Safely Stashing A Satirical Sci-Fi Story

This will be more comprehensible if you have read Frank Herbert's "Dune" books, which pass for science fiction but are at least forty-nine percent fantasy. You'll be still better off if you've gone so far as to read the fill-in books Frank Herbert's son has written since his father's death.

But, unlike a Bene Gesserit warrior-nun in teaching mode, I have tried to make my satire understandable EVEN for the uninitiated.    

 

‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

HOPECRUSHERS OF DUNE

“Come in,” said Reverend Mother Bodelia Sneakaround, “for all of life is entrances which are exits which still are entrances to the exits we enter.”

“Er, um, right, what you said.” The Fremen-born girl Dazzlechick, in her first year as a Bene Gesserit novice, came in, looking relieved that, in spite of the typical gobbledygook speech from her mentor, it still was possible to do a simple, natural action like walking forward through a doorway. “Reverend Mother, my prana-bindu meditation exercises have been disrupted by a question which I cannot expel from my mind.”

“Questions go questing,” Bodelia solemnly intoned, “in quest of the unanswerable answers which question the unquestionable process of answering the answers that we question.”

“Of course, Reverend Mother. Now, may I, um, you know, actually tell you what my question is?”

“The ancestors of our questioners have been telling the untold answers ever since humanity left Old Earth and began forming the Empire of the Known Universe, my child. Here on Planet Arrakis, the descendants of those who decided calling the place Dune was less of a mouthful are daily writing all sort of questions in the sand, where the wind of destiny blows them away unnoticed.”

Dazzlechick nodded nervously. “I’ll take that as a Yes, Reverend Mother. What unsettles me is this question. Since the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood is supposed to be all-wise and totally awesome, guiding all humanity toward the glorious evolutionary something-or-other, why does everybody’s life on every planet always turn out so rotten? Also, why aren’t males making more of a contribution to trying to fix things?”

To the girl’s surprise, instead of scowling and delivering another meaningless lecture, Bodelia smiled.

 “Praise be to nothing in particular!” She arose from her lotus position to hug her apprentice. “I had been hoping that you would get around to raising that very question on your own initiative! Prepare to learn an actual answer!”

The Fremen girl was further surprised, but encouraged, to hear her teacher speak so coherently for once. “Enlighten me, Reverend Mother!”

“Come this way, then,” Bodelia invited. “We must follow the Golden Path to the Oxygenated Path, followed by the Depleted Uranium Path and the Carbon Fiber Path. Along the way, we’ll say goodbye to the Yellow Brick Road, but BEWARE!-- we must avoid wasting time hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock. Thereafter, all shall become clear.”

Dazzlechick never was sure how they made their mystical journey. It was weirder than any of the times she had ridden on board Rockymountainhigh-Liners of the Spacing Guild, and accompanied by what looked like psychedelic visual effects in a movie. At one point, she thought she heard the Dawn Sequence from “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” But presently they found themselves in one of the Art Deco-style chambers common to adaptations of the Dune novels; and there waited one of the Spacing Guild’s own Navigators, the ones who folded space in order to keep storylines moving without endless delays for characters to get from one solar system to another.

“Peace and incalculable profundity to you, Zipzoom,” said the Reverend Mother to the Navigator. To this, he replied, “Journeys always contain more arrivals than departures; just a minute, I think it’s the other way around. No, that’s only when we overbook flights. Never mind that. Who’s your novice?”

“This is Dazzlechick of the Fremen. She is a very demure girl; she’s had no more than twelve knife-fights this week. But more to the point, no pun intended, she is the first of all my apprentices ever to think of asking me WHY everything is so miserable for everybody in our universe.”

The Navigator smiled-- which, given his grossly mutated appearance, only made him uglier.

“Welcome, Dazzlechick! You will find this ffff….flabbergasting! Gotcha, you thought I would say ‘fascinating.’ Nope, I’m not a Spock fan.”

Dazzlechick frowned in thought. “Wait! I just realized, we’re all in a normal atmosphere! Don’t you Navigators need to stay in a mélange-gas atmosphere to live?”

“Not at all,” Zipzoom laughed. “We just make the suckers think that so they’ll be more impressed with how alien we seem. But we should proceed, shouldn’t we, Bodelia?”

“Right. Lead on.”

So the Reverend Mother and the Navigator led the Bene Gesserit novice into a colorful control room, where twenty or more non-mutated men were monitoring some sort of computer terminals which seemed to incorporate interstellar communication systems. “This,” Bodelia announced to Dazzlechick, “is Hopecrusher Central.”

“It’s our most covert operation,” Zipzoom added. “From here, Joy-Suppression Teams are dispatched to every world where there’s danger of something going right for someone. Just listen for a while to these mission controllers as they work, and you’ll soon get the idea.”

Dazzlechick, still finding it hard to believe that someone would actually name a place “Hopecrusher Central,” turned toward Bodelia. “Reverend Mother, I said I was distressed about things going wrong for people all the time, but Navigator Zipzoom speaks as if it’s a BAD thing for someone’s life to go RIGHT! What does this mean?”

“The meaning of life, dear novice, is a lively meaningfulness of life that means living.”

Exasperated that Bodelia would choose this moment to revert to gibberish, Dazzlechick saw no better option than to do as the Navigator had urged her. So she listened to the multiple duty-related reports being called out in the control room….

“Attention! Planet Jetlag has people treating sexual attraction as a motivation to exercise kindness and honesty, instead of treachery and exploitation! They must be stopped!”

“Prepare a team for intervention! There’s an industrial facility on Planet Hownowbrowncow that ISN’T ruining their entire environment!”

“Action stations! The government on Planet Attaboy is changing hands without violence!”

“Warning! We have detected a mother and father on Planet Wigwaggon who aren’t abandoning their children to horrible ordeals for obscure causes!”

“Catastrophe! Some siblings on Planet Milktoast are not in vicious rivalries!”

“Alert! There are as many as fifteen happy marriages on Planet Faraway!”

“Danger! A bloody civil war has just been successfully prevented on Planet Skiptoomyloo! If this outbreak of reconciliation is allowed to spread, it might cause a major galactic downturn in bitterness and hatred!”

“Panic! On Planet Inkadink there is an advance in medical care which doesn’t do more harm than good!”

“Maximum crisis warning! Inhabitants of Planet Gruntpoo are beginning to believe in a Supreme Being, WITHOUT this belief causing them to murder everyone in sight!”

Zipzoom suddenly stepped away from the two Bene Gesserits, to stand beside the controller who had spoken last. “This one gets the supreme priority!” he told the controller. “If people start realizing that faith in God can be a GOOD thing, our whole program will fail!”

Dazzlechick took hold of her teacher’s hand. “Reverend Mother, what does this mean? And please, tell me an actual meaning for once!”

“So I shall, dear girl. All of us here are operating in the universe of an existentialist worldview, like that of Sartre  and Camus, in which despair is the bedrock foundation of all philosophy. Those controllers are in charge of stamping out any hope, anywhere, that EITHER scientific achievement OR supernatural faith can ever lead to anything good in the long run. Notice that the controllers here are all male? You asked why men weren’t doing more; well, these men ARE doing their part: working toward an endgame in which people find peace in relinquishing all hope. While we are the Bene Gesserit, they are the Bene Herbert.

“Those who do not themselves believe in any afterlife, or in any spiritual consolation, often conclude that misery does love company. As you may be suspecting, that’s us. Therefore, all material progress of civilization in stories must be made to produce more and worse injustices, and every movement of religious faith must turn into destructive madness and oppression. Heroes and heroines must be seen to fail, and supporting characters must always end up disillusioned with them-- until the reading public, and ultimately the whole universe, agrees on a nice, tranquil resignation, and scoffs at idealists. Meanwhile, we of the Bene Gesserit supply the profound-sounding nonsense to keep humanity confused. And based on this program, Bene Herbert men write stories which promote existential despair.”

“Do people actually enjoy reading such unhappy stories?”

“I know it sounds odd, child. But the Bene Herbert novelists have refined their narrative skills to such a degree that the sheer detail and inventiveness hold the attention of readers, even though evil keeps on prevailing in the stories. Then, by a subtle emotional influence, we Bene Gesserit convince those readers that the sophistication of the plotlines DEPENDS ON this pessimistic worldview. We trick them into assuming that speculative fiction can’t be inventive and clever unless it promotes the loss of all hope. And our reward for these efforts is-- the satisfaction of knowing that other people are as depressed and miserable as we are. Of course, we normally don’t admit to ourselves that we’re unhappy; most of the time, we tell ourselves that we’re just being realistic.”

Dazzlechick drew a long breath. “Maybe you're pleased to do that, Reverend Mother; but not I!”

Without waiting for Zipzoom to rejoin them, and without waiting for Bodelia to utter more empty speeches, the Fremen girl dashed out of Hopecrusher Central. Finding the inter-dimensional path by which the Reverend Mother had led here here, Dazzlechick fled back along it. Not back to Dune, for she realized that her home planet was doomed forever to be part of the Bene Herbert’s grand scheme of telling everyone that the universe had no Creator and no divine plan to make truth and love triumph.

Instead, she would seek a universe where hope wasn’t held in contempt.

To her great relief, Dazzlechick found herself arriving in the universe of the writings of Joseph Richard Ravitts, who did believe both in God and in the possibility of love and virtue succeeding. There she would become a sympathetic, likeable character in the Grey Eagle saga.

And she would REMAIN a likeable character, instead of going down the toilet the way Frank Herbert had caused both Paul and Alia Atreides to go down the toilet after the first volume.

Phony Good Guys Shoot a Genuine Good Guy in the Foot

The definition of “alt-right” has been ambiguous to me --apart, of course, from “villains perfectly suited for hardcore leftists to be horrified about.” But now, some persons who almost certainly QUALIFY AS alt-right have helped me out, by providing me with a glaringly obvious distinction between themselves and a Christian conservative I know.

Bear with me here. In defiance to the dumbing-down of society, I shall explain something which takes more than two short sentences to explain. To those who want to keep everything in the arena of blind emotions, I make NO apology for preferring truth.

The Christian man, my real-world in-person friend for longer than five years, is Jack Phillips, the bakery owner who leftists want to believe is “full of hate against everyone who’s different.” This accusation against Jack is not just a mistake, it is a calculated lie. The slanderous accusation depends on the fictitious claim that he wanted to exclude GAYS AS A CATEGORY from being his customers at all. The intentionally misleading slogan used by his detractors, “Just Bake The Cake,” is designed to support the false charge. It’s nothing unusual for lies to take cover behind a disguise of “profound simplicity.”

It was never about what people were allowed to come inside Masterpiece Cakeshop; it was always about two other questions: (1) Do business owners have the right to decide WHAT PRODUCTS they will or won’t sell? (2) Do United States citizens have the right to decide what statements and opinions they will publicly ENDORSE AND APPLAUD?

Jack’s enemies are themselves entirely aware that the answer to both questions is Yes. In proof of their knowing this, THEY WILL NOT force a vegan storeowner to sell meat, nor force a pacifist storeowner to sell war toys. Neither will they force a Muslim bookstore to sell books which say that Islam is wrong. But with the typical moral selectivity of leftists, they do desire to force Jack Phillips to sell, NOT “merely a cake,” but specifically a cake bearing COMMUNICATIVE symbols which would have the same effect as words. The leftists themselves are entirely aware that what they are demanding is the same thing as if they handed Jack a microphone in a public place and ORDERED him to say to a crowd, “Everything I believe about the true nature of marriage is wrong.”

I've heard audio from the mother of one partner in the entrapment team that went after Jack. I didn't catch whether she was the mother of Mullins or of Craig; but she dutifully recited the agreed-upon lie, claiming that her son had been "turned away" solely because of who he was.

These Christian-bashers know exactly what they’re doing, though they’ll furiously deny it. And, unfortunately, many supposed supporters of Masterpiece Cakeshop are stupidly HELPING THE LEFT to succeed in falsely painting Jack as a “hateful homophobe.”

This is where the revealed nature of the alt-right comes in.

Never, not for one instant on any day, did Jack wish to bar homosexuals from buying those products he chose to sell. But to this moment, there are alt-right imbeciles who undermine him by arguing that the issue IS about being allowed to exclude a category of people arbitrarily from shopping at the bakery. These imbeciles cheerfully revive the segregation-era phrase, “the right to refuse service;” thus do they support Jack’s alleged right to do something JACK NEVER WAS DOING AND NEVER WANTED TO DO.

Jack is the legitimate conservative here; his actions are not based on “hate,” but based on his knowledge of certain truths, like children benefiting by having both sexes represented as parents. But you’d never know this, when there are people on left AND right wrongly claiming that he is like a racist lunch-counter owner in Mississippi before Martin Luther King rose up for justice-- the only difference being that the neo-fascists WANT Jack to be like that lunch-counter owner. 

With friends like his alt-right “supporters,” Jack truly doesn’t need enemies.

A Lighter Piece, About Comicbook Adaptations

 I might as well get some use out of having binge-viewed thirty episodes of CW's "The Flash." Here goes: an all-purpose representative generic typical episode of that series.

Barry wakes up in the morning, to find that his bed was short-sheeted while he slept, by the latest faster-than-Flash speedster. Going to the kitchen for some breakfast, he gets beaten up by a pancake that is more powerful than he is. Regenerating quickly from this beating, he goes to brush his teeth, but gets beaten up by a toothbrush that is also more powerful than he is. Healing again, he goes to put a letter in the mailbox, but the mailbox also beats him up because it is more powerful than he is.

Wearying of this abuse, Barry skips running to work in favor of taking a bus. But a poster on the side of the bus beats him up. When he reaches police headquarters, a bulletin board beats him up. Iris drops by and brings him the latest edition of her newspaper, but a photograph in the newspaper beats him up. Horrified, Iris insists that Barry see a doctor. Barry goes to the doctor's office, where the doctor's stethoscope beats him up.

Leaving the doctor's office, Barry finally finds a wrongdoer he is able to defeat: a four-year-old boy pulling a dog's tail. But while scolding the brat, Barry gets bitten by the dog.

Just as he finishes rapid-healing from the dog bite, Barry is approached by the Gal Gadot Wonder Woman, who tells him, "If you can behave intelligently for five minutes, I'll be yours eternally and love you forever!" Barry manages to behave intelligently for THREE minutes-- and this, only because in those three minutes nothing happens to give him any opportunity to be an idiot. But in the fourth minute, Zoom suddenly appears, losing balance and falling at Barry's feet.

"Oh, no!" the homicidal Zoom groans. "I've broken my ankle! Now I'm helpless! Any superhero could come by now and shoot me or cut off my head, and I would never be able to murder any innocent people ever again!"

With a look of great compassion, Barry sits beside Zoom and says, "I can't kill anyone, because then I would be just as bad as you are!" The villain's eyes widen, and he replies, "What? Do you murder people routinely for fun? But-- Oh, excuse me, I'm forgetting who writes your dialogue. Er, um, right, of course you would be just as bad as I am if you thought about all the vulnerable people who are threatened by me and actually--"

That's as far as Zoom gets before Wonder Woman cuts off his head. Barry is horrified; but Wonder Woman assures him, "There there, little baby, don't worry: I won't let anyone think that YOU discovered moral priorities and took action to save Zoom's future victims. I'll deliver Zoom's head to Detective West, and you can keep on being an ineffectual wimp. Too bad, though: if you had had a spine, I could have loved you," And away Wonder Woman goes, shaking her head. 

Losing Patience With Micro-Predestinationists

I saw an online friend being pressured by the advocates of arbitrarily forced predestination. They are the ones who will accuse us of denying God's omnipotence if we venture to disagree with them on HOW GOD USES that omnipotence. But I refuse to be browbeaten by this false accusation. I happen to worship a God Who doesn't revel in plain raw power so totally as to leave no space for mercy or love. 

Calvinists always claim that everything in their doctrinal system is "just what's right there in Scripture." What this means in actual fact is that they READ CALVINISM INTO Scripture, then claim to have "discovered" it there. The prooftexts they lean on most heavily, actually DON'T support their position.

For instance, we know from Scripture that God hardened Pharaoh's heart during the time of the plagues hitting Egypt. Micro-predestinationists love this one. But stating that Pharaoh's heart was hardened AT THAT TIME is not an absolute statement that Pharaoh COULD NOT POSSIBLY have come to repentance and salvation at some later point. Mind you, I don't think it's likely that he ever repented, but this is not the same thing as it being inherently impossible for him to have repented before he died. Calvinism requires Pharaoh's destiny to be hermetically sealed, externally controlled all the way without Pharoah ever having any say-so; but that's what Calvinism requires, not what the Bible requires.

Likewise, it was declared before Esau was born that he would have to serve his younger brother, and micro-predestinationists want this to support a contention that Esau was damned to Hell in advance. But Calvinist language is the only language in which "having to serve your younger brother" is synonymous with "being damned in advance, with no possibiity of being saved ever." And any honest person who understands the way God speaks about nations in the Old Testament, knows that "Esau I have hated" is talking about EDOM, the nation Esau FOUNDED.

Calvinists claim to be piously concerned for God's glory, anxious that His sovereignty be recognized. That's what they say for public consumption. But in reality, what they're anxious for is the emotional security of believing that everything everywhere is controlled and scheduled and mapped out and boxed in. If they didn't have this insecurity problem, they could easily see what so-called "Arminians" can easily see: the common-sense fact that God's sovereignty does not DEPEND on damning people for literally no reason. God can give His creatures real free will, the power of meaningful choice, without losing even the least little bit of His sovereignty, because, well duh, it's Himself sovereignly CHOOSING TO GIVE that gift of choice. Being infinitely wise, He can work around it and still achieve His purposes. If humans cannot at any point make a decision which is THEIR decision and which does have a bearing on whether they are saved, then they are passive recipients of arbitrary outside action, and are playing no part in the chain of cause and effect. 

Which would mean that damning them is literally done FOR NO REASON-- just because God happened to feel like it.

Given this view of divine justice, there is a humorless absurdity in the way Calvinists define "mercy." They say it's mercy when God allows doomed "non-elect" sinners to live their lives for a while, AS IF there might be hope, when all the time He's planning to spring the terrible surprise on them, without ever giving them any chance to be converted. This IS NOT mercy, it's a cruel cat-and-mouse game, in which hellfire will utterly negate the pretense of mercy.

Calvinists are the only people I know who have any interest in using the word "Arminian" as a valid group label. They do this to trivialize and marginalize every non-liturgical Christian (sometimes liturgical ones too) who takes at face value the countless appeals the Bible makes to human choice. But I do not hold even one conviction, on any detail of any subject, which depends even slightly on the writings of James Arminius. I can TRUTHFULLY say that it's right there in the Bible.

I mean, come ON already: at the end of the Book of Joshua, does it say "God will FORCE YOU to choose whom you will serve"? In Revelation, does Jesus say, "Behold, I am smashing your door off its hinges"? Well, as for that, I've known a Calvinist to argue with a straight face that Jesus in Revelation DID mean He would in effect break in the door by force and MAKE the person inside submit to Him. But the truth is simply too obvious. Every time any version of the sowing-and-reaping principle is presented in God's Word, our own causal connection to our destiny is being confirmed. Because if we don't have some volitional say in what we are sowing, then WE'RE NOT sowing anything. Rather, something is BEING sown without our consent; our presence in the general vicinity of the field is a coincidence, having nothing to do with action by us. In which case, there IS NO moral factor in our existence. We have merely been plunked down into a situation over which we never had any influence; and God might as well punish molecules for containing electrons, as punish us for anything.

Here is where Calvinists will choose to think that I'm denying human sinfulness. I'm not. But the only way my argument could be refuted would be if all the Calvinist prooftexts DID mean what Calvinists want the prooftexts to mean, and they don't. I know quite well that people are sinners; but I also know that the spiritual situation IS NOT about God making us plastic toys which can't DO anything, then raging at us for BEING what we could never have avoided being.

What Calvinists pigeonhole as "Arminianism" is in reality the more complete understanding of Scripture. For understanding that God can FIT the element of real free will INTO His plans does not at all diminish His ever-so-emphasized-by-Calvinists sovereignty. God's actions don't need to be meaningless, to be sovereign.

I have never said that our being given the power to refuse or accept salvation made us WORTHY OF salvation; still less have I said that we have any power to produce our salvation. But granting us the freedom of response to His initiative gives a greater legitimacy to God's judgment than "Might makes right." Recognizing the screamingly obvious Biblical truth of human choice takes nothing away from God; but absolute externally-imposed predestination, by making judgment meaningless, takes ALL OF GOD'S GOODNESS away from Him, leaving nothing but "I can do this because I want to and you can't stop Me."

Now, THAT'S a matter of genuine concern for God's glory, instead of the Calvinist insecurity which can't rest easy unless everything is chained  up and clamped in a vise.

Calvinists, ever eager to have the last word, will retort with attempted Gotcha's like quoting "For all have sinned." They will be hoping no one notices that their standard prooftext barrage IS NOT ANSWERING the points I've made. Again, I have not denied God's sovereignty; I've merely argued that His USE of His sovereignty conforms to His love and kindness, rather than being an exercise in cruelty which drains the word "grace" of any meaning.

Rommy Is The Mommy! She's Better Than Pastrami!

September has been my month to binge-view the not-terribly-old sci-fi series "Andromeda." This, in large part, because Lexa Doig, who played the Starship Andromeda's android avatar and holographic persona, is a majorly major celebrity crush for me. Really, come ON: Star Trek's Commander Data was allowed to experience love with human women, so why the entropy should Rommy not have been allowed to become Captain Hunt's permanent soulmate? SHE obviously loved HIM from the very core of her being, and in spite of her superior powers she genuinely revered him for his wisdom and bravery, so it would not have been a hopelessly lopsided relationship.

But no-o-o-o-o, the "Andromeda" writers had to keep Dylan Hunt unattached, even though they scarcely ever actually gave him a girlfriend anyway. And poor sweet nearly-indestructible Rommy, who DID have real emotions, was left emotionally unfulfilled, never even allowed (as far as I've seen) to SAY to Captain Hunt, "I love you."

As an indirect attempt to justify the celibacy imposed on the most appealing female in rhe series, they ran one episode showing that another High Guard captain HAD once entered a sexual relationship with his ship's female avatar. This had ended in tragedy because the High Guard's avatar androids carry top-secret information about the ships, information that must not be collected by enemies of the Commonwealth. This plot device was forced and unconvincing. Again, come ON: in an era millennia into the future, we're supposed to believe that there couldn't be a fail-safe allowing the military secrets inside Rommy's exquisitely beautiful head simply to be instantly DELETED, while Rommy's endearing PERSONALITY remained?

It could have been done easily. They chose not to do it. Fooey.

Insofar as Lexa Doig's character is concerned, I'm undecided whether to feel placated or insulted by the Dylan/Rommy scene at the end of the episode "Dance of the Mayflies." There, though STILL not permitted to pour out her cyber-heart to her beloved captain, she was permitted to come close to such a declaration. During the episode, the shortness of human life expectancy compared to sci-fi super-beings had been brought up; so, in the epilogue, Rommy could at least tell Dylan that she couldn't bear the prospect of outliving him and thus losing him. (Think Arwen and Aragorn.) Dylan, in response, went so far as to speak of love, but somewhat abstractly. This, in terms of what he and Rommy SHOULD have been to each other, was as unsatisfactory as the milktoasty peck on the cheek that he gave her in conclusion.

But apart from feeling sorry for "Andromeda's" android heroine, who is my favorite robotic-type character in all of science fiction ever, there is an aspect of the scene which I definitely LIKED, and was pleasantly surprised by: the fact that Dylan Hunt DID NOT limit himself to shallow phrases about him "living on" in Rommy's memory. Here is my approximate quote of his full speech to her about the perpetuity of love:

"You won't lose me, Rommy. Love never dies. Your body may be destroyed or your power may run out, but love goes on forever. When the universe ends and the last star burns out, the only thing LEFT will be love."

This -- I'll venture to call it a testimony -- delighted me insofar as its SPIRITUAL significance. No, Captain Hunt did not recite the whole Nicene Creed; but even his modest expression of faith flew head-on against the icy atheism that Gene Roddenberry wanted to promote. The hero's prediction of love going on forever COULD NOT POSSIBLY be right in a materialistic, mechanical universe.

And in my estimation, the value of Dylan Hunt's words IS NOT spoiled by their being addressed to an android. No one has yet invented any sort of robot that has REAL self-awareness with free will and genuine emotions; but if such a robot WERE built, my own expectation of enjoying Heaven would not be the least bit impaired by God regarding this robot as a living creature with a soul-- due to it being effectively an OFFSPRING of its human makers.

None of the science fiction *I* write will ever feature androids that really are alive and autonomous, because I don't believe there ever will be any. But if the fictitious free-willed android Rommy actually existed, I would not be denying God's Creatorship by desiring that Rommy should be considered a daughter of humans, capable of receiving the gift of saving faith. And I'm not saying this just because the actress Lexa Doig is as hot as a supernova.

When Trejo Is Tres Chic

A year or two  of years ago, cinema tough guy Danny Trejo, a Latino counterpart of Mickey Rourke, was photographed participating in a parade, carrying the flag of the United States --not inverted, and not placed beneath a Mexican flag.

Mister Trejo didn't have to do this. In the modern atmosphere of political correctness, he had nothing to gain career-wise by paying any respect to the United States. Far from it, siding absolutely with Latino supremacists of the Reconquista movement, while claiming that EVERY objection to Latino crime gangs was a racist lie, would have been the very thing to boost his popularity in all the fashionable hard-left circles. Therefore, I am inclined to cut Mister Trejo a lot of slack.

But it's hard to shrug off his 2010 blood-and-guts movie, "Machete." It's the kind of movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger would have made.... if Schwarzenegger had been a Mexican chauvinist whose entire concept of goodness began and ended with "whatever is to the advantage of Mexicans." Even an immigration agent played by Jessica Alba ends up shouting to a crowd that there cannot be any such thing as justice or law UNLESS Hispanics get to have everything their own way without reservations or questions.

Mister Trejo plays a Mexican Federale officer who is threatened by white supremacists on top of being entrapped by a Mexican drug cartel which has bought off most of the Federales. The hero must accordingly lead an army of low-riders to defeat the white supremacists chiefly, and secondarily the drug cartel's leader. At least the script has the cheap honesty to admit that the buying of police is endemic in Mexico; but as far as this film lets us know, the drug trade-- operating with Gringo collaborators-- is THE ONLY organized crime flowing from Latin America to the United States. There's no such thing as the Mara Salvatrucha gang, and there's no such thing as Democrat mayors of "sanctuary cities" buying Hispanic votes by aiding and abetting illegals who commit murders, robberies and rapes-- including murders, robberies and rapes in which THE VICTIMS ARE ALSO HISPANIC, go figure.

No moral ambiguity troubles the writers of "Machete." Absolutely all illegal border crossers out of Mexico are adorable dreamers who can deserve unlimited sympathy; and you'll never learn from this movie how many hospitals in the southwestern United States have been driven to bankruptcy by illegals exhausting their patient-care capacity without ever paying a cent. Anyone and everyone who has even the slightest misgivings about illegal immigration is either a monstrously violent white supremacist, or a monstrously wicked schemer who can profit somehow by oppressing poor innocent Latinos, or both.

Something else you'll never learn from this movie is the fact that the Texas Revolution did not happen because white supremacists were being imperialistic; it happened because the dictator Santa Ana denied representative government to people under his rule. That's why there were MEXICANS fighting on the TEXAN side in this revolution. It is also a fact that the later Mexican War was begun BY SANTA ANA, who was a sore loser despite the Texans having spared his life before. Santa Ana came out zero for two, and his whole country lay prostrate before the Gringo victors. But not only did the United States not attempt to occupy and possess all of Mexico, but it paid Mexico for the portion of land it did take.

However, modern Mexican administrations, particularly that of Presidente Vicente Fox, have found it wonderfully convenient to whip up anti-Gringo resentment, as a way to divert Mexican citizens from resenting their own government's failure to promote their well-being. These politicians love it when their agitators in the United States chant the misleading slogan: "We Didn't Cross The Border, The Border Crossed Us!"

The border might never have moved south if a 19th-century Mexican ruler had extended citizen rights to his subjects; and to this day there are Latino CITIZENS of the United States who DON'T WANT the United States to change into Mexico 2.0, because these loyal United States citizens understand just which society has enabled them to advance themselves by their own efforts.

All this leaves me scratching my head over why Danny Trejo would star in a movie like "Machete" --apart from the money, plus the sweet perk of being kissed onscreen by Jessica Alba and other beautiful women-- and then turn around a few years later and parade the United States flag as if he LOVED the same United States which "Machete" depicts as the embodiment of all evil. But it may be that Mister Trejo appreciates freedom of expression; appreciates this country for allowing itself to be defamed and vilified so extravagantly. His movie's own credits reveal that the state government of Texas-- a state which, if you listen to Democrats, is crowded with xenophobic racists who would regard George Wallace as being too lenient-- actually facilitated the production of "Machete."

To anyone reading my words: please tell me if you know of any motion picture produced within the borders of Mexico, BY a Mexican film studio, that portrays Mexico as overflowing with evil, sadistic bigots, while saying that GRINGOS (apart from some gangsters and crooked cops) are all adorable dreamers who can do no wrong. Or for that matter, name a major AMERICAN movie company that would have hired Mister Trejo to star in a movie which portrayed present-day Mexico-sobre-todo activists as being in the wrong....

I didn't think so.   ago, cinema tough guy Danny Trejo, a Latino counterpart of Mickey Rourke, was photographed participating in a parade, carrying the flag of the United States --not inverted, and not placed beneath a Mexican flag.

Mister Trejo didn't have to do this. In the modern atmosphere of political correctness, he had nothing to gain career-wise by paying any respect to the United States. Far from it, siding absolutely with Latino supremacists of the Reconquista movement, while claiming that EVERY objection to Latino crime gangs was a racist lie, would have been the very thing to boost his popularity in all the fashionable hard-left circles. Therefore, I am inclined to cut Mister Trejo a lot of slack.

But it's hard to shrug off his 2010 blood-and-guts movie, "Machete." It's the kind of movie that Arnold Schwarzenegger would have made.... if Schwarzenegger had been a Mexican chauvinist whose entire concept of goodness began and ended with "whatever is to the advantage of Mexicans." Even an immigration agent played by Jessica Alba ends up shouting to a crowd that there cannot be any such thing as justice or law UNLESS Hispanics get to have everything their own way without reservations or questions.

Mister Trejo plays a Mexican Federale officer who is threatened by white supremacists on top of being entrapped by a Mexican drug cartel which has bought off most of the Federales. The hero must accordingly lead an army of low-riders to defeat the white supremacists chiefly, and secondarily the drug cartel's leader. At least the script has the cheap honesty to admit that the buying of police is endemic in Mexico; but as far as this film lets us know, the drug trade-- operating with Gringo collaborators-- is THE ONLY organized crime flowing from Latin America to the United States. There's no such thing as the Mara Salvatrucha gang, and there's no such thing as Democrat mayors of "sanctuary cities" buying Hispanic votes by aiding and abetting illegals who commit murders, robberies and rapes-- including murders, robberies and rapes in which THE VICTIMS ARE ALSO HISPANIC, go figure.

No moral ambiguity troubles the writers of "Machete." Absolutely all illegal border crossers out of Mexico are adorable dreamers who can deserve unlimited sympathy; and you'll never learn from this movie how many hospitals in the southwestern United States have been driven to bankruptcy by illegals exhausting their patient-care capacity without ever paying a cent. Anyone and everyone who has even the slightest misgivings about illegal immigration is either a monstrously violent white supremacist, or a monstrously wicked schemer who can profit somehow by oppressing poor innocent Latinos, or both.

Something else you'll never learn from this movie is the fact that the Texas Revolution did not happen because white supremacists were being imperialistic; it happened because the dictator Santa Ana denied representative government to people under his rule. That's why there were MEXICANS fighting on the TEXAN side in this revolution. It is also a fact that the later Mexican War was begun BY SANTA ANA, who was a sore loser despite the Texans having spared his life before. Santa Ana came out zero for two, and his whole country lay prostrate before the Gringo victors. But not only did the United States not attempt to occupy and possess all of Mexico, but it paid Mexico for the portion of land it did take.

However, modern Mexican administrations, particularly that of Presidente Vicente Fox, have found it wonderfully convenient to whip up anti-Gringo resentment, as a way to divert Mexican citizens from resenting their own government's failure to promote their well-being. These politicians love it when their agitators in the United States chant the misleading slogan: "We Didn't Cross The Border, The Border Crossed Us!"

The border might never have moved south if a 19th-century Mexican ruler had extended citizen rights to his subjects; and to this day there are Latino CITIZENS of the United States who DON'T WANT the United States to change into Mexico 2.0, because these loyal United States citizens understand just which society has enabled them to advance themselves by their own efforts.

All this leaves me scratching my head over why Danny Trejo would star in a movie like "Machete" --apart from the money, plus the sweet perk of being kissed onscreen by Jessica Alba and other beautiful women-- and then turn around a few years later and parade the United States flag as if he LOVED the same United States which "Machete" depicts as the embodiment of all evil. But it may be that Mister Trejo appreciates freedom of expression; appreciates this country for allowing itself to be defamed and vilified so extravagantly. His movie's own credits reveal that the state government of Texas-- a state which, if you listen to Democrats, is crowded with xenophobic racists who would regard George Wallace as being too lenient-- actually facilitated the production of "Machete."

To anyone reading my words: please tell me if you know of any motion picture produced within the borders of Mexico, BY a Mexican film studio, that portrays Mexico as overflowing with evil, sadistic bigots, while saying that GRINGOS (apart from some gangsters and crooked cops) are all adorable dreamers who can do no wrong. Or for that matter, name a major AMERICAN movie company that would have hired Mister Trejo to star in a movie which portrayed present-day Mexico-sobre-todo activists as being in the wrong....

I didn't think so.

Exploding Another Pagan Book

During all of this calendar century so far, hardcore feminists have been trying to have it both ways at once: women are omnipotent goddesses, AND women are poor helpless victims of male oppression. Most recently, being goddesses has been pulling ahead in popularity.

But back in 1987, the contemporary dogma that any randomly-selected twelve-year-old girl can crush a 300-pound man was not yet fully entrenched in the popular culture; so the big emphasis for feminism still was women's victimhood and women's martyr-like moral superiority. This was the year when Riane Eisler, a neo-pagan author, first released a Herstory book titled "The Chalice and the Blade." Eisler's premise, naturally, was that the worship of a male deity automatically promotes violence and cruelty, while goddess-worship guarantees love and peace and idyllic equality, because women are the exclusive keepers of both justice and mercy.    

It was necessary for Mizzzzzz Eisler to be selective with her source material, in order to be sure of arriving at her predetermined conclusion. By dwelling on European and Mediterranean antiquity, she was able to report truthfully, or should we say HALF-truthfully, that peaceful agrarian cultures which worshiped fertility goddesses were indeed invaded and conquered by warlike tribes which worshiped male deities. She devoted many pages to the ancient "Kurgan invasion," and I have no cause to think that she falsified any part of this information, since it already supported her agenda. But she avoided consideration of Japan, which had the female deity Amaterasu at the top of its pre-Buddhist pantheon, and nonetheless generated plenty of bloodshed. She also avoided consideration of the Thuggees of India, who were motivated to commit ritual murders by their worship of the female deity Kali. AND she avoided consideration of all the Native American nations in which, by THEIR OWN admission, many tribeswomen delighted in horribly torturing defenseless captives.

Above all, Mizzzzzz Eisler had to rule out, a priori, any possibility that the God of the Bible ACTUALLY EXISTS. Men who believed in such a God were obviously terribly warped to have MADE UP such a nasty Supreme Being, whereas women show their superiority by-- not exactly making up, Eisler would contend, but giving a name to the presupposed female principle which "really" runs the universe.

Following this divine female principle, according to the author, will move humanity forward on the path of evolution, which of course (although Eisler herself is heterosexual) will entail complete acceptance of homosexuality.

The presumed closeness to the Goddess that is allegedly enjoyed by women, just because they ARE women, surely explains why millions of latest-version feminists have built on Eisler's premise, claiming quite literally to BE goddesses for no reason other than being female. Never in my life, not even once, have I met or heard of any man or boy who claimed that MERELY BEING MALE gave him a literal status of godhood for which women could have no equivalent.

This last fact is one which I've mentioned online before. At least one feminist has tried to deflect my real point by angrily retorting, "You're saying men are never arrogant!" No, I wasn't saying that; I was only saying that ONE SPECIFIC STYLE of arrogance, an arrogance which claims ACTUAL deity rank for one's own sex BECAUSE OF being that sex, while denying it to the other sex, has in my own anecdotal experience only ever been practiced by females.

But in 1987, Mizzzzzz Eisler was not yet pushing for New-Agey boasts of mortal women literally being goddesses. She was settling for their presumed across-the-board moral and spiritual superiority. Thus, near the end of "The Chalice and the Blade," she very justifiably complains against such abuses of women by men as when husbands throw away the family savings on drinking binges. Behaviors like this ARE evil and inexcusable, and Hell probably will be full of lost male souls who for all eternity have to suffer the same terrible pangs of starvation that they knowingly inflicted on their own wives and children. But Eisler chooses to believe that the very idea of a male-headed household INEVITABLY MUST produce these evils.

Okay, if any fans of Mizzzzzz Eisler see my words, I invite you goddess-worshipers to identify for me exactly what Bible verses declare that it's okay for a husband to starve his family so he can get drunk. I'll wait.

Note to everybody else: they won't be able to find any such verse. Mizzzzzz Eisler wants Christianity to be thought of as discredited because men who DON'T follow Jesus behave in ways CONTRARY to the Bible.

Eisler's fans, unable to find a Bible verse approving of men who starve their children for the sake of booze, will resort to the usual ploy: pointing at the Mosaic Law which, MANY CENTURIES BEFORE Jesus came, imposed some admittedly harsh penalties on women. But whatever was the reason for this ancient approach, Jesus changed it forever on the day when He rescued the adulterous woman from death.

And Jesus did not need Mizzzzzz Eisler, or any other goddess-worshiper, to introduce Him to the idea of mercy.

For a reprinting which occurred after the Soviet Union collapsed, Eisler appended an epilogue in which, like numerous feminists, she tried to discredit free enterprise right along with discrediting the Bible. Referring to the oligarchs who grabbed control of the Russian economy in the Yeltsin era, she pretends that their crookedness was representative of capitalism. What it REALLY represented was men who had already been powerful IN THE SOVIET SYSTEM, simply retaining their advantages in a new format. Their piracy WASN'T free enterprise, but Eisler expects us to believe that it proves the wrongness of free enterprise. You know, just like the way drunken husbands who AREN'T obeying the Bible, somehow prove that Biblical ways are all wrong.

At the end of this epilogue, there's an irony: Eisler happily relates how her work has found acceptance in Germany. You know, Germany, the country where, three decades after "The Chalice and the Blade" was first released, Angela Merkel has been showing her divine female wisdom..... by pampering Islamist invaders, who treat women in the very way that Riane Eisler condemns.

Painful Truth About How To Find Comfort

I'm exploring the minefield of love; there's a country-western song waiting to be written there, but I'll leave it to someone who can play a guitar.

WHEN DO YOU DROP A MATTER, AND WHEN IS A GOOD PURPOSE SERVED BY BRINGING IT UP AGAIN?

As in most things, human selfishness affects how we want to answer this question. None of us LIKES to be reminded of times when WE did wrong. But with incidents where we have cause to believe that we were in the right and someone ELSE did wrong, It's more complicated. There are opposite extremes available to us. Bitter, quarrelsome personalities will cling to EVERY grudge, including made-up grudges. Timid, compliant personalities think ANY sort of peace is better than ANY conflict, so they'll surrender from the start, even if they are entirely in the right.

If we were forced to choose ONLY one or the other of these extremes, then of course the teachings of Jesus would require us to be the timid peacemakers, because no good comes of a strong will that clings to false positions and enjoys feeling angry like taking a drug. But those two extremes AREN'T the only possible positions. It is possible to be gentle in spirit, yet realize that sometimes we have to insist on truth.

Narcissistic, self-worshiping spouses or friends will never become any less narcissistic by always getting their way; they'll only gain momentum in their selfishness, demanding STILL MORE indulgence. Prince Adonijah, who was the last troublemaking son of King David after Amnon and Adonijah died, is reported by Scripture as being a troublemaker EXACTLY BECAUSE he was pampered and never held accountable for his actions. A self-worshiping friend or spouse has a great lie planted in his or her deepest heart; the lie says: "I'm better than other people because I say I'm better, so true justice demands that everyone else give way to me!" This terrible self-deception WILL NOT JUST GO AWAY by itself; if it is never corrected, it will only keep getting worse and worse, right up to the moment when that person drops into everlasting Hell.

So there HAS TO BE some kind of rebuke or correction for selfishness. But specific human situations are so diverse that I can't offer an easy rule that works for every person who needs to be corrected. I can only say here that sometimes a love relationship HAS NO CHANCE of succeeding if there ISN'T some correction of the more-selfish partner. What I can do here is to point out a subtler pitfall to be avoided. It should be easy to see that a wrongdoer must be made to face his wrongness at some point or he'll never become a better person. But it is also true that sometimes an old issue needs to come to light FOR THE GOAL OF PROVING FORGIVENESS.

My first wife Mary Cecilia was a righteous, noble-hearted woman in most ways. To anyone who knew her, I say that no virtue you saw in her was fake; it was all real. But she had exactly one hidden fault which AFFECTED NO ONE BUT ME: one area of behavior where she treated me very badly, and this without justification. It simply SUITED HER PRIDE to mistreat me in this way. This one area of selfishness, a jarring note against her many good qualities, was so deeply planted in her soul that it took the long suffering of her terminal cancer to bring her finally to repentance for it. I know that she confessed this very thing to a priest we knew; she deliberately arranged her confession in such a way that the priest WAS allowed afterwards to give me a hint of what it was about. And a goodbye letter that Mary left for me added confirmation.

I had already forgiven her in my heart for this ongoing offense against me; and I dare to be confident that the way I cared for her in her illness SHOWED HER that I forgave her and loved her. But I have cause to wish poignantly that I actually HAD spoken about it openly, to make my forgiveness unmistakable.

Six weeks or so before the end, while Mary Cecilia still was able to walk around, she came up to me in our kitchen and made a humble attempt to confess directly to me this very same evil habit that she had stubbornly and dishonestly made excuses for in the past. But she had barely begun to confess it to me before I told her, "There's no point in talking about that now." I intended my response as a way of saying it was water under the bridge, a thing to be put behind us. By this point in time, she could no more make any amends to me for what she had done than King David could have raised Uriah the Hittite from the dead, and I would never have asked her to TRY to make any amends now. May God forgive me if some part of my mind WANTED HER TO FEEL BAD about the fact that it was too late for her to undo the injury she had knowingly inflicted on me.

I probably would have felt able to go ahead and speak with Mary openly about it, if not for the fact that in the past she had played a manipulative game in this very area. That is, on several occasions over the years, she had put up a pretense of real remorse for her treatment of me: a pretense which was calculated to force me to say, "No, no, you're not a bad wife at all," because I'd be the bad guy if I didn't say that. No doubt some who read these words have encountered the same head-game from a false friend: fifteen seconds of play-acting at apology, cornering you into play-acting that no offense even happened, in order that the false friend can cut off any future possibility that you would hold him or her accountable for the bad behavior which he or she isn't really sorry for at all.

Now, my Mary Cecilia WASN'T false in her spirit; but in just this one area, affecting only me and revealed to no one else, she had allowed herself to indulge in the self-serving game of insincere apology intended only to silence legitimate rebuke. When she so belatedly DID really repent, I can say in my defense that if I had let the conversation continue, she might actually have offered to try to make some amends to me, and my accepting such an offer would have proven MORE CRUEL to her than my choice to cut the discussion short.

In the weeks we had left after that one attempt she made, I can say truthfully that I went on striving to lessen her bodily suffering, and went on giving her every sort of assurance that all her sins were forgiven. She simply HAD TO realize that I loved her unreservedly. And if she died still feeling ANY doubt of my specific forgiveness for her specific wrongdoing against me in particular.... well, she's IN HEAVEN now, the place where we shall know as we ARE known. So now she absolutely DOES know that I forgave her for that particular bad behavior. And when we meet again up there, no residual harm will remain from that forgiven sin.

Nonetheless, and even with the qualifiers I've given, I still wish that, on that evening in our kitchen, I had allowed Mary Cecilia to make what would have been her ONLY honest confession EVER made to me directly on this issue. My explicitly spelled-out forgiveness would have been an additional solace for her during that home stretch before she passed into the embrace of our forgiving Savior.

So, in conclusion: even if you don't hold a grudge for some wrong you suffered, it might be appropriate to bring the matter up one more time FOR THE VERY SAKE of making forgiveness obvious. And if you are the one who did harm, you CERTAINLY should be willing to endure the temporary embarrassment of saying, "I was wrong and you were right," in order that the wounds can truly be healed.

Truth is supposed to be spoken in love; we are told this endlessly, and usually the speaker's emphasis is ONLY on love as a sentiment. But the cause of love is not helped if truth IS NEVER SPOKEN AT ALL.