THOMAS MERTON

I've been taking a look at a book I read years ago by Thomas Merton called Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. There's just one highly illuminating and quotable passage after another. Take a look at this, for example:

"We believe, not because we want to know, but because we want to be. And supernatural faith responds to the mystery of that natural faith which is the core and center of our personal being, the will to be ourselves that is the heart of our natural identity. The higher faith is the will not only to be ourselves, but to find ourselves truly in Christ by obedience to His Father."

This is just so much better than that self-effacing swill Christianity is always preaching. I find matters of humility and the self highly problematic.

HURRAH, EGYPT!

Let the cynical bourgeois pundits yatter on about "stability" as much as they like: the people of Egypt have enacted their GOD GIVEN right to impose their will on the government and have forced the unholy fascist fuckwad and Yankee ally out of power.

Let the mealy-mouths of Western nabobism learn this lesson, if they are capable: "stability" does not mean 30 years of dictatorship; "stability" does not mean gunning down peaceful demonstrators; "stability" does not mean censorship and torture. What was not supposed to happen has happened: the people have prevailed, and by bypassing the machinery of "stability."

Doubtless, once heaven does not descend on Egypt by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, we shall hear the habitual "realist" cynics blither on as if nothing wonderful or idealistic has really happened. But these are the people who breed death within, speak it daily -- these are the mini-Kissingers, the blind men of the bourgeoisie who hate the Kingdom of Heaven with a passion: if, indeed, they are capable of passion.

God bless the Egyptian people! Let's learn something in sleepy Canada: the authorities can have their asses kicked, and hard.

MR. STALIN?

The image above is taken from the November 2010 issue of SCALE MILITARY MODELLER. It is a captioned close-up of part of a diorama featuring battle between Soviet and German troops in WWII.

Now, I peruse this magazine pretty often, and I can say these guys know their tanks well and would never, for example, mistake a Panzer II for a Panzer III or a Sherman for a Chaffee. The modellers featured in this publication build stuff that is way out of my own very humble league.

But mistaking Lenin for Stalin? We modellers are known for our pedantry -- endless debates have occurred, for example, about what just the right shade of olive drab is appropriate for a Sherman tank. So I think I can be excused if I express my own dismay at a historical faux pas that makes one wonder just how much the buttons and badges crowd really understands about the war in its larger and more important contexts. Hopla!

TALK IS CHEAP?

When you say something is wrong and something must be done there will always be those who say "talk is cheap." Ask these people what they would have of you: do they want you to act, as they pretend they want? Or do they really want you just to shut up? And ask them what they themselves are doing about the injustice. Are they speaking out against it? Acting against it? Both? Neither? Usually it is neither. Those who decry those who decry injustice are almost always not the bold fighters against it, but its defendants.

And if talk is cheap, why do the rich insist on owning the media?