Sunday, February 1, 2015

Open Comment Thread (2015-02)

New open comment thread for Feb 2015. Can't believe we already burnt January....

50 comments:

  1. To kick off this month, it should be noted that the entire Sistah Raccoon thread has been dumped off Topix. So I don't know what happened. Someone -- with a capital "S" -- did not like it.

    But fortunately the entire thing has been preserved and will be posted here at Est Quod Est. We are firm believers in freedom of speech for all, including our fine furry friends.

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  2. Bless you Mistah Pauli.

    My thumbs don't be workin as good as you big folks an it were hard to do all that writin. So when they tear it all down I coudn hep but cry an cry. Upset my poor Sweet Baby. Lil Rayville be my home till Mistah Raccoon move us upstream here by governor fatty. Don't know what got into them peoples down in they deep dark woods. Lil Ray musta thow a fit an go to the sherf again like he do. Threaten a tell tales a somepin like he do. Prolly cause a he mono an be TORTURE as a child. All that erster stuffin make him wiggly. Collectin pitchers a men turn in to womens on he site now. Can't hep hissef tho. Jus too much erster stuffin.

    Bless you again for ever thing yo do Mistah Pauli.

    Eunice

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  3. Just look at Rod's post today affirming the reader who complains that the reporter interviewing Malcolm Butler didn't try to get him to talk about what he called his "vision," after he'd told her he couldn't explain it right then. Reluctance to try to get Butler to prattle on about a spiritual experience in a 30-second post-game interview in the noisiest, most emotionally charged setting possible in sports reporting, that is somehow indicative of our culture's inability to countenance the supernatural.

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    1. To some people, a supernatural vision *is* all about an emotional charge.

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    2. Not that we haven't noted this before, but Rod is disturbingly fascinated by spiritualism, pretty much any old kind of spiritualism.

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    3. Who said it was a supernatural vision in the first place? He didn't (sorry that you have to tolerate the awful interviewers in that). He may have just been laying awake the night before thinking positive thoughts.

      Not that he isn't a religious guy, as he mentions in that interview (and schools the insufferable Charlie Rose on what being blessed means).

      But "you believe what you want to believe" (see American Hustle). And Dreher had a narrative that our culture sucks and wanted to believe Butler was talking about an apparition from BVM or somesuch. Or, more likely, Dreher wanted us to believe that he believed that Butler was talking about an apparaition.

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  4. Jindal takes another step forward for me. He's got a bigger vision that most, and he's pissing off the right people,. Shows he's on to something.

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    1. While I absolutely agree with Jindal's goals - removing Obamacare root and branch - he of all people should know he can't get to there from here. Too much political. not to mention media, addiction to fundamentals of Obamacare (non-actuarial "insurance"; 26-year-old "children" on policies) has already been deliberately introduced into the political patient for cold turkey withdrawal to be possible at this point. Obamacare was designed to induce damage to its insureds if straightforwardly disrupted.

      Obamacare will inevitably collapse of its own weight - no meaningful, sustainable health care cost control - but for that matter so will private health insurance, or rather all, as private health insurance is already doing, will inevitably transition to the HSA/high-deductible model.

      The key for Republicans will be to compound the correct formula for health care methadone, a transitional structure that can methodically remove the U. S. from Obamacare without imploding politically in the process before itself being methodically dismantled into the least redistributionist residue possible, likely in the form of extremely generous tax relief supporting individual health care responsibility.

      Of course, how the Supremes decide King v. Burwell could provide a game-changing political lightning rod that leaves the Republicans on an entirely new playing field.

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  5. Y'all, mosey on over to Gabriel Sanchez's opuspublicum blog for some hifalutin' discussion of the Eggs Benedict Option:

    https://opuspublicum.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/some-options/

    https://opuspublicum.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/more-options/

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  6. Why is this tolerated? Jonathan Carpenter
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-williams-admits-that-his-story-of-coming-under-fire-while-in-iraq-was-false/2015/02/04/d7fe32d0-acc0-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html

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    1. If he'll lie about the little things like this, he'll certainly lie about bigger things.

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  7. Pauli, just for you:

    In today's offerings by our favorite over at "The" "American" "Conservative", we have the following two pieces in succession:

    A call to "stand up to people like Gov. [Scott] Walker".

    "How Bobby Jindal Wrecked Louisiana"

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    1. This is a rather formal manifesto by OWB of his final emancipation from political conservatism ("Ewww!") and headlong into a university-based, sort-of-socially-conservative-if-he's-lucky mush of gophers overdue for their rub-and-tug in the sun. But mush he's now betting everything on to buy his books (next: How Plato Healed My Plantar Warts) and with whom he's arrived at a head-to-tail Faustian bargain: too stupid and lazy himself to aspire to more than a J-school BA from LSU, he'll now flatter and promote a posse of commenters like Carlo (Casella?) Lancellotti instead if they'll talk him and his wares up in turn and give him more of an appearance of scholastic gravitas. In the final analysis, a 40-watt country boy desperate to be more than he was born to at any cost. But I don't think lurking Conservative University Professor Nation is going to deliver the Duck Dynasty Nation numbers he'll need.

      Incidentally, while I think Jindal has turned into a Ted Cruz President of Conservative America alley, Walker is sounding more and more as if he could take a seven league boot leap over Jeb any day now and face up against a fat old woman with drooping, tired looking hair as an imminently serious conservative JFK with very broad appeal to beat.

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    2. I want Walker. Period. I'm disappointed in Lawler; his piece is ridiculous elitism. Walker just posted this on his Facebook page as if to say "Here's my response."

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    3. I want Walker. Period. I'm disappointed in Lawler; his piece is ridiculous elitism. Walker just posted this on his Facebook page as if to say "Here's my response."

      I'm not in a position to say if Walker knows how potentially brilliant this move is or not, but plenty of people do know that higher ed inflation and health care inflation are both driven by very similar if not identical engines, inelastic demand (can't prosper right now without either, Mike Rowe notwithstanding) and oversupplied with funding not tied to performance.

      To the extent Walker succeeds with higher ed, he's then already positioned miles ahead of anyone else on health care also.

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    4. But mush he's now betting everything on to buy his books (next: How Plato Healed My Plantar Warts) and with whom he's arrived at a head-to-tail Faustian bargain...

      At first I thought that this would be a vanishingly small target audience for a low-brow book on Dante, as that crowd would have had exposure to real scholarship on The Divine Comedy.

      But then two things came to mind: many receiving college degrees in the past 30 yrs or so (incl. me) were not as well-educated in the humanities as they ought to have been, and are ripe picking for an NPR-friendly easy-reader book on Dante (saves them from reading the real thing). And while those like Dr. Lancellati might know a lot about "the Landau and Lenard-Balescu equations, and also the so-called Kuramoto model", I'd venture to guess that they don't know as much as they think they do on other topics -- see Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society for more on that topic. And so they're ripe picking too, especially if they are sucked up to individually, as in the case of the good Prof. L, or as a class by way of the Walker and Jindal pieces. So maybe he will sell a few in that niche.

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  8. In response to the not-one-but-two Dreher selfies in this post, I offer these results of a recent study by learned experts in the field:

    A new study showed that men who posted more online photos of themselves than others scored higher on measures of narcissism and psychopathy.

    But we sort of knew that already. . .

    H/T Patriot Post

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    1. I read that study. I have taken exactly 2 selfies in my life, and they were both used to replace older profiles pictures of myself. But both of them made me uncomfortable, especially one which I had edited because the lighting was weird. There was something a bit "off" about the whole process. So I decided I wasn't going to do it again.

      I know someone else who posts a lot of selfies, and that person definitely is mentally ill, diagnosed and is being treated for it.

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    2. Well, as you can see, I've only taken one. In my defense, though, I thought it was something to eat.

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    3. And oh boy how your thesis is reinforced, painfully, in today's post about Rod taking the family to the parades in New Orleans. Shudder. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/its-carnival-time/

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    4. Bonus VFYT post today in which he actually states: "I would say that this is the breakfast of a poseur, except I’m not posing: this is who I am. I am large; I eat multitudes."

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    5. Sadly, the weekend of bacchanalia and blasphemy has taken its toll on our Cub Reporter.

      Lucky thing for him that his suggested remedy has now been authorized as his Lenten sacrifice. Two birds with one stone . . . .

      P.S. Speaking of "sacrifice", we are told again in that post of how hard he has to work and the toll that it takes on him to bring us the fine content and deep thoughts on his blog. Consider yourselves fortunate to be living at a time such a man walked the earth . . . .

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    6. Sadly, the weekend of bacchanalia and blasphemy has taken its toll on our Cub Reporter.

      Without an objective third party medical review of either one, how would the periodic benders of a life-long alcoholic look different to us out here from the curated descriptions of the similarly periodic "mono" episodes its victim shares with us?

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  9. Ah, yes, The American Dreher:

    Joan says:
    February 13, 2015 at 4:12 pm

    Just after I posted, the audio came on for an ad on this site. It was the voice of a young woman saying “I want my yoga pants to smell like I sweat money.”


    That's what I'm going to start calling Wick's little cyber Asian massage parlor for lost lambs, not The American Conservative, but The American Dreher. Dreher wears the yoga pants that smell like money sweat, while everyone else there just works in the laundry.

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  10. A free-form poem.

    We truly are all sinners
    Met you at Socrates in the City
    Except by grace we are all haters
    Agreed.

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    1. And here's the video of SITC for your enjoyment, eighty (80) minutes of Dreher expounding. (No, I didn't listen to it . . . ).

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  11. I stumbled upon the Twitter feed of Charles Cosimano last night. He's a Dreher regular commenter with whom Dreher has been chummy with (as you can see here) and a regular nut. He is also way into BDSM and links to a self-published PDF book which features a naked woman tied to a cross.

    He has made a virtually unwatchable youtube video which more or less demonstrates his mental illness/sense of humor. Part of me wants to do a full expose on this guy as part of a series on Dreher regulars.

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    1. The first requirement for someone who calls himself a "humorist" is to be funny. I worry about anyone who finds that video (or his tweets, for that matter) to be entertaining in any sense.

      But he fits in well with Dreher -- he's narcissistic, too.

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    2. I read a little more of his long essay about psionic nonsense. There is some serious anti-Christian stuff in there, beyond all the sadism. I think I am going to do a post sometime, exposing him for what he is -- an anti-Christian nut-case who seems to really be into all the occult/majick stuff in combination with the BDSM dreck.

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    3. One might think that one who is so concerned with the sickness of our culture as to write repeatedly and in published journals about the need to drop out so as to preserve the faith wouldn't be so very very chummy with such a writer.

      But then again, that assumes sincerity on the part of that concerned individual.

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    4. Rod is so chummy with him, what with all the "Uncle Chuckie" and "Cosimanian Orthodoxy" stuff, I assumed they were childhood pals or college roommates or something. If they are not...it's even weirder than I had thought. Cosimano is a real nut, and creepy too. What is the draw, there, for Dreher?

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    5. Part of me wants to do a full expose on this guy as part of a series on Dreher regulars.

      What is the draw, there, for Dreher?

      From his written references we can deduce that Charles Cosimano had some sort of classical historical education and at some point may have been some sort of writer. However, this would have been some time ago: Cosimano is on the right.

      http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/get-attachment-1.jpeg

      Here, on the left, next to fellow first chair seal Siarlys Jenkins as they both attend Dreher's packed speech on Ruthie Leming in October, 2013:

      http://www.theamericanconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/get-attachment-1.jpeg

      Jenkins has never to my knowledge spoken of ever having been employed, but does seem quite versed in garage sale table history, particularly that of early labor movements. Feel free to explain him further.

      But the practical reason Dreher cultivates Cosimano is the same reason Jimmy Kimmel cultivates a short, bullet-shaped Mexican named Guillermo Rodriguez: as a comic relief sidekick to charm the house, put the audience at ease, and portray Dreher as an aw, shucks reg'lar Christian guy who celebrates the most diverse viewpoints on his blog even to the point of embracing BDSM princes. Or at least BDSM princes 40 years past their prime who have no other place to go now to receive the same attention while showing others how slavish devotion to a savior is to be performed.

      One can sum up all of Uncle Chuckie's comments like this "Unfortunately, nobody cares about [whatever Dreher is talking about at the time] and, if they did, they'd just laugh it off". Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And take my wife, please, ba-dum-dum.

      While no doubt some of the more primly religious might tut-tut, in trying to expose Cosimano as a sinner you would probably be more apt to be playing into Dreher's theatrical hands; you would be much in the same position of triumphantly exposing the pathetic old uncle's pull-my-finger fart-noise trick. At the same time, Cosimano is willingly playing the role of Dreher's adulterous woman whom he would grandly have sin no more; then they'll split the audience take.

      Done right, though, what you truly might be exposing, if anything, by featuring Uncle Chuckie is what a draw Dreher is to the lonely, the elderly, the frightened, the maybe important in some small way once upon a time, the needy, the no longer quite focused in the world, and at the same time the symbiotic need Dreher himself has to cultivate and lead a cult of such needy people into further dependence on him. That's the real sin I see here.

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    6. Cosimano is a real nut, and creepy too.

      And then some.

      The other day I really started cracking into the guy's writings. Not a great idea. I got freaked out. The man is into bondage, black magic, making threats to kill people, advocating some type of high-tech vampirism that he seems to believe actually works. The only defense you can make of the guy is that he's really just joking -- it's all in good fun. That seems to be Dreher's position. But I don't think Dreher is correct about this. CC might be playing around with this "psionic targeting" stuff but all these e-books of his detail a philosophy that is so nasty, so anti-Christian that it is really indefensible. He comes across as seriously wanting bad things to happen to certain people

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    7. They say a picture is worth a thousand words...that doesn't quite do justice to the revelation that is that photo of "Uncle Chuckie." Sometimes the psychosis runs so deep, it is plainly visible. I've seen men like that shouting at phantoms on the streetcar.

      But on thinking about it more, I think Dreher has basically a nihilistic, destructive view of the world too, for all his pious protestations to the contrary. They are too miserable peas in a pod.

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  12. I won't recap all I've said about Dreher and his penchant for attracting the dependent and the needy within a closed society, but since my reply to the Young Fogey I've begun to think that goes a long way toward explaining the shift in his commenter population more heavily toward academicians, both instructors and the impressionable young.

    Although the meme teat currently most full for making there involves variations on how lurking, closeted conservative academics have it hard, man, even the tenured ones, backing out the focus just a little bit shows that all of those content to spend their days in academe actively embrace a world that would be regarded as a fascist state if it were a geopolitical unit, and so having their words and thoughts searched prior to publication just comes naturally to them, as does the delight in being accepted as part of the in-group for successfully submitting to that purifying humiliaton.

    This leaves a docile - far more than crunchies, far more than the solely religious (who, it goes without saying, can be exceptionally disputational if allowed), far more than the purely political - symbiotic as well as syncophantic pool different only in the focus of their interests from the overtly cult-like accretions of cultural Marxism that currently plague most institutions of higher education.

    Dreher has finally re-discovered his Sacred Grove, and in so doing arrived at the additional happy conclusion that, naturally, he is its Plato.

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  13. Yeah; Dreher's book about Dante? it's a SEQUEL, people.

    How can a book about Dante, the medieval poet, be a sequel to The Little Way of Ruthie Leming? Only if both books are really about him.

    File under Not Really News.

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    1. And for the same reason, TLWORL was, of course, a sequel "of sorts" to Crunchy Cons.

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  14. FYI: Dreher will be hocking his Dante book Monday at The Covenant School in Dallas. He is using the school because he is so "popular" with Dallas Catholics. Jonathan Carpenter

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  15. Time to take up a collection for Erin Manning.

    Franklin Evans of "Evans-Manning Award" fame will be making his second celebrity appearance eatin crawfish and wielding Dreher's mint julep hammer in St. Francisville this spring. If arrangements can't be made to send Erin, her half-namesake will soon be changed to the "Franklin Evans Mighty Hammer of Commentary Award" alone and she'll be permanently relegated to doing the Dreher blog laundry while every other featherstone's book gets promoted over hers.

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  16. Replies
    1. In everyday life, the definition of "decadence" is requiring greater and greater levels of stimulation to still achieve the same level of satisfaction:

      - beer is not enough, pure grain alcohol, then pure cocaine is required

      - vaginal sex is not enough, anal sex with shaved women, then anal sex with shaved pangolins is required

      - prayer is not enough, full body prostration, then being hung by the nipples from eagle claws is required

      But as has always been the case with Dreher, the same death spiral into decadence happens in blogging, too, accelerated by such novel wormholes through the rational continuum as the convenient "epistemology of imagination": now, whatever can be imagined can stake a claim to reality. Even the idea of a limit to ever more decadently provocative click-baiting blog topics has now been erased. To infinity, and beyond!

      From crunchy backyard chickens to the most avant-garde science fiction as pistol shot to get the herd moving toward buying the required Benedict Option gospel book (now in the pipeline after Dante) on its thundering way to Benedict Option Valley.

      Oh, for those days when a simple organic kale would still get their attention.

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    2. The trained seals in the Dreher combox are certainly ready to play in the Land of Epistemology of Imagination. To wit, the comments on that silly post "seriously" discuss such things as The Matrix vs. the Benedict Option, and that (according to the eminent historian that Dreher relies on) humanity doomed itself to extinction when it progressed from hunting-gathering to agriculture.

      I'd hope that Dreher had to block 100 or so comments calling "bullshit" on his piece, but that would be a foolish hope, wouldn't it?

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    3. In order for any Benedict Option book to maximize its audience it must capture what any possible purchaser could ever conceivably loathe or fear. Gays. Transhumanism. Groot. Peanut butter. Imaginary bugs crawling on my skin-get-them-off-get-them-off. Transhumanic gay vegetable creatures instructing armies of imaginary bugs to crawl all over my skin while smearing it with peanut butter get-them-off-get-them-off.

      Without the recently discovered hyperdrive of imagination as epistemology, this marketing universe quickly collapses. With it, however, the Benedict Option can now "philosophically" legitimize itself as anything the editor and publisher will need it to be; no one seriously thinks Dreher himself has a clue to its definition, do they?

      Incidentally, that's the quickest way to increase your seal herd: gratuitously promote whatever academic instructor you're trying to bring into the flock to "historian" or "philosopher". Now, see? You and Plato - you's both philosophers. How kewl is that?

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    4. Aaaannd...more emperorography: if you're not down with Dreher's vision of the Benedict Option and other things, grasshopper, it's because you've not yet learned to "see". Fortunately, and especially for all the under-30 seal pups one can pick out in Dreher's comment boxes, he's available as your service dog.

      You know, if we put our minds to it, we could actually write Dreher's posts before he does.

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    5. I see that the estimable Charles Cosimano adds his wisdom, so to speak, to the party:

      Yet why look for what is not there in the first place? If metaphyscial reality is an oxymoron, and I think it is, what is the point of the exercise?

      But of course even that wholly subjective view will fit within the Epistemology of Imagination, so all can stroke their chins and nod while saying "Hmmm, interesting".

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    6. Here are the sort of metaphysics we know Dreher will be serving up in the Dante book, the sort of stuff Dymphna was talking about above:

      In the book, I tell the amazing story — one I have repeated on this blog — about how the ghost of my grandfather, Dede, lingered around my mom and dad’s house days after his death. He stayed near to my father, his son, with whom he had had a strained relationship in the last few years of his life. My father, a Methodist, gave me permission to call a Catholic priest to come deal with the matter. The priest brought with him a Cajun Catholic grandmother who had a powerful spiritual gift of discernment. From How Dante Can Save Your Life:

      “It’s him,” said the priest. “And he says he can’t move on unless you help him get forgiveness.”

      My father froze.

      “Daddy,” I said, “tell him about what happened between you and Dede!”

      And so he did, revealing everything about the pain of his father’s rejection and his fidelity to the old man in spite of it all. After he finished, Father Termini said quietly to my father, “Do you forgive him?”

      “I do,” said my father, nearly breathless.

      Father Termini blessed the house, and a week later he had a mass for the repose of Dede’s soul. There were no more ghostly visitations at our house.

      I believe that upon his death, my grandfather saw how much his son had loved him, and how his son suffered and sacrificed for his sake. And Dede was remorseful. His sorrow was so great that he could not advance spiritually. He could not let go of this world without his son’s forgiveness.

      Can I explain this theologically? No, not really. But I believe I saw the power of a living man’s forgiveness free the soul of a dead man trapped by guilt and let him move on to the next life.

      To make this clear, I don’t have firm theological categories that can explain what happened that week in Louisiana — but I know that it really did happen. My father believes it was all real as well. And yet, as I document in the book, this did not change him in the least. Unlike Luhrmann and Shermer, my dad is a believer in God, so he has no prior commitments that prevent him from accepting what happened as having meaning (as opposed to being just one of those things).


      South Louisiana ghost stories, not that there's anything wrong with a little homespun folklore. But if you don't believe him, you probably have a metaphysical cataract.

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