Bring on the Mockery

We’ve reached the point where mockery is appropriate. 

How could any self-respecting Trump supporter possibly expect any normie to the left of Pat Buchanan think that J6 was an inside job when Kashless Patel and Dan “Mum's the word” Bongino won’t admit it, even after the Blaze inconveniently did their work for them? Danny we hardly knew ye. Somebody do a welfare check on Bongino. 

Maybe FBI should start subcontracting their tougher investigations to The Blaze? Maybe get ol' Steve Baker to teach at Quantico? Whatever it takes. 

Blaming Tucker Carlson for fracturing MAGA is laughable. He’s a lagging indicator.  The MAGA split occurred at the precise moment when Trump said, "Epstein who? It's a Dem hoax!"  The sound ensuing was a million jaws dropping and a million antisemites confirmed in their opinions. 

Candace’s popularity is inversely proportional to the black hole of the FBI/CIA. Nothing would take the heat off “the Jews” more than an honest FBI/CIA and Candace has exploited that lacuna. It creates perfect conditions for scapegoating. Of course, the groypers would say the Jews are preventing an honest FBI/CIA and we can’t prove they’re wrong. Trump’s always had a soft spot for Israel and the connections of Epstein and the Mossad give off a bad vibe. 

So I appreciate Candace’s investigations. We know state-sponsored crimes can only be solved by amateurs and hacks like her -- but we don’t know which crimes are state-sponsored. So of course we'll listen to her until we get an honest FBI. Simply as a single outlet to receive tips (tips that the FBI is probably file 13'ing) is useful. 

Trump could've and should be the uniting figure in MAGA, not Tucker or Vance or anybody else. But he quite intentionally decided to be anti-transparent around April/May and that’s fueling the division. My fear is that Trump 1.0 was over when he let go of Flynn and Trump 2.0 was over when he let go of Gaetz. 

Or maybe we all have our expectations too high. The Dems want to kill us, Trump wants to ignore us. We’ll take the latter! But Trump surely knows that as well.  

Meanwhile the Blaze’s alleged pipe bomb planter is perfectly to type. Lesbian, DEI hire, soccer jock, joined some Obama task force, got rewarded after J6 with a job in the CIA.  The only thing that doesn’t fit is she was born in a red county in a red state: Hamilton! Oh. 

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The other day I thought Trump’s Truth Social account got hacked. How else would there appear a meme boasting about his creation of “50 Year Mortgages”? This seems a tissue-thin difference from renting. It also, conveniently, allows the banks to profit from gobs more interest. 

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My theory of the three causes of unaffordable housing: 1) Fed Reserve easy money policy for most of the years 2008-2022 allowed Blackrock and second home buyers to pick up housing at 0% interest 2) decoupling from the gold standard in the 1970s (houses actually are not that expensive priced in gold). 3) immigrant labor holds wages artificially down.

Charles Murray and the Science of Love

I’m reading Charles Murray’s book about his conversion to Christianity from agnosticism. So far a lot of it is his recognition of the “perfectly tuned” universe and earth. The odds are a trillion to one that life formed, he says, and he’s not tempted by the silly multi-universe hack. 

Humility is famously said to be not about thinking too little of yourself but thinking rightly of yourself. That applies to humanity in general. If there has been temptations to think little of ourselves due to the vastness of the universe or the loneliness of being the only planet that we know of that has life on it, it doesn’t have to be that way. You could look at the vastness of the universe not so much as a way of thinking little of humanity in comparison but rather seeing it as showing man the beauty and wonder and impressiveness of God.

If man feels too little, too insignificant, then note God’s response: to become one of us. And then, as if to reinforce the message even more strongly, he became an insignificant Communion wafer.  The more we learn of science, the more he responds in reassurance. 

In the end we’re not only allowed to think very highly of ourselves but it is demanded by God of us. That was the point of the Incarnation. Our value is not in our eyes or the universe’s, but in God’s.  As Reid Buckley, William F’s brother, wrote: the paradox is to see yourself at the same time as nothing, a speck - but also everything to God.

Rod Dreher Post

Read a rich Dreher post on the sad story of Steve Skopec and how you have to get out of your head, that you can’t argue and understand apologetics in order to get close to God. It takes long, meditative prayer. It’s hard. 

Interesting that the Orthodox don’t think God is primarily known through reading the Scripture or reading commentaries on it. It’s through prayer, and not the petitionary kind. 

He says: 

Hesychastic prayer isn’t magic or anything. It is premised on the fundamental Orthodox idea that God is primarily to be known through participation in His life. And the most ordinary way to do that is through prayer. Notice that hesychastic prayer is not petitionary, except in asking Jesus for mercy. You don’t make a list of the things you want or need from God. The point is simply to place yourself in His presence, and stay there. This is a participatory form of knowing Him — and, for Orthodox Christians, the only way to know Him. Orthodoxy distinguishes knowing about God from knowing God. It is good to know about God, through reading, study, etc. — but the point of life is to know God in one’s heart, and to create in one’s heart a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit.

More Steve Skopec via Dreher: 

“This friend of mine [Steve’s] explained to me that he believed that if he approached things the way I do, if he tried to make sense out of the suffering he sees in the lives of people he loves who have tried to live their lives the right way, it would drive him crazy. He told me that when his kids come home from college and sit around the table debating theology, he enjoys it, but feels no need to join in. To him, what matters is to believe, to prioritize the things that are most important — his responsibilities as a provider and his family — and to leave the rest up to God.

I found myself wondering why I have to question everything. Why I so desperately need things to make some damn kind of sense. I found his explanation to be a nearly-perfect encapsulation of the childlike faith Christ commended his followers to adopt…and yet, and yet, I knew even as I tried to cement this concept in my own mind as a better way that it was something I could never do. Or at least, something I could not do anytime soon. My search for meaning amidst the suffering is far from its conclusion. And yet it still felt like an important piece of the puzzle I’m trying to assemble along this pilgrimage towards whatever comes next.”

More Dreher: 

“As an Orthodox, I learned how to turn off my analytical mind. I would have thought in the past that was about making myself stupid for the sake of pietism. But I learned that no, my over-analytical mind was making me sick, spiritually and physically (when it turned to trying to make sense of the fact that my Louisiana family rejected me). Orthodoxy doesn’t tell you to stop thinking about things. It rather orders the thinking, and teaches you how not to let obsessive analysis ruin your life.

How I regret those years I spent as a Catholic, talking for hours with other conservative Catholic friends, usually bitching about the failures of the Church. We weren’t wrong in our criticism, but rarely if ever did we talk about the Lord, or the good things He gave us in the Church. We analyzed and critiqued everything, and imagined ourselves to be loyal sons of the Church. Don’t misread me: I’m not at all saying that one shouldn’t analyze and critique. Pietism is no virtue when it is used as an escape from the responsibility of criticizing and critiquing (though one should do so constructively, from a place of love). I’m just saying that intellection is no substitute for deep prayer. And in my own case, I learned the hard way that the habit of overanalyzing everything (not just the things of religion) is a serious spiritual pitfall for me, as I believe it is for Steve.

People take up this admittedly difficult spiritual path when they become convinced that it is worth it. They become convinced that being able to abide steadily in God’s presence will not only transform their own life, but also enable them to pray with increased clarity and effectiveness for those they love.”

And Now For Something Completely Different...

I randomly scoped out Google Earth and randomly screenshot photos from Johannesburg, two parts of Ireland, two parts of Japan, and a smidgeon of of Germany. 

God Plays "Hide and Seek" For Us

I love when there’s a synchronicity to what I read, such that disparate sources point to a single truth. 

Chemist Dave Collum said on a podcast that one time he was having a conversation with a high level government guy, former NSA, who mentioned a lot of “they did this” or “they wanted that”. And Collum said, “who is ‘they’?” He wanted names on things on some of the mysterious tyrannies of our time. And the NSA guy said, “as soon as I tell you a name, it’ll shut down thinking. You think, ‘oh Bill Gates did this’ and then thinking dies”. It’s no longer interesting or worthy of further exploration. Collum implied a lot of it is just groupthink that is un-orchestrated but runs in the elite circles. 

Collum said that has really stuck with him, that when you define something too well it shuts down thinking. What if the same is true with God? If he’s not mysterious, would we be as interested? 

I was reflecting also on an interesting piece by Steve Sailor in Taki magazine that talks about how the human mind craves 50/50 propositions. NFL betting is so popular, he says, because it’s such a razor close call with the point spreads, including all the micro bets that they’ve been able to determine are very close to 50/50. He quotes a physicist who wonders if God purposely made the universe so puzzling in order for us to be interested in it, to be fascinated by it, to wonder at it in all senses of the word.

I thought of that in connection with the Shroud of Turin and how it seems to show the moment of Resurrection. Is it a bit of a letdown to see this as proof? Does scientific proof take the trust and faith out and make things somehow less captivating? Does it make things too pat and shuts down thinking?

Faith in Jesus has seemed in some ways a 50/50 proposition (even if maybe only 20% of our population are strong believers). There is, on the one hand, plentiful evidence in favor of faith, beginning with the gospel testimony, the way the apostles willingly died to attest to its truth, and myriads of experiences nowadays, in terms of “Godincidents” to outright healing miracles. But there are also evidences against faith given how God cannot be touched and felt in a material way (except under the disguise of Communion), how much evil exists, and how death has not been overcome. 

A meditation I read today talks about how God plays “hide and seek”. There's the third chapter of Song of Songs. The parables in the gospels likewise illustrate this: some will get it, some will not, meaning it encouraging further thought. In John's gospel Jesus says, “you’ll see me awhile, then you won’t, and then you’ll see me again”. And there is Mary Magdalene and others who see the risen Christ but don’t recognize him until he prompts them to.  This strikes me as the best proof of all that “hiding and seeking” is advantageous to us.  Human psychology must have that need. 

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Another human need is the need for stories - which the gospels provide in spades.

There's a new book out that's "an invitation to allow the oldest stories—and the Greatest Story—to reshape our own.” From a review: 

"There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being.

In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age and that such poverty has left us vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well.” 

Food Truck Triplog

They say it’s not the heat but the humidity but sometimes it’s both. Today was both and whoa even a heat-lover like me took an hour break. But after walking/jogging 5.3 miles it felt warranted. 

We had just gone to the Columbus Food Truck Festival at the Franklin County fairgrounds and stumbled around in the heat, picking food from the first truck we saw (practically). This is the closest thing to our city’s “Taste of Columbus” it would seem. Unfortunately there were almost no samples so it would’ve cost a fortune to try all 40+ shops. Not quite “Taste of Cincinnati” alas. 

I joked to my wife that you know you’re old when you’re excited about going to a food festival. When I was a kid I’d be like, “There’s McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, who needs anything else?” 

I went with “The Pressed Olive” which specializes in “Mediterranean wraps and comfort food” according to their website. I had a “French taco”, a wrap stuffed with three meats (chicken, pork and brisket) as well as gouda cheese & fries.  My wife picked a Cincy bbq joint a few yards away and chose ribs and collard greens. (I used to think as a kid it was “colored greens” because I thought only black people ate them.) 

Needless to say there were a lot of trucks that “got away”, as in they got away without my money. I chose Frida’s Mexican for a chicken burrito but felt some regret for missing out on Big Pappy’s BBQ and the luscious-looking smoothies at another truck.  Smoothies, by the way, are one of the few good things that the young have now that we lacked. We had nothing but Icee’s. 

I used to have no money and all appetite. Now I have money but not enough appetite. Such is life!


Brave Old World

One of the purest joys of my childhood was also an unmitigated disaster. I never wanted anything more than that chemistry set when I was 7 years old, probably because I liked picturing myself in cerebral jobs like a writer, geologist, or absent-minded professor. Maybe the latter because of the influence of Jerry Lewis in his hit “The Nutty Professor”. Wikipedia reports that you can be so engrossed in your study that you can neglect things like, oh, maybe a paper route? Sounded good to me. It could also be an excuse to be subpar in other areas, like athletics:

"The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose academic brilliance is accompanied by below-par functioning in other areas, leading to forgetfulness and mistakes.

One explanation of this is that highly talented individuals often have unevenly distributed capabilities, being brilliant in their field of choice but below average on other measures of ability. Alternatively, they are considered to be so engrossed in their field of study that they forget their surroundings."

Maybe I’m overthinking it. I was also intensely curious in what things looked like under a microscope. It was a way to see what is invisible and what could possibly be cooler than that? Who wouldn’t want to see God if they could?

I worked long into the morning of Christmas Day and came down with an allergic reaction necessitating a hospital visit. So the mini-disaster.  That was the first and last day I got to use my chemistry set. My potential career as a scientist ended abruptly. 

But what makes me think of this is how they would never market a chem set to kids nowadays for threat of lawsuit. In fact, if the statute of limitations wasn’t up I could probably sue now and afford that vacation home in Hilton Head...hmmm....

We lived in a braver time, a seatbelt-less world of courage and fortitude free from the iron grip of lawyers. When I think of Ohio during the '60s and ‘70s I think of the unofficial motto of Miami University: "To think that in such a place, I led such a life”.... And lived to tell about it. 

Chesterton & Lincoln's Favorite Biblical Book

I heard the other day that GK Chesterton’s favorite biblical book was Job. As it was Abraham Lincoln’s.  So I picked it up again and read the last ten or so chapters. 

One of the chapters was Job thinking back on the good old days, and his self-depiction was remarkably similar to that of Jesus’s, i.e. he “delivered the poor who cried”, “caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy”, “was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame”, “father to the poor”, “my word dropped upon them like rain”, “my glory ever with me, and my bow ever new in my hand”.. Later, he said, he was persecuted and “spat upon” with his “reputation in shreds” due to his reversal of fortune. Sounds like Jesus’s public ministry followed by his crucifixion. 

But Job’s reaction to his fate was completely different than Christ's so that’s where the story is very different. Jesus did not complain to the Father of the injustice nor demand from Him an accounting for why the cup could not pass him by.  Obviously Jesus knew the book and I wonder if he thought “this is for me”.  Perhaps the book was mostly only for Him? And his mother? Because only they could say with certainty that they were as righteous and sinless as Job and that they would suffer unjustly but that they now - with the example of Job - could chart a different reaction. 

Anyway I read the ending in light of some of the really “hard cases”, as in impossible to fathom, like that of the killing of Alice Hochausler by the Cincy strangler. This is what a commentary says about Job’s repentance after God speaks: 

“His encounter with God's limitless power and wisdom has silenced his tongue and stilled the storms of his mind. Job has come to see (1) that God has ordered all things in the universe according to a divine wisdom that surpasses human understanding (42:3), (2) that God is not accountable to men or required to give an answer to their every demand (42:4), and (3) that wisdom consists, not in solving the riddle of suffering, but in humbling oneself before the Lord (42:6). • Be assured that whatever God ordains, even if its reason lies beyond us, is always the work of One who is wise. We should accept it, no matter how difficult it may be to endure, for God knows and appoints what is best for each of us (St. Basil, Letters 5, 2).”

There is a relief in knowing that you don’t have to know how, in St Basil’s words, how something like Alice’s death was what is in the end the best for us. 

Nuclear Power and the Demonic

Tucker Carlson wondered aloud if nuclear power was given to us by demons seeing how destructive it is and how hard it is to trace out who really came up with the technology.  He also thinks it’s not an accident Christians were targeted by its usage (the main Christian community in 1945 in Japan was Nagasaki). 

At the very least nuclear power as a weapon is something only the devil would love. 

The line between inspiration and perspiration is often thin like the line between divine assistance and human effort in someone like Mother Teresa. Where man ends and the supernatural begins is often a hard to determine but in reading about nuclear history there are some interesting nuggets. 

If there was a conduit between the natural and supernatural one could start with British scientist Frederick Soddy (and look at Ernest Rutherford and James Chadwick as well). None of these men would be allergic to demonic influence, being atheists and one an anti-Semite. Soddy especially seems friendly to the occult. 

Interesting that the book of Genesis and Enoch have parts in which it is said that an alien or ancient race communicated scientific knowledge.  

From an article: 

In 1921, Frederick Soddy won the Noble Prize in chemistry for his research into radioactive substances and his studies of isotopes, yet curiously this Oxford scientist mused about a ‘forgotten race of men’. What were the relations between Soddy, the Theosophical Society of Madame Blavatsky and Atlantis, if any? There have been many speculations on the theme of highly advanced ancient knowledge, leading to an abundant number of works that border, unintentionally, on fiction. Authors such as Charles Hapgood, for example, put forward conjectures as to lost ancient civilizations that were capable of mapping the entire globe.

Radium is not a substance that one readily connects with mysticism; but through a peculiar series of connections between science, speculation, and spiritual beliefs, one can trace a direct line from a scholarly work on the characteristics of radium from the Oxford professor Frederick Soddy’s The Interpretation of Radium and the Structure of the Atom, all the way to the Theosophical doctrines of Blavatsky and ideas on lost knowledge.

In 1875, Blavatsky and two colleagues founded the Theosophical Society. Blavatsky was deeply interested in the origins and meaning of various world religions, the beginnings of human civilization, and the connection between esoteric knowledge and contemporary science and technology. She believed in Atlantis as an historical fact, and held that part of the human race had its origins there. 

Theosophy’s rise in a period of intense scientific and technological development, during the late 19th century is not as contradictory as it might seem. As the historian of science Jeff Hughes notes: ‘One of a number of systems of belief that came to prominence in this period as alternatives to organized religion and scientific rationalism, theosophy drew on ideas from Eastern philosophy, mysticism and ancient occult traditions dating back to Pythagoras. Its blend of esoteric wisdom and spiritual philosophy... appealed to Victorian audiences disenchanted by the materialism of much modern science... In particular, theosophy’s emphasis on esoteric wisdom gave it a strong appeal to intellectuals. They saw in it a way of exploring and expressing hidden realities in an increasingly materialistic world...”

Gallows Humor in Our Soviet State

So Biden has suddenly developed late stage cancer where with decent medical care you get a diagnosis years ahead of time. But his docs sure caught that tiny basal cell he had removed in 2023. 

I remember in 2022 Biden suddenly declared a new “war on cancer” and it seemed like it was coming out of left field. Er, maybe not so much? 

What’s also interesting to me is how Biden can say things that could be taken as a gaffe, or maybe something true that he’s not supposed to say. With the dementia you lose some of your ability to lie because your brain isn’t filtering thoughts correctly. The frontal cortex needs to be overridden if telling a lie, and the cortex loses some of its governing function with dementia.  

So when Biden announced he had put together “the most extensive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics”, it might - or might not - have been a gaffe. But what about how in a 2022 speech he announced he had cancer? Hmm....

As Will Chamberlain wrote, “Bone metastasis is a late stage cancer. Prostate cancer is slow-growing. The deep irony here is that they are revealing that they likely covered up Biden's cancer diagnosis in order to distract from news that they covered up Biden's cognitive decline.” 

The lying by the Biden family and media astounds and astonishes with its length and breadth and width. It’s weird living in late Soviet Union times in our own country. 

As was someone joked recently: “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

That is the sort of gallows humor that was popular in the Soviet Union in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And the American people are learning as the Soviet people did to discount everything the government says and figure that the opposite is likely true. 

Mark Shea, Back in the Day

Two early Catholic presences on the web were blogger Mark Shea and John Zmirak. Both come from working class backgrounds and have a bit of a chip on their shoulder regarding elites. However, Zmirak ended up fiercely on the Right and Shea fiercely on the Left. Ironically they agreed on at least one thing: the folly of the Iraq War. 

The Iraq War seems to be the precipitating cause for Shea's turn from disdain for country club Republicans to red-hot hatred for all Republicans. You can see his blog turn back around 2004. 

The war began in March 2003.  "On November 1, 2003, the Associated Press presented a special report on the massive human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib. The scandal came to widespread public attention in April 2004, when a 60 Minutes II news report was aired on April 28 by CBS News, describing the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel taunting naked prisoners. "

Shea called himself an "old yellow dog Catholic labor Democrat" but later said he was an Independent. From his blog: 

May 31, 2003 — "When history is written, years from now, this war will be the one major black mark on the Bush presidency.... Are we prepared to be bogged down in Iraq, for years to come, fighting a religious war? History will not judge this whole adventure very kindly." 

Jun 30, 2003 — "Hear anybody beyond a few zealots who are even aware of the Dem schemes to keep Bush nominees out and apply anti-Catholic litmus tests? ... The Liberals champion abortion (very, very, Me) and the Great Society (strongly We.) Republicans idolize both the rugged individual AND the ..."

Aug 29, 2003 — "He says we won't be in Iraq for 50 years. We'll be there for about 5, with endless stuff like this going on, until enough American troops die ... Bush's simple piety is not rocket science ("WWJD?") but sincere. When he expresses it, he earns brickbats as a one-dimensional think who . ... ...Were we to confine our diet to creatures that lacked sense and do not even respond to light, we could only eat liturgists and liberal Democrats."

Oct 31, 2003 — "Speaking of which, here's a nervous Chattering Class Take on Bush's Evangelical Faith. It's always difficult to read stuff like this..."

Nov 26, 2003 — "It's almost credible as an effusion of leftist hysteria, full of all the normal 'conservatives are nazis/destroy Rush Limbaugh blah blah--until ... Bush for solar flares. Then you start sensing that you've been had. A fun read if you enjoy parodies of looney leftist rhetoric."

Jan 30, 2004 — "Support for Bush must be total and unequivocal. Anything less makes you a Yellow Dog Democrat. And they say conservatives are not ideologues."

Jun 1, 2004 — [Republicans] are every bit as much ideologically driven dissenters regarding Church teaching as the most pro-abort Democrat. " 

Emerald Robinson's Post

So more follow-up from Emerald Robinson the 2020 election hack:

....The researchers collected all the Internet website information related to Smartmatic and Dominion in a database to preserve records before it was all wiped by the bad guys.

That's when they found the ultimate source: the anonymous Japanese guy.

It turns out: ONE GUY tracked all Internet traffic flowing between Dominion, Serbia & Hong Kong on Election Day 2020.

And that one Japanese guy posted that info on his little anonymous account. They contacted him to get all the IP addresses that Dominion used.

What did the anonymous Japanese guy want for a full file of all the IP addresses that Dominion used inside the USA on Election Day 2020?

He wanted a donation: $20.

To this day, nobody knows his name.

Now here's the most important part: the IPs obtained from the Anonymous Japanese Guy on Twitter/X were crucial in stopping the steal of the 2024 election.

Literally could not be done without that information.

So that guy helped save America. 

He might not even know it too.

This IP info led to an astonishing discovery that the traitors at CISA deny to this day: the primary data center for the 2020 election was hosted in a foreign country on a Huawei server.

That's right: America's election system is in the hands of its enemies.

CISA is supposed to be the place inside DHS that "protects" America's vital infrastructure.

But CISA is actually the nerve-center where America's elections are stolen. 

In fact, CISA actually "partners" with Smartmatic to practice beforehand.

On Losing My Pro-Life Single Issue Voting Badge

There’s a lot of angst in Catholic world over Trump’s pro-IVF executive order. I can’t really share their anger since Trump could hardly be expected to be more Catholic than most Catholics (who approve of IVF). Sure, you could blame Vance, a Catholic convert (since we all hold coverts to a higher standard since they often know more about Catholicism), but ultimately it’s not the reason I voted for either of them. Indeed, I’ve surrendered my badge as a single-issue voter. 

My excuse, such as it is, seems less defensible now that Trump actually took office. The idea was that without accurate elections, we couldn’t get accurate votes on things like, say, abortion. First order priority was to stop rigged elections, but perhaps the 2020 election was a one-off due to the covid mail-in voting. But it’s also hard to focus on abortion, a perennial scandal of the country, when the other side is perpetrating a new one by jailing Trump supporters (and trying to do so to Trump himself!). 

I have to admit the Ohio vote to legalize abortion was tremendously demoralizing. It’s hard not to give up in the face of a red state voting that way. Certainly Trump and Vance have. They’ve pretty much stayed away from the issue like vampires do garlic. 

The first principle of life, that it is precious and a gift from God, no longer obtains for most people. So trying to prohibit abortion seems like declaring that women can be men and vice-versa. Sure you can enact some law but no one believes it. 

Political Catholicism

I’m puzzled by tweets by serious people who are appalled at the introduction of religion into the public square by Trump and Vance. They call it “the instrumentalization of religion” or “political Catholicism”. 

It feels like a lot of people wouldn't take their own side in a bet if it meant surrendering their right to virtue signal.

It’s hard to know what they mean exactly from a random X post. Likely they’re taking issue when someone has a stand on a political issue and they defend it by quoting out of context from the Bible or the Catechism. Apparently this just started this year, go figure. Those suddenly complaining about the politicization/instrumentalism of religion seem like they didn't much complain when it was done by the Left, or when it was not done at all (since, after all, Christians are supposed to be like the children in the old days, seen but not heard). 

Perhaps it’s that they don’t like the messenger and feel Trump’s giving a bad image to Christianity by associating himself with it. It’s as if the Church has a brand and we don’t want to tarnish it with sinners let alone political leaders. If George W. Bush made Christians nervous, those who belong to the creed of “winsomeness” and “a marketable witness”, then how much more Trump and Vance! But in the end conversions don’t happen via the good or bad examples of political leaders but by God’s gratuitous grace. 

God seems to have less a problem with Trump and Vance than the complainers since he seems to have put his thumb on the scale given Trump miraculously survived a couple assassination attempts. Maybe it’s actually not His will to bring back the Obama/Biden years and keep religion in the closet and privatized.

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Wheaton, a Christian college, recently came under fire for congratulating an alumnus who was confirmed to a White House post. They took down the X post and apologized. 

I puzzle over the apology and explanation. It fascinates me because it's related to my own Catholic high school's praise of a Kamala Harris aide (I complained and received a boiler-plated a non-response response). 

Is there any hypothetical point at which the Democrat Party can be seen as functionally irreligious and incompatible with the Catholic faith, i.e. on par with the masons? Is there anything more they can do to communicate that? Have they not tried their best?  Harris herself said take that Jesus stuff out to the Trump rally down the street. If David French were fed to the lions would he cry, "If MAGA had been more winsome and accommodating, this wouldn't be happening!" 

So Wheaton said this: 

"The recognition and prayer is something we would typically do for any graduate who reached that level of government."

In other words, it is completely irrelevant if the graduate is working hard for abortion on demand, transsexual rights, the suppression of free speech, or even the abolition of Wheaton College. Got it, though I don't quite understand it. 

"It was not our intention to embroil the College in a political discussion or dispute."

Ahh, well, you might not be interested in politics but alas politics is interested in you. 

"Our institutional and theological commitments are clear that the College, as a non-profit institution, does not make political endorsements [...and is a] deliberately non-partisan institution." 

Yes, as a 501 3-c you need to get the tax deductions for donations. LBJ approves. 

"This is both for missional purposes and legal reasons. Within the evangelical community—both domestically and internationally—we encompass a spectrum of political perspectives..."

So the goal of the college is to mirror the political perspectives of the evangelical community? Then why go to Wheaton if it has no wisdom to impart of its own? Or does the college prefer to appeal to the broadest range of people purely for remunerative purposes? 

"The College’s moral commitments on the sanctity of life, human sexuality, ethnic diversity, racial unity, justice, poverty, and stewardship intersect with politics complexly, not simplistically, especially in a two-party system."

This was the least offensive part of the statement. Yes no party has a monopoly on truth. I do wonder if there's anything one of the parties could do, hypothetically, that could draw out Wheaton to make a choice, to take a stand.  Perhaps if the student body was mostly drawn from only one of the political parties. Then, it seems, it would be an easy call...

Drinking Trees and Other Random Thoughts

A famous political philosopher said, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation." The question is how much is too much ruin. I think that was answered when we shut down the economy during covid, gave billions out to people, triggered huge inflation which allowed Trump to come back in office. In other words, "too much ruin" is when the middle class feels the pinch.

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Jack Cashill on the moment the earth changed axis

"Even a child could pinpoint the moment the grand illusion shattered. That would be, of course, the evening of June 27, 2024, when Biden took the stage to debate former President Donald Trump. In a flash, even the dissemblers at MSNC could see the emperor had no clue and that their empire of lies had no future."

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This was from 1971 from a publisher of a conservative magazine and it rings true:

"Since Catholic parents in general are more concerned about behavior than about orthodoxy, they cling to the Catholic schools as lesser evils. The Catholic high schools cling to their constituency by maintaining a measure of their traditional discipline.”

Catholic schools don’t have to be Catholic so much as offer discipline and better behaved students since parents have nowhere else to turn. It's like the two-party political system: you normally have no choice except the lesser of two evils.  Fortunately this time I actually got to vote for the candidate I supported in the primaries. 

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My favorite all-time politicians: Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul, Donald Trump, Tom Coburn and JD Vance. 

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The closest thing for a tree-lover to indulge their love for trees is to drink bourbon. 

Whiskey is aged in wooden barrels, which accounts for up to 70% of its taste and all of its color. 

The wood goes back, etymologically, a long way. From the Old English “ac”, begotten by the Proto-Germanic “aiks”,  Hence “oak”. 

For years the fermented corn lies fallow, soaking tannins, waiting for the bridegroom and the intimate consumption. 

Bourbon’s slogan: "Drink trees via fermented corn."