Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: SF/F’s transideological malaise

It appears it is not only right-wing conservatives, libertarian extremists and Bible-thumping god-botherers who are thoroughly sick of the meatless, mindless, scalzified SF/F that is being pushed on them by the genre publishers:

I am on the opposite end of the political spectrum from you. I am a Marxist and an atheist, but I didn’t come here to debate politics or religion. Anyway, last year I started writing seriously and I thought I should get out there on the web and see what the “scene” is about right now, sci/fi and fantasy writers and markets and new fiction, especially short fiction. I constantly read sci/fi and fanstasy, but mostly from my collection of old paperbacks, Vance, Herbert, Howard, etc… I read just as much non-fiction from my local library. So I put my finger on the pulse. The experience was disheartening. New short fiction seems to place innovation over all other qualities possible in a particular piece, which means my desire to read a good story is likely to go unsatisfied. Also, the “scene” is completely preoccupied with identity.

And of course, I happened upon the Scalzi/Vox feud. I checked out both blogs. The verdict: Scalzi – rather dull and typical upper middle class views, Vox – incendiary but rigorous, consistent, and most importantly, often funny. As a Marxist I can’t resist good polemic, even from the other side.  I lurk about once a month.

Let me backtrack with a little explanation. Some people out there, perhaps not you, may confuse my radical leftism with the stuff going on out there. They would be wrong. As a Marxist, for me it is class, class, class. Class trumps race, gender, everything. Its all about wealth. The fact that “old white men” are holding alot of it is due to historical forces, not from their “whiteness”. In the 60’s and 70’s, the leftist preoccupation with class was replaced with race and gender issues, to the detriment of all concerned.  Old news, just spelling it out here for clarity’s sake.

So we get to now, and race and gender obsessed “liberal progressives” are such a harmful force in society that I, an actual socialist revolutionary, can enjoy you tormenting them on your blog, even though your political perspective is rooted in basic assumptions that are opposite my own. Strange days indeed. For liberal progressives, this would indicate I am a sexist racist, but as a white male I am already on their shitlist so whatever. I am a Marxist. I believe I am fighting the good fight. I am not going to get on my knees and lick boot, hoping for “ally” status. Eff that. The whole thing is a bizarre repackaging of original sin.

So when you put The Last Witchking out there for free, I thought why not and downloaded it. When it came up in the queue I dived in and I was floored. The stories were excellent. They entertained me. What else can I say? Opera Vita was incredible. There was a poignancy there I was not expecting. Suffused throughout is a certain ephemeral beauty, stately and linked with mortality. The subtlety belies tropes about limitations of the “male perspective” that are bandied about when the writing community weighs in on gender.  I haven’t seen religion done so convincingly and movingly in the genre since Herbert. I went ahead and read Magic Broken and enjoyed it thoroughly and then pulled the trigger on Throne for five bucks and now I am enjoying that.

It is really remarkable that your apparent congenital disorder, the inability to shut up or even tone it down, has disbarred you from the typical path to success as a writer.  I guess there is hope. I found your work via your soapbox. Despite my predilections toward the radical, I never let politics get in the way of personal relationships and now I have to add that it can’t dissuade me from enjoying fiction I like. Thanks for the books. I am hooked on Selenoth now, the antidote for my genre malaise. Please make it your goal to churn out volumes of the stuff for readers like me trying to survive this long winter.

That an avowed Marxist would enjoy my fiction is less surprising than it might sound. I am, after all, a radical, merely one with very different assumptions and objectives. And I’ve always gotten along much better with the hard left than with the soft, squishy, bourgeois progressive left; one of my independent studies was done under a hardcore Canadian socialist who regarded McDonalds as the capitalist devil incarnate.

Of course, this may be because the hard left is about the only group that hates the progressive left more than I do. One of the great satisfactions about being on the right-wing is the knowledge that even if we lose and the revolution finally arrives in its fullness, the useful idiots are going to be the first ones lined up against the wall and shot. And who can look at the way Wall Street has been raping the country and not feel the urge to raise a revolutionary flag; if that is capitalism, then I don’t want any part of it and I’m a libertarian!

But besides our obvious ideological and religious differences, I have to take some issue with the writer’s idea that it is my unwillingness to cower before the PC gods of publishing that have prevented me from following the conventional path. While my notoriety would presumably have made it easier for them to decline to publish me – which is theoretical anyhow because I do not have an agent and I have never submitted my work for publication to any of the various genre publishing houses – this actually has the situation backwards.

One reason that I have been so uncompromising and so unwilling to play along with the progressives is because I have known from the start that the substance of my fiction would prevent the mainstream publishers from publishing it. And I also knew I had no interest in writing the sort of tedious political crap they wanted to publish. So, there was no reason to muzzle myself because I knew there was no chance that they would publish books like The Chronicles of King David or Summa Elvetica no matter what I did or did not say. I can’t pose as either a hero or a victim because I never had anything to lose in that regard.

In fact, I consider myself incredibly lucky to not only have such strong support from intelligent readers across religious and ideological lines, but to be writing at a time when the gatekeepers are so impotent. All of us who write should be deeply grateful, whether it is to God or to History and the class struggle, to be alive at such a fascinating time! To be able to write exactly what one wants and be able to make it readily available to those who are potentially interested in it is all that any writer can really ask for. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.

Mailvox: don’t struggle

TS writes of his difficulties in attempting to find belief in the existence of God:

Vox, I’ve read your blog for quite some time now and have enjoyed it immensely. Right now I am a struggling theist. More and more I am doubting the existence of God and it’s plaguing my thoughts and causing some serious depression.

My biggest hurdle in my mind right now is the fact that you can’t see God. You come across as very intelligent so I ask you personally: what helped you get past the fact that you can’t see God or hear from him. My mind continues to tell me I am being irrational for believing in a life form I can’t see. Am I missing something?  Is this truly a matter of “blind faith” as an atheist would mockingly say? Your thoughts are much appreciated. I genuinely want rational reasons that can help me get past this mental hurdle

It has become apparent to me that there are three primary causes for atheism. One is a simple neural anomaly where the atheist lacks something in the brain that is necessary for some forms of belief. This doesn’t merely relate to belief in God, but also in the ability to connect with other beings, hence the strong correlation between atheism and higher levels on the autism spectrum.

The second cause produces the most common and irritating variety, the intellectual perma-adolescent. This is the Religion Minus variety, which is nothing more than a parasitic Do What Thou Wilt Society. Combine it with the first cause and one has the typical New Atheist: smug, juvenile, and socially autistic.

The third cause is what I would describe as a failure of understanding. It is, I submit, a category error at its core. To me, it seems quite literally crazy to refuse to believe in ANYTHING simply because one has not seen it or heard it. We live in an age of virtual reality, where what we see and hear are entirely false. We live in an age of quantum physics, where what happens on one side of a galaxy has chaotic and unknown, but theoretically observable effects on the other side of it.

So, to think that because one has never personally seen nor heard something is any sort of indication that it doesn’t exist strikes me as solipsism of the first order. As for me, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever in believing in God’s existence. There is nothing to get past. Perhaps this paragraph explaining why I am a Christian, taken from my exchange of letters with Luke of Common Sense Atheism, will help you understand my perspective on the readily observable fact of God’s existence.

Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in
objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single
one of us sooner or later. I believe in the fallen nature of Man, and I
am aware that there is no shortage of evidence, scientific,
testimonial, documentary, and archeological, to demonstrate that no
individual is perfect or even perfectible by the moral standards
described in the Bible. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus
Christ is the only means of freeing Man from the grip of that evil. God
may not be falsifiable, but Christianity definitely is, and it has
never been falsified. The only philosophical problem of evil that could
ever trouble the rational Christian is its absence; to the extent that
evil can be said to exist, it proves not only the validity of
Christianity but its necessity as well. The fact that we live
in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of
God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is
described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find
that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the
shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

My advice to TS is to stop struggling to understand how God functions or why God hasn’t submitted to a personal belief audit and start simply experiencing the effects of God in this fallen world.

Stand outside in the cold autum breeze, close your eyes, spread your arms, and feel the unseen wind on your face. Read the Book of Proverbs, read the latest professional manual on child-rearing, written with the benefit of more than two thousand years of collective human experience, then go to a park and observe the children interacting with their parents. Go drop one rock on top of another 500 times and do your best to convince yourself that all the life you see around you began as a result of a singular accidental collision. Go to a funeral of a stranger, observe the grief of the friends and family, and tell yourself that the rearrangement of atoms involved in the transition of the deceased from life to death was of no more material import or significance than the shattering of a rock into dust.

Speak to a murderer and ask him to tell you why he committed his horrific crimes. Look at the pictures of the aftermath. Then look deep into his eyes and try to tell yourself that neither good nor evil exist.

Immerse yourself in the atheist arguments with your eyes and your mind open. Not until you fully understand them, not until you reconstruct them from their foundational assumptions, can you grasp how superficial and foolish they are from a purely rational perspective.

Empirical mysticism isn’t a path I would recommend for everyone, but the excessively logical often struggle with the reality of the mystery. They simply cannot accept that Man is not capable of formulating the questions, let alone finding the answers. That is why allowing themselves to experience and accept the manifold mysteries of life, the universe, and everything can be necessary for them to permit themselves to be convicted of things not seen.

In the end, one is advised to make The Castrate’s Choice: It is so or it is not so. Because the life lived seated on a fence makes for a poorly lived one. Choose, and then live accordingly.

Mailvox: A European perspective

A Spanish reader weighs in concerning my comments on the different challenges faced by Western civilization in Europe and North America:

I have been following your posts for several years and, although I never had an interest in fantasy, I just started reading The Wardog’s Coin. (I figured that since I enjoy so much your thoughts on economics, politics, and gender issues, I should also check the fiction.)

After reading you post titled “Why there is hope for Europe” I would like to share some thoughts with you about the differences between the situations on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps I should begin this by mentioning that I am European, Spanish to be precise.

In your article, you enumerate these three differences:

1.    Parliamentary systems
2.    Trans-ideological nationalism
3.    No popular pro-immigrant mythology

I agree with the first, not so much with the other two. But, most importantly, I would add two that I consider crucial.

1.    America’s immigration problem is with Spanish-speaking (mostly) Christians, whereas Europe’s is with (mostly) Muslims. I am really surprised that you did not include this one among your three differences.

The Americans’ memory of the Mexican War or the Spanish-American War is nothing compared to the Europeans’ memory of centuries fighting against Islam (almost 800 years in the case of Spain). Not to sound patronizing, but can an American wrap his head around the idea of a national identity forged in a conflict that triples the age of the United States of America (711 A.D. to 1492 vs. 1776 to 2013)? Some things are so big that they are routinely overlooked.

An American notices a South American moving into his neighborhood and he may have some very valid concerns, if nothing else, as a taxpayer. But he never really fears that Juan Garcia is going to show up one day in a subway station and blow himself up killing dozens of innocents. Our American John Doe has never witnessed Juan Garcia peeing in broad daylight on the façade of an American church. John might fear that his baby girl will marry Juan and then he’d have to attend a Catholic wedding, he does not fear that his baby girl will spend the rest of her life in a burka. He may fear that his grandchildren will play soccer rather than American football, he does not fear that they will learn how to behead infidels (like John himself).

In Europe, you find croissants, which were created in the image of a crescent to be eaten in defiance of the Muslim invaders centuries ago. You find Spanish families named Matamoros, literally ‘Moor-slayer’. And so on. In Europe, a nationalist party has plenty of symbolism to use against immigrants. There is absolutely nothing in the American culture against South Americans even remotely resembling that deeply rooted pathos. The closest thing being what? The ballad of El Álamo?

Plus, a South American is not going to tell our John Doe to stop eating burgers, but a Muslim cannot tolerate jamón, and to a Spaniard jamón is several orders of magnitude more important than the national flag, the national anthem, and the King, combined.

Worse still, after two devastating world wars and a traumatic cold war dividing the continent, Europeans happily (hippily?) embraced this kumbayah idea that if you don’t annoy others then they will leave you in peace. This was not meant only between France and Germany or between the metropolis and the former colonies, but in a vaguely general universal sense. So it is now particularly vexing to receive so much animosity from some immigrants (while the official politically correct tune goes on unaltered). America has not at all gone through such an emotional roller-coaster; you see, it happened over there.

So John Doe is not that concerned; certainly not as concerned as his European counterparts.

2.    If I am not very mistaken, immigration in the US is very concentrated in the Sunbelt. Whereas In Europe, immigration in Scandinavia, Britain, and Germany is as much an issue as it is in Spain and Italy. This would be equivalent to Alaska, the Dakotas, and Vermont having as much an issue with immigrants as Texas and California. Clearly, they don’t. (Again, this is not to overlook the federal fiscal implications.)

Plus, European towns are typically much more densely populated and geographically contiguous, so much so that you can actually walk from one neighborhood to another, so when a neighborhood suffers it is much more evident to all and so it is easier to genuinely worry, to empathize (even if the media tries to ignore it). But urban sprawl in the US, I suspect, has had a detrimental effect on what Ibn Khaldun called Asabiyyah, the nation’s social cohesion, by creating some sort of watertight compartments. An American neighborhood goes to hell and the people over the county border do not even notice because, to begin with, they’d need to drive there to notice but they never go (and the media dutifully ignores it). By the way, I think this phenomenon also helps explain why American Conservatives in the last presidential election where so mistaken about their real chances, they have lost sight of the nation by living inside a monochromatic bubble (Dems too, but their aggregated Blue State bubbles are demographically larger, it seems).

I think these two points are much more powerful than the pro-immigrant mythology. Indeed, it was, in part, because of the strength of this mythology all across Europe that so many nations made it so easy for immigrants to move in.

Finally, all this relates to perceptions, not necessarily actual threats, and to how easily and how much political parties can gain from that fear and what they do with that. Almost every Muslim I have personally met in Europe is too busy making a living to spoil it by going radical. And since they often live in several European countries before they settle down it is quite normal for many of them to speak several European languages. And let’s not forget that it was not them who drafted or even voted for all the idiotic legislation that’s gotten us into this mess (ditto for South Americans in the US). Obviously if it was all bad news then all the continent would be soaked in blood once again. But the really amusing twist (and isn’t History rich in amusing twists?) is that these growing nationalist parties have much more in common with what most adult Muslims have seen in their own homelands than with the political parties that have dominated Europe since 1945. Perhaps they will feel more at home? It’s not a cruel cheap joke. After all, General Franco, won the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) with the help of the African volunteers, his beloved Moorish Guards. Perhaps the key to real multicultural understanding was not to be found in kumbayah Social-democracy but in something better time-tested.

He’s entirely correct to call me to account on my failure to mention the demographic differences concerning the two invasions, especially since I’ve written about them in the past. Most Americans are astonished to learn that Muslims make up less than 5 percent of the European population, whereas Hispanics make up around 20 percent of the U.S. population.

As one American friend was surprised to observe, she saw more Muslims on her last visit to Minneapolis than she did in Rome.  Londonistan and Amstarabia no more indicate the Muslim occupation of Europe than New York City proves that most Americans are Jews.

That being said, our Spanish friend is incorrect about the invasion of the U.S. being primarily concentrated in the Sunbelt. It is certainly most severe in the four Sand States, but when Somalis are being elected in St. Paul and entire neighborhoods are being renamed to reflect who is now controlling them, the idea that the problem is localized is clearly incorrect. To put it in the proper perspective, there are only about 4x more Muslims in Europe per capita than there are Somalis in Minnesota. 

Mailvox: Are Christians “required to be dicks”?

LudVanB objects to the idea that atheists should be expelled from Christian organizations:

“Not all Christians are required to be dicks, Vox”

To which Myrddin responded:

Actually, if we behave the way Christ and his apostles behaved:

  1. To honest seekers: Be gentle.
  2. To scoffers in private: Avoid them.
  3. To scoffers in public: Humiliate them.
  4. To people who claim to be part of the church, but are willfully and proudly disobeying: Kick them out.
  5. To false teachers: Silence them and/or kick them out.
  6. To those who repent: Welcome them back.

Notice under churchian definitions, in four of those six situations, Christians are required to be dicks.

Let’s see if we can  find Scriptural justification for Myrddin’s claims. I’ll start with the two that are relevant to yesterday’s discussion, numbers (4) and (5).

(4) 2 Thessalonians 3:6: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us.”

1 Corinthians 5: 11-13 “I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.””
 
(5) James 3:1: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”

2 Peter 2:1: “But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves.”

The lesson, as always, is this: never listen to an atheist attempting to lecture you on theological matters. They literally do not know what they are talking about.

Mailvox: where to find motivation

AL is seeking to get out of a rut:

Do you have any words of advice or inspiration for someone in their mid-20’s that feels the drain of being stuck in a rut?  I’ve found myself and others around that age stuck in the same sort of endless downward spiral.  The stress of work and trying to “make it” simply makes it seem too hard to work on the things necessary to get out of the rut.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in a situation like that, but I am sure you’ve observed others that have been.  Hell, I get the impression more than a few of the Dread Ilk find themselves in such a mess.

I think that most people start to lose any sight of their dreams at this point in life, or when they are 35 or 40 always wished they had made a few moves to change their situation when they were 25 and still had time.

Is it the economy that’s really making things hard?  Is it just a lack of motivation?  I don’t know what it is, but I’m determined to get out of this and I’m sure others that read Vox Popoli feel the same.

It is always hard to separate the urgent from the important. My rule is to always devote at least 15 percent of my work time to things with long-term possibilities. Such as, for example, my fiction. It’s not my job, it’s not my career, and it’s not a reliable way to make a living, but every book has upside potential, however remote the odds, whereas the average contract job that pays the bills does not.

It’s so very easy for hard-working young men to simply put their heads down and think that by working hard, they will naturally get ahead. But we’re not living in a Horatio Alger novel and it doesn’t work that way anymore, in part due to the economy, in part due to the feminized workplace, and in part due to the increased societal imbalances of wealth distribution due to increased government intervention in the economy. Those who win, win bigger now, but fewer people win.

One of the factors in the mid-life crisis AL mentions is the realization that time is running out and one’s options are increasingly limited. There is no more time for mistakes, for finding yourself, and for screwing around, what you do will dictate the way you will live for the rest of your life. And the sooner you understand that, the more time you have to actually do something, to take several chances, to fail, to fail again, and then to ultimately succeed.

Failure is the norm. I can’t stress this enough! You’re usually going to fail, so fail as fast and as often as you can, because failure is the seed for future success. By the same token, because it is the norm, it is nothing to fear. Nothing! And each time, you learn more and you learn how to go about the next opportunity more effectively.

I can’t tell AL how to motivate himself because everyone is motivated differently. Motivation tends to be related to how we surmount our natural weaknesses. Because my primary weakness is laziness, I tend to be most effectively fueled by negativity and by competition. For example, I very much doubt I would have been driven to make VP a more popular blog than Whatever had the competitive comparison not been repeatedly waved in my face. There were days when I didn’t feel like blogging, there are still days when I don’t feel like it. But I do it every single time, and fortunately, the motivation will be there as long as Whatever is deemed to be a competitor of some kind.

It’s the same motivation I draw upon on the soccer field when it’s the second half, I’m worn out, I’ve just sprinted 50 yards down the sideline to be cut off by the sweeper, and I look back to see an opposing striker and the left midfielder marked by our right defender at midfield as the goalie punts the ball towards them. Part of me is arguing, quite logically, that I’m too old and too tired to run, and it’s not as if the World Cup is on the line anyhow. And then I hear that snarling voice inside saying “that’s my guy and that motherfucker isn’t going to score on my fucking watch!” And then, somehow, the energy to run back magically appears. Which is why, in ten games this season, (five of them defeats), no left midfielder or outside defender has scored a single goal. I don’t think I’ve even allowed a single uncontested shot from that side, with the exception of a free kick resulting from a defender’s foul.

But that’s my motivation. I know what it is and I know how to draw upon it. AL has to figure out what works for him. Maybe it is praise. Maybe it is money. Maybe it is a sense of serving others. Maybe it is social status or even just pure envy. It can be positive or negative, but it has to be identified before it can be purposefully utilized. If AL is determined to get out of the rut, he will get out, he simply has to determine what gives him the strength to run when he would rather walk.

Mailvox: Porky predicts Obamacare

I find Porky’s political wise man act to be a little tedious, so I’m going to make sure I don’t forget this prediction by posting it here.  Porky wrote:

Are you incapable of seeing that the Obamacare rollout was a planned failure? Do you not understand the progressive tactic of lowered expectations?

The website will be functioning reasonably well by December (I suspect they’ve had the fix all along) at which time Obama will announce his glorious Christmas gift to humanity is “not perfect, but it’s improving every day and children and pregnant women are safe now.” The argument will have been successfully shifted from “should there even be socialized medicine” to “how can we make socialized medicine work.”

Mission accomplished. Another brilliant progressive tactic made possible by the type of foolishness we see in the OP.

So, Porky predicts there will be no delayed implementations, the Obamacare site registrations will be working smoothly within 30 days, and Obama will make a public announcement to that effect.

If he’s correct, I will congratulate him and take his predictions more seriously in the future. If he’s not, we’ll be able to safely dismiss his particular brand of political conspiracy theory.

Mailvox: the Fed imbalance

JD asks about the Fed’s balance sheet:

Fed balance sheet may not return to normal until 2019?  What does this mean to lay people?  Would you enlighten The Dread Ilk, please?

The short version is that quantitative easing, which is the Federal Reserve’s euphemism for “printing money” under the current monetary regime, is not working in terms of returning the economy to full employment or stimulating economic growth. However, the Fed doesn’t dare stop QEn because doing so would almost instantly crash the stock market and hurl the global financial system into crisis, if not collapse. So, the program is going to continue indefinitely, which we already know due to the appointment of Janet Yellen, who is even more expansionary-minded than the man named Helicopter Ben.

Wikipedia has a good definition of quantitative easing: “Quantitative easing (QE) is an unconventional monetary policy used by central banks to prevent the money supply falling when standard monetary policy has become ineffective. A central bank implements quantitative easing by buying specified amounts of financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions, thus increasing the monetary base. This is distinguished from the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds in order to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.

“Expansionary monetary policy typically involves the central bank buying short-term government bonds in order to lower short-term market interest rates. However, when short-term interest rates are at or close to zero, normal monetary policy can no longer lower interest rates. Quantitative easing may then be used by monetary authorities to further stimulate the economy by purchasing assets of longer maturity than short-term government bonds, and thereby lowering longer-term interest rates further out on the yield curve. Quantitative easing raises the prices of the financial assets bought, which lowers their yield.”

This is why the stock market is up considerably since early 2009 and why corporate borrowing is up when the other private borrowing sectors are down. The reason that the QE program has continued for nearly five years now is that it hasn’t had the triggering effect that it was supposed to have in 2009 or any subsequent year. This is exactly what I have been talking about for years, in pointing out that the Fed cannot expand the money supply in the same way that was done in Weimar Germany and in Zimbabwe, because there are material and significant differences in the way the Fed “prints” money and the way past governments have printed money.

The Fed won’t simply print money in the traditional manner because the coterie of investment institutions they serve can’t profit that way; it is all inflationary downside without a leveraging upside. The US government could certainly do it, of course, and all it would have to do is completely shake off the chains of Wall Street first. So, needless to say, printing trillions of dollars and distributing them to the citizenry is not going to happen.

Given that they STILL haven’t taken the simple step of forgiving mortgage debt to free up disposable income, it should be obvious that they’re not going to indiscriminately hand out cash to everyone either.

My case for debt-deflation doesn’t rest on the physical impossibility of money printing, but on the improbability of Wall Street voluntarily giving up the goose that has laid so many dollar-filled eggs for 100 years. I think they will kill the economy before they give up control, especially since widespread bankruptcies and foreclosures taking place under the present regime would put huge swaths of U.S. property in their hands. It is very much a heads they win, tails you lose situation.

As for 2019, they might as reasonably have given a date of fiver. If you look at L1, it is very clear that all QE has done for the last five years is prevent the bottom from falling out completely while encouraging an astonishing amount of malinvestment via the corporate and federal sectors. So, I anticipate more of the same until the household sector defaults begin, which should set off the third, and more serious, stage of the financial crisis.

Timing? I don’t do timing. How will the crisis be resolved? I don’t know. These things cannot be known until they happen. All we can know for certain is that the present course of credit disinflation and substitution of private debt for public debt is not going to continue indefinitely, since it would result in the complete socialization of the national economy by 2030.

Mailvox: the wages of public school

MY writes about the problems her family is having with her niece:

I’m writing this on behalf of my sister, whom I’m very close to.  I have a niece who is giving her parents a great deal of grief lately. I debated writing this but I don’t think we could get a perspective like yours from anywhere else, if you would be so kind. X is 13 and on a fast track to making some very bad choices. She is very dependent on her friends and bends to peer pressure to a ridiculous degree. She does not socialize with her siblings unless forced to and is rude and distant.

A few weeks ago her dad asked to look through her iPad, something they randomly do from time to time. X refused and ran out of the room with it. When they finally got it from her my sister says she couldn’t figure out why X wanted to hide it as there was nothing incriminating on it. I told her I thought she erased things. We know this to be true now.

As punishment her parents took the iPad away. They caught X sneaking into their room at 3am, stealing it back. She is now indefinitely banned from her iPad.

A few nights ago my sister noticed her phone missing. On a hunch she decided to check X’s room after X fell asleep. She found the phone and a series of texts from a instant messenger site on it. The texts were to a couple people. One was a boy and of course, the text had a vulgar sexual nature to them. The boy was asking her if she twerked and X was flirting back with him. The other texts were to a girl, making plans to hang, and X noted that she had to make sure to call the friend on a land line so her parents wouldn’t get suspicious about her texting.  Another text was from a high school boy. I’m not sure what he said to her but this particular boy is known to have fathered a child by another middle school girl. So my sister puts the phone on her night stand and waits. X sneaks back in and takes the phone again back to her room. At this point mom and dad both get up to confront her. They go take the phone back and find not only has X erased the texts but she also took the app off the phone.

-My sister substitutes at the school X attends. Another mom who works there, mother of one of X’s friends, showed my sister a series of texts on her daughter’s phone from X. The texts were loaded with crude song lyrics, f-bombs, and the word “bitch” in all its uses.  The girlfriend did not use the vulgarities that X used.

-X has, obviously not taken any responsibility for her behavior. She claims the texts to the middle school boy about twerking were just jokes and she has never met the high school boy, etc. She can’t explain how the high school boy knows who she is. She is sulky, short-tempered, self-obsessed, entitled, and generally lazy at home.

My sister and her husband have gone through some major financial upheavals in the last 5 years. My brother-in-law now works for my dad but is not making enough yet for my sister to quit her job again. My sister is thinking of pulling them all out of school next year. I note this because my first response was to suggest pulling X out of school among other things. They have removed all the electronic toys from the house and store them at my dad’s office. They also took the door completely off her room.

They are a traditional family that regularly attends Latin mass and my sis is just stunned by this behavior. I am too honestly. None of the other three kids are like this. Her behavior is very self-destructive for her age. Short of pulling her out of school, how to you change a 13 year old’s character? How can they provide consequences in a way that will get a positive response instead of this nasty, passive aggressive sulking? How do you get a child this self-obsessed to stop focusing on herself and show empathy and affection for her family? What resources would you recommend?

It’s important to note that this sort of thing is always a possible consequence when children are abandoned to a public school environment. It’s not an inevitable consequence, to be sure, but there are always going to be those children who are, by character, more susceptible to it than others, regardless of their upbringing. I strongly favor homeschooling for all children, but especially for those with weak, easily-influenced characters.

My recommendation would be to pull X out of school immediately. The nature of the problem exhibited is serious enough to justify drastic action, especially in light of her blatant lying, stealing, and other Machiavellian actions. The other children can probably wait until next year if they are not showing any signs of similar behavior. But the school year has barely begun and there is a very good chance that X will get herself into trouble of one sort or another in the next eight months.

As SB pointed out, these problems aren’t something that started overnight. They are character problems, they are firmly implanted, and they will require a long period of boot camp-style attitude readjustment.So, in addition to pulling her out of school and the solid steps the parents have taken to deny her communications and privacy, they should rely upon the method proven to work by various militaries throughout the world. For the next six weeks, they should put her to work until she is too exhausted to find trouble.

By Christmastime, X should be an expert in grouting, deep-cleaning, and every surface in the house should be sparkling. And then there is a credible threat hanging over her head when the strictures are gradually relaxed; every time she is tempted, she’ll be weighing whether it is worth another six weeks of hard manual labor.

All socialization outside the house and parental supervision should be barred until further notice. X is a child, she is a dependent, and as long as her parents are legally liable for her actions, they have the right and the responsibility to prevent her from indulging in her short-sighted, self-destructive tendencies.

There are no guarantees, of course. Despite her parents’ best efforts, X may become an overweight mudshark with a meth habit and two abortions under her belt by the time she is 18. Or she may turn it around completely. Regardless, the probability is that if her parents don’t directly and forthrightly address the situation with consistency and resolve, she will destroy her life in one way or another. Unfortunately, some people are just naturally self-destructive.

One of the hardest things to accept as a parent is that we cannot make our children’s choices for them. What we can do is decide upon the primary influences upon them. In the case of the child who is greatly susceptible to peer pressure, the answer is straightforward: take care to ensure that her peers are positive influences rather than negative ones.

Mailvox: 25 reasons for Trinitarian skepticism

PB actually emailed me 100 reasons why he feels my skepticism concerning the Trinity doctrine are correct. But the first 25 are more than sufficient for the purposes of discussion.

1. Because
Jesus Christ is represented by the sacred writers to be as distinct a
being from God the Father as one man is distinct from another. “It is
written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me” (John 8:17 and 18).
2. Because he not only never said that himself was God, but, on the contrary, spoke of the Father, who sent him, as God, and as the only God. “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). This language our Saviour used in solemn prayer to “his Father and our Father.”
3. Because he is declared, in unnumbered instances, to be the Son of God. “And lo, a voice from heaven, saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Can a son be coeval(the same age) and the same with his father?
4. Because he is styled the Christ, or the anointed of God. “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10:38). Is he who anoints the same with him who is anointed?
5. Because he is represented as a Priest. “Consider the ….High-Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus” (Heb. 3:1). The office of a priest is to minister to God. Christ, then, as a priest, cannot be God.
6. Because Christ is Mediator between the “One God,” and “men.” “For there is one God, and oneMediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).
7. Because, as the Saviour of men, he was sent by the Father. “And we have seen and do testify thatthe Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14).
8. Because he is an Apostle appointed by God. “Consider the Apostle,…Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him that appointed him” (Heb. 3:1 and 2).
9. Because Christ is represented as our intercessor with God. “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34).
10. Because the head of Christ is God. “I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of every woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3).
11. Because, in the same sense in which we are said to belong to Christ, Christ is said to belong to God. “And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:23).
12. Because Christ says, “My father is greater than all” (John 10:29). Is not the father, then greater than the son?
13. Because he affirms, in another connection, and without the least qualification, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).
14. Because he virtually denies that he is God, when he exclaims, “Why callest thou me Good? There is none good but one, that is God” (Matt. 19:17).
15. Because our Saviour, after having said, “I and my Father are one,” gives his disciples distinctly to understand that he did not mean one substance, equal in power and glory, but one only in affection and design, as clearly appears from the prayer he offers to his Father in their behalf, –“that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (John 17:21).
16. Because the Father is called the God of Christ as he is the God of Christians. Jesus saith unto her, “….Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father; and to my Godand your God” (John 20:17).
17. Because an Apostle says of God, in distinction from the “Lord Jesus Christ,” that He is the “onlyPotentate,” and that He “only hath immortality” (1 Tim. 6:15 and 16).
18. Because it is the express declaration of the same Apostle, that the Father is the one God, and there is none other. “Though there be that are called Gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things” (1 Cor. 8:5 and 6).
19. Because the power which Christ possessed was, as him affirmed, given to him. “All power isgiven unto me” (Matt. 28:18).
20. Because he positively denies himself to be the author of his miraculous works, but refers them to the Father, or the holy spirit of God. “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John14:10). “If I cast out devils by the spirit of God” (Matt. 12:28).
21. Because he distinctly states, that these works bear witness, not to his own power, but that theFather had sent him (John 5:36).
22. Because he expressly affirms that the works were done, not in his own name, but in his Father’s name (John 10:25).
23. Because he asserts, that “him hath God the Father sealed,” i.e. to God the Father he was indebted for his credentials (John 6:27).
24. Because he declares that he is not the author of his own doctrine. “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me” (John 7:16 and 17).

25. Because he represents himself as having been instructed by the Father. “As my Father hath taught me, I speak these things” (John 8:28).

Regardless of what your opinion on of the matter is, I think it is important to keep in mind that Christians should not elevate theological understanding to an overly sacred status. It is repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior that are the central issues of our faith, not an ability to see more clearly through the glass than others. Jesus, you may recall, was never overly impressed with intellectual ability.

Mailvox: The Hydrogen Sonata

TT notices what I’ve been reading recently and has a question or two:

A couple of years ago I tripped across Iain Banks’ Culture series and fell in love with it.  I used Player of Games as the gateway to get my friends hooked. I was greatly saddened by Banks’ far too premature death.

Have you read the others in the series?  Are you enjoying the Hydrogen Sonata?

But for the consciousness uploading, I think we’re getting close to the technology that could create the Culture.  Or, at least, put an end to want.  That idea really excites me. What are your thoughts on the subject?

I have read most of the others in the series. While I quite like the concept of the sonata and I found it initially intriguing, the book itself has thus far proved to be remarkably tedious. Part of the problem is that the central plot device, which is the Subliming of the non-Culture race, is almost totally uninteresting to the reader; with precisely one exception that I will not mention for spoiler reasons, there is literally no reason why he should care about it one way or another. That being said, I’m only halfway-through it, so I cannot honestly say that I have an opinion on it until I finish the book.

The problem with the Culture series is the same problem that Star Trek has faced for decades. First, imagine that all the Earth’s problems are solved! Okay… so now what?

The answer, apparently, is to go outside the area in which the problems are solved and then recreate those old problems using new and different cultures to take the place of the divisions inside the amalgamated culture. What this represents is a failure of the imagination; neither Banks nor Roddenberry were ever able to actually present a credible future of the sort they were nominally envisioning.

It’s remarkable how much war and violence there is in these officially peaceful cultures, is there not? Why, it’s almost as if the alternative it literally too boring to imagine!

Because he was considerably more talented and imaginative than Roddenberry and his heirs at the helm of the Star Trek franchise, Banks’s Culture feels much more rationally credible than Roddenberry’s UN Stormtroopers in Space nonsense, but it is still, at the end of the day, an artistic and imaginative failure. In fact, it is a testament to the man’s skill as a science fiction writer that he managed to make such a comprehensive failure so interesting.

As for the potential end of want, I have been thinking about that a lot lately and will reserve my thoughts on the matter for a future post. Post-scarcity economics is a fascinating topic, but I would not consider the Culture to be a serious take on it for reasons that should be discernible in light of what I have written above.