Like most people, I became familiar with Charles Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol through one or several of the numerous film adaptations that saturate television screens every holiday season. Also like most people, I avoided reading Dickens's slender masterpiece for the sole reason that I assumed I would have little to gain from reading a story that was already so familiar to me. Nevertheless, about fifteen years ago I finally picked up the slim novella and gave it a read. The book left such a deep impression that I have made reading it at the beginning of the Christmas season a tradition since. 

Contrary to my initial assumptions, being familiar with the characters and the general plot of the narrative did not detract from the reading at all. Quite the opposite. Knowing the story allowed me to focus on the writing itself and though A Christmas Carol does not perhaps showcase the highest degree of Dickens's literary skills, it contains stylistic flourishes and vivid, colorful descriptions that enchant and delight, to say nothing of the characters all of which have become as iconic as many of Shakespeare's greatest creations.  

Unlike the majority of his novels, Dickens's A Christmas Carol is compact and sleek and the mere efficiency with which the narrative achieves its aims is part of its charm. Every scene is meaningful and memorable and the moral message around which the entire story is constructed rings sincere precisely because of its devastating simplicity. 

Reading it every year for the past fifteen years has enriched and deepened my appreciation and experience of Christmas and I could not imagine Christmas time without it. If you are among those who have not read A Christmas Carol, you owe it to yourself to turn off the television and set aside a few hours to read this quintessential Christmas classic this holiday season. I hope it will enhance your experience of the holidays the way it has enhanced mine.

The work is available as a free download at many ebook sites including Project Gutenberg. 

God bless us, everyone!

I have jotted some stray, slapdash ideas concerning notions of nationalism and, in particular, white nationalism. These are mostly meanderings, but in the points below I outline why concepts of nationalism based on race are misguided in the current backlash against globalism. For what it’s worth, here goes:

• Recent political developments – Trump, Brexit, the Hungarian referendum against forced EU immigration quotas – seem to me to be reactions against neoliberalism, globalism, open borders, and anti-nationalism.
• In my mind, these reactionary political movements are good things in of themselves and display the frustration and annoyance ordinary people in countries around the world harbor against governments who have actively and willfully neglected the interests, security, well-being, and voices of their own citizenry in favor of:

1. international trade deals, outsourcing schemes, and resource plundering campaigns that undermine and exploit citizens of nations in favor global corporations
2.  suicidal mass immigration that actively seeks to dissolve social cohesion and social order under the banner of some form of utopian multiculturalism
3. open border policies that undermine the rights of native workers, increase social alienation, and weaken social stability
4. repressive PC ideology that, in some cases, have criminalized free speech.

• Put more simply, citizens of nations are reacting against neoliberal globalism.
• This reaction has rekindled the notion of white nationalism in some citizens of the United States and Europe. Though it is somewhat understandable, especially in European countries, white nationalism, as a concept and movement is, in my opinion, unrealistic, untenable, foolish, and dangerous.
• A part of the reaction against neoliberalism is the objection to wedge issues that liberals and leftists employ to empower and defend some groups within societies while simultaneously disempowering and attacking other groups within society all with the ulterior motive of destabilization. Wedge issues weaken social cohesion and agitate resentment. Subscribing to white nationalism amounts to little less than subscribing to another wedge issue. This is especially true in countries such as the United States.
• One idea people seeking to free their countries from the crush of globalism should embrace is the concept of civic nationalism; a nationalism that adheres to civic citizenship and acceptance of a national culture that does divide its citizens along racial or ethnic lines. Multiethnic, multiracial nations can be incredibly successful, socially cohesive places if all the ethnic and racial components that make up the fabric of the nation unreservedly and wholeheartedly agree to and accept a feasible and viable monoculture. (I am well aware of how big a pipe dream this is at first glance.)
• This holds true even for European countries where, on the surface anyway, white nationalism might seem tenable, but on closer inspection it becomes clear that a strict form of white nationalism would be unsuccessful even in mainly homogeneous countries like Hungary. Under a white nationalist banner, the Roma and other non-ethnic, non-white Hungarian citizens would be instantly marginalized even more than have been or are marginalized currently. In addition to being a grave injustice, this type of nationalism would be a detriment to social cohesion and order in the long run. 
• Having said this, it must be recognized that European countries are homeland nations – that is they are homelands of certain ethnic groups and deserve to remain the homelands of these ethnic groups. This self-evident truth is inherent in the very names of the countries themselves. Finland should remain the home of the Finns; Slovenia for Slovenes; Italy for Italians. All non-ethnic citizens wishing to settle in these countries should adhere and respect this and strive to become Finns, Slovenes, and Italians themselves. They should attempt to force their values on the homeland countries nor buy into the political wedge issues that countless anti-national and social justice NGOs peddle to them. The Finns, Slovenes, and Italians, on the other hand, should strive to accept these members of society as Finns, Slovenes, and Italians in the interest of avoiding the creation of parallel societies within the border of one country. Mass immigration to home countries – this includes non-European homelands as well – whether legal or illegal, regardless of the reasoning for it, must be avoided at all costs. This should not be seen as racist or xenophobic. Encouraging multiculturalism in the sense that other cultures eventually occupy positions that challenge the native culture of the homeland should also be anathema in these places. Non-native citizens or those wising to be citizens who refuse to obey the laws or ways of the monoculture should not be allowed to stay.
• What is needed then is a form a transcendental nationalism that embraces all of its citizens, yet demands respect for and adherence to a strong monoculture. (Again, big pipe dream, I know.)
• After that, nations need to embrace, support, and develop the sovereignty of other nations to help them defend against social wedge issues, financial plundering, labor and resource exploitation, illegal military incursions, and all the other hallmarks of rampant neoliberal globalism.

Summary thought – the current nationalist backlash against the neoliberal / leftist world order is a good thing; entertaining notions of white nationalism as the ultimate remedy for globalism is misguided and fatuous, especially in countries like the United States and Canada.

I did not vote in the recent US election. I have no partisan leanings and was never an avid Trump supporter. Nevertheless, like Slavoj Zizek, given the choice between Clinton and Trump, I would have chosen Trump and I am satisfied that he won the election. Now Zizek is hoping the Trump election will somehow reinvigorate the far left; I am just pleased the establishment seems to have taken a kick to the groin and that another roadblock against globalization seems to have been erected. Unfortunately, thousands in the United States seem incapable of accepting a Trump presidency and have taken to the streets in a rather absurd protest of peaceful democratic elections.

Love trumps hate seems to be the battle cry of those protesting against the outcome of the democratic election of Trump. I can understand how some can construe the many inflammatory thoughts Trump expressed during the campaign as hate speech; this becomes especially comprehensible when one realizes that anything that falls outside the current liberal mantra can be interpreted as hate speech even if it may not be. Yet, I am at a loss to understand the logic of the whole love trumps hate thing. Some stray thoughts on the matter:

• Like "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength," Love Trumps Hate strikes me as an Orwellian statement par excellence. Like the Party in 1984, the modern global elite have succeeded in brainwashing a sizable segment of the population into believing whatever idiocy it promotes and, just as the Party in 1984, it has managed to trick people into accepting illogical and contrary statements through the notion that belief in such slogans makes one an honorable and respectable citizen, while rejecting them or merely questioning them is seen as a thought crime that reveals one to be deplorable and criminal. This is why the rioters taking to the street all over the world think so extremely highly of themselves while they smash shit up, burn American flags, and protest what appears to have been a fair democratic election . . . you know, that thing they respect so much?
• Sure, Trump supporters would have probably protested a Clinton win as well, but I imagine the protests would have been covered from an entirely different perspective with an entirely different voacabulary.
• Despite assurances from enraged and fearful liberals the world over, Trump is no Hitler. I also doubt he is rabidly racist. His views of women may not conform to today's ultrasensitive standards, but he is by no means a fire-breathing misongynist intent on winding back the clock on women's rights. I strongly doubt he truly cares about the abortion issue enough to change it in any way. His utterances about minorities and Muslims in particular were spoken on the campaign trail and are likely hyperbolic. He may increase the vetting of refugees and immigrants from the Middle East and other trouble spots around the world and deport some illegals here and there (and he would be well within his right to do both of these things) but the mass deportations will not happen. 
• Trump is an egoist. Perhaps even a megalomaniac. He has money and he has fame. All he needs to score the hat-trick of greatness is power. Well now, against seemingly overwhelming odds, he has secured that too, but I do not think he will wield it in some neo-fascist fashion. Trump strikes me as an individual interested in securing a legacy for himself - a positive legacy. This means he will certainly not, despite all the fear of the contrary, go full-tilt right wing fascist during his presidency. He is a populist and will most likely initiate a centrist agenda. For God's sake, the man is a former playboy socialite. He is, at the core, a social liberal. He will not attack gay rights or do anything that might be detrimental to minorities who are citizens. He may, however, put some obstacles in the path of further globalization. This is what truly bothers the elite, not the racism, sexism, or xenophobia Trump purportedly represtents. For the elite, anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-xenophobia have become a means through which to push their globablist apsirations in the West. They are the weapons with which they censor and repress their opposition and enslave oblivious PC do-gooders into thinking they are supporting something noble and admirable when in actual fact they indirectly support something that is slowly killing them and every culture and economy in every culture in the world that has been attacked through these means. It is worth noting they do not employ these tactics with some of their less progressive partners in the Middle East. It is also noteworthy that the racism, sexism, and xenophobia inherent in some of the countries of these strategic partners also do not enrage the global elite at all.  
• Think about it for a minute. What is the love that Hillary Clinton and the rest of the global elite espouses? Beyond the words and sentiments they express, how are their ideas any better than what Trump promulgates? Clinton is a corporatist, globalist, neo-liberal shill saber-rattler who threatened a return to the cold war. During the campaign she chanted the liberal progressive mantra, but her actions demonstrate that she did not truly give a rat's ass about the progressive goobledygook. Look at how she undermined Bernie Sanders. How loving was it to destabilize Libya, for example? What about the love she planned to unleash in Syria or the money she took from loving progressive regimes in places like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, countries that, incidentally, have been revealed through Wikileaks to be major funders of ISIS. Referrring to Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables was certainly loving as was her practice of paying female employees of the Clinton foundation less than male employees. I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, warm, fuzzy notions aside, I did not detect too much actual "love" in Clinton or her party, nor do I see much love in the crazed rioters running rampant in cities across the US.

Referring to the many blog posts I have written criticizing what I loosely term the left or liberalism, a reader recently asked if I considered myself to be right-wing. The majority of what is called the right today is little more than a less-diluted form of the left. More often than not, left and right differ from each other in name only. In this sense, I do not place myself within the right. 

I am drawn concepts like natural law, heirarchy, and organic unity and it is my view that abandoning these notions has not always yielded good results, but creating some sort of society resembling the likes of Saudi Arabia is not something for which I would advocate. The older I get, the more I am drawn to classicism and high culture, yet it would be false of me to claim I do not enjoy or see merit in some popular culture. Through personal experience and observation, I have found comfort in concepts such as localism and regionalism and have a high respect for true patriotism, which I prefer over vulgar nationalism. At the same time, I believe in respecting and valuing other cultures and traditions, but not in the perverted sense in which it is practiced by most people today.

I believe contemporary notions about individualism, egalitarianism, and liberalism are not as noble-minded as they seem and contain fatal flaws that are not always conducive to a rich and meaningful life. In addition to this, I have found most post-modern notions of social justice and social progress to be at best, misguided, and at worst, dishonest. This does not mean that I oppose or reject all liberal notions or ideas. Individual rights and freedoms are important and often worth fighting for, but it has been my experience that those who fight under the flag of individual rights and equality, especially equality, are actually quite totalitarian at heart. 

What does that make me then, as far as sensibilities go? A modern tradtionalist? There is an oxymoron for you. Perhaps I am something like that, though the label strikes me as inauthentic. One thing is for sure, I immensely critical of the politically correct ideology that dominates the West today because I find it to be offensively iron-fisted and oppressive in nature. Essentially, this is what I refer to when I speak of the left. This is also why I would lump the vast majority of those who identify themselves as right in comfortably with what I refer to as the left.

How can one describe the manner in which the mainstream media has covered recent major world events? 

Dishonest seems too light a term. To claim bias would be to state the obvious. Incompetence and ineptitude draw closer to the point, but the fathomless depth of incompetence and ineptitude the mainstream media has displayed in the past few years make such words hollow and flippant. 

How does one describe the MSM then? The same MSM that hides and denies the dark destabilizing effects of the so-called migrant crisis; the same MSM that was blindsided by the Brexit vote; the same MSM that attempted to convince the world that Trump had no chance of being elected president.

What words can one ascribe to such limitless asininity?

Words are not required. 

The MSM is dead. Its existence has been irrevocably invalidated. 

The time has come to abandon it.

At the very least, the time has come to see it for what it is and judge its contents and messages accordingly. 

Back in October 1, 2015, I wrote a blog post titled "This May Be the Beginning of the End for the Left" in which I argued that left/liberal establishment was becoming unhinged. 

I cannot help but chuckle at all the astonishment and disbelief surrounding Trump's win. As far as I am concerned, it was utterly predictable. I see Trump's victory as just one in a slew of recent events that have laid siege to the status quo over the past year or so. In my opinion, this siege will continue for some time to come, so those with leftist / liberal /globalist leanings had better become used to having their precious sentiments and beliefs challenged at every turn.

Of course, the left is not accustomed to having its views challenged and one significant thing the outrage over Trump being elected president serves to prove is the extent to which most liberals and PC worshippers have been deluded and blinded by their own ideology. The echo chamber these poor souls wallow in is so effective that they believe the echo chamber to be reality. They have been marinating in their falsehoods for so long that they have become utterly incapable of coping with anything that dares to dispute their worldview. The hysterical protests currently erupting in cities across the United States are a perfect example of this. I hope these protests drag on for a while - the longer they continue, the more apparent the ignorance and hypocricy that fuels them will become.