Essays in Idleness

The highlight in Trump’s inauguration yesterday was Carrie Underwood’s a cappella performance of “America the Beautiful.” It was of course not meant to be a cappella, but the canned orchestral backing cut out, leaving an awkward silence. This ended when Carrie advised the musical captain, “I’ll just sing it,” then carried it off in her full-lyric (almost mezzo-) soprano.

I formed a crush on this Oklahoma country singer when I first learnt about her. This was when she married an Ottawa hockey player, fifteen years ago. She had come out of the choir of a Free Will Baptist Church. (Like my Cape Breton mama, who became a Free Will Baptist at the age of five, when the congregation she belonged to collectively defected from quasi-Presbyterianism, to save their Homeville family church from the United Church lawyers, at the merger of 1925. My grandma, Annie, said she preferred these Baptists because, “They allow dancing, and the use of the human brain.”)

Carrie Underwood has generated gospel hits, including the incomparable “Jesus, Take the Wheel” (well, crossover), and the whole album, My Saviour.

She is not political, or wasn’t, even slightly, like many of Trump’s supporters now come out of the wainscotting. And they still hate politics, as I do. But when they are called, they will vote for their freedom; and will play their part, on cue. And when the technology fails, they will sing, a cappella. God bless all the Trumplings.

On the eve of what should be a memorable inauguration, I am of course expecting paradox and disaster. Surely something will happen that no one could possibly predict, and if it is news, it will almost certainly be bad, for good news is seldom published.

I don’t, however, see how anything that is nasty and disagreeable will happen. For even if Communist China invades Taiwan, or Russia launches some of its boasted hypersonic missiles randomly into a defenceless Europe, I should expect things to end fairly well. Some of the world will certainly survive, and we will simply go on, sans Russia and China. But I don’t expect either Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin to be quite so stupid.

Alternatively, no one will survive, in which case, we don’t have a problem.

Moreover, there are no asteroids currently in sight, and only Los Angeles seems to be burning. Even the next Ice Age does not seem to be approaching in the immediate future, and surely, we’ve all given up waiting for global warming.

If something should happen to Trump, tomorrow, there is Vance, Musk, Hegseth, and several other reliable Trumpians. Washington could freeze over, and Hell, too (they are adjoining), but never mind. Our countdown doesn’t begin until February 16th, which is Septuagesima.

It is not optimism I am trying to show, but complacency. Those of us who would exhibit Christianity, as well, must realize there is God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and that this God created the world and everything in it. He has indicated that things will not end badly. Or if they do, in our case, it will be purely personal.

A glance through the lens of the James Webb telescope should convince us that our narcissism led us astray. We should get over ourselves. Our fate is very definitely not in the stars, nor, really, in the care of any politician. The most tyrannical of them come and go, and the worst they can do is murder us. (Many, though corrupt and annoying, are in fact perfectly harmless.)

Fear not. Our fate is in the power of God, or, if He doesn’t exist, it is already decided.

One of my more controversial opinions is that Hollywood, and the film industry generally, have not told us the strict truth about the proliferation of werewolves. Their notion that people may be transformed into “lycanthropes” — a consequence I suppose of Darwin’s evolution theory — is seriously at odds with the folk tradition, and the presentation of werewolves in the classical view. These werewolves did not practice shape-shifting, nor the pre-classical therianthropy. For in those sciences, other mammals were always other mammals, and not “half-human.” Again, Darwinism is probably to blame, for it teaches that before the appearance of man, nature “evolved” an endless series of partial, “not quite” men.

Thus, in reality, werewolves are a distinct species, which, when we consult the principle of speciation, give birth only to more werewolves, and are (as it were) “programmed” to avoid hybridization. Moreover, when forced into it, the hybrid products of animals almost always prove sterile. It is thus a very inconvenient thing to be a werewolf, though positive from the family-planning point-of-view.

Indeed, there were no “werewomen,” even in Old English, which usefully accounts for very low lycanthropic reproduction rates. The term itself is among the fanciful neologisms of feminism.

But what of the werewolves who have been taking the place of people (the “Great Replacement Theory”)? I would assume a large part of our illegal immigrant population consists of convinced werewolves, but that like their other convictions, they are false. However, just because they believe in nonsense, does not mean that these immigrants (or their liberal champions) are insincere.

There has been scandal for the last decade or more in the United Kingdom, where soi-disant “werewolves” have been obsessively raping young white women, presumably in an effort to hybridize. Perhaps, if our standard for lycanthropy, or should I say lycanthropology, could be improved and corrected, these foolish imposters might be persuaded to go home.

Else, we will need a “Children’s Crusade,” to spare white girls from unwanted attention. Or a “Reconquista,” to convert these supposed werewolves back into Christians, as they were before the “Werewolf Conquest.”

Amy Chua, Yale perfesser of law, who tutored both J. D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, as well as numerous Supreme Court clerks, was more-or-less unpersoned at the height of the Obama monstrosities. She had written a “beuk” (we reserve Scottish pronunciation for this word) entitled, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which had got her almost run out of Yale. Also, death threats — an absolutely commonplace tactic of leftists, progressives, and other filth.

(I remember the Ottawa police asking me — their very first question — “What did you write that made your critics so angry?” Later, by coincidence, I was run out of the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post.)

Mrs Chua stood accused of telling her daughters to get straight A’s in school, and to play the piano and violin. She is worse than a beneficiary of White Privilege, for she is also beautiful and has squint eyes. Her husband, another Yale perfesser (Jed Rubenfeld. constitutional law), was investigated for two years then prosecuted on (obviously) false charges. On top of his other sins, he is Jewish.

Curiously, both Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc. were triggered by this remarkable teacher, who exhibits Nietzsche’s response to trauma. (“Whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”)

Mr and Mrs Rubenfeld also co-authored a delightful, useful book on certain ethnic groups in the United States. It is entitled The Triple Package, and is on three common traits that make, for instance, Indian and Cuban immigrants, and Mormons, as well as Chinese and Jews, so disproportionately successful once they settle there. Also, in my experience, the Maltese. (Hint: they make their kids get straight A’s, and play the piano and violin.)

Amy and Jed will be among the vice president’s honoured guests at the inauguration next week of Mr Donald J. Trump. He will become president, again!

“Happy days are here again.”

My attention is directed this morning (by Niall Ferguson) to a letter from John Adams, sent to Mercy Otis Warren in January, 1776. Mr Adams calls Monarchy the “genteelest and most fashionable” government, should the American colonies go mad, and decide upon sovereign independence. Then he recommends a Republic, himself.

Not all the colonies went with him; indeed what became Canada retained Monarchy but got rid of slavery, instead. However, we might still be willing to annex the USA as our eleventh province — or at least those parts with natural resources — after finding a new name for it. (Alas, “Green-land,” which might please the ecologists, has already been taken.)

Mr Adams concedes that a Monarchy would more likely make him rich. …

“It would produce so much Taste and Politeness, so much Elegance in Dress, Furniture, Equipage, so much Musick and Dancing, so much Fencing and Skaiting; so much Cards and Backgammon; so much Horse Racing and Cock fighting; so many Balls and Assemblies; so many Plays and Concerts that the very Imagination of them makes me feel vain, light, frivolous, and insignificant.”

Whereas, a Republic would produce the stoical and spartan virtues, together with a terrible excess of Politics. We may see that, from even this great American Patriot’s analysis, it would be grim.

How wise we were, to remain Playful and Loyalist!

I notice that the American “surgeon general” wants to put cancer warnings on all bottles of alcohol (to be sold in the “free market”). This would of course be accompanied by punitive new “health taxes.” As usual, the “science” behind this is false, and moderate drinking, especially of wine and ale, has been shown to improve health and increase longevity in many studies. Morbid alcoholism causes health problems, however.

We have now sixty years of false information in support of many product bans, and we have come to assume that Nanny State — which always has its own interests at heart, and never those of the public — must desecrate the packaging for all the most popular comestibles.

One of my little boys once showed enterprise by supplying sets of fake, stick-on labels to be sold in corner stores, which he designed and computer-printed himself. His talent for typography made me quite proud. These appliqués exactly matched the cigarette labels the Canadian guvmint had “mandated,” but read, i.e., “Cigarettes cause eating disorders in fish,” and, “Sex while smoking can lead to pregnancy,” and more simply, “Have another!” … It was much more profitable than lemonade stands; I am trying to remember why he stopped.

A clever lad, of independent mind, he was also a campaigner for child labour.

But we will need a new generation of health messages, for the public authorities like to waste our money by ordering the capitalists to alter the design of their warnings, constantly, to make them more alarming and repulsive. I’m sure they have large departments for this, employing many otherwise unemployable people, to extend their social welfare budgets and discourage trade.

I was thinking they could design one for surgeons general. It would read, “Being hanged from a lamp-post can endanger your health.”

Like other useless old men, I find myself celebrating anniversaries that do not command the attention of the world, for I am surrounded, increasingly, by the dead. For instance, today is the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of my father — who took his leave from this world about sixteen years ago. I am, like every surviving son of every father, more and more alone with him; and he, in his way, more and more alone with me. This is because I knew him as he was, before the world began to become unrecognizable.

Like his father before him, my father was “radically liberal.” Papa’s adult life began in a uniform, flying sorties in Spitfires against Hitler; grandpa’s began in the mud-fields of France (though happily elevated on a horse), against the Kaiser. Mine I speak about too much, but it was not heroic like theirs. Perhaps only men can understand this: that you cannot be a man until you have risked your life. Nor can you be a good man until you have risked everything in a noble cause.

Papa’s, and also grandpa’s life, as artist, was also fraught with difficulties, which are put in the way of every honest man.

In contrast to the “neo,” or modern, who lives more spontaneously, for comfort.

I wrote, “radically liberal,” but here, too, I am using terms that cannot be understood today. Canada, and the other English-speaking countries, grew up in defiance of the socialist and totalitarian principles that guided many of our neighbours. Our instinct was always to freedom — even, if necessary, from each other. Only very recently in history was this instinct — expressed across a range from moderately liberal to reasonably conservative — compromised, and progressively suppressed. (We exist for the government, now.)

One speaks with the dead, in reverence, through silence. My sense is that papa is still listening.

Alice Weidel, the federal leader of Germany’s “far-right” AfD, has approximately the same policy prescriptions as Donald Trump. Chiefly they are to return to the bourgeois habits that used to make free market states prosperous. But she subscribes to these in mainland Europe, which has been easily spooked since the Nazis offered policies that were not bourgeois.

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” as the far-right poet, T. S. Eliot, wrote in Burnt Norton, now the better part of a century ago. (He was arguably plagiarizing the far-right German poet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.)

One could recommend that my readers look her up on YouBoob, or better search for print, and form their own opinion on this Frau Weidel. (Who speaks English, and Chinese, fluently.)

Compare her, for instance, to the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, who rose to power as the prosecutor protecting Muslim “grooming gangs,” and now puts people in gaol who protest on behalf of their rape and murder victims. The idea that Mr Starmer should have a rôle in the government of a civilized country, is as absurd as the idea that the 14-year-old narcissist who has ruled Canada, or the 82-year-old senescent who has ruled the United States, are respectable members of the human race.

The remarkable “coalition” of Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, Kennedy, Vance, &c, &c — which includes several prominent Democrats now awarded the title “far-right” by America’s utterly worthless media — may be about to change the atmosphere, even in the black heart of the Dark Continent (Europe). None of these new Yankee brooms is as unambiguously vicious as the “statesmen” they are replacing.

But it will be difficult for them. The truth is that politics are often controlled by the lowest of the low, as today. The most successful of our power-mad “elites” tend to be very evil, and free only with nasty smears for their opponents. That, and public ignorance, are the secrets by which Liberals, Democrats, and other Socialists continue to win elections, and to increase the massive accumulation of criminal incompetents in their bureaucracies — where any hint of ability or even honesty will be punished.

Looking forward, I am not optimistic. But one should be open to the unexpected, in this God-created world.