Look at this piece from from Politico:
Hey Democrats, Fighting Fair Is for Suckers
[…]
The list of those changes is dizzying. Grant statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico, and break California in seven, with the goal of adding 16 new Democrats to the Senate. Expand the Supreme Court and the federal courts, packing them with liberal judges. Move to multi-member House districts to roll back the effects of partisan gerrymandering. Pass a new Voting Rights Act, including nationwide automatic voter registration, felon enfranchisement and an end to voter ID laws. Grant citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants, creating a host of new Democratic-leaning voters: “Republicans have always feared that immigration would change the character of American society. Democrats should reward them with their very worst nightmare.”
The other day I posted on a book I just read. Talk about “Black Swans”!
____ Originally Published on: Jul 3, 2018 @ 15:24
Occasionally libs slip and reveal more of what they really think than they usually intend. Remember, scratch a lib and find, beneath, a well of venom.
Over at the National Schismatic Reporter, dated 13 Ventôse CCXXVI, usual suspect Michael Sean Winters has let the cover slip from the cauda.
Here is a bit of thinking which fully justifies a new nickname as a member of the New catholic Red Guards. Remember who they were? The Red Guards? After Mao sparked the youth in the Cultural Revolution, they rampaged through the byways, targeting political enemies for public humiliation and execution.
Or maybe a better image is the Terror of the French Revolution.
Some of you young’uns might not know who the Tricoteues were.
As the French Revolution descended into the Reign of Terror, the women of the streets and markets who had been active were sidelined from politics. In sullen protest, they parked themselves near the guillotine and did their knitting. Thus, Tricoteuses … knitter women. In literature, you might remember the ghastly figure of Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities.
In his melt-down about recent Supreme Court decisions, MSW concluded:
I had been prepared for the Janus decision to go the way it did. I was, therefore, surprised by how angry I got when the decision was released and how my anger did not dissipate. I left my computer to go work in the garden, something that almost always restores equanimity, but not this time. The Supreme Court had a chance to defend the decency of the nation and it failed to do so.
Normally, when I get into a debate with a conservative friend and we are at an impasse, with no hope for resolution, I try to ease the tension with levity, and say, “Well, when the revolution comes, I will put in a good word for you and your family.” To my friends in the Republican political and legal establishment who have not stood up to Trump: When the revolution comes, you are on your own, and I will be clamoring not for mercy but for a seat next to the guillotine, where I can do my knitting.
In a more jocular mood, I prefer the less horrifying image of MSW as the Wile E. Coyote of the catholic web.
Now he is Madame Defarge, Tricoteuse of the catholic Left. He has risen from his fainting couch and moved to the guillotine with his needles.
His is a particularly venomous mind but this vision of the future is what the Left really wants.
UPDATE:
I remind the readership of the sort of tolerance that Madame Defarge displays towards people who challenge him. For example, he wants Prof. Chad Pecknold to lose his livelihood because of an opinion he doesn’t agree with. HERE And HERE Defarge thinks that converts shouldn’t be allowed to voice an opinion… because they are conservative.
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Leftists are totalitarians. I experienced that working in education, a field dominated by leftists. We’re seeing it now as leftists won’t let people wearing MAGA hats dine in restaurants and as leftists are confronting and refusing service to prominent members of President Trump’s administration who dine in public at restaurants. They really do want to use violence to get their way.
I’m stunned. I didn’t expect him to unmask himself to THIS degree.
Now: if someone on the right expressed similar sentiments, they’d hide from the backlash that would leave them unemployed and almost unemployable. How long before his current employer severs the relationship?
What a whiny baby. As sorry as I feel for this man, I feel more scared by his mentality and those who share it. Our fellow members of the body of Christ have become morally and spiritually lazy.
Do they want us merely dead or humiliated, groveling and then dead?
Surely there is more to this than one would have expected. Is this MSW’s “trans” moment?
So be it Mr. Winters. And as you sit knitting, we will have our version of the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiègne to quell the Terror.
Which is a great book! William Bush,
To Quell the Terror: The Mystery of the Vocation of the Sixteen Carmelites of Compiegne Guillotined July 17, 1794. I had the same ill feeling as when I read Benson’s Lord of the World regarding the direction we seem to be taking (again).
The Left respects neither the law of God or the law of the land, and has no moral code except for “the end justifies the means in order to consolidate power”, so we should not be surprised if they descend into violence at some point. We are already seeing elected officials (Maxine Waters) inciting a mob which has been seething since the election, and we are seeing the media excuse and justify the lawless actions of groups like Black Lives Matter. Cities are allowing liberal protesters to go way beyond exercising their first amendment rights, and turn a blind eye to them breaking laws, destroying property, harassing people, and shutting down highways. All the while, municipalities like St. Louis are trying to further restrict peaceful prayers and protest outside of abortion clinics, conservatives are being hounded and abused on social media such as twitter, christian-run businesses are being targeted by the homosexual mafia, media vigilantes are doxing donors to conservative causes, and duly-elected officials are receiving death threats.
In 2014, Monsignor Charles Pope argued that we have entered the 4th of 5 stages of persecution, and in America we have only seen conditions deteriorate since then. We may not be very far from stage 5. http://blog.adw.org/2014/09/the-five-stages-of-religious-persecution/
As a child of the 80’s, I grew up thinking that liberals were like the parents from the show “Family Ties”- gentle, mostly tolerant hippies with weird ideas. That face of the Left has largely disappeared in the US, and instead now we see comedians like Jim Carrey and Kathy Griffin become totally unhinged, high school students who think it is ok to harass businesses which don’t cater to their gun control desires, and professors threaten students who don’t submit willingly to their brainwashing. The Left, without respect for God’s or man’s laws, has little to keep it from engaging in violence, and at some point I think we will see this occur.
That MSW felt comfortable enough to voice this desire for violence in a public “catholic” newspaper, says a lot about where we are in our race to the cliff.
“His is a particularly venomous mind but this vision of the future is what the Left really wants.”
I agree, Fr. Z.
Could it be that the New catholic Red Guards (more-often-than-not against the death penalty… at present, anyway) [Ironic.] will suddenly declare the dp “something we can agree to disagree on – even with Pope Francis!” all the while sipping their favorite chardonnay next to that guillotine? (You know, it is the “lived reality” given the current situation about all these enemies of the Church!)
Sieg Heil! No wait… C’est la vie!
At this point, isn’t criticizing Michael Sean Winters like…picking on a “special needs” child?
That’s a threat. My, my, don’t the Marxists feel on top of things. They seem very confident they would in the main come out on top. What violence lurks in their hearts, such anger! Eight years of a president doing things their way did not help them, it spoiled them rotten, and they want that feeling back, very badly. In fact, they’ll do anything to get it. If people get hurt or killed, in their minds they’re justified. They’ve convinced themselves they’re right and that God is on their side.
By any means necessary.
God forbid it comes to it, but they are making more and more open threats. Their violent threats are escalating, and when you have members of Congress, celebrities, and other influential people calling for violence, it’s a matter of time. We already had a nut shooting at members of Congress at a baseball game. That didn’t make an impression on the Marxists.
But, I do not believe it would go as well for them as they think.
Winter’s post reminds me that I need to order a couple cases of 5.56mm.
They rampaged through the byways, targeting political enemies for public humiliation and execution. I will just agree that this new Leftist Red Guard is very real, and very scary. Kristallnacht scary.
Well now, that is a particularly deranged piece of agit-prop issued by MSW and the Fishwrap. The first paragraph, with MSW’s generic appeals to self-governing and the Constitution, reeks of national-socialist dissembling.
International socialists such as Lenin and Mao would praise MSW’s ability to cloak his secular lust for power in humanitarian terms, along with MSW’s portrayal of his opponents such as pro-lifers as “repugnant racists.”
We are told in mid-article by MSW that “normal human sympathies” are not present in this White House, thereby justifying MSW’s murderous remedy at the conclusion. An inherent quality of 20th century socialist intellectuals and street thugs- a fascination with revolution, destruction, and bloodshed- continues in the 21st century.
One suspects that a major source of MSW’s “shock,” “surprise,” and “anger” at recent SCOTUS rulings is the socialist “Cloud-Cuckoo Land.” That Land provides for its inhabitants an intoxicating combination of utopian visions, secular ambitions, and murderous fantasies.
MSW’s article is an example of why Leftists and Islamists often recognize each other as kindred spirits. [As in Andrew McCarthy’s terrific book.]
Then there are the Never Trumpers. They should thank God not only for the defeat of Hilary Clinton and many positive events since January 2017, but also for bringing many deranged fiends out of the woodwork into the light of day sooner rather than later.
MSW would benefit by examining both the source of his bloodlust and his conscience, followed by Confession. He would also benefit by reading a March 2018 article “Why the Democrats Would Lose the Second Civil War, Too.”
Huh…it almost sounds like MSW favors capital punishment.
[He makes irony redundant.]
The most shocking part of this sentiment is MSW’s apparent forgetfulness that history — regardless of this month’s temporal “winners” or “losers” — will end in the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. Has he no fear of God? He would do well to remember John 16:2 and meditate on what his attitude says about which side he has chosen in the real (spiritual) war.
Sean wants to be trans and identify as a ghoulish old crone. Good he’s decided to be the butt of a joke. How humble.
This will end in violence. Of that there can be no doubt. Are you ready? Have you prepared? Is your family ready? Best to think through it now before the tumult truly begins. If we aren’t prepared to fight back when the time comes, folks like MSW will indeed be chortling as we stand in line for French haircuts.
MSW must have forgotten that part of the Our Father which talks about forgiveness when he says: “when the revolution comes, you are on your own, and I will be clamoring not for mercy but for a seat next to the guillotine, where I can do my knitting”.
So typical really. Libs talk about charity but give less to charity than conservatives, they volunteer less, they tip less and apparently they need to learn more about mercy. Lol, and then the conservatives are the ones that value justice over mercy right? Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned (especially after November 2016).
Btw, I can’t help myself but when MSW says he’s debating his conservative friends, I have a mental image of him yelling furiously at a sock puppet. I’m glad the debate ends with some levity, at least. ROFL.
[If at times more conservative or traditional Catholics may fail in charity, I don’t see them wishing that libs be put to death for their entertainment.]
“I will be clamoring not for mercy but for a seat next to the guillotine, where I can do my knitting.”
That a man could un-selfconsciously write something like that is indeed telling – in more ways than one. [You noticed.]
Eric: thanks for the info. about the William Bush book “To quell the Terror”. I took a look at it on Amazon and it seems good so I’ve ordered it (yep, used Z-link!). I had previously read the Gertrude von Le Fort book, which of course is a novel, and so am looking forward to reading this factual treatment. And it seems that Mr. Bush was actually in the first-night audience in Paris for Poulenc’s “Dialogue des Carmelites” in 1957. Wow!
In the spirit of good humor on Independence Day and since Semper recommended reading of the March 2018 article “Why the Democrats Would Lose the Second Civil War, Too, ” may I recommend the latest trending twitter hashtag:
https://twitter.com/search?q=secondcivilwarletters
What just popped into my mind, having read through the comments, is similar to what I say when it comes to the need to prepare for disasters:
It always happens to someone else, until it’s your turn.
Jersey Girl: Your Twitter thread recommendation could have been accompanied, as a courtesy, by a notice that the thread consists mainly of acrimonious and foul-mouthed Leftists. In the real-world there is a well-documented history, and a well-documented current wave, of Leftist violence and blood-curdling threats against elected conservative officials and citizens- who are also targeted at times specifically for being Jewish or Christian or black or Hispanic or white conservatives. You would benefit by reviewing MSW’s article above and Fr. Z’s and other reader’s comments.
Some tweets in that thread you recommend are mildly amusing on a juvenile level. Though, given the frequent vulgarities and hostility in that thread, your assertion that you recommend it “In the spirit of good humor…” is debatable to say the least. Cheers.
In the late 70s, when I was a grad student in a self-consciously Marxist/Maoist department, I was forewarned at least twice that I ought to abandon my Catholicism and capitalism because I would be executed when the Revolution came … soon!
Also about that time (early 1980s), an Islamic friend, during a friendly conversation (I was learning Arabic and he was from Kuwait), responded to my statement that I did not believe Mohammed was a prophet sent by God, saying (quite calmly and friendly): Strictly speaking I am obliged to kill you now…
Lived reality.
In the article Semper Gumby mentioned, the author, Kurt Schlichter, is too optimistic. Civil wars today aren’t fought by two or more uniformed armies; it’d be more like gangs of thugs running drugs, protection rackets, and kidnapping people. All the while terrorizing people on their side and not on their side. God help us, but such a war would be severe punishment for the sins of the US. And there’d be no winners.
In eschewing circuitous language, such commentary further reinforces the little spoken reality that there is a host of Mme D’s in this world whose needles would eagerly knit the harvest (I believe that Dickens gave Mme D. the first name of Thérèse) of those with whom they violently disagree.
You are absolutely right, Semper! I’m horrified! I read only good natured and funny letters when I looked early this morning. No foul language or acrimonious language at all. I should have realized that everything gets destroyed by leftists these days! I’m so very sorry.
You know, I am sick of the katholyk Left. They are, plain and simple, pro-abortion fanatics who refuse to leave the Catholic Church formally. In other words, they refuse to be honest. They are snakes of the first water. Prof. Camosy of Fordham, right after the election in 2016, wrote about being flooded with texts from his katholyk friends, all of them saying, “What went wrong?”
“Wrong,” in their lexicon, was that the criminal abortion fanatic, who promised repeatedly during her campaign that persecution of the Catholic Church would be ramped up, lost.
But ever suggest that Camosy, or Beans, or MS. Winters, or Mark Shea, or any of the other Hillary fanatics are pro-abortion, and they scream like a stuck pig. The same goes for the 95% of American bishops who have been handing out Communion to pro-abortion fiends, and slobbering over their coffins at their funeral-canonizations, for the past 45 years.
It is no accident that McCarrick, a serial rapist of seminarians, priests, and altar boys, was also, for decades, among the most enthusiastic haters of canon 915. It’s time to shine a much brighter spotlight on the other vociferous haters of canon 915 who are still in office.
I think 45 years of benign tolerance of abortion, the rape of males, and sacrilegious Communions (they seem connected, don’t they?) is quite enough. Don’t you?
No doubt there has been persecution of the Church. In the past years, however, we have had:
Two Cardinals with a history of homosexual behavior. A third had a long reputation of it.
An Archbishop used took c. $200,000 from the archdiocese treasury to support his boyfriend. Other bishops have resigned because their history of homosexual behavior became public.
Priests led away in handcuffs.
Priest who have died of AIDS–and they weren’t Haitian.
One priest who appeared at a youth retreat with his boyfriend and announced he was leaving the priesthood.
Whatever damage done to the Church by persecution from secular enemies secular culture is minor compared to the damage done by clerics.
“Priest who have died of AIDS–and they weren’t Haitian”
It’s been a long day and so I’m a little tired, but try as I might, I’m really having trouble finding any charitable interpretation of that remark. Please clarify.
charivari rob – robt brown is a good and kind commenter and it is not difficult to be charitable about what he says.
Almost all of us are sinners (there is a chance that there is a saint reading this, so I say almost all of us, not all of us): for reasons I do not understand, I was lucky enough to be born into this world to Catholic parents (well, nominally, anyway, but being born to nominal Catholics turned out, for me anyway, to be good enough for me to be thankful for it) but I was born at a time when many Catholic priests (not all of them, not even most of them, but a huge number of them) were great sinners, indulging in homosexual sex when they wanted to (and thus, often dying from AIDS, just as many Haitians did – the reference Rob’t Brown was making was to the fact that AIDS in Haiti was often transmitted through ways that were not sinful – not involving adulterous and homosexual fornication.)
Look, I pray for all the sinner priests and cardinals and popes who lived at the same time that I lived.
I did not suffer much from their selfishness, but many many people did. I pray for justice – no priest who has sinned against the innocent, no cardinal, and no pope, will get to heaven without deep repentance for his sins. I would like to see the death penalty reinstated for rapists and their ilk. But I still pray for evildoers.
The further irony is that MSW’s stated reason, in other articles, for disliking the Janus decision is “My concern for the future of unions is rooted in my faith, but you do not need the eyes of faith to recognize the deficit in social solidarity from which this country suffers. Unions are a vehicle for solidarity … Solidarity lost a battle today….”
Presumably Michael Sean will be knitting on the Seamless Garment O’ Mercy.
[Yeah… that’s it.]
Jersey Girl: Thank you for your kind response. Good point you made about the Left and destruction. Many of them are unfortunately addicted to subversion and destruction as they try to create the Glorious Worker’s Paradise.
David Collins: You might be right about Kurt Schlichter being too optimistic. Deo Volente, we will not find out.
Though, if civil war occurs, “uniformed armies” would participate. Active-duty and reserve military units would not simply evaporate (defections, desertion, inability to report to one’s unit are separate issues). Irregular forces would no doubt recognize the value of wearing uniforms for camouflage, durability, battlefield recognition, and discipline (irregular warfare in civilian clothes is a separate issue).
The gangs, drug-running, and protection rackets you mention exist today, of course, and no doubt would be problematic also during increased civil strife and civil war. Still, there would be combat operations between units to, among other things, seize territory and resources to ultimately impose their will upon their enemy.
A civil war would be of course intolerable. So eventually there would be a “winner.” The goal, no doubt you’d agree, is that the forces of tyranny surrender rapidly.
Man. Talk about teein’ up a hanging curveball.
[I know. Kinda like the 40 MPH cage.]
Charivari Rob says:
4 July 2018 at 10:58 PM
“Priest who have died of AIDS–and they weren’t Haitian”
It’s been a long day and so I’m a little tired, but try as I might, I’m really having trouble finding any charitable interpretation of that remark. Please clarify.
Charity is not necessary in this case–just a bit knowledge. Haitians are a high risk group for AIDS.
From Wikipedia
Haiti has a 1.8 percent prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS, among the highest percentage-wise in the Caribbean region (behind the Bahamas, and Belize). However, it has the most overall cases of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean region with an estimated 120,000 HIV/AIDS-positive Haitians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Haiti
robtbrown:
hmmm….
Okay, a few points in no particular order
…
– Thank you for your reply. If I’m going to take issue, I wanted to make sure I understand as much as possible from the source.
– Neither AIDs nor Haiti were really part of the original post or the admittedly wide-ranging commbox fare, so their appearance was to some degree from out of left field.
– Personally, I would have been more interested had anyone discussed the court rulings Winters had actually mentioned.
– Yes, I made sure to read up on some of the health statistics earlier. Yes, Haiti has pretty much the worst AIDS situation (per capita) in the western hemisphere. Besides some of the “normal”, “basic” factors (bad enough as they are) – they also have a history of government trouble, multiple natural disasters, a terrible economy, battered infrastructure, and the “help” of several international bodies who are exploitative, incompetent, and/or corrupt.
– The point of my original comment was that I didn’t see anything charitable in referring to Haitians as you did, but that charity towards you obligated me to consider that I might have missed something.
– “charity is not necessary in this case”? I’d say that charity is always necessary. Charity is indivisibly linked to love and faith. It doesn’t extend to giving away the store, or neglecting to stand up for what’s right, or neglecting to stand against what’s wrong, or failing to act decisively & forcefully when needed. Any of our (hopefully) principled disagreement must be as charitable as possible, informed by necessity and pertinence.
– Tarring a group with some stereotype or statistic as a point of emphasis – particularly when it has no relevance to the discussion at hand – is not charitable. To say what you did is to introduce a people into a subject simply as a benchmark for negative measurement. It comes across as …even the Haitians. It borders on being a slur.
I am very much pro labor union (cf Rerum Novarum), though against so called public sector unions. I worked four years for the US govt in IT, and I found the greatest influence on govt IT conditions came from what was happening in the private sector.
IMHO, the unions now are having problems because, in addition to the consequences of technology, they sold their souls to the Dem party. And so union political financial support was going not merely to better working conditions but also to support issues with which many of their members disagreed.
I find it rather odd that the dear robtbrown is accused of slurring the Haitians. His reference to the Haitians is perfectly understandable and well-explained.
Whom he does, not to say slur, but let’s say: badmouth a bit, are the priests who are having Aids. After all, they could have contracted their disease in a one-in-a-lifetime sin which did not break out of the natural order – even if they aren’t Haitians (nor for that matter heroin users). Let not a disease be a mark of shame.
robtbrown, I’m a public employee and (somewhat to my amusement) a member of a smallish public-sector union. Not a very powerful union – among other points, we have no legal ability to strike, so it’s not as if we have much leverage.
I don’t have broad-based experience of other unions to compare to, but I suspect our dues are somewhere towards the more modest end of the scale, covering collective bargaining, employee representation (e.g. in grievances) and advocacy – as well as one or two small benefit programs.
The dust is still settling from the Janus decision. The early understanding is that it makes this a “right-to-work” state, and waiting for some of the details. Practically speaking… if the decision results in some erosion of our ability to fund bargaining/representation/advocacy in our own best interest, it’s not as if the state is going to pick up the slack.
Imrahil,
Offhand, I can list four priests who gave died of AIDS. Was the cause a bad blood transfusion, a la Arthur Ashe?
Two were asst pastors.
One had been arrested for soliciting sex from a male police officer. That happened on a Sat night. By Sunday he was gone from the diocese, the excellent bishop having sent him to a rehab center, where he didn’t stay. Later, I heard he had died.
Another was asst pastor in a parish in another town where I attended daily mass after work. One day he was longer there. Later, I came upon his obit–ex priest, left behind his partner, send memorials to AIDS foundation.
A third was the chaplain at a high school. I didn’t know him all that well, but played basketball with him a couple of times. I found out later that most of the high school students knew about him.
The fourth had a graduate degree (maybe doctorate) in literature. I had met him some years before he was scheduled to teach the liturgy class in Rome. He was not a liberal, but cancelled due to illness and was replaced. Later, I was told what the illness was.
I could tell other stories, but it isn’t really necessary.
Other than stocking ammo and rations, how’re we supposed to prepare for a civil war?? Unless you have the means to build a bug-out cabin in the woods, you’re out of luck.
[Luck isn’t the only factor. Your desire, ingenuity, knowledge and time are factors. Start by forming a network of people whom you trust. You might have things and skills they don’t, etc.]
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C-Rob
1. If you read all the comments, you will see that I was replying to a previous comment about the persecution of the Church. Why did you note that I was off topic while ignoring that the comment that triggered my response was also off topic?
2. My objection to public sector unions is that negotiations are not with the owners or their representatives. Salaries, etc., are determined by legislative and executive decisions.
I worked for the US govt. When we were trying to hire entry level programmers, the private sector was offering initial salaries that were equal to what the govt was paying after two years of work.
3. As I said before, the unions have only themselves to blame for the present right to work situations. If they had limited themselves to issues directly affecting work situations, there wouldn’t be so much pressure.
4. I didn’t intend to slur the Haitians. It has been common knowledge to anyone paying attention that Haiti has had a high incidence of AIDS. Ditto San Francisco. I assume your reaction was just the typical Anglo Saxon tendency to moralize everything. When I was teaching the course on De Deo Create et Gubernante, it was interesting to see the reaction of students (most, but not all, of whom were A S) to the fact that Evil is primarily understood as Ontological and only in certain cases as Moral.
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