Biden is out of the race.

New York Post. Biden endorsed Harris, as did the Clintons, but Obama and Pelosi rather pointedly did not.

Incoherent Thoughts

Instapundit gives the topline, where this person declares that she wishes the Trump assassin had been more accurate, but then immediately talks about how worried she is about political violence. 

But that's not the good part! The good part is that this person actually brought a crossbow to the protest in order to engage in violence if necessary. It's ok, though, because unlike evil firearms crossbows are "a much safer alternative" that are "only used for personal defense as an absolutely last resort." 

Somebody tell Pope Urban II. He appears to have been under a different impression. St. Sebastian likewise. 

The protestor goes on to claim that her hammer-and-sickle tattoo is a product of her having been born in the Soviet Union. So you know, it's not because of a commitment to worldwide socialist revolution -- i.e. political violence. No, that stuff is very scary. 

Approaches to Theology

I was planning on leaving off of theological speculation after last week's confessions, but the discussion -- and especially some thoughts provoked by Janet and Tex -- convinced me that it would be worthy to talk a little more about the broader issue of theology.

These are always contentious discussions, and partly the reason is that there are several different approaches that seem to lead to conflicting results. The first one is suggested by Janet: accept that God is so different from us that we can't really understand him at all. And yet even in that she makes some positive claims:

[W]e humans can't possibly understand God's ways. A worm understands more about your 401(k) investment strategy, than we understand about God's plan. To an unborn child, birth is a catastrophe, the end of everything he knows; but to us, we know that it's the start of something far greater, and the end of something that could not possibly go on any longer.

I would be very, very cautious about seeing "the hand of God" in anything other than your own life (and even that, mostly in retrospect). God is never doing just one thing, and further is primarily concerned with the salvation of individual souls rather than anything else.

"It's really hopeless" is not a happy claim, but it could be true without being happy. But it may not be functional even if it is true, as Kant said of determinism: even if you decide to believe that you have no free will and everything is determined by physics, the choice to make that decision about what to believe seems to be a free choice. You can't really function as someone who believes in determinism; every day you experience choices that you seem to make and need to reason about (e.g. 'should I have donuts for lunch, or something healthier?' doesn't seem to be deterministic; even if Krispy Kreme just opened across the street and makes donuts right at your lunchtime, it seems like you can at least occasionally decide to eat something else). Students and teachers like Nicholas of Cusa have gone a long way down this path of showing that God's infinity makes him fundamentally unknowable; I myself doubt whether infinity is a proper metaphor, because it seems to be a feature of creation rather than the uncreated. Still, many of Nicholas' basic points hold even if you say that infinity isn't a large enough concept, so to speak. 

Fortunately, you have another road you can choose, which is scripture. This seems to be the source of Janet's claim that God is principally interested in saving souls: it's not reasoned from nature, as we can't even prove the existence of souls from nature. Scripture provides a number of positive claims about God. For example, the prophecy of Ezekiel provides an extremely mysterious account of the chariot of God that Moses Maimonides wrote a book about interpreting. Such interpretations do tend to suggest that God takes sides for reasons of his own, as with Moses; we still may not always understand these reasons, as when he orders Joshua to engage in what seems like wholesale genocide. Sometimes people doubt at least some of the scriptures' authenticity, especially when it seems like an argument that God took one group's side over the other's; the scripture really does seem to say that, but it's out of order of deductions like those that begin the Declaration of Independence, i.e. that God loves everybody equally.

For Christians, scripture also includes an apparently easier path: Jesus as intermediary personhood, whom you can relate to directly as one human being to another (fully man and fully god, somehow). This point is raised by Tex; yet of course Jesus is not merely man, though fully man, and by nature exceptional and extraordinary, and thus a model that can't be expected to hold for the ordinary and normal. 

Still, it's attractive because then the path is not necessarily much harder than developing a relationship with another person, except that you only get to meet the person through scripture or as you imagine interactions through prayer. However, then you have the same problem as the mystic, who approaches God and knowledge of god through meditation: how much of what you are 'finding out about God' really is your imagination rather than a genuine encounter with the divine? I'm reminded of a favorite quote from the movie Ladyhawke, wherein the thief says to the knight, "Sir I talk to God all the time, and the truth is he never mentioned you." Yet at least in the movie, the thief was just trying to avoid an arduous and scary duty that really did lead to what the author depicts as prophecy and divine justice. 

You can try to test your imagination or meditations also against scripture, of course, to see that you're not getting too far astray. But we also have scriptural interactions with God the Father in the Old Testament, especially in the Book of Job. Job is actually full of a set of claims about God that I would say are characteristic of another major approach to theology, which is negative theology. Job, upset about all the misery inflicted upon him even though he has tried to live a just and faithful life, is confronted with evidence of things God is not: specifically, God does not share Job's limitations. Job can't hang the stars in the sky, or set the firmament on its foundations. We aren't really told anything about how God can do those things, so we don't really know much more about him: but we do know that there are ways in which God is different from us, and these are ways in which he lacks our limitations and instead possesses great powers. 

Job contains at least one passage, though, that suggests yet another approach to God. I have written before on several occasions about its description of the horse: 

Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

This is an interesting passage, though: because horses are like that, but only if men make them so. By pure nature, a horse will avoid any danger, and is scared like a grasshopper -- or of a grasshopper. The Lord's point in speaking to Job, if Job were the kind of man who could understand it, was that this is indeed what men do with horses.

We usually call this approach "natural theology." The basic idea is that you can learn about God from his works. It is possible to reason about the world that we do encounter, and here we find that God -- as authors of the rules of the world -- has set the basic moral structure of reality, which we can deduce. We can deduce it from the way the world works. This project was one that the Greeks were already working on when they encountered Christianity, and a lot of the machinery is Aristotelian. We can know what the virtues are because they are the qualities that fairly reliably produce good outcomes: self-discipline, mastery and moderation of appetites, courage, even justice because it helps us flourish among other people. Aristotle is clear that we should reason from what works 'always or for the most part,' because sometimes chance occurrences can create exceptions: the courageous man may usually save his life and carry the battle, but he might accidentally charge into an arrow he didn't see coming. The virtue still holds because it usually works out better for a person or a society to have it; chance is just when random things happen at the same time in a way that creates an unusual result. 

To bring this together with the horse, Aristotle argues that arts entail the perfection of what was left only partly perfected by nature. The horse's virtuous qualities that we encounter in Job are brought about by humans noticing the potential in the natural for these things, and then using art to bring them about and perfect them. In this way we are doing what J. R. R. Tolkien called subcreation: not a true act of creation of the sort that God can do, but a subordinate work on what we find in God's creation to make it a fuller realization of the qualities we have learned, also from the study of a nature that is God's creation, to be the virtuous and excellent ones. 

This creates conflicts with the other approaches. If God is so much more powerful and wise (Job), why didn't he create the things perfectly to begin with? Or perhaps he did, and we are screwing it up because our reasoning about his work is so inferior (Janet). But perhaps this is part of what God wants for us, and he does value our reasoning about his work as well as our own work; and in fact part of the point is that he wants us to do some of it (Tex).

Notice also the conflicts with reasoning from apparent miracles, which are places where what is ordinarily the usual course of actions is set aside for no obvious reason. To reason that Trump was protected by a miracle in the recent assassination attempt is to do exactly what Aristotle warned against: to reason not from what is 'always or usually' the case, i.e. where you can be reasonably sure that a Form is involved, but from wild chance exceptions. Maybe those just happen sometimes, and it is our error to find meaning in them.

Yet to bring us back around to the scriptural approach, it does seem like God gets involved sometimes, that he does take sides among men and among nations. Then miracles look like admissible evidence, if only we knew of what. 

That's the problem, all right

Nobody can force the powers that be to quit stonewalling and gaslighting. But their ability to keep it up has natural consequences that all their power can't prevent:

Given the lack of an adequate response from Biden administration officials and the public’s growing mistrust of the Biden FBI and Department of Homeland Security, people are looking at the timeline of the assassination attempt and drawing their own conclusions.

Look at what's happening in the polls as more and more people conclude these people are lying to us 24/7/365.

Full Circle

Readers will recall that I’ve often suggested that Trump learned political rhetoric from his time with the World Wrestling Federation (later “Entertainment”). Just read the mean tweets in the voice and with the beats of Hulk Hogan, I’d advise; then they won’t seem scary, but will be recognizable as the theatre that they are. 

Hulk Hogan is a character played by a gentleman named Terry Gene Bollea, but it is the character speaking on stage. The theatre is now part of the nonfiction, for better or for worse. At least in professional wrestling, violence is performance rather than actual assassination attempts. Look out for Bernie Sanders with that steel chair.

The Hand of God

Author Lincoln Brown is having similar thoughts to the ones that have been troubling me. The piece is raw and painful, questing after the justice of things like this. 

But what about Corey Comperatore, a loving and devoted husband, father, and public servant? Was it God's plan for him to die? 

For every person who is saved from cancer by the power of prayer, there are thousands for whom those prayers are never answered. When we were in Cambodia, I witnessed more than the horrific effects of human trafficking. We visited some of the Killing Fields....

I understand: my best friend is dying of stage four cancer at a very young age. I watched my father die too, and he was a brave and faithful man, one who saved lives, a firefighter, a volunteer. 

We are told that death has been conquered, and therefore perhaps it is of no real concern. That's hard to accept as people who have to die, and who have seen the effect of death on those we love. Yet, like Jules in the movie, I think you can't help but acknowledge the miracle. I don't understand it, but I can't deny it.

Fear

I have been to war three times. I’ve been mortared, rocketed, machine-gunned and shot at with Kalashnikovs. I once stood a bear off its kill to force him to let us pass on a trail. I ride motorcycles almost every day. 

The clear footstep of God is the scariest thing I have ever seen.

When my grandmother was buried, child me asked why anyone would fear God, as the scripture said. I know now. God getting involved is terrifying. 

People say to pray for the nation. I’m not the sort to say things like that. But I am praying. 

RIP Newhart

We loved you anyway, you SOB. 

Spam

Gringo alerted me that a comment of his had disappeared. I checked the spam folder of the blog, and found that many of our comments have been automatically assigned to that by Google -- including some of mine! I have restored all the ones I recognize (except Greg's, who really is spam and should go bother someone else). If you notice a comment disappearing, ping me and I'll fix it.

This is getting annoying, Google. The whole purpose of Blogger, when it was new, was to serve as a host for free speech. Go **** yourselves. Having money doesn't make you right. We'll say what we want, one way or another. 

Always loved Sarah Isgur

She tweets: "MSNBC’s bewildering coverage of the RNC this week is further proof that the left leaves elite universities and institutions with no clue about what conservatives believe or why. Whereas conservative students leave college being able to speak fluent liberal."

Good Lord

Conspiracy theories and all that, but it's actually worse if this really was the product of extensive, institutional failure. It'd be better if there was a plot! This indicates the complete failure of all of our institutions... er, as did the Afghanistan situation, the "pier" to Gaza, the border situation, oh good gracious. The whole thing needs to be torn down and replaced, or not replaced where it's not helpful.

More Glorious Behavior

So undercover cops need to drink to keep their cover. However: 

The Pagan's MC are accusing the cops of excessive force, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution after a confrontation in a bar suddenly degenerated into violence caused by cops who had been drinking for hours.

Maybe all this secret police stuff is not befitting of a free society. 

Corporate Interactions

I had a meeting today with a team led by a former SFOD-D operator and Silver Star awardee. He opened by questioning whether I would be able to make our upcoming in-person meeting from “prison,” and then asserting that “you look like you’re ready to murder somebody.”

I responded, “Every day all day,” which he loved. However, I had to circle back with the team to explain some cultural differences between their world and the world of the American infantry. 

Pulp Fiction

It’s hard to avoid Jules’ conclusion. The way the film was portrayed out of sequence masks that Jules’ conversion also saves his life. His faith does. 

It’s terrifying to think that God would take the side of so flawed a vessel; or to think that God would be so directly involved in human affairs at all. It’s obvious why Vincent rejects the idea. To do otherwise is to admit the existence of a far greater power. 

Dragon’s Breath

View from my front porch. 

Then This Happened...

...at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, per @DanScavino via @cdrsalamander (I don't seem able to post X videos): 

https://x.com/DanScavino/status/1813067403703820757 

BZ, indeed. 

Eric Hines

Safety first

I held off on posting this, because it referred to an ABC News interview I couldn't at first find in the original, and I feared it must be satire or a hoax. At the 1:50 mark in this ABC News interview with the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, she explains that the roof from which a young man shot former President Trump on Saturday was not manned by law enforcement because the sloped roof was considered too dangerous for security personnel.

Honestly, I'm still wondering if it could be a clever fake. Could she really have said this on camera? Perhaps next she could reconsider whether live ammunition should be issued to SS personnel. Someone could put an eye out with one of those things.

I wish I could still post images here, to show a comparison between the roof Crooks shot from and the roof the counter-sniper shot from after Crooks opened fire. Both look to be about 3 in 12 slope.

Couldn't agree more

I'm a big believer in price signals and a big doubter on erasing them.

Cities have used rent control for decades as a way to keep renters from experiencing the price signals of bad policies enacted by local and state politicians, and it's been a disaster without escape all along.

Prices are the balance between supply and demand.

You can lower demand by creating alternatives. You can raise supply by removing obstacles to the natural tendency for supply to flow in wherever prices are rising. But a sure way to crash supply is to react to high prices by capping them in order to pander to voters who are deserting you in droves. It's an especially unsavory form of pandering when the price shocks your voters are experiencing result from your own boneheaded economic policy, but President Unity likely couldn't have understood economic principles even in what passed for his cognitive prime.

"Affordable" housing is meaningless if it's unavailable at the state-mandated price, just like "affordable" healthcare.

That’s All Right

 

Hillbilly for (V) President

I have not read Vance's book nor followed his career, so I don't have a highly informed opinion on his selection as Trump's VP nominee. In the spirit of all the recent talk about 'representation' and 'feeling seen,' it is kind of nice to see someone who will self-appellate as an Appalachian on a major ticket. 

That doesn't make him a good choice, of course. Probably many of you have better information about that.

Were I advising Donald Trump, I would have suggested to him that he make a self-defensive nomination of somebody so crazy that any future assassins would think twice about taking a shot at Trump himself. All public information makes this shooter look like a loner, but Dad29's original remarks that led us to talk about assassination before the attempt happened was about Deep State concerns on Trump prompting them to take a shot at him. "Did the CIA kill JFK?" was a question a lot of people asked for many years. Similar people might wonder about a young man with no obvious connections, possessed of the perfect demographics to offend no protected group, getting to an unprotected rooftop with a short clear shot that he was allowed to take before being immediately killed so he couldn't talk.

I'm not saying that it was a conspiracy. That would be paranoid. I'm just saying that a Presidential candidate might pick a VP whose personality made a strong argument against anyone taking another shot. He might also want to hire some private professionals to bolster his government-provided security, which would be prudent rather than paranoid given how badly the USSS performed in this case.