Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll: the push for pot Is related

It's everywhere on the news regardless of where you live.  The push for pot is rampant.  The old cliché is there. "Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll." With this being the 50th anniversary of an infamous rock concert festival on Max Yasgur's farm whose celebration will be held on the grounds of a venue where Innes Ireland to Alan Jones won F1 races for 20 years nearby, you have to wonder of that phrase relates to what has happened in our society as a whole. All three have taken control of the land.

Rock and Roll. Today, too many churches have sold their souls to rock and roll, and the penetration of these parties have seduced the youth -- even when they attend a church that is full of bad rock music in services -- to think of it as a party that when it comes to serious teachings, they skip church in the belief the truth is "relative" and not absolute, and also because they were taught in these youthful parties that they mature and ignore the seriousness. The most popular churches are self-help life enhancement centres where any hit song from any pop divo or diva is sung (see NewSpring singing from 50 Shades of Gray as an example), and the rampant popularity of the Kundalini spirit of Bethel where many congregations have cover bands playing Bethel's hits, unaware they promote such dangerous New Age spirituality that was rampant of that era that is coming home to roost now. How many times have people's warnings of Bethel fallen on deaf ears?

Rock and Roll also means the relativism in the media that started in music and is now pushed in a post-Hays Code movie and television industry, especially with the glorification of television's New Big Four where "too hot for movies" and "no Kyle Busch Rule" is now glorified as the perfect show for television, as commercials promoting shows from the New Big Four are pushing the TV-MA rated programming, which is the X rating in movies. Losing the standard has cost entertainment its high quality and high standards. When even religious radio such as the KLVR-FM chain from Sacramento decided to purge Biblical teachings, news, and commentary, while pushing heretic entertainment, the relativism is complete.

Thirty years ago, as a teen, I investigated rock music for its lyrics and content as a term paper for fun in the summer. In light of the gruesome murders we've seen that have plenty of influence in the music, movies, and television, what hath the rock and roll culture wrought?

The culture of Rock and Roll has taken over.

Sex. After Vermont's judges went rogue two decades ago, thirty-one states passed marriage definitions, many over 75 percent approval, and even California approved 53 percent, primarily with the "rest of the state" that was being ignored by the state leadership, a warning that proves Sen. Dirksen correct in 1964. In light of the major scandals at elite colleges over admissions (which is partially related to federal quotas that are another issue), and Justice Scalia's warnings in the decision that forced "sex" per the elites down on us, the idea of "free sex" and "sexual liberty" is demolishing religious freedom.  These judges of elite institutions said the majority's view of marriage did not fit their feelings.  We see the dangers of sodomy and graphic sex-ed standards that these "San Francisco Values" forced on us, and that includes heinous crimes that we would never have seen in the past, and special protections under ObamaCare that protect STD's.

Today, MTV glorifies out of wedlock teenage sex and Discovery has been celebrating boys who claim to be girls, forcing even athletic standards to be changed to appease them. In 2012, Miss Universe, then owned by The Trump Organisation, was sued by a Canadian man who claimed to be a woman, with Gloria Allred representing him, forcing Miss Universe to accept men who claim to be women (since the man is Canadian, and the Canadian Human Rights Code protects men who claim to be a woman), and this past Miss Universe season, Spain was represented by such men. Thanks to the "Exxon Mobil Payback" (the Executive Order signed giving special rights to sexually perverse in businesses signed by the Obama Administration when shareholders overwhelmingly rejected a New York City proposal), CrossFit, Inc. was forced to accept men claiming to be women as women (and vice versa) as part of attempting to teach their techniques to the military.

Now we are seeing the next push in sexual liberty in many city-states where a single city or two control an entire state. These powerful urban areas are now forcing laws allowing effective infanticide by killing children during any time the child is in the womb of the mother. These sexual liberty activists have a philosophy similar to India's Hindu caste system, where they are the warrior caste and Christians and those outside the elite enclaves are untouchables. Look at the controversy over Twitter banning Abby Johnson's Unplanned from having an account, and how most television channels affiliated with a major movie studio banning that movie from being advertised on their channels.

Drugs.  As a registered athlete with CrossFit, Inc., for The CrossFit Open the past three seasons currently representing Athlete's Arena (which acquired the CrossFit box last year that I have been part the past four years) with friends participating in higher level events,  and the domestic Autorité Sportif Nationale (ASN) for the International Triathlon Union because of a requirement that local ASN membership is mandatory to participate in triathlons, and having run in International Association of Athletics Federations or the domestic ASN sanctioned races that are state-level national championships and internationally renowned 10,000 metre races in the region exclusively as a weekend warrior, the rule book for these events state we are subject to drug testing under the auspices of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Many workers at businesses around the world, including police, fire, and first responders, and the military, are also subject to similar WADA drug testing policies, in addition to factories.

There is a push now to legalise a Prohibited Substance in the WADA Code (Section 8), Cannabinoids, in this nation, much of it is being built on emotionalism instead of what WADA and others have proven. In light of seeing cannabinoids being found in the body of a sprint car driver killed after ignoring authorities in a New York State sprint car race and then suing an Nippon Telegraph and Telephone and Monster Energy champion who is under the WADA Code for an FIA Grade 1 licence (Monster Energy NASCAR Cup drivers must have an FIA Grade 2 licence; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone INDYCAR drivers must have FIA Grade 1), the dangers of pot as a while, and the dangers of such, people are being fed a bucket of lies to support legalising marijuana, despite its dangers. This endorsing of pot recently forced NBC Sports, in association with Feld Entertainment, to block a cannabinoid advertisement from a Supercross motorcycle because of policies enacted by the FIM and WADA. Yet the push for more drugs is part of the idea there should be no standards but their own feelings.

The propaganda being pushed emotionally towards legalising pot will lead to a transition to full pot legalisation, as we have seen in too many states. We cannot follow along with the blind and legalise such illicit substances on a Prohibited List of the WADA.  If this happens, many common weekend warriors and workers will be punished as others try to pass their dangerous substances through to force a failed drug test. The cost of marijuana is too high, as our state's Attorney General, Alan Wilson, has noted.

Have we come to a full era where "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll" are now glorified in a dangerous way?

Wish I'd written that

On the upcoming Mayweather-McGregor event:

This is a festival for fools, a carnival of greed. Caligula would have been revolted by this fiasco, and so would his horse. The official hype is only one week old and I want to turn in my American citizenship, sail off to a distant isle and wait there until I and the rest of the human race devolve back to the primeval slime out of which we crawled because, believe me, if this fight comes off, that process may be well nigh irreversible. I would rather watch a raccoon fight an 18-wheeler on I-90 than this match. Anybody who pays to see it should not be allowed to cut his own meat, let alone handle his own money. You know what the difference is between this event and human sacrifice? Ring card women.

- Charles Pierce, writing at SI.com

Flashback Friday: America the damned?

My own opinion is that things are slightly better now in the United States than they were a couple of years ago, when I originally wrote this piece. There's no hiding the bad, to be sure (as I wrote yesterday), and the culture is, if anything, increasingly decadent, but it could be worse - Donald Trump is no savior, but he's a hope, and at least he's not Hilary Clinton. And maybe, just maybe, this country's descent into Hell might be slowed down just long enough for a miracle. Who knows - we might even watch 1776 this year.

The Fourth of July used to be a special day for me. For a couple of years, I was the chair of the 4th of July parade in Richfield, Minnesota, and in the years before and after that it was always a treat to go to a parade.  We lived for the fireworks show at night; in addition to the shows on the Fourth, Bloomington had a show on the evening of the 3rd; if the weather was nice we drove to the top level of a nearby parking ramp, where we'd listen to the radio and eat popcorn while waiting for it to get dark enough for the show to begin.  The Fourth itself meant movies, almost in the same way that Christmas does - The Music Man, with Robert Preston, and my favorite musical of all time, 1776.  Yes, those were good times.

It's been a few years now since I've paid the Fourth any attention at all, and this year will be no exception.  I can't celebrate it anymore, because in my opinion there's nothing to celebrate. Over the course of these last years, we've seen America go straight to Hell, and last week's obscene Supreme Court decision just emphasizes the fact.  It's not only the decision itself, disordered as it is; it's this whole idea that the American Experiment has finally come to an end.  States' rights are going, if not gone; a relentless political correctness, from which dissent is not tolerated, governs our public discourse, as companies and special interest groups increasingly punish people simply for expressing their own thoughts; religious freedoms are not only done away with but scoffed at; police forces are increasingly militarized; in the name of national security, the Federal government becomes more and more intrusive in our lives; our very history is either forgotten or airbrushed.  Increasingly the world revolves around international financiers, investors more concerned with the bottom line than the High Altar.  To them it is money that makes the world go around, not the laws of gravity.  They've succeeded in reducing man to a statistic in a budget, a mere number that represents not a human soul but a profit/loss statement.  To them things such as gay rights are ideas to be pandered to; they see them not as troubled individuals but consumers with money to spend, and that's the only kind of morality that matters to them.  The poet Allen Ginsburg, in his epic Howl, called it Moloch, as is so evocatively illustrated here:


And who is there to turn to?  Not the humans running the Church; as rights are stripped away and depravities are legalized, we get lectures on climate change. Not political parties: the leftist Democrats, held captive by fanatical extremists, are the driving force behind many of these changes, while the timid Republicans, more interested in retaining power than doing anything with it, stand idly by.  Besides, the parties are just flip sides of the same coin anyway; they both want our money, the only difference being what they plan to do with it.

Man, that is depressing, isn't it?

We're all to blame for it, in a way, thanks to Original Sin.  We've allowed marriage to be corrupted through our own actions, just as we've played our own roles elsewhere.  There's more to it than that, of course; the Devil is alive and well in this world, in these United States, and he's finding many a willing disciple.  This doesn't mean we're helpless, though.  The pessimistic (but realistic) Rod Dreher has advocated what he calls the "Benedict Option," which involves groups of orthodox believers gathering into what might be called community support groups, where they exist to strengthen each other's faith, families and future.  It's not a retreat from the world, as some would have it, but a circling of the wagons.  And it's necessary because, as Dreher puts it, things are not going to get better.  Others advocate a more activist approach, attaching the issue head-on and refusing to be pushed around.  Still others think things can be turned around by electing the right individuals, that America at its heart is still a conservative nation.  The number who believe in that last category grows smaller and smaller, and if you're inclined to believe it I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to discuss with you.

In short, America seems to have devolved into a Godless, licentious nation, consumed with hedonism, basing everything on feelings rather than any kind of logical thought.  Not the sex you want to be?  Easy - just change.  Feel like marrying two or three other people?  Well, why not?  Think killer whales are human?  They probably are.  If you even bother to believe in God, you can create Him in whatever Image you want, knowing that He just wants you to be "happy," whatever that means nowadays.  What's frightening is not the question of where it all ends; it's that, deep in our hearts, we already know what the answer is.  It's not just America, of course, but the whole world.  The whole world isn't celebrating July 4th, however, and I'm not sure how we can, either.

In this atmosphere, watching a movie such as 1776 where we witness the birth of the republic, seeing what all these men were willing to risk their lives for, and then to look at what that cause has become, is beyond depressing.  To see an immoral lifestyle legalized (in the process overturning state laws passed by citizens) by a group of nine unelected officials, the same group (if not the same individuals) responsible for legalizing the murder of unborn human beings, all based on supposed rights that can't be found in the Constitution - well, if I was one who cried, I'd have shed more than one tear over these last few years.

I mentioned above that what's really scary about this is that in our hearts we know where it all leads.  A priest, talking about the various natural disasters that have befallen California recently, remarked that "When you keep giving God the finger, pretty soon he's going to grant your wish and leave you alone."  It's tempting on the one hand to look at anything bad that happens and see in it the finger of God, just as it's tempting to look at those same events and decry the idea that God would punish people indiscriminately, the innocent as well as the guilty.  But as we're reminded in Matthew 5:45, it rains on the just and the unjust.  The fact that there may have been innocent people living in Sodom and Gomorrah did not save the cities from being destroyed.  In fact, the Bible is replete with natural disasters as a sign of God's displeasure.

Speaking of which, it's worth noting that while some conservatives today suggest God is withdrawing His protection of America as a once-special country, there are others who would point out that America was founded on dubious propositions in the first place.  Such are the probing questions asked in Christopher Ferrara's provocative book Liberty, the God That Failed, which suggests that from the very beginning, liberty was a chimera, "the false god of a new political order."  Much the same message can be found in Hans-Herman Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed,  So perhaps we've been thumbing our noses at God this whole time, and that the Hell we're going through was predestined to happen at some time or another; it's just our lot that it's happening in our lifetimes.


And yet - it's all been part of God's plan that we are alive here, now.  There's obviously something we're meant to do, some role we're intended to play.  It's not likely we'll be able to determine that on our own, which means we have to keep our eyes and ears open and our prayers constant.  We must live lives that are good and pious, to the best of our abilities.  We must try as best we can to influence those close to us: friends, family, neighbors, workmates.

Most of all, I think, we must realize that we cannot be both Christians and Americans.  We can no longer live this hybrid, hyphenated life.  We give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, following the words and examples of Jesus, but we can no longer excuse what America does simply because it is America.  We pray for our country because patriotism is, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, a virtue, but we cannot go down with the ship - instead, we must head for the lifeboat created by Our Savior for our protection.

So in this weekend of rote patriotism, when for some of us there seems nothing left worth celebrating, try to remember that the things we truly celebrate are those things that are scorned by the rest of the world.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ reminded us thusly: "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

That reward is greater than any nation, any flag, any political or judicial victory.  It is the hope which we carry to ward off despair, the true joy that protects the soul from depression, the light that shines in the darkness.  If indeed America is beyond salvation, then damned she will be; our victory will be greater than that.

Originally published July 3, 2015

The irony of CNN firing Kathy Griffin

The inappropriate picture of actress Kathy Griffin holding the headed of a "beheaded" caricature of President Trump bloodied led to CNN, a division of Time Warner (NYSE : TWX), which could be acquired by American Telephone and Telegraph (NYSE : T), removing her from New Year's Eve programming. Now that was the correct behaviour since it was inappropriate. But what people forget is this very same Time Warner, through its NetherRealm Studios, is responsible for producing Mortal Kombat, a 25-year old video game franchise where one of the glorified moves is the character "Sub-Zero" pulling the head and spine off losers in the game's signature "fatality" move. Further games in the franchise include beheading (Kitana's fan), cannibalism (Mileena's eat and spit the bones, Liu Kang's dragon), and other copious amounts of violence that led to video game ratings that has furthered the advancement of even more violent video games for "adults only" ratings.

Has anyone noted how TWX will fire Kathy Griffin for doing to Donald Trump what Sub-Zero does to losers in their own video game?

Flashback Friday: The automated world

At dinner [Wolfe] started on automation. He has always been anti-machine, and on automation his position was that it would soon make life an absurdity. It was already bad enough; on a cold and windy March day he was eating his evening meal in comfortable warmth, and he had no personal connection whatever with the production of the warmth. The check that paid the oil bill was connected, but he wasn't. Soon, with automation, no one would have any connection with the processes and phenomena that make it possible to stay alive. We would all be parasites, living not on some other living organisms but on machines, arrived at the ultimate ignominy."

- Rex Stout, A Right to Die

Playing the Trump card

On election day I'd posted the epic scene from Apocalypse Now where Morrison is singing "The End" while the helicopters swirl overhead. It wasn't meant to be a pessimistic bit, because I'm not a pessimistic guy. I'm a realist, which I realize some people believe to be a euphemism for pessimism. I don't look at it that way, at least not in my case; if it was, I'd have been listening to Leonard Cohen songs while I was writing it.

What I mean by all this is that this country has reached a precipice, and I don't know that it can be pulled from it. You may remember this piece from earlier in the year, in which Terry Teachout had wondered aloud whether or not America could continue as a country where people "talked past each other." I think now is the time to look at this again, particularly in light of the electoral map from Tuesday's election.

This first image is a visual of the electoral vote. Trump (the red states, natch) has won or is winning in 30 states, compared to 20 (plus the District of Columbia) for Clinton. It's a fairly stark map, because even though Clinton continues to lead in the popular vote (albeit by a very slim margin), not only does the electoral vote support Trump fairly decisively, you can see how Clinton's support (with a few outliers) is concentrated along both coasts, and stops around the Mason-Dixon line. But look at this second map:

This shows the vote broken down by county, again using the red/blue key. As you can see, red dominates the map, with pockets of blue here and there. And then there's this one:

You've probably seen this floating around, showing that half of the population is concentrated in a very select areas. I've no idea how accurate this is, but even if it's not 100%, that's not the point.

Here's the point.

Donald Trump won 30 states and the electoral college, but lost the popular vote. George W. Bush won the electoral college and lost the popular vote. Richard Nixon, in 1960, won 31 states (if memory serves correctly) and barely lost the popular vote. Except in cases of landslides, Republicans consistently (but not always) win a majority of states, a majority of counties in those states, but can still lose the presidential election.

What this indicates to me is that a growing number of the American people suspect that their votes no longer count, that a small number of states covering an increasingly small amount of landmass can determine the outcome of a national election. We could see a candidate win 35 or so states and still lose. He could win an overwhelming majority of counties and still lose.

Why is this important? Let me cite an example: a friend of mine called me Tuesday night. She lives in a state where only the three big population centers vote Democratic - the rest of the state goes Republican, but because most of the people in the state live in those three cities, the state almost always goes Democratic in the presidential election. She voted for Trump, "not that my vote counts," she added. In other words, she feels disenfranchised. And that's one person living in one city in one state. What happens if it reaches the point where entire states feel disenfranchised, where the residents of 35 states understand that it doesn't matter what they think, it doesn't matter what 70 of the states that make up the federation called the United States believe, that 30% of the states can dictate the nation's policy to everyone else. (And throw a hissy fit when they lose.)

That is not good; it's bad enough when individuals feel disenfranchised, but when entire states come to feel that way, then you truly have created "two Americas." A state that feels permanently shut out of the decision-making process can never truly feel like an active participant in the governing of that nation. That's what people mean when they talk about Balkanization, that's what they worry about when they look at countries where ethnic cleansing takes place. I'm not suggestion that ethnic (or ideological) cleansing is about to take place here, at least anytime in the near future, but I am saying that this is how nations break up. It's more than Teachout simply saying people talk past each other. It's that the credibility of majority rule itself is in danger, when that majority is concentrated in a small area relative to the size of the entire country, when a minority of states can dictate to the majority. It's called the tyranny of the minority, and it most definitely is on its way to happening here.

Tuesday's election is the exception that proves the rule, because if this continues, I don't know that we can see this kind of result again. The Californians are talking about secession, as Texans have done in the past, for the opposite reason. Perhaps it's time to let them go, to let them form nations that have more in common with each other than calling themselves a part of the "United States." Because the demographics suggest it's more like an enforced unity, and when we can't even agree on a common American culture or an agreed-upon definition of words upon which the debate can be framed, when we can't even agree on the existence of good and bad, right and wrong - well, there's nothing united about that.

Wish I'd written that

"WISTFULNESS' by misterXCV 

I started to feel just a touch of that malaise that has lingered in the air this year. You know that malaise, right? Maybe it’s the election. Maybe it’s the rapid way everything is changing. Maybe it is the division — people seem so repelled by each other that they don’t even try to talk. Maybe it’s that snarkiness so often eclipses wonder.

Maybe it’s that snarkiness and cynicism and weariness often eclipses wonder."

- Joe Posnanski, in Times Square, but he could be just about anywhere this year.

Wish I'd written that

Art  began to champion everything opposed to the Enlightenment and science:  It exalted emotion over reason, instinct over rationality, sensation over thinking, primitivism over civilisation.  Taught first in art colleges, this avant-garde philosophy found its way into recording studios.  In fact, a number of influential British rock musicians actually started out as art students, among them Keith Richards, Peter Townshend, Eric Clapton, and John Lennon.  As a result, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, Cream, and many of the other British bands were deliberately creating music that expressed the philosophy of the artist as a romantic hero who smashes established culture to create a new culture of moral freedom, emotional release, animal energy, and vivid sensation.  The sheer energy of rock -- the pounding beat, the screams, the spectacle -- is intended to bypass the mind and appeal directly to the sensations and feelings."

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, "How Now Shall We Live?"

Take that from the turn of the century book, then modern pop music being listened by the generation protesting (see the Charlotte riots, Occupy Wall Street, and other left-wing marches) and ponder how the idea of defying authority heard in rock and rap tunes over the past 50 years has given us such lunacy of disobeying authority (note the number of police hatred in NWA's "Foxtrot the Police" and Tracey Darrow's "Cop Killer," and the famed Time Warner shareholders meeting where Charlton Heston protested Mr. Darrow by reading in front of the Board of Directors for the company the ditty whose title is too lewd to publish.

Do you see a pattern based on what Mr. Colson (now deceased) and Mrs. Pearcey wrote a generation ago?

Understanding the populist appeal of Donald Trump

Sometimes you find insight in the strangest places.

A lot of people, Rod Dreher foremost among them, have been trying to figure out and/or explain the phenomenon of Donald Trump: how he got to be a serious presidential candidate, why voters cast their lot with him despite his often contradictory messages, how he continues to confound the pundits despite his non-conformity with the conventional political wisdom.

Well, it just so happens I was perusing a potential addition to the Hadley Library the other day. It's a book called Reelpolitik II: Political Ideologies in '50s and '60s Films, by Beverly Merrill Kelley. (And before you ask, there is a Reelpolitik I, which covers the same topic in films of the '30s and '40s.) Despite the somewhat daunting title, Reelpolitik II is a readable, intellectually accessible look at how various political ideologies are displayed in eight movies of the era, from the Sam Fuller-directed The Steel Helmet (1951) to John Wayne's The Green Berets (1968), with several stops along the way.

One of those stops is in a city that serves as a thinly-disguised version of Boston, setting for the 1958 classic The Last Hurrah, directed by John Ford and starring Spencer Tracy as a big-city mayor, a veteran of the old school of politics, running for reelection for the last time. One of the best things about Kelley's book is that she takes the time to explain both the political context of each ideology - in this case populism - and the ways in which it relates to the movie, both on- and off-screen.

She starts with an account of how the seeds of populism can be traced as far back as Thomas Jefferson, who in 1824 wrote Henry Lee that "Men are naturally divided into two parties: (1) those who fear and distrust the people . . . [and] (2) those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe." Populism perhaps reached its peak in the 1890s with the presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, campaigns which took place in a time of "Rampant materialism, bottom-line morality, government corruption, and a total void in environmental responsibility" (sound familiar?), but can be seen in presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln. The key to populism, Kelley writes, is in understanding that "prosperity percolates up from the bottom, as opposed to trickling down from the top."

Citing the ambiguity of the populist movement, Kelley then segues into a discussion of the films of three populist directors: Frank Capra, King Vidor, and John Ford. By showing how numerous biographers have either misunderstood or misidentified the political content emanating from these directors, Kelley makes several key points about populism that go a long way to explaining how we got to where we are in our present situation. For even though Trump has often said he is not a populist, it is the most compelling way in which we can analyze his rise.

First, both liberals and conservatives identify with populism. Conservatives find themselves attracted to populism's emphasis on order and tradition, and a hierarchical power structure that "not only is the most logical way to organize the world, but [also] reflects the design of the Creator and for the past ten millennia has proven the most effective means of governing." On the other hand, liberals identify with populism's acknowledgement of the need for reform, lest the common man exist as little more than "the understructure for those residing on Easy Street." Says Kelley, "They are willing to start at the bottom, but they also want to be assured of the chance to end up at the top."

Not surprisingly, given the appeal of populism to people of various ideological bents, "Populist politicians have a devil of a time bringing together such seemingly irreconcilable extremes," and in applying this analysis to Donald Trump's campaign, one can see how extraordinary a task he has accomplished in assembling such a diverse coalition of support. Nonetheless, despite the challenges, Kelley maintains that every president dating back to FDR, whether or not his personal story is that of a populist, has had to find a way to harness aspects of the populist strain in order to win election. Even FDR and JFK, who were themselves hardly populists, understood the necessity of appealing to populist nature. In the case of Kennedy, this task was helped by the birth of television as a campaign tool, allowing him to come into the homes of each American and present himself as a "man of the people." As Kennedy himself summed up in Profiles in Courage, "the true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people." It was that appeal, to (as one pundit put it) "man's better nature," that blended idealism and populism to serve as the foundation of Kennedy's New Frontier.

Conservatives who support Trump based on his attacks against the do-nothing Republican elites are often challenged by their man's support of particular welfare programs - but we shouldn't be surprised by that. Trump indeed is not looking to dismantle the welfare state, and why should he, for he simply speaks in true populist fashion. James Michael Curley, the real-life Boston mayor who was the model for The Last Hurrah's Frank Skeffington (played by Spencer Tracy), once cautioned that a politician should "always remember, for the person who comes to you [seeking help], that favor is the most important thing in the world. If he could take care of it himself, he wouldn't be coming to see you." The unholy alliance of Big Politics and Big Business, Trump asserts, is designed to line the pockets of the rich at the expense of the little guy - no wonder, then, that Trump does not include "Big Government" as one of the evils. Make it more efficient, make it more streamlined, but you're never going to be able to get rid of it as long as you have a system that puts the squeeze on the working class.

Liberals contend a man like Trump, with his wealth and power, can hardly be a man of the people, but here again we're playing on a different field. With the advent of television, Kelley says, "Image became more important than issues, and any candidate with a stuffed-to-the-seams war chest and the right political consultant could pass himself off as just about anything he wanted on TV." Certainly we live in an era when campaigns are basically made-for-TV affairs, and with that Trump has been able to massage his image to that of someone speaking for the disenfranchised. Regardless of the reality of the situation, whether or not Trump's positions would really solve anything, hardly matters. It is the TV image that counts, and Trump (who likely serves as his own political consultant) knows what to do.

So far we've looked at how populism draws from both liberal and conservative pools of support, something which Trump has certainly done. We know that the successful politician has to tap into this populism, again something at which Trump has succeeded. Does that mean that Trump is simply a demagogue, one who feeds on unfocused anger? Not really, once we look at just what it is that populism focuses on. According to Kelly, populism expresses "free-floating resentment of power, dug-in distrust of major institutions, and an impotent sense of personal alienation." Populists "burn for simple fairness, for a Sodom-and-Gomorra-like cleansing of the country's morals and a return to the innate wisdom of, by, and for the people." Further, we'll combine this with what Kelley sees as the three key points to modern populism: antiintellectualism, antimaterialism, and antimedia. If all this sounds to you like the themes upon which Trump's campaign is based, I think you'd be right.

Trump's critics might use "antiintellectualism" as a disparaging term to describe the relative lack of intelligence of Trump supporters, but this would miss the point altogether. The resentment of power and distrust of major institutions to which Kelley refers reflects the anger people feel at the inability, if not downright incompetence, of the "elite" which run such institutions and hold powerful positions in business and government. They may be at the top of their class, the smartest men and women in the room, Trump argues, and look where it's gotten you. Do you feel that the leadership provided by these people has made your life better, given you a better chance to succeed? (At this point, the answer is usually a deafening "NO!") These people think they're better than you, Trump says, but they aren't. Trump offers himself as an outsider, one who can come in and clean up the mistakes of the experts precisely because he isn't an expert in politics, and he isn't beholden to special interests in ways that they are. Now, this may or may not be true, but for our purposes that doesn't matter - what does is the message, and why it appeals. Truman once spoke out against "big-brass fancy hats," State Department "striped pants boys," and "fuddy-duddies." Update the lingo a bit, and these could be the very words coming from Trump's mouth.

Likewise, "antimaterialism." This may seem confusing, coming as it does from a successful businessman whose life seems to cry out excess, but again think about it for a moment. In arguing for tariffs, for limits on immigration, for policies that most corporate elites argue would result in higher prices, Trump's message implicitly attacks materialism. I don't care if Japanese cars are more affordable, it doesn't matter if outsourcing those manufacturing jobs means lower prices, the argument goes. What it does is detract from the greatness of America, from the ability of American workers to produce American goods to be purchased and used by American consumers. True or false, it contains an internal logic that incorporates the populist refrain.

Of course, antimedia has to be part of a populist message, and here Trump easily strikes a chord with his (frequently accurate) attacks on the mainstream media, which he sees as advancing their own agenda to the detriment of the country (in Fox's case) or telling outright lies about what goes on (the Washington Post, for example). This is an easy attack, since so many of the media elites also belong in the intellectual classification, and so by the time populists get around to considering them, they've already got at least one strike against them. Never mind that the same media which Trump excoriates is oftentimes responsible for providing the very coverage that has helped catapult Trump to the top of the Republican party; the message resounds with a large segment of the public.

Given all this, and this is just a small examination of Kelley's premise, which is itself a small survey of populism overall, should anyone be surprised at Trump's rise? He is the larger-than-life hero of his own story, but when one looks at movies like The Fountainhead, one sees just such heroes. Pundits chuckle at the contradictions in Trump's message, but considering the contradictory sources of populism's appeal, that shouldn't be a surprise.

There's one particular paragraph in Kelley's book (and keep in mind this is simply an introduction to discussion of The Last Hurrah so the reader can understand where the movie's coming from) that best describes the world we seem to live in, one with rules made by "ivy tower dwellers and subsequently employed by industry captains to justify 'the survival of the [economic] fittest.'"

Much as in the post-Enron culture of today, corporations had lost sight of ethics and commercial citizenship. They had forgotten that, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, they had been granted charters only if they promoted the public welfare. It didn't take long for avaricious businessmen to strike mutually beneficial deals with needy/greedy individual states. Promoters no longer had to prove their ventures advanced public welfare. The only obligation assumed by these corporations was to themselves, the only responsibility was to turn money into money. The rich ended up getting richer and the promise of a better life for all remained mostly unfulfilled.

That's the world that Donald Trump talks to, and the people who feel its effects are the ones who line up to vote for him. That Trump himself might be one of the "avaricious businessmen" makes no real difference; he's the unlikely man who speaks the message that the populists want and need to hear, and as history has shown time and time again, such messages often come from the most unlikely messengers. That we fail to understand history, that we ignore the past, is the only reason we can constantly be surprised by the present.

Friday Flashback: The role of hate

What with everything that's been going on this week, I thought the choice of this week's Friday Flashback would be an appropriate one, even though it's almost ten years old and most of the sources cited are ones I no longer follow. It shows, among other things, that tragedy is a constant in life, and that the emotions it produces are ancient and never-changing.

One of the more interesting issues raised by the Amish killings this week is the proper role of anger (or, more precisely, hatred) when reacting to this horror, as illustrated in a fascinating exchange in NRO's The Corner. Unfortunately, I think this is something that raises more questions than answers, so don't expect much in the way of definitive conclusions from me.

It actually begins outside The Corner, with Rod Dreher's comments about the now-famous grandfather of one of the victims, urging others "not to hate" the killer. Dreher describes himself as one who is not at the level of forgiveness exhibited by the grandfather but, "Please God, make me into the sort of man who could."

NRO's John Podhoretz picks up on this and starts the discussion. Podhoretz is a self-described "moderately observant Jew," which I note not as some kind of neocon jag (this isn't The Wanderer or New Oxford Review, after all) but as a background to the moral footing from which he comes. Podhoretz notes that while

I can certainly see the beauty and the moral seriousness that would follow from attempting to hew as closely as possible to Christ's example of unconditional love and forgiveness. All the same, this story disturbs me deeply — because there can be no question that anger can be as righteous as forgiveness. I'm not sure I would want to be someone who succeeded in rising above hatred of those who murder children.

I suspect this is a comment that most of us can identify with. Like Dreher, we fall short of such an elevated level of forgiveness, and like Podhoretz we share a concern as to whether we really should aspire to that level. So, agree with Podhoretz or not, we know where he's coming from.

John Derbyshire next chimes in on the discussion:

Back in the Bronze Age, when folk knew what was what, Hate—personified as the goddess Eris (after whom we have just named a new Solar System object)—played a key role in civilizational survival. . . Christian meekness certainly has its place in human affairs. So does Homeric ferocity.

As Derb elicidates in a further post, he does not mean to suggest that we should emulate everything from the Bronze Age (female slavery, for example). But, he adds, "I do believe it is foolish to attempt to deny essential human nature, of which the propensity to hate those who wrong us is an invariant component, today just as much as in the Bronze Age." And he concludes, in what I think is the most relevant sentence in the discussion,

A civilization that can't summon up some pretty widespread hatred for a man who lines up little girs and shoots them in their heads, after having been foiled in an attempt to molest them, is a civilization with a spring broken somewhere.

No question that hatred has been around for a long time, and is an essential part of human nature. But did Christ come to us to transcend those motivations which drove us in the past, and in the process to transform us from our baser human nature to a higher level of understanding and love? You could get a headache just thinking it over.

Some of Derb's loyal readers did think it over, and came up with more compelling thoughts. One, citing Piper's The Four Cardinal Virtues, offers this analysis:

You will find, under 'Temperance,' a discussion of The Power Of Wrath. It focuses on, among other things, a question that Aquinas asks in De Malo (On Evil) 'whether all wrath is evil?' Later on, Pieper continues: 'Lack of sensuality is not chastity; and incapacity for wrath has nothing to do with gentleness. Such incapacity not only is not a virtue, but, as St Thomas says, a fault: peccatum and vitium. ... Only the combination of the intemperateness of lustfulness with the lazy inertia incapable of generating anger is the sign of complete and virtually hopeless degeneration. It appears whenever a caste, a people, or a whole civilization is ripe for its decline and
fall."

Podhoretz returns to the discussion with a link to a thoughtful story from First Things by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, on the different ways in which Christians and Jews view the role of hatred. Soloveichik, in recounting the story of Saul's hesitation in killing Agag, looks at the mischief performed by Agag, and sees in it a lesson similar to that noted by Derb's correspondent:

The message is that hate allows us to keep our guard up, to protect us. When we are facing those who seek nothing but our destruction, our hate reminds us who we are dealing with. When hate is appropriate, then it is not only virtuous, but essential for Jewish well–being.

Rabbi Soloveichik may be referring specifically to the survival of Israel in the Middle East tinderbox, but certainly in its broader sense he poses a question we all have to deal with, the same one that Podhoretz raises: what is the role of hate?

We dismiss the idea of vengeance as a suitable motivation for our actions (unless, of course, you're Mickey Spillane.) Indeed, those who defend capital punishment (as I do) often take pains to emphasize that the vengeance sought is not a desire to "settle the score" with the condemned on a personal level, but rather to express the collective outrage of the society toward the reprehensible actions which the condemned has taken. In doing so, we return once again to the concept of righteous anger, as a good and proper motivation for the actions of the state. It emphasizes the idea that intent is a key part of the discussion - that we must avoid the idea of the right action being taken for the wrong reason. Life often insists that we do things which we may find distasteful or unpleasant, but that when we do so our motives, as always, must be pure.

It has been argued, from the pulpit and elsewhere, that the Christian duty to forgive is tempered somewhat by the need for the accused to seek forgiveness. Such forgiveness, when accompanied by true contrition and remorse, demands our forgiveness as a just and proper response. But what happens when, as is the case in the Amish killings (and in so many other cases in our modern world) those conditions are not met? Soloveichik cites C.S. Lewis, who "detested" the idea that one could be eternally damned, "yet anyone who refuses to submit to salvation cannot ultimately be saved." Therefore, is our granting of forgiveness to one who does not seek it a sign of true charity, or a mocking of God's laws? And if it be the later, than what are we to do?

Maybe the closest thing we can come to in the form of an answer to these questions lies in another of the comments from the Amish community. In one of Get Religion's many fine pieces on the story, Mollie quotes a carpenter who offered, for my money, the most touching quote of the week: “I wish someone could have helped him out, poor soul. It’s obvious that something was troubling him.”

In his article, Rabbi Soloveichik returns to a quote from C.S. Lewis: “Christian charity,” he stresses, “counsels us to make every effort for the conversion of such a man: to prefer his conversion, at the peril of our own lives, perhaps of our own souls, to his punishment; to prefer it infinitely.” While we acknowledge the existence of Hell, we pray that all might be spared, even those for whom Hell appears a certainty.

In His last moments on the Cross, Christ forgave the Good Thief; He did not, however, spare his mortal life. The punishment, the thief noted, was a just one. And so perhaps hatred and vengeance are the wrong words to use after all, for they imply something eternal, unchangeable, irredeemible. Maybe anger was the right word, for in our righteous anger can be a just emotion, a display of God's justice and laws, much as the anger Christ displayed toward the moneychangers in the Temple. As the maxim goes, hate the sin, love the sinner. Our anger over the sinner's actions unites with our love for the sinner in a prayer for the sinner's repentance and redemption. And so we pray for the strength to forgive those who seek it; we pray for the conversation and salvation of the wicked; we pray for the fortitude to confront evil in a moral and just way. For us, prayer is the only answer to an issue that appears to offer only questions. If we're willing to accept it, most likely, it is enough.

Originally published October 6, 2006