Essays in Idleness

“The devil will seem to win in the last days,” said a certain Sister Amadeus to one of my gentle readers, a long time ago. This is a reasonable inference upon the Christian teaching, which does — really, truly — contain an apocalyptic element. (An “element” is irreducible, at least in abstract algebra.)

We have been many times before apparently at the end of days, but not actually there; which is why the Christian must keep his spiritual bags packed, but also continue drinking tea. The world is full of tricks and misapprehensions. The cleverest often get it most wrong, and it is a point of principle, up here in the High Doganate, to distrust the worldly. To reduce the Revelation to a political tussle would be, for instance, quite certainly too clever.

Yet what is not an apocalypse, could still be pretty bad. I have noticed the tenor of reports, lately, from both sides. The expectation of catastrophe is common to them; indeed, the demonic Left is trying to achieve it. All of their efforts are bent on destruction; whereas, only some of the efforts are indisputably evil on the other side. But this was so in 1789, and 1917. We needn’t be surprised.

Appearances are deceptive, but not always so. That the Devil has rolled up “the media, academia, the bureaucracy, most of the armed services, charitable foundations, most of the corporations, and most of the metaphysical speculations that pass for religion,” can be demonstrated, according to my correspondent.

“Good point,” as my cool-headed son would say.

But in the end, both French revolutionists and Bolsheviks were defeated; and eventually even the Batflu successors of Mao, will be disarmed; after another hundred million casualties, or with luck, a lesser count. The moral stench of them lingers to the present day, but it is mixed by now with so many other effluents from the discharge of post-Catholic modernity, that the streams are sometimes hard to distinguish. The great majority of those processed through our “education” systems espouse “Marxism” in some form, today, but the kids are hardly Bolshevik. Their ideology is so diluted by ignorance and stupidity, that they may freely drink the Kool-Aid. (“A rainbow of flavours,” as their advertisements boast.) For the moment, it doesn’t kill them; it just makes them mentally ill.

The good news, even down here in the stew of the news, is that a “backlash” is coming. It takes some time to gather force, but I see many signs that it is growing. People tire of being ordered about by malicious clowns; and one by one, decent people detach themselves from the Movement.

That does not mean the backlash wins, however; or even that, if it won, it would lead us to a better place. I, at least, am too world-weary to embrace a smiley-face optimism. But as I’ve been writing, in the cause of Hope — Truth, Goodness, and Beauty will survive. In the end these prevail, on Earth as in Heaven, even when it appears that all is badly lost.