A happy birthday to our youngest

 

Yes, it's true.  We're on the brink of having no more children younger than teen age.  But not yet.  He's on the brink, however, and his feelings are mixed. Part of him is excited about getting older, and part wishes he could stay young.

When I was his age, I couldn't wait to grow up.  What the hell was I thinking?  But it was in the freewheeling 1970s when anything and everything adults could do was pretty much laid bare on the table for us little'uns to see.  We may think with the Internet things have gotten worse.  No, they've gotten secretive.  In the 1970s, what you go to dark sites on the Internet to find today were on storage shelves and book racks next to Popular Mechanics for all to see.

So there is that.  Our youngest, who we call our 'Little Catholic Gift", has grown up in a world separate from his brothers.  His oldest brother, over fourteen years his senior, grew up in an age at the end of ours, when the last shards of the assumptions that defined my generation were still in effect.  Things were changing, of course.  As they always do.  But the world our oldest grew up in - of God Bless America, Let's agree to disagree, of VCR tapes and CD players, of this new thing called the Internet, and of an only recently post-Cold War world - was far closer to my experience growing up than anything our youngest knows. 

To our youngest, most of those things are non-existent to ancient fables and legendary tales.  Including, of course, the idea that our country, our faith traditions, and the values we grew up with are for anything other than disdain and contempt.  With our oldest, we taught him to look past skin color and see people as individuals, all within one human race, never judging based on group identity.  Being in public schools, we had plenty of help in those days, though we noticed a growing tendency for him to see skin color and other identifiers more and more, courtesy of the latest lesson in his grade school text book.

But for our youngest, we have to explain to him that he wasn't born a racist Nazi simply because of his skin color.  That he is not guilty for the sins of everyone who ever had white skin.  That the country in which he was born doesn't deserve to be burned to the ground while people who look like my son should get it in the neck because, well, skin color. That's quite a change.

Plus, there's been shifts to our lives in general.  He was a late arrival in a family of late arrivals.  My mom was the youngest of six children in her family, and I came along almost nine years after my sister, who was born eight years after my parents were married.  It's not surprising, therefore, that my youngest's experience visiting family is limited.  There isn't much family left.  While my three oldest missed out on most of our greater extended family, they still can remember meeting some.  Our youngest never knew any but my mom and dad, and the rarest visit from my wife's parents and sister from Florida or visit to her surviving grandmother. 

More than that, my mom moved in with us when my dad died.  Over the years, her age and a clear case of dementia has left her as dementia often does.  Owing to our lives, him being home schooled, and obligations I have or opportunities that come my way, that often leaves him as the main contact to take care of my mom when the rest can't.

That's not easy on him, God bless him.  I explained to my sister that after her divorce, our parents stepped in and helped raise her son.  Likewise, though we lived away from my parents for many years, when we moved to Ohio, they would come down and babysit or watch them when needs arose.  In those crazy years when we became Catholic, sometimes we left them for days at a time as my wife and I scrambled to find income any way we could.  

But while her son and our oldest were raised by and cared for by their grandparents, our youngest has had to help care for for his grandma.  And it isn't easy.  Anyone who has been a caregiver for an elderly parent, even without dementia, knows how taxing it is.  Add the dementia element, and it can be more than tough.  Yet he handles it like a trooper.  If he gets al little exasperated at times, at the ripe age of pre-teen, I'd say he's more than earned his room and board.  

He helps her, gets her meals when we aren't available, and generally watches to make sure she's OK.  Despite it all, he's still as close to her as any of the boys and makes sure he takes time out of his days to spend time with her - something I think continues to help her in a very positive way. If he still sleeps with his stuffed dog he got when he was a baby, I let it slide.  Given what he's had to contend with, I'll leave him what shards of childhood he can hold onto while he can.  

So here's to a happy and blessed birthday and year for him. He's in many ways pre-teen going on twenty five in his life's experiences.  I get that he's not some poor kid in a third world country, but he's not had an easy walk either.  It's helped him, of course, and he can hold his own in a household of adults with the best of them.  May God bless him and the upcoming year in even the smallest amount of how much he blesses us.

Oh, and for his birthday dinner, we asked what he wanted - family tradition: birthday celebrant gets to choose.  He said McDonalds.  We said that's fine, but we thought he might want something a little more 'special.'  So he said OK, homemade McDonalds.  Since our oldest's first job was at McDonald, he took what he remembered there and found substitute recipes to make a dinner of burgers, nuggets, fries and even Big Macs.  

And you know what?  Though we couldn't' find small buns for the Big Macs, making them larger than they should have been, it worked.  Closing our eyes, we couldn't taste a bit of difference.  Hopefully that and all the things that went with his birthday made it worthy of what he brings to our family. 

By the way, eating a Big Mac twice the size of a normal Big Mac is like eating rocks. It took me until dinner the next day before I was able to eat anything else. 

Tasted great, but as filling as steel armor

Even the apple pies he made were twice the size - but yummy

CNN provides the stupidest Covid story of the month

I know, I know.  Leave me alone about it being CNN.   I should go to more credible news outlets like anything you might find in the checkout lane at the grocery store.  But CNN is still a source that is used and reported on in various other outlets and websites as if it's really news. 

That's how I saw this, and I just had to laugh.  It's classic 'they're tunneling under our houses' The Monsters are Due on Maple Street hysteria of the fifth magnitude.  Apparently some people in Missouri are getting vaccinated against Covid - in secret!  Why in secret?  Because they're scared, scared I tell you, of their loved ones who are antivaxers!

Really, read the "story".  It's all there in black and white.  As of now, I should mention I know of nobody who has said they oppose others getting vaccines, much less that they would somehow punish or hurt someone for doing so.  In a world with billions of people, could there be a few freakish cases of people doing so?  Sure. But with that logic, we could make a non-story into a news story about anything.  Oh, wait.  Yeah.  

Anyway, I realize it's unfair to use CNN as an example of the bad messaging that has defined the Covid era.  Nonetheless, it's because CNN is hardly unique that I don't feel terrible about it, even if the story is so stupid as to melt your brain. 

It illustrates a major problem right now, and that is the clash of agendas around Covid and its reporting that has muddied the waters and led even the most open and acquiescing individuals to at times at least raise an eyebrow. If it was just CNN it would be good for a laugh.  But it's not just from laughable sources like CNN.  Which is my beef.  If the medical community wants me to listen, I ask that it please do its best to sound like the medical community, not a tabloid publication or a used car salesman. 

UPDATE:  Why waste time with CNN?  Because CNN is merely one voice in the chorus of propaganda.  So I was just informed that the Gray Lady is picking up on the 'look out they're coming to get you!' hysteria.  It's not just one outlet that is the problem, it's the industry.  As I tell my boys, believe it or not there was a time when we could tell the difference between grocery store tabloids and mainstream news outlets.  

Heh

 

And then they came for white liberals

So Newsweek posted this story about a black rights social justice organization calling upon white liberal Democrats to stop putting their kids in Ivy League schools.  Sorry o'liberals of mine, your time in the sun is done, and your kids will now cash in the cost of your self-righteousness.  That seems to be the point of the group's message. 

Newsweek plays ignorant about the real motive of the message.  Could it be a stealth group trying to make such noble ventures look bad?  Could it really be a group saying college admissions should be barred against students based on skin color?  The article seems rather brief, and non-committal. 

Between you, me, and the grandfather clock, I have a hard time believing the good writers at Newsweek were not able to find what it took me two seconds to find.  Granted, it all could be a ruse, but it's a darn comprehensive ruse.  Likewise, McCarthy could have been a communist agent and it would all make more sense.  But as it is, proof contrary to the accepted narrative is not forthcoming, so my quick search seems to have yielded the actual group and what it stands for. 

That might be why Newsweek got all 'can we ever be sure?' about its identity.  After all, this is a fairly brazen call to discriminate against children based on skin color, even if it is part of a growing trend.  The fact that more and more blacks and black activists seem comfortable openly pining for a day when it's whites using those drinking fountains, stepping off the sidewalks, and perhaps even basking in the fields, is troubling enough.  Not surprising to sane people and students of the historical Christian faith, but troubling for  those indoctrinated in the foolishness of multiculturalism nonetheless.

After all, Christians - and others - of a sane disposition know that multiculturalism is bunk.  The idea that for 50,000 years the world lived in peace, love and John Lennon songs while only the vile Christian West and America invented all evil, is about as accurate as Himmler's Handbook on Jewish History.  Yet it's the foundation for modern liberal education, the idea that only in the Christian traditions and American experiment has evil really ever occurred.  Sane Christians and others with brains know that evil, sin and temptations transcend all boundaries and identities in human history. 

Nonetheless, liberals keep plodding on with the lunacy.  My son saw in his OSU course catalogue a class that reinforces this.  It was called Comparative Studies in Slavery.  Yep, you read that right.  The course description?  It was a paragraph long, but could be summarized like this: Slavery has existed on a cultural level throughout the ages in many different forms ... but only the European Transatlantic African Slave Trade was truly evil and dehumanizing.  The kids taking that class are taught by professors who were my peers who heard discussions when we were in college about how only whites are capable of being racist.  See how things progress?

More and more blacks, Asians, Muslims and others are coming out of the closet and putting teeth into their bite when it comes to ending this whole Western Christian Civilization and Anglo-American  experiment rubbish.  In a bit of poetic justice, the good people at Dallas Justice Now have decided their first target should be those self-righteous white liberals who think a BLM poster or George Floyd pin will do.  No, it won't.  For decades I've asked if things are as horribly evil as white liberals and liberal men say, shouldn't the men and whites relinquish their lofty positions and given women and minorities their spots?  Of course I was dismissed as ignorant for saying such a stupid and silly thing.

Now it's not me saying it.  It's the ones those precious white liberals thought were groveling in the dirt and rejoicing in the glorious beneficence of white liberals everywhere.  It would serve liberals right to harvest the first fruits of their folly.  Sadly it won't be them.  It will be their children and everyone's children, including those who have taken the bait of resentment, blame and revenge, who will pay once the one civilization that brought such ideas as equality, liberty and right to life has been sent to the ash heap of history. 

My first Facebook block and the trends of our age

 

That is the first person I ever blocked on Facebook, and one of only two I've ever blocked/banned since I began on Social Media.  He was a fellow who seems to be a somewhat moderate Catholic and who trolls Mark Brumley's FB page.  He had trolled others and me before on a host of issues.  The final straw was dealing with this article by Deacon Greydanus I posted on some time back.  

It being FB, I gave just one example of why Deacon Greydanus was wrong, and many objections to the Left's approach to racism have substance and are not semantic quibbling.  I picked the Kaepernick protests since I'm versed on those, and remember why so many made clear they were bothered - chief reason being the naked hypocrisy of those lifting up Kaepernick who only recently trashed Tebow for daring to breach the hallowed halls of sports with vile politics. 

Mr. Chasuk did what he always does, and that's troll.  This was done largely by repeating bilge, a few insults and personal digs, and the not too subtle suggestion that my problem is black people. I initially thought I could spell it out that charging 'semantic quibbling' doesn't apply when people explain exactly why they have a problem with something, and that explanation involves matters of substance.  And furthermore, the reason - duplicity, denial, hypocrisy used to advance and agenda with which they reject on factual grounds - is more than any definition of quibbling.  That went nowhere, and resulted in more trolling, name calling, accusations, dismissal of basic Church teaching 101 and the works.  So I blocked him.  Only one of two times I have ever blocked or banned someone from anything, and here is why him and not other trolls I've run into over the years. 

Mr. Chasuk appears about millennial age, and demonstrates many of the more baleful aspects of that particular generation.  Beyond being a troll, he exhibits the characteristic disdain for history, ir not reality in general.  Like those millennial trolls at Patheos, he was fond of invoking the old 'that's a right fine narrative about liberals being against censorship back in the day, but can we ever really know they were against censorship?  Maybe they rejoiced in censorship?  Maybe CAT spells Dog?  Can anyone know anything of the past' trick.  That's just your version of reality after all.'  

Worse, however, is something that I wanted to touch base on when I broke my ban on linking to Mark Shea's website a few weeks back.  I got waylaid from my point when Mark lamented to his readers my unwillingness to speak to him directly.  After multiple attempts at speaking to him directly that were cleverly foiled by Mark, I gave up.  But that sort of sidelined the greater point.

The point I was going to bring up was looking beyond Mark's partisan call for all people who would consider themselves good to vote Democrat while calling for the destruction of the GOP.  Yeah, that's political zealotry of the first order.  Nonetheless, for all its lockstep devotion to the Party, I'm sure Mark would be appalled if you suggested he was calling for Republicans to be killed.  Like calling for the NRA, or Gun Cult, or the GOP to be wiped out by the State or by God, Mark doesn't mean actually killing those in such groups.  He means the groups must go.  I can imagine his rage at anyone suggesting otherwise.

But you know what?  I've noticed such distinctions are generational on the Left, not universal.  Remember the Parkland shooting heroes?  That is, those students and youth celebrated by the press who rose up to become the March of Heroism against the plague of gun violence in our nation?  Where did they go?  Long before Covid, they had fallen off the radar. 

True, the media is like that.  Journalism is like a kid with a toy at Christmas.  At first it's all the rage, but most of the time by the end of the year it's old news. But the speed with which most of the youth were shuffled away versus the degree to which they were initially lifted up by the press was interesting.  

It's been my hunch that a growing number of those youth began making troubling statements about gun owners and gun rights advocates that the press just couldn't downplay.  Like Mark, those young activists had no problem saying the NRA should be destroyed.  Unlike Mark, however, some had no problem saying how the NRA should be destroyed  - namely with their own guns.  Same with gun owners.  I remember a particular tweet that caused a stir when one said he wished gun owners would kill themselves with their own guns..  Likewise, a few months later another Parkland advocate caused a stir by tweeting that he wished a congresswoman who opposed their agenda would be the next victim - along with her family - of the next mass shooting.  

This is not Jim Brady's gun control movement.  This is not a movement founded on the idea that peace is ever good and violence is ever bad, therefore guns have to go.  Too many of those young radicals were fine saying violence and killing are acceptable, as long as it's those evil people who are in their way. 

That same fanaticism has found its way in other leftwing advocacy circles.  We all remember the good Ms. Thunberg (whose name is accepted by spellcheck), Climate Warrior extraordinaire, and her 'we're here to save the world, so get out of our way or else' rantings  The same with the BLM riots last year.  No level of destruction, carnage or death was unacceptable to the sacred cause of the BLM gospel. 

While older, seasoned Boomer era leftists tried to twist and torture the English language to assure us that the BLM burnings and destruction were just peaceful protests, I noticed many younger activists would have none of it.  And that's where Mr. Chasuk comes in. 

I realized he was trouble after the Jan 6 terrorist attacks, as they are described by the Left.  He was on Mark Brumley's page, going with both barrels against the unprecedented horrors of January 6th and how that was an indictment on, well, everything right of center. 

I caught something though.  Most trying to explain how we rejoiced in the BLM protests while decrying January 6 were stumbling about trying every trick in the trade to avoid the obvious.  Some said there was a magical distinction between attacking government and even federal buildings versus the actual US Capital.  Others said the violence was coincidental and unrelated to the pure protests that were peaceful, as opposed to January 6.  Heck, I saw a couple try to insist the BLM violence was part of a vast rightwing conspiracy, that the BLM protesters were all about pace, love and John Lennon songs, but evil MAGA types snuck in to make them look violent.

Not Mr. Chasuk.  Nope.  He and others his age and  younger had a very simple message to distinguish between support for BLM protests and riots and everything that went with them as opposed to the January 6th ritos.  That distinction?  Easy.  BLM was right and just.  Sure we weep, we mourn, we lament the loss of innocent life during those weeks of riots and protests.  But the cause was just, and verily didst the slaughter of the innocent glorify the just cause.  Lucas Beaumanoir couldn't have said it better. 

And that is something more and more younger and younger leftists are embracing, if the Internet suggests anything about it.  As they've already embraced bigotry and racism against the correct race, the glory of censoring and banning offensive material that's truly offensive, and judging and condemning endless swaths of reprehensive sinners for not being as righteous as they are, so they are warming up to the age old idea that sometimes violence is not just an answer, but a damn good one at that. 

In fact, that was one benefit in seeing Mr. Chasuk, as opposed to other old codger progressives who flitted around Mark Brumley's FB page.  Many would try to excuse this or that, such as banning books because of racist messaging or judging people of the past without mercy by appealing to some trivial jot or tittle or parsing an obscure justification.  

Not Mr. Chasuk.  He was fine saying censorship is good when it's against bad stuff.  And judging, duh, of course it's right.  Condemning entire groups of people based on this or that identity?  Is there a problem?  And violence and even the killing of the innocent?  Again, for the glory of the just cause we may weep, but we also endorse. 

Now he is about two generations removed from Mark Shea, who would never say actual Republicans, much less innocent people, must die for the cause.  Nor would he ever come out and excuse the killing of innocent people under the auspices of it being a just cause.  Or at least I haven't seen him do so.  Mr. Chasuk and other people his age?  Oh yeah.  I've seen more than one explain why no end of violence against America is completely justified, even if the innocent must die - if there can be innocent in such a vile and racist nation as ours. 

Mr. Chasuk, for his part, never said that we must kill the guilty and the innocent.  He simply made clear that when it does happen, as long as it is for the just cause (that is the leftist cause), it's an acceptable loss.  Collateral damage we might say. 

The big question is this.  Since there is nothing stopping the Left at this point, and with each day we see it descend deeper and deeper into the Pit, what well the next generation or two after Mr. Chasuk be saying?  Will they leave it as 'we don't seek to kill, but those killed for a just cause - that is our cause - are acceptable losses'?  Or will they take it to the next step, as he has from the tired old Boomer leftists like Shea, and say it's time to go to the boxcars and lynch mobs, now hand us the guns?  Only time will tell. But I'm not optimistic. 

The Post-Modern Pope

I try not to delve too deeply into the Francis Wars.   As a non-Catholic, most of the harshest critics of then Pope John Paul II were the liberal Catholics I knew.  As I moved into the Church and roamed about St. Blogs for an idea about this whole Catholic thing, most who were not liberal simply dismissed such critics.  They didn't like liberals' attitudes about the pope, and when the rhetoric against the pope became vile, they would speak out.  But it was no big thing most of the time.  The emphasis was always on 'we're all under the same big Catholic tent'. 

Despite the fact that most who said that then will rip into anyone who dares question Pope Francis today, I still try to keep a 'big tent' view   I don't think Pope Francis is Satan, Hitler, Stalin, Charles Manson or George Clooney.  I agree with some of what he's said.  

For instance, I liked that he pointed out food waste is a sin, and one of the unfortunate byproducts of our industrial age is having so much that we can afford the luxury of throwing perfectly good food in the trash even while millions around the world starve.  Well done pope.  Or his attacks on consumerism, or drawing - perhaps not enough -attention to the Nazi style selective abortion that is becoming all the rage to the left of center.

Nonetheless, I do have problems with him.  Especially in how he conducts himself as a religious leader.  I don't think I've ever known so prominent a religious leader who seems to celebrate 'do as I say, not as I do' as a religious ideal.  His constant 'the problem with the world is those believers over there' rhetoric has led to a cottage industry of Catholics who are thrilled every time they're sure he just blasted those believers over there.

Plus it's not hard to see his sympathies lie to the left of that political center.  He may say marriage is between a man and woman, or abortion is sin, but see if he rips into those who challenge or reject those moral positions.  Yet watch when he takes on critics of various, often political, viewpoints such as Global Warming or open immigration or Covid lockdowns  He has no problem blasting them as sinful deplorables, even moving to judge their inner hearts and motives.  

Then there is that tendency he has to echo what I learned about Marxist inspired Latin American Liberation Theology.  If he isn't a student of it, then some level of Liberation Theology osmosis seems to have had its way with him.  It's not hard to see his sympathies lie with almost anyone except the Western Democratic nations and those believers who happen to live there. 

Finally there is the fact that he just spends so darn little time talking about things like Jesus or the Catholic Church as if they really matter.  Oh sure, you can find some quote of his in a greater talk where he might speak of salvation and the Church, but you usually have to go digging to find it.  Not so with his views on Global Warming, the economy, immigration, or Black Lives Matter.  You google pope and any of those, and you're hit with a tidal wave of multiple references to multiple statements he has made.  Sometimes a little more focus on the hereafter rather than the here and now might do him better. 

With that said, the news a week or so ago that his first post-surgery move was to drop a bomb on the Latin Mass sent my head spinning.  As the world is blowing itself apart, as tyranny and mass killing and eugenics and the move to destroy liberty, religion and life is almost unchecked on a global scale, as the Catholic Church is bleeding numbers and more and more Catholics don't give a rip about Catholic teaching, he decided to drop the hammer on those Catholics attending the Latin Mass under the premise that it's divisive?  Has it ever dawned on him that if it's divisive, it might be because of many reasons and many sides of the issue - including him?  I mean, for a pope whose tagline is 'who am I to judge', he does a lot of judging.  And condemning.  And sometimes almost contemptuously putting down those who don't share his view of unity. 

That he does this under the auspices of bringing unity is like telling people to stop being divisive and admit they're Nazis.  More than that, it reinforces my growing opinion that Pope Francis approaches the Church the same way postmodernity approaches the world.  That is, if we have seen further than others, it's not by standing on the shoulders of giants, it's because we are the first generation of giants to look back at the deplorable history of dwarfs who came before us. 

That's why so many millennials and others raised in the postmodern era have nothing but contempt for the past, and don't really care about learning anything from the past.  That's why survey after study finds younger and younger generations not only not knowing basics, but not caring that they don't.  After all, why care about everyone before us who were clearly losers who messed it all up compared to our awesomeness?

Pope Francis sometimes gives whiffs of this viewpoint.  He often acts as if the first 2000 years of the Faith were a dress rehearsal for now when we're finally getting things right.  And this new vision of the Church is finally the right one, firing on all pistons correctly, understanding all of the new visions of the world that finally shed the proper light on the true revelation of how things always should have been. 

As my sons have said, if it was any generation other than this one, such thinking might seem more plausible.  I sometimes think that never in history has a generation with so little to show for its time on Earth spent so much time speaking of its superiority to everyone who came before who built the civilization that same generation inherited and yet despises. 

And like postmoderns, who are getting nastier and nastier the more we see the latest, greatest ideas of the last couple generations unravel and fail, it seems as though the more questionable results of the Church's attempts to modernize become apparent, the worse those who support the Church's modern approach to dealing with the Faith in the world become similarly nasty.  Unfortunately, I could include Pope Francis in that assessment. 

To embrace the Left

Is to embrace the lies and deplorable arguments required to defend the Left.

I've stopped following the page that monitors Catholics on Twitter because I'm more and more convinced that Twitter is of the Devil.  I know there can be good people who post good things on Twitter, but the bad far outweighs the good from what I've seen. 

Nonetheless, one individual I will check on is deacon and film critic Steven Greydanus, simply because I continue to watch in amazement as he has descended deeper and deeper into the shadows of the Leftwing pit.  Things I know he once would have condemned, or arguments he rightly would have laughed at, are now his stock and store. 

He and I used to have some pretty good discussions back in the day. While we didn't always agree, he was respectful and had little tolerance for lousy or lame arguments that were used to make a Social Media point.  Of course he was also against the name calling and calumny that defines so much online discourse.  That made debating things with him a pleasure, even if I never thought much of him as a film critic.

I say all of this because: 

His source is a Huffington Post piece - which should raise a thousand alarms right there - about how Texas Republicans are banning the teaching of evil and good.  They are literally saying schools can no longer teach the KKK is bad or mention MLK, at least according to the HP hit piece.  

Which is false of course. And not just false, but head-up-a-donkey's butt idiotic lies.  You would have to be some special level of partisan dumb to think that's what this or any major bill would seek to accomplish.  It's nothing but the old trick of  saying 'Republicans won't teach that Stalin was a bad man' while failing to mention it's because they won't promote the policies and ideologies of Hitler, who said Stalin was a bad man.

It wasn't easy to find, but if you dig a bit you can see what is happening.  The Texas GOP is going after the racist based Critical Race Theory that alternately does and doesn't exist based on the moment, and is founded on the principle that going to a pre-WWII approach to sizing people up and judging them based on group identities including, but not limited to, skin color and ethnicity is the only way to go. Sane people of virtue and common sense see CRT for the evil stupidity that it is. 

FWIW, here is an alternate view over at FOX. I unusually don't reference FOX for more than fluff or trivial pieces, but  I had to go there in order to see almost any attempt in our propaganda ministry national press to ask the Texas Republicans their point of view.  Most outlets seemed happy to take the HP's 'GOP wants to praise the KKK and Nazis' narrative as gospel truth because, well, of course they do.  

The emergent Left is a grave evil, a sort of 'History's evils' greatest hits.'  It poisons everything, including deacons of good will who once would have recognized and condemned the lies and evils used here in order to perpetrate even greater lies and evils, but who now must support the same.  

Ed Begley describes white conservatives for the modern Left

 

From the wonderful movie 12 Angry Men.  Not to be seen as a treatise on the jury system, it's a morality play demonstrating post-war liberal thinking, where looking past prejudices and personal axes to grind in our pursuit of true justice and equality was the message of the day. 

Today, the Left has perfected dragging a thousand prejudices into the mix, especially when people have axes to grind and can blame their fortunes on 'them.'  Aided by a propaganda ministry composed of journalism, education, entertainment, book publishers and even religious leaders, the modern Left has almost perfected the 'you heard liberals say, but the Left now says' template for the modern world.  

You know, you once heard liberals say that banning offensive material is fascism, but the Left now says banning offensive material is mandatory. Or you heard liberals say that it's wrong to judge, but the Left now says we will judge the hell out of a growing boatload of deplorables.  Or you heard liberals say that violence is never the answer, but the Left now says violence can be a damn good answer if it dost glorify the leftist cause.  You et the point. 

We watched this gem of a film the other night, at our sons' request.  When this symbolic scene occurred, I suddenly thought of how many things I've heard promoted by the Left regarding non-leftists dissenters that bore an eerie resemblance to the speech above. 

I thought of the Duke LaCrosse scandal, when college professors and scholars were trotted out to explain that it's just in the bloodstream of white American boys to want to rape black girls. Or the Tucson shooting, when CNN had a roundtable pointing out that it's simply a fact that conservatives and Republicans are violent. Or the four years of hearing how people who didn't vote for Hillary were clearly sexist, or MAGA types are Nazis.  Sometimes they will say 'they aren't all' that way, but let's be honest, we get the drift.  Just as we get the drift in the clip above. 

The same is said about white Americans, whites in general, Christians, Americans, conservatives, Republicans, men, heterosexuals, - you name it.  The above speech from the late Ed Begley is almost verbatim what you hear from the modern Left when it comes to anyone who doesn't bow before the idol of the Left.

Does that mean only those on the Left are capable of such bigotry and ignorance and hate?  No.  Of course not.   As I've said a million times, however, it's the identity of who is saying this sort of bilge that makes the difference.  Dig into any back alley, Montana log cabin, or cypress covered shack and you can hear people talking about blacks or Hispanics or Jews or Catholics or Asians or Muslims in such a manner to this day. 

The difference is, to hear the same said about whites, conservatives, non-leftists, Catholics, and traditional Americans in general today, you don't have to search out such remote locations.  Reading a newspaper or watching the national press, hearing prominent Democratic politicians, viewing a major awards show in Hollywood with millionaire celebrities and power players, listening to interviews with university scholars and professors and presidents, or hearing millionaire athletes and even prominent religious leaders will do just fine. 

And that makes all the difference. 

The Cleveland Indians bore me

I never followed the Indians because I followed the Reds instead.  But this is no news I wouldn't expect in our age of crazy evil.  As should be obvious now, the point is to engrain in our minds the idea that anything and everything, every name and every word, associated with the history of the United States is evil and unforgivably racist.  That way the growing number of younger Americans who also believe the same about such things as the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, equality, liberty and freedom of speech can be added to.

Just who is behind this or why is open to speculation.  My guess is simple numbers.  If 10% of the non-Western world wants the Western world exterminated, that's half as many people as live in the whole of the Western World.  And since these vast global mega-corporations value the bottom line, it's not hard to see where they will fall if push comes to shove. 

In the meantime, priming up and coming generations to rejoice when the whole of the Western Tradition, the United States, and the Western Democracies have been put to rest is the end goal.  When everything from legal documents to insect names to sports franchises are associated with evil and need eliminating, the rest won't be much of a problem. 

Those who don't like this trend?  Easy.  Stop giving the corporations doing this your business, or apparently it doesn't bother you that much. 

I laughed out loud at this

 

CNN is outraged

That Ted Cruz and Republicans are blocking White House diplomatic nominees for political reasons.  You can read all about it here.  Because, of course, the side CNN opposes is doing it to the side CNN supports.  It's really that easy.  No other explanation needed.  All the long-winded wordplay in the article to suggest we're on the brink of an apocalypse because of something that has never happened before is merely to say CNN is upset that it's the other guys doing it to CNN"s guys as opposed to the other way around.  Easy-peasy Japanesey. 

Vaccines and us

We haven't received our Covid vaccines.  We are not antivaxers.   We have had our children vaccinated as a matter of course over the years.  And yet we haven't received the Covid vaccine.  There are many reasons for this in our thinking, but let me set the stage for you when it comes to our thinking.  What we bring to any discussion of a vaccine, and what is on our mind always where medications and vaccinations are concerned, is as follows. 

First, years ago we gave our second oldest son, who had a few health problems early on, an over the counter med when he was little. He ballooned up and broke out in a rash.  We asked his then-pediatrician about it. She insisted the reaction couldn't have been that particular medicine.  Reactions to that cold medicine do not look like that.  Therefore the next time he got sick, we gave him that medicine again.  Once again, he reacted the same way.  Once again she insisted that the side effects of that particular medication do not react in such ways.  We found a different doctor and stopped giving him that particular medicine.  He's had no such reactions since. 

Second, years ago after my mom was living with us, she went to get her annual flu shot.  We never got the flu shot because we seldom got the flu.  And I knew plenty who got the flu shot who ended up getting the flu.  So in our family, despite not being antivax, we passed each year on the flu shot.

Mom didn't, however, and received her shot.  That very night her shoulder went completely lame.  It ached and she was in much pain, being unable to use her shoulder where she received the shot.  We took her to the doctor the next day and asked how the shot could cause that.  He said it couldn't.  That is not a side effect of any flu shot.  We went to an expert, and the expert insisted the same thing, that it was merely a sudden flare up of severe arthritis.  I said that may be true, but the morning before her shot she didn't have any problems.  

True, years earlier she had something happen and to this day nobody knows what.  Doctors said it was everything from a stroke to shingles.  But since then, her shoulder and arm were generally back to normal until she had the flu shot that afternoon.  Nonetheless, they insisted the two were not connected.  It may have been a flare up owing to the condition she had some years earlier, but it was simply a coincidence that it became bad on that particular day.

Finally, my oldest son was on track to be a gourmet chef because of his love for - and abilities with - cooking.  He had done some basic education at a local community college owing to his white privilege.  Before he transferred, his doctor - wrongly - told him that to go to any university would require his vaccines be up to date, including his flu shot.  He explained we didn't get that shot normally, but the doctor - former doctor - pressed him.  So he, alone among all of us, got his first flu shot along with updating a couple other vaccines.  

A few months later we were eating at a restaurant and he began to choke.  We thought perhaps he was eating too fast.  He managed to get it down and my wife drove him home while the rest of us finished.   We thought no more of it.  Some months later, we had friends over and he planned on cooking a fine salmon dinner for us.  While bringing the dishes out to us on the deck, he looked like hell.  He face was swollen, he was having a difficult time breathing.  One of our friends was a nurse and she recognized immediately a severe food allergy reaction.  We were able to use  meds at hand to reduce the symptoms.  We then took him to the doctor and an allergist and they diagnosed him with a severe fish allergy.  Since we didn't eat fish that often unless it's Lent, it took us time to see this development.

We pointed out that he had never had anything close to a reaction to fish or any food.  We also pointed out that we first saw this only after he received that battery of vaccines at his doctor's insistence.  Nonetheless, they said these things were in no way connected.  There was no reason to think his sudden, and debilitating, food allergy is in any way connected to the vaccines.

So that's our experience.   Not once has anything gone wrong with us from getting vaccines.  We know this because every doctor, specialist and medical expert has insisted it hasn't.  Dumb, blind luck and cosmic coincidence, but no connection.   Causation and correlation after all. 

My mom has been unable to use her arm since then.  Furthermore, it was her inability to use her arm that led to her falling, which led to a near death emergency that, among other things, hastened her dementia as such medical crises often do.  

My oldest had to give up on a culinary career. No culinary school or restaurant would hire a chef who could die in the kitchen from simply smelling fish or fish ingredients.  He can't go to a random restaurant, but must call ahead to make sure they don't serve fish.  No trips to the beach, aquariums, or anything with the smell of fish in the air.  He can't be around if a coworker brings fish for lunch.  He can't even be in a Walmart supercenter if they are cleaning the seafood department, even if he stands on the other side of the store, without developing symptoms. 

Yet none of this is connected to vaccines, because the experts assure us they aren't.  We are not antivaxers, and have always made sure our boys were up to date with all of the essentials.  But we are also skeptical.  We are skeptical because nobody seemed the least bit interested in looking at even the possibility that, say, a modern flu shot could trigger a reaction they don't expect.  Even as, according to a BBC article a few years ago, food allergies are exploding exponentially since the 1990s, they're sure there is no connection.  More than that, they don't seem interested in even entertaining the possibility.

If that's the case with these, could it not be the case with the Covid vaccine?   We've known many who received their shots.  Most have had no major problems, only the usual shot reaction.  A few became sick, a couple very sick.  Two we know had emergencies and had to rush to the ER.  One has developed a blood clot.  

Then again, we know several who have tested positive for Covid.  To this day, only a couple had the slightest symptoms.  Most who were found to have Covid had no symptoms at all.  From younger to older, you wouldn't know they had anything.  Some looked healthier than I am while they had it.  

None of this is to say I recommend not getting the Covid vaccine.  We're still on the fence.  I'm not saying we never will, but this might explain why we're a bit hesitant.  And that's with vaccines in general.  With Covid, misinformation is an added problem, including the kind you find on social media.  The inconsistency of messaging that has defined the Covid era also doesn't help.  Plus it's impossible for me not to see that with Covid there might be medical considerations in what we are told, but you can't miss the politically motivated considerations that appear just as important.

I want to ask Pope Francis if it matters that I'm Catholic

Years ago Pope Francis sent shock waves through our little hobbit hole when he met with a pack of Protestant leaders and more or less told them to get to God where they're at.  After all, we had lost almost everything we had to become Catholic, and set ourselves on a future path in which my main retirement plans rest on doing a Fred Sanford after my last day on the job.  

It doesn't sound like much of a problematic statement I know.  It sounds pretty darn nice of him, not to throw fire and brimstone down on a bunch of non-Catholic Christians.  It seems completely ecumenical and the type of outreach I remember from Pope John Paul II that made Catholicism seem approachable to my Protestant eyes back in the day. 

And yet there was something bothersome the way Pope Francis said it.  Whenever I mused on Pope John Paul II's outreach to us "Separated Brethren", it always seemed in the broader context of wanting us to come back to full communion with the Catholic Church.  He - and others at that time - may have praised us Protestants and affirmed us and celebrated us and, heck, even said Catholics could learn from us.  But it was always done around the greater point that for all we have, we don't have it all until we have it in communion with Catholicism. 

When Pope Francis said that to those Protestant leaders, however, and when he has made similar statements about Islam, Atheism, or just about any particular religious belief system, I never feel it is in such context.  It sounds to me, and certainly sounded to us then, that he is more or less saying Catholicism is a right fine option; but it's merely one of many fine options out there in the world where the topic or religion is concerned.  

What really seems to matter when Pope Francis speaks is not so much being a fine Catholic, or even a fine Christian, but being a fine citizen of the world.  To that end, he seems most concerned about people being too rigid about their religion, especially their Catholic religion, while he demands nothing but rigidity when it comes to a host of sociopolitical movements and agendas sweeping the modern world, such as Global Warming, or Immigration, or Covid lockdowns, or economic justice.  

Let him talk about those things and Pope Francis comes across as having all the tolerance of a Jack Chick tract. Rigid doesn't even begin to describe it.  Same with judgmentalism.  He may not judge when it comes to things like abortion or gay sex, but let someone even question a dominant global narrative about police brutality, Global Warming or Covid restrictions, and Pope Francis is Johnny-on-the-spot for those advancing those agendas with not only condemning the lack of obedience of dissenters, but even suggesting how wretched and evil they are in their very hearts.  I'm not sure the 700 Club went that far.

But again, none of it is ever for Catholicism, or believing in Jesus, or caring about the Holy Spirit, or even caring about Heaven or Hell.  He may speak to the evils of abortion or that sex is best served between a man and woman in marriage. Those topics and other Catholic teachings he speaks on, and even affirms them at different times as well as their importance.  But if you disagree, I get the impression he wouldn't lose sleep over the fact.  He might even welcome you with open arms if your problems are only with a Triune God or the Real Presence.  

But question the dominant leftwing narrative about Global Warming, or suggest that perhaps tightening border security is a valid way to handle an immigration crisis, or question the latest narratives about Covid, then it's like watching Jerry Falwell in a mitre.  Which brings me back to my original question for Pope Francis. 

If I had only one choice, which would be more important: that I be a devout and practicing Catholic, even if I question various (predominantly liberal) political and social narratives, or that I dismiss the Gospel and the Catholic tradition while cleaving unto the various socioeconomic policy proposals and agendas of global secular liberalism.  Which one would Pope Francis want?  I know what I should assume he would want.  But whether it's me or him, I'd be lying if I said I know for sure. 

Asian Carp are from Asia

For instance, Google where Asian Carp come from and you get this tidy bit of info:

This must be established, or you might miss how stupid it is that scientists are pushing to rename the species because - you guessed it - racist.  The CBS News had a special segment in which some fellow with some parks service said it was named Asian because it was a nuisance - you know, like Asians.  Not because the species originate in  Asia.  A democratic congresswoman was also interviewed who said we need to be sensitive about words and terms used to perpetuate racist stereotypes.. 

The news report didn't mention once in the story that the Carp in question originated in Asia.  It merely said they were imported in an effort to control certain species in the wild.  It never once said where they were brought from.  That made the false assumption above sound more plausible, times being what they are.

Of course the story made efforts to connect it to anti-Asian violence and the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes.  It even went the extra mile to connect it to Trump's racist attempt to link Covid to the Chinese people.  Because being from China or Asia apparently doesn't matter when it comes to finding out where things originate?  It doesn't matter.  The point is to embed in our minds the idea that if it came from any time in the Christian West's past, we can assume it is racist and must be abolished.  This includes such racist ideas as equality, liberty, sanctity of life, the Golden Rule, the rule of law, or the names of insects and fish. 

This is also what happens when being a righteous crusader is the easiest way to get on the news and be relevant, even if the crusade is brain-dead stupid.  A plea for scientists to stay in science and stop thinking they exceed the bravery of soldiers hitting the beaches by looking for the latest offensive name that needs abolished, whether it's based on reality or not. 

As for the news report, it was lies and falsehoods.  Much selective word choice while ignoring important facts - like the fact that Asian Carp originated from Asia (China specifically), hence the name.  Again, there are fools and liars, and then there are those who know  better than to believe anything the modern news media has to say. 

Now, we have today and tomorrow off owing to our youngest's birthday.  I wasn't going to blog at all, but couldn't pass up the stupid - and the dangerous.  It's stupid as we all know the reality, but its purpose is diabolical.  But that's that, and I'll be back after the festivities.   TTFN. 

A merry Fourth of July

So we had a fine July 4th weekend.  The delay in posting is owing to duties in life.  Nonetheless, given the rarity of such gatherings now, I figured it was past due for a posting.  As I've said, it's tougher and tougher to get the whole family together for these things, as it should be.  The older boys are all moving on in their respective journeys.  When they can, they get together and we make the best of it.

We had a sort of reprieve from the usual sunrise/sunset of raising kids last year when the lockdowns hit.  Living with my 90 year old mom had us self-quarantining long before the rest of the world did.  And we didn't really relax that imposition for most of the year.  The boys agreed, and went ahead and took online classes and hunkered down for most of when they could.

This year, however, things are at least trying to get back to normal.  While our oldest is in school for the long haul - eyeing a doctoral degree and an academic career - the other two are moving on in more immediate ventures.  They're still home.  Their philosophy is to move out when they need to; when a job, or a distant school, or marriage compels them to move out.  It dawned on them that for most of history people moved out because they had to, not just to move next door and live alone in order to move next door and live alone. 

As one adroitly pointed out, the whole 'I'll move out to live by myself just because' was a phenomenon of the 20th century and, to be brutally honest, not a Christian values driven one.  Quite frankly it often war born of the desire to be able to live a life that wasn't conducive to having mom and dad around, if you get my drift.  And while a comprehensive set of statistics on such developments can be difficult to amass, given what I know of my own family and when my parents and their parents left home, it all seems to fit into that observation.  Even returning from the war, my uncles moved back into my grandparents' homes until they needed to move out, not just to move out.

And in this day of changing social structures and shifting economic fortunes, that seems wise to me.  So far my second youngest is wrapping up his first degree and my oldest is planning on graduate school.  Between them and their grants and scholarships, having stayed at home, they owe $0.00 in college debt.   My third oldest son, who chafes at the idea of paying modern colleges a nickel, plans on moving up the corporate ladder until such time as a college degree, if needed at all, will consist of a small part of his overall income.   Our youngest son is still too young to make the call, and who knows what will be needed by the time he's college age?  

With all that, they were still able to get together this July 4th, the second big day in our half of the year.  It was also special because we all, including my mom, had a chance to meet our second son's 'significant other's' family.  I wouldn't say they're ready to pick out curtains, but it's getting to the point they felt it was time for the parents to meet.  July 4th at the local fireworks seemed a nice neutral ground.   All parents can be leery of who their children date, but so far I'm pleased with her.  Sporting a Cheshire Cat grin and solid set of values, her parents insisted on meeting my son and giving him the once over before letting her go out, despite her being an adult.  That was a bonus point in my book.  The night meeting them reinforced the already positive views I had developed. 

The other two boys are, at this point, in their bachelor mode.  My oldest son will likely need a girl to propose to him.  My third oldest is of the kind to throw himself 180% into what he's doing, and if that doesn't include worrying about social life for the time being, he'll get around to it when he does.  Right now, having become a manager at the ripe age of 20, his focus is moving to the next level and working whatever extra hours (and getting the subsequent extra money) it takes without worrying about other entanglements.  Our youngest, again, is a bit out of these particular concerns.

We still did a little smoker and fireworks setting off a couple days later here at the homestead.  We had to wait for then because our youngest insisted it be done when all brothers were present.  We left my mom stay indoors that night because of the heat and the adverse effect that has on her.  She was able to watch from her bedroom window.  But we were all still there, for the time.  And as always when the family can get together, it's a fine time.  

For a relatively smaller town, we have an impressive fireworks display every year.

Both of our families, and some stragglers, lined up against the wall to watch the display.  Her parents are from Canada, and they hadn't attended a fireworks display on July 4th.  They were impressed. 

The boys setting off a series of smokers just to add color to the festivities, even if it was two days after the holiday proper.  

That same night as the smokers we put on one of our Independence Day spectacular lights displays using various resources we won't get into. This year even our youngest was able to do his part on his own, though a decision to put a vegetable garden in our front cut down on space.  Nonetheless, they improvised nicely and made our yard light up for the celebrations.

The day after.  Call me strange, but I've always had a certain affinity for the day after major holidays - Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, July 4th.  There's something about coming out and seeing the next day after all the fun of the previous night is processed. Was a time that the previous Independence Day home fire and lights display left refuse that took an hour to clean up.  It was nowhere near that now.  Again, times change. Hence enjoy those times when they happen.  

My immediate thoughts on the news about Pope Francis and the Latin Mass

More to follow 

You can't help but smile

 I have no clue what it is or where it came from:

But for all its strange weirdness and prehistoric production values, there's a simplicity there that makes you glad.  

It reminds me of some of those made for school kids shows we watched.  Not that we cared about the content of the shows.  Seeing the teacher roll in a giant stand with an old TV and a video cassette player the size of an armoire simply meant we had the chance to fade away from the drudgery of school, at least for a time.

Most shows we watched I can't remember.  I do recall one we watched in kindergarten (c. 1973) called Mulligan's Stew; IIRC produced at the University of Michigan.  We also had a series of specials called The Metric System.  The point was trying to get us to accept the metric system and help bring America up to metric speed.  From what I can tell, it didn't work. 

Something like this show would have been snickered at by us if they showed it, as we did most things they made us watch - if we paid attention at all.  Now, looking back, I admit I find it absolutely charming. 

In follow up news to the military readiness to attack Trump supporters

I see the Surgeon General of the United States is calling Covid misinformation an 'urgent threat'.  Ever notice how many things nowadays is categorized under the heading 'urgent threat' or similar?  It's as if they're saying they fully support our rights and freedoms as long as those do not pose an urgent threat.  Out of dumb blind luck, however, almost anything that questions a leftwing narrative is an urgent threat.

Of course the joke here is that you can't have misinformation when the last thing that has defined the Covid era has been consistency of messaging.  If there was some consistent narrative at all, I could then figure what was and wasn't misinformation.  

For instance, my sons predicted weeks ago that within a week or so of July 4th - when President Biden promised we would be liberated from Covid - you'd see news reports of Covid spikes and the beginning of talks about returning to restrictions and even lockdowns.  Given that's what dominated the news this morning, I'd say they're not too far off. 

We all know that Covid, like climate, health, opioids, or anything today, is about one part science, and five parts politics.  I couldn't tell you what to think of Covid unless I just said whatever they say today is now gospel truth and I obey.  If I think more than that about what has been said over the last year or more, almost none of it makes sense. 

In fact, if I begin asking questions like why was my mom not tested for Covid when we had to take her to the ER with chest pains, shortness of breath, and general weakness, I begin to wonder why the Covid rates are really down.  Heck, they didn't even ask if she was vaccinated.  But then, that could be misinformation because I noticed things.  And we all know that misinformation is an urgent threat. 

General Mark Miley is why my sons did not join the military

General Miley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has repeatedly made clear where his loyalties lie, and it isn't Americans, servicemen or otherwise, who run afoul of the Leftist State.  Perhaps some hear him say 'trust me, I would only mobilize the military against those Trump supporters over there.'  I join those who hear him being far more vague about who he would mobilize the military against. 

Even as accidental deaths and continued problems with preparedness plague our military, he has made it clear his first priority is speaking the Leftist words. The inherent racism of Caucasians, the racist identity of our slave nation, and obviously the importance of the abstract genitals and the eternal libido seem to rank high in the to-do list of our military's leaders, including Gen. Miley.  My sons, especially my most militarily ready third son, made it clear that such gibberish at the expense of soldiers' lives would not do.

Not that they aren't aware that deaths sometimes happen.  Not just in combat of course, but accidental deaths, friendly fire, even unexplained deaths have occurred in military service since forever.  That happens.  Imperfect humanity and fallen world after all.  

But the thought that these things could happen not because they happen, but because they are exacerbated by a military leadership almost proud of not giving a damn about anything but fealty to the Left at all costs, was unacceptable to them.  As my sons said, if they die in service to their country, even in an accident, that is the cost of freedom.  But not because they were allowed to die rather than properly be prepared to survive, just so our sex and drugs culture and the movement behind it will be placated.

That General Miley increasingly makes it clear he's prepared to use the military against those who refuse to bow before the USSA is even more troubling.  We already saw both the military and law enforcement take a knee last year, and join in the chants for an overthrown American heritage.   Do we really think that, if the Left finally gets power, it will take more than a nudge to get the likes of General Miley and other military leadership to give the orders for the divisions to roll forth and crush all dissent? 

Hardly.  I have a harder time believing he wouldn't.  And if nothing else should make us worried, I'd have to say it's that.  If there are a growing number of Catholics and Christians who would happily see the power of the State step in and crush disobedient non-Leftists, it appears they will have no small number of military leaders prepared to raise their hands and volunteer. 

Prolife is no heresy

Even if you add scare quotes to the term as if you are the only one who can validate a prolife perspective.  This needs to be said, because:

The falsehoods and calumny upon which he routinely rests his arguments is bad enough.  That he suggests prolife is a heresy while demanding all people of good will align with the party that supports a variety of ungodly positions including, but not limited to, ESR (that's embryonic stem cell research), assisted suicide and the right to die, the modern drugs and sex culture despite the era of AIDS, as well as unchecked abortion rights  from conception to birth, is appalling.  

Worse, however, is the idea that someone stumbling around looking for some voice about Catholicism might find this and think it's true.  After all, that's how I found Mark ages ago.  

I had seen Scott Hahn talking about Confession on EWTN in a hotel room as I was traveling to Florida.  I wasn't able to discover who Hahn was, so when I cam home I went looking to find him.  That's when I stumbled across Mark who, at the time, had recently written a glowing review of the actor John Rhys Davies because Davies had just made an impassioned defense for Christian West demographics against the encroachment of Islamic influence. 

That seemed sane to me, and it countered the impression many of us non-Catholics had that the Catholic Church had long ago rolled over and surrendered to the forces of the day.  Seeing other pieces by Mark, such as a stirring call to arms after the 9/11 attacks, or his observation that the LGBTQ movement embodied a clear and obvious threat not only to the dignity of human relations, but also a threat to religious liberty, suggested he was one to read.  Plus, as my wife said, he wrote the way I talked.  That he was a Tolkien fan sealed the deal.

Granted, I didn't agree with everything I saw Mark write at that time.  Nonetheless, the better seemed to outshine the bad, and his writings, among others, became a help for us getting our heads around Catholicism from an American Evangelical perspective.  

Because of that and the fear that others might stumble upon him now and confuse his political zealotry with the actual Catholic Faith, I find it necessary to point out, again, that being prolife in ways Mark's support for the political Left does not agree with is not a heresy.  Some might call it Christian virtue.  

UPDATE: File under Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.  Apparently his follow up to 'Murderous suicidal prolife heresy' is an article for Catholic Weekly in which he emphasizes the need for Christian unity and hot it is Satan who would have us turn on one another. 

Geeesh.  Again, so that those stumbling about looking for what Catholicism is all about can be warned, especially since there are still those who point to Mark as a valid outlet for learning about Catholicism and Catholic social teaching. 

The daily Critical Race Theory propaganda piece

From America's Ministry of Propaganda, formerly the national press.  Yep.  It's all about beautiful people who only want to do what is right and are being forced to resign because of violence and hate and protests against doing the right thing - those backlashes being organized by the VRC*.  I mean, wow.  That "article' is not even pretending to be objective.

But then, the prop ministry doesn't even try anymore.  It's naked propaganda and we all know it.  Those on the Left know it, but would be stupid to care.  Those not on the Left know it, but have no avenue to voice their observations.  After all, did any major news outlet actually examine the BLM movement and its claims?  I only saw cheerleading and complete advocacy.  

In this case, it wouldn't have been hard for NBC to find people on the other side of the issue who have also faced backlash, including being fired.  We had a teacher in, of all places, a local Catholic school who was dismissed for questioning the idea of Systemic Racism.  That's fired, not resign - as most in the story have done. 

But again, propaganda.  That's a kernel of truth heaped upon with mountains of lies or misinformation or strategically ignored facts.  That's the thing we used to call the news media.  Now something owned by vast global corporate interests with designs on eliminating that pesky Western Democracy rubbish that could stand in the way of unimaginable financial opportunities in parts of the world with nary a care about such deplorable ideas as liberty, equality, or the sanctity of life.  Therefore don't expect truth from the press any more than you would expect truth from a telemarketer's appraisal of your home owner's warrantee. 

* Vast Rightwing Conspiracy. 

Redemption and reconciliation become the latest Christian virtues to end up on the Leftwing chopping block

Courtesy of the New Prolife Catholic movement.  So apparently Rebecca Bratten Weiss posted this on her Twitter feed:

Wow.  There was a time when I imagined such an image would have been celebrated as an example of redemption and God's grace working in the worst of sinners, of which I am chief. Note how it is framed as disturbing, nothing at all about grace, mercy or redemption.  Furthermore, such a misplaced focus (apparently on things like forgiveness, mercy, redemption, and God's gracious healing of us sinners) is what makes the RCC look bad.  

Wow.  I mean, wow.  Thank goodness it's only her, and nobody else taking such a disturbing view of Church teaching.  Correct?  Oh, turns out here are some comments on this thread:

Exactly how this fits into the emerging notion on the left that judgmentalism is all the rage, but mercy and forgiveness are just stealth white supremacy and therefore to be rejected, their banter doesn't make clear.  It's enough that they don't see redemptive grace or reconciliation, but rather an individual who should not be allowed to move past his sins, and the idea that no saint should be venerated by ... a sinner? 

New Prolife Catholics approve this message

Note the good Catholic film critic and deacon Steven Greydanus throws his two cents worth of contempt for such an image of redemption and reconciliation into the mix.  Well done deacon.  I notice how one trick of shifting Christian goalposts around rests on semantic nitpicking of the type the good deacon himself tried to condemn recently.  God makes saints of course, the individual who wrote that in a likelihood understand this.  But the important thing should be the story of redemption and unbelievable level of God's grace, not 'quibbling over semantics, which is the definition of what Deacon and company are doing'. 

For what it's worth, this is simply following a growing trend in which we learn almost anything and everything from the last thousand years of Christianity and the Christian West - and possibly before - can be assumed to be false, the result of bigotry, racism, colonialism, misogyny, or any one of a million different demographic defects.  

For instance, maybe in heaven there can be forgiveness for a growing list of unpardonable sins such as rape, racism or slavery in America, but on this side of the eternal, depending on your group identity, your arse belongs to the Left and whatever privileged demographic group is holding the rope at the moment. 

As God is my witness, I sincerely believe there is no heresy, blasphemy, intrinsic evil, or sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance that believers - Catholics included - who have thrown their lots in with the Left will either embrace, defend, or at best ignore.  And if it means throwing core Christian doctrine and virtue under the bus, or interpreting such things as God's grace or redemption only through the prism of leftwing dogma, apparently that's just fine. 

A "forced meeting with your attacker where you tell them you forgive them
and then everyone acts like nothing happened" - A New Prolife Catholic perspective

To be with the Left is to lie

Yep.  Lies, falsehoods, misinformation, idiocy and plain B.S. are the stock and store of those defending the Left.  You see it in so many topics the Left advocates.  For instance, take the gun control movement, where almost everything said is riddled with misinformation, falsehoods or reliance on accusation and calumny.  And for all of its efforts, a good 99% of its time and energies if I were to guess, is aimed at stopping what amounts to about 5% of mass shootings, themselves a small percentage of overall gun violence.  That's one example.

Another is a frequent mantra of the New Prolife Catholic movement, in which 65 million abortions in America are the sole responsibility of misogynistic capitalists who have given women no other choice but the unfortunate, yet completely understandable, choice of terminating their pregnancies.  Furthermore, nobody - and that means no woman ever - wanted or celebrated an abortion. 

That has never been true, as I knew girls in college who saw abortion as a badge of honor and a gratuitous F-you to men who are rendered powerless where children are concerned until they find out there will be a child they for which they are financially responsible.  And that was the 1980s.

Now, the old 'I'd abort six million babies for better sex' movement is picking up speed, and more and more women are being encouraged to rejoice with great gladness over the ability to abort their pregnancies.  If they've aborted before, then they should hang a medal of honor on their bra.  If not, then rejoice and be glad and cheer the fact that if it ever came around, the power of defining life or non-life would be yours for the having!  See this blasphemous sign praising God for aborting pregnancies here.  

Post Modern Jesus, beyond caring about skin color, also loves abortions

Again, the New Prolife movement is simply an allegiance with the Left and all its manifold heresies, blasphemies, and promise of mass extermination of undesirables to sustain a culture of debauchery and decadence in the era of AIDS, with its clear goals of eliminating liberties and freedoms of everyone else all who fail to bow before the ninety foot idol of the Left.  Because of that, expect copious amounts of 'what camps in the German woods' denials and lies to become part and parcel of the whole New Prolife gig. 

Be the 21st Century Counterculture