I will give JD Vance credit

He is willing to call out the BS and mendacity that has come to define our post-Christian, postmodern era:

That we have taken an entire generation and told them that every word uttered should affirm them as the gods of their realities, or they should unleash endless hatred or commit suicide - either being an understandable reaction - shows just how low we've sunk.  The only thing worse is how so many of our institutions that should know better (ahem, hello Christian Church), have pretty much gone along with it.  And have done so no matter how disastrous the results. 

We'll see how it goes.  Vance better be good enough to die for the sins of humanity, because even the slightest discovered transgression will be hyped more than Pearl Harbor was.  And more than that, almost everyone left of center, and the bulk of those who have settled into our post-Christian status quo, will jump on him like rabid inquisitors.  

Enough said

Special counsel worried jurors would see Biden 'as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory'

Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that he was concerned jurors would not believe that Joe Biden “willfully” kept classified documents, and that was one of the reasons why he does not think the president should face charges.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur writes.

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Hur wrote that: “Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires.”

Interesting point

I'm back!  It's been a whirlwind to be sure, as the previous posts demonstrate.  Thanks for all the well wishes and comments and emails everyone!  We certainly are blessed.  

As I've said before, I don't intend to keep up with the old pace of blogging, times being what they are, and obligations and family dynamics shifting and all.  Nonetheless, I'll still comment a time or two each week, though I hope to spend more of my blogging time on the finer things of life.  

You know, family fun and games, the latest book or movie, or just being glad about our new bishop who actually makes us think we are important to him.  The previous bishop - Bishop Brennan - also gave us that feeling, but he was sent back to his stomping grounds in Brooklyn before we had a chance to get to know him.  Nonetheless, our latest bishop more than rises to the occasion, and I can't say how nice it is to have a bishop who seems genuinely glad about not just his Catholic Faith, but its traditional roots as well (bonus point: he's also an official exorcist for the Church). 

Nonetheless, I thought I would throw out this little observation that caught my eye and has made me think. It was something that really made sense, is obvious, and yet something I hadn't put together.  It was pointed out that up until WWII, most of humanity believed two crucial things.  One, that there is something very important beyond this physical world.  And two, that there are things in this world that are more important than me.

After WWII, those assumptions began to collapse quickly.  Soon individualism became 'me, myself and I, as opposed to the rest of the world that is dead last in importance'. You can see this in those media psychiatrists who insist we owe it to our kids to put ourselves first ahead of them, or anyone else for that matter.  Heck, you can see it everywhere. 

And the importance beyond this world, which likely was already collapsing in the West among the upper classes before the World Wars, began to unravel fast across the board.  Really.  I wonder how many Christians today believe that one's religious confessions have anything to do with the afterlife.  For that matter, I wonder how many think anything has to do with the afterlife, other than the assumption it happens and we get to see our loved ones and cuddly puppies after we die, because of course we do. 

But those two beliefs, bigger than this world and a world bigger than me, were far from exceptional, even if humans had millions of different ways to unpack those beliefs.  But in the modern age, it's largely me as the center of my world, and nothing beyond this world of terrible importance, if there is anything at all.  The results of these perspectives speak for themselves.  

File this observation under 'solutions to the problem that the media will never cover.' 

Expressing your individuality like everyone else

Is the mantra of our modern age.  It's worth noting that true non-conformity has never been vogue.  True non-conformists will always be outcasts.  It happens.  Societies have that which is acceptable, and that which is not.  Nonetheless, during the counter-culture revolution of the 1960s, the flower children of that age managed to systematize non-conformity in a way never really seen.  Presenting themselves as freethinking rebels with a cause, there are probably few cases of more like-thinking conformity in history than the entire 60s hippy movement.  I mean, you could see a free thinking flower child hippy rebel ten miles away because they all looked and acted the same.  

Since then, and with help from the good people at Madisen Avenue, non-conformity has become big business.  There's money to be made in convincing people that the best way to be a non-conformist is to get in line and do what all the other non-conformists are doing. 

I thought of this when I saw a story about some local police department changing its policy where tattoos are concerned.  I mean, how much of a rebel are you when the symbol of the oppressive machine is on your side?  More to the point, when the symbol of the oppressive machine is groveling at your feet and willing to change policy in the desperate hope that you apply for a job!  Perhaps that's why so many celebrities and rock stars grovel before the State Machine today instead of boldly rebelling against it - if they ever really did rebel against it. 

I have to say, based on the evidence around us, I'd call my sons about the most rebellious non-conformists I know.  And generally it was with little prompting from us parents. In most cases they were free to pursue their appearances and interests as they saw fit.  Long hair I would tolerate, though I wouldn't recommend it.  That's a battle I wasn't going to fight.  But I drew the line at piercing and tattoos.  Anything that could cause an infection would not be allowed as long as they were on my insurance.  They more or less accepted those  boundaries, and thus far, none of them have gotten the body art or piercing or goth this or dyed hair that is embraced by about 97% of their free thinking peers.  Which makes you wonder just who is the bold non-conforming rebel.

The courage of our youth

When pondering the hot mess police response in Uvalde, Texas, one of my sons said something damning.  He said the kids in the school were braver than the adults in uniform.  We then discussed why.  We concluded there was a time when the natural fearlessness of children was formed and shaped into bravery, sacrifice, honor, duty and loyalty. Not always perfectly, but that was the goal.

Today, that natural fearlessness of children is formed and shaped by Wall Street, Hollywood, our schools and universities and even many of our churches into cowardliness, narcissism, nihilism, hedonism and decadence.  Had those poor children been outside their school, I feel they would have charged forth blindly to save their classmates.  It took growing up and being weaned in our post-modern nation to get the response from adults that we witnessed.  Though the bravery of those who did act shows that, like old teaching, the new hedonism doesn't always stick either. 

I thought of that when I saw the below speech. It's from a Harvard undergrad.  According to John C. Wright, it was met with stunned silence.  Because she is spot on.  And we all know it.  And those who have surrendered and consigned future generations to tyranny and oppression and squalor know it, too. 

Kudos young woman.  You are a credit to those who waded ashore at Normandy and in every other conflict that was waged to keep us free.  You're better than the schools, culture, corporations and even religious traditions that raised you. 

I admit this was in bad taste

But it still made me laugh:

Because let's face it, there is some truth there and we all know it.  Though you could replace Dr. Fauci with a news logo and it would be just as true. 

I blame Gutenberg

 Yep, this is his fault:

When books are this cheap and easy, you get the above book on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf.  Personally I could come up with at least one or two other important speeches before stumbling on anything young Ms. Thunberg has to say.

The problem isn't just the proliferation of books, however. I only jesting.  It's that the above cover reflects the dominant media narrative.  Per the media, Ms. Thunberg is one of the most important people of our age.  Because the media says so, that's why. 

It almost makes you rethink anything we've ever heard from the media over the years, don't it. 

St. Patrick's New Breastplate

Courtesy of that sage and prophet Bono:

Oh Saint Patrick he drove out the snakes
With his prayers but that’s not all it takes
For the snake symbolizes
An evil that rises
And hides in your heart
As it breaks
And the evil has risen my friends
From the darkness that lives in some men
But in sorrow and fear
That’s when saints can appear
To drive out those old snakes once again
And they struggle for us to be free
From the psycho in this human family Ireland’s sorrow and pain
Is now the Ukraine
And Saint Patrick’s name now Zelensky

Yep.  You read that right.  We live in a shallow and superficial age.  A godless, aimless, pointless age with nothing to anchor it except the latest fad. If that fad is lifting Ukraine up to the level of Heaven and worshipping Zelenksi as the new Buddha Messiah God, so be it.  

I think it was Chesterton who once said something to the effect that if people stop believing in God, they won't believe in nothing, they'll believe in anything.  If that was said, our age proves its right more than anything I can imagine.

For the record, and to be honest, I was never a U2 fan.  I always had the impression they were waving their arms in the air and saying, "Look at us, we're important!"  They clearly imagined themselves as the next Beatles in terms of social and  cultural relevance.  Complete with their own 'Rooftop Performance' back in the mid-80s.  So part of this could be bias on my part.

But I don't think all of it. It shows that for all of our post-WWII contempt for the entire pre-WWII world, we've made it our life's ambition to repeat everything we condemned our ancestors and parents for doing.  

You know what would be neat for the black community to do?

Every once and awhile say that criminals cause problems too. Right now, the American black community  has entered an almost Dali-like world of surrealness where blacks - or anyone really - can break the law, rape, murder, assault, threaten the innocent, and if anything goes wrong, police are killers! 

I mean, that's nuts, and more nuts than I dare you to find in many other eras in human history.  Yet not only has it gripped the black community, but I'm seeing nobody anywhere else - and that includes in education, corporate America, politics, and even religion - point out that every now and then there is such a thing as personal accountability.  That every once in a while, criminals can sometimes be a least slightly to blame for crimes. 

Bonus points for recognizing in that article another 21st Century post-modern distinctive.  That is, in addition to post-human race group identity, whether or not you are capable of making a mistake or accidently doing something as opposed to purposefully doing evil is based solely on which group you happen to belong to at the moment.  

So to group A - black America - anything done by anyone in groups B (Police) and C (whites in general) can be for no reason than  purposeful killing and racism.  Accidents simply don't happen in these cases.  There can be nothing other than a purpsose  Everything is on purpose and for the worst reasons. 

Meanwhile, again, we don't even care about blacks committing crimes.  Accident or not, nobody - including politicians, educators, journalists and religious leaders - appears to care enough to do something about it more than an occasional block party or march through the streets. Because the main cause of most violence against blacks isn't the problem?  

It's one crazy age.  As my sons said, if Medieval peasants had Monty Python, their skits would probably look a lot like us. 

This is why I advised my sons not to join the military

This is what our military has been reduced to.  At a time of increased fatalities through accidents, cases in which servicemen have proven ill-prepared for combat, and mounting cases of criminal assault and unexplained murders, our military focuses on - all things gay sex. Because that's what the leftwing says to focus on. 

So what if as many Americans have died of AIDS - with the majority being homosexual men - as have been killed in all of America's wars combined?     If anyone doubts the 'cold civil war' or 'culture war' or whatever you prefer has been lost by those who would preserve the Christian Western tradition, I give you this. 

I try to imagine what future history will say about us. I don't think it will be pretty. 'So dad, you're saying that in a world of pandemic and mounting crisis, the thing they care about the most was who those in their military units wanted to have sex with?' 'Yes son, that explains a lot.'

It's not that Black Lives Matter

It's that no lives matter until black lives do. On a more serious note,  my old Patheos editor Sam Rocha takes it to the next level by echoing the latest development in the 'judge by skin color, not content of character' movement.  Now no life matters - hear that oh sons of mine - until black lives matter.  And when and what that means means nothing since, like most things of postmodernity, there is no end game or goal or measurable outcome.  There is a slogan to be used to pummel, pummel, and pummel again.  

By the lack of clear finish lines and goals, combined with Sam's statement, my sons' lives may never matter again.  Or his life may not matter. Or even black lives may not matter? Who knows except what we all know which is always nothing ever.  And while we don't know, the goalposts continue to be moved. 

Note, however, how he easily weaves in and out of 'it's all sooooo complex' to stating his position about BLM with all the uncertainty of a Waco tent meeting. That's a trick my sons have noticed.  They saw it most recently in our neck of the woods when a police officer shot and killed a teenager who was attacking another girl with a knife.

They noticed that now the debate is over when a knife fight is OK, when it isn't, when wielding a knife and attacking someone might make you the victim, why police should have comprehensive knowledge of all people involved before reacting, and basically how we can ever know if C-A-T really doesn't spell DOG.

The important point isn't finding an answer, but keeping things in perpetual question mode.  Keep things jumping, hopping, and confusing.  Insist everything is always except for when it isn't until it's never which is yes no.  And that way, amidst the confusion, you can then plow forward - as Sam does - with the gospel of BLM, racial profiling, and guilt by group identity, ethnic liability, national origins and what have you.  In fact, so sure is he in pushing BLM that, compared to all the 'it's all so nuanced' filling his post, you can't help but pay some level of attention when he makes such dogmatic statements.

Which, my boys imagine, is the point.  Complexity when convenient, surrounding a juggernaut of dogmatic utterances that would make a Nuremberg speech seem nuanced by comparison.  That is one of modernity's neatest tricks.  It's how we went from a post-war liberalism that said violence is never the answer, to a 2020 insistence that those innocent killed by the BLM riots were sad, but necessary collateral damage for the greater cause.  Or the national 2021 debate about when trying to stab someone to death makes one the victim.  

There are so many other things wrong with this post.  It's sort of a condensed 'everything wrong with the modern left in one post' publication.  Such as Sam's easy dismissal of the lives ruined and incomes  lost from last year's riots.  Sam points out that so horrible has been the terror visited on black Americans for the last four hundreds years by all the racist whites in this racist nation, that they could riot and destroy (and perhaps kill?) for decades and it would never make up the balance.  Again, you heard liberals say violence is never the answer, but the Left now says that it can be a beautiful thing when executed for the leftist cause.

It's enough for my post, however, that his appeal to circular dogmatic nuance is why things like this, meme though it is:

Fall on deaf ears. It's a perfectly sane and valid point.  Why have our highest paid professionals concluded that a few seconds of often edited, fuzzy and shaky videos is enough to execute judgment, when we watch same highest paid professionals spend endless amounts of time examining the  most sophisticated and expensive motion picture capture before arriving at a conclusion?  In a sane and mature world not polluted by lies and foolishness, that is a valid point. But in a world of 'it's so complex let's charge forth with new morals that are right this time', it is, sadly, a waste of breath and ink. 

Three Amigos, Internet Trolls and the death of freedom

Huh?  What?  That's the sort of headline I write that can only make sense to me.  So let me 'splain.  

I'm sure we've all been watching with jaws on the floor as a growing number of our nation's leaders make it clear they wish to eliminate the right to oppose them.  Furthermore, we've watched as billionaires in the tech world took it upon themselves to control speech and thought crimes by banning people who disagree with them.  And if that wasn't enough - and by golly it ought to be  -  I'm sure I'm not the only one who stared in disbelief at so many who seem perfectly fine with this and are sure such measures would only be applied to those type of people over there.  As one who has spent my life reading, teaching, studying and lecturing on history, that's the equivalent of an astronomer stumbling across a flat earth conspiracy theorist.  How could we be this stupid?  How could we be this historically illiterate? 

Well, let's start with my blogpost title. Back during my purgatory at the Patheos site, I learned all about internet trolls.  I'm sure I had seen a few in my time before that, but since at Patheos we were expected to keep watch on each others' blogs, I had plenty identity the trolls on my site and what I should do about it.  One incident leapt to mind the other day when I saw an advertisement for the old 1980s comedy The Three Amigos, and it got me thinking of a couple others and the subject at hand.

One frequent troll at Patheos commented under the name Andre B.  He wasn't your typical troll.  He was obviously smart, and when he wasn't trolling he had interesting things to say. But when he trolled, he trolled. I had several readers tell me over the year that he had really nailed them.  They thought he was an insightful, good faith commenter, and he ended up being a troll!  One once wrote in capital letters he was so frustrated.   And Andre could frustrate.   It was nothing to see him gobble up hundreds of comments as people took a long time to figure out they were being trolled by him.

Like all trolls, the point is to hijack debate, derail conversations, and argue ad nauseum to no ultimate point.  So once I posted on something I remembered back when I was in college.  It was an early example I witnessed of 'water cooler talk' on a news cast after a previous night's television program.  Not that I had never experienced talking about television programs.  But this was different because not only did people talk about it the next day, but I actually saw it discussed on the news.  This was in the 80s before news broadcasts were as much about promoting pop culture agendas and corporate interestse as talking about news.

The topic involved an episode of Johnny Carson.  Carson had Chevy Chase on as he was touring about, promoting his latest movie The Three Amigos.  Carson also had film critics Siskel and Ebert on.  At one point Carson asked them what were the best and worst movies they had seen recently.  Roger Ebert, in keeping with his somewhat abrasive personality, said the worst movie he had seen recently was The Three Amigos.  The audience gasped.  And then Carson did something very un-Carson.  He rebuked Ebert.  He said if he had known that would be the answer, he wouldn't have asked the question.

Anyone who grew up with Carson or had spent any time watching him knew that was the equivalent of Carson standing up and smacking Ebert with a medieval mace.  I can't remember the context, but I posted about that at Patheos.  Andre, ever the troll, stepped up to inform me how wrong I was.  He found the clip on Youtube and, to him, it was a love fest.  Nothing to see at all.  Respect and love and admiration from Carson.  Ebert and Carson a love story.  I was obviously wrong.  

I said he was nuts, that Carson was not only upset, but it was talked about the next day.  They even mentioned it on the morning news!  And then Andre said something he had said before.  He said he couldn't trust my memory.  I was possibly lying.  Or maybe mistaken.  But my recollection was entirely irrelevant.  I became frustrated because I remembered the talk that occurred the next day.  It's just one of those things in a person's life that makes an impression.  I had watched Carson for years.  Everyone could tell he was unhappy.  Carson was the king of lifting people up, but on the rarest of occasions, he would put people in their place, and this was such an occasion.

By his own admission, Andre is a millennial.  At best he would have been an infant or young child around this time, if he had been born at all.  How could he tell me what went on when there is no way he could have experienced any of it? 

And then I got to thinking of other trolls I bumped into at my time on Patheos.  Another was a fellow named Rob Lot (IIRC).  Rob's shtick was very simple.  The past is irrelevant.  Bring up what Democrats said in the past or that the Left had once dismissed Bill Clinton's behavior as the irrelevant part of his personal morals, and I was constantly told it was of no value.  Bring up what LGBTQ activists promised would never happen about punishing people over gay marriage, and again it's the past.  It doesn't matter.  That was almost always his response to the references about the past or history in general.

Another individual commented under the name 'Neko.'  She was a regular on M. Shea's blog.  I believe she stopped by mine a couple times.  Once she made a claim about religious people being religious because that's what they've been told by mommy and daddy.  I responded that not only was I quite liberal in my youth, I was also an agnostic.  I became a Christian as an adult, having been seeking the Truth for quite a few years.

Not to be dismayed, she fired back that I was a boldfaced liar.  I was never an agnostic, nor was I a liberal.  What?  I told her I had no reason to doubt she was a mother or an atheist.  Why so difficult accepting my testimony?  Who would call someone a liar on the internet when they're merely posting about themselves?  That would be like calling me a liar for saying I like pepperoni on my pizzas.  But she stuck to it, and what's more, when I pushed back at her, other readers got - on me, rather than her for calling me a liar.

All of this came to my mind when I saw that advertisement.  And it got me to thinking, as I am wont to do.  In each of these cases, we have things that I've discovered are quite common in modern (postmodern) discourse.  Especially on the internet, but I wonder how exclusively on the internet.  In each case an appeal is made to the past, and in each case in different ways, the appeal is smacked down.

In one case, I'm told by someone who wasn't there that just because I was there is irrelevant.   I am told by another that the past itself is entirely irrelevant.  And when all else fails, a third just called me a liar when my own personal experience didn't conform to her broad stereotypes. 

Now we might think this is all just internet trolling. Again, the point of a troll isn't to defend the helpless or aid the starving or seek justice in the world.  The point is to wreck online debate.  To that end they'll write anything.  For quite some time I assumed that such arguments, as annoying as they were, just happened to be tools of the trolling trade.  They didn't believe these things.  They merely wrote them online because they could.  

But what if I'm wrong?  What if they weren't writing these things just to troll?  What if they really believed them?   What if in their real lives in the real world this is how they approach reality?  They will look at someone from the 1940s and say that person knows nothing about growing up in the 1940s, or they will call someone a liar for experiencing or seeing things that stand against their social media informed opinions.  Or, in the end, they just say the past doesn't matter anyway, no history, no anything - anything before yesterday isn't worth worrying about.  What if they really believe these things?  What if we've raised an entire generation - and I believe they were all millennials or younger - who think this about history and the people and events of the past? 

When you see the growing number of 'communists rock', or 'censorship might work', or 'what's wrong with digging into people's teen years to destroy them', or 'America invented racism in 1619', or 'the only way to defeat racism is with new racism', or most recently 'I'm sure they'll just ban them, but never me' comments, editorials and articles, you wonder how the most educated generation in history could actually believe these things.  But then, if the above examples are the rule today, and a general disdain for anything before yesterday is now dogma in terms of buttressing our own righteous superiority over those who came before, it shouldn't be surprising.  Terrifying perhaps, but not surprising. 

If only conservatives were more like liberals

And accepted the loss of a presidential election with maturity, dignity and grace, the world would be a happier place.

When I see the rage inducing level of hypocrisy, false equivalency or double standards that define so much progressive discourse, I'm reminded of what my sons say: arguing with liberals is like playing a game of Monopoly with someone who keeps throwing pots and pans at you.  

It's a senseless and stupid analogy, but then that's the point. 

Why I don't do Twitter

 In one easy picture:

This was shown me because of my focus on the growing love we have for American Indian culture.  With a blank slate, we celebrate 'Indigenous Peoples'.  I've said I would never support a celebration of 'European Peoples' because that's too broad, and could include too many things that shouldn't be celebrated.  When it comes to Europe, that's clearly the belief held by many today.  Europe, Christianity, America - all evil, all bad, no way can they be celebrated.  But American Indians?  Why, 100% celebration there.

Partly this is due to American Indian activists not being beholden to the old Christian notion of repentance and confession of sins.  That is something unique to the Christian West.  Most cultures and societies don't spend their time beating up on their ancestors, their heritage, their culture or their people.  So American Indian activists can promote their own heritage 100%, condemn anything from Europe 100%, and increasingly be given the free megaphone to do so.

This includes support from a growing number of Christians and Christian leaders, who seem to agree that the Christian West brought bupkis to the New World; not democracy, not civil rights, not sanctity of life, certainly not the Gospel.  In fact, that's the craziest thing.  I get non-believers saying the Gospel is crap and not worth the bad that happened.  But more and more I see Christian - and Catholic - leaders saying the same thing.  And that's a problem if our assessment of the Gospel's worth hits about the same note as non-believers.

We're acting as if things like civil rights, equality and the sanctity of human life - not to mention the Gospel of Jesus Christ - are garbage.  More to the point, a culture that was pre-modern, where matricide, infanticide, patricide, human sacrifice, and its own fair share of genocide and slavery, was just awesome on every level.

So common is this now that one of my sons experienced a debate in his college cultural anthropology class.  The issue of pre-Columbian American culture came around, and their practice of conquest, slavery and human sacrifice came up.  The class held a splendid debate where the conclusion was - who are we to judge?  Ours is the worst culture to ever exist after all.  Plus overpopulation is causing Global Warming.  The Indians had it right.  Keep overpopulation in check.  If their reasoning was a bit on the superstitious level (just like moderns who still believe that God in a manger silliness), the reasoning was quite sound.  You trim off the undesirables, the unwanted, the inconvenient.  You don't need elaborate ceremonies appeasing some fire god today of course.  We have Science.  But the desire to keep too many people from happening was quite sound, and of course to be celebrated - and copied. 

Such is the legacy of what we're seeing with the mantra of 'Indigenous People rock it 100%, not like evil Europeans with their Jesus and democracy and human rights rubbish'.  That is a major problem, and Matt Walsh, who I'm no particular fan of, is right to call it out.  Even if he didn't do a particularly good job of presenting it in a way that would encourage discourse, at least he threw it out there.  A problem with Twitter right there. 

But Mark could have responded with - anything to do with the topic at hand.  He could have said why Walsh is wrong. He could have defended the unqualified celebration of such a culture and its trappings, despite holding 'pro-life' views.  He could have explained that the celebrations should be understood someway, or that it is wrong to give a blank check as many do.

Instead, you get Twittertalk, which means acting like you haven't made it through puberty yet, with variations on 'your mamma's ugly and she wears army boots'.  Just the type of behavior our children in our age of suicide, drugs and depression need to see.  I would expect Mark's reply from someone who has yet to experience adolescence.  And yet that, along with the requisite F-Bombs that define much of his Catholic Social teaching, is about par for the Twitter course.

I believe Social Media has devastated our intelligence, our discourse and our society.  Nowhere is this more evident than Twitter.  After seeing some unfortunate Twitter entries by Dawn Eden, I was happy to see her post that she was taking a break from the platform.  That is good.  Like most carbon based lifeforms, she's better than that.   I see Twitter being a 0% gain in the world of human interaction.  And nothing demonstrates that assessment better than the above image.  Not because it is uniquely bad.  Quiet the contrary, because it it almost universally indicative of how people handle themselves on Twitter. 

Really Google?

Celebrating the Dachshund Bobblehead?  That's the only thing you could come up with to celebrate today?  Such is the 21st Century.  I don't think we realize how close we are to the End of the West and the way we've understood living out the Christian Faith for the last many centuries.  We'll have to dig back to a period in the early generations of the Faith to come to a similar experience.  

A lot to hang on a stupid Google doodle about a bobblehead I know.  But let's face it, ten years ago there is no end to the possibilities Google could have celebrated.  Today, there's no end to the possibilities that Google dare not celebrate. And that makes all the difference. 

Verdun?

 OK, this was weird, from New York Times columnist Elizabeth Bruening:

Kudos for not dropping Auschwitz, instead going to its lesser known evil sibling.  But Verdun?  Where did that come from?  Why not say the Somme?  Borodino maybe?  Antietam?  I get avoiding that last one.  After all, that's the Civil War and everyone was a racist slave advocate so you never know who would be the villain there. 

But that struck me.  Why Verdun?  Was that right wing?  Is Trump plunging us into war more than the last president?  I know 2020's WWIII left us shaken, but why drop Verdun or any major battle in modern discourse about our current presidential candidates? 

We live in an age that has taught people not to care.  My son pointed that out some time ago.  For decades we've championed being narcissists who don't care.  "I don't care unless it impacts me," became almost sacred mantra, and something I heard individuals proudly state many different ways over the years.  Without that, we'd not continue the sex and drugs culture in the AIDS pandemic.  We wouldn't talk of banning hate speech.  We wouldn't care about how others are hurt by my ideas for fighting global warming or abolishing national borders.  Not caring unless it impacts me is crucial for many moder ethical movements and agendas. 

So it was cool to not care.  The last thing we wanted to do was be right wing and care passionately.  An unintended result of this, however, is that anyone trying to get people to rise up and take action - no matter what particular vantage point you're speaking from - is at a disadvantage.  

It's not just here in the US either.  I've read multiple pieces over the years from European outlets, as well as talked with friends who live in Europe, that say apathy and a general malaise has been the biggest pandemic in Europe for some time.  Unless you take away their government benefits, or challenge open drugs and sex, they really don't care.  Let Europe die, let civilization collapse, who cares?

Therefore because of this, we have to rely more and more on verbal dog whistles, hyper rhetoric, or anything to grab people who have been taught that the only thing worse than Verdun or Dachau would be to care about Verdun or Dachau at all.  The saddest part is the fruitlessness of this tactic due to the years of cultural indoctrination that has taught, most young people to not care enough to know what Verdun or Dachau were in the first place. 

The lunacy of modernity exceeds the memes that make fun of it

So here is the meme:

And here is the actual statement from a news cast (from a different network) reporting on how experts say we can avoid leaving our kids to die in a broiling car on a hot summer day:

The story is here.  I've seen this multiple times.  These are the experts being interviewed by the press.  None of whom seem capable of seeing the glaring problem.  Heck, it took me a minute for it to register.

If you don't want to forget your kid in a sweltering car, then put something else you really need in the back to remind you.  Others have said 'put something important' in the back seat.

That's what an abortion culture gets you. That's what a generation of godless nihilists and hedonists gets you.  What we are seeing is the result of this secular pagan godlessness spun for decades.  Ripe for the picking.  That's how you take over the freest, most prosperous, one of the most charitable and penitent societies in history.

Get your best and brightest to affirm that for parents in the world today, it's logical that they need their cell phones at least as much as they need their babies.  The signs of Satan's reign in our world today are so clear, you must want to deny it.  It couldn't be because you can't see it.

In case I'm not clear, allow me to repeat.  If we live in a nation where our betters and brightest say the best way to avoid consigning your child to agonizing death in a sweltering car is to put something else that really matters in the seat beside them, we're in big, big trouble.

Or, perhaps my boys hit the nail on the head.  If this is what our modern age has produced, perhaps this is why so many now are getting off by consonantly pointing to the sins of old sinners from long gone.  By constantly adding disclaimers that more or less say how morally inferior those people from before yesterday were, it takes our attention off of the monstrous hot mess disaster we've made our own world in our own time.  That might be.

A fun Halloween reflection on the sacred and the secular

From an unlikely source.  I stumbled on this blog years ago.  It was a blog post celebrating JRR Tolkien.  After that, I read several posts and realized it was mostly a blog about RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons and similar.  I would go back and sometimes he would have an interesting piece outside of the 'Inside RPG Baseball' stuff.  It looks like the blog is now defunct, though it's up for perusing old blog posts.

This one always struck me.  He's dealing more with artwork in various eras of Role Playing Games.  My guess is that he's no fan of recent versions.  My boys, who are into the RPG/Fantasy/Sci-Fi world keep me up with the latest of that culture, and it seems there is always a debate over the best and worst of the latest.

Anyway, he's comparing two pieces of artwork, but featuring the same monster, a demon named Orcus.  He contrasts two pictures, one from decades ago that appears almost amateurish, and one modern piece that seems right at home in our modern CGI laden world of CGI movies and PC games:

He explains his preferences and why he prefers the older, less refined version (some of it likely being a preference for older things in general - but that's an assumption on my part).  He spends much time discussing the overall evolution of art in the hobby, as well as other tidbits.

Then he comes to the point that grabbed my attention.  In unpacking the differences, he writes this:

Now, I'm not trying to suggest in the slightest that the Sutherland Orcus is a careful product of someone with a deep understanding of the medieval mind, because that'd be laughable. However, the Sutherland drawing, like most of the drawings in the original Monster Manual, is broadly consonant with medieval esthetics. Or perhaps I should say that it calls them to mind. There's something weirdly primal about that goofy Orcus DCS drew. I've always found medieval demonic images to be far creepier than modern ones, precisely because they have some atavistic connection to aspects of my cultural memory. Modern demons are just imaginary creatures; they're not monsters, if you catch my meaning. Wayne Reynolds' Orcus isn't a demon. Look at how muscular and physically powerful he is. That's a creature that inspires fear for my life, whereas Sutherland's Orcus is one that inspires fear for my soul.

You get that?  Beyond a fairly accurate take on how the medieval mind processed imagery in terms of the natural and demonic, he also 'gets' the difference between the sacred and the secular.  

We live in an atheist age.  Atheism had its Great Awakening at some point between the mid 19th and mid 20th centuries.  At some moment, atheism won the mind, and in some cases the heart, of a growing number of citizens of the old Western world.  It's been evangelizing the lost around the world since.

But with this comes a very material, physical, and IMHO shallow, grasp of things.  What does the secularist fear?  Physical pain, physical threats, physical death. What does the secularist crave?  Ultimately some form of physical pleasure since, to the secularist, everything is somehow physical or material anyway.  That second, newer painting speaks to that.  It's a buff, beat'em up type of monster that would feature in so many horror movies or Marvel films today.  Whatever it can do, it stops dead at anything beyond this physical universe.  Even the ability to destroy all life in the universe stops at all life.  There is nothing else to fear because, for the secularist, there is nothing else.

But as believers, we connect to that first old, silly drawing.  We know - or should know, if the doubts and assaults on the Christian World haven't taken their toll - that beyond this physical world is an entire part of existence that we must jealously guard, for the loss of that means the loss of everything, not just the small speck of time in which we live in this paltry material universe.

I thought of this old piece when I watched the strange events of the Amazon Synod, the confusion, and the statue that nobody seems to agree about, unfold.  In short, most defending Pope Francis, the synod, and the place of precedence for that female statue have emphasized the purpose of the synod, to reach out to the peoples of the Amazon regions, to find ways to increase access to the sacraments, to more or less apologize for the Western destruction of their ancient cultures (with no real call out to anything bad in their cultures), and of course an emphasis on the environment and ecological priorities.  All of these might be fine, but atheists - with the exception of the Sacraments - might sound no different in terms of priorities.

Somehow, the whole idea that possibly worshiping a pagan idol or 'Mother Earth' is no big deal, 'it's the environment stupid!' sounds much more modern, more material, and more like the monster in the second picture.  The problems Catholic and Christian leaders address today are big, bad and mostly physical - Global Warming, immigration, economy, sexual assault, racism and the like.  The idea of a pagan idol or pantheistic veneration of the world only matters if, well, you believe it.  Otherwise they're just material people in a material world doing material things - which is why material crises and material solutions are the focus.

I wonder if the world's Christian leaders were sitting around the table, rolling up the strange shaped dice we associate with RPGs, and getting ready to sally forth, just which of the two monsters would scare them the most. For the worst hysterics ginned up by Global Warming activists, for instance, might inspire fear for our lives, but as people of faith our main priorities should always be those dangers that are dangers because first and foremost they are threats to our souls.  And yet it's mostly those physical life saving issues our leaders are focusing on, often to the detriment of our soul saving fears.

Just a little pondering things as we get ready to wade through the torrents of yet another washed out Tricks or Treats.  Boo!

Would Mark Hamill please stop ruining my childhood memories

By acting like the usual spoiled brat idiots that populate so much of modern social media? 

So Ivanka Trump tweeted a picture of her kids in a Star Wars costume for Halloween.  Being a Woke Leftist, Hamill reacted in typical Pavlovian activist fashion by mocking her and following it with a highly suggestive vulgar insult.

I mean, come on people.  They're kids, and it's Halloween.  Stop making Joe McCarthy seem like the sane and balanced one in the room.  And stop acting so foolish as to taint my viewings of the original Star Wars.  Geeesh. 

Suggestions for youth who are panicking about Global Warming

Yep.  And I could add more.  I've often told my sons about going to school without air conditioning, or not having it as I grew up.  Heck, my parents wouldn't use air-conditioning even if the house we moved into had it, unless the temps got up to bright side of Mercury level heat.   All in all, with few exceptions, we had no more in terms of electronics and pollution than my parents did in the 30s.  We had TV, and they didn't.  We had cassette players and they had only record players.  They had electric stoves and refrigerators and washers and driers as we did.  I don't think we had a dish washer until I was out of college.  We did have a microwave.  That's about it.

Now, of course, most of what we have is plugged into something.  We have phones - needing electricity and hence power, and computers or laptops or tablets - needing electricity and hence power; we have televisions as always, and multiple electronic devices.  I know of no modern buildings that don't have air conditioning and that don't use it.  I see lighting for decorations, massive lighting displays on a variety of holidays, not to mention the sheer size and volume of electronic everything today.  Of course this doesn't include video games and computer games and other electronic equipment that chew up far more carbon than our old ball bats and footballs from back in the day (it's worth noting I saw a story on the decline of interest among up and coming generations in things like sports).

I've said a thousand times that I absolutely believe it when scientists say STEM has caused climate change.  Every day I become more and more convinced that the way in which we approached the scientific revolution and subsequent industrial and technological revolutions reminds me of a couple kids finding the keys to their parents' liquor cabinet while the parents are away.

Sure, at first, it looked all peaches and cream.  Everything could be solved by science and math, and industry and technology will fix all the problems.  Give it all a blank check and we'll fix the world.  Though even at the beginning, there were those who expressed concern about either the physical changes, or at least the social ones.

But now, after the last century, after a growing list of problems attributed to various forms of the STEM family, at seeing the limits of science, and how often the scientists and experts and researchers of the past ended up being wrong, you'd think we'd be rethinking the whole thing.

Instead, it's as if those kids with the keys to the liquor cabinet woke up with a horrible hangover from drinking too much whisky, admitted it was the whisky, and are now hellbent on drinking yet more whiskey to make them feel better.

As it is, if we are really serious about his being the crisis of all history and the world will be destroyed by 2100, then we would be making serious, radical and all-bets-are-off changes - including changes that impact ourselves.  Instead, we are seeing people who want others to do the suffering so they can go on living a life that has brought us - per the science - to the very crisis they're panicking about.