When of one mind, Janus' views
form a composite of his two main sides. He attempts to consider issues with care and thoughtfulness, though he remains biased towards Christianity and Western
traditions. Outsiders might call him a Conservative, but in fact he is a Fundamentalist in that he promotes the Christian values that raised Western civilization to its peak.
One of the faces, looking to our right and called Patulcius, is the headstrong and determined side of Janus, tending to authoritarian ideals. Patulcius looks to history and upholds the traditions of
Christianity and Western civilization, and the well-being of Western nations. Patulcius sees world events as a struggle between divine and demonic
forces.
The other face—the easy-going, more open-minded, left-facing Clusivius—dislikes authority and prefers a more individualistic outlook. Clusivius looks to the future and contemplates changes. While
Christian, Clusivius takes an interest in the well-being of other civilizations as well as the Western. Clusivius tends to believe that elitist conspiracies play a major part in world events.
When possible, the complete Janus seeks to form a synthesis of the two sides when making a decision. At other times Janus allows any differences to stand without resolution. But now and again the two sides must battle one another until one side wins Janus' acceptance.
Tending to sensationalize, and sometimes to hyperbolize, C. F. van Niekerk over-analyzes any number of subjects from mundane minutiae to the great philosophical questions of life itself.
Katáxiros, the parched one, alone and adrift at sea, yet ever rowing ahead anyhow, sometimes weakly and sometimes vigorously, thirsting after God through the Orthodox Christian Church, contemplating the ways of the Lord, recognizing that while he is inadequate to the task, he must press ever ahead. Katáxiros writes about matters pertaining specifically to the Orthodox Church.
Barzillai Alpheus Bozarth claims to be a 19th Century man marooned in the 21st Century after a failed experiment in inter-dimensional travel. Not at all impressed with the wonders of our time, he would give just about anything to return to his beloved world of "horse manure and civilized etiquette". Barzillai writes historical observations and pores over old books and documents.
We don't know what to make of the Wanderer. He walks in with the moon and rolls out with the wind. He uses no name; the smells of rank sweat, dirt, and smoke mark him as much as anything. He's always near, but never close. Heedless of human ideals and bounds, he stands unyielding for honor on the ground. He's practical to a fault when he's not romantic to even greater fault. He says little, but when he does finally speak, we listen up. The Wanderer is our lawman of final resort. By hook or by crook, he sees a job done, just don't ask how. Frankly, we're a little afraid of the Wanderer.
Nature can be cruel to mankind.
If Concussus had his way, nature would be crueler yet. Concussus tends to arrive at the blackest of times, when humanity seems the most despicable.
Diabolus, the devil's advocate. Sometimes we are tempted to embrace the evil world that we despise. Diabolus is there to encourage us in this folly. Fortunately a rare visitor here.
– 10 May 2024 –
C. F. van Niekerk:
If you haven’t noticed, if you ever try to find serious and detailed news these days, your efforts will make you want to tear your hair out for the lack of serious options. That’s especially true since 2015 when Donald Trump started to run for president, when the media launched into full-fledged, lying panic-mode. The mainstream media explicitly scrapped their old veil of objective neutrality and began to spew nothing but cockeyed, hysteria-based, political propaganda.
But the devolution started before that, of course. Outlets like The New York Times, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, and even The Daily Mail once really did provide detailed information that was pretty much objective, if not exactly neutral. They did so even ten years ago. But now that the common people have gotten duller, shallower, and more emotional (thanks to the media), journalism has followed suit.
So it’s pretty difficult to parse the news these days. How, then, do I try to do it? (If I even bother anymore.)
How to Read the News
Well, first of all, I avoid video. Unless it’s raw footage, video for actual news is for ADHD retards. How are you supposed to get useful details with flickering, edited snippits while someone yammers on about what you’re supposed to be seeing?
And no memes, either. Meme news is useful propaganda for simpletons, amounting to something like headlines at best; but in and of themselves, memes are worthless for details and background! The internet in general, and social media in particular, has almost single-handedly dumbed down just about all of journalism to the point that most people get their news from Facebook and TikTok!
So I read articles to get news, if I can stand to do it anymore. And when I do read articles, if I’m interested in the matter, I try to use triangulation. I try to read about events from different perspectives, namely geographic perspectives, or institutional perspectives, and sometimes from different social or political points of view. Sometimes!
To do this, I first try to read about events through the most local newspapers or TV newsrooms as possible to the events in question. Oftentimes the local outlets provide more detail because the locals are far more interested and informed about their local situations. In foreign countries, it can be quite useful and informative to auto-translate news and opinions from local sources about local events. For example, the African country of Gabon had a military coup last year against their long-time ruling dynasty. Inevitably any outside international news source will focus almost totally on whatever that means for outside interests, but they will distort or ignore the facts and situations on the ground. So it’s useful to read from local sources, like in the Gabon Review in this case.
Then, if the news relates to official statements or surveys or studies, I try to find the original source, often available at a government’s or organization’s website. It’s amazing how quickly data degenerates through the media narrative process into emotion-charged gibberish. Sometimes the original sources give an enormous amount of detail.
Then, to get the big picture view, I try to read about broad-scale events through outlets that have little national interest in the matter at hand, sites like the RT, Asia Times, Al Jazeera, and still The Daily Mail (the latter for only some things, especially about seedy crimes and the like, and the Kardashians’ underwear and such garbage.) Often if a matter is controversial in a particular country, that country’s national news will hide details or give especially slanted accounts. For example, if an event is controversial in the Middle East, let’s say it’s about feminists in Iran, it might be useful to read about it in RT, The Asia Times, and maybe the Hindustan Times, on top of local or official sources. If the news is polarized in Canada, for example about an ecological disaster, then it might make sense to read about it from the perspective at Al Jazeera maybe to get a relatively neutral big picture perspective.
Finally, it’s often useful to get some background information. As biased as Wikipedia no doubt can be, I do find that site to be a pretty useful reference to get background information on a particular news item, whether it’s about a conflict or an economic matter or a technical matter. I also sometimes find Wikipedia useful to look up geographic and demographic information about particular places in the news, though I may use City-data.com for American cities and counties.
Most News Sources Suck
Some news sources provide better detail than others.
Out of all the professional news sources, there is one outlet that still provides a high level of journalistic research and objective details and information about the subjects it covers: The Epoch Times, out of Taiwan. They do lean to the right politically and socially, which can provide a refreshing perspective in comparison to the almost universally, tediously left-leaning “serious” outlets everywhere else. A lot of conservative-types really like The Epoch Times, and even subscribe to their physical newspaper because it’s generally wholesome and interesting on top of socially conservative and anti-Communist. (Sounds like an ad, don’t it?! Well, probably not after I continue on here…) Still, The Epoch Times also has other biases, of course, beyond the mere political.
Every publication that exists has biases, even if it’s an academic journal or an official government resource. They all slant their information based on their agendas and perspectives, and not one of them is really neutral. That’s partly what any news is for: shaping opinion!
Pretty much every single mainstream news source, every Western government, and every large institution produces left-wing crap to varying degrees. So in order to filter out their bullshit, when reading their information, it’s important to first identify the agenda and slant of that source of news and information. CNN and MSNBC write shallow, stupid articles for shallow, stupid liberals who think they are smart but are too lazy to read long articles. The Daily Mail is a liberal English tabloid. RT is pro-Russian and they like to stir the pot in the West. Al Jazeera is left-leaning and globalist but pro-Islam and mildly anti-Zionist. ZeroHedge is vaguely right-wing libertarian and anti-establishment. The pathetic Fox News writes establishment Republican slop to keep an increasingly disenchanted Boomer conservative audience on the plantation. Figure out the agenda, and it becomes much more clear why the publication is writing the story at all, and why they are saying what they are saying. What’s their slant?
The Cult Behind The Epoch Times
And The Epoch Times has a weird slant. They are officially produced by a way-out Eastern religious cult called Falun Gong. A Chinese man named Li Hongzhi started Falun Gong back in the 1990’s, and it quickly grew so popular that Chinese authorities decided to crack down on it and ban it back in 1999. In the Western news of the time, it had seemed like China was cracking down on a bunch of old ladies practicing yoga in public. But Falun Gong is more strange than smiling old Chinese ladies doing yoga poses in public.
According to Wikipedia (that left-slanted, CIA-funded globalist encyclopedia), Falun Gong claims that Li Hongzhi is “‘a God-like figure who can levitate, walk through walls and see into the future. His ultra-conservative and controversial teachings include a rejection of modern science, art and medicine, and a denunciation of homosexuality, feminism and general worldliness.’ Hongzhi instructs his followers to downplay his controversial teachings when speaking to outsiders.”
Hmm. Say what you want about Hongzhi’s cult deity nonsense, he’s winning me over on his social views!
Wikipedia continues: “According to the Falun Gong, the Falun Gong aspires to enable the practitioner to ascend spiritually through moral rectitude and the practice of a set of exercises and meditation. The three stated tenets of the belief are truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. [. . .] Together these principles are regarded as the fundamental nature of the cosmos, the criteria for differentiating right from wrong, and are held to be the highest manifestations of the Tao. [. . .] Li Hongzhi writes ‘It doesn’t matter how mankind’s moral standard changes [. . .] The nature of the cosmos doesn’t change, and it is the only standard for determining who’s good and who’s bad. So to be a cultivator you have to take the nature of the cosmos as your guide for improving yourself.’ Practice of Falun Gong consists of two features: performance of the exercises, and the refinement of one’s xinxing (moral character, temperament).”
So, overall, as far as religious cults go, Falun Gong doesn’t seem too awful, though there is no true salvation in it. Maybe it’s something like Mormonism in its deviation from God but promotion of wholesome social values. In any case, certainly Falun Gong is an improvement over the dominant fanatics of Leftist, liberal social Marxism!
For all of The Epoch Times‘ strange and alien Falun Gong cult agenda, despite being run by a man who, we are told, proposes to walk through walls and levitate and to be some sort of demigod, it’s amazing that the cult’s news outlet manages to embody classic journalistic integrity, investigative grit, and attention to detail far more than every other mainstream media news outlet in existence today. The Epoch Times provides real, concrete news the way old newspapers did a hundred years ago. Compare that with the stuck-up gravitas and journalistic loftiness of every other “professional” news outlet, and the contest isn’t even close. The Western news media has lost their depth and credibility.
It’s just one more thing that so effectively highlights the very fallen and pathetic state of the Western media today!
[Edit, 11 May 2024: After thinking more on the subject, for the sake of honesty, I have to admit that for all of the positive things I wrote about The Epoch Times, which I believe to be true within the context of my point, I personally don’t read that news outlet all that much. It’s not one of my preferred sources if I’m setting out to read news. They only let you read so much before they try to charge you, for one thing, which is understandable. And they are a little too pro-Zionist and conventional-conservative for my tastes. They’re not a bad source, and often they are a very good source, but I just don’t like them all that much.
If anybody actually cares (and even if they don’t, I guess!), my regular news sources where I casually skim headlines pretty much amount to ZeroHedge, RT, Rantingly, Al Jazeera, Military.com, and Rense.com. These sources all have their slants and their pros and cons, but those are what I’ve settled with for non-editorial, quasi-daily newsfeeds.
I used to read news much more intensely than I do now. I had RSS newsfeeds running every fifteen minutes with custom tickers scrolling all the time. But since everything has gotten so hysterical and emotional and insubstantial, I’ve pulled way back from this practice except for the increasingly rare cases when the news bug hits me. The news these days is designed to generate an impressionable state of constant fear, uncertainty, and doubt on top of outright distortion and lies. While I think it’s important to stay informed, it’s also important to stay halfway sane and unplugged.]
FINES ET INITIA 