Got Butter; The Detour; The Before Times; Current Daily Routine; Sociopaths and Psychopaths; the Church Scandals; What to Do When Caught Off Guard.

• In my previous entry, I reported that we were running out of butter and that the stores in our area, where we could expect to buy it, had run out. I can now report that I was able to go to Metro, a wholesale-retail supermarket, and buy six bars of a New Zealand brand butter. I noticed, however, there certain brands of cheese and bacon that we liked to purchase were not available. 

• I drove to the Metro on a truck route where, in the before-times, there had been an overpass collapse. Now, it has a detour which can be perilous to get through because there can be traffic jams and the left turn lanes had to be put in the most right hand lanes. This time, there were a lot of trucks going through the detour and I wasn't sure that I was in a right hand lane to make a u-turn and then left turn to get back on the truck route (thankfully, I was).

• Yes. The before-times. I am using that term. I think things are going to change for China (and the world) if and when this virus crisis comes to an end. Whether the before times ended with the start of the virus crisis or when Chairman Eleven assumed lifetime powers will be one for the historians to decide.

• My days now have a definite routine. I have the alarm set for 6:30 AM. When it awakes me, I first stay in bed and I do some daily readings, on my phone, which are religious and philosophical. (I read books of daily thoughts from the Church fathers and thoughts about Mary, I read some aphorisms from Nicolás Gómez Dávila. This crisis and Lent, I have as well been reading daily passages from the Liturgical Year by Abbot Prosper Gueranger.) With this done, I get out of bed and prepare to wake Tony who has some video classes from his school to watch. I put on the kettle and heat some water for tea. I then get Tony up. He doesn't wake easily and I have to start dressing him until he is awake enough to finish. He then goes to the bathroom to do his ablutions while I set up thecomputer and the Apple TV so he can watch the classes. Tony starts the classes himself and sits on the easy chair in the living room to watch them. I sit beside him on a couch and do daily Spanish, French Chinese lessons on the Duo phone app. Once that is done, I make Tony tea and some breakfast; I maybe do a load of laundry; continue doing some daily readings – this time of a book I am reading (novel or non-fiction work), then some language book readings (Spanish, French, Latvian and Chinese) and then some poetry (The Metaphysical Poets, Gerard Hopkins, an English Poetry Anthology and the german poet Friedrich Hölderlin); I maybe listen to a podcast, I read articles from the Internet using my Feedly RSS app and some other tidying-up that I notice I have to do. Tony meanwhile, having finished watching the video classes, does homework. The assignment are sent, via WeChat, to Jenny who forwards them to me on my WeChat. I air-drop them from my Iphone onto my Ipad. Eventually, Jenny gets out of bed and our relaxed time is finished. When she has finished her ablutions, she will bark at Tony & me for whatever reason, and maybe make us lunch if helping Tony do her homework is not her priority. After lunch, I may go out to pick up deliveries or do some shopping or do a little reading or watch some video or continue reading the novel or non-fiction book I am reading. (anything to get away from Jenny "helping" Tony with his homework) About 4:00 PM, if the weather is good, Tony & I will get out of the house and play catch. When we get back, it is supper time. After supper, Tony will do some more homework, and I will occupy myself (with reading or a video or a podcast) until we can start our 8:00 PM English class. Once this is done, everyone will relax until bedtime. We will shower, watch video, play video games and read till about 11:00 PM, at which time we try to fall asleep and do the same thing the next day....

• I was talking on WeChat with a local acquaintance about video I had been recently watching. I mentioned the Tiger King series that I had just seen and some series that I had been watching from the Investigation Discovery network like Homicide Hunter and one I just discovered: Living with Evil. The latter series has acquaintances and relatives of Murderers describe their relationships with the criminals. Of the six episodes I watched, three of the criminals were husbands to the narraters, one was a brother, one was a step-son, and one was a friend. There were certainly signs that something was not right with these murderers and one could almost wonder why the narraters didn't catch on quicker than they did, until you realized that the signs were incidents that were quickly out of one's mind when things returned to normal. The person I was talking with about this brought up the terms sociopath and psychopath. I had to ask what was the difference between these types of individuals; and from what my acqaintance told me and what I later gleamed from some Internet research that I did that, there wasn't a clear distinction. Both types were certainly evil. I thought psychopaths, compared to sociopaths, were more wild and untamed like predatory animals but it turns out they aren't. Anyway, my chat partner then, out of the blue, brought up Catholic priests and said they were a group with a pathology all their own, and that the priests who did the molesting, or maybe he meant all priests, couldn't be classified homosexuals but as perverse power seekers. All I had to say in response was that that Church scandal was sad. I didn't want to debate the topic because I was caught off guard, and wasn't in a mood for these confrontations that our politicized age has caused. (I wish I asked if Obama was a sociopath, which I thought that narcissists were, earlier but that what's you get for trying not to step on minefields.) 

• Anyway, what are my thoughts on the Church scandals? They were a tragedy. Lots and lots and lots of sincere Catholics were let down. If you believe that what is taught by the Church is true, than the world was been let down. Do I think Priests as a group are bad through and through, as my chat-mate suggested? Of course not. What were the causes of the scandals? Infiltration of the Church by homosexuals and progressives, and the cultural revolutions of the 1960s. The cover-ups were caused by a combination of a bureaucratic need to shuffle the problem off, and in many cases a desire to be merciful to the offending priest. The desire to be merciful was a mistake and should have been dealt with like a criminal manner and thus handed over to the state. And of course, the devil played a part. 

• I hate being caught off guard like I was about the priest thing. As I said, I don't like these sorts of debates because they can get my blood boiling. I also have discovered that many progressives often throw so-called "facts" at you that you haven't heard of and need to confirm. For example, there have been so many documented cases of people saying things that aren't true about Trump that you have to take all they, the anti-Trumpers, say about him with a grain of salt. (I had someone telling me that Trump and Rush Limbaugh said that the virus was a hoax, which turned out to be a case of they taking what Rush and the Donald had said out of context.) And these progressives, when they do try to argue with you ,only reveal their prejudices and not so much the logic of what they are saying. You can't argue with people like that. And being good at debating does not mean one is good at discerning truth. The latter skill takes a lot of time and doesn't look good in the age of sound bites. Best response (for me) to these progressive verbiage assaults:  yeah, yeah, whatever you say, and hope they shut up.