Who You Callin' Honky, Cracker?

       The recent emphasis on race in America has done this great nation no good. It has made things worse. Very worse.
      The "dialogue" on race in the media and the Internet makes the same mistake as psychology; that talking about a "problem" will solve the "problem" when, in fact, it usually makes it worse. Talk therapy is valuable -- for the psychologist, who gets paid a lot of money per hour of "work" and really has no interest in "curing" his or her patient. For no one else is talk therapy valuable. The patient becomes an incessant talker of his or her problems with any damn one and the source of the patient's "problems" are constantly barraged by demands that the person admit that he or she is just a big jerk and who has ruined the "patient's" life by not giving him or her an extra Jello cup in the summer of 1984. And once that the source of emotional and psychological pain finally grudgingly admits (just to shut up the "patient") that yes, the "patient" didn't get an extra Jello cup on a summer's day in 1984, then starts the barrage of questions, "Why?" And if the answer is, "Because you were a rotten brat that day" or "You were late to the picnic" or "You stole Suzie's Jello cup." And then the "patient's" questions become nothing but "Why, why why" until the source of pain says, "I just didn't like you much then. But I like you now. So, shut the hell up." And then a relationship between the "patient" and the "source", which was friendly, or at least civil, before the shrink got involved, turns into a "patient" who is angry over past sins and always will be so and a "source" that is exasperated and eventually hostile towards the "patient" because he or she is just damn tired and really wants nothing to do with the "patient."
     This writer admits that it's a bad analogy, but your faithful correspondent is not a professional writer and thinker, but he thinks that the analogy works.
     Now, consider extending the analogy a bit. The "patient" has a friend who may be a member of your family or clan. This friend has heard the bitches of the "patient." All of a sudden the friend is attacking you in worse terms than the patient. The only way you can satisfy this friend is to fall on your sword after willing your fortune to the "patient" along with a bit to the friend. In other words, you've become a really bad guy (or gal) and you begin to think that all the world hates you except for maybe your mother and crazy aunt.
     This is much the situation, with all this "race dialogue". A person of European ancestry is held in contempt and and expected to feel guilt for the sins of one's ancestors against black people even if one's ancestors did not come to the shores of this blessed country 1880, fifteen years after slavery was abolished. A Jew living in Brooklyn whose ancestors came to the U.S. from a Polish shetl is held to the same sense of responsibility for the slavery of black people as is the descendant of a slave owner in the South. It's odd, because neither of them owned slaves, but for some reason they are expected to feel guilty for something that their ancestors had done or not done. They are supposed to feel guilty, to put it short, because they aren't black or Hispanic. And the worst finger waggers are other European-Americans, whether Christian or Jewish. The sense of guilt that the race mongers have made them feel grows exponentially in their hearts to the point that they hate their own and they are more problematic than the initial complainers in that one finds one's self fighting on two fronts, one of which is part of one's own community. If one says that the fellow travelers are "race traitors" one is labelled with the name, once again, of "racist." If one ignores them one is accused of "shutting down" the conversation. What can one do? Arguing results in "Why? Why? Why?" Ignoring the bitching results in being passive-aggressive.
     One, as an American of European ancestry, finds one's self, in the same position as Japan today. In previous posts this writer has posited that Japan is to Asia what England is to Europe; both part and not part of a larger continent. And Japan, like England and European-Americans find themselves blamed and condemned for things that happened long ago and the present generation is supposed to reperate and apologize for things that they have had nothing to do with. All three are supposed to ignore bad behaviour by minorities as a payment for "past sins."
     The only thing one can say in response for Europeans and European-Americans can do to fight the charges of the evil of the whiteys have done over the years is to demand that those who are saying that those descended from a people originated from west of the Caucus Mountains and north of the Med is to say, "Okay. We're bad. We're really bad and stone evil. And since we're so bad and evil you should probably stop using anything that we've discovered or invented because those things will probably corrupt you. Get rid of your car. Trash your TV and cell phone and computer. Don't have your kids vaccinated. Throw out your guns and gas heaters and water systems. Quit keeping your money in the bank. All those things are European or European-American things and thus, no good. We'll keep all those things for ourselves because they're bad. Good luck, brother." And the same should go in spades for the fellow travelers. After all, they want to be "down with the people."

Just Out Of Time

      Have you ever woken up one morning, looked around and thought to yourself, "I don't know where I am or when I am"? Of course, the previous question is predicated on the premise that one has not spent too much time with Jack Daniels or Buddy Weiser the previous night.
     Your faithful correspondent has found himself waking up in the state described above (not the hangover state, but the cold sober falling asleep and awakening) more and more these days.
     Let us take, for instance the latest Twitter, Facebook and media outrage de jour: the bad hunter dentist and the lion Cecil. From what yours has read, the dentist was a bad hunter because 1.) with his bow and arrow he was not able to kill off the lion and had to shoot the thing. And 2.) because, while he was on "safari" he really had to have the lion basically chased into his range instead of going into the lion's territory. He was, in a sense, hunting in Africa at a place, as illegal as it may have been, that was pretty much similar to places in the U.S. where deer are raised and penned in fenced off area and then are "hunted" by from lairs set up by the owners of the property. The "hunters" are not so much hunting as they are target shooting.
     Be it known that yours has never been a hunter. The only animal he ever killed, to his knowledge, was an English sparrow off a telephone line with a BB gun. He felt bad for that for several days and went back to shooting green army men figurines. But this writer has never been against hunting of animals. The late Baron, when a boy and young man, because of financial circumstances, was forced to hunt for food for his family; squirrel, quail, possum, deer and rabbit. He was proud of his marksmanship and his skill. During World War Two his specialty was hunting and fighting men. After the War he'd had enough of hunting and put his rifle away to be a self protection device. When your faithful correspondent, after hearing many tales of the Baron's prowess as a Nimrod, asked the Baron, "Why don't you hunt anymore?" he replied, "I got tired of killing things. I got a soft heart after the War." But he never was against hunting.
     This writer remembers when on a Saturday or Sunday night on broadcast television (before cable television) that the Nibs would watch "adventure" programs. Some of the programs would feature travels to then exotic lands like China, Tibet, India and Polynesia, as well as Iceland and Malta. Others featured hunting and fishing. It was normal to watch television on a weekend and see a man hunt a lion, a leopard, a wolf, and elephant or a rhino (this writer could never understand hunting a rhino because rhinos, while looking fierce, are actually pretty harmless. Hippos kill more people than lions and/or leopards annually, and no one really hunts hippos, though they should to save human life). It was just part of life. Hunting was just something did and it was accepted.
     One read accounts of Theodore Roosevelt's safari in Africa and saw photographs of TR posing with his kill. One read Hemingway's hunting stories. It was no big deal. TR was the manly president who was also a conservationist. Hemingway was the manly writer and was very popular during his time and for many years afterwards. Fitzgerald, compared to Hemingway, looked like a courtier of Louis XIV; a city boy in a nation of country boys.
     Now the city boys have taken over. In fact, the sissy boys have, in a sense, have taken over. The media and much of the loud Internet really don't understand hunting culture. Consider the fact that if one went to a news stand and looked at the magazine rack among the magazines directed to the male audience would be magazines such as Sports Afield, Field and Stream, Hunting and Deer Hunting. Now one would be hard pressed to find these magazines on the news stand because they've been replaced by "lad's mags", workout magazines and "adventure" magazine such as "Outside" (which seems to be eco-friendly adventures).
     Does this writer advocate the senseless slaughter of wild animals for fun or proving one is a man? Of course not. Neither did the 19th century writer H. Rider Haggard who wrote, among other novels, King Solomon's Mines. In the novel the narrator describes the killing of many elephants for their ivory. After the description he states, "We got sick of the killing" despite the fact that ivory was money and the protagonist just throws down his rifle and walks away while the native bearers strip the elephants of their ivory.
     What we have in this whole Cecil the Lion thing versus the Evil Dentist is a change in the culture; a change in the American culture. Now anything that is not human that has hair or fur or feathers are sacrosanct and every wild animal is Bambi  and every man with a gun or bow and arrow is evil. Davy Crockett killed a bear with a knife and was a hero back in the day. Now guy manages to kill a lion is suddenly the Antichrist.
     If most people pitching a bitch about the dentist/bad hunter saw how their beef, pork and chicken were processed they'd gag, at the least. But they don't and they prefer it that way because they want to be able to eat a nice sirloin or pork tenderloin while thinking that a bad shot dentist is a creep because he wanted a trophy head of a lion while they're chowing down on Ol' Bossy or Babe because they're hungry for some meat.
     And the whole controversy is idiocy simply because those making the most noise about a guy killing a lion haven't said a word about ISIS killing Christians and Yezidhis for no other reason than because those people are not Muslims. The complaining class complain about the dentist paying $50,000 to kill a lion, but they don't complain about Christian and Yezidhi girls and women being sold to ISIS fighters for as little as $20.00. To the liberal complaining crowd the life of one horny lion is more important than the lives of people who are just trying to live their lives peacefully
     In other words, the life of one old lion is more important than the killings and rapes of many Christians, Yezidhis and innocent Muslims according to the media and the Internet.
     Ain't life grand?

Bad, Badder, Worse and More Worsest

     For the past couple of weeks your faithful correspondent (apparently because he has a masochistic nature) has been reading biographies of Communist dictators. Specifically, Joseph Stalin and Mao-Tse-Tung (or as he is called at the Manor, Mousey Dung). In the reading of these biographies this writer has realized that Adolf Hitler had no monopoly on being a very bad man. In fact, yours has come to the conclusion that while the Austrian was a very bad man, Stalin and Mao may have been worse men.
     Please know that this writer has no truck with Nazism. Several of his elder relatives fought against the Germans in WW II and hated the Nazis and taught their progeny to hate the Nazis) until their dying days. One uncle not only despised the Nazis, but he, because of his experience in Europe, hated the Russians and the Soviet Union. It must be remembered that during the War the United States and the President, the silly and often foolish Franklin Roosevelt, referred to Joseph Stalin as Uncle Joe because he was fighting the Germans, The awful Walter Duranty reported for the New York Times that there was no man-made famine in Ukraine during the 1930s while, there was, in fact, an awful famine that resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people. The press lied in saying that Stalin was just a mild Socialist somewhat like a 1960s Swede.      And during the Chinese Revolution the government and press more supported Mao than it did Chaing Kai-Shek because Chaing was considered corrupt and a bounder while Mao was considered a man of the people. The press and government neglected to mention that, while Chaing was a bit of a self server, his troops fought the Japanese while Mao's troops fought Chaing's troops whenever they could. Chaing was a crook, to be sure, but he was a crook in the way that a mild dictator is a crook; he wanted to live the big life with a lot of toys and money. He never oppressed his populace as is evinced by Taiwan where he set up his government after he left Mainland China.. Mao was a crook in a much different way.
      Let's look at the three men. Hitler was a monster because of his racism. He believed, or pretended to believe that Jews were undermining the German and Western culture. He used an old European fear of Jews and institutionalized it. He hated Poles and Russians because they represented the East. For him the East was a source of grief. When Hitler went on his killing spree he had The Other killed. All Jews, whether German or not, were The Other. He was, in his own mind (or for the benefit of the anti-Semitic Germans which were raised by him) basically exterminating a sort of termite. Bad thinking? Yes. Evil thinking? Yes. Should we spit, pee or poop on a swastika every time we see it? Of course. Hitler and Nazism are major cooties and should always be remembered and their memories shat (please forgive the vulgarity) upon.
     Now we come to out allies in the War.
     Stalin is responsible for more than 10 million deaths of Russians, Georgians and Ukrainians during his reign. These deaths are not war related deaths. They are deaths that are the result of intentional famines, massacres, forced labor and assassinations. Stalin was killing his own people for his own benefit. The man pretended to be a Bolshevik, but he lived like a grandee. He had more than a few vacation houses and held parties, many of them drunken routs, while the average Russian was wearing cardboard shoes, eating nothing but turnips to survive and having to use communal toilets in apartment buildings. Stalin regularly killed his own people. He regularly terrorized his own people. He indoctrinated his own people that Hitler never could.
     Mao followed Stalin's example. Mao was not interested in defeating the Japanese. He was interested in using his power. He had a stable of female entertainers for his sexual pleasure and lived the life of a horny ReillyDuring his reign more than 20 million people died from famine because Mao considered the export of agricultural goods more important than feeding his own people. Mao wanted an industrial China and was more than willing to sacrifice the lives of millions to attain it. If a local official said to Mao that people in an agricultural area said that people were starving to death because of Mao's policies Mao would say that if the people worked harder there would be more food to eat. Then the official would be jailed and executed, Mao used terror in a way that Stalin never could. And the oddest thing is that Mao always spoke a Chinese dialect that was not common in China. He never learned to speak Mandarin, but he managed to establish a cult of personality unlike any other ever seen.
     When Kim Il-Sung was considering invading South Korea both Stalin and Mao encouraged him to do so. Stalin wanted to test his weapons. Mao wanted to extend his influence in Asia. The result was the deaths of thousands of Koreans, Chinese and Americans. Kim wanted to end the war in 1951. Both Stalin and Mao wanted him to continue with the war. The result was more deaths and the fact that the borders of North and South Korea did not change. Kim took the Mao road to governance i.e., the people serve the state and the leader of the state. The citizens of the state mean nothing. The state is all as long as Kim was living big. And the curse of that adherence has resulted in the awful Doughboy Kim Jong-Un.
     And it keeps descending to Fidel Castro and his lackey Che Gueverra (a psycho-murdered if there ever was one), The Shining Path Guerrillas in Peru, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein (more Stalinist than Arab nationalist) and the Khmer Rouge. All of these groups have followed the Stalinist/Maoist path.  Ask your self what governments has followed the Hitler path?
     This writer remembers when it was popular for people in the United States to wear Mao pins (almost all Chinese in Communist China) band to have copies of Mao's Little Red Book. There was the chant of "Ho! Ho! Ho! Che Minh!" at anti-Vietnam War rallies. Images of Che Gueverra were, and are still, considered the "thing" despite the fact that the man was a stone killer of the worst sort. But, if then, if one showed up weaving a swastika flag or wore a swastika patch one was considered a hater or an outlaw biker.
     It makes no sense. All of the above men were bad. No one of them was worse than the other. But, for some reason, Hitler is considered the non plus ultra bad guy despite the fact that compared to Stalin and Mao he was a piker.
     It makes one wonder about the state of popular culture and contemporary education.

So Sorry!

     Considering this writer's last post concerning apologies, there is this about Indian politicians demanding reparations and apologies for the British colonization of India. It's all cheap race mongering and feel sorry for one's self. If it had not been for the British there would be no India. There would be a warring collection states speaking different languages on the land mass now known as India.
      India's prime minister endorses call for Britain to pay reparations for colonial rule - Telegraph

Who's Sorry Now?

     Things have been rather busy here at Nib Manor what with dealing with shady real estate agents and talking to his solicitor about how to realize the most benefit from the selling of the late Baroness Nib's estate. Be it know that this writer is not a businessman and has no head for business. But that is the price of being a member of the lower aristocracy fitted for nothing much more than reading and writing and regretting lost opportunities as the lower nobility tend to do.
     This week your faithful correspondent has been spending a bit of time reading about the late writer Iris Chang. Ms Chang was a Chinese-American woman who wrote what many people consider the definitive book about the take over of Nanking China by the Japanese in the early days of World War II. The title of the book was "The Rape of Nanking." When the book was published it set off fire alarms in Japan because the Japanese have always denied that any such program of massacre, oppression and organized rape had taken place. Ms Chang was a troubled young woman suffering from depression and mild schizophrenia, and after her third book (about the Chinese experience in America) she took her own life.
     One of the things that she did after her book about Nanking she had the opportunity to meet a high level Japanese official. During the meeting for an apology from him, on behalf of the Japanese government, an apology for the rapes of Nanking and Shanghai. The man acknowledged that those incidents took place but did not apologize for them. She kept pressing him for an apology and he never did. She wanted the man to say, "I'm sorry. We, the Japanese, are sorry for our barbarity." She left the meeting frustrated and angry. The press screamed, "Japan refuses to apologize for atrocities of WW II!"
     In pondering this apology fetish this writer has found himself on the side of the non-apology crowd for historic wrongs simply for the reason that the apology demanded by many groups or people are demanded from people who had nothing to do with the offense. The Japanese official from whom Ms Chang demanded an apology had nothing to do with Nanking or the invasion of China. The man may not have even been alive during the incident. Most Japanese at the time of the meeting were not alive during the incident. Their fathers and grandfathers may have been, but does a son have the right, or does he have the obligation, to apologize for his father's sins? The most that the person can say that has any import and sincerity is that he or she regrets that the incident happened.
     Yours has noticed that Asians are particularly fond of apologies for past sins. Mao Tse-Tung used that tool to come into and stay in power. He demanded apologies and self-criticism from his lackeys and the people to the point that they would apologize and beg forgiveness for things that they had never done. The Japanese have demanded apologies for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while never apologizing for the invasions of China and Singapore and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One wonders what the value of an apology from a person who had nothing to do with the offense is worth. To this writer, it means nothing.
     Let us assume, for a moment, that you, dear reader, punched a fellow in the nose for whatever reason. You threw the first punch. And once the fight was broken up and every spectator of the tussle agrees that you were in the wrong, your victim demands an apology and you refuse stalking away in high dudgeon. Now we fast forward to the reader's grandchildren. The grandson of the person you punched in the beak approaches your grandchild and says, "Hey, your grandpa punched my grandma in the nose and I want an apology. I want you to say you're sorry!" And your grandkid says, "My dear fellow, I had nothing to do with it. Talk to grandpa." And then another fight breaks out because the other kid has confused your grandkid with you. Does that make any damn sense?
     The only time that an apology is sincere is when it is from the person or persons who committed the offense. You cannot apologize for the actions of others. You can say that you can regret those acts. But you can't apologize.
     Early in his career as President of the United States Barack Obama took a tour of much of the Middle East, Africa and Europe on what was called The Apology Tour in which he apologized for every perceived offense against other nations by the U.S since 1776. And the result was a big yawn from the world except those who wanted to lay a sense of guilt on the U.S. It was an exercise in foolishness by a man who is, essentially, a fool.
     The time to apologize is immediately after the fact. If you accidentally hit a person in the head with a shovel one apologizes, or one has beat a foe to dust and realizes that one has gone a bit too far one apologizes. But to apologize to the Bank of America because one's father was a bank robber, or because one's great grandfather chased the army of the Madhi in the Sudan is just cheap and stupid. One cannot speak for one's ancestors. In fact, this writer would posit that nations cannot apologize.
     So, please, people trapped in the past, quit demanding apologies that we have no right to give. Is the lack from our vocabulary of the two words "I'm sorry" going to ruin your lives. If so, this writer feels sorry for you.
     

Call Me Mister

     Your faithful correspondent has spent a good portion of the past few months dealing with the estate of the late Baroness Nib. Unfortunately for all concerned this writer is the executor of the will. In trying to be a responsible executor yours truly has had to deal with lawyers, para-legals, notaries, real estate people and workmen. And one thing has been noticed; almost all of them, once discovering one's given name, are all too quick and eager to start addressing one by one's given name, while, in fact, they should, out of a sense of respect and courtesy, address one by an honorific followed by one's surname.
     Those who personally know this writer know that he is not a stuffy or uptight person. In fact, he is pretty casual and fairly friendly. Being a citizen of the United States he does not expect people to address him as "Lord Nib" despite the fact that, while not born to the blue, he is a natural aristocrat. But he does expect people with whom he is not on a familiar basis to call him "Mr. Nib" simply because yours refers to the other person as "Mr. Smith", "Miss Jones", "Mrs. Johnson", or "Ms Angry."
     In dealing with all these people, who have all been hired to perform various duties and tasks by this writer there is an invariable sequence of events: Yours introduces himself as Marmaduke Nib. The other person introduces herself at Patty Sneakyrealtor. Then, immediately Ms Sneakyrealtor starts calling your faithful correspondent "Marmaduke", or even worse "Marmie." And she continues doing so despite that fact that this writer continues to call her "Ms Sneakyrealtor." She's so damn dense that she doesn't realize that she is being urged to return the courtesy without the writer coming out and saying plainly, "Call me Mr. Nib, if you please, madame." To which she'll probably reply, "But I don't please. I want to be your friend. Call me Patty."
     Here's the point: It is only common courtesy to address other people by an honorific and their surname until until given permission by the person to use the Christian name. People have a right, face to face, to expect to be called by the name they want to be called by. In this day where a clean tee shirts and jeans are considered almost formal wear people are all too eager to be "friends" with someone they really do not know. A person one has just met, nowadays, is all too quick to assume that one is their friend and they expect one to be their friend. A person may want to be considered one's friend, but one, if nothing else, has the right whether or not to consider that person a friend. In the not too far past it was a trick for a car salesman to use one's given name as soon as he could because he wanted to appear to be one's friend. After all, a friend wouldn't cheat another friend on a deal, would they?
     And the usage of an honorific and surname for another person is a sign that one respects the other person in a professional manner. Your faithful correspondent has worked with people for over ten years, known them well and are professionally friendly with them and yet refers to them as "Mrs. McCoy" or "Mr. McGee"
and they refer to yours as "Mr. Nib." We are equals, and yet separate. We like one another, depend on one another, but we realize that we really aren't friends in the old sense in which a friend was an especially close person and not just an acquaintance. Now it seems that every-God-damn-body is one's friend and one is supposed to buy the world a Coke.
     One should especially expect one to be called "Mr. X" by people one hires to perform duties or tasks. Those people are one's, in a sense, employees. One is paying them. This goes for doctors (consider the fact that when one goes to the doctor the doctor usually refers to one as Otto {or whatever one's name is} while if one calls the doctor Myron he has a hissy fit and says that one should call him Dr. DeGaulle), lawyers and anyone who one pays to perform a task. One is paying them to perform a task. One should expect the person, even if they recognize the common courtesy and respect in name usage, to address one in the most respectful and courteous  manner because one is paying that person. To be crude, one is that person's boss and should be treated as such. And those who are all too eager to call one Otis (or whatever one's name is) should be considered on the same level as Gypsies trying to sell one a "great horse" or Travellers offering to paint one's house for a "great price" because they have "left over" paint from another job.
     So, this writer advises that the reader expect he or she be called Mr., Miss, Mrs. or Ms by those with whom one is dealing until one gives the person permission to call one by one's first name. And, of course, one should show the courtesy to the person one is dealing with until given permission to do otherwise. If the person insists on using one's Christian name the best thing to do for both one's self and the other person is to say, once the other person has said, "Well, Jasper....." one rudely interrupts that person and say, "Pardon my rudeness, Mr. Shyster, but starting now I would prefer that you call me, Mister. You are not my buddy. You are not my friend. This is a professional relationship. Let's keep it that way." You, the reader, will benefit. And the other person will benefit simply because you have drawn a line that makes clear that there is a difference between business and friendship.

Conrad

     Anyone who has read Conrad's novel "The Heart of Darkness" knows that the last words of the character Kurtz were "Kill them Kill them all."
     Kurtz was a Belgian trader who had gone to the darkest part of Africa to make money. He was not a missionary. But despite his search for money he also, perhaps unknowingly, expected to civilize his little part of Africa. Instead he was made an sort of idol and a prisoner by the Africans that he had hoped to civilize for his trading concern.
      We, in the West, have fallen into the Kurtz trap. Our civilizational kindness and the wish to make a profit have resulted in us being trapped by a lower form of civilization. The lower form of civilization is the Islamic civilization.
     Through our kindness we have not only given the revolver to those who wish to destroy us, we have loaded the chambers and handed the gun to those who are such savages in their mores and morays and yet benefit from our work and talents as Christians and Westerners, we have pulled the trigger in slow motion The bullet is coming into our brains unless we wise up.
     Be it known that this writer is not a racist or religionist. The ever lovely Lady Nib is an Asian woman, Bloody Nib Manor is in a Mexican neighborhood, one of this writer's best friends was a black man, and the most beautiful woman he ever saw was an African woman and one of his doctors was a Muslim.
     But one wonders, considering the current state of Islam against the West, if it would not have been a good idea if General Gordon had not directed, in his battle against the Mahdi, had told his men to kill them and kill them all.

     

Who's Confused?

     As long time readers of this series of pamphlets are aware, the ever lovely Lady Nib is an Asian woman; specifically Japanese. From the day of her birth until into her fifties her hair was as black and shiny as onyx, as straight as a die and as thick as a hawser. It was only then that a few silver strands came in. She's always been proud of it, and rightfully so.
     Back in the early 90s it became popular for a segment of the female Asian population to bleach their hair to various shades of brown, auburn or even blond and to curl their hair into ringlets. When Lady Nib first saw this trend she said, "Oh my! That looks very bad. These poor girls want to have Northern European hair on Asian faces. It's like putting Ford decals on Dodges. It just doesn't work. In fact, it looks stupid." But, the world, being a slave to the fashions of those who have money and/or fame, ignored Lady Nib's protestations and now, if one watches Japanese television one sees images of many Japanese young women with a set of blondish curls that would drive Farrah Fawcett into fits of jealousy. But Japanese people, in Japan, really don't know much about the U.S. or Europe. They think they do, but once they get to Los Angeles or London they find themselves gobsmacked by a world that they didn't know existed. Some of them, while in Japan, want to appear American or European in a Japanese milieu. They think of Japan as staid and tradition-ridden and that the Occident is hip and with it while the Occidental hipsters look to Japan for what is the new trend. It's all very confusing for them; is manga cool, why do Goths dye their hair black, why do Americans love Godzilla while people in Japan think the monster is a joke?
     Which brings us to "people of color" in the U.S. Has the reader noticed that an inordinate number of well-known African-American women seem to have hair that is lighter than the natural color? Many of these women spend a lot of time complaining about how they are "put down by The Man", and yet they have chosen to have their locks bleached to match those of Paris Hilton. There is no way that Beyonce's long curly and honey colored locks are natural or that Raven Symone's chrome head came from genetics. And one must ask one's self why women of color, who are constantly pitching a bitch about the white man and white culture, decide to make their hair as European as they can. It makes no sense unless one factors in the fact that many black men consider European idea of beauty to be the ideal beauty and that black women are trying to match that as best they can. Consider the fact that in South Africa, and even in the United States there are beauty products for black women that are supposed to lighten their skin color. Why?
     Be it known that the most beautiful woman (besides the ever lovely Lady Nib) this writer ever knew was an African (not African-American) woman. She was beautiful in every way; mind, body and soul. She had a posture that would make a ballerina jealous. Almost every man who saw her got slack jawed when he saw her. She straightened her hair for convenience sake, but her hair was as black as coal. And, as far as this writer is aware, she never disliked or was jealous of anyone on  racial terms. She was what she was and accepted it and people loved her for it. She didn't try to be white. She didn't try to be black. She was just her; a woman comfortable in her own skin and she didn't let the tides of popular culture dictate who she "should" be.
      Consider this tirade by Raven Symone about Donald Trump. She's got a chrome head while bitching about Trump's anti-immigration rants. Well, we've got two idiots; Raven Symone and Donald Trump. Trump is right in immigration, but Symone, because of her chrome head, can't tell the idiot Trump that he's racist because she's, in a sense, as racist as she claims that he is by trying to make herself look like a Swede with a suntan.
      http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/views-raven-symone-thinks-trump-behind-steinle-murder

   

Trump?

     This piece by Jonah Goldberg pretty much tells the problem with Donald Trump:
     http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421045/donald-trump-fraud

The Same Old Song

     As long time readers of this broadside are aware, we here at Bloody Nib Manor as Christians. The ever lovely Lady Nib is an Anglican and your faithful correspondent is an Old Baptist, as well as being an old Baptist.
     This fact matters to this entry because this entry deals with the shrinking Christian ethos in the West and the results of such shrinkage.
     The West, specifically Western Europe, the United States and Canada, were heretofore nations and cultures based on the Christian ethos, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant. The Church and the teachings from the Bible were as important, or more important,  to the average citizen or subject in personal and public life as were the dictates of the governments. For the highly educated there were such teachers as Socrates and Marcus Aurelius and the histories of Greece and Rome to draw upon for wisdom and ideas of governance, but even these eggheads always referred to the teachings of the Bible to make their case to the wider world. We, as societies like to natter on about the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Icelandic republic and so forth. But in the end, it was always the Judeo-Christian ethos and belief in Judaism and Christianity that have put the best parts of those documents into effect. When we look at the results of the French Revolution and the de jure banning of the Jewish and Christian teachings and ethos we see the results of the abandonment of the things that made life in France livable for the average Frenchman. We see mass executions of the aristocrats, the unfavored, and the religious -- including a convent of Carmalite nuns---, the assumption, in a way that no monarchy had before been assumed in the West, that the citizen was a tool of the state, and the assumption that they, the revolutionaries, have not only made a government anew, but the world anew i.e., the establishment of a ten day week and the first year of the Revolution being called Year one. The silliness, in its self is overwhelming. Or it would be if the Soviets in the Russian Revolution, the Nazis, the Chinese Communists and the Cambodian Communists had not done the same thing in spades.
      What we have in the West now is the result of more than seventy years of de-Christianization which was led, not only by atheists and agnostics, but by liberal Christian theologians. One cannot blame atheists and agnostics. They are what they are; fools. But liberal Christian theologians are to be blamed. They are to blame hard and heartily condemned. They are fellow travelers in the same way that many wealthy persons supported the Soviets  back at the beginning of the 20th century or as actors support mere idiocy now. They saw a what they thought of as a "better idea" that was new. They still reverted Jesus, but not as the Truth. They saw, and still see Him as a Jewish version of Socrates and Plato; a man with some pretty good ideas. And when one is dealing with man instead of the Son of Man one can pretty much ignore the things that that man said in favor of the new flavor. Mohammed said a few (two nor three) things that make sense, so one might as well put an illiterate Arab trader on the same level as the Son of God.
     Female genital mutilation is considered by the New Theologian, a sad thing, but excusable in the same way that women in the church were expected to wear a hat or veil (your writer remembers those days in Protestant churches). Abortion on demand, while sad according to the New Theologian, is also sad, but a woman's happiness is more important than a child. We all deserve to be happy, don't we? And same sex marriage is just a matter of courtesy to our gay brethren and sisters; they are nice people and are born that way. Meanwhile, if a dirty drunk stumbles into the New Theologian's church, is confronted by the New Theologian and the drunk says that he wants Communion the New Theologian will probably give the drunk the address of a rehab clinic and send him on his way despite the drunk saying that he can't help being a drunk. He was born that way.
     The New Theologian kicks out the props of Western society while saying that he loves, not Western society or Jesus Christ, but the world. And this intellectually poor educated dope actually thinks that he's doing God's work by ignoring God's Word. After all, the New Theologian has a B.A., an M.Div and maybe a T.Hd. Jesus never made it to high school as far as we know. The old Scottish crofter, the American sharecropper, the mechanic, and the boy behind the plow read the Bible and studied it more in a year than the New Theologians does in a lifetime. And the reason that he comes up with such silly and destructive ideas and pronouncements is because he want to be liked and respected in the world at large. He has forgotten, or does not want to remember that Christians have three enemies; the World, the Flesh and the Devil.
     The New Theologian is more dangerous to Western society than the atheist or agnostic because he operates under the cover of Faith. He is, in a sense, antiChist in that he misrepresents the teachings of Christ under the cover of Christ. And because so many people who regard themselves as Christians have no knowledge of the Bible or their faith, they will follow the New Theologian over a cliff like lemmings. And along the way they will do their best to change Western society to an anarchic and at the same time fascistic society while they insist that they are being "nice."
     The odd thing is that back in the 18th century and before "nice" meant "silly."  They condemn themselves with their own words and don't realize it. And they condemn us with their ideas and don't realize it.

The Return of Men in Hats

     As long time readers of this broadside are aware there has been a long running occasional feature called Men in Hats. The subject of the feature is, well, men's hats and men wearing hats. Sometimes there are histories of hats, famous men and their hats, and, as much of it as there is anymore, the culture of hats in the modern world. This is, in some ways, odd because your faithful correspondent usually wears only two types of hats (technically one type of hat and one type of cap) -- the straw boater between the Memorial Day and Labor Day and a beret the rest of the year. There is the occasional wearing of a cheap faux Panama hat worn during gardening, but really does not count because the gardening hat is not the public face of yours truly.
     Be it known that this writer is a believer in men wearing hats; not as a fashion statement but more as a self-proclamation of identification and a completion of one's daily dressing. Back many years ago when your faithful correspondent was trapped in the jaws of the public school system in Southern California he came across a book in the public library entitled "Call Me Mister." At the time of the discovery the book was fairly old; perhaps first published in the mid-1950s, if not before. It was one of those books that nobody bothers to write anymore -- books for people transitioning between childhood and adulthood trying to figure out how they should present themselves to the world. It was a book about male etiquette, how to dress like a man and prepare to go out and apply for jobs and such. One of the chapters in the book dealt with men wearing hats. There was a sort of personality quiz in that section which, upon completion one received advice on, based on one's personality and aspirations, one chose one's hat. It was a bit of a sliding scale ranging from the trilby or fedora for the serious and business-like young man (for some reason the trilby was considered more serious than the fedora despite the fact that it is really a bit of a silly hat) to the pork-pie for the joker and happy-go-lucky type to the beret for the misfit. The summer hats followed the same line as the winter hats (panama fedoras and pork-pies) except for the beret which seemed to be a cap that one was to suffer with in the hottest days. The one hat, during the summer, that any type of personality that was considered good for any man, young or old, was the boater. And by the time the book was published the boater hat was pretty out of date in America. In fact, by the time the book was written hats, except for warmth in cold weather, were pretty much out of fashion. But the book made such an impression on your faithful correspondent as a callow youth that he has remembered and pretty much lived according to the teachings of the book.
     So summer is here in spades and it's time to consider putting on your summer hat. One can't go wrong with a boater, whether an expensive Italian boater or a cheap Chinese boater. The boater always looks sharp, is cool and keeps one's mug out of the sun. And it doesn't make one look like one is a professional lawn mower.
     Here's a history of the boater hat. This writer questions some of the facts in the article, but the writer of the article has a university education while yours truly only graduated high school, so he may have more facts than yours. At the end of the article is a photograph of the author wearing a really cheap boater and looking much more like Ted Cruz than he would probably like.

Loved and Loathed: The Straw Boater Hat, a history | Tragicocomedia

Bad People Bad -- Good People Ignoring the Bad Badder?

     Please consider reading the following piece by Ashton Blackwell:

https://ashtonwblackwell.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/nothing-to-see-here-except-an-assaulted-baby/

     And once you get to the link look at the first link she provides of an attack by several people upon a young girl holding a baby. It is rather disturbing for several reasons.
     The first is that the girl, about 13, is attacked for no other reason than because she was sitting in a park or a school yard for no other reason than because the attackers thought  she was in "their" space. For those who haven't clicked onto the link, the girl is white and her attackers are black girls. We do not have "whites only" spaces anymore in the United States, but apparently there are "blacks only" spaces.
     The second reason that this is disturbing is because the attackers care not a wit for the infant.
     The third, and perhaps most important reason that the video is disturbing is that someone actually filmed the incident and did nothing to stop what happened. If there had been an incident in which a black girl holding a baby had been attacked by white girls and it had been filmed by a white boy/man who had done nothing there would have been a brouhaha that would have tired out even the most seasoned CNN talking head. And why? Because, as Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal.
      Some of us are given more rights than others and given excuses for bad behaviour than others by the government and the mainstream media. And the reason is not too awfully hard to figure out. It is racism pure and simple. It is racism of the worst sort. It is based on a racism that assumes that Black people, Hispanic people, Muslim people and gay people (your faithful correspondent realizes that Muslims and gays are not races, but he uses the term "race" in a loose sense such as the old writers used the term "the English race" or "American race") suffer from some biological defect that disallows them to act in a civilized manner in a civilized nation. In other words, those, to the government and media, are really not human; they are a missing link between base savage and civilized man.
     The proper and civilized man and woman expects anyone in a civilized nation to act in a civilized manner. A New Guinea cannibal who has moved to this great nation is expected to quell is taste for human ribs in exchange for living in a civilized society. An Muslim is expected to be monogamous. A gay person is expected not to parade down Main Street with his dingus decorated as a candy cane.
     If white trash acted in the way that the media portrays white trash as acting there would be shock stories of idiot progeny of incest littering the streets, dead people shot by 12 gauge shotguns regularly picked up after disagreements over whether Elvis is alive or not, and a bunch of guys named Cooter and and Hec and Gator would would make international news if they, wearing Confederate flags as capes, shot every black person, Muslim and homosexual within a mile radius of their shotgun shack. But there are few stories because these things rarely happen. But when they do the actors are rightly condemned , but not for the correct reasons. They are condemned, not so much because they did something bad, but because they are white people who did things that offend the sensibilities of American and European civilization. White people, apparently genetically, are supposed to know better. Minorities (except East Asians such as Japanese, Chinese and Koreans) are expected to think and behave one way and are given a pass. The rest of us are held to a standard that surpasses that of minorities. And the result is that some of the majority, a good deal of the majority, decides to follow the minority in thought and behaviour simply because it is a morally and legally easier way to go.
     Ain't liberalism great?

Gypsies

     There was a time, believe it or not, when your correspondent spent a lot of time in pool rooms years past. And the reason was because of three cushion billiards table. unlike pool tables three cushion tables have no pockets. Three cushion tables are all about geometry and not trickery. To see an example of the game watch a movie called "Lady for a Day" made back in the 1930s. It is ,basically, the same story as "Pocketful Full of Miracles" made in the early 1960s. The earlier motion picture was made when pool was considered outre' and three cushion an art.
     The reason that your truly brings this up at this time is because of Gypsies.  Anyone who has travelled in southern Europe is aware, Gypsies are a problem. Women have to hold their handbags closely and men have to keep their hands on their wallets an passports to prevent themselves from being robbed by Gypsy children.
     It may appear racist or ethincist, but the truth of the matter is that a lot of Gypsies are just damn crooks, thieves and cheaters despite what they say.
     Back in the day when your faithful correspondent was haunting pool rooms it was made clear to him. Your writer had, and still has, a custom made billiard cue. There was no way that it could have been mistaken for a house cue because of the wrap on the thick end of the cue. At said pool room there were a group of gypsies looking for something they could get. One day your faithful correspondent left his cue on a billiard table for a few minutes to go get a cup of coffee. When he came back the cue was gone despite the fact that he had paid for the table for a period of time. Being pretty angry and a natural detective he started stalking through the pool room looking for his cue. He found a Gypsy boy using your writer's cue to play 9 Ball (quell horror!) among a bunch of Gypsy men. Your writer approached said boy and said, "Young man! I believe you have my billiards cue!" The boy looked at his older compatriots. One nodded to him. Then the boy gave yours the cue with the words, "I thought it was a house cue." At which this writer took the cue and returned to his billiards practice cursing under his breath that Gypsies are not romantic and that they are, by culture, crooks, cheats and thieves.
     The point is that Gypsies know what they are. They know and embrace the culture in which they've been raised. And they don't get out the ACLU when someone calls them out for what they are. They are honest in that way. They know what they are and admit it. This is different than a lot of other groups who demand one's respect.

Flags, ISIS and Coathooks

     This writer apologizes for having been so slow to return to the blog since his last post. But the passing of Baroness Nib and Lord Isamu in the month of February and the attendant legal and financial matters have precluded any posts due to demands on your faithful correspondent. Dear Reader, please be assured that yours truly will make every attempt to post on a weekly basis in the future.
     This past week has been an interesting one that has left us here at Bloody Nib Manor rocked back on our heels for a bit. It is not that the incidents were unexpected, but more that they came so fast. An analogy would be one expecting a punch from an opponent and finding oneself at the receiving end of a fist not one time, but several times in an instant. Four punches in the time of one punch will result in one feeling confused and dopey and consider throwing in the towel. Or pulling out a sap.
     Last week, after the shooting at the church in Charleston, S.C., it didn't take long for politicians, in their never ending quest for cheap solutions and get their mugs on the telly, to call for the banning of the Confederate battle flag from all governmental institutions. Governor Halley the first by calling for the flag to be removed from the state capitol grounds. Then every politician and liberal commentator jumped on that band wagon as if the Confederate battle flag is some sort of demon that drives stupid drug addled young men to do evil things. Soon thereafter merchants such as Wal-Mart, E-bay and Amazon announced that they would no longer sell Confederate battle flags or any merchandise displaying the flag (Which raises the question about what are said merchants going to do with their Lynard Skynard and Confederate Railroad CDs and downloads). And then, once the thing end of the wedge had been inserted, everything seems to have collapsed. Calls for the removal of statues of Confederate soldiers, the removal of Confederate cemeteries, changing the names of universities (Washington and Lee, for example) and streets and parks. The attempt seems to be that anything Confederate, whether the battle flag, but any and everything, is as evil as the horned god that Satanists pretend to worship. A film critic for the New York Post has even suggested that Gone With The Wind be banned from showings at governmental institutions (film museums and such). It's all silly and stupid and wrong-headed. But liberals and politicians of every stripe are often that way.
     No matter what your thoughts about the rightness or wrongness of the Southern states seceding from the Union one's opinions concerning that unfortunate event have nothing to do with the Confederate battle flag and it's place in modern Southern society. In fact, this writer, based on no scholarly studies by eggheads writing doctoral dissertations or chasing tenure, posits that the Southern affection for the battle flag is not so much as nostalgia for the Old South as it is, and was after the Civil War, a reaction to Reconstruction and the burden that the Federal government put upon the Southern states after the war. The War was ended with the understanding that, for most in the South, the peace would result in life going back to that before the War. There would be no Confederates and Unionists. There would be Americans who had a sad and bloody disagreement. The reality was that the South was, in fact, if not in law, under martial law for twenty years and the Southerner was under the thumbs of often mercurial and often vengeful men who really knew nothing of the South, were often chasing money and wanted to punish those who had defied them. The reaction of the South was to grasp harder onto it's regional identity. The South had been beaten and humiliated by losing the War. Reconstruction was the North grinding it's heel into the face of the South. How could a man or woman who had suffered that humiliation not fight back in whatever way they could? The battle flag and nostalgia for Southern heroes was the reaction. It was a way to say that they are somebody worth respect, not a way to say down with blacks. Consider the fact that in some jurisdictions ex-Confederates were legally prevented for running for political office by men, from the Union, who treated black men and women worse than a Southern non-slave holder ever did. Also consider the fact that after WW II it was not uncommon for ex-Nazis to be elected to governmental office. The U.S. did what it could to bring up and help to recover from the ravages of WW II in Germany and Japan while the U.S., after the Civil War tried to do everything it could to keep the South down and in poverty. The Confederate battle flag was, and is, more a symbol of resistance to Federal over reach than it is a symbol of racism. It is the biting of an ankle of a dog that has not only been beat into submission, but kicked and starved afterwards by its master.
     (N.B. Be it known that this writer has, as far as he is aware, no ancestors who fought for the South in the Civil War. One great-great grandfather was a corporal in 3rd Regiment of the Iowa Veterans Volunteers {Cavalry}under the command of Capt. John D. Brown, and a great-great grand uncle was hanged by Confederate bushwhackers under the mistaken idea that he was a spy in Jasper County, MO. So this writer has no special sympathy for the C.S.A.)
     Within a week of the Confederate battle flag brouhaha the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that same sex marriage would be the law of this great nation. Immediately the Rainbow flags came out because, apparently, no one appreciates rainbows like the gays. And almost as immediately the gay (yours would use the words "sodomite" or "queer", "gayster" or "qweeb" but this writer really doesn't want to put up with a crap storm of outrage from any gays that may happen to read this) cohort has called for all churches and religious institutions to recognize, and support enthusiastically, same sex marriage. Our own Dear Leader has even gone as far as to say that religions, specifically Christian denominations, should get with the modern program and embrace the whole concept that there will be two little toy men or two little toy women on a wedding cake. "Love" is supposed to overcome all because love is, well love and love is always a good thing, right? So what religious people, people who are not religious but hold a morality based on religious values and people who are concerned about the future of the moral state of the name and society are supposed to throw out their values so that Barbie can pretend that she's married to Lucille when, in fact, in no religious tradition over fifty years old recognizes anything close to same sex marriage. 2% or, at the most 3%, of the population of the nation have somehow decided what the rest of us are to believe. And since the decision is so fabulous E-bay and Amazon are happily selling rainbow flags despite the fact that the fact of same sex marriage is ruinous to society. It's all about love, you see. And love overcomes all. And since the Supreme Court decision we are all expected to embrace our gay brothers and sisters and say that being gay is not only okay. It may be better than being straight. In fact, there should be a mandatory gay class in junior high schools so that all kids will love the gays and, perhaps, discover the fact that they are gay despite the fact that Bobby, until taking the class thought he was in love with Sally and suddenly found out that, because of the class, Jimmy was not his best friend, but potential lover.
     It all reminds me of ISIS and the erasure of collective memory. Jonah Goldberg calls the phenomenon  "the memory hole" based on Geo. Orwell's novel 1984. In the novel the government, once it has changed it's mind about an issue, demands that the people put their memory of the former governmental stance into a "memory hole." The memory is supposed to disappear and instead of the nation being at war with Eurasia and allied with Asia the nation is at war with Asia and allied with Eurasia and always has been. The difference is that the nation has, as of yet, not been able to perfect the "memory hole" but television and movies come pretty close. Instead, what our "betters" do is demonize our memories and tell us that what we know, experienced, believe and have studied, are not true and they will do whatever they can to try to erase those memories, at least in public, from the populace. It is not so much cover-up as it is denial and demonization. ISIS denies that there is any other form of the awful religion of Islam. It will deny that there is any other religion than their form of Islam. They clench their fists, stomp the ground and will kick over any evidence or kill anyone who denies that their form of Islam is stupider than any other form of Islam or that Christians and Jews understand the Bible better than they, or their founder, Mohammed, do.
     The modern liberal and politician (whether Democrat or Republican) who caters to the news media in their attempt to be hip and with it would like to destroy everything and have forgotten everything that doesn't fit into their idea of what should be. They want the Confederate battle flag banished to the area of history that the flag of Joan of Arc in in the U.S. and want it replaced with rainbow flags. It's all about love, you see. Not morality or common sense. And besides, the gaysters spend a lot more money buying off politicians than do Southerners, on a per capita basis. The modern pol doesn't blow up Buddha statues in Afghanistan or Christian churches in Syria. They are much more under handed by making laws. They use the stiletto hidden under the cloak instead of the cosh. And we put up with it.
     Regarding the coat hook, your faithful correspondent has gone on all too long this week and will address the matter of the coat hook next week. To put it short, for those who are interested, the coat hook is a metaphor for modern America. To wit, one can only hang so much on a coat hook before it rips out of the wall.
     All the best from Bloody Nib Manor. There are pigs to be fed and onions to be dug up.


     

Fernandez

     Richard Fernandez is a writer who used to have his own website called The Belmont Club. He has since moved his writing to PJMedia.
     Your faithful correspondent knows little about Mr. Fernandez beyond the fact that he once worked with the government of the Philippines and tried to work between the government and Islamic insurgents in trying to promote some sort of peace.
     He is a good thinker, a good writer and doesn't spend a lot of time on nonsense.
     Here are two of his recent columns:
     http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/01/22/the-part-of-yourself-you-used-to-own/

     http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/01/22/the-part-of-yourself-you-used-to-own/

Men in Hats (with no man)

     With the return of regular posting in this blog your faithful correspondent is also bringing back the "Men in Hats" feature.
     The hat for this post is the trilby hat. Or, as we at Bloody Nib Manor refer to it, "the awful trilby."
     The trilby hat was inspired by the by the first stage production of George du Maurier's 1890's novel "Trilby." The novel gave us the term Svengali and the play gave us the hat. In the play the character Trilby (who was a woman) wore a hat that became so popular among the British aristocracy that it it became a "thing" with the character's name attached to it.
     So, what is a trilby hat? A trilby hat is a proper fedora that has been ruined by a pair of scissors. The brim has been snipped away to unusefulness and the crown has been shortened. It's the type of thing that may look good on jeune filles or gamines, but the fact of the matter that most of them are worn by men. And they just don't work. Some of the British aristocracy used to wear them back in the day when the aristos were considered silly, but the style soon was taken up by race course hacks, betting shop owners, mods, and rockers and the "cool" crowd. At the Manor the hat has always been regarded as slightly disreputable like the pork-pie hat. 
     It's a bad combination of a cap and a hat.
     Few people can get away with wearing a trilby. The only man that this writer and recall having done so is Rex Harrison. Young women can get away with wearing one because they can be Trilby. Besides, yours truly gives young women a lot of leeway because they are silly and cute and this writer is an old bloke.
     If you're a man and have finally gotten the sense to wear a hat or cap don't wear a baseball cap (those are for kids, ball players and machine gunners in B-17s) or a trilby. Be a man, a real grown up man, and wear a real hat or cap like a Stetson, a fedora or a beret.
     Here's a picture of a trilby if you don't know what one is:
     Awful Trilby Hat

Better Minds....

     While we here at Nib Manor often give the impression that we are all-wise (which is usually the case) there are occasionally men who have a better command of the distillation of ideas and the mother tongue than do we.
     Such is Victor Davis Hanson, as evinced in the following:
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=8154

Why From Alan to Abdul?

     It's been a while since your faithful correspondent has been faithful. He apologizes for his inconstancy. The only excuse is that things have been troubled here at Bloody Nib Manor for several months and yours truly has neglected to buy a quart of ink from the local vendor.
     One of the things that this writer has paid attention to is the conversion of formerly Americans and Europeans from secular or titular Christian families to Islam and the fact that a good number of them decide that it might be a good idea to run off to the Middle East and fight against the infidel or want to shoot up the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in order to help establish a Caliphate world-wide. In other words, this writer wonders why a man (or woman) who grew up as a little tyke riding a bike on the streets of suburbia, London or Paris, watching Go Rangers on television, listening to Metallica or Katy Perry, celebrating Christmas and Easter, and perhaps attending church twice a year, would want to hook up with a desert tribe that will cut one's lips off if one is found playing "Old Folks At Home" or "Whammer Jammer" on a harmonica, expect a young man to be satisfied looked at women wearing bags, and expect one to go ass up five times a day to worship a black rock located in a place that no same person would want to visit.
     While there is no empirical evidence and this is all the result of internal thought and some study, yours has come to a conclusion: The interest of the investment that Christianity has given to the western world has run out. Christianity in the West. This is not to say that only the Christian faith has been on the decline, but that the Christian ethos has declined. There's an old saying that atheists want to behave like heathens and libertines while expecting everyone else to treat in a Christian manner. The chickens have come home to roost and the elites find that their shoes are covered with chicken shit as well as finding that the shoe on the other foot pinches.
     For at least sixty years the intelligentsia have denigrated Christianity and the Christian ethos. It started as a game played in the halls of academia that, in the mainstream seminaries, spread to the public and the media. Before then the average steelworker in Pittsburgh, farmer in Missouri, coster-monger in London, sewer-cleaner in Paris or mosaic worker in Sicily attended church or synagogue at least several times a year and believed in the precepts of the Christian or Jewish faiths. If the faith was not bred in the bone, at least the ethos was. And with that ethos there were boundaries. There were laws and morals that went on beyond the national laws.There were religious customs that, even if a family wasn't religious, were honored in word, if not in fact. This writer can still remember blue laws when the only stores that were open on a Sunday were drugstores and the occasional gas station and when kosher butcher shops were shut down on Saturday.
     But our betters, in other words, professors wanting to get tenure and make a name for themselves, decided that the Christian ethos (and Christianity itself was a lie or misunderstood) and spent an awful lot of time denigrating the faith and its results. Their thinking was, as far as you faithful correspondent can make it out, was that if Christianity is not true and Jesus was just a kind of weak Middle Eastern Buddha, then the whole Christian ethos is worth about a much as a bag of popcorn. In other words, not much.
     Now, imagine yourself a young fellow. You grow up as a nominal Christian. Being a nominal Christian is a pretty easy gig, but you know that there are limits to what you can do. If nothing else, you remember a few of the Ten Commandments and that Jesus was a pretty good guy. Then you start hearing, reading, or watching articles and shows that say that being even a nominal Christian means that you're a sucker, Jesus was a huckster and Moses is a myth. Ergo, the whole Judeo/Christian ethos takes a dive because it's based on lies. And, super ergo, you can do any damn thing you want as long as it's not illegal. You can get drunk to the point of being super-stupid, you can screw any woman who will put up with you, you can tell your parents that they are a**holes because you didn't get the Hello Kitty Fender guitar that you wanted for Christmas (which means nothing because there is no Christ and therefore no Christmas). And you can do it all while getting the approval of your liberal Protestant pastor when he's not smoking boo ,or wondering if he or she should trade in his or her two year old Volvo for an Audi or a BMW with the money they make from Christians who they really think are awful dopes.
     Here's the deal in a nutshell. Young men need limits. They need boundaries. They won't admit that they need them, but they need them and want them. Once they know the boundaries they are comfortable and adapt to them. They'll kick against the goads, but after a while they'll realize why there are goads. And that's the reason why some boys (and a few girls) in the West convert to the Religion of Perpetual Bitching. In Islam there are clearly drawn boundaries. The boundaries are wrong and not true. But consider the Hare Krishna movement; same deal, but without the guns.
     The constant denigration of Christianity in the West has resulted in the rise of Islam in the West because the West has forgotten itself and that Christianity is the reason for the modern West. When you little tow-head boy runs off to become a jihadi or your little blond surfer girl runs off to marry a savage living in a mud hut in the Middle East you should look at yourself. Not so much because you're a bad parent, but because you didn't place the limits that traditional Christianity places on a person.

Where Confusion Reigns

     Recently the State of California passed a law that requires male college students to get explicit permission from their female partners before engaging in the sex act.. The young woman has to say," Yes. Let's have sex" before the young man is allowed to begin the act of copulation. If he doesn't receive this permission with these specific words (or a variation thereof), at a later date the young woman, having regretted the encounter for some reason, is allowed to report the young man to the college or university administration as a "sexual offender." She can claim that she was "date raped", drunk, under the influence of some sort of drug, pressured into doing the nasty or that he took advantage of her during a time when she was weak and vulnerable and just wanted a hug and that turned into a session of attempted baby-making. In other words, all the onus is on the man, and he must get explicit permission from the young woman to go farther than third base. A wink and a nod will not do. Actions will not do. He must have, at least, a verbal, out loud version of, "Do me, baby!" before his BVDs go to half mast.
     What the law does not say is what happens if said young and dewy-eyed co-ed goes to the campus rape reporting desk and say that Tommy Varsity took advantage of her for his own evil pleasure and she didn't say, "Hey! Yeah! Let's do something my father would kill you for doing to me. I want to do IT!", and the brute boy, upon being dragged into the campus police station on a charge of some sort of rape (the term "rape" here is very broad) says, in response to the charge, "Gee whillikers! Sally Ann not only gave me permission. She demanded that I dip my wick. I can clearly remember her saying, 'Give me six inches of your best, big boy!' And she was stone cold sober. We'd spent the night at Starbucks drinking double espressos for three hour talking about the shading in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" But, of course, since women are the nobler sides of human nature, at least as far as the education establishment is concerned, Tommy will be kicked out of college and Sally Ann remain in college and have the added benefit of being a victim of male sexual abuse despite the fact that she did demand that Tommy give her his best (she just regretted it later when she realized that he had been making the beast with two backs with her best friend Mary Jo a day later). Unfortunately, poor old Tommy, soon to be working the fry basket at McDonald's and trying to get an apprenticeship as a dry wall hanger (good luck with that, Tommy, since you don't speak Spanish), didn't record Sally Ann's urgency on his iPhone or have her sign a paper, written up by a lawyer, for her to sign giving him permission to do something that would shock his old grey-haired mother.
     For some reason, because the state college and university systems in California seem to hold themselves apart from the rest of the great unwashed citizens of the state, claims of rape, of whatever sort, are not investigated by the local city or county law enforcement authorities. Why? Who knows? Academics hold themselves apart from the rest of society in a way that Socrates and Plato would have found laughable. By the colleges and universities police themselves and, thus, claims of rape (of whatever sort) are not investigate by trained detectives, but by university cops and "equality boards" made up of politically correct academics, usually from the Women's Studies field.
    During the same week a feminist group declared that the iconic photograph of the celebration of the end of World War Two of a sailor in his summer white uniform kissing a nurse in her whites was, in actuality, not a celebration between two people of the end of an awful war, but was, in fact, a photograph of a rape. The reason given by the  "fighters for women's equality and foes of patriarchy) is that the man and woman did not know one another at the time of the kiss. The man just grabbed the woman, in their opinion, and planted a big old smooch on her without, I suppose, the woman giving written and notarized consent. The man in the photograph was always unknown. Several men claimed to be the sailor. The nurse, on the other hand, was known. And she said that when the end of the War was announced on the billboard oputside the N.Y. Times building she was so happy she would have gladly kissed a duck because she was so happy. She never complained about being victimized by a swabbie. In fact, she stated that she enjoyed the kiss. But our feminist betters have decided that the nurse was just a victim of the "patriarchy" and just didn't know any better. To them the woman was as raped just as if she had been thrown onto Devil's Island as the only woman among a bunch of male hardened criminals. In other words, women before about 1970 just didn't know their own minds. They were mental slaves to the male conspiracy that wanted to make all women into either Stepford Wives, for home use, or round-heels for fun. And it might, and should be noted for the sake of this argument, that the womyn (to use the 1970s spelling of the word among the hairy armpit, short-haired and awfully loud crowd) of this professional woman victim crowd are all university or college graduates, except for a few drones of the male type with wispy beards an a lot of empathy (it's a good way to get some leg -- apologize while taking the plunge ("It's just my awful male and XX chromosome that makes me want to do this, but I can't help it. And thanks for giving me permission. Just sign on the dotted line").
     Which brings us to the Seven Sisters colleges back East. The Seven Sisters colleges are women's colleges which were founded in the mid to late 1800s. Now, some over 100 years later, they are all still woman only colleges despite many of their alumni demanded that the men only colleges become co-ed. And, of course, if one to say that Vassar, for example, should start accepting male students said women would say that a female only Vassar is a great tradition and givers the "second sex" a chance of a good education away from the pressures and distraction that men cause while West Point or Virginia Military Institute gain by having women in the classes because women bring a softer side to being an Army officer. In other words, the thought is to kill the enemy with kindness instead of an A-10 Warthog or M-16.
     A couple of weeks ago Mount Holyoke college, which is one of the Seven Sisters, decided that it would be a good thing to accept trans-gender people as students. Truth to tell, this writer (and all here at Bloody Nib Manor) are not quite sure what a trans-gender person is. Is it a man who dresses as a woman and says that he is a woman? Is it a man who has silicon breasts and is undergoing some sort of estrogen treatment? Is it a man who has had his man-hood removed and replaced with a plastic surgeon's version of a vagina? Could it be a guy who looks like a guy with a beard and body odor who says that he feels like he is a woman inside? This writer actually heard a recording of the president of Mount Holyoke announcing this new policy and the woman was actually in tears of joy at this change. The president of the college was awfully proud of the college being "accepting" of the "other". But the fact remains that Mount Holyoke will not accept male homosexuals, effeminate men who like women for sex partners or male gymnasts or figure skaters to its hallowed halls of academia. So the whole "accepting" thing is a bunch of nonsense. What was not stated is that would a woman who decided that she was a man and had had a penile build done in her "secret area" be accepted as a student with all the joy that a lady-boy would.
     The Seven Sisters colleges seem to be the source of all the above nonsense. Back in the old days when common sense reigned a man who claimed that he was really a woman or a woman who claimed that she was really a man was not called "trans-gender." That person was called just plain crazy in the same way that most East Indians call sadhus crazy despite the fact that ignorant Western tourists or "spiritual leaders" call them "holy men."
     Let's face it, universities and colleges, are the hot-houses of social idiocy. They may be great to get a technical education; nursing, engineering, chemistry, physics and avionics, but when it comes to what was once known as the liberal arts they are just, for the most part, pits of bad thinking and political correctness. A father works in a steel mill 50 or 60 hours a week and drinks cheap beer to relax on the weekends in order to send his dear little daughter to Vassar or Columbia or Long Beach State and, after about one semester, he ends up with a daughter who hates him because he's part of the patriarchy that held her down because she couldn't play (because she didn't have the stuff, but she has an excuse) Varsity football in high school, or that he didn't kill the boy he caught making out with his daughter in the boy's car after the prom in high school. In other words, since the daughter has gone to a Seven Sisters (otherwise known as the Sapphic Sisters) school or has joined a Sapphic sorority under the direction of her Women's Studies professor, Dad has become a Hitler who would be as likely to shoot her in the back of the head as give her a Christmas gift. And said daughter, with her trick education in liberal arts, is pissed off because she can't work at NASA because she doesn't have the scientific education but she blames NASA for being anti-woman because an understanding of the writings of Virginia Wolffe should be as good as an understanding of physics or astronomy to get a man (or more usually a woman to Mars). So she blames her Dad because he was a guy. And once she hits 30 and realizes that being a lesbian isn't all that great because her partner won't change the light bulb or clean out the garbage can and any kid she has will be a crap shoot from the local sperm bank, decides that she's not a dyke (excuse the crudity, but I'm an old man), and finds a nice young fellow and she becomes a suburban mommy but passes on the poison she learned in college to her spoiled rotten brats who are diagnosed with Autism or ADD or hyper-activity because she wants to talk about the oppression of the patriarchy with her Vassarite girlfriends while she doesn't discipline her kids.
     We're doomed.

I Slam! You Slam! We All Want to Slam Islam!

    Some time ago this writer publicaly stated that he was going to no longer write pieces against Islam, illegal immigration and the general idiocy of the ruling class.
     Since then it has developed that due to the ineptness of the current administration "militant" Islam is on the march in Syria and Iraq. ISIS (or ISIL or the Islamic State of the Caliphate) promises to forcibly instill Mohammedanism on the whole world. The liberal "thinking class" wrings its hands telling us that ISIS is not Islam. Of course ISIS is not Islam. In the same way that all Germans were not Nazis. Islam in the Middle East just lays down and keeps quiet while ISIS goes on its march to their self-perceived world-wide victory hoping that they can come into the conquered areas and profit. Think of the French during World War Two. Most French put up with the Germans and a lot of them collaborated with the Hun. Not many resisted the Nazis ( a few Huguenot villages hid Jews, and there was as small resistance supplied by the British and Americans) but most of the French just lived with being occupied by Germans. And once the war was over and France was liberated every damn body and his grandmother claimed to be a member of the Resistance. Those who couldn't get away with the claim were shamed, but the French, being French, took the que sera sera route and not long after started honoring Nazi collaborators with literary awards.
      That seems to be the way it is in Syria and Iraq. The average Mohammedan, upon being invaded by a bunch of savages, is not loathe to rat out the Christian family or Yezidhi family that his family has been living next to for centuries much the same way the French and Germans ratted out their Jewish neighbors. In news reports Christians and Yezidhis have described how their Mohammedan neighbors informed on them to ISIS.
     And consider this: as far as reported, there have been no local Mohammedan militias formed to fight against ISIS. Everybody seems to think that the government army has the job of fighting while everyone else is sitting around eating pistachio nuts and drinking mint tea. And the armies would rather surrender with the knowledge that they'll be executed while on their knees rather than while standing up and fighting. Hope may spring eternal, but a study of history, especially of Mohammedan history, shows that there is little mercy when dealing with a Mohammedan with a gun or sword. The Solons of the Middle East like to say that the U.S. has a short history while the Arab nations have a long history, but it seems that the average Abdul wearing an Iraqi or Syrian army uniform never seems to recall that if he surrenders to an invading self-proclaimed Madhi he'll probably be dead withing two days after flying the white flag.
     Here's a thought experiment: Imagine that some crazy Christian cult of about 13,000 (a Reconstructionist group of some sort, let's say) decided that it was about time to take over the the United States starting in Michigan. And imagine that they are trained and armed and that they are bound and determined to impose their Apocalyptic theology and governance on the nation. How far do you think they would get? Would it not be true that every Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Jew, agnostic and atheist with a deer rifle, a rabbit gun, a .38 Special or a .45 would be out hunting that bunch once the government failed to do so? A lot of Americans would shiver at the thought of an army coming into their town, but a lot would be fighting against them. The only ones who would really lay down are those bastards on Wall Street because they are looking for profit and not right. And if the Reconstructionist Army took over Wall Street the Wall Streeters would find themselves looking at the ugly end of an M-60.