Timelines Timeliness

(Image from eBay)

Just in time to assuage unhappiness with current politics, the concept of multiverse timelines has caught fire:

On Joe Rogan’s podcast last month, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explained his theory that “the timeline has split twice in the last nine months. . . . The world was going to head in two totally different directions.” The first split was when Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pa., on July 13. The second was on Election Day. Twitter is awash with posts from some users exclaiming that they “love this timeline” and others lamenting that they “hate this timeline.” Ezra Klein, doyen of the intellectual left, said in a Nov. 19 podcast that he’s watching Mr. Trump’s nominees “to see what timeline we’re in.”

The notion of this timeline implies the existence of that timeline—an alternative reality in which things unfold differently. Much as the idea “We are living in a simulation” saturated social media during the Covid-19 pandemic, “this timeline” is the latest exclamation of discomfort with our present reality.

Though it’s especially prominent among those who are online and anti-Trump, references to the timeline aren’t the sole province of the left. Last month, David Friedberg, co-host of the tech podcast “All-In,” repeatedly used the term to indicate his elation with political circumstances: “I am so shocked and surprised in a positive way that we ended up on this particular timeline. . . . We’re on this timeline and I do think the United States, as Neo, dodged a lot of bullets here.”

The invocation of Neo, hero of the film franchise “The Matrix,” is telling. The concept of timelines originates in science fiction and is linked intimately with the multiverse, the idea of parallel realities with similar people and personalities but different events and outcomes. This connection to science fiction is perhaps why the theme has resonated with Silicon Valley’s newly right-leaning techno-utopians, as well as members of the left.

Human beings have always believed--or imagined--that there are realities different and maybe better than the one we are stuck in. From heaven to reincarnation, from a simulated universe to a multiverse, there may be a super-reality where our good behavior is rewarded or our lives can have a second chance.

Just as Marxists saw benefits in religion because it was the "opiate" of the masses, conservatives won't decry multiverse-ology because it keeps many leftists quiet, and besides, it may be true (!). Meanwhile, your humble blogger has given up trying to understand the current timeline and is just enjoying the show.

California: More Lenient Laws For Government Than Everyone Else

Small businesses are plagued by lawsuits filed
under the American with Disabilities Act.

The law that penalizes businesses for violating the rights of the disabled does not apply to public schools.

California businesses that discriminate against a customer can be sued for penalties of at least $4,000 and damages of as much as three times the harm they inflicted. But the same penalties do not apply to public schools that violate their students’ rights, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday in the case of a disabled student from Contra Costa County.

The 1959 California law, the Unruh Act, applies to civil rights violations by “business establishments.” And “public schools, as governmental entities engaged in the provision of a free and public education, are not ‘business establishments’ within the meaning of the act,” Justice Joshua Groban wrote in the 7-0 decision.

In this case the double standard doesn't lie with the state Supreme Court which is just interpreting the laws as written, but with the legislature. This is yet another example of the government applying more lenient rules to itself than it does to everyone else.

I often wish that the Progressives who want the government to run everything would look at the consequence of them getting their wish. Government exempts itself from penalties or remedies or shortages, there is no appeal, and we are all immiserated.

May Day, 2022

Waikiki Elementary May Day, 1980 (Star Advertiser)

The Lei Day celebration returns to Kapiolani Park:

This year, the 94th Lei Day Celebration returns after a cancellation in 2020 and virtual celebration in 2021. The free festival will take place from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. this Sunday at the Queen Kapiʻolani Park in Waikīkī.

...Lei Day has a fascinating history. The day originated from an idea by poet Don Blanding in the 1920s.

Blanding thought there should be a designated day celebrating the beauty and significance of lei in Hawaiʻi. Blanding discussed his idea with “Honolulu Star-Bulletin” columnist Grace Tower Warren. She suggested that Lei Day should fall on May Day, creating the popular and catchy phrase, “May Day is Lei Day.” The first Lei Day celebration was held in Honolulu on May 1, 1928. Since then, numerous festivals have been established throughout the state to celebrate the uniquely Hawaiian holiday.

As I've said before, I much prefer the Hawaiian May Day to the Marxist version that commemorates worker uprisings. Flowers universally bring smiles, while upraised fists bring...I'll be polite and just say pluses and minuses.

Pope Francis: His Own Man

(Politico photo)

Pope Francis has inveighed so often against capitalism and Western values that the Catholic Church appeared to be another institution conquered by the Gramscian Marxists' long march through history.

Not so fast.[bold added]

Pope Francis is a complicated man who doesn’t fit neatly into American left-right political paradigms. He made a fair number of decisions early in his papacy that exasperated conservative American Catholics, so he got tagged in the public mind as a liberal. Many progressive American priests cheered his reforms, but some went a step further. They began to portray their own revisionist agendas as the pope’s. Some even came to believe it.

Pope Francis hasn’t done all the things those progressives hoped he would. He was widely expected to allow married men to become priests in the Amazon region. Instead he called celibacy a “gift.” He was “supposed to” move forward on the ordination of women as deacons. Instead he has shut down the idea at least twice. While some progressives expected him to change Catholic teaching on sexual morality, he instead forbade priests to offer liturgical blessings to same-sex couples.

The "left-right political paradigm" is far too simplistic: for example, there are many Republicans who support gay marriage and many Democrats who support law enforcement.

It's good to see that the Pope--who ignores the existential threat of Marxism to the Catholic Church--is his own man.

May Day, 2021

(HVB photo)

May Day festivities in Hawaii were cancelled last year, but--can you feel it?--there are signs of revival everywhere. Schools, churches, and other groups are having virtual celebrations, and vaccinated families and friends are having low-key gatherings.

There will be flower leis made, given, and received this year, many more than 2020 but not as many as 2022.

Your humble blogger prefers Hawaii's May Day to the Marxist version. To me receiving a lei with a kiss is more worthwhile than marching with a raised fist, but however you choose to spend it, dear reader, have a wonderful May Day.

Recognizing the Enemy

A mobile version was the only update
the 1919 Protestant Union Bible needed

After receiving their MBA degrees, two of my business-school classmates decided the pursuit of filthy lucre wasn't for them and entered seminary. One became an Episcopal priest, and the other, a Chinese-American evangelical, went to Hong Kong. I thought of him when the Chinese Communist Party announced that it was producing its own version of the Bible: [bold added]

the party sees Christianity, which some estimates suggest is the country’s fastest-growing religion, as a unique threat. [Duke Professor Xi] Lian cites three major reasons. First, Christianity is an international religion. Bonds of affection and solidarity link Christians around the world to their brethren in China.

Second, it is congregational: “You have this ability to mobilize a stable, reliable community.” Congregations helped topple dictatorships in South Korea and Poland. Third, and perhaps most important, Christianity’s “transcendent vision, transcendent values” present the Communist Party with an insuperable “moral and ideological rivalry,” Mr. Lian says, because Chinese people largely see the party’s Marxist-Leninist foundation as a spent force.

Over the centuries translating the Bible has required knowledge and dedication far beyond that of your average scholar. Those undertaking the task must not only be fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and the destination language but know when to deviate from a word-for-word translation in order to capture the poetry of Biblical passages. The CCP version will not only be a crude effort, but the language will be bowdlerized to comport with Marxist ideology:

Purging passages deemed incompatible with “core socialist values” while retaining a measure of the original poetry—this would require literary achievement and deep religious knowledge, both of which are lacking in the party’s handpicked experts.

Joseph Stalin thought little of the power of religion when he asked, "How many divisions does the Pope have?"

67 years after Stalin's death the Soviet Union exists no longer, and Christianity has been targeted as a threat by the most powerful Communist government on earth. Xi Jinping may be ascendant today, but the same fate awaits his attempt to suppress and alter truths that have lasted millennia.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.

May Day, 2020

May Day is International Workers' Day, and marchers have made adjustments to accommodate coronavirus restrictions:

Masked, but not much distancing

The two largest protests in San Francisco and Oakland didn’t involve crowds gathering in front of buildings or marching side-by-side through city streets while chanting and waving colorful signs. Demonstrators instead climbed into cars and trucks, or mounted bikes and other vehicles and formed caravans to parade their way through cities and sometimes surround places like government buildings or businesses.

I prefer how May Day is honored in my home state.

May Day is lei day in Hawaii
Flowers and garlands everywhere…

(Photo from Hawaii.com)

Leis can be simple or elaborate, multi- or mono-colored, expensive or free as the flowers from one’s own back yard. They are given at birthdays, airports, weddings, graduations, banquets, holidays, or sometimes just because. They are given freely without expectation of reciprocation, often to people that one has never met before.

There’s supposed to be no lasting commitment—the flowers fade quickly even in a fridge; the receipt of a lei therefore usually “means” little. But sometimes we remember the occasions forever.

A lei is granted with a kiss. Many young boys, grimacing, receive their first kiss from a non-family member when receiving a lei. Later, for the cost of a few flowers it’s a good pretext for a young adolescent male to peck the cheek of a girl he’s long admired (if your mother made the lei, don’t tell the girls, they feel funny when you say that).

On May Day, 2020, there won't be a lot of kissing or giving of leis. Let's hope that on May Day, 2021, we can go back to the way things were. © 2020 Stephen Yuen

Religious Delusion

Economics professor Walter E. Block distinguishes

good capitalism (freedom with property rights),

bad capitalism (crony capitalism),

good socialism (monastery, kibbutz, commune, and family); and

bad socialism ("Venezuela, East Germany, Maoist China and the U.S.S.R.").

WSJ letter writers were quick to pounce upon Professor Block's efforts to find a pony somewhere in socialism. Excerpts: [bold added]

The only “good” socialism Prof. Block cites involves voluntary arrangements among small groups of people, such as in convents, cooperatives or even families, in which members know each other and feel accountable to the group. Today’s debate about socialism and capitalism, however, takes place at the country level, not at the level of the kibbutz or commune, and there are no countries in which socialism has worked on a large scale. At the country level, capitalism works and socialism doesn’t—ever.

Prof. Block says convents, Jesuit seminaries and kibbutzim are examples of successful socialism. But how many of their members were dragged in by a majority vote? I have chosen not to join a convent or Jesuit seminary or kibbutz. When the votes are counted in the 2020 election, will I be allowed to decline membership in Sens. Sanders’s or Warren’s socialist state?

The Episcopal Monastery in Santa Barbara will close
in 2021 due to lack of interest.

It has always perplexed your humble blogger why leaders of the Episcopal Church are overwhelmingly socialist. Now I have a glimmer of understanding.

I will never forget that, when the Bishop of my Diocese recited Marx's famous "from each..to each" principle, his face became as beatific as when he read the Gospel. Perhaps the Bishop's socialism experience---and that of other clergy---consisted of the spirit of the monastery, likely to be very positive.

It's nearly impossible to scale the monastic religious fervor necessary for socialism to work to the country level (unless you want to go the "National Socialism" route--any takers, Progressives?). The person at the DMV doesn't love us, and the food-stamp screener probably doesn't consider us a child of God but as a case number. Sure, keep the Church out of the State, but let's leave the State out of the Church as well.

Barring Barr

The attorney general gives a speech on secularism, and the left goes bananas.
--William McGurn, WSJ

(Photo from National Catholic Reporter)

Speeches by public figures are so numerous and predictable that I rarely pay attention, but because of the brouhaha I had to take a look. Aside: the Barr speech and the reaction to it are a version of the Streisand effect, named after Barbra Streisand's 2003 attempt at photo suppression that backfired by calling widespread attention to pictures of her Malibu home.

I personally found the speech by Attorney General William Barr (below the page break) to contain a main proposition that should be debated: [bold added]

Men are subject to powerful passions and appetites, and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community at large.

No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity.

But, if you rely on the coercive power of government to impose restraints, this will inevitably lead to a government that is too controlling, and you will end up with no liberty, just tyranny.

On the other hand, unless you have some effective restraint, you end up with something equally dangerous – licentiousness – the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good. This is just another form of tyranny – where the individual is enslaved by his appetites, and the possibility of any healthy community life crumbles....

Instead, social order must flow up from the people themselves – freely obeying the dictates of inwardly-possessed and commonly-shared moral values. And to control willful human beings, with an infinite capacity to rationalize, those moral values must rest on authority independent of men’s will – they must flow from a transcendent Supreme Being.

In short, in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people – a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man-made law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles.

Rather than debate William Barr's ideas--ideas that trace back to the Enlightenment--opponents prefer to shout him down and associate him with the worst villains of history:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman accused Mr. Barr of “religious bigotry” and described his words as a “pogrom type speech.”

Political ethicist and professional attention seeker Richard Painter tapped out a series of even more furious tweets, here calling the speech the latest episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” there suggesting Mr. Barr isn’t much of a Christian, here again saying Mr. Barr sounded like “vintage Goebbels.” Over at MSNBC, meanwhile, retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, told Joy Reid the attorney general is “Torquemada in a business suit,” a reference to the Spanish Inquisition’s grand inquisitor.

Mr. Barr is pondering an age-old question: how do we form a good society? The innate sinfulness of man (too quaint? contemporary terms are racism, sexism, greed, narcissism, tribalism, sociopathy, psychopathy, misanthropy, and misogyny) requires controls to prevent individuals' most harmful actions.

If "coercive" government is the sole means of restraint, the result is ultimately tyranny. And, unless the powerful government is administered by selfless philosopher-kings, it becomes peopled with sinful individuals who can act with no hindrance--no one governs the governors--in satisfaction of their own appetites. Ultimately every Socialist or National Socialist society becomes corrupt--the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Maoist China are also the deadliest examples--as the favored few become immensely wealthy over the immiserated masses (ironically this was the capitalist evil that Marx railed against).

William Barr embraces the "Framers' view" that a people and society steeped in religion will act morally most of the time and need only limited government and laws to hold society together.

“Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.”---Grant Gilmore (1910-1982)

Come, Progressives, let us reason together. Don't shout down people who question the ever-expanding role of the State. After all, they want what you want: a State that will wither away.

No Solace

It's just me, but a hammer-and-sickle crucifix is
not a crucifix (WSJ photo)

For centuries the Church, in order to survive, has accommodated itself to tyrants. However, accommodation is futile in the case of Marxists, who destroy all rival ideologies and faiths once they achieve power: [bold added]

Religion may show man’s longing for a better existence, Marx argued, but it also prevents that dream from becoming reality.

Communist regimes put Marx’s principles into practice, starting with the first Marxist state. Between 1917 and 1921, the Soviet Union destroyed nearly 600 Russian Orthodox monasteries and convents. The leaders of the first communist country oversaw the killing of at least 300 Orthodox clergy. This bloodbath eventually became Soviet policy. The Eighth Party Congress decreed in 1920 that “the Party aims at the complete destruction of links between the exploiting classes and . . . religious propaganda, while assisting the actual liberation of the working masses from religious prejudices.”

The scholar Todd M. Johnson estimates that Soviet authorities sent 15 million Christians to their deaths in prison camps between 1921 and 1950. A further five million Christians perished in the following 30 years. The Soviet Union also targeted Muslim communities for mass deportation, killing, for example, as many as 46% of Crimean Tatars. Thousands of Buddhist monks also died at Soviet gunpoint. Where religion survived in the U.S.S.R., it did so secretly—or under the watchful eye and controlling hand of the state.

Central and Eastern European communist states also suppressed religion. Perhaps best known are the Polish communist attacks on the Catholic-driven Solidarity movement in the 1980s. Today North Korea reserves some of its harshest treatment for those found in possession of Christian Bibles. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, satellites of communist Cuba, Christian communities are viewed as a threat to the dictatorships and have been targeted for punishment.

Communist China is today’s worst offender. Since its founding, the People’s Republic of China has tried to control or eradicate every religion within its borders.

The social-justice wing of the Church allies itself with progressives who will kick it to the curb once the latter are in charge. For example, it doesn't take much imagination to envision what will ensue when the wealth-tax movement starts eyeing beautiful church properties in the Bay Area. Or when a priest is "asked" to provide confessional evidence against an enemy of the state.

But there's no solace in I-told-you-so's.

You Are Your Aspirations

If "Christian" means aspiring to be "Christ-like" , do Marxists want to be Marx-like? From a new biography of Karl Marx:

Marx was often impossible to deal with, as one of his fellow radicals wrote: “Everyone who contradicted him, he treated with abject contempt; every argument that he did not like he answered either with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motives of him who had advanced it.”

If Marxists are trying to be like their hero, I'd say many of them are succeeding. (Tip: practice saying "middle America" or "bourgeois values" with dripping scorn and you're halfway there.)