Quote:Why mistranslation, migration, and manipulation have a bad taste

Radio Far Side, Sep 24, 2025



One of my many guilty pleasures is crunchy peanut butter and Smucker’s Concord Grape jelly on crustless white bread. It’s one of my comfort foods from earliest childhood.

The problem is that the Indonesian language does not distinguish between jelly, jam and preserves. A single term—selai buah, which essentially means “fruit goo”—is used for all three condiments, so 90% of the times I order grape jelly, I get jam or preserves, as happened today.

This isn’t apropos of anything in particular, but I’ll try to work it into today’s rant so it doesn’t come off as completely gratuitous.

So, I haven’t watched the Charlie Kirk memorial, nor have I watched Trump’s UN rant, but I’ve certainly heard plenty of commentary and seen the highlight clips. By the way, Erica did not flash the “Satan symbol”. That hand gesture is American sign language for “I love you.” As with selai buah, it’s all in the translation (told you I’d tie it in).


Anyway, Trump got me to thinking—which is a dangerous thing. I was thinking that I can’t think of any other time in history when the leaders of so many countries were deliberately trying to destroy the countries they “lead” and the cultures they come from.

Now I can think of many examples where leaders tried to forcefully spread their cultures (see colonialism), and many who kicked off bloody internal conflicts to protect and defend their cultures from internal threats (see civil wars), but no evidence of a single—much less many—leader trying to purposely destroy their nation and culture, especially against the will of the home folks.

The issue of unfettered mass migration of folks who have no intention of integrating is beyond my ken. I have lived and worked in six countries, and in every case I’ve gone out of my way to learn the customs, traditions, history, and languages of my hosts. I’ve gone so far as to develop regional accents, according to native speakers.


On top of that, I’ve spent many hours and significant amounts of money maintaining a legal immigration status, abiding by the laws and regulations of my host country. Here in Indonesia, they are sticklers for legal status, and if you violate the laws, they will deport you at your own expense, or leave you to rot in jail.

I have exactly zero sympathy for folks being rounded up and deported from the US. Heck, I go to great expense and hassle to maintain Mrs. FarSide’s US visa, even though we haven’t been back since 2016. She gets five yeas of unlimited entry/exit with every renewal.

That said, what could possibly drive nations to commit cultural and economic suicide by not enforcing long-established immigration laws? What benefit could these countries possibly derive from such permissive behavior, especially against the clear wishes of their citizens? Even more puzzling is what could make all those natives knuckle under and accept the invasions, to the point of bankrupting their own social safety nets that they pay so dearly for?


One common factor in all this is that the nations who are suffering the most from the insanity have all surrendered their right to self-defense. In recent decades, Canada, Britain and Australia have all given up gun ownership, and they are now swamped with invaders. Europe has long been a gun-free zone, and naturally the invaders are now the only ones with guns.

The worst parts of the US are the ones with the strictest “gun control” laws, while Texas and Florida are maintaining a tense balance because the citizenry are well armed and like target practice.

There is nothing more precious than one’s native culture. Some of my most enjoyable moments are spending time with the North Americans, and especially the Texans I know here. We can communicate on a level far more profound than most of my interactions with locals, because we have a broad and deep shared experiences and beliefs that allow us to bypass a lot of assumptions and agree on many foundational issues.

For instance, sharing a pile of BBQed brisket and a link of jalapeño and cheddar sausage smothered in jalapeño honey sauce with a hank of crusty bread and a side of potato salad with a fellow Texan is a rare and precious treat. We share an entire vocabulary that even the most skilled foreign speakers don’t understand. We know and assume certain knowledge that a non-native would never grasp.

It’s like the old joke: a man walks into a bar, and while he sits there, people were yelling out numbers and the whole place would erupt in laughter. He askes the man sitting next to him, “What’s going on? People yell out numbers and everyone laughs.”

“Ah,” replied the man, “We have all been hanging out together for so long we know all the jokes, so we assigned the jokes a number so we don’t have to repeat the entire thing.”

“Interesting,” said the stranger, who sat and thought about this for a while. Eventually, he got up the nerve to yell out, “16!” No one laughed.

“What did I do wrong,” he asked his neighbor.

“You’re really lousy at telling jokes,” said the man.

What possible benefit could “leaders” have for selling out their countries? I have a guess.

I am of the opinion that these “leaders” and the copious NGOs and “societies” that allow unmitigated invasions are getting kick-backs from all the money they dole out to the invaders. All of the “soft” money gets laundered through various organizations as “aid” for various causes, such as feeding and housing the invaders.

Then large amounts come back as “campaign donations” or just plain old transfers—say in cryptocurrencies that don’t go through banks. The remaining funds are used by the likes of Soros, Gates, and Schwab to fund sterilization and eugenics programs, or human experimentation on “marginal” populations.

In addition, various programs are funded and operated to destroy social and cultural cohesion, disrupt traditional families, and divide and conquer large populations. The reason for these efforts would be to wipe out the concept of nation-states and destroy the notion of cultural solidarity in order to institute a new global system of governance that would never work with traditional nationalistic ideas.

In AD 711, a force of mostly Berber Muslims under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from North Africa into the Iberian Peninsula. They defeated the Visigothic king Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete (711). Within a few years, most of what is now Spain and Portugal was under Muslim control, becoming al-Andalus. Eventually, parts of France, Ireland, England, Italy, and the Balkans were taken over, with the latter eventually becoming the Ottoman Empire.

The Muslim occupation of Europe lasted 781 years, until Ferdinand and Isabella (of Columbus fame) broke the Saracens’ hold and Reconquista began.

Call me crazy, but it sure looks like “someone” is trying to recreate that era, and European “leaders” are only too happy to play along, draining the treasuries into their pockets as they go. Maybe they think they’ll live out their days in tropical villas in Central and South America, while their former nations evaporate.

Anyway, I just finished a peanut butter and grape jam sandwich. It’s not perfect, but it will have to do, since my adopted culture has no history of preserving anything at all, much less fruit. With a year-round growing season and fruit dripping off the trees. The culture here—including the language—never had to deal with concepts like pickling, canning and preserving, because fresh was available anytime and anywhere you wanted it.

In fact, the only thing Indonesians have ever had to store was rice, which depended on the monsoon season. Cheese was introduced by Europeans, and Indonesians eat very little of it. Things like pressure cookers and pickling jars are as rare as hurricanes on the Moon. All the native dishes are designed to be eaten with the hands out of cone-shaped hats that serve multiple purposes as shade, water glasses and food bowls.

It’s a very strange culture (to me) because Indonesians have little or no concept of planning and maintenance, since they’ve never had to survive deep winters.

Vive la difference!

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Our film du jour is Children of Men (2006), loosely based on the novel by one of my favorite mystery writers P. D. James. A dark dystopian pscho-thriller, the plot revolves around mass infertility and authoritarian governments. Sounds a lot like today’s headlines. Some very good performances, and Alfonso Cuarón’s direction is spot on.