Essays in Idleness

“Remember to keep your Masarati painted flat black, nothing ostentatious or attention-getting,” writes Baggins the Pharmacist — among my most generous patrons. He adds good, solid, worldly advice to his donations, and some spiritual nuggets, too. My gratitude for him, and for each of the others who through nuisance and expense have conveyed, since Friday, their kind regards to this mendicant antiblog and its author; none go unnoticed, by my banker or by me. Our chance of surviving the winter has increased. A blesséd Advent to all! My renewed appreciation, for all who sent donations in the past; and to other gentle readers, my humble thanks in future.

*

The world continues to disregard my instructions. Its motive begins, to my mind, with the fear of individual human freedom, and the individual human responsibility that goes with that. It also fears relationships, such as with God. It cannot hear the angel of, “Fear not!” — on which the last two popes were so eloquent.

We choose to remain children, if delinquent on occasion; we agree to be enslaved, in deference to the mediocre agents of the Father of Lies — to “fit in” with the requirements of Twisted Nanny State. The collapse of true religion is the consequence of that. For God is replaced in our hearts by baubles, idols; by objects of the moment that will not, verily cannot help us when the trial comes.

But what do I mean by the Twisted Nanny State?

Communism, socialism, was and is a design to impose it by main force. The current mayor of New York, and the president of Venezuela, do not differ on that “ideal.” I see the former looks forward to a day when the City will take charge, completely, of all building and property decisions, and make everything conform to its planning policies. Thus it would become “Caracas North,” but will need a wall around it, to keep its inhabitants from escaping.

Most socialists, however, adapted their “vision” in the generation of Thatcher and Reagan, and as the Berlin Wall came down. The crackpots quickly swivelled to feminism and environmentalism, but although they are forgetting now, most came to realize that state power is compatible with the consumer society. That it works better that way.

The Chinese state ideology was also “liberalized,” under Deng Xiaoping; we began converging. The State needs mountains of wealth through taxes; the people need illusions; so why not encourage their empty consumerism?

“To get rich is glorious!” Deng declared, himself looking forward to the convergence of which I write. “A basic contradiction between socialism and the market economy does not exist,” he famously observed. “We must adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries,” he added. He persistently defined socialism not in relation to a people, but to the development of production systems. In this, he was in perfect agreement with the advocates of capitalism, American-style. He even shared their dislike of “leftwing deviationism.”

Some readers of this antiblog are under the impression that I support Trump, and oppose Deng’s successor, Xi Jinping. But to my mind they are variations on the same theme, dedicated to success in the same contest between manufacturers of GDP. Trump, the lesser genius, may honestly believe he is serving American traditions in this way, and is (as his Evangelical enablers affirm) not in conflict with faith and family. Indeed, he flatters them as allies in his own reach for power.

So does the greater genius, Xi, who is in the bigger hurry to secure national dominance. But he realizes, as we are reminded by underground news from China every day, that “faith and family” are essentially in the way. Unless they are entirely committed to the State’s power, and the State’s priorities, they are at best useless. Hence the bulldozers currently levelling the ground, that was occupied by Catholic and other churches in that realm. (With the polite cooperation of the Vatican, incidentally: negotiated by Bergoglio through the sex-pervert McCarrick, with provisions that remain “top secret.” Words cannot describe the totality of the betrayal.)

The Chinese communists want to catch up with what, in the West, mass-market capitalism has already accomplished: the phasing out of religion.

My notion of the Twisted Nanny State encompasses capitalism and communism alike. It is the creation of an immense, and necessarily Kafkaesque, bureaucratic machine, nominally both “publicly” and “privately” owned, irresistibly controlling every aspect of human life, with or without the legitimization of “democracy.” It is founded in a view of the State from which the Church (and with her, all spiritual life) has been permanently and effectively “separated” or excluded.

This, curiously, is what Pope Leo XIII identified as the heresy of “Americanism,” though it is currently advancing faster in China.

In North American history, this is what the Patriots unknowingly fought for, and my ancestor Loyalists unknowingly fought against. Today a pope in Rome, though superficially anti-American, struggles to impose a post-Christian political agenda — that of the Twisted Nanny State — on the ancient and changeless order of the Church. It is the heresy of “Americanism,” the murky legacy of rejected Modernism. One might almost call it, “The separation of Church and Church.”

O brave new world!

And yet it serves as a reminder, that only Christ can save us.