The "shame" chant. Sometimes I wish Hunter S. Thompson were around to put words to the insane absurdity of this all. I like to think he would have come around.
No, that's not the meaning of "theophany." Rather, it means the visible manifestation of God or "a god," even if false, not to "his people" but rather to mankind.
Therefore, Rod's usage of the word is correct here. The reference is to the visible and public manifestation of a false god. The false god is Self. Wokeism is its religion. The Father of Lies is its spiritual mentor. The Gender Cult is one of many of its signs. The pagan powers of our time are the high priests. And those idiot demonstrators are disciples. It all fits.
Responding to both of your comments, I'm declaring Satan a false god. Or rather I'm not declaring him that...he declares himself that. It's the Original Lie that he told to our most ancient ancestors: "Eat the fruit...and you will be like God."
Secondly, sorry but yes, the term is inclusive of false gods. The dictionary definition: "A visible manifestation to human kind of God or a god." A god...not capitalized...false. Your argument is not with me but rather with the dictionary and the plain meaning of words.
Perhaps he is to some people; his greatest desire. He lost his position in heaven bc he wanted to be above God, the I Am, so in essence he wants desperately to be God. Not be a god.
Again, regarding the three. What is the size of the trans-identifying population? If you're going to throw numbers, somebody's going to ask for a metric, you know?
It doesn't matter if "being transgender is a primary factor", what matters is if the toxic ideology of transgenderism has now proceeded to the next stage of killing people outside of the cult, rather than simply mutilating those inside the cult.
Remember that the 9/11 attackers were only 19 of a billion muslims, but they had a similar death-cult ideology.
"Parents in California and more liberal states are probably in a politically and culturally hopeless situation. At least other states can be sanctuaries for them."
There will be a great sorting. I'm in a state where elected officials have taken a definitive stand against this; people will come here who want to escape the California madness. But I have little doubt that people from my state - the type who have those "In this house we believe..." signs in their yard - they'll go TO California to live in their leftist utopia. And let them.
We're rapidly approaching the point where there are but 2 choices - either the "fascism" of Trump or DeSantis, or the "inclusiveness" of those who think kink "butt sluts" have more right to your children than you do.
I'm much more pessimistic. I think we passed the point of no return sometime in the last eight years. It really was Obergefell. A nation which can blithely obliterate in its law what marriage has always meant has passed the "all passengers who do not wish to continue to Hell must depart here" point.
There will be some heroic attempts at resistance. Whoever imagined the Kentucky legislature would be a beacon of sanity and light? But the combination of principalities and powers, useful idiots in all of the kinds of media, and maybe a hundred million Americans who have grown up with all of this madness having formed their "thoughts" about these matters will prove too much for the rest of us to contain, I'm afraid.
I reached this conclusion when I read last year that 70% of Americans now approve of same sex marriage. I really was stunned by that. A Supreme Court ruling was one thing, but that more than 2/3 of the country would endorse it, would be varying levels of enthusiastic about it, shocked me. We are well into Romans 1: 18 - 32 times.
Most Americans will go quietly. The rest of us need to build communities quickly, thousands of post Christian Levittowns. It's interesting that most of us who have this perception think of the intermountain West as the natural locus of such a nation within a nation. Maybe some Southern states, maybe places rarely thought of, such as upstate New York, might also be in consideration.
Everyone thinks The Authorities would never let us get away with it. "Biden has the F - 17s," goes the cliche. But I think of the authorities as men like the magnificent Nashville officers who charged toward danger, Judge Newman and the state prosecutors who brought Ellick Murdock ( proper pronounciation ) down, the large number of people still in our military who are appalled by what we've become.
We still have a hardy minority who, whatever their theology may be, haven't yet bowed the knee to Baal. I'm not a John Brown, except I'm old and would be dispatched quickly by The Authorities. To riff on the Woody Allen joke about his Vietnam era draft classification as hostage material, I see myself as early fatality material. We wouldn't go after Them, but They would almost certainly come after us.
I still try to find beauty in every day life, but it is so frustrating trying to raise a normal kid in this culture.
The thing that gets me is that a lot of this can be put at the feet of Christians. I fell into the ‘it’s just a fad’ thinking and ‘dude, they’ll grow out of this when the adults in the room tell them what’s what.’ But the adults never showed up. And, worse, went along with stupid.
For me, it’s just so hard to believe that many volunteer to have dysfunctional lives because all my husband and I wanted growing up was normal. As is, a traditional nuclear family in the suburbs. A relatively quiet life w/o drama popping out of every corner. Our families were so messed up and I see the old dysfunctional patterns in the way the culture acts. It’s so sick and sad to watch. It’s truly demonic. There’s just no other word for it.
I think that with Jesus there’s always hope.
I’ve hit a point where I’m grateful all of this is happening because it just means that Jesus will be coming back sooner rather than later And that will be the final victory over all the crazy. That’s why I can’t truly despair like I want to some days. I still have to do my part for the kingdom, but there’s only so much I’m required to do here, now, today. It really doesn’t matter what came before, but how we react to these situations and the people around us now. That’s really all we can do. Just move forward one step at a time.
Goethe's "Verweile doch! du bist so schön!," on the one hand; and on the other von Hoffmannsthal's "Wie kann das sein, daß diese nahen Tage Fort sind, für immer fort, und ganz vergangen?"
No, I wasn't strong enough. I just withdrew deep inside my own mind so it was as if it was happening far away from the real me. As much as abuse is claimed to turn victims violent and becoming in turn abusers, a whole lot, a majority, grow up to revile such behavior and abhor the thought of doing such harm.
Sorry, I disagree with you, liberals like myself brought about this disaster far more than any Christian, and mixed up a bitter cup for all of us, unknowingly. Mea culpa. You may freely take responsibility for Dubya's torture wars, or for cheering and clapping while soulless capitalism destroys the planet unrestrained as we consume our way to living on a landfill, or for covering up child abuse in your ranks, or whatever else you feel complicit in, as a conservative Christian, but the trans phenomena comes from the deep bowels of liberal idealism and its quest for unconstrained liberty and self-definition. The mass shootings, regardless of the killer's gender issue, are also mostly the fault of American liberals, not the gun nuts. We always had plenty of guns in this country, but not so long ago, within living memory, a mass shooting was a huge deal. Not anymore. What changed in the last decade? Certainly not gun laws. No, the madness has increased, the culture is getting angrier and more violent, and by "the culture" I just mean mainstream American culture, which is predominantly liberal, let's admit it.
People like you are the ones who will likely redeem the rest of us, especially when it comes to this trans business and various other liquid modern dissolutions. I sincerely doubt that the liberal impulse will ever dissipate from mankind's heart, however, so I have no fear for it, but consequences are a bitch.
I am voting Republican in PA regardless, and tell my liberal friends about it just to see the looks on their faces. They are discombobulated. Losing some friends, gaining others. Growing less and less patient as the years wear on.
I'm not sure you didn't misaim your comment. I agree with everything you wrote. And I loathe the Republicanism of the last forty years.
I've started to see articles about Miss Hale's odd fixation on remaining a child. The transgendered community ( how do they sort themselves out, I wonder? ) is attacking Christians for existing. One article lamented the parents' refusal to acknowledge their daughter as a man.
Who was Peter Pan.
The response of all of the rest of us should be that she was severely mentally ill. I believe this is true of all "transgenders," that, or they are demon influenced. We shouldn't hesitate to say so.
No argument here, but I was responding to the heartfelt comment by lovepeace2022, including: "The thing that gets me is that a lot of this can be put at the feet of Christians."
If not for Christians holding the line -- and all other religiously faithful -- we would be polygamous cannibals by now, probably.
This is the second time today that a commenter's remarks aimed at somebody else have landed on me. I wish Substack could do a better job with its delineations.
Contrary to most presumptions, the world is not a rational place. Libertarianism is the other fig leaf, for it depends on order, neglecting mystery. However, everyone living faithfully under one ancient infallible creed is similarly a difficult proposition.
I could be fairly described at this point in life as a Christian, libertarian populist whose views fall within a belief that God is infinitely wiser than I, yet it's still possible to find how He would have us live. I asked Him a long time ago to show me the truth. I have not been disappointed in that continuous process, though the revelations have been disappointing. No fig leaves. As time goes on, His wisdom is only further confirmed, and the faith verified.
DeSantis is NOT a fascist. He promotes traditional family values. He also is admirably pushing back hard on the DEI establishment in public colleges and universities. A fascist would not sign into law expanded school choice like DeSantis has recently done. The list goes on. Care to offer any examples to support your view of him?
"It is possible that some specifics in the manifesto are legitimately not the public’s business, or reasonably could spark copycat killings. If so, police should show it to independent journalists who can be trusted to report its contents with discretion."
I'm not familiar with the ethics and standards to which journalists are held, but I don't understand why the whole manifesto couldn't be released unredacted. The threat of copycat killings is already existent. If there is an argument being made within the manifesto that rings true enough with members of the Alphabet community, surely the rest of society would look in horror as an appeal is made to the manifesto to justify the killings. Let the uncensored truth come to light to do its work.
In general, I'd agree. On the other hand, there may have been certain people that she sought out specifically, and if she ranted specifically about them, even if the ranting is 100% slander, the internet is not kind - stuff like "Mr. X is a child molester who patted my head on the way to gym class one day and I didn't like it and he didn't apologize" does not make it easy for Mr. X to put in a rebuttal. And for the next 20 years, when someone starts typing Mr. X's name, the auto fill will go "Mr X. ... is a child molester".
Right on. You know who really is “transphobic” and hates trans people? Andrew Sullivan and other staunchly pro-gay-marriage but anti-trans voices. I read Sullivan the other day lamenting trans madness - but the trans people were making *the identical argument* I personally heard Sullivan make countless times, with great eloquence and tears in his eyes, during the gay marriage debates of old. I remember Sullivan saying something like “why would God give me such deep love for another man if it’s a sin?” Of course that argument made no sense at the time, but at least be consistent and embrace the trans variation on it. Yet when trans people say “a loving God wouldn’t want me to stay in the wrong body” or whatever, Sullivan calls them out and attacks their ideology. There is no logic there, there truly is only hate for a different group. Me, I opposed rewriting Genesis then and I oppose rewriting Genesis now, not because I’m hateful or trans phobic but because I think God knows better than I do!
As for the Satanic element of it, see That Hideous Strength. Or Walker Percy, who in the *1980s* was already predicting that liberal elite doctor types would inevitably end up sexually abusing children. Percy, unlike Sullivan and co, actually understands logic and consequences of ideas…. More on that here:
“ If there is one unforgettable takeaway from the book, it is Percy’s reiteration of his fellow legendary Southern Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor’s insight: apparent virtues, like tenderness or compassion, when divorced from the divine source of all virtue, inevitably lead to the death camps – or to Epstein Island. “Love is love,” after all, even for adults and their prepubescent paramours. Dostoevsky wrote that without God, everything is permitted. He was right, but only halfway so. As the children in Percy’s tale, and far too many real children today, could tell you, without God, everything – in the worst sense of that word – is mandatory.”
The little girl whom Stavrogin rapes in The Devils tells him before hanging herself, "You have killed God." The chapter, called Stavrogin's Confession, was taken out by the censors and is today usually published as an appendix (cf. Magashack's masterly Penguin translation, still widely available).
Going after Sullivan. It's a dark and lonely job, but somebody has to do it. I get that he'a friend of unser Wirt, but you are to be thanked for having crisply and accurately summarized the sophistry of his position and giving me the day off. Feser's crack is a good one, but the thing about the Mensheviks is that the Leninists just walked over them. There is an element of fear in Sullivan's newfound aversion to the rest of the alphabet, don't you think? If A, then B.
"No place to hide" -- it's absolutely true. I'm old enough to remember the days of "let San Francisco be San Francisco and the Bible Belt be the Bible Belt." But in small towns such as Taylor, Texas, pop. 15,000, the radicalized city staff sees it as their solemn duty to spread the woke gospel and enforce a "pride parade," public opinion be damned. The libertarian "limited government and the constitution" camp just has no answer for this -- only the Rufo/Orban approach stands a chance of resisting it. See the coverage below.
I have a 13-year-old who is incredibly smart but is an angry kid and uses a lot of liberal talking points - including those of the LGBT crowd - as a weapon against those who try to assert authority over her. She finds it the epitome of hypocrisy that traditional Christianity, including that which our church and her school preach, condemns homosexual behavior, because she's so brainwashed into thinking that it's all about "love is love".
I can't say too much more about the situation for the sake of privacy, but as I have been forced to come closer to some of the LGB and Trans+ stuff, it's actually very sad how many of these people feel very lost and alone, feel unloved and unloveable, and fall into the cult of the demonic LGBT+ activists (who do seem to be a small but very vocal part of the movement) who tell them "We love you and we're the only ones who can love you". When it wasn't radical enough to be homosexual, trans came out to push the culture even more out of whack, even though a lot of what the trans+ people push is diametrically opposed to what the homosexuals have been trying to tell people for the last 25 years.
The demons need to be fought against hard, but I think there are also a lot of people who need to be snatched up out of the fire in love because they ended up into something far more sinister than they bargained for.
My daughter went through similar things at the age of 16. Including SSA. I spoke on the phone with a well known Catholic therapist. He told me that girls have a much better track record of "growing out" of it. Well, he was right, she did. She is fairly liberal still and only attends church when she's at home, with us (She's 25 now). I get a lot of eye-rolls until she needs something.
I'm fasting, praying the Rosary, and trying to stay away from confrontations with her now. I have 2 younger son's, who are going through their own storms right now. It can feel overwhelming at times. I have been including Rod and his readers in my Morning Offering for a few years now and will send prayers your way also.
Thank you for sharing. I have a teenager as well and it’s so tough to parent these days b/c everything in our culture has been twisted inside out. You and your family will be in my prayers.
If it's any consolation, I was that kid in the 70's, but beginning at around age 16. I was an obnoxious, angry, smarter-than-the world (haha!), little leftie in training. Hated our culture and hated all religion. Now, I'm an Orthodox Christian who cringes at the memory of that little sh*t know-it-all judge. I have much to repent for. There is hope!
Trans love bombing is as much about agape love as is the lust to drop bombs on foreign peoples because we love democracy. All these enemies fighting on the same side, death and destruction. Now what force would be for this?
Ah, Lord have mercy!--give us rest from the Machine. I think we're seeing another "internal apocalypse of history" now, as Berdayev talked about it: "There is such a thing as the internal apocalypse of history. The apocalypse is not merely a revelation at the end of the world: it is also a revelation of the inner events of history, of the internal judgment upon history itself...History is a tragic conflict between the personal and the super-personal or pre-personal...Personality is active in history, within history the individual is revealed, but history is merciless in its attitude toward personality and oppresses the individual...It may be said that in fact the subject of history is not man, not even mankind, but a non-human reason...History deceives man, using man's self-seeking as a means to attain quite non-human goals. The cunning of history, against which the living personality rebels!"
“An example of the calibre of counsellors who decide if a 12-year-old comes home from school is Kenna Cook, who has access to the kids at Davis Unified [School District]. She held a BDSM group called Slaps Giving; she authored blogs: ‘How to be a better butt slut’.”
Your agent (a Pete Hamill-ism) was recently attacked in these boxes for "grotesque hyperbole" or something for warning that the State was getting ready to mutilate children against the wishes of their parents. Here's what these dimwits don't get: the public schools ARE the State. It's the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity inverted and weaponized. The State doesn't have to be in Sacramento, it's right down the street when school board meets. If I pay taxes to keep it going, you can bet your ass it's the State operating. Of course, California State law helps them here, or can be made to.
If you want any chance, any chance at all, of resolving this peacefully, then Dissolution of the United States is the only solution. And the chances of that being accomplished peacefully now are very remote.
It will be hard. It will be unpleasant. The United States will lose even more of what precious little standing it has in the world. We will become a bunch of smaller, less powerful, and less wealthy, but still pretty influential nations a la France, Australia, or Japan instead of the great Collossus that the USA has been for the entirety of all of our lives.
There will be massive dislocations. There will be tremendous financial consequences that result in a lower standard of living for all of us.
But the alternative is going to be to lock and load and a tremendous bloodletting that most of you, with little to no personal experience with personal violence and its aftermath will never see coming.
We have plenty of space and resources for us to sort ourselves out and away from each other. It will happen, one way or another. Better to admit failure and work towards as soft a landing as you can.
Kentucky, almost more than any other place at the time, epitomized the struggle of the Civil War. Both Presidents were born here. You can go to both of their birthplaces and do full tours of both in a single day. In an alternative universe, Lincoln grew up to be the president of the Confederacy and Davis led the Union.
The whole "brother vs. brother" thing actually happened here. "Orphan" brigades of volunteers fought on both sides. Kentucky was represented by a star in the national flags of both combatants, even though they didn't secede.
Yes. The Civil War history I grew up with as a boy, Bruce Catton's American Heritage book, said one went north the represent the midwest (and the railroads), the other south to become the spokesman for the planter aristocracy. Jan. 1, 1863, must have been something in Kentucky.
Flannery O'Connor: "Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.” – from her essay “The Grotesque In Southern Fiction”
The military will quickly rout those who will have their peashooters confiscated, who dare mount any violent insurrection against Woke. The American dream might have been liberalism's best hope but ultimately, like all worldly attempts at Eden, is ending in failure. Let's hope it's not ending in "regime normalization" of the whole rest of the world too.
The connections from the acceptance of quee*marriage to this trans destruction seems clear to me. I can recall soon after Canada allowed que**marriage two brothers stood on the steps of their courthouse- maybe Toronto and demanded to be 'married'. The head of the que**marriage movement said that these two were "mocking marriage". I knew the end was nearer than I thought.
"If you could transport yourself back in time to 2003, and tell Americans what the future was going to hold for them and their families if they embraced the LGBT movement, would they have been so eager and so naive? I appreciate gays and lesbians who speak out against the trans insanity, saying there is nothing about supporting homosexuals that requires you to support transgenders. But sorry, that ship sailed a long time ago, with transgenders on board. The logic used to sell Americans on affirming homosexuality — the logic of bodily and sexual autonomy, and personal feelings trumping any other consideration — has also been used to justify affirming transgenderism. The philosopher Edward Feser quipped the other day that watching a leading gay commentator objecting to trans extremism is like listening to the Mensheviks complain that the more extremist Bolsheviks are rushing through the door that the Mensheviks helped to open."
Over and over and over and over again.
Year after year after year after year.
I have posted the following double digit times all over but NOT ON SUBSTACK, so here goes.
There is a line between normal and abnormal. We can't pick up the line and move it over a little in order to normalize a little bit of abnormal without the rest of abnormal screaming, "What about me".
This is what we tried to do and failure was the only possible result.
Can we reverse this? Not until after the catastrophe.
The "shame" chant. Sometimes I wish Hunter S. Thompson were around to put words to the insane absurdity of this all. I like to think he would have come around.
No, that's not the meaning of "theophany." Rather, it means the visible manifestation of God or "a god," even if false, not to "his people" but rather to mankind.
Therefore, Rod's usage of the word is correct here. The reference is to the visible and public manifestation of a false god. The false god is Self. Wokeism is its religion. The Father of Lies is its spiritual mentor. The Gender Cult is one of many of its signs. The pagan powers of our time are the high priests. And those idiot demonstrators are disciples. It all fits.
Responding to both of your comments, I'm declaring Satan a false god. Or rather I'm not declaring him that...he declares himself that. It's the Original Lie that he told to our most ancient ancestors: "Eat the fruit...and you will be like God."
Secondly, sorry but yes, the term is inclusive of false gods. The dictionary definition: "A visible manifestation to human kind of God or a god." A god...not capitalized...false. Your argument is not with me but rather with the dictionary and the plain meaning of words.
Perhaps he is to some people; his greatest desire. He lost his position in heaven bc he wanted to be above God, the I Am, so in essence he wants desperately to be God. Not be a god.
Who hurt you, ma'am?
Again, regarding the three. What is the size of the trans-identifying population? If you're going to throw numbers, somebody's going to ask for a metric, you know?
https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/audrey-hale-counseled-by-pastor-whose-daughter-she-killed/
Since when do you wait for 'all the answers'?
Huh? My math is three tenths of a percent.
It doesn't matter if "being transgender is a primary factor", what matters is if the toxic ideology of transgenderism has now proceeded to the next stage of killing people outside of the cult, rather than simply mutilating those inside the cult.
Remember that the 9/11 attackers were only 19 of a billion muslims, but they had a similar death-cult ideology.
One of his best posts in a while.
Sorry, but Francesco speak with forked tongue.
Left or right fork, out of both corners of the mouth.
Broken clocks an' all that...
"Parents in California and more liberal states are probably in a politically and culturally hopeless situation. At least other states can be sanctuaries for them."
There will be a great sorting. I'm in a state where elected officials have taken a definitive stand against this; people will come here who want to escape the California madness. But I have little doubt that people from my state - the type who have those "In this house we believe..." signs in their yard - they'll go TO California to live in their leftist utopia. And let them.
We're rapidly approaching the point where there are but 2 choices - either the "fascism" of Trump or DeSantis, or the "inclusiveness" of those who think kink "butt sluts" have more right to your children than you do.
I'm much more pessimistic. I think we passed the point of no return sometime in the last eight years. It really was Obergefell. A nation which can blithely obliterate in its law what marriage has always meant has passed the "all passengers who do not wish to continue to Hell must depart here" point.
There will be some heroic attempts at resistance. Whoever imagined the Kentucky legislature would be a beacon of sanity and light? But the combination of principalities and powers, useful idiots in all of the kinds of media, and maybe a hundred million Americans who have grown up with all of this madness having formed their "thoughts" about these matters will prove too much for the rest of us to contain, I'm afraid.
I reached this conclusion when I read last year that 70% of Americans now approve of same sex marriage. I really was stunned by that. A Supreme Court ruling was one thing, but that more than 2/3 of the country would endorse it, would be varying levels of enthusiastic about it, shocked me. We are well into Romans 1: 18 - 32 times.
Most Americans will go quietly. The rest of us need to build communities quickly, thousands of post Christian Levittowns. It's interesting that most of us who have this perception think of the intermountain West as the natural locus of such a nation within a nation. Maybe some Southern states, maybe places rarely thought of, such as upstate New York, might also be in consideration.
Everyone thinks The Authorities would never let us get away with it. "Biden has the F - 17s," goes the cliche. But I think of the authorities as men like the magnificent Nashville officers who charged toward danger, Judge Newman and the state prosecutors who brought Ellick Murdock ( proper pronounciation ) down, the large number of people still in our military who are appalled by what we've become.
We still have a hardy minority who, whatever their theology may be, haven't yet bowed the knee to Baal. I'm not a John Brown, except I'm old and would be dispatched quickly by The Authorities. To riff on the Woody Allen joke about his Vietnam era draft classification as hostage material, I see myself as early fatality material. We wouldn't go after Them, but They would almost certainly come after us.
I still try to find beauty in every day life, but it is so frustrating trying to raise a normal kid in this culture.
The thing that gets me is that a lot of this can be put at the feet of Christians. I fell into the ‘it’s just a fad’ thinking and ‘dude, they’ll grow out of this when the adults in the room tell them what’s what.’ But the adults never showed up. And, worse, went along with stupid.
For me, it’s just so hard to believe that many volunteer to have dysfunctional lives because all my husband and I wanted growing up was normal. As is, a traditional nuclear family in the suburbs. A relatively quiet life w/o drama popping out of every corner. Our families were so messed up and I see the old dysfunctional patterns in the way the culture acts. It’s so sick and sad to watch. It’s truly demonic. There’s just no other word for it.
I think that with Jesus there’s always hope.
I’ve hit a point where I’m grateful all of this is happening because it just means that Jesus will be coming back sooner rather than later And that will be the final victory over all the crazy. That’s why I can’t truly despair like I want to some days. I still have to do my part for the kingdom, but there’s only so much I’m required to do here, now, today. It really doesn’t matter what came before, but how we react to these situations and the people around us now. That’s really all we can do. Just move forward one step at a time.
Goethe's "Verweile doch! du bist so schön!," on the one hand; and on the other von Hoffmannsthal's "Wie kann das sein, daß diese nahen Tage Fort sind, für immer fort, und ganz vergangen?"
It wasn't all fun for everyone. I was beaten almost every day for years in public schools, 60 years ago.
No, I wasn't strong enough. I just withdrew deep inside my own mind so it was as if it was happening far away from the real me. As much as abuse is claimed to turn victims violent and becoming in turn abusers, a whole lot, a majority, grow up to revile such behavior and abhor the thought of doing such harm.
I am sorry to learn this, Fran. May God bless you.
That is such an eloquent comment. You're a treasure, and your family is blessed in the extreme.
Sorry, I disagree with you, liberals like myself brought about this disaster far more than any Christian, and mixed up a bitter cup for all of us, unknowingly. Mea culpa. You may freely take responsibility for Dubya's torture wars, or for cheering and clapping while soulless capitalism destroys the planet unrestrained as we consume our way to living on a landfill, or for covering up child abuse in your ranks, or whatever else you feel complicit in, as a conservative Christian, but the trans phenomena comes from the deep bowels of liberal idealism and its quest for unconstrained liberty and self-definition. The mass shootings, regardless of the killer's gender issue, are also mostly the fault of American liberals, not the gun nuts. We always had plenty of guns in this country, but not so long ago, within living memory, a mass shooting was a huge deal. Not anymore. What changed in the last decade? Certainly not gun laws. No, the madness has increased, the culture is getting angrier and more violent, and by "the culture" I just mean mainstream American culture, which is predominantly liberal, let's admit it.
People like you are the ones who will likely redeem the rest of us, especially when it comes to this trans business and various other liquid modern dissolutions. I sincerely doubt that the liberal impulse will ever dissipate from mankind's heart, however, so I have no fear for it, but consequences are a bitch.
I am voting Republican in PA regardless, and tell my liberal friends about it just to see the looks on their faces. They are discombobulated. Losing some friends, gaining others. Growing less and less patient as the years wear on.
They haven't won me over and never will, despite my own failures. God will keep the faithful, faithful.
I suspect you're right.
I'm not sure you didn't misaim your comment. I agree with everything you wrote. And I loathe the Republicanism of the last forty years.
I've started to see articles about Miss Hale's odd fixation on remaining a child. The transgendered community ( how do they sort themselves out, I wonder? ) is attacking Christians for existing. One article lamented the parents' refusal to acknowledge their daughter as a man.
Who was Peter Pan.
The response of all of the rest of us should be that she was severely mentally ill. I believe this is true of all "transgenders," that, or they are demon influenced. We shouldn't hesitate to say so.
No argument here, but I was responding to the heartfelt comment by lovepeace2022, including: "The thing that gets me is that a lot of this can be put at the feet of Christians."
If not for Christians holding the line -- and all other religiously faithful -- we would be polygamous cannibals by now, probably.
This is the second time today that a commenter's remarks aimed at somebody else have landed on me. I wish Substack could do a better job with its delineations.
Liberalism became a fig leaf for libertinism, then the fig leaf blew away.
Contrary to most presumptions, the world is not a rational place. Libertarianism is the other fig leaf, for it depends on order, neglecting mystery. However, everyone living faithfully under one ancient infallible creed is similarly a difficult proposition.
I could be fairly described at this point in life as a Christian, libertarian populist whose views fall within a belief that God is infinitely wiser than I, yet it's still possible to find how He would have us live. I asked Him a long time ago to show me the truth. I have not been disappointed in that continuous process, though the revelations have been disappointing. No fig leaves. As time goes on, His wisdom is only further confirmed, and the faith verified.
DeSantis is NOT a fascist. He promotes traditional family values. He also is admirably pushing back hard on the DEI establishment in public colleges and universities. A fascist would not sign into law expanded school choice like DeSantis has recently done. The list goes on. Care to offer any examples to support your view of him?
Patrick, you addressed this to me by mistake. I have never said I thought Desantis was a fascist.
My apologies. Should have been addressed to kgasmart.
He's not a fascist and neither is Trump. As to backing wars of choice, that is up for debate.
"It is possible that some specifics in the manifesto are legitimately not the public’s business, or reasonably could spark copycat killings. If so, police should show it to independent journalists who can be trusted to report its contents with discretion."
I'm not familiar with the ethics and standards to which journalists are held, but I don't understand why the whole manifesto couldn't be released unredacted. The threat of copycat killings is already existent. If there is an argument being made within the manifesto that rings true enough with members of the Alphabet community, surely the rest of society would look in horror as an appeal is made to the manifesto to justify the killings. Let the uncensored truth come to light to do its work.
In general, I'd agree. On the other hand, there may have been certain people that she sought out specifically, and if she ranted specifically about them, even if the ranting is 100% slander, the internet is not kind - stuff like "Mr. X is a child molester who patted my head on the way to gym class one day and I didn't like it and he didn't apologize" does not make it easy for Mr. X to put in a rebuttal. And for the next 20 years, when someone starts typing Mr. X's name, the auto fill will go "Mr X. ... is a child molester".
Good point. I hadn't considered that.
Well... I live with an angry teen. We'll keep it at that.
They are already threatening copycat vengeance.
Right on. You know who really is “transphobic” and hates trans people? Andrew Sullivan and other staunchly pro-gay-marriage but anti-trans voices. I read Sullivan the other day lamenting trans madness - but the trans people were making *the identical argument* I personally heard Sullivan make countless times, with great eloquence and tears in his eyes, during the gay marriage debates of old. I remember Sullivan saying something like “why would God give me such deep love for another man if it’s a sin?” Of course that argument made no sense at the time, but at least be consistent and embrace the trans variation on it. Yet when trans people say “a loving God wouldn’t want me to stay in the wrong body” or whatever, Sullivan calls them out and attacks their ideology. There is no logic there, there truly is only hate for a different group. Me, I opposed rewriting Genesis then and I oppose rewriting Genesis now, not because I’m hateful or trans phobic but because I think God knows better than I do!
As for the Satanic element of it, see That Hideous Strength. Or Walker Percy, who in the *1980s* was already predicting that liberal elite doctor types would inevitably end up sexually abusing children. Percy, unlike Sullivan and co, actually understands logic and consequences of ideas…. More on that here:
https://gaty.substack.com/p/suffer-little-children
“ If there is one unforgettable takeaway from the book, it is Percy’s reiteration of his fellow legendary Southern Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor’s insight: apparent virtues, like tenderness or compassion, when divorced from the divine source of all virtue, inevitably lead to the death camps – or to Epstein Island. “Love is love,” after all, even for adults and their prepubescent paramours. Dostoevsky wrote that without God, everything is permitted. He was right, but only halfway so. As the children in Percy’s tale, and far too many real children today, could tell you, without God, everything – in the worst sense of that word – is mandatory.”
The little girl whom Stavrogin rapes in The Devils tells him before hanging herself, "You have killed God." The chapter, called Stavrogin's Confession, was taken out by the censors and is today usually published as an appendix (cf. Magashack's masterly Penguin translation, still widely available).
Going after Sullivan. It's a dark and lonely job, but somebody has to do it. I get that he'a friend of unser Wirt, but you are to be thanked for having crisply and accurately summarized the sophistry of his position and giving me the day off. Feser's crack is a good one, but the thing about the Mensheviks is that the Leninists just walked over them. There is an element of fear in Sullivan's newfound aversion to the rest of the alphabet, don't you think? If A, then B.
It seems the ideological descendants of the sexually radical Old Bolsheviks have discovered the ruthlessness Stalin dispatched his rivals with.
It's Sullivan, Jake.
"No place to hide" -- it's absolutely true. I'm old enough to remember the days of "let San Francisco be San Francisco and the Bible Belt be the Bible Belt." But in small towns such as Taylor, Texas, pop. 15,000, the radicalized city staff sees it as their solemn duty to spread the woke gospel and enforce a "pride parade," public opinion be damned. The libertarian "limited government and the constitution" camp just has no answer for this -- only the Rufo/Orban approach stands a chance of resisting it. See the coverage below.
WSJ ($):
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-small-texas-city-gets-a-drag-queen-parade-for-christmas-taylor-lgbt-bureaucrats-council-politics-experts-11670600353
https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-christmas-parade-drag-queen-values-teachers-administrators-11671059001
Google news:
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=APwXEdc1HO6kzHkmCN-A9ld-v1Yo-Y7iEw:1680188839034&q=taylor+texas+pride+parade&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi8w5-X94P-AhVtnGoFHTbRBLIQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=1439&bih=899&dpr=1.5
What a drag the West is becoming.
Thanks, Rod! Your impact on the collective consciousness of humankind – the zeitgeist – is significant. Glad you're around!
I have a 13-year-old who is incredibly smart but is an angry kid and uses a lot of liberal talking points - including those of the LGBT crowd - as a weapon against those who try to assert authority over her. She finds it the epitome of hypocrisy that traditional Christianity, including that which our church and her school preach, condemns homosexual behavior, because she's so brainwashed into thinking that it's all about "love is love".
I can't say too much more about the situation for the sake of privacy, but as I have been forced to come closer to some of the LGB and Trans+ stuff, it's actually very sad how many of these people feel very lost and alone, feel unloved and unloveable, and fall into the cult of the demonic LGBT+ activists (who do seem to be a small but very vocal part of the movement) who tell them "We love you and we're the only ones who can love you". When it wasn't radical enough to be homosexual, trans came out to push the culture even more out of whack, even though a lot of what the trans+ people push is diametrically opposed to what the homosexuals have been trying to tell people for the last 25 years.
The demons need to be fought against hard, but I think there are also a lot of people who need to be snatched up out of the fire in love because they ended up into something far more sinister than they bargained for.
Pray for you.
Thank you. I appreciate it greatly. The past couple of years have been exceedingly difficult.
My daughter went through similar things at the age of 16. Including SSA. I spoke on the phone with a well known Catholic therapist. He told me that girls have a much better track record of "growing out" of it. Well, he was right, she did. She is fairly liberal still and only attends church when she's at home, with us (She's 25 now). I get a lot of eye-rolls until she needs something.
I'm fasting, praying the Rosary, and trying to stay away from confrontations with her now. I have 2 younger son's, who are going through their own storms right now. It can feel overwhelming at times. I have been including Rod and his readers in my Morning Offering for a few years now and will send prayers your way also.
"I get a lot of eye-rolls until she needs something." Hilarious but it's clear she still loves you.
Thank you for sharing. I have a teenager as well and it’s so tough to parent these days b/c everything in our culture has been twisted inside out. You and your family will be in my prayers.
Thank you. :)
If it's any consolation, I was that kid in the 70's, but beginning at around age 16. I was an obnoxious, angry, smarter-than-the world (haha!), little leftie in training. Hated our culture and hated all religion. Now, I'm an Orthodox Christian who cringes at the memory of that little sh*t know-it-all judge. I have much to repent for. There is hope!
Trans love bombing is as much about agape love as is the lust to drop bombs on foreign peoples because we love democracy. All these enemies fighting on the same side, death and destruction. Now what force would be for this?
Ah, Lord have mercy!--give us rest from the Machine. I think we're seeing another "internal apocalypse of history" now, as Berdayev talked about it: "There is such a thing as the internal apocalypse of history. The apocalypse is not merely a revelation at the end of the world: it is also a revelation of the inner events of history, of the internal judgment upon history itself...History is a tragic conflict between the personal and the super-personal or pre-personal...Personality is active in history, within history the individual is revealed, but history is merciless in its attitude toward personality and oppresses the individual...It may be said that in fact the subject of history is not man, not even mankind, but a non-human reason...History deceives man, using man's self-seeking as a means to attain quite non-human goals. The cunning of history, against which the living personality rebels!"
I'd say that remarkable insight captures our human predicament perfectly.
“An example of the calibre of counsellors who decide if a 12-year-old comes home from school is Kenna Cook, who has access to the kids at Davis Unified [School District]. She held a BDSM group called Slaps Giving; she authored blogs: ‘How to be a better butt slut’.”
Your agent (a Pete Hamill-ism) was recently attacked in these boxes for "grotesque hyperbole" or something for warning that the State was getting ready to mutilate children against the wishes of their parents. Here's what these dimwits don't get: the public schools ARE the State. It's the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity inverted and weaponized. The State doesn't have to be in Sacramento, it's right down the street when school board meets. If I pay taxes to keep it going, you can bet your ass it's the State operating. Of course, California State law helps them here, or can be made to.
You can bet it wasn't me accusing you of hyperbole. For before it became general, we were early victims of their grotesqueries.
If you want any chance, any chance at all, of resolving this peacefully, then Dissolution of the United States is the only solution. And the chances of that being accomplished peacefully now are very remote.
It will be hard. It will be unpleasant. The United States will lose even more of what precious little standing it has in the world. We will become a bunch of smaller, less powerful, and less wealthy, but still pretty influential nations a la France, Australia, or Japan instead of the great Collossus that the USA has been for the entirety of all of our lives.
There will be massive dislocations. There will be tremendous financial consequences that result in a lower standard of living for all of us.
But the alternative is going to be to lock and load and a tremendous bloodletting that most of you, with little to no personal experience with personal violence and its aftermath will never see coming.
We have plenty of space and resources for us to sort ourselves out and away from each other. It will happen, one way or another. Better to admit failure and work towards as soft a landing as you can.
It occurs to me to say that the old Confederacy suggests itself as one of the smaller big-S States. And Kentucky was a border state!
Kentucky, almost more than any other place at the time, epitomized the struggle of the Civil War. Both Presidents were born here. You can go to both of their birthplaces and do full tours of both in a single day. In an alternative universe, Lincoln grew up to be the president of the Confederacy and Davis led the Union.
The whole "brother vs. brother" thing actually happened here. "Orphan" brigades of volunteers fought on both sides. Kentucky was represented by a star in the national flags of both combatants, even though they didn't secede.
Yes. The Civil War history I grew up with as a boy, Bruce Catton's American Heritage book, said one went north the represent the midwest (and the railroads), the other south to become the spokesman for the planter aristocracy. Jan. 1, 1863, must have been something in Kentucky.
Flannery O'Connor: "Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.” – from her essay “The Grotesque In Southern Fiction”
The empty churches are Christ haunted. The rest is possessed by other things.
Lincoln led the Union
Davis the Confederacy
Or a revival of federalism, in which red states insist that they shall govern themselves.
The military will quickly rout those who will have their peashooters confiscated, who dare mount any violent insurrection against Woke. The American dream might have been liberalism's best hope but ultimately, like all worldly attempts at Eden, is ending in failure. Let's hope it's not ending in "regime normalization" of the whole rest of the world too.
The connections from the acceptance of quee*marriage to this trans destruction seems clear to me. I can recall soon after Canada allowed que**marriage two brothers stood on the steps of their courthouse- maybe Toronto and demanded to be 'married'. The head of the que**marriage movement said that these two were "mocking marriage". I knew the end was nearer than I thought.
"If you could transport yourself back in time to 2003, and tell Americans what the future was going to hold for them and their families if they embraced the LGBT movement, would they have been so eager and so naive? I appreciate gays and lesbians who speak out against the trans insanity, saying there is nothing about supporting homosexuals that requires you to support transgenders. But sorry, that ship sailed a long time ago, with transgenders on board. The logic used to sell Americans on affirming homosexuality — the logic of bodily and sexual autonomy, and personal feelings trumping any other consideration — has also been used to justify affirming transgenderism. The philosopher Edward Feser quipped the other day that watching a leading gay commentator objecting to trans extremism is like listening to the Mensheviks complain that the more extremist Bolsheviks are rushing through the door that the Mensheviks helped to open."
Over and over and over and over again.
Year after year after year after year.
I have posted the following double digit times all over but NOT ON SUBSTACK, so here goes.
There is a line between normal and abnormal. We can't pick up the line and move it over a little in order to normalize a little bit of abnormal without the rest of abnormal screaming, "What about me".
This is what we tried to do and failure was the only possible result.
Can we reverse this? Not until after the catastrophe.