Wednesday, July 28, 2021

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. 

24 comments:

  1. There was a quote by a twitterarti that floats around...

    "There are no bad tactics, only bad targets."

    I just note that it seems like the story trope Protagonist Centered Morality has apparently escaped fiction and begun infecting the real world.

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    1. That's part of the point. What us old codgers look at and wonder about when it comes the unreal world of the internet, younger generations appear to be taking it to the streets. We saw that during the Kavanaugh trials and BLM last year. My sons have noticed the same in college. What we see as 'gee, that must be a troll', they see being debated in real time and in the real world with all we imagine is only on Social Media.

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  2. Was it really necessary to share this? What good do you expect to come from it?

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    1. Musing. Thinking of the internet culture, how it tends to encourage this sort of 'that's your reality' flippancy, and accompanying a growing 'besides, my reality is the one worth letting others die for'. Given that it took 2 generations to go from 'death to the GOP - but no innocents should die' to 'the just cause, and if the innocents be to die, so be it', I just pondered where it would be in another couple generations.

      As for bringing him up by name? Because I've seen others in Catholic forums and websites debate with him, and I feel it's worth pointing out when someone might just be the one happy to stand at your door and shuffle you off into the night when the time comes. There are trends and patterns here, and not only is it worth noting, but it's worth putting names and faces to those who may be players in the coming storm, if not on the national or international stage, then at least on the stage we occupy. After all, as we've seen, they're more than happy to do it to those who dissent from their causes.

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    2. You should know from both history and Scripture that "from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." He's not in power and he's not someone close to you; he's a nobody on the Internet, just like you and I.

      "Sure we weep, we mourn, we lament the loss of innocent life .... 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." Could Curtis LeMay? "There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders." This is not so generational as you seem to think.

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    3. Much of the difference is between those who say, "Let us do evil, that good may come?" and those who don't. That, however, has been going on for thousands of years, presumably back to the Garden of Eden.

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    4. Curtis LeMay isn't the only example. Douglas Mcarthur bribed General Tojo into covering up Emperor Hirohito's involvement in war crimes. Instead of giving him a chaplain to allow him to repent of his sins, he literally blackmailed Tojo into committing one last sin to save his family. Sure, it may have been important in saving Hirohito and stabilizing Japan, but was it worth the cost on Tojo's soul? Or Mcarthur's soul?

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    5. Howard, and it was those Boomer liberals who taught me to speak the name Curtis LeMay in the same breath with Hitler, Himmler and Satan. Mark Shea made plenty of distance trashing him by name. That's the change. It's not anything new per se. Nothing new under the sun and all. But it's not to say things we thought we might have moved from we are returning to far quicker than anyone imagined, say even ten years ago: race hate and racism, discrimination based on race, violence, censorship and even killing for the cause. That's about two generations since those Boomers to Mr. Chasuk. My point is, will it even be two more before we go full blown pre-WWII mentality?

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    6. When I was an undergrad, the position of faculty sponsor for my dorm (which was supposed to be a "Men's Honor Society") opened up, and we interviewed candidates. The only candidate I remember spoke about his idea that economies progressed from agriculture, to industry, to service, to information, to "fun". I asked him what we would do when the next big war came, because we might have all the amusement parks and cruise ships, but the agricultural economies would have the food and the industrial economies would have the guns. "I think we've evolved beyond that," was his answer.

      Please tell me you were never that naive.

      My claim is not that we are better than people 80 or 160 or 1000 years ago; very much the contrary. My claim, as I have stated before, is that people are pretty much the same whether you're in academia or industry or government, whether you're in the USA or Russia or Japan, whether you're in the 21st century or the 19th century or the 12th century. People tend to have similar strengths and weaknesses and be subject to similar temptations. One of these constant temptations (though it varies both in its strength and in the strength with which it is resisted) is hinted at by Chesterton: "To start with, some impulse, perhaps a sort of desperate impulse, drove men to the darker powers when dealing with practical problems. There was a sort of secret and
      perverse feeling that the darker powers would really do things; that they had no nonsense about them." This is always there, and we become most vulnerable to it when we think we are safe from it.

      Maybe that's why Ecclesiastes says, "Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."

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    7. Howard and Dave, you're both making good points. As far as I can tell, human nature hasn't changed much, advancements in communication technology are making the insanity more obvious with each generation.

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    8. Douglas Mcarthur bribed General Tojo into covering up Emperor Hirohito's involvement in war crimes.

      Who's the author of this fantasy?

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    9. Howard, I agree with everything you said, and I often repeat it in other discussions. Nothing new under the sun. We’ve seen it all before. That said, I also remember this quote:

      “‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given, us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it. We should be very hard put to it, even if it were not for this dreadful chance.”

      It isn’t hard to see what is brewing in our society, in our world. It's harder not to. I’m the first to say in some cases there is nothing new under the sun. And yet new challenges will arise, sometimes in ways nobody has seen before. One of the Uber-Narratives of my youth was the question ‘Why didn’t they do something?’ You didn’t even have to guess who the ‘they’ was. It was the Germans in the 1930s. For even if evil is inevitable, it’s up to each generation to rise up to fight it, just as it’s up to us to help the poor even if the poor will always be with us.

      For the record, I never bought into the Utopian era thinking of post-WWII liberalism. I did, however, assume certain things had turned a corner. So universal was the condemnation of judging based on skin color, for instance, that I imagined it would be a thousand years before we’d see that return. Like Smallpox or Polio, it wasn’t as if all disease of sin had been tackled, but at least that one had been. How could a society that made judging based on skin color perhaps the only unforgivable sin turn around in a generation and mandate the same? In our day of education and information, you’d think it was impossible.

      That’s the point here. It isn’t that I’m shocked that evil raises its ugly head. I’m shocked that it’s able to be so flagrantly used by those who called the evil what it is, and who now turn about and argue for the same. Whether racial prejudice, censorship, or violence with even killing of innocents, these things were so universally condemned I imagined it would be other avenues evil would have to use to get a foothold, especially if the evil came from the Left which so loudly condemned the same. But obviously not. And in only a couple generations we see how quickly the sins have returned. So now that we know what is happening, what will we do about it? Future generations will no doubt wonder.

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    10. Art Deco, I read about it in Hirohito: the war Years, by Paul Manning. The book's author was a war correspondent who doubled as a machine gunner during the Allied bombing of Japan.

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    11. Ok, let's see if I understand this correctly, Dave is shocked by there being evil in the world, just by the type of evil we are currently seeing and by how easily that evil is getting away with being weirdly hypocritical.

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    12. https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Bormann-Exile-Paul-Manning/dp/1495488144

      You mean this guy?

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    13. Unknown, I'm shocked that the ones who declared these unforgivable evils are now promoting the same evils they declared to be evil with impunity, and the speed with which everyone - including not a few religious outlets - are falling into line.

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    14. Art Deco. Yes, but he's not the only one. I suggest you do more research

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    15. Art Deco. Yes, but he's not the only one. I suggest you do more research

      He's attributing 'war crimes' to a ceremonial head of state. His other notable work purports to be a biography of the post-war life of Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary. That book was published in 1981, at a time when the extant evidence strongly suggested Bormann had died in May of 1945. Definitive proof that Bormann did in fact die attempting to flee Hitler's bunker arrived in 1998, with the DNA testing of some relics. IOW, Mr. Manning put his name on what was a bizarro fantasy. I suggest you allocate your research time with this dictum of Mortimer Adler's in mind: "Not every book merits a line-by-line reading".

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    16. I'd suggest other participants here have a gander at the publisher's synopsis of Mr. Manning's 1981 tome.

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    17. I said he wasn't the only one, just the first one that came to mind.

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  3. 'Chasuk' is an unusual name. People carrying the name are generally from the Bay Area (concentrated around San Jose with a smaller population at East Bay loci) or from smaller cities in the swatch of territory which runs from Ventura in the south to just north of Sacramento in the north. Few if any from around Los Angeles or San Diego. There are small knots of Chasuks elsewhere: one in Oregon, one in Louisiana around Baton Rouge and Lafayette, one in Florida. There were at one time Chasuks around Mobile, Columbus (Ohio), and Baltimore, but they appear to have decamped elsewhere.

    This fellow is just shy of 30. I'm wagering he's the son of Dr. Robert Chasuk, a gp who practices in Baton Rouge. It appears he was enrolled at Thomas Aquinas College for a time, ca. 2012. SMDH

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    1. I know little of him, except what I've seen in his comments. I remember some years ago Dave Armstrong got into a debate with him about banning the Confederate Flag. It's the combo of trolling and his flagrant 'the innocent died, but it was just' that caught me.

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  4. https://www.linkedin.com/in/schasuk

    For some puzzling reason, Mr. Chasuk hasn't updated his LinkedIn profile in > 3 years.

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