Tuesday, October 20, 2015

My Uncle's Death in the Umpqua Community College Shooting

My uncle, Lawrence Levine, was the professor who was killed in the Umpqua Community College shooting.  His death hurt my family and me immensely.  Resulting questions, relevant to political activists, continue to haunt me.
Normally, I am very politically active here and elsewhere promoting culturism. But, this tragedy hit me so hard that I could not watch the news: seeing the killer’s face threw me into a despair-filled rage. I still have trouble watching the news.

Herein, lays a question for us activists: At what level are we appropriate to the political issues we cover?  When I write about the Islamification of the West, I treat it as a theoretical issue.  To the women raped in Sweden, this is inappropriately sedate.  And, if I boldly announce that we should sink refugees’ ships, this is also too casual.
How do I find the appropriate level of emotional sensitivity in my writing and policies?  This emotional question still makes it hard for me to blithely peruse political sites.

President Obama visited our grieving families.  Knowing me, my family begged me to be polite.  And, I thought this would be hard as I detest Obama’s multicultural - globalist policies as much as anyone.  But, he was personable, comparing his daughters to my nieces, and telling us that Michelle and the American people send their sympathies and care – no politics were mentioned.  

This nice gesture humanized Obama for me.  Now I find it hard to conjure as much vitriol for him as I previously did.  And, I say this knowing he is giving Iran nukes, caused continuing death in Libya, and demolished our borders: all things I hate.

Is there ever a moment wherein tragedy – as in 9/11 – makes us all just Americans, or westerners or – dare I, as a culturist, say it – humans?  When, as with grieving families, should we adopt this frame?  And, when should we just be adversaries?

My uncle Larry loved the river and, as a youth, moved to Oregon to escape civilization’s noise.  His home overlooked the Umpqua river, wherein, via fishing, he became one with nature.  This is not hyperbole.  His writings express just this transcendence.  And, on his rare visits to LA, he longed to return to nature. But, civilization chased my uncle to the banks of the river; he did not escape.

Was my uncle’s retreat from civilization spiritual or illusory? How much of our lives should be spent in political trenches and how much outside?  Where is the balance? If retreating to nature is an escape from politics, might not politics also become an escape from life on its own terms? 

Lastly, the existential questions: Why try?  As I worked my way through my uncle’s many unpublished manuscripts, I found myself repeating, ‘Words cannot save you. We will all die. Why continue writing?’  These questions still haunt me.  Perhaps the answer lays in the answers to my earlier questions. For now, just writing again is healing.

RIP Uncle Larry.  

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Why My New Version of ‘Imagine’ Must Crush Lennon’s

I recently recorded a ‘right-wing’ culturist version of JohnLennon’s leftist-anthem, ‘Imagine.” In fact, I have long had a physical revulsion to the destructive platitudes in Lennon’s song.  But, with communists and Muslims attacking, the song is now more dangerous than ever.  My mock version may prove to be the antidote to his cultural virus.  But, if that doesn’t work, we may need to decapitate every zombie who is spreading Lennon’s version.  If we don’t dismantle Lennon’s hymn, it could destroy the West.

Lennon’s anthem asks Western people to imagine there’s ‘no religion’ and ‘no countries:’ A borderless heaven. When we’re being inundated and attacked by Islam at every turn; pretending Islam will just disappear when we all ‘imagine’ it, is suicidal. Rather than imagine there is no religion, we must be aware that one religion, Islam, is coming for your throat!   Lennon admits he’s a dreamer.  We need to wake up and stop sleep-walking towards the cliff that Lennon’s stupefying incantation is sending us towards.

Even the way the hippy prophet uses the word ‘religion’ is dangerous.  Not all ‘religions’ are the same.  He thinks imagining no Christianity is good.  Christianity is the best religion ever.  It teaches the value of the individual, it is the basis of western civilization. Lennon’s religion-equating, ‘brotherhood of man,’ formula is at the root of the multicultural blindness that justifies our letting ‘refugees’ into our nations. Imagine Christianity as the official religion of the West.  Why? Christianity is kind. Cultural diversity is real.  Evil Exists. It is called Islam.

Imagine no possessions?  When Lennon goes into this communist reverie I want to vomit. When I lived in New York, I used to sarcastically imagine all the people living in his exclusive, guarded building, ‘the Dakota.’ When Lennon uses ‘greed’ to explain hunger and inequality, he insinuates that the blame for poor nations’ maladies comes from nations who have possessions - the West.  This means we must let in ‘economic refugees’ because our ‘greed’ caused their poverty.  Bullocks.  Our western cultures produce.  Theirs sucks.  Cultural diversity is real. Their poverty is their fault. We owe them nothing. 

So, imagine a world wherein everyone sings my culturist version of Imagine. It would make the West strong and ready to defend itself.  But, if people persist in spreading Lennon’s commu-tard dream about a borderless, heavenly, homogenous nether-world where Islam leaves us alone and people from backwards cultures get “their fair share” of our civilization, we need to see them for what they are: stupefied, destructive, somnambulist, unthinking, virus-spreading zombies weakening our defenses.  Aim for their heads!