Essays in Idleness

I wish everyone and their SJW aunt would stop dumping on President Trompe, so I could have a turn. The news tends to demean one. It invites all readers to take sides, and by its immediacy adds that quantum (or quantus, or those quanta) of hysterical madness — instant emotional response to partial information, of which a proportion is maliciously false. Actually, I despise Trompe, and am opposed to almost everything he is doing, but I’m not going to give the slightest satisfaction to his “progressive” opponents, whom I despise more. He is no reactionary, and no “conservative,” either, only a puffball populist; why would I like him? (Example: Trompe wants everyone to have more money; I think they have too much already.)

He has unusual virtues in a politician, however. He is candid about his intentions, and is passing honest, however sloppy with the details; robust in his flattery, as too in his abuse. His self-seeking is open, not disguised. He is the dead opposite of a Machiavellian schemer. This is brave because, while it charms his stiff-necked supporters, the majority in any democratic electorate demand to be lied to. Should the entire media say one thing, and Trompe says another, I would think Trompe more likely to be telling (some aspect of) the truth.

Comparisons of Trompe to the Pope are obtuse. Proposals to replace either with the other would be, heroically, obtuser. An Aristotelian mean between the two is inconceivable. They are, in my humble but persistent opinion, nearly opposites.

Edward Feser, always worth reading, explained patiently yesterday, “Why Archbishop Viganò is almost certainly telling the truth” (here). Since I couldn’t explain it better myself, I have given the link. Apart from what he demonstrates, Prof Feser’s manner of presenting his case is worth holding up to admiration. Tabloid readers may find it boring, but if so, it is an argument against having taught them how to read. (The spread of half-education is among our modern crimes.) Those who discover in themselves the right to an opinion on topics with which they are unacquainted should soldier through such articles on a mission of auto-didactic reform.

What Trompe and Bergoglio have in common is a now-global culture in which the truth has lost any sort of precision — where it has not lost any content at all. We can’t turn the clock back, I am often told (though I find this easy enough to do on my forty-year-old Timex watch), and therefore we must accept the new reality, to which Humpty Dumpty is our lexicographic guide. Even if we could move backwards through time, we would find that our world was always a whore. Still, it was once more discreet about it.

Very well, I might “accept” this reality, there being no choice. Except, there is a choice. It is to act “as if” the truth had value — the whole truth, and nothing but — for in the longer scheme of things, nothing ever changes. The truth is still the truth and a lie is still a lie, no matter what the powers of enforcement. Wait, patiently, and the fog will clear. Of course this will not happen in our lifetimes, as Holy Church has always taught.

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WOOD’S HA’PENCE. — A certain valued correspondent immediately replies that while he counts himself among the obtuse, he finds these qualities in common between “el Papa” and “el Presidente”: 1. Ill-educated and badly informed. 2. Given to constant self-expression. 3. Playing to a particular crowd, constantly (populist, Peronist). 4. Uninterested in the character of their respective offices as established by tradition. 5. Vengeful and mocking towards those with whom they disagree, while ignoring legitimate criticism. 6. Pretending to reform while installing their own “swamp” pals. 7. In the world and completely of it, in the culture that no longer acknowledges the force of truth (a different way of describing the culture you mention).