The Caesars' Game

I've been listening Mike Duncan's The History of Rome padcast and have just made it to the ascension of Caligula. Having read most of Vox Day's comments on male hierarchy, I couldn't help but consider the early Caesars in that light. I have only a passing familiarity with these characters, so this is based only on Duncan's podcast and high school history classes.

Here are the ranks as Vox enumerates them:

• Alpha - Natural leaders. Confident, charismatic, and dominant. Usually run the show wherever they go.


• Beta - Natural semi-leaders. Confident, but maybe not as charismatic. They have to work at it and frequently play second-fiddle.


• Delta - The rank and file. Mostly passive. Stable, hard-working "family" men.


• Gamma - Weak, scared, passive-aggressive loners. Sycophants and complainers. They get little respect and usually don't deserve it.


• Omega - Creepy losers. Sociopaths.


• Sigma - Confident, charismatic, dominant men who don't naturally incline toward leading anything or even necessarily participating.

Julius Caesar was a Natural, a born Alpha. He was charismatic, reckless, brash, and stunningly successful in war, politics, and womanizing. People adored him or abhorred him, but everyone respected him.

Augustus Caesar (aka Octavius, etc.) was not an Alpha. As a young man, he was intelligent and thoughtful but sickly and possibly even a coward. Men didn't gravitate toward him or respect him. At best he was a Beta, but it's possible he was a Delta or even on the border of Gamma. Fortunately for him, he spent much of his teenage years at the side of Uncle Julius, absorbing some of his character and methods. By the time Julius died he had become a Beta, and over the following decade he transformed himself into an Alpha. His more timid roots kept him from becoming a complete clone of Julius, however. He didn't rule or conquer with the reckless abandon of his uncle, but remained a thoughtful and careful administrator. He relied very heavily on his even more intelligent capable advisor, Agrippa, whom I would call a strong Alpha if it weren't for his continual preference to remain in Augustus' shadow.

Tiberius began life as a Delta. He never wanted to be a leader, let alone an emperor. Circumstances forced him to adopt the behavior of an Alpha, but he always hated the role. The conflict between who he wanted to be and who he felt he was forced to be eventually broke him. He died an Omega.

Caligula could have been another Julius. He was born an Alpha, but he was twisted into Omega behavior under the murderous, perverted tutelage of his adopted grandfather.

Draw what conclusions you will. I strongly believe that men can become something to which they were not born. That can be a good thing or a bad thing.

A Good Article for Women

Tracy McMillan lets women off a little too easy on a few points, but overall, she wrote a good article for the Huffington Post. Here's a summary:

1. You're a bitch
2. You're shallow
3. You're a slut
4. You're a liar
5. You're selfish
6. You're not good enough

The last paragraph is especially good:

The bottom line is that marriage is just a long-term opportunity to practice loving someone even when they don't deserve it. Because most of the time, your messy, farting, macaroni-and-cheese eating man will not be doing what you want him to. But as you give him love anyway -- because you have made up your mind to transform yourself into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving, and most of all, accepting of your own dear self -- you will find that you will experience the very thing you wanted all along:

Love.

America?

My mother used to say, "We're not poor; we're just broke." It was her way of saying that poverty is a state of mind and believing that you are poor (whatever words you use to describe your state) will ensure you remain poor. It's the same for nations and freedom. A free and moral people will be free and moral regardless of their form of government, while a servile and immoral people will remain servile and immoral no matter how much liberty and prosperity you attempt to foist upon them.

HT: Vox Day

We are Absurd

Apparently, the PTB have been negotiating with an imposter they thought was a high-ranking official of the Taliban. It's pretty bad when you don't even know who the top leaders of your enemy are.

The United States government has no idea how to fight the war in Afghanistan. They have no idea how to stop people from blowing up or hijacking aircraft. They have no idea how to defend our borders against invasion or even how to define an invasion.

Or else they are doing a very good job of pretending that they don't.

In either case, we as a nation have become absurd. We deserve the ridicule of the rest of the world.
Update: I don't know whether these kinds of actions are the spasms of a pre-rigor corpse or a sign of fitful life:

Several members of Congress — including Reps. John Mica, R-Fla., and Rep. Thomas Petri, R-Wis., who are set to assume leadership of aviation issues in Congress next year when Republicans take control — have demanded that the TSA restrict the use of the thorough pat-downs. Last week, state lawmakers in New Jersey announced a resolution calling the machines' scans a violation of the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure, and members of New York's City Council said they would introduce legislation to ban use of the machines in the city.

Update 11/24/2010: I agree with rienzi's comment at voxday:

We're told that this Al-Queda organization has an organized structure, plenty of funds, and thousands of jihadis who just can't wait to be martyrs. Yet, in more than nine years, they have supposedly been able to pull off only a handful of bombings.

If they really are such a threat, how come stuff isn't being blown up on almost a weekly basis? Either they're the most passive, lazy, incompetent terrorist organization that ever existed, or they've been so thoroughly infiltrated that they can't pull off the smallest job without having most of the world's security sevices know about it in advance, in which case they are no threat whatsoever.

Also puzzling, it that they never follow up on success, and seem obsessed with airplanes. Blow up subway stations and buses full of Brits. A big success, but never tried again. The country is full of soft targets that ought to be tempting as hell to any self-respecting terrorist: football stadiums, shopping malls, schools, government offices, and yet in more than nine years they haven't pulled off one successful major attack. Two guys in a van, with one rifle, freaked out the entire DC metro area, and yet, a supposedly large and well-funded terrorist organization can't do the same thing?

With every passing day, the idea that there really is no such thing as an "Al-Queda" organization out to get get us, and that its mostly just false flag/black ops with a few independent loose cannons thrown in seems to be less tin-foil hat, and more realistic.

Totalitarian Sexual Assault

Scanning
Unless every single access point to the airways scans every single person who enters every single airport, no amount of body scanning will prevent terrorism. The X-ray scanners do a good job of revealing concealed firearms (in addition to dehumanizing and desensitizing people and giving the pervs of Totalitarian Sexual Assault a thrill), but not every airport has them. Once you pass security at one small airport, you have access to "secure" areas at every airport without having to pass through security again. In fact, at many airports you don't have to pass security at all. One person outside security could give a weapon to another person inside security by dropping it off a balcony or sliding it under a rope.

Explosives
Even if it were possible (AND IT'S NOT!) to build a scanner or train a person to detect every possible combination of substances that could be made to explode, there are ways to hide things from chemical or visual snooping. If someone is intent on dying, what in the world would deter him from swallowing as much explosive material as his stomach could handle? Why stop at swallowing? There's no reason explosives couldn't be surgically implanted. The three ounce rule is as stupid and pointless as the rest, invented by bureaucrats and implemented by mentally retarded thugs. If five or six ounces of some unknown (and unknowable) liquid is explosive, then a couple of terrorists could each carry three ounces and combine it later. Twenty people could board flights from twenty different cities having connecting flights in Chicago or Denver and combine the contents of all their shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and water bottles (that's 12 oz per person) to make 240 oz or just under 2 gallons. Whatever liquid explosive this rule is supposed to guard against, I'll bet that's enough to do the job.

Hand weapons
Every object can be made a weapon. Every object. Have you ever broken a CD or DVD? Ceramic mug? A ball-point pen? Banning fingernail clippers from airplanes is moronic. If you want to threaten somebody, there are so many better choices that aren't banned at all.

Totalitarian Sexual Assault
These are all policies invented by manipulative, power-grabbing bureaucrats to placate the simple-minded and acclimate the cattle to being herded. All in the name of security.

Security from what? Sexual molestation? Oh, right! From terrorists. Because everyone knows terrorists would never dream of targeting a large crowd of people all standing closely packed together in an airport lobby. At the risk of alienating a reader or two... How stupid do you have to be to believe that any of this has anything to do with security!?

"Mr. Eloi, please step out of line so Mr. Morlock can feel you up...er...I mean pat you down."

"Well, if it makes us all safer..."

On Joyce Meyer

A while back I slammed Kathryn Kuhlman for some of her poor decisions. For a counter example, see Joyce Meyer, tpreacher, mother, and wife of Dave. I have no problem recommending her as a preacher worth hearing.

A Few Words on the Word

The Bible is the most remarkable body of literature on Earth. It includes oral tradition, court records, poetry, correspondence, history, and prophecy in a consistent and accurate whole. The reader must keep in mind the cultures, languages, and circumstances of the various authors to reach a full understanding. He can't read as if Paul's letters were written in English. He can't even completely trust that the English translation accurately conveys the author's intended meaning.

Aside from the usual difficulty involved in understanding any text absent inflection and body language, politics and religious dogma and an inevitable failure to understand the cultural milieu that would have informed a contemporary reader make a perfectly accurate understanding almost impossible. Add to this the challenges of translating extinct languages such as the Bible's original Greek and Hebrew into living and evolving tongues like English, and the obstacles to true understanding seem insurmountable.

It is nothing short of amazing that we can read the Bible in English today and, so long as the entirety of its teachings are considered and no single passage is taken in isolation, we can still have a very good idea of what God is trying to tell us through it.

I understand how some people come to elevate the Bible above God himself, treating the physical material of paper and ink or the translated text as if it is itself something to be worshiped. There is a strong temptation to be distracted by the distinctive--miraculous even--nature of the Bible's preservation through the ages. However, as we read and study it, we must keep in mind all of the cultural and personal filters through which we understand its words.

Most people aren't able to read the Bible in its original languages, and some sections of scripture no longer even exist in their original forms. We don't have access to the actual words that God spoke to Adam in the Garden, only a paraphrase that was passed down from person to person and translated from language to language.

That's not to say that the meaning of the words we do have can't be trusted--as I already pointed out, the Bible is astonishingly consistent from end to end--but that they are frequently not word-for-word transcripts. Even in those places where the text is precise, the words are not always inspired or truthful. Letters and messages from kings and generals are reproduced for history and context, not necessarily because they contain any great truths. Some passages contain advice that doesn't rise to the level of command let alone divine command.

The Bible is an amazing collection of Scriptures, but it is not all we need to understand the world or even all we need to understand God and our relationship with him. It is essential, but it is not everything.