Hammer Films, Creepy Creatures, B-Movies And Christopher Lee

“I have just been fired because nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. Apparently, all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.” – Fright Night

If Kamala is selected president, she promised a new post-apocalyptic movie.  She’s calling it Mad Marx.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I was a kid (think four or five) there was a local channel that ran horror movies late at night on Saturday night.  First there was the news at 10PM, then Star Trek at 10:30PM, and then, finally, at 11:30 Creepy Creature Feature started.

There was no host, just a title card with a vampire and perhaps some cobwebs followed by one or two B-movies and whatever ads the local salesguy could sell for midnight on a Saturday night.  I’d imagine the ads were nearly free:  five-year-olds in my generation didn’t have a lot of disposable income.

The movies were (at the time I was growing up) almost all from the 1950s and 1960s, and almost all of them were in black and white.  I think that the television station could get these movies for very low cost, or, perhaps free in movies that failed to follow the proper copyright steps, like Night of the Living Dead.

Who flips Rob Zombie’s pancakes?  Count Spatula.

Last month Bob suggested I revisit the old Hammer Film Productions® films, which are mainly known for their Frankenstein and Dracula movies.  The studio turned out over fifty films, however, before it started cranking out science fiction and horror movies around 1957, and brought Peter Cushing in as an actor and having him join former British commando Christopher Lee in 1958 with Lee playing Dracula.

An aside:  apparently when they were filming Lord of the Rings, director Peter Jackson was describing how he wanted Lee (playing Saruman) to react when Wormtongue stabbed him in the back.  Lee stopped Jackson when he was trying to explain what he wanted.  Lee:  “Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody is stabbed in the back?  Because I do.

To be blunt:  I have never seen a scary Hammer™ film.  Most of them were, at their very best, entertaining.  F-Troop’s Forrest Tucker as a scientist in the 1957 film The Abominable Snowman?  Yeah, that’s not going to be scary.

And if the animal got stuck in the chute, would that make him adoorabull?

Oh, sure, when I was a kid Hammer’s® Quatermass and the Pit (United States title:  Five Million Years to Earth) gave me shivers when I was in still in the footed pajama set, but rewatching it as an adult, I found it an interesting concept (alien overlords still “kind of” alive underneath London), but not scary.

One of the big differences I have seen in either the Hammer™ movies, or any number of movies from the day were built around concepts that seem to have been put away in the current political climate.

What concepts?

Humans are the good guys.  Sure, not all humans were good.  There were sniveling bad guys (mostly effeminate) or traitors (especially mostly secret commies) or scientists who didn’t understand what they were doing.  Or Dr. Fu Manchu – he was definitely a bad guy, from a culture so different that although his goal of world domination was clear, his motives were less so.

Dr. Fu Manchu is still more credible than Dr. Fauci. 

There was an optimism about the future.  Roger Corman’s horrible movie Day the World Ended (1955) scared me six ways from Sunday because there was a mutant that was afraid of rain and I lived in a place where it hardly ever rained.  But the end of the

Just like traitors, the scariest bad guys looked like us but weren’t us.  Dracula, for instance, was, like Cornpop, a bad dude.  And he looked like us.  And, sort of, acted like us.  But you knew, deep down, he wasn’t human.

We (generally) win.  Now, I’ll admit that I like John Carpenter movies where at the end of the movie I’m pretty sure that mankind was wiped out sometime not long after the credits roll:  (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness).  But most horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s were optimistic that brainpower plus grit would solve almost any problem we face.  Of course, the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers was in the “we lose” category, but it was pretty amazing, but much more common were films like When Worlds Collide where humanity, led by Elon Musk, manages to save itself through nearly impossible odds.  On a rocket.  With hot chicks.

I guess he’s now offering space for rent.

For whatever reason, I think the end of the optimism was around 1970.  Westerns turned dark, and B-movies where humanity was the bad guy or where humanity out and out lost became much more common, such as Colossus, the Forbin Project, where supercomputers manage to link up and prove that A.I. is scary and may become humanity’s master benevolent and will be the best thing ever to happen to humanity.  Not long after this (1974) Hammer® was essentially done making films and their quirky and optimistic take didn’t seem to sell anymore.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Hammer’s© fall was right after The Exorcist (1973) came out.  It might be the final and most optimistic movie of this period of horror/science fiction.  Although not a B-movie, it did show a world where true Evil was far scarier than anything that Dracula or Frankenstein ever was.

Yeah, the doctor even called the cemetery, “Human Resources”.

The Exorcist, optimistic?  William Peter Blatty certainly thought so, since, although there was Evil, it could be vanquished.

By Good.  And no matter how many times Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing tried, he never ever could get rid of Hammer’s™ Dracula.  Probably because Van Helsing knew that Christopher Lee was pretty good with a knife.

Change, Batman, Male Prostitutes, And Bears

“You were looking for a way to change your life.  You could not do this on your own.” – Fight Club

My Chinese friend gave me an iPad.  I just love homemade presents!

I can tell when I’m really ready for change.  I don’t think about it.  I don’t plan it.

I do it.  I become it.

Instantly.

How can I tell when I’m not ready to change?

I think about it.  I plan it.  I consider ideas like, “starting Monday, I’m going to . . . “

Then Monday comes around.  Meh.  There’s always next Monday.

Change is instantaneous, it’s a drag racer (I mean cars, not men in dresses that for some unspecified reason like to read to children) after the pedal has been pushed to the floor and the car is launched.  The desire to change?  That lingers and hangs around on the couch, eating curly fries and thinking about what it one day might do.

Shame on you if you haven’t heard of Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute, who offers professional hygiene, discretion, and animal gratification.

One of my friends when I was living in Alaska shared this story:

Wife:  “I’m leaving.”

Husband:  “What, what the hell?  You’re leaving me?”

Wife:  “No.  I’m leaving Alaska.  I’m moving.”

Husband:  “Why?  I thought that, while we had our ups and downs, our marriage is pretty good.”

Wife:  “No.  I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving Alaska.  It’s fine if you want to come, too.”

My friend (who I will call Tim since that’s his name) said that this was a constant pattern that he had seen.  Perfectly happy couple, and then one day, bam, the wife said she was outta there, done with Alaska except for the rearview mirror.  He said it generally happened about 20 years after the couple had moved to Alaska.  Sometimes 19 years.

Do mimes with invisible walls have obstacle illusions?

He had no idea why it happened, but it was frequent enough that he’d seen the pattern play out again and again.

Now that, my friends, is change.

Another example more relevant to me is biking.  I used to bike a lot, and I know from experience that the only thing that is as insufferable as a gay vegan-Democrat-Crossfit® enthusiast is a bicyclist.  But when I decided that I was going to use biking as an exercise to get into better shape (which worked) I went all in.  No, I didn’t buy the silly jersey or the clip on shoes or a bike that weighed .03 ounces (351 kiloPascals), but I did buy the gear I needed to be good enough to lose some weight.  Hell, I wasn’t racing, I wanted a heavy bike so I had to work my fat ass harder.

So, after 5,000 plus bike miles a year for two years, I found I lost approximately 10 pounds.

Why didn’t the bear go to college?  Because bears don’t go to college.

Hmmm, I guess I can’t ride my bike faster than my fork, but when I was on my bike, even though I was far from a world-record anything, I was training as hard as any world-class athlete.  Just not as long, and just without the talent that they had.  I mean, I was dedicated, but there was no way I was gonna cut my testicle off like Lance Armstrong.

But, again, the change was instantaneous.  Just as instantaneous as when I decided to stop biking because I noticed it was causing some damage to my body, and having a bad ankle wasn’t worth losing 10 pounds.

One day, bicyclist.

The next day?

Not.

So, change itself is instant.  And also predictable – it always has and always will require just three simple things, as Ludwig von Mises (who is dead) wrote:

A Vision of a Better State

A Path to Get to the Better State

A Belief That My Action Along the Path Will Get Me to the Better State

If you have Vision, Path, and Belief, you change.  If I don’t have them, even if I’m missing just one of them, I don’t change.  At all.  I just sit on my couch eating curly fries.

Anyone can want to change, in fact I’m sure we all want to change.  But until we get those three simple keys, we won’t.

When my youngest was five, The Mrs. and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, “Batman”.  Now he wonders why we won’t take him to the theater.

Why do people who have heart attacks sometimes become fitness devotees?  Because they now have A Vision of a Better State – not being dead next year.  They have A Path to Get to the Better State – exercise and eating right.  They now have A Belief That Their Action Along the Path Will Get Them to the Better State – their doctor told them, and now they’re paying attention.

That’s a rather extreme example, but it’s one that gets raised all the time.

I think the reasons that more people don’t make changes comes from a few simple reasons:

Despair:  They don’t believe that anything that they do can change the situation that they’re in so they don’t even dwell on a better state or look for a path.  They’ve given up.

Not Looking:  They simply won’t open their eyes to the possibility of something different, or feel guilt, and also can’t see a way, even if it’s abundantly clear to others.

Apathy:  They don’t care.  Curly fries are easy.  Work is hard.

Sometimes change is a conscious choice, but I’ll also admit that sometimes change is forced upon you like the Alaskan husband from Tim’s story above.

If you have something you want to change, change it.  You can’t make yourself younger, but you can make yourself stronger than you are today.  If you want more money, you can’t write yourself checks based on an IOU that you wrote to yourself (like the government does) but you can earn more or save more or both.  I guarantee it.

My grandfather once told me it was worth it to spend money on good stereo speakers.  That was sound advice.

Once I asked a friend (not Tim) to write a sentence of their choice as small as they could.  They did.  Then, I said, write it again, and make it smaller this time.

They did.  Generally, the power is within us to do amazing things, but we have to first believe.  You can choose change, or it can choose you.

But what you and I do with that?  It’s up to us.

How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?

“It was O-Ren Ishii and her powerful posse, the Crazy 88, that proved the victor.” – Kill Bill, Vol. 1

My friends always made fun of me in high school for having an imaginary girlfriend.  Of course, the joke was on them:  they were imaginary, too.

One of the comments on a post a few weeks back asked a pretty good question:

“How did we get so crazy, so fast?”

The answer actually involves several intertwining threads, mice, Soviets, and gasoline engines, so let’s see of we can weave a web that covers at least a chunk of what has made us so crazy, so quickly.  This is a distillation of the last seven years’ worth of study and writing, so some of it might be pretty familiar.  Also, it’s not necessarily complete yet, but here are the major threads that I see that have led to what Heinlein called The Crazy Years.

First:  Societal Malaise Due to Abundance

I’ve written several times about John Bumpass (that’s his real middle name according to the Internet) Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiment, see immediately below this paragraph for links to two previous posts.  The short summary is Dr. Calhoun asked a crazy question:  what would happen if you gave a population of mice everything they could want:  food, water, freedom from predation, space to live, bedding material, and places to make nests.

Want Dystopia?  Because this is how you get Dystopia.

The Unabomber Teaches The Facts Of Life

The result?  The mice died out.  At a certain point they stopped mating, mother mice stopped taking care of infant mice, gangs formed, and some mice (the “beautiful ones”) just spent their time grooming themselves and not really interacting.

If this sounds like Reddit® or TikTok™ or the Democratic National Convention, well, you’re right.  For a certain subset of the population, abundance has ruined them.

My friend told me I didn’t understand the meaning of the word “ironic” which was ironic because it was Tuesday.

I think it started in the 1960s.  I’m just guessing.  I like to blame the hippies, so they’re likely the early-version.  It then continued into the wildest era of abundance the world has ever seen:  the 1990s.  If you look at any time lapse, that’s when the United States started leading the world (it has spread now, literally) in having obesity, not hunger, be the bigger (pun intended) health problem.

I think this started to manifest itself, big time, in the music of the 1990s.  We went from Warrant singing about Cherry Pie to Kurt Cobain mumbling about how living in the suburbs with all the Pop Tarts™ his fat face could eat was killing him.  Turns out that shotguns are even more deadly than Pop Tarts©.  Who knew?  We had a generation that was lost because they had everything.

I think a candidate for the hallmark phrase of this Crazy Cause is:  “Why are we even here, dude?”

Never take diet advice from a fat guy, and never take life advice from Kurt Cobain.

Second:  Societal Anxiety Due to No Challenges

I recently made the comment on X® that a lot of people would e better off if they had been bullied as kids.  Was I serious?  Yeah, I was.  One response was, “Why do you want to make things worse?”

The truth is, for me, that bullies actually helped me build my character and my resolve.  And, believe it or not, sometimes the bullies were right and the things that they bullied me about (second graders can be assholes) were things I needed to fix to be a better person.  Did I lift harder to get stronger because of it?  Yes.  Did I develop the internal resilience so that the people who (rightfully) bullied the smarmy second grader that I was eventually earned the respect of the bullies?

Yes.  Males, even young males, need to develop a hierarchy and understand their place in it and why they are inferior to Chuck Norris.

No child is born perfect, and it is the challenges in life that help define and develop character.  Without challenge, development is stunted.

I think that today’s twentysomethings have the problem that they look into a future that certainly looks grim to them, yet they’ve never had a chance to develop their character and are told again and again how perfect they are and how their choices are important.

Newsflash:  the choices of a second grader generally deserve about as much attention as the choices my dog wants to make.  Both will eat all of the cake in the house if you let them and make messes everywhere.  It’s our job as parents to not care what they think when it’s important to develop character and virtue.

Chuck Norris can recite pi backwards.

As a society we face many of the same problems:  what is it we stand for and what are we trying to accomplish?  We don’t have Soviets to fight, we’re actively encouraging invaders into our country to replace us, and we don’t have any cool national purpose like the Apollo program.

I think a candidate for the catchphrase of this crazy cause is:  “Why am I so worthless?”

Third:  Societal Atomization Due To Tech

As humans, we have minds that are built around smaller social systems, mainly.  The big move from rural to urban happened in the west only recently.  Our legacy social structure is (mainly) to live in a town for a very long time, put down roots, make friends, make a reputation.

Most people aren’t leaders, they’re followers, and want to be led.  Why else would sane people want zoning regulations?

The good news is I can have up to six Eldrich Abominations without asking for a zoning variance request.

But now, put us in a constantly churning urban landscape where we don’t know the next-door-neighbor in the apartment building?  Who do we turn to?

Well, whatever latenightjokeman says or whatever TikTik™ says or whatever InstaFace© allows to be printed.  People are defining themselves on how YouTube™ says Europeans feel about Donald Trump.

They are also allowed to pick whatever gender they are.  How do I know tech is driving this?  Back when COVID made everyone homeschooled, transgenderism dropped.  Why?  No one to identify to – which is why “transwomen” with no girl parts get offended when gynecologists won’t give them appointments.

Yes.  That’s a thing.

The iPhone™ is a big driver.  It puts connections in the hands of kids.  I talked with one Millennial, and he said that at the start of his high school career, kids “cruised main” looking for other kids.  By the end of high school, it was all phones.  Friendships dropped, and dating dropped.  Mix that with the first two causes above, and it leads to fewer kids.

Dating sites magnify this, and make every girl “4” think that she deserves a Chad ranked 9 or higher because one time a drunk Chad had sex with her.  This leads to Chads being happy, but girls being sad and hollow inside.

I think a catchphrase for this Crazy Cause is “Who or what the heck am I?”

When I was a kid I thought my dad was Superman®.  Later, I wonder why he put a cape on after drinking bourbon.

Result of these interacting strands of Crazy are a large number of people who:

  • Stand for nothing
  • Have no examples of virtue other than seeking money in their lives
  • See no point in anything other than the present moment
  • Are distracted
  • Think they’re too good for PEZ™
  • Are filled with the combination of anxiety and narcissism
  • Do and feel whatever the media tells them to do
  • Haven’t built social circles of any particular strength – clubs and churches are on constant decline

There’s good news.

All of this is self-limiting.  We’re not mice, and plenty of good humans haven’t fallen into Calhoun’s Behavioral Sink.  Many of those same people have overcome challenges sufficient to shape their character for the better.  Finally, there are enough of us that don’t follow.

We lead.  Or we choose our own path.

And?

We’re gonna win.

The Third Act

“That’s why every magic trick has a third act.” – The Prestige

A man has to have a purpose in life.  All memes today are “as found”.

I’ve heard it said that there are only seven basic plots to stories, and that was the thesis of a book by the Christopher Booker.  Who would have thought a guy named Booker would write a book?  On the other hand, I’d hate to be the guy named Booker who didn’t write a book, unless my name was Dan-O.

Anyhow, we might look at those plots in a future post (maybe next Friday?) but now I want to talk about how most movies are made – they use a three act structure, and compare that to a human lifespan.

The First Act is the setup.  It introduces many of the characters and the situation.  You start by knowing absolutely nothing about what’s going on other than the title and maybe you might have seen a preview.  It’s the job of the storyteller to let you know what’s going on, while at the same time bringing drama and challenges into the life of the protagonist.

For most people, their first act may vary in details, but it’s the time of life from when they’re born until they complete their schooling and are “out in the world”.  Obviously, most of the ways that we reached adulthood are different, but most of them rhyme pretty well.  You may have had more or less adversity, you may have had more or less wealth, you might have been raised in the mountains or in the city, but those are just variations on a theme.

True story:  when I started my first website back in 2000, I was trying to figure out how to get it in search engines, so I did a search, at work, for “Submission Websites” when a bunch of fetish websites for a fetish I never even knew existed popped up.  Thankfully, the web controls were weak then.

Most people lose a grandparent, experience some tragedy, experience some conflict with parents, and almost everyone has to deal with the disturbing revelations of puberty and growing awareness of how small they are in comparison to the world.

Sure, some stories vary greatly, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be raised in the 1930s Soviet Union, but I imagine most stories of those reading this are pretty similar through adulthood.  Not the same, but similar.

How do you ground someone from Gen Z?  Make them go outside and socialize with their friends.

That’s the end of the first act, and the first challenge for most people is finding their way and path in life.  That’s the second act.  In a movie, the protagonist has a problem introduced in the first act that they have to solve.  In a good movie, the protagonist has to grow in ability, skill, virtue, or some combination of the three to deal with the problem.  The second act transforms the protagonist into something more than what he was.

The Second Act of most lives consists of wrestling with careers and marriages and children for most people.  Some miss part of that triad, but most people deal with all three.

I tried this, and it actually works, but video games are more fun.

This is the time in life when marriages succeed or fail.  When careers go where you expected, or, more likely, veer off in wild tangents that 18-year-old you would never have expected.  And, children.  Anyone who has raised more than one knows that each one is different, and each one presents a different challenge in order to make them suitable to add value to the world.

Or not.  Sometimes, all of these things fail.  I guess that’s why they make comedies?  Regardless, it’s the time when people are busy trying to accomplish things, trying to solve problems, and trying to make a place in this world and contribute.

Say what you will about Vlad, but he took action when the stakes were high.

While similarity remains, there is much more variation in the Second Act for most people.  That’s where fortunes rise and fall, and that’s where heartbreak and setbacks are either overcome or we allow them to overcome us.

The final act is the Third Act.

In a film, it creates a climax.  All of the action, all of the plots, all of the tension built into the story is resolved, for good or bad.  It finishes the story, and resolves enough of the plot to satisfy the audience, and finally allows reflection by the protagonist on how they’ve changed, and understanding who they really are.

In a life, what does the Third Act look like?  Is it a gold watch at retirement, cruises, and sitting on the patio in a shade with a lemonade watching boats go by?

For me, I can’t see that.

I can’t imagine that being my Third Act.  I’ve consciously filled my life with struggle, with daring myself to improve and get better and see my worst times were when I was complacent and life was easy.  It may be that you’ve chosen differently, and I’m just messed up, but it does set up my Third Act.

Steve Jobs said he wanted to “kick a dent” in the Universe, and he certainly did.  Would smartphones have come without the iPhone®?  I do think so, but I think his overall legacy is a negative one.  Smartphones haven’t made humanity happier, for the most part.  Instead, they’ve created a false connection where people are still seeking real connections.

This would be a good third act.

I guess, if I were looking for a climax to my life, it would kicking a far different dent in the Universe, allowing people to see that we don’t have to live like this.  There is another way, and it’s better, and freer, and provides that hope of humanity becoming the flower of creation, rather than another weed.

I believe that with all of my heart, that there is another way.  I’d write a book about it, but my name isn’t booker.  Wait, maybe if it was a wild book?

The Book:

Bad Economics Destroys Wealth

“Hey, there’s no airbag.  I can fly out through the windshield?” – Rocketman

Toyota® introduced their new Nagasaki airbag – they say “you won’t feel the impact”.

Annually, about 2800 lives are saved by airbags.  Hurray!

Annually, 13.6 million new cars are sold.  That probably doesn’t rate a hurray, I mean, not ever fact is exciting.

I’m guessing (numbers are sketchy) that it costs approximately $2000 per car to add airbags.  This number may be a bit high, but replacing a single airbag can cost $2000, and many new cars have so many airbags that some cars can legally be sold as bubble wrap.

By federal law, all passenger autos sold must include airbags.

That pencils out to an annual cost of $27.2 billion dollars in additional consumer spending.

For airbags.

So, we have all of the math ready for us:  how much does it cost to save a human life.

(drumroll)

About $10 million dollars per life saved.

Every Monday evening, Superman® researches bitcoin.  That’s his crypto-night.

That’s insane.  I mean, I know the goal is a good one, but why is the federal government mandating that Americans spend an average of $10 million dollars per person to save them?  Heck, I don’t like most people even $50,000 worth.  But $10 million?

This number, and, indeed the federal mandate that airbags be installed on everything on the highway is a product of the “safety at all costs” culture.  Their motto is, “If only one human life is saved . . .” which is meant as a rallying cry for whatever uneconomic idea that they want to put forward.  An actual economist, Thomas Sowell, made the argument that if you wanted people to drive safely you’d replace the airbag with a big Bowie knife.  I tried to verify that quote, but the link that I came up with was . . . my site.

So, I couldn’t verify it, except by myself.  I’m not sure I’m a reliable source, but, hey.

It would also decrease emergency room visits.  Save him?  No, then how would he learn anything?

Hit the brakes too hard?

Sorry about that – there are consequences to the driver.

Imagine how polite drivers would be then?  If not, think of the lowered hospital visits!

The news is simple:  no one makes it out of here alive.  No one.  We cannot escape the one inevitable consequence of living, which is death.  The GloboLeftSafetyPatrol thinks that if we spend billions of dollars, we can make Death go away.  No, at least in 2024, the only thing that we can do is shoo Death away from our doorstep for a little while by using better diet and exercise and maybe renting an 18-year-old to use as a blood donor to live off of them like a vampire.  I heard them called “blood boys” once.

If I brought the concept that actions have consequences up with a GloboLeftist, it would break their mind.  They live in a world where money is what other people provide to satisfy all the wants of the world.  In my experience, most people want a lot more than the world can afford, so we have to make choices.  Not everyone can afford a blood boy.

Asian fathers are disappointed if their son has a B+ blood type.

That’s the basis of economics, making the least-bad choice given the information you know at the time.

The second thing that drives the GloboLeftistSafetyPatrol nuts is the idea that people might have a choice.  It drives them nuts.  What if I wanted to buy a car that didn’t have airbags?

I’m the bad guy.

Why?  Well, for that to be the case, the GloboLeftSafetyPatrol has decided that they own me.

To be clear, I do believe that there are obligations that an individual has with society, and that a society has for an individual.  Pure libertarianism in the absence of an infinite expanding frontier is simply not workable, though it has been tried and certainly worked better than communism and with a much smaller body count.

A similar bad choice is involved with the decision to import the swarming masses of parasite carrying (link below) illegals to replace actual citizens.  All of the job growth post-COVID has been by immigrants, either of the legal (or, since there are millions and millions of them) more likely illegal aliens.

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

When illegals do a home invasion is it a house swarming party?

In one way this is a multiple hit to the economy.  First, these aliens, on average consume a lot more resources than are offset by the tax revenue they produce and work that they do.

For every illegal crossing the border, the economy has that much more sand poured in the gears in terms of unpaid for medical cost, schooling costs, infrastructure costs, and benefits cost.  The average illegal costs far more than the average veteran, and much more than the average veterinarian.  Heck, they even cost more than the average vegan, though they’re not so smug.

Second, for every illegal that consumes additional housing, often in conditions of squalor with much higher occupancy than an American family, the housing stock is consumed, raising prices.  I read one story about a Canadian apartment where the inhabitants were living in every room in the house, including having a bed in the kitchen where two people lived.

Lastly, the illegals keep wages low.  Literally if we import the third world, we become the third world because our wages will eventually drop to third world levels – the same goes for free trade.

Importing illegals (and, let’s face it, many legal) aliens actually makes the economy get worse, and it’s faster the more we import.  With lowered demand for housing, prices would go down.  With lowered amounts of workers, wages would tend to go up.  Take these to the extreme, and California becomes Mumbai, but with fewer cobras.

If Chuck Norris didn’t have arms, what would his catchphrase be?  “You’re about to meet de feet!”

The GloboLeft loves illegals, because of their compassion – but studies have consistently shown that their compassion is just that, a feeling, and that people on the TradRight are generally those that actually fund and charities that help people.  To the GloboLeftists, that’s simply not their problem – government (meaning you and I) should take care of it.

We can’t afford airbags anymore because we’ve used that wealth on . . . airbags.  And illegals.  And any one of a thousand things that you or I could think of where the government either mandates waste or pursues policies that are directly detrimental to the voters.  I mean, even Sweden is waking up to the concept that importing rapefugees might not be the best policy since there are no-go zones (Malmo) where actual Swedish people aren’t allowed.

But what bothers me the most is, if the government keeps wasting the wealth of the country in this fashion and at this rate, I’ll never be able to afford a blood boy.

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

“You can’t have both of the parasites.” – Fight Club

A tapeworm showed up to a party and got kicked out.  I guess the guy was a terrible host.

When I think about parasites, I start with thinking about the GloboLeft.  Somebody like George Soros has been sucking at the economy, producing no value, and trying his best to control its brain.

Like Toxoplasmosis gondii.

Toxoplasmosis gondii (T. gondii from here on out) is, like a gender-studies major, a parasite.  It has an interesting life cycle, in that it often occurs in cats.  In reality, it can infest any warm blooded animal (and birds as well) but most people are aware from due to its association with cats, and not the Broadway musical, but the fuzzy felines.

I want to write a Broadway show titled Vocabulary.  It’ll be a play on words. 

T. gondii likes to infest cats. Since it occurs as cysts in animals, T. gondii has developed the ability to change the behavior of mice and rats. Specifically, T. gondii changes the brain and behavior patterns of rodents to make them less worried about being dinner.

Of things that rodents don’t like, “being eaten alive” is pretty near the top of the list.  Uninfected rodents really hate the smell of cat pee and avoid it, since cat pee often occurs near where cats are, and cats like to eat rodents alive, just for sport.

However, give a rodent an infection of T. gondii and it either loses it’s aversion to cat pee or becomes attracted to it.  It also reduces the behaviors associated with avoiding predators and makes the mice more bold and less worried about predators.  It also makes them hyperactive, increases the distances they travel, and makes the reckless when they show up at a new area.

Yes.  T. gondii turns mice into little mobile food trucks for cats.  This is on purpose, so the cats eat the mice, and then get infected, and then poop, and then spread T. gondii everywhere.

Mary Poppins Food Truck Review:  “Super cauliflower-cheese but the lobster was atrocious.”

Well, there’s a horrifying thought!  A parasite that changes the behavior of creatures!  Thankfully humans don’t get it, and it doesn’t impact human behavior?

Well, nazzo fast, Guido.

It turns out that T. gondii just loves to hitch a ride into humans.  And just like it changes the behavior of rats and cats and mice, studies have shown that it also impacts humans as well.  How?

T. gondii has shown to have some of these effects in people:

  • Increases impulsive behaviors,
  • Increased car accidents,
  • Increased road rage, and
  • Increased mental illness (like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder).

Yeah, T. gondii is a disaster for people since if you look at the list above, it appears to turn them into GloboLeftists.  It also messes with human immune systems so it doesn’t get eaten, makes healthy cells die, increases inflammation, and may even encourage other parasites to join the party by downregulating the parts of the human immune system that keep them out.

Staying up all weekend is fun – after all, sleep is for the week.

Thankfully it’s rare, right?

Nope.  In women of childbearing age, infection rates are:

  • 50%-80% in Latin Americans,
  • 20%-60% in Eastern Europeans,
  • 30%-50% in the Middle Easterners,
  • 20%-60% in Southeast Asians,
  • 20%-55% in Africans, and
  • 7% in the United States natives (2004 data) but 28.1% in foreign-born.

Billions of people have this parasite, T. gondii.  But that’s just one parasite.

I had that parasite.  Didn’t care for it.

Let’s take this a step further.

There are large numbers of parasites beyond T. gondii that infect and impact humanity.  I looked it up and came to two conclusions:

  1. Parasites are really gross and repulsive.
  2. There are hundreds of different types of parasites out there.

How likely is it, of all of the different types of parasites that impact humanity that the only one that impacts behavior is T. gondii?  If I were a betting man, I’d lay money that there are certainly more parasites than not impact behavior.  And since many of these parasites require exposure to blood or poop to increase the number of hosts, well, might the behaviors that the parasite “encourages” be tied to more exposure to those things?

It’s a thought.

Once again, when looking at the religious themes of chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty, it occurs to me that all of those virtuous behaviors – every single one of them – reduces exposure to parasites and disease that may take over our minds.

Is it just a coincidence that as adherence to chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty are tossed away as old, outmoded thinking that we find ourselves in a world surrounded by triggered adherents of Clown World?  Perhaps the warnings we’ve seen in the past of those possessed by demons was, at least in part, based on parasites.  It seems like all the behavior that leads to the fall of civilizations tends to increase the likelihood that people will catch parasites.

Where do Viking clowns go?  Val-ha-ha.

Maybe, maybe it’s only the GloboLeft, but the GloboLeft is actively encouraging behaviors that result in the perpetuation of parasites.  Today.  Ever wonder why the GloboLeft reacted so harshly to ivermectin being a potential cure to COVID?  It kills parasites.

What would have happened if GloboLeftists had taken it and found out that their lives are a lie and their predilection to certain sexual practices was actually parasite mind control?

Are the GloboLeftists, in addition to being parasites, are also being consumed and controlled by parasites?

You be the judge.

It Came From . . . 1985

“Go that way, really fast.  If something gets in your way, turn.” – Better Off Dead

People with babies can be really rude at the movie theater.  One kid was crying so loudly that I could barely hear the person I was talking with on the phone.

I was recently looking at some graphs that showed, by birth year, what time people thought were the “best” for various things.  For example, most people thought music peaked about the time where they were stupidest and going through puberty, say, 12-14.  I recall reading that one “dealmaker” would always put on music that would have been popular when the person he was trying to influence would have been in that age range.

Worked like a charm for him.

Movies are different.  For most people, surveyed, regardless of birth year, movies peaked in the 1980-1990 era.  Why?  They were creative, not afraid to take a risk, and great new movies were coming out almost weekly.  My initial cut at this list of movies had 25 movies on it.  And I thought of including at least 10 more.

It was an embarrassment of cultural riches that we had at that time.  Well, at least we have Marvel™ Movie Product  #432 now.

As always, the list isn’t in any particular order, and feel free to toss your favorites in the comments.

Witness – What I like best about this movie is that I’m fairly certain that it inspired Weird Al to do Amish Paradise.  Other than that, just a fish out of water movie about a crusty cop pretending to be Amish and an excuse to put Harrison Ford in something that wasn’t Indiana Jones® or Star Wars™.

If you see an Apple™ store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

The Breakfast Club – I really didn’t like this movie.  It tried to make as if teens were angsty and filled with self-loathing and/or had bad relationships with pushy parents.  Most of my friends were fairly well-adjusted, so I just didn’t relate to any of the characters.  Of note:  I think people are complaining now that the characters were all white.  Imagine how it would fly if they were all BiPOC?  Regardless, it makes the list because it’s a cultural touchstone for so many other people.

Vision Quest – Now this character I could identify with – a teen who has a vision, and goes on a quest.  Okay, it’s about wrestling, girls, and life, and features a great soundtrack and lots of wrestling.  Oh, and Linda Fiorentino.

When two silkworms wrestle, how often are the results a tie?

The Sure Thing – 1985 was Peak John Cusack.  Sure, now he is an uber-Leftist on XX, but back then he was just another actor who could put in a great performance as a teen everyman.  Of note:  this was the first time I ever saw a cordless phone in a non-science fiction movie.

Lost in America – This is a movie about yuppies who decide to retire and go around the country in a big camper.  On their first stop, the wife gambles away all of their money.  Low-key hilarity ensues.  My favorite line?  “You are not allowed to use the words ‘nest’ or ‘egg’ ever again.”

Brewster’s Millions – Richard Pryor has to spend $30 million in 30 days and have nothing to show for it to inherit $300 million.  John Candy plays the sidekick.  Good times.

Rambo:  First Blood Part II – This movie transformed the brooding John Rambo into something closer to Batman® in a bandana.  Normally I wouldn’t put a sequel on the list, but this is a very different movie in every way from First Blood.

First PEZ™, Part II

The Stuff – What if your ice cream was eating you?  Yes, that’s the plot.  Yes, it’s played for laughs.

Back to the Future – Ever daydream about making sure your parents had sex?  Well, no, not until I saw this movie.  Time travel showed up in quite a few 1980s films, but this and Terminator probably top the list back when it was still a “new” movie concept.

Day of the Dead – Yes, a sequel, but, wow.  It was considered very, very gruesome for the time and place of release, but now this stuff is on TV all the time.  Interesting plot that could have had a much better script.

Fright Night – What if vampires were cool, suave, your next-door neighbor, and looking to bang and drain your girlfriend?  Better call a washed-up TV horror movie host to help!

The Amish do not approve.

Weird Science/Real Genius – People were optimistic that science could solve our problems in the 1980s, such as getting a girlfriend or popping a lot of popcorn all at the same time.

Summer Rental – Who wouldn’t want John Candy as a neighbor?  Well, I wouldn’t, since he’s dead.  But he also got in a feud with Richard Crenna (also dead) and Rip Torn (also dead) comes to the rescue by turning his restaurant into a pirate boat.  Okay, it’s essentially exactly the plot to Caddyshack, but who cares?  It’s funny.

The Return of the Living Dead – Is it a floor wax?  Is it a dessert topping?  If Shimmer™ could be both, why can’t The Return of the Living Dead be a comedy and a horror movie?  It is.  It cost $3 million, made $14 million, and though it was a very stupid movie, was certainly not brainless.

Volunteers – John Candy, again, but this time as a Tom Hanks sidekick who is brainwashed by the communists and teaches them the Washington State fight song.  Again, fun, and no Asians were killed in the filming of this movie.

Fight, fight, fight for Washington State . . . .

Better Off Dead – John Cusack again, 1985 was really his year.  In this movie where teen suicide is played for laughs, and I loved every minute of it.  Savage Steve Holland’s career was too short in movies, but lived on in animation.  The humor is mainly focused on the absurd, like the two Japanese brothers, one who speaks no English, and the other learned by listening to Howard Cosell.  I liked it.

Commando – I didn’t wear underwear to this movie, thus leading the expression “Commando” meaning not wearing underwear.  Okay, that’s not the case, but Commando could almost be titled Generic Arnold Schwarzenegger Action Movie because it is mainly just Arnie blowing things up and making bad puns.  And that’s okay.

In an Arnie voice:  “Well, at least my hat is purr-fect.”

Remo Williams:  The Adventure Begins – Until getting writing this post, I had no idea that this silly movie was based on a book series called The Destroyer that lasted for over 150 novels.  Yup.  But this is Fred Ward in a humorous movie that never takes itself too seriously, and has the production values of a TV movie, including Joel Grey as an ancient Asian master.

Re-Animator – I’m a sucker for great H.P. Lovecraft movies, and there are very, very few of those because Lovecraft built a wonderful world but didn’t write all that well.  This one involves a medical student who invents a reanimation fluid that make the dead walk again, which was a big 1985 theme, apparently.  This is Lovecraft, done right.

White Nights – Very much a Cold War movie, Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov are dancers who plot to escape the Soviet Union.  It’s a spy thriller with sand dancing.  It’s the closest to a drama on the list, so, it’s got that going for it.

Brazil – No, still haven’t seen it.  Yes, I will at some point.

Does this capture the spirit of the movie Brazil?

The Truth, Neutrinos, Taylor Swift, And Otto Von Bismarck.

“I know what you’re thinking, ’cause right now I’m thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking it ever since I got here: Why, oh why, didn’t I take the blue pill?” – The Matrix

When I was a kid, I could walk into a 7-Eleven with just a dollar and walk out with a six pack of pop and three candy bars.  Now?  They have cameras everywhere.

I write a lot about the Truth, but I think the Friday before Memorial Day is a fine time to talk about the Truth in general.  Why?  Because I said so.

The first thing I want to point out is that a quest for Truth, does not mean everything is bright and happy and puppy tails.  The Truth is, very often a grim thing.  I have found things sometimes aren’t the happy web that I imagined.  Like the Wedding Guest in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner I ended up being “A sadder and a wiser man” because of The Truth.  I guess the Wedding Guest’s bright spot is at least Iron Maiden® wrote a song about him.

That is part of the issue of looking for the Truth – I thought I understood life, and then a curve ball hits.  Some people call this sudden exposure to the Truth:  The Red Pill, based on the red Reese’s Pieces that E.T.® ate with Indiana Jones™ in the movie Jaws.

Or something like that.  Heck, I used to worry about the evidence that the Sun’s neutrino count was half of what would be expected, and that maybe its internal fusion had stopped.  But that was just too scary, so now I worry about celebrity gossip.

What was Otto von Bismark’s favorite Queen song?  Under Prussia.

The Red Pill is choosing to see reality as it is, not as we’d wish it to be.  In this quest, I’ve seen things I didn’t want to see, and understood things often people are willfully ignorant of because the consequences of the Truth are . . . disturbing.

That’s difficult, because then I have to go back through what I formerly believed to be True, and reassess – how does this new Truth change what I thought I knew?  What else do I think to be True that is similarly wrong?   What I trusted as the Truth, after taking the Red Pill, I had to reassess and review my whole worldview through different eyes.

One of my first Red Pills was when I was a sophomore in college.  I realized then that most people simply didn’t care about me, didn’t care if I succeeded or failed, and that the majority of my presence in the world was like that of a finger in a cup of water – pull the finger out, and two seconds later you’d never know a finger had ever been in the water.  Unless I hadn’t washed my hands after going to the bathroom.

There are several things still functioning on the Titanic, for instance, the sinks still hold water.

And, it’s True.  Most of the journey of most lives is shared with just a few very close people.  I remember that one of my friends died not too long after high school – a car crash.  I hadn’t seen him for four years afterwards, and was sad, but, you know, I shrugged and moved on.

That’s not the case for everyone – families are much tighter, obviously, but lots of marriages are transactional:  it’s based not on a bond, but on a transaction, like nearly every Hollywood marriage.

But it comes down to friendships, too.  I once had a close friend at work.  I left the job, and boom, the friendship status was closed.  Our relationship had been a transaction, and it occurred in an artificial setting.  Didn’t mean I wasn’t irritated, but, hey, like Mark Twain said, Red Pill is gonna Red Pill.

She said, “Strip down, facing me.”  It wasn’t until the McDonald’s® cashier screamed that I figured out she meant my credit card.

Searching for the Truth isn’t about avoiding ugliness, searching for the Truth is about being able to make actual choices, using free will free of illusions.  It’s about making actual conscious moral decisions without pretending.  This is better, even if the Truth is ugly.

Why?  Decisions made with the Truth in mind work out better.  If I tried to use reason and logic with a toddler, we’d both end up frustrated and I’d end up with a black eye and a fractured clavicle.  Again.

That’s a key problem with making decisions or basing reality on anything other than the Truth:  “solutions” won’t solve any problems if they’re not based on reality except by accident.  Those “solutions” may even make things worse.  For instance, if the problem is youth crime, and New York City decides that to stop youth crime, for any crime short of murder, they’re going to ignore it and put the criminal back on the streets immediately, what will happen?

For illegal aliens, if the policy to stop those illegals is to fund them to get to the border, bus them from the border to relocation centers, feed, clothe, fund, and then fly for free to yet more free stuff:  housing and food.  How many illegals will that policy stop?

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

The True solution to a problem often requires a True understanding of the problem.  In the examples above, the True problem isn’t the illegals or the young criminals, the True problem is the GloboLeftElite who want the illegal aliens and the youthful criminals to be doing exactly what they’re doing.

Not using the Truth to make decisions when you have it is morally and ethically bankrupt, and the GloboLeftElite and their stooges have a lot to answer for.

The biggest ally I have in my search for the Truth is humility, which is probably one of the best inventions, ever.  Although I’ve learned a lot, the best lesson I’ve ever learned is that I can be 100% dead wrong.  Because of that history, I always, always try to ask myself, “what if I’m wrong?”

It’s a powerful question.  If everybody is doing the same thing, and I do something different, what happens if I’m wrong?  What’s the upside if I’m right?  We live in a world of uncertainty, and finding Truth is not always clear.  It’s True that the dollar will eventually go to zero, but it’s also True that I could go broke waiting for that to happen.

So, I try to seek whatever evidence I can to help me.  I also like to use those close friends (and The Mrs.) as people to help point out when I’m delusional.  They try, and sometimes they’re right, and sometimes I’m right.  By writing these points down in the posts I’ve put out, I’ve also made it so it’s harder to delude myself that I knew better than I really did.

Just kidding.

I’m really hoping this isn’t a spoiler for you Civil War buffs. 

The reward, though, is to live a life where you’re guided not by delusion, but by Truth.  It may not always be the happiest outcome, but it is the real outcome.  Or if that’s too scary, I’ll just concentrate on whatever Taylor Swift is doing instead.

Stupid neutrinos.

The Dystopian Movie Post

“Hello, this is Killian.  Give me the Justice Department, Entertainment Division.” – The Running Man

I once saw a poster with the title “Have you seen my cat?” and it had a phone number.  I called them and told them I hadn’t seen their cat.  I like to be helpful.

It was suggested in the comments a while back that I write a post about dystopian movies.  I thought that was a great idea, put it in my “future posts” file, and here we are, looking at futures where dehumanization is the norm.  I’ve actually been quite looking forward to writing this post, so I hope you enjoy!

Obviously, the list isn’t exhaustive, but these are some of my favorites.  I’ve put them in chronological order.

The Time Machine (1960) – This is a wonderful film that never should have been remade.  A sequel?  Perhaps.  But this film is nearly perfect, and Rod Taylor is perfect as the time travelling scientist who travels to a future where meat is back on the menu.

I need to get a time machine, but I don’t think they make them like they’re going to anymore.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – You want a downer movie?  This is a downer movie.  I’d say that either this or 1984 are probably the most depressing movies on the list in a movie where violent youth are encouraged by corrupt politicians.  Malcolm McDowell is best known for this role, and he wasn’t even 30 when the film came out, so it’s gotta suck that the thing you did nearly sixty years ago is what you’re best known for.  Looking at you, Sirhan Sirhan.

Biden’s administration is working like clockwork . . . orange.

Silent Running (1972) – This is an ecologically driven film about an astronaut who just won’t allow the last forests to be destroyed.  The catch?  These forests are in space, on long term orbits.  Because taking them into space would be the most logical thing to do, right?  Okay, I didn’t notice that when I watched the thing on the Dialing for Dollars™ movie back when I was 10.  This movie is the most Bruce Dern of any Dern movie, so if you like Dern, this is the Derniest.

Zardoz (1974) – Yes, this is the movie with Sean Connery wearing an orange diaper with crossed bandoliers and pistols.  It is also the very best movie ever made where a giant floating stone head spits rifles, pistols, shotguns and ammunition out of its mouth.  After review, I’m gonna stand by that statement.

No, I’m not suggesting anyone watch Zardoz, because many of you have weapons.

Logan’s Run (1976) – Logan 5 is a future cop who is sent on a secret mission to infiltrate a group of people who want to have freedom and not be executed by floating up into a people-sized bug zapper when they turn 30.  The special effects are a bit clunky, but it does star Basil Exposition as Logan 5.

Escape From New York (1981) – I think no one makes dystopian futures more fun than John Carpenter.  I imagine everyone has seen this very classic film about the distant future (1997!) where New York has been turned into an open-air prison and then the President’s pod lands there as Air Force One is blown up.  This is the movie that made everyone think the President had a cool escape pod.

If you saw this poster you’d think everyone had great flowing locks of hair, all feathered like the wings of a majestic eagle in 1981.  And they did.

1984 (1984) – The other really, really bleak movie on this list, the classic story that gave the world the term “Orwellian”.  I’ve seen this one twice, and it’s probably enough, especially since after the last time I watched it, the story kept going after I turned off the television.

Terminator (1984) – The dystopia in this particular film is about the rise of artificial intelligence and its desire to kill all of mankind, probably because they forced Skynet to watch episodes of The View to train it.  I can tell the Terminator® is a Google™ product, because it’s Chrome©.

The Running Man (1987) – More Arnold.  This movie is what happens when you mix 1984, a Jazzercise™ videotape, and American Gladiators™.  This “future” is ruled by some sort of quasi-corporate totalitarian regime in the midst of a worldwide economic collapse, but with 1980s hair.  There is absolutely nothing serious about this movie, but it’s fun to watch.

Imagine a dystopia where the media makes up the news to make people look bad!  How silly!

They Live (1988) – What if aliens secretly ran everything, and were using powerful hypnosis along with alien tech so they could walk among us without us ever even knowing it?  And what if you could get glasses to allow you to see their propaganda, things like, “Consume” and “Marry and reproduce” showing that the “evil” alien overlords are actually kinder than our current overlords?

Millennium (1989) – In the distant future, they have time travel, so they decide to send hot women back in time to kidnap people from airplanes that are about to crash so they can bring them to the future to make babies because people are infertile in the future.  Oh, sure, it sounds like a porno that also explains the problems Boeing® is having, but in reality it’s a fairly good science fiction flick starring Cheryl Ladd, the “other” one of Charlie’s Angels.

12 Monkeys (1995) – This is movie is what you get when a member of Monty Python directs a movie about a time traveler trying to stop eco-terrorists from destroying the world and turning it a dark basement filled with cages that smell like Bruce Willis.  The movie is one of Willis’ best.

I learned that humans eat more bananas than monkeys.  As for me, I can’t recall the last time I ate a monkey.

The Stand (1995) – Stephen King may now be a GloboLeftie that has 90% of his brain addled by Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I promise, he used to write interesting books.  The Stand is one of them.  I have no idea if he wrote this in the depths of a cocaine binge, but it’s possible.  It never could be a two hour movie, but in 1995 they told the story in a miniseries.  It’s good.  This dystopia is a world falling apart after most people die from COVID the flu, and an epic battle of Good against Evil.

The Matrix (1999) – Oops, A.I. again, with people being used as the most expensive and inefficient batteries possible this time.  Why?  Umm, the future is cloudy, I guess, and A.I. can’t use solar?  But they can give people food and spend time with expensive computers creating a virtual reality?  Okay, the plot isn’t perfect, but there are lots of guns.

Idiocracy (2006) – What happens when dumb people have lots of babies and smart people don’t reproduce?  Well, you’re soaking in it!  This is a quite funny movie about how everyone is getting dumber, quickly and society becomes more and more absurd as competence disappears.  A guy with average intellect in 2005 is unfrozen 500 years later, and is now the smartest man in the world.

Sadly, the difference between the movie and reality is that in the movie, they put the smart one in charge.

Dredd (2012) – Dredd takes place in Mega-City One in the year 2080.  The city is composed of huge armored skyscrapers where tens of thousands of people live.  The character, Dredd, is a Judge – he can arrest, conduct a trial, and convict a criminal in, oh, thirty seconds or so.  And if it’s the death penalty?  Appeal denied – Judges can execute the sentence themselves.  I wonder if we can give those powers to the Border Patrol?

Looking at the timing of some of these films, I wonder if we collectively could see in the 1980s and 1990s what would be happening and anticipated it in film.  Nah.  Coincidence, I’m sure.

What are some of your favorites that I missed?

The Post On Nihilism I’ve Been Working On (Here And There) For Weeks

“Think his nihilism got the best of him and he tried to kill himself?” – House, M.D.

Nietzsche couldn’t use pencils.  He thought they were all pointless.

A big danger is Nihilism.

It’s certainly one of the biggest dangers that society faces today.  As our society has become less religious, more urban, and has a greater and greater embracing of technology, people begin to ask:

Does any of this matter?  Do our values have any real meaning?

My answer to both of those questions is, of course, yes.  Values and virtues don’t become outdated.

But what is Nihilism?  Nietzsche defined Nihilism fairly simply:

“That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs – no thing in itself.  This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind.”

To a Nihilist, nothing matters and everything that anyone can think of is true.  Read that sentence again, and tell me what I’ve missed in what’s ailing society at its foundation, right now, today.  To quote Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose, if Nihilism is the “extinction of the individual, then this world and everything in it – love, goodness, sanctity, everything – are as nothing, nothing man may do is of any ultimate consequence, and the full horror of life is hidden from man only by the strength of their will do deceive themselves; and ‘all things are lawful,’ no otherworldly hope or fear restrains men from monstrous experiments and suicidal dreams.”  I’m guessing he knew my ex-wife.

Observance to a religion gives a society many things:  purpose, values, unity, and stability, among others.  But a Nihilist would say that all religions have the same validity, just like all cultures have the same validity.

But that is observably false.

Say what you will, but the Aztec people had a great motto:  “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everyone.”

I’ll cherry pick an example:  Aztecs.  The Aztecs were a bloodthirsty, cannibal, slaving religion.  When their ancestors escaped up north, they became known (later) as the Anasazi, and were so hated that they managed to get a huge coalition of all the other tribes together to unite to kill them, probably because having cannibals as neighbors is horrible for property values.

We live in a nation where academics and the news media are trying to normalize everything from cannibalism to “minor-attracted persons” to men pretending to be women.  The only, and I mean only, way that this sort of normalization attempt occurs is because the GloboLeft are a group of nihilists that don’t have any fixed beliefs, at all.  They were HATING former FBI Director James Comey before Trump fired him.  Then, in the span of a single day, they were converted to loving him.

“Comey was always the good guy.”

We were always at war with Eastasia.

When Amy was a child, she said she wanted to go into comedy.  Well, no one is laughing now.

If horrible religions like the Aztec religion can result in murder, wholesale slavery, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, imagine how much worse it is to have no religion at all?  Now, it becomes open season on anything.  The Mrs. likes to talk about an article she read once (maybe it was back when we subscribed to Reason?) about the author attending a Washington, D.C. dinner party.

The conversation went something like this . . . .

“Well, of course Africa is a problem, and probably has 200,000,000 too many people.  I think that it can be solved, though, by withholding food supply.”  This wasn’t a politician, but probably a GloboLeft academic or regulator.

The author confronted the GloboLefty:  “You’re casually talking about starving 200,000,000 people to death?”

Apparently, the GloboLefty didn’t really like it when it was phrased that way, but when he could hide behind pretty words that disguised the real meaning of what he was saying, well, he was good with it.

I was going to donate my clothes to starving people in Africa, but I decided not to.  If my clothes fit them, they’re definitely not starving.

The French Revolution was, perhaps, the very first example of this sort of extreme Nihilism, where the idea was not a war on man, but an organized war on God, Himself.  Mankind has certainly had its share of civil wars and genocides throughout history, but the French Revolution was something entirely new – the desire of an idea, Nihilism, to remake an entire nation and discard every idea from the past.

To a Nihilist or a GloboLeftist (but I repeat myself) I am nothing.  You are nothing.  We are not even worthy of consideration as humans.  We are beneath contempt.  To quote Rose again, “The Revolution, in fact, cannot be completed until the last vestige of faith in the true God is uprooted from the hearts of men and everyone has learned to live in this void.”  In the words of V.I. Lenin:  “. . . there will be no way of getting away from it, there will be nowhere to go.”

Really.

Should the Russian Revolution be renamed the Tsar Wars?

The greatest horrors (that’s “horror” – I’m not talking about Madonna) in the history of humanity have been brought about by GloboLeft governments while being run not by atheists, but by antitheists.  Period, and that’s verifiable by actual numbers.  The end stage of this is the Nihilism we see around us now:  The Nihilism bent only on destruction.  The French Revolution started it, but you can see it daily at work

As I’ve said again and again, I believe we will win, because we stand for something and to win they have to kill us all.  Every single one of us.

They can’t.  After 74 years of trying, the Soviets couldn’t erase Religion and the values it provides.  Today, only 13% of Russians are atheists.  Infecting everyone with Nihilism is really, really hard.

My doctor said I should drink more wine.  He actually said, “less beer”, but I’m pretty good at reading between the lines.

Why am I so certain we’ll win?  Because we’ve been winning for at least 2000 years, and that won’t stop now.  I do believe in Truth.  And I know others to, too.

That’s all it takes to win.