Another Narrative Fail

Seriously, things are getting too easy for me lately. The collapse of the Liberal/Progressive Narrative is almost now totally complete. One has to be either mentally challenged or extremely delusional to not see how that Narrative has lost all moral credibility.

Let us just consider the recent atrocity in San Bernadino. The Elite media sprang into action even before the bullets stopped flying. A “reporter” for CNN cautiously informed the public that this latest outrage had “all the earmarks” of an “anti-government militia” or perhaps “the Tea Party.”

Here’s how easy it is:

Monomakhos First Universal Law of Official Reportage: “When a mass shooting happens, the longer it takes the Media to report anything about the shooters, then you can be sure that they’re moving heaven and earth to find out anything about him (or them) that would tie them to the NRA/Tea Party/Militia/whatever.” The corollary of this Law is: “When a shooter is white and/or Christian, the speed with which this is reported is instantaneous and the volume and frequency which this will be broadcast will rise in direct proportion to the number of victims.”

Monomokhos Second Universal Law of Media Reportage: “When it is clear that the perpetrator(s) were radicals/Moslems/minorities, then the velocity with which an official grievance group and/or academic panel is assembled will be in direct proportion to the number of victims.”

See? I just popped those off the top of my head. I’m sure that you could come up with your own if you put your minds to it.

When it became apparent that the perpetrators were a radicalized Moslem couple, our President was “not sure what the”motive” was. Perhaps it was “due to terror.” Or maybe “workplace issues” were in play. Worse, while he was in Paris attending a Global Climate Change summit (take that! Isis!) he went on to criticize his own (?) country yet again: “only in America” are there mass shootings like this he calmly informed us. Considering the fact that he was in the very country where an even worse mass shooting took place just two weeks earlier, leads me to think that he’s ironically challenged. (Can you even begin to imagine what the Elite Media would say if it had been George Bush who said that?)

Gimme a break. Still, it’s been comical to watch the Left grab for any straw whatsoever as they cling at the cliff’s edge.

When it became obvious that the elephant in the room could no longer be ignored, the Elite Media went into high gear in order to misdirect the people. That’s basically their job anymore. A new word entered the public lexicon: “Prayer Shaming.” We are told that the calls for prayer by certain Republican candidates even when this was the express wish of several of the hostages was nothing but a cheap stunt. What was needed was “action.” Yeah, more gun control –that’s the ticket.

Seriously, I don’t know how much longer this insane clown posse that is the Mainstream Media/Ruling Class can continue. Their now-open hatred of God is obvious to a blind man. Eventually, it’s all going to come crashing down.

May God speed the day.

Comments

  1. I saw that there had been a shooting and read about some of the details. A friend of mine said that they don’t know who did this yet. I said, “Let me take a wild stab at it.”

    What I told him was that this happened in California and therefore, until the evidence made it undeniable, there was a strong bias against calling it terrorism and a taboo against calling it Muslim terrorism. But the shootout and the bomb left behind looked like an extremist Muslim plot to me. I just said to wait til tomorrow. The truth can’t be suppressed forever.

    Sure enough, Pakistani and Saudi Muslims, connection to Isis, amateurish but clearly following some terrorist playbook.

    So what is the predictable reaction of the Liberal media? Gun control. Even though everything was purchased legally. Perhaps you have forgotten Paris in the heart of the gun control capital of the world?

    http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

    If you look at the data for the United States from the 1980’s to 2008, you see that the rate of black perpetrated homicide is about 8 times higher than the rate for whites. Thus, the homicide rate in the United States for whites is more comparable to that in Western Europe.

    It’s not about gun control. It’s about a sick subculture.

    Another sick subculture, that of extremist Islam, is responsible for the Cali terrorism attack.

    But I encourage liberals to keep their heads in the sand. It will lead to the destruction of their sick culture.

  2. Daniel E Fall says

    Here is why you are wrong and the obvious missing piece.

    The media is not concerned about left or right. They wish to sensationalize everything.

    CNN is so horrible. Erin Burnett said the other day Laquan McDonald was killed for jaywalking. I was infuriated. And CNNs coverage is so nonstop on one piece that after an hour I could vomit.

    Sorry George, they are not liberal media. They are just bad media. And Fox is no better.

    The only decent outlet is BBC. And even BBC said shooters named.. It should have said Muslim shooters.

    Political correctness is on hyperdrive.

    And for that I will credit the liberals. But for sensationalism, they all do it.

    Anything to whip up a story.

    • Daniel E Fall says

      By the way I’d like to add the media’s unwillingness to say Islam terrorism is really annoying.

      The efforts to not infuriate Muslims is way over the top political correctness.

      I can tell you what this red neck liberal says, but you won’t print it.

      • Lola J. Lee Beno says

        If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and dives like a duck, well, then, it’s a fake duck!

    • Lori Goldberg says

      Exactly.

  3. The burning question is, “Did Syed Farook take out rental car insurance?” Just kidding. The real burning question is, “Who is Tashfeen Malik?” It’s day 3 and there is no picture, despite the fact that pics and fingerprints are required for immigration and driver’s license. Is she the personification of everything that is wrong with the Immigration non-process, or is something else going on? Is her background being electronically invented as we speak?

  4. The chickens are coming home to roost. The US’s playing footsy with Salafist extremists, the overthrow of secular governments and their replacement with religious extremists in Iraq, Libya , Egypt and Syria are finally bringing us to “payback” time. You reap what you sow.

  5. How do you know that, if you wait long enough, an ordinary rank-and-file Moslem won’t become a “radical” Moslem?

    • Michael Bauman says

      There is the rub. The founders of my parish were forced out of their homeland by a Moslem pogrom against them often carried out by neighbors whom they had been at peace with for some time.

      • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

        What nationality were the Muslim perpetrators of that pogrom,” Michael Baumann? What nationality were those founders of your (unnamed) parish?

        • Michael Bauman says

          Syrian/Lebanese. What other Orthodox have been pushed out of their homeland my Muslims often with the collusion of the west in the last 100 or so years. You know that. Oh and you continually spell my last name incorrectly. Only one n.

          Those stories are part of the tradition of my parish which I have named frequently on this blog BTW and which unless your memory is failing drastically you know. So don’t try to paint me with your spurious “anonymity” brush.

          I know you think that only Russian Orthodox can conduct pogroms but you would be wrong. And your question is simply an egregious attempt to raise a spurious ad hominem suggestion and continue to be an apologist for Muslim treatment of Christians.

          By the way, the IOCC is selling for donations a small lapel pin with the Arabic N on it and the caption, “I, too, am a Nazarene” as a way of raising some money and standing in solidarity with our Christian brothers and sisters being persecuted by ISIS. A persecution which I am sure you will find some way to excuse and minimize. Because the victims are anonymous?

          • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

            “My parish was founded by victims of a Muslim pogrom?” Survivors you mean?
            And would that be like the Christian pogrom when they entered Jerusalem in the First Crusade, or like the Christian pogrom of the 4th Crusade in Constantinople? Or like the Christian pogroms which Roman Catholics visited on Lutheran towns in German and vIce versa in the Christian THIRTY YEARS RELIGIOUS WARS? How about the religious pogroms visited on the Muslims and Jews of PREVIOUSLY multi-religious Spain, which resulted in Spanish (Sephardic) Jews being scattered all over the tolerant and “ecumenist” Ottoman Empire?
            If you are going to label every victory by Muslims in Lebanon a pogrom, does that mean that the Christian militias’ victories there, and those of the Druzes, etc., are also “pogroms?”

          • Hieromonk Mark (Kerr) says

            Michael, Serbian Orthodox have also been pushed out of their ancient homeland of Kosovo and Metochia, and the relentless pressure of genocide and cultural obliteration against the faithful remnant clinging to their patrimony and the ancient, sacred and culturally important monuments continues, perpetrated by Albanian Muslim terrorists. Nationality doesn’t really seem to play much of a role in the situation; it is not in any way a defining factor. Islam is the defining element and the root (i.e., radical) source of the problem. It is an idolatrous, barbaric, theocratic, globalist totalitarian ideology deceptively called a ‘religion’. And the personal failings of individuals and groups identified as ‘Christian’ to live by the Gospel in no rational way can be equated with what Islam is and what the results of fidelity to its teaching are.

            • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

              Hieromonk Mark. Who has visited more harm on ORTHODOX Serbia, Albanian Atheists and Muslims or Roman Catholic Croats?

    • How do you know that, if you wait long enough, an ordinary rank-and-file Christian won’t become a “radical” murderer at the local Planned Parenthood?

      • Michael Warren says

        The greater probability is that Planned Parenthood will murder more babies and then sell their remains for profit to the highest bidder.

        But that is the acceptable violence of liberals who are licensed to take human life, isn’t it? You all fantasize about politicizing murders to further your lunatic fringe narratives, literally praying to be enabled with a pretext to engage in persecutiom and purges. Simply sickening.

        Listen to yourselves, swooning in anticipation to celebrate tragedy while you participate in a trade of human vivisection Dr. Mengele himself would blush at…

        • M. Stankovich says

          Mr Warren,

          First let me recommend two things: up to 24 mg per day of Ondansetron, a 5-HT3 antagonist for nausea & vomiting; I would caution you that the FDA has not approved it for melodramatic “sickening,” ineffective for what Kierkegaard and Sartre have described as nausée, which is an existential problem. Secondly, you need to educate yourself in the reality of the “brokerage” of human tissue and “specimen,” which in our society, is completely legal. As one who lives in the in one of the largest university and privately sponsored research-oriented cities in the US, Planned Parenthood is no more guilty or culpable than the hundreds of facilities who practice the identical “vocation.” We are a culture dependent upon the next “medical miracle” derived from “tissue” donation. You purposely confuse the issues: Planned Parent does not murder for profit; they murder, then charge the accepted rate to prepare and deliver “specimens” like every other ghoulish broker in the business, pursuant to prices established by the FDA. No more, no less. There is no auction to the “highest bidder.”

          I, for one, tire of self-righteous, mouth-breathing neck-beards such as your self who finger point & scold “liberals” on the internet as if you were Elijah confronting the heathen. Mr. Warren, I was “separated” from my job last week because of my extended illness – and I’ll let the lawyers argue the matter – but it had nothing to do with my extended illness. All the lawyers and the California Dept. of Fair Employment believe it was because I was vocal about my ethical opinions regarding abortion, homosexuality, and transgender, refusing to follow the county “policy” of accepting as “normal” what the Church condemns as sinful. Do not puff your chest in self-righteousness at me. You are a “sickened” paper tiger, bloated with what Hamlet declared, “Words, words, words.”

          • Michael Warren says

            Yes, I understand that narco-sensualism is a pillar of the white, liberal, paternalist plantation. And although I am nauseated by the obscenity of liberalism, as a social democrat I find my solutions in free speech and the revolution, and I don’t look for an escape in drugs. I am a man, not a dehumanized liberal.

            I honestly feel pity for you, because you rejected Orthodoxy and Truth for a narcissism which will die with you, and, indeed, a hall of mirrors playing tricks on your soul and never allowing you to see reality as it is. Sartre would define you as one addicted to opiates, for you never will allow reality to emerge so that you can live a true existenz. Whereas, Berdiaev would also pity you for creating a subjective construct of self mythology preventing you from truly living toward objectivized christocentrism.

            Human life begins at conception. That’s just science. No, because debauched liberals have made laws which can declare life unworthy of life does in no way diminish the inherent humanity of that life. Nor are these laws legal in the sense of humanity. Just as it is immoral and evil to buy NAZI leather goods made with human skin or mattresses made from human hair or soap made from human tissue, it is obscenely immoral to trade in the vivisected remains of human children! What you wrote is bathotic, debauched, ideological pornography attempting to amnesty crimes against humanity. The fact that you try to rationalize something as heinous and foul as the trade in vivisected human remains indicts you and your ideology as craven and reprobate evil. People who thought as you do were tried for crimes against humanity at Nuremberg. There is nothing even human to your point of view, not to mention Orthodox.

            Your words indict the evil of your sick and twisted liberal ideology. It is pathetique in the fullest existentialist understanding of the world. It celebrates moral fugue and anomie to create a reality Dr. Mengele would find repulsive. Your liberal gestalt is profane.

            Words which come to mind when I read your insane rant are bezobrazie, urod, chudovische, zlo. I was oppressed by your lack of humanity.

            One last thing in regard to your polemic: do you want to know why your effette liberalism is a dead ideology, outside of the blatant evil you advocate? It is dead because it refuses to take responsibility for its history of failures and to change. Instead it would rather abort morality and human decency in the hopes the zeitgheist would one day allow it to pull humanity deeper into a lumpen sewer of rationalization for evil. Narcissist neopaganism aside, liberalism crucifies all objective standards to fit round pegs into square holes and achieve whatever ideological end justified by any and every immoral means. It is a mutant ideology of orcs and spiritual vampires. And your defense of commerce in human vivisection here shouts that to the world. Dr. Mengele is ashamed for you.

            • Daniel E Fall says

              Actually Mr Warren, you distort Stankovich horribly.

              It is clear you are a better reader than writer.

              • Michael Warren says

                Seems you are a better ad hominem critic than polemicist. But of course you aren’t unagendized.

              • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                You almost “hit the nail on the head,” Daniel. It’s too bad the draft was discontinued–it got some people out of harmful ruts. Oh, how horrible and pitiable–“unagendized!” And always the “Of course….” next comes “Actually….”

                M. Stankovich, too, really nailed it!

            • Michael Bauman says

              Mr. Warren, I suggest you calm your outrage and try listen to what M. Stankovich is saying. He writes in a difficult bombastic style (much like yours). A style that does a great disservice to himself and his beliefs. As one who has contended with him for many years now and still disagrees with him in substantial ways in much the same manner as you do here today, he is not the person you paint him to be. I had to repent of my vituperation. Please re-think.

              • Michael Warren says

                Thank you for your advice, but anyone demanding amnesty for the trade in the vivisected remains of human children is advocating reprobate evil. The fact he derides others for condemning this heinous and black practice attempting to shout them down is self condemnation before my response even rebuts his morally bankrupt, liberal diatribe.

            • Peter A. Papoutsis says

              Michael has constantly asserted the Holy Scriptures, Sacred Tradition, Canons and Fathers of the Church. Where is he wrong? Who made you the arbiter of all things Orthodox? This is the fundamentalist bs that needs to be denounced and exposed. You should apologize to Michael, and seek to be much more humble in your life.

              You need Jesus.

              Peter

              • Michael Warren says

                Unlike renovationists, we in the Orthodox Cburch don’t have innovators as authorities. We in the Orthodox Church recognize innovators as the founders of heterodox movements and departures from orthopraxis. We in the Orthodox Church have Holy Canons and Holy Fathers which anathemize such innovators as schismatics and heretics. We have the Holy Fathers and the Mind of CHRIST. Where it seems in the mind of every neopagan Eastern Rite Protestant Renovationist the Church, the Holy Canons, the Holy Fathers, the Mind of CHRIST, the historical and cultural orthopraxis of every local church, all that embodies the life of Orthodoxy in the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition is ‘fundamentalist bs” because it rejects their iconoclastic worldview as heterodox, heretical.

                So the choice then is two millenia of CHRIST’s Church Orthodoxy and fidelity to her or a century of Eastern Rite Protestant innovation which knows better than the Church and has self-proclaimed, original “authorities” in the place of the Holy Fathers, Holy Scripture, Holy Canons, orthopraxis, Tradition expressing the Mind of CHRIST and saving the People of GOD in theosis. Before anyone decides let him understand that renovationism calls for ritualism of/for/by men in nominalized humanism accomodating the secular world while Orthodoxy leads one in theosis in Life in CHRIST JESUS. Salvation in CHRIST in Orthodoxy or death in man in Renovationism: that is the choice. Renovationism knows better than CHRIST and HIS Church in its orthodoxism. Or people can choose Orthodoxy, but they can’t have both and be Orthodox. Orthodoxy is mutually exclusive from Renovationism which is an heretical counterfeit of it. I urge people to follow CHRIST and avoid the organ grinders to save their souls in the Orthodox Church.

                • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                  Michael. This is an UNTRUTH of yours:
                  “we in the Orthodox Church don’t have innovators as authorities.”

                  NOT TRUE!

                  “Behold, I am doing a new thing.” “..I bring you a new commandment….”
                  ..make all thing new…”

                  • Michael Warren says

                    All innovators are anathemized in the Orthodox Church, Your Grace. I am sure you are familiar with the Anathema service on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Mr Warren must be among those who objected when I used to serve what HE calls “the anathema service,’ but which is called. in fact, by educated Orthodox: “The Office of Orthodoxy.” The most prominent features of The Office of Orthodoxy are THREE: the Creed, the Polychronia, and the Anathemata, All sing the Creed, the Protodeacon intones the Polychronia and the Anathemata , while the choir/people respond with Many Years or Anathema at the appropriate times. I suspect that I am MUCH MORE FAMILIAR with what Mr Warren calls the Anathema service than he is. Has it EVER been served in Detroit? Has he been present when HIS bishop served it? There is NO heresy called “innovation.” Some in Holy Russia formed an ad hoc group called, usually, “Renovators” They are often included amongst those anathematized in Russian Diocesan Cathedrals, but not always,
                      The present Archbishop of San Francisco, Archbishop Benjamin served as Archdeacon several times with me in the old days in the Office of Orthodoxy,
                      When has Mr Warren prayed at the Office of Orthodoxy, in what Cathedral and what Hierarch served it?

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Innovators and innovations by the Holy Canons and at the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

                      It is pointless to write anything to you, because your sole interest is spam, personal attacks and cyber stalking. That is simply pathetic. Respect your episcopal dignity, Your Grace.

                      My personal life is none of your business, Your Grace.

                • Peter A. Papoutsis says

                  Settle down Francis. Put a little water in your wine.

                  Peter

            • M. Stankovich says

              Mr. Warren,

              If you were any dumber, more-self-righteous, or unjustifiably arrogant, your head would rattle when you walk. You are a classic troll, come here to feed your obviously weak ego needs by mocking everyone – pious people whom you know nothing about, have never met, nor heard speak, including a Hierarch of the Church – by your “name-calling,” labeling, and disparagement with all the key phrases directly from Fox News: liberal gestalt, narcissist neopaganism, “a lumpen sewer of rationalization for evil.” Words, words, words, pal. You would wilt and flee the human tragedy I have witnessed and attempted to intervene in fear: the most despicable, loathsome, and rejected of God’s creation. And I continually bear in mind that “For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matt. 7:2) You would judge my faith – pitying me for having “rejected Orthodoxy and Truth for a narcissism which will die with [me]?” “Dr. Mengele is ashamed for you.” You bait for a fight? Not with me. You are a classic troll, and not even a good one. Be gone. You are toxic to this forum.

              • Michael Warren says

                It is all too telling how you readily are the hero of your own narratives, transfer to others the indictments of your own poor formation and behavior and even try to label a social democrat with a faux news smear.

                Will you be trying to associate me with the KKK or the murderers of JFK next? Will I be found again guilty for impugning the evil of the trade of the remains of vivisected children? Is it arrogant and sanctimonious to insist on inalienable, human rights? Or is it just fashionable for liberals to whine when they are shown to have no clothes and be the advocates of horror, terror, evil not known since Hitler’s death camps?

                Seems all my words have visceral meaning and they fit the condemnation of liberal debauchery with sovereign intensity.

                Your liberal narrative is failing not because of my social democratic and Orthodox Christian rebuttal but because it is a contemporary antireligion of amnesty for all that is false, immoral and evil, bending the knee to a narcissistic, neopagan baal. Your self indulgence which you agitate for is the evil and degeneracy discrediting everything you stand for. You are responsible for the darkness you believe, its sin, your behavior.

                You just justified and amplified every word I wrote in a tawdry pastiche of liberal irresponsibility and moral fugue.

                Frankly, as an Orthodox Christian, I can say it is the obligation of all well adjusted and pious coreligionists to reject the Anti-Christian, maladapted anti-formation your reprobate liberalism and depraved moral renovationism represents. Don’t be surprised by people living by moral standards trying to pursue Orthodox piety rejecting the base and unadulterated evil your liberal mutation of renovationism represents.

                • M. Stankovich says

                  Mr. Warren,

                  Your rhetoric is all too familiar of individuals who have run headlong through this and Fr. Han’s site with the identical jingoism, insult, judgment, and “righteous assault,” only to vanish when they have exhausted themselves, or are eventually ignored. You are on a manic roll, compelled to comment to everyone over everything with “dank memes,” punctuated with perseverations of “zombies,” “fugues,” “liberalism,” and “renovation,” all of which are completely empty phrases, void of content & common sense. You do not tower over me (cf. Gen. 11) with your verbosity.

                  You would suggest that I support amnesty for abortion? You are more ignorant than I imagined. Apparently your mania precludes you from reading: I said it is the reality. And what was my point? If you would stop Planned Parenthood then stop all brokering of human tissue and specimens for research; and back to the reality: it will never happen because our society is addicted to “medical miracles” derived from research conducted with human tissue and other materials. 25 states have enacted “Right to Try” laws that require pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to provide terminally ill patients with trial medications & devices even in Phase I clinical trials (establishing safety phase). What does that tell you? Tough talk, but trolls like you are nothing but “words, words, words.”

                  You say my “liberal narrative is failing?” A cheap, empty troll convention you all use which has no meaning nor content. You are all alike, grabbing as much negative attention as possible, insulting as many as possible, and then running. If you were near me, I would recreate the encounter of our Blessed Father Nicholas The Wonderworker with Arius, and slap the vulgarity out of your mouth. You are an arrogant troll. Nothing more, nothing less.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    Nothing but petty attempts at guilt by association and ad hominem.

                    This is why a mind on MSNBC is something Barnum and Bailey would have showcased in their freakshows as an abnormal oddity. But of course keep on trying to vilefy the message by personally insulting the messenger. We understand that is all you have. Hate.

                    This is precisely why your subhuman and rejected liberalism is vanquished in the war of ideas. It is patently flawed, degenerate and evil.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    Again not only the hero of your own narratives, but the equal of St. Nicholas in your alternate reality contending with the “Arian heresy” of human rights, that no life is unworthy of life much the less human vivisection. What arrogance!!! How dare anyone challenge the vile and reprobate liberal, renovationist narrative?!

                    Delusional, sanctimonious and sociopathetic. Your religion is fugue and your church is anomie. Your standard of sainthood is Anton LaVey.

            • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

              M. Warren! Define your “narco-SENSUALISM” PLEASE!

              • Michael Warren says

                It is not my narco-sensualism, Your Grace, but the libertine debauchery of liberal McCivilization indulging consumption for pleasure, profligacy, promiscuity through the use of narcotics. Moral iconoclasm by doped up masses led to degeneracy on the paternalistic, technocratic, limousine, liberal plantation. Something the generation of Woodstock and send indulgent, pagan excess defined as its culture and foisted on America.

                You can appreciate, Your Grace, by renting the vintage film Woodstock or simply reading the platform of the Democrat party.

                • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                  Michael can’t it! As I thought. (Or doesn’t know what definition is, thinking it means “any examples I can scrape up or make up”!

                  • Michael Warren says

                    Actually, you have been answered, Your Grace, with a full definition. The film Woodstock can illustrate the meaning for you. Parts of it I believe are available on YouTube.

                    Then the concept can be amplified for you by reading the writings of Roshack, Foucault, Marcuse and Chomsky. Don’t forget Bakunin’s Revolutionary catechism as well.

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Michael says I can define what he CAN’T define! Does he know the difference between a definition and an example of a word defined?
                      Daniel and Michael S. really nailed it with him! He can’t think of a definition of “narco-sensualism”, a word he made up himself and thought SOUNDED like something! Maybe it could mean DEA Agents visiting a bordello!

                • M. Stankovich says

                  Is there someone who actually comprehends this statement:

                  It is not my narco-sensualism, Your Grace, but the libertine debauchery of liberal McCivilization indulging consumption for pleasure, profligacy, promiscuity through the use of narcotics. Moral iconoclasm by doped up masses led to degeneracy on the paternalistic, technocratic, limousine, liberal plantation.

                  “Limousine,” you say? “Plantation?” And do you actually intend to attempt to silence everyone who challenges you with “Do not address me personally again” on Mr. Michalopoulos’ forum? I strongly suspect you are a troll on the decline when you must attempt to order silence so disrespectfully on another man’s forum. For me, having to watch someone attempt to open one of those impossibly packaged-in-plastic items, then resort to a sharp knife or scissor in frustration makes me cringe; once you cut yourself, however, I’m comfortable caring for the wound. It’s the crash & burn part that makes me anxious. I could be wrong – though I am not a betting man – but you have repeated your “position” on nearly every matter I can think of with basically the same set of catch-phrase and jargon-laden rhetoric to last me well into 2016. You are overbearing, mean, judgmental, cynical, and in too many cases incorrect in your assertions, making the effort to correct you too burdensome, and frankly a waste of time. And the sad part is that, on the occasions you do make an insightful comment, you immediately obliterate its significance by insult, arrogance, or disrespect. My friend Michael Bauman referred to me as “bombastic,” which I acknowledge and frequently regret; but I am correctable and admit so when I am wrong. That is the opposite of you, the troll, Mr. Warren, because you invade and attempt to take every discussion you enter hostage whether by discussion, insult, judgment, or flat out meanness. And you are deep in it, brother.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    You still are the hero of your own narrative trying to float a personal attack against me to try and silence me because you have lost the argument.

                    I have elucidated my position and explained what I have written. Those who aren’t their own messiahs AKA delusional trolls ask for clarification when they don’t understand what is written. Then they read the answers given them. And when all they have is ignorant personal attacks to offer, they are asked to take that elsewhere.

                    You don’t know the difference between a SOCIAL DEMOCRAT and a Republican. Neither do your friends, yet you expect to be taken seriously with your contrived and immoral nonsense?!

                    You floated a reprobate argument for the trade in the vivisected remains of human children on the ridiculous attempt at linking the legality of what Planned Parenthood is doing with some anti rightwing rant against other corporate entities and lumped me in with them by some sort of asinine suggestions for drug therapy and continue to offer only childish KOZ type character assassination in the hopes of finding something to stick.

                    I am a SOCIAL DEMOCRAT. Look it up. But it is pointless. You are an irrational liberal refusing to admit that the failed ideology you advocate uses consumerism, sensualism and narcotics use as a means of controling the working class and keeping it on the liberal plantation for mob agitation. Narco-Sensualism used on the limousine liberal plantation.

                    You keep writing words, words, words because your liberal talking points box you in and render you incapable of understanding ideas, ideas, ideas. Dialogue with a liberal puppet like yourself you shout is not only pointless but an exercise only a remedial education for you and yours can make possible. Like a puppet on a string you do and say what the liberal, renovationist echo chambers tell you with a smugness tenth graders are known for. Anything else is above your paygrade

                    But here you are blathering about nothing, caressing your fallen liberal idol (mostly of yourself) and personally attacking me because I find what you believe and stand for repugnant, evil, while being totally disinterested in your personal life and whatever identity you have chosen for yourself. You resent that I speak out against what you believe and here you are whining about it with typical, liberal hystrionics. That’s all you have to offer, and no one cares. So shout a little louder with your friends that you intend to continue in insipid personal attacks without any substance because I reject what you and they stand for as reprobate evil and can elucidate why. Keep shouting your concession with invective and ad hominem spam. Everyone can see that is all your tired and ridiculous ideology has to offer.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    If you can’t understand English and metaphor or simple political science, why are you troubling others with your ignorant and crass nonsense?

                    There are proper ways to ask for clarification of terms and concepts which don’t begin by offering prescriptions, move to stupid personal attacks, evolve into equating social democrats with republicans then have you ridiculously morphing from messiah to St. Nicholas to Muhammad Ali. If there were a country called hubris, you would work in its sanitation department. The word bathos is insulted when you are mentioned with it in the same sentence. Here you are offering invective to act as a smokescreen for reprobate evil. Trolling and spam.

                    Do you really believe nonsensical personal attacks are in any way going to advance your agenda? Liberal, renovationist dilletantism aside, you and yours are just desperate.

                  • Daniel E Fall says

                    I honestly feel sorry for the guy.

                    He has taken all positions on the left side of the bell spectrum and moved them to a common point well left of where many actually belong.

                    Many folks don’t understand that political division is its own empire. Think of them as Rush Limbaugh’s fish. He feeds them a daily dose of right wing nostalgia/hate/ideals where they all reminisce about 1776.

                    Opposing views are good-both ways.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      Bathos. The one to feel sorry for seems to be yourself who not too long ago was trying to affix the conservative Republican label to myself in the hopes of somehow saving your failed liberal agitprop.

                      Well, that didn’t happen so now your political illiteracy shifts focus and morphs into an ad hominem attack because that is all you can comfortably hope to accomplish. You don’t have to share uninformed liberal talking points and engage in personal attacks.

                      This is precisely why liberals are obsolete eyesores

                      Or you can take your talking points back to KOZ to share with all the other minds rotting in the GIGO of MSNBC.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      I honestly feel sorry for a pointless liberal with nothing to say who feels compelled to try and bolster his low self esteem by insulting people he neither knows nor understands.

                      Seems to be a few of them about.

            • While you zeal is admirable, Michael, it is painfully obvious that you neither know Mr. Stankovich nor understood what he wrote. His was no defense of human vivisection, I assure you. Quite the contrary.

              • Michael Warren says

                He wrote of the acceptability of the trade in the vivisected remains of children and tried to shout down people opposed to it. I think that is all the foundation for my rebuttal necessary.

                I don’t want to know such people. As an Orthodox Christian, I am taught to avoid and flee evil while doing good in its place.

                • Once again, Mr. Warren, please re-read Mr. Stankovich’s post. I quote from his post (emphasis mine):

                  As one who lives in the in one of the largest university and privately sponsored research-oriented cities in the US, Planned Parenthood is no more guilty or culpable than the hundreds of facilities who practice the identical “vocation.” …they murder, then charge the accepted rate to prepare and deliver “specimens” like every other ghoulish broker in the business….All the lawyers and the California Dept. of Fair Employment believe [I was fired] because I was vocal about my ethical opinions regarding abortion, homosexuality, and transgender, refusing to follow the county “policy” of accepting as “normal” what the Church condemns as sinful.

                  Say whatever else you will about Mr. Stankovich, but your accusation is completely unfounded. He not only stands (with “words”) but is willing to suffer for the Faith of Christ and His Church.

                  Mr. Stankovich, in his often “in your face” style, is rightly calling your attention to the fact that so-called Conservatives, as well as the so-called Liberals you (often rightly) decry are equally complicit in what you, he, and every Orthodox Christian understands to be pure evil.

                  Your zeal is admirable, as I said; but you really do owe him an apology.

                  • Michael Warren says

                    I do not owe an apology to anyone so vicious who wantonly rationalizes the trade in the visected remains of human children. Or did you not get the boorish attempt at creating a contrived moral equivalence between Planned Parenthood and other businesses to float his unbalanced screed against myself and everyone else who despises what this would be liberal, renovationist messiah stands for? It isn’t happening, and I suggest you allow him to fight and lose his own battles without badgering the people who point out the blatent evil and moral bankruptcy of his position and obscene worldview.

                    If anything, his over the top, poseur attempt at elitism by its very nature warranted him his comeuppance, outside of the reprobate vivisectionist propaganda.

                    Your sympathy for the man is your issue, not mine and not the public’s. Perhaps you are enamored of his feigned, pharmaceutical acumen, dilletante agitprop, and loathesome faux elitism, but i can assure you that his orcish ways are sociopathetic and inappropriate. Please trouble me no further. I have nothing more for you.

                    Thank you.

                    • The truth is that I have never met Mr. Stankovich and do not know him other than from his postings on this and some other forums. I never cared much for Mr. Stankovich’s “in you face” style of commentary (nor for yours), but at least he reads and understands a person’s post before responding. You, on the other hand, are in such a rush to find fault and assign your silly labels that you cannot even bring yourself to attempt an understanding of what has been written. You expect your readers to wade through your sometimes delusional tirades in order to discern whatever truth may be found therein, but you steadfastly refuse to return the favor.

                      What is it about his writing that anyone – liberal Planned Parenthood or conservative big pharma researchers – who participates in the trade of parts of aborted children is committing murder that do you not understand? Moral equivalence? Absolutely! How is this a defense of Planned Parenthood and human vivisection?

                      He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      I suggest you substantively challenge what is “delusional” instead of using it as an ad hominem crutch to say nothing more than you don’t like what I write. What is delusional is justifying crass and contrived personal attacks to use them as an oversimplified means of grouping ideological opposition together to not only vilefy but then go on to rationalize the evil policies of liberalism. And then put it all under an umbrella talking about trolling where one casts oneself as some sort of enlightened messiah. Ridiculous prelest and demonization. That’s what delusional.

                      Instead of personal attacks learn to respect or ignore positions you neither understand nor can substantively appreciate. It helps your position when you ASK about what you don’t understand instead of crouching it in dilletante invective. That’s called dialogue.

                      Reiterating that the trade in the vivisected remains of human children is justified because conservative x or y do the same thing or whatever… HELLO, I AM A SOCIAL DEMOCRAT! That means I advocate a reevaluation of who controls the means of production to put it mildly. I regard capital as exploitative, amoral and retrograde. Lumping me in with the corporate prostitutes with ridiculous personal attacks to then say x does almost the same thing legally along witb PP is about as relevant to my position as disputing the density of volcanic ash at Mt. ST Helen’s as a function of corporate pollution. Non sequiter, ad hominem nonsense.

                      And the trade in the vivisected remains of human children is reprobate and still patently evil while advocacy for it or rationalized ploys of human equivalence are simply reprobate calls for amnesty of evil. In this case crouched in politically motivated personal attacks which even a semiliterate missing link would find preposterous.

                    • No doubt you are the people,
                      And wisdom will die with you.

                      Thank you for your reply. It will save me a great deal of time. A blessed Nativity to you.

                    • Michael Warren says

                      The Peace of GOD!

                      Wisdom and Truth are immortal as faculties of the WORD.

                      A blessed Nativity to all who celebrate it for whatever reason on the 25/12, December! Happy St. Spiridon’s/St. Herman’s Feast to the absolute majority of Orthodox Christians who don’t!

                      As an aside, my church is new calendar and that is a sorry division which has no need to be rehashed in controversy. The divisiveness of thirteen days at this critical hour is an indulgence we cannot afford. I and my family, however, celebrate the LORD’s Nativity on the 7, January/25, December with the Mother Church, Mt. Athos, Jerusalem, Belgrade, Tblisi, with the 80%+ majority of Orthodox Christians and the historical Church.

                      CHRIST is Born! Glorify HIM!

          • Gregory Manning says

            Give ’em hell Michael! I, of course, don’t know all the players or the details of your battle, but it pleases me no end to imagine they have picked a fight with the wrong man! May they rue the day they did so!

            • Michael Warren says

              Thank you very much for your encouragement. But remember morality, human decency, Orthodox formation, rejection of evil and sin is the obligation of us all.

              • Gregory Manning says

                Sorry Michael W. My “childish”* remarks were directed at Michael S. Frankly, I wish there were something about your presence here I could encourage but, so far, it doesn’t look promising. Couldn’t you consider another approach–something less vexing–honey rather than vinegar–that sort of thing? Speaking as a gay man of some years I’ve grown weary of outrage and generally avoid reading it when I encounter it.

                *see Michael S.’s remark below at Dec. 12.

            • M. Stankovich says

              Mr. Manning,

              I personally rue nothing because – in the words of Mohammad Ali – ” I fear nobody and I’m as pretty as a young girl.” And even as I find your comment childish, greetings on the Feast of St. Spyridon.

          • Antiochian Friend says

            Mr. Stankovich,

            Please forgive me if this question is impertinent. Having been separated unjustly from your job, have you likewise been separated from your health insurance or been forced to sign up for COBRA (which is often unaffordable) in the midst of your extended illness? If so, it would seem that the Parable of the Good Samaritan is playing out on this forum, and we aren’t acquitting ourselves well. If your treatment is being interrupted or jeopardized by this adverse employment action, Mr. Michalopoulos has my permission to give you my contact information. I would gladly give a denarius or two if it would help you.

            • M. Stankovich says

              Dear Antiochian Friend,

              I’m sorry for not seeing this earlier, and I am genuinely moved by your charity! You epitomize Matt. 25 and surely God will richly bless your intention! Fortunately, the insulting severance they offered me – while I was still hospitalized – was to continue my health insurance for the month of December, after which I am again covered by my wife’s insurance. They “awarded” me a severance package of several weeks pay, and after deducting everything they could possibly deduct (including a fee for a key to the door!), I was sent a check for less than $12.00. I leave it in the hands of the State office of Fair Employment (the CA equivalent of the EEOC). A joyous Nativity Feast to you, my friend, and with gratitude and thanks from my heart!

      • Rdr Thomas says

        Human behavior falls all across the spectrum, but when you start to see more occurrences of a particular behavior within a group, you stop looking at the behavior of single individual and begin to look at what is groups those individuals together. It’s not rocket science.

        This sophomoric rhetoric where one simply flips a statement around with different names inserted does not rise to the level of conversation even.

        • Michael Warren says

          There is good and bad in everyone is not an effective suasion in combating ideological systems which are clearly reprobate and perpetrate evil. It is morally derelict, trite and banal actually. Nor is relativism an Orthodox response to amorality and social decay. That is what has gotten us to the point of cultural subhumanity.

          We are taught by Holy Mother Church to worship the CREATOR and war with sin not deify a fallen creation to justify neopagan debauchery.

    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

      Which is more dangerous, a radical Muslim or a radical Christian, J. Clivas?

      • Carl Kraeff says

        Your Grace–Please let me take a stab at this. I lived my first 15 years in Istanbul, Turkey and I am somewhat familiar with Islam and Muslims. If I may, I would like to be more precise with the terminology so I will define a radical Muslim or Christian as one who kills in the name of religion.

        A radical Muslim is justified by the holy books of Islam and thus may be considered a good Muslim. For example, what the ISIS has been doing to the Yezidis and Christians is in complete consonance with the Qur’an and Sunnah (Hadith and Sira).

        A radical Christian is not justified by the holy books of Christianity and thus is a bad Christians. For example, what the Inquisition did in Spain and what the Protestants and Catholics did to each other during the Thirty Years War are not in consonance with the Holy Bible, especially the New Testament.

        To answer your question directly, radical Muslims and Christians are equally dangerous, even though their method of murder may be different.

        • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

          But Carl you say that radical Muslims and radical Christians are equally dangerous and that in this, the radical Muslims are being true to their teachings, while radical Christians are betraying their teachings?

  6. Michael Warren says

    The media acts as a liberal ministry of truth funded by monied interests to advance an agenda aimed at manipulating the mob for the interests of the limousine liberal plantation. What tells you everything you need to know is what they intentionally distort or refuse to report.

    • Terry Myles says

      Has it dawned on anyone that the “news” has become the vapid recital of press releases from the entertainment and commercial interests delivered by politically correct (right and left), blow dried, pretty faces that keep us focused on holiday parties and Christmas shopping. The dumbing down was as obvious during conservative as well as liberal regimes. It seems that most groupings whether religious, social or political are circling the wagons and listening to their compatriots to the exclusion of contrary opinions.

      • Daniel E Fall says

        It is rampant sensationalism.

        Pretty sure Erin Burnett on CNN recently said the kid in Chicago was killed for jaywalking, unless I heard her wrong.

        What is the outcome of such crap?

        It pisses off the social liberal because they know it isn’t true.
        It pisses of the conservative because they know it isn’t true.
        It fires up BLM bigtime and probably makes the BLM movement bigger which gives the media more fodder.

        It feeds itself.

        They are the cause of the great divide. Whenever my staunchly conservative neighbor sends me conservative media bits.. I generally first recognize the fodder factor.

        Rush Limbaugh, Stephanie Miller, Bill O’Reilly, Rachel Maddow…. all of them make money by firing up their audience and it is never to suggest the other side has good ideas.

        And most of the people posting here are Orthodox, we have a common belief system, and oddly enough many of us find common ground.

  7. Peter A. Papoutsis says

    The MSA with that stupid prayer shaming stunt definitely crossed the line. They were irrelevant and a bunch of liars in the past now they are completely and utterly anti God and filled with hatred towards us Christians. If we were not awake before this should wake us up. They hate us they have no use for us and we are beneath contemptible for them. How can this nation stay united with a type of garbage that is being put out on a daily basis by the lame stream media?

    I cannot even begin to tell you how infuriating that prayer shaming stunt was to me and almost every other member of my family and friends that read it or became known of it. For the first time I am truly scared for my children’s future not just economically but spiritually. They are going to be Christians and not just in a non-christian land, but Christian in an anti and hostile Christian land.

    For all of those on this blog there are Orthodox and lean to the left understand something they don’t like you either because you are Orthodox Christians. So you can keep on spewing your leftist and progressive ideology but at the end of the day if you’re dedicated to Christ and to His Holy Orthodox Church you are on this country’s hit list.

    So regardless of their prayer shaming we as Christians should pray to Almighty God for His mercy for his grace and for his justice. God has been and always will be our protector especially in times like this.

    May Almighty God bestow his blessings on us all ma events like this help us to realize then we need to stick together as Orthodox Christians because they are coming for us and they’re not even hiding it anymore.

    Peter A. Papoutsis

  8. Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

    Don’t you have CBS in Texas, George?
    Anyhow all the news consisted of interviews with thr Sherif until the FBI FINALLY announced that the shooting was an act of Terror. Your beff should be with Law Enforcement, George. The Sheriff and ALL the local and state and federal lae enforcement personnel paiently anf Steadfastly REFUSED to get baited into the kind rant-producing “revelations” like yours. We had these law enforcement reports around the clock here in L.A., every 15 minutes 24 hours a day here in L.A. on, among other stations KNX-FM. The local CBS outlet. It must have been achingly frustrating for some.
    There were no “narrative fails.” because there was no narrative at all!! Why crank up the propaganda machine, George?

    • Is the local mosque in Los Angeles interested in adopting a retired Orthodox bishop? We might know of one who would be interested.

      http://www.dailystormer.com/obama-says-solution-to-moslems-killing-you-is-to-have-no-guns/

      • M. Stankovich says

        Who are you, you anonymous coward, to mock the anointed of God, who served in the Vineyard of your Lord for a nearly a quarter-century; whose instructive writings continue to dominate the website of the DOW with his wisdom, and a Hierarch’s patient & loving directives & instruction? He is both chosen & beloved by our God and held & protected for the job he did and never bringing scandal to his ministry. Do you disagree with his comments, or dislike him personally? Bear up & shut up! Argue as you will, but you violate the Holy Tradition of the Church to mock, or disregard the highest calling a man is bestowed by God Himself. Shame on you & others who would disrespect a man held in honour higher than the Angels themselves. If you need direction, I point you On the Priesthood by our Blessed Fr. Chrysostom. You need to apologize and ask his forgiveness.

        • Gregory Manning says

          THANK YOU Michael!! I completely agree! It is because of these regrettable incidences that I distance myself from the “American” Orthodox Church movement. If this is what American converts are going to bring to Orthodoxy then I don’t know you.

      • Daniel E Fall says

        You are a true coward.

        In fear of government.
        In fear of litigation.
        In fear of liberals.
        In fear of Obama.
        In fear of Muslims.
        In fear of blacks.
        In fear of eighty year old men.

        Go find a mirror.

    • Law enforcement doesn’t write the narrative. Investigators are looking for facts to support prosecution of violations of the California Criminal Code and United States Code. Journalists and politicians create narratives. To say that the Sheriff and FBI didn’t use a particular rhetoric in thier press releases as proof the Exuctive Branch, Democratic party and CNN didnt try to create narratives is a red herring.

  9. Gregory Manning says

    A Cautionary Tale

    “The head of Canon White is worth a lot to ISIS, which have placed on it a bounty of 157 million dollars.”

  10. ReaderEmanuel says

    I laugh when they keep wondering if the mass shooters have ties to the NRA. How many NRA members have committed mass shootings? None that I know of!

    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

      WHO keeps wondering “if the mass shooters have ties to the NRA”, ReaderEmanuel? WHO?
      Where may we learn of this? Come on! We’d all like to share that laugh of yours!

      • Michael Warren says

        Why the liberals who want to punish and infringe the liberties of the innocent for the crimes of the guilty do, Your Grace.

    • Daniel E Fall says

      I bet you looked hard for that non-statistic.

  11. Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

    Seven posts in less than an hour–reminds me of the squid which, when threatened, secretes a bunch of ink to hide behind!