Bad Books: PLEZ Section 4

The Protocols is not an organized book.  It is rambling, repetitive and sometimes imbecile.  But these qualities contribute to its literary effect as an exposé because they set the book’s clear declarations in a world of shadows and strange sounds.  The Protocols remind me of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, or of a monologue by a man who has something important to say but who frequently mumbles and is not entirely sober.  The tone shifts from sly to bombastic to muttering.  Sudden segues enhance the cloak-and-dagger mood.

Bad Books: PLEZ Section 3

The Protocols purports to describe a plot to install “the King-Despot of the blood of Zion” as ruler of the world.  The qualifier despot means a bad king who rules for his own benefit and this King-Despot of the blood of Zion is thus the antitype of what St. Paul called “the blessed and only Potentiate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15).  Where Christ is the good shepherd who “giveth his life for the sheep,” this King-Despot is an antichrist, a bad shepherd who is worse than a wolf.

Where Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, the Protocols say

“There remains only a short distance and the cycle of the Symbolic Serpent—that badge of our people—will be complete.”

Bad Books: PLEZ Section 2

The second section of the Protocols begins by stating that it is “indispensable” for the purpose of the Learned Elders “ that wars should not produce any territorial alterations.”  The Elders plot require that the political map of the world be static, just as it has, in fact, been static (with minor exceptions) since 1945.  This doctrine of sacred and inviolate boundaries will put war on “an economical footing,” and by so doing will transfer power from the military men of the old aristocracy to the money men of the new plutocracy.  When nations fight for territory, the indispensable man sits on the field marshal’s horse.  When nations fight for market share, the indispensable man sits in the big office at the bank.

I Read the Bad Books for You: Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Section 1

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is one of those many books that are more often mentioned than read.  Most literate people know from hearsay that the Protocols is a libelous forgery of the Czarist secret police and that the Protocols says Bolshevism was actually a stalking horse of supremacist Jews.  That, at least, is what I knew from hearsay (although my claim to literacy is in some quarters disputed).  In any case, I have at last decided to actually read the infamous tract, and propose to tell all who care to listen exactly what I find.

Recruits for the Misfit Army: Wise Words from Gustave Le Bon

“Among the most important characteristics of our age we must mention the presence, in the midst of society, of a number of individuals who, for one reason or another, have been unable to adapt themselves to the necessities of modern civilization, and are unable to find a place therein.  They form a superfluity which cannot be utilized. They are the unadapted.”

Gustave Le Bon, The Psychology of Socialism (1899)*

I am myself a superfluous man who is only barely adapted to modern civilization.  I am not unemployed, incarcerated, or a fugitive from justice, but I am conscious, sometimes acutely, of  my alienation, irritation and disgust.  I am, therefore, to some considerable degree a misfit.  It is only with effort, and then imperfectly, that I adapt myself to my environment.

Creation Reflects the Creation

Last weekend I walked with my daughter by the Brazos River and took some photographs that reflect events in the first three days of the Creation.

“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.”

Some Warm Theological Debates

“Every man knows that he understands religion and politics, though he never learned them; but many people are conscious they do not understand many other sciences, from having never learned them.” 

Jonathan Swift, paraphrased in the Letter of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son (March 25, 1751)

“Carefully avoid an argumentative and disputative turn, which too many people have, and some even value themselves upon . . . and when you find  your antagonist beginning to grow warm, put an end to the dispute by some genteel badinage.” 

Letter of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son (Nov. 5, 1765)

Theological and political debates at the Orthosphere are only sometimes argumentative, disputative and warm.  The prevailing tranquility in these parts is partly owing to our civility, partly owing to our personal modesty, and partly owing to our prudent use of cooling doses of “genteel badinage.”   This tranquility is creditable because, as Swift somewhere said, every man is jealous of his own religious and political opinions.  A man who is grateful to be corrected on a practical point in natural science will, as it were, fight like a tiger to defend his religious and political cubs.

Here are a couple of instructive examples from my neighborhood in Texas, a century and more ago.  The first appeared in the Navasota Examiner, April 18, 1895, and relates a theological debate that grew overly warm at a church in Iola, twenty miles east of here.  The incendiary question was whether grace must be evidenced by works or may be fully present in an unreformed sinner.

Discourse Control and a Disenchanted Conservative

I recently linked to Glen Beck’s interview with Darren Beattie, editor of Revolver News, and will again say it is not a waste of time.  It is posted on Youtube and therefore “contextualized” with an “Information Panel” that professes to correct disinformation.  As Youtube puts it:

In a Shoddy Land

“There is considerably too much guessing about this large nation.

Rudyard Kipling, From Sea to Sea: Letters of Travel (1899)*

“One report says that six cars were derailed and fell off the bridge into the big lake of water below.”

Brenham Daily Banner (Sep. 1, 1889)

Kipling had this thought while passing over “a groaning, shivering trestle” on a train from California to Oregon in 1887.  His train did not suffer the misfortune of of the train that jumped the tracks near here two years later, but that it didn’t was due to nothing but providence or dumb luck.

On “False Flags” and Agents Provocateurs

“There have already been many astonishing and horrible provocations against the FN by the Sorathic powers; but these have so far failed to evoke any escalation from that side.  Therefore, I think that the 2023 provocations will be directed against the West.”

Bruce Charlton, “What Will Be the 2023 Early Year Offensive Against Western Civilization . . .” Bruce Charlton’s Notions (Jan. 7, 2023)

Bruce is here predicting a dramatic escalation of the Ukrainian War by means of a staged atrocity or “false flag” operation.  Russia,  which he calls FN or the Fire Nation, has so far declined to lose its temper, overreact, and therefore furnish the pretext for its own destruction.  So Charlton expects the “Globalist Establishment” will dress up as a Russian and commit the atrocity for them.  Covertly “poking the bear” is Provocation Level 1, the purpose being to make the bear bellicose, thus providing a pretext to destroy the bear. Provocation Level 2 is dressing in a bearskin and conspicuously eating some widows and orphans.