Broken Family would have to be tackled as a part of this.
• Recreational drug use needs to be criminalized and enforced severely.
  • Many mental health disorders can be traced back to recreational drug use.
  • Recreational drug use is not conducive to a stable, safe, and healthy society.
    • Yes, Big Prison would have to be tackled as a part of this.

TL;DR – America needs values, and to get values America needs God. I don’t think any of these reforms will happen before some kind of Catholic revival sweeps the nation. And I’m not holding my breath for that.

(y) – Guns

The difference between an armed civilian and a crazed gunman is the “crazed” part. Legislative action so far focuses on the “gun” part. That’s because if any effort was made to address the “crazed” part, two things would happen:

• America would have to confront and address it’s absolutely irrational and reprehensible system of mental health.
• The left party would lose most of it’s voter base to institutions.

(That last bit is a gratuitous political joke. But to avoid any offense, an equal number of voters from the right party would also be institutionalized. Now I am a fair and balanced commentator.)

(x) – Being Nice or Being Right

Orthodoxy is the belief that certain things are true. Orthodoxy is also the belief that certain things are not true–we call these things “false”. Orthodoxy is a flag planted on truth, in an uncompromising way. There is no wiggle room: either a proposition is true or it is not, regardless of the consequences or personal cost.

If you forego Orthodoxy, you have to choose between being nice or being right. Being nice means being agreeable to the largest number of people. Being right means being disagreeable to the right kinds of people. Neither is anchored in truth, but once you are at this point, truth is already unimportant.

Sola Fide is false*. It is not nice to say so**. It should be said.

*Disclaimer: Sola Fide is one of the pillars/features of Protestantism. Naturally Protestantism takes a perfectly fine Catholic theological point and isolates it and makes it everything. That’s kind of the point: It has a hint of truth, so can be rationalized biblically, yet the isolation of it from context and the reinforcement of Sola Scriptura gives it merely the facsimile of truth and life. Faith is good. Faith is not the only thing that is good. Faith is not the only thing.

**Second Disclaimer: It is not nice to say so, so that is why I am saying it here.

(w) – The Tree of Liberty

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson

The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed because the previous liberators have become tyrants and the new liberators have not yet become tyrants. The cycle is infinitely recursive. The fruit of the tree of liberty is tyranny, and the seeds which make the tree grow is revolution.

By the way, I looked up the source of the quote in context in order to render the quote properly for this post. I was amused to see the sentence immediately following the above quote is this one:

It is it’s natural manure.

This we can agree on, Mr. Jefferson!

AMDG

(a) – Thoughts While Riding an Elevator

There is a frequent saying that God meets people where they are. I cannot deny this: God speaks to people in the way best suited to them, it is different for everyone. This is why Testimonies are valuable.

The word “Convert” has it’s roots in the word “Turn around”. I like to visualize this as God, at the center of an infinite plane, as a piercing bright light. People can be turned a little bit away from him, looking off to the side; people can be looking straight at him, beholding the fullness of the beatific vision; or people can be turned away from him, watching their own shadow stretch into infinity.

God does meet you where you are, but you can’t see Him if you aren’t looking.

Which means that for many people, Christ is standing right behind them.

(x) – Quick Thoughts on the NRA

I saw the latest news and it’s as good a time as any to note some quick thoughts about the NRA. If you would like a quick summary, skip to the bottom.

1. The NRA is not the 2nd amendment. The 2nd Amendment will persist with or without the organization. Donating to the NRA is not the same as supporting the 2nd amendment. Donating to the NRA means you support the NRA, and if you happen to also support the second amendment then you support that too.
2. That point will be lost because the lawsuit filed in New York is an overtly political act at an overtly political time. But then, the NRA is an overtly political organization and as such is fair game in the political struggle that is this election year. It’s important to note that the New York AG has not filed a lawsuit against the 2nd Amendment, just against the NRA. The firestorm that is about to follow this will conflate the two.
3. Classical Liberals (of both the left and right varieties) do themselves a disservice by aligning their ideology with (or in opposition to) an organization. Organizations can be defeated and destroyed. Ideologies can only be argued and rebutted.
4. Morality transcends ideology, and moral judgement is the only thing with power to destroy ideology. Is an organization good? Do the individuals who run it, and other individuals who align with it, behave consistently with that value judgement? Answer those questions before you allocate dollars.

TL;DR: Who Cares?