J.K. Rowling continues to get schooled

On the foolish danger of aligning with the Marxist Left.  The Left is a jealous and unforgiving god.  It will demand you embrace X today, and then next year declare X evil and retroactively punish all who listened to it today.  It will settle for nothing less than 100% obedience to whatever it decides is true today.  If something you imagined is true, even if because the Left says it's true, is declared false tomorrow, you had best follow suit or face the Leftist machine. 

That is what Rowling, the left's darling fantasy author of the 21st Century, is learning the hard way.  For years, Rowling's Harry Potter series was lionized and celebrated by the Left in all its establishments: schools, publishing (naturally), the media, Hollywood.  She was the toast of the town, her books elevated to almost Gospel level, and the phenomenon and its marketing by way of a sympathetic news media was the stuff of advertisers' dreams. 

It didn't hurt that she was, herself, far to the left of center.  She knew how to market herself and avoid many pitfalls of other fantasy genre authors.  She figured out how to appeal to Christian fans, Wiccan fans, atheist fans, and even ostensibly conservative fans.  And she, quite alive and visible in the Internet age, managed to convince various groups that her books were for them, no matter how radically opposed those different groups were. 

Because we were entering a phase in which racism and bigotry became the only sins, the unforgivable, all defining sins, her heavy handed themes of inclusion and equality and anti-bigotry fit like a glove.  That she dabled her toes in various liberal darlings like gay sex, feminism, even transgender equality was just icing on the cake.  If she had to go back and insist characters were really gay, or that what appeared friendship was actually more, in our age of credulity, that was just fine.

And yet, because she dared to drop from 100% obedient to only 99.99% faithful to the Leftist gospel, she is now under the full wrath of the Left's inquisition.  She dared to say women have periods, or babies, and that a scientist shouldn't be fired for suggesting there is such a thing as boys and girls. That's been enough. 

She's now a pariah.  She has been hounded by former fans, demanding publishers pull her books.  She's been eviercated on social media.  And you can see the press is only so-so about defending her.  If the press was on her side, it would be running top of the hour stories about the unfair treatment she is receiving, and make a big stink about her views, others who hold her views, and how horrible this movement is that's trying to silence her.  As it is, you see very little of this being covered, and if covered at all, done so on the back page near the grocery sections. 

One way the Left keeps people on the reservation is this 100% lack of tolerance for the slightest divergence from progressive same think.  Oh, they'll insist they're completely open to all points of view.  But that's laughable.  They may not care if you prefer the color orange or if you think man buns are a gastly sight.  But when it comes to the primary dogmas, there is only one way to be, and that's entirely obedient and subservient.  The slightest digression will end with you being cast into the outer darkness with the rest of the irredeemable deplorables. 

The shooting of Jacob Blake: A different perspective

As we should realize, there are other points of view than those immediately embraced by the Left.   This one comes from the Kenosha Police Union.  According to them, the events shown in the brief video and the accounts given by Black's attorney don't tell the whole picture.

I'm sure they don't.  Nor am I saying we take the Union's version as Gospel truth.  I'm just and old fogey when it comes to things like presumption of innocence (on all sides), burden of proof (for all sides), due process (for everyone) and resisting that urge to declare guilt or innocence based on things like skin color or demographic label.  Again, that's me. 

Clearly we've moved to a new era in America.  Those institutions - like the media, education and entertainment - that used to declare such principles to be higher than the angels now appear quite ready to jettison the whole package.  Me?  In my efforts to not be an idiot, I think I'll prefer withholding judgement and execution until we've at least found some evidence beyond skin color and profession and other labels.  

It might be everything Blake's attorney and the video suggest.  It might be nothing close.  Let's pretend we don't know and wait for actual evidence.  

Teachers Unions in action

Here:

Yep.  That's a growing thing with America's communist revolutionaries:  Guillotines.  Which is fair.  They've already convinced leftist Americans - including Christians and Catholics - that the Robespierre approach to justice is the only approach to justice.  That is, enemies of the Left of any race, gender, creed or religion - must be eliminated.  At this point we don't even care about facts, evidence or truth. 

So there is a purity in honesty with it all.  Some are just stunned that a Teachers Union would give such symbolism glowing praise.  And not only that, but support 'wherever this is headed.'  Woof.  Sane people and Christians who believe in the Church's historical teachings on sin in a fallen world know damn well where it is headed.  Increasingly the American communists are flagrant about where they want it to go.  And increasingly they are getting more and more support from our elites, our power players, even our religious leaders.  As can be expected.  See the last century for more examples of such developments.

One way Conservatives screwed the pooch, as the old saying goes, was alienating those who livings were tied to things like the government or taxation.  And that includes schools and education.  Somehow Conservatives pledging to hack and slash taxes (and hence, the benefits and pay of those who relied on such income), along with their pledge to downsize (that is, throw thousands of government workers out on the street) led to an interesting development.

That development was people who worked in such professions increasingly favoring and supporting the opponents of those who wanted to slash their incomes or throw them out on the street.  And if that opposition wanted things like godlessness, communism, tyranny, oppression, genocide, racism, or whatever, guess what?  Those in such professions might not have enjoyed doing it, but they nonetheless chose to join that rather large historical group known as the 'enablers' by preaching and teaching the doctrines of that opposition.  Given how many teachers we hear discuss their latest cruise in the Caribbean or annual trip to Disney World, I think they chose wisely. 

That is one reason this happened.  There are many others, as is always the case with historical developments.  But now we're beginning to see the end result of this revolution's designs.  We see what it wants, how it wants to do things, and its end goals.  And we're watching as we are impotent and unable to stop it.  

RIP Chadwick Boseman

So sad.  Chadwick Boseman, who rose to fame in the movie Black Panther, has died.  He was only 43 years old.  Apparently it was cancer, that disease that unites all of humanity in our hatred of it.  

From all I've seen and heard from my boys, who are into the whole Marvel thing, he was a decent sort.  He didn't seem to get into the whole Hollywood Leftist propaganda thing, but used his earnings for endeavors like helping people and helping those from Africa in dire need of the basics. 

The movie itself shed light on the mindset of Americans today, especially the Black Community.  I called it the anti-Passion.  For with The Passion of the Christ, there was an all out assault on Gibson, his movie and even calls to ban and censor the film.  For the first time, Christianity was called evil, its symbols symbols of evil, and there was actually talk - for the first time I remember - of people wanting traditional understandings of the Christian Faith to be marginalized if not eradicated. 

The result was that Christians of all stripes, including Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, flocked to see this very Catholic take on the Passion narratives.  Seeing the Faith under such a flagrant assault for the first time (something we seem to have forgotten), for a season at least, inspired believers to fill the theaters and support the movie, no matter what the quality happened to be. 

The movie Black Panther, boasting of an alternate reality in which Africans are actually superior in every way, yet too beneficent to use their knowledge and powers to subdue the world, struck a nerve with black Americans.  The theaters were filled to the brim and the numbers were off the charts.  In some ways, it was for the same reason reversed. In this case, it was used to elevate black and African heritage, even in a mythical way, and woe betide anyone who didn't join with the praise.

But in it all, Mr. Boseman seemed to be a gracious sort.  There was no controversy around him from what I know.  He came off as sincere and a good fellow overall.  And even so, whatever, it's sad to see a life cut short by such an annoyingly awful disease. 

My God grant peace and strength to his loved ones and friends and all who knew him.  My the Lord accept him into His loving arms.  And may perpetual light shine upon him.  

He's Back!

Who is back?  A fellow named James Maliszewski. Who's he?  Apparently he's a historian of sorts, also a pro writer, and a fellow deeply emerged in the world of RPGs (that's roleplaying games to us amateurs), Fantasy, Sci-Fi and all that jazz. 

I stumbled on his blog years and years ago, before I even had mine.  It was a post celebrating JRR Tolkien.  It was a well written, pithy post, that capture much of Toklien's greatness and influence on modern fantasy.  I thoughts at first it was just a literary or perhaps fantasy type blog.  Since Mr. Maliszewski is also openly Catholic, I thought it might be something along those lines.

After a few posts, it dawned on me that this was no Catholic or literary blog.  Even if much of his purpose was tracing the literary roots of the RPG genre - particularly that flagship RPG Dungeons and Dragons - it was definitely focused on the game, the hobby and the surrounding culture.  One of his big theses is that Tolkien had bupkis to do with Dungeons and Dragons, and he seems to take the late Gary Gygax at his word when he insisted he hated  The Lord of the Rings and only used Middle Earth references as cheap marketing ploys.

I found him a bit touchy at times.  A couple of times I merely asked a question and received rather curt responses of an almost 'how dare you' nature.  But then, again, the genre in question.  I've mused before on the disproportionate level of influence that fanboys and brandboys have had on the Internet and Social Media culture.  Nonetheless, I found his writing enjoyable, and he often delved into areas of nostalgia (a plus for me) and history, with some very keen insights I must say.

A few years ago he fell off the radar.  Apparently it had to do with problems with a game he was trying to publish by way of that crowd funding or what have you.  I have no clue about those things and can only guess what may have happened.  Also, he had written about health problems with his father.  

Whatever the reason, he abruptly ceased writing for his blog back in 2012.  I would go back on occasion to look up a couple of his more perceptive posts.  In getting ready for the big 2020 Fall Season (woohoo!), I went back to look up one I remembered when, lo and behold!, it looks like he's back. 

No fanfare.  No return post.  No 'I'm back!'.  Just some posts beginning a couple weeks ago this very year.  So no clue what to expect.  I'd like to think he'll be as interesting and perceptive as he was.  If you're inclined toward things like interesting insights about history, Tolkien and fantasy, if you like RPGs and Science Fiction and even Comic books, then you might like it, too.  

How the propaganda ministry does it

So last week it was all Green Checkmarks.  That is, each news story I saw analyzing claims made by the Democrats reported that they were true, or mostly true, or in a couple cases not altogether true - but they still all got a Green Checkmark  meaning true!  100% green last week. 

This week, of course, the dreaded Red X of falsehood has begun flying like mosquitoes.  I've already seen two after the first day.  And those claims not marked as false but in someway not completely and technically true are being pounced on. 

So we have this, apparently a Trump advisor from Puerto Rico told of her mother's journey to raise her family in America as a first generation immigrant from Puerto Rico.  The advisor, Kimberly Guilfoyle, went on to describe herself as a first generation American citizen.  

That's when I saw the outlets pounce.  Of course Puerto Rico is a US territory, and its citizens are officially US Citizens as well.  I know, it's complicated.  Don't ask me to unpack the history of that hot mess, why it's not a state, what the differences are and how it all works out.    

But the media outlets were quick to mock her for apparently not knowing that she always was, technically at least, a US Citizen.  Even the good Deacon Steven Greydanus got in on the act:

Yeah, see a conservative do that about something a liberal Puerto Rican immigrant said at the DNC and imagine what good progressive Catholics would say. 

But here's my thinking.  Could it be that this says something about how those in Puerto Rico see themselves?  Could it be insight into their way of thinking?  Might it mean something that they see being here as what should matter, and this could shed light into how at least some understand this complicated matter?  I mean, doesn't charity demand we consider such things rather than just tweet 'what dumb-dumbs'?  

Or not.  Goodness knows we can't focus on her speech about how great America is and how wonderful a land of opportunity we are blessed with.  Heaven forfend. 

Again, since apparently not a single Democrat said anything wrong last week, it's hard to tell how the press would react.  But I get the feeling that if all things were equal, and the only difference being Ms. Guilfoyle works for Biden, you would hear none of this.  And if someone at FOX or similar outlet did make a stink, the rebuttals and charges of racism would be swift and brutal. 

Whatever it would be or not, however, note how this worked.  Nobody is talking about her speech at all.  Those who are talking about it are getting caught up in these trivialities.  But in all things, the greatness of America as land of opportunity, which you might have come away from her speech with, is entirely forgotten.  And that Charlie Brown, is one way the propaganda ministry - with help from choice Catholics and other sympathetics - does it. 

Quick note: As I was getting this ready, I was notified of another Greydanus original that follows the same 'focus on the molehill of the opposition so we don't have to focus on the mountain range of mass slaughter on the Left' tactic:

Yep. Why join Ms. Johnson in her condemnation of one of history's most brutally efficient human slaughter machines when we can ping her on a triviality?  Oh sure, Planned Parenthood was founded on Margaret Sanger's principles of exterminating minorities, poor and other sub-human reprobates which it continued to celebrate until a couple years ago, and yes it continues to help with the annual slaughter-fest of a million screaming innocents - but Johnson said a goofy, Johnson said a goofy!

Sigh.  Especially when you see the same good deacon prepared to eviscerate someone like Abraham Lincoln for failing to be as morally perfect as the modern Left demands when it comes to judging and hating on the right and wrong skin colors for the right and wrong reasons:

Yep.  Note the word Great in scare quotes.  The New Prolife Catholic movement in action.  Not a shred of understanding or sympathy for those in the past who were of their time, nor letting pass a slip of the tongue from Pro-Life advocates today, all while giving endless benefits of endless doubts to the modern equivalent of the human slave trade.  This is just what the press propaganda ministry, and the Left, wants from its confessing Christian supporters. 

Richard Spencer backs Joe Biden

So there you go.  Richard Spencer, according to some the incarnation of Adolf Hitler, Nazi, White Supremacist and Alt-Right racist supremacy, is backing Joe Biden. 

Now, does that mean anything?  No.  Not a thing.  If a person who worshipped aardvarks backed Joe Biden it doesn't mean anything about Biden.  In a vast country with hundreds of millions of citizens, you're going to have all kinds voting this way and that.  

A single person, or even hundreds of people, supporting a national candidate means little.  It is only newsworthy because for the last going on four years, the Left - including good New Pro-Life Catholics - made a huge deal about Spencer backing President Trump as some sort of added proof that Trump is not only a Nazi racist, but attracts Nazi racists, and Spencer's support is proof.

Of course I have no doubt that this will be met with those on the Left with all manner of technical exceptions.  Or they can just play the Left's favorite 'it's different now' card.  Or he can't be supporting Biden for the wrong reasons since Democrats are never wrong.  Or they can deny that anyone ever made a big deal about Spencer at all despite all the evidence to the contrary.  

In the end, it doesn't really matter to sane people because it shouldn't matter to sane people. To the Left it won't matter because it's no longer convenient to matter. 

You might as well say the Earth is flat

Crisis Magazine dares to question Women's Suffrage.  Wow.  You could just as easily say slavery is a good thing or that, well, I'm not sure what else.  Is there anything else wrong today but bigotry, racism, sexism and slavery?

Anyway, this isn't new, and I've seen a few over the last several years beginning to question just when everything went sour.  As Christianity gushes people in unprecedented numbers who are apostatizing and abandoning the Faith for good, and a growing number of people are questioning the entire Christian, Western and American worldview on almost every issue imaginable, some have concluded this didn't just happen overnight.

Sin aside, there has to be something, somewhere that marks the beginning of this end.  It wasn't Trump, or Obama, or the First Gulf War, or Clinton, or Reagan, or the Sixties, or the Beatles, or the Red Scare, or WWII.  The further back you go, the more you realize recognizable issues that have flourished into these Civilization destroying ideas were already alive and well. 

Someday we're going to have to ask the hard questions, or it will be too late.  At least for our children and their children's children.  It will be tough, and it won't involve us just saying how sinful those old time reprobates were.  It will mean us pledging to undo the damage.  

I'm not saying we abolish women's right to vote.  I'm not saying we abolish democracy or go back to monarchy.   Nor, despite what some have thrown back at me, am I saying we abolish science and go back to living in caves.  I'm merely saying we can undo things in the world.  It's possible.  Just look at all the newest awesome ideas liberals hoisted on the world decades ago that the Left now calls evil and unacceptable.

This exercise in rethinking generations of assumptions might just include rethinking some major premises we've come to embrace for many generations, beyond just questioning MTV or whether flat screen TVs were a good idea.  That is, of course, assuming we believe things like the Gospel, Christian civilization, democracy and the free world are  actually worth saving. 

I hate it when life validates my boys' cynicism

So CNN is reporting on 'nationwide protests' in wake of Jacob Blake.  Note well, we have no clue what happened but by edited videos and eye witnesses who all seem to have the same appraisal of guilt and innocence.  No trial.  No investigation.  And already entire professions, ethnic groups, and nations are being condemned.  Goebels, patron saint of mass communications, would approve.

So as I blogged, we were doing a cookout and the boys were camping out.  While roasting our goodies, we discussed many things as we are wont to do.  My wife and I made it a priority to have sit down, home cooked meals as much of our life as we could.  So the boys are used to robust debates and discussions when food is in the area. 

We came to the topic of Covid, quarantine and BLM.  We were all laughing at the death of scientific objectivity in the wake of so many scientists, experts, and medical pros insisting that the Covid virus knows well to avoid BLM protesters.  We mentioned that in our little neck of the woods, C19 had barely phased us, even during the height of the initial outbreak. 

Then came BLM, and for a week we had hundreds, if not more, coming from out of town to gather locals together for multiple protests.  In about a month, we suddenly had hundreds of cases and multiple deaths.  That lasted for several weeks until, like the rest of the state and country, the cases and deaths began to decline, and continued to decline.  Good news. And pretty much that should solidify the idea that large gatherings outdoors can increase the spread of C19, including gatherings for BLM protests. 

Anyway, during the talk one of my boys quipped that since C19 is going down, businesses are opening, and the economy seems to be getting better, it's about time for another black man to be shot by police.  I glared at him, for no other reason than we live in America in the 21st Century, and a single slip of the lip is all it takes for a life and livelihood to be forever ruined.  Also I try to discourage that level of cynical pessimism that assumes the worst in the style of broad conspiracy theory motifs. 

Then, lo and behold, what happens?  Well, need I say more.  It chills to the bone to think this could be true.  Not that it's part of some conspiracy where the parties involved are paid to shoot and get shot.  But somehow things are in motion for these things to happen, and to be exploited on cue for reasons to do with divisions and unrest and power, whatever the cost in lives and human suffering.  

My old college professors always said America was the country to fabricate things and whip its people into frenzies for the sake of the wealthy and the powerful.  I'm starting to think they were onto something. 

On the eve of the Fall season

Our second oldest boy's birthday has always been a rough spot for him.  By the time he was in school, the first day was usually right before his big day.  That means he didn't have the benefit of summer, but got no benefit of 'it's his birthday!' since everyone was just getting settled in for the school year.  As such he's developed a few sensitivities about his day.  One of these is that he begs and pleads for us not to consider doing 'fall things' until after his birthday.  That's fine since, like most Americans, we reckon fall not to be the Autumnal Equinox, but the day after Labor Day.   So that period of time in which he is willing to say summer is over and fall has yet to begin?  We call that Fall Eve.  We don't do fall things, but we begin revving up for that season of seasons I've so often blogged about. 

This year, of course, is 2020.  And that means weirdly awful.  Already the Big 10 has cancelled football, and many schools are following suit.   In these parts at least, football is as tied to autumn as holly and ivy are to Christmas.  Just how that will square with those old fall memories remains to be seen.  It was to be the first year for our youngest to go to an OSU football game, but that will have to wait.  We'll do something special for him to fill in that gap.

One way we thought out of the box was for our second oldest's birthday.  Since they're all here doing online college this semester, we figured we'd come up with something odd to do to compensate for the crazy and be a little different than the usual for his big day.  So we came up with camping - in our back yard!

We are not, on the whole, outdoorsy types.  We enjoy getting out and walking and going to parks.  We've tried camping in the past a couple times.  The memories are good, but I find the experiences to be less satisfying than thinking about them later.  Nonetheless, in trying to come up with  something, we thought a tent, a cookout in the fire pit, and a chance for the four boys to hang together might be a nice substitute going into this sure to be stranger autumn season. 

Despite wagering to the contrary, the boys were able to put the tent up
with little help from the parents

Times being what the last 12 years have been, this is the first time
he's ever been inside a tent.

The finished product, in our little backyard grotto.  Not bad for their first attempt. 

A mixture of not-healthy/healthy, as we grill eggplant
to add to the beans and hot dogs

He always must be dramatic about everything - that's the old football player 
coming out in him

I think they're watching my third oldest roughhouse with the pooch

The most pensive and understated of the four boys.  He's had a rougher time
in life than them, and his older three are the first to admit it

My boys step up and help the caregiving for my Mom.  All four do a great job.
She was able to be part of this owing to them pulling resources to get her down here

Marshmallows to the fore!

After the feasting, we took my Mom inside and watched her so the four could 
hang out together.  They chose to play games: including
 playing D&D by campfire and torchlight 

Waiting for the fire to flare back up again

The wanted us to have prayer around the campfire, so we came back out after 
the lights were down and the fire was burning bright

As normal, our third oldest takes it upon himself to tend the fire

While our youngest vegges out listing to serenades from our second oldest

Their torchlight D&D game nearing the witching hour - what 
would those old fundamentalists we knew say?

There's something about a campfire (even in a fire pit) heading into those
autumn days.  All in all, a fine day capped by a splendid evening

The Feast of King St. Louis IX

Usually this is one of those feast days that sort of cruises under the Griffey radar.  Not because there is anything wrong with King Louis IX.  It's just I tend to gravitate more toward those Francis like saints that I can envy and even possibly relate to more than a king or great ruler.  

Nonetheless, we saw the racist and Europhobic assault on Louis IX during the Black Marxists Matter riots, and subsequent Antifa Leninists, I thought it was worth remembering.  

Not that he was singled out for being anything other than Christian, Caucasian, European and named for something in America.  For the radicals of the Left - would someone please come up with an appropriate label for this movement that incarnates so much evil from the last centuries!!!??? - that was good enough. 

So here is a nice little unpacking of the man, the feast, and some readings.  

A man has been shot by the police

Witnesses say he was shot in the back seven times by police who then administered medical aid until he could be transported to the hospital.  The officers involved have been placed on administrative leave. We know the race of the man who was shot and his name.   No other details are known at this time.  That's the news.  That's what we know.  We know nothing else.  

Prayers for this man and his family.  Prayers for the police involved and their families.  And prayers for a corrupt and wicked age that will see nothing but skin color and political expediency in such a sad confrontation.  Of all involved, it is those who will do the latter who need the most prayers. 

Because of course they can

It turns out stars attending the VMAs this year will be exempt from NYC's otherwise mandatory restrictions regarding quarantines.  Duh.  Does this surprise - anyone?  As my sons said, a class war disguised as a race war.

Speaking of, note the number of decidedly black entertainers who will also be so privileged, while struggling people of all races who aren't part of the beautiful people will have to suck on it.  This is your white privilege in action.

I'm sorry, but if you're irongant or bigoted (or both) enough to vomit back such rhetorical bilge as 'systemic racism', 'black lives matter' or 'white privilege', I have a hard time believing there isn't a 99% chance you'd be the type goosestepping around Berlin back in the the good old days of the 1930s.  It takes that level of willful ignorance or bigotry to embrace such demonstrably evil and false ideas. 

Alrighty then

So I'm still thinking about this comment from Catholic apologist Mark Shea that was posted by Donald McClarey here:

I can't think of a more Protestant approach to Catholicism than wishing that part of Catholicism and those Catholics I don't like to be eradicated from Catholic life and done away with.  The essence of Protestantism is, after all, saying this or that part of the Historical Faith sucks and is wrong and evil and brought by all these reprehensible reprobates in the Babylonian Captivity, and it's high damn time we send it and them to the cornfield.  It's not Sola Scriptura that is the capstone of Protestantism, no matter what the theologians say.

And there is no better demonstration of this mindset that the Catholic apologist's comment above.  

Mark Shea might just approve this message

The wisdom of youth

So while putting up a tent in our backyard for our great 2020 vacation, my third oldest made an interesting observation: The first person in history who ever tied a knot was a freaking genius.  

I never thought about it before, but yeah. 

Why are we shocked that some at the DNC eliminated "Under God"?

So everyone is up in arms about the fact that some events at the DNC have had the Pledge of Allegiance a couple times in which the phrase "Under God" was removed.  One with LGBTQ groups, and one with Muslims who worship the same God Christians worship.  My response: And?

This has been that communist takeover long anticipated.  Not pure communism of course.  In fact, I haven't seen a clever term or phrase used to describe it.  Is there an increasing number of articles, editorials and opinion pieces singing the praise of communism?  Calling for Marxism, pure communism, and good old Communist States over America?  Oh yeah.  Last year alone I saw at least a dozen from major outlets doing all of that.  

And I'd wager there are more than that in lesser places.  And forget colleges and schools.  My boys' World History textbook sang much glory music for various Marxist and communist leaders, while giving little to American presidents or heroes (except of a minority or female sort).   And even when I was in college (mid to late 1980s), there were plenty of pro-Communist/USSR folks I ran into.  At least two professors I had openly preferred the USSR to the USA, and several students I knew agreed. 

It's not just communism, however.  The Left has all but sanctioned racism and racial bigotry by merely scratching out old racist documents against blacks and Jews and replacing those ethnic labels with 'White'.  By that, they mean Caucasian, but they use 'White' as some pox upon the world in need of eradication.  Add to this Left's growing obsession with assisted suicide, euthanasia and selective abortion as ways to mass exterminate inconvenient and unwanted people, and it's not hard to see parallels with that brand of fascism associated with Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.  

Beyond that, it's clear that the Left hates the Christian Faith alone of all the religions in the world.  You don't have to read deeply into textbooks or other publications to see the disgust and loathing aimed exclusively at our Christian heritage.  The same goes for hatred of Europe and Western culture in general.  In itself, this 'Left' tends to be a godless movement, with only the vaguest and meaningless ideas of some 'god' if any.  But it tolerates most other religions for now, as long as they join in the destruction of the Christian West and its bastard child America.

Therefore, that they have removed what was put there to separate America from the godless communism of the Soviet Union should come as a shock to nobody.  Just like that old MSNBC commercial that eliminated references to our Creator from the quotes it played from the Declaration of Independence.  To hear that old commercial, we just have rights for some reason - not any God thing. 

This is antiChrist of the first order.  This is the stuff of hell and evil.  It's born of that 'Culture of Death' that Pope John Paul II understood was at the root of both the communists and the fascists and the nazis.  It is alive and seizing control of our nation even as we speak. And it is making it clear what the goal is, the end is, and what the nation they want will look like. 

Perhaps it's too late.  It wouldn't surprise me.  America was, like most things that rise high in this vale of tears, the exception to the rule.  Most of last century, and in many places in the world today, we see the rule. That is where we are going.  Too late to stop?  I can't say.  I just know we're going there and going there fast. 

A flower grew at the Democratic National Convention

It was, 2020 being taken into account, what you expect from a political convention.  The Dems are here to save the world, everything is evil Trump's fault.  Nothing new there.  Naturally no mention was made of the Dems' part in all our woes.  Again, a typical convention.

But there was one highlight, and I must admit, it's a nice one.  It reminds me of the time President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan visited a young boy and his family and had dinner with them.  It was in response to something the boy wrote.  I still remember the pictures of Ron and Nancy in the living room, eating off TV trays.

Fake?  Perhaps.  Was this fake on Biden's part?  Who knows. If I see a person do something that lifts up a child, I don't ask beyond 'what must the child have thought'.  In this case, the results seem to speak for themselves.  Well done Brayden Harrington.  And, in this case at least, well done Vice President Biden. 

Lila Rose and a consistent pro-life ethic

Ah, consistent pro-life ethic.  That's a phrase tossed about, usually by Catholics who cleave unto the Left of the political center.  What it typically means is that you can't be pro-life and also challenge the horses and chariots of the Political Left at the same time.  Like many things in the progressive camp, it's a slick way of herding the conversation along a one way road.  You either agree, or you're not pro-life.

Now, the hirlairty is that those doing so are as often as not fully supportive of a political movement that defines itself by promoting and supporting the Sexual Revolution, the abortion culture, and increasingly such goodies as embryonic stem cell research (remember that?), legal assisted suicide, post-birth abortions (AKA infanticide) and even dipping their toes in the pool of euthanasia.  Add to that its embrace of modern racism and racial based evaluation of human worth, and you wouldn't think there is much pro-life there.

But the NPLCs are able to pull upon the secular, progressive belief that there are no sinners but that corrupt and oppressive social structures make it so.  Therefore, if anyone does have abortions, indulge in sexual deviancy, rape, pillage, murder - it must be the fault of 'The Man' (things valued by Conservatives).  And it's only the horses and chariots of the Political Left that can possibly save us from The Man. 

That's a brief look at how they do it.  What it boils down to is a radically inconsistent pro-life ethic disguised as anything but.  The real strange irony in all of this is that one of the frequent targets of the NPLCs is a young lass named Lila Rose.  Ms. Rose exploded on the national stage for going undercover and exposing the murderous profiteering of Planned Parenthood.  Almost overnight, good Faithful Catholics decided that the best thing to do was fret over the dishonest means necessary for an undercover operation that discovered the evils beneath Planned Parenthood's murderous industry, than focus on the evils beneath Planned Parenthood's murderous industry. 

Since then, she has largely been ignored, or occasionally blasted, for daring to suggest things like undercover work is acceptable, or that you can't be prolife and support a party whose platform is dedicated to falling on the sword and throwing the least of these under the bus so that abortion can be santificed and expanded in all possible ways.  Go figure.

Anyhoo, I find Ms. Rose, far more than most Catholics who try to bake that Kosher Ham of Leftist Catholicism, to be authentically and consistently pro-life.  That doesn't mean I agree with her all the time, or even her approach to things.  One doesn't need to agree with me to pass the 'righteousness' test.  I look at why she says and does what she says and does, and hold it up to other things she's stood for and against.  And in that, she's far more authentic and reliable than many of her NPLC critics.

So here are a few tweets of hers I saw populate on another site that illustrate the point.  

Yep.  Trump is not my cup of tea.  I get that he is the one bulwark against the pseudo-communist juggernaut, but that still doesn't mean he's not a fistfull of problems.  Continuing to blame everyone else for failing to cut such funding is no different than Obama blaming everyone else for his anemic recovery.  I get why it's happened.  I'm certainly not inconsistent or stupid enough to say since Trump failed to eradicate funding of Planned Parenthood, I'll therefore support the party prepared to throw the least of these out the window and hold America hostage to ensure funding of Planned Parenthood.  That's like saying FDR, having failed to eliminate the Holocaust, I'll now support the Nazis who have perpetrated the Holocaust.  So she's right here. 

But notice she goes after Trump where it is due, but then observe:

Again, she doesn't fall for the 'fed up with FDR, I'm now a Nuremberg Catholic all the way' approach.  She sees the evil and the culture of death on the left side of the aisle just the same.  For many Catholics, it's hard not to see their trashing of Trump as merely the excuse to support the party of death they so long deplored.

And then, she also does this:

God bless that poor woman. 

One of the worst things Pope Francis ever said was his 'who am I to judge' dodge where gay sex is concerned.  The Sexual Revolution will certainly go down in history as one of the greatest human tragedies ever visited upon mankind in all of history.  Abortion aside, the body count is beyond comprehension.  Add to that the genocide level slaughter of the abortion culture that is needed to sustain the revolution, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen.  And it isn't just sex. It's the drugs, the party, the debauchery, the selfish apathy that became sanctified during this time. 

I must say the Orthodox are better at calling this one out than Catholics, or even Christians in the West in general.  Afraid they'll say meanie things to us (or perhaps enjoying the fringe benefits of the revolution), we're rather tepid about calling it out.  Given the suffering, carnage, misery and loss attributed to this Party till you Die revolution, our lack of stalwart opposition is shameful, and hardly consistently pro-life.  Even Pope Francis deserves a smack on the hands for giving this a pass when he's so prepared to brutally judge other sins that are usually associated with thinking above the waistline. 

But Ms. Rose gets it right.  Again, I'm not saying I always agree with her.  And sure, we can discuss her methods.  But compared to the dumpster fire inconsistencies of so many of her Catholic critics, I'd say she is a far cry more consistently pro-life than many of them are close to being. 

Thom Brennaman gets sent to the glue factory

 Apparently Brennaman, Cincinnati Reds announcer, was caught on an open microphone making a "homophobic' slur. 

Mr. Brennaman has groveled and paid obeisance to the Soviet God of the Leftist State, but right now,  he's out.  He says his word doesn't reflect him.  My guess is, it does.  Like so many high profile people whose wealth and success depends on being in line with the powers that be, he could never say what he really thinks.  This is modern America after all. 

Nothing new in the 21st Century.  No country is ever free in the sense of 'no rules, just right' or 'if it feels good, it is good.'   Liberalism promised this.  Perhaps we were stupid enough to believe it.  But the Left is now making it clear that when it comes to freedom, it never mans able to do and say anything you want.  In fact, as you watch the Left morph, you begin to wonder if freedom is even a thing anymore. 

Remember, in a totalitarian state, no amount of  past fealty to the State will do.  The minute you digress from obedience, the second you cease to be useful, then it's into the truck, and off to the glue factory you go. 

I was slow on the draw with this one

But once it sank in, I had to laugh.

HT: to my second oldest for this one. 

On John Kasich at the DNC

I already wrote on this here, so won't repeat myself.  

I just post this due to the MSM's coverage this morning, suggesting once again that Kasich's 'shocking' turn is due to Trump.  No, it isn't.  It started back when he tried to copy Scott Walker and ended up getting spanked for his efforts.  Soon afterward we in the Buckeye State noticed he was beginning to sound, shall we say, a bit more 'left of center' as the months droned on.  So just a reminder as so many run about saying 'It's because of Trump that Kasich has taken this bold move!'  

Nope.  Like so many Never-Trumpers, it's almost impossible not to believe this is where he wanted to be all along.  Or at least where he wanted to be as the signs of the times made it clear where the national winds were blowing. 

Where the Aliens are

Michael Flynn of the TOF Spot is back, which is always great news.  He has taken on the old notion of strange lifeforms and weirdos from other planets.   Read it here.  I'll leave his excellent post to speak for itself.

I will mention this bit, however, which leaped out at me:

What a waste! All that great big honkin' universe out there and we're all there is? But, why should there be anyone else in the universe, regardless of its size? How many dandelion seeds are scattered to make a single dandelion? How many stone chips litter the workshop to make one statue? Why should it not take a universe to make a world? If the mass of the universe were much less, it would have expanded into vichyssoise long ago. If it were much greater, it would have collapsed back on itself before anything could get started. This is how big a universe must be to make galaxies, stars and petunias, whether one world or a gazillion be inhabited.

One of my growing gut feelings is that the Church has been dropping the ball for some time.  Not that it ever navigated this sod well without messing up.  We are fallible humans in a fallen world after all.  But in recent years, the Church has gone left when it should have gone right on very fundamental notions of, well, reality.  And it has been doing this for quite some time.

Part of this is because of the clout that the whole rationalist Enlightenment era had and the boost this new science based approach to everything received from the Industrial Revolution.  In only a couple generations, the world suddenly had things that for a zillion years were not even in the dreams of madmen.  That seemed enough to say that we were clearly in a new phase in the history of humanity.  There was pre-modern, and now there was modern where we would get smarter, better, and discover how wrong everyone was all along.

Somewhere in all of this, the Church began a 'keeping up with the Jonses' approach to things.  It assumed the basic ideas behind the infallibility of progress and the ever improving lives which we had as a result.  Gradually, it seemed to accept this silly notion that us Christians clinging to our old religious worldviews were just the simple types, and it was those brilliant scientists, experts, and scholars who would show us the way.

And it wasn't only Catholics.  Heck, I have an old  Biblical Archaeology magazine from back in the 1990s where this was actually a debate.  Even that late in the game, the two sides were over whether Christians should take at face value the theories and conclusions of non-believers or not.  One side said no, but there was an opposite side that took the idea that only non-believers are truly objective and fair and unbiased.  And that was in the 90s, when such a blind faith in the objectivity of anything human was already crumbling.  Think of what it must have been a few generations earlier.

So we more or less accept a secular, atheistic spin on - everything.  Even a Catholic exorcist said that the Church makes sure there is no 'material' explanation before plunging into the whole 'spiritual warfare' phase of the exorcism.  That is, assume a material universe with material rules and explanations for material problems.  If that doesn't work, then God stuff.  Matter here, spirit otherwise over there. 

That very dichotomy is the stuff of the non-believer. Yet I'd bet most Christians accept it as well.  We go, sometimes by guidance, with the idea that anything and everything can be handled by the experts, but if that doesn't work, then get to prayer.

But consider that above.  Beyond the atheistic theories about parallel universes and dimensions, most say our universe is so vast that it demands other lifeforms.  But why?  Maybe as God created the material aspects of Reality (the smaller and less significant parts to be sure), perhaps this vast universe is exactly all that is needed to  produce a single rock upon which life develops.  Assuming  we take at face value all the latest theories about the origins of life and evolution and all, why not think this?  Maybe we were the focal point all along, and the universe God made simply required a universe that we see in order to make it happen.  You never now (and it may be we never will).

I'm not saying science is all wrong or we need to go back to caves.  Or that we put the kibosh on medical science.  Or we get rid of toilet paper.  Heaven forfend!  I merely point out that there is a large gap between what we think all the experts and scientists and researchers know, and what they know.  Beyond that, there is also not a level playing field when it comes to benefits and payoff for many of the great advancements and leaps forward in knowledge and practical living that we've come to take for granted.  The same leaps that seem to have given the secular such clout in the modern mindset.

For instance, science and experts and researchers and scholars have all shown us new things, and discovered things and solved problems and helped us know things we never knew.  And yet, conversely, they have also helped us forget things that people knew for much of the first period of human history.  From a Christian point of view, that includes forgetting, or at least struggling to remember, the spiritual reality that dwarfs the mere physical universe we love to ogle when the latest Nova special is on PBS.

One of the byproducts of the Church's acquiescing to a materialist model of Creation with some added spiritual stuff is the thought that there is a dividing line a billion miles wide between material and spiritual, no matter how Sacramental we say we are.  You see it still.  Some scientist, or not a few theologians, will chuckle that we no longer think the milk spoiled because of demons.  I've heard that said many times in various forms over the years.  It shows how much smarter and knowledgeable we are than those goofy superstitious people of yore.

But consider this.  Those old timers may have thought that about spoiled milk, but just because we know how the spoilage occurs, does that mean it is therefore shorn of any spiritual linkage?  Plus, as far as those silly old timers with their stupid superstitions, how about us?  Whatever they believed about milk or other foods spoiling, they generally knew how to keep things like that from spoiling nonetheless.  

How are we, us super smart science era types, on that  level?  Our foods are preserved only by adding endless artificial preservatives and synthetics and chemicals, none of which have anything to do with the increasing rates of cancer food allergies we're experiencing.  Those silly old timers were quite capable of doing what we can't do, and all while doing it naturally.  That's the ones who thought the world we see is just a small part of the greater heavens and spiritual realms that were present everywhere and in everything they experienced.

You be the judge.

Let me help CNN out a bit

Their headline: A 25 year old man has been charged in the shooting death of 5 year old Cannon Hinnant.

In our modern era, it should be thus: A black man has been charged in the murder of a 5 year old white child, Cannon Hinnant. 

Of course if the suspect was white and the victim black, we all damn well know that's how the headlines would read.  And we know why, despite a robust Social Media push to have Cannon remembered by the nation at large, almost every national "news" outlet has ignored the story.  It sends shivers down my spine to think of how far we've come.  How much worse when I look up 'New Prolife Catholics' who have not so much as mentioned the boy, even as the few stories about him populate their feeds and blog sites. 

The great evil, racist, 'make the Nazis look good' development in our age is the ease with which we no longer care about human beings or human suffering but that they aid the political agenda.  Add to that the skin color mandate, and we're starting to look like a Berchtesgaden party, but without the whimsy. 

Now, I do need to give kudos to CNN for actually mentioning the story.  It joins a small and elite group of national press outlets that have bothered.  And again, we all know why.  To deny it is to be a liar and a fraud.  It's because of the skin color.  Valuing and judging people based on skin color is now mandated - in our schools, our media, our popular culture even some of our churches.  Almost overnight, we concluded that Nazis and Jim Crow were onto something, they just had the wrong skin colors.  And voila!, it became racist to not look at skin color in deference to some content of character rubbish.

That's called a totalitarian state.  Declare BS truth, and threaten within an inch anyone who fails to repeat the BS mantra.  If we are wondering when America ceases to be free, we might want to look in the rearview mirror rather than down the road. 

Note: On the other hand, good hearted Americans - I'd like to think on all sides of the aisle - have responded to support for the family.  Again, we wait for evidence and facts before rendering judgement about the case.  But we have enough evidence to judge with righteous wrath our deplorable propaganda ministry for ignoring this story and the reasons it has done so.  For that verdict, we have all the evidence we need. 

Martin and Lewis on Pope Francis and division in the Church

Martin and Lewis.  Heh.  I was proud of myself for that one.

Anyhoo, Fr. James Martin tosses out a high five for a piece that is making the rounds in Catholicland.  Mike Lewis at the Communist sympathetic America magazine, has penned a rather direct piece about the divisions in our Church and who is responsible.  It shouldn't come as a shock that the problem is those critics of Pope Francis over there.  

I won't spend an hour penning my appraisal of Pope Francis one way or another.  I will say one thing that has bothered me about his pontificate for some time.  That is, he has a knack for not using the First Person Plural when speaking about the problems in the Church.  Most often, he tells the World it has every right to despise the Catholic witness - and it's because of 'those Catholics over there'. 

His whole 'we have met the enemy, and it's those Catholics over there' has brought about something I've never seen as plainly as I see it now.  That is, we have an entire culture of Catholics who routinely remind us that the problems with the Church are 'those Catholics over there'.  I get that this probably isn't new.  But it was looked down upon in the early days of my entrance into the Church.  If you had such a view, it was usually centered on a particular issue, and then there was usually some 'says I, the greatest of all sinners' qualifier, just to make sure. 

We didn't want to be a Catholic pharisee after all, standing there, thanking God that He didn't make me like those Catholics over there.  You can certainly point out error.  It might even be Christian to confront error and those advocating error.  But never, ever just sit there and say you're not as much the problem as anything 'those' Catholics do.  

And yet, since the ascension of Pope Francis, it has become almost normative to hear Catholic bemoan those Catholics over there who are clearly the problem.  And why not?  So does Pope Francis.  Again, he may say it sometimes, and perhaps it gets lost in translation.  But I'm at a loss to think of many times Pope Francis has said the problem with the Church is 'us', 'we', 'me first and foremost'.  He may have said it, and I don't want to be on record saying he never has.

He just doesn't do it often, at least compared to how often he tears into 'those Catholics over there' for being rigid, obsessing with doctrine, dwelling on Truth, and other such bothersome things.  And when speaking of the Church's witness, he has little problem dwelling on the failures of 'those Catholics over there' as the big sticking point.

So I've come to expect Catholics on the Internet to rush to their blogs whenever Pope Francis says something, and rejoice that he is finally and forcefully calling out 'those Catholics over there.'   I've seen it so many times now, I've lost count.  Pope Francis will let fly at some group of sinners, or more specifically, sinners in the Church, and good Faithful Catholics will rush to Twitter or St. Blogs to rejoice that he is finally calling out 'those Catholics over there.'  

If there was no other reason to have a problem with Pope Francis, that is a pretty big reason.  First lesson in pastor school was always to make sure you use 'we and us' as much as realistically and truthfully possible.  The last thing you want, after all, is a congregation that is sure it's everyone else in the congregation who is the problem.  And always blasting 'them and they' is a great way to get minds thinking in that direction.  Which could be why it might be less Pope Francis's critics, as much as he and his supporters, who play no small part in the divisions they so often bemoan. 

The Evil the Left does

Now, I'm not stupid.  I know evil is a universal. I subscribe to the historial Christian doctrine of original sin.  Or even as the Orthodox put it, the proclivity to sin.  Either/or, it means humans are not born with a moral blank slate, only to be forced into sin by corporate corruption and societal oppression.  Each individual will gladly sin at points, purely because that's what we do in a fallen world.  Anyone who has raised babies will attest to this fact.  It isn't society that teaches the youngest of children to do wrong. There is something in them that compels them to do it on their own.

Therefore, no ideology, group, demographic, culture, nation, civilization, or any other identity of humans is devoid of wrongdoing.  All have sinned, as the Bible acutely observes.  Far be it from me to disagree, or think that such a level headed observation applies to only one side of the aisle.

But here is the difference.  It's not when a society or nation or kingdom has evil in its ranks that is the problem.  It's when the evil begins to be endorsed, excused, and even supported by the main institutions of power and influence within that particular society.  That's when things get ugly.

Right now, the Left controls most of those institutions.  It has the 'news' media, most of our arts and popular culture venues, our education systems, a sizeable portion of our government, a growing segment of corporate interests (both large and small), and no small number of religious traditions and their leaders.  With this monopoly of thought, it becomes increasingly easy to dismiss, ignore, or even excuse and defend the most heinous, evil, and wretched attitudes and behaviors.  

We've seen this with the politicization of Covid-19.  Is the Left the only side that has spun this for gain?  No.  But its spins have been all but embraced by these institutions that should exist to point out such abuses.  Is the Left  the only one to produce terrorist groups and violent organizations bent on destruction, hate and death?  Hardly.  But those that do exist and that preach the Leftist gospel are ignored, or excused, or even endorsed by all of these cultural power cells.  

And that's the difference.  So the fact that prominent individuals - not just hacks somewhere in some basement or log cabin in the Montana wilderness - have despicably seized upon the death of President Trump's brother to score points and wish President Trump himself death is vomit inducing.  It's the stuff all humans should be ashamed of.  And yet, I'd wager little to no attention will be paid by our mass media culture.  So anyone else on the Left will easily be able to ignore the evil, or even laugh along.

That's the problem.  As the Left pushes genocide attitudes, eugenics based ideals, hatred, racism, bigotry, violence, oppression, destruction and all manner of evils, those same institutions that should stand firm against such a movement instead ignores it at best, or supports it at worst.  And those on the Left - from dock worker to priest to mob boss - are able do so as well.  That's how the terror states of yesterday happened.  That's how America will become everything the Left ostensibly fears America becoming. 

So the Christian approach to this is to call out such evil, and send prayers for President Trump, his brother, and their loved ones.  May the peace of God, which suprasses all human understanding, cover their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen. 

This is disturbing

 I may never watch Disney cartoons the same way again.

We should be able to vote in person

So says Dr. Fauci.  

I thought I would post this in case you missed it.  Strangely, it hasn't been carried by many "news" outlets.  In fact, I didn't see it mentioned on a single morning show, though it may have been when I was on another channel.  Still, as this search shows, it isn't something that is being plastered all over the press.

The fact that the Left seems almost rabid in its desire to push voting into an 'all mail' format is enough to make me want to keep it in person.  My distrust of the Left is fast surpassing my distrust of almost anything else in the world today.  And I'm not a trusting person to begin with. 

When the Left became all about loving Corporate Interests

So the big story isn't that obviously anyone who doesn't vote the Biden/Harris ticket is both a racist and sexist.  Nor is it the stories of left wing outlets preemptively saying the only redemption for America as a sexist, racist genocidal Nazi state is to vote Biden/Harris.  It isn't even that Biden picked a woman who painted Biden as a racist during the primaries.  

The big story is that Corporate America and multi-zillion dollar tech mega-opolies are rejoicing with great joy that Harris is the pick, since she's a sure bet to glad-hand the billionaire interests that, well, apparently the New Left loves so well. 

Here the left of Lenin outlet Vox gushes over how Harris and Silicon Valley are a love story made in liberal heaven.  Of course Tech Companies have been in the front lines of turning America into that communist inspired socialist state the Left has dreamed about.  Using the 'fake news' template, they are free to shut down any and all speech and expression tied to anything not left of center.  And don't try to scream censorship.  Once again. the Left changes the rules per convenience.  When a record store owner didn't want to carry a Madonna album, that was censorship.  When billion dollar communications industries want to ban non-leftist speech, that's never censorship.  Remember, the left cheats. 

So now we know.  The Left loves those multi-billion dollar corporate interests, and rejoices that left wing politicians will be in power to ensure those multi-billion dollar corporate interests continue to do what they've done so well - and that's help push America into that Lenin paradise they've been desiring for so many years. 

Happy VJ Day!

Yep, it's almost forgotten.  Liberals, being a Western focused brood, tend to dismiss the War in the Pacific part of WWII.  I actually have history texts on World War II that confine the entire Pacific War into a single chapter.   To us, WWII is all about the Nazi menace, because that's so easily blamed on the West, and America.  Even Pope Francis has embraced this idea that the Western Allies could have bombed a few rail lines and ended the Holocaust, but chose not to because of our racist ways.  Therefore since we can call Nazis evil, and use Nazi evil to condemn all of the West, we like the European conflict.  Heck, we even give a nod to Normandy once a year or so. 

But the Pacific War?  That gets sticky.  We all know that the US, being racist, all but forced Japan (who we grossly underestimated because racism) into attacking us, which was part of FDR's plans.  We then decided to invent the Atomic Bombs in order to kill as many Japanese babies and Japanese Catholics as we could.  Beyond that there were some aircraft carriers or something, and that's about it.  By 1945, Japan was clearly a broken and penitent nation wanting only peace, love and John Lennon songs.   But us racist Americans would have none of it.  We already had our eyes on world domination and oppression by way of our mighty Military Industrial Complex.   Using Japanese babies as guinea pigs for a show of power is just what our old American racists craved.

Or so the gist of my boys' history books seem to suggest.  All of this ignores those inconvenient non-whites who are always pests when their lived experiences don't jive with Leftist propaganda.  The fact is, one of the strange benefits we've received from China - and other Asian and Pacific Rim nations - emerging and trying to assert themselves is hearing their perspectives.

Remember, after WWII, Japan emerged as our prime, and just about only, ally in the Orient.  Never ones to spend too much time in humility and repentance, Japan was more than happy to ride the crestwave of American guilt and shame that was emerging during the Civil Rights era, and stoked by all those Soviet bots who were seeing post-war era America as their chance. 

Since Truman had plenty of enemies in our own ranks, not the least of which were Eisenhower (political) and MacArthur (personal), we seemed to have ample evidence that Japan was truly a place of peace loving humble penitents when the US decided to nuke them a couple cities.  Popular portrayals of hayseed Americans loving the fact that Truman showed them Japs a thing or two only solidified the idea that this horrible thing happened in a vacuum for no discernable reason.  

It didn't help that there really is no way to square Christian ethics with dropping a meg-bomb on a city filled with the elderly, women, children and infants.  The verdict was in, and America emerged as the bad guy, second only to those Nazis whose defeat we prefer to focus upon.

But yet, you have those emerging voices as other nations, such as Korea, Vietnam, Burma (now Myanmar), and China began to tell a different tale.  The really big break with the Japanese narrative was the emergence of the Korean Women.  At a time when feminism was riding high, their stories of systematic rape camps built by the Japanese for the sole purpose of using them as sex slaves for their soldiers sent shockwaves.  That hurt.  

That didn't only hurt, but it inspired younger Japanese to start rethinking what they had been told about the war.  I know from a girl I dated in college, who was from Japan, that Japan's take on historical events and our take were quite different.  Much of what she heard here in the States she had never heard before in Japan.  Plus, beyond such young Japanese seeking truth, the other Asian countries began to tell their tales.

It turns out, WWII begins in 1931, not 1939 like the press always says.  WWII was already going strong, and atrocities piling up, before Hitler came to power or Mussolini was humiliated in Ethiopia.  And the atrocities continued.  Well beyond the infamous Rape of Nanking, Japan's atrocities rival that of Nazi Germany, if even a restrained acceptance of the various Asian nations' perspectives is taken.  

We don't know how many millions were killed.  Japan is not nearly as repentant as Germany.  Plus, many of the places in which the atrocities happened were not occupied as Germany and its conquered territories were by the Allies.  In addition, it's tough to figure just who killed who.  Like Germany's clash with the Soviets, sometimes we have a hard time figuring out if China caused the death of so many of the millions, or if they were all Japan.

In any event, we now have a much different picture of Japan in August, 1945 than that which was promoted by Japan or critics of Truman's decision to drop the nuclear bombs.  We know that it was a terror state on par with Nazi Germany, and thousands suffering and dying daily under Japan continued to do so up until its surrender.  We also know, thanks to a robust inquiry from within its own borders, that the Japanese high command was in no way prepared to go down quietly.  An invasion and conquest and nothing less is what they were planning.  And given the horror of Okinawa, that invasion would have been one of the worst in all of human history. 

Meanwhile, just waiting Japan out or starving it out would have consigned endless tens of thousands of Japan's victims to torture and death.  Not to mention that the American presence in the area that would have been needed to starve Japan out would have stood exposed to Japan's suicide bomber mentality.  

No, from a Christian point of view, it's tough to reconcile the decision to drop atomic bombs on cities filled with children and the innocent.  Even dropped on purely military targets would be hell and gone from chivalry.  But it was hardly an evil in a vacuum.  If anything, America stands guilty, as the Christian West usually does, of sinking to the level of the world around it.  Already the death toll of World War II averaged in the hundreds upon hundreds of thousands a month.  As many died on average in a month during that conflict as were killed by both atomic bombs.  And one of the biggest causes of that death toll was not the relatively small percentage drawn from the Strategic Bombing operations, but from the Holocausts, the Eastern Front, and Japans's own reign of slaughter and terror.

It shows what happens when good people get pulled into bad things.  At some point, in this present darkness, the only way to realistically stop the bad is by joining the bad.  Perhaps the lesson isn't to condemn the US but to learn the best way to beat evil isn't to join it.  Yet despite America's slip into that, it nonetheless managed to stand higher than many countries in an age where killing by the tens of millions had become the norm. 

If nothing else, for a moment at least, that was certainly worth celebrating.