Evil exists and a living human being never more palpably embodies it than when he or she seeks to turn masses of fellow humans into insects. Good people merely soil their own judgment when they compromise with such dead souls.
Cyfyngder y dyn yw cyfleusdra y Duw.
Mans tight spot is Gods way in. (Welsh saying)
I understand that people do not like to be oppressed by gloomy thoughts. If asked whether they prefer the half-full or half-empty option of the drinking glass" clich 99 of the respondents would naturally choose the former especially in contemporary America. To mistrust optimism among us is taken as an embrace of pessimism. The choice is a toggle on toggle off" polarization: the non-optimist is a pessimist by default.
This severely reductive mentality is really quite foolish and potentially quite dangerous. It may explain why legal endorsements of marijuana gained momentum in the last election cycle as well as why sports video games and other retreats to fantasy continue to boom in a collapsing economy. People are trying to remain optimistic in the face of a growing mass of somber facts. The polarity to this stupid but popular version of optimism would probably be a mass hysteriaa panic with no apparent limits as excessive in its tendencies as the happiness" vector. If Americans only knew outright that is what most of them already suspect deep down riots would erupt and the nation would slide into anarchy. Under the circumstances perhaps an etiolated stupor really is the better option.
So we dream on. We buy more gifts for another Christmas and stop following Washingtons vultures as they daily rip more sinew from the Constitutions corpse. We are only too willing to dismiss as loonies the Cassandras who carry their Agenda 21 warnings far and wide over the Internet even as our Congress votes to expel the word lunatic" from all public documents lest feelings be hurt. Everythings okay just fine: the doomsayers need to get high" or get laid". Abortions occur rarely and only because teenagers have gotten drunk not because adults cant control themselvesand the procedure never ever involves sucking away a fully formed fetuss brain. Muslims everywhere just want peace: they only turn homicidal when some redneck mocks the Prophet. The whole world would be safer if only Bob Costas could collect all our handguns: criminals would surely not exploit the disarmament of the law-abiding publichow droll!and the abuse of guns has absolutely no racial-ethnic component to it by the way. Universal health care will assure everyone an equal chance at state-of-the-art medical treatment and its funding can easily be supplied by raising taxes on the obscenely rich and by simply printing more money (which latter may be done as needed and without any effect upon the cost of bread and shoes). Everything will be all right. The sun rose yesterday and it will rise tomorrow. Light another joint and chill out.
The promotion of substitute-opiates like weed booze and Hollywood films is actually an essential step in the playbook of any ambitious despot with designs upon a republic. Anesthetize the masses. Dope them up. Give them sports. Stir in millions who speak a different language and have never lived in a functional democracy. Call the lingering conscientious objectors despicable names like racist hate-monger and neo-Nazi. Reduce the electorate to a herd of grazing cattle.
I say againand I shall keep saying from now on with the clarity that Novembers election has brought to methat the men and women behind this massive power-grab are evil. Recently I called them child-killers and so they are (viz. partial-birth abortion Fast and Furious the collateral damage" of drone assassinations the Third World cancer villages" created by clean energy" initiatives). This week I would broaden that observation to accommodate the full scope of moral wickedness. Please ponder for a moment just what evil" means and then tell me that our current leadership does not meet the criteria.
None of us is perfect: all of us sin. Yet the prerequisite for any moral behavior good or bad is freedom. A sentient somewhat intelligent being must possess a choice of actions in order to be credited with having chosen rightly or wrongly. A man is not a murderer if he is tied and gagged so as to lure his friend into a mine field: the true malefactor must both make his own choice and make it in the knowledge of its probable harmful consequences. To be sure if we refuse opportunities to extend our free will over circumstances or to acquire necessary information we may become as culpable as if we had done certain deeds with malice aforethought. A twelve-year-old who strikes another child with a wrench because his father has often beaten him with blunt objects deserves much leeway when being judged; the same person at the age of twenty-two ought to have asserted more control over his unhappy conditioning. A landlord is not responsible for his propertys caving in on a family during a violent earthquakebut the same landlord carries heavy responsibility if a structure of whose dangers he has been warned kills people on a clear calm day. The service of goodness must include a desire to do better energetically exercised.
Now consider the case of a person who would take away the very possibility of moral choiceof freedomfrom his or her fellow beings. This person has meditated for years and years upon various schemes to deprive normal adults of choice on a vast scale and for all time to come. The design then is highly deliberate. It is no crime of passionno punch thrown in a fit of anger. The formidable amount of reflection behind it far from exploring how to do better is all invested in stealing from humanity the ability to do any good at all. Its utopian ecstasy cannot even claim the modest excuse often available to such vices as envy and greed of channeling outward a twisted desire for the admiration or approval of others (a condition that Thomas Aquinas applied to all standard sins). Rather this quiet and persistent brooding upon the removal of moral choice from the human realm passes within the secrecy of one sick mind one dark heart. Its object is not an eventual round of applause: its object rather is the complete subjugation of the audience to the status of insects in a lab experiment.
Such self-gratulatory joy is known only to the sociopath. The person I am describing would to him- or herself be God. Having rejected God contemptuously he or she would replace Him.
And such a sooty withered soul I say again does not deserve to be designated that of a mere transgressor. I am describing a human being who has turned thoroughly evil on the inside. Dante represents Fra Alberigos soul as frozen in the pit of Hell even as his body continues to live and breathe. The Jovial Friar" lured his own brother and nephew into a deadly ambush after richly wining and dining theman exquisitely appropriate metaphor for the conduct of the peoples choice" in our own time. I believe that those who harbor this slavering lust to devour the freedom of innumerable human beings around themwho thrill like modern Caligulas at the thought of reducing their fellow creatures in vast numbers to playthingsmust already carry the breath of Hell inside of them. They want us dead. They want us as spiritual beings bound and tied to little strings like marionettes. These are not bosses who humiliate others because of their own insecure ego or harridans who slander others out of sexual jealousy or career ambition: these are not normal pitiful people with their unsightly peccadillos. These are irredeemable megalomaniacs. In them we see young Hitler Stalin and Mao… or do you suppose that Hitler was never a boy or that Stalin was a mass-murderer as a toddler? They all start somewhere; and in the present configuration of the American ruling elite we find many who could pose as the boy-man Adolph in his corporals uniform.
The Scots say that to eat with the Devil you need a long spoon. No kitchen drawer contains anything long enough to equip Senate Republicans for sitting down with the current Democrat hierarchy. The people with whom John Boehner seeks compromise desire us as free beings to die. One of them has claimed that Maos aphorisms are among her favorite reading. Another assured Putins lackeyin a manner intended to be privatethat he could handle us all much better after we reelected him. You dont trade and barter among dead souls like these without feeling the chill of death creeping through your own heart. In the ancient myths any visitor who partakes of food or drink in the Underworld never leaves. The Republicans who imbibe this dark communion will never again be able to find the light of day.
As Christmas approaches do not believeso may your soul thrivethat the teaching of Jesus requires you to be an optimist of the mystified stupefied variety. On the contrary it is the Christian who should and must recognize that evil exists and that certain pacts must never be struck. The lifeblood of spirituality in every human beingChristian Hindu Jew Muslim and paganis freedom. Those who would deny us an ability to choose to stray to learn and so to grow as individual creatures are seeking to revoke the most precious gift that God has given us. Indeed a major reservation that any Christian must entertain toward Islam is that its traditional hierarchy opens the door wide to numerous theocratic despots claiming to speak for Allah and insisting that the faithful mute their conscience and march blindly to dictated rhythms. To the extent that our ruling elite have manifested an increasing sympathy for (if not a conspiratorial collaboration with) radical Islam it is precisely because they are drawn to the ornate scaffolding of despotism ready-made within that belief system. Do you as a Christian really suppose that you can tacitly condone the usurpation of God-given freedoms and still profess your faith? If the slaughter of babies half-out of the womb championed by this Democrat regime (and not yet endorsed by any radical imam) does not suggest to you a need to part company then you would no doubt find nothing objectionable either in sharing communion with a Mayan priest as he lifts to the sky the beating heart of a fresh human sacrifice.
We must fully understand and constantly remind ourselves that we are now at war. How such a war is to be prosecuted I can imagine only sketchily… but I know that the plans of defense must not include suing for peace in the hope of being dealt with charitably. If you find yourself astride the fence in this one then youre on the wrong side: there is no fence.
My best guess at this point is that a major reaggregation" must take place leaving those states that honor the Constitution in one camp and those that prefer to be ruled by czars in the other. Secession has nothing to do with this option: a state cannot secede from the Union when the Union has already disbanded. The federal governments ongoing and thorough abrogation of the Constitutions terms legally annuls any binding contract among the participating parties. Whatever solution lies hidden in the tea leaves however will only emerge in a timely and relatively peaceful manner if we begin looking for it now and looking seriously. Therein after all rests the true ground of optimism: the belief that intelligent and mature adults can resolve an unpleasant situation by studying it squarely. Business as usual only means that we postpone the day when we help ourselves until we can no longer find each other in the chaos.
What is half full at this moment isnt our glass of happiness but the ship of state. You dont pump out a half sunken ship: you clear the lifeboats.