Five Articles I Recommend
Things I've been reading lately, and found interesting.
1) Did America Cause Europe's Energy War?
I'll skip straight to the punchlines:
At the same time, Germany, as it strives to replace Russian gas, has turned to the United States, which now provides (at “astronomical prices”, according to the German economy minister) 45% of European LNG imports — up from 28% in 2021. So overall, it’s hard to deny that the US is clearly benefiting from the European energy crisis in general, and from the recent pipeline attack in particular. No doubt that’s why US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Nord Stream attack offers a “tremendous opportunity” to end Europe’s dependency on Russian energy — a strange choice of language for what effectively amounts to a terrorist attack on a strategic infrastructure of a Nato ally. He also confirmed that the action would directly benefit the US: “We’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe,” Blinken added.
It should also be noted that the attack came at a time when the German government was coming under growing pressure to end the sanctions. Just a week before, large demonstrations had taken place in Germany calling for the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 to resolve the energy crisis.
Now, all this may very well be a case of unintended benefit for America. However, the mounting evidence forces us to ask an uncomfortable question: could the US strategy in Ukraine be aimed not only at weakening Russia, but Germany as well? It’s a terrifying prospect, but one that German elites can’t afford to discount. [emphasis mine]
2) Imagination and Fantasy: Pornography of the Mind
I do not wish to misuse my imagination, that great gift of God! But I have, and very consciously. And I do wish to love all creatures, and honor God in them. When they appear before me, my intent is to continue looking at God, only through them. They bring their own special gifts, and they in their uniqueness are my teachers.
A few years ago I realized with dismay that in my "harmless" habit of sexual fantasy in my imagination (which I used as a way to fall asleep, feeling cossetted and loved by my imaginary lover), I was imagining a woman so deeply that she had a kind of life. But then, as I learned to pray and meditate more deeply, I saw a great contradiction: this imaginary being, who becomes so real to me...doesn't she deserve the same treatment as all beings?
Why must she exist, conditionalized, made to serve me, when I intend to grant all beings perfect freedom, and to admire them with perfect love?
Ach...I was a right monster! As I understood the depth of the error, I asked for help from Mary, for she slays demons of lust. I spent time building new houses for the women of my fantasies, and I sent them into them, and told them they were free, and now I think of them no more.
The author understands the depth of the error:
Sexual fantasy is pornography of the mind. And just as with pornography, this is sexual abuse. Christ said that just to look at another woman with lust is to commit adultery with her (Matt. 5) – and this is without her consent, so it is not too strong to say that to sexually fantasize about a woman or any other person is to rape her in my heart, and likewise, to look at a pornographic image or video of a woman is to rape her in my heart. Fantasy, like pornography, is theft and leaves the person who has become an object violated.
So when I fantasize, I do not only avoid the relationship I desire, but I abuse the one I desire.
I'd add that if you are willing to take away the freedom to consent or not consent from one woman in your mind, then you build in yourself the capacity to take it away from anyone. This is the wrong direction. The right direction is to destroy any such capacity in yourself.
The author provides ways to stop:
So how do I avoid fantasizing in this negative, anti-iconographic way? One important piece of advice repeated by many ascetic fathers throughout history is the need to cut off such an intrusive thought at the root. Elder St Paisios described these thoughts or images as being like aeroplanes circling around us: the key thing is not to let them land. So we shouldn’t entertain such a thought or image even for a second, as to do so gives it entry into the nous. The easiest time to fight is now, never later! So as soon as the image appears, we can make the sign of the cross, invite the presence of Christ into the nous: when Christ was tempted by intrusive thoughts, he referred at once to the presence of God, using quotes from Scripture. Fantasy is often a symptom or a symbol of personal isolation, so as well as inviting the presence of God, we can engage with reality and real people around us, contact a friend, arrange a time for confession.
3) Don't Take the Bait
I was angered by Biden's speech with the red lamps, red curtains, where he demonized conservatives. But I did think "why this 'Reichstag' speech, why now?" The author provides an answer:
Heads up: they are goading you to a prime-time slaughter. A mild-mannered historian, Jon Meacham, framed a Bull Connor of a barn-burner speech for President Biden. As the race-baiting segregationist Connor once sought to do with blacks, Biden’s speech looked to put the deplorable outside our civic and social order as enemies of the people.
Meacham’s speech had a message for two groups of Republicans.
To the mainstream, populist-adjacent Republicans, the message was: It’s time to bend the knee and join the Liz Cheney, Democrat-sanctioned Republican future.
To the “ultra MAGA” Republicans, the message was an intended provocation—a poke in the chest, a double-dare to stand up and push back.
The progressives are ready and wanting you to show up for a fight. They want you to show yourselves as the animals that they say you are. They are provoking folks who see themselves as American patriots so that they can cast them as domestic terrorists.
Don’t take the bait. They are looking to provoke a civil war. Instead, give them a civil rights response: peaceful and nonviolent protest is the only way forward. That’s the proven way to fight the oppression of a greater power with asymmetrical advantages.
4) Beware the Matriarchy
The author (shock! A woman!), Carmel Richardson tells it like it is. She destroys the tired argument that men are withdrawing from higher education in great number because of (quoting from a Wall Street Journal article) "a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off.”
The alternative, which the Journal gingerly avoids, is because they don’t want to care.
Why?
The answer, by now, should be obvious, if too avant-garde to admit at a Georgetown cocktail party. Young men are not anti-intellectual. They aren’t lacking the right program to help them get involved, or more scholarship, or help controlling their testosterone. Rather, they have found themselves in a society that demands they be anything other than who they are as men, and they are, largely, trying to escape it.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the female-ruled classroom has little appeal for them. It is yet another environment in which a growing class of childless women can play mother. Divorced from the grace we reserve for our own flesh and blood, the female managerial class wages a cold war of nips and tucks on the male spirit from his childhood onward, demeaning him for his existence (male fragility), for his point of view (mansplaining), even for spreading his knees too far apart on the subway (man spreading). Left with few, if any, healthy avenues for exercising any power, is it any wonder young men so often turn to seek thrills in the lowlife entertainment of video games, drugs, and pornography?
Of course there are other, positive places for men to turn, and that is where I see myself being useful. Men can turn to self-improvement. They can find freedom in nature. They can, and should, turn to God.
5) In UK, Cross Yourself, Go To Jail
From the sign: "Protesting, namely engaging in an act of approval/disapproval or attempted act of approval/disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means. This includes but is not limited to graphic, verbal or written means, prayer or counselling."
The author wonders if anyone cares...
My theory here is that affluence diminishes our ability to live by principles. Every problem can be avoided with it. Whereas, when times are hard, problems must be faced head-on. So a population numbering in the millions is able to avoid every problem that comes up in their lives, and thusly, their mental muscles atrophy. Thusly, before the surrounding society becomes completely intolerable for life, it will move in that direction by degrees, unopposed to the last bestial moments.
I expect signs like this to appear around euthanasia centers. People forget that the nazis first carted away the handicapped, and called that compassion. An incredible book on Dietriech Bonhoeffer provides insight to the moral landscape of Germany in the 1930s.
You might not be bothered by this because you find it offensive that people protest abortion, and you welcome the stronger "protection" provided by the government limited free speech in this instance.
But the world changes radically every ten years. Once the power to jail people for wrong-think in areas A, B, and C have been granted to a goverment, can't you see that the power will remain, even as popular opinion changes?