Category: Culture

Who would you fight for?

Farewell of Hector and Andromache, Sergey Postnikov, 1863

Recently I had a casual exchange with contributor Bruce of Newcastle on the OT. 

The guts of our remarks was the number of wars fought by Russia and how this had shaped their national psyche.  Further, that Western attitudes and policy towards Russia will continue to be largely ineffective, if not counterproductive, until the West at least accepts that Russians don’t think like us.  Their beliefs have been baked-in over hundreds of years and formed their protective stance towards Mother Russia.

This led me off on the tangent of wondering about loyalty.  The Russian populace in Australia is relatively small and certainly by comparison to the Chinese, Indian and Jewish communities and of course, those from the assorted Middle Eastern and Asian nations.

Therefore, I wondered, if push really came to shove, who would leave the relative safety of Australia to fight for their birthplace?  The question is predicated on the person being born overseas and armed conflict between their birthplace and another nation was either commencing, or imminent.   Moreover, any reasonable assessment concludes that the military forces of your birthplace are very likely to be overwhelmed.

Imagine it is all but certain that your birthplace will cease to exist as the nation you were born to.

And if you were to leave to fight, would you do so only as a member of the regular military forces or, would you engage as a guerrilla?  Or, if incapable of bearing arms, would you instead act in a direct support role?

Those thoughts naturally lead to a question about an Australian born person living overseas.  There are several Cats living overseas or who travel overseas extensively for their work.  Would you return to Australia to defend her if necessary, or remain in the relative safety of the country you were in at the time?

Rightly or wrongly, I don’t have any China born friends of whom I could ask the question.  Overwhelmingly my friends are Russian born and for several, I could reasonably guess their  response without even asking.   But, I do have a couple of Indian born friends and rang them to test my question. 

Both said they thought it was extremely unlikely (impossible) that India would be militarily overwhelmed and thus their services would not be required.  Fair enough and almost certainly true.  But when pressed, one of the two said that yes, despite being an Australian citizen of some 26 years (slightly more than half his life), he would take whatever steps he could to protect his birthplace even if that meant leaving his wife and children in Australia.   He did, after all, still have some extended family in that country but if nothing else, would be ashamed of himself if his birth country was effectively destroyed and he had done nothing.

So, what say you Cats?   If your birth nation was facing almost certain annihilation from an aggressor, would you depart (or return to) these shores to defend your birthright? 

Some thoughts on mothers, drag queens, trans, groomers & grooming

Why are parents, and in particular mothers, taking their children to drag queen shows and drag queen story hours in public libraries? This phenomenon of provocative drag queens performing in front of children was unheard of as little as five years ago yet now, probably because we are living in the middle of a woke revolution, every day hear of more stories and we see more footage of mothers with children, even infants, attending highly sexualised shows and “cabaret” acts, where scantily clad males parody women by putting on “women face”, and where these same males in “women face” lewdly gyrate and thrust themselves sexually in front of young children. Why do parents willingly take their children to view such lewd acts? This question was asked by Rita Panahi on Outsiders this week. As an aside, methinks Rita is having some regrets voting yes to the SSM debate. I have no such regrets because I did not vote yes back in 2017, I voted no and the reasons why I voted no are on display every single day.

But back to the question, why do parents, particularly mothers, actively participate in this?  Until now, drag queens have only ever been considered adult entertainment so, I am curious as to why we are suddenly seeing this phenomenon emerge where a society permits and even encourages drag queens to dress up and perform before children in highly sexualised and provocative ways. Whilst not all drag queens are paedophiles, I find it odd that any self-respecting drag queen would want to perform such acts in front of children, and such a willingness to do so reeks, to me at least, of something far more sinister. It isn’t rocket science to see that exposing children to drag queen shows and having drag queens read stories to children is a manifestation of the whole transgender cult but there is also something more dangerous and insidious at play, it is a manifestation of queer ideology’s open intent to sexualise young children, to make children sexually accessible, and to legitimise minor attraction, aka paedophilia. I believe that the push for SSM was the Trojan Horse to mainstream queer deviancy and degeneracy. And it has worked a treat, because silly and naïve parents, mainly mothers, are so drenched in woke progressive ideology that they fail to see the obvious dangers, dangers that aren’t just lurking beneath the surface, they’re bubbling away for all to see.

Look closely at the video clips from the US that show the degenerate drag queen shows.  Note that when you do you will see that, apart from the homosexual men and the degenerate drag queens, you will usually only see children with their mothers at the shows. I don’t see many straight males. Where are the fathers? Well, I know where they are, they’re missing, gone, absent, AWOL. And it seems to me that the mothers who are taking children to such shows are doing so because they are so desperate to prove their loyalty to woke ideology, and to accumulate woke brownie points that they willingly expose their children, not just to questionable content but more disturbingly, to questionable people.  We know paedophiles groom children, but they are also adept at grooming parents, particularly mothers.

I wrote the following a few days ago on C.L.’s blog and I apologise to those who’ve read it already but I’m going to repeat what I wrote. I know some might find what I wrote contentious, but it is something I have thought a lot about lately and I have discussed this with female friends and family.

It is an indisputable fact that it is some parents, and particularly mothers, who place their children at physical, emotional and psychological risk. Sometimes this is accidental, sometimes deliberate. Some mothers do so because they are naive, some because of rank stupidity, and some are happy to endanger their children in order to adopt a particular lifestyle or be accepted into a particular cult or group. They fail or refuse to understand how certain people, certain lifestyles and certain practices are dangerous and will harm children emotionally, psychologically, and physically. We hear examples of this weekly, where a child has died or been murdered by a mother’s de facto or boyfriend, where a child has been sexually abused by a mother’s de facto or boyfriend or someone she has invited or allowed into the home. Years ago, I remember reading a story about a young child who went missing decades ago. Whilst it took many years for the truth to unravel, the child’s paedophile abductor was known to the mother. The mother had associated with some unsavoury people. Whilst she didn’t set out to deliberately endanger her child, there are tragic consequences when you associate with dubious and dangerous people, and you leave your child in the care of people who should not be near children. 

The sudden emergence of children attending drag queen shows and drag queen book readings in public libraries is a phenomenon that would vanish today if mothers stopped taking their children to such events. But too many mothers are now so indoctrinated into a progressive woke world view that they refuse to acknowledge the obvious dangers posed by some individuals, beliefs, and practices. In other words, they refuse to acknowledge the reality of deviancy. The mothers who are taking their children to these drag queen shows are wilfully ignoring these dangers to satisfy woke ideology, with the result that they are jeopardising the future psychological, emotional, and physical wellbeing of their children. No good mother takes a child to watch drag queens perform. But what is more worrying is how our society, if it is not at the stage where it actively celebrates and applauds such deviancy, is just happy to shrug its shoulders and says, “what harm can drag queens do”.  It is this rank stupidity and apathy in the face of such obvious deviancy and degeneracy that proves that it is no longer only children and parents who are being groomed, our whole culture is being groomed, and we are willing participants in modern day child sacrifice. If this doesn’t ring alarm bells, we are doomed.

Nietzsche’s foreboding insight

From the outset, it must be said that German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a troubled individual who suffered a wide range of afflictions during his relatively short life.   Having said that, in the preface to his work ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, Nietzsche wrote:

What if a regressive trait lurked in “the good man,” likewise a danger, an enticement, a poison, a narcotic, so that the present lived at the expense of the future? Perhaps in more comfort and less danger, but also in a smaller-minded, meaner manner?

Considering Nietzsche wrote that in 1887, it was a foreboding insight into our modern world and the decline of the West’s morality.   Nietzsche considered it “the danger of dangers” – namely, that all individuals, even those with the potential to rise above the mediocre mass, are pressured into becoming a ‘herd animal’ whose only apparent goal was to please or acquiesce to the rest of the herd.    

This is most evident in today’s social media platforms, often with enthusiastic reinforcement by the MSM, where critical thinkers are hounded when their conclusions don’t match the groupthink.  Globally, Governments have harnessed this phenomenon to keep those individuals in check who dare to question the approved narrative.   Within our small community at the Cat for example, there are numerous individuals who have been subjected to a variety of punitive responses on social media or by government for daring to question the official orthodoxy during Covid. 

Where an individual is independent and questioning the orthodoxy, that person is deemed by the herd to be ‘bad’ and must be hounded into silence.  Alternatively, those who belong to the herd and conform, are deemed to be ‘good’.   Social media, government and the MSM can combine to judge the outspoken individual and on many occasions, the pile-on can be vicious.  At a minimum, the person’s social standing is damaged and for some, their professional standing is destroyed.  Yet this herd behaviour can overturn society’s growth and evolution.  

So, is this a new phenomenon? 

For millennia, humans have gathered together to form societies (whether tribes, clans, villages and so on) and those societies must have rules for peaceful and productive cohabitation.  As many humans were naturally inquisitive and, necessity being the mother of invention, humankind flourished.  

Of course, assorted rumours, speculation and vendettas arose every now and then with terrible consequences for those deemed outside the accepted orthodoxy.   There are near endless examples in our human history of the persecution of minorities for some alleged or even actual ‘slight’ against the established status quo.  But there is also a veritable conga line of independent thinkers from before Aristotle to after Isacc Newton that made vital contributions to society’s evolution, yet many were initially ridiculed or persecuted.    

Whilst we consider ourselves far more civilised today, is the persecution of the outspoken independent thinker via social media really much different to the baying mob armed with pitchforks advancing on the hapless individual?   Those events usually happened with the consent of the local Chief (who may even lead the attack) – why is this different to our government inciting, and in some cases orchestrating, a vengeful mob? 

Social media has a lot to answer for in our modern society with its insidious and destructive impact on our society being fanned and encouraged by every Western government on the planet.  Government recognised the opportunity to frame the narrative in a social media context and apply (un)official enforcement via the mob.   The rate of transformation, and ferociousness of self-imposed enforcement, must exceed their wildest dreams.   

The MSM, for their part, have long recognised their dependence on government largesse via advertising (or ownership) and that their very existence is governed by legislation.  Every one of us can point to numerous examples where journalists have utterly failed to challenge the government’s statements or actions.   The hand inside the media glove unquestionably belongs to the government.    

Will things change?  The malevolence of the vested interests, and sometimes outright contempt for the people they are supposed to govern, would suggest that the voice of those who question the official pathway will continue to be threatened.  Only sites such as the Cat offer refuge.

Although Nietzsche couldn’t have imagined our society, the principle of silencing questioning thinkers remains – in our time it is a cohort of anonymous social media assailants, MSM and government who persecute those who would rise above the dim-witted and complaint masses; how often have we seen a call to correct some perceived inequality coupled with implied allegations of an anti-social phobia for the non-compliant?

Of course, the desire for control extends far deeper and includes the covering up of government excess (even criminality) or collective censorship of legitimate news or opinion.   If it challenges, embarrasses or confronts the official narrative, the attack dogs of social media and the MSM will do their master’s bidding.  

Finally, Nietzsche’s pertinent warning:

Our highest insights must – and should – sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission.  Why has an anti-natural morality – a poison which has spread through the entire body of mankind – gained dominion over Western civilization?

I doubt that Nietzsche could have imagined, even in his wildest dreams, the extent to which our social structure has deviated nor the depths to which our morality has descended.  Indeed, many of those who contributed greatly to our developing society over the millennia would struggle to be heard in our enlightened ‘modern age’.     

Battle on Cats, battle on.   

Perversity under liberalism

This is a rather good thread on the pseudo-medicalization of psychological conditions that are often, in other instances, nothing more than perverse sexual fetishes and I recommend it to you. One of the interesting aspects here is the status of perversion under liberalism. To put it bluntly, liberalism not only lacks the philosophical and moral framework and vocabulary to distinguish and elaborate the perverse from the good/ natural, it is actually and increasingly hostile to any such architecture and vocabulary.

The framework and vocabulary that distinguishes and elaborates the perverse from the good/natural is one that is able to identify what certain things are as well as what they are for. The problem for liberalism is that it abandoned this framework from its inception and overtime the remnant vocabulary was purged as it ceased to make any sense within the framework of liberalism. Now, whenever we are confronted with what was formerly understood as perverse conduct, within the framework of liberalism, only the ideas of consent and harm are our guides. While these ideas are serviceable within their limited range, as guides they in no way exhaust the legal or the moral, and they certainly provide no assistance in identifying or dealing with perversity.

And it’s precisely because of this absence and hostility that our understanding of perversity follows a pattern of first being psychologized, medicalized, and finally normalized via a program of de-stigmatization. We now see the reverse occurring; that is, people that maintain an understanding of this or that conduct as perverse are, firstly, stigmatized as extremists, bigots, and the like, and, finally, psychologized as suffering from irrational fear (homo/ trans/ –phobia). Many such cases, indeed.

Prideland

I have often wondered what it must have been like for ordinary people in Russia, China, Germany, Cambodia, Korea, Iran, and other countries, to wake up and realise they were living in a country that had been overtaken by a sinister, fringe, and radical political ideology. Did they think the political madness would pass and everyone would finally come to their senses? Perhaps some people were bewildered, bamboozled, puzzled, confused and overwhelmed by the radical change. I am sure some understood what was happening, but no doubt most people thought they could wait it out. As a student of history I understand how radical ideologies, once they obtain power, be it through elections, revolutions, or coups, never waste any time consolidating power and never waste any time implementing radical social, political, economic, sexual and racial agendas. The left are masters of this. It happened very quickly after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, and it was replicated fifteen years later in Germany when Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933. And once in power they never voluntarily relinquish power. They use state apparatuses to propagandise, to indoctrinate and to groom. Communism, Nazism and Fascism enforce their agendas by grooming.  All totalitarian ideologies groom, they are experts at it.

In democracies like Australia we do not have the excuse of sudden radical ideological change (although the jury is out with this current Albanese government). No, instead we have allowed radical and fringe ideologies to gain influence and power slowly, by infiltrating and corrupting our mainstream political parties, government departments, media, academia, education, entertainment, charities, even religious groups. This process of infiltration and corruption has been slow, but it has been highly successful, and it is now entrenched. And nowhere has this process been more successful than with the whole LGBTQI+ ideology. What began as a genuine and sincere campaign for equal rights for gay men and gay women has now morphed into a sinister campaign for the compulsory acceptance of radical queer theory, and as part of this compulsory acceptance, the push is to normalise sexual perversion and to breakdown societal and sexual taboos. Queer theory is unapologetically revolutionary in its desire and intent to destroy heterosexuality (or as they prefer to call it, “heteronormativity”), to destroy the family, to destroy biological reality, to destroy male and female, to destroy our Judeo-Christian heritage, to destroy religion and to destroy consent laws. In queer theory, all children, even infants, are regarded as sexual beings who can consent to sexual activity. LGB has now evolved into LGBTQI+ and it’s the last three letters and the plus symbol that now runs amok through western societies. I call it LGBTQI+ fascism and this fascism is now entrenched across western societies.

I live in inner-city Sydney and the city is currently hosting “WorldPride,” a festival promoting global LGBTQIA+ pride. Sydney is currently drenched in LGBTQIA+ pride propaganda, there are banners, flags and murals everywhere, almost every shopfront displays the LGBTQIA+ pride logo and flags, walking through David Jones today I noticed how even the ground floor of the store has been painted with LGBTQIA+ pride colours. It is everywhere, you cannot escape the propaganda. Building facades are painted and daubed with pride colours, one hotel near Hyde Park has LGBTQIA+ pride ribbons hanging for metres down the front of the building. Footpaths, steps and roads have been painted with the LGBTQIA+ pride colours. As I walked through all of this today, I became increasingly bewildered, puzzled, disturbed and irate, and then I realised something, it was akin to walking through Berlin in 1938, where the swastika and other Nazi imagery were omnipresent, in 2023 I walk through Sydney’s streets and stores and the LGBTQIA+ pride colours are omnipresent.  Just like the Nazis used the swastika as a symbol of its sinister ideology, just like the Soviets used and the Chinese and North Koreans still use murals and military parades to symbolise and promote totalitarian ideology, the LGBTQIA+ pride colours are also designed to intimidate, to indoctrinate and to promote, and all of this is a message to ordinary Australians that they no longer have the reins of power in this country, that power now belongs to fringe, radical ideologues.

I felt sickened by the display today, it is everywhere. I now live in LGBTQIA+ land. This has nothing to do with equal rights for gay men and women. This is state sponsored grooming and indoctrination. I will have nothing to do with it. Yet if I dare protest, I am the reactionary, the bigot, the homophobe, the transphobe, the racist, and the Nazi. And all of this will only get worse, so I am prepared for the day when I hear a knock on the door and I will be confronted by police who will question why I refuse to celebrate LGBTQIA+ pride, why I think paedophiles are dangerous and should not be allowed near children, and why I believe in biological reality. The police will probably say that they want to check my thinking. I am ready for all of this. And do not laugh, such police visits are already happening in the UK.

Once upon a time East Germans lived in Stasiland, Australians now live in Prideland.

Parasite: Christianity with Korean characteristics

I was struck by a particular sequence in the movie the first time I saw it (on the TV, I’m have to confess) two or three years ago. WolfmanOz’s commentaries on movies brought that sequence to mind again. If you haven’t seen Parasite, it is probably best not to read this post, which is certainly a spoiler. I apologise for the quality of the video clips, which come from screen captures.

I know nothing of pre-Christian Korean religious practice or folk lore, but a cursory search yielded a whole Pantheon, represented, for example, like so.

It’s easy enough to see which ones are dangerous, and the convention that is used. It may be that all of the elements of Parasite can be accounted for in terms of Korean mythology. Nonetheless, major elements of the movie strike me as being specifically Christian.

The two main families of the story are the Kims – father Ki Taek, mother Chung Sook, daughter Ki Jung and son Ki Woo – and the Parks – father Dong Ik, mother Yeon Kyo, daughter Da Hye, and young son Da Song. The Kims are scroungers living in the lower reaches of the city in a sub-basement with windows at street level. The Parks are wealthy, living on the heights in a house designed by a famous architect. A successful contemporary of the Kim children is going overseas, and recommends the son to take over his tutoring of the Park’s daughter. This friend brings to Ki Woo from his grandfather a scholar’s stone, for no obvious reason. It’s a grace. Scholar’s stones, or landscape stones, are microcosms of mountainous landscapes; a kind of bonsai mountain.

Daughter Ki Jung’s talent for fraud begins to shine through as she expertly forges qualifications for Ki Woo, who, unlike his contemporary, is not attending university. Ki Jung is subsequently represented by Ki Woo as an art therapist for the Park’s son, Da Song. She immediately exerts iron control over both the son and the mother, showing an enviable ability to bend others to her will. This young woman is CEO, or at least, Vice-President (Human Resources), material. Mrs Park, obsessed with all things American, calls Ki Woo Kevin, and Ki Jung, Jessica.

By similarly polished deceit and manipulation, the Parks’ driver is replaced by Kim the Elder. The housekeeper, Moon Gwong, was inherited by the Parks from the original owner, the architect himself, so she is a tough proposition. In elaborate choreographed interactions, the Kims manoeuvre Mrs Park into dismissing her without notice. She is then replaced, of course, by Mrs Kim.

The whole family is now employed by the Parks, who then leave for a camping holiday to mark son Da Song’s birthday. The Kims are sprawled over the living room furniture enjoying the Park’s food and booze, as the rain begins to come down more and more heavily. Then Moon Gwong rings the doorbell and begs to be let in for something she has forgotten. Beneath the basement, hidden behind shelves and a blast door, is a deeper basement bomb shelter, and living down there is Moon Gwong’s husband, Geun Se, who has been emerging at night to get food ever since the Parks moved in.

The couple discover the family relationship of the Kims, and after some slapstick, they are restrained by the Kims in the shelter, when Mrs Park calls to announce they will be home in a few minutes. Only Chung Sook is supposed to be in the house. More slapstick. At this point, as father, son and daughter scatter into hiding, Mrs Kim serves dinner to Mrs Park, and Bong Joon Ho begins to reveal his purpose.

Da Song sees a demon

The three are trapped until the Park parents fall asleep on the sofa, when they escape from the house and into this startling sequence.

Flood and fire

The colour keys in this are critical. As the descent begins, the dominant colour is green, most noticeable in the place where it changes – the road tunnel. As the Kims descend we see the green stripes on the walls and green characters on the footpath lights. The first bright burst of red is from the taillights of a car turning at the end of the tunnel as they shuffle towards it. From that point, the colour key is red. It seemed to me on first viewing, and does still, that this sequence is a descent into the Inferno; paradoxically, in the context of a flood, yet nonetheless obviously. Notice the son’s momentary reluctance to be swept down by the flood.

All of the reviews and commentaries that I have seen insist that the movie is built around class divisions and tensions. The division is deeper than that. It is the division between the earth-dwellers – the Parks – and the denizens of the underworld. The flawed earth-dwellers, snobbish, supercilious, gullible, live in the green world of the Parks’ garden, whose lawn and trees are the background to most of what happens in the Park home.

In Bong Joon Ho’s universe, it seems, the underworld is populated with demons, ghosts, the restless dead and lost souls, all of whom interact with the overworld and its people. When the Kims arrive at their flooded sub-basement, the correspondence of the underworlds is reinforced by intercutting the scenes as they recover what they can, with scenes from the underworld of the Park home, where Moon and her husband are bound, and the wife is dying from injuries sustained when she was kicked down the stairs by Mrs Kim.

Through this appalling chaos run themes of conscience and repentance, focussed on the mysterious scholar’s stone, which is what Ki Woo rushes into the sub-basement to rescue, and which rises through the floodwater to meet him.

The stone rises

Up to this point, the Kim family has expressed its optimism through its “plans,” as seen during the descent, and where the “plan” is often a plot or scheme. The refugees from the flood sleep in a gymnasium, and the son asks the father what the plan is. Ki Taek’s answer reveals a resignation of despair; Ki Woo’s reveals a resignation of optimism and the significance of the stone.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:4

The Rock clings, follows, nags the conscience and, when necessary, leads, even into the valley of the shadow of death.

A halo for Ki Woo

Despite two attempts, Ki Woo cannot be killed, or even permanently injured, with the stone. Note the spreading pools of blood and what looks for all the world like water on the floor from which Geun Se picks up the stone the second time.

Mio caro bene!
Non ho più affanni e pene
no ho più pene al cor.
Vedendoti contento,
nel seno mio già sento,
che sol vi alberga amor.

My beloved!
I no longer know suffering and pain,
I no longer have grief in my heart,
Seeing you happy,
I feel that in my heart
Now only love abides.

Handel Rodelinda Mio Caro Bene
The flies, and the remorse

The flies settle on Geun Se’s body as soon as he stops moving. The final trigger for Ki Taek’s rage is Mr Park’s disgust at Geun Se’s smell. This theme runs through the movie. The Kims’ scheme is almost brought undone when the son, Da Song, announces that all four smell the same. Back in the sub-basement, Ki Jung points out that their common scent comes not from common soaps or deodorants, but from where they live. As the Kim family waits under the table to escape the Park home, Mr Park muses on Ki Taek’s smell. It’s a bit like boiling a rag, and is sometimes smelled on the subway. The flies know, though, the smell of the dead.

Bong Joon Ho’s underworld is an eclectic Purgatory; one in which destinations are yet to be decided; to which redemption may come; from which resurrection is possible. It is the spiritual basement of the world. Looked at another way, this is the most sophisticated zombie movie ever made.

Ki Woo and Chung Sook survive the carnage, and return to their familiar underworld. Ki Taek retreats to that other underworld beneath the basement of what was the home of the Park family.

…a hope that enters into the inner place… Hebrews 6:19

This final scene is filled with the most extraordinary joy. I think everyone feels it, and the credits close on this sense of spiritual elevation, whatever unsolved puzzles Bong leaves them with. The Good News is like that.

It’s time to celebrate men and masculinity

There is a Yiddish word I am sure many here have heard of before. The word is “mensch”. Mensch, in its original meaning, is not a word to be used flippantly. Calling a man a mensch is a serious compliment, to be used sparingly, it’s a word of praise that extols the virtues of a man, a man who is good, who does good, who takes responsibility, who is physically, emotionally and mentally strong, who is loyal, who is kind, who uses his masculinity to love, protect, build, and nurture. As we know, not every male is a good man, just like not every female is a good woman. There is nothing worse than a weak man. If you want an example of a man who is the antithesis of a mensch, look no further than Harry Mountbatten-Windsor, who is revealing to the world just how weak, disloyal, treacherous, irresponsible, dissolute and narcissistic he is. For me personally, there is nothing more attractive in the world than a strong and masculine man comfortable in his own skin.

Sadly, in 2023, men of all ages are routinely demonised, disparaged, ridiculed, and smeared. Masculinity is denigrated. The appalling term “toxic masculinity” is used recklessly to the point now where it’s routine, nobody blinks an eyelid on hearing it, and it’s commonly used against white men of European background. Male masculinity is trivialised and mocked in advertisements, in media, in entertainment, in education, in academia, and in writing. Men are made fun of, and all men are presumed to be sexual predators. Men are now deemed guilty until proven innocent. This constant denigration and disparagement of masculinity starts early in life, so that we now live in a culture where boys are growing into adolescents and young men without purpose, they’re lost, bewildered, angry, sidelined, marginalised, and mocked. Too many boys are growing up without fathers and positive male role models. The consequences of this are catastrophic, we are witnessing teenage boys, and young and older men committing suicide in ever increasing numbers, we are seeing staggeringly high numbers of homeless men (young and old), boys’ educational outcomes are lagging significantly behind girls, and over the last decade we have seen the rise of the “incel”, young males who are socially awkward and are unable to communicate, preferring a relationship with a computer rather than a human being. What is an “incel”? The Oxford Dictionary describes “incels” as….

a member of an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually, typically associated with views that are hostile towards women and men who are sexually active.

I believe the online “incel” phenomenon is a version of an age-old male phenomenon, the gang. Marginalised, disaffected, socially alienated males have always been attracted to gangs, it is in those gangs that they find other males like themselves. The gang gives boys and young men purpose, direction, meaning, it provides them with a community of other males, and they depend on and feed off this community. It should surprise no one that in 2023 there are online gangs of young men who roam the internet, who play violent online games, and who watch pornography. These socially awkward and alienated males, many of whom have grown up without fathers and in highly feminised environments, have testosterone which has never been channelled into positive masculinity, and so an online community has mushroomed of males angry with the world and particularly with women. Many of these socially awkward and alienated males are highly susceptible to grifters such as Andrew Tate and Jack Murphy, to name just two. Tate, currently under arrest in Romania, has allegedly pimped young girls, US based Murphy pimped his wife. These grifters created businesses to extract money from lonely, impressionable and awkward young males, and once they received the money, they would provide pseudo masculinity recipes to young men which contained fraudulent elixirs to pursue their “positive masculinity”, except the recipes were made up of snake oil masculinity promoting misogyny, pornography and the emotional and sexual subjugation and abuse of women. That is not real masculinity, it is a perversion and debasement of masculinity. Snake oil masculinity is costly, fraudulent and misogynistic, real masculinity is free and character building.

If the West is to be saved, and I believe it can be, then the current demonisation of men and masculinity must stop NOW. And this initiative needs to come from women. Why? Because I believe that women have created this problem of disaffected, disillusioned and socially alienated males. I do not want to live in a culture dominated by females and where boys and men are smeared and ridiculed. I want a society where the masculine and feminine are complimentary to each other. I want men to be men, where the words “be a man” are mandatory and celebrated, where boys and men are provided with male role models who encourage them to be good, to do good, to take responsibility, to be physically, emotionally and mentally strong, to be loyal, to be kind, to use their masculinity, not to subjugate or manipulate women sexually, physically and emotionally, but to love, protect, build, and nurture.  In other words, we need to cultivate the mensch in men.

O Advent Tree!

The buds begin to appear towards the end of November, just before Advent. Thoughtfully, the trees vary in their timing, some retaining their vibrant heads of blossom well into January, but for the most part, their display is at its most spectacular in the third and fourth weeks of Advent with a show that always thrills me. And how did they know that red and green are the colours we would come to associate with Christmas? What reds, orange-reds and green they are. They fairly burst with joyful colour.

Greenslopes, 14th December 2022

It’s Brisbane, and the trees are, of course, Poincianas, named after Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, who was a governor of St Kitts. Officially, they are Delonix regia, and are also known as flame of the forest or even flame tree, but we have a better candidate for that. The name which probably suits them best is flamboyant. They go by many names across India and S.E. Asia.

Keep your pines and firs, with their un-snowed-upon branches gracelessly upright, desperately needing baubles and drapes of tinsel to convey festivity. I’ll walk outside and, where the passion for subdivision and six-packs has not destroyed them, look across the suburban hills to pick out the splashes of red, even yet, with contributions from the occasional flame tree still afire with the fading remnants of its peculiarly intense red.

Annerley, 25th November 2022

I know Advent is penitential, but, but… what a season it is. If we must forgo a springtime Easter, we have at least subtropical summer Christmas. Praise God!

O come, O come, Emmanuel!

You’re the farm

I was stooged again by the missus and ended up at Southland Shopping Centre on Sunday.
She’s got a way of making lunch not seem like shopping and I fell for it again like the pasty I am.

So there’s a new Japanese that seems nice and the missus told me about the robots that bring the food like its a good thing.
We went there.
Bad move.

This joint’s automated and the first thing that happens is we get instructions from one of the humanoid kiddies:

1: select from the touch-screen
2: add to the cart
3: send the order
4: your food will be delivered
5: and pay at the counter when yr done

Then she gestures with an open hand to the cash register where there’s another possible humanoid with a permanent grin.

No immediate threat, I thought to myself but that was when I noticed what was behind her on the shelf. One of those Asian gold cats with the kitten-eyes and an arm that’s waving waving … always waving.

So while waiting for food and with one eye on that freaky cat, I watched.

All the actual human kiddies stood around essentially doing nothing until a robot arrived and then they unpacked the food dispassionately. No visible emotion, it was almost like they were trying to out-robot the robots.

Cold like the pot-stickers ultimately were.

A returning robot smacked straight into the chair leg of the table beside us.
I’m sitting there smiling at the farce and saying “stupid bloody robots” … just a little bit too loud.

And the missus is cringing because she knows that I could equally be commenting about:
a: the wait staff
b: the machines
c: the customers
d: the sheer absurdity of it all

But this old Polish bloke beside me at the next table is chuckling because he can overhear me.

Looking at him and smiling, I peck peck pecked the touchscreen for more food. Raising my eye-brows I said, “I feel like a chicken”, and exaggerated the pecking motion with my hand.

The bloke’s wetting himself while his wife is pretending to search her hand-bag and mine is pretending that this isn’t really happening.

Maybe its my weird sense of humour but I think its hilarious that I was actually ordering more chicken at the time.

Guest Post: Gyro – Fisking An Ignorant Activist

Please note: this is in traditional fisking format. Stan Grant in normal font, Gyro’s responses in italics.

Grant: To understand China you need to understand whiteness, yet it’s missing from the conversation

In some ways, Xi’s China may represent the end of whiteness. Except that the Chinese Communist Party itself mirrors whiteness.

It is not possible to understand China without understanding race and racism. Specifically, without understanding whiteness.

Gyro: Grant does not define his racist term ‘whiteness’ here. He’s actually being racist from first principles of logic as he’s assigning some undefined adverse value to all people possessing an immutable characteristic they were born with. In this case, skin tone. Grants therefore fails the Martin Luther King Test in the first sentence. Hilarious, as Grant’s starting at rock bottom and immediately calls in the mining equipment.

Yet far too often the conversation around the rise of this new superpower is in predominantly geo-political terms, about authoritarianism versus democracy, about human rights — or whether we will go to war.

But race sits at the heart of it all.

Remarkable claim. Let’s see Grant’s remarkable proof of his definitionally racist thesis.

We were reminded this week when China described the AUKUS agreement — between Australia, the UK and the US – as a race-based military bloc of white countries.

So Grant’s saying that the entire multicultural push of the last 2 generations in Australia has utterly failed and that all multiracial Australians, Americans and Britons are actually … white? Where’s the proof?

China’s Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, says that’s how it appears to people in other countries. What he means are non-white countries.

But that’s not what he actually said.

A history of humiliation

The Chinese Communist Party has a deep racial consciousness.

Utterly wrong. The CCP is deeply racist, as China has been for millennia. Only been obvious for 3,000 years, and Stan….. totally missed it. Mainland Chinese culture is that of the Celestial Kingdom, half-way between Earth and Heaven. Within this perceptual milieu no-one but a Chinese is human at all. The CCP has co-opted this as all Chinese Imperial elites do, there is absolutely nothing new about Han ethnic racial supremacy. Grant is ignorant of this.

It is there in the reminder to its people never to forget the hundred years of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers — of white powers.

Qing China was ‘humiliated’ by:

  1. The Civil Wars of the first half of the 17th century.
  2. The White Lotus Society Revolt of 1796-1804.
  3. The muslim revolt of 1798
  4. The Miao rebellions of 1798 onwards.
  5. The immense and terrible civil war we call the Taiping Rebellion.

So just how did the the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace (Chinese Taipings), Japan (ethnically Japanese), Imperial Russia (multiethnic), British Empire (multiethnic), German Empire (German & Prussian), French Empire (multiethnic), Vietnamese Empire (Vietnamese). Grant’s statement is that everyone who is not European is actually European including the Chinese. This is laughable. Just how did the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) stabilising relations with Tsarist Russia humiliate the Qing?

Grant’s astounding ignorance might be improved if he’s capable of reading, which is doubtful as he a propagandist for the ABC. He might start with Spence’s 1996 ‘God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xuiquan’, and Wilson’s 1868 ‘The Ever Victorious Army: A history of the Chinese Campaign under Lt-COL Gordon and of the Suppression of the Tai-Ping Rebellion’.

Yes, that humiliation was at the hands of the Japanese, too, but the Japanese themselves cannot be separated from the project of whiteness.

Grant: It’s all whitey’s fault and if the Japanese did it then the Japanese are white. No, no they are not, unless ‘white’ means ‘human’. Grant is literally an idiot to say this.

In his book, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking, scholar Michael Keevak traces how the Chinese stopped being white.

He says in early interaction between Europeans and Asians, the Chinese were actually described as white.

No reference, interesting! And what did that term mean in that specific historical context? Grant is an ignarus homo indeed.

This was before racialised thinking was popularised in the 18th century.

It was then that scientists started to divide the world up into groupings of colour. Colour denoted civilisation. At the top were white Europeans, at the bottom black people and all others, graded on a sliding scale.

Keevak says Asians — including the Chinese and Japanese — began to “darken”.

They lost their whiteness, he says, “when it became clear they would remain unwilling to participate in European systems of trade, religion and international relations”.

Grant does provide a reference, so there is no need to think that he has not lifted this out of context. He’s also entirely ignoring the millennia-deep Chinese ethnic dislike of all foreigners based on skin colour.

The fall of the Qing Empire in the 19th century hastened a racial reckoning for the Chinese.

This was a dark night of the soul; it would tip China into a century of upheaval, revolution, and violence on an industrial scale.

And what was the fundamental driver of this? It was not the western powers at all, it was the revolt of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, that event called the Taiping Rebellion 1851-64: 20-30 million people died! It is most likely that Grant ignorantibus has never heard of it.

And it also brought China face-to-face with white power. The Qing Empire was humbled by Britain, a tiny island that now occupied Chinese territory.

Utter twaddle and totally wrong historically.

The distant voice whispering in Xi’s ear

The Communist Party has brought China to a position of strength, but it remains haunted by the memory of weakness.

Nineteenth-century writer Yan Fu was influenced by European liberal thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill and the father of economics Adam Smith, and saw China’s future emulating Western liberalism.

Why does this activist nitwit entirely ignore the greatest and bloodiest civil war in human history? The British SUPPORTED THE QING and helped them to defeat the Taiping!

Perhaps the most influential thinker of all, Liang Qichao, also looked to the Western idea of history as a march of progress — and progress meant modernisation.

Liang is known as the godfather of Chinese nationalism whose acolytes included the Chinese Communist revolutionary leader, Mao Zedong.

What about Sun Yat Sen? Yuan Shi Kai?

He coined the phrase “the sick man of Asia” to refer to China’s fallen state. He said they were awoken from a thousand-year-long dream.

As Liang embraced Western ideas, he also advocated for the unity of the “yellow race”. He used the term “minzu” to describe the people of the nation.

So Liang was a Chinese Nationalist within a cultural milieu of Han ethnic supremacism, and Grant ignorantibus believes this makes him a white European?

Seeds of resentment and ‘yellow peril’

World War I was another reckoning. At the Paris peace talks, China felt abandoned. German-occupied Chinese territory was not handed back to China but to Japan.

And the Japanese were not white Europeans, they were… Japanese.

The seeds of resentment were sown.

Actually they had been sown in 1895 after the Chinese defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. It is doubtful that Grant ignorantibus has ever heard of this war.

Historian Jerome Ch’en writes: “From 1842 to 1942, China had been treated by the West with distrust, ridicule, and disdain…”

Wrong. But mostly by Japan, and by the Chinese themselves in the Taiping Rebellion.

Liang Qichao — who had looked to the West — now turned sour. He was an official observer in Paris, but returned believing that following the West would lead China to catastrophe.

At the same time, the world was warning of the “yellow peril”.

Australia had its own whites-only policy, excluding non-white races from the country.

This was, of course, an ALP and progressive leftist policy, something Grant ignorantibus strangely refuses to mention.

Racial politics was also shaping China’s great foe, Japan.

The Japanese derided the Chinese as “yellow”. As Michael Keevak points out, Japan saw itself on par with Western powers.

Its imperialism mirrored the imperialism of white colonisers.

This is a lie, Japanese Imperialism mirrored Japanese Imperialism – ask the Koreans about a certain Hideyoshi Toyotomi, and the Japanese invasion of Korea 1592-1598. This fact alone demolishes Grants pitiful excuse for an argument.

Indeed, China was not colonised. It was never under colonial control. It did lose parts of its Empire to other Empires. Just as the French Empire was defeated and lost parts of its metropole to the German Empire in 1870. Just as China conquered Tibet and still holds parts of India. Does that make China ‘white’ too?

Under Grants idiotic illogic, everyone seems to be white. If everyone is white, no-one is.

In the West, the Japanese were still seen as “coloured people”, Keevak says, but “maybe not as yellow as the Chinese”.

For the past three centuries, power and whiteness have been synonymous. From the British Empire to the American century, white nations have exported violence, committed genocide, stolen land and made it all legal.

So according to Grant ignorantibus the other 4,000 years of Imperialism do not count – or were they too all ‘white’? Grant is genuinely pathetic here, the poor ignoramus has to ignore all the other Empires from the Akkadian Empire Sargon created c 2,334-2,279 BC through the Maya and Aztecs to the great Songhai Empire the sub-saharan Africans created in the 14th century to the vile Ottoman Empire which survived into the 20th century. Grant ignorantibus merely proves that he’s an pitifully clownish progressive clod, the depth of his intellect makes a carpark puddle look like the Challenger Deep..

China, like so many other non-white nations, has felt the sting of white imperialism.

China was and remains – an EMPIRE. Go ask a Tibetan, Inner Mongolian, Hakka, Uighar, etc etc etc. So under this clown’s thesis, the Chinese must be white!