I watched Star Trek as a child living in Rawlings, Maryland.  It helped create my hopeful disposition toward technology and the future.  I am still thankful for that effect, while not being thrilled with the presentation of overly sexual themes when I was an impressionable young boy.

This analysis is fabulous.  I’m looking forward to watching the fan film series that Cullen praises in his analysis.

Every word of this article is both true and clever.

For example:

The War on Whatever is not meant to be won.  It is meant to be continuous, which it is. Like the never-ending war in Orwell’s 1984, it is waged by the empire against its own subjects, but not only to keep the structure of society intact, also, in our case, to transform society into a neo-totalitarian global-capitalist dystopia.

And:

And what about the War on Populism? You might not remember that one so well.  I do, because I published two books about it. It was launched in the summer of 2016, when the empire realized that “far-right populists” were threatening “freedom and democracy” in Europe, and Trump was on the rise in the USA. So another “state of emergency” was declared, this time by the Intelligence Community, and the media, and Academia, and the Culture Industry. Yes, that’s right, it was time once again to set aside our democratic principles, censor “hate speech” on social media, bombard the masses with ridiculous official propaganda about “Russiagate,” “Hitlergate,” and so on, or otherwise “the far-right populists would have won.”  The War on Populism culminated with the roll-out of the New Normal Reich.

To read the entire column click on the image above.

Amen.

When you click on the image above a Substack article will open.  It is a defense of Eastern Orthodox influencer Jonathan Pageau.  He produces content under the brand, “The Symbolic World.”

The writer observes,

Maybe you received a good education. In that case, glory to God! But not everyone was so fortunate. And Pageau isn’t only addressing himself to folks with Ph.Ds in comparative religion. He’s trying to have a conversation that anyone can jump into—regardless of their education level. He doesn’t speak down to people, but he does make himself intelligible to any reasonably thoughtful person. That, in my book, is a virtue.

The Yankee Athonite proclaims, “The Baby Boomers were infamously bad at handing down a basic understanding of… well, anything.”  Ouch.

Describing the importance of good stories to our lives he says

What makes Pageau famous, though, is that he fills one of those knowledge gaps—specifically the ones left when we stopped telling our kids bedtime stories. Those were the moments when we catechized our children into the folk-wisdom of their ancestors.  I’m always struck by the scenes in The Andy Griffith Show where Andy tells Opie (or Otis) classic stories like Jack and the Beanstalk. The problem is that Opie’s generation also grew up watching The Andy Griffith Show. By the time they had kids of their own, TV had pretty much monopolized the story-telling aspects of our society.  Yet, as St. Basil the Great pointed out, those old stories prepared the hearts and minds of men to receive the Gospel. They still have a place in our world. We have simply failed to make room for them. Pageau is correcting that error.

I’ll stop before I quote the entire commentary.

Comment below.

Amen.

Hollywood has produced another film making fun of preachers.  Gee.  We’re all shocked.

I listen to this YouTubers content more for his hilarious rant than to get his opinion on any particular film.  He ends every video with, “That’s all I’ve got for today.  Now … go away now.”

Brilliant.

I’m not sure whether he coined the phrase “The Message” to describe the plot line of nearly everything produced by Hollywood for the past decade or not.  But I love how he exposes it so much in his reviews.  You can probably define “The Message” for me without me telling you what it is.  A hint.  Think gay.

Amen.

Back in 2004 I was “brigaded” on email.  Given how disconnected from reality the internet is I wonder if the thousands of emails I received back then were machine generated.  I received them as an overwhelming rejection of an idea I promoted by email at the time.  I was thinking that the emails were all generated by individuals. 

Maybe not!

It is important to realize how fake the screen world is now.  It’s essential, actually, for your mental and spiritual health.  My rule of thumb is NEVER to believe anything that a political, monied or popular source says in the opening days of the assertion/news.  I tell my wife everyday, “Time will tell.”

That’s why I pay closer attention to older/more-experienced-source commentary than I do to what the powerful/rich are saying.  Especially in the opening days of an event/story.  But you have to be cautious with this also, because the opinionator world is in the process of being purchased as well.

Never forget that truth and reality EXIST!  And it often is the opposite of what your scrolling reveals.

Amen.

Paulie and I are driving to Florida.  After a long day on the road Paulie wanted to relax watching an old episode of Andy Griffith.  She couldn’t.  You can’t.  Instead, you must watch Big Pharma advertisements interrupted by the content you wish to enjoy.  People actually pay a cable subscription for this s**t?

Click thru to watch a video report on the recent Oscar ceremony in Hollywood to further illustrate my point.