Essays in Idleness

One of the claimed glories of our post-Christian world, is its cancellation of forgiveness. I was reading about this in an article by Laura Perrins, which I found in the (excellent) website, The Conservative Woman. She gives an account of the suicide of a young Oxford student, who had an awkward sexual encounter at the age of twenty, with a young woman who then announced that she had felt “discomfort.” His schoolmates called an inquisition, condemned him for “messing up,” and said they needed “space” from him. He appeared distraught, at this isolation. A couple of days later, he drowned himself in the Thames.

I thought of events that had happened, to me and to others, in a previous century: to men whose lives were, ever after, ruined; to several who were shamed into suicide, like rape victims, by things done to them. Already forty years ago, feminism had advanced to the point where reputations and livelihoods could be wrecked. Several persons known to me were slandered and destroyed by feckless accusations. (As Scott Symons said, back then, “There is no blood left to be shed in the battle of the sexes in Ontario.”)

Men have also done appalling things to women. (Did you know?)

But the revolutionary principle, now asphyxiating our neo-pagan society, gives the greater discomfort. It is the withdrawal of forgiveness, for all crimes — even those which were minor, or imaginary. For along with Christianity, mercy is nullified, and the world is consequently drowning in sleaze.

Once upon a time, when I was staying ever so briefly in Japan, I became confounded by everyday Japanese behaviour. Often it seemed neither rational, nor irrational; neither intelligible, nor mysterious, nor fuliginous. Reading their superb mediaeval literature in translation, especially novels from the Heian period (IXth through XIIIth centuries), I could speculate about their past and present attitudes and customs, and become lost among them. But while Japanese men were enigmatical to me, the women annulled my thoughts entirely.

Those were the days when “feminism” was at large in the West. This was supposed to be true in the East, too, thanks I suppose to neo-colonialism, or to another definition of feminism. For the Japanese woman, feminism apparently meant that women should be free of constraining tradition, and have what they want. But for the American or European woman, it meant they had declared themselves subservient to the totalitarian feminist agenda. This had made especially the young American women (“girls,” we used to call them) tedious and one-dimensional, although available for casual sex.

Whereas, when I told a “liberated” Japanese woman that I was married and had two delightful little boys, she replied, “Good men are hard to find. Women have to share them.”

It was a lyrical observation; or perhaps a deep, impenetrable flirtation. She was philosophizing, in an inscrutable way. This was a woman who had brilliantly observed that, “Democracy is impossible without slavery.”

By her inspiration I wrote a suite of poems, with the title: “Neither Monogamy nor Polygamy, but Origami.”

The Apostle, elder brother of Simon Peter, and patron of singers, fishermen and fishmongers, farm workers, and pregnant women, stands also before the gate of the new liturgical year.  (Tomorrow will be Advent Sunday.) He was the first disciple, the “Protokletos” to be called by Jesus. Saint Andrew left his nets by the Sea of Galilee to become a “fisher of men.” His earthly mission concluded on the Saltire Cross, at Patras in Achaia.

My apologies for being “down” through the month of November. Perhaps I am getting “up” again. Atypically, our weather has been glorious and warm, through the chill Canadian monsoon. But finally, we have received notice of winter.

My thoughts on the American election were published in the Catholic Thing, yesterday. They were pointedly inconsequential. I am not a democrat (upper or lower case), nor even not-a-one, but was mildly relieved by the defeat of the Woke Marxists. Also, mildly surprised, because I expected the fix would be in, again; apparently the Republicans mounted an effective ballot watch, at great expense. The Democrats spent their billion-and-a-half on Hollywood celebrities and other filth who, we learn, may not even have been voting for them.

As we have observed, previously, the future of our society does not depend on voting, but on the people. The task of Christianizing them remains urgent.

____________

POSTSCRIPTUM — The first thing I learn this morning, when cranking up the Internet to search for Saint Andrew, is that Catholic Online has been de-platformed by “Shopify,” one of the sponsors of Internet vileness. This was because they are pro-life, and thus not inclusive of child murderers. It is good to think that in the wake of the “far right” victory in the recent election, some retributive justice may be on the way. … Yesterday was Black Friday, which hardly matters with the Canadian post office on strike: I am anyway getting too old and feeble to beg for donations.

Perhaps I will take a little break from my Idleness, as it were, for a few days, or forever if my current illness develops unexpectedly into death. Less pleasantly, I, and we, are inundated by politics, via the American election, to the mental equivalent of a North Carolina flood. We will need some time to dry out, and make a few repairs, for instance to the buildings that floated off their foundations.

There is no point in commenting on the election. Nothing we do, or that anyone does, on our modest scale, can have an effect on “events.” It is all between cosmic forces of good and evil, and will be expressed in fresh human suffering. That is what politics can accomplish, in the Satanic strategy. Nor can the “misinformation” (or, lying) be overcome. I think the best way to understand the human dimension of this is in the Republican slogan: “No matter how much you hate the media, it’s not enough.”

In memory of “Baggins the Pharmacist.”

*

All Souls is a day in which we commemorate the dead — our dead, our own death to come, and death generally. We celebrate these things joyfully. …

A most exhilarating spectacle came to me, on a card sent by a couple in Dunrobin, Ontario. I am privileged to receive not only generous donations, for my idleness, but often, to find the cheques and money orders enclosed in beautiful cards and letters. This one contained a watercolour reproduction, “Serene Bay,” by the California painter, Dennis A. Francesconi.

He became a mouth painter in response to a terrible water-skiing accident, which left him “C-5” quadriplegic at age seventeen. But dissatisfied with his “mobility issues,” and without use of his hands, he decided to master penmanship by mouth. Then he took up drawing. His artist-wife Kristi comes into this somehow, and his extraordinary sense of colour seems to have found itself. He also removed himself from public support.

Thanks to the Internet, I quickly learnt about him and about the Association of Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. It is an association that itself inspires, consisting of people making original works of beauty, rather than just whining for money. At their website one may review a catalogue of other such painters, in India, especially, and in almost every other country.

Dennis writes that by helping others in similar situations, “one begins to truly understand why all of this has happened in the first place.”

If Trump is a Fascist and a Nazi, then I certainly am, for I view Trump as a “Liberal.” Or rather, perhaps, I am to the Far Right of the Fascists and Nazis, for I find little in their party lines even slightly compatible with my reactionary views.

Verily, it would be more intelligent to call me, and people like me, Anarchists; although I fear we are not violent enough. Perhaps we may dissociate ourselves from Trump and company (even while voting for them), by exposing them as incorrigibly bourgeois; but then re-associate with anyone who is sincerely trying to be catholicly Christian, and thinks politics just a present for Caesar.

Hell, art is more important. (This includes poetry and pop-free music.) But the love of art, like the practise of religion, must be a genuine, and therefore a humble thing. For when it is presented as a fashionable pose, it is garbage.

We now have it straight from the lips of Michelle Obama, that anyone who does not vote for Kamala Harris is a sexist and a racist, and from Kamala Harris’s, that Donald Trump is a fascist. From me you have heard that anyone who votes Democrat (or has voted Democrat in the last sixty years) is a Woke Marxist. I prefer Republicans, and specifically two from California, and one from New York. (Nixon, Reagan, Trump.) My current pick for President of the USA is actually Trump, though I like J. D. Vance better. Trump has a basic understanding of how the world works, and appreciation of the American Constitution; he is theatrical, but sane. He appeals to me because I am pro-American, and somewhat interested in personal survival. This has nothing to do with democracy, of course.

My standards for politicians have never been very high. That means I am not opposed to them, absolutely. I do not look for the best, however, but for the least bad. I am radically opposed to those who will not tell the truth, except perhaps at gunpoint. Yet even in this stressful situation, they would probably lie, for they are, medically speaking, compulsive liars.

In Canada if not the States, our political culture was relatively sane as recently as when our prime minister was Louis St Laurent (defeated, 1957). In the United States, I would celebrate Calvin Coolidge as the least bad president in the XXth century, and mark Woodrow Wilson as the most bad. He was the first (Yankee-doodle) “Woke Marxist,” to use that expression expansively. He was, in the most poisonous sense of these words, an academic and an intellectual. But in those days the government was so constrained — by the Constitution, which did not begin to be discontinued until Lincoln — that the amount of ideology it could impose fell short of comprehensive. Nevertheless, Wilson and his batty wife did what damage they could.

Listening to the Misses Obama and Harris, one feels nostalgia for the days when the modest voter would shy from termagants and madwomen.

Among my more indelible political memories was in an Ontario backyard. The provincial “conservative” party had recently swept to power in one of those “common sense revolutions,” and the gentleman I was chatting with had a plan to destroy the province’s municipal governments. He was also now the municipal cabinet minister, and thus at the head of the wrecking crew.

“David,” he explained to me affectionately, for he was arguably an old friend. “The local governments have been featherbedding.”

Astounding!

This I gathered is why they would be merged and centralized into bigger and bigger units, and put under more robust provincial control. Local governments would be losing power; the province’s local government bureaucracy would be vastly expanded. And after changing all the boundaries (so that, for instance, a unitary “City of Prince Edward County” was created to attract capital investment to a quaint, beloved, recumbent domain), very profitable automotive stripmalls could overspread the rural landscape.

I could not entirely blame my friend for these policies. He did not, after all, know what he was doing. Each measure, on its own, would pass the plausibility test for an incurious person. The rule of Chesterton’s Fence was being ignored. (Find out why something is there before you dismantle it.)

I fear that my anarchist expostulation, Tuesday, may have encouraged the fence-removers. But note that, while mentioning federal and provincial governments, I omitted municipal. Chester-Belloc’s further principle of subsidiarity applies especially to the smaller agencies. They should be comparatively ineradicable. (Call it “featherbedding” if you please.)

We need to totally exterminate socialism on its grand national, indeed international, scale. But capitalism should be demolished creatively instead. A huge multiplication of (scandalously independent) local governments, laws, customs, conventions, and rituals, is what I count on to drive the capitalists away.

One of the unfair advantages I have gained in life is that, at one point or another, almost everything I had was taken from me, by one injustice or another. Well, not quite everything. Towards the conclusion of my life I still retain hundreds of literary, artistic, and sentimental items, and have been able to replace many books. This, I have found, is a joyous thing, and I am much happier than I was in earlier life; much, much happier than when I had money and career prospects.

There is very little a Liberal or Woke Marxist can do to me now; perhaps imprison or shoot me; but I’ve had my “three score and ten.”

Nevertheless, I should like to defend others who are greedy, not only for a long and healthy life, but to be permitted to keep the money and property they’ve accumulated. As Thomas Sowell says, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

It is up to the money-maker, or should be, how much he will surrender to church, charity, or favoured cause. Of course, if you are a Liberal or Woke Marxist you think he should be paying more taxes. (The top 5 percent already pay two-thirds of our taxes, incidentally.) I would give advice on how to deceive the tax-collectors, if I could, but like most little people I have no expertise.

The money the government impounds is almost entirely wasted, just as its costly regulations  are mostly unnecessary or counter-productive. The money that goes to “welfare” is quickly dissipated, and deprives others, especially family, of their opportunity and duty to help, as well as expunging humility in the poor. Let them feel honest shame if they are collecting pogey: “free money” is even more damaging to the poor than it is to rich people.

But the money of the rich “trickles down” carefully, from private hands. And when it comes to financing those eleemosynary things, the people will give them their own money, once the government withdraws. It won’t withdraw, voluntarily, however, because the government uses the money to finance its corruption, and power displays. In particular, all genuine cultural life is supplied by the rich, and also by poor individuals. What governments pay for is overwhelmingly false and ugly.

I would not recommend greed to individuals, lest it be bad for their souls. However, it is not the government’s business, and we would all benefit if at least 95 percent of the federal and provincial governments were permanently closed. Even the bureaucrats would benefit, as I did, from being stripped of their jobs and income.

My banterings on contemporary politics have been misunderstood. Several readers are under the impression that I champion “theocracy,” and long for a state like that in Iran. But of course, it would be a Christian theocracy, with perhaps the pope replacing the High Mullah.

Let me explain why this is heresy, and why a Shia-style theocrat was never in our cards.

Christ confirmed “the separation of Church and State” (as we paraphrase in modernist language). “Give unto Caesar,” as Christians are told in the synoptic gospels; and unto God, the things that are God’s. The display of divine contempt for the things of this world is part of every Christian’s “identity.” Government, and power, are just secular, material matters.

Whereas in Islam, which is intrinsically fanatical, there is no distinction. Allah is to be consulted on everything, however trivial, and his agents become tyrants, naturally. Those not Muslim were born to be damned, as in Calvinist Protestantism. There is no escape.

“But Otiosus is against democracy, like the imams!” …

There have been others against democracy — Plato and Socrates, after and before — but Islamists are not among them. They are in the totalitarian democratic tradition, along with Communists and Fascists. All claim power from a vote, which may not have been counted honestly. Our Western democracies parody this, when they pretend that there are “group rights.”

Instead, we should cling to the rule of law. We should accept boring, secular, predictable law, without revolutionary flourishes. And, governments, whether republican or monarchist, should be at least tolerable, not seizing things; with the police and military under them, by tradition. The law is required to vindicate our freedom.

Theft is bad; it is sin. It doesn’t become right when “the people” vote for it. “Tax the rich” is essentially obscene. The idea of a welfare state, depending upon involuntary taxes, isn’t merely economically inefficient. It is dark, wicked, stinkingly evil. A government that impounds and transfers arbitrarily from one social group to another, is guilty of this enormity. Democracy has made the welfare state possible, and for that reason it must end.

I long to live in a voluntary order.

“You can’t argue with stupid.” — This phrase, used recently by one of my favourite old ladies, is typical of her charity and kindness.

I, on the other hand, yield too easily to the “mendacious” analysis; for when anyone destroys everything he touches (Justin and Jagmeet come to mind), I too quickly assume he is doing it on purpose. Take Justin, for instance. I have endured him in power for almost a decade, but like my friend Stephen, I became aware that Justin was one of Canada’s stupidest public figures long before that. But he had nice hair, a cherubic smile, and swept the women’s vote, so his rise in Canadian politics was irresistible.

He is probably slightly less evil than I have assumed. This is true of most presently or formerly popular politicians. Not having the ability to make “muchmoney” as an enterprising businessman, yet wanting to make a name for himself, he contrived to master what takes little brains, and fly quickly on the family name through the pedestrian ranks of party politics. Because the successful politician can more or less help himself to the taxpayers’ billions, he easily collected a retinue of low-intelligence bureaucratic types, come to share his good fortune. They have spotted the gold coin lying in the ditch, or loose in an unattended pocket.

The hereditary principle indeed comes into play. Justin actually inherited “muchmoney” from the start, as his father Pierre did from his own (genuinely enterprising) father. Pierre, though a notorious skinflint with his own money, was unprecedented for his extravagance as a politician, and we (the humble, taxpaying Canadians) are still paying off his public debt. And just when the budget was finally balanced, after thirty-something years of great pain, Justin appeared, to revive the Trudeaumanic spending. He appears to be the new record-holder for irresponsible profligacy, helped by his subscription to the “climate” fraud.

To listen to him during Question Period in the House of Commons — and the many criminal scandals he is being asked to account for — one might form the wrong impression. His shrieking, bawling, girlish postures might be mistaken for demonic inhabitation. But this would be unfair. More simply, the man is an idiot.

____________

THE HIGH DOGANATE has been overrun with complaints about this Idlepost: that it is offensively mild. By turning away from God, and to some foolish distractions, Justin represents not citizens but the Ministry of Lies. My attempt to defend him by showing that he is an idiot, will not do. Prince Myshkin is our standard for a holy idiot. He is “a fool with a heart and no brains.” But those with brains and no heart are also unhappy (in the religious sense). Does that make those who lack both less wicked? And, what about Jagmeet?

In an unusual moment of optimism, this morning, I was reminded of the first Canadian Thanksgiving, celebrated by Martin Frobisher in what has been officially called the Qiliqtaaluk region of Nunavut since 2021. Or, Frobisher Bay off Baffin Island, in Meta Cognita, as the Canadian arctic was called from the XVIth century.

Frobisher and his men, audacious privateers, had regathered after being scattered by a formidable storm in the Davis Strait. They were offering thanks to Our Lord for their safety, and successful crossing of the North Atlantic, a most dangerous passage. Ice floes seemed to be blocking their voyage farther into the Northwest Passage to the interior of Cathay. But hell, they had salt beef, biscuit, and mushy peas (the ideal Canadian Thanksgiving repast), and the sailors of the expedition — at least those who had not already perished — were treated to a sermon by an Elizabethan divine, before the Sacrifice of the Mass.

Moreover, today is Christopher Columbus Day, or was, throughout the Americas. This holiday, which Ms Kamala Harris proposed to cancel before changing all her “most deeply held” opinions recently, may nevertheless survive in the hearts of all civilized men, even as DNA investigators opine that Columbus was not from Genoa, but from a family of Sephardic silk-spinners in Valencia. Then as now, the Jews were persecuted; and now as then they are persistently over-achieving.

If you aren’t Catholic, you can at least pretend to be.

Glenn Reynolds quotes Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Samuel Eliot Morison’s incomparable Life of Columbus:

“At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavouring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. …”

The saintly Instapundit, who joins me in calling fashionable Woke Marxists “worthless” and “garbage people,” recalls a scene just before the pioneering “colonialist” landed in the New World. The Aztecs sacrificed 84,000 men, women, and children at the re-consecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan, in 1487. He wishes us a Happy Indigenous People’s Day.