The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton

Trump is the most anti-war president we've had in at least five decades and sees through the now absurd notion of NATO.  Anti-war folks tend to get killed or shot at -see Jesus, Pope John Paul II, Robert F Kennedy, MLK, Trump...

We can probably add to the list Thomas Merton, whose death is convincingly shown as a homicide in a book whose title shares this post's title. 

In 1962 one of Merton's most popular books came out: "New Seeds of Contemplation". Perhaps there was a sense that this monk had some "juice", some influence, and he was writing against the Vietnam War. In those days he crossed the rubicon into the political and prophetically wrote, "[I'm] walking into a known and definite battle. May God protect me in it." He later said that non-violence is "not a tactic that allows you not to be dirtied with blood." Also prophetic, as he himself was dirtied with blood and likely killed for his anti-war views. 

From the book:

In The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton we identify four men who have been most instrumental in imprinting upon the public mind the wholly unsupported notion that Merton died from accidental electrocution...Merton, with his trenchant observations about the propagandistic nature of the American press—observations that were far ahead of his time—would not have been at all surprised to learn that two of those men were professional journalists.

Arriving in Thailand, Thomas Merton landed, in effect, in the middle of the Indochina War that he opposed. The Thai government was closely allied with the United States in pursuing the war [including allowing US military bases]. Thais were on the CIA payroll and collaborating with the agency that ran the Phoenix Program training camps in Thailand...

Before any investigation, Dr. Nakvachara concluded that “cardiac failure” had caused “accidental falling into the fan.” When investigators know the result of an “investigation” before it even begins, there is a better word for it. That is “cover-up.”

There was every reason to suspect criminal causes. Even without de Grunne’s extremely suspicious behavior, Merton’s violent unexpected death per se is reason enough to suspect homicide. The defective electric cord installed in the fan appeared to be evidence of a crime. The unnatural position of Merton’s body prompted the first witnesses not to touch anything and to take photographs to preserve the evidence of foul play. The conflicting statements of witnesses, as well as one very nervous witness whose actions and statements were peculiar, to say the least, amounted to compelling evidence that something was badly wrong.

What could be more ridiculous after all, than the notion that a person should have a fatal heart attack and then fall into a fan that happens to be short-circuited?

It was such a joke, in fact, that virtually everyone reporting on Merton’s death in the English language has chosen either to misconstrue it, to ignore its contents, or, what is most common, to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

Remembering Our J6 Patriots

In the Woody Allen comedy “Bananas”, Howard Cosell narrates a live assassination attempt in a South American country. Everyone knew about the assassination ahead of time except for the president. Reminds me of how CNN showed up for Trump’s Butler rally joined by a Pulitzer Prize winning AP photographer.  Life imitating fiction.

I listened to "A Coffee and a Mike" podcast and it occurs to me to wonder about when using the DoJ and FBI as a political weapon became a thing. Martha Stewart might be ground zero, serving time in prison for a nothing burger (not for insider trading but for the FBI categorizes her statements to them as deceptive). That was 2002. 

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was on the docket in 2008.  Obama managed to get him indicted and he ended up serving 7 years for a nothing burger. James Comey was a part of this, just as he did later with Martha Stewart, Trump, and Hillary. 

This scary visage of the federal government was ignored by most, including me. For one thing, I wasn’t a Stewart or Blagojevich fan. 

The famous line from a German during Hitler’s reign: 

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

So for me it was: 

“First they came for Martha Stewart, but I wasn’t a homemaker…then they came for Rod Blagojevich but I wasn’t a Democrat….Then they came for Trump and his supporters and there was no one left to speak for us.” 

When they came after Trump supporters it hit too close to home. By 2021 I was a fervent Trump fan, mostly in antipathy to the response to him, but had I been retired I could've seen myself there in Washington on that fateful day. I wanted to be there, and I envied the refrigerator repairman who came the next week mentioning he had been in D.C. to support Trump.

It would’ve been absurdly easy for me to have walked on the “restricted” Capitol grounds, and thus suffered the consequences. I much doubt I would’ve entered the Capitol itself but I still would’ve been fined, sentenced, and perhaps done a month in jail just for being in a restricted zone (the grounds) as other Trump fans experienced. Certainly would’ve had a “permanent record” with the government and perhaps later be subject to increased scrutiny on flights.

It would have seemed harmless to me to walk around the Capitol since the barricades and wire fencing had been (suspiciously) taken down by perpetrators well before the Trump speech was over (and those perpetrators were naturally never found despite video evidence). It turned out to be an elaborate entrapment trap (the dry run being the Whitman “kidnap” case in October).  The only thing as surprising as the government being a sworn enemy of her people was that her people saw through it enough to elect Trump in ’24. 

The government’s reaction to Trump tells you everything you need to know about the government. As people in the old Soviet Union used to say, “a government hiding something is one with something to hide.”

The Grad Who Worked for Kamala

I thought about how disappointed a high school alum who worked as the chief aide to Harris must be now that his ticket to the top has lost. Sorry, not sorry. But he’ll land another job, they always do. 

His career well illustrates the parasitical nature of the D.C. swamp: he’s held 9 jobs in 13 years and currently owns the verbose title of: “Special Assistant to the President & Senior Advisor for Congressional Affairs and Strategic Outreach”. 

There are so many “make work” jobs in Washington. Spigots of money froth like the cascades of the Trevi fountain. He spent time as “executive director of the New Democrat Coalition” and another as “political director at Serve America PAC”. Utterly useless. Reminds me of the tens of millions that Kamala’s “consultants” got paid for helping her lose the election. It’s no wonder the Maryland has the highest median income of any state in the country. 

I’m still puzzled by what it would take for Catholics to recognize, en masse, that the Democrat party is not a viable voting option given their stands on abortion, LGBT and trans issues, sex ed and porn in grade schools, deep state targeting of pro-lifers and traditionalist Catholics, etc... I suspect part of it is the Catholic culture at the higher levels understands that the Democrat party is the wing of our government that facilitates our cash cow, in the form of providing millions of dollars to the church in return for settling illegals. 

His own case is probably the same old song: a disaffected fallen-away Catholic who grew up during the disaffected '80s.  And gay. His tweets reveal passion about the wedge issue of the moment: abortion rights after Dobbs, patriotism towards Ukraine, gay rights (it's personal for him, so that might be his own legit belief).  He has a special love for Adam Kinzinger, one of only two people he follows on Bluesky. 

Regardless, my alumni magazine's glad-handing interview with an architect of destruction was eyeopening. Could be ignorance, could be the diocesan culture, could be that I’m just too partisan. 

I looked up a respected old catechism from about 100 years ago, in a less polarized time. It didn't give guidance on Catholic schools providing friendly interviews with Democrats (a much different party back then!)  but it had this to say more generally: 

“And since matters closely connected with the essentials of religion are often the subject of debate, it is the duty of Catholics to vote for such candidates as will act justly in dealing with ecclesiastical questions, and have the interests of the Church at heart. If a Catholic, by giving his vote to a candidate who is hostile to the Church, or by abstaining from voting, makes himself in part responsible for the success of that candidate, he has much to answer for.”

Grey Mirror Substack Excerpt

Interesting perspective and explains why American voters have so little power. From Grey Mirror Substack:

**

Power has a very nice trick. The trick is: it convinces you that it belongs to you. But actually, you belong to it.

What is power, in our country? Let’s call it—Washington. We don’t know what it is. Never assume you know what power is. Power never wants you to know what it is. Respect how good it is at this! But you can usually figure out where it lives.

Fundamentally, if “democracy” means anything, it means a regime in which elections are important. Here are two easy tests for whether a phenomenon is important.

First: if no one told you about it, would you know it existed?

Second: how much more important could it become?

If we only listened to the language of the 2024 election, we would be very convinced—by the arguments of both sides—that something important was happening. This is more true than ever in any recent American election. But suppose we magically had zero access to political news. Could we tell, through our daily lives, that something had happened? What about after 2016, when similarly incendiary rhetoric was used?

Trump and his followers borrow liberally from the language of “regime change.” Yet in fact, across history, when a regime actually changes, everyone’s life changes. If you lived in East Berlin in 1985 and 1995, you did not need a newspaper to know that the regime had changed.

An obvious way to define the importance of an election is to ask what percentage of power over the state it grants. This definition is nice because it is on the unit scale: from 0 to 1. 0 means: no power. 1 means: all the power.

How democratic is your regime? How much power, as a percentage of absolute power, can a realistic political movement capture by realistic political actions?

Who has the rest? Someone always has the rest. Power is conserved. Of course, the idea of American political science is the opposite: we believe in limited government—as if some paranormal power constrained the actions of an otherwise sovereign regime.

If we define law professors in black polyester robes as not part of the government, then we do have limited government. If we define them as spiritually incorruptible, like the Pope, except that his robe is white and theirs is black, then we do have limited government.

However, if we define the judiciary as part of the government then our regime is most definitely unlimited. I’m sorry if you’re learning this for the first time.

If winning gives you 1% of absolute power, the election is 1% of a democratic election. Since winning the 1932 election gave FDR way more than 1% of absolute power, we can’t even say that absolute democracy can be new to American history. Since all our political factions today are FDR respecters, none of them can argue that an absolute election, like that of 1932, is impossible, or illegitimate, or un-American, today. 

At a rational level that Washington would function just as well, if not better, without any politicians. Certainly, the last days of the Biden administration demonstrate that Washington does not need a President. And the President himself is only one small part of the White House. Washington needs a White House, but only to resolve interagency conflicts. But it could always just flip a coin.

In a sense, America does not have a President. If it had a President, it would have a chief executive of the executive branch. For that, it would have to have an executive branch. In an executive organization, every node in the organizational chart has a goal and a set of resources, including direct reports who can be given goals and resources. This is how a company works. This is how an army works. This is not how Washington works. Until you understand this about Washington, you are in Don Quixote world.

America has no executive branch. It has a procedural branch: the administrative or “deep” state. In this procedural branch, every employee in every agency, from top to bottom, has not goals, but duties. These duties are set by rules and procedures. These rules and procedures are set not by the executive branch, but the legislative branch.

But the legislative branch is elected, too! Yes—elected with a 98% incumbency rate (in the House), and 90% (in the Senate)—then subjected to a seniority-driven committee system mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. 

You might think of our legislative branch as a parliamentary body. Indeed, at its center is a classic parliamentary debating chamber. But if this chamber was literally filled in with concrete, if nothing like what happens there now ever happened anywhere again, the actual work of Capitol Hill could continue undisturbed. This is true, too, of every parliamentary body on Earth. There is no body of statesmen that decides on policy by open debate. There are no statesmen at all. There are politicians. If they debate, it is to pretend. Generally their function is to raise money so they can keep getting elected. And if they do keep getting elected, they rise in the bizarre Venetian seniority system.

Yet the Hill is an extremely functional sovereign bureaucracy. Legislation still works. It can still make serious changes to Washington. Politicians are mostly fundraisers and PR fronts, but Hill staffers do actual, serious governance work. It’s a career that can be a career in itself, but that can also point into the agencies, lobbying, or activism. But—

Not only do the legislators not proactively drive legislation, the staffers do not even generally write it. The role of the Hill, in “our democracy,” is to select, from the vast arena of ideas championed by some lobby or movement, whose language becomes law.

This is Capitol Hill. It actually runs the country. Hardly anyone in America has any real idea what does. It has a 13% approval rating. It is totally impervious to elections. “Our democracy,” folks.

So the Congress is a kind of breakwater against democracy. Behind this wave-barrier is—true sovereignty, which is inherently permanent. Inasmuch as Washington has a center, that center is the Hill. The Hill is the matador. The White House is the cape. Sorry, voters.

Legislation is how anything really serious gets done in DC. Legislation may even be a way to compel an agency to do something it doesn’t want to do. It will at least have to pretend. It may not do it quickly, cheaply, or effectively. It will have to do something.

Moreover, legislation has effectively unlimited power upside. Congress could very easily abolish the Department of Education. Or the Department of State. It won’t, though—not because America needs these agencies but because no such action is in the interest of any legislator, staffer, lobbyist or activist.

Congress dictates not just the budget, personnel and policy of the so-called “executive branch,” but even of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) within it. It’s a wonder the “leader of the free world” can even decide when to take a dump.

While no one in Washington particularly has an incentive to care about saving money—some people still care anyway. The worst thing about Washington is that it’s not just that some of them are good people. Most of them are good people. Washington is made of good people. That’s the most appalling thing about it.

Moreover, because the Republicans still do not see themselves as seeking power, only good government, any spending wins are dead-end wins. 

Ultimately, their mindset is still the mentality of Boxer in Animal Farm: “we must work harder.” I do not agree. Yes, it is always better to work harder. All things being equal. But all things are not equal—and here, I think, we must work smarter.

First of all, the true tiny micro-reality of this trench warfare, as compared to the huge fake macro-realities it is used to sell, is inherently a deception. Yes, you can get a little done. In some areas—like immigration—where large parts of the old government still want to do their old job and know how to do it—you can get a lot done. But…

Taking these micro-victories seriously has a serious cost. The harder a Republican administration fights, and the small more victories it wins, the better it sells the illusion that it is in control of the government—allowing the Congress, which is actually in control of the government, to evade any accountability. It’s actually a beautiful design in a sense.

Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: elections matter. Do they, though? Suppose you spend the next four years ignoring politics and living your life. Even if the biggest, best plans of the new administration come true—even if DOGE is all Enrico Dandolo and no J. Peter Grace, even if Elon can save two trillion dollars—

Will you notice that anything happened? If not, do elections matter?

Trying to save the country by making the government smaller, better, etc, is a lot like trying to go to space in a balloon. You can get really technical about it. With a big Mylar envelope and a lot of other space-tier gear, you can get to like 100,000 feet. The sky is pretty black up there! It’s almost like you’re in space.

In terms of your lungs, you’re in space. In terms of gravity, you’re on earth. What we normally mean by space is orbit. Orbit is not about altitude. Space is not a function of being really high up.

Making the government smaller is great. Making the government better is great. You do have a beautiful view of the stars.

But actually, space is a function of going really fast. Also, power is a function of being in charge of the government. Right now, they are in charge. 

The solution is obvious: capture Congress. Legally, of course. Make elections matter.

Congress is a pretty attractive startup target. First, it actually runs the country. It has all the power everyone thinks the President has. The Senate can even overrule the Supreme Court (by “packing” it).

What it chooses to do with that power is mostly just to delegate it to the agencies in vague language mixed with micromanagement—in the twisted, opaque, and not always pretty nexus of money and influence from which the Hill makes its “laws.” Congress is America’s seawall against democracy.

When enough of its incumbents win enough elections, our patriotic Congresspersons protect the whole noxious nexus of the “administrative state” from being swept away by one great wave of populist revulsion. This regime’s results are revolting indeed. Sadly, the people are almost as revolting. That’s why, in the 21st century, neither oligarchy nor democracy is a viable structure of government.

The solution is: teach Americans that the fundamental problem of their situation is not that their government is doing this, that or the other thing wrong—though it is—but just that they have almost no power over it.

Washington is not accountable to the voters, or to anyone else either. Even if it was accountable to the Jews—I can’t even tell you what a vast improvement that would be. At least someone would be in charge. Unfortunately, there are no “Elders of Zion.” It’s all up to you, dear American voter. If you can learn how to vote to take power, not to use power, you will win. Otherwise, you will lose.

Your problem is not inflation, abortion, immigration, or even fentanyl. Your problem is that you don’t have enough power. You’re not voting against fentanyl. You are voting for power. You are voting for the power to beat fentanyl—as well as inflation, abortion, immigration, and whatever else needs beating (but nothing that doesn’t).

The irony of our politics is that progressive ideas fit perfectly with progressive power. Every progressive idea makes progressives more powerful. If the real world changes so that the exact opposite idea is the powerful idea, progressives will change their mind.

On February 1, 2020, insouciance toward Covid was a progressive idea. On March 1, 2020, paranoia toward Covid was a progressive idea. What changed was not anything new we learned scientifically—but just that President Trump came out as insouciant. Suddenly, the only way to rebel was to be paranoid. So, instead of going to Chinatown to lick doorknobs, we all had to mask up. If Trump had gone the other way and talked about our precious bodily fluids, America and the world would have followed the Swedish model.

Progressives do not believe in the American system of government, only in power. Conservatives do not believe in power, only in the American system of government. Therefore, progressives always win and conservatives always lose. And as for the American system of government—how’s that working out for you, conservatives? Is it the best system of government in history, or the worst? Or, in some strange way, both?

Fascinating Look at the Powers That Be

Reading interesting book on the Greek debt crisis but a symbol of so much more (i.e. describing the deep state) called, “Adults in the Room” by Yanis Varoufakis. Some excerpts. 

On Larry Summers, a kingpin of the universe and Epstein isle visitor: 

"[Summers] said ‘There are two kinds of politicians: insiders and outsiders. The outsiders prioritize their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price of their freedom is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions. The insiders, for their part, follow a sacrosanct rule: never turn against other insiders and never talk to outsiders about what insiders say or do. Their reward? Access to inside information and a chance, though no guarantee, of influencing powerful people and outcomes.’"

Explains the establishment hatred of Trump: he says what he wants (outsider) but he's also an insider (as only the president can be). 

He goes on to explain how black box non-transparency is knit less of conspiracy than this: 

When a large-scale crisis hits, it is tempting to attribute it to a conspiracy between the powerful...If our sharply diminished circumstances can be blamed on a conspiracy, then it is one whose members do not even know that they are part of it. That which feels to many like a conspiracy of the powerful is simply the emergent property of any network of super black boxes.

The keys to such power networks are exclusion and opacity.

**

Many decent Greek bank employees were worried sick by what they were observing and doing. But when they got their hands on evidence or information foreshadowing terrible developments, they faced Summers’s dilemma: leak it to outsiders and become irrelevant; keep it to themselves and become complicit; or embrace their power by exchanging it for other information held by someone else in the know, resulting in an impromptu two-person alliance that turbocharges both individuals’ power within the broader network of insiders. As further sensitive information is exchanged, this two-person alliance forges links with other such alliances. The result is a network of power within other pre-existing networks, involving participants who conspire de facto without being conscious conspirators.

Whenever a journalist refuses to slant their story in the politician’s favour, they risk losing a valuable source and being excluded from that network. This is how networks of power control the flow of information: through co-opting outsiders and excluding those who refuse to play ball. They evolve organically and are guided by a supra-intentional drive that no individual can control...

Once caught in this web of power it takes an heroic disposition to turn whistle-blower, especially when one cannot hear oneself think amid the cacophony of so much money-making. And those few who do break ranks end up like shooting stars, quickly forgotten by a distracted world.

He describes how to fight it, first saying to recognize we may be unwitting members of the network: 

Secondly, and this is the genius of Wikileaks, if we can get inside the network, like Theseus entering the labyrinth, and disrupt the information flow; if we can put the fear of uncontrollable information leaking in the mind of as many of its members as possible, then the unaccountable, malfunctioning networks of power will collapse under their own weight and irrelevance. Thirdly, by resisting any tendency to substitute old closed networks with new ones.

The backlash, as we've seen with Trump, is fierce and explains why the DoJ/FBI doubled-down rather than backed down when their lies were exposed:                

Insiders, I had written in 2012, would react aggressively to anyone who dared open up their super black box to the outsiders’ gaze: ‘None of this will be easy. The networks will respond violently, as they are already doing. They will turn more authoritarian, more closed, more fragmented. They will become increasingly preoccupied with their own “security” and monopoly of information, less trusting of common people.’

On the crisis in 2015:

...the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the Greek government organized the world’s greatest bankruptcy cover-up. How do you cover up a bankruptcy? By throwing good money after bad. And who financed this cover-up? Common people, ‘outsiders’ from all over the globe.

I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People – powerful people – listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: they don’t criticize other insiders. I had been warned.

Election Day/Month/Year

Election Day! The day (or week or month) we find out whether we’ll continue to be led by Obama and thugs or if we get a 4-year sabbatical. 

I think it says a lot when we think about who Obama has chosen or favored. Everyone he does is braindead-stupid, which suggests they would need to lean on him for his power and influence. First there was Biden as the VP pick back in ’08. In ’20 he favored Kamala in the primaries. Then this year he wanted Walz to be picked as VP over a guy who actually has an IQ above 100 (Shapiro). It can’t be accidental that he picks figureheads, “empty suits”. 

Political analyst Mark Halperin is center-left but even he can see it. Halperin is furious at his media for covering up Biden’s senility and letting Kamala be the candidate, saying it was very counterproductive. 

**

We went to the polls after, we thought, the pre-work crowds but around 9:30 to 10am it was jam packed. Never seen our voting station that crowded. Usually we’re out in 2-5 minutes and this time it took over 30. Not bad, of course, compared to places like Arizona. 

Meanwhile, this news is kind of surreal. ICE agents told they can’t wear uniforms or badges to vote today, per internal email obtained by journalist Ben Bergquam.  Seems they don’t want to intimidate all the illegal aliens voting.

I suspect Trump will win the American citizen vote but that might not be enough for him. 

It's almost sort of a catch-22: if the country was healthy enough to elect Trump this time then we wouldn't need him.  

For all our famed American “rugged individualism” we are incredibly interdependent and not just with regard to economics. Our freedoms depend on other people and certainly not on the Constitution or law.  If we’ve learned nothing over the past decade or two it’s that the government feels comfortable censoring our speech and limiting freedom via either third parties or direct edicts. We’re only an executive order or two away from tyranny so the Constitution can’t save us and neither can Trump --but he can at least delay the inevitable. 

**

The common thread of the past two decades can be summed up in one phrase: the weaponization of previously neutral instruments. Anything that can be weaponized/politicized has been, including the dollar, the judicial system, search engines, voting and medical systems. 

It’s hard to think of a single public-facing entity that hasn’t been weaponized. 

**

Quotable: 

"A time could come when, whether we want it or not, we'll have to live without churches, just as Christians lived without them in the first three centuries. May God preserve us from living to that time! But our task right now, for modern  Christians, is to think through and work out a form of life in the Church under any conditions, even when they take our churches away from us. After all, this could happen, sooner or later."

—Archbishop Theodosius (Snigirev) 

Is President Harris God's Plan?

One issue that seems neglected in the current Church, although it might be linked to inadequate catechesis on my part, is how Christians ought deal with government tyranny. 

In a way I realize I’m rather late to recognition of injustice. Millions of babies in the womb killed over the past decades asserts to the fact. Yet many people, like myself, have believed in the goodness of America and have been thrown off-kilter by recent events that threaten freedom of speech, religion, that undermine the rule of law and our justice system. Adam Smith said, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” but how much is too much ruin? How much corruption is acceptable? 

Particularly appalling is the injustice around non-violent offenders related to January 6th. This is such a visible affront that affects the lives of over 1,180 defendants and the lack of outrage is offensive, whether it comes from Democrats or comfortable country club Republicans. 

I sometimes wonder if virtue *has* to be the loser in the short and medium run, and winner only in the long run.  Evil has the benefit of no guardrails as well as the element of surprise. The Soviet Union thrived for some 70 years before dismantling.  Plus I read in an older catechism that bad leaders are sometimes sent by God to chastise a people — in which case it’s possible that President Harris is God’s plan! 

Equally confusing are such disparate Christian approaches to recent tyrannies. St Maximilian Kolbe’s view seems to have been the polar opposite of Alexander Solzenheitzen's, based on the latter's haunting quote: "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive…?…They would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened.” Similarly there’s the example of Bonhoeffer in Germany. 

I read an interesting book called “Why All People Suffer”. The relevant and potent chapter was about non-violence and how the victims must show the victimizers what they are doing in order to provoke their conscience. God allows suffering as a third way to get sinners to change (the first two being their own conscience and the punishment that results from bad actions). Jesus was the premiere example of this. 

I think of this especially in regard to the "tale of two J6rs". One fled the country and received asylum from Belarus (to Belarus's credit, given the J6r would not have received a fair trial here) and another, named John Strand, who stayed and fought the charges and ended up getting a longer sentence by not lying and taking a plea deal.  

As much as I cheer and cherish the little guy who evaded the police state by fleeing (a David v. Goliath story, although this David was not nearly as good as David and Goliath surely not as nasty as our Goliath), I realize that in Christian terms Strand chose the better path. He *showed* the victimizers what they were doing and pricked the consciences of those who still have one. The other fellow did nothing productive in terms of the spiritual realm.

Are these two J6rs are, in a microcosm, the difference between Solzenheitzen's approach and St Maximilian Kolbe's? Or is the idea that one solution fits all wrong in itself and that different souls will discern differently but no less accurately? 

A Shocking Stat

Today I think I heard the most shocking statistic I’ve heard in my lifetime.  At my own parish no less. In his homily Fr. J mentioned they had a diocesan meeting for all priests yesterday and that Bishop Fernandes says that the number of Catholics in the Columbus diocese since he became bishop in 2022 has gone up 60%. Sixty percent. 

It has nothing to do with conversions of course but to Biden’s mass immigration policy.  Per Fr J, the bishop is desperately seeking foreign priests to serve the new populations, and indeed he just got one from Cameroon to serve the burgeoning Cameroon population in the diocese. 

Back of envelope math while walking the dogs: that would mean the diocese went from around 250k Catholics to 400k, a 150k influx. If there are 3 million people total pop of diocese (including non-Catholics), that means about 6% migrants added (assuming 80% are Catholic). If Biden has let in 21 million in 2 years that is about 6% of US population so it tracks. Wow. 

So welcome to Mexico! We may end up making America a more nominally  “Catholic” (or Muslim) country at the expense of our freedoms, rule of law, and safeguards we traditionally enjoyed. (Although admittedly white Democrats in power and our “educators” are doing a good job on their own with that.)

Catholic author John Zmirak says not to count on these Catholics to stay. “Virtually all the sheep our shepherds steal from other flocks leave after a few years of vapid sermons by lavender priests. The only bright side? When Catholic immigrants leave the Church, they often become conservative evangelicals and vote pro-life finally.”

History may look back and say that the stolen 2020 election was far more impactful than 2024 election because of the Biden admin's goal of making the US less a country and more a global village. For good or ill we’re different now. 

**

Trump’s election in 2016 so enraged and emboldened the Deep State and Democrats that you have to wonder if MAGA was a net positive good, that maybe we shouldn’t have riled up the hornet’s nest. But who could possibly have known in 2016 that the true powers in this country are the CIA/DHS/DOJ, or that the Dems would react so strongly they would become lawless?

Hiring Trump in '16 was like giving the finger to somebody in traffic and that driver goes into road rage creates a 50-car pileup and closes the highway. You can blame the driver for the middle finger but really the other driver is at fault. 

**

The amazing thing about Obama is how quickly he understood where the power centers were in the US government (I assume due to mentoring by his endorser Ted Kennedy?). Obama was as unknown and new as Jimmy Carter but turned out to be the opposite of the naive Carter by understanding the rules: the president feeds the hand of the military and intel agencies and they let him stay in power.  Thus Obama pissed a lot of liberals off when he began the drone program and killing people in foreign lands.  I recall it being pretty controversial at the time but it was surely a crucial step in securing the neocons in the agencies. He later did the coup in Ukraine and got involved in Syria and Libya. Obama also was smart about putting his generals (like the infamous Gen Milley) in power. 

If the four most charismatic presidents since JFK are Reagan, Clinton, Obama, and Trump, then the problem is that Reagan was “handicapped” by his own virtue, Trump by his enemies, and Clinton and Obama were mostly free to do as they please, unaffected by conscience or guardrail.  

Which actually is the way it has to be. Virtue has to be the loser in the short run and winner only in the long run since vice has not only the element of surprise (like Pearl Harbor) but the lack of conscience needed to do wrong. You have to have the cross before the resurrection, so evil thrives before virtue triumphs. The Soviet Union thrived for some 70 years before dismantling. Similarly the Democrats will certainly thrive before they fall. 

The Long Wait for People to Wake Up

A big part of the reason for our country's decline is that good people are actively voting for decline. My brother-in-law comes to mind, but also a second cousin who was a longtime union rep and devout Catholic.  I looked for a glimmer of hope today to see if maybe he's been able to see that what used to be called Republican (endless wars, Wall Street worship, selling out to China, etc...) is now Democratic, and what used to be Democrat (pro-American worker, anti-open border, pro speech & civil liberties) is now Republican. There’s been a pretty dramatic shift, which is why folks like RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Naomi Wolf and others have jumped on the Trump train while folks like Dick and Liz Cheney and Bush intel officials have endorsed Kamala. 

It’s not until good people figure things out that times will change and maybe it’s donning on Don, who used to be a prolific donor to the Democrat party but slowed down during the Trump era. He was an enthusiastic donor from 2006-2012 but then his wallet went silent from 2016 till his last donation in 2020 to a local county hack.  But maybe something happened over the past four years to change his mind. We’ve certainly had a lot of “new data” in the form of the Biden administration. 

It’s been an agonizingly slow process, this realignment, this period of folks calculating “are things bad enough for me to at least look at MAGA?”. It feels like it’s a race to see if America can be destroyed before good people wake up in time to keep that from happening. Given the giant increase in illegals who have no culture around rule of law or civil liberties it seems that it’s already too late by all natural appearances. And the destruction would certainly be merited. No one could possibly fault God for not saving America given how blind we’ve become, though we can always hope!  

In the end I suppose all the looking for causes of this or that, of when and how things went astray, are a waste of time. This quote from USSR dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn says it all: 

“I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.”

**

There's a local priest on Facebook who still hasn't got the message. 

He's still in the Jonah Goldberg wing of the Republican Party and it's a bit befuddling. Catholics who are well-informed politically and still don't get it are fascinating, like unicorns. I might attribute it to ignorance or classism (he's a polyglot and composer and Trump's is an imperfect vessel to put it mildly) but ultimately only experience teaches, and he's got a day job and he will be won over only if things get bad enough. 

No good can come except through suffering. Isn't that the message of the cross? 

The most amazing part is how devout, smart people don’t care about their own countrymen who are suffering from unjust political persecution. I feel like I’m missing something bigly. I feel like there needs to be interviews with respectable conservative journos - honest, non-aggressive interviews - so we can understand where they’re coming from.  I joke that Jonah Goldberg would be leading the charge for the defense of the J6rs if they were protesting for free trade rather than on their perception of a stolen election. Specifically be great to sit down with the National Review gang. They've been awol. 

People just don’t seem to care about J6 and government overreach. Given my own sinfulness, it doesn’t make sense that I could be more sympathetic to their plight given that such a relatively small number of Americans care about them. I suppose part of the problem is that most of us are one-eye’d people now - we don’t read anything besides our own side. I can’t stomach reading the New York Times nor can folks who read The NY Times stomach a Tucker Carlson or Julie Kelly. 

Ultimately I suppose it comes down to the mainstream media. I understood intuitively that as America forgot God it would greatly affect the quality of politicians (as well as the quality of the voters). But for some reason I never anticipated it would kill the journalism profession.

**

Heard a riveting podcast about the HB6 Ohio House scandal. Householder needed money not for yachts or personal use, but in order to collect power. One of the more discouraging elements in politics is the success of money (ads, endorsements) in the majority of political races. At least in George Washington's day votes were bought by something of actual value (whiskey). Nowadays politicians spend that money on silly commercials and the voters get nothing but empty promises. Let's go back to providing free whiskey! 

OSU, Notre Dame, the Debate

My tendency to reflexively root for the underdog is undermining my ability to be a fan of OSU and Notre Dame!  When OSU beat some patsy last week by a lopsided score I was found myself accidentally cheering when the other team made yardage.  Similarly the Northern Illinois v ND game was inspiring and so memorable, especially when the coach for Northern Illinois started crying during the interview. 

I think it’s in the American psyche to root for the underdog which is why to some extent Trump is so popular. He has everything going against him - including himself given some of his tendencies! - and yet somehow won the biggest upset of all time in 2016. But I didn't root for him then. 

Say what you will about Trump’s flaws but It's interesting that all the worldly powers of our time: the wealthy, the powerful, the government intel agents who lied about the Biden laptop, the principalities & powers like the New York Times and Washington Posts, all approve of the Jonah Goldbergs and the David Frenchs and the establishment Republicans.  Sometimes the anawim are right.

**

Watched the debate the other night, ninety minutes I’ll never get back. Harris acquitted herself well enough but that isn’t too surprising given she’s a lawyer and lacks dementia.  The debate wasn’t for me or the average Americans since the average American has made up his/her mind who they will vote for. This was only about reaching that sliver of undecided in 6-7 states, approximately 250,000 people.  Hence Trump going for the Haitians eating cat in Springfield angle. This was the touchy-feely issue he needed to reach low information voters. He got rapped on the knuckles by the hall monitor but it was interesting to hear the moderator appeal to authority, saying “we reached out to the city manager about that..”.  In other words, journalists uncritically accept what a politician says. That minor thing, in a nutshell, is the problem today, the death of journalism combined with authority figures having proved themselves untrustworthy. 

Living in SoCal

I can now say I've lived in Southern California. 

Because that's what it's been like here in Central Ohio for past 2-3 months. No rain, no clouds, just stellar day after stellar day. 

I did a glorious rural run along Creek Rd at the Madison County line. Beautiful area that would be great to bike sometime. The landscape color here reminds me of San Simeon with sand-colored grasslands and golden corn stalks. It's desert country of late, the air dry and cracklin', the creeks low. The only clouds are contrails and the sycamore limbs are white as white caps, as stark as elk horns. 

The water is calm, like Walden Pond, and I slide effortlessly over the shiny surface.  It reminds me of the cover of the Thoreau classic that I treasured in grade school. I see some turkey vultures overhead and think, "Ask not for whom the turkey vultures circle, they circle for you."

Not long ago we rented a cabin outside Hocking Hills. That morning under the speckled sun I read Scripture and felt like Billy Graham on his North Carolina front porch. 

Glancing blows of sunlight 

Trunk'd pillars cathedral our path...

We started out in the family room reading amid the light knotty pine boards. Is there something evolutionary or atavistic about wood and stone in housing? Calming and natural. It feels almost western out here, like you’re transported to pony express times with ranches in the middle of nowhere. 

E-biked over hill and dale (and even the battery couldn't conquer some of those hollers). Beautiful country and really the only way to see it given it’s un-hikeable unless you’re young. Lovely to ride in the dappled shade on our “private” fifteen mile mountain road (I saw two cars the whole ninety minutes).  Even went off on an unmarked road which led to three or four houses spread out over the next half-mile. Half-surprised I didn’t get chased by a dog or a gun-owner. Again the feel was so “ranch-y’ that it felt like Ronald Reagan on his Rancho del Cielo. 

It’s a jungle out there, literally. The brush behind the house is so heavy and the climb so arduous that I assume little of this surrounding area has been hiked whatsoever either now or in previous generations when Indians and pioneers stuck to the game trails. 

There are trees so straight here that they seem to defy the laws of nature, as if they were made by machine. They silently mock the other twisted trunks, or perhaps they simply piously bear witness, ala the saints. 

It feels so oddly restorative, being in this forest womb with absolute quiet. As a retiree, how would I really notice the difference?  And yet I do...Picturesque dog walks without the need to pick up the poop or cross busy streets or force the leash over mailboxes. No need to drive the car.  It’s kind of like a beach vacation in some ways, but much less crowded. I can see why monks like the Trappists in Kentucky chose wilderness areas. You feel closer to God and have fewer distractions and attractions. You can get in a meditative mood and just sit and let whatever thoughts present themselves. 

We had fire-cooked hotdogs for dinner along with a broccoli salad that Steph made yesterday, Put gouda cheese on the dogs and declared it good! 

I took another half-mile at dusk with one of the dogs. Good to see the path in all its diurnal incarnations. Back home I notice the fire smoke rising like incense and wonder why I appreciate this sight more than the incense rising at Mass. Anyhow it's nice to make the world a better place, i.e. warmer one, by burning carbons. Longer growing seasons and all. 

My Drinking History

College professors with tenure have god-like abilities to do what they will.  At my college in the ‘80s, it was hit or miss on whether a given teacher would be particularly interested in teaching on a given day. 

An example was our English composition prof in which at least three classes were devoted to the delicacies of exotic foods. We didn’t ask why since we were freshman. On our last day he even brought in sushi for us to try. 

Being of Irish heritage my sensibilities have always reflexively been against elitism and snobbishness so I took it upon myself to teach our teacher. I wrote my first essay about the delights of McDonald’s quarterpounder with cheese, saying that it was on par with the tenderest filet mignon. Embarrassing in retrospect but the professor inadvertently taught me that you need to write for your audience, in this case him: he gave me a C-. The next paper I wrote on a neutral topic and got an A. He said my writing had markedly improved. I bet. 

So naturally I was similarly skeptical about any expensive beers or liquors. Just the tried and trued Budweiser lager, the McDonald’s quarter pounder of the beer world. Even trying a Miller Light felt  ‘daring’. It was about 8 years into my drinking career before a friend had me try something he called ‘Guinness with training wheels’, which was half Guinness and half Budweiser. Guinness is hardly that risky since it’s not any more bitter than Budweiser and probably has less calories. The fear factor was simply due to the color being black!  Rank prejudice. 

I was content with adding Guinness to my drinking repertoire and liquor never tempted, especially after having too much tequila during the ’89 Bengal Super Bowl appearance. It would be about a quarter century before I’d try that again. 

Budweiser and Guinness were my happy mainstays for about thirty years until the craft beer boom started. It was around 2011 when out of curiosity tried a pale ale, nothing too wild or hoppy like an IPA. And I liked it well enough, it had a lot of flavor and was a bit “spicy”. For the next couple decades I left pilsners behind for the most part.  

And then, not out of snobbishness but for weight control mostly, I experimented with bourbon as a supplement to beer. More bang, fewer calories. And I found I liked the taste and the different interesting varieties...

In short, I fear I’ve become my old professor.

Why Harris Will Probably Win

It’s very unscientific, but I won’t believe Trump can win unless some of the people I know change their minds about him and there’s no evidence of that. There’s a lot of talk about people “waking up” but I’ve seen little real world evidence of that. I don’t think things got nearly bad enough to wake anybody up.  The invasion across the border doesn’t impact most people’s daily lives. The financial crisis is nothing so far, nothing compared to what it could be (inflation is under control and unemployment rate within historical levels). We’re not at war (except a sissy proxy war in which we hide behind the skirt of dying Ukrainians). The two-tier justice system doesn’t affect most people because other people are paying that price. 

The only things that tend to concentrate minds are the economy and war, and both of those are under control so the advantage has to go to the incumbent (which is Harris).

I’m not sure how a divided Republican Party can win anyway (it’s two parties now, MAGA and establishment Republicans).  A house divided against itself cannot stand. I’m sure I’m not alone in no longer considering myself a Republican. I wouldn’t vote for Nikki Haley so I can’t blame Nikki Haley fans for not voting for Trump in November. 

Naomi Wolf, a leftist who has “woken up” said recently: 

“Half the country wanted to get rid of Pres Trump in 2020 in spite of peace and prosperity because they could not take the frenzied emotional tenor. You may not know these people but I do and some of them need to vote for Trump if he is to win.”

I have a sense that things have to get worse before they’ll get better but they have to get worse fast in order to get Trump across the finish line. 

Somebody joked, “how long before we start saying 2028 is the most impactful election in our lifetime?” I replied that we already had the most impactful (2020) so we’re pretty much doomed.  As important as this upcoming election seems there’s a case to be made that it’s too little, too late. It’s pretty hard to recover from a period of truly wretched leadership, from 2003 when Bush went into Iraq to 2016, and then again 2016-2020. That’s 18 of the past 22 years and most of Trump’s years were spent on defensive due to Russiagate and impeachments. Trump lived on a knife’s edge since if he did anything unpopular with a few key GOP senators he would’ve been removed from office because the Senate would’ve impeached him as well. And Obama remade the military and the federal judiciary into his image over his eight years (twelve if including Biden years). 

My stepson was right back in ’16 when he said that Trump’s only job is to throw monkey-wrenches into the machine. That’s still his role so everything is just a delay tactic at this point. 

**

True: 

“If the US had to raise taxes monthly to pay for Ukraine every month, the war would’ve been been over 2+ years ago. Imagine how fast Iraq and Afghanistan would’ve been over. How good would our roads & grid be if we would’ve spent that $8T on infrastructure?”

**

Also true: 

“The problem with addressing mass immigration through the democratic mechanism is one of collapsing decision space. The conservative party is captured, so you need an alternative but that takes a decade to build and the left is importing votes faster than you can convert citizens. It's a race, and the left knows this....Citizens are only converted in the first place by seeing too many imported voters, by which point it is too late to vote against it.”

I think some of it comes down to whether one think humans are “interchangeable robots”. That was what we used to cynically say given how my workplace would lay off large numbers of people and replace with contractors. (This backfired when they had to re-hire a bunch of them back.)

Similarly, we think we can import a ton of people from other countries to cover for our diminishing birthrate but we’re finding out too late that it doesn’t work that way. Different countries have much different educational systems, beliefs, cultural memories, backgrounds and we no longer even try to assimilate them via our education system. They assimilate us in fact. 

The bad thing is I'm too young given the pace of change not to be deeply affected by all this. I had thought, circa 2017, that we didn’t have to worry about the collapse of most of our systems and I might have been right but for not realizing the government had censorship tools and that that would alter the results of the 2020 election (which, in turn, greatly accelerated our national decline). In a sense, the government was far more potent than I’d given it credit for, especially with a compliant media not holding it to account. 

The more religious of the Founding Fathers, like Washington and Adams, said that religion would be crucial to keeping America free. The less religious, like Jefferson, said our liberty depends on the freedom of the press.  In the end I guess they were both right, although since they happened at more or less simultaneously it’s hard to tell which aspect dealt the death blow. 

Changes to the Mass and Society

I’m always intrigued by looking for the boundary line between the “good ‘60s’ and “the bad ‘60s”. 

Romans 1:18-32 says there is a pattern to sexual degeneracy, and a society that rejects belief in God will inevitably follow it. It spirals downward in three stages:

Worship of nature (vv. 21-23)

Homosexuality (vv. 26-27)

“A debased mind” (v. 28)

Is "worship of nature” a proxy for “bad worship’, or pagan worship? Did the Church do anything in the ‘60s that might've disrupted the proper worship of God, i.e. the worship that God wanted rather than what man wanted? Perhaps so. 

A deep dive in the ‘60s: 

What if we paralleled secular events with the changes to the Mass given that the Mass is the hinge on which all things depend.  Exorcists claim that the devil fears Latin more than the vernacular (Protestants hated our Latin so we had to change for them apparently). Could the spread of the vernacular in liturgy and less reverential worship have aided the devil? 

The ancient saying is “Lex orandi, lex credendi (Latin for “the law of what is prayed [is] what is believed [is] the law of what is lived”). It means "prayer and belief are integral to each other and that liturgy determines theology" according to wikipedia. 

So in December of 1964 came the first of the dramatic changes to the Mass. And it feels like the sea change in the culture happened right after that. While I wasn’t old enough to observe the cultural change of the ‘60s I think that 1964 was still sort of “normal”. Maybe I’m wrong; certainly by then prayer was already banned from U.S. public schools and llinois had repealed its sodomy laws, becoming the first U.S. state to do so. 

What if I looked at the ads and articles in a 1964 newspaper versus one just two years later in 1966? Would I see much difference? Obviously this is very anecdotal but it’s interesting to speculate on. 

Cleveland’s largest newspaper, The Plain Dealer, on a randomly chosen day from Dec of 1964: 

The front page has two very large headlines:  “local tax valuations okay’d over objection” and “Rome roars welcome to pilgrim pope”. Below the fold there’s an article on how even little gifts at Christmas are “conveyors of great love.” There is a single paragraph piece on Vietnam. And there’s an article on Cleveland’s fight in the “war on poverty”. The article begins with the optimism of the era: “Recognized at last, after centuries of existence, is the crime of poverty. Everyone is against it. The nation is committed to a war on poverty that could last a generation or more.” 

Everything in it seems pretty normal, even pious. Breezy and friendly. Not exactly “tense”. 

Another random page has advertisements for men’s hats, shoes, and stylish raincoats. On another there are ads for housewares and a jeweler’s. Very few of the ads depict human models but one that does shows a woman in a modest dress, below the knees and not titillating. If sex sells, it wasn’t being used in this 1964 edition of the Plain Dealer. 

Okay, now a random issue from Dec 1966: 

Headlines include one on the Cincinnati Strangler, another on Jack Ruby being seriously ill, Gov George Romney hinted as a candidate for president, an article on Zambia’s conflict with Britain, and Germany’s lack of accord on trade. 

The tone is certainly different. More serious, more international news, more political. The optimism isn't present. 

Page two of the edition immediately presents drawings of girls in bikinis. Well that’s different! One has her legs spread and her hand on hip. There’s also an article on an actor who claims that the “English language itself is racist”. Hey, we’re not in Kansas anymore!

I randomly turned to another page with criticism of the stiff-necked conservatives in the Methodist ruling body. Later more bra advertisements. Conflict and sex seem to be the new major themes. Division and fornication. 

So what happened between those two years? I’m not sure but a few include: the Supreme Court allows contraception, the first Roman Polanski film “Repulsion” is released. There’s a Time magazine cover story "Is God Dead?”.. The Church of Satan formed in San Francisco... “Valley of Dolls” published...Black Panthers founded... Likely I’m missing a lot of other things. 

But the other big faultline is the end of 1967 when the Mass goes fully vernacular. Bad things continue. NYC violent crime rises 20% annually starting ‘67 thru ‘71...The first X-rated movie is produced..Divorce rate goes straight line up until 1979.

Then comes the full monty, the 1969 “new mass” on April 3rd, 1969. We had the Stonewall riots two months later that are universally recognized as the start of the gay rights movement. The Manson murders occur in August... Deaths at Altamont in Dec... No-fault divorce established in CA. Per capita alcohol use up 50% from 1960... Church attendance begins to fall in 1970...Four states -- Alaska, Hawaii, New York and Washington -- legalize abortion. In ’72 the first Playboy with full frontal nudity... “Deep Throat” & “Joy of Sex” are released and in ’73 Supreme Court legalizes abortion.

Driver's License and State Power

I looked up the history of driver’s license as a window into creeping government power, one that would of course grow exorbitantly (most recently shown by the powers exercised due to covid). 

Not surprisingly it all started in Prussia, the “worst” part of Germany historically (the area of the most enthusiastic Hitler supporters, birthplace of militarism and Lutheranism, of a compulsory school system with structured days, and a hotbed of scriptural scholar critics):

On September 29, 1903, Prussia, then a monarchy within the German Empire, introduced mandatory licensing. A mechanical aptitude exam was required, administered by the Dampfkesselüberwachungsverein (“steam boiler organization”).

Germany is in some ways the “California of the world”. It’s where bad ideas start and spread, and it is where permission of the government to drive a car started. This was followed soon by New York (which was then the “California of the U.S.”).

States requiring driver’s licenses came slowly. The length of time between the first state to require and the last was over 50 years; in 1903 it was New York and in 1954 South Dakota. Additionally, a handful of states didn’t impose driver’s tests until the mid-1950s, including big states like Illinois and Wisconsin. 

It feels like back then states had more power.  Nowadays the federal government could simply threaten to withdraw funds for roads and get the states to comply quickly. The covid lockdown was more rigorous in some states (New York) compared to others (Florida), but my impression is that states were far more similar than different.  Not sending children to schools was a huge deal and was countrywide. If the states had more power, at least one of them would’ve bucked this absurd idea given how kids are not at risk from the virus.