christianity – Martin Simpson

What Makes People Happy, Part 2 (posted 7/13/26)

On Friday I started a series of articles about happiness, and I talked about how money and income, along with career and gender, impact happiness. I’m heading toward some thoughts on how politics and political ideology affect happiness, but on the way I’d like to consider a couple of other factors: the impact of social media and social connections, and the impact of religious belief.

First, it’s pretty easy to see social media as a big dose of brain poison that you’re inviting into your house and life on a daily basis. But I won’t go nearly that far. I think the internet is like many things in life, in that it is not intrinsically good or bad. It offers many possibilities that you can use to either improve your life or degrade it.

Sure, there’s lots of porn and conspiracy theories and political dreck that takes over way too many people’s lives. But there’s also smart conversation and music and all of the great achievements of humanity at your fingertips. And there’s the possibility of making a network of social connections, too.

Regular readers will remember that I only started this page because an impressive guy calling himself CO (the Cautious Optimist) started a Facebook page called Cautious Optimism over 10 years ago now, and invited me to join some early members and write occasional pieces there. The site dealt with everything from culture to music to politics and humor, and people were free to contribute links and commentary for everybody to discuss. A great person volunteered to police the site and kick out the trolls (Shout out to Laura Belveal!), and soon many hundreds of smart and interesting people started chiming in, and a great community of over 30,000 members grew up there. Facebook inexplicably shut the site down last November for no reason that they were willing to disclose, and that was a real loss to many of us – which is a sadly ironic testament to the positive impact that social media can have in our lives.

By the way, some of you have regularly been asking me if the mysterious CO might ever start the page up again. I can only say that I’ve been in regular contact with him, and have been encouraging him to do so; he seems to be considering it, but I don’t know more than that right now.

Anyway, having said all that, social media still has obvious downsides that impede personal happiness in ways that I think we’ve only started to grasp. Some of them are simply the opportunity cost involved in anything that takes up that much of your time. If you’re spending many hours a day consuming social media on screens, you’re by definition not spending those hours interacting with people in the real world, or reading books, or learning a language or an instrument, or walking in the woods.

Also there is the big problem of comparing yourself to others – most of whom have painted a falsely positive picture of their own lives in their online posts – which is a recipe for misery, and also for feeding the narcissism to which we are all susceptible. Everybody wants to be an influencer of some sort, with their own podcast or website, and will seemingly sell their souls for clicks. (And I say that as someone who has been on a few podcasts, and writes my own columns and has recorded a few videos for this, my own website!)

(Sidebar: Narcissism is terrible, whether it is exacerbated by social media or not. The quality that is opposed to narcissism – humility – is an old-fashioned and misunderstood virtue, because we often think of it as putting yourself down or feeling inferior. But I love CS Lewis’s definition: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”)

Another problem with social media is the way it can cut us off from community, social networks and inter-connectedness. (And of course, it is good when it does the opposite, as I think it does when people use it to establish worthwhile and nurturing online communities like the late, lamented CO site.)

Researchers who study happiness have long pointed to having friend networks and social connections as a reliable index of personal happiness, and though social media has clearly exacerbated the deterioration of these connections, it was already going on in America before the internet.

Robert Putnam wrote an influential book in 2000 called Bowling Alone, in which he documented the trend. He pointed to the marked decrease of people participating in social organizations like scouting (for children), and civic or fraternal organizations like The Lions Clubs, Elks Clubs, Rotary, Kiwanis, etc. for adults. His title comes from the fact that while slightly more Americans were bowling, many fewer were bowling in organized leagues. Hence “bowling alone.”

The declining participation in fraternal organizations – some of which were religiously affiliated, such as the Knights of Columbus or the Hibernians – was mirrored by decreasing church attendance and participation in religious organizations. And that trend influences human happiness, too.

There is a large body of research that suggests that actively religious people are happier than irreligious people. Some studies point to variations within the larger finding – looking at the way the connection between religious participation and happiness may be shaped by differences in nationality, economic status, and others – but the overall connection appears to be consistent.

A recent study from Pew Research of survey results from the US and 25 other nations is fairly typical. Those studied were categorized into three groups: the actively religious (who worship at least monthly), the inactively religious (who identify with a religion but attend less frequently), and the unaffiliated, or “nones” (i.e. the non-religious).

In most of the countries surveyed, the actively religious were more likely than those in the other two categories to describe themselves as “very happy.” In the US, 36% of the actively religious – compared to 25% of the inactive and 25% of the “nones” – described themselves that way.

The same pattern held when looking at how often the three groups also participated in other types of non-religious organizations, such as charities and clubs. Among the actively religious, 58% also participated in at least one nonreligious voluntary organization, as compared with 51% of the inactives, and only 39% of the “nones.”

I know it’s wise to tread lightly when it comes to religion, but I will say that I find these patterns both intuitive and counter-intuitive, in different ways. Because of my own bias – I’m a Christian – I’m predisposed to think that my faith would naturally make people generally happier. The word “gospel” means “good news,” and the idea that a loving Creator made me in His image is pretty sweet.

On the other hand, I can also see ways in which religion could make one unhappy, and atheism could make one happy. Because the idea of adhering to a moral code that forbids a lot of pretty alluring things – hookers and blow are off-limits, as is smiting the many idiots in life who strike me as quite smite-worthy – and teaches that at the end of this life I will be called to account by my Maker for every word and deed in my life? Not so giddy-making.

Conversely, atheism – to the extent that it sees humans as animals with a more developed frontal cortex, morality as human-devised and arbitrary, and conscience as an illegitimate restriction imposed on the individual by others in their own self-interest – gives one a desirable permission slip to do what feels good or serves you. Hookers and blow and smiting the smite-worthy are back on the table, along with raping and pillaging and all else that you can do without getting caught.

(Or, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, “If there is no God, nothing is impermissible.”)

Now I’m not here to tell you which is the One True Religion. I’ve made my call on that, but you’ll have to work that out on your own. (I recommend doing so with fear and trembling, so….)

But this last point provides me with a transition to my remaining thoughts about happiness, which I will explore next time.

Here’s a preview: politics strongly affects happiness, with conservatives generally being much happier than leftists.

My previous point suggests at least a partial explanation, because Republicans are per capita much more religious than Democrats. Another Pew Research Center study that has been conducted three times since 2007 – this one looking at the “religious identities, beliefs and practices” of over 35,000 Americans – includes the following findings:

81% of Republicans identify with a religion, as compared with 50% of Democrats

52% of Republicans pray daily; 41% go to church as least monthly; 48% say religion is important in their lives

For Democrats, those numbers are 35%, 24% and 28%, respectively

Another study found that even as the percentage of Republicans who are irreligious has grown, there is still a large “God gap” between the parties. This phenomenon played out in the 2024 election, when 80% of Trump voters identified as Christians, compared to just 40% of Harris voters. Two-thirds of Harris voters “seldom” or “never” attend church.

So if religious people are happier, and more conservatives than liberals are religious, that pattern partially explains the happiness gap between the left and right.

But only partially. If you’ll hang in there with me, I’ll look at some of the others causes in my next column.

Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!

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Don’t Trust Behar or Tucker for Your Theology (posted 4/20/26)

There are some moments in each election cycle when I wonder if I’m not dreaming — or hallucinating – the things that are going on in our country.

One of those moments came the first time I heard that a national political figure was claiming that men could become women. And before I could check whether that was a hilarious Babylon Bee story, hundreds and then thousands of such insane claims were being mainstreamed all over the place.

Male politicians were wearing dresses and demanding to be called “Ma’am” and “Miss” and “Tina Louise.” Lightly closeted Minnesota Jazz-Hands Enthusiasts were putting female hygiene products in boys’ bathrooms. Major corporations were spending (and losing!) millions of dollars on PR campaigns lying about basic biology. Formerly respectable scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson was claiming that sex was “assigned at birth,” like a social security number (except that nobody was stupid enough to claim that you could change your social security number).

Another such moment was when half of our political elite – including the President, VP and head of Homeland Security – were insisting that the border was closed and secure, when hundreds of thousands of people were flooding across the border every month. This went on for years, with powerful elites making these absurd claims while ON A SPLIT-SCREEN TV SHOT with caravans of illegals approaching and then crossing the border!

And who could forget being reassured that the late Joe Biden was a paragon of mental and physical health, while we watched him falling up mobile airport staircases and down over sandbags and off of bicycles, while talking to dead people, and then staring blankly into space, and then pooping on the Pope. (He finally beat Medicaid, people!)

But even after all of those surreal moments, I did not have “we’ll be getting our theological exegesis from Trump, Joy Behar and Tucker Carlson” on my 2026 bingo card.

By now you’ve all seen the “Trump-as-Jesus” meme, and sure, it’s fun to watch people pretend that they’ve never heard of or seen Donald Trump before, and so are shocked – shocked! — that he’d post offensively self-aggrandizing images. But I also understand that people of faith can argue in very good faith that Trump comparing himself favorably to Lincoln or Washington is different than comparing himself to Christ.

And if you accept Trump’s claim that he thought the painting was comparing him to a doctor rather than Jesus, you might have whatever is the opposite of TDS. (Hint: Doctors wear white lab coats rather than robes, and don’t have a halo effect behind them, and heal people with surgical tools and medicine, rather than an angelic light emanating from their hands.)

I don’t have any problem criticizing the Pope when he makes political statements. When he’s implicitly argued against

enforcing our immigration laws, or criticized relatively small numbers of people being unintentionally killed in legitimate military actions but remained silent when the people we’re fighting slaughter tens of thousands of their own people, for example, he’s opened himself to political criticism, IMHO.

Which is not to say that I’ll be going to any Bible studies led by the president.

On the other hand, do you know who makes Trump look like Thomas Aquinas by comparison? The Reverend doctors Joy Behar and Tucker Carlson.

Behar has always been one dim bulb in an extremely dim candelabra at the View. Though she was raised Catholic, Behar now calls herself an agnostic. But don’t worry: she is still happy to share her theological wisdom with you. For example, last week she proclaimed that, “Jesus did not run around calling himself the Messiah.”

This was too much, even for the Mensa members on the View, several of whom immediately jumped in to say that of course He did. Joy’s response made everyone watching dumber: “No he did not! Jesus was not narcissistic like [Trump.]”

Let that sink in for a moment. That’s not some obscure theological claim. It’s kind of important that in the religion that is based on the idea that Christ is God, Christ taught that he was God. (Duh!)

But Joy was not to be deterred, even after Sara Haines pointed out the obvious: “When you’re the Messiah, it’s not narcissism to claim to say it.” Joy stuck to her incredibly stupid guns, pouting, “Yes it is.”

(Shhhhh. Don’t anybody tell her that He also said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”)

Of course Joy was just following in a long tradition of leftist non-Christians simultaneously mocking Christian for their simple-minded religious beliefs, and also lecturing them about how Jesus (and His great teachings) totally contradicts their political beliefs.

But Tucker Carlson, upon hearing the joyless one expounding on religion, said, “Hold my tall, frosty mug of anti-Semitism and watch this.” And he excreted a novel theological theory: Muslims are actually better Christians than conservative Christians!

(Take it from the guy who favors Hitler over Churchill, Putin over Ukrainians, and jihadis over Israel!)

Tucker’s main take-away quote was that “The people in charge don’t want you to know that Muslims love Jesus.” He went on to explain that Islamic teaching “regards Jesus as a major prophet who performed miracles and is expected to return in the future.”

The smarmy, conspiracy-theory tone here is (sadly) typical of Tucker in recent years. You’ll never guess who the perfidious “people in charge” are! Hint: They’re the ones who control the weather, and worldwide banking, and they’ve got space lasers and wear funny hats. And don’t tell Joy Behar, but Jesus is one of them!

Even though those people are known to be super clever, their work was not exactly cut out for them, in terms of how they could keep us Christians from realizing how much Muslims really love us. Because that idea already seems a little far-fetched to us, just because of a few niggling details.

Details like the last 1400 years of Muslim history, during which Islam has been spread by the sword, and wherever Christians have been unable to defend themselves by force of arms, they’ve been preyed upon and killed in great numbers, with the survivors being subjugated or fleeing for their lives. And details like the Islamic present, wherein every country in which Muslims have achieved a governing majority has oppressed Christians (and Jews) like second-class citizens, at best!

Tucker also doesn’t mention that while Muslims might give lip service to Jesus as a prophet, they don’t believe He was the Christ, or that He was resurrected, or that His future return will bring about peace on earth. To the contrary, they teach that He will reject Christianity and usher in a world-wide Islamic caliphate. In that sense, Muslims agree with Joy Behar – never a comforting position to be in! – because they also don’t believe that He ever called Himself the Messiah.

Why, it’s almost like Tucker is wallowing in a Beharian level of ignorance, dishonesty and bad faith.

In conclusion, as is usually the case, I would rather be on our side, with our team – politically, economically, and even theologically – than on theirs.

Politically, I’ll take Lincoln, Coolidge, and Reagan over Wilson, FDR, and Obama. (And Trump over Hillary, Biden and Que Mala!) Economically, I’ll take Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell over Marx, Malthus and Keynes.) And theologically, I’ll take Aquinas, Lewis and Billy Graham over Bin Laden, Hasan Piker and Joy Behar.

And I’ll happily give them the points, and still like our odds!

Que Mala/Crockett, 2028!

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A Little Political Taxonomy(posted 6/4/25)

Perceptive and regular readers of my columns may have noticed that I am periodically annoyed by our elite leftist leaders in DC, the MSM, and the Ivy League.

If by “periodically” I mean “7 days a week, when I’m not asleep.” And if by “annoyed” I mean “infuriated.” And I do, in both cases, mean that.

But there is another type of nationally prominent lefty who just frustrates me, because they demonstrate the ability to think clearly and call out problems on both sides…but then can’t sustain that and come to the right conclusion.

There are so many people of the first type from whom to choose, and their failings are so obvious as to need little explication. So for today I’ll discuss just one, and his actions just this week, on just one issue.

The Dem in question is Jamie Raskin, and the issue is the terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado on Sunday.

By now you all know the basic details: Muslim illegal immigrant named Muhamad (unexpectedly!) who hates Jews (unexpectedly!) uses a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to badly burn 8 Jews who were peacefully marching to plead for the release of the hostages still being held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. (The terrorist reportedly used fire in his attack because he had been unable to get a gun, due to his illegal status.) At least two of his victims had to be airlifted to a hospital, and if they survive, will face a long and extremely painful recovery.

A few more details make the story even more infuriating. At least one of the victims was an octogenarian Holocaust survivor. A local police official – hours after video had widely circulated showing the terrorist screaming, “Free Palestine!” and, “I did it for Gaza!” – insisted that the scumbag’s motives were not known.

Then a genius named Juliette Kayyem got on CNN late that evening and blasted Kash Patel and Dan Bongino for having declared that the obviously targeted terror attack was a “targeted terror attack.” Juliette was not buying that small step to a well-supported conclusion.

But soft! What ditz through yonder camera speaks? Tis Juliette, and she’s a total moron: “It makes law enforcement look disorganized, and it makes the FBI look so juvenile, like why are you getting ahead of the police chief who says, ‘I don’t know what this is?’”

Did I mention that Juliette is a former DHS official in the Obama administration, and a former Harvard professor? Because of course she is.

Anyway, Muhamad came to the US on a tourist visa in 2022. When he broke our laws by overstaying that visa, the Biden administration demonstrated their “tough on crime” bona fides by… rewarding him with a work visa for two more years! And then he illegally stayed again, when that visa expired. (Please insert an all-caps “Unexpectedly” after each of the three previous sentences.)

So to recap: an anti-Semitic Muslim illegal immigrant carried out a horrific attack using fire. From that set of circumstances, one might logically draw the conclusion that we have serious problems involving vicious anti-Semitism, mass illegal immigration, and even a statistically over-represented tendency to violence among some (not all) adherents to a certain Religion of Peace. And possibly a “fire-control” problem.

But not if one is Jamie Raskin D-(‘oh!)- Maryland, who turned his awesome Sherlockian powers of deduction toward Boulder, and quickly arrived at the culprit: Guns!

The poor dunce went on MSNBC, and said, “We are still in the midst of a gun violence epidemic…. This is why we are for a ban on military-style assault weapons in the country. Our lax gun laws are a danger to everybody in America.”

I’m not making that up. He looked at a multi-faceted crime with zero guns involved, and decided that guns were the problem.

I thought about guns when I saw that news story, too. But my thoughts were more along the lines of, “I wish that had happened in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, or some other free state where citizens exercise their 2^nd amendment rights more vigorously. Because if it had, that hateful creep would have been lucky to light up his first octogenarian before he was stitched with bullets from his tiny groin to his evil cranium.”

And THEN we would have all been spared that smoking bullet-magnet’s idiotic political slogans, and Juliette would have been justified in scratching her empty head and wondering what his motive had been.

So Juliette and Jamie are the type of leftists who drive me crazy, because they are propagandist hacks who wouldn’t tell an inconvenient truth or make a good-faith argument if their lives depended on it.

But the second type – and there aren’t a lot of them – are frustrating, because they often show that they are capable of clear thought and smart criticism, and yet continue to make common cause with those like Raskin, Schumer, et al.

John Fetterman is one. Since he recovered from his stroke, he’s frequently been a beacon of sanity in the Dem congress. He’s called out the anti-Semitism on the left, praised Trump’s closing of the border, and criticized his party’s shameful coverup of Biden’s physical and mental infirmity. But he still votes with them the vast majority of the time, even though he’s proven that he knows better.

The best example of this type is Bill Maher, who I think I’ve written about before. He’s a condescending egotist who I wouldn’t want to hang out with, but he’s intelligent and often very funny, and he regularly takes a scalpel (and a machete) to woke errors and idiocies like nobody else on the left. And yet, at the end of the day and after demonstrating that he’s got 20/20 political vision…he puts his leftist blinders back on and returns to rote conservative bashing.

Or, as one of my favorite Bible verses puts it, “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.”

I don’t watch Maher’s program, but I often watch clips of it that show up on my various political feeds, and his discussion of Harvard’s self-destructive arrogance this past weekend was a good example.

He spends nearly 6 solid minutes tearing Ivy League education a new one, with insight and sarcasm. He points out that students aren’t being educated but indoctrinated, and indicts woke intolerance, feckless administrators, and the hypocritical arrogance of gullible, entitled youth. He points out that Harvard is “an assh*le factory.”

But then – so frustrating! – he puts on his pinko-colored glasses, and goes every kind of wrong.

The pivot comes when he grudgingly says that Harvard does turn out some decent people. But his first example tells you all you need to know: “But for every Barack Obama, there are two Josh Hawleys.” And he doesn’t mean the comparison as an insult to Obama – which it should be – or a compliment to Hawley. Which it should be.

For the next 3 minutes, he lobs evidence-less ad hominem attacks at Hawley, and then lists those on the right who have Ivy League degrees with an acid tone of disdain: Vivek, DeSantis, Cruz, SCOTUS members, etc.

That’s it. He just lists them. He doesn’t cite any stupid or evil things they’ve done, or any of their flaws. He just sneers their names, and his audience of trained seals applauds accordingly.

I keep finding myself thinking of the Parable of the Talents, and how those who squander greater gifts are judged more harshly than the less gifted who don’t make much of themselves. I look at dullards like Hank Johnson, AOC, or Eric Swalwell, and I’m not sure they even know how dumb or wrong they usually are.

But then I look at someone like Maher, deftly dissecting the destructive foolishness of the Left, before immediately backsliding into juvenile, simple-minded smears of the Right. I watch him proving that he knows better, and then acting like he doesn’t, and I shake my head.

I don’t know which is worse.

But I do know that I’d rather be on our side – even with all of our squishes and weasels! – than on theirs.

Hamas delenda est!

Transgender Fencers & Non-Violent Child Sacrifice (posted 4/16/25)

I’ll open today with the results from Monday’s “Moron of the Month” competition.

This one elicited a lot of great responses, including references to Joe Dirt and the Heatmeister, and many funny references to the shortcomings of all three contestants. And unlike last week’s nominations from the Eastern Division, when Lashes Crockett left the other nominees in the dust, this one was close.

Not counting the readers who said they couldn’t choose, or that it was a three-way tie, Elie “Fat Albert” Mystal took the dunce cap, with 18 votes, to corrupt Tania’s 13 and Griesa’s “Come and get me, I’m an enormous, unashamed, queer illegal!” 7-vote-winning strategy.

So Mystal advances from the Western division. I’ll hold off until toward the end of the month to choose the three nominees from both the Southern and Northern divisions, and then we’ll have a “Moron-off” among the Final Four.

Meanwhile, other boneheads have stepped forward to give me fodder for one of my traditional categories: “We Don’t Hate the Media Enough.”

The first example one comes from the story you probably heard about last week, in which a female fencer refused to compete against a male, and was disqualified for it.

The male, Redmond Sullivan –a violator of Simpson’s Rule of Life #146: Never trust someone with two last names – fenced last year as a male, and came in 29^th in his last competition. (I’m assuming that that was out of no more than 30 competitors, tops.) But when he switched to “female,” he won.

UNEXPECTEDLY!

Many media outlets called him a “transgender woman,” as well as “her” and “she.” Because of course they did. But the outlet that took the prize – I think it’s called “Sports Grail,” but that might just be the site that repeated this – used this headline: “Fencer disqualified after she refused to fence with someone she believed is transgender.”

Ugh. She doesn’t “believe” the dude to be “transgender.” She believes him to be a male. Because…wait for it… He’s. A. Male! You idiots!

(I would also have accepted the headline, “Fencer disqualified after she refused to fence with a male who wrongly claims to be transgender.”)

The next example comes to us from CBS. (UNEXPECTEDLY!) And it follows a pattern I saw many times in my teaching years.

Before they took my class, many of my students had been propagandized to believe that all indigenous peoples were noble proto-environmentalists, living in Edenic conditions of peace and love until the wicked Europeans invaded and colonized their lands, teaching them the evil ways of capitalism and the Judeo-Christian world view. So it was my job to teach them true things that they’d never heard of before.

Things like, “If we were to give the Black Hills back to the Indians who lived there before whitey showed up, should we give it to the Sioux, or to the tribe that the Sioux slaughtered and stole it from, or to the tribe from whom that tribe had stolen it, etc.?

And, “If the descendants of white southern Democrats who owned slaves should pay reparations, should the black Africans who captured those slaves in the interior of Africa and then took them to the coast and sold them to Arabs or Europeans also be forced to pay reparations? And speaking of the Arabs, how much should they pony up, since they took many more slaves than the Europeans did?”

Then I’d casually mention that Slavic people and the Welsh – who are both almost as white as Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher) – were actually some of the most enslaved people in olden times. The word “slave” comes from the word “slav,” and “Wales” and “Welsh” come from a Germanic root meaning “slave.” Anglo-Saxons in western England owned more slaves than those in eastern England, because the west was closer to Wales, where the welsh/slaves were conveniently nearby.

By that point, the more leftish among my students had either curled into a fetal ball and were crying, or else had turned into a toxic combination of Greta Thunberg and Cotton Mather, and stood pointing at me, and with blazing eyes, yelled, “How dare you? The white man lies!”

But enough about me, and my pedagogical fantastic-ness.

I was reminded of those classes when I saw CBS’ report on a recent discovery of an altar in Guatemala that dates back to Mayan times. The archaeologist who made the discovery reported that the bodies of three young children were found there, and concluded that the site had been used for child sacrifices.

Now CBS could have stopped right there. But then the network would be just “C.” But you can’t have CBS without the “BS.”

So they found an “expert” to parachute in and correct any impression that perhaps the altar builders might have had just a dusting of “bloodthirsty child murdering” along with all of their lovely, indigenous ways.

Enter Maria Belen Mendez – she has three accents over the vowels in her name, so you know that she’s super credible – who is identified as “an archaeologist who was not involved with the project” says that the nasty stuff at the altar was actually just a part of the native religion’s reverence for the sun and moon:

“[The child sacrifice] was a practice; it’s not that they were violent, it was their way of connecting with the celestial bodies.” (You hear similar claims about the Aztec festivals during which the mostly peaceful brown folks ripped the hearts out of their living victims, or beheaded them by the thousands, and then rolled the heads down the steps of their temples…. But only because they wanted to ensure a good harvest, you see.)

Ummm…. I’m no child-sacrifice-ologist, but I’m pretty sure that whatever else you might say about people who murdered toddlers on an altar, you can’t credibly say, “it’s not that they were violent…”

By the way, do you think these cultural apologists would EVER say, “It’s not that the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition were violent. They just REALLY wanted to find out who the heretics were.”

They would not.

And we don’t hate them enough.

Hamas delenda est!

Biden Makes 2 Unforced Errors – an Ill-Timed Cash Grab, and Getting Trans-y on Easter (posted 4/1/24)

I hope you all had a good Easter weekend, or Paraphilia Day, or whatever. I certainly hope that you had a better weekend than Joey Gaffes did, since his was marked by two major unforced errors.

The first one – going to a glitzy fund raiser at the same time as the memorial service for murdered NY cop Jonathan Diller – wasn’t initially his fault. The fundraiser had been previously scheduled, and it was bad timing.

On the other hand, one might note that maybe if Biden’s party hadn’t been pushing the kind of soft-on-crime policies that enabled Diller’s murderers to be out on the street instead of doing life in prison in the first place, Diller would still be alive, and Joey’s cash grab could have taken place without such ugly visuals.

Regardless, once Biden realized that his fundraiser was going to coincide with Diller’s service, and that Trump was going to attend (and be welcomed at) that service, a reasonably competent politician would have at least tried to avoid the disastrous optics. Maybe he could meet with Diller’s family privately to express condolences, or bump his fundraiser back a day?

If nothing else, he could have put out a press release saying that under these tragic circumstances, he wouldn’t be attending the fundraiser. It still would have brought in the big bucks, for two reasons: 1. Anybody contributing to the late Joe Biden at this point is ineducable, and would donate anyway. 2. Nobody was there to see Biden.

I mean, other than people who had laid bets in Vegas in the ongoing “when is Biden going to die” prop bet, and had their money on “during a creepy fundraiser on March 29^th.” (For the record, I’ve already lost my $100, because my over/under on that one was “halfway through the SOTU.”)

(And by then, he’d already been dead for several years, so I don’t know what I was thinking.)

Biden’s second unforced error was deciding to declare Easter Sunday as the “Day of Trans Visibility.” Man, that decision is all kinds of wrong!

As a Protestant, I used to tease my Catholic friends about how many saint’s days they had in their calendar. (“You weren’t in school yesterday. Don’t tell me: it was St. Horace’s Day, right? Wasn’t he the patron saint of cobblers? Or was it shoelace makers?”)

But in general, Christians only have two big holidays, plus a few associated minor ones (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, a handful of church services during Lent). Altogether there are barely enough Christian holidays to fill up a week, and non-Christians are not expected to even notice – let alone approve of – more than the big two.

But LGBTQ zealots are going nuts, with something like 145 recognized “holidays,” not to mention three entire months devoted to pride, LGBT history and trans awareness.

And if the weirdest oddball in your office interrupts a staff meeting to ask what kind of events the company is planning to hold to commemorate “Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week” (February 19-25^th, so mark your calendars for next year), you can’t even do a spit-take with your coffee without being shunned as a bigot.

An anonymous commenter summed it up best: “40% of the year to recognize 1% of the population?”

Which points out the political idiocy of Biden’s Easter debacle. Yes, church attendance and the number of people who claim to be Christians has been on the decline. (At the same time, society seems to be mysteriously decaying on just about every moral and ethical issue in sight. UNEXPECTEDLY!) But people who are at least nominally Christian still make up a majority of the country.

On the other side, a very tiny number of deranged activists have been revealing themselves as raving Christophobes in ways that repulse normal people, whether Christians or not. Morons disrupt Easter services at St. Patrick’s in NYC, unfurling a banner and shouting nonsense. A Cadbury chocolate store in England advertises “gesture eggs.” (I’m not making that up.)

How does that political calculus work? “Let’s go out of our way to intentionally offend tens of millions of Christians, and in a rude, obnoxious way that will offend tens of millions more who don’t like offensive jackasses, just as a general rule. And by doing so, we’ll lock up the sought-after ‘blue-haired narcissistic malcontents’ vote!”

It really must be tough to be in a political party whose most zealous members are rabidly hostile to Judaism and Christianity. The smart tack would be to just acknowledge Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Christmas and Easter with a half-hearted, banal public statement (like the Biden WH did on Sunday), and then move on.

But the hard left can’t abide that. They’ve got to go out of their way to highlight their contempt. Like when the White House has an E***er egg roll, but feels compelled to warn kids that there better not be any “religious symbols” or “overtly religious themes” on their East** eggs.

Got it? We can’t “ban” gay porn from our middle school libraries, but you should expect an assault team from the DOJ to fast-rope down to your front lawn and arrest your parents if they try to sneak some “religious overtones” into a holiday that exists to celebrate the resurrection of Christ!

Bah!

Bah, I say!

By the way, no one has asked me my thoughts about transgenderism, and I have no special expertise on that topic. But the same could be said of every MSM talking head, national Democrat politician, and cast member on the View, and they’re always yammering on about it. So why shouldn’t I?

Especially since I’ve got what many have called a crystal brain (hat tip to Adam Carolla), and an uncanny ability to be right about stuff. So here goes:

I think that people who say they are trans fall into one of 4 groups:

1.People who truly have the mental illness of gender dysmorphia, which is similar to other conditions such as anorexia, in that in both cases, the sufferer believes the reality of his/her body to be different than it actually is.

2.Those – mostly adolescent females – caught up in a social contagion.

3.Men who have the sexual fetish of autogynophilia, which is being aroused by the thought of oneself as a female.

4.Creepy grifters who do so for personal gain: in the form of winning sporting events against women, getting prurient access to female bathrooms or showers, or getting into female prisons when they should be in male prisons, getting “misgendered” the old-fashioned way.

I really do feel empathy for those in the first two categories, and think our society should give them all the therapeutic and social support they need to get well, and successfully deal with their hardships. (But we obviously shouldn’t humor them, any more than you’d agree with some poor soul dying of anorexia, and tell her that she’s horribly fat!)

Those in category 3 should probably also get therapy – if they recognize their sickness and want to get well – or else swift opposition by police, and anyone else who learns of their predilection.

Those in category 4 need to be opposed, thwarted, shamed and punished.

Okay, this column is getting long, so I’ll make this another three-column week, and post a shorter one on Wednesday.

But I can’t leave without pointing out the evil criminal story that precipitated Biden’s first gaffe of the weekend. Because the two scumbags who murdered Jonathan Diller are veritable poster boys for the national Dems’ horrific pro-criminal legal stance.

The shooter was career criminal Guy Rivera (with 21 prior arrests), and his sociopath driver was Lindy Jones (14 prior arrests), who was illegally carrying two guns in the car with him. Diller’s partner managed to shoot Rivera, but he survived. Tragically.

The Dems vigorously opposed “three strikes” laws for repeat offenders, but you’d think that by this late date, even they could tolerate a “10 strikes” law, which would have prevented at least this horrendous crime.

For me, the creepiest detail in this whole, tragic story was that Rivera was found to have a shiv in his rectum when he was arrested. Which could only mean two things: 1. He’s more sexually twisted than Hunter Biden. Or 2. He knows how evil he is, and was thus planning to be sent back to prison at any minute, and wanted to go in armed.

That really gross fact has made me question my own – usually brilliant – plans to improve our country. Because coming in at #12 on my personal List of Executive Orders which I would sign immediately after becoming president is, “The first part of the punishment for any cop killer – before ‘execution after a 30-day appeals process’ – is to have a shiv stuck up his rectum.”

Now that I know that some of those freaks are already doing that to themselves – and (shudder) possibly enjoying it – I’ve got to amend my Executive Order List.

Thanks, Brandon!

Hamas delenda est!

Stupid Criminals, Lefty Atheists Tell Christians What Jesus Really Taught & Sunny Hostin Discovers She’s White, and Owes Reparations (posted 2/16/24)

There are a lot of stories to cover today, so let’s get started.

Right after Christmas 2022, Christopher Jason Hovis, 42, was arrested after he scared the hell out of a couple of children when he broke into their house in Decatur, Alabama and started stealing stuff. He was arrested shortly afterwards.

Even though he had a long criminal record, and even though this happened in Alabama, he was out of jail again by last week. I know what you’re thinking: the citizens of Alabama ought to demand better. They ought to insist that Hovis is put back in jail before he can commit another—

Oh no, wait. A homeowner took care of that particular problem last Saturday, when Hovis began kicking his way through a door of his house at 4:00 a.m. The homeowner got his pistol (because: Red State!) and called 911. Cops headed his way immediately.

But as the old saying goes, “When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.” In this case, Hovis won the race between himself and the police, kicking his way into the house before officers arrived.

After he collected his prize — a traditional gunpowder greeting from the homeowner – a news story reports that Hovis celebrated his victory by “retreat[ing] outside, where he succumbed to his injuries.”

Yes! I can’t think of a better place for a would-be home invader to die than “outside.”

Since the story doesn’t mention another weapon, I’m assuming Hovis was unarmed, which would trigger many lefty crime-justifiers to caterwaul, “How could the homeowner shoot an unarmed man?!”

Clint Eastwood’s character in Unforgiven had the right answer, which I am paraphrasing: “He should have armed himself, if he was going to violently kick in the door of a gun-owner’s house.”

Roll tide!

If you watched the video I posted on Monday, you know that I cited CS Lewis in my thoughts about our current election cycle. But as much as I love his clear thinking about Christianity, I also really enjoy being lectured about my faith by non-Christian leftists who are 100% sure of what Jesus meant when he taught things that they imagine him teaching.

So I was in luck this week, when two theological giants shared their doctrinal wisdom with us all.

First up was Megan Rapinoe, the obnoxious, America-hating soccer player and professional malcontent. “Highlights” of her “career” include repeatedly dissing our national anthem, whining that female soccer players don’t get paid enough, and badly missing a penalty kick to kill the American team’s chances to advance in some meaningless tournament.

In her last game, while walking alone on the field – far away from whatever counts as “action” in a soccer game – she somehow managed to tear an Achilles tendon. Then, as soon as her career was over, she signed a letter opposing the “Protection of Girls and Women in Sports” Act, which would prevent men who pretend to be women from playing women’s sports.

Which tells you a lot about Rapinoe. She’s the special kind of jerk who would happily subject other female athletes to getting the crap kicked out of them by creepy male athletes, once she was safely retired.

After her injury, Rapinoe waxed theological: “If there was a God, this is proof that there isn’t, because this is f**ked up.”

Move over, St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, because mediocre Megan is rocking the exegesis!

Rapinoe appeared on a podcast this week and discussed how surprised she was by the blowback she received from Christians and non-Christians alike, most of whom thought that her hilarious injury seemed more like proof of God’s existence than the opposite.

She now says that “there is a special place in hell” for people who celebrated her karmic downfall. She also said, “Someone needs to check in on the Christians; they’re not okay. They also missed the whole joke.”

No, no, we got the joke. You’re an entitled little Christophobe who got wildly overpaid to play a boring game and spew hatred, and at the beginning of your last game ever, you blew out your Achilles while walking slowly in soft grass all alone.

That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard since Norm MacDonald passed away.

Not to be outdone by the sapphic Solomon, Rob Reiner was out pimping his upcoming “documentary” God and Country, which explains that politically active conservative Christians are actually voting in ways “completely antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.”

Because whenever I find myself thinking, “I wonder what Jesus would do in this situation?” I always like to consult a far-left celebrity like Rob Reiner.

And it turns out that the Gospel according to Rob teaches that we should abort babies until the moment of birth, enable addicted wretches to die in the streets and satanic doctors to castrate confused kids, and teach racial hatred and envy of people more successful than yourself. Also, Hamas isn’t so bad, and Death to America. Amen.

As we polite southerners like to say, “Bless your heart, Meathead.”

Speaking of meatheads, our vice president assures us that she is ready to serve, in the event that something happens (unexpectedly!) to Joe Biden.

As a rebuttal of Que Mala’s utterly unjustified self-confidence, check out the twitter video from Elsa Kurt, as she narrates Harris’ attempt to plug in an electric car at a photo op. (It’s several years old, but I just saw it for the first time.)

The VP stands beside the car holding the charging plug. An off-camera voice says, “Go ahead and plug in,” and she says, “Okay,” and then takes way too long to plug it in, as if she’s never used an appliance before.

Then she holds onto the plug for the rest of the multi-minute clip. She says, “There we go,” and the guy offscreen says, “And that’s it.”

And because I was wearing my conical wizard hat while watching and could read his thoughts, he spent the next agonizingly long minutes thinking, “Ok, you can let go now. Let go. Just ease your hand off. For the love of God, please don’t keep standing there and holding that thing!”

The actual dialogue, which I am not making up, goes like this:

Que Mala (QM): And there’s no sound, or fumes!

Off-camera Guy (OCG): There… there is nothing. And that’s all there is to it.

QM: And for all of us who are used to, to filling our tank, you usually can smell it and, and hear it, you can hear the guzzling.

Off-camera Guy’s Thoughts (OCGT): Guzzling? What? No. You can’t hear electricity!

QM (still holding the cord): How do I know it’s working? How would I know that?

OCGT: Not by the smell. Because electricity doesn’t have a smell. Unless it’s passing through the body of a condemned man sitting in an electric chair. Which is where I wish I was right now.

OCG (out loud): So typically, you’d use a card, and then (pointing at the bright green lights lit up on the charging station) this light would come on.

And this makes Kamala cackle like she always does when nothing is the least bit funny.

Good lord, how hard can this be? You’ve got a male plug and a female receptacle. You just plug the male into the fe—

Oh, wait a minute. I get it. Kamala is one of those leftists who can’t define what a woman is, and thinks that a man can become one. So… how can I put this delicately? A process that involves the meeting of male and female is not their strong suit.

But of all of the leftist elites, I would have thought that Que Mala would at least understand that process. Especially since it was her entry into politics, under the tutelage of Willie Brown.

Gotcha! I bet you didn’t know that THAT was what “tutelage” means, did you?

Wait a minute. As a professor, I tutored many, many college students. Could I have been doing it wrong, all of those years?

I mean, yes. YES! If Willie was doing it right, then I was definitely doing it wrong.

Luckily for me, since my Norwegian wife would rip me limb from limb (that’s in her viking DNA) if I had been “tutoring” college students the way Willie tutored Que Mala…

Finally, I can’t not mention the hilarious Sunny Hostin story from this last week.

The empty-headed race-baiter from the View has always prided herself for being half-black and half Puerto Rican, but when she appeared on a genealogy show last week, she found out that her ancestors were actually Spanish slave owners.

In fact, they’d only moved to Puerto Rico because slavery had started getting suppressed in Spain, so they took their slaves with them to the New World.

Now for you and me, that wouldn’t be devastating news. Because we’re not racist weirdos who think that we are responsible for the deeds of long-dead ancestors, either good or bad.

But Sunny is a dimwitted racial essentialist, and she’s argued that she and other “people of color” deserve reparations from the descendants of evil white slavers. So this was not good news.

She fidgeted and laughed very awkwardly, and stammered about how she never imagined she came from Spanish slaveholders! But she soon tried to philosophically distance herself from this horrible rebuke to her self-conception: “I guess it’s a fact of life… that this is how some people made their living… on the backs of others.”

Not “some people,” Sunny! YOU! You have been a privileged slaver, and now your shameful secret is out.

When Sunny got back to the View and talked about this awkward new knowledge, the irony was delicious. She talked about how painful it was to find out she was half white, and how her blonde and light-eyed mother and family members had always thought of themselves as “racially black and ethnically Hispanic,” for whatever that’s worth.

Spoiler alert: it’s not worth a lot.

Sunny tried to put the best face on things by trumpeting the fact that she’s 7% indigenous Puerto Rican. And the dullards in the View audience applauded. “Yay, non-whiteness! Hooray!”

And sure, 7% is a lot, when compared to the .00001% Cherokee in Grandma Squanto’s background. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

But we’re not buying it, Whitey! You’ve pushed this stupid, racist and tribalist binary of oppressors and oppressed for your whole life, and now it’s come back to bite you on the arse. The lily-white arse!

I almost developed a tiny bit of respect for Sunny though, when she stuck to her guns after this revelation, telling the View audience, “I still believe in reparations!”

For a moment I thought that she deserved a little credit, and wondered how she was going to figure out how much reparation money she owed to minorities, and how she was going to go about paying that.

But nope! Right after saying that she believes in reparations, she said, “So all of you can stop texting me saying that I’m a white girl, and don’t deserve reparations.”

So for all of you who have asked the eternal question, “How dumb is Sunny Hostin?” you now have your answer.

She’s so dumb that even though she now knows that she’s a multi-millionaire descendent of slave holders, she STILL thinks poor white people with no connection to slavery should pay HER reparations!

Hamas delenda est!