Many have commented that my piece going into the New Year was very dark. I understand how it might seem that way, but it actually was not. Every great crisis involving some sort of great dysfunction has roughly four stages: revelation, confrontation, conflict and resolution.
Ever since I started writing publicly about the disorder in our world and its trajectory, I have said we are entering a great storm that will be terribly violent but will ultimately result in the renewal of the faith and face of the world. I know many have thought that there surely has to be some secret way to avoid the storm altogether. While I have sympathy with them, as I largely thought the same thing myself until the fall of 1995, I have never said or given any hint at all that the storm could be avoided. Others like to kid themselves that God, Himself, will take all the faithful to some place of safety while everything collapses. I have also been impatient – and even contemptuous – of that idea. While many of us have not engaged in attacking the faith, our faith has not been of the sort that has effectively defended that faith. When we acknowledge our sinfulness in the Confiteor, we ask forgiveness both for what we have done and what we have failed to do. I have been very insistent that the storm comes – and it comes for all. God sends the rain of the storm on the just and the unjust alike. For the just, it is the great opportunity to show our faith is intentional, unshakable and unwavering – and not just a callow plea for endless ‘get out of jail free’ cards.
Having been consistent in the call, I would be a pathetic counselor, indeed, if, on the very eve of battle, I were to tell you to rest your heads well and have no worries, for all will be well. I have never believed my job to be to give you false hope that you can exempt yourself from the vicissitudes of the storm. Since at least 1963 I have believed my job was to help you get through the trials while building your relationship with God, forming healthy communities, and making your trust in Him solid as tempered steel. That has been consistent through the decades of training, since I first submitted myself to a trio of Priests in 1995, and since I went public in 2013. You can argue that I am a bit crazy, but God save me from turning inconsistent in these critical moments!
We are headed to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart. The only path there runs through the Valley of Death. For a time now, I will be describing the terrain of that dark valley to you – not to scare you, but to get us through it safely under God, so that we get to the Triumph together to offer God a bountiful harvest of joyfully renewed and trusting souls.
Having reiterated that, we are now in the briefest stage of the process, the confrontation stage. It is not going well for the left.
When most pundits speak of the left they describe them as the Marxist authoritarians that have taken over and replaced liberals in the Democratic Party and our institutions. I agree with that, but the most fundamental characteristic of the modern left is its hostility to Judeo-Christian faith. They are Godless but not godless. They are cynical even in that. Like proper Marxists they believe religion of any type to be the “opiate of the people.” They want the people (for whom they have utter contempt) to be well drugged with Gaia, the climate scam, DEI, transgender ideology, gun control, and a dozen other items of raw faith that must not be contemplated or deviated from. Unlike orthodox forms of Judeo-Christian belief – which demand that believers, including leaders, sublimate their appetites to established doctrines – the left’s religions are all designed to supplement and strengthen the power of leftist leaders. It is the only thing they care about. Whether that is a function of willfulness or existential despair at divorcing themselves entirely from seeking to love the true God and serve Him – or some combination of the two – I cannot be entirely sure. Their appetite for power is only rivaled by their rage at the loss of belief in anything greater than themselves.
How, then, is this period of confrontation going badly for them?
Let’s start with DEI, the racial discrimination program that has been touted by the left as social justice. The situation with Claudine Gay, former president of Harvard University, may have dealt it a death blow. After refusing to condemn antisemitism on campus and being found to have serially plagiarized in her meager work, she finally resigned. But she and many of the black DEI advocates (Kendi Ibram and Hannah Jones, among others) are blaming racism for her departure – when the parcity of her work and her cheating would have left a white man unable to secure a job at a community college.
We now have a generation, maybe two, of white men in government jobs, middle management, law enforcement and various other jobs who have direct experience at being passed over for jobs they were best qualified for in order to keep the ‘diversity police’ at bay. If there was a time when the resentments from those blows were harmless, that time is gone. Two sets of people are furious with the corrupt system; those who were passed over and those minority folks who earned their way. Even though they were accepted after showing they had the chops for the job, minorities who care about merit had to overcome the difficulty of proving that they had earned the job by the content of their qualifications rather than the color of their skin. That chafes – and it was people who were supposed to be their ‘advocates’ that put them in this situation. It still rankles that abandoning merit generally has cast a pall over their specific achievement – and every time they start a new job they have to prove all over again that it is their skill, not their ethnicity or race, that is the key to their success.
In any non-authoritarian, heterogeneous society, minorities depend on the majority’s commitment to justice and fair play to secure their full participation in that society. Such minorities generally push for unity and objective standards of quality, for their success is dependent on the good will of the majority. Bizarrely, we have a small group of minority activists who have, for more than a generation, used the language of fairness to bully and cheat everyone except themselves.
The jig is up. Almost all people of good will have figured out that DEI and cries of diversity are not designed to inject fairness into the system, but to game it. Even some of the brighter entities pushing this con are starting to back away in fear of the growing backlash. BlackRock, a linchpin of the concept of woke investing, will lay off 600 people to start the New Year, all coming from the ESG (woke) sections of their business. Only the most obtuse of the diversity activists will continue their bleating. Even a competent conman knows to back away when his mark figures out the con – because it can get ugly quickly. The marks have figured out the con here.
Five mass shootings in the last year, including the most recent in Perry, Iowa, were committed by transgenders. The left tries to somehow make them victims instead of mass murderers and shuts down coverage almost as soon as they find out a transgender did it. But people have noticed. Trannies are certainly punching way above their weight in the mass murder department. Ordinary people wonder when the left will take mental illness seriously – and stop trying to groom and mutilate children.
The left eagerly works to mutilate language, as well. If homosexual pornography that is easily available from the bookstore up the street or Amazon is removed from an elementary school library, they call it “book banning.” Meantime, blue enclaves eagerly ban classics like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, insisting it is for ‘safety and inclusion.’ People have noticed.
Leftists are reduced to making such ridiculous assertions to justify their failure that it is doubtful even many of them believe it. They try to make up for the lack of verisimilitude with angry, faux self-righteousness and by getting their trolls to swarm social media sites saying the same ridiculous things over and over again to make their numbers seem bigger. They are become puffer fish. Though somewhat comical, puffer fish are poison.
The left has already lost the confrontation stage. As their gaslighting fails the left increasingly turns to threats and coercion. They gave this its first run with the Covid scare beginning in 2020. That was a fusion of gaslighting with bullying from public health officials and the federal government, on down to the lowliest local officials and lazy police (you know, the ones who run from danger but LOVE to push around ordinary folks). All of these got quite the thrill from seeing how powerful they were. (It is a signal source of pride for me that my son, who worked for a Sheriff’s Dept. when Covid started, quietly went to the sheriff and told him that he would not enforce any Covid restrictions or mandates; that he would not make a big stink, but if the sheriff had a problem with that to tell him so he could find a new job. The sheriff told him he was good. If law enforcement officers had done that generally, we would not have had the nightmare we did). There is a steep price to be paid for the serial abuse of authority; the authority rapidly evaporates as people recognize it for what it is, mere power games. This applies to institutions, as well. People who think a title or a credential gives them carte blanche to roll over ordinary folks find, over time, that their title has not elevated them. Rather, their misbehavior has eroded respect for the institution they occupy, itself.
At his speech commemorating Jan. 6 in Valley Forge, Joe Biden insisted it was the most dangerous moment in American history – and boasted about how vigorously he had prosecuted those who trespassed in the Capitol. As always, Trump is worse than Hitler and his supporters are worse than brownshirts, according to Biden. Biden is certainly not boasting of his or the left’s commitment to law and order; crime is so out of control in leftist run cities that the justice of the Wild West would make things much safer. But that is the fig leaf he used to cover what was a naked threat: ‘dissent from the narrative at your peril, for I will send the secret police after you to jail you.’ To underscore the point, a Biden operative, U.S. Atty. Matthew Graves, announced a few days later that the Justice Dept. would widen the scope of the J6 prosecutions to include anyone who was on the Capitol grounds at all that day, inside or outside. Certainly, the Biden Injustice Dept. has acted very vigorously, if opportunistically, to target individuals such as parents of schoolchildren, traditional Catholics, and others who defy their narrative – even a doctor who exposed an illegal transgender clinic. You can get poisoned if you are one of the unlucky ones on the receiving end, but it is all puff and stuff, for they simply do not have the comprehensive power to go after everyone who opposes them. It is an intimidation tactic designed to encourage people to keep their heads low so as not to be singled out – because the law has little to do with justice anymore, only power. And all the dire pronouncements about how dangerous Trump is boil down to their fear that he might do to them what they have been actually doing to ordinary people for over three years. When they speak of threats to “our democracy” the emphasis is on the word, ‘our,’ not ‘democracy.’
The left has to use these tactics because the numbers are against them. They have to cheat because they cannot win a fair fight. They have to lie because the truth cuts hard against them – and the lies keep getting more ridiculously absurd. They have to intimidate honest people to quit the fight because they can’t win a clean fight. But increasingly they are shooting blanks – and the more they shoot the more normal people they radicalize against them. Three and a half years ago, they were able to force over 80% of the American population to take at least one Covid shot. Last year, despite all the lefty shrieking, they struggled to get over 5% to take a booster. They fired all their rhetorical and coercive weapons early and mainly managed to convince people they cannot be trusted. So now they rely mainly on threats, having squandered any credibility with all their gaslighting. When both gaslighting and coercion fail, then comes open conflict.
The left believes it can shape and control this conflict. Once again it overestimates its own prowess – in more ways than it can imagine right now. First, America has become an international laughingstock and irritant. Nation states and terrorist organizations make their decisions without reference to America, except to the extent of mollifying her so she does not formally engage. When she does engage, it is an irritant and, perhaps, impediment to their plans. But it carries little weight and is most assuredly not decisive. That means the ravenous dogs of war rising around the globe will have their portion whatever America says or does. We are no longer the straw that stirs the drink. We may get drawn into some serious wars. More likely, contestants will, when they consider America at all, utilize tactics to keep America impotent.
The left won’t even be able to control how conflict begins or from whence it comes. Kurt Schlichter believes that America is very likely to fall victim to some large-scale Oct. 7-style terror attacks on our home soil. I agree with him. Victor Davis Hanson believes we are headed for a Thermidorean reaction. (Maximilien Robespierre launched the terror during the French Revolution, keeping two guillotines busy executing hundreds per day. By the time Robespierre took over, the ideologues in France had gotten so unhinged that they were arresting and killing people both from the right and from the left – anyone who dissented or was thought maybe to dissent from their ever more doctrinaire weirdness. It ended in a convulsive pushback when Robespierre, himself, was guillotined on July 27, 1794 – which the revolutionaries had renamed the month of Thermidor. Yes, the French revolutionaries were not content to just topple statues – they renamed months and tried to manipulate reality, itself, to accommodate the increasingly weird fantasies they sought to impose on the French people. It seemed unstoppable, if unreal, until it was all unraveled in a day). I agree with Hanson, too.
Many people busy themselves trying to determine what will be the trigger. I think that to be a fool’s game: when you have a football field full of triggers, all set 10 inches from each other, one is going to go off sooner or later. Once one goes off, they all go off. Whenever and however it happens, once it begins the self-absorbed prattlers of the left will all fall with astonishing speed as ordinary people treat them with an overwhelming wave of revulsion and disgust. They will be utterly irrelevant to the serious challenges of the moment. Global alliances will start shifting like a kaleidoscope. National borders – and the borders of states and provinces within those national borders will do the same. It is no mean feat to avoid the guillotines of the left until Thermidor comes, but it is coming. Though they don’t know it, all the ideologues of the left are already dead men walking. When it does come that will not be when the struggle ends, but when it begins. The Ninth of Thermidor was followed by the volcanic rise of Napolean – and nations throughout the world will be vulnerable to their own strongmen seeking to fill the vacuum left by the suddenly impotent and irrelevant leftists who have held almost all the levers of power. The most dangerous enemies in our future are not leftist scolds, but those who would restore order without reference to God.
That, my friends, is why I formed and devote my life to CORAC. For a time we will be beset, throughout much of the world, by roving bands of rival warlords seeking to establish their primacy. I do not want to replace the oppressors from the left with oppressors from the right, but I know that, “the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Do not be deceived. Many on the right and in the center ideologically consider Judeo-Christian faith to be rank superstition. Their dispute with current leftist overlords has more to do with who should be issuing the dictates than with faith, family and freedom. CORAC gives people who are genuinely devoted to intrinsic human dignity and free will under God a means to resist warlords of any stripe.
Thus, while being aware of and dealing with the depredations of the authoritarian left, my concern is directed to the future. The left is already irrelevant except for their exceptionally violent death rattle. We must win hearts and minds back to God to once more have liberty and justice for all. It was the rise of Christianity that made objective standards of liberty and justice universally possible. Our current descent into authoritarian paganism (okay, sometimes pantheism) must not and will not become prelude to a new atheistic totalitarianism. This is why I so value those who occupy themselves with the things right in front of them that they can do right now. They will be the heroes of this epic saga who prepare the way for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
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I was deeply saddened to hear of the sudden death of a good friend, Kevin Vasina, while he and his family were visiting France. Kevin was a mainstay of the Knights of Columbus at St. Joan of Arc Parish in Arvada, Colorado (my Parish). He is survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son. It made for a very difficult Christmas season for the family. Kevin was focused on home and frontier skills that have been lost – at least with me. Whenever I got home, we would get together for coffee and doughnuts. May he rest in peace and may his family find consolation in their good memories of him. And may he advocate for all of us from the other side of the veil.
If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.
Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim
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