It was only a matter of time before Harvard Law’s double hater (liberalism and democracy) emerged from the scholarly shadows to join his soulmate JV “Junior Varsity” Vance in the Trumpian spotlight. Damon Linker puts Adrian Vermeule at the heart of an emergent “politics of reactionary negation,” in which not even the fanatic Catholicism people like AV sashay around with has any real meaning to them. Rather, disgust at modernity altogether – a disgust as deep as the Mariana Trench – seems to propel world-loathers into Trumpworld.

Specifically, the double haters hate the “personal existential emptiness … the meaninglessness and inertia” with which contemporary secular American life oppresses us all. Only a Catholic theocracy (UD calls it a Cathophate) will smash a country where “liberalism is the great enemy that must be fought and defeated so that something more wholesome and spiritually invigorating can take its place.” The American government will be run by priests and their acolytes, and will graciously rid us of our personal existential emptiness.

There is no neutral ground on fundamental questions of God, good and evil, and the purpose of human life. Political conflict entails conflict about these ultimate things… Accordingly, [radical rightwing Catholics] view public institutions, social structures and religion as an integral whole. Nothing is truly private. Everything affects the common good; there is no private life or private conscience. The resulting vision is of a hierarchical society with concentrated power, close coordination between church and state, and public regulation of religious orthodoxy… [In short,] the Catholic Church should strategically co-opt the American state. The result would be a return of state-sanctioned religion and a politics that is at once socially conservative, statist and economically populist… [The ultimate goal of all human life] is heaven, and the integralist means of getting us to that destination is to subordinate politics to the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church.

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So here’s a modest policy suggestion from UD: Before fully committing themselves to the overthrow of American democracy, Vance and his army of reactionary negationists should ask themselves whether their sensation of personal emptiness and inertia has more to do with excess ejaculation than modernity.

It’s quite possible, in other words, that they are mainly reacting to the post orgasmic, post coital tristesse that tells you you’ve gone and emptied yourself of sperm yet again.

These men after all are America’s most prominent pronatalists, led ultimately by the hyper-childed, always depleted-looking, Elon Musk. Wouldn’t they all feel silly if the miserable hollowed out feeling they ascribe to the rest of us is an epiphenomenon of their excruciating coital self-coercion?

It’s important to remind ourselves that semen retention has a distinguished spiritual history:

• karezza (Italian)
• maithuna (Hindu Tantra)
• sahaja (Hindu Yoga)
• tantra (Hinduism and Buddhism)
• cai Yin pu Yang and cai Yang pu Yin (Taoist)

Every one of these traditions recognizes coitus reservatus as providing benefits in terms of focus, a greater sense of purpose, and overall harmony. I would urge Vance and his followers to give this a try before extending their own sense of emptiness to everyone else.

Remember: Our side is known as The Happy Warriors.

In case you’re hankering for an update on higher ed in Iran.

She could have applied for Bangladeshi citizenship until she was 21, but did not, and the South Asian country has said there is “no question” of her obtaining citizenship now.

The UK Home Office stripped her of citizenship when she was 19 years old, meaning she still had time to file for Bangladeshi citizenship…

Plus Shamima Begum was married to a Dutch guy, so she might see whether that country would take her. Plus if it’s true she’s harmless now, let’s have her apply for a golden passport. She can set up a Go Fund Me page. She needs to raise about $20,000.

I don’t want to sound indifferent to the fate of this former terrorist who has possibly made an authentic and complete turnaround. I’m fully aware she languishes in a Beckettian hellscape where insane burqabis attempt every day to kill non-burqabis. (Begum no longer wears a burqa.) But she had options, which she rejected. She still has a few, but seems to be doing nothing about them.

 I’ve been sort of involved with some of the recruitment efforts and interviewing of some of the potential candidates. Last year, we had five potential candidates, and … all five decided to go elsewhere. Idaho used to be a state that attracted OBs for the outdoors, for the family values, the recreation — it’s a good place to live. But I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade had an impact…

What I heard from others was that those who were interviewed in the last year expressed concerns regarding the legal climate and concerns of prosecution, which led them to not take our offer of employment. 

A doctor at Idaho’s third shuttered obstetrics unit talks about why the total abortion ban is also becoming a total birth ban.

Sing along.

I Command Cat Ladies in The Name Of The Lord

I command Cat Ladies in the name of the Lord
Drop your weapons and flee
For the Lord has given me authority
To stomp all over thee.

Crypto pastor gets it said.

The Division of Securities is not fighting against me, they’re fighting against God, and they will lose… I had to give $500,000 to the IRS for some tax debts, then the Lord said to start remodeling our house… People trusted the Lord with their money. As we said, pray about it and then do what you want and they bought in. It’s no different than Moses leading the Israelites out of the wilderness. So, no, I don’t feel bad, because I know what God is going to do. Now, does it look bad from a natural perspective? Of course it does, it looks like death. But that’s how God works.

You read dat right. Gambia’s had just about enough of babies crawling around with their clits on.

“The point at which your business plan requires divine intervention is the point at which you have a solvency problem,” said prosecutor Andrew Mark Thomas in closing arguments…

LOL. Scenes from America’s latest edition of Elmer Gantry.

Gotta admire Iran’s “Cap and Pray” economic policy: Shut down all businesses where women don’t wear a scarf. Absofuckinglutely brilliant.

In the Mea Shearim area, there are [illegal] signs advising visitors not to enter if dressed “indecently”. Despite complying with the community’s dress code, [female journalists] were still targeted with degrading accusations and insults, being called “impure (unholy)” and receiving death threats.

Noticias Cuatro TV broadcast footage that showed a group of men throwing bottles, trash, posters, and other objects at the journalists. 

The question of whether or not Israel should recognize—and fund—the right of yeshiva students to pursue their Torah studies rather than join the army has been a political hot potato since at least the 1970s…

Given that tens of thousands of Haredi men do no Torah study of any actual meaning or value – they lack the motivation/intelligence/training to do little other than show up in a building occasionally and hang around open books – the writer misstates the problem. It’s sweet that he assumes that we assume that all male babies born into this population transform into Torah scholars. But since we have eyes in our heads, we do not assume this. Because we know it is not true.

[T]here are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army … hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and … they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers … the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.

Netzah Yehuda is nothing to be proud of. The US gov has singled this unit out for sanctions, so atrocious has its conduct been in the West Bank. And who can be surprised? A subculture taught to consider pretty much everyone not an ultraorthodox Jew pretty close to subhuman can’t be trusted with serious weaponry. Unless you don’t care about the law of warfare.

And the IDF didn’t create a unit just for Haredim cuz it was wowed by their solidity and consistency: Haredim are so unassimilably weird and demanding in their general and specific orientation (no mixing with women ever!) that nothing short of total segregation will work with them.

Indeed, “fully integrating Haredim into its ranks would require a wide array of logistical challenges—providing strictly kosher food, for example, or addressing concerns rising from coed military service—it currently cannot and does not want to address.” And why is it only the IDF that has to address ways of being that allow this group of Israelis to contribute to the Israeli state’s existential crisis? How about the Haredim meeting the army halfway, and, say, suspending strict observances for the duration of their service? Suspending their inhumane attitudes toward everyone not a member of their religious group?

OOOH, say their rabbis, that would be the first step to secularization.

So?

The author goes on to argue that the war is going desperately badly — a position rather at odds with his initial argument that the Israeli court should leave an enormous population of unemployed young men alone.

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UPDATE:

At least 22 percent of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students under the age of 26 are illegally employed, in violation of the terms of their exemption from military service, a new study has found, appearing to undercut the community’s argument that its members do not enlist due to their total immersion in Torah study.

Well.

Gotta admire their honesty.

So let’s see what the good reason is.

Haredim believe—deeply, strongly and sincerely—that religious devotion in the form of Torah-study, no less than the actions of foot soldiers or intelligence officers, is important for Israel’s security. Indeed, a vital, essential part of it... [A]t least in Haredi eyes, [fit young men who only pray] are not evading public service but contributing to it—and in a way that, they sincerely believe, is essential to the safety and security of all their fellow Jews.

Indeed, in Haredi eyes, they sincerely believe they don’t need to work instead of pray; sincerely, they believe Israeli taxpayers should subsidize their prayerful unemployment. Sincerely, in Haredi eyes, vaccination against disease is evil, so sincerely they allowed thousands of their old and very young to die of covid. Many Haredi sincerely believe that stealing funds from the Israeli state (in which they sincerely disbelieve) is okay. In Haredi eyes, during Israel’s national minute of silence on holocaust remembrance day, you should make a lot of noise to show your contempt. In Haredi eyes, violence against the “state” – which extends from constant destructive rioting/traffic disruption to attacking children dressed insufficiently modestly – is essential to the safety and security of all their fellow Jews. (Oh except that in Haredi eyes no person who is not Haredi is really a Jew. Sincerely.)

These are all good reasons. Because Haredi people think they are good reasons. Sincerely.

“[O]ur decision not to share the news [that a member of our community stabbed and drowned her babies] is deliberate and guided by the wisdom of our rabbis.”

Ultraorthodox Lakewood NJ – known until now for its astounding rates of welfare fraud and its refusal to vaccinate its people against measles, covid, etc. – arrogantly responds to media inquiries with pride in its longstanding refusal to face up to what the many pathologies of its community have wrought. Of course this is a very big news story, but by definition America’s most anti-social demographic doesn’t give a shit.

Oh, turns out filicide mom has “severe mental illness,” which, guided by the wisdom of our rabbis, we decided left us free to put her alone in her house with her defenseless offspring. (Not totally defenseless: Apparently she only stabbed the older of the two, presumably because the pitiable child offered a little resistance.)

And of course the madwoman would – will? – continue to produce more babies. More babies is what ultraorthodox women – psychotic murderers or not – do.

#everybodydies