Serving All Your Doom & Gloom Needs

On his podcast Eric Metaxas, the author of a praised Bonhoeffer biography, constantly mirrors the sort of perpetual surprise that I do regarding the fall of equal protection under the law and the collapse of the media as watchdog for that.  It's the sort of thing that gobsmacks and of course we patriots run the risk of being cranks for exhibiting one-track minds on the subject. 

I was reading a novel about horse-racing and came across this paragraph (from "Lords of Misrule", an apt title for our current administration). "Medicine Ed" is a horse trainer of long experience who is like Metaxas and me:

Seem like every day since time he been thinking what a shame and pity it is how the world is coming down, how the pride of work has disappeared, until they just laugh at him, the boys that come on the racetrack now—how the horses is misused and abused, started out racing too young before they bones is hard, not rested proper and dosed with all kind of shots and pills, and so consequently don’t last—how these five-and-dime horsetrainers and they ten-cent owners anymore be tighter than the bark on a beech tree, when it come to anything but rush rush rush them horses back to the track and collect a bet. It ain’t no real sportsmen round here no more, if it ever was, or either sportswomen.

Seem like since time, that was the most fun old Medicine Ed been having, studying on it every day, every day, how this good thing has come down and this other thing that once was fine, has went to pieces on him.  Until he be sick and tired of his own self. 

I can relate. There ain't no real statesmen around, if there ever was, or stateswomen. 

A bishop on Twitter recently posted the daily Mass reading which emphasized treating the resident alien well.  Which always feels disingenuous given that immigrants at least have the heft and might of a political party (Democrats) and the media behind them. Their travails are certainly real but they are hardly marginalized in our society. In fact, they are given the privilege of breaking laws without real consequence. 

So I cheekily responded: “Let us not forget the truly marginalized, those without political party or institution backing them, those Jan 6rs imprisoned for trespassing and errant political thought.” 


You can say the Jan 6rs have it coming and my justice side well understands that. The problem with justice and mercy is I don't understand them as being compatible, but God somehow can. So I leave it to him. But I do understand the difference between someone paying for their "crimes" in spades, i.e the Jan 6rs - and those who enjoy their FBI pension despite treasonous acts that should land them in prison. 

The last five years have opened my eyes to the first time to injustice. I’m sure it existed before, say, 2015, but I was blind to it!  I thought the last injustice - prejudice against blacks primarily - was repudiated with the election of an African-American president.  Just as capitalism strutted and felt the conqueror after the Soviet Union fell, similarly I thought American injustice had fallen after 2008.  Time to move on! Ha, but history never ends nor does human nature... The socialists and the BLMs came back with a vengeance. 

It’s probably a healthy thing to understand, at last, what the Old Testament prophets were so exercised about. The American system seemed to have had an impervious nature to it, designed so expertly by the Founders, and yet we now plainly see that just like every banana republic in history the law is not blind and that it favors those with the regime’s political views. Liberals can be found guilty of contempt of Congress or lying to the FBI and face no repercussions while Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn are tried and convicted.  Antifa can get away with things a Jan 6 trespasser cannot. 

The Founders never envisioned or would've sanctioned a fourth branch of government, that of the administrative state, and so to some extent the system they designed is really not what is currently practiced. The hermeneutic of discontinuity applies. As Erik Prince, Navy Seal officer and founder of Blackwater said: “The real constitutional crisis is we have four branches of government…the fourth is that permanent state bureaucracy that is unaccountable  and they start to abuse those tools for the benefit of one political party.”

Part of my affection for the Jan 6rs is many of them had such an idealistic view of their country, not realizing they were walking into a trap laid for them. God love them, they really thought the Capitol was “the People’s House”.  One has been charged up to her neck despite trying to physically restrain an agitator (probably FBI plant) from breaking a window (see this).  

It's an ever source of surprise to learn that real history - and evil - occurs even in your own time. 

Romulus & Remus, Peter & Paul

Rome is known as the city of Peter and Paul; their names are forever linked (sharing a feast day) and their martyrdom (birth into Heaven) birthed the locus of the Catholic Church on earth. 

Meanwhile the myth of the founding of Rome was centered around two abandoned twins named Romulus and Remus who were nursed by a kindly she-wolf. 

Interesting parallel. Even in the Latin the names are alliterations: “Romulus and Remus” and “Peter and Paul”. 

The birth of spiritual Rome was due to two “brothers” in Christ, adopted by God, who because they died there gave life to Rome as the spiritual center of Christendom. 

The birth of pagan Rome was attributed to two brothers adopted by a wolf who because they survived there gave life to the earthly city of Rome. 

The Sound-Driven Words "Feckless" and "Niggardly"

I wonder if the popularity of two words in the lexicon are suffering/benefiting from our culture's failure to make distinctions combined with a move back to a pre-literate, oral society primarily driven by sounds (i.e. podcasts and YouTube videos). 

The two words are "feckless" and "niggardly".  In an oral culture words are more often said than written but both of these words have sounds that are associated with either a forbidden-but-enticing word (feckless) or a forbidden-but-ugly word (niggardly). 

The first syllable of "feckless" sounds like f-bomb and so seems like a particularly ribald way to criticize a wayward politician.  For those unclear on its meaning, the ambiguity only serves its cause. Add in "less" and you have a euphoniously derogatory word -- and indeed it's popularity is up from the dead (at least it was s a nearly dead word when I was young): 

Similarly, the first two syllables in "niggardly" sound like the infamous "n-word" and so has fallen into disfavor because of a failure to make distinctions and, presumably, whites terrified of being tagged as a racist. It is guilty by association as it were. The "n" word only fell into disfavor in the late 1960s so it's understandable that's when usage of niggardly dropped dramatically. 

 

Ray Epps, International Man of Mystery

So I see the lovely and talented New York Times has added Ray Epps to its Foxe's Book of Martyrs (joining Eric Coomer and Liz Cheney). Amusing and revealing, I suppose. As Matt Taibbi (no fan of Trump) wrote: “With censorship soaring and real reporting all but taboo, the major dailies have just one important function left: being a political signaling system.” 

Kremlinology has come to America!

Kash Patel,  chief of staff to the Sec of Defense under Trump commented that the NYT love Epps "the way they loved Christopher Steele" and that any investigation will likely show Epps is the Steele of 1/6.

Naturally Darren Beattie likewise threw the B.S. flag. (The powers that be really think Trump voters are stupid, or it's simply a way to steer elite opinion properly on Epps.)

Humorous Babylon Bee forum writers jumped on it: "Ray Epps Says He Feels Like He’s Been In Solitary Confinement For The Last 18 Months In The Comfort Of His Ranch With His Loved Ones, Able To Travel Freely."

And: "Biden Awards Ray Epps Purple Heart For Jan 6 Heroics"

And: "Jeffrey Epstein, Ray Epps, And Los Vegas Shooter Invite Uvalde Police Chief To Join Unsolved Mysteries Club"

The Deep State is marvelously entertaining these days such that it's pretty hard to get my novel reading in. These guys combine humor and malevolence and incomprehensibility in a way that's hard to look away from. 

No doubt part of my discomfiture is that we conservatives have traditionally had an inflated image of FBI and authority in general and seeing the FBI picking winners and losers - almost at random - is gobsmacking. According to an FBI confidant who infiltrated the Proud Boys, the much denigrated group actually helped de-escalate 1/6 and for their trouble have proven that no good deed goes unpunished. They were there, according to the source, to prevent Antifa from attacking MAGA people but alas the FBI was the bigger threat.  Who could know?  

Richard Hannian on Twitter gets our post-reason environment: 

Elites need to look at themselves in the mirror. The picture of Lia Thomas on the podium should be your everlasting shame. You opened the door to [Trump]. But they think they’re sane.

You couldn’t write a screenplay with anyone more absurd than modern liberals, and you couldn’t dream up a more perfect foil for them than Trump. I feel lucky to be alive at this current moment, and so should you.

Trump has helped me better enjoy movies and TV shows. I used to say some events were too absurd to be believable. But then Trump comes along and everything about his persona and role in American politics is even stranger. He’s expanded our understanding of what is possible.

Everything is faintly ridiculous or completely ridiculous all the time. Like John Bolton bragging about how he arranged coups in foreign countries, the idea being apparently if they aren't going to be a democracy on their own then, hell, we'll force democracy on them!

And Ukraine, amid what was supposed to be an existential crisis (war with Russia), is "considering legislation to legalize same-sex marriage" according to an BBC headline.

It's a perfect storm of such folly such that it can't be an accident, and that a wise Providence is setting us up for a wake-up call. It's only when multiple institutions fail spectacularly that we look upward. 

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Bill Clinton's Georgetown intellectual mentor, Carroll Quigley, predicted decades ago some of our current trouble: "Aristotelian logic says, 'night is not day and day is not night.' The semanticists answer, 'what is twilight?' and we are expected to abandon Aristotelian logic. If Aristotelian logic says, 'male is not female and vice-versa,' the semanticists say, 'what about homosexuals?' and we are expected to give up Aristotelian logic." ... 

So I got to wondering if the spectacularly successful novel "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides a decade o two ago helped ignite the current trans cult.  The protagonist was a hermaphrodite and so the identity of male versus female for all people was thus, somehow, held in question...

Guatemalan Bishop Gerardi and the Jan 6 Problem

Guatemalan Bishop Juan Gerardi was once involved in investigating war crimes and had this to say: 

“Unless we know the truth the wounds of the past will stay open and cannot be healed…..Truth is the primary word, and is what will break this cycle of violence and death and open up the future of hope and light for all.”

He was assassinated for his troubles, alas, but his statement is nevertheless true.  Trump voters will never "move on" until the truth is revealed. 

Speaker McCarthy says everything is ready for the investigation to start after the GOP wins the House but no one believes he will. Kash Patel put on social media that he his phone hasn't rung despite exposing the largest conspiracy in modern gov’t history and having worked for Trump on defense dep’t.

A list of unanswered questions from the last real reporter, Julie Kelly: 

On the eve of the 18-month anniversary of the so-called "insurrection," let's review what we still do not know:

--Identity of pipe bomber or any related investigation

--Role of FBI including informants and undercover agents embedded in the crowd and in "militia" groups

--Who ordered Capitol and DC Metro police to attack crowd outside with explosives incl flashbangs and other weapons such as rubber bullets, chemical spray, and pepper balls?

--Who gave the order to allow protesters into the building?

--Where's the 14k hours of surveillance video?

--Why did sergeant-at-arms for Pelosi and McConnell refuse pleas for extra help on Jan 6, delaying deployment of guardsmen until after 5pm?

--Why did DC Mayor Bowser refuse offer for thousands of guardsmen?

--Where is public testimony of cops involved in lethal, excessive force?

--Where are Pelosi's records re Jan 6?

--And Muriel Bowser's?

--And Capitol Police's?

--And FBIs?

Just like Russiagate and "quid pro quo" impeachment, J6 smoke is a coverup for the regime's underlying fire. Release the tapes.

The death of journalism has necessarily resulted in a death of truth. The lies we’ve been told have been staggering, starting with “covid as a Chinese lab leak is a conspiracy theory” to “Trump colluded with Russia to become president” to “the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation” to the latest with respect to Jan 6th. 

One Line Tuesday

Today, in the style of the Babylon Bee headline, here are a few: 

Hunter Biden Talks Presidential Teleprompter Operator To Include Reference to a “Seymour Buttz”

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Biden Reads From Teleprompter: “Wait For Applause” (Long Pause Ensues)

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The Publicity around "the Big Guy” Deal With Chinese Only Upset Biden Because He Looks Like Bad Negotiator For Only Getting 10%

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Rogue Biden Teleprompter Writer Adds:  “And I’d Like To Recognize Kamala Along With Oliver Klozoff”

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OpEd: Other Than Incompetent Foreign & Domestic Policy, Poor Communication Skills, A Heart For Division, And A History Of Corruption - Biden Is A Good President!

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OpEd: Try To Find Someone Who Loves You Like The FBI Loves Ray Epps

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Study Shows That 9 Of 10 Scientific Studies Are Bogus

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Man Of Irish-German Heritage Has Clean And Well Ordered Liquor Cabinet

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Study Finds Democracy Not Transferable to Iraq or U.S. Blue States

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FBI Denies Being Fourth Branch Of Government Despite Evidence To Contrary

Archbishop Sheen's "Declaration of Dependence"

I’m reading Archbishop Sheen’s 1941 book “Declaration of Dependence” and it’s so good. He was a prophet! 

I’m only part of the way through but can see why it’s just gotten re-released. It really speaks to our time and the disillusionment so many Christians feel about our government. 

Some excerpts:

"Political irrationality is used as a contrivance for power. There was once a time when a man blushed at being caught in a contradiction, but the insane or irrational never do. The Communists who berated the Nazis embraced the Nazis without a blush.” 

That goes along with the “death of shame” that I’ve noticed in politics since Bill Clinton.   

Sheen also predicted the crazed unpredictability of modernity (and although he didn’t predict the insanity of  being able to “identify” as a different sex it certainly fits here): 

"Because the spirit of the world is irrational, modern international politics is to a great extent unpredictable. If ideas are only instruments for power, it follows that treaties will be repudiated when they no longer serve power. We can never, for that reason, predict what certain nations will do tomorrow, because they are governed not by reason, which is predictable, but by unrestrained power, which is unpredictable.”

He mentions how WW2 is a smashing our illusions, of how “even Americans had the false optimism" during the last war, WW1, which they thought was the ‘war to end all wars. 

Mom will like this because the Church and Archbishop Sheen are both pessimists about history! He writes on the eve of Pearl Harbor: 

"In a word, everything human, everything historical, has collapsed. Self-destruction stalks the earth...Now that we are disillusioned, where are we going to look for hope? The modern man despairs because his utopian progress has failed. Not so with the Church! Her insight is far more realistic. Never expecting man to be a god, the Church does not feel that all is lost because he turns out to be just a disillusioned man. The perfections for which man is made are free gifts of God to be received through repentance and faith and forgiveness. Man’s despair today is only his proud and impenitent pretension to be independent of God and His love. In this sense, the war is a revelation. It has brought man back to earth, to his misery, to his need of God.”

"The Church is not optimistic about history; it has always seen that the final product of history will be anti-Christ, the concentration of diabolical evil in human souls. And the only way out of that horror will be, not a new social order, but the Second Coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead. Every year in the Gospel of the Mass the Church reminds her children that there will be no perfect state in the world, for while good men sow wheat, evil men sow cockle; and both will be permitted to grow together until the harvest.” 

Jan 6 SWAG

Pitched a new Babylon Bee headline:  “FBI Online Gift Shop Now Offering Jan 6 Themed SWAG Including 'This Insurrection Sponsored By The FBI' T-Shirt". 

The best (only?) revenge of the powerless is mockery, in the great Irish tradition under centuries of British rule. 

I recall back in the '90s how Islamic terrorism seemed like just something you had to put up with, sort of a cost of living in a fallen world. Then 9/11 happened and it felt different, a change of perspective given the enormousness of that atrocity. 

Similarly, with the FBI, it seemed like you had to put up with the excesses with J. Edgar Hoover and later Ruby Ridge and Waco. Just a cost of doing business. But the 9/11 event for them was the attempt to take Trump out via the Russian hoax followed by the Jan. 6th Fed production number (with the Whitman prequel). 

They obviously need to be disbanded since they are more a force for evil than good at this point. But unlike bin Laden, the FBI has powerful friends in Congress and media.  I think all or most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis but Saudi Arabia was not punished for 9/11 due to having patronage in D.C., so we took it out on Iraq and Afghanistan. Similarly, the FBI has great patronage in D.C. so it looks like the plan is to take it out on Trump and the Jan 6 trespassers.

In Praise of Rosaries, Scapulars and Indulgences

It occurred to me how consoling and healing it was reading “The Secret of the Rosary” back in grade school. The post-Vatican II response to the promises around the Rosary, as well as around the wearing of the scapular, were intended to discourage us and for us to see it as bordering on superstition. I was influenced in that direction certainly. Even the gospel’s miracle stories were de-emphasized, such as the Feeding of the Five Thousand reduced to a sermon on sharing. 


But the promises of the Rosary and scapular and indulgences seem a necessary antidote to the Pelagianism of our age. Nothing quite expresses the power of grace and God’s love like pondering the promises of those devotions and by implication the feebleness of man’s works compared to God’s. Instead, we tend to think man’s works and thoughts are determinative and prayer an add-on like the A-1 sauce on a steak. The pragmatism of our age whispers that only the material matters.  Or, if religiously bent, that only one's actions matter.  But the devotions mentioned above give unexpected power to the weak and confer benefits non-material. 

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 Justice Clarence Thomas in new book "Created Equal":

“I went off to school and I took all sorts of philosophy and took history, took theology. You read, you thought about things. Later in life, I was thinking back on my life, and I thought after all of that, the person who had the greatest influence and probably the most accurate was Sister Mary Dolorosa in the second grade in 1955 as we were beginning the Baltimore Catechism. She would say, “Why did God create us?” And the answer was pretty uniform—a whole group of second graders answered in unison: “God created us to know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him in the next.” So that’s pretty simple. After all the existentialism, having studied metaphysics, nihilists, you’ve been through all these, and you come back to Sister Mary Dolorosa and the second grade in September 1955. It seemed to me in a lot of ways that life was a circle that you started in one place, went away, and came back.”

Conservatism: A Rediscovery

Reading the book “Conservatism: A Rediscovery” and it’s pretty enlightening. Edmund Burke is not the gradualist he gets the reputation for.  Hazony makes the case that it's not the documents or government structure that allows us to thrive, it’s the culture and the people. I think there's a temptation to want to believe there's a "system" (especially for this computer programmer) when, of course, humans are complex, irreducible, and dependent on God. 

We found out, the hard way, in 2004 that democracy and the rule of law were not easily transplantable in the infertile cultural soil of Iraq. But what we learned of late is that democracy and the rule of law is also not salvageable in the infertile soil of modern America. It all makes sense now, what’s happening, when you see it with the eyes that our Constitution is only as good as the people who enforce it (or don’t enforce it). The edifice or false idol is the Constitution; what made us great is a nationalism (common language, law, religion) and the Bible. The sacred founding documents were a kind of “fiat currency”, i.e. only as good as the faith the people had in them and that faith was ultimately dependent on faith in the culture and traditions and religion of Anglo-Americanism. 

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Delivered a shot at company leadership yesterday. Human Resources put out a non-sequitur email saying they are evaluating potential changes to our benefits in response to the recent Dobbs Supreme Court decision. I responded to the HR person and cc’d the CEO saying that I hope we provide additional benefits to those choosing to keep their unborn child rather than encourage or facilitate the opposite. No response obviously. 

It’s kind of a crazy world when a decision to turn the abortion decision back to the states where it belonged is greeted with hysteria. But our CEO understands his audience - he’s always been interested in millennial generation and he’s big on insights about them - and one of the insights is the famous “snowflake” metaphor in which they are fragile flowers easily upset by political events like Trump winning the presidency or now Dobbs. So he has to massage them with either actual benefit changes or instilling this temporarily hope for them that the company will “push back against that evil Supreme Court”.