Morning Moon

Woke up suddenly realising I hadn't put the bins out. Went outside in all the lowering clouds and saw the light opening a way through them. Then came the moon sailing, small but full. A bird was singing in the dark. And I felt humbled and happy to be standing there.

May your morning be beautiful, wherever you are.

Recrudescence

So I came in from the night and the moon and noodled around on the web for a bit, including a reply to some biblically inclined gent re C.S.Lewis' Christianity. But sometimes - I have no idea how this works - under the thread you see related notes. There was Kafka, there was stuff about healthy fats and dandelions and then.

An illustrated poster tells us that National Socialism is growing, and next to that statement places two lightning strikes. The poster itself shows a pair of mountains with the sun rising between them. In front of it is an aryan maiden, corn gold hair, babe in arms, roots in the earth beneath, all very blut und boden. Why did it appear near our conversation? Maybe it connected into this idea of the ideal of woman as home maker. There is a sign on the sun, obscured by the figure of the woman, but nonetheless recognisable as a swastika. The post/note had 133 likes, 13 restacks, 7 comments. There were other posts too from the same author, in more forthright vein.

I stared at it, sick to my stomach. Looking at the hearts and the restacks, not many in the great scheme of things. 'You're a troll or a nutter calling out to another few nutters,' I thought, and wondered whether to just ignore it because I believe in free speech, a right that is being compromised everywhere. One thing that has alienated me from what's commonly termed the progressive left has been the overuse of words like Nazi and Fascist, trivialised to mean any view they want others to regard as heinous. Another major problem has been the authoritarian creep and policing of thoughts, words, ideas, the label of 'hate' thrown at every fidget of dissent. Nate Silvers' excellent piece on Blueskyism takes a while to get going but once the graphs are out of the way it's well worth the effort and is the best analysis of the issue I have read. (https://www.natesilver.net/p/what-is-blueskyism)

I am a believer in freedom of expression but there are limits, for me at least. No death threats, no rape threats, no incitements to murder, no child pornography, no waggling your tackle in front of folk who haven't consented to it, no attempts to revive the ideology that triggered the deadliest conflict in human history...doubtless there are others I forget.

I did report it, because if the world is full of nonsensical ideas, we can at least boot the rubbish that got millions of us killed. Fck that noise.But why are we hearing it again?