Staring at Stone

No, this blog hasn't disappeared, if anyone was worried. I've been on vacation. I had good intentions of writing while away, but you know how good intentions can go. We did a fairly aggressive road trip through Alaska. You would think that driving all day would leave you energized to do something after being cooped up all day, but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, I'm just now finding myself finally shaking off the grogginess, after half a week back. I thought vacations were supposed to be breaks from the daily grind of life, but always find myself having to recover from vacations and long weekends.

At any rate, we're back, and I plan to return to regular blogging. And since we're on the subject of traveling, lets go with that subject today.

While it may not be helpful to stereotype people on their modes of vacation travel, it can be interesting to consider how our existing stereotypes map to travel destinations. Think of how liberals travel. There seem to be about three loose categories of liberals: the radical left, the hippies, and the mainstream left.

The hippies, especially the country hippies, largely travel like I do. They go in to nature. They camp, hike, and fish. They're drawn to music and often can be found at music festival in droves.

The radical leftists...honestly I have no idea where they go. I'm not friends with any of them. They all deleted me on facebook. [I have noticed that, out of 50 or so liberals that unfriended me for supporting Trump, I can't recall any that kept a garden. On the other hand, of the outspoken liberals that I'm surprised haven't deleted me, they all keep a garden or engage in similar activities. They must fit into the category of country hippies, and are good people - as vocal (and wrong!) as they may be about politics.] Perhaps the radical leftists don't travel at all because they're too busy smashing the fash to skip down to Acapulco, or even more likely because they're broke.

The final group, the mainstream liberals, tend to travel all over, to be sure, but there is something about their travel that is very status signally. They pick locations they can brag about and use to show off their sophistication. Largely, that means going to Europe. There is nothing wrong at all with vacationing in Europe. I have a great desire to go and visit some of the sites written about by the great historians, especially Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch. Those are the places where the great stories took place that forged western civilization. For me, going to those places would be akin to a pilgrimage to Mecca. They're the places a nationalist would go, if we consider western society as a nation.

The liberals who visit Europe tend to hit the spots with the greatest cultural significance. The irony is that the art they visit and pretend to care about represents a culture they reject. (Or at least pretend to.) Man, do they love their Michaelangelo. I see fervent leftists post selfies with The David, and at the Sistine Chapel, even though they see the Bible not just as mystical hocus pocus, but as the major source of evil and oppression in the world. They don't know who David was, or why he was significant to the people of the era, and, if they did, they would denounce him for moral impurity. Your standard Christophobic liberal gushing at their appreciation for the artistic significance of The David is just about the fakest thing imaginable. You can't appreciate The David if you don't appreciate David, let alone despise him.

Even more so with the Sistine Chapel. In a grandiose way, it illustrates the stories of the Bible. The artwork is significant for the same reason that Tolkien and Rowling fans flock to the cinemas to watch movie adaptations of their favorite books. Everyone knows that the movie is never as good as the book, but they go anyway. They just can't resist the chance to see how the stories might look outside of their own imaginations. Biblical artwork would have carried a similar appeal, giving people the chance to see a lifelike representation of the stories most significant to them.

How can you dismiss Christianity as a cult of ignorance and then marvel at the depiction of God touching the hand of Adam? Well, you fake it. Sure, there's some historical significance to consider, but the notion of having some deep appreciation for the piece is asinine. They couldn't possibly be contemplating the significance of the piece because to do so would require them to reject it entirely. They aren't contemplating anything at all when viewing The David. They're just staring at stone. They snap the picture, feign admiration, check it off their list, and move on to the next waypoint in their vacuous walk through life. A stoned hippie fishing off the dock is spending his time in a much more profound way than your typical Euro-grazer. At least he is not playing pretend.