Mr. C and I happened upon a lecture given by Sir Roger Scruton at the Oxford Union Society, which led us to watch his 2009 documentary, Why Beauty Matters (on Vimeo. . . while it lasts).  Both videos are well worth your time and speak of matters of importance and urgency to conservatives in our rapidly declining civilization.

About that label — “conservative” — Scruton says (roughly) “conservatism is love of what we have.” In the current climate in the West, and even for some time now, I’ve come to differ. I do not love what the West has become (despite my moniker) and I have chafed under the description “conservative” for some time now. I am not a lover of “what we have,” I’m a lover of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Or, better, I love the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. If there is a one-word description for that worldview, someone let me know. But, whatever it’s called, while Sir Roger and I agree on the “love” part, it is not about “conserving” what we have for me, that’s for sure.

Went poking around real estate again today, and wanted to calibrate what I was seeing.  I am looking, but I don’t actually want to buy a house — I want to steal one.   So I check from time to time, as I have no particular schedule pressure, and recent years have been the wrong time to buy, hence I have bought nothing.  Incidentally, I knew that 2012 was the right time to buy — it just wasn’t right for me, which is galling.

Anyway, I have been window-shopping cheap houses again, and went for some context.  I understood that prices had been coming down, which I think may be an earlier-than-anticipated correction perhaps leading to a soft landing, rather than what I expected — a bursting bubble then another bailout. Every level of government tries to prop up property prices (regardless of value) because property taxes are based on city assessments or price paid, depending on the location. When prices fall, it’s supposed to be some kind of disaster, and when they soar, it’s supposed to be great. No wonder we keep blowing bubbles, and screw the buyers anyway– who cares what the filthy un-landed peasants want? Buyers are supposed to sign up for a lifetime of debt and the threat of forfeiture. I do not envy the young in anything these days.

Roger Kimball has written an excellent article describing the treatment being accorded John Eastman by the State Bar of California as a result of Eastman’s actions in advising President Trump on possible legal recourse related to 2020 election voting irregularities alleged to have occurred in certain states. There are numerous links provided within Kimball’s article to explain facts and why the actions by the California State Bar are inappropriate.

Eastman is not the only prominent professional to be treated in an unAmerican fashion for speaking out and supporting what, in essence, is nothing more than the exercise of individual free speech guaranteed to all Americans in the 1st Amendment of our U.S. Constitution.  Medical professionals in California and from other parts of America have been similarly treated during the Covid pandemic and the same has been applied to political advisors and others supporting policies of President Trump during his term in office that reflect the will of the American people, sometimes called “populist.”

The latest Twitter file was released, and again, a former FBI special agent was at the heart of it. The former agent was a man named Clint Watts, who ran a dashboard to track “Russian Influence.” The dashboard was called “Hamilton 68.” It was created by the “Alliance for Securing Democracy,” which includes Bill Kristol, Michael McFaul, and John Podesta.

It really is DC vs. the rest of us. Isn’t Kristol supposed to be a “journalist?” How is he on a board and reporting about the product of that board?

If you have read only one story about the last two US Presidential elections, chances are it’s contained a reference to Russian meddling/interference with their social media “bot farms.” On Friday, Matt Taibbi revealed that much of the so-called “proof” of that interference came from a single source: The Hamilton 68 Project.

The problem with all these stories that credited Hamilton 68 is that the project itself was bogus. It was one big psyop — led by a former FBI Agent turned MSNBC “misinformation analyst,” Clint Watts, the German Marshall Fund (US), and a veritable “Who’s Who” of Trump haters including, you guessed it, Bill Kristol.

When President Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, the media meltdown that election evening was priceless to watch. So shocked were the drive-by media they could not understand how the great unwashed American voters had voted the wrong way. As Ms. Brezinski would later exclaim: “We are the ones to tell them what to think.”

The Democratic Party was also stunned as their media partners had assured them for more than a year that the Nurse Rached of American politics—Bruno Clinton—was a 97% lock to win the Presidency. But instead of trying to figure out what message Trump had gotten through to the American people that so resonated that he won all the swing states, they made two decisions. They would claim without any evidence, not that Trump’s message resonated but that Trump had illegitimate help winning the election as his Russian partners bought “bots” on social media that alleged, for example, that Bruno opposed the second amendment and this supposed cacophony of political online statements turned the American people against the former Secretary of State.

One of my patients I saw yesterday is a transplanted Englishman who is mystified by Prince Harry:  “If he wants to leave the royal family, fine.  Others have done that in the past.  It’s not for everyone.  But why is he so determined to destroy the entire institution on his way out?  Why can’t he just go, and do something else with his life?”

I mentioned his perspective to my wife, who just shrugged and said Harry is trying to sell books, and is only interested in whatever money he can make, however he can make it, and he’s not acting on any particular principle.  She may be partially right.  But I really think there’s more to it than that.

There’s a brilliant post on the main feed which attempts to figure out why nihilists, who think that nothing matters, are so often tyrannical in attempting to control the behavior of others.  Bryan Stephens made a characteristically insightful comment, “When you make what happens the fault of someone else, you have to go after them.”