The Crowhill Journal

Should we conquer Mexico? I know that doesn’t sound very 21st century. We like to think we’re beyond things like conquering other countries. But we have to face such questions like adults. If a neighboring state becomes a threat, you have to at least consider the idea of military intervention.

It seems that Mexico is run by the cartels, and that violence is a threat to us and will get worse. There’s also the drug problem. We should destroy the drug factories in Mexico.

If the Mexican government can’t get these criminals under control, we might have to do it.

Try putting molasses in your hot chocolate. I’m a big fan of hot chocolate. Sometimes I add cinnamon and cayenne to make it spicy. But I just tried adding molasses, and it adds an interesting flavor.

Listening to Stephen Fry’s Mythos. Fry is a very educated and talented man, and it shows in his retelling of Greek myths. I’m only part of the way through but enjoying it thoroughly.

Are the Covid vaccines to blame for Hamlin’s collapse? I hear that’s a theory that’s making the rounds on the right. I don’t have any knowledge about it one way or another, and suspect it’s a crackpot theory born out of ignorance, but I am 97.6% certain of this: if there were valid medical reasons for suspecting the vaccines, that information would be hushed up, and you’d be censored for sharing it.

Google is unbelievably frustrating! My brother had a Google Home device. In order to get it to do something, you have to say “Hey Google,” or “Hello Google.” You can’t customize that — as I could on my old Android (non-Google) phone. So if there are two Google devices in a room — for example, his Google Home and my Pixel — they both respond.

Didn’t anybody at Google consider this possibility?

I hate modern light bulbs. Depending on what kind you get, they (1) don’t turn on right away, (2) flicker, (3) don’t last 1/10 the time they claim to last, and (4) contain dangerous chemicals. In addition to all that, they’re more expensive.

Every time I use one of these stupid things I curse Congress for requiring them.

Is football too violent? The Damar Hamlin story has drawn attention to the violence of football, although it shouldn’t. There was nothing particularly violent about the play, and we don’t know whether the play had anything to do with his health issues. Even if it was (a “blow-induced arrhythmia,” some say) it wasn’t all that shocking of a blow, and those circumstances are very rare.

However, we should not have “a conversation” about this. Because “a conversation” means that the liberals get to lecture and everybody else has to shut up. That’s what the word seems to mean these days.

It would be nice to have a rational discussion, if that’s possible.

First, football is violent, and that’s a good thing. We need violent sports. Young men need relatively safe and controlled ways to be violent. A country with no violent sports is a country ripe for being conquered.

Second, yes, football may be too violent. They’ve made it safer over the years, and I hope they can make it safer still without turning it into a sissy game.

Football will always have risks. You can’t have large bodies running around on a field without some risk of injury. And that’s okay. Injuries are unfortunate, but they’re not the end of the world, and it’s not as if the rest of life is safe either. People get injured taking showers, driving, walking, etc.

We have an epidemic of fatherlessness. The Daily Signal podcast has a good show on fatherlessness. Look up “Kris Vallotton on Devastating ‘Pandemic of Fatherlessness.'” He’s a little hard to listen to, but he has a lot of interesting things to say. And he doesn’t propose an easy solution — elect this candidate, pass this law, etc. It took decades to get into this mess, and it’s going to take time to get out of it. If we can.

I am more and more convinced that nothing short of a religious revival is going to save this country.

The Biden classified document story is deliciously funny.

I have my doubts about Bryan Kohberger’s guilt. I’m not a “true crime” fan, and I haven’t followed this case closely, but it seems to me that the murderer made mistakes that a criminology student would not make.

Does anybody like this Harry guy? I don’t follow the royals, but this guy seems intolerable, even without his harpy of a wife.

Conspiracy theories are not more popular on the right. Here’s a link to a good discussion on the topic. It’s a little too anti-Trump, but it’s mostly good information. Conspiracy Beliefs are Not Increasing nor Exclusive to the Right. If that’s true (and it seems to be), why do so many people believe that? Is there a conspiracy about conspiracy theories? Who benefits from bemoaning the growth an influence of conspiracy theories?

Some conspiracy theories are true. There is a conspiracy to promote the left’s global warming story. Contrary voices are silenced. Same with the government-approved Covid story.

Taking down the tree. In the Crowhill household we take down the Christmas tree on Epiphany, or the weekend that follows. What do you listen to while you take down the tree? There are so many songs about Christmas, why aren’t there songs for taking down the tree?

Small beer. “Small beer” is low-alcohol beer that was brewed as an all-day beverage. (Before modern sanitation, alcoholic beverages were, in some ways, safer than water.) George Washington has a famous recipe for small beer, and one of the Crowhill clan gave me a little kit for a gallon of Washington’s small beer. There is no malt. It’s molasses and hops. I brewed it yesterday.

Speaker McCarthy. It took 15 ballots, but he finally got the job. I hope the concessions to the Freedom Caucus push things in a more healthy direction.

On nicotine — I just had a smoke on the back deck. I haven’t smoked my pipe in quite a while. Generally speaking, I think smoking is a bad idea, but it’s one of those things that’s probably only bad if done regularly — like eating a Pop-Tart, or drinking a soda. I don’t think I’m doing myself any great harm by smoking a pipe once a month. I may be wrong about that, but I’m probably not very wrong.

Having said that, nicotine is a strong drug. If it’s been a while and I smoke a full bowl of strong tobacco, it goes to my head!

The Speaker of the House — It’s been amusing to watch the spectacle of McCarthy’s efforts to become speaker. I’m a big fan of what’s happening and don’t want it to stop any time soon.

ISTM that Congress has been going in the wrong direction for a long time. Parties have all the power, and individual congresscritters have none. They can’t offer amendments. They can’t even debate bills. They’re just presented with the conclusions of the leadership and are expected to go along with their party. Sometimes they don’t even have time to read a bill before they vote on it.

I want more debate. More questions. More fighting. More voices. More variety. Less machine. Less establishment.

What’s happening is good for the Republic, although it might be too little too late. And if we don’t have a Speaker for a few weeks, who cares?

Russian literature — I was reading The Brothers Karamazov, but that got interrupted by One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which we’re reading for our next “shortcut to the classics.”

These books were obviously written for people with lots of time on their hands. They’re so slow!

My overall reaction is that I expected better. For example, so much is made of the section (in the first book) on The Grand Inquisitor, and … it’s really not all that interesting. The basic argument is that freedom is not worth the cost we pay for it (assuming that suffering is a necessary consequence of freedom).

Yeah. Okay. That’s the sort of thing you wrestle with in 7th grade and then you get over it. It’s not all that profound. It’s like when somebody in college asks you if you’ve ever considered you might be a brain plugged into a wall socket and everything you consider as reality is just an illusion. Yeah, sure. I thought about that when I was five. You didn’t?

Conspiracy theories — You’re more likely to believe a conspiracy theory if you’re isolated. What I want to know is whether you lose your ability to reason when you’re isolated.

Conspiracy theories have many different definitions, but one common aspect is that they’re an explanation that most people don’t accept. (What sensible person would argue that most people are right?)

Ask yourself this: which group of people know more about the Kennedy shooting — the people who accept the common explanation, or the people who believe some conspiracy about it? The conspiracy believers, of course. Most people don’t care, and they just accept the mainstream answer. The conspiracy believers have (on a guess) read 100x times more about the subject and know quite a lot.

What they’ve read might include a lot of bunk, but it’s absurd to say their opinions are based on ignorance. They know far more about the details than most people.

A case could be made that people go along with the mainstream view in about the same way that they follow fashions, or use the latest hip words, or watch the popular shows. They just want to fit in and be normal. They’re scared of being different.

Also, “everybody knows” lots of things that are complete nonsense — that people thought the world was flat before Christopher Columbus, that it takes seven years to digest gum, or that Marie Antionette said “let them eat cake.”

Why should we prefer the “normal” narrative?

I’m not defending conspiracy theories, but I’m realizing it’s a lot more complicated than people like to think. Conspiracy theorists are neither dumb nor irrational.

My New Year’s resolutions, so far — Only one, about my weight. I want to get back to 160 by the end of the month. I have some other ideas, but I haven’t refined them down to actionable, measurable goals yet.

If you want to succeed with resolutions, you have to make them measurable, attainable, specific, fun, positive, and they should piggyback on existing habits. But even if you don’t take a systematic approach, it’s good to have goals. Everyone can improve.

I don’t know if this is entirely fair to Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” but one of my recollections from that essay is that a fairy story is a result of the clash of two civilizations — e.g., when someone from one world finds himself in another.

England became the home of several waves of immigrants, who generally pushed the previous inhabitants west or north. At any given time you might have two cultures bumping into one another. E.g., Angles living next to Jutes. If a Jute teenager wandered into Angle territory, he’d find himself in a completely different world. Strange languages. Strange clothing. Strange customs.

A “fairy story” is about falling into that other world.

I believe that concept describes the left and the right in America today. We live in completely different worlds, where words have different meanings, there are different facts, different news, and different “narratives.” (That word in that context annoys me, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it seems to imply there is no truth, only story.)

A serious conversation on any political or cultural topic would require a patient disassembling of assumptions, alleged facts, and so on. After that soul-crushing, mind-numbing exercise, you might be able to back up to something like a common starting point. But I think that’s becoming more elusive every day.

I don’t want to do it. I have no patience for the people who get their “information” from the other side. The “narrative” in that world — the woke world, the world of the legacy media — is shaped by people who believe it’s okay to flood the country with illegal immigrants, that it’s possible for a boy to become a girl, that speech is violence, that social media not only can, but should suppress certain views, that we should blindly trust government science and silence anyone who dissents, that climate change is a bigger threat than China, that we should ship oil and gas to Europe while New England gets ready to freeze this winter ….

Such people — that is, the “narrative” creators on that side — are either crazy, sniveling cowards, or both. I have no time for them.

In most areas of life, it’s a good thing to listen to both sides. But when one side is insane, that doesn’t apply.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who don’t accept the insane propositions I mention above, nevertheless drink from that well and get “information” from these clowns. Maybe out of habit. Maybe out of a misguided attempt to “get both sides.” I don’t know.

It’s a fool’s errand. The other side might as well be flat Earthers. They’re that far gone. And their insanity infuses everything they say. (I’ve never been a fan of “presuppositionalism,” but there is clearly some merit to the idea.)

There is hope for the people who drink that poisoned draught. There are plenty of examples of people waking up and seeing the light, and there are plenty of people who have the time and the energy to help those poor souls out of the slough. Ben Shapiro. Prager University. Etc.

I don’t have the time, the energy, or the patience to do that work. And probably not the talent either.

In today’s environment, expressing simple and obvious things like “we should not get rid of energy that works until we have something else that works to replace it” make you some sort of criminal, a hater, and probably a Nazi. It’s wearisome beyond belief.

When I was a younger lad, I had the patience to try to explain things. I’m not young any more, and I’m done with it. Other people are doing a fine job in that space. I’ll follow and support them in their efforts.

I will continue to listen to the remaining sane people. Pigweed and I will continue to opine on topics that interest us over at the “beer and conversation” podcast. But blogging doesn’t have any appeal any longer.

This is site is officially closed. I’ll leave it up for a couple weeks, but after that, I’ll probably delete the whole thing.

It’s been a fun ride, and I appreciate all of you who have participated over the years. But it’s time to close this chapter.