This is stolen from Chataeau Heariste.
The cake icing reads, “Sorry about the divorce.” The crazy-eyed chihuahua lady is divorcing our intrepid beta, and rubbing his face in that fact. Now whether she’s just a sperg who didn’t mean no harm, or a sadist who likes to drive home the humiliation, is hard to say. Either way, he’s a huge beta for 1) letting their marriage decay to the point where she felt comfortable pulling this stunt on him and 2) standing there like a goof proudly displaying her heel mark on his face.
This is on about the same moral level as the idea of getting aroused why your wife cuckolds you and destroys your wedding vows. Go off and read the thread, for it enters the antechamber of hell, where the only person who makes sense is GBFM.
The question is: Why? Consider that Kipling was not being sarcastic when he wrote.
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise —
At e’en, the dying sunset bore her busband’s homilies.He warned her ‘gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as ‘gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.‘Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt —
So stopped to take the message down — and this is whay they learnt —“Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot” twice. The General swore.
“Was ever General Officer addressed as ‘dear’ before?
“‘My Love,’ i’ faith! ‘My Duck,’ Gadzooks! ‘My darling popsy-wop!’
“Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?”The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband’s warning ran: —
“Don’t dance or ride with General Bangs — a most immoral man.”[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise —
But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General’s private life.The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General’s shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): —
“I think we’ve tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!”All honour unto Bangs, for ne’er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as “that most immoral man.”
General Bangs (double entendre was clearly intended by Kipling was a rotter, a scoundrel, and probably a coward. He was also a typical Indian Army General. He was despised. The idea that Jones would invite the aforementioned scum into his marriage bed — prostituting his beautiful wife for some advancement — was seen as unthinkable and dishonourable.
However, we have, as a society, decided that honour is unfashionable, fidelity foolish, and that such scruples are to be consigned, like Kipling, to the dusty pages of history.
Or not.
You see, there is a payback. Honour requires a code, morals, a set of values that one aspires to. There are consequences.
Morality flows from the God and the nature of God. (This applies to all religious systems — Islamic bestiality and intolerance flows from their model of God). Or, one could say that from theology comes it’s handmaidens: Ethics (from which flows virtues, duty, and honour) and philosophy (from which comes natural philosophy or science). Without that foundation, it is a matter of sating increasingly jaded appetites. I could talk about Rome here, but there is a more modern comment.
For example, it is often claimed that there’s not a shred of evidence for the existence of God. This is simple nonsense; there’s lots of evidence, some of it weaker and some of it stronger. Some of it is highly questionable and other portions very hard to explain away. (And one of our favorite bits revolves around just when and how Pius V knew that the battle of Lepanto had been won, at the time it had been won, and in the absence of long-range communications. Look it up. Really.)
Evidence, in any case, there is. What there isn’t is absolute, irrefutable proof,. To use the word “evidence,” when what you mean is “irrefutable proof,” is intellectual dishonesty of quite a high order, much worse, much more vile, than simple theft of a word. It’s even worse, in its way, than the intellectual dishonesty of failure to note, when discussing poisons, that toxicity is in the dose.
But then if “brights” are not required to be “bright,” if a disliked religion must give way even if it opens up the world to a loathed one, how can we expect “evidence” not to mean “proof” or dosage to matter to toxicity?
And some would insist, still, that the contradictions claimed to be in the New Testament render it invalid.
Ahem.
Note, at this point, that we have still not claimed that, in fact, there is a God. We may, and do, believe that there is, and believe that there is evidence that there is. But there is no absolute proof, a point we’ve already readily conceded, and we see no point in arguing for what cannot be proven.
Still, we can’t help but note that much of what masquerades as disbelief in God is really just disapproval. Consider the following pair of claims on the subject, voiced, along with some others, by Hitchens during a debate with Dinesh D’Souza:
1) People are badly designed. No god could be so incompetent.
2) Earth is not paradise. Most of humanity has lived in misery for most of mankind’s existence, though things are somewhat improved now. No god could be so heartless. No real god could have permitted Auschwitz.
These are the criteria by which a god should be measured, his similarity to Himmler, in some particulars, and Stalin, in others?
Ahem.
Never mind. Let “brights” be not very bright. Let dosage not matter to toxicity. Twist word meanings. Make Stalin a god, too. Why not; it’s been done before and likely will again.
Even so, never go to a gunfight without a gun and, if you intend to win, never go to a religious war without religion. You’ll lose.
If you deny religion — and say that the state rules are more important, even when they are explicitly immoral — you may win for a while, as the military tend to conservatism and the preservation of honour (because soldiers are quite practical people, and know their Kratman). But you will destroy the society from which it comes, and then the army of that society.
It may be that the madmen of the jihad are correct. America has become the weak horse. Not because of its technology — which is as good or better than other militaries — but because the virtues of manliness have been expunged from the society in a hope that we may in some manner become perfect.
Fools. There is no perfection this side of the grave. Every nation has enemies. And without faith, nations will fall.
