Content Warning: Theological Discourse.

He was the brother of St Peter. He was martyred on the X shaped cross that now bears his name, that cross which is a fixture in many a “kink dungeon”.

30 November is the day The Church remembers, celebrates, his martyrdom at The Holy Mass. In Bob Fosse’s film, All That Jazz, the character modeled on Lenny Bruce (played by Cliff Gorman) quips, “To Catholics, death is a promotion, man.” Kind of a macabre thought, but we deal with the paradox of “losing” one’s life to “find” it, as we grow as Christians.

Jesus talks about walking away from family, friends, our “old”lives. In the Old Testament, the prophet Elijah chooses Elisha as his successor, while Elisha is out ploughing a field with 12 yoke of oxen. Elisha slaughters the oxen and boils the flesh in a dramatic gesture of leaving his old life. All St Andrew had to do was give up casting his net for fish and become a “fisher of men”(meaning human beings).

The first season of the Christian year, Advent, began yesterday.. We commemorate the season with a wreath and four candles, three violet, one rose coloured. We sing lovely hymns and chants Creator Alma Siderum, O Come O Come Emmanuel, to name two.

The “Social Justice” advocates, informed by so-called “Liberation” theology put an emphasis on righting the wrongs perpetrated upon the weak and politically powerless. There is a collectivist emphasis to this perspective of Jesus’s message of Redemption and Salvation., It suggests we can ignore our inner and very individual rebellions against God, (our tendency to sin).

The error is that somehow, “good” social policy can get us off the hook personally. Seeking the Kingdom of God takes a back seat to cleaning up this earthly kingdom, the kingdom that is ultimately Satan’s.

Dying to our selfishness and narcissism is neither easy nor fun. We have many diversions and distractions to keep us entertained. We can rationalize horrific behavior that keeps our self-centeredness in place. But our self-centeredness is what keeps us enthroned, as the major deity in our personal universe, not as humble servants in God’s.

from Caesar Augustus that the entire world should be counted.” St Luke 2:1

I keep debating whether to close the blog, but something, an event, a feeling, a book comes to mind and I know I need to keep going.

Right now, I am watching Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe, a serialized story shown at the movies in 1940, about a superhero, Flash Gordon, who thwarts the evil plans of Ming The Merciless. The story is formulaic, with Flash bouncing from one harrowing deadly situation to another. No sooner is one threat extinguished, than yet another existential threat materializes.

We are obsessed with political melodrama in this country right now, with Good and Evil changing polarities like the alternator on your Plymouth Fury. Each month seems to come with its new episode, foreign intrigue, graft, collusion, plague, impeachment, more plague, more corruption, more graft, more foreign intrigue, more plague

Yada. Yada. Yada.

The political atmosphere has a superficial moral clarity akin to that of professional wrestling.

We even have billionaires wanting to conquer the world, who have allied themselves with “dark” forces, specifically the People’s Republic of China. It is a totalitarian police state that dictates family size, religious practice, and free exchange of ideas. The billionaires have powerful computational devices that can record almost every human activity, from where you buy your groceries to what contraceptive method you use, or don’t use. (If I’m exaggerating, it isn’t by much).

Now, of course, we have to play along with the billionaire oligarchs, because they stand for progress and couldn’t possibly harm us, since they wear nice crew neck sweaters and want the whole world vaccinated. We could have the first “business casual” police state.

They always expect their counting machines, observing machines, recording machines to work, as if their binary code will always be comprehensible. We fully accept the omniscience and invincibility of the high tech connected digital monolith. If Gates, Bezos, Dorsey, and Zuckerberg end up ruling the universe, it will be because we allowed them

Does anybody really think the codes and software and algorithms will live forever? Perhaps I should ask if anyone has a Beta-max© machine they could sell me. Or if they can receive an analog signal on their TV. Did you get your Sears Fall and Winter Catalog for this year?

To get you thinking, whether you want to or not, consider this. Why is one megalomaniac better than another? Adolf Hitler on the one hand, Bill Gates, on the other.

Good Public Relations and cheap dope help. Seriously. As long as you’re happy, what are a few million (or billion) dead people?

So said a staff officer in the Reichswehr of Wilhelmine Germany in 1914. He was assessing the alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire with whom Germany marched to war after the catastrophe at Sarajevo. Some leaders could see the looming disaster relentlessly unfolding, as events became uncontrollable.

The American political scene changed, irreversibly, in 2016. It cannot be reset. The American people are now chafing under the impediments to their freedom. A Christmas lockdown will be ignored, pandemic be damned.

Right now, some of the finest trial lawyers in America are building a case of ballot-tampering and electoral fraud against the Democratic Party and its Presidential/Vice-Presidential Ticket. It is a complex and yet simple case with computer fraud, and good old-fashioned fraudulent illegal voting.

Faced with a loss attributable to electoral fraud in 1960, Richard Nixon folded. He let Kennedy get away with it. Donald Trump, love him or hate him, is NOT Richard Nixon. He is not conceding yet, because he has not officially, legally lost.

The cases will go through the courts. Trump could fail. And there, available to public and Congressional scrutiny is the abundant evidence gathered that is the substance of Trump’s case. That evidence will not disappear. It will be entered into court records. They will be the millstones around Biden’s and Harris’s necks. Biden and Harris will have problems governing if their legitimacy steadily erodes.

Assuming Biden takes the oath of office in January, he will be a President propped up by the Bad Guys of contemporary America, Wall Street moguls that strip Americans of their jobs and dignity, high tech plutocrats from Silicon Valley, a legacy broadcast and print media, increasingly discredited and ignored. Add in Marxist street gangs, like Antifa, a threat that Biden fails to censure.

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. has rapidly diminishing mental capacity. Kamala Harris, his Vice President, was chosen for her superficial qualities, her sex and race. Fifty two years ago, Nixon chose Spiro Agnew for the superficial strategic reason of coming from Maryland, a Border State. Border State pedigree was considered important in the political calculus of 1968.

We know how things turned out. The festering mess of Watergate caused Nixon’s downfall. An unvetted Spiro Agnew resigned when his corruption surfaced. The Watergate cover-up was the crime at the core of Nixon’s reelection, kind of like the doctored algorithms, dead people voting, and illegal vote counts of 2020.

What will Congressional Democrats, particularly Senators, do when a weak, demented President attempts to govern? If Biden proves himself to be the marionette people think he is, the Democrats will abandon him.They will see Biden’s puppet masters are the universally disliked plutocrats, Big Tech, Wall Streeters, the modern day robber barons, those villains of pre-World War One America. These characters care not a whit for American sovereignty, or American workers. What prudent politician wishes to be shackled to those corpses?

Washington D. C. is a de facto court, in the mold of Versailles, or Constantinople. The courtiers, i.e. politicians, lobbyists, military officers, civil servants, engage in intramural intrigues that are repugnant to most Americans. Donald Trump was the yokel whom the courtiers had to answer to. And they hate him because he is not one of them.

What the Democrats don’t get is that Trump is a champion of a broader movement, that will endure after Trump leaves the scene, whether in 2021 or 2025 or 2029. The American People don’t want the globalist visions of Bill Gates, The Clintons, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, or most significantly, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of The People’s Republic of China.

It’s over. No more of this.

I am back to say I’m gone. I’m through blogging.

It’s not about politics. But it is. I’ve changed as a person over the years. For my own sanity, I’m no longer sharing any observations, thoughts, or feelings about anything.

All of you are wonderful people. I wish you all the best. This is the end

Go to my Site Pages. I just posted What Passes. What Endures. Read it. It should have been a blog post, but I made a mistake and know not how to fix it.

It is 3:00 AM in Richmond, Virginia USA. In Moscow, Russia it is 10:00 AM. The faithful are worshipping at a magnificent Chutch filled with icons. They are chanting their chant form, знамены,

This is the Russia that defeated Hitler, the Russia that tossed out the Communists after 75 years. The spine of this nation are the women in baboushkas, dressed for a morning in the 40s (8°C).

The priests reverence the altar, the Body and Blood of Our Lord have been sanctified. The camera now zooms in on an icon , most likely from the 18th, possibly the 19th Century, Madonna and Child.

As a people the Russians prevailed over Hitler, then Stalin. They wear the masks against COVID, but do not practice rigid social distancing. A virus doesn’t phase them that much. They chant, along with choir. A grandfather holds his granddaughter as they reverence two icons.

The people who know they are sick, who ask for healing will receive it.

I should go back to bed.