Dark Winds

I'm just over halfway into People of Darkness. It's a very conventional crime story. But it is readable so far. It's just that you shouldn't look to be wowed by rich descriptive language or a truly unique plot. The writing is competent, even a bit minimalist. And I rather it err on the side of minimalism. But the story and characters could be a tad richer.

We get some descriptions of Navajo beliefs through Officer Chee. And I find that interesting. This is a short-ish book so I should be able to breeze through the rest in the next couple of days. These stories are (so far) definitely not padded.

I'm through five episodes of The Name of the Rose. It's holding up just fine. But it makes you realize just how good of a condensation the Sean Connery movie was.

We're spending far more time with Edso and his infatuation with the girl. The original movie handled it in maybe four minutes and we're not the worse for it that it wasn't extended into an hour.

At the end of episode five, the formal debate between the Franciscans and the Pope's men has started. It's rather funny because it elapses into a Monty Python sketch worthy of The Life of Brian. Fisticuffs break out on the debate floor. I don't remember anything like that in the movie.

And I haven't read the book so I don't know what is true to the book. Is it true to the book that Anna seems to have some Lesbo attraction to Edso's girl, La Ragazza?

And in another Monty Python moment, Salvatore has been setting animal traps for the girl (Edso's girl) that he knows is living in the nearby woods. He caught her once but Edso happened to be nearby, heard hear screams, and cut her down. (It's the type of trap where you step into a loop, the loop tightens on your ankle, and then you are lifted upside down into the trees above the ground.)

Well, this dumb girls falls for it again. She sees a rabbit under a tree, tries to grab it, and is instantly hoisted into the air by Salvatore's trap. This time he has her. He drags her off to his home and ties her up.

Shades of feminism which says that women don't need the protection of men. But here we see in this trap the perfect metaphor for why women need men to protect them...if only from other men. Women themselves cannot currently find their way out of the trap of having to shower with male athletes who are pretending to be women.

And we're all becoming trapped by prosecutors who will not prosecute, reduced police departments, and the support by government of the lawless while they persecute the lawful.

But women are the majority coalition and they support this. There are conservative women who carry guns and know that government is no stand-in for the protection of a man (or self-protection). But those kind are few and far between. Most women are like La Ragazza. They will fall into the trap. And at some point, there will be no Adso there to help them out because the Adsos of the world will no longer care for their plight.

But I must confess (Confess! Confess!) that I chuckled when that idiot woman got launched into the air by Salvatore's trap.

I completely agree. I would say a fair reading of the Navajo Way is that they have cultural beliefs that keep them (or try to keep them) satisfied as a poor tribal people.

Assuming they have always lived in or around the desert, that makes some sense. There is not an abundance of resources in the desert. You have to learn to live with less.

That said, I do understand when the Navajo look at whites and roll their eyes at many of the things they do. We do the same thing here. It would seem that the traditional Navajo are a somewhat conservative people. How can you not turn your nose up at a people and dismiss them as idiots when their government is paying Drag Queens to groom children within the confines of a school?

History is a long time. It is very apparent that our own culture is cracking up.

Like I said, I have no doubt the a lot of these tribes in the modern day have become "woke" and have sold their souls (and religion) to Progressivism. If not, I would appreciate them even more. But I don't know the real story. It looks like the first novel by Hillerman was published in January 1990. And I think the stories themselves are set in the 50's or 60's.

So before getting too nostalgic about the Navajos, it would be instructive to see how they are living today. A quote from Wiki suggests that there are pre-Spanish and post-Spanish Navajo in terms of how the lived:

I read a good book on what I think was the Plymouth colony. I'm pretty sure it was Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower.

The standard story is that those nasty white people exploited the pure, peaceful, one-with-nature Native Americans. What those first colonists ran into was Indians tribes desperate to ally with the white man in order to protect themselves from hostile neighbors.

I've just started the last episode of The Name of the Rose. I think this could have been pared down to six episodes. But what it is is quality.

I also started The Blessing Way (only a few pages). So far, so good.

Here's another preposterous quote from The Blessing Way:



"Desert" is a climatic description, not a value judgment. That said, if you've seen a tropical or temperate region where water and plant life flourish, you have every right to call out a desert as relatively barren.

And what person that you know looks at a desert and says it is ugly? They are indeed often very beautiful in their own way.

So this trait of stuffing these fortune-cookie pseudo-spiritual comments into the mouths of Native Americans and pretending they are profound is obnoxious.

I would certainly expect a Navajo to find much beauty in the desert. I also suspect he understands the hardships of living on a barren land. Being beautiful does not necessarily mean preferable. Sometimes you live where you live because that's where you've always lived. And it's more than okay to appreciate it and think it is beautiful.

But dispense with the dime-store philosophy about "the white man sees only desolation." Have you seen some of those mega retirement communities that have been built in Arizona? The white man loves the desert...perhaps provided there is a golf course within walking distance.

I challenge anyone to find a nomadic people who have the western concept of time. Organization based on the sun for common purpose yes, but that can be hours on either side of the clock. It is only when man moves into cities and requires better organization and specialization of tasks that time becomes more important. 

I don't doubt that man has usually lived without hours and minutes. What I doubted was this romantic version of the Navajo that they never hurry. I bet when some dude is making an assignation with his mistress while her husband is away, he may indeed hurry on over to her place.

Also, my point was that it was a romantic libtard modern notion to get all warm and fuzzy over the Navajos (or anyone) not having a strong concept of time. I don't particularly see that sort of ignorance as something to be proud of. It's understandable that ancient man didn't have a pocket watch at his disposal. But certainly astrologically (if only by the sun and moon), the idea of cycles (time) was there. It was just not as minute as the minute and hour.

It is a libtard notion to glamorize the ways of the Native Americans. "Oh, isn't it wonderful that they had no word for time? We live in such a rushed culture." And I would completely agree that we live in a hurried and harried culture and that we could learn something from the Navajo about how to chill out.

But the thing is, this is only an affection – internal virtue-signaling, if you will. The Western get-ahead consumerist lifestyle is so ingrained – the need to keep up with the Joneses so powerful – that all that 99.9% of people will only ever do is post those nice Navajo sayings on Facebook. But to live by them? Not going to happen for most. That would require doing without. And that concept is verboten.

As long as white males are not involved the leftists are more than willing to overlook the barbarians at the gate, they are willing to find their customers of "peace and tranquility" over come the barbarous, of say canibalism, or torture. Yes, they might say the Aztecs, lived in peace with nature but they cut the hearts out of living people by the thousands. 

There is always a "but" in leftists explanation of their philosophy. As a general rule anything said before the word but is bullshit.