12/17/24 – If the heads of tech could keep their pandering to a certain person to a minimum, the American people might retain a modicum of respect for them, which is already at an all-time low. Have some courage and conviction. Have some dignity.
12/17/24 – It goes without saying that nobody wants a dictator either. Don’t delude yourselves. It would be worse than a monarchy, and we already had a war to end it. We are a free people, and we’re going to remain free.
12/16/24 – This was a thought-provoking anecdote from the article below. “To make forests amenable to scientific quantification, planners had to redefine what forest meant. Trees became timber, and everything not a tree was designated as underbrush—useless stuff that got in the way when workers tried to efficiently harvest the timber.
The German rationalists reorganized the forests, planting new trees in neat rows and clearing away all the underbrush. At first, everything seemed to go well. But as the Germans discovered too late, the trees needed the underbrush to thrive. Without the organic messiness that the rationalists had deemed superfluous, the trees’ nutrient cycle got out of whack. They began ailing. A new word entered the German language—Waldsterben, or ‘forest death.’
By focusing on only those parts of the forest that seemed instrumental to their uses, the planners failed to see the forest accurately. In trying to standardize and control the growth process, the planners murdered the trees.
The modern meritocracy misunderstands human beings the same way the German rationalists misunderstood trees.”
Whenever people bring up Germans, we think Jews because they tried to exterminate them. The Jewish people are entirely capable of efficiency. In fact, they have been some of the most industrious people in human history. What might their secret be? Could it be found within the wisdom of their religious texts, which have also asked them to grapple with human complexities and…messiness? The entire Hebrew (and Christian) Bible is a long philosophical consideration of God, life and pretty everything with few easy answers and many hard questions. The messiness is part of the design of the universe, of human beings, of life, of everything.
Lastly, the Hebrew Bible is likely the oldest religious text in the world, and in its opening, it says that on the seventh day, God rested. It commands us to do likewise. In fact, if we don’t sleep, we will die. It’s a disease. More generally, rest is like allowing a field to lie fallow. We do it so it will continue to bear fruit instead of being farmed to death. Responsible rest is not a waste of time. It’s an investment in life.
Best of How To: Waste Time
12/16/24 – This article also by David Brooks brings up good questions, especially regarding who should run the country and what kind of academic training makes for good leaders. We’ve done monarchy. The Revolutionary War rid us of that parasitic nightmare, and none of us want it back. We’ve done aristocracy. Nobody wants spoiled, airhead nepo babies with refined affectations and crude characters. We’ve done elite-university technocrats. (By the way, it’s elite, spelled just like that, not élite, with a French accent aigu. There is also no native English pronunciation of the word with the French é sound. At most, some native English speakers might pronounce it with the French e but never é….) Does our country run by the elite technocrats look like it’s working? It’s clearly not working. Now, a certain person wants to run the country with billionaires. Yes, indeed, this must be the solution. Let’s assume that because they achieved some level of success in one domain, for who knows what reasons, it must generalize to everything. So, of course, this would make them qualified to run the country. Therefore, what’s left? How about the American people in our diversity and collective wisdom run our country. We might not have them élite, fancy degrees or billions of dollars, but we actually know our country and care about it, not just about ourselves. Let’s actually be a democracy.
How the Ivy League Broke America
12/16/24 – “After a visit to one London institution, Dickens wrote to a newspaper to enlist the attention of the readers to the efforts ‘to introduce among the most miserable and neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest principles of morality and religion; to commence their recognition as immortal human creatures.’” The connection that Dickens draws between moral formation of outcasts and “their recognition as immortal human creatures” is as pure an expression of Jesus’s teachings as can be. We call it salvation, but the term has lost this explicit understanding.
The Rabbit Room’s ‘Christmas Carol’ Draws on Dickens’s Pure Religion
12/16/24 – The whole piece by David Brooks is worth your time. “America’s Founding Fathers studied the history of democracies going back to ancient Greece. They drew the lesson that democracies can be quite fragile. When private virtue fails, the constitutional order crumbles…. Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and respected. That’s very different from how we treat people now—in ways that make them feel sad and lonely, and that make them grow unkind.”
How America Got Mean
12/15/24 – One of the greatest indictments of western culture is its lack of emphasis on hospitality. It wasn’t always this way. In The Atlantic’s article on George Washington, posted here in October, after winning nothing less than the Revolutionary War, he and his wife performed their duties in the reception of guests, meaning hospitality. It was a remarkable detail. It gave a lot of insight into the American culture of the time. The individualistic turn that western culture has taken has coarsened the cultural component that most defines civilization – hospitality. On this Sunday, ask yourself: how do you treat the stranger? As Jesus said, how you treat them is how you treat God. Happy Sunday!
12/15/24 – The greatest “public space” ever created is the planet God gave us. Nothing else compares. We can sit in the shade of a tree or build a fire in a natural clearing, and we have all we need for community. The “infrastructure” of community is actually not in buildings, but in our posture toward each other and God. You have to actually want to be in community with each other.
That said. Many institutions, particularly religious ones, that we have created are intended to facilitate community within and beyond the physical. Not only is there community, but there is man-made beauty for our senses. It is a lovely complement to our abundant natural beauty. So, maybe just go to church.
“Beck: I mean, how do you get to that place with neighbors and people in your community without a church?
Jackson: I think it’s tough.
Beck: Yeah. It is tough.
Jackson: I think it’s not impossible. I mean, there is something about a shared set of values sometimes that comes from the church, that allows making friendships to be a little bit easier.”
In general, if you have a hard time approaching strangers, think of it this way. Anybody who is well-formed and well-bred is warm, friendly and welcoming. They go out of their way to help others feel included. In many countries and cultures, hospitality is extremely important. If others don’t receive you well when you’re this way, that’s an indictment of them and their upbringing – not of you. You just keep being the way one ought to be. Your persistence in this regard makes the world a better place.
Best of How To: The Infrastructure of Community
12/14/24 – We are not fans of people becoming reliant on drugs for the rest of their lives. Although we all might need to use drugs to manage our health at various points in our lives for different reasons, the general goal is to make one’s way off of them and to return to the body’s natural balance. There are always tradeoffs in economics and in life. If you decide to take a shortcut, such as choosing to take a drug, understand that it’s not a free lunch.
We are also not fans of assailing what are proven and effective vaccines. The timing is worthy of being analyzed to keep them effective but perhaps less overwhelming, especially for young children.
We live as natural lives as we can, and this has helped us stay healthy. Unfortunately, the world has become polluted with chemicals and processed foods, and we are living more sedentary lifestyles.
RFK Jr. is over-the-top, but the general sentiment is not wrong. In fact, many indigenous cultures have been using traditional, natural medicine and continue to use it alongside modern medicine. Generally speaking, the best approach is to start with the most natural, least invasive approach and incrementally try stronger ones if they fail. As mentioned above, one should also try to get off the stronger approaches as soon as possible.
12/14/24 – Israel has indirectly weakened Russia by weakening Iran, and Ukraine has directly weakened Russia. It is in Europe’s interests to finish Putin while he is still reeling from these blows.
12/12/24 – A clarifying technical point on short selling. Naked short selling is illegal, but we all know it’s not being enforced. Therefore, although short selling is presently legal, since the illegal variant is not being enforced, it is arguably safe to presume that much of short selling is in practice also illegal.
12/12/24 – A certain Bishop is rather too enchanted by the siren call of fame and the perilous narcissism that comes with a well-trained mind blessed with natural gifts, too focused on the number of Christianity’s adherents and not focused enough on, well, “the impoverished, self-denying carpenter,” Jesus Christ.
The Catholic Church has committed mortal sins. It will redeem itself completely and without equivocation – and it will change to orient itself totally and completely to Jesus Christ. There are many great priests. We are blessed to have them serve our communities with their kindness, their pastoral care, their knowledge, wisdom and eloquence, their insights into the faith and the human condition, and their guidance. May they remember that they are humble shepherds of a flock that trusts them. God does not betray his flock or its trust. He is true to them and to his Word.
Dumbed-Down Catholicism Was a Disaster
12/12/24 – We have often said that Christianity is a subversive religion. That’s because it is. Coming out of the Jewish tradition, with stories that sound fantastical yet piercingly true to the human condition, Christianity tells a story that goes completely against the human grain – the instinct for survival. Every great author has one thing in common. The stories they tell aren’t about themselves. They are about us. They call the Bible the Good Book. It is a lens into our psyches and our souls. It is also an opportunity for salvation. It’s not the hand of the person who wrote the Bible that’s dangerous and powerful. It’s the power of the word. The salvation is in the Word.
12/11/24 – Should we ban short selling? This is a serious question. It very well could be time. Obviously, investors would still be able to sell stocks. They just wouldn’t be able to sell borrowed stocks. This move might create more competition and bring down prices by helping markets function correctly again or at least better than they have.
One can think of short selling as a run on a healthy bank in the sense that a healthy firm can also come under price pressure not for fundamental reasons (such as liquidity, solvency or other fundamentals) but simply because of the whims or the machinations of market participants. If the argument is that we don’t want runs on banks and go to great lengths, such as FDIC insurance, to prevent them, then why would we want “runs” on stocks? We ban or regulate all kinds of financial activities. Why not ban short selling?
12/11/24 – A research idea for anybody who knows how to correctly compile and analyze financial data. We know that mergers and acquisitions can consolidate firms, thereby, decreasing competition and potentially increasing prices. (For laypeople, this is not price gouging, which has a specific definition and criteria.)
Another way this can happen is…short selling. Here is the argument. Short selling is typically a natural part of a healthy market, but just like a part of the body, it can become unhealthy. Imagine a situation where short sellers are colluding with or are originating in powerful hedge funds, such as Citadel, to drive down the prices of otherwise viable and promising companies, potentially into bankruptcy, on the pretense of market fundamentals.
However, in reality, they are doing this to protect or to inflate the prices of the assets already in their portfolios, such as established companies that already have large market shares,…and perhaps also to protect these dominant companies from (potential) competitors by forcing them out of the market via short selling. In other words, the short sellers could also collude with these established companies to drive their (potential) competitors out of the market.
12/11/24 – One of the problems with doing research is that it is extremely time-consuming when one or a few people work on it. How do we create community research projects while maintaining high quality, accountability and proper attribution? Ideas? A track-changes documentation process for the entire research project, start to finish?
12/10/24 – Journalism has a nepo baby and elite university graduate problem. These people are liberal-biased, arrogant ignoramuses who are out of touch with the American people. The legacy media needs to rid itself of this problem.
12/10/24 – On an unrelated note, we’re fans of getting rid of daylight savings time. It’s unnatural and disruptive. Standard time is healthier, and we need to make things simpler. We hope that this is an easy place to start.
12/10/24 – The beautifully flawed Saint Peter, at the end of his life, basically said that he stayed true to the Lord until the end. He answered the Lord’s call. He did what the Lord asked, and he kept the faith. That’s really it. Nothing more. It’s a divine parsimony.
12/10/24 – Thank you to Paul Krugman for the education. His research, his books and his opinion pieces, his writing in general, were accessible. Parsimony is supposed to be an academic virtue, but it is not treated as such. Also, teaching can often feel like a thankless job, and one wonders what their students are going to do with what one teaches. Often it’s just to serve themselves, but it’s not always. There’s always hope that what one has taught will end up being used, with a purity of heart, for the greater good. Everybody makes mistakes, and Krugman is not an exception. Ultimately, for all of us, the motivations matter more than anything else, and there’s hope in that.
12/9/24 – Can someone rein in a certain person and his personal vendettas and delusions? This isn’t about him. It’s about the American people. Is the incoming administration going to serve the country or what? Liz Cheney or anyone else on the Jan 6 Committee didn’t do anything illegal. The evil one did because he incited an insurrection – the single most shameful moment in American presidential history. We will never forgive him for it. May he burn in hell for it. All of the Jan 6 criminals should serve their time for engaging in unpatriotic and despicable criminality. Serve the f—king American people, a—holes.
12/9/24 – Academia needs to be purged of its anti-Semitism and its religious bigotry. One shouldn’t have to be an intellectually ignorant, bloviating pseudo-intellectual quack and hack, a bigoted, racist, anti-Semite to succeed in an industry that should demand not just knowledge, but as its ultimate goal, wisdom. Academia has become about cultural power, money and prestige. It has stopped being about truth and about serving humanity. It has become a vanity project controlled by immoral, self-worshipping atheists with subpar intellects. This would be a good project for the incoming administration.
12/8/24 – We don’t want to provoke anyone or any more tensions. They are absolutely terrible as it is. However, we do need to state some facts. One assumes that everyone knows this, but many Muslims are intentionally misinformed about their religion and their history. Christianity was born in the Middle East out of the parent religion, Judaism. It basically started out as a Jewish sect. Christianity has existed in the Middle East for about 2,000 years, since the very beginning of the faith. During those two millennia, it did not have “religious wars” on the scale and with the brutality that Europe had.
Islam is the youngest of the Abrahamic religions. It is not fair to Jews or to Christians for it to dominate the Levant. Muslims, no matter their sect, need to learn to live side-by-side with other religions, as mentioned, Judaism and Christianity, but also other lesser-known religions with fewer adherents, in peace. One’s right to practice their religion freely, openly and peacefully should never be conditional on the religion being the country’s majority religion or the number of its adherents. It’s a fundamental God-given right that no person can take away.
So, our hope is that we can open a new chapter for the Middle East, one that establishes a true democracy in a Muslim-majority part of the world that genuinely respects religious freedom, not just in the transactional way that Assad practiced. George W. Bush, an evangelical Christian, said “Islam is peace.” May it be peace in more than just words, but in deeds.
12/8/24 – We’re glad the Assad regime has been toppled. The rebels say that they will extend a hand of peace, freedom and democracy to all Syrians. We hope that the rebels remain true to their word. They pulled off a remarkable victory. May they also pull off a remarkable governance. The Syrian people have suffered tremendously, and they, like all people who live under brutal dictatorships, deserve to have self-governance and to be free.
As always, we pray for the persecuted church, and today, particularly for the Christian minority in Syria. May they be allowed to practice their faith freely, openly and peacefully, and may they be agents of peace, reconciliation and religious harmony in a region that desperately needs all of God’s children to live in peace. Be true to the God of Abraham.
12/8/24 – You might still be able to livestream the Washington National Cathedral’s Handel’s Messiah. It seems that there will not be a recording. Happy Sunday!
Handel’s Messiah
12/7/24 – Damascus has basically fallen. Why does it feel like we don’t have a president? It has often felt like this for the past four years. Hey Biden, maybe less focused on saving your guilty son’s behind and more focused on the people’s business, you know, the people you’re supposed to be serving. What’s the plan here?
12/7/24 – We understand that the loony left’s Palestinian-supporting faction is high on their brain rot induced ignorance pretending to be actual knowledge and their anti-Semitism cloaked in compassion for a people and a culture and even more so a region they do not understand at all. However, they might want to briefly set aside their self-glorifying virtue-signaling whose sole purpose is to solicit admiration for themselves and their “enlightenment” to actually try to understand the situation in the Middle East in its labyrinthine geopolitical complexity. And no, this is not really about religion. It never is. It’s about power and money, as it almost always is.
Iran (autocracy, backing Hezbollah) and Lebanon (totally dysfunctional, Hezbollah) and Russia (autocracy that is trying to destroy a democracy, Ukraine) is allied with Assad, a despotic ruler who has used chemical weapons on his own people.
The Syrian rebels (terrorists) are supported by Turkey (quasi-autocracy) and indirectly aided by Israel (flawed but actual DEMOCRACY) because they are trying to defeat the Hezbollah terrorists.
Now, we would like to ask the loony left’s Palestinian-supporting simpletons: Who are the angels in this situation? You can say the Palestinian people, but aren’t the innocent people throughout the region, who are simply getting caught up in this insanity, just as deserving of compassion. Whose side are you on? If you have an actual working brain cell, you would be on the side of democracy and freedom. Let’s make this very simple for the simpletons: Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is not interested in democracy and freedom. That’s what would take over if Israel loses.
More generally, as the articles says, governments close to Iran, which is on the verge of building a nuclear bomb, end up being toppled because, hard to believe, but citizens actually want their government to serve them, not be a proxy for another country. “Nothing is as shockproof and reliable as a state army composed of citizens whose interests match your own.” This is our suggestion to the loony left’s Palestinian faction. You’re out of your league. Maybe it’s best to just shut up and sit down.
The Fall of Aleppo Was Oddly Familiar
12/7/24 – DeSantis is a better choice. Can we do this?
12/6/24 – There is an institution that specializes in this service. What is it called again? Oh, that’s right, the church. The idea is not to clear your conscience of shame or guilt or to purge yourself of these unpleasant feelings. The idea is to do the work to reconcile yourself to God and to your fellow human beings. In fact, it commonly goes by two names: confession or the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You have to own your sinfulness, confess your sins, do penance and – change your behavior. You actually have to put in the work. What a concept.
Unburden Yourself of Secret Shame and Feel Happier
12/6/24 – A while back, Ray Dalio, who’s probably not a household name, said that the pitchforks are coming for the greedy rich and that capitalism needs to be reformed. It does need to be reformed – desperately so. Also, in case people have missed it, not only is the world generally on fire, but there have been more assassinations or assassination attempts. Unlike what some paranoid people like Elon Musk think, this is not some Democratic or left-wing conspiracy. It simply reflects a growing anger within the world’s population. We have a question for the greedy rich: Do the pitchforks just come with you as innocent, passive bystanders, or are you inviting them with your avarice? Was Marie Antoinette innocent?
12/6/24 – If war comes to our shores, will we be ready, or will a certain person be preoccupied with undermining our military on some witch hunt for “wokeness”? Please tell us: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? The Ottoman Empire would like to know.
12/6/24 – The Middle East is poised to blow up…even more so than it has. Democracies around the world are in distress, including ours, and we’re in the middle of a presidential transition. Just an average day in an average life, I guess.
12/5/24 – What can we do? We can perform a magic trick. One day, you’re over here on the left. You disappear. Abracadabra, you reappear over there on the right – on the other side. The name of this magic trick is middle finger to the elites.
12/5/24 – Americans: The propaganda gave Biden a pass, and, now, they are trying to gaslight us about it. It’s insult upon insult.
12/4/24 – He made a mess of Ukraine, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the border, the economy…. What didn’t he make a mess of? The Conservative Republicans wanted him to be more aggressive in arming Ukraine. Now, they’re f—ked. He listened likely to the progressive wing, you know, the pie-in-the-sky people who don’t know how to govern anything. He opened the border without thinking through the ramifications both in terms of the integrity of our nation and the economics. He bailed out the plutocrats – again. Oh, and he’s corrupt. In fact, much of the Democratic Party is corrupt. After all those years in Congress, Biden was still bad at governance, and he lacks integrity. That’s why the Democratic Party lost.
How Biden Made a Mess of Ukraine
12/4/24 – Was it an opinion with a red line underneath it when the propaganda refused to accurately and objectively report on Biden? This is a widely shared opinion by the American people of the propaganda. Was the propaganda’s clear double-standard in coverage also an opinion? Was it an opinion to act like an arm of the Democratic Party? There is a reason the American people have a low opinion of the propaganda. It’s because they deserve it. It’s not because we’re delusional. You can’t play favorites. Do your job!
12/4/24 – Just like that, center-right. Barely had to move at all. You can do that in this country. Do you know why? Because we’re a free country and a free people, and we’re going to remain a free country and a free people. Not the right, not the left is going to bully us, coerce us, force us, or oppress us in any way. See Bangladesh and South Korea; well, the American people are a little crazy, and we are a tough group of people. Know it now.
12/3/24 – Hey elites, suck it, you bloviating, pseudo-intellectual quacks and hacks. We’re liberating ourselves from you…forever.
12/3/24 – Biden didn’t just lie about the pardon. Another very important thing he lied about was running again. He is one of the worst presidents in American history.
This Is Who Joe Biden Has Always Been
12/3/24 – Conservatives, figure out the economics, and we’re onboard. The labor secretary pick is a great start.
12/3/24 – The way Democrats win is by turning off all the centrists/moderates and frankly normal people in the country. The country gave you the middle finger, and it’s going to keep giving it to you. Hey, special interest groups, you’re winning the legacy media, but understand this, you’re still losing over and over and over again. So, the country gets to give you and the legacy media the bird. It’s two for one.
12/3/24 – Speaking of said elites, they can’t read books…but we already knew that didn’t we. Liberal excess is a surefire way to a shallow brain. One can’t train a brain to read lengthy, complex texts, when the brain has already been trained by social media, extrinsic motivation and other factors to simply build a façade of erudition. They are an illusion of intellectualism. Walk behind it, and there’s nothing there.
The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books
12/2/24 – For those who are counting, this is in addition to The New Yorker, which was removed a while ago because it is too much a slave to the loony left and seems to have no interest in or connection with the vast majority of the country. We’re not interested in being indoctrinated. We’re looking to be informed, and there is a big difference between those two things.
By the way, Notes from Underground is a reference to a novella by Dostoevsky, who was nearly executed for reading banned books and became a devout Christian. It is not a reference to a now dead Hamas terrorist who orchestrated the massacre of innocent Jewish people. There is a big difference between those two people and things as well. If you’re supposedly an erudite member of said elite class, you might want to know a thing or two about literature and about life. It was practically sacrilegious to use his title in that way.
12/2/24 – There is too much to read as it is. The Washington Post is out. It is a puppet of the Democratic Party and its advocacy groups and too close to the Washington elite and its institutions, almost all of which need reform. It does not meet the journalistic standards we expect.
12/2/24 – We would like to ask the Jewish people, who do you think would treat you better: MAGA with their tiki torches and “Jews will not replace us,” the racist liberals with their “Zio b—h,” or the actual conservatives? George W. Bush, for all of his flaws as a president and bad policies, was the same person who said, “Islam is peace” in the aftermath of 9/11. These people are also protectors of religious freedom in general, meaning no matter the religion.
We would like to ask all of the immigrant communities, of these three groups, who do you think will respect your God-given and Constitutional freedom and rights? Who will let you maintain and even respect your traditions and simply allow you to be instead of trying to control your words, even your thoughts? In other words, who will actually let you be free instead of forcing you to be like them with their cultural imperialism and cultural hegemony?
The answer is clear – conservatives. We don’t like their economic policies (too much trickle down, too much tax cuts for the rich, too much faith in the markets (they can fail, people) and too little safety net), and they need to be more judicious in their foreign involvements, but they have principles, and they do the best job of respecting our humanity in its diversity and its complexity. They treat us like children of God because they usually believe in God. These are important qualities to have.
12/2/24 – This might come as a surprise, but the people who genuinely seem the least racist are the practically nonexistent conservatives. They are also the people who have lost the most.
12/2/24 – This is what the American people have for governance. It’s hard to process how bad this is.
12/2/24 – The Republican Party is also corrupt, and a certain person is the worst of them all.
12/2/24 – The Democratic Party, the party of racist white liberals, is corrupt, and the media has been propping up this party and these people.
12/1/24 – We’re so blessed to have such a great community. Community is everything.
12/1/24 – Happy First Sunday of Advent!
“O come, O King of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind.
Bid all our sad divisions cease
and be yourself our King of Peace.”
O Come, O Come Emmanuel