David Hockney

ALAN writes:

Wherever a man is engaged in contemplation, it is common for people to say about him that he is “lost in thought.”

I suggest that this is nonsense. They have it backward: Such men are not “lost” in thought. They are at home in thought. They do not “lose” themselves in thought. They create themselves in thought.

If they are “lost,” it is in the “real world” as they attempt to navigate through a maze of liars, fools, frauds, airheads and swindlers.

How is one’s mind assaulted in public places today so that it is nearly impossible to be lost in thought?  Let me count the ways:

Traffic: The endless din of trucks, buses, and monster vehicles.

The beeping of vehicles used for landscaping.

The indescribable, mind-destroying noise of motorcycles and vehicles deliberately engineered to be as loud as modern technology makes possible.

The noise mendaciously called “music” from passing vehicles. Read More »

I WENT into Target the other day to look for a new thermal lunch-bag for my husband when I noticed a big rack with Father’s Day cards. I stopped to look at them — most of them were $6! — and noticed one that was for “two Dads,” obviously a card for a “gay” couple. Would anyone buy this card? I wondered. Very possibly.

It is heart-breaking to think about it. It’s heart-breaking for any child to be forced to live a lie. One father is all we get. Some may seem like fathers to us. But we only have one. Nothing else is possible.

That’s the beauty of fatherhood. Nothing — not death, not divorce, not abandonment, not a cultural revolution against fatherhood — can change this fact. And nothing can entirely sever the tie between a father and his child. That tie is biological and spiritual. People who haven’t seen or spoken to their fathers for years still think of them and are affected by them. Fatherhood used to be cultural too but that is very much breaking down. An enormous, heavily-funded state apparatus is directed to keeping fathers out of their homes. But no tyranny can ultimately succeed at this project however many families it cruelly and coldly destroys. Fathers will always live in their children’s hearts and cannot ever be entirely exiled from them. Even a bad father lives on.

In Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, the protagonist is a young boy born without a father. The trajectory of his life is established from the beginning by his fatherlessness.

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his white grave–stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were—almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes—bolted and locked against it.

The book goes on to give what seem to be living examples of every kind of father: the cruel stepfather, the indebted and reckless father, the overly protective father, the devoted father. And it ends in great happiness. David Copperfield becomes a father himself. Could Dickens have imagined a world with “two Dads?” He might not have been able to imagine it, but he could understand it. The human scene, he knew, was varied and constantly produces new eccentricities.

What about those children with “two Dads?”

Stay tuned. They will someday tell the world they only have one. Greeting cards and big, corporate retailers cannot change nature.

Happy Father’s Day to all fathers, both good and bad, both appreciated and under-appreciated. Never doubt that you are loved and have a permanent place in the hearts of your children. Read More »

PARIS writes:

I would like your opinion on my situation. I’m 35 years old, and have three kids. I’ve always felt like I was meant to have two more. I always feel, whether it be in taking pictures or sitting on our living room couch, that there is this empty spot left for this child or children that I was supposed to have.

My youngest is now 10. And I feel like I’ve been in mourning for at least five years over not having more kids. I still have “baby fever” so to speak. My husband didn’t want more kids after last one because we didn’t have much money then and he was attending school. We were also on food stamps. Now ten years later, our income has more than doubled (financially we’re probably middle class), and we are not on any government assistance, yet husband still doesn’t want any more kids. I feel so horrible. Read More »

HEART OF JESUS, glowing furnace of charity, king and center of all hearts, have mercy on us. 

June is the month of the Sacred Heart. Pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart (below). Read More »

An ad for Frances Valentine, Kate Spade’s last fashion business

STEPHEN IPPOLITO writes from Australia:

You really nailed it in your post about Kate Spade with your observation on that “black hole above the…fireplace” suggesting a world view that life is “dark and purposeless.” Spot on! There’s even a second such image in that sequence of shots – it’s in the second photo, in a frame above Mrs. Spade’s right shoulder, as she is shown gazing at herself in a mirror – a duplication that hints that something in Mrs. Spade perhaps may have been drawn to bleak images.

I felt very uneasy as I studied these shots and couldn’t understand why. It seemed to me that I had felt the very same unsettling sensations somewhere before. I found that quite surprising because I share your view about the stylishness and good taste of the branded products bearing her name. Then I recalled where I’ve felt the same uneasy sensations: every time I watch the famous opening title sequence of Hitchcock’s atmospheric film, Vertigo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q42Jdx6T7nI

The sequence was obviously very deliberately composed around the image of a black hole to reflect the film’s bleak central themes of obsession, alienation and above all: the morbid appeal that death holds for many people who are drawn to the darker side of life. The sequence features segmented shots of the face of a woman who is never shown whole and does not appear in the world of the film at all. It dwells particularly on the image of the pupil of one of her eyes – oversized, perfectly round, black and empty. It strikes me, as I think it must strike most people, as a portal into a terrible void. Such a strange and unsettling image to find as a decoration on the walls of a family home.

Fans of Vertigo will already know that the appeal of suicide looms front and centre among the film’s themes: the central female character Madeleine, like Ms Spade a stylish and elegant woman, is obsessed by the spirit of a long-dead woman who committed suicide, attempts suicide, herself, in San Francisco Bay and describes life as a walk down a long corridor “and at the end of the corridor is nothing but darkness.” She confides in the Jimmy Stewart character early on that: “I don’t want to die, but there’s someone within me and she says I must.” Read More »

IT IS ALWAYS extremely sad when someone commits suicide. So it is with the death this week of the wildly successful New York fashion designer, Kate Spade, 55, whose upbeat, chic, and colorful feminine accessories were understandably very popular.

Spade, who hung herself with a scarf and leaves behind a husband and a 13-year-old daughter, obviously had a dark side she did not wish to reveal to the public. This darkness is apparent to me in the artwork which decorated the multi-million dollar homes in New York and the Hamptons owned by her and her husband, Andy Spade. These homes combine a studied, preppy look of classic furniture, elegant patterned fabrics and cozy knick knacks with chillingly bleak modern art. This contrast is a common form of juxtaposition among the fashionable. On one hand, there is a devotion to tradition and on the other there are “I-reject-all-that” gestures. The art people hang in their homes expresses their worldview and definitely affects their inner states. Even people with vast resources to buy the most expensive of things often cannot make a full commitment to beauty because they are alienated from its source. This alienation, I submit, was the cause of Spade’s death. How could Kate possibly make sense of intense inner suffering in such a world?

I offer these images, however, mostly without comment and with condolences to her family. I do not mean to suggest that all modern art is dangerous. Much of it, however, makes people unhappy because it is ugly and bleak or simply confirms an emptiness within. Much of it is mere sensation and thus enforces a profound meaninglessness.

Read More »

AMERICANS support the Israeli military to the tune of $10 million a day, money that could potentially go to providing health care, college tuition, housing and jobs to the poor in this country and elsewhere.

The Israeli army has killed and injured thousands of unarmed Arabs, including medics and journalists, in recent weeks. (A total of 112 have been killed and more than 13,000 have been injured, some shot in the head and limbs.) But the army also routinely performs “extra-judicial” assassinations of Palestinians who are considered a threat.

Yesterday, Ezzeddin Abdul-Hafith Tamimi, 21, was shot by soldiers elsewhere from the protests by Gazans. Here is his story, posted at the If Americans Knew blog. Please bear in mind when reading this that Tamimi was 21 years old, that he was not attacking anyone when he was shot down and that he never got his day in court. Please bear in mind also that you and I are indirectly complicit in these actions because of American support:

Ezzeddin Abdul-Hafith Tamimi, 21, was shot by Israeli soldiers in Nabi Saleh village with three live rounds from very close range in an extrajudicial assassination. The soldiers then prevented Palestinian medics from approaching Ezzeddin as he lay, critically injured, on the ground.

According to eyewitnesses, Palestinian medics tried to provide aid to the seriously wounded man, but the soldiers assaulted them, and threatened to shoot them. Ezzeddin then succumbed to his injuries.

When Ezzeddin’s mother was informed that he was killed, she rushed to see him, but the soldiers sprayed her face with pepper-spray and forced her away. Read More »

Conchita Wurst, the transgender winner of the Eurovision Song Contest

The anniversary of the Devil’s Day suicide mission – and the Marxist E.U. which it spawned, are nothing for Americans or Europeans to celebrate.

After 73 years of moral and cultural rot, unlimited Third World immigration, [also non-stop wars of foreign aggression that are not in the interest of Americans or Europeans, have decimated other peoples and have helped create waves of refugees] and now, a steadily eroding economy, the ever diminishing number of British & American D-Day survivors have got to be asking themselves, “What was it all for?”

To quote the British Historian David Irving:

“If the British soldiers on the beaches of Normandy in 1944 could look forward to the end of the century and see what England has become, they would not have bothered to advance another 40 yards up the beach.”

— The Anti-New York Times

AS MORE women see through the lies of feminism and embrace the traditional life, the Big Media are likely to shame and demonize the housewife more and more. Annie Kelly, a Ph.D. student who is writing her dissertation on internet anti-feminism, sets a very, very high standard in this regard with her recent article at The New York Times. No longer is the housewife just a loser and a parasite, she is now a “sinister,” “authoritarian,” “hyper-feminine,” “racist,” “abhorrent,” ‘red-lipsticked,” “lunatic” “white supremacist” so afraid of being violated and objectified by men that she opts for submission. She’s also the usual parasite (Ph.D. students writing political tracts are not parasites): Read More »

WILLIAM J. TYCHONIEVICH writes:

I enjoyed your takedown of the inane song “Imagine,” but as an English teacher I must insist that the proper annotation for “And no religion too” is “And no grammar, either.” Read More »

ALAN writes:

“What did I have that I don’t have?  What have I got a great big lack of….?”

Eydie Gorme asked those questions in her classic 1966 recording of What Did I Have that I Don’t Have? Keep them in mind as you read the following.

Did you hear about the 12-year-old boy who rode his bicycle from his home in Utah to his grandparents’ home in Massachusetts…..alone?

His parents gave him permission to do so, provided that he phone them every night so that they could keep track of his whereabouts and safety.  He did, and they did.  There were no problems.  He arrived safe and sound.  He was not harmed, robbed, molested, kidnapped, or killed.

Oh, and I forgot to mention one thing:  He did that in the early 1960s. Read More »

JUDE DUFFY wrote at Fitzpatrick Informer last week about the Irish abortion referendum. His thesis that the referendum was rigged is plausible, but even if one does not accept it, his analysis of the major forces at work in Ireland is accurate:

In keeping with the Big Rig strategy—a subspecies of the Big Lie—the Deep State rigged the abortion vote referendum on a massive scale; the theory being that, as with the Big Lie, the bigger the rig, the more it stupefies the target into dazed submission—Shock and Awe administered in the psycho-political realm.

Bear in mind that the Irish vote had implications not just for Ireland but also for Northern Ireland, the United States, Poland, Spain, Hungary, and other countries where abortion is still a burning issue. So, for both domestic and international reasons, the Deep State needed the defeat to be huge and psychologically crushing. Is anyone naive enough to believe they wouldn’t rig it under such exigent conditions? Seriously?

In Ireland, remember, there are no alternative media, and almost no independent journalists of any kind. No one here is watching the Rothschild crooks of the government and the Alinskyite far Left, so they can get away with just about anything.

Crucially, Ireland also has proportionally one of the largest and most powerful Masonic networks in the world—networks that almost no one—not even the strongest Catholics—seem to be aware of. Indeed, the silence in Ireland surrounding Freemasonry is a not so paradoxical a testament to its huge power and success. A secret society that is talked about is, after all, by definition, not so secret.

In 2008, the then Prime Minister of Ireland, Brian Cowen, called the current Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar (an openly homosexual Neocon), and his party colleagues ‘Freemason F***ers”. Within a few months, Cowen and his government were hit by a huge bankster-induced financial crisis that brought the country to its knees, and destroyed Cowen’s political career. The “Freemason F***ers” have held the tiller on behalf of Rothschild globalism ever since.

As for Ireland’s pro-abortion Left, it is dominated by criminals and terrorists. The Workers Party, a criminal terrorist, Stalinist gang with strong links to British intelligence, took a leading part in the campaign, as did Ireland’s mainstream left-wing party, Labour—itself dominated by ex-Workers Party stalwarts.

Pro-abortion Sinn Fein is another criminal enterprise controlled by British intelligence—as are the thuggish Trotskyist parties, such as Solidarity (aka the Militant Tendency). Who in their right mind would expect any of these guys to play by the rules of democracy?

In any other country on planet earth, a gaping chasm of 22 per cent between opinion polls and official results would be laughed off the stage. Even the UN would express extreme scepticism. However, so punch drunk have Irish Catholics become over several generations, they long ago stopped noticing what stares them in the face.

Organised opposition to Rothschild globalism in Ireland does not exist—only a single issue anti-abortion movement, which cringes, Stockholm-syndrome style, in the face of its Zio-leftist persecutors, does.

Thus, true to form, the pro-life leadership are ignoring the irrefutable evidence of huge fraud in the referendum, opting instead for their usual weedy, fatalistic response to pre-ordained “defeats”—their self-absorbed reasoning being that it’s better to be rigged into oblivion than to be seen as a bad loser—or worse still, a “conspiracy theorist”. [Read more here.]

BISHOP DONALD SANBORN, at his blog In Veritate, answers a college student’s questions about faith and the meaning of existence. An excerpt:

Question 2. What are your views on evolution? Evolution is a proven fact. How do you reconcile it with Christianity?

Answer. Evolution is an absurd system which is based on an absurd principle: that something comes from nothing, that the greater comes from the lesser, that the more perfect comes from the less perfect, that order and constancy come from chance. Evolution is a modern mythology which makes the systems of the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses look rational. It is to say that there is design without a designer. It is a creed that is too unbelievable to recite. Indeed, I think that one would have to be psychotic to really believe that it is true. It would be psychotic, for example, to say that the music of Mozart was composed by his cat’s walking on a piano. Yet evolution asserts this very principle. Read More »

Cardinal George Pell

STEPHEN IPPOLITO writes from Australia:

As a member of TTH’s crack team of foreign correspondents sprinkled strategically throughout the world, I thought I would report to you on what is currently playing out down under with the Catholic churchman whom the world’s press are fond, (I think probably rightly), of describing as “the third-highest ranking official in the Curia” and as “the Pope’s finance minister,” Cardinal George Pell, a native son of these parts.

You wrote a very prescient piece about his legal woes back on 20 July 2017.

[NOTE: This website does not recognize the heretical, modernist Vatican II Church as the Catholic Church. But in the eyes of the world (and many sincere Catholics), it is the Catholic Church, and thus allegations of crimes by its clergy are publicly imputed to the Catholic Church. The media coverage of sex abuse charges, when that coverage is slanted or false, and the prosecution of false allegations, constitute a war against the Catholic Church.]

His Eminence, apart from his Vatican post, is Archbishop of Sydney, Australia’s largest city, and was before that Archbishop of its second city, Melbourne. He has been for several decades now far and away the most widely-recognized Catholic in this country. Although you and I and just about all other readers of TTH would beg to differ, he has long been identified by the press as a leading “conservative” voice in the church world-wide.

His Eminence has been on extended leave of absence from his Vatican post since June 2017 when he  was charged that month with a series of “historic” child sexual abuse crimes dating back to the 70’s and ‘90’s.

In your piece in 2017 you expressed serious doubts as to the credibilty of two of the main witneses against Pell, (the identities of most other witnesses, along with their detailed evidence, being withheld from the public by court order as is usual here in such cases).

You were right to do so. His Eminence’s Committal Hearing completed last month. The magistrate delivered her findings and judgement earlier this month. I’m not American but from what I have read of US practice and procedure our Committal procedure seems to resemble fairly closely the US “Grand Jury” procedure. That is: before someone may be tried for an indictable offense a magistrate, sitting alone, hears evidence in a modified type of trial in order to determine whether there exists a  reasonable possibility that a jury, properly instructed, might find the allegations proven. It is not  the criminal standard of proof of “beyond reasonable doubt” that is the test applied in committals but simply whether there appears to exist a credible or reasonable case for the accused to answer. Read More »

JOHN LENNON’S 1971 song “Imagine” is the New World Order anthem, a song not of peace, but of deadening global tyranny and nihilism. Funny how many people have been seduced by the powerful, hopeful music into thinking it is benign. The music acts as a potent sedative — although few pills or pharmaceuticals could so instantly lull the rational mind as this can. It’s no accident that this utopian, Communistic song, which envisions a world without personality, possessions, nations and religion, has been played at the United Nations and the Summer Olympics. There’s a circle in hell where speakers play this tune over and over, driving everyone into raving lunacy. In hell, there is no imagination.

I have annotated the lyrics:

Imagine there’s no heaven
Imagine you are nothing
It’s easy if you try
It’s easier if you don’t
No hell below us
And no justice too
Above us only sky
Around us only force
Imagine all the people living for today
No past or future, ah-ha-ah-a Read More »

ERIC writes:

This photo was taken on a ferry with a lot of adult commuters, and not too many kids. But still.

Israeli forces have killed 112 Palestinians and injured 13,190 since March 30th, including a deaf child who was shot in the head, medics, and journalists. One Israeli soldier was reportedly injured.

Read more here.

HEAD to a fall-out shelter when he speaks. Novus Ordo Watch examines “Pope” Francis’s latest outrage:

We must be clear that merely experiencing same-sex attraction is not sinful — sin is an act of the will, not a feeling. What is sinful is consenting to it, approving of it, acting on it, and claiming that such attraction is normal, legitimate, or healthy. It’s sinful because sexual attraction exists for sexual acts, and the primary purpose of sexuality is procreation, something that is intrinsically frustrated in unnatural acts.

Unnatural acts are, in the truest sense of the word, a perversion, meaning a turning away from the proper end (the Latin pervertere literally means “to turn to ill effect”). They are an abuse of the faculties God gave to man so he could produce offspring. As one moral theologian puts it: “The malice of sodomy consists in the perverted affection towards the wrong sex or in the attraction towards the wrong method of sexual gratification” (Rev. Heribert Jone, Moral Theology [Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1962], n. 230.2; italic and bold print given).