I have had several people contact me to see if I am okay, due to the sporadic nature of my posting lately. I did have a significant and serious health issue arise. As is my wont, I did some heavy research, and came up with a treatment protocol. (As you know, I am leery of all but CORAC doctors since Covid revealed the profession is inundated with glorified cable installers who know and care little about science but are completely on board with the narrative whether it helps or hurts. I have no use for hospitals since they became the primary support system for the culture of death after the adoption of Obamacare. Remember how many leftists were advocating for denying all medical treatment to people who refused the shot? Yeah, really smart to let government bureaucrats make all our medical decisions.) As it turns out, the protocol I used worked magnificently for me. It was a modification of several different protocols – and I owe a debt of gratitude to our scientific consultant, Steve Baker, who gave me a key piece without knowing that is what he was doing. The crisis seems to have passed – and I will confirm that with a clinic of some sort next week. The fight was exhausting, though, as is any fight with a serious disease. God willing, I will be back on target now. I know many of you would like more details, but I’m not really up for the endless rounds of good-natured people telling me what I should eat, how much and when, and what I must stay away from. I appreciate the concern behind it but get wearied by it.
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In the early ‘90s I was told (or so I believe) that, as the storm set in, God would cloud over the minds of some of even the best, most thoughtful people. Any time I have a clear visitation, I begin a rather complex set of protocols to confirm or dismiss it. After all, if God communicates directly with you, you can bet the devil is doing his best impersonation to confuse and set you off track. I don’t discuss details of these protocols, even with my Priests, as the devil can’t read your mind, but can hear everything you say. At first, I dismissed this as a clumsy effort to deceive.
I was at my Mom and Dad’s house, though. Dad and I loved to argue. It was an old family sport for us. We disagreed on many things politically, but Dad always had rational, logical bases for his arguments. It was deeply satisfying for both of us. The next day, Dad started arguing the dumbest, most illogical point he ever had – and mulishly stuck to it, not even dealing with my counterarguments, just ignoring them. I was flabbergasted. I was even more so the next day when I got what may have been the only overt apology over an argument I ever got from Dad.
With bafflement, he told me he did not know what came over him the day before – that I know very well that he is not stupid and he had no clue why he had argued such a stupid point while rejecting all logic and evidence. It was striking. Truth is, Dad had a very quick, agile mind. He was the only person I have ever been wary of in debate. I don’t think I am giving anything away by noting that I took that as evidence I should take the matter seriously.
Holy cow! I have never seen anything like what has happened with the left in recent years. There is no rhyme or reason to their “policies;” it is just all nihilism, all the time. I first noticed something seriously wrong about a year into Barack Obama’s tenure. Before that, I had been quite good at predicting what Democrats would do based on their actions. I thought their priorities were usually wrong, but they were coherent. Once we got into Obama’s tenure, I could no longer project what they were working on from what they were doing. I didn’t lose my touch, the leftist movement just got increasingly opportunistic and incoherent. They no longer had a desire to serve, only a ravenous hunger for power. Whenever bad economic news threatened, Obama just changed the metrics for measuring it to make it look less bad…kind of like seeing the car redline at 6000 rpm and instead of fixing it, moving the redline over to 8000 rpm. It has not gotten better since.
I have said that the power of evil is broken…and so it is. Every new gambit it launches just reveals its rhetoric for the empty show it is. But that does not mean we are not in for a fight as it perishes loudly from the earth.
I get really depressed sometimes. Being a student of history does not help that depression. Do we ever learn?!
There are periods in history in which large segments of a population go barking mad for a time. Even worse, sometimes the crazies hold power over the rest of society for a time. Think the French Revolution or the madness in Rwanda for extreme examples. Milder versions happen – the Soviet Union, North Korea, the ongoing disaster of Communist China. These things always burn themselves out. One might prefer one of the milder versions, but the more extreme burn themselves out much more quickly. They always kill a lot of people before the madness is destroyed, though.
The woke madness that currently infests the globe is the first time there has been a truly global outbreak of such insanity. It is frightening. Those who feverishly succumbed to it are incapable of making salient arguments for their cause…probably because there are none. They are brilliant at hijacking bits and pieces of the honorable standards of whatever the old regime is, weaponizing them against all resistance to their madness while exempting themselves from any objective standards at all. But oh, they have rules! Those rules are grounded in nothing and change like a kaleidoscope – but they are more ferocious than a 17th Century Salem Witch hunter in enforcing the rules of the day (which are not the same as the rules of yesterday nor of what the rules tomorrow will be).
In America the woke madness is slowly being beaten back, oh so terribly slowly! In Europe, the insanity has fully taken root. It is probably only civil war there that will end it. Russia, first infected over a century ago, is the first Euro-Asian country recovered, but heaven knows, it still has its own substantial disorders to overcome.
A young Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, was murdered brutally and senselessly by a mentally ill homeless man on the train in Charlotte, a man who had been arrested and released at least 14 times previously in his penchant for violent crime. He will be held this time, not because of the brutality of his crime, but because he has embarrassed the leftist elites and stands as an accusation to their vacuous policies. The left’s media scribes reveal their mendacity by refusing to cover the story. They know how damaging it is to their narrative, so they try to memory hole it. That tells me they still have enough residual sense to know the difference between good policy and bad, but have willfully chosen to support bad at all costs, even at the cost of the lives of those they pretend to advocate for.
Transgender ideology is particularly telling. Some of it is just adolescent angst adapted to the modern era. Young people, trying to find their way and their place in the world, have a habit of experimenting with different personalities and poses as if they are in a clothing store trying to find out what fits. It is just in the last decade that transgender ideology has become trendy and, so, is included in the mix, particularly for those who are socially awkward or insecure. These people are generally harmless, but playing with an ideology that can only intensify their already existing misery. In the worst cases, they get hormonal therapy or surgery that permanently destroys their capacity for normal, fruitful lives. I am painfully familiar with the story of Chloe Cole, a young woman who underwent “gender therapy” when she was 12 and detransitioned in her late teens. It is notable that she was surrounded by activists who encouraged her transition. She may (I pray) have a useful life in the years ahead, but she will never be able to have children – and normal sexual union with a man she loves may be very difficult for both, if not impossible. It is hard for me not to see the activists and therapists who encourage this as demonic. They love to encourage others, so long as it is not their skin in the game.
Over the last 60 years, when has the prevailing therapeutic culture not just rationalized the prevailing socially trendy madness with 12-dollar words in academic sounding papers? Though I well know that a good therapist is worth their weight in gold (perhaps more, because they are much rarer) it is hard not to see psychiatry and therapy as junk science, available mainly to the trendiest bidder.
Transgender ideology is a direct assault on the sovereignty of God. It is open warfare and entirely vain pretense. Happiness comes from actually knowing your place in this world and living it as best you can. When I was young, I would have loved to plant Major League fastballs routinely into the upper decks of stadiums. That was not among my gifts – and “identifying” as a big league slugger would not have made it so. I wish I was mechanically inclined. Almost everybody in my family, except me, is. But I am not. Identifying as such will not make it so. That is the rub with the enthusiasm for identity ideology. Sooner or later you confront reality – and it is not kind to your pretenses and dodges. I am glad to identify as a gifted strategist, researcher, and writer, not because they are necessarily the gifts I would have chosen for myself but because they are among the gifts I have actually been given, so I don’t have to waste time warring with reality.
Ellen Page was a bright, bubbly young actress who, at some point, decided to become Elliott Page. While Page claims she is finally her true self, I don’t think I have ever seen her smile or look anything other than gloomy in her effort to pretend to be a man. So it goes when you declare war on God’s sovereignty.
Even more evidence of what a demonic playground this has become is that “transgenders” are punching WAY above their weight in mass shootings. When you mix existing mental illness with psychotropic drugs while refusing to treat the underlying illness, what do you expect? That, literally, is the devil’s playground. These are not just examples of adolescent angst. But we are clearly playing with fire – and pretending that “compassion” demands we shove confused people closer to the flames of perdition.
I am not trying to put together an exhaustive list of modern pathologies. We have gotten so crazy that doing so would be utterly exhausting. But things that, in healthier times, we would have dismissed with a chuckle in a few minutes, we are seriously discussing now. Like I have occasionally said, I always knew the road to hell was paved with good intentions. I remain shocked that the same road is lined with crowds enthusiastically cheering on their own destruction.
It is the oldest seduction in the world, the seduction the satan used to trip up Adam and Eve: the seduction that we can be equal to – or even greater – than the God who created us. It constantly brings people to ruin – and yet people keep falling for it. We are a vain and silly people!
But there is good news. I hear from Priests all over the country that they are being besieged like never before in their lifetimes with top-quality conversions. People who have dismissed God and religion altogether all their lives are coming in with genuine fervor. Meantime, there is a rise in Protestant conversions, as well, particularly on some college campuses. Young people seem to be a study in extremes right now: either they have purple hair, nose rings, and eternal shrieks, or they are moving dramatically into the faith. It is no surprise you have probably not heard this: the idiot media is not just the scribe of the left; it is the satan’s scribe, as well. To tell you of this revival that has already begun would be to confess they have utterly failed. It is particularly good that it is happening so strongly with young people. Those on the fence can look to the continuing misery of the woke mobs or the joyful contentment of the newly fervent believers and choose. We are witnessing Deuteronomy 30:19 unfold in real time: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live.”
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If you have not watched the episode of Crosstalk with Kansas State Sen. Mike Thompson, you have missed a lot. Thompson was chief meteorologist at two of Kansas City’s three major TV stations for two decades. He, with Chicago’s late John Coleman, are genuine scientists who give a strong dose of reality to the vastly overblown talk of manmade climate change. He also talks about some real threats that we completely ignore, to our peril. Just as California’s insane forestry rules adopted in the ‘90s led to the catastrophic wildfires of the last decade, so our neglect of painful realities now will lead to serious water and power shortages in the near future. Do we ever learn? We fight phantasms that never were while steadfastly ignoring entirely predictable and genuine crises.
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I did a talk via ZOOM for our Colorado group on Saturday evening – and they were kind enough to get me a dinner delivered via GrubHub an hour before the meeting began. I do love me some Kentucky Fried Chicken! Shoot, you can tell just by looking at me. Thanks to the folks in Colorado for making sure I was well fed. I’m still eating off it.

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 X at @JohnstonPilgrim
The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)
18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552
Dallas, Texas 75252




















Great comments, Charlie.
Ann
A few days ago, just ahead of this article it came to me that Charlie might be a victim soul swallowing a lot of our deserved illness for us.