A while back, I wrote about Richard Beck’s fascinating series of blog posts that explored the development of demons in the Bible. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of Beck’s biblical exegesis, I appreciated his willingness to probe the relationship between a person’s spiritual state and his or her actions.

Recently, he has been writing about the effect Flannery O’Conner’s writings have had on his Christian outlook.

I have to confess, Flannery O’Connor has wrecked me. Over the last two years, I’ve read all her short stories and have read her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, twice. And I don’t read fiction.

Reading Flannery O’Connor has been a profound and destabilizing experience that I’m only just starting to reckon with. I’m still exploring the contours and jagged edges of the changes O’Connor has wrought within me. What have I rejected and turned my back on? What have I changed my mind about? How have my theological biases and prejudices been altered?

Am I still the same person, theologically and spiritually speaking, or have I changed in some significant way? Has my spiritual pilgrimage been enriched, or knocked off course? …

I guess the first thing I’d say is that Flannery O’Connor beat the liberal Christianity clean out of me. To speak as Flannery speaks, it might be more appropriate to say that Flannery burned the liberal Christianity clean out of me.

The acid bath, if you’re interested in undergoing it, was mainly a mixture of Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, and the story “The Lame Shall Enter First.” Speaking only for myself, the liberal, enlightened humanism that informs and guides much within liberal Christianity just withered in these stories. I saw way too much of progressive Christianity in Hazel Motes’ “Church of Christ Without Christ” (Wise Blood), and in the enlightened humanism of the characters Rayber (The Violent Bear It Away) and Sheppard (“The Lame Shall Enter First”).

Because of Flannery O’Connor, I struggle to think of myself as a liberal, progressive Christian anymore. No doubt, I’ll continue to use that label to describe myself when it’s helpful to draw quick, rough contrasts between my views and conservative, evangelical views. I haven’t shifted toward conservatism in the religious, culture and political wars.

The only way I can describe what’s happened is this.

I’m not liberal or conservative, progressive or evangelical.

I am something stranger.

Figuring out just how strange, and it what ways, is now the adventure that I’m on.

Beck used his next post to clarify his thoughts.

Many liberal and progressive Christians struggle with doubts. The forces of secular disenchantment strongly affect liberal and progressive Christians.

Consequently, there is this impulse within progressive Christianity to make faith lighter, to believe less and less, to dilute faith.

As a progressive Christian, over the years I’ve contributed my fair share to this impulse, doing my best to sing the praises of doubt. But a few years ago, I began to grow concerned about this trajectory if left unchecked. I began to worry about my spiritual health, as well as the health of many other progressive Christians.

I am not the only one who has grown worried. After years of praising doubt and deconstruction, many progressive Christians have begun to speak about the need for a turn, a movement back toward reconstruction and a second naïveté.

To be clear, because the label “progressive Christianity” is messy and vague, I’m not speaking of progressive viewpoints, theologically or politically, but about the deconstructing, disenchanting, Enlightenment-driven impulse that runs through much of progressive Christianity. The impulse that keeps diluting faith, where you are believing less and less.

Reading Flannery O’Connor finally brought all these worries to a crisis point for me. I think it was Hazel Motes’ preaching about the “Church of Christ Without Christ” in Wise Blood that did it. “The Church of Christ Without Christ” sounded a lot like what I saw going on within progressive Christian circles, a Christianity that gets so watered down and diluted you don’t, in the end, believe anything at all.

The trouble with the incessant deconstruction at work within progressive Christianity is that, left unchecked, all it tends to produce are agnostic Democrats.

This realization hasn’t made me conservative. My voting hasn’t changed. Especially with Trump in office.

The effect hasn’t been political. It’s metaphysical. I’m simply tired and bored by a progressive Christianity that doesn’t believe in anything, at least anything beyond Jesus being a model exemplar of liberal humanism. I’m not angry or disgusted, I’m not rejecting progressive Christianity. Plus, everyone is at a different developmental stage. You might be just starting out on a necessary and vital season of deconstruction, especially from toxic forms of Christianity. You can’t be expected to be where I am right now. So for you, friends, I hope what I’ve written about doubts and deconstruction is a blessing to you as you start your journey.

All that to say, I remain very sympathetic to progressive Christianity.

But a Christianity that doesn’t believe in anything–a Christianity that dilutes and dilutes and dilutes until you have a “Church of Christ Without Christ”–that Christianity just doesn’t interest me anymore.

I’ve made a long and hard journey carrying my doubts, and now I’m just bored by them.

I am blown away by Beck’s candor and insights. It takes an immense amount of courage to write publicly that one’s strongly-held views have been withered away.

However, O’Conner seems to have that effect on people. She had no “chill”, as the kids say nowadays.

That lack of chill can be seen in a letter she once wrote:

“I was once, five or six years ago, taken by some friends to have dinner with Mary McCarthy and her husband, Mr. Broadwater. (She just wrote that book, A Charmed Life). She departed the Church at the age of 15 and is a Big Intellectual. We went at eight and at one, I hadn’t opened my mouth once, there being nothing for me in such company to say. The people who took me were Robert Lowell and his now wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.

Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the ‘most portable’ person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, ‘Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.’ That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.”

No wonder Beck’s Christianity withered from O’Conner’s prose. I could only imagine how Mrs. Broadwater survived her response.

I don’t know how Beck’s Christianity will evolve in light of his reading O’Conner. However, I am extremely hopeful. The fact that Beck feel like a “stranger” is an encouraging sign.

Could he be getting closer to the heart of Christianity, which, in O’Conner’s words, is her “center of existence”?

One can only pray and hope.

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While Washington D.C. is agog over the possibility of another government shutdown (whatever that means), American foreign policymakers appear to be unconcerned about that petty obstacle. The news is awash with foreign policy developments from around the world.

And never mind if the federal debt now exceeds U.S. annual GDP: there’s an empire to run!

Below is a survey of foreign policy stories that have been reported on just over the past few days.

Syria and Iraq

The U.S.’s involvement in Syria and Iraq continues to be disastrous. In 2017, U.S. and allied strikes may have killed up to 6,000 civilians in ISIS-controlled areas. However, notwithstanding ISIS’s significantly reduced presence in the region, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced American troops will remain in Syria. While he claims that “the conflict between the Syrian people and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has to be resolved through diplomatic means, and Assad has to step aside from power.”

While acknowledging that some Americans are skeptical of the continued military involvement in Syria, Tillerson said it’s vital for the U.S. be engaged in the area in order to continue fighting terrorist groups and the possibility of their resurgence.

“United States will maintain military presence in Syria, focused on ensuring ISIS cannot re-emerge,” Tillerson said. “Ungoverned spaces, especially in conflict zones, are breeding grounds for ISIS and other terrorist organizations. … The fight against ISIS is not over. … Similarly, we must persist in Syria to thwart al-Qaida, which still has substantial presence and base operations in northwest Syria.”

Tillerson said another major goal of the U.S. in Syria is to prevent Iran from growing its influence in the region, calling the country’s influence “malicious.”

So there you have it. American troops are going to allow Assad to peacefully step aside from power, confront ISIS, and prevent Iran’s influence from growing in the region. What could be simpler?

There are at least two major problems with Tillerson’s portrayal of the situation. First, in an interview with Scott Horton, Middle East correspondent Elijah Magnier argues that the American military has effectively become an “undeclared protector” of the Islamic State in the region. Second, the Trump administration quickly backtracked on its announced strategy in Syria in response to fierce objections by Turkey.

The U.S. military is swiftly backtracking from plans to build a 30,000-person border force in Syria after the proposal triggered a new diplomatic showdown with Turkey.

After earlier heralding the idea as a pillar of the Trump administration’s new Syrian strategy, U.S. officials on Thursday said the plan was poorly conceived and won’t proceed as previously outlined by the military.

The rapid reversal was a sign of the divisions in the Trump administration over how to move forward with its Syria strategy as the fight against Islamic State draws down.

“It’s unfortunate that the entire situation has been misportrayed, misdescribed, some people misspoke,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters late Wednesday night as he flew back to Washington after unveiling the administration’s new Syria policy in California. “We are not creating a border security force at all.”

Despite the U.S. reversal Turkish leaders said they remain skeptical of Washington’s Syria strategy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Mr. Tillerson’s comments were insufficient and that Turkey would wait to see whether the U.S. continues training in Syria for Kurdish fighters that Ankara views as terrorists.

The Philippines

The Wall Street Journal reports on the U.S.’s increased counterterrorism efforts in the Philippines:

The U.S. military has launched a new counterterrorism mission in the Philippines, making operations there eligible for the same funding used to finance the long-running wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military officials said.

The decision by the Trump administration to elevate the U.S. mission to an Overseas Contingency Operation, or OCO, was made last September in response to a Philippines government request for more support to fight extremist groups, officials said. The U.S.-backed Philippine military in October ousted Islamic State-affiliated insurgents from a city on the southern island of Mindanao after a five-month battle, but faces an enormous rebuilding task.

Between 200 and 300 American troops are currently serving in advisory roles in the country and officials said that number is likely to remain unchanged for now. In addition to advisory troops, technical support and equipment, the mission is providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance by drone.

So much for the thought that America’s …. challenging history on Mindanao, which began after the Spanish-American War, might temper its actions on that island.

Air Force to consider International Squadrons for Terror Targets

The American military’s increasing concern over the possibility of confronting Russia and China, however rational it may be, has forced it to consider how best to deploy assets in the most effective manner. To that end, The Wall Street Journal reports:

The U.S. Air Force is considering forming international squadrons of low-cost fighter planes to strike terrorist targets in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, allowing deployment of higher-tech jets to areas requiring their advanced capabilities.

A new unit employing relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf aircraft could free up cutting-edge U.S. and allied jet fighters for deterrence missions in Europe and Asia, and could help relieve a critical pilot shortage the U.S. Air Force faces, military and congressional officials say.

As the U.S. transitions its fighter fleet to new advanced stealth planes, like the F-22 and F-35, it is confronted with the difficult cost equation of using a fighter jet that costs $150 million to buy and $35,000 an hour to fly to destroy a terrorist camp of tattered tents.

Now, as Russia and China invest in their militaries and assert themselves more, the U.S. faces the additional problem of how and where to deploy limited numbers of stealthy warplanes to deter so-called peer competitors.

Ukraine

Meanwhile, the U.S.’s sock puppet government in Ukraine is making extremely dangerous moves that could led to a military confrontation with Russia.

As The Washington Post reports:

Ukraine’s parliament on Thursday passed a bill that is aimed at reintegrating the eastern territories currently controlled by Russian-backed separatists and goes as far as to declare support for taking them back by military force if necessary.

The bill describes the areas in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as “temporarily occupied” by “aggressor country” Russia. President Petro Poroshenko welcomed the legislation, saying it would help restore control of the east by “political and diplomatic means.”

Russia warned, however, that it effectively kills the peace accords to which Ukraine is party and which were supposed to resolve the deadly conflict.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine, which erupted weeks after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014. The 2015 Minsk peace deal helped reduce the scope of hostilities, but clashes have continued and attempts at a political settlement have stalled.

The bill, passed by the Supreme Rada after days of raucous debate, contains no reference to the peace deal brokered by Russia, France and Germany that obliged Ukraine to offer a broad autonomy to the separatist regions and a sweeping amnesty to the rebels. Most Ukrainian political parties rejected that idea as a betrayal of national interests.

“We can’t embed diplomatic and political agreements that are prone to change into the Ukrainian legislation,” Ivan Vinnyk, a member of Poroshenko’s faction in parliament, said on Thursday while explaining why the Minsk deal was not mentioned.

In a terse statement issued after the vote, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the bill is nothing “but a preparation for a new war.” The ministry said the bill runs against Kiev’s commitments under the Minsk accord and further alienates Ukrainians living in separatist-held areas.

“Sadly, we are witnessing the making of a situation which is fraught with a dangerous escalation in Ukraine and [carrying] unpredictable consequences for global peace and security,” the Russian statement said.

Clearly, Ukraine’s military can not survive a conflict with Russia’s. The only reason its government has the nerve to make such a move is because it believes that, if war with Russia were to arise, the United States would support it militarily.

So much for the idea that Trump’s election would lead to improved relations with Russia.

These stories merely touch the tip of the imperial iceberg.

Given all of the moving parts, what could possibly go wrong?

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Earlier this week, I reported on the questionable remarks to the media and members of Congress by Bandy Lee, a Yale psychiatrist who raised doubts Donald Trump’s mental fitness to serve as President. Lee also edited a book that included essays from 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts making the same argument.

In that article, I asked whether the American Psychiatric Association was going to address this situation, seeing that a member of theirs was using her profession as a cover for a soft coup.

Fortunately, the answer came swift and strong.

As the Washington Examiner reports:

The American Psychiatric Association urged members of its profession to uphold its decades-long principle that psychiatrists should never offer diagnostic opinions about people they haven’t personally examined, in light of President Trump’s impending medical exam and questions about his mental fitness.

“We at the APA call for an end to psychiatrists providing professional opinions in the media about public figures whom they have not examined, whether it be on cable news appearances, books, or in social media,” the group wrote. “Arm-chair psychiatry or the use of psychiatry as a political tool is the misuse of psychiatry and is unacceptable and unethical.”

The rebuke came Tuesday as politicians and members of the media were ratcheting up their rhetoric about Trump’s mental health. Earlier in the day, Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle unveiled legislation that would require presidential candidates to have a medical exam and publicly disclose the results before the general election. Joe Scarborough also has said on his MSNBC program “Morning Joe” that Trump has dementia, and more than a dozen lawmakers have discussed Trump with a Yale University psychiatrist who said that Trump was “going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs.” The psychiatrist, Dr. Brandy Lee, who has not examined Trump, edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which includes testimonials from 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts.

But the association reminded its members that one of its core principles, known as the “Goldwater Rule,” has been in place since 1973 and states that psychiatrists should not publicly issue medical opinions about people they haven’t personally examined in a medical context.

“The Goldwater Rule … makes it unethical for a psychiatrist to render a professional opinion to the media about a public figure unless the psychiatrist has examined the person and has proper authorization to provide the statement,” Dr. Saul Levin, the group’s CEO and medical director, said in a statement. “APA stands behind this rule.”

While the APA’s statement didn’t call out Lee specifically, it is abundantly clear that the organization had Lee in mind. Further, Lee did not need to be reminded of the Goldwater Rule. CNN raised it with Lee, who came up with vague rationalizations to justify raising doubts about Trump’s mental capacity.

Interestingly, Trump addressed this issue head on by letting cameras into a meeting discussing immigration policy. As Politico reports:

For nearly an hour Tuesday, President Donald Trump presided over an unusually public negotiating session on the subject of immigration, running the meeting while TV cameras rolled in an apparent effort to knock down reports that he is less than a fully capable commander-in-chief.

Surrounded by 25 lawmakers inside the Cabinet Room, Trump held court over the meeting, alternately inviting Democrats and Republicans — by name — to address the bipartisan group. He ran point for 55 minutes over a relatively free-flowing discussion between lawmakers about the future of the DACA program, border security and the possibility of immigration reform.

This was a brilliant move. What better way for him to show whether he is mentally fit by opening up a meeting to show him at work.

In any event, it is encouraging to see the psychiatry profession decide to not get dragged into a soft coup.

Whether the media and other politicos decide to drop this idiotic issue is another question entirely.

I’ll take the under.

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It’s certainly understandable when foreigners don’t understand the different roles between the federal and state governments under the U.S. Constitution, especially when few Americans understand it themselves. However, perhaps charity isn’t the best attitude when dealing with a foreign magazine that really should know better.

For example, The Economist‘s latest issue includes an editorial about California’s new law liberalizing marijuana use. Unfortunately, the magazine’s understanding of states rights is simply a mess.

State activism is often confused with an argument that sounds similar but is fundamentally different. To many American ears, the notion that states should do their own thing has an echo of secession, the “states’ rights” defence of slavery made before the civil war and the resistance to federal civil-rights laws in the 1960s. To be clear: states do not have an innate right to resist federal laws, which is why California’s position on immigration enforcement, which comes close to non-compliance with the federal government, is mistaken. The federal government does often need to step in on questions of fundamental importance, such as who can vote in elections.

But in many areas, particularly in social policy, it makes sense for the states to have plenty of leeway. When mistakes are made, as they inevitably will be, the damage is limited to the state or city that did the experimenting. When new laws do succeed, they can be copied across the country.

What is absent from The Economist‘s analysis is any understanding about where the respective scopes of the federal and state governments.

In essence, the activities of the federal government under the Constitution is limited to Article 1, Section 8, which, according to Brion McClanahan, is essentially focused on common defense and commerce. States are otherwise free to address any issues outside of that scope. That would also include immigration. As McClanahan writes:

You see, immigration was long considered a State issue. Jefferson said as much in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. A State like Texas could, at least according to the original Constitution, build its own wall and craft its own strict rules on immigration and state citizenship. That includes voting. The Constitution is clear that States determine who can vote as long as the distinction is not made on the basis of race, sex, age over 18, and the requirement of a poll tax. They can prohibit aliens from voting.

In other words, whether the state can act on a particular issue has nothing to do with the sensitive feelings of those who don’t know American history, and everything to do whether the state has the legal authority to do so. A state has every right to “resist federal laws”, especially when they overstep the rights of its citizens. All the American civil war proved was that the North was military and economically more capable of overcoming the South’s desire to secede from the Union. Force does not negate an argument. States today have as much a right to nullify unconstitutional federal law, or secede from the United States, as they did when the Constitution was ratified in 1788.

The Economist clearly demonstrated that it understands none of this, notwithstanding its support for California’s liberalized pot laws. Unfortunately, given my previous rants about the magazine, this is not a surprise in the slightest.

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In November 2016, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi banned the use of the country’s two largest bills, the 500 rupee (worth approx. $7.50) and the 1,000 rupee notes. People were allowed to exchange those notes into 500 and 2,000 rupee bills, but only at designated locations, and within a very limited amount of time.

According to the New York Times, the purpose of the ban was to “expose and penalize people holding huge amounts of cash they could not account for, primarily money on which taxes have not been paid.” However, the ban struck widespread panic among everyday Indians.

As Carmen Dorobăț writes in Mises Wire:

[T]he rupee ban has managed only to create chaos and desperation for millions of Indian citizens. They were left with no money to buy basic amenities, and saw their dearly earned savings being wiped out overnight. They queued in front of the banks and rushed to their ATMs, scrambling to exchange the worthless banknotes in the brief window of opportunity provided. Both banks and ATMs ran out of money, as India’s printing presses rushed to keep up by printing new lower-denomination currency.

But many Indians are so sick of corruption that they are willing, albeit grudgingly, to bear these hardships if the move should end it. They don’t know that it won’t: the move did little more than temporarily inconvenience the large money launderers and tax evaders, who have already found loopholes allowing them to profit from and minimize the effects of the government’s move—and that is a good thing.

India’s move to restrict the use of cash appears to be part of a larger war on cash by governments, primarily so that they can enhance their ability to track taxable income.

However, that doesn’t mean such measures will work. To get a sense of how effectiveness of India’s rapid ban was, all one has to do is read the New York Times‘s recent article on the matter. In short, despite the government’s actions, Indians still prefer using cash for they day-to-day purchases:

Signs and banners for Paytm, India’s biggest digital payments service, festoon Pooran Singh’s cellphone shop, where people drop in all day to add data or talk time to their prepaid phones.

Yet few of these people actually use Paytm at the store, which straddles two dusty streets in this sleepy north Indian city in which tractors jostle with cows for space on the narrow roads.

“People recharge in cash,” Mr. Singh said, after a young man handed him 20 rupees, about 32 cents, to top up his mother’s phone.

The scene in Mr. Singh’s shop underscores a persistent reality of India’s economy: People prefer cash for most routine transactions, despite intensive efforts by the government and global technology companies to lure them onto digital platforms.

India’s reluctance to give up paper money poses challenges for the firms that are vying to offer electronic payments, including local players like Paytm, which has received financing from the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, and American tech companies, like Facebook, Google and PayPal.

Indeed, it is encouraging to see everyday Indians figure out ways to determine how best to pay for their needs, regardless of what the government says. India’s lack of success ought to give other governments pause when evaluating whether to enact similar measures.

Unfortunately, given the desperate need of governments to find new ways to find tax money, it is unrealistic to expect them to give up anytime soon.

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The Wall Street Journal reports on the Gordian Knot of Stupid that is Denver’s plan to subsidize low-income residents who rent luxury apartments in the city.

Denver has a plan for its glut of sparkling new, high-end rental apartments with amenities like gyms, roof decks and sometimes even pet spas: It will use them to house teachers, medical technicians and others who can’t afford the city’s soaring rents.

Under a program to be unveiled later this month, the city, along with employers and charitable foundations, will pay the difference between what a lower-income resident can afford and the market rent of an apartment.

Like other cities across the country, Denver is grappling with a shortage of affordable housing for middle-class workers. “Instead of having these units sit vacant, if we can create opportunities to help some of our employees, our residents get into those units, that’s an immediate response,” said Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.

What a great idea. Rather than allowing the market to punish developers who built too many units, which would help far more people than whatever plan the city implements, Denver will use taxpayer money to give to families who wouldn’t have had the resources to rent such apartments in the first place.

While the city is selling this as a way to help lower-income families get affordable housing, it is really the developers who made bad business decisions who will get bailed out.

While there is a severe affordable housing problem in cities across the U.S. However, there are many actions cities could take, including loosening zoning and building requirements, that don’t require taxpayer money. And let’s not forget the Federal Reserve’s role in creating money, which makes it that much more challenging for those with fixed incomes to maintain their standards of living.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if more cities implement similarly idiotic schemes like this one.

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The New York Times published a fascinating article today, in which it documents how towns or cities across Mexico have begun seceding from larger political entities in an effort to address the violence that has swept the nation due to the drug wars.

The article begins with discussing how avocado farmers in the village of Tancítaro have formed militias to protect them from both drug cartels and the Mexican state, to the point where it “has effectively become an independent city-state.”

Tancítaro represents a quiet but telling trend in Mexico, where a handful of towns and cities are effectively seceding, partly or in whole. These are acts of desperation, revealing the degree to which Mexico’s police and politicians are seen as part of the threat.

Visit three such enclaves — Tancítaro; Monterrey, a rich commercial city; and Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, just outside the capital — and you will find a pattern. Each is a haven of relative safety amid violence, suggesting that their diagnosis of the problem was correct. But their gains are fragile and have come at significant cost.

They are exceptions that prove the rule: Mexico’s crisis manifests as violence, but it is rooted in the corruption and weakness of the state.

The cities have addressed the violence differently. While Tancítaro farmers have formed militias that report directly to them, Monterrey’s business elite took over efforts to reform the police and judiciary, and Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl’s police chief has undertaken the herculean task of reforming the local police by himself. However, in each of these cases, reform efforts took place outside of the state structure, which is viewed by many Mexicans as, at best, inefficient, and at worst, in bed with the drug cartels.

The fact that one of America’s elite newspapers is reporting this story is indicative of the increasingly weakened condition of the state.

One wonders if this will be the first of many stories of secession efforts that will be reported in 2018.

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I’ve never understood why anyone would want to worship Satan. After all, if he is real, why would anyone want to worship a created being, any created being, rather than the Creator himself?

Sounds like the picture perfect example of a losing proposition.

Nevertheless, for as long as Christ has been away from this earth since his Ascension, so too have there been people who have sought the presumably wise guidance of the ultimate fallen angel.

Moving forward to today, I suppose it should be no surprise at all that Los Angeles has been and continues to be a haven for the unorthodox, including those who hail the angel of light.

What may be surprising is to find the Los Angeles Times write about Satanists as positively as it did today:

In November, in the candlelit basement of a house just above the Silver Lake Reservoir, Alexandra James walked over to an altar where her husband, Zachary, waited near a bleached human skull, teeth locked in eternal rictus. From the altar, she lifted a sword and drew points across his chest while a circle of onlookers watched solemnly (well, a few giggled too). An organist played eerie minor key chords and Alexandra turned to face the group.

“On this altar we consecrate swords to direct the fire of our unholy will,” she said. “A human skull, symbol of death. The great mother Lilith created us all, and will destroy us all.”

“Hail Satan! Hail Satan! Hail Satan!” The group chanted back.

The Jameses had planned the ritual as the climax of a low-key house party that included a dozen or so friends associated with ritual magic — artists, writers, rock musicians who freely mingle occult vocabularies (Satanist, coven, witches), none taken too literally. But a bigger moment came a few hours later when word circulated that Charles Manson had died. Far from mourning a man whose crimes burned satanic imagery into the American mainstream, everyone cracked beers in celebration and jammed on psych rock tunes. Bonnie Bloomgarden, the singer for the band Death Valley Girls, joked that Manson’s spirit would be reincarnated as a small dog, and that she’d probably accidentally adopt it.

It was a great night for a heterodox generation of new self-described Satanists who are upending old “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Helter Skelter” stereotypes in service of radical politics, feminist aesthetics and community unity in the divisive time of Trump.

What better indication that we live in troubled times when Satanists point to Trump and say, “See? We’re not nearly as bad as him.”

The article meanders between describing contemporary Satanists as those who appear to be following it as a fashion statement, and how they differ from “orthodox” practices.

If satanic rituals of old were centered on smashing Christian orthodoxy and middle American propriety — or, more basely, taking drugs and getting laid — this form of Satanism explicitly uses a huge range of ideas to give shape to the inchoate rage felt by so many — especially women and other marginalized groups.

These new converts believe that when confronted with so much chaos, one way to make sense of it is to conjure it themselves.

“If you don’t give people some sense of magic and community, you get the Proud Boys,” Alexandra said, referring to the fraternal neo-fascist group created by Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes. Zachary agreed: “People like the Proud Boys have their own social clubs, and that’s black magic. Instead of running away from that, we need to find better ways of organizing ourselves.

“In these times,” he added, “a lot of people want to not feel helpless. And Lucifer was the original rebel angel.”

And yet Satanists never ask what happened to him as a result.

The article also delves deeply into how local artists have turned to Satanism.

Even among the merely Satan-curious, the imagery seems to be popping up all over art, film and music.

The Jameses’ group — not officially affiliated with any one strain of Satanism — is loosely based around their doo-wop band Twin Temple, which sounds like the Marvelettes if that group had pined after the blessings of Baphomet instead of the boy next door. They got their start playing shows for the music-activist collective Play Like a Girl. Dressed in uniforms of black leather and lace, the couple made quite a striking duo on the town, and soon enough others wanted in on their scene.

“They were these barfly regulars with a Gomez/Morticia Addams vibe. We would riff on all things weird,” said Brent Smith, a novelist who met them at the rock bar Harvard & Stone. He sees their rituals as less of a religion and more of a structure for community and making art.

“It’s hard enough inspiring people in L.A. to congregate,” Smith said. “But there’s also real philosophy there, and the means to apply it. Rituals keep you accountable to the work you’re doing. Satanism doesn’t require ideology, and it’s ideology that so often kills writing.”

On Halloween, much of the group gathered in the basement of the Hollywood bar Black Rabbit Rose, where a who’s who of modern occultists gathered for rituals, rock shows and talks from the scene’s demimonde elite.

Avant-garde director Kenneth Anger (whose “Lucifer Rising” is a favorite of Satanists and starred eventual Manson family murderer Bobby Beausoleil) took questions from fans like Matt Skiba, the Blink-182 guitarist and Satanist. Noise musician and prominent Satanist Boyd Rice interviewed Karla LaVey (daughter of Anton LaVey) about war stories from the scene’s midcentury heyday. Glenn Danzig, founder of the horror-punk band the Misfits (who recently sold out the Forum for a reunion show), gabbed with fans in the VIP suite and showed off an archive of rare last-days-of-Jayne Mansfield photographs alongside the Lethal Amounts gallery owner Danny Fuentes, who organized the party and often hosts exhibits of transgressive occult-y art.

At the witching hour, Twin Temple performed a full set, capped with a ritual during which it performed an anti-baptism of its coven-mate, the young film director Kansas Bowling. Blood-smeared and stripped down to nearly “sky-clad,” as they put it, Bowling was offered up in service to the goddess Lilith as an avenging angel for crimes against women.

“Some of these men, like Harvey Weinstein, are finally being held accountable for their crimes,” Alexandra yelled at the crowd. “What do you think, shall we burn him at the stake? Or shall we drown him and see if he floats?” The crowd erupted in cheers for both.

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CNN reports that:

A dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate received a briefing from Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee on Capitol Hill in early December about President Donald Trump‘s fitness to be president — and Lee has been asked to speak with additional lawmakers, worried about the President’s mental state, later this month.

Lee is editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which, according to Politico, includes testimonials from 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts assessing the president’s level of “dangerousness”.

In the Politico article, Lee is quoted as having been surprised by Congressional interest in her findings.

“One senator said that it was the meeting he most looked forward to in 11 years,” Lee recalled. “Their level of concern about the president’s dangerousness was surprisingly high.”

Lee confirmed to CNN her meetings with members of Congress on the issue:

“Lawmakers were saying they have been very concerned about this, the President’s dangerousness, the dangers that his mental instability poses on the nation,” Lee told CNN in a phone interview Thursday, “They know the concern is universal among Democrats, but it really depends on Republicans, they said. Some knew of Republicans that were concerned, maybe equally concerned, but whether they would act on those concerns was their worry.”

Interestingly, CNN asked Lee whether her public comments were consistent with the professional standards of a psychologist:

Lee’s public comments are highly unusual given protocols from medical professional organizations — including the 37,000-member American Psychiatric Association — banning psychiatrists from diagnosing patients without a formal examination. Under recent guidance from the APA, it is “fine for a psychiatrist to share their expertise about psychiatric issues in general,” but “member psychiatrists should not give professional opinions about the mental state of someone they have not personally evaluated,” according to an APA blog post. When asked by CNN about Lee’s comments, the APA referred them to this guidance. …

Lee made it clear that she is not in a position to diagnose the President, or any public figure, from afar. But she said that it is incumbent on medical professionals to intervene in instances where there is a danger to an individual or the public. She argues that signs the President has exhibited have risen to that level of danger.

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Whether one calls it cultural Marxism, intersectionality, or some nasty combination of the two, universities continue to publish material that lazily argue that white Americans create toxic conditions that need to be confronted and eliminated.

Don’t be polite. That’s racist.

For example, Robert Wenzel points to a Wall Street Journal article that discusses an effort to combat civility because it “is a manifestation of white patriarchy”. In the article, Steve Salerno writes that two University of Northern Iowa professors are spearheading this campaign because “civility within higher education is a racialized, rather than universal, norm.”

[T]heir core contention is twofold: One, that civility, as currently practiced in America, is a white construct. Two, that in a campus setting, the “woke” white student’s endeavor to avoid microaggressions against black peers is itself a microaggression—a form of noblesse oblige whereby white students are in fact patronizing students of color. Not only that, but by treating black students with common courtesy and expecting the same in return, white students elide black grievances, bypassing the “race talk” that is supposed to occur in preamble to all other conversations. Got it?

It is bad enough that someone came up with this idiotic theory. It also appears that it has been put into practice.

Something similar is happening in collegiate debate, where historically high standards of decorum are under siege as manifestations of white patriarchal thinking. So are the factual and logical proofs that debaters are normally expected to offer in arguing their case. Some participants are challenging the format, goals and ground rules of debate itself, in some cases refusing even to stick to the topic at hand.

Again the driving theory is that all conversations must begin by addressing race. As one top black debater, Elijah J. Smith, writes, debate must, before all else, “acknowledge the reality of the oppressed.” He resists the attempt on the part of white debaters to “distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are forced to deal with every day.”

Mr. Smith and his think-alikes seek to transform debate into an ersatz course in Black Studies. In a major 2014 debate finals, two Towson University students sidestepped the nominal resolution, which had to do with restricting a president’s war powers, in order to argue that war “should not be waged against n—as.” Two other students decided that rather than debate aspects of U.S. policy in the Mideast, they’d discuss how the common practices of the debate community itself perpetuate racism. Other recent debates involving black participants have devolved into original rap music.

A few debates have featured profane outbursts and even the hurling of furniture. In one memorable case, when the clock ran out on a student during the championship round, he yelled, “F— the time!”

The “existential crisis” of white Christians

Meanwhile, an Morgan State University associate professor claims that white Christians are experiencing an “existential crisis” due to the declining religiosity of white America.

According to Campus Reform:

Darrius Hills, who teaches African American religion at MSU, claimed in the journal Black Theology that white Christians have lost their “spiritual centre” and are collectively facing an “existential crisis” that has led them to turn to Donald Trump for help “ameliorating these racial and religious anxieties.”

Before criticizing Hills’s thesis, it is important to note there is an element of truth within it. Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case published a report finding that from 1999 to 2014, not only has the death rate for middle-aged white Americans been increasing, the cause of that increase is due primarily to suicide and afflictions stemming from substance abuse. The mortality rate is most pronounced among those with no more than a high school education. To Dr. Deaton, the only phenomena comparable to these “deaths of despair” is the AIDS epidemic.

When one considers the de-industrialization of the United States over the past 30 years, particularly in flyover country, it shouldn’t be a surprise that one consequence would be despair among those who lost previously stable jobs. Trump clearly tapped into that frustration, and helped him win the White House.

However, the leap in Hills’s thesis occurs in the presumption that white Americans voted for Trump to ameliorate “racial and religious anxieties”.

Although the research makes no mention of any interviews or focus groups with white Christians—a common feature of qualitative research—Hills nonetheless contends that white religious people are in a perpetual state of despair.

“It is a perpetual despair that results from the acknowledgment and the realization of personal, social, and political reconfiguration and its impact upon the hierarchical positionality of White communities,” he asserts.

Interpreted through the lens of critical race theory [which will be discussed below – Mr. Fool], Hills argues that white American males are uniquely discontented in the current year, claiming that they have feelings of “aggrieved entitlement” because of the rising minority population in America, and have therefore “proven to be eager and willing theological bedfellows.”

Hills adds that white Christian support for Donald Trump “raises disturbing questions about the nature and mission of evangelical Christian thought as it pertains to racial and religious reconciliation,” calling the current “racial divide” among white Christians a “continuation of [Christianity’s] socio-religious platforms since the eighteenth century.”

For those wondering what “critical race theory” is, according to the UCLA School of Public Affairs’s Critical Race Theory website:

[Critical Race Theory] recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color. CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutral and colorblind, however, CRT challenges this legal “truth” by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege.  CRT also recognizes that liberalism and meritocracy are often stories heard from those with wealth, power, and privilege. These stories paint a false picture of meritocracy; everyone who works hard can attain wealth, power, and privilege while ignoring the systemic inequalities that institutional racism provides.

In other words, the “scholar” (hee hee hee) does not need to find a specific person do anything specifically to argue that a racist act occurred. He or she merely assumes that racism exists, and that any institution that perpetuates it must be destroyed. Full stop.

In fact, “Professor” Willis co-authored an article with Tommy Curry, a Texas A&M “professor” who argued in a podcast that “in order to be liberated, some white people may have to die.”

It is simply astounding that universities not only publish such mad gibberish, but hire people to write it. If this continues, it will only be a matter of time before the reputation of the academy, as far as the liberal arts are concerned, evaporates.

In the meantime, it appears that Americans will be forced to suffer through such idiocy.

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