Culture Clash

"Why Do They Hate Us?"  So asked the cover of Newsweek in the weeks after 9/11.  Most Americans avoided asking the question, since the very thought of addressing that issue smelled to some people like some sort masochistic attempt to rationalize the Manhattan massacre.  But it's an important question, and adults should know the difference between an explanation and an excuse.

The primary, most obvious, and explicitly pronounced (by bin Laden) justification for the attack, and the ideology that spawned it, is American foreign policy.  We have ignored that for 15 years.  How's that working out for us?  But there is a secondary reason for their hatred.

George W. Bush's answer was "they hate us for our freedoms".  President Bush was over-simplifying, as was his signature sin.  (When asked whether Iraq might descend into civil war in the absence of Saddam Hussein, Bush's response was, "why would they? They're all Muslims). 

But there was a heavy kernel of truth in Bush's corny phraseology.  The Islamic world (and not just the terrorists) do indeed harbor, at best, a deep antipathy for Western "freedom".  But what element or aspect of that freedom so offends the average Muslim?

The general Islamic critique of Western freedom is that it often degenerates into narcissism, materialism and unmoored sexuality, of all which cheapens and trivializes the dignity of the human being.  There is a LOT of truth to this.  The Islamic solution, of course, would violate the best tenets of Western Civilization by stripping the individual of most freedoms and liberties that we assume to be our birthright.

But just because the Islamic solution is unacceptable to us does not mean that their critique should not be honestly and seriously appraised.  There is a need for discretion in our culture.  Freedom exercised without restraint and without regard for its effects is, indeed, no freedom at all, but a soulless self-indulgence that we must guard against.

Perhaps the clearest example of this dynamic is the differing opinions on what is considered to be appropriate public attire, specifically for women.

In the West, we don't, and should not, dictate dress codes (other than banning public nudity).  But that does not mean that individuals should not regulate themselves.  In the Islamic world, dress codes are dictated but, and this is the most important and salient point here,  just because an Islamic woman covers most of her body from public view does not mean that she is bring forced to do so.

We know this because Islamic women who do not live in Islamic countries often choose to dress conservatively by Western standards.

Here is the broad-stroke assessment of female dress codes from the Islamic perspective: women in the West dress in a way that send the message that they wish to be seen as sexual objects.  By covering most of their bodies, Islamic women remove this from the equation, thereby making courtship and male-female relationships more genuine and stable.

There is a lot of truth to this.  And after all of the caveats about patriarchy, individual liberty, and freedom of expression are filtered out, some truth remains.  The culture that defines the West is the best that humans have yet contrived.  By reducing the power of the state and the clergy to dictate our personal behavior, we exalt the God-given value of each individual life by practicing free will.

But if we do not consider how our exercise of freedom as we define it affects others, we make a mockery of freedom and we cheapen it in the eyes of others. 

My 3-year old son is free.  He is free to touch a hot stove.  That does not mean that he should.  I am free.  I am free to eat McDonalds 4 times a day.  That does not mean that I should.  Absence of personal freedom is an insult to humans and to God.  But absence of discretion and moderation in the exercise of that freedom is just as bad.

How Do We Know What We "Know"?

A few of the people I respect most in the world have asked me about my recent characterization of Michael Brown "attacking a cop".  While that was not meant to be the main point of my post about the media treating criminals as representative of "the black community", it is a very important question, the answer to which applies far beyond this case, indeed to any historical event we could ever possibly discuss.

What do we "know" really?  That's heavy stuff.  As a historian and an educator, I try to very careful about saying we "know" things unless there is a certain threshhold of evidence that can be met.  The further we go back in history, the more elusive that evidence is.

For any event more than 150 years ago, for example, there are no photographs, no video, no audio recordings, no living eyewitnesses.  So how do we "know", for example, that George Washington even existed?  From one point of view, we don't.  But from another point of view, we just "know", don't we?

In the 21st century, evidence of historical events is far more prevalent, especially since smartphones have, for better or worse, smashed the barrier between the old guardians of information (the State, the media) and the everyday person.

But despite all of our new ways of recording and collating information, the human element remains.  The issue of bias, the unreliability of eyewitnesses, the tendency for actors in these event to exaggerate or lie outright.

When I wrote that Michael Brown "attacked a cop", I felt comfortable with that phraseology for two reasons; the first is forensic and the second is human.

First, for forensics.  I will quote from the Department of Justice's report on this matter.  Keep in mind that several other agencies investigated this tragedy and substantiated the officer's claims.  Many people refused to accept those findings and demanded a federal investigation.  All quotes below are from that investigation.  My response to each point will be in italics.


Michael Brown likely did reach into Wilson’s vehicle and grab the officer 

So, Wilson had bruises on his jaw, scratches on his neck, and Michael Brown's DNA on his collar, shirt, and pants, where his holstered weapon was.  Wilson's DNA was on Michael Brown's palm.  Two quick questions for the reader:  have you ever heard of this forensic finding?  That Brown's DNA was on the cop's collar and that the cop's DNA was on Brown's hand?  If not, ask yourself why you have never heard this.  

And secondly, can you think of another scenario that would explain Michael Brown having the cop's DNA on his hand other than him slapping, punching, or grabbing that officer?

Michael Brown did double back toward Darren Wilson 

DNA and bloodstain forensics show that Michael Brown retreated after having been shot and then made the fatal mistake of stopping that retreat and advancing back towards the officer.  

 Michael Brown’s hands were probably not up, but it’s impossible to say for sure


The DOJ was very sober and exacting in saying "we can't know for sure" whether Michael Brown had his hands up.  It's worth nothing that several witnesses "remembered" Brown's hands being up after the fact, but not when they were originally interviewed.  And the DOJ hedging its language in "we can't know for sure" makes its other, less ambiguous findings more credible.

Now for the human element.  This is where all the tension around this issue springs from.  The majority of people made up their minds about this issue, and so many others, before they had any specific information.  White cops shoots black man?  The majority of us just run to our pre-assigned corners and stick our fingers in our ears to block out any evidence that may question our assumptions.

 When two people are involved in an altercation and one of them dies, the only living witness obviously has a motive to lie.  The lie would serve to make the survivor seem blameless and the deceased to seem demonic.  We all know this.  And for this reason, nobody should simply believe the police in a case like this.

But we have forensics.  And when we have forensics, we can do controlled experiments.  If the cop says he was punched in the face, we should require evidence.  If we then find that the cop's face is bruised and that victim has the cop's DNA on his hands, we have come as close as we can to "knowing" that the cop was telling the truth.

If the cop says Michael Brown retreated, stopped, and approached the officer again, we should require evidence.  If we then find a blood trail that corresponds with that sequence of events, we are, again, as close as we can reasonably be to verifying the cop's account.

Some people will still not be satisfied, of course.  DNA and bloodtrails can not compete with intractable worldviews, after all.  California v. Simpson, anyone?

The last hope for persuasion lies in Occam's Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation is almost always the correct one.  In this case, there are two possibilities.

Possibility #1:  the cop was largely truthful in his account.

Possibility #2:  the cop decided, for some unknown reason, to murder Michael Brown, but not his friend who witnessed the whole thing.  After killing this man for no reason, the cop, in front of witnesses and before backup arrived (who the cop had called for before the altercation began, went up to Brown's body, slapped himself with Brown's lifeless hands, and used those lifeless hands to grab his own collar and shirt.  He then got some of Brown's blood (from where and with what tools?) and then sprinkled that blood in a pattern that would correspond with some instantly-conceived cover story.

Which is more likely?

I believe the cop's account.  I also believe that Michael Brown's death was a needless tragedy.  Maybe the cop was rude and aggressive with Michael Brown.  Maybe Michael Brown had been unduly harassed by other cops in the recent past.  But the one thing that we know would have saved Michael Brown's life is if he had not decided to assault a cop.

We have to be intellectually and morally honest enough to accept that sometimes our assumptions are wrong and that, even when they are right, they are almost always ambiguous.  Even someone in the right can have elements of wrong in their actions.  But in this case, in this specific sequence of events, we know what happened as much as we can ever really "know" anything.

Hyper-aggressive policing is a problem.  It is a discussion that all Americans need to have with each other.  Since we have more laws than any other country, we are only "free" because we insist on telling ourselves that we are.  Police have enormous power over us, and that power is growing.  Many police are veterans of our recent and current wars and seem not to know or appreciate the world of difference between being a soldier and a cop.

But to have that conversation, we need to be honest.  Symbols matter.  Words matter.  "Hands up, don't shoot" is a powerful, evocative slogan, but the needless tragedy that birthed it is misunderstood by an enormous number of people.  The only time Michael Brown put his hands up is when he used them to reach into Darren Wilson's car.

We have to distinguish between people who are wholly innocent of any wrongdoing and people who make reckless decisions that needlessly put their own lives in danger.  We have to put ourselves in other people's shoes and respect their perspectives while not surrendering our own common sense.  And most importantly, we need to wrestle with a tragic reality:  Michael Brown and Darren Wilson both assumed the worst about each other, and it cost a young man his life.  Evolving past that unfortunate truth is a long and painful process, but it must begin with the truth.

Enough

We're getting to the point in this country where an armed felon can't even flee a traffic stop and then turn on a cop with a stolen gun loaded with 23 bullets anymore.

The militarization of police in our society is a serious and pressing issue.  Matters of personal liberty, privacy and dignity in the face of the power of the State are of monumental importance for all of us.  But I can think of nothing more destructive to the need for this debate that the insistence on treating violent criminals as saints as long as it fits into a disgusting, intellectually bankrupt narrative of irredeemable American racism.

The latest "unrest" in Milwaukee came after a young black man was shot and killed by another young black man.  Unfortunately, this tragedy plays out nearly every single day in Milwaukee and countless other cities.  So why did this shooting evoke such a violent outburst?

Well, because in this case, the young black man who shot and killed the other young black man was wearing blue.  He wasn't a crip; he was a cop.  Were he a crip, there would have been no riots.  But he was a cop.

A sizeable number of African-Americans saw fit to destroy property and attack random white people while screaming "black power" and urging their peers to "take this shit to the suburbs".  On what planet is that a rational response to a violent criminal being killed by a police officer?

The mainstream media did not cover the events in Milwaukee very heavily.  If there were a mob of white people attacking random black passersby while screaming "white power" we all know the wailing and gnashing of teeth would have been unyielding and unending, and justly so.  But why is the reaction so different when black people are engaged in racist anarchism?

The answer is that the media, the Democratic party (which is nearly always in charge of areas where these things happen, and "sophisticated" white people are hopelessly racist, but not in the way the Black Lives Matter crowd thinks.  Here's how:

Firstly, when black people riot and loot and attack random white people for the sin of being white, that's not "the African-American community" in action.  It is, instead a nihilistic subset of that community.  The media glosses over this difference and pretends that sociopathic thugs represent "the African-American community".  That's racist.

The rioters in Milwaukee don't represent the "black community" any more than Dylan Roof or David Duke represent the "white community".

Some examples: there are more than 43 million African-Americans in the U.S.  Were they an independent nation, the size of their economy would be over one trillion dollars.  That would make them the 20th richest nation on earth.  The average income of African-Americans is over 48,000 dollars.  That's a higher average income than people have in Germany, Canada, Taiwan, and 200 other nations.

What does this mean?  It means that people who set gas stations on fire to protest the death of an armed felon do not represent the "black community".  When the media implies that they do, they are engaging in the worst kind of racism: the bigotry of low expectations, the idea that if a black person engages in completely indefensible behavior, it's not really their fault because........well, the unspoken implication in mainstream media treatment of this issue is that black people should not be held to the same standards as everyone else.  And that's racist.

 Hillary Clinton invited the mothers of several African-Americans who have lost children to speak at the Democratic National Convention.  Most of these anguished parents had sons who were killed by police officers.  The most well-known was the mother of Michael Brown, whose death triggered the Black Lives Matter movement.

Michael Brown robbed a store and then assaulted a police officer.  While his death was tragic, and while no parent should ever have to bury a child, what does it say about the Democratic Party that they feel that a young man who would punch a police officer in the face and try to take his gun is a fair representation of the "black community"?

Were there mothers of young black men killed by other young black men?  Or, far better, were there black business owners, doctors, lawyers, teachers, or God forbid, police officers?  Not at that convention.

The young black police officer who had to make an awful split second decision to save his own life is far more representative of the black community than was the young man who lost his life because he insisted on playing out the idiotic "thug life" fantasy.

The ultimate victims in this while fiasco are African-Americans, the vast majority of whom just want to live in peace and pursue their own happiness.  But when the elites in our society treat the predators who rob and kill law-abiding black people as the true victims of "systemic racism", it is a disgusting disservice to the black community and it is the clearest example of "systemic racism" that I can possible imagine.

Worst. Choice. Ever.

Ugh. Here is a brief list of people I'd gladly vote for over Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton:  Every other person who has run on either major party ticket for president in the last 75 years.  This is the first time I've ever been glad that the Electoral College exists.  Since I live in a state where the winner is pre-ordained, I can avoid the moral ickiness of voting for either of these two people by simply not participating in the process.

But even if the president were elected by popular vote, which he or she should be, and even if all known laws of probability were cast to the side and the entire election somehow came down to my personal vote, I would still not be able to vote for either of these people.

I miss Mitt.  And we will all soon miss Barack.

The most dispiriting thing about this whole charade is that most of the body politic is proving incapable of being honest about both candidates.  Trump supporters lie for Trump and they defend the indefensible.  Hillary supporters do the same for their candidate.  This is nothing new, of course, but this dynamic is amplified by the fact that these are the two worst candidates imaginable.

An unfortunate truth:  The only person who Donald Trump could ever conceivably beat in a general election is someone as flawed as Hillary Clinton.  The only person who Hillary Clinton could ever conceivable beat in a general election is someone as flawed as Donald Trump.

If Donald Trump were running against any other Democrat, he would have zero chance of winning.  If Hillary Clinton were running against any other Republican, she would have zero chance of wining.  These two need each other.  They are locked in a symbiotic death spiral.  They each are only as close as they are to the presidency because of the monumental flaws of their opponent.

First, for Trump.  There are two stipulations about Mr. Trump that I think are very important, and they should not be taken as efforts to defend this indefensible man.

First, the mainstream media is grossly unfair to Donald Trump as compared to Hillary Clinton.  According to the media, it is worse to hurt the feelings of some Muslims than it is to kill, dispossess, and forcibly displace millions of Muslims.

Second, Trump has raised some issues that need to be talked about.  Illegal immigration is a problem, and any person predisposed to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "racist" over and over again is part of the problem.  Hillary Clinton is pathologically corrupt and dishonest, and any person predisposed to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "sexist" over and over again is part of the problem.

So, the media is hopelessly biased against Trump and Trump has raised some valid points, points which the Democratic Party is invested in ignoring.  The problem is that Trump is a despicable human being who, even when being treated unfairly, is deserving of no defense.

I actually think that many of Trump's policies are policies that would be supported by a clear majority of voters if they were being explained by someone with an ounce of modesty, empathy, and intellectual consistency.  Trump has none of these.

The idea of my son behaving like Donald Trump when he is a grown man is revolting.  Whenever my son, not yet three, goes even 10% Donald, he gets a timeout.  The thought of any person I know and respect behaving the way this man behaves is unthinkable.

I don't think Trump is a racist.  To be a racist, you need to have a worldview.  Trump doesn't have a worldview.  He has a mirror.  He makes George W. Bush look like Plato and Einstein combined.  Trump believes in nothing but Trump.  He is a sociopath of the highest order. 

While anyone who seeks the presidency must have at least some sociopathic tendencies,  Trump sets the standard for a petulant narcissism that other politicians at least try to hide.  Trump lacks the self-control needed to hide his narcissism.  Self-deprecating humor, for example.  Don't expect it from Donald.  He is utterly incapable of it.

He is a self-absorbed, petty man-child who is temperamentally unfit to be a police officer or an insurance adjuster, never mind the job he's running for.  The mainstream media is right about this aspect of Trump's temperament; after all, a broken clock is right twice a day.

Mrs. Clinton flaws are different, but just as troublesome. She may be more polite than Mr. Trump, but her actions and impulses are terrifying.

She seems never to have come across a proposed use of military force that she opposed.  Her impulse towards secrecy and dishonesty is not of the run-of-the-mill security state variety.  She actually set up her own security state via her private server scheme.

Not content to keep her actions secret from the American people, she insisted on keeping her actions secret from the national security state as well.  She seems to have used her position as Secretary of State to merge the security state with the Clinton foundation, claiming to represent the American people while accepting mountains of cash on behalf of her family's enterprise.

How else would a "public servant" and her husband "earn" $250,000,000 in just over a decade?  I know Bill gives a good speech, but come on.

What Clinton and Trump show more than anything else is a contempt for common decency.  The moral standard that is being set here is truly dispiriting.  A man who trades in wives the way we trade in cars and a woman who thinks we are too stupid to notice that she hasn't given a press conference in a year and that "despite extreme carelessness, we decline to indict" is a ringing endorsement of her moral rectitude.

How do we choose between bad and evil?

The Cult, Part II

In my last post I tried, inadequately I'm sure, to identify The Cult in our country today that centers around the idea that members of our military are inherently the best moral specimens of our society and that all the killing and dying attendant with their job is done "for us", specifically to "protect our freedoms".  In my mind that is a venal, cynical, and disgusting lie.

I hope now to illuminate another Cult, or perhaps a tributary of the one I wrote of earlier.  This dynamic was illustrated by the medias' differing responses to two grieving parents of American war dead, Mr. Khan and Ms. Smith.

Mr. Khan's son died on behalf of the American State (not the American people, not "us") after the American State invaded an Arab nation which had not attacked the United States, overthrew that Arab nation's dictator, stood by while that Arab dictator was lynched, and then stood by as that Arab nation descended into a nihilistic abattoir of torture, forced human migration, beheading, and child murder which has proceeded to seep into Europe and the United States. 

Ms. Smith's son, on the other hand, died.....oh, wait.  Same thing.

But the treatment of the grieving parents was most decidedly not the same thing.

Why was Mr. Khan treated as a prophet, a moral exemplar, a tribune of all that is just, while Ms. Smith was treated as a harridan with an axe to grind, a vaguely sympathetic yet hopelessly misguided wretch?

The answer lies in which presidential candidate's behalf each of these poor souls was speaking.  Mr. Khan spoke for Hillary Clinton.  Mrs. Smith spoke for Donald Trump.

Imagine the boundless perversion of Mr. Khan speaking on behalf of Mrs. Clinton.  Mrs. Clinton voted to send his son to his death. Mr. Trump's sin, in Mr. Khan's eyes, was that he has proposed freezing Muslim immigration into the United States.  Naturally he focused on the possibility that, had Mr. Trump had his way, Mr. Khan's son may never have been an American.

But what about the mirror image of this argument?  What about the idea that, had Mr. Trump had his way, Mr. Khan's son may still be alive, blessing Mr. Khan with decades worth of grandchildren and restoring stolen memories?  And the Muslims Mr. Trump is concerned about are not the Muslims typified by Mr. Khan's son, but the Muslims typified by the man who blew himself up in order to kill Mr. Khan's son.

I should take a moment here to stipulate that I am not defending Mr. Trump. who I find to be one of the most indefensible cretins to ever sully our national stage, but Mr. Trump's sins do not imply any virtue on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, a point which seems to be lost on Mr. Khan.

While Ms. Smith criticized Mrs. Clinton mercilessly, that criticism was not entirely unwarranted.  What is truly bizarre to witness, however, is the mainstream media opining that while Ms. Smith's critique of Hillary was hyperbolic and in poor taste, Mr. Khan's critique of Mr. Trump was some sort of revelation.  Let's take a deep breath and accept this fact: the only commonality between the deaths of these two young men that has any relevance to this specific discussion is that Hillary Clinton supported both of these wars.

The root of the media's fawning over Mr. Khan is this: it allows them to virtue signal, to feel self-righteous, and to preen about how great America is.  It goes something like this: "Mr. Khan's story proves that America loves Muslims.  After all, we let this Muslim man immigrate here, and then we let his Muslim son go kill other Muslims on our behalf, before being killed himself! USA! USA!"

But what about the several American soldiers of the Muslim faith who used their training and their station to slaughter other American soldiers and civilians, both in the theater of war and on the homefront?  Are the parents of children killed by Muslim-American soldiers invited to speak anywhere?  Don't hold your breath.

And how much more sympathy and acclaim would Ms. Smith have garnered were her son a Muslim-American who died "for his country", rather than just a boring white American who died "for his country"?

The media was so enamored of the narrative of a Muslim who died for America that they willfully ignored two relevant facts:  First, the Muslim in question died in the commission of killing Muslims.  Second, the woman who the aggrieved parent of this Muslim was endorsing was part of the machinery that sent this Muslim to his death.

Hillary Clinton's policies, and those she has endorsed and voted for, have led to the deaths of at least one million Muslims.  Donald Trump's proposed policies, which he will ever enact even if elected, have hurt people's feelings.  What does it say about our media that they insist that the masses should be more outraged by the latter than the former?

The Cult part 1

America is, at least in theory,  a nation of free association.  It is, therefore, a nation of cults.  Since the word "cult", like the words "bias" or "conspiracy", trigger negative moral connotations in the ears of most people, let us take care to define the word.

Here is a standard definition from an American English dictionary: a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.

That definition is morally neutral. Morally redemptive and morally repugnant ideologies and practices have all started out on the fringe as "cults", with relatively small groups of devoted adherents.  The best of humanity (Christianity, the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution) began as cults, as did the worst (Naziism, Communism, Islamism).

But there is a specific American cult that is at the center of the recent...whats the word?...scandal?....tempest?.....diversion?....puppet show?.....regarding the Khan family and their patriarch's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The first thing any human being must say if he or she wishes to pontificate on this issue is that their heart breaks for Mr. and Mrs. Khan.  Any person of any age, gender, race, or station in life should feel a visceral anguish for these parents who had to bury their child, even if their child was a full grown adult who chose a dangerous profession.

The very idea of burying a child grates against our sense of cosmic order.  It is an assault upon the space-time continuum, a thing that tests our faith even if we never had any.  If you have ever seen the opening scene of "Patton", when George C. Scott is speaking about the thought of America ever losing a war....."The very idea is HATEFUL to us"...... 

But Captain Khan did not die in a car crash.  He did not die of a disease.  He did not die defending his home or his family from a predator.  Captain Khan died in a war.  He died thousands of miles from his country in a country whose government or people had never attacked the United States.  He was killed by a suicide bomber, who was, from a certain point of view, a stone aged moral abortion who would have served mankind better by hanging himself from an olive tree but, from another point of view, was simply doing what most honorable men would do, which was resisting an alien invasion of their home.

That suicide bomber had a mother.  And her son is just as dead as Captain Khan.  There is an uncomfortable commonality between the motives of Captain Khan and his nameless killer, even if we spend prodigious amounts of mental and rhetorical energy trying to deny this fact.  Most Americans would recoil at the idea that Khan and his killer were morally equal, but we lose our humanity if we deny that the grief of their mothers is.

Captain Khan was not sent to Iraq to hand out bottled water and insulin.  He was sent there to kill human beings and to destroy physical property.  That's what the military does.  That's what every military has done since the dawn of civilization.  The military is a tool.  And sometimes a hammer is called for.  But let's not smash someone in the head with a hammer and then feign shock and offense when they resist, as if we were merely handing out library cards and water filters.

The only operative question in the case of Captain Khan is "what did he die for"?  To all the adherents of The Cult I'm writing of here, the answer to the above question is "for us" or "for our freedom".  No. No!

This is a lie.  It is a vicious, disgusting, dangerous lie.  Captain Khan's death, and his very presence in Iraq in 2004 did precisely nothing to preserve or enhance my freedom.  In fact, the enterprise which he represented categorically threatened and degraded my freedom.

The fact that American parents lose children in wars, and that American children lose parents in wars, and that all of our children and grandchildren will be paying the bills for these wars for untold decades, is tragic enough. 

American soldiers do not protect our freedoms; we protect them ourselves by exercising those freedoms without fear. 

Saddam Hussein was not going to infringe upon my freedom of association.  But since the invasion of Iraq, my own government has seen fit to seize every bit of digital correspondence sent or received by American citizens.

We (hopefully) teach our children that killing is wrong.  But we (not all of us) simultaneously teach those very children that the people who we train to kill, and pay to train to kill, and ship all around the world to kill, are inherently the best among us, our heroes, our saviors, our protectors.  This is The Cult. 

Captain Khan died 12 years ago.  Since then, the region which he was sent to pacify has descended into a barbarism which takes expert historians to find precedent for.  Captain Khan did not die for me.  If he killed people in Iraq  before his death, he did not kill for me.  He died not for me, but for The Cult.