Know thy enemy

Carlos Caso-Rosendi

Here is a little bit of good advise from our first Pope:

Humble yourselves therefore under the powerful hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Be disciplined, keep alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. — 1 Peter 5:6-10.

We were talking about Postmodernism, a concept I personally consider the south end of a northbound mule. Postmodernism is nothing but the apotheosis of Modernism but for the sake of clarity we will pretend that the rear end of that mule is a different animal and we will call it Postmodernism so no one will get confused. Neither Modernism nor Postmodernism are your friends. That mule is a crazy animal and it kicks hard, that is enough reason to know how it behaves.

Postmodernism is what you are up against. Imagine Nero, Diocletian, Julian the Apostate,  Arianism, Donatism, Nestorianism, and every enemy Christians ever had in the last 20 centuries all rolled up in one and munching on steroids all day. That is your enemy. It wants to kill you and your children, and it is already living in your neighborhood, and in your neighbors’ heads.

Postmodernism is an ugly monster but it is also pervasive and pernicious, and at the same time attractive and with a seductive capacity unparalleled in history. The German Nazi Party are a bunch of boy scouts compared to the Postmodernist hordes that have taken over our universities, schools, government administrations, financial systems, and much more. They are not only the Deep State but they are also a number of forces, some of them never seen before, intent on not only conquering the world but re-engineering nature itself. You learned from Jesus that those who conquer the world must pay with their souls. The Postmodernist horde is planning to pay that bill with your soul. That is why you have to learn as much about them to defend yourself and your family.

Those who did fall into the Postmodernist trap fell because they do not have the education to detect it, they are only vaguely aware of how their lives are being changed by forces beyond their control. Just like a lion hunts not the strongest animal in the herd but the weak and the young, Postmodernism preys on the young and the ill-informed amongst us. That is why the times demand that we learn how they operate, their doctrine, their methods, and everything about them. We must do this or perish.

Keep in mind these two concepts: the first is “words matter” and the second is: “ideas have consequences” — because one needs words, a lexicon, a vocabulary to express ideas, the enemy is actively trying to control not only public discourse but even language itself. In 1967, John Lennon introduced a new expression to the English language when he sang “I’d like to turn you on.” (A Day in the Life) Lennon was most likely unaware of the implications of that phrase. In the Progressive manual, a person is something similar to a machine with a switch that can be turned on and off. That song is now half a century old. The enemy has perfected that technique. Now they are flooding the airwaves with new concepts and expressions designed to use language as a weapon to conquer and destroy Western Civilization.

One central activity of Modernism and now Postmodernism has been the attack on God’s fatherhood. The first war on God’s paternity was launched in 1517 by the German Reformation against God’s representative, the Holy Father in Rome. In time, Christian nobility, Christian kings, and other paternal figures became targets of the enemy. Today we see a frontal assault on the family and most specifically fathers. The word “patriarchy” has been changed into a pejorative term synonym with “oppression.”

Dr. Jordan Peterson nailed it when he said of the Potmodernists:

“The first thing you need to know about Postmodernism is that it does not have a shred of gratitude, and there is something pathologically wrong with a person who does not have any gratitude, especially when they live in what is –so far– the best of all possible worlds. So if you are not grateful, you are living by resentment, and resentment is about the worse emotion one can possibly experience apart from arrogance. Resentment, arrogance and deceit: there is an evil triad for you!”

Keep the words of Dr Peterson in mind when considering the following facts. Despite of the ups and downs of the world’s economy, Western nations and their very imperfect Capitalism, have managed to take a considerable part of mankind out of poverty. For example, my maternal great-great grandfather was an orphan, a survivor of the cholera epidemics that affected northern Italy in the first half of the 19th century. His name was Tomaso. Whoever took care of him did not know the baby’s parents or their last name. The whole family was dead, so they called him “of his ancestors” (Italian, di antenati, dialectal form: di antinà). That ‘oppressor patriarch’ lived most of his life with a daily income of less than 20 cents of a US dollar, valued in today’s money. He was a serf, he had to work the land to eat. He had as much of a past as he had a future, and he was not exceptional. There were millions like him. On last count, he is the patriarch of over 300 descendants that live in Italy, the USA, Brazil, South Africa, the UK, Hong Kong, Israel and other parts of the world. None of his descendants has to scrape a living as a serf. We have come a long way from the days of antiquity when most of mankind was condemned to a short, brutal life of poverty and strife punctuated by famines, pestilence, and war.

Conclusion: if you can have just a cup of coffee and one egg on toast for breakfast, if you have more than one set of clothes, thank God for your blessings: if you had not been born in the Western World your chances of living a long comfortable life would have been greatly diminished. Yes, we have problems. Yes, the current Capitalist system is far from full compliance with the Social Doctrine of the Church but … to quote my grandmother: “it’s better than munching mice.” Much better, if I may add to Grandma’s wisdom.

Back to the unhappy Postmodern crowd.  They tell us we are all oppressed. They deem some as oppressors, of course. They decide who is oppressed and who is the oppressor. For example, they have done a very good job at convincing black Americans that they are being oppressed. Again, the facts: according to Dr Peterson, if black Americans were a nation, they would be the 18th wealthiest nation in the world. Much better than Argentina or Zimbabwe, a strange twist of history for the descendants of those who were taken from their ancestral lands by force to be slaves in the cotton plantations of the southern United States, or the coffee plantations of Brazil. Life is certainly a lottery: the losing ticket of yesterday can be today’s winner.

I read the news today, oh boy
4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I’d love to turn you on

More about the dangers of Postmodernism in my next post.