Sober yourself up (Rambler No. 2)

Dear H,

As many authors have already told us, man's mind is never satisfied with the things immediately in front of it.  It's always breaking away from the present to lose itself in plans for the future.  We forego the only time in our power right now to plan enjoying things which, in all likelihood, we may never even get to.  And as this practice is an easy target for raillery to the jokesters and of preaching to the serious, it's been ridiculed with all the best barbs wit has to offer, and exaggerated with all the high-blown words of oratory.  Every historical example of its absurdity has been studiously collected.  It's been mocked profusely; and a hundred over-used sayings have been called out to battle against it. 

The rise and fall of Mark Driscoll

Dear H,

Up until Mark Driscoll I had never considered getting a full-time job.  I was a playboy and a loser at heart, had never read a serious book, and had lived in a kind of perpetual childhood.  Then I heard him speak.  A stocky, round-faced working-class type, he caught me off guard because he was funny.  A pastor who was actually funny.  Unheard of, in those days, and in fact most days, as Christianity and humor are in an eternal fight to the death (neither sex nor laughter are mentioned in Heaven).

On the death of Cato

Dear T,

This week we've been waiting for World War 3 to start.  At least that's what everyone's been telling us.  It started about a year ago, actually.  A little event nobody even noticed that turned into more events and got us to here.  And if you want, you could say it started a lifetime ago.  Donald Trump put the squeeze on Iran last year because they put the squeeze on President Obama.  They put the squeeze on President Obama because the Ayatollah took over in 1979.  He took over because Mohammed's followers couldn't agree about who takes over for Mohammed.  And Mohammed only took over because nobody could decide who really spoke best for Moses.  So you could say this was four-thousand years or so in the making.

In defense of Hollywood

Dear H,

Ricky Gervais, hero

I hate the poem First They Came, but I have to admit it has kind of a point.  Once you go down some roads you have to ask who's next?  Thus once Ricky Gervais told the actors to shut up (hats off to him), why not the professors?  Once the professors, why not the musicians?  Why not the cashiers, the mechanics, and the nurses? Why not the street-sweepers and garbagemen, the bus-boys and Uber drivers, the mail-men and the waitresses?  None of whom, by the way, have anything to do directly with politics, or are specialists in any field related to government or social policy, and few of whom, in the end, have ever read a serious book on economics, or law, or civics, or foreign policy. 

In defense of Pope Slappy

Dear M,

I'll confess up-front, for the sake of dramatic effect, that I think Pope Francis is a slimeball.  Nearly everything he does in the news makes me sick.  We caught him washing Syrians' feet.  He told us to let them all in -- an act which even the Dalai Lama, out of respect for Western Civilization, is against.  The next he says we can't judge perverts, while likening Donald Trump to the baby-killer King Herod.  He hates the death penalty, and even life imprisonment for murderers.

I could go on here, but unnecessarily.  He's for life if you're a lowlife.  If you're doing well, or a patriot, or innocently wealthy, or you just won a war against the Hun, you'll be last in line for a foot washing.  Like nearly all leftist Christians, he says to love your enemy and care for the outsider.  Like nearly all leftist Christians, he forgets that this is subjective, and that the "outsider," the "sinner," the "woman at the well," the person you're "not supposed to judge," is the person you are personally offended by.  He ought to eat his words and wash Trump's feet.