Up against the pipes
Does gentle reader enjoy being smeared? Well, I should speak only for myself. I don’t like it. Perhaps I am projecting when I guess that most members of the new administration, Stateside, don’t enjoy it either. Verily, I’ll go out on a limb, and say no normal person (is Trump normal?) delights in being viciously attacked. And yet our Lord said: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.” (Note the qualifier.)
In such an exposed position, I would be wondering if there is any point in trying to alleviate ills and dysfunctions in public life, over the objection of spy networks within Deep State, the lawless courts, the organized rioting, the lies disseminated by the mainstream media and other votaries of the Hyena Left. I would find myself longing for retreat to some mountain hut, to resume the composition of these zuihitsu.
Or, quietly reciting to myself the “If —” poem of Rudyard Kipling, or maybe quoting it, as I gather the illustrious quarterback Tom Brady did the other day. It is true he is not a member of the Trump administration, but by now he might as well be. For this tweet, he was immediately labelled as a “white supremacist.” There are more manipulable Kipling texts than that, if you are an illiterate junkyard dog, who takes this author for a KKK wizard. But then, the message of the poem is so profoundly noble, I can understand why it drives progressives crazy.
“White supremacist” is, should gentle reader not have observed, the current vogue term among those devils in human flesh, who seem to have worn out “racist” and “fascist.” Anyone who opposes them is now a “white supremacist,” including moi, I should think, and every traditional Catholic. (I notice that the typical “white supremacist” in the Church wants Cardinal Sarah to be our next pope.) To be fair, I think there are some genuine white supremacists in North America today; perhaps thousands in a population of a few hundred million. Most of them south of the Rio Grande.
“It’s the thought that counts,” as I was writing on today’s Catholic Thing (here). The reality hardly matters, as the ideologues have discovered, in this age of triumph for politics over religion. But as I say there, the Enemy couldn’t succeed had he not first rendered most of the population unresponsive to godly reason. “I feel” has replaced “I think” more generally, as our criterion of judgement on the most important matters. And this is the very requirement for the advance of totalitarian evil, in society at large.
Let me mention that I am quite impressed by the calibre of most of Trump’s appointments — especially Steve Bannon and Betsy DeVos — and relieved that he has shaken off Mike Flynn. Most, in addition to high competence, seem to have “the right stuff” to endure the constant smearing from “media” in the broadest sense, and the threat of violence. I’ve begun to include several in my prayers.
As I suggested yesterday, I am and will be hardly in agreement with everything they do. But they are up against the pipes, through which the unmistakable stench of Hell is venting into our world, and thus in need of divine and human sustenance. As the Bible says, “Fear not!” in the battle.