An American soldier stationed in South Korea appears to have escaped into North Korea, effectively becoming a defector. It appears that he was involved in some fights in Seoul, and he had been previously arrested for assault. He was about to be arrested again or deported to the US, and that seems to be the reason why he wanted to escape. But going to North Korea is a bit of risky proposition. 

Yes, he’s African-American by the way. 

That raises a few interesting questions. First, about all those American soldiers stationed all over the world, and in particular in Asian countries. Many times they are involved in crimes and are resented by the local population. In Japan, there were more than a few cases of rape committed by American soldiers. And when it’s not rape, it’s general anti-social activity. And this seems to be common in South Korea too. 

But many times nothings happen to them, because they obey to a different legislation. They are under the jurisdiction of the U.S. law. In Italy, in the American base in Aviano, a drunk-driving female soldier run over a kid, killing him. She’s probably going to be sent back to the US and never prosecuted, as it already happened in a similar case before that. 

But in this case, well, the soldier went to North Korea, and of course they don’t have extradition treaties with the U.S., and it’s not sure what will happen to him there. 

North Korea is a very interesting and mysterious country. No one knows very well what goes on in there. According to the American propaganda, it is some kine of Communist hellhole where people are put in prison camps killed and tortured for no reason, but that doesn’t seem to be exactly the case. A few images that leak from there now and then show a more or less normal, if a bit old-fashioned, country. 

I’m not a big fan of Communism. I think it’s an awful political system, and I am not a big fan of authoritarian states in general. On the other hand, the modern liberal world isn’t that great either. In some ways, the rigidity of Communism worked as a time capsule to protect the population from the worst changes of the 20th and 21st century. Just look at Eastern Europe. The reason that they have less immigration and are in general more socially conservative, is really because they were under Communist occupation for a long time, and thus isolated from Western influence, money and propaganda. 

Just look at the way people dress. These are some pictures of women in North Korea. Aren’t they cute? They look nice with those uniforms or just more traditional clothes. In North Korea, people are not rich, they mostly ride bicycles to get around, but they still seem to dress with a certain elegance. Just compare it with anywhere in the West, or even with South Korea. 

South Korea is obviously more prosperous, but also much more Westernized.  

Now, it’s interesting to compare both worlds. On one hand, you have places like North Korea, or even China, where the state controls basically everything in society. Now, of course China is no longer a Communist country in any significant way. People can own property and there are even many Chinese billionaires. But it is still a very controlled system, where people are not allowed to do many things without authorization, there are bad policies such as the social credit system or some of the worst lockdowns in the world during Covid.

On the other hand, the West tried, at least for a while, “total freedom”. But it turns out that, when given total freedom, most people don’t really know what to do with it. They are just interested in watching Netflix or porn, doing drugs or eating too much, and being brainwashed by big corporations.

It seems to me that freedom, when lacking a coherent moral system as a frame around it, is not that great. You really have to have some kind of system where vices are punished or discouraged, and virtue is rewarded. It doesn’t need to come from the State. It can come from other institutions, such as the Church, citizen groups, or even society self-policing itself.

A big problem in the West is the mass media, which is constantly propagating bad behaviour and bad ideas to the people, and basically saying that bad is good, and black is white. Even most churches in the West today just regurgitate liberal propaganda. They are not that much different from Netflix.

Supposedly, North Korea s an Atheist state where religion is forbidden and religious people are persecuted. But I am not sure how much of that is true and how much is propaganda.

There is even a Catholic Church in Pyongyang, there are about 1000 Catholics in the city, and according to this state official, they have complete freedom of religion. Who knows who’s telling the truth?

This is from a previous video in a Catholic Church in North Korea. Look at that choir singing. Pretty nice. Today in the West, that’s very rare. Catholic Churches are completely modernized and usually empty. To find anything similar to that, you have to go to a small church that still does the traditional mass, but there are not many of those around.

So, yes, North Korea is basically a time capsule. Perhaps not the best place in the world to be. But probably also not the worst. And they do have some beautiful women.

Also, Swedes vs Finns

Living the dream is an expression that means living a luxurious, ideal lifestyle, but it can also be taken to mean being out of touch with reality. Stop dreaming, bitch. Life is hard. Wake up and smell the coffee.

My time in Finland is almost up, and it was a dream in many ways. It was mostly a happy, relaxing, beautiful period, with just a few sad moments, but being in an arts residency also meant being away from the daily grind in a sort of alternate vacation time, which was really unsustainable for a much longer period. So it’s time to go.

And yet…

Some experiences, like some dreams, are easily forgettable, while others are memorable and remain with you for a long time. The ancient Greeks had two gates from which dreams came. The false or meaningless dreams came from the ivory gate; the true or prophetic dreams came from the horn gate. I suppose Finland, for me, was of the second type. While the dream is ending, some part of the experience will remain, and perhaps even become the basis for a new foundation in life.

Dreams can be captivating, but hard to explain, to ourselves and to others. While a dream can be exciting as it happens, it fades away as soon as you wake up, and you struggle to even remember it. There is something incommunicable about dreams. Hearing other people tell their dreams is usually boring. I suppose that’s why my Finland columns were not so exciting for readers — it’s hard to talk about a dream.

But one thing I find interesting is that Finland lies at the very edge of the West. Just next door to Russia, the West’s old-new nemesis, and, on the other side, to Sweden, the poster-child of current Western progressive values. Finland has only been independent since 1917, belonging to the Russian Empire for over a century before, and to Sweden for several hundreds of years before that.

While relations with Russia are historically complicated, especially now, they have not always been completely hostile, and there are many Russians living in Finland. Sweden and Finland, however, tend to get along better.

And yet… Historically, Sweden dominated Finland, but it was not exactly an equal relation. As someone local told me, during the period of Swedish domination, Swedes were the elite, and Finns were peasants: “Finns were basically used as workers and soldiers”. Still today, Swedish-speaking areas in Finland, closer to Sweden, are more upper-class, dominated by a few rich, traditional families. While the eastern area next to Russia (Karelia) was poorer and traditionally less developed, and still is. Peasants then as now.

Perhaps because of that, despite their major similarities, Finland and Sweden are, in some ways, very different. Or perhaps I should say that, while the landscape and many aspect of the culture in both countries are similar, Finns and Swedes are not.

Swedes today are very much into political correctness and virtue-signalling. Swedes tend to dislike conflicts, so they always try to find some sort of general consensus. But that, on the other hand, leads to conformism and to a certain sheep-like mentality. Everyone must support the same thing in order to avoid conflict, and for that they take their cues from the media. So they tend to like to support whatever is the fad of the day. In the 1930s, they supported eugenics because that was the vogue; now they support immigration and BLM.

It is interesting that such characteristics do not change even when you displace Swedes from Sweden. Minnesota is an American state famous for its large presence of Swedish immigrants. It is also one of the states more famous for pushing Somali immigration and BLM stuff. You might remember that the state was shook up by the George Floyd riots in 2020. But nothing much changed. If anything, it just made them even more supportive of BLM and other progressive stuff.

Finns are different. I don’t know if it is because of their proximity to Russia or for other reasons, but they seem less preachy and less consensus-oriented than the Swedes. They do not seem to care all that much about political correctness and seem to be more independent in their ways of thinking. Of course, they are still part of the current West and as such subject to the same type of propaganda and values and ideals. But it seems to be less pronounced than in Sweden.

One thing about the Scandinavian countries is that in the last decades they have become very Americanized. The same is true of the whole world, I suppose — American culture is global culture now, from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli — but since Scandinavians tend to be very fluent in English (more than Germans, and much more than Southern Europeans) the influence is felt more directly.

Personally, I don’t really like that a lot. I wish each country just kept more of their own culture and traditions. Finns have much to be proud of, and it’s not just Nokia, sauna and Moomins. I’ve learned a lot about Finland during this period, and I wish I could have learned even more.

Unfortunately, the experience is ending and now it’s time to leave for other shores. Thank you and goodbye, Finland. Kiitos and moi moi.

And other immigration stories

You might remember Scorsese’s mother from the hilarious dinner scene in “Goodfellas”, shown below, where she plays Joe Pesci’s mother. That’s Scorsese’s real mom, and she’s amazing. She also plays a small part in “Casino”. (I didn’t realize it before, but Scorsese’s father also has a brief cameo in “Goodfellas”, as Vinnie, a prisoner cooking tomato sauce.)

But if you want to see more of Scorsese’s parents, I recommend watching “Italianamerican”, which I just watched. It is a short documentary (less than 50 minutes long) made by Martin Scorsese in 1974 about his parents. Basically it’s just a home movie of him having dinner with his parents and asking them questions about their background.

Many people bitch and moan about massive immigration today — including me. But it is important to understand the differences between immigration back then and now. The Italians, while very poor at the beginning, worked hard to integrate and to improve their lives, and eventually their children and grandchildren became completely assimilated to the new way of life, and, in many ways, were more “American” than “Italian”.

My own grandparents had similar experiences. My great-grandmother came from Italy, only not from Sicily but from Lombardy, and to Argentina instead of to the U.S. But her parents were poor, illiterate peasants, who thought they would find a better life on the other side of the Atlantic. She arrived in Argentina when she was only 5. About a decade later, just 17, she was already married and working as a seamstress, and at 18 she had her first child. The second one, a year later, was my grandmother.

What is the difference with the current migration wave? Well, for one, the ones coming now are mostly non-white people migrating to white countries, so it’s a reverse process of colonization. Also, in the case of Europe, they are mostly Muslim, so it’s a different religion and culture which makes assimilation harder. In fact, considering the numbers, you might even ask — who is “assimilating” to whom, in the end?

Besides that, previous immigrants had to work very hard to survive and lived in dire conditions. Scorsese’s mother tells us in the movie that at one time they were 14 people living in a small apartment with three rooms — the mother, the father, the uncle, the aunt, a nephew, and nine children. And, occasionally, they even took paying boarders too.

Current immigrants, on the other hand, have paid apartments or hotel rooms and receive welfare and other benefits, which is the main reason they are resented. Germany pays billions of euros every year to host refugees. And why? The excuse is that they are needed because of a supposed shortage of workers, but with the economy shrinking and automation taking over many jobs, it is unclear if they are really needed. Besides, as mentioned, many don’t even work and resort to criminal activities instead.

On one hand, the powers that be tell us that the world is overpopulated and that we’re destroying the planet with climate change. On the other hand, they tell us that developed countries need to receive a lot more people from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, which will consume more resources. It doesn’t make sense, and there is not even any attempt to hide the contradictions in the discourse. Because it’s all just based on lies, and the real objectives are clearly not the ones stated.

In any case, this is a separate issue, which is unrelated to Scorsese’s film, which talks about a different time — about an America, a New York that, like the Europe of old, does not really exist anymore. Seen today, it is a nostalgic movie about what was and what could have been.

Plus, Scorsese’s parents are so genuine and funny that you could watch them for hours. The film is so intimate, it is like you were having dinner with them too. Only, unfortunately, you can’t taste the food, which must be amazing. (However, Scorsese’s mom secret sauce recipe is described in the credits, you might try that).

I recommend watching this little gem of a documentary, which is, at least for now, fully available on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/pcWUNfmf0tI

https://youtu.be/MTJz_hj6GXw

A brief comment and nutrition advice

When I was still a child, they started rolling a propaganda that “margarine is healthier than butter”. It was obviously bankrolled by margarine producers. To me, even back then, it never made any sense that an artificial concoction with bland taste and bad smell could somehow be healthier than natural and delicious butter. My family, however, switched temporarily to margarine, also because it was cheaper and we were not rich. I never liked it, though, and since I became an adult, I’ve only bought butter. (I’m still not rich, but priorities are priorities.)

The point is that I’ve learned from early on that a lot of nutrition and health advice coming from the media or government or “experts” is bullshit, intended to sell you bad stuff, when not to harm you. Then, usually, after 30 years or so, someone comes up and says, “yeah, we were wrong, this is not really healthy.” But, by then, it is too late.

Aspartame, for instance, 40 years after the FDA approved it, is now being associated with severe health risks. And not just that, several other artificial sweeteners, such as Splenda, have also been outed as damaging. Sugar (in excess) may be bad for you, but all artificial sweeteners are worse.

A good rule of thumb is the taste. If it doesn’t taste as good as the natural version, it’s usually not healthy. Except for liver. Liver is supposedly natural and good for you, but I never liked its bitter taste.

However, there are things that taste good — or are at least addictive — such as chips, instant noodle soup, burgers, etc, but which are not good for you. Mostly, not because of the food itself, but because of the additives and chemicals inserted into it.

As a society, it seems that we evolved or devolved into childish habits. A child likes sweets and fast food, basically. And that is true of most adults now, too. Traditional cuisine is left for a few in the middle and upper classes. Most working-class people eat trash food, and that’s the main reason why they are so fat.

But I’m thinking now that lying about butter marked the end of civilization as we know it. Because it showed that we were living in a society basically based on lies, lies promoted as truth. From “margarine is better than butter” to “you can choose your sex” to “diversity is our strength” is one small step. Once you accept one lie, you can easily accept all others.

In fact, the “transgender” and “diversity” stuff is perhaps easier to swallow, being abstract concepts with difficult proof. But saying that “margarine is healthier than butter” was a complete fabrication, an inversion of the truth that is very easy to disprove. After all, we have consumed butter for thousands of years, but margarine made with processed oils is a very recent invention which was only possible with industrialization.

Modern technology, who can deny it, brought a lot of comfort and facilitated people’s lives in many ways. But one area in which it arguably was counter-productive was in food production. Industrialization made it possible to produce much more food, it is true, so hunger is not a big issue today even in poor countries — in fact, obesity among the poor is the big problem now. But, on the other hand, industrialization also made food worse and less natural. From cows fed with hormones to chemical additives to HCFS to genetically modified seeds, 20th and 21st century food production became increasingly artificial and unhealthier. So much so that for eating “organic food” (the only type of food available to our ancestors) you have to pay a premium.

But don’t expect a return to more natural ways. Things are, if anything, getting worse. Now besides the usual processed food they are offering us “lab-grown meat”, “edible vaccines” and “bugs on the menu”. Margarine is going to be the least of your worries. You will eat the genetically-modified bugs, and you will be happy.

Time to wake up

There is little we can do about the next developments that are soon coming in the Modern West. From “new pandemics” to “fifteen minute cities” to social credit tied to your bank account, bad things are going to happen, whether we like it or not. Complaining won’t solve anything, and it seems to me that most people are happy with the status quo anyway.

Of all the black pills, hat’s the hardest black pill to swallow. That most people today are content with the way things go. Or that they even fret about mostly imaginary problems (“climate change”, “transgender children”) while completely ignoring real ones, such as collapsing birth rates or the rise in the cost of living or the increasing violence.

Well, as Chesterton said, we all agree that there are problems, but we really disagree about what those problems are:

“But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency; and many of us would as soon welcome German measles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would rather have rheumatics. (…) In social matters we must actually find the cure before we find the disease.”

I don’t really care.

I’d rather just check out, you know what I mean? Living in a small community in the woods or in a farm, away from it all, with the very few people I like.

Yet I fear that that, too, is a dream. I mean, people have to make a living somehow, and that’s hard enough inside the system, imagine outside.

But at least it seem to be something worth trying — to find an alternative on how to live the best you can, while things around you slowly disintegrate.

Truth is, I’m tired of complaining. I’ve been complaining all my life, and it never took me anywhere. I think the main problem of the opposition to globalism is that this seems to be a bunch of guys who are always complaining, complaining, complaining, but that doesn’t really inspire anyone. People don’t like complainers. What’s inspiring is someone who does something.

But… Oh, well, that’s hard.

So, what to do?

I lived in Finland for two months, and in many ways, it felt like a dream. Perhaps because it was a period limited in time, perhaps because I had a lot of different experiences that didn’t quite fit together, perhaps because the foreign language and landscape and people made me feel displaced, perhaps because the film project I was working on was about dreams, or perhaps because I was influenced by some dreams I had even before coming here, fact is, I had a general sensation of unreality that hasn’t been dispelled yet.

It was mostly a wonderful experience, even if with a few setbacks — setbacks that appeared to be more frequent in my final days, as if signalling that the dream was coming to an end.

Now, very soon, I will be going back to Germany, and there I must go back to “normal life” — working or trying to find work, worrying about my residency permit, paying bills, moving to another apartment, and in general trying to solve several practical things that I have been postponing for a long time.

Besides, while Finland (or at least the small town where I resided) felt like a place out of time, seemingly isolated from all the problems of our contemporary world, it is not the same in Germany. Oh no Siree. Germany does indeed feel like the modern world, from climate change to inflation to refugee drama to all that’s wrong with the world today.

(“What’s wrong with the world?”, asked Chesterton. “What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.”)

Anyway, I don’t know if I will continue writing when I am back there, or at least, I will probably be taking a break for a while. Perhaps I need some time to rethink this blog. People don’t read much blogs anyway these days — they watch videos and social media. But videos take time, and I hate social media.

So, we’ll see. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

Time to wake up.

https://youtu.be/CnM4cl5LZn4

https://youtu.be/Zx4doqynooA

Paris is burning, but where to escape?

The current and still ongoing riots in France — some call it even a budding civil war — will perhaps serve as a wake-up for many people living in the West, about what is really happening in their lands. Perhaps. I am not really sure, as most White people are so brainwashed and alienated from reality that I really doubt much of anything will change.

For years, it was known that violence among migrants and locals would eventually escalate. In fact, Michel Houellebecq predicted a very similar scenario in his novel “Submission” (2015). Sure, they are mostly attacking the cops and looting shops, a bit like the George Floyd riots in the U.S.A., but it is a level of sustained violence never seen before, at least not in recent years in a European country. The closest thing to it were the riots in England in 2011, which were also, by the way, mostly done by migrants (Muslims and Blacks).

There are several elements here, one is obviously racial — the thug shot by the police was Algerian — the other religious, as most immigrants in France are Muslims. In any case, it is clear that this goes beyond the teenage thug that was shot. There are several things coming together: resentment by Algerians of French colonialism, resentment of Muslims against the French government, general anger by a despised minority against the police, influence from BLM stuff in America, etc. But, in general, it just shows that “multiculturalism” was always one of the dumbest ideas ever. The belief that people who are very different and in many cases hate each other would live in peace and harmony because of ??? was always unrealistic and utopian.

The problem is that France might be the worst country — I’ve been to Paris not long ago, and I made a short video about it — but it is far from being the only one with such troubles in Europe. All European countries have been targeted with massive immigration by non-white people from poor third-world countries. For years we were told that the “Great Replacement” was just a “conspiracy theory” promoted by “right-wing extremists”, but what now? France is more than 20% to 30% non-French now, and things don’t look good.

But why can’t whites — French, Germans, Italians, Irish etc — have their own countries where they are the ethnic majority or even the only ethnicity? I never heard any explanation for that. Supposedly it is because, if countries are allowed to remain majority white, this is somehow “racist”, or they will become “Nazis” and do “another Holocaust”, but that is a complete non-sequitur. Also, Japan is still mostly Japanese, China is mostly Chinese, and no one seems to have much of a problem with that. It’s just White countries that for some reason need to become all “multicultural”.

Now, I am not completely naive and I do know why this is happening and who is doing it, but most white people don’t. They really believe in the multicultural utopia, against all possible evidence.

Now, immigrants themselves are just pawns. Most of them might really just be good family people who want to work. Still, they are competing with the locals and driving down wages.

I don’t have much time for the “they just want to make their life better” argument. It’s an opportunistic outlook. Sure, they want to go where someone will give them more money or more advantages, but there is little interest in what they will contribute to society. They would change countries in a whim, if they got a better deal. I remember talking to two young Turkish immigrants in Germany, and they were not working-class, they were middle-class, highly educated young men who studied in Germany, spoke fluent German and English. And yet, at one point one of them said that what they really wanted was to go to Canada, because they thought they could get more benefits there.

Who needs such people? Why can’t they make their life better where they are? Turkey itself is not so bad these days.

Then there is also the sexual element, which is a bit distasteful, so I haven’t seen anyone talk about that, except perhaps for people like Anglin. But it’s true, most of the Middle Eastern and African refugees are men, and their coming was cheered on mostly by women. Not that most women are sexually interested in refugees, but more men around just means more options for women. For men, it is the opposite. It means more competition, not just for jobs, but for women too. Contrast that with the Ukrainian refugees, who were mostly women and so there wasn’t so much complaint from European men, but neither the same enthusiasm by women.

Of course, the main problem is that European governments are not on the side of their own native population, but are actively aiding and abetting the replacement and generating all this chaos that we see.

Anyway, the whole thing is a mess. But hey, at least France has a good multicultural football team, even if they still lost the Cup to Argentina (who, ironically enough, had a relatively whiter team, and Messi is almost fully Italian).

In Finland, Midsummer week is usually when people take their holidays and go out camping, boating, fishing, swimming naked in a lake, or doing all kinds of things outdoors. (No, not that. Well, maybe that too).

It is also when it usually rains.

This year… Well, for a while it seemed as if it was going to rain. While the whole previous week and even this same week until yesterday has been warm and sunny, feeling almost more like Spain than Finland, yesterday it started to rain, and I thought it would go on raining for the whole weekend, so I got a bit depressed.

But now the sun has come back, and I’m happy again. It’s funny how a little change in the weather can make such a huge difference in our mood.

However, it is still unclear if it will be rain or shine during the whole weekend. Midsummer this year is June 24-25.

Midsummer is usually commemorated with bonfires, but this year they have been prohibited because of the risk of forest fires, at least in this area. Getting drunk is another popular past time, and that’s why the number of people drowning in lakes seems to increase exponentially in Finland during those two days. This has not been forbidden, however — at least, not so far.

I hadn’t realized, but Midsummer is actually Saint John’s Day (and its eve), or the feast of Saint John the Baptist, commemorated every year on June 24, which is a popular feast in Portugal, Spain and other European countries, and also what, in Brazil, is called “Festa Junina”, or June festival, but also “Festa de São João”. The only thing is that, in Brazil, being in the Southern hemisphere, it is midwinter, so people drink mulled wine and eat pine nuts. The large bonfires, however, help you keep warm, although it doesn’t get all that cold in Brazil, even in winter.

In Finland, the holiday is called Juhannus, also because of Saint John, but it is rarely religious these days, and since 1955 it is no longer fixed on June 24, but scheduled to fall always on a weekend. It can be any day from 20 to 26th of June.

As usual in those cases, pre-Christian pagan celebrations have become mixed with Christian religious festivities, and so it is unclear when the bonfire tradition began. In medieval times, they were said to keep witches and evil spirits away. It was also common to swim in lakes or rivers to wash away the sins, and in remembrance of the baptisms performed by Saint John. But there are evidences that celebrations of the Summer solstice in general are a much older affair, although the actual solstice, of course, is on June 21 and not 24.

These are my final days in Finland, so that’s why I felt such melancholy when I saw rain falling after what seemed a very promising summer. (I was told that, on the contrary, this has been, so far, a very good summer for Finnish standards — sometimes, it really rains for months).

It has been a nice if uneven experience to be here for a while in these Northern lands, and writing a little bit about it, even if it doesn’t seem to have interested many readers. I guess the world is becoming too crazy right now for anyone to focus on more innocent subjects such as travel and culture and art.

Besides bonfires and lake swimming, there are also some traditional folk rites associated with love and fertility during those two days — i.e. if a young maid collects seven types of flowers and puts them under her pillow on the eve of Midsummer/Saint John, she will see her future husband in a dream. As you may remember, it is very similar to the tradition of The Eve of Saint Agnes, about which I wrote a while ago.

I don’t know if this works for men, too. I don’t think so.

One of the main characters of the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic, is the singer Väinämöinen, an old shaman and magician. Many of the episodes are about him trying to find a wife — always unsuccessfully. The most famous story is that of Aino, a young girl whom he wins the right to marry after winning a song contest with a rival, Aino’s brother. But she prefers to drown herself instead of marrying the old sage. Disappointed, Väinämöinen goes fishing to forget his troubles, and when he’s in the boat, lost in thoughts, she comes back as a fish and mocks him. Then she disappears forever.

Poor Väinämöinen. I feel his pain. I think that I, too, haven’t found what I’ve been looking for in Finland, whatever that was. But it has been a nice ride.

At the end of the long epic poem, replaced as King by a wise Child born of a virgin, Marjatta — an obvious Christian allegory, even if the details are different — Väinämöinen leaves the country, giving his musical instruments to his people as a legacy.

Perhaps it is time for me to take my leave too?

 

Brief notes on “Cool Hand Luke” (spoilers ahead)

I just watched “Cool Hand Luke” (1967) for the first time yesterday. One of the first things that called my attention is how many similarities it has with the later “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975), only that it’s in a chain-gang prison instead of an insane asylum, and with the “rebel outsider” played by Paul Newman instead of Jack Nicholson. But really, they should have sued for plagiarism.

Or perhaps, the theme of rebellion against authority or against an unjust system simply was the main motif of the times. After all, it was present in a lot of popular music of the 1960s and 1970s, too.

Both films have a similar structure. “Cool Hand Luke”, however, is much more direct in its Christian allegories and visual references, which might seem a bit strange, since the film was directed by a Jew called Rosenberg. (Milos Forman, director of “One Flew”, was of course also Jewish).

There are too many references to count to the New Testament, direct or indirect, from the name of the character (Luke, like the Apostle) to the “raising from the grave” scene, to the “cross” image over the picture at the end — but also the songs used in the film are relevant and play on the religious theme.

At one point, Paul Newman’s character sings a song called “Plastic Jesus”. While some may see the lyrics as flippant, in the context of the scene, sung after the death of the character’s mother, they become actually very moving. You can watch the scene below.

https://youtu.be/_-0BCUPM4tk

For that and several other reasons, the movie made me think about the basics of the Passion story — you know, the theme of sacrificing yourself for others. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”. To die, so that others may live.

I don’t think it was a very common theme before Christianity. In some of the Nordic or Greek ancient myths you have a warrior or even King who dies in battle, in a way sacrificing himself for his people, but it is more about the courage of facing death or about fighting until the end. Then you do have some stories of self-sacrifice as revenge — for instance, in the story of Samson in the Old Testament, he kills himself in order to kills his enemies too — like a suicide bomber avant-la-lettre.

But the idea of someone simply forfeiting his own life for the benefit of others seems a somewhat novel idea, which however has become common in many later stories and movies. Not always in a good way, of course. I can think of many movies where it becomes corny or annoying. For instance, in Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino” (2008), while not a bad movie, the ending with the self-sacrifice annoys me a bit. Maybe it’s just me, but it feels false.

In “Cool Hand Luke”, however, it works, even though here it is perhaps not so much about self-sacrifice for others (does Newman’s death change anything for any of the other prisoners? Not really) as about dying and thus becoming an undying myth of hope, a story that people will tell over and over again.

Some may say that the intention of the film is subversive — after all, it seems to be comparing a petty criminal to Jesus — but I don’t think it’s the case here, or, at least, I didn’t see it as offensive at all. I wouldn’t call it a religious film either. But it’s one that uses Christian imagery and themes in an effective way.

I don’t think it has much to do with belief either. I don’t know what the screenwriters’ beliefs were, but Jorge Luis Borges, who was an avowed atheist, used Christian images and references in a few of his stories, while J. R. Tolkien, who was a fervent Catholic, set his universe in a fantastic, mythical pre-Christian land, where the references are only indirect.

I think the explanation is that “Cool Hand Luke” was made in 1967, and portrays an even earlier time, which looks like the 1940s or early 1950s. Back then, religion and religious references in fiction were not completely out of common people’s universe, as they are now. Today, in the age of Drag Queen Story Hour, it has become almost impossible to refer to Christian imagery in a way that is not ironic, cynical or just purposefully offensive.

And, in fact, as if to prove the point, more recent covers of “Plastic Jesus”, such as the Billy Idol one, tend to accentuate the parodic, blasphemous meaning with additional lyrics that have little to do with the original song.

AIDS, Covid and Sex Robots

A few days ago, I wrote the following comment at another blog:

Kary Mullis (who invented the “PCR test” and died mysteriously just before “Covid”) always said that there is no causation link between HIV and AIDS. And there’s a video of him heavily criticizing Fauci for his management of the “AIDS p(l?)andemic”.

Also, it is quite obvious that AIDS in Africa and in the U.S. were two different things, as one affected mostly middle aged homosexual men, and the other heterosexuals and even children. I think AIDS in Africa was/is mostly a scam to get Western aid. They called anything “AIDS”, just as they called anything “COVID” later on, to get money.

Looking back at the AIDS phenomenon, it is clear that there were many similarities with COVID, including the presence of Anthony Fauci at the forefront, and very dubious claims that were later disproved.

It seems that, both back then and now, the main interest was to promote panic.

But why?

I think now that it might be about reducing birth rates.

As someone who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, I remember the propaganda about AIDS, making teenagers terrified of having sex, in particular if having sex without a condom. It was really hammered in not very subtle ways that, if you didn’t use a condom, you would die.

But even back then it was known that the main form of contagion, if there was such, was anal sex and drug use (sharing injected needles). Most AIDS victims were either homosexuals or drug users, with some unfortunate hemophiliacs who received tainted blood transfusions.

However, some say that the AIDS epidemic was more a lifestyle disease than a viral disease, as the HIV causality was never properly proven. Some say that the real causes of deaths were the so-called “poppers” (drugs used to facilitate anal sex) — which were banned in the early 1990s, and after that, coincidentally, the AIDS death started to subside — and AZT, a “cure” promoted by Mr. Fauci which was anything but — it killed you more than it helped you.

Whatever the case, in the media, AIDS was about making you terrified of sex.

Now, what about Covid? What was the function of the lockdowns, since they did nothing to stop the spread?

I think now it was also about birth rates. People are already afraid of sex — let us now make them afraid of all other kinds of interpersonal contacts. Let’s make everyone lonely.

It seems to have worked. People are having less and less babies, and birth rates, which were already very low in most Western countries, have really dropped in the post-Covid world.

What’s next?

Some argue that the next thing to be promoted are going to be AI sex robots. Basically, sex dolls with some kind of app similar to Siri or ChatGPT inside, which will provide some kind of pseudo-human interaction which, even if primitive, will be enough for most people.

Sex dolls don’t transmit diseases and, best of all, don’t produce babies. Also, since they can have any “gender” or sexual organ, or even both — or even new kinds of sexual organs — they will help to increase the general confusion most young people have today about sex.

I suppose it’s a possibility.

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Pockets of Sanity?

Regardless of their political orientation and their view about pandemics, I think most people will agree that the world is slowly going mad, and has been at least since the beginning of COVID in 2019.

The other day a famous University professor in the UK was caught having sex in public with his dog. I don’t know what to make of that, but it seems to be yet another symptom of a general social malaise.

Crime and general random violence seems to be increasing, together with drug use. There were at least six cases of people being pushed onto the NY subway tracks just in the past two weeks. Homelessness is very visible in most large U.S. cities and some European ones.

In France, homeless migrants are attacking old women and children almost daily. Just days after a Syrian stabbed children, now an Algerian was filmed hitting a grandmother and her granddaughter. (Luckily, it seems neither suffered great harm). The media says he is “French”. Well, yeah, I guess everyone is French now, just like everyone is an American.

But why are such people in France in the first place?

Why are such people all over Europe, from Italy to Finland? Yes, even in Helsinki I saw some Somalis loitering around. I thought they had come to Europe to find jobs? Well, I suppose that if the state supports you and pays your rent, you don’t need to worry about that too much.

Then, also a few days ago, the currently installed U.S. president twitted a message about giving “love” to “transgender children”. If that is not a direct call for child abuse, I don’t know what is.

First of all, there are no “transgender children”. I’d argue that there are no “transgenders”, period, but saying that children who did not go through puberty yet are of a different sex because they play with dolls instead of with toy cars or vice-versa, is just ridiculous. There are only two possible cases of “transgender children” — those who are being mentally abused (convinced of an impossibility), and those who are being more directly sexually abused. I can understand that teenagers may feel confused about their sexual identities thanks to the media, but not pre-pubescent children, who are really mostly just playing out the wishes of their parents (or, more likely, single mothers, as I doubt many fathers would approve of a “transgender child”).

But secondly, what kind of world is that in which the president of the most powerful country of the world is publishing such messages as part of his job? With the economy tanking and crime rising, with homelessness and drug overdoses at the highest rates ever while billions are spent in wars abroad, with psychotic “refugees” stabbing children while no one does anything to stop the flow, surely there are more pressing concerns?

But it is weird to see the “transgender” and “LGBTQ” issue acquiring such importance, even at the geopolitical level. Estonia has just approved “gay marriage”, the first Baltic state to do so, marking the border of the new Cold War, which seems to be between supporters of these new types of sex-based identity and supporters of more traditional arrangements (basically, Eastern Europe and most Asians, Indians and Muslims).

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, when the old type of “normality” was still a given, it is strange to see the world today. I guess we didn’t know what we had until we lost it.

Why are the people in power doing all this, when there seems little to be gained? Well, I’m reminded of that famous line from a popular movie: “Some men just want to watch the world burn”. Ordo ab chao and all that.

Writer Lihn Dihn says: “It’s not all hopeless. There are pockets of sanity. Get yourself into one.”

Well, yes, sure — but easier said than done. Where are the pockets of sanity in Western Europe? And for how long?

Looking at it from a secular perspective

I’ve been thinking about religion lately. As we all know, the West has all but abandoned Christianity: the little of it that remains is not very different from progressivism; and progressivism itself seems to have morphed into a new type of religion, with its own processions, prayers and rituals of penance.

Of course, the process is not even barely new. It has been happening for a long time, some say since the French Revolution, and others say that even before, during the Reformation. In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote “Dover Beach”, a beautiful poem about the “sea of faith” retreating into nothingness, and that was before Nietzsche famously sentenced that “God is dead” in 1882. The ending is sort of a description of our current post-religious world, a scary place with no safety net to fall back on:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

However, I don’t want here to talk about God or miracles or supernatural events. I am sure they exist, and demons and ghosts too: there are more things between Heaven and Earth that are dreamt in our limited human imagination. However, what I’m concerned here is with something else: religion as a form of community.

The Church as meeting place

A week or so ago, while outside in the streets of Jyväskylä a yearly music festival was taking place, which included a DJ dressed with rainbow colours and scantily clad Finnish ladies “twerking” to the latest American hip hop rhythm, I was attending Latin Mass and playing innocent board games with a group of young Catholic Finns. Well, to be fair, not all were Catholics — there was one infiltrated Protestant. Not all were young — I am pretty old, and there was someone else my own age. And not all were Finns — there was a German, a Brazilian and a Vietnamese too. But enough of them were Catholic Finns, and most of them were Catholic converts from Protestantism.

And I realized that a church is (or used to be) a great place to meet people, in an environment of relatively better values, that is, with a higher probability that the people there would be more wholesome than at a nightclub and that there would not be robbers, drug dealers, perverts or scammers among them. Of course, these days, you never know.

But part of the reasons for the infiltration and dismantling of churches — and not just there, but even innocent organizations such as the Boy Scouts — was to remove from existence those small peaceful shrines, and substitute them for increasingly obnoxious “safe spaces” that are anything but.

In the old times, a church used to be not merely a place where you’d go to hear mass once a year. It was a place to celebrate each holiday and season, to learn values, to meet your neighbours, to meet a husband or a wife, to get married, to educate your children, to seek guidance, to find comfort for pain. The local priest was a teacher, a psychiatrist, a newscaster, an entertainer, a doctor, a leader.

Of course, churches were not perfect, and today they are much worse. They are also part of today’s corrupt system, and, as such, they took part completely in the Covid operation, forcing masks and vaccine passes and all. It was not even possible to have holy water in the fountain because of a “virus” — something that for some reason had never been a problem before.

Material comfort is good, but it’s not enough. Even those who are up to their necks in the secular material world are searching for something, “something else” as they call it, be it in new age cults or “Science!” or BLM marches. Everyone wants some kind of explanation or “meaning” for this dream called life — or, at least, some reason to wake up and go to work every morning.

Christianity used to provide this, as well as some sort of unity in society. But in the modern progressive world, Christianity is no longer fashionable, or, in the rare cases where it still exists, it has been changed into a different type of religion that is more concerned with political and social issues than with saving souls.

Besides, in today’s society there are so many different groups living together in permanent conflict (a conflict that is gleefully stoked from above) — blacks versus whites, natives versus immigrants, transgenders versus TERFs, vaxxers vs antivaxxers, etc. — that most people can’t even get along with their neighbours, much less be part of any type of community, be it religious or not.

Now, the problem in particular of the Catholic Church, is that while they are still some good people inside it, the hierarchy at the top is mostly rotten. Pope Francis is no pope, and the current Vatican has been transformed into a den of homosexuals — it’s not me saying this, but traditional Catholic bloggers such as Ann Barnhardt, who probably knows what she’s talking about.

The Conversion

But then again, perhaps it was always so. In his Divine Comedy, Dante put several Popes in Hell, and there’s a famous story by Boccaccio about the conversion of a Jew. The story goes like this: Giannotto, a Christian man, tries to convince his Jewish friend, Abraham, to become a Christian. The Jew accepts, but on one condition: that he will go first to Rome, to see up close the vicar of God and his Cardinals to check the holy life they lead.

On hearing this, the Christian becomes desperate. His friend will never convert, “for if he goes to the court of Rome and sees what foul and wicked lives the clergy lead, not only will he not become a Christian, but, if he had already turned Christian, he would become a Jew again without fail.”

Giannotto, therefore, tries by all means to dissuade his friend from going to Rome, but to no avail. Abraham goes there, and in Rome he closely observes the Pope and Cardinals, realizing that “practically all of them from the highest to the lowest were flagrantly given to the sin of lust, not only of the natural variety, but also of the sodomitic, without the slightest display of shame or remorse…” And greed, avarice, gluttony, too.

On his return, Giannotto asks what opinion has he formed of the people in Rome. Abraham’s reply:

“A bad one, and may God deal harshly with the whole lot of them.  And my reason for telling you so is that, unless I formed a wrong impression, nobody there who was connected with the Church, seemed to me to display the slightest sign of holiness, piety, charity, moral rectitude, or any other virtue.  On the contrary, it seemed to me that they were all so steeped in lust, greed, avarice, fraud, envy, pride, and other like sins and worse (if indeed that is possible), that I regard the place as a hotbed for diabolical rather than devotional purposes.  As far as I can judge, it seems to me that your pontiff, and all of the others too, are doing their level best to reduce the Christian religion to naught and drive it from the face of the earth, whereas they are the very people who should be its foundation and support.”

Giannotto is naturally crushed, but just then Abraham continues:

“Since it is evident to me that their attempts are unavailing, and that your religion continues to grow in popularity, and become more splendid and illustrious, I can only conclude that, being a more holy and genuine religion than any of the others, it deservedly has the Holy Ghost as its foundation and support.  So whereas earlier I stood firm and unyielding against your entreaties and refused to turn Christian, I now tell you quite plainly that nothing in the world could prevent me from becoming a Christian.  Let us therefore go to the church where, in accordance with the traditional rite of your holy faith, you shall have me baptized.”

The Future

You may think that Bocaccio’s satirical story is a harsh criticism of the Catholic Church, and while it is so in many ways, Boccaccio worked for the Church and was a good Catholic until the end of this days. Like Dante before him, he criticized the corrupt hierarchy in order to try to improve the Church, not to destroy it.

Seeing young people celebrating Latin Masses and discussing theology and current events from a decidedly non-mainstream perspective makes me a bit more confident in the future. One of the girls, a beautiful young woman with a luminous smile, said that the challenge of being part of a Christian minority in an increasingly anti-Christian world gave her even more reason to go on. Difficulties make our strength and faith grow. Far from giving up, she was even cheerful in the face of adversity.

Many people feel despair at the current state of the world. But perhaps that’s not the correct way to see it. Only God knows what the future will bring. Yet, not all is lost, not all is bad, and hope springs Eternal.