#intemperate speech

[catmint1]

The problem with the world is that everyone does not have a brain, but everyone does have a tongue.

—Raheel Farooq, Kalam

[darkmaga-retard]

By Andrea Widburg

Family members of those killed during the intemperate, ill-conceived, costly, and embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan invited Trump to attend the third-anniversary ceremony at Arlington. A female Arlington employee tried to prevent Trump’s team from recording the event and, failing that, filed a formal complaint alleging a physical altercation (which Trump’s team strongly denies).

Now, the Army has gotten involved. I suspect partisan political motives given that (a) no one in the feds cared when Obama or Biden did what Trump stands accused of doing and (b) Trump has stated that he intends to clean out the military’s DEI rot, which Obama seeded and Harris-Biden reinforced.

Here’s a brief summary (and here’s a longer one). The ceremony took place on August 26. The mainstream media were present, so cameras were definitely allowed; it’s only Trump’s cameras that were a form of desecration.

Again, Trump was there in response to a personal invitation. He did not give a speech, film a commercial, or invite a crowd. Instead, he helped place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Nevertheless, an Arlington employee (which means the employee was under the military’s umbrella) tried to block the Trump team. Maybe the employee was just officious and obsessed with decorum, or perhaps the employee knew that the day’s optics were awful for the Democrats: Biden was on the beach, Kamala put out a meaningless tweet, and Trump honored those who died because of Harris-Biden incompetence.

[xxxxvivix]

Yandere! Killua x OC

Anime: Hunter x Hunter

Character: Killua Zoldyck

t/w: non-reciprocal love, yandere, care, teenagers

a/n: I don't know English well and I write with the help of a translator. I really hope that the work did not turn out to be incoherent:(

🧊 Yandere! Killua is intemperate and impatient. After meeting him, it was he who took the initiative in communication. He often threw stones at your window, and if you didn't answer, he knocked on the front door and questioned your parents.

"Hey, come on, look out the window. Are you already asleep?"

💧Yandere! Killua did not immediately realize that he was in love. At first, taking care of you seemed just friendly, but later he began to think that something was clearly wrong.

"No, I won't let you skate. Why? What if you break something?"

🧊Yandere! Killua began to notice strange habits and desires behind him. He may hold his gaze on you for a long time or want to braid your hair into pigtails. Things that used to seem nasty to Killua and too vanilla now seem normal.

"Are you comfortable with such long hair? I think you'd be better off with pigtails."

💧Yandere! Killua doesn't even think about the fact that his feelings are not reciprocal. If you didn't like him, you wouldn't smile when you see him. Is that right?

"I like you. It seems to me that we could become something more than friends"

🧊Yandere! Killua was very disappointed to see your puzzled face. The guy's white eyebrows furrowed when you started talking incoherent speech nonsense about the fact that you are still children.

"Why not? You like me. The fact that we are children is not an excuse, name the real reason"

💧Yandere! Killua got angry when you hesitantly told him that you were in love with someone else. You thought Killua would understand, he's a friend, your old friend, always ready to help. But no. Killua didn't understand.

"Who is he?"

🧊Yandere! Killua will definitely find this lucky guy, even if you don't say the damn name.

[mightyflamethrower]

After last Thursday’s debate, Biden himself laid to rest the Democratic lie that he was robust and in control of his faculties. In truth, he demonstrated to the nation that he is a sad, failing octogenarian who could not perform any job in America other than apparently the easy task of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief in charge of our nuclear codes.

In 2019, Democratic primary candidates often hit rival Joe Biden for his apparent senior moments and incoherence. During the 2020 campaign, Biden often became in bizarre fashion animated and nasty (“you ain’t black”/“fat”/“lying dog-faced pony soldier”/“junkie”).

His “corn pop” stories were grotesque and had a senile accentuation of his earlier “super-predator” and “clean” black riffs. As president, his mental decline progressed geometrically, in the sense that every three months, Biden became far, far worse than during the prior 90 days. His handlers long ago had determined that masking his feebleness at the expense of the security and safety of the nation was a small price to pay to retain power.

What followed was the most comprehensive deceit in presidential history, analogous to insisting that frail and dying FDR in 1944 was just fine as the November election approached or that Woodrow Wilson was expertly running the country as he lay bedridden and near comatose.

Any who questioned the vigorous Biden narrative was trashed as “ageist.” Special counsel Robert Hur was dubbed a “hack” for accurately describing Biden as so amnesiac he would win nullification acquittal from a sympathetic jury.

An array of court sycophants periodically gave interviews, insisting that the robust Biden was smarter and wiser than ever. His press secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre, helped coin a new slur, “cheap fake,” for any who collated video and audio clips demonstrating that Biden was obviously non compos mentis. Would she say the same today after the about-face CNN panelists reviewed Biden’s serial debate lapses to support their now-opportune advocacy that he not run for reelection? Would she wish to be a passenger in a car driven by Biden?

In sum, the “dynamic Biden” farce was finally laid to rest by a debate, but not before it had served the original leftist Faustian bargain. Under the guise of COVID, an enfeebled and stationary Biden outsourced his entire 2020 campaign to toady journalists and surrogate politicians.

His task was to pose from his basement as the uniter, ‘good ol’ Joe from Scranton,’ serving as the pseudo-moderate veneer for the most far left agenda in recent history. In the bargain, Joe and Jill enjoyed the privileges of power and status, while they farmed out the presidency to an array of former Obama subordinates and the hard left of what is left of the old Democratic Party.

The useful lie continued throughout his presidency, escalating in direct proportion to Joe’s mounting stumbles, brain freezes, rambling, and incomprehensible speech. When our president said something either outrageous or unfathomable, the public was to assume that it was intemperate to attribute his failures to senility.

So, the nation became acculturated to deciphering about 60 percent of what he said and writing off the rest to his never-to-be-spoken-of disability. It was the cognitive bookend to the ruse that FDR was able to stand and walk—although far worse because being wheel-chair bound is not a limitation for a president, whereas cognitive incapacity of Biden’s magnitude most certainly is.

The Biden lie was the crown jewel of a number of other left-wing/media fabrications. The more they spread, the more they seemed absurd, and the more they were refuted—so all the more others took their place and the more their promulgators never apologized but simply moved on to their next one. The common denominator was that all the lies, during their existence, were useful to the progressive project.

The Russian collusion hoax helped lose Trump the 2016 popular vote. Its resumption during his presidency ate up 22 months of his administration during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller farce.

The October surprise laptop disinformation lie may have cost Trump the 2020 election. But it was concocted so that Joe Biden could stare at the debate camera and swear to the American people that Trump was a liar, citing “51 intelligence authorities” who insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was a likely hallmark of Russian disinformation.

We were asked to believe that clever Russian disinformationists fabricated all the sick photos and selfies of poor Hunter, knew the Biden family’s intimate tensions and fault lines as evidenced in the computer’s texts and emails, and were able to package and deposit the computer to either a Russian operative masquerading as a computer repairment or have it delivered to the supposedly useful idiot. The truth was, the FBI had the laptop during the debate and had long verified its authenticity—and thus kept mum as its brethren intelligence apparatchiks lied to the nation.

What the untruth did not fully reveal was that Biden’s campaign foreign policy guru, Antony Blinken (the current Secretary of State), cooked up the entire ruse. He enlisted former CIA grandee Mike Morell, who then rounded up on spec the confessed lying duo of John Brennan and James Clapper, who in turn drafted still more deceivers, among them the once esteemed Leon Panetta.

And the lie worked perfectly as envisioned, far better than even Russian “collusion.” The nation was deceived into believing that the “asset” Trump was reduced once again to colluding with Putin to enlist his former KGB soldiers to smear the upright Biden family and thus warp yet another election.

Note that all these lies were never retracted. No one ever apologizes. No one is ever punished, even when the lie is given under oath. No one ever has any regrets. And no one ever has any hesitation to lie again, given the utility of the prior untruth.

We were told by the deceitful Alejandro Mayorkas that the border was “secure” as he deliberately destroyed it and welcomed in over 10 million illegal aliens. That lie survived even the absurdity of years of nightly news clips (“cheap fakes?”) of thousands swarming an open border. And it died only when the 2024 election approached and the Biden administration read polls showing that a vast majority wanted the border closed and illegal entrants deported. Then suddenly, the lie that the border was secure transmogrified into the back-up lie that “Republicans would not help us close the now-insecure border.” Translated into Orwellian terms, the border that was crossed by 10 million was always secure but could have been made even more secure had Republicans joined Democrats to secure what was already “secure.”

We live in an era of lies. Sometimes they are purely political, like the Charlottesville “both sides” yarn. And sometimes they change history, like the fabrications that bats and pangolins, not the communist Chinese Wuhan virology lab, birthed the COVID-19 virus, or the Anthony Fauci contortion that his offices did not fund and help out, stealthily and in circumvention of U.S. law, deadly gain-of-function virology research in communist China.

Yet another lie was institutionalized: the January 6 riot was a full-fledged, carefully planned armed insurrection to overthrow the government. In contrast, the four months in 2020 of killing, assault, arson, and looting that saw over 35 dead, 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, $2 billion in damage, and a federal courthouse, a police precinct and a historic church torched were “cries of the heart” from the oppressed and victimized.

Those untruths ensured that hundreds of mostly naïve protestors who showed up in the capitol soon became convicted felons serving long sentences, while the 14,000 arrested for the 2020 mayhem were mostly released as overzealous but otherwise sympathetic activists.

These lies changed the course of the nation. They are birthed by the incestuous marriage of a Washington-New York political culture and a corrupt media.

The purveyors are Juvenal’s “who will police the police.” They are the administrative overseers in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the various cabinets and agencies. They feel they are exempt from any consequences for the damage they do, given that in their day jobs they operate as judges, jury and executioners.

Finally, while all governments lie, the left is far more adroit at it because, in their any-means-necessary/the-ends-justify-the-means credo, they spread supposedly good “lies” that stop the Hitlerian Trump, neuter the creepy deplorables/irredeemables/chumps/clingers or save the good people from the MAGA anti-vaxers and assorted yahoos.

Will the lies continue?

Indeed, they will thrive until the people slash the administrative state of its unaccountable and unelected “experts”; until they indict those in the future like Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan and their brethren who lie under oath or to federal investigators; until they ostracize and utterly discredit those like Mayorkas, Fauci, and the Bidens whose deceptions took hostage an entire nation; and until they tune out a bankrupt media, the power cord of the entire Pravda enterprise.

[monimarat]

So I was reading Vieux Cordelier VII and I thought the metaphors Desmoulins uses are interesting in the context of the language of terror and it’s association with nature and the sublime, specifically in relation to the imagery of things being “frozen.”

In A genealogy of terror in eighteenth-century France, one of the things Ronald Schechter writes about is how the word “terror” was, among other things, tied to the incapacitating awe in the face of natural forces and how related metaphors can be seen in the writing of revolutionaries.

In no. VII, Desmoulins uses that imagery repeatedly to describe what he sees as the impact terror has had on the Republic. I like this passage in particular:

Better would be the intemperance of the language of democracy, the pessimism of these eternal detractors of the present, whose bile pours out on everything around them, than this cold poison of fear, which freezes thought to the bottom of the soul, and prevents it from gushing forth at the Tribune or in writing. Better would be the misanthropy of Timon, who can find nothing beautiful in Athens, than this general terror, like mountains of ice, which, from one end of France to the other, covers the sea of opinion and obstructs its ebb and flow.

The example that Schechter uses in his book is this speech by Barère at the Convention on November 25th, 1793, where he is talking about how terror is intended to paralyze domestic and foreign enemies, but has no place in the Convention:

It is not at all in the temple of liberty, in the center of the Revolution, that terror must live, that courage must be frozen, that speech must be paralyzed; it is not at all here that souls must be timid, energy dulled, and that the character of the free man must be effaced. It is from this sanctuary that terror must go to restrain domestic enemies… and from this tribune that must come rewards and encouragements for the armies of the Republic and fright for the foreign cohorts.

And, of course, there is Saint-Just’s famous quote from the Fragments. I’m including the full thing because I usually only seen the first couple of sentences quoted:

The Revolution is frozen; all principles have been weakened; all that's left are red bonnets worn in intrigue. The exercise of terror has jaded crime, as strong liquors jade the palate. Undoubtedly, it's not yet time to do good. The particular good is a palliative. It is necessary to wait for a general evil great enough that general opinion feels the need for measures to do good. What produces general good is always terrible, or seems bizarre when you start too early. The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through laws. Its impetus has no other object, and must overthrow all that opposes it; and each period, each victory over monarchism must lead to and consecrate a republican institution. There is talk of the height of the Revolution: who will set that height? It is mobile. There have been free peoples who fell from greater heights.

[zerogate]

The writings of John Chrysostom provide a rich taste of the tone of this new literature. ‘Let there be no fornication,’ he declared in one of his many fiery speeches on the topic of lust. A beautiful woman was, he warned, a terrible snare.

A (non-exhaustive) list of other snares that the work of this revered speaker warned against includes laughter (‘often gives birth to foul discourse’); banter (‘the root of subsequent evils’); dice (‘introduces into our life an infinite host of miseries’); horse-racing (as above), and the theatre, which could lead to a wide variety of evils including ‘fornication, intemperance, and every kind of impurity’.

The index of a collection of his sermons gives a taste of the whole. Under the word ‘Fear’ one is offered:

needful to holy men, 334; a chastisement for carelessness, 347; of the Lord true riches, 351; a punishment, 355; awakens conscience, 363; of harm from man ignoble, 366; a good man firm against, 369; without the fear of hell death terrible, 374; of hell profitable . . .

And so on, for twenty-five references, before ending in the nicely conclusive: ‘purifies like a furnace’. Look under ‘Happiness’ and the eager reader would be greeted with rather scant offerings. Here, one is merely offered:

in God alone, 46034

This was a new literary world and a newly serious one. ‘The extent to which this new Christian story both displaced and substituted for all others is breathtaking,’ writes the modern academic Brent D. Shaw. ‘The power of this Christian talk was produced by many things, among them a remorseless hortatory pedagogy, a hectoring moralising of the individual, and a ceaseless management of the minutiae of everyday life. Above all, it was a form of speech marked by an absence of humour. It was a morose and a deadly serious world. The joke, the humorous kick, the hilarious satires, the funny cut-them-down-to-size jibe, have vanished.’

And in the place of humour, came fear. Christian congregations found themselves rained on by oratorical fire and brimstone. For their own good, of course. As Chrysostom observed with pleasure: ‘in our churches we hear countless discourses on eternal punishments, on rivers of fire, on the venomous worm, on bonds that cannot be burst, on exterior darkness’.

-- Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

[catenaaurea]

Catechism of Pope Saint Pius X

The Commandments

The Sixth and Ninth Commandment

1. Q. What does the Sixth Commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery, forbid?

A. The Sixth Commandment, Thou shalt not commit adultery, forbids every act, every look and every word contrary to chastity; it also forbids infidelity in marriage.

2. Q. What does the Ninth Commandment forbid?

A. The Ninth Commandment expressly forbids every desire contrary to that fidelity which husband and wife vowed to observe when contracting marriage; and it also forbids every guilty thought or desire of anything that is prohibited by the Sixth Commandment.

3. Q. Is impurity a great sin?

A. It is a most grave and abominable sin in the sight of God and man; it lowers man to the condition of the brute; it drags him into many other sins and vices; and it provokes the most terrible chastisements both in this world and in the next.

4. Q. Is every thought that comes into the mind against purity a sin?

A. The thoughts that come into the mind against purity are not of themselves sins, but rather temptations and incentives to sin.

5. Q. When is a bad thought a sin?

A. Bad thoughts, even though resulting in no bad deed, are sins when we culpably entertain them, or consent to them, or expose ourselves to the proximate danger of consenting to them.

6. Q. What do the Sixth and Ninth Commandments command?

A. The Sixth Commandment commands us to be chaste and modest in act, in look, in behavior, and in speech. The Ninth Commandment commands us in addition to this to be chaste and pure interiorly, that is, in mind and in heart.

7. Q. What must we do to observe the Sixth and Ninth Commandments?

A. To be able to observe the Sixth and Ninth Commandments, we ought to pray often and from our hearts to God; be devout to the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of purity; remember that God watches us; think on death, on the Divine chastisements, and on the Passion of Jesus Christ; guard the senses; practice Christian mortification; and frequent the Sacraments with the proper dispositions.

8. Q. What must we avoid in order to preserve ourselves chaste?

A. To preserve ourselves chaste we must shun idleness, bad companions, the reading of bad books and papers, intemperance, the sight of indecent statues or pictures, licentious theatres, dangerous conversations, and all other occasions of sin.

[bruteides]

Four conflicts during the late 1940s highlighted the problems faced by organized labor at the time. The first pitted a few union leaders against a sometimes angry President Truman. The President, a liberal New Dealer, ordinarily supported blue-collar demands for change. But he had been distressed by the strikes in January 1946, which he believed threatened his efforts at reconversion, and he grew alarmed when faced with strikes by coal miners two months later and by railroad workers in May. Truman could not prevent the miners from striking, but he was determined to stop the railroad workers. Trains, after all, were vital to the American economy, for both passenger and freight travel, in the days before widespread superhighway transportation. After weeks of bickering with the carriers and twenty rail unions, Truman thought he had an agreement in hand. But leaders of the two largest unions, A.F. Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and Alvanley Johnston of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, refused to toe the line. Both were old friends of the President, who brought them to the Oval Office three days before the strike deadline and lectured them, "If you think I'm going to sit here and let you tie up this whole country, you're crazy as hell." Whitney said he was sorry: "We've got to go through with this, Mr. President. Our men are demanding it." Truman responded by giving them forty-eight hours to reach a settlement. "If you don't, I'm going to take over the railroads in the name of the government." When the workers nonetheless went out on strike, Truman became as angry as any American President of recent times. On Friday, may 24, he marched into a Cabinet meeting and announced he would go to Capitol Hill and seek an extraordinarily draconian law. it would have authorized him to draft strikers into the military, without regard to age or number of dependents, whenever a walkout threatened to create a national emergency. Truman even had aides prepare a speech to be given over the radio that evening. It was virtually irrational, assailing the patriotism of "effete union leaders" like Whitney, Johnston, Murray and others, whom he also associated with Communism. "Every single one of the strikers and their demigog leaders have been living in luxury, working when they pleased and drawing from four to forty times the pay of a fighting soldier." Truman's draft closed, "Let's give the country back to the people. Let's put transportation and production back to work, hang a few traitors, and make our country safe for democracy." Charles Ross, Truman's old friend and press secretary, was "horrified" by the diatribe. Clark Clifford, Truman's top policy adviser, recalled that it was surely one of the most intemperate documents ever written by a President." Ross and others managed to calm Truman down, and his radio address that evening was forceful but temperate. Still, he insisted on going to Capitol Hill the next day, by which time everyone knew his intent. As he entered the House, he received a standing ovation, whereupon he outlined his tough proposals. When he was almost finished, his chief labor adviser, John Steelman, informed Clifford, who was in an anteroom off the House floord, that the unions had settled on the terms proposed by the President. Clifford wrote a note about the settlement and had it delivered to Truman, who paused and then read it to thunderous applause. Clifford and others considered it a victory for Truman, who dropped his demands for legislative action. But many liberals and labor leaders were deeply frightened. The New Republic, a leading liberal journal, called Trumans congressional message the "most vicious piece of anti-union legislation ever introduced by an American President."

James T. Patterson — Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974

[yellingintothedarkness]

PROVERBS 16 1 -Mortals make elaborate plans, but God has the last word. 2 -Humans are satisfied with whatever looks good; God probes for what is good. 3 -Put God in charge of your work, then what you’ve planned will take place. 4 -God made everything with a place and purpose; even the wicked are included—but for judgment. 5 -God can’t stomach arrogance or pretense; believe me, he’ll put those braggarts in their place. 6 -Guilt is banished through love and truth; Fear-of-God deflects evil. 7 -When God approves of your life, even your enemies will end up shaking your hand. 8 -Far better to be right and poor than to be wrong and rich. 9 -We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it. It Pays to Take Life Seriously 10 -A good leader motivates, doesn’t mislead, doesn’t exploit. 11 -God cares about honesty in the workplace; your business is his business. 12 -Good leaders abhor wrongdoing of all kinds; sound leadership has a moral foundation. 13 -Good leaders cultivate honest speech; they love advisors who tell them the truth. 14 -An intemperate leader wreaks havoc in lives; you’re smart to stay clear of someone like that. 15 -Good tempered leaders invigorate lives; they’re like spring rain and sunshine. 16 -Get wisdom—it’s worth more than money; choose insight over income every time. 17 -The road of right living bypasses evil; watch your step and save your life. 18 -First pride, then the crash— the bigger the ego, the harder the fall. 19 -It’s better to live humbly among the poor than to live it up among the rich and famous. 20 -It pays to take life seriously; things work out when you trust in God. 21 -A wise person gets known for insight; gracious words add to one’s reputation. 22 -True intelligence is a spring of fresh water, while fools sweat it out the hard way. 23 -They make a lot of sense, these wise folks; whenever they speak, their reputation increases. 24 -Gracious speech is like clover honey— good taste to the soul, quick energy for the body. 25 -There’s a way that looks harmless enough; look again—it leads straight to hell. 26 -Appetite is an incentive to work; hunger makes you work all the harder. 27 -Mean people spread mean gossip; their words smart and burn. 28 -Troublemakers start fights; gossips break up friendships. 29 -Calloused climbers betray their very own friends; they’d stab their own grandmothers in the back. 30 -A shifty eye betrays an evil intention; a clenched jaw signals trouble ahead. 31 -Gray hair is a mark of distinction, the award for a God-loyal life. 32 -Moderation is better than muscle, self-control better than political power. 33 -Make your motions and cast your votes, but God has the final say.

[velvialifestylesummit]

The strenuous articulation of Biden in his speech for the summit G20 in Vietnam may be attributed to the the apoplectic symptoms associated with torpidity of daily movement as well as his recent feeble walk in a public ceremony that the congressional impeachment may become tosh if the senescent candidacy for the presidential election remains the same without configuration. Hence the energetic nomination of America for the looming female candidacy is feasible to revitalize the senescent leadership at the Whitehouse for 2024. The change of leadership should focus on the younger candidacy with convincing sagacity. The implementation of digital Dollars tends to configure the insuperable indebtedness of the Biden Administration without relying on the exorbitant quantitative easing approach to intemperately run the national administration on raising liabilities in future that the digitalization of monetary transactions is inevitable in mitigating the impact of monetary devaluation on international trade. This helps eliminate the scantiness of food expenditure for daily consumption under monetary impoverishment in the coming years.

[deltamusings]

Craig Robertson Family Statement

We, the family of Craig Deeluew Robertson, are shocked and devastated by the senseless and tragic killing of our beloved father and brother, and we fervently mourn the loss of a good and decent man. The Craig Robertson we knew was a kind and generous person who was always willing to assist another in need, even when advanced age, limited mobility, and other physical challenges made it more difficult and painful for him to do so. He often used his expert woodworking skills to craft beautiful and creative items for others, including toys such as sleighs, rocking horses, and bubble gum dispensers for the children of friends and neighbors at Christmas time. He was active in his local church congregation and loved the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart. He was a devoted dog lover all his life, and he lavished his animals with love and affection. He was a lover of history and an avid reader of every kind of book. In his younger years, he was a sportsman and hunter. He was a firearm enthusiast, collector and gunsmith, who staunchly supported the constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms for the purposes of providing food and protection for his family and home. As a safety inspector in the steel industry, he worked diligently and conscientiously to safeguard the lives and well-being of untold thousands who would use, and benefit from, the numerous industrial and public works projects he was responsible for during the course of a decades-long career. Craig loved this country with all his heart. He saw it as a God-inspired and God-blessed land of liberty. He was understandably frustrated and distraught by the present and on-going erosions to our constitutionally protected freedoms and the rights of free citizens wrought by what he, and many others in this nation, observed to be a corrupt and overreaching government. As an elderly–and largely homebound–man, there was very little he could do but exercise his First Amendment right to free speech and voice his protest in what has become the public square of our age–the internet and social media. Though his statements were intemperate at times, he has never, and would never, commit any act of violence against another human being over a political or philosophical disagreement. As our family processes the grief and pain of our loss, we would have it be known that we hold no personal animosity towards those individuals who took part in the ill-fated events of the morning of August 9, 2023, which resulted in Craig’s death. We ask that the media and public respect our family members’ privacy and give us the time and space needed to come to terms with the sad tragedy of these events.

[mskoreodyssey]

The Hero Titles - III - Archetypes

[@utopianparadoxist​’s video]

As a quartet closest to the center with the most interrelated verb. It's easiest to describe prophets and magicians as two sides of a coin. Both are defined by their unique connection to magic. The art of using individual will to change reality in a way that would normally be impossible. They're also connected to the scientific process. As it describes the collection of true knowledge through the changing of variables.

As emissaries of their Aeon's divine will, prophets use their aspect as a source of knowledge. They're known for becoming experts and analysts. Often approached as consultants and sources of guidance. The speech of a Prophet is powerful, and the way they spell words will be often linked to their dialogue. Which is itself influenced by their aspect or the legacy of their prophecy. Their insight of the future and the rules governing reality allows them to issue prophecies, making these individuals effective guides. But they can also perform miracles, impacting reality directly through the sheer intensity of their thoughts. But both run the risk of becoming intemperate in their knowledge and arcane. Even alienating to the friends that should listen to them.

As sorcerers who wield their aspects great power, magicians use their aspect as a tool of change. Mighty beyond their kin, magicians transform reality and are altered by their aspect in kind. They're often looked to as leaders and sources of direction. Knowing best how to flow with reality and respond to change as it comes. Their speech is often marked by the way they spell words, as the locutions to a wizard's spell is always linked to the magic being cast. Successful wizards learn to take control of their immense power and use it for themselves. Witches will rest that power from their familiar. A living source of their aspect that both AIDS and controls them. Heirs must take responsibility for their magic inheritance or risk letting it consume them, and both risk turning to dark magic that worsens the world. Evil sorcery is practiced whenever we diminish ourselves or other people. Changing individuals into unhappier, more unfulfilled versions of themselves.

Whether they take the form of Robin Hood, pirates or cyberpunks. Outlaws are rebels who stand outside society's rules and prefer to live by the law of the land and their own personal values. Since their only community is the one which they make themselves. More solitary thieves tend to pick their friends carefully, only trusting those they consider equals. This tends to make them high-impact solo players, but they can sometimes go AWOL and take action with no regard for their group's feelings. If they think they know what's best. More group-oriented rogues tend to be friendlier to everyone, but are also intensely devoted to those who win their hearts. Sometimes to an unhealthy degree. Outlaws are skilled at stealing their aspect from reality and using it as a versatile tool. Thieves will use this ability to amass power and options for themselves. While rogues will spread their wishes like gifts to empower those around them.

Whether we're talking about warriors or butlers, servants are those who serve and protect. They stand defending the front lines of society or helping whether it requires structure. Acting as Guardians and assistance as duty calls. Feeling beholden to the expectations of society, servants often adopt some version of a Warrior's Code of Honor. Which factors into the persona they strive to project. Group-focused Knights try to make themselves seem reliable and dependable. Getting others to trust them to know what to do and how to help. Solitary Pages tend to use their personas to try to escape accountability. Convincing others to let them indulge whatever fantasies interest them. Because of their early reliance on others and self-serving nature, pages have the longest path of any class to reaching their true power. However, once they reach it, their vast reserves of untapped potential make them second to none.

Powerful warriors, both Knights and Pages shine at using their aspect as a weapon with. Which to serve their enemies as a weapon with which to provide their enemies devastating defeats. Whether it's in combat or conversation. Knights are devoted to serving their friends. Between either direct service or by making gifts out of or through their aspect. With which to empower them further. A Page's innocent and kind-hearted nature tends to inspire in others the desire to be helpful to them in turn. Like thieves, they'll collect both their aspect, the tools and allies that grants them to further empower themselves. However, both should be careful that they don't confuse their personas with their own inner selves. Or use them to deny their feelings and those of others.

Royals are those concerned with aristocracy and nobility. They're intensely concerned with the great figures who shape society. As such, share a focus on birth-rights and legacy. Their passion for society makes them intensely devoted to the causes they choose and the people they love. Never one to shy away from a challenge, the Royal will take on any fight so long as the cause is righteous in their eyes. These individuals are judges and revolutionaries. Tearing down what's old and stagnant to allow for the flourishing of the new. They're formidable attackers, but also effective de-buffers. As they remove their aspect from reality or wear down the enemy through its use. However, their reverence for high-class court society can make them judgmental and arrogant. Their greatest challenge is resisting the ego that would convince them they're above others.

Fairies are a kind of elemental, a being who is made of magic. Their identities are crafted by the weight of their own aspect above all else. Being so connected to their own inner-nature, insulates them from the society around them. Prone to meddling and mischief, fairies make a mark all their own, and the world can only stand by and watch. This tends to give them an ethereal quality that makes them stand out. They're healers and improvers, bringing into existence what wasn't there before. Though they can fight perfectly well on their own terms, they can also grant powerful buffs. As they add their aspect to reality or build up others through its use.

However, being so defined by their own inner worlds makes the fairies' greatest challenge handling their own extreme tempers. Depending on whether they're in a good or bad mood, they can evoke either of the two fairy courts.

Happy fairies evoke the court of the seelie, seeming lucky or blessed. The sorrows of the world never touch them for long. A truly hurt fairy can evoke the unseelie, seeming inherently unhappy and prone to misfortune. They can be unpredictably violent and intensely vindictive.

[rpnewspaperblog]

Critical, delicate dance between religion and civil society

As a lifelong student of world history, I am accustomed to religionist diatribes like that expressed in the Feb. 18 letter to the editor of the Journal-Courier (State of the Union speech “pack of lies”). Intemperate, God-is-vengeance outbursts are the stuff of history. Alas, they still offer little in the way of genuine solace and solutions to what ails the human condition.  They also bring to…

[mightyflamethrower]

After last Thursday’s debate,

Biden himself laid to rest the Democratic lie that he was robust and in control of his faculties. In truth, he demonstrated to the nation that he is a sad, failing octogenarian who could not perform any job in America other than apparently the easy task of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief in charge of our nuclear codes.

In 2019, Democratic primary candidates often hit rival Joe Biden for his apparent senior moments and incoherence. During the 2020 campaign, Biden often became in bizarre fashion animated and nasty (“you ain’t black”/“fat”/“lying dog-faced pony soldier”/“junkie”).

His “corn pop” stories were grotesque and had a senile accentuation of his earlier “super-predator” and “clean” black riffs. As president, his mental decline progressed geometrically, in the sense that every three months, Biden became far, far worse than during the prior 90 days. His handlers long ago had determined that masking his feebleness at the expense of the security and safety of the nation was a small price to pay to retain power.

What followed was the most comprehensive deceit in presidential history, analogous to insisting that frail and dying FDR in 1944 was just fine as the November election approached or that Woodrow Wilson was expertly running the country as he lay bedridden and near comatose.

Any who questioned the vigorous Biden narrative was trashed as “ageist.” Special counsel Robert Hur was dubbed a “hack” for accurately describing Biden as so amnesiac he would win nullification acquittal from a sympathetic jury.

An array of court sycophants periodically gave interviews, insisting that the robust Biden was smarter and wiser than ever. His press secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre, helped coin a new slur, “cheap fake,” for any who collated video and audio clips demonstrating that Biden was obviously non compos mentis. Would she say the same today after the about-face CNN panelists reviewed Biden’s serial debate lapses to support their now-opportune advocacy that he not run for reelection? Would she wish to be a passenger in a car driven by Biden?

In sum, the “dynamic Biden” farce was finally laid to rest by a debate, but not before it had served the original leftist Faustian bargain. Under the guise of COVID, an enfeebled and stationary Biden outsourced his entire 2020 campaign to toady journalists and surrogate politicians.

His task was to pose from his basement as the uniter, ‘good ol’ Joe from Scranton,’ serving as the pseudo-moderate veneer for the most far left agenda in recent history. In the bargain, Joe and Jill enjoyed the privileges of power and status, while they farmed out the presidency to an array of former Obama subordinates and the hard left of what is left of the old Democratic Party.

The useful lie continued throughout his presidency, escalating in direct proportion to Joe’s mounting stumbles, brain freezes, rambling, and incomprehensible speech. When our president said something either outrageous or unfathomable, the public was to assume that it was intemperate to attribute his failures to senility.

So, the nation became acculturated to deciphering about 60 percent of what he said and writing off the rest to his never-to-be-spoken-of disability. It was the cognitive bookend to the ruse that FDR was able to stand and walk—although far worse because being wheel-chair bound is not a limitation for a president, whereas cognitive incapacity of Biden’s magnitude most certainly is.

The Biden lie was the crown jewel of a number of other left-wing/media fabrications. The more they spread, the more they seemed absurd, and the more they were refuted—so all the more others took their place and the more their promulgators never apologized but simply moved on to their next one. The common denominator was that all the lies, during their existence, were useful to the progressive project.

The Russian collusion hoax helped lose Trump the 2016 popular vote. Its resumption during his presidency ate up 22 months of his administration during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller farce.

The October surprise laptop disinformation lie may have cost Trump the 2020 election. But it was concocted so that Joe Biden could stare at the debate camera and swear to the American people that Trump was a liar, citing “51 intelligence authorities” who insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was a likely hallmark of Russian disinformation.

We were asked to believe that clever Russian disinformationists fabricated all the sick photos and selfies of poor Hunter, knew the Biden family’s intimate tensions and fault lines as evidenced in the computer’s texts and emails, and were able to package and deposit the computer to either a Russian operative masquerading as a computer repairment or have it delivered to the supposedly useful idiot. The truth was, the FBI had the laptop during the debate and had long verified its authenticity—and thus kept mum as its brethren intelligence apparatchiks lied to the nation.

What the untruth did not fully reveal was that Biden’s campaign foreign policy guru, Antony Blinken (the current Secretary of State), cooked up the entire ruse. He enlisted former CIA grandee Mike Morell, who then rounded up on spec the confessed lying duo of John Brennan and James Clapper, who in turn drafted still more deceivers, among them the once esteemed Leon Panetta.

And the lie worked perfectly as envisioned, far better than even Russian “collusion.” The nation was deceived into believing that the “asset” Trump was reduced once again to colluding with Putin to enlist his former KGB soldiers to smear the upright Biden family and thus warp yet another election.

Note that all these lies were never retracted. No one ever apologizes. No one is ever punished, even when the lie is given under oath. No one ever has any regrets. And no one ever has any hesitation to lie again, given the utility of the prior untruth.

We were told by the deceitful Alejandro Mayorkas that the border was “secure” as he deliberately destroyed it and welcomed in over 10 million illegal aliens. That lie survived even the absurdity of years of nightly news clips (“cheap fakes?”) of thousands swarming an open border. And it died only when the 2024 election approached and the Biden administration read polls showing that a vast majority wanted the border closed and illegal entrants deported. Then suddenly, the lie that the border was secure transmogrified into the back-up lie that “Republicans would not help us close the now-insecure border.” Translated into Orwellian terms, the border that was crossed by 10 million was always secure but could have been made even more secure had Republicans joined Democrats to secure what was already “secure.”

We live in an era of lies. Sometimes they are purely political, like the Charlottesville “both sides” yarn. And sometimes they change history, like the fabrications that bats and pangolins, not the communist Chinese Wuhan virology lab, birthed the COVID-19 virus, or the Anthony Fauci contortion that his offices did not fund and help out, stealthily and in circumvention of U.S. law, deadly gain-of-function virology research in communist China.

Yet another lie was institutionalized: the January 6 riot was a full-fledged, carefully planned armed insurrection to overthrow the government. In contrast, the four months in 2020 of killing, assault, arson, and looting that saw over 35 dead, 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, $2 billion in damage, and a federal courthouse, a police precinct and a historic church torched were “cries of the heart” from the oppressed and victimized.

Those untruths ensured that hundreds of mostly naïve protestors who showed up in the capitol soon became convicted felons serving long sentences, while the 14,000 arrested for the 2020 mayhem were mostly released as overzealous but otherwise sympathetic activists.

These lies changed the course of the nation. They are birthed by the incestuous marriage of a Washington-New York political culture and a corrupt media.

The purveyors are Juvenal’s “who will police the police.” They are the administrative overseers in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the various cabinets and agencies. They feel they are exempt from any consequences for the damage they do, given that in their day jobs they operate as judges, jury and executioners.

Finally, while all governments lie, the left is far more adroit at it because, in their any-means-necessary/the-ends-justify-the-means credo, they spread supposedly good “lies” that stop the Hitlerian Trump, neuter the creepy deplorables/irredeemables/chumps/clingers or save the good people from the MAGA anti-vaxers and assorted yahoos.

Will the lies continue?

Indeed, they will thrive until the people slash the administrative state of its unaccountable and unelected “experts”; until they indict those in the future like Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan and their brethren who lie under oath or to federal investigators; until they ostracize and utterly discredit those like Mayorkas, Fauci, and the Bidens whose deceptions took hostage an entire nation; and until they tune out a bankrupt media, the power cord of the entire Pravda enterprise.

[skloomdumpster]

FTWS Season 1 - Episode Titles

So, this only took me one year to figure out, but: 

All episode titles come from poems and/or quotes by the famous Irish writer William Butler Yeats. For further context, Yeats was born in Ireland and then later educated in both Dublin and London. He was very interested in Irish folklore and the occult, being those themes of most of his earlier works, but later on his writings trickled down a more politicized path.  He was born in 1865 and lived to 1939. 

Episode 1: “To The Waters and The Wild”

This title comes from the poem “The Stolen Child”, written in 1886 and published in 1889. It’s part of Yeats first wave, talking about Irish folklore and the concerns over children who were led astray by faeries. Coincidence much? This is also the episode we see our Stolen Child, Bloom, who’s just been forced to move away from her adoptive family, because, as Aisha herself points out, Bloom is a changeling. Quite literal. Here’s the full passage:  

Episode 2: “No Strangers Here”. 

As far as connections go, all I could find on this is that it was a quote said by Yeats and the full thing goes “there are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t met yet”. Episode 2 is the episode the girls start to grow closer, so again, very literal. 

Episode 3: “Heavy Mortal Hopes”. 

The episode title comes from a line in the poem “To The Rose Upon The Rood of Time” published in 1893, being the full verse: 

Now, this one is a little murky, but a couple highlights: In episode 2 is when Bloom first hears the mysterious voice calling her, but it’s in episode 3 that she’s obsessed over finding who is Rosalind. Connections might be drawn between the “heavy mortal hopes” that toil and pass, such as Terra’s insecurities, Aisha’s worries and even Sky and Silva’s dilemma, as they all fade into the background to the grand reveal of the episode, Rosalind, declared “long dead”, who’s hidden underneath the school. 

Episode 4: “Some Wrecked Angel”. 

Title taken out of the play “The Land of Heart's Desire”, published in 1894. This play tells us the story of a fairy child, who encounters the newlyweds Mary and Shawn Bruin (alongside his parents), but who denounces God, proceeds to horrify the family and try to stake a claim on Mary, for her to join her in the Otherworld. At the end, Mary dies, opting to join the Child into the Otherworld.

NOW... This episode’s plot is Beatrix, the fairy child, meeting the newly weds, Sky and Bloom, and she proceeds to denounce God (aka Farah and everything Bloom believes) and, at the very end of the episode, Bloom’s trust in Alfea is fully broken, as she now believes what Beatrix told her. Also, since we’re talking an Irish play with the phrase “wrecked angel”, is always fun to note that’s an euphemism for a demon. As in an angel who’s lost their wings.

Full passage of the title follows: 

Episode 5: “Wither Into The Truth”. 

Title taken from the last lines of the poem “The Coming of Wisdom With Time”, published in the book “The Green Helmet and Other Poems” in 1910. 

Here’s the FULL poem: 

Analysis on the poem show this is Yeats reminiscing on his youth and his “lying days”, but that now as he grows old, he’s withering into the truth. Episode 5 is the last episode Bloom spends blinded and stumbling around like a drunken man. That’s the episode she manages to get the truth out of Beatrix (yes, she killed Callumn), but also the episode Bloom withers into the truth of Rosalind, as her release is the cliffhanger. More lines may be drawn as this is also the episode we, the audience, wither into the truth of Silva and the other adult’s past, with the first flashback sequence that shows us that not only Bloom is going into the wrong direction (Rosalind is clearly evil), but Sky is also being lied to by Silva. 

Episode 6: “A Fanatic Heart”. 

This line was taken out of the poem “Remorse For Intemperate Speech”, published in 1933, one of Yeats last works. For context, here’s the full poem: 

We could spend all night studying just this one piece (and I might), but some very clear lines can be traced. Yeats is well into his political era and talking about his righteous anger over his country and the injustice suffered, all of each outgrew his fine manners and liberal speech, this is a deep hatred that’s been maimed at Irish from the start, carried from the womb. 

The episode uses just the bottom line, “A fanatic heart” and the meaning is left to interpretation, but personally, I think while it nods to Rosalind, it’s actually talking about Bloom, whose lean into the anger and surpassing the fine manners and liberal speeches, gives her the Dragon Flame, what she carried from the womb, a fanatic heart. I’m not dead set on this interpretation though. 

Extra: 

What IS important to note is that, safe for episode 2 whose source I couldn’t find, all titles come from books/poems published in chronological order. Remember back up there, in context, where we talked about how Yeats’ career went from the occult and the folklore to the politics and the conflicts he was seeing first hand? Well... So does the tale of Fate: The Winx Saga season 1.