After 10 Years in the South These are the Things I Don't Like

Having lived in the South for over a decade I think I can give a fair assessment of the positives and negatives of the region. As a non-native I approach with different eyes able to see from an outside perspective, it's easier to see things amiss in a home that you are a guest in rather than in your own home.

The Negatives 

I begin with the negatives of Southern culture, largely so I can end on a positive note. In this fallen world there is no perfect culture, no utopias, no system of government or way of life that will bring heaven fully on earth. We get glimpses, tastes, and hints of it here and there, but on our earthly pilgrimage until the full realization of Christ's kingdom it will always be that, hints, glimpses, tastes. That said, some cultural manifestations are simply better or worse than others and more closely approximate a Christian ideal than others. I start with the negatives that I have observed in Southern culture.

Littering

Southerners don't seem to care very much about littering. It's that simple. The evidence of this is observable driving down nearly any road in the South, there will be trash that has been flung from people's cars adorning the sides of the road. Bags from bottom tier fast food restaurants, Monster energy drink cans, bottles and cans of the worst beers known to man, and even the occasional full bag of household trash will regularly be seen on the roadside. Nearly every time I set to work in my yard cutting the grass, and doing general maintenance of my property, I will be obliged to pick up the random leavings of some inconsiderate driver who deemed my yard a better place for his trash than his car.

All sin can be reduced to a failure to love your neighbor, littering fails to love one's neighbor in that it passes the labor of proper clean up of ones' mess to ones' neighbor. I now have to pick up the trash that some human slob flung from his car, he is stealing time from me, but more than that he is uglifying my yard and the world in general. 

Beauty matters, this seems to be lost on many Southerners who have a gnostic Baptistic approach to aesthetics. This is why church buildings often are just gigantic cubes, or imitation shopping malls, where function soullessly triumphs over beauty. The same can be said of the roadside, the country roads here are often beautiful areas full of oak trees, and pastures, yet trash from local Quick Trip mini-marts regularly defaces an otherwise beautiful scene.

By way of contrast, in my home state of Wisconsin, this is a rare occurrence. People regularly recycle and it is pretty much unthinkable that you would simply toss your random trash from your car window. No I am not an advocate of recycling, and I think the climate change narrative is largely bullocks, I am most certainly not one of those guys. But I think the habit of recycling has the effect of making people more conscientious regarding their trash on a very practical level. While visiting family in Wisconsin this past summer as we drove down country roads I remarked to my wife, "Notice how there is no trash in on the sides of the road?"

It may seem like a small trivial thing but it's in the little things that our character is revealed, it reflects greater character issues within a culture. Southerners litter. There is a park near my home that has a waterfall and a nice natural swimming hole in it, it could be a beautiful spot, but despite there being trash receptacles clearly available people simply leave their trash about the riverside and detract from the natural beauty. This is actually part of being a conservative, we want to conserve the natural beauty of an area when we take dominion over it. Guys like Teddy Rosevelt were some of the first American conservationists, being opposed to wack job leftists doesn't mean we are required to give up a sane respect for the environment.

The Driving

Drivers here are terrible. Yes, I know people always complain about the driving where ever they may are, but in the case of Southern drivers it isn't just an opinion, the objective data backs this statement up. South Carolina, my current home, is number 1 for worst drivers in the nation. The states in the South regularly lead the nation in accidents per capita, and accidents that lead to fatalities. So, yeah I get it people always say, "The drivers here are so bad!" no matter where they live, but in the case of the South it's objectively true. The picture on the right is a perfect example of a scenario that is has a decent probability to be chaotic if it happened here.

Every single time (not an exaggeration) I go somewhere in a vehicle I am forced to be a witness to some poor or outright dangerous driving. A perfect and regular example of this is at a four way stop sign. I tell you dear reader, four way stops simply boggle these people's minds. Again, people will think I am exaggerating, but every single time I come to a four way stop where a number of cars will be involved it is guaranteed that I will be witness to confusion and stupidity. There are so many people who simply don't know when it is their turn to go. My favorite is when you roll to the four way stop and there is a car already stopped on the opposing side of the road and you want to turn left. You were clearly there after the opposing driver, yet, rather than going as it is their turn to go, they begin waving you on to make your turn out of order. It's infuriating, on the surface it may seem polite to get waved on out of order. I assure you it is not polite. It's rude because they are asking you to break the rules rather than simply following the rules and taking their turn. I've been at intersections identical to the one in the picture above, and seen people stopping when they need to go, waving others on, and, as Sir Topham Hatt would say, generally causing confusion and delay. 

Another bizarre driving phenomena that I have repeatedly observed is at lights that are going from red to solid green both ways with no left turn arrows. In such instances, drivers who are making a left turn will sometimes bolt out ahead of oncoming straight traffic immediately when the light turns green. I have lived in a number of parts of the country, West coast, Rocky Mountain, Midwest, and the Northeast, and I can tell you that I have never seen this happen anywhere else. It's like people simply don't know the rules of the road here. I was again reminded of this after being in Wisconsin over a week when I finally saw someone do something stupid and dangerous on the road, I commented to my wife, "That's the first time since we've been here that I saw someone do something stupid on the road." It happens everywhere, it's just distilled and concentrated like a bourbon here in the South.

This regular phenomena of bad driving prompted me to create a stupid driver scale to categorize levels of infractions, it is as follows:

Level 1- This is a stupid driving move that is not necessarily dangerous, and it doesn't effect any other drivers on the road. 

Ex: Driving with your wipers on a super fast setting when it is only misting. Drivers with their turn signals on for miles. A guy who passes you on a dotted center line when there are like a half dozen cars in front of you all going the same speed, thus accomplishing nothing by passing you.

Level 2- This is a stupid driving move that is not necessarily dangerous, but it does effect other drivers on the road.

Ex: Slow poke drivers. Drivers who basically come to a crawl when making a right turn. Waving other people on at stop signs when it isn't their turn. 

Level 3. This is a stupid driving move that is in fact dangerous, but no one else's driving is forced to be altered as result.

Ex: Blowing a stop sign at a four way stop but no one else has gotten to the intersection yet. Guys on the freeway driving insanely fast in a clear left lane.

Level 4. This is a stupid driving move that is in fact dangerous and other drivers have to alter their driving to prevent an accident. It results in nearly causing an accident, other drivers have to slam on their breaks or veer to avoid the stupidity that would otherwise cause an accident.

Ex: Making a left turn into oncoming traffic but the oncoming driver is aware and brakes before T-boning the stupid driver. Weaving in and out of traffic racing your buddy on the freeway.

Level 5- The stupidity reaches such a height as to cause an accident.

Ex: Call the police and call a lawyer, stupid people often don't have insurance. Hit and runs are common here. I'd recommend dash-cams for insurance and court purposes.

On my travels I regularly see level 2 infractions, as I said above every time I go out, and probably 2-3 times a month I will witness level 4 infractions. The most recent example was a car that was inexplicably stopped in the road with its hazards blinking, the driver ahead of me didn't notice this until the last second and slammed on his brakes and veered off of the road up a curb where a pedestrian was walking literally about 6 feet away. No one was hurt but it was yet another "What the hell?" driving moment. Maybe the guy who nearly rear-ended the guy parked in the road was too busy throwing a beer can out his window and wasn't paying attention to the road?

Air Conditioning

The second to last of my complaints about Southern culture is with regard to air conditioning. People here love, love, love their air conditioning. I don't. There are a lot of people here that simply can not function without the air conditioning keeping things at around 68 degrees. Not an exaggeration. During the summer months yes, it is hot, humid, and frankly miserable. Despite this, I work outside a regularly, having a small hobby farm, and I drink plenty of water and tough it out. I figure that since people did this in the past living in the South before air conditioning technology was granted to us, so there is no reason I can't do it today.

Not so with many others, they begin to panic and complain about being hot the moment the thermostat gets north of 70 degrees. I don't think these people go outside during the summer, at least not any longer than the walk from their air conditioned car to their air conditioned house takes. Mostly the complaints regarding the thermostat are from fat sedentary men and menopausal women. At the various places that I have worked such are the ones that dictate the thermostat, they guard it like a dog does his favorite bone constantly aware of any threats to the bone. It gets so bad that myself and other co-workers who are neither fat nor menopausal are reduced to bringing fleeces and sweatshirts to work throughout the year, yes, they have the air conditioning running even in the winter months. It's bizarre showing up to work when it's 90 degrees outside carrying a sweatshirt but this is where things stand, the fatties and the aging women have spoken.

This isn't simply a workplace phenomena, it carries over to restaurants and stores in general. Walking into a restaurant or grocery store here in the South you will likely be greeted with an arctic blast of air hitting you like a Norse gods' breath as you enter. To be clear, it's not necessarily the temperature that bothers me, it is the constant blowing of the air conditioned air. Again, by way of contrast with life in Wisconsin, at no point during our recent visit did I feel like there was excessive air conditioning being used. When we visited restaurants and stores it always felt like a reasonable temperature and there wasn't a blasting sense of artificially cold air as you entered a building.

Perhaps this is because summers are shorter and not nearly as intense that people are far more judicious in their use of air conditioning in that part of the country as opposed to the South. The Summers there are not nearly as humid with highs averaging in the 80's. On our return trip home from Wisconsin the first place that I noticed an absurd use of air conditioning was at a restaurant stop in Tennessee, I said to my shivering wife, "Well, I guess we are back in the South." I am also reminded of articles during the yearly Summer heatwaves, which the media used propagandistically to push the climate change narrative, but contained the interesting fact that Europeans in general do not regularly own air conditioning units, nor do they use much air conditioning, and they think that it is bizarre how infatuated Americans are with it. They choose rather to live life in a manner that embraces the flow of the seasons, rather than fighting for an indoor season free equilibrium that constant use of air conditioning brings about. I find this a sensible outlook and is in keeping with my own experience.

To be clear, I think air conditioning can be a good thing, if it's over 90 degrees outside and it is as humid as a swamp it sure is nice to have the ability to bring the temperature down and knock out the humidity to a more comfortable level. It's the abuse of this good thing that I have a problem with, and it seems to be done with an enthusiasm in the South that I haven't seen anywhere else in the country.

All the Worst of American Christianity is Here

The worst aspects of American Christianity thrive here in the South. The church culture is generally low, individualistic Baptistic, and Zionist. Much more can be said on this than I will say here, but let me give a 30,000 feet up overview of my final complaint.

Southern Mega Church

Low church culture is a product of Baptistic individualism and revivalist culture. The gospel becomes all about getting individual people to choose Jesus. This leads to revivalist meetings, mega-church gimmicks, celebrity preachers, and a lot of cringe embarrassing expressions of Christianity. This is where you get guys riding into mega churches on motorcycles with AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" playing on Easter Sunday.

The Christianity here ubiquitous, everyone is a Christian, even lesbian coworkers I've had are Christians and regularly would go to church. It is a very thin Christian culture, where belief is private, in one's heart, and no one can judge me but God. I've seen countless tattoos to that effect, "Only God Can Judge Me" is the most popular. Life is lived that way, I can live however I want and no one can tell me otherwise because no one knows what's in my heart. Well, I might not know what's in your heart but a wise Man once said a tree is known by its fruit, but what we He know?

Simple Lutheran Church

The church buildings are ugly. This I think ties in a bit with what I said regarding littering, there isn't a high emphasis on beauty. Couple that with hyper-individualistic Baptist thinking and buildings only exist to provide space to meet, not to transport or enthrall worshippers with a sense of the grandeur of God. Couple this with a belief that the world is about to end and America has to do everything within its power to support Israel, and you will have a whole lot of ugly church buildings.

Compare the two churches pictured, which building seems more reverent, more serious, more timeless, and less modern? Which building do you think has robust preaching? Which building do you think will likely have communion if you attend the service? Which building do you think is more fitting for a church? If your response to this simple line of questioning is, "The building don't matter, it's what's in people's hearts that matters!" or something like that, you are infected by gnostic ideas.

Conclusion

To be clear, I love the South, these criticisms are simply my observations after over a decade of living here as a non-native. As promised I will follow this post with a glories of the South post. These are simply the negative cultural phenomena that I can't help but notice, I notice them every time I cut my grass and have to pick up Natural Light beer cans that conscientious men with "Only God Can Judge Me" tattoos have chosen to decorate my lawn with. I notice these problems every time I drive and there is some sap waving me on at a stop sign when it is unquestionably his turn to go. Lastly, I notice this stuff every time I get blasted with excessive air conditioning, when that happens I know that I am indeed in the South.

Against the Ortho Bros

An ongoing phenomena that is growing in American Christianity is protestants turning to Eastern Orthodoxy as an answer to their issues with Protestantism. On the one hand I certainly am sympathetic, Protestantism can be very schismatic, provincial, and immature in its theology, ecclesiology, and worship. These are all undeniably true and they are tragic, a lot of these problems are frankly baked into the cake of Protestantism itself. That being the case, many American Protestants have begun to look wistfully to the East for something solid, something timeless, something with more authority. I am here to raise my voice and simply state that this is a blunder on their part.

It is a blunder for many reasons, in this brief writeup however it is not my intention to dig into the theological issues per se as to why Eastern Orthodoxy is problematic, if that’s what you are looking for look elsewhere, that’s not my concern here. Rather my focus is more on the cultural and behavioral expressions I have seen amongst Western men who become Eastern Orthodox, hereafter to be termed Ortho bros. Putting it that way should give the reader a hint of what I see as an obvious problem, I will proceed by addressing some of these issues.

Becoming Eastern Orthodox Necessitates a Rejection of Western Christian Culture

This is probably the most obvious cultural issue when it comes to someone becoming Orthodox, it is at its core a rejection of Western Christian culture. It is the rejection of the West that draws people into Orthodoxy, as they take on a foreign identity with little known rites, customs, language, and theology. It is foreign, it has a mystique about it, it has ancient liturgical worship, its own pantheon of saints, and visible practices, this leaves many with a thrill at the thought of, "If my Baptist parents could see me now!" but more on that in a bit.

That really gets to the motive, Baptist culture is largely shallow and lacking in rich worship and traditions, this is all true. So, the allure of Orthodoxy is in its higher liturgy, worship, and sacred mysteries. But are there no Western churches that exemplify this? Do not the Lutherans and Anglicans have robust liturgical worship? Do not the Catholics and their liturgies and worship have nearly everything the Orthodox churches have but with better art? Why does one need to go to the East for this? They don't. So why?

Again, it's almost a gnostic thrill of being an ecclesiastical bad boy thumbing his nose at all of Western Christianity, and joining the secret "inner ring" of real Christians (more on that in a bit). That's what's wrapped up in all of this and it needs to be trotted out front and center, when someone becomes an Ortho bro he is rejecting Western Christianity as a whole.

This is really close to the core of what is happening when a Western Christian turns to Eastern Orthodoxy, they are rejecting their family. What is a culture other than the familial inheritance we have been given by those who have gone before us? For better or worse those of us in the West have an ecclesiastical heritage, there are bright spots, there are warts, and there are scenes over which we look with shame and embarrassment. This is our family history, we are a part of this story. A story that involves masses, monks, popes, reformers, schism makers, heretics, cult leaders, etc. Our family legacy may not be perfect, no one but a complete fanatic would argue that it is perfect, but it is just that, our family legacy.

Our current place in the history of the Western Church is a low point and full of weakness. Do we abandon our family when it is currently desperate for faithful sons to lead her out of this present darkness? What should we think of sons that turn their backs on their family when things are going poorly?

That being the case I find the impulse to look to completely foreign ecclesial bodies, with foreign languages and customs, foreign stories, and completely foreign saints, I find such an impulse to be odd at best, ungrateful and unfaithful at worst. The analogy that comes to my mind is an American guy who grows up in the American Presbyterian church and eventually comes to the conviction that the Korean Presbyterian church is where it is at. You may have seen some, the signs are written in, well, Korean. He takes on Korean culture, starts learning Korean, starts wearing Korean outfits, begins disparaging American Presbyterian theologians as lightweights, and talks glowingly of Korean theologians. He even refers to the sacraments not by their English names but in Korean (like saying “Theotokos” for the blessed virgin), because it more closely captures the profundity of the sacraments, or something like that.

I dare say some form of this is what is going on with Western Christians who become Ortho bros. The analogy is meant to be goofy to show how goofy it is when a man rejects his own Christian culture to embrace a foreign Christian culture. They are rejecting their familial home and embracing the foreign and exotic. It is a rejection of their mother church.

This is my big criticism of Ortho Bros here, it is cultural. For a Westerner to embrace Orthodoxy he has to turn his back on his own culture and embrace another. I personally have heard Ortho Bros talk glowingly of trips to various Eastern European countries almost with the same affection a Zionist premillennial evangelical speaks of a trip to Israel. They talk of trips to places like Georgia and the feasts and deep worship that exists there and how refreshed their souls are during their visit. It’s become almost a pilgrimage, a return to the motherland. A motherland that none of the Ortho bros have any ancestral connection to. This is strange to me.

Anecdotally speaking, some friends of mine locally have a men's club where we periodically get together and toast a great Christian man from history. The thrust of this group is to be "little c" catholic and honor Christian men from all traditions and to have faithful Christian men from all traditions and denominations attend to eat together, drink together, and celebrate our common Lord together. Some Ortho bros came to this for a time, conversations would take place, mugs of beer would be hoisted, laughter would be had. Then they stopped coming. Why? I can't help but think this is because they've rejected all the faith traditions represented at the meeting, they don’t really see us as part of the same family. How can an Ortho Bro honor someone like C.S. Lewis for example? 

The reason they can't will become more obvious with the next point.

It's More than Just Another Denomination, Great Schisms and What Not

For a Protestant or Catholic (Latins as they call us) to become Orthodox they have to renounce their former Christianity before the mighty perfection of Orthodoxy, that’s not hyperbole, that’s part of the deal. Also, they often will be encouraged to be rebaptized, it depends on the priest and/or bishop’s position on the matter. They also will have you anointed with oil, they call it something else of course, Chrismation or something, I frankly don’t care what they call it because I am a Westerner and that isn’t my culture. But there it is, you have to renounce your former Christianity and likely will have to get rebaptized. This is because your original baptism didn't count. Your original baptism didn't count because it wasn't done by the Orthodox church.

You tracking dear reader? If all of the above is the case, and it is, then what does that say about Protestant churches? They aren't really churches. What does that say about their members? They aren't really Christians. You see why they would have a hard time hoisting a glass to toast C.S. Lewis as a great Christian?

Talk about schismatic. For Ortho bros fleeing the schismatic nature of Protestantism they've leapt out of the frying pan and into the fire. I recall a friend who was going Orthodox telling me how it would be a year before he was allowed to take communion, despite having been a baptized communicant church member for decades. This is because for the Eastern Orthodox your church isn't a church and your sacraments are just fictions, most of them don’t seem to have the testicular fortitude to just flatly state it like that, but this is the logical conclusion of their position.

This warm hospitality isn't reserved just for Protestant converts though, it in many cases extends beyond Protestants and Catholics to other Orthodox denominations themselves. They don't even like each other is my point, there is a great deal of infighting amongst the various wings of Orthodoxy. They exert a great deal of energy fighting over who is the true church and whose sacraments are actually efficacious.

My point here is that in seeking to escape from the schismatic nature of Protestantism, the Ortho Bros turn East naively unaware of the schisms within the East itself and embracing the division of the East exerted toward the West.

I'm Orthodox! Look at Me! So Edgy, So Different!

This final point will focus simply on the behavior I have noted amongst Ortho bros, nearly universally the behavior I have noted is thick palpable pretentiousness. Likely this is largely a phenomena unique to Western men who have rejected their Protestantism and turned to the East, but there it is, gobs of pretentiousness. If you've been around the block a bit with these guys you'll know it's almost like talking to a vegan or someone who does Crossfit, you know very quickly that they are Orthodox through some pretentious overture made as they signal their Easternness to all around them.

What am I talking about? Well, it can be as simple as randomly crossing themselves backward during a simple prayer at a corporate prayer event, it can be a gigantic wooden cross being worn on the outside of a shirt, or it can reach the heights of a guy showing up to a school children's play decked out in Ortho robes with a giant wooden cross on his chest like he is ready to hoist up an icon for the crowd to venerate. Personally, I can attest that these sorts of things occurred not a few times at my children's Classical Conversations group where one of the dads from a co-op family would regularly make school events an opportunity for him to show up dressed all weird and trying to signal "I'm Orthodox! Look at me! Behold and tremble you low church Baptists! You have no idea the deep magic I wield!"

Meanwhile, every level headed onlooker was likely only thinking how he must not have gotten enough attention as a child.

Every time this guy showed up to events the pretentiousness was palpable to the point of nausea. He of course was a former Baptist and was training for the priesthood or something, the ridiculous behavior reached its zenith when he showed up to the kids' presentation day all decked out in black robes and wearing a giant wooden cross. Why couldn't he take a couple of minutes to change before showing up? Oh, that's right because then he couldn't rub his Orthodoxy in the face of the normie Protestants at the event. I couldn't help but think of how obnoxious that was for his kids, "There's dad again, making everything about him." Kind of like a loud parent at their kids' sports game constantly trying to annoy and pick fights with other parents all under the pretense of “cheering for my kid”.

If this guy was a one-off I would happily write it off as a random moron, but this sort of pretentious attention seeking behavior has been repeatedly observed by myself in my interactions with Ortho bros over the years. Again, it’s often like someone who loves to talk about their fad diet, they think it makes them intriguing, but to those on the outside looking in, the behavior simply makes them tiresome.

There are blog posts and reddit posts with titles like “Protestant Mother Found My Icons”, yeah because you wanted them to be found, you think it’s edgy to blow raspberries at the Christianity of your parents, grow up.

Also, it's not exactly honoring to the saints if you're using their icons as pawns in your petty attempt to trigger your normie parents or co-workers. But hey, what do I know, I am just a dumb Protestant who doesn't understand the deeper magic from before the dawn of time.

Conclusion

I’ve kind of dumped on the Ortho bros here, to be clear I don’t have any deep seated beef with the Orthodox church, they are Trinitarian Christians who can cheerfully confess the Apostles Creed and as such I consider them brothers in Christ. Unfortunately, in most cases I doubt the sentiment goes both ways, and that's a problem. Eastern Orthodoxy is a great and faithful expression of Christianity, for men in the East, if you are in Georgia, Russia, Belarus, Estonia, etc by all means embrace your church, stand up for her. However, for Western men to go to Orthodoxy strikes me as a form of unfaithfulness to one’s own history and culture. As such, particularly for Western converts, Orthodoxy is often accompanied by an avalanche of pretentious attention seeking overtures, the “Let me freak out my normie mother with my icons” or “I’m going to wear a giant wooden cross to my brother’s Baptist retreat and cross myself backwards all the time during prayer times.” That sort nonsense.

Really at the core of my gripe here is that the Eastern church is just that, it’s Eastern, it’s not our story as Western men, it’s part of the great story, it’s a part of advancing God’s kingdom, it’s just not the West’s story.

 

"Conservative" Women Don't Belong in Office

 While cruising through the daily cavalcade of horrors, exaggerations, and outright lies that makes up the "Trending News" section on Bing, yes, I do that occasionally, I came across this gem of a story. It led me down a rabbit hole of thought, and thoughts being what they are I figured I should put them to pen, er, type.

Lauren Boebert is one of the darling Republican congresswomen ushered in during the great MAGA take over in the Trump era, there were a number of such people but most notably are probably the women Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Boebert apparently was recently thrown out of a Denver theater's showing of a "Beetlejuice" play due to her obnoxious behavior, and if half of the reports are true obnoxious is an understatement. What stood out most in the article regarding Boebert was a little side comment that she is recently "separated" from her husband.

Apparently, she was attending this "Beetlejuice" play with a new boyfriend of hers, I don't believe her divorce is final, when the disorderly behavior occurred. She apparently was vaping, singing and laughing loudly, was verbally abusive to others, and was generally a throbbing hemorrhoid to everyone present in the theater. It sounds to me like she should be required to piss in a cup before being allowed back to Washington, but hey, what do I know. Look at 1:02 of the video, she laughs with her paramour as they leave the theater grounds, she thinks the whole thing is a silly joke. Conservative guys will circle the wagons though and defend this miscreant. What struck me is how this is a common trend amongst women who are supposedly "Conservative" who get elected to office, they inevitably start cheating on their spouse and then ultimately nuke their family while they start going through a carousel of men.

Boebert made a name for herself by opening a restaurant staffed with suggestively dressed women all openly carrying guns. Midwits on the right ate it right up, and the obvious gimmick was a roaring success, so, naturally she took the grift to the next level and ran for office. She would be seen constantly toting guns around at rallies, having guns prominently displayed in video interviews, and incessantly talking about guns. The schtick worked like an extra strength laxative and she won a congressional seat. If you look her up online there is a frankly tiresome gun theme in nearly all of her interviews.

To be clear I am a supporter of gun rights, but I have never understood the people who frankly seem to get sexually aroused by firearms. They are tools, just like any other tool they have a time and place to use, and they can be fun to use, at least that's been my approach. It's kind of like the guys who obsess over their vehicle, and ramble nauseatingly about the engine specs, the modifications done, etc. I never cared, I never will. A vehicle is just there to get me from point A to point B. 

Coming back to Boebert, just think about it for a second, she got thrown out of a "Beetlejuice" play. Let that swish around on your palate for a few seconds. Just think of the level of douchebaggery that you have to reach before theater staff would approach you and say, "Ma'm you are ruining Beetlejuice, we're going to have to ask you to leave."

Boebert and her current fling reached getting thrown out of a "Beetlejuice play" levels of douchebaggery. Achievement unlocked, I guess.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is another example of these moral train wrecks that are "right wing" women in power. Greene is a conservative MAGA darling who occasionally appears on talk shows to, "Tell it like it is" and, "Own the libs". Green recently divorced her husband of 27 years as of December of 2022. After seeing her pop up in MAGA rap videos it was all too clear that this woman was not likely to be a paragon of virtue. They never seem to be, they go to Washington and become strumpets, or perhaps they always were strumpets and their thirst for men is simply directed toward accumulating power.

There are numerous accounts of Greene's incessant adulteries and philandering. The rampant philandering simply reached such embarrassing heights that her husband was placed in the unenviable position of either accepting his wife's behavior and becoming a complete cuck, introducing his wife's current boyfriend at family meals, or, maintaining some dignity and divorcing her. He chose the latter.

Whatever the reasoning behind this obvious pattern of behavior, it seems to be a consistent problem with loud flashy "Conservative" women who become celebrity figures. Perhaps it is as simple as that, if a woman becomes famous it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to continue to respect the not famous husband she has been with through the years. Especially if the woman is reasonably attractive, there seems to be no end to the right wing fan boys that talk about how "hot" the conservative female rockstar is, I've heard it personally from people for decades now. 

"Look! She's riding a four wheeler decked out in Carharts with a shotgun on the back...what a babe!"

Latent behind all of this is the issue of feminism. A conservative Christian woman doesn't seek to run for office, she is too busy being a wife and a mother, this is why the whole notion of a conservative female politician is really an oxymoron. You can't be a feminist and a conservative, just like you can't be a homosexual and a conservative, etc. The things are antithetical, and I think this is closer to the root of the problem.

Sarah Palin's divorce is another example of this trend. When she came out to give energy to the crippled geriatric 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain the right wing media was abuzz with talk about how great she is, how beautiful she is, and how unfair the leftist media treats her. Naturally as she soared to stardom, selling ghost written books, doing speaking engagements, and was a regularly sought out guest for news shows, the charges of whoredom began to pop up repeatedly. I have no doubt they are true. It seems that right wing men are suckers for country girls who shoot guns, fish, and tell the libs to shove it. So expect conservative inc marketers to give us more Palins, Boeberts, and Greenes in the future, almost as a sort of humiliation ritual for the American right to endure.

It's pathetic to hear grown men on the right talk about how "conservative" some governess, senatress, or congresswoman supposedly is. The reality is, if she was such a conservative she would be at home taking care of her family, not in the halls of congress or in governors mansions. My advice to Lauren Boebert is simple, repent of your sins, go home begging for forgiveness, and take care of your kids. Also, stop going to "Beetlejuice" plays, you're an adult.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer: An Attack on Christmas

As advent and the Christmas season approach it is good to begin planning now how best to navigate the holiday season to get the most out of it, or rather as heads of homes, to put the most into it. Advent and Christmas are filled with traditions and practices that we often go through unthinkingly. A pristine example of this is the music.

The day after Thanksgiving, if not sooner, radio stations around the country will begin to blare with what have become the staple American Christmas songs. Most of us know them, "Frosty the Snowman", "Silver Bells", "Jingle Bells", and of course "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". But, what is it that all of these Christmas songs have in common?

The common theme in all of these songs is that Christ is nowhere to be found in them. Which makes it absurd that they are called Christmas songs. Nearly all of these songs were written in the 1940's and 50's and have become part of the traditional American Christmas ever since. None of them are particularly good musically, lyrically, or containing potent messages. At their best they are exercises in sentimentalism as the singer drolls on in a melancholy manner about "Being home for Christmas". At their worst these songs are vapid, childish, if not insulting to the true meaning of Christmas, yet adults feel obliged to endure the twaddle in many a December car ride.

Whether of the puerile or mawkish variety, each of these songs have acted as a secularizing force to supplant Christmas with what can be termed "Winter Holiday". Christmas when stripped of its Christ leaves us with songs about trees, snow glistening, Santa Claus, grandmas getting ran over by reindeer, living snowmen, sleds on hills, and or course, heroic red nosed reindeer. There are even bad movies to accompany the bad songs to drill the bad message into your head all the more.

The worldly are often wiser than the sons of light in this regard, the secularizers know what they are about and they give it to their audiences good and hard. Meanwhile, many Christians simply fumble along unwittingly accepting the Christ-less Christmas propaganda into their homes. It's harmless, I remember watching that when I was a kid, it's fun, what's the big deal? For those of us parenting little Christians, the reality is that these songs and movies send a confusing message to our children. What do red-nosed reindeer, frosty snowmen, sleigh rides, chestnuts roasting over open fires, and silver bells have to do with Christmas?

Nothing, absolutely nothing. These are things that may accompany life in winter, and that's what the secularists have replaced Christmas with, winter holiday, where we celebrate winter life and give gifts to one another for no particular reason. How hollow.

It was probably 3-4 years back I can recall riding in our van with our children during Advent season, one of them asked for some Christmas music and so I obligingly and grudgingly put on one of the stations playing the bad Christmas music. Most if not all of the songs already annoyed me at this time, as the music washed over me with the over-singing from performers warbling out the idiotic lyrical content it invariably would cause me to go into rants about the content and mocking imitations of the ridiculous falsetto singing. Perhaps this is what my children really wanted, to see dad at his best.

As I listened to the music and its vapid content and the shamelessly self aggrandizing performances, it dawned on me, "Why are we doing this?" Why do we listen to this garbage every year? Particularly when there is a treasure trove of rich Christ centered hymns and songs that obviously would be more fitting for the season, why do we put on Mariah Carey, and people warbling away about a Christmas tree's lovely branches? Surely we of all people have something far more meaningful to sing about?

Creating More Robust Traditions

The secularists are not going to promote a Christ centered Christmas on their centralized platforms of radio and television, we need to do that in a decentralized manner in our homes. Today the great music of the ages is right at our fingertips, before car trips we can load up our phones with traditional advent hymns like "O Come O Come Emmanuel", "Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silent" and Handel's "Messiah". It need not all be choral arrangements, there are plenty of bluegrass or Celtic folk versions of these great songs. During Christmastide, there are countless great songs that can be played that are centered on the first coming of Christ.

These are the songs I want to reverberate in my home, not the twaddle being served up by the secularists. Music is important, it gets into us, it echoes in our minds. That's precisely why the secularists had to replace the rich potent Christmas music with the shallow winter holiday songs, the Christmas music made them uncomfortable.

Imagine being a thorough secularist and hearing chipper carolers singing that we need to, "Remember Christ our Savior, was born on Christmas Day, to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray." 

You can just feel them squirming can't you? People singing such songs are celebrating something, something deep, something profound, something eternal...best to just get back to the chestnuts roasting over an open fire before things get serious.

We as Christians ought to feel just as uncomfortable when the winter holiday songs come on, because these songs are actually an attack on Christmas. They were created to drain Christmas of its potency and to make it vapid and silly. We need to see this music for what it is, and it is not innocent, cute, or traditional, it is a direct attack on Christmas to strip it of its Christ. We need to resist it for that reason. The secularists have drowned out the rich vibrant music with their vapid nonsense, it is our duty to return the favor.

Don't get me wrong I do actually like few of the winter holiday songs, "Happy Holiday" by Andy Williams is probably my favorite. I like it because it sounds rather boozy and has a nice swing to it. I can picture it being sung by a Frank Sinatra type in a full suit with a glass of scotch in one hand and a big band behind him. You got me, that's kinda cool.

But again, what's the Holiday being celebrated?

Conclusion

I want this all to be an encouragement for us as Christians, an encouragement to consciously create robust Christ centered Christmas traditions in our homes. If we are going to do that recovery of the music is one of the first things we need to pry out of the gnarled withered hands of the secularists. The people at Comcast, Clear Channel, and network television aren't going to serve up rich Christmas music for you, you're going to have to swim upstream against the current to obtain the real riches.

 
Toss the winter holiday stuff into the rubbish bin, revive the potency of a Christ-centered Christmas and let the secularists clutching their hollow husks squirm in our wake. As I said at the start of this, the time to plan is now, failure to plan is planning to fail. Advent begins November 27th, get your playlists for car rides and the home ready, get your nativity scenes now, plan which movies to watch now rather than passively letting the secularlist networks serve that up for you. May we fill our homes with the richness of permanent things as we celebrate the Lord of Heaven coming to Earth.

Glorying in the Mundane

Above is a picture of the eggs that our hens are currently producing. Today our girls put out 8 eggs, which isn't too shabby in my opinion. I took the picture to capture the spectrum of color that they make. We have been for some time trying to raise a specialty bird, the Black Copper Maran, which lays the darkest colored eggs in the world, and they have just recently began laying. Ours aren't the darkest layers I have seen, but they lay a lovely mahogany colored egg. There is also one olive colored egg laying hen that we have, and you can see her beauty in the mix.

Step back for a moment and just marvel at this; the chickens romp around the yard scratch up dirt, overturn leaves and other debris, and eat bugs and seeds, all climaxing in them laying an egg. This is simply stupendous. The world all about is teeming with wonder. If we fail to succumb to the call all about us to stand in awe, the fault is entirely our own. There is nothing boring about the world around us, indeed it could rightly be described as a series of miracles one right after the other occurring right before our eyes.

I remember Chesterton once saying something along the lines of, "There are no boring subjects, only people who are bores." I also recall John Piper ecstatically saying "It rains, the sun shines, grass grows, cows eat it, and cows make milk!" Truly a marvel. Oh for eyes to see the world as it is! As children we see the world more rightly, all is new and properly full of wonder. As we age we get used to seeing the miraculous every day; but the rightly tuned eyes, ears, skin, and taste-buds, see, hear, feel, and taste the glory of God all about them.

A Meditation on 40 Years of Abortion, or Why the Nazis Were Better Than Us

Men and women become accomplices to the very evils they fail to oppose. This truth has been a blight upon the German people for the last 70 years. How could they have let the evils of the the ghettos, the round ups, and the horrors of concentration camps occur in their proverbial backyard without stiff resistance? The answer: they countenanced the evil in a similar manner as the majority of people in the United States are either supportive or indifferent to the ongoing practice of abortion, which has continued for 40 years and does not seem any closer to being ended.

How I wonder, can a people wag their moral fingers at the Germans while at the same time being either supportive or indifferent to murdering infants in the womb? Perhaps it is because the Germans were too scientific in their approach, too cold and inhuman, too blunt in their aim, too honest about their goals, too messy in their methods, too dirty in their task. If these be the reasons why the German death camp sends shivers down the backs of people, how can they feel ambivalent towards abortion?

If the Germans are to be faulted for a cold scientism leading to death camps, then Americans are to be faulted with a gushing emotionalism which trumps reason leading to Planned Parenthood "clinics" [sic]. If they were too blunt about their practice (Calling for a "Final Solution"), we are simply dishonest and refuse to say what it is we actually are doing, even the term "abortion" is an obfuscation. If they are to be faulted for being too messy in their murders, we are too sanitary and too clean; to kill a child is a mere "procedure".

The Germans carried out their ethnic cleansing attempting to hasten the evolutionary process; in America the killing of children is done primarily in order to maintain a certain lifestyle or because having a child would be inconvenient. The Germans saw certain races and people groups as un-persons and their lack of rights warranted their deaths; in America, the murder of babies is conducted because the woman is so overflowing with rights that she has the right to murder. Theirs was a butchery done teeming with masculinity, with chest poundings, with "Zieg Heils!", and a frank logical methodology; ours is a slaughter being conducted effeminately, with bra burnings, "Stay out of our vaginas!", and a muddled blend of idiotic talk about rights.

The Nazis were better than us. Or rather, we aren't better than them.

They had goals, they took the ball from Darwin and ran for the end-zone. We, well we have a society of narcissistic whiners with a raging sense of entitlement who think the world exists to serve them and they will kill to maintain their idea of pleasure. For my part, I'd rather be killed in a death camp by some sociopathic-Darwinist-eugenicist shooting for the perfect man, than in the womb of some club-hopping-"Dancing With the Stars"-watching-narcissist seeking their own pleasure. At least I'd have been killed by someone who thinks their are working for the greater good.

Both will be condemned in the Last Day. Yet, perhaps it may be more tolerable for Sodom, Gomorrah, Berlin and Auschwitz than for Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles in the Day of Judgement.

The Courage to Say, "It Stinks"

"The parable of the sower"

Postmodernity is like the classic movie monster "The Blob" that absorbed everything in its wake. In no area of life does this seem more true than that of aesthetics and the arts. We are told that there are no forms of music that are superior to others, nor any art that is better than others; all is in the eye of the beholder, all is subjective, mere opinion. I am here to say, balderdash. I want you dear reader to stand erect, with a stiff upper lip, a critical eye or ear, and to courageously declare, "It stinks." without feeling as though you have committed some sort of blaspheme.

The fear to call a form of art bad came rushing back to my mind this weekend, as I was in a chapel that houses what has to be among the more ridiculous portraits in churches. It is Jesus, looking like the type of stern vagrant one would meet at a 7-Eleven at 2 am, as the sower of his parable. His toes on one of his feet jut out from the wall a bit, giving the impression that he is walking out of the painting to ask for a dollar. Flanking him are the individuals represented in Christ's parable of the sower. In the background is the city of Jerusalem, and beyond that the two towers from NYC smoldering, after the 9/11 attacks (unfortunately I could not get a picture that captures all of this).

The humorous thing to myself is that when I asked other people in the chapel what they thought about this monstrosity, the reply I got was, "Oh wow! I just noticed that! Woah that is awesome!" Another person, who I could tell was looking at the thing with a jaundiced eye, replied, "It's alright." People are simply afraid to say that an artistic expression is bad.

So, let me lead the charge and say it, "It stinks."

Apart from the second commandment issues, many depictions of of Christ are just plain creepy; this painting is no exception in that regard. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't an easy piece to make, it took a great deal of talent to produce it, so it has that going for it. It is huge, made with oils, and vibrant. The unfortunate result was a huge, oily, vibrant 9/11 level artistic catastrophe on the chapel wall.

The painting in the chapel reminds me of the steady stream of unwittingly irreverent art that Jon McNaughton continues to churn out. It is "God and Country" Fox News Republicanism put into art. Below is the painting, "The Empowered Man", it is part of a series of paintings (The previous one, "the forgotten man") which could conveniently be made into a comic strip. To the left you see Lincoln, Washington, Reagan, and I think Jefferson praying. On the right you see Obama prominently positioned with his hands up, in a defensive posture, as though the constitution wielding man has a string of garlic driving back his vampiric impulses. Behind Obama are the dejected faces Bill Clinton, FDR, LBJ.

"The Empowered Man"

When analyzing art one must ask what is its message? Here the message is that the constitution is apparently Heaven's gift to man; it has the power to drive back the forces of darkness (Obama, Bill Clinton, LBJ), and it is cheered by the likes of Lincoln. Nevermind that Lincoln was head of the bloodiest anti-constitutional presidential administration in American history; here is Lincoln again portrayed as a national saint. Also, note the kneeling of Jefferson. What is he kneeling before? This kneeling with abject reverence before the constitution is a repeating theme in McNaughton's work. Americana is the god in McNaughton's work. As such, it stinks.

"One Nation Under God"

Above is another example of McNaughton's work. The message is right to the point, the constitution is God's gift to man. It is interesting the think about the type of personality which this kind of art would appeal to; on second thought, no, it really isn't that interesting. There is no mystery here, there is no invitation to contemplate, and no question as to what exactly the artist means. McNaughton's work is to art what a strip club is to romance, it is cheap, to the point, wholly artificial, and utterly lacking in mystery. In other words, it is propaganda. Other than that the paintings themselves aren't half bad.

Art is not purely subjective, like one's favorite ice cream, or roller coaster ride. Some works are better than others and in our context it takes great courage to say that a song, painting, or even an outfit is shabby. Relativism rules in art and aesthetics in our day; where else do all of the squares on canvases, or pajama wearing Wal-Mart goers come from? It's high time for a Renaissance in beauty, this will only come through vigorously reclaiming objective standards in art and aesthetics.