“Meet 19-year-old Hunter “Pixel” Jimenez, a nonbinary trans boy caught between the expectations of his Guatemalan immigrant family and his dreams of living happily ever after.”
Yes. Poor thing is so oppressed by its family that only WANTS THE BEST FOR THEIR DAUGHTER’S LIFE! Who can live under such oppression? New woke friends will be soooooo much better, supporting the “journey” through the wonderland of gender theory and medicalization...unless she decides to detransition...
Jun 28, 2023·edited Jun 28, 2023Liked by Peachy Keenan
The right are by nature focused on the granular: family, individuals, self. The left see community as the smallest unit of order/significance. As such, the left strive to control their communities through the organs of: neighborhood, city, county, state, etc while the rights focus on what's inside their 4 walls. Winning a culture war seems a fight not just against the left, but against the nature of "right-minded" people. It feels like the elves in middle earth fighting the long defeat. While noble, the outcome of the fight seems inevitable. Blessings to you Peachy for fighting the long defeat.
Fatalistic, yes, but also dependent on a faulty framework. There is a despondent and depraved form of individuality inherent in far-left culture, and 'communities' on the right are (or, were) ordered by certain things like faith, civics, geographic vicinity, and common ancestry. There are elements of both in left- and right-minded thinking.
Even in the depraved "let your freak flag fly" left-wing individualism they are conforming to the group. There is a whole constellation of traits that go with the leftist mental illness: sexual deviant behavior, anti human thinking, elevating animals to equal or superior to humans which is a modern version of an animist belief system, body modification (unnatural hair color, piercings, tattoos, trans mutilation), etc, etc, etc wherein their practice of these individual choices they're just adhering to the group identity. Their interest in displaying these practices is so that the group can witness their virtue signaling.
Common Ancestry is unavoidable for both left and right.
The ordered communities of the right are faith/civics are still the smallest order ie the individual. Faith, for most, is entirely invisible. No Christian is compelled to wear a garment professing his adherence to his faith. The Christians practice of virtue should be for God and while the Christian and his neighbors benefit from his virtue the measure of his succes is not acceptance from a group but from his creator. The Christians civic behavior again is dictated by the principles: Love God, Love neighbors. So where it may look like he's involved in civic life it all is linked back to an invisible relationship with an invisible God. While I'd like my family, neighbors, greater community to worship as I do, ultimately I accept that like Adam and Eve, they have free will and can choose death instead of life. Which goes back to my original point that the left want to convert at the point of the sword so that they can grow and protect the community the right allow for the individual choice even if it means losing the culture.
1) I'm not a common PK Substack reader or commenter, and I have my history with experimenting with a fair bit of what you pointedly describe as leftist traits (I've always been very pro-human, though). 2) Your thoughts on right values being still, at base, related to the interest (and salvation) of the individual are fair! I understand. However, there are definitely examples throughout history wherein the religious convert at the point of the sword so they can grow and protect certain communally shared values while the very depraved profess philosophies that literally hinder their health and remove their genes from the gene pool, i.e. losing the birthright of the future. I'm unsure how to square anything as individualistic as de facto 'right-wing.'
Right wing thinking is often described as rugged individualism, I'd say that's a by product of the root which is Judeo-Christian values. God judges individually based on behavior, so those values are oriented to the individual.
I'll agree that some Christians converted others at the point of the sword. When they did that they abandoned truth and ceased being Christians. I think that behavior is wrong, contrary to the principles that a loving God asks his followers to live by, and as such sinful leading to death -faith without love begets zealotry. Does the misdeeds of an individual or group invalidate Christianity? I don't think so, it's a way of life practiced by fallen mankind, it's inevitable that we will fall many times and need grace and Jesus sacrifice to be forgiven.
I may be defending the idea too much, in fact it's probably a flawed premise. Ultimately, I do think the culture war is a lost cause. The left are invested in winning to the point of lethal violence the right just want to live their lives and be left alone. Heck most of them don't feel compelled to teach their kids their own values...and want their kids to pick their values by osmosis. To quote a movie "game over man game over!"
My perspective is that most of this will be moot when Christ returns and instead of converting people at the point of the sword he'll be judging at the point of the sword. Hoping that's sooner rather than later.
I appreciate the exchange and the thoughts. Let's say that I am both less religiously invested in the truths of Christianity, though I was raised Catholic and am feeling a return to it, and more hopeful about the inevitable collapse of false and harmful far-left programs than you are. Their beliefs are mostly against human nature, so how could they last? Cue another movie quote from a clownish antagonist about a dog finally capturing his own tail and not knowing what to do with it. They'll keep going, epoch after epoch, but we have to be vigilant, generation after generation. God bless.
I think they can continue because they're based on emotion, they're easy. As such it's the impulse of everyone to do what easy. That's why there's so many young leftists. The laziness quotient is high with them. It's hard to have self control, it's hard to work and make good choices, the left would tell us that kindness requires us to care for these people that made bad choices so they don't have to suffer from their choices; the right would say that suffering educates us and removing the suffering removes the opportunity to learn.
Hard times make hard men
Hard men make soft times
Soft times make soft men
Soft men make hard times.
We've lived 35 years of soft/fat times I think things are about to get really hard, really fast.
Appreciate the conversation, I grew up Catholic, I'll never go back.
MacArthur should have listened to Henry Ford and tried to control his money from the grave. The only good thing will be that all of these “artists” who are creating their New World utopia will follow the lesson from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and be hung from their own petard.
A petard is a bomb, you don’t get hung from it. The phrase was “hoist with his own petard,” old timey for being blown up by your own bomb. There’s your lesson from Shakespeare.
I struggled with modern art for a while, but then I decided, since I’m not a dummy, that if you create a piece of art and I can’t find anything to like about it, or understand the piece, then that’s a failure of the artist, not me
the audience member. The art world is no different than academia or corporate America these days. Use the approved keywords, win valuable prizes.
Unless you have a billionaire in mind, you should probably crowd fund a nonprofit to pay for the awards. Start out small and go from there.
Peachy, thank you for your writing! I read through your book in two days and I’m thankful that you are writing on behalf of all the self-censoring women of the English-speaking world.
I’m a conservative Catholic man in my 30s who loves the arts, design, culture and the best that West has offered to the world. It’s dismaying to see the total lack of conservatives in the creative industries. Conservatives need to get in the game and hold the line.
Let’s get our billionaires in line to fight the good fight. We need our own genius grants to fund more truth, beauty and goodness in our blighted world.
I’ve endured artists and their work my entire life. I try to extend to them the artistic license that everyone says they’re due. Frankly, I’m sick of it. The preciousness, the posing. Let’s pray for another “shock of the new” that seizes art by the throat and brings us robust changes.
Important topic. The redefining of the ways that something possesses “beauty” has been in cultural decline. In my opinion, the postmodern art movement was the apex of the downfall.
Yes, the destruction is the point. I guess that's why there is an ongoing campaign to redefine beauty in all things including the human body. In what other context does elevating the obese, tatted, pierced and blue (green, fuschia)-haired woman make sense? And whoa to you who call it out. You must affirm that Bruce Jenner in the skinsuit of Caitlyn is beautiful. You must. Great piece, Peachy. I always wondered about this particular foundation.
“Non-binary trans boy”? I can’t keep up with this @&$!
Something chilling about those sculptures. “The glory of God is man fully alive,” said St. Irenaeus, who also deserves a namesake grant. Seems woke art is meant to negate every word of that--no God, no man, no alive-ness. It really does lay bare its insidious aims and has zero beauty to beguile with. It’s so utterly heartbreaking that so few people are unable to discern truth and beauty from plain rubbish.
I highly recommend everyone support the work of Passage Press and the Passage Prize. Here is the first place winner for poetry from last year, which would not be out of place in a Norton's Anthology (it's that good):
I've never been much interested in 'modern' art as it generally always presents as either mocking or destructive - rarely uplifting (probably being too generous).
The Left has always stood for the 'marginalized' of society, but they have forgotten good and only live destruction.
Giving them power through money enables their destruction at full speed ahead.
Unfortunately, with size and speed, their wake becomes larger and the destruction affects widely.
Yes, this is a tricky one because whereas we can vote with our eyeballs and wallets if, for example, a streaming platform becomes took woke for our tastes, fellowships like this are just handed out with no questions asked and there's nothing we can do about it. Criteria is also tricky, how could ours be defined: "Not woke?" "Traditional values"?
Hey Peaches: ( inappropriate to follow ) My X handle has the initials U.R. I apologize. As for the Gray Mirror link - his pov suggests that when it comes to *culchuh* Conservatism, by definition, will always be “in the shadow.” Roderick did what Roderick did because it was appropriate to the culture of the ‘70s, when white / straight guilt was rampant. See also “Radical Chic….” haven’t seen the Bradley Cooper version, but know what to expect. It’s a plight by definition, to ask those would never overfill an envelope, to become a patron of “the arts.” The arts are the last things on their minds, as in, about a nephew, “oh yeah, *the artist.*
“Meet 19-year-old Hunter “Pixel” Jimenez, a nonbinary trans boy caught between the expectations of his Guatemalan immigrant family and his dreams of living happily ever after.”
Oh God, please, please make it stop!
Yes. Poor thing is so oppressed by its family that only WANTS THE BEST FOR THEIR DAUGHTER’S LIFE! Who can live under such oppression? New woke friends will be soooooo much better, supporting the “journey” through the wonderland of gender theory and medicalization...unless she decides to detransition...
The right are by nature focused on the granular: family, individuals, self. The left see community as the smallest unit of order/significance. As such, the left strive to control their communities through the organs of: neighborhood, city, county, state, etc while the rights focus on what's inside their 4 walls. Winning a culture war seems a fight not just against the left, but against the nature of "right-minded" people. It feels like the elves in middle earth fighting the long defeat. While noble, the outcome of the fight seems inevitable. Blessings to you Peachy for fighting the long defeat.
Fatalistic, yes, but also dependent on a faulty framework. There is a despondent and depraved form of individuality inherent in far-left culture, and 'communities' on the right are (or, were) ordered by certain things like faith, civics, geographic vicinity, and common ancestry. There are elements of both in left- and right-minded thinking.
Even in the depraved "let your freak flag fly" left-wing individualism they are conforming to the group. There is a whole constellation of traits that go with the leftist mental illness: sexual deviant behavior, anti human thinking, elevating animals to equal or superior to humans which is a modern version of an animist belief system, body modification (unnatural hair color, piercings, tattoos, trans mutilation), etc, etc, etc wherein their practice of these individual choices they're just adhering to the group identity. Their interest in displaying these practices is so that the group can witness their virtue signaling.
Common Ancestry is unavoidable for both left and right.
The ordered communities of the right are faith/civics are still the smallest order ie the individual. Faith, for most, is entirely invisible. No Christian is compelled to wear a garment professing his adherence to his faith. The Christians practice of virtue should be for God and while the Christian and his neighbors benefit from his virtue the measure of his succes is not acceptance from a group but from his creator. The Christians civic behavior again is dictated by the principles: Love God, Love neighbors. So where it may look like he's involved in civic life it all is linked back to an invisible relationship with an invisible God. While I'd like my family, neighbors, greater community to worship as I do, ultimately I accept that like Adam and Eve, they have free will and can choose death instead of life. Which goes back to my original point that the left want to convert at the point of the sword so that they can grow and protect the community the right allow for the individual choice even if it means losing the culture.
A few quick thoughts:
1) I'm not a common PK Substack reader or commenter, and I have my history with experimenting with a fair bit of what you pointedly describe as leftist traits (I've always been very pro-human, though). 2) Your thoughts on right values being still, at base, related to the interest (and salvation) of the individual are fair! I understand. However, there are definitely examples throughout history wherein the religious convert at the point of the sword so they can grow and protect certain communally shared values while the very depraved profess philosophies that literally hinder their health and remove their genes from the gene pool, i.e. losing the birthright of the future. I'm unsure how to square anything as individualistic as de facto 'right-wing.'
Right wing thinking is often described as rugged individualism, I'd say that's a by product of the root which is Judeo-Christian values. God judges individually based on behavior, so those values are oriented to the individual.
I'll agree that some Christians converted others at the point of the sword. When they did that they abandoned truth and ceased being Christians. I think that behavior is wrong, contrary to the principles that a loving God asks his followers to live by, and as such sinful leading to death -faith without love begets zealotry. Does the misdeeds of an individual or group invalidate Christianity? I don't think so, it's a way of life practiced by fallen mankind, it's inevitable that we will fall many times and need grace and Jesus sacrifice to be forgiven.
I may be defending the idea too much, in fact it's probably a flawed premise. Ultimately, I do think the culture war is a lost cause. The left are invested in winning to the point of lethal violence the right just want to live their lives and be left alone. Heck most of them don't feel compelled to teach their kids their own values...and want their kids to pick their values by osmosis. To quote a movie "game over man game over!"
My perspective is that most of this will be moot when Christ returns and instead of converting people at the point of the sword he'll be judging at the point of the sword. Hoping that's sooner rather than later.
I appreciate the exchange and the thoughts. Let's say that I am both less religiously invested in the truths of Christianity, though I was raised Catholic and am feeling a return to it, and more hopeful about the inevitable collapse of false and harmful far-left programs than you are. Their beliefs are mostly against human nature, so how could they last? Cue another movie quote from a clownish antagonist about a dog finally capturing his own tail and not knowing what to do with it. They'll keep going, epoch after epoch, but we have to be vigilant, generation after generation. God bless.
I think they can continue because they're based on emotion, they're easy. As such it's the impulse of everyone to do what easy. That's why there's so many young leftists. The laziness quotient is high with them. It's hard to have self control, it's hard to work and make good choices, the left would tell us that kindness requires us to care for these people that made bad choices so they don't have to suffer from their choices; the right would say that suffering educates us and removing the suffering removes the opportunity to learn.
Hard times make hard men
Hard men make soft times
Soft times make soft men
Soft men make hard times.
We've lived 35 years of soft/fat times I think things are about to get really hard, really fast.
Appreciate the conversation, I grew up Catholic, I'll never go back.
MacArthur should have listened to Henry Ford and tried to control his money from the grave. The only good thing will be that all of these “artists” who are creating their New World utopia will follow the lesson from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and be hung from their own petard.
A petard is a bomb, you don’t get hung from it. The phrase was “hoist with his own petard,” old timey for being blown up by your own bomb. There’s your lesson from Shakespeare.
I struggled with modern art for a while, but then I decided, since I’m not a dummy, that if you create a piece of art and I can’t find anything to like about it, or understand the piece, then that’s a failure of the artist, not me
the audience member. The art world is no different than academia or corporate America these days. Use the approved keywords, win valuable prizes.
Unless you have a billionaire in mind, you should probably crowd fund a nonprofit to pay for the awards. Start out small and go from there.
Peachy, thank you for your writing! I read through your book in two days and I’m thankful that you are writing on behalf of all the self-censoring women of the English-speaking world.
I’m a conservative Catholic man in my 30s who loves the arts, design, culture and the best that West has offered to the world. It’s dismaying to see the total lack of conservatives in the creative industries. Conservatives need to get in the game and hold the line.
Let’s get our billionaires in line to fight the good fight. We need our own genius grants to fund more truth, beauty and goodness in our blighted world.
I’ve endured artists and their work my entire life. I try to extend to them the artistic license that everyone says they’re due. Frankly, I’m sick of it. The preciousness, the posing. Let’s pray for another “shock of the new” that seizes art by the throat and brings us robust changes.
Important topic. The redefining of the ways that something possesses “beauty” has been in cultural decline. In my opinion, the postmodern art movement was the apex of the downfall.
Yes, the destruction is the point. I guess that's why there is an ongoing campaign to redefine beauty in all things including the human body. In what other context does elevating the obese, tatted, pierced and blue (green, fuschia)-haired woman make sense? And whoa to you who call it out. You must affirm that Bruce Jenner in the skinsuit of Caitlyn is beautiful. You must. Great piece, Peachy. I always wondered about this particular foundation.
“Non-binary trans boy”? I can’t keep up with this @&$!
Something chilling about those sculptures. “The glory of God is man fully alive,” said St. Irenaeus, who also deserves a namesake grant. Seems woke art is meant to negate every word of that--no God, no man, no alive-ness. It really does lay bare its insidious aims and has zero beauty to beguile with. It’s so utterly heartbreaking that so few people are unable to discern truth and beauty from plain rubbish.
Congrats! You've made RealClearPolitics.
I highly recommend everyone support the work of Passage Press and the Passage Prize. Here is the first place winner for poetry from last year, which would not be out of place in a Norton's Anthology (it's that good):
The Aged Mathematician
[by “T.J. Snodgrass”]
Ghosts and Gaussian noise remain to me,
A creaking involution, but I see,
And have seen, proportion. Though some degree
Is lost, I—no, that’s not it. I’ve forgot.
I fear that all desirous inquiry
Falls to discourse on a round; cordoned thought,
Violence—the quick of my mind is still.
One more proof, or moment, or harmony
For the spheres, something vital to be taught.
Where did I trespass? What did I fulfill?
Outside, I hear the calling of a friend,
Long dead, in the bark of a stricken dog.
I've never been much interested in 'modern' art as it generally always presents as either mocking or destructive - rarely uplifting (probably being too generous).
The Left has always stood for the 'marginalized' of society, but they have forgotten good and only live destruction.
Giving them power through money enables their destruction at full speed ahead.
Unfortunately, with size and speed, their wake becomes larger and the destruction affects widely.
Mammon always manages to find the drain.
Yes, this is a tricky one because whereas we can vote with our eyeballs and wallets if, for example, a streaming platform becomes took woke for our tastes, fellowships like this are just handed out with no questions asked and there's nothing we can do about it. Criteria is also tricky, how could ours be defined: "Not woke?" "Traditional values"?
Criteria: the transcendentals as have been defined for 2,000 years in Christendom.
We had better find a way to defend ourselves now. The radical left has a bad habit of eliminating those that they don't like.
"So how did the Left come to dominate the arts, and how can we compete?
Answer: Find a rich dead billionaire, seduce his widow, and plunder his fortune."
And.... this is why it's Katie lock the door time!
Hey Peaches: ( inappropriate to follow ) My X handle has the initials U.R. I apologize. As for the Gray Mirror link - his pov suggests that when it comes to *culchuh* Conservatism, by definition, will always be “in the shadow.” Roderick did what Roderick did because it was appropriate to the culture of the ‘70s, when white / straight guilt was rampant. See also “Radical Chic….” haven’t seen the Bradley Cooper version, but know what to expect. It’s a plight by definition, to ask those would never overfill an envelope, to become a patron of “the arts.” The arts are the last things on their minds, as in, about a nephew, “oh yeah, *the artist.*
Sincerely