Victory Game Center

Otto Scott: I read very often writers that are better than I am. Their grasp of technique sometimes strikes me as almost magical. And I am delighted when I read somebody who is that well equipped because there is such a pleasure in reading good writing. It never occurs to me to feel otherwise.

R. J. Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: And I know that this is true of musicians, good musicians. When they hear another fellow play better than they have ever heard an instrument played before. They are delighted. They crowd around him. They call him master, maestro.

Rushdoony: I have an amusing story to tell on that. It goes back to the 30s. A very prominent violinist of the day was vacationing in San Francisco when another very prominent violinist from Europe was giving a concert there and he and a friend who was also a musician in the San Francisco symphony, but not a violinist, were seated together. And this prominent violinist listening to this man who was superlative in his playing became a little uncomfortable with the excellence of the concert violinist. And he fidgeted a bit and mopped his brow and told his companion, “It's very hot in here, isn’t it?” And the man looked at him and said, “For violinists, it is.”

Scott: Well, I knew some jazz musicians years ago and their attitude was of great pleasure. I think ... I think the fine arts, the fine musicians and the concert groups that we know are much more catty, much cattier. Almost like the professors.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: Academia is not famous for being broad minded or admiring in any way of first rate talent.

Rushdoony: Well, to go back to [Gonzalo Fernandez] de la Mora. He makes another point that I think is marvelous. He says that the opposite of envy is the communion of the saints, a fellowship in terms of a common faith, a common life. And he said envy isolates people. And instead of the communion of the saints, instead of community of any sort, you have an anti community impetus. You have a hostility directed to everyone from a position of isolation because the envious man is not content to be at peace with anyone.

Scott: Well, of course, he cannot ever be, because there's always something to be envious of. If you are basically an envious person you must envy the man who can dive off a high board. You must envy a good dancer. You must envy almost every ability that you see that you don’t possess.

Rushdoony: Yes. Well, we live in a world in which no one preaches against envy, neither in the church or out of the church. It is regarded as altogether natural to be envious.

Scott: Well, it is promoted. It is encouraged, but it is true that you don’t hear sermons about it. I don’t really know what the church today sermonizes against. Once we... when we really come to it, all sins seem to have shriveled down to racism.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: Beyond that there is no sin.

Rushdoony: Yes. That is very good. That is about the only sin that is left. And that is an odd thing to choose as a sin, because one of the characteristics of people all over the world has been a preference for their own. People prefer their own families. They prefer their own nationality or their own race, which is entirely legitimate as long as they don’t abuse and mistreat others. I believe that the world has seen more racism in this century than ever before precisely because we are trying to equalize everything and we are trying to obscure the differences and say they don’t exist. And when you do that, you are going to create a situation where there will be a bootlegged and resentful recognition of differences.

Scott: Well, you drive underground what doesn’t belong underground. The business of justice, the business of treating people fairly, the business of equality before law and meritocracy, so to speak, of making opportunities open to all, the whole idea of a civilized society is based on the idea of mutual respect. But respect is one thing. A denial of reality is something else. If in order to get along or to placate we have to pretend that everyone has the same intellect and intelligence, the same ability, then we have downgraded all intelligence and all ability.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: It is usually a question of let’s you and he be equal. Not you and I.

Rushdoony: Yes. Well, by obscuring the fact of differences, what we have done is to create a climate in which any awareness of reality is gone.

Scott: Well, it is dishonest.

Rushdoony: Yes. You are not living in a real world if you don’t recognize differences and say he is better than I am. He is of another color. And he or she is not as good as I am in this particular field where I am good.

Scott: Well, I had that conversation with a sales manager at a magazine I was with. He said, “I was raised to believe that I was as good as anybody, weren’t you? I said, “No. I wasn’t.” And he said he was surprised. And he said, “Well, how were you raised?” I said, “I was raised to think that we were better than some and not as good as others.” And I still think that is true.

Rushdoony: Yes, yes. That was very much a part of our training in our generation.

Scott: Well, now, of course, it is forbidden to say that you are better than anybody else. That is an evil thought in the popular jargon. And yet how could you possibly avoid having it?

Rushdoony: Yes. Well, as I said, when you will not allow reality to govern your thinking you are going to live in a world of hypocrisy and that hypocrisy will increase year by year and more and more warp society. And I believe that the envious character of our society, its anti racialism, its hypocrisy in one sphere after another, is leading to more and more dislocations, because reality is not allowed to impinge upon our world.

Rushdoony: But I think what you said about envy is right. It is precisely because it is insatiable. It doesn’t stop at anything. And as you have written about the French Revolution, it wasn’t enough to take away the titles from the nobles. It wasn’t enough to take away their lands. It wasn’t enough to take away their lives. They had to be defamed. They had to be spat upon. They had to be, in one way or another, continually a target of abuse.

Scott: That is true. And you know that when the Royalists came back to England after the death of Cromwell they dug up his body and burned his skeleton.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: Now that was vengeance. That is just ridiculous.

Scott: The hatred and the envy of the men who became wealthy in the oil industry is still with us. There are individuals who get apoplectic about the oil companies making money. What would they have preferred? An industry where nobody got rich, of course. I mean, time and again we keep moving as a country closer and closer to the idea that people shouldn’t get rich unless they please the crowd, unless, of course, they are entertainers. ... And the oil industry is a working industry.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: All these companies, all these activities are workers. Your farmer that you are talking about is somebody that works, that produces something, not just makes noises in the air or puts a ball through a basket up against the wall. ...

Rushdoony: In the early 70s I twice had reports from people on our mailing list about pastors who in the course of a sermon had insisted it was immoral for any man to make more than so much...

Scott: More than they.

Rushdoony: That is exactly what came out of the second. The first had set 30,000 as a moral limit. The second, 45. And it was asked by someone who was not a member, but who was visiting, "Why 45?" And he said, “Well, I make that.”

Scott: The New York Times book review is one of the masochistic exercises that I go through weekly. And it constantly reviews the trashiest and most obscure, crazy, stupid novels. Now novels today comprise only 10 percent of the books, but they are 90 percent of the books The New York Times book review reviews.

Rushdoony: Yes. Well, de la Mora says they must tear down those who are superior and exalt the inferior. Somehow that is their virtue. They are proving that they are fair minded and appreciative.

Scott: It is a very deadly business.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: Because I have actually run into individuals who have made up lies about others.

Rushdoony: Yes.

Scott: Of whom they were envious. And there is no defense against that.

Rushdoony: No.

Scott: It cannot be anticipated.

Rushdoony: Well, the envious are inferior. And instead of trying to excel they are going to tear everyone down to their level.

Erik Kain wrote: sure, it’s Valve’s house and it’s Bethesda’s game, but both those companies made their money already.

We did some research, and apparently Pratt ordered the studio to pay him $1.5 MILLION to star in Guardians Of The Galaxy. Not only that, his contract stipulated that he gets paid even more money every time the movie is shown on TV! That’s right—if Guardians appears on cable 10 years from now, Chris wants to get rewarded for it, despite not doing any additional work.

Apparently this pattern of behavior stretches way back, including Chris’ demand to get paid for every single episode of Parks And Recreation he appears in. And according to former coworkers from before his acting career, when Pratt worked in a restaurant as a waiter, he was already living a double life by collecting money and tips nearly every day he went to work.

It’s hard to reconcile the funny and charming Chris Pratt we all know with the wealth-obsessed jerk he appears to really be behind the scenes.

Jed Whitaker wrote: Many of the threads echo this sentiment, the notion that this family is somehow using their son's death for capital gain, as well as complaining that none of the money is going to cancer research.

Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.