Tag: culture rot

REPRINT A Muddled Movie About Something Rather Important

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

 From November 10, 2012

Many years ago, I think in an Agatha Christie novel, I encountered an old conscience-teaser (I don’t know what else to call it) that went something like this:

You get your heart’s desire; but to pay for it, a Chinese mandarin must die.

There’s the temptation. If this person were to die in the normal course of events, you’d never even know it. He’s a perfect stranger on the other side of the world. His life would seem a small price to pay for fame, fortune, love, health, or whatever else might head your crave list.

But the catch is that you know that as soon as you get your wish, an innocent man will die because of it.

Which was the inspiration for The Box (2009) by Richard Kelly, starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella. A married couple very badly needs a break, and Frank Langella shows up on their doorstep with a box. If they push the button on the box, they get a million dollars in cash… but someone they don’t know dies.

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The University: Where Young Minds Go to Die REPRINT

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Hey, remember Janet Napolitano–Big Sis, former head of Homeland Security? Well, she’s now president of the University of California, and she’s come out with a big new list of things that no one will be allowed to say in any UCal schools ( http://nypost.com/2015/06/15/the-dont-you-dare-say-that-drive-for-campus-diversity/ ).

The stated goal is to produce “diversity” through enforced uniformity of thought.

For instance, Big Sis opposes what she calls “the myth of meritocracy,” so there will be a taboo against saying “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”–because that’s wrong, that’s bad, and it really means “People of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.”

Hmmm… You mean they aren’t? Never? What was Affirmative Action all about, then?

Big Sis has been handing out tracts with titles like “Tools: Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” You remember “microaggression,” right? ( http://leeduigon.com/2015/05/12/how-liberals-make-human-life-unliveable/ ) It’s virtually anything you say or do or think that some liberal doesn’t think you should be allowed to say or do or think. There is to be no microaggression throughout the UCal chain!

This era of history is an embarrassment. Authority figures, from the lowliest idiot teaching school to the most exalted fat-head in Washington, hand down ridiculous lies and promote crazy policies. They tell lies that even a simpleton should be able to see through (like “Bruce Jenner is now a woman”), and when they get caught lying, they just keep right on lying like nothing happened. If they’re left-wing liars, they know the nooze media will cover for them.

But as for everybody else, down there among the great unwashed…

You miserable peasants don’t even know you’re racists and homophobes and cissexists and whatever, everything that comes out of your mouths is microaggression, so just shut up!

They won’t be satisfied until they’re able to sew our mouths shut.

The Lout in the Gym REPRINT

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From  January 7, 2016

I wanted my exercise yesterday, so I went to the Y to play some basketball. “You should know, we have no heat in the gym today,” they told me at the desk. I said I’d work hard and generate my own eat.

Well, they weren’t kidding–there was no heat, and the gym was very cold. That’s why I was the only one in it. But I worked myself hard, and the cold wasn’t cold enough to make me stop.

By and by another guy came in, and he used the other basket. And then a third man entered the gym.

He brought some kind of gizmo with him, set it up on the bench, and began blasting the gym with really loud, really crummy “music.” Just like it was his gym and he was the only one in it.

This is what you get when people are raised by comic books and video games. This lout, this oaf, goes shambling through life unaware that there is anybody else who ought to be considered. He is oblivious to the presence of others. The only way he’ll stop doing something is if someone makes him stop.

You see more and more of this lately. There are now yobbos who double-park on the busy main street of my home town, creating traffic jams for everybody else. They park wherever they feel like parking. They play their “music” at you. When they walk their dogs, they leave the neighborhood decorated with little plastic bags full of faeces. They toss their fast-food scraps into your garbage can. They aim powerful floodlights at your bedroom window all night long. They talk on their cell phones as loud as they can in restaurants, in movie theaters.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong and our culture is in good shape.

The Great False Prophet of ‘Democracy’ REPRINT

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Credit: Getty Images/Hulton Archive

 

From April 7, 2021

John Dewey

There is a reason why we have always heard, and continue to hear, so much babble about “democracy” when the country we live in is, by law, a republic.

Much of that reason is John Dewey (1859-1952), often hailed as America’s greatest philosopher, a great sage–guilty, though, according to R.J. Rushdoony, of calling Christianity “an alien faith” because “committed to a fundamental discrimination and separation to a ‘spiritual aristocracy”… and “the opposition of the human kingdom to God’s kingdom” (Thy Kingdom Come, pg. 54).

So what we have is “America’s greatest philosopher,” powerful and influential, baldly stating his opposition to Christianity–in a Christian country founded by Christians. And being applauded for it.

Rushdoony quotes Dewey: “I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which Christianity is committed.”

Did you get that? Christianity is bad, Dewey has taught generations of American academics, because it’s not “democratic.” That makes it… bad.

Now just because academics and their students today probably couldn’t tell you who Dewey was, doesn’t mean they aren’t drinking from the well he dug. They are drinking deeply; and as for the well, many lesser fat-heads have labored on it since, always digging deeper.

That we can’t think of any thinker who successfully unmasked Dewey as a charlatan does not speak well for our late-19th and early-20th century crop of thinkers.

And so our republic gets eroded, now more than ever, and our foolish “intellectuals” seduce us with “democratic ideals.” What God couldn’t do, they will! Make way for utopia! All we need is an all-powerful government, advised by themselves, to take us there.

These sins go back a long way in our history, and their effect is being felt today.

Another Morning in the Doctor’s Waiting Room REPRINT

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 From June 9, 2014

We don’t have television in our home, but it’s always waiting for me at any doctor’s office. This morning it was the eye doctor.

His TV is always turned to morning talk shows featuring as guests fifth-rank celebrities I never heard of. “And now let’s give a great big welcome to Bajja Bajuvnik from Facebook!” And the audience goes wild. The co-hosts are always some undersized white woman who talks faster than I can hear, and a hulking big athlete with earrings. And of course there’s always a Musical Guest to perform real loud music that I really hate.

Most of the commercials seem to be for antidepressant drugs that could kill you if you don’t watch out, according to the long disclaimer.

You might not need those drugs if you didn’t watch these shows.

In an effort to tune out the TV, I picked up a magazine–New York, the magazine for libs ‘n’ progs who want people to think they’re cool.

A couple of ads jumped out and caught my eye. One was for “Must-Have” sunglasses. Must have? Is there someone out there who needs to get a life?

Another asked, “Are you gorgeous, handsome, young, super-successful and rich… and you don’t have a head-turning woman in your life? If you are, we need to talk.” This was for some “model-quality introductions” service, illustrated with head shots of women who were supposed to be beautiful but actually looked kind of creepy. Maybe they were cyborgs.

Ah, our wonderful popular culture!

A Rejected Invitation REPRINT

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From March 11, 2014

Every day I get invitations to review books. Usually they’re by people I never heard of, about topics that have no bearing on my work.

But last night I got one that made my hair stand on end. I won’t tell you the author’s name or the title (you’ll soon see why). The email was from this person’s publicist.

So, here’s a book about a romance between “a bisexual woman” and “a transgendered man,” by which they mean a woman who, by dint of surgery and hormone injections, is being turned into a monstrous parody of a man. Or, as the publicist put it, a person “born female, but who became the man of her dreams.” And here’s the cute quote that was intended to pique my interest: “What’s a girl to do when she’s been unlucky in love with both men and women?”

You don’t really want to know my answer to that, do you?

We are told that writing and publishing this book is “therapy” for the writer. The last time I reviewed one of those therapy books, the author phoned my editor and angrily demanded I take it back.

The Bible teaches us that “It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100). But all this new wacked-off crazy foolishness about “gender choices” and “gender reassignment” and “celebrate” this or that perverted and bizarre lifestyle–it’s all about divorcing ourselves from God. We are going to be the ones who make us, in any “gender” we want. And maybe once we’ve mastered that, we’ll get around to re-making ourselves as members of other species. “What’s a girl to do, when she falls in love with a German shepherd that used to be a man that used to be a woman…?”

America’s moral meltdown continues.

Dumb Culture, Dumb Schools, Dumb People REPRINT

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From February 26, 2015

If you can’t keep up the culture, you can’t keep anything. You can’t have a republic of dummies. Know-nothings are not able to maintain a modern economy.

But Scholastic Books seems intent on applying the art of bonsai to the human mind. The bonsai artist creates little tiny trees. The cultural bonsai artist creates little tiny minds.

You know you’re getting there when adult crossword puzzles have to be taken off the market because nobody out there is able to do them.

I’ve been reading the first two books in Scholastic’s Wings of Fire series. These fantasy novels, pitched to Young Readers, are all about dragons. Dragons are, we would think, very different from human beings. But the dragons in these books say things like:

“Ew, that’s gross!” “Awwwwww, how cute!” “You guys.” A sadistic monster character is described as “mean.” And here’s an immortal line of dialogue from Book #2, The Lost Heir: “Would you like me to spell out ‘DRAGONETS WUZ HERE’ in giant rocks?”

WUZ? In all caps? Say it ain’t so. Any moment now, I’m going to wake up and find out none of this has happened, it was just a bad dream… Nope, the book’s still there in front of me. Still packed to the brim with stupid, cliche-choked dialogue guaranteed to keep a child’s mind perpetually locked into its 11th year, unable to grow, unable to develop. A mind subjected to the art of cultural bonsai.

And it goes on for as long as its victims live. The dumbing-down of this generation never stops. Whether it’s high schools handing out diplomas to students who can barely sign their own names, or colleges sucking up five or six years’ worth of tuition to give poor, debt-saddled “graduates” degrees in thumb-sucking, Star Wars Studies, Women’s Studies, or Licking Chalk off the Blackboard, our pop culture and our schools never stop binding the roots, pruning back the branches, stunting the trunk–to produce adults who think like 11-year-olds, support Obama, and can’t do crossword puzzles because they’re just too hard.

People who watch the Kardashians.

God help us. Deliver us. Save us.

COVID Legacy: Waste-of-Space Workmen REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Lazy worker Stock Photos, Royalty Free Lazy worker Images | Depositphotos

From August 3, 2022

I can’t shake the suspicion that something bad happened to America during our stupid COVID lockdowns–something subtly bad that no one saw happening at the time.

Let me put it this way: Since the lockdowns, a lot of people have forgotten how to work.

F’rinstance: We drink bottled water. Once a month we get four bottles, five gallons each. This we’ve been doing for some 30 years. We put the empties in the foyer and the delivery guy takes them away and leaves the new bottles there.

This week the delivery guy left our new bottles out on the sidewalk in the broiling sun and never bothered to open the foyer door, let alone take away the empties. Lazy! Shiftless! No idea how to do a simple job! I called up the company and read them the riot act. “I hope he doesn’t get fired,” said the office guy. “If he makes a hog’s ass of the job,” I said, “he should get fired!” I guess I made myself clear: they sent the driver back to take the empties and put the new bottles in the foyer.

But we’re seeing this stuff all the time now, aren’t we? It’s like all these sloppy, incompetent, who-gives-a-rap, what-me-worry workmen have their own personal Joe Bidens in their heads instead of brains. They really seem to have no idea of what “work” is, as if they’ve never seen it before. And who knows–maybe they haven’t. Not in school. Not in college. Maybe nowhere.

Can we straighten ourselves out from this? It won’t be easy!

A Book to Make Me Wake Up Screaming REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

 From May 11, 2016

Those publicists just can’t stop barking up the wrong tree.

I have been invited to review a book “set against the mysterious and sexy backdrop of Southern Cuba”–actually, she lost me right there–that “follows the young Thalia Vandergruen as she searches for her true identity with the help of trusted clairvoyant Sofi…”

Stop already. Have you ever known anyone actually named “Thalia”? I haven’t. And what’s with “Sofi”? That’s not how you spell Sophia, or Sophie. And she’s a clairvoyant. Uncle! Uncle!

But wait, there’s more. If you think those are silly names, Thalia meets this guy named “Yahriel–” (You should see how my spell check is reacting to these names. You’d think Joe Collidge wrote this.)

Stop, I can’t take any more. And this by a supposedly best-selling author. I checked: she’s a real person. I’m not giving her name because I prefer not to hurt her feelings. And anyhow the issue is not her, or her particular book, but the kind of drivel that keeps oozing out of our publishing industry. This example is pitched especially to women, in the category “women’s fiction.” But I will not have that said about women.

“What sets it apart,” concludes the publicist, “is the author’s signature smart bent and social conscience.” Great merciful heavens–does that mean what I think it means? The poor defenseless reader! I can’t think of anything good to say about “social conscience” in fiction.

I’m always looking for books to read and review, but this will not be one of them.

Idiocy on Steroids REPRINT

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From June 4, 2014

A fellow Christian columnist has shared this comment from one of his readers. I reproduce it here unedited, undiluted.

“Not a shred of moral relativism at all in what I said. I said all human live is valuable. I also said it is good to live one’s religious faith.

“But let’s get your your example of what you call ‘mugging and self-defense.’

“A person you term a ‘mugger’ approaches you with a display of force and, with the threat of violence, ask you to give him some property. You comply. No one dies. Everyone goes on with their day.

“The only actual ‘danger’ to human life comes when you threaten the mugger (and the mugger’s life). You may say ‘no.’ That threatens the mugger. You may brandish a weapon. If its a gun, you may open fire. Those acts certainly threaten the mugger.

“When all that the mugger wants is a little property, it is not clear why you feel morally inclined to threaten the mugger’s life. It would seem it is just easier to share your property with the person who has the monopoly of force.

“And its not clear in the case of the mugger who is actually the victim. The mugger needs property. You have property. The mugger is asking you to share. That does not imply victimhood at all. Your selfish refusal to share is what escalates the exchange in the first instance.”

Now this is imbecility of a very high order, inaccessible to ordinary dunderheads. It may only be acquired, at great cost, at a university, from tenured professors who are themselves morons.

I wonder if this guy will ever deliver the keynote speech at a Democrat convention?

So, folks, the next time a thug with a switchblade “asks” you for your property, remember, it’s immoral to resist him.

A compleat jidrool has told you so.