Reality Culture

I have to ask, why be so soft on this asshole? He doesn't know shit from shingle about leadership and I don't think he has ever been in the military. If there is a problem in his unit it is his leadership that is at fault. He doesn't have to know the Joe is having problems with his 17 year old, or his wife has low self-esteem. His job is to delegate work in the most efficient manner possible. He is not a victim but an employer. 

That's a very good point. One could say that politicians were always like diapers: They needed to be changed often, and for the same reason. But now there is a class of users and abusers of our country who (mostly) orbit safely above us in the swamp of the Federal government and its various tentacles. And the mixed metaphor more than suits these bastards.

Cicero certainly would have understood our times as well. All very well said, by the way.

Also relevant to the Artlerian subject at hand:



I've gotten as far as 1:09:00 into it where I was astounded by this summing-up by VDH:

Later in the conversation they discuss the military and "wokeness".  Not that long ago 75% of Americans said they had great confidence in the professionalism and competence of the military today that number is 45% and getting lower. Another example of our institutions failing the people they are charged to protect, perhaps the only remaining line. Can anyone think of an institution, private or public, that has the respect of the people? Whose position is so unassailable that to attack it is to destroy the very foundation of what America is intended by the founders? 

I recall the 60s and 70s when the country was in chaos. The only institutions that stood above the fray were the military and organized religion. The virus of leftism slowly invaded religious institutions in the 80s and began to turn them into proponents of abortion on demand, homosexuality, and socialist ideology. It took a little longer for most educational institutions to take the same path, but by the 90s most large universities had, or were planning, to drop requirements for western civilization, history and government (civics) classes. 

The only event that slowed the steady progress of what is becoming a fascist state was 911. For a brief time the march of the the left was put on hold. Perhaps 5 years and they were nipping at the heals of the military and intelligence agencies. Today in 2023 we find ourselves in the same position as the Roman republic. Franklin was asked what kind of government they had designed. "A republic if you can keep it" was his terse reply. Well, we haven't kept it. The great American republic is dead as Cicero's Rome and it is not coming back. Whatever comes out of the political chaos existing today will not reinvent the founders ideals. We might, if G-d ordains find a path to a newer and possibly more perfect union, but there will be blood on the streets and in the fields. The world will suffer the loss of America. The fall of Rome in the 5th century brought on over 1000 years of feudalism and oppression. The fall of America may do the same. 

I think the essay by Stone is excellent, but perhaps not as good as one produced by Dennis Prager on the subject. The idea of ugliness instead of beauty being the basis for art by the Left has long been something that Prager has talked about.

The religious angle is relevant because a religious point of view is (in the Judea-Christian world) a hopeful, even loving point of view. Yes, if you look back at the Renaissance or earlier, much of the Christian art was the thematic equivalent of an Elvis velvet painting, even though often produced by masters. You do what your patrons demand of you.

But at least the patrons had the idea of Almighty God, of a world of beauty, design, and purpose. The world envisioned today by "artists" is one of pointlessness, randomness, and therefore ugliness. It's a cynical view that knows only how to make reality the butt of their jokes.



Art is a big subject and I wouldn't expect anyone to capture it all in a 1000 world essay. But he makes many great points.

Art has always been a variety of things with a variety of influences. What we can say today is that art has been focused by the Leftist point of view into a narrowness we've never seen before. And it is centered on a sour and dour outlook. At the bottom, all that most have to express is a sense of ugliness or discontent.

And so you get this "art" for Martin Luther King Jr. that looks a good deal like a twisted turd. It is ugly by any measure. The Left (and other influences) has filled the souls of people with anything but Deus Lux.

I've never heard it summed up better just how the art world has been perverted by the atheistic, virtue-signaling, drama-ridden, politicized, angry, self-indulgent, arrogant, red-diaper-doper-baby Snowflakes who ruin everything they touch – and not just art.

An excellent article. Again, he puts together, in one piece, much of what we have been saying for years. His point about minorities ruling us has been apparent for at least 50 years. I remember reading about the Founding Fathers in college and the term "tyranny of the majority" came up. Even then, I said that things had flipped and we were now operating under a "tyranny of the minority." The leftists of those days were crazy enough, but today we live in a true case of "the inmates running the asylum." 

I agree that our future prospects are dim. I think the only thing which might change the direction in which we are going, is some type of major defeat, economic collapse. From there, reality could take hold again, but it would be in the form of strong men of some sort or another. Could this be worse than our present situation? Yes. Would it necessarily be worse? No. 

Man the Killer



In March of 1861 President Abraham Lincoln stood on the inaugural platform overlooking a nation that would soon be in a war consuming at least 600,000 lives. Today historians place the total closer to 700,000. More Americans died in this war than any other. Lincoln sought in his first inaugural address, “the better angels of our nature”. Do we have better angels to our nature?



Lincoln had it wrong. There is no better angel, man is a killer, possibly the killer angel of wrath, destruction, mayhem, and murder. Oh, we disinfect our killer nature with religion, ethics, and morals but in the end the urge to lash out always overcomes the individual and the nation. We seek to justify our actions as Saint Augustine said by the rules of a “just war”. That is rhetoric man is a killer, and we enjoy killing.



We make excuses for killing, some of them defensible. Who can say that wiping out the plague of Naziism was not necessary and justified? History and literature are full of examples. In Boris Pasternack novel Dr. Zhivago the two elements of man’s nature are set in direct conflict during the Russian Revolution. Zhivago is the noble man as envisioned by Tolstoy and Komarovsky is man as seen by Dostoevsky. One the pure poet, the other the politician and schemer. We are shown that Zhivago is the better man, but he is no less corrupt than Komarovsky.



The leftist fancies they have the moral high ground. He is taking what he perceives is a righteous position. In this he is a classic passive/aggressive. His passiveness is a guise to give the pretense of humility and non-violence when his actions are anything but non-violent. Thus, the radical protesting police brutality is using tactics and fully expecting counter measures just as violent. He then claims, “police brutality”.





On 7 January 2023 29-year-old Tyre Nichols was pulled over for a traffic stop in Memphis. The officers who pulled him over were part of a police task force called Scorpion. It is not unusual for police to form special task forces to address crime of specific nature or locations. The five officers and the victim are black.



There are numerous reasons that the police officers chose to savagely beat Tyre Nichols, news organizations and the net are full of those reasons. However, the reason most often heard after three weeks is the lack of training. Training certainly plays a large part, but the major factor is these police officer wanted to kill Tyre and they did.



In the last few days two officers and three EMTs have been relieved of duty or terminated. This is a massive CYA by the Memphis police, seeking to appease all complaints from the public. Will this massive firing settle the discord over the beating and death of Mr. Nichols? We could think that might be the case, but the race baiters will surely wade into the controversy and seek to engender violence.



What then, is the solution to violence; better training, better hiring practice, increasing police presence in problem neighborhoods, more police everywhere? How do we watch the watchers in a free republic? Is it possible to reduce the violence that mankind has utilized for thousands of years? In a word, no. Man is a killer animal and appeals to his better angels fall on deaf ears.