In Defense of Garden Gnomes

It’s not an argument that I’d hitherto contemplated, but anything that defends garden gnomes while attacking modern art is obviously correct in my book.

It was only with the rise of the Avant Garde and specifically subsidies for those artists that this magical category of “Kitsch” comes about in which all the folk arts and lower-class aesthetic sensibilities as dismissed not by an aristocracy that feels noblesse oblige, but by ethnic and class enemies who need to discredit and exclude the productive national majority ethnicity from their own institutions, so that they, the capturing ethnicity and interests, might extract the tax dollars and institutional prestige the productive classes themselves generate.

Now you might say “that’s cute but do you really care about Garden Gnomes and dogs playing poker that much?”

No but I REALLY care about realistic historical depictions in art, and the national character and mythologization of my people. And the SECOND you let these parasites get in and declare the national majority’s folk art is somehow illegitimate or aesthetically bankrupt, something they’d never say about the absolute WORST minority art (No black, jewish, muslim, latino, queer, lesbian, communist, or any other EVER gets accused of kitsch no matter how inept, propagandistic, or downright dumb their art is), the second you give them that power, they use it in every single instance against any work that might moralize, uplift, or express the values of the ethnic majority or middle-class.

This is the reason your architecture is ugly, this is the reason sculptures only depict sexual degeneracy or political corruption, not heroism, this is the reason every approved artwork that isn’t a legacy holdover (which their paid activists destroy) exists in some way to actively offend, “challenge”, or “discomfort” the productive classes who actually make society run.

When’s the last time a museum curator proudly said they’re displaying a work to “Challenge” the black community? To “discomfort” the Jews? That offending the queer community is necessary to start a dialogue?

Never.

Because the purpose of art is not “contemplation” or “challenging assumptions” it’s aesthetic warfare to moralize or demoralize enemy peoples and communicate the dominance hierarchy, either through aesthetic mogging or humiliation.

That being said, I’ve never been a fan of that 70s macrame home art one would sometimes see on displayed on wooden walls or the classic velvet Elvis. But the idea that Thomas Kincaid’s pretty paintings are somehow less artistically worthy than Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs is obviously and intrinsically false.

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All Ur Yule Are Belong to Him

I always found the idea that Christian art was in any way inferior to secular art to be mysterious, the Boomer schlock of Christian Rock and the Amish romances of the Christian Bookstore Association notwithstanding. As much as I might like Silver Bells and White Christmas, they absolutely pale before the triumphant majesty of The Messiah and Adeste Fideles. And no one who has ever stood before a grand cathedral in Italy is likely to be impressed by the childish brutalism of modern block architecture today.

But forget the grand compendium of the art of Christendom, this pair of tweets prove that Christians can meme with the best of #GamerGate and even /pol/ itself.

“Easter was actually originally a pagan holiday!”

Keep complaining and we’ll take Toyotathon and make it a Christian holiday too.

“But we-“

You just lost Shark Week.

“That’s not-“

SHARK WEEK IS A WEEK-LONG CHRISTIAN FESTIVAL NOW

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真善美

Those who are mystified as to why I have a very high opinion of Xi Jinping tend to amuse me, mostly because they are some of the same people who bought into the previous “Putin is Hitler” theme between 2007 and 2014. As for the Boomer-tier “don’t you know they is CHICOMS” nonsense, I would merely point out that the Chinese Communist Party is presently less communist than the Democratic Party is democratic or the Republican Party is republican. Things tend to change over the course of 100 years; the CCP of Xi is not the CCP of Deng, let alone the CCP of Mao.

Anyhow, Xi and Putin are the two great nationalist leaders who successfully stand against Babel, the failing neoliberal world order also known as globohomo. Xi and Putin had the courage to succeed that Donald Trump lacked; it’s worth noting that none of the three leaders were supposed to succeed their predecessors.

And just as it’s finally beginning to be known that Putin has been methodically rebuilding the Russian Orthodox churches, Xi’s nine-year campaign to improve Chinese culture through literature and entertainment is gradually starting to bear fruit. The three Chinese ideographs above are zhen shan mei, which means True, Good, and Beautiful, and they are the conceptual centerpiece of Xi’s cultural revolution.

Xi Jinping stressed that pursuing the true, the good and the beautiful is the eternal value of literature and art. The highest boundary of literature and art is moving people, letting the spirits of people experience baptisms, letting the people discover the beauty of nature, the beauty of life and the beauty of the spirit. We must, through literature and art works, spread the true, the good and the beautiful, spread upward and charitable value views, guide the people in strengthening their powers of moral judgment and their sense of moral honour, yearn for and pursue a life of stressing morals, respecting morals and abiding morals. As long as the Chinese nation pursues the moral plane of the true, the good and the beautiful generation by generation, our nation will be eternally healthy and upward, and will for always be full of hope.

Xi Jinping pointed out that China’s excellent traditional culture is the spiritual lifeline of the Chinese nation, is an important source nourishing the Socialist core value system, and is a firm basis for us to get a firm foothold within the global cultural surge. We must integrate the conditions of new times with inheriting and carrying forward China’s excellent traditional culture, and inheriting and carrying forward a Chinese aesthetic spirit. For our Socialist literature and art to flourish and develop, we must earnestly study and learn from the excellent literature and art created by people in all countries worldwide. Only if we persist in using the foreign to serve the Chinese, exploration and innovation, ensuring combinations of the Chinese and the Western, and mastery through comprehensive study, will our country’s literature and art be able to flourish and develop better.

Xi Jinping’s Talks at the Beijing Forum on Literature and Art, 16 October 2014

Compare the Chinese program with the unmitigated filth and appalling celebration of the False, the Wicked, and the Ugly of the last 100 years of Western art and literature. When is the last time any Western leader dared to stand firmly against the degradation of Western culture, or to even lift a finger in an attempt to raise the cultural standards of the West? And Xi’s culture campaign is not a communist program, it is an intrinsically Chinese nationalist one, one that has its roots in the consciousness of the consequences of past decadence and was almost certainly inspired by the cultural campaign instituted by the great Lee Kuan Yew when he first came to power in Singapore in 1959.

There were, in addition, several easy, popular points to be scored that required no planning, including a series of “anti-yellow culture” prohibitions imposed by Pang Boon as minister for home affairs. “Yellow culture” was a literal translation of the Mandarin phrase for the decadent and degenerate behaviour that had brought China to its knees in the 19th century: gambling, opium-smoking, pornography, multiple wives and concubines, the selling of daughters into prostitution, corruption and nepotism. This aversion to “yellow culture” had been imported by schoolteachers from China, who infused into our students and their parents the spirit of national revival that was evident in every chapter of the textbooks they brought with them, whether on literature, history or geography.

The Singapore Story, Lee Kuan Yew, 1998

We are not the Chinese and they are not us. But the enemy of our mutual enemy is our friend, and there is a long and positive history of Christians showing respect for the noble and virtuous pagans.

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In service to the Beautiful

President Trump has been the only President to champion the Good, the Beautiful, and the True over the course of my lifetime. Whether he succeeds or fails – and I believe he will succeed – in his war with the Swamp, he has been the greatest U.S. President since Andrew Jackson defeated the Bank.

Policy. (a) Applicable Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public. They should also be visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. Architecture — with particular regard for traditional and classical architecture — that meets the criteria set forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings. In the District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture.

(b) Where the architecture of applicable Federal public buildings diverges from the preferred architecture set forth in subsection (a) of this section, great care and consideration must be taken to choose a design that commands respect from the general public and clearly conveys to the general public the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of America’s system of self-government.

(c) When renovating, reducing, or expanding applicable Federal public buildings that do not meet the criteria set forth in subsection (a) of this section, the feasibility and potential expense of building redesign to meet those criteria should be examined. Where feasible and economical, such redesign should be given substantial consideration, especially with regard to the building’s exterior.

This is not a trivial matter. To stand against modern art and architecture is to battle for the soul of the nation, which has been enervated by the hateful, spirit-destroying ugliness pushed relentlessly by the Prometheans for decades.