Death to Whom?

How can "Death to America" be good for us? It depends who "us" is. I mean this very seriously. We are at a point in our culture that the old identities have frayed irreparably. As the country in which we were born turns ever more against our families, our blood, and our God, does "America" really still describe us? Even if so, for how much longer?

Eastern European rave Kazantip cancelled (organizers confirm)

What is the world coming to when you can't trust mafia-affiliated Russian drug-and-sex-fueled rave organizers to properly update you the status of an event? No, I'm not speaking of the Sea Dance Festival in Croatia. This is the summer Crimean rave KaZantip.

If you're a westerner and have heard of Kazantip, it's likely from the following Vice video:

This is actually the second, and edited, version but the gist is unchanged. (The original Vice video contained some brief references to things that could get them in legal trouble.)

Women, boats, beach, electronica music and alcohol. What's not to love? To make it even better there really is a partially-constructed nuclear power station where it's traditionally held. The plant was being built when the Chernobyl meltdown occurred and became abandoned after.

The Deluded

Governor Kasich of Ohio, a man currently running for president, described illegal immigrants as "people who are contributing significantly." He is, of course, absolutely right. Illegal immigrants contribute greatly to domestic unemployment, crime, murder,disease vectors, and America's continuous decent into all new levels of low trust society. 

Here at Pravda Zvit'azi, we'd like to wish Governor Kasich the best of luck with procuring the Democratic nomination...

Are They Wanted?

Take a second and read the article In Modern Ukraine, People of Color Need Not Apply by Mikhail Klikushin. Summarized, it details the downright awful and dehumanizing treatment of black people in the Ukraine. The actions taken by the Ukrainian people show that blacks cannot be considered part of their society, and are not wanted, no matter how they behave, or what they may be capable of contributing to Ukrainian society.

Reading this, I ask you, my reader, what you would wish to do about it? I strongly encourage you to formulate a response to this before moving on. I will wait.

Happy Hour

See my dissection of the rest of the GOP debate at Part One (Primetime) of this series. See also my answers to the Happy Hour debate questions in Part Three, and the Primetime questions in Part Four.

Unlike the later debate, the format of the Happy Hour debate was much more traditional, giving each candidate a minute, rather than thirty seconds, to reply to each question, and asking more of your standard policy fare. In short, it was somewhat boring, as you can see yourself from the transcript, or any video that Fox has copyrighted down yet.

The traditional debate, like many things in our society, is a throwback to Ancient Greece. If we actually wanted to judge the comparative merits of a candidates' plans, we'd let them communicate in writing, with recourse to citations. The whole idea of debating is a leftover from an earlier time when paper was expensive and literacy rare. As such this, like many debates, suffers from being a rhetorical contest that somehow bamboozles trained politicians into thinking its dialectical.

As a result of this, I can't rank the early crowd in the same way I ranked the 9:00 debate. Everyone spoke in the same wooden political fashion that they have since the truly talented American orators went to face off with their Athenian forebears in Limbo. Any logical statements made were couched in the buried assumptions that politicians so love, and thus will only be appreciated by those who share those biases. Yours may be completely different than mine, and thus you may find my list to be ridiculous. That's fine.

As nobody stood stylistically above or below the rest, I really have no recourse but to evaluate these candidates primarily on the issues. As I stand firmly miles away from the Overton window of American politics, can hardly be seen as in away representative of the opinions of the American voter. I'll try to restrict myself to the things that really ticked me off.

Post-Debate Wrap-up

See my continued dissection of the first GOP debate at Part Two (Happy Hour) of this series. See also my answers to the Happy Hour debate questions in Part Three  Part Four.

All in all, this was a very entertaining debate. While, at times, I wondered if I had managed to pick up the Israeli Prime Minster's debate instead, and it's never fun to see that the consensus position on the Middle East is that we need to face off against ISIS and Iran AT THE SAME TIME (because strategy is unworthy of 'Murica) there were still some reasons to hope. A full ranking and discussion of the candidates follows the jump.

Law and its Lack

We tend to imagine that the Presence of God would make a place strange, that the laws of nature would break down and the world would be undone. Maybe we're wrong. Maybe the paranormal, the strange, occur more when God is rejected. 

God wrote the law and set its boundaries. He called the universe, which He had so ordered, good. Satan, on the other hand, tried to cast doubt on this law from the very beginning. (Genesis 3:5) By causing man to fall, he managed to stain creation's perfection, and inched his claws through the door to our world.

So, in turn, is our era one in which man rejects Law: in so doing opening the gate to the abyss. Could even the worshipers of Molech imagine a horror such as this? Throughout the developed world the children of men hide, either physically or pharmaceutically rather than face the nightmare their lives have become. As the works of Lovecraft predicted, the absence of this universe's laws does not bring freedom, but madness.

We must reject rebellion. We must adhere to law. Without it, we are little more than playthings for what lies outside it.

"What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down – and you're just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?" 

A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt