AP24 Civil War

 

Have you seen Alex Garland's Civil War? Perhaps not, because you dread a deluge of leftist propaganda, fair call. But I think you'll be surprised to find the film doesn't go down that path. It's shot through the lens of a crew of journalists on a mission to interview the President even as secessionist forces are closing in on DC. 

So what follows is an attempted objective account of the horrors of war, not least a civil one, and Garland does a good job. Kirsten Dunst plays her part admirably as a hard-bitten combat journalist, her young protege ain't bad, elder NYT(!) journo veteran does the job and adrenaline fueled Joel (Wagner Moura) is on target and there you have it, an SUV of journos travelling from NYC to DC via Pittsburgh in the midst of a civil war.

There's a few moments of dread in the journey, though the violence is underplayed for the most part, and you'll be surprised to note secessionist forces are apparently color blind. Black, white, whatever have banded together to overthrow a tyrannical President (Nick Offerman), and they do. One race, human, against a corrupt despot. Nice.

Right on, and the WF, led by something which looks suspiciously like 1st Cav, hit DC and take out an ignominious, lying tyrant. Keen-eyed viewers will note he's shot in the end by a FPOC (Female Person Of Color), who is also the Sergeant in charge of the requisite kill team, ahem.

OK, the movie's not perfect but it does manage to steer a course between current partisan friction as if to report on a civil war that's actually going down, with all the inane wickedness therein. Are the combat scenes good? You be the judge, gentle readers, and you'll note our beloved ruler gets shot inside his DC fastness. What a good ending.

Watch Civil War, it's streaming on Amazon.

Topical, what?

LSP

PS. For a real review, written by a real journalist from, errrr, AP, go here.

PPS. Does the objective journalist still exist? My only real cavil about this flick is that it's main protagonists, the journos, are really well played, I recognize them even, from the past, but are they feasible today, much less tomorrow. That in mind, Civil War might be slated as a retrospective cast in the future. Dystopian, yes, but the real dystopia, from this flick's POV, would be the journalists themselves. Here, they're cast as truth tellers. I won't bang on.

STORMY

 

You know what it's like. Sometimes invoices get lost and, dammit, your fair share of the Carbon Tax doesn't get paid. Totally understandable, but look what happens, a ferocious storm rolls in from the North as our Old Enemy, the Weather, changes. That's your cue to get on the front porch and dare the Weather to do its worst as lightning cracks and rain sheets down. Not unlike Ahab or King Lear, when you think about it. 

So there you are, wondering if this small slice of rural heaven, much less the Compound itself, will withstand and live through the deluge, arklike, when news comes in that a sham stasi show trial in New York has delivered a guilty verdict against President Trump. Huh, let's see how that brazen skulduggery plays out in the polls.

Note Upper Lip Stud

In related news, yesterday marked the anniversary of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when Moslem Janissaries poured over the Theodosian walls. What a hideous moment for Christendom, what a triumph for the moon worshiping death cult. Emperor Constantine XI addressed the soldiery before he died in the fighting:

Most noble leaders, illustrious tribunes, generals, most courageous fellow soldiers and all loyal honest citizens! You know well that the hour has come: the enemy of our faith wishes to oppress us even more closely by sea and land with all his engines and skill to attack us with the entire strength of this siege force, as a snake about to spew its venom; he is in a hurry to devour us, like a savage lion. For this reason I am imploring you to fight like men with brave souls, as you have done from the beginning up to this day, against the enemy of our faith. I hand over to you my glorious, famous, respected, noble city, the shining Queen of Cities, our homeland. You know well, my brothers, that we have four obligations in common, which force us to prefer death over survival: first our faith and piety; second our homeland; third, the emperor anointed by the Lord, and fourth; our relatives and friends.

 

You can read the whole speech here as you work towards retaking the second Rome. After all, we need the Bosphorus.

Stormy,

LSP

Clubland & Whatever

 

Some of you may scorn clubland and that's fine, but perhaps you'll enjoy the above photo of LL and myself in the Smoking Room. Nice topper, what?

Eton forever. Well at least on my uncle's part.

Defeat Bolshevism,

LSP

Defeat Bolshevism

 

We fight against principalities and powers, against wickedness in high places. Do you think the demons can win? They may appear to do so, but such is hubris before they're cast into the Lake of Fire. In the meanwhile, stand firm, resolute in the Faith.

Defeat Demonic Bolshevism, and that's not said lightly.

Roger?

LSP

War News

 

You've probably noticed there's been movement on Ostfront, with Russia moving back into Kharkov Oblast and more besides, not least an MOD shakeup. Big Serge gives an excellent analysis, concluding:

The trajectory of the war suggests that the NATO bloc will do everything in its power to prop up Ukraine’s strike capabilities, and that Ukraine will continue to hunt for high profile strategic assets, even as it continues to be ground down in the critical theater, which is the Donbas. When the AFU is finally ejected from their last toeholds along the line - losing Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, being squeezed out of southern Donetsk Oblast, and forced back on the west bank of the Oskil, the temptation in Kiev will be to blame the west - that they gave too little, too slowly, too late. This is one lie that they must not be allowed to get away with. The NATO Bloc has, virtually without exception, given Ukraine everything they’ve asked for. It just didn’t matter.

 

If you missed the above link, you can read the whole thing here.

Cheers,

LSP

Gaza Pier

 

oops

Do you remember the Gaza pier which the US built with your money to deliver humanitarian aid to genocidal jihad Hamas supporters? Sure you do, we all do, and now look at it, floundering and sinking on a beach. But hey, it only cost several hundred millions. I like the inimitable Armchair Warlord's analysis:

Do you know what's actually the most outrageous part of the whole Gaza pier operation?  In a week they'd only delivered a thousand tons of cargo with it!

That's equivalent to ONE load that ONE of the Army LSVs on site could have simply delivered over the beach.

During my previous career I found that on many occasions doing things the "hard way" was actually the easiest way to get something accomplished, because we weren't spinning our wheels and wasting time and effort trying to figure out some "easy" way to do it.  In this case simply delivering humanitarian aid over the beach via landing craft would have been far easier and far less complicated than building and delivering this Rube Goldberg-esque pier through the surf.  I suspect this option was in fact chosen because it could deliver cargo without American service members having to physically walk around on the beach, thus satisfying Biden's "no boots on the ground" directive via the threadbare technicality that the American boots are actually on a floating pier a hundred meters offshore.

 

And there you have it. What a waste of $320MN virtue-signalling cash. But hey, interest on the national debt's only about $1TN every hundred days, so what's a few million? 

Cheers,

LSP

Memorial Day

 

ALMIGHTY God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead; We give thee thanks for all those thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence, that the good work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.

May they rest in peace and rise in glory,

LSP

Thunderstruck

 

The thunder of guns, "tore me apart." Quite.

Your Very Best Pal,

LSP

Trinity Sunday

 

Typical Kitchen Glocks

Tomorrow we rightly remember and honor the fallen, today we celebrate the holy and undivided Trinity. Part of that, here at the Compound, means welcoming assorted soldiery on a weekend pass from Fort Hood. One of them, my eldest, is even a Sergeant, which seems very strange.

Perhaps you remember when Sergeants seemed pretty old. Now they're not, they're ludicrously young and full of youthful energy. That in mind, let the reader understand, would the NCO Club make it to Mass this morning?

Good question, and after Mass #1 at 0945 the Manse was ominously silent, like two minutes silence silent. You'll be pleased to know I resisted the heady urge to charge upstairs beating a wake up drum armed with a pick-axe handle, and brewed strong coffee instead. Let the kids rest, I thought to myself on the back deck, after all, they run around all week, so.

Then, irenic reverie over, lo and behold, there's a team in the dining room struggling into two button blazers and khakis. Why they couldn't do this in their rooms is and remains a mystery, but still, there it was and not bad for all that. And off we went to Mass #2 by the lake.

I'll spare you the trinitarian homily, which was a hopefully helpful Augustine/Aquinas hybrid, but I will say this: The faithful believe that a communion of divine persons in perfect love lies at the heart of reality, that ultimate Truth is personal love which loves us. The modern heathen believe in a very different God, that reality is impersonal force. You will notice, my dear friends, that people come to resemble the deity they worship. Choose wisely.

In similar news, a churchman sent me this excellent photo after Mass, from the restaurant where he was enjoying lunch. Have a look:

We must all eat at this place, and what can we say? A free man can defend himself, a slave can't. Go ask a Red Indian or someone in the UK if you doubt me.

#2A,

LSP

Trinity - Augustine

 

Everyone knows Sunday's the Feast of the Trinity, that central doctrine of the Faith which describes the inner nature of God as He has revealed Himself. One nature, divine, three persons, distinct, and unless you believe this you're in big trouble, says the Athanasian Creed. This, NB Anglicans, has been shunted to the back of our latter day Prayer Books where presumably it'll cause less offense by virtue of being well hidden. Here's the intro:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.

So, there's most definitely a three line whip on orthodox Trinitarian doctrine. That said, can we make any sense of it? St. Augustine most certainly endeavored to do so in his magisterial De Trinitate, read it if you can and I found this short commentary helpful. An excerpt:

The Father, Son and Spirit are distinct, and yet they are a unity in the equality of the one substance. Any inferiority of the Son refers to his human nature or to the Trinitarian order whereby he has received his equal being from the Father. “The Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God…yet there are not three Gods – but one God – the Trinity Itself” . . . “so total is the equality of this triad that not only is the Father not greater than the Son as far as divinity is concerned, but also Father and Son together are not greater the Holy Spirit, nor any single person of the Three is less than the trinity Itself” (8.1).

Still, within this equality there are distinctions between the Persons. The Father is distinguished as Father because He begets the Son, and the Son is distinguished as Son because He is begotten. The Spirit, similarly, is distinguished from Father and Son inasmuch as He is ‘bestowed’ by them; He is their ‘common gift’, being a kind of communion of Father and Son.

The distinctions between the three persons are grounded in their mutual relations within the Godhead. Augustine resorts to the category of “distinctions based on relations” even though this may seem contrary to the doctrine that God as simple and as such cannot be differentiated from his attributes. The reason for this assertion is to escape a cunning dilemma posed by Arian critics. They argued that the distinctions within the Godhead, assuming they exist must be categorized as either substance or accidents. Everyone agrees that God has no accidents. On the other hand, to view the distinctions as substance would result in three independent substances in the Godhead.

Augustine rejects the dilemma. He suggests that the terms Father, Son and Holy Spirit denote not difference in substance between the Persons but eternal and unchangeable relations between them within the one substance. That is to say, what differentiates the Three Persons in the Trinity is the specific form of relations. The persons retain substantial equality.

The relationships do not simply distinguish the Persons from each other – they are the persons. In technical language, they are subsistent relationships. Accidents in ordinary things like qualities or quantities can change. For example, the quantity of stuff in a man can change without him ceasing to be a man. But in the case of the divine, relationships are actually substantive predications since they are identical with divine nature or substance. But a relationship requires real distinctions between two referents at the poles of the relationship. The Father is distinct from the Son. Neither is distinct from God; and they are each distinct from the Holy Spirit, not as Father and Son, but as ‘from whom he proceeds’.

Edmund Hill elaborates, “Therefore [the Father] is not only Father, he is the fatherhood (the relationship) by which he is Father. So too the Son is the sonship by which he is Son. And the Holy Spirit. . . the relationship of being Gift, the relationship of ‘givenness’ if you like.

 

Now, per the above, what do "subsistent relationships" in the life of the Trinity teach us? To put it another way, if distinct personhood, real personhood has been revealed to us as relationship, what does that mean for us who have been created in the image of God? Read Augustine's triads, obviously, but perhaps we get a glimpse of the truth when we reflect on how dismally we behave when self-obsessed, and how much better when the opposite applies. 

In other words, we become ourselves when we forget ourselves in relationship. The last shall be first, and all of that. 

Just look at Victoria Nuland and tell me I'm wrong. By the monkey, I dare you.

Guinea on,

LSP

Weapon Of Choice - Behold Classic

 

Here you go now:

Cheers,

LSP

DISCLAIMER

You probably feel cheated by this brief pop music post and were expecting a firearms comparison. Which gun would you take as your weapon of choice depending on various contexts. 

For example, in the Compound's kitchen we choose Glocks, a 9 and a .45. At the door it's different, a pump 12 does the trick. Upstairs, maybe Birettas rule, or wheelguns. Point being -- you can go with this, you can go with that. 

I rest my musical if slightly opaque case.

Hope You're All Long ETH$

 

Oh my, you go to a diocesan meeting in Fort Worth and return to... what? HAIL. Yep, hail. I thought it was gonna break my truck, but it didn't, lo and behold. Still, it was fierce and I texted Calgary, "Outrageous hail!'

She replied, "Look at that baby hail. That's like you sending me a video of one tiny thunder clap. Yes, we did have one tiny second of thunder. I had to pause my phone to make sure because it was so little and quiet."

Well, damme by faint praise, what? And in case you're wondering, here at the Compound we stand fast on the deck, stalwart, daring our ancient enemy the Weather to do its worst.

In other news, the SEC has approved Spot Ethereum ETF. Well, thrice in and double and quits. Your call, I'm long ETH and, of course, DOGE$,  the Peoples' Coin.

Felix,

LSP