Sophistry's delight

I'm not sure if I am capable of a relationship. It is something that I am loathe to actually think about. I've certainly had ample opportunity. And life is what you make of your circumstances. I am significantly disadvantaged compared to people I have known. I am also significantly advantaged compared to people I have known. I have had ample opportunity. I could have. And yet I never did. God provides the opportunity, but it is up to you to take it, to accept it. I'm not sure why I never accepted it. I'm not a homosexual. I could see myself in certain circumstances becoming one. It would be too easy, scarily easy. But I simply do not intellectually accept it for myself. I don't even really think that it is a legitimate aspect of people, ie people are not really born this way. People are born as they are, but it is up to them to make of it what they will. It is a choice, either way. And you can respect other's choices or your own choices. The shame an...

Today is December 24th. I went to church today at the Unitarian Universalists. I have not thought about religion for a long while. My current position on religion is basically the same as the Alt-Right. It is something that I had been developing for far longer than the alt-right has been active. That is: Christianity is a cultural vessel of European culture. Religion is a language in which people pour their spirit and desire. Religion takes this impulse and it shapes it in certain directions. Likewise, Islam is a cultural vessel of Middle Eastern culture. And there is such a thing as Islamic nationalism going on, and it is a negative force in the world inspiring scores of terrorist attacks. It was this issue which made me decisively break with the Left, as they were taking Islam at face value and accepting their claims as absolute truth without any skepticism. Skepticism which they did apply to Christianity. What I really think is going on is a deranged elite centered in Wash...

It appears that Ta-Nehasi Coates ragequit Twitter after being burned some by Cornell West . I am aware of Coates' writing. It has genuinely disturbed me. I view his elevation by The Atlantic Monthly to be a profoundly irresponsible choice which has harmed the social fabric of America. The Atlantic Monthly is edited by Jeff Goldberg, who is a Jew. Goldberg has said in interviews that he was picked on by white Italians and it was blacks who saved him. I doubt it. In my experiences with blacks, they are not noble savages in the least. They pick on the weak and they respect the strong. They are just like everyone else. I myself have interacted with Coates. I found him to be short-tempered. Worse were his fanbase, who were cult-like. They called themselves "The Horde." That alone is a sign of their moral debasement. The Horde might be an aesthetic choice that is appealing to some in a fantasy universe, but when it comes down to it, the Horde is a destructive force tha...

I really don't mean to give them attention, as that is what they want. I don't particularly have any animus towards people who think that they are the wrong gender. This isn't something that I'm eager to really engage in. You are defined by your friends and your enemies. Having trans people as enemies is like being an enemy with a homeless person. They're so far beneath that it is punching down. That is the truth. No one really believes in their crap. But no one really wants to engage in it. So they just play along. What irritates me is when the activism starts to enter the political and cultural realm which affects everyone. So no, I don't want it in the schools. I don't want it in the culture at all because glorifying it and portraying it in a positive light will encourage vulnerable and impressionable young people to pursue it. I also get the feeling that I'm being gas-lit whenever trans activism comes up. I feel like a fast one is being pulled ov...

The Last Jedi is coming out this weekend and so I tried to rewatch the Force Awakens. I saw the Force Awakens in the theater and it was okay I thought, kind of by the numbers. It made me miss George Lucas's whimsical side. I'm a little weird in that I think that the Phantom Menace was the best of the prequel films. I thought that the last two were some of the worst films ever made. The reason is that the Phantom Menace has soul that the last two do not. The last two get serious. But George really is a softie at heart. He's not so good at messed up stuff. Yes, people hated Jar Jar. Jar Jar is not my favorite character, but he doesn't particularly bother me either. He is a non-entity to me in the films. Just an odd creature in the universe. Finn, oddly enough, is far more jarring to me because his character is so badly acted. He goes from being traumatized by a fellow soldier's death to wholescale killing his own in the tie fighter. Something isn't quite...

Last year, on Election Day, I remember it quite vividly. I was doing ride sharing that evening. One passenger I picked up talked about the election. I may be amalgamating them, but bear with me. He said that if you're starving, you pick whoever may help you, even if it may lead to war. Anything to prevent starvation. Then he said, "I'm going to watch Hilary win," as I dropped him off. I took the night off as well. I opened up my laptop and turned on the New York Times. And I watched in horror as the needle moved steadily left. Or was it right? I voted for Hillary. Well, in actuality, I voted for Jill Stein on my ballot, but that was because I traded my vote for Stein in West Virginia for a vote for Hillary in Colorado. Clever. She won Colorado too, if I recall, so my part of the gambit worked. You could even argue it was the move of a super-Hillary supporter who very much did not want Trump to win. I did not want Trump to win. My dislike of Trump is very v...

Last night was a bit of a downer for me. Frustrating, when a truth dawns on me and a self-created bubble pops. I often refuse to accept the truth because of the will to power, as in my consciousness is what is most important to me, my perceptions and ideas. My race and ethnicity are a part of me but not one that I particularly like to think define me, even though it does. One thing that I end up doing is meandering through electronics. It is a fun game, finding little gems, highly depreciated and good value ones. It is a game, and no different than a woman going shopping for fashion. So here's one. Behold, the HTC A9. And you can buy it for $99 . (Full disclosure, that is an ebay affiliate link which I just created an account for). I want to buy it. I shouldn't because I already have a better product: the iPhone 6s. But I want to because this is such a good deal. It also appears that it has comparable audio quality to the HTC 10, which is $300 new. I was looking...

Black Pigeon Speaks makes the case for Japan becoming the hegemon of Asia in the coming decades . I've followed BPS for several years now. 2014 was an important year. It was the year of ISIL rampaging across the Middle East, which is proof that the end is no end. It was the year that I joined the military. The previous few years I had started reading up on geopolitics, because I felt that it held an explanation for my predicament in life. I did find an answer, in fact, which I will elaborate in later posts. This argument is one that I have heard before. George Friedman said it many years ago and I think BPS ripped it off from him. I came to Friedman by way of Robert Kaplan who used to post these epic great articles in The Atlantic Monthly which were grim, realistic, and epic. I need to put more photos on this blog to improve readability.

I feel like I've had a bubble pierced. But I knew it was a bubble all along. That is why I played along with it. It was a fantasy. A silly one. An unusual one. One so unusual that I found it stimulating and interesting. Interesting, but not especially healthy or realistic. Ultimately, it was a fantasy. Life was not supposed to go like this. I was thinking about it today. I am like an orphan dropped off here in this country, the United States. The language barrier makes it so that I am cut off from my extended family. My thoughts, my dreams, my emotions, my frames of reference are all in English. I feel kinship to England in a very intellectual way that I do not feel kinship to Taiwan, where my family is from. Part of it is the contempt of familiarity. Within the people of Taiwan I see my own flaws. My own flaws are magnified by mere fact of being a minority here. I was thinking tonight that I was acting like a cuck, in the alt-right terminology. My relationship with the alt...

I was not totally outraged at her death. It was indeed an accidental shooting from the looks of it. You could also argue that the prosecution overreached by charging him with intentionality. It honestly appears to be an accident. And the people who are harping about the case are really acting on the fact that the shooter is an illegal Mexican immigrant. It could easily have been a teenager who accidentally discharged the weapon.  But acquitting him of involuntary manslaughter is insane. From the NRO , this appears to be a textbook case of involuntary man slaughter.  b) Involuntary—in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony; or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, or without due caution and circumspection. Wouldn’t firing a gun in a crowded public place amount to an act that might produce death in an unlawful manner, without due caution and circumspection? Doesn’t Zarate’s account amount to a conf...

I was a teenager in the 1990's. An unhappy one at that. It is odd looking back now, in my 30's. Those are the years you are strongest. I can now trace back how the cultural narratives and the conceptual frameworks of that time set me up for disappointment. I hope that if I ever have children, I can do them better on this front. But of course, a moment in time is always something that is fragile and momentary. Times do change. With my luck, my kid will be a rap music listening transsexual opioid addict, as these pitfalls have emerged prominently in recent years. When my father was my age, I was six years old. Gadget lust occurs often with me. It is worse with other people I know. Other people I know who are average people earning very average livings will talk about how they want to buy the $1000 iPhone X, which objectively is a complete waste of money. But why does it occur? There is this feeling of progress that you get with these things. Every next gadget is a st...

I am writing on my little blog here because I have wasted so much time and energy on message boards. And why did I do so? Typically, it works like this: I have an idea. I want to talk about it with someone. None of my real life friends want to talk about it. I actually have few friends, and precious few who want to talk about weird stuff that I am interested in. They have lives. Things to take care of. And so on. So I go to an anonymous message board. I put out my thought. Someone, equally discombobulated, equally detached, responds. Then we hash out the idea. But this other anonymous person is an unknown. Often, they are freaks of some sort that if met in real life would be avoided. But no one knows you are a dog on the internet. It goes round and round. People with emotional issues will post it, bringing up their preoccupations with oppression. The worst is race, and it will often be brought up in say, fuel efficiency debates. So, in a moment of clarity, which are rare,...

The issue of transsexual pronouns is ludicrous. It is ludicrous because of its sheer absurdity and cumbersomeness. But beyond all of that, it is a form of thought control. Simply put, the pronoun issue is about controlling your thought even when the transsexual is not in the room. If you think about it, pronouns are not  used when someone is in the room. Using the pronoun when the person is in the room is in a way, disrespectful. When someone is in the room, you say, "Jenny's book," not "her book." So why are transsexuals so adamant about the pronoun issue? Because they don't just want tolerance and respect. They want you  deep down to accept them as they see themselves. They want to define reality. They want to win any debate over the issue. This is about kow-towing. This is about kissing the ring.

I'm a little behind the times. It is odd to say. It is inevitable, as time passes. A big part of me still thinks that it is the Bush administration, because that was when I was in my early 20's. Life has happened. The best part of my life is over. I am in my mid-30's. I have been reflecting on my 20's lately, well, before that. I see where people wind up in life. Much is typical and normal. Much is tragic and sad. As children we are set on a course like wind-up toys, as it is presented to us by the elders above us. Then we go and seek them out to the logical conclusion. And I haven't written in a very long time. I am rusty, and my structures are misshaped. My thoughts are distracted and discombobulated. But my impulses are still solid, my tendencies and so forth. I have much to say about life. I hope that you join me. Wonder Woman. I watched it last night. It was highly flawed. I found it quite boring in parts. It was interesting in other aspects. The setting ...