Lex Anteinternet: If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worried yet, you ought to be. Or maybe not. Or maybe.

Lex Anteinternet: If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worr...: The Defense Department hosted a Christmas service at the Pentagon. Now, if you are an Apostolic Christian, as the overwhelming majority of C...

If you are an Apostolic Christian, and aren't worried yet, you ought to be. Or maybe not. Or maybe.

The Defense Department hosted a Christmas service at the Pentagon.

Now, if you are an Apostolic Christian, as the overwhelming majority of Christians around the world are, or if you are a member of a Protestant denomination that is closely based on the Catholic Church, or which even thinks that they are part of it, this service will come across very strangely.  But, as I've noted before, this is a Protestant country and a Protestant county in which the strains of Puritanism are deep.

The services of the Apostolic Faiths, i.e., the Catholics and the Orthodox, go back to the very origins of Christianity.  The Didache was written within a couple of decades of the Crucifiction and it shows Christians doing what Apostolic Christians do right now, which isn't a surprise to Apostolic Christians but which can come as a rude shock to Protestants.  The writings of the Church Fathers do the same.  If you read these text and remain a Protestant, while cutting a little slack for High Church Anglicans and conservative Lutherans, it's just a wilful decision to ignore the first 1,500 years of Christian practice.

But most people don't read those things and so they're going with what they learned as kids, or what they've sort of picked up, no matter how in error or ignorant it may be.  John Calvin, who influenced the Puritans, was flat out demonstrably wrong (and frankly not a nice guy) but most people don't know that if they're in one of the churches influenced by him, and for that matter they don't even know who John Calvin was.

The Puritans, because they were religious dissenters from the Church of England, which had militantly broken off from the Catholic Church in order that King Henry VIII could pursue a string of hopefully fertile bedmates, was not only pretty ignorant, but obstinately so in many ways, as it had a history of fighting with the Established Church.  The Church of Scotland was somewhat as well, particularly in its American form.  All of these churches have declined enormously in Europe while Catholicism has increased, reclaiming lost ground, but in the US their descendants are pretty numerous and strong.

Most Protestants aren't "Evangelical Protestants", but Evangelical Protestantism is really easy for people who want to be Christians without a whole bunch of Christian theology, want to escape the personally difficult aspects of Christian theology, or who just know that there's truth in Christianity and don't know where to go.  The do it yourselfism in them is pretty strong, and some, but not all, of them are pretty good at pointing out the sins of others while simply ignoring their own favorite  ones.  There's a host of ministers in this camp that are personally wealthy or who are married and divorced, and who have even engaged in affairs.  Flat out ignoring the Christian injunction against divorce and remarriage is pretty much the rule in most Protestant communities and it obviously is in some Evangelical ones.  Paula White is on her third husband, for example.  Joyce Meyer on her second.  Missouri pastor Rich Tidwell is a polygamist.

The point isn't to debate on all these topics, setting aside polygamy, Protestant denominations do not have, I think, the process of annulment, which can be controversial in the Catholic Church, and their ministers do not take vows of poverty, but rather the pick and chose nature of things is a problem, and it'll turn on Catholics and is already starting to.

The New Apostolic Reformation is an aggressive backer of Donald Trump and its openly a backer of Americanism.  Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is clearly aligned with the movement, and it's pretty clear that Secretary of Defense Hegseth falls in this camp.  Hegesth is practically the poster boy for ignorance in this category as he's festooned himself with tattoos that recall the Crusades while not realizing at all that Crusaders would have regarded him as a heretic.  But there he is, all emblazoned with sayings and symbols that properly belong to the Apostolic faiths, while living in what they'd all regard as an irregular marriage.

The same week that the Pentagon service occured Chip Roy took a direct swing at Catholics.

A lot of good Americans give their money to Catholic charities thinking they're helping people, and it turns out they're a part of a vast leftist network that is being used to undermine our country. 

Whether it's the open borders, Soros DAs, Arabella, or the 'Islamification' of Texas and this country—it's organized, and this is one example. Look at the Medicaid fraud up in Minneapolis. It was going to Somalis, and it was literally billions of dollars.

This administration is rooting it out; Congress needs to do more. That's why I called for a special select committee to follow the money of these radical groups. We need to do it.

Roy, who lives in Austin Texas, is a Baptist, something that isn't surprising both because the Baptist are a large Protestant religion in the United States and because Texas is part of the "Bible Belt" where the Southern Baptist are particularly strong.

The Baptists are not part of the New Apostolic Reformation as a rule and have a very large set of differing beliefs on different topics. The reason to note this, however, is that Roy's statement really brings out a certain strain of Protestant Anti Catholicism that's very deep in the country's history.  Setting aside any one thing he's complaining about, a strain of it is that Catholic charities don't seem to care very much where people come from.

And that's because Catholics aren't not supposed to view the world that way.

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. 2 Corinthians 10:3 They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven

Letter to Diognetus.

For many years, the really strong Protestant religions in the US were the "mainline" Protestant faiths, of which the Episcopal Church was the strongest.  None of the Mainline Protestant Churches was friendly with the Apostolic Churches, but they ironically all had connections to it, with the Presbyterian Church having the fewest.  In truth, in spite of the Black Legends of the Reformation they'd spread, they all worried about how they were viewed by the Catholic Church, accepting large elements of the Church's views as correct, and particularly worried about whether they had Apostolic Succession, strongly suspecting themselves that they did not.  People have spoken much about the decline of Christianity in the West, but they've missed two elements of that story to a significant degree, one being that the Catholic church was persistently attacked by Protestant governments during and after the Reformation, and that this yielded to attacks by left wing secular governments thereafter.  The Catholic Church nonetheless endured in spite of all of it, and its' rebounding from that assault.  The Mainline Protestant Churches, however, are simply dying of their own accord.

All along there's been a strain of loosely organized Protestant churches that fall outside of the Mainline churches.  The Mainline Protestant Churches did not worry much about them, but as time has gone on, and the impacts of the death of the Reformation and the cultural revolutions of the Baby Boomers have played out, those churches have grown and are particularly infused with the American Civil Religion, which many barely churched Americans are as well. The New Apostolic Reformation is just a sliver of that set of beliefs, but Apostolic Christians should be concerned.  The Apostolic Faiths are growing in the US right now as people turn towards the truth, but this administration is infused with the NAR which leads to events like this.  Recognizing the Christian origins of the United States is fine, and saying something prayerful at the Pentagon in this season is as well.  But a performance such as this, combined with rumblings from somebody like Roy, should worry us.  Christianity is not an American thing.

Or, perhaps, something else is going on.

The Apostolic Faiths are growing and converts from Protestantism are part of the reason why.  The Mainline Protestant Churches are dying.  Evangelicalism remains strong, but things like this show the marked contrast with the Ancient Faith.  This may all be part of the death of the Reformation playing out before us.

There remains a danger in all of this, however.  There are prominent Apostolic Christians in the National Conservative/Christian Nationalist camp.  People like R. R. Reno, Rod Dreher and Kevin Roberts are founding members, and J. D. Vance is the most prominent politician who travels in that camp.  The views that the backers of people like Mike Johnson and Pete Hegseth hold are not necessarily friendly towards Apostolic Christians at all.  While people in the Reno/Dreher/Roberts camp may rejoice as the seeming defense of Christian values by the administration (and I'm not sure that at least Reno and Dreher, the latter of whom has declared Trump unstable, hold that view), it's making common cause with people who are either inherently hostile to the Apostolic Faiths or, in the case of Trump himself, deeply immoral.  Being such a fellow traveler rarely works out and we'll be turned on.

Related threads:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 103d edition. The tragic co-opting of death and politics.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Charlie Kirk, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, Commentary, Fascism, National Conservatism, Populism, Protestant, religion, The Horst Wessel Effect, The Kennedy/Guevara Effect, Weapons

Donald Trump and wolves in sheep's clothing. Attacking actual Christian beliefs and practices. The White House Faith Office and Paula Michelle White-Cain. We warned you.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Commentary, Donald Trump, Mainline Protestant, New Apostolic Reformation, Protestant, religion, Sunday Morning Scene, The Second Trump Administration, You heard it here first

An Appeal To Heaven. The 2024 Wyoming Primary

Labels: 2020s, 2024 Election, American Civil Religion, Apostolic Christianity, Catholic, Christian Nationalism, Christianity, National Conservatism, New Apostolic Reformation, Populism, Protestant, Wyoming

The End of the Reformation II

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Baby Boom Generation, British Empire, Catholic, Christianity, Colonialism, Martin Luther, Protestant, religion, Synchronicity, The Reformation, WASP, Western Society

Confusing politics with religion.

Labels: Apostolic Christianity, Christianity, Protestant, Yeoman's Self Centered Razor

Lex Anteinternet: Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.

Lex Anteinternet: Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchr...: The Angelus by Jean-François Millet I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time.  Ways which, really, are too stro...

Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.

The Angelus by Jean-François Millet

I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time.  Ways which, really, are too strong to put up to coincidence.

Sometime last week I saw this post on Twitter by O. W. Root, to which I also post my reply:

O.W. Root@owroot

Nov 29

Sometimes I have wondered if I should write about being a parent so much, but I've realized that it's one of the most universal things in the whole world, and one of the most life changing things for all who do it, so it's good to do.

Lex Anteinternet@Lex_Anteinterne

Nov 30

It's also, quite frankly, one of the very few things we do with meaning.  People try take meaning from their jobs, for example, which are almost universally meaningless.

My reply, was frankly, extremely harsh.  "[A]lmost universally meaningless"?

Well, in fact, yes.  I was going to follow that up with a post about existential occupations, but I hadn't quite gotten around to it when I heard some podcasts and saw some web posts that synched into it.  I've been cat sitting recently and because of that, I've been able to catch up on some old ones (note the synchronicity of that. . . the tweet above was from November 29/30, but the podcast episode was from June).  The podcast episode in question is:

People to Catholicism Today? ⎮Flannel Panel - Christopher Check

That episode discusses a very broad range of very interesting topics, and it referenced this one amongst them:   Catholicism Is So Hot Right Now. Why?

I haven't listened to the second podcast, but the first is phenomenal.

These are all linked?

Yes they are.

I've noted here on this blog and on Lex Anteinternet that the young seem to be turning towards social conservatism and traditionalism.  It's easy to miss,. and its even easy to be drawn to it and participate in it without really realizing it.  This is different, we'd further note, than being drawn to the various branches of political conservatism.  There's definitely a connection, of course, but there are also those who are going into social conservatism/traditionalism while turning their backs on politics entirely, although there are real dangers to turning your back on politics.

What seems to be going on is that people are attracted to the truth, the existential truths, and the existential itself.  

Put another way, people have detected that the modern world is pretty fake, and it doesn't comport at all with how we are in a state of nature. It goes back to what we noted here:

Yeoman's Third Law of Behavior.  I know why the caged tiger paces.

I think what people want is a family and a life focused on that family, not on work.

As noted above, most work is meaningless.  That doesn't mean it's not valuable.  

Very few jobs are existential for our species.*  We're meant to be hunters and gatherers, with a few other special roles that have to do with the organization of ourselves, and our relation to the existential.  Social historians like to claim that society began to "advance" when job specialization, a byproduct of agriculture, began, and there's some truth to that, but only a bit, if not properly understood.  That bit can't be discounted, however, as when agriculture went from subsistence agriculture to production agriculture, i.e., agriculture that generated a surplus, wealth was generated and wealth brought in a great perversion of social order.  Surplus production brought in wealth, which brought in a way for the separation of wealth from the people working the land, and ultimately ownership of the land itself.  Tenant farming, sharecropping and the like, and agricultural poverty, were all a byproduct of that.  When Marx observed that this developed inevitably into Feudalism, he was right.

Agriculture, originally, was a family or family band small scale deal.  While it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever put in a garden how it worked, social theorist and archeologist got it all wrong until they made some rather obvious discoveries quite recently, one of the most obvious being that hunter/gatherer societies are also often small scale agricultural ones.  How this was missed is baffling as Europeans had first hand experience with this in regard to New World cultures, most of which were hunting societies but many of which put in various types of farms.  Even North American native bands that did not farm, it might be noted, were well aware of farming themselves.  Even into the present era hunter/gatherer societies, to the extent they still exist, often still practice small scale farming.

It turns out that grain farming goes way, way back. But why wouldn't it have?

Additional specialization began with the Industrial Revolution, and that's when things really began to become massively warped for our species, first for men, and then with then, with feminization, for women.  We've long noted that, but given the chain of coincidences noted above, we've stumbled on to somebody else noting it. As professor Randall Smith has written:

It’s important to understand that the first fatal blow to the family came during the Industrial Revolution when fathers left the house for the bulk of the day. The deleterious results that followed from ripping fathers away from their children were seen almost immediately in the slums and ghettos of the large industrial towns, as young men, without older men to guide them into adulthood, roamed the streets, un-mentored and un-apprenticed. There, as soon as their hormonal instincts were no longer directed into work or caring for families, they turned to theft and sexual license.

Randall Smith, A Traditional Catholic Wife?  

So, in the long chain of events, there was nothing wrong at all about farming. There was something wrong about the expropriation of the wealth it created, and that fueled the fire of a lot of development since them.  That first set of inequities ultimately lead to peasant revolts in Europe on occasion, and to a degree can be regarded as what first inspired average Europeans to immigrate to various colonies. . . a place where they could own their own land.  . and then to various revolutions against what amounted to propertied overlords.  The American Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, and the Russian Revolution all had that element to them.  Industrialization, which pulled men out of the household, sparked additional revolutions to counter the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, with some being violent, but others not being. The spread of democracy was very much a reaction to the the evils of the Industrial Revolution.  Unfortunately, so was the spread of Communism.

Money has never given up, so the same class of people who demanded land rent in the bronze and iron age, and then turned people into serfs in the Middle Ages, are still busy to do that now. As with then, they often want the peasants to accept this as if its really nifty.  People like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are busy piling up money and concubines while assuring the peasantry that their diminished role in the world is a good thing as its all part of Capitalism.

It is part of Capitalism, which is a major reason that Capitalism sucks, and that there's been efforts to restrain its worse impulses since its onset, with efforts to limit corporations at first, and then such things as the Sherman Anti Trust Act later on.

All that's been forgotten and we now have a demented gilded prince and his privileged acolytes living off the fat of the land while people have less and less control of their own lives.  Most people don't want to glory in the success of Star Link of even care about it, but people feed into such things anyway, as the culture has glorified such things since at least the end of the Second World War, the war seemingly having helped to fuel all sorts of disordered desires in society that would bloom into full flower in the 1960s.  A society that grew wealthy from the war and the destruction that it created, saw itself as divorced from nature and reality, and every vice that could be imagined was condoned.

And we're now living in the wreckage.

I think this is what is fueling a lot of this.  Starting particularly in the 1950s, and then ramping up in the 60s and 70s, careerism really took hold in American society, along with a host of other vices.  Indeed, again, as Professor Smith has noted:

The “traditional Catholic family” where the husband worked all day and the wife stayed home alone with the children only really existed – and not all that successfully – in certain upper-middle class WASPy neighborhoods during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Working in an office all day is not necessarily evil (depending upon how it affects your family). It’s just modern. There’s nothing especially “traditional” about it.

Most careers are just dressed up jobs, not much else.  Nonetheless people have been taught they need to leave their homes, their families, they're very natures, in order to have a career, sometimes abandoning people in their wake.  They're encouraged to do so, to a large extent.

Indeed, I dare say, for most real careerist, nearly always abandoning people.

And average people are sick of it.

That's why young men are turning towards traditionalism of all sorts.  They're looking for something of value, and they're not going to find it behind a computer in a cubicle.  And that's why young women are reviving roles that feminist attempted to take away form them.  

They mean something.

Footnotes: 

* Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

Lex Anteinternet: Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Lex Anteinternet: Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, T...: 

Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Hmmm. . . that's interesting.  Trump's now okay with it.

Trump and his acolytes went from demanding their release, to absolutely opposing it.  Now they're in favor of it again.

What gives?

Well one thing may simply be that so much time has gone by, these files are now scrubbed.  Sounds conspiratorial, I know, but files can be scrubbed, or lost.

The problem here is that the whole thing sounds so, well, all over the place that an effective scrubbing might be impossible.

Another one is that Trump might already know it won't get past the Senate.  Just yesterday loyal flunky John Barrasso stated he wasn't sure if they'd vote on it or not.  Figures like Barrasso figure their Senate seats are so safe that they're untouchable.  They aren't, and he was running pretty scared last time, but they tend to think that way.

Or it just isn't worth the political capital that it was burning up.  That would suggest that whoever is getting protected just isn't worth this level of damage, particularly that some formerly loyal MAGA's have gone overboard into the lifeboats.  The Republicans only barely control the House now and are set to lose them in the midterms.  If only two or three more Republicans in the House abandoned ship, Mike Smarmy Johnson is done for and the GOP would start to break free of King Donny.  Two Republican House members, including amazingly Marjorie Taylor Greene, are openly poking the king and he's been able to do nothing about it.

Yet another is that, related to above, Trump just intends to lie his way out of whatever they say, if they're damaging to him, and so far we have no reason to believe that in spite of his personally gross behavior towards women, that he's implicated in kiddy diddling.  At the worst, it's possible that he knew what was going on and didn't do anything about it,  and there's likely a lot of rich and powerful people in that boat.  Or maybe he actually didn't.  Epstein was a creep, but just having young bikini wearing women on the premises doesn't necessarily mean that diddling is going on.  So whatever is in there, he may be confident won't touch him directly, and whomever it does, well he can always say it includes Democrats too, which it probably does.

Which may be, after all is said and done, the biggest lesson.  Since Ronald Reagan this country has followed the absurd notion that's what's good for the wealthy is good for everyone.  As Oliver Bullough has stated; "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly".   

Businessmen plotted to take over the government and install fascism in the 1930s.  The plot failed, and nobody was prosecuted.  Reagan sold the American public the idea that vast wealth trickles down.

Epstein hung out with the rich and powerful. Some of them he supplied with teenage girls.  The money didn't trickle down, and its not trickling down.  Rather, it's morally corrosive and effectively the Business Plot ultimately won out with the election of Donald Trump, aided by the Democrats prime strategy being a judicial coup rather than an oligarchic one.  

There's still time to reverse that. This might be a good place to start.

Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Laws of Behavior

Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Laws of Behavior: 

Yeoman's Twenty-third Law of Behavior:  "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly" Oliver Bullough.

Certain societies worship wealth, but this rule is invariably true, although there are plenty of individual exceptions.  

Wealth corrupts, it simply does.  The New Testament councils that "Love of money is the root of all evil", and while some people acquire vast wealth simply because they love work, quite often it's mixed in with the love of money.  Beyond that, money at some point both blinds people to the consequences of their own actions, and to the realities of that.

The corruption of money keeps people working in positions they should yield to younger people who are kept from moving up, and therefore kept at a fiscal and societal disadvantage.  It leads to the destruction of land, people, and the environment.  And big money nearly invariably brings in extra corruption on a personal level.

Big money attracts sycophants who assure the wealthy person that his actions are benign, or that he's smart, and deserves to be the exception to the rule.  It reduces people to objects, and allows people to believe that their personal destruction of others is merited.  

“No one can serve two masters.m He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."  Matthew, Chapter 6.

The Agrarian's Lament: Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Distributist remake of this country.

The Agrarian's Lament: Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Dis...: 

Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Distributist remake of this country.

I was going to use the work "revolution", but didn't as I don't want it suggested that I mean an armed revolution.  I'm not.  Indeed, I'm not keen on violence in general, and as I intend to refer to the American Revolution in this essay, I'll note that had I lived in the 1770s, I'd have been genuinely horrified by events.  I highly doubt that I would have joined the "Patriots" and likewise I wouldn't have joined the Loyalist either.  I'd have been in the 1/3d that sat the war out with out choosing sides, but distressed by the overall nature of it.

The other day I posted this:

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 10...: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The... :  CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and w...

In that item, I noted this:

Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State.  The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.

Oligarchy is now where we are at.

I've been thinking about it, and Dr. Jones has really hit on something.  The nature of Americanism, if you will, is in fact not its documentary artifacts and (damaged) institutions, it is, rather, in what it was.  At the time of the American Revolution the country had an agrarian/distributist culture and that explained, and explains, everything about it.

The Revolution itself was fought against a society that had concentrated oligarchical wealth.  To more than a little degree, colonist to British North America had emigrated to escape that.

We've been losing that for some time.  Well over a century, in fact, and indeed dating back into the 19th Century.  It started accelerating in the mid 20th Century and now, even though most do not realize it, we are a full blown oligarchy.

Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments are held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which has been repeatedly mentioned- to have a care that the loyal citizen should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined.

Aristotle, Politics.

Corporations were largely illegal in early American history.  They existed, but were highly restricted.  The opposite is the case now, with corporations' "personhood" being so protected by the law that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political spending is a form of free speech and corporations can spend unlimited money on independent political broadcasts in candidate elections.  This has created a situation in which corporations have gobbled up local retail in the US and converted middle class shopkeeping families into serfs.  It's also made individual heads of corporations obscenely, and I used that word decidedly, wealthy.

Wealth on the level demonstrated by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump simply should not exist.  It's bad for average people and its corrupting of their souls. That corruption can be seen in their unhinged desire for self aggrandizement and acquisition.  Elon Must acquires young white women of a certain type for concubinage  Donald Trump, whose money is rooted in the occupation of land, has collected bedmates over the years, "marrying" some of them and in his declining mental state, seeks to demonstrated his value through grotesque molestation of public property.

Those are individual examples of course, but the government we currently have, while supported by the Puritan class, disturbingly features men of vast wealth, getting wealthier, with a government that operates to fork over more money to those who already have it.  The MAGA masses, which stand to grow poorer, and in the case of the agricultural sector are very much already suffering that fate, deservedly after supporting Trump, continue to believe that the demented fool knows what he's doing.

I don't know the source of this, but this illustration perfectly depicts how MAGA populists treat Donald Trump.

This system is rotten to the core and it needs to be broken.  Broken down, broken up, and ended.

The hopes of either the Democrats or the Republicans waking up and addressing it seem slim. The GOP is so besotted with it's wealthy leaders that the Speaker of the House, who claims to be a devout Christian, is attempting to keep the release of the names of wealthy hebephiles secret.  Only wealth and power can explain that.  The Democrats, which since 1912 have claimed to be the part of the working man, flounder when trying to handle the economic plight of the middle class.  Both parties agree on only one thing, that being you must never consider a third party.  

It is really time for a third part in this country.

In reality, of course, there are some, but only one is worth considering in any fashion, that being the American Solidarity Party.  Perhaps it could pick up the gauntlet here and smack it across the face of the oligarchy.  Or perhaps local parties might do it.  In my state, I think that if enough conservative Republicans (real conservatives, not the Cassie Cravens, John Bear, Dave Simpson, Bob Ide, Chuck Gray servants of the Orange Golden Calf Republicans) it could be done locally.  The U.S. has a history, although its barely acknowledged, of local parties, including ones whose members often successfully run on the tick of two parties.  New York's Zohran Mamdani and David Dinkins, for example were both Democrats and members of the Democratic Socialist Party.  Democrats from Minnesota are actually members of the Democratic Farm Labor Party, which is an amalgamation of two parties.  There's no reason a Wyoming Party couldn't form and field its own candidates, some of whom could also run as Republicans.

Such a party, nationally or locally, needs to be bold and take on the oligarchy. There's no time to waste on this, as the oligarchy gets stronger every day.  And such candidates will meet howls of derision.  Locally Californian Chuck Gray, who ironically has looked like the Green Peace Secretary of State on some issues, will howl about how they're all Communist Monarchist Islamic Stamp Collectors.  And some will reason to howl, such as the wealthy landlord in the state's legislature.

The reason for that is simple.  Such a party would need to apply, and apply intelligently, the principals of subsidiarity, solidarity and the land ethic. It would further need to be scientific, agrarianistic, and distributist. 

The first thing, nationally or locally, that such a party should do is bad the corporate ownership of retail outlets.  Ban it.  That would immediately shift retail back to the middle class, but also to the family unit.  A family might be able to own two grocery or appliance stores, for example, but probably not more than that.

The remote and corporate ownership of rural land needs to come to an immediate end as well.  No absentee landlords.  People owning agricultural land should be only those people making a living from it.

That model, in fact, should apply overall to the ownership of land.  Renting land out, for any reason, ought to be severely restricted.  The maintenance of a land renting system, including residential rent, creates landlords, who too often turn into Lords.

On land, the land ethic ought to be applied on a legal and regulatory basis. The American concept of absolute ownership of land is a fraud on human dignity.  Ownership of land is just, but not the absolute ownership.  You can't do anything you want on your property, nor should you be able to, including the entry by those engaged in natural activities, such as hunting, fishing, or simply hiking, simply because you are an agriculturalist.

While it might be counterintuitive in regard to subsidiarity, it's really the case, in this context, that the mineral resources underneath the surface of the Earth should belong to the public at large, either at the state, or national, level.  People make no contribution whatsoever to the mineral wealth being there. They plant nothing and they do not stock the land, like farmers do with livestock.  It's presence or absence is simply by happenstance and allowing some to become wealthy and some in the same category not simply by luck is not fair.  It 

Manufacturing and distribution, which has been address, is trickier, but at the end of the day, a certain amount of employee ownership of corporations in this category largely solves the problem.  People working for Big Industry ought to own a slice of it.

And at some level, a system which allows for the accumulation of obscene destructive levels of wealth is wrong.  Much of what we've addressed would solve this.  You won't be getting rich in retail if you can only have a few stores, for example.  And you won't be a rich landlord from rent if most things just can't be rented.  But the presence of the massively wealthy, particularly in an electronic age, continues to be vexing.  Some of this can be addressed by taxation. The USCCB has stated  that "the tax system should be continually evaluated in terms of its impact on the poor.” and it should be.  The wealthy should pay a much more progressive tax rate.

These are, of course, all economic, or rather politico-economic matters. None of this addresses the great or stalking horse social issues of the day.  We'll address those, as we often have, elsewhere.  But the fact of the matter is, right now, the rich and powerful use these issues to distract.  Smirky Mike Johnson may claim to be a devout Christian, but he's prevented the release of names of men who raped teenage girls.  Donald Trump may publicly state that he's worried about going to Hell, but he remains a rich serial polygamist.  J.D. Vance may claim to be a devout Catholic, but he spends a lot of time lying through his teeth.

And, frankly, fix the economic issues, and a lot of these issues fix themselves.

Lex Anteinternet: Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations

Lex Anteinternet: Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations:   Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations 9780300155525 This includes the excellent essay The Idiocy of Urban Life, which I...

Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations

 

Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations 9780300155525

This includes the excellent essay The Idiocy of Urban Life, which I've occasionally cited here under its original The New Republic name, The Cows Revenge.

Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The...: Announcement confirming that Trump wine and cider is now stocked at Coast Guard BX's. Sigh. Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Cath...

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

Announcement confirming that Trump wine and cider is now stocked at Coast Guard BX's.

Sigh.

Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State.  The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.

Oligarchy is now where we are at.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 107th Edition. Tacky Crap, Delusion, and the Sgt. Schultz defense.

Labels: 2025 Election Post Mortem, 2025 White House Vandalization, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, The Sgt. Schultz Defense, White House, Zeitgeist