Fooled me!

So I just posted about the fact that Francis went to Africa to trounce and pounce the evils of the Wall Street West.  Yes, he has also pointed to the problems Africa has in its own structures, and that's worth something.  But the headline I then saw said 'Pope Francis criticizes the New Colonialism'.

Wow!  That's what I was wanting.  The New Colonialism is, of course, the modern Left's contempt for those African types who aren't getting with the program and accepting liberal values, especially when it comes to sex issues: abortion, condoms, and of course the glories of gay sex (with the underlying heresies of post-Christian religious beliefs).

But what did he mean?  Well, if this article is to be believed, he meant that evil Stock Market, that is Capitalism and market forces that he seems to feel are the sum total of wickedness and oppression in the world. So I guess it fooled me on that one.

My message to Pope Francis is this: It's not capitalism or even Wall Street.  It's a Godless, heathen society that has turned these forces into base greed and self-serving interests.  Of course any economic theory has been about how to move money around and help society produce things in the process.  Capitalism did that like none before it.  More people came out of poverty and were given greater chances to to better things in a shorter amount of time than ever in human history.

That's not to say it's peaches and cream now.  It isn't.  Capitalism today has become 'how can we give the crappiest service, produce the crappiest products in the lowest possible quantities while raising prices as much as humanly possible while routinely screwing over the working class that makes it happen?'  That's not good.  But it's not necessarily Capitalism.

It's the same with everything else.  The same that has turned Capitalism into a sheer force of rank consumerism and greed is the same that opposes war, torture and the death penalty, not because of some lofty sanctity of life philosophy, but because those things impede the awesome centrality of the divine me.  The same divine me that the post-Christian Capitalist forces exploit, manipulate and abuse.

The problem with Francis, as well as most progressive Christians, is that he has looked at the symptoms, and decided to set aside part of them as no big deal, thinking that the other part of the symptoms are, in fact, the disease.  They aren't.

Take diabetes.  My Dad found out he had diabetes on the day he had his heart attack.  We should have known, but back then we just didn't think of it.  He was taking forever to heal.  He was always thirsty.  Really.  We would empty gallons of milk and fill them with water and put them in the fridge and he would down them day after day.  Of course once he was diagnosed it all made sense.  But that would be like us insisting that it wasn't diabetes after all, it was really just being too thirsty that was the base problem.  And further, insisting that the lack of healing he had was really no big deal and we could agree to live with it.

Pope Francis continues to open up arms to all the liberal sensitivities and axes to grind.  That which liberalism espouses, he passionately advocates.  That which the Left hates, he hates with the white hot fury of a thousand suns.  That which the Left believes - that everyone just wants to get along and it's only the traditional West that fundies and conservatives venerate that makes it impossible - he seems to embrace.  And yet he doesn't seem to grasp that these things he attacks are not because of the Right, Fundamentalists, Capitalism or anything else that liberalism says.  Just like the things of the Left aren't necessarily the problem either.  But the Left embraces the base problem, and that is ultimately Godlessness. Or at least heresy and heathenism as understood from the traditional Christian narrative.

Until we admit that what we call 'the Left' is a new, competitive philosophical and religious force that will tolerate no equals and has no intention of compromising, and further is an affront to the traditional values and morals of the Christian Faith, we're going to end up heading toward a cliff and putting our future generations in great peril.  No matter how hip and cool we think we are today for doing so.