It’s Official: The Inmates Have Taken Over the Asylum

I was thinking about entitling this essay “I Told You So”. And then like the deranged Jack Nicholson character in The Shining just writing those words over and over and over again. And again, and again, and again. Ten thousand –nay a hundred thousand times–would not be enough to scratch the surface.

What elicits this cry of despair on behalf of Yours Truly? Only the fact that we are truly caught up in the grips of a cultural insanity that shows no sign of abating. Specifically, the fact that the Episcopalian hierarchy at Christchurch, Arlington, Virginia, has decided to take down the plaque which memorializes the fact that George Washington was an esteemed member and vestryman there.

The left is entering into dangerous, never-before ventured territory here. We’re not talking about only stupidity of the worst sort but a type of evil that once experienced, can never be unexperienced. Words fail me. Stupidly evil or malevolently stupid? It’s a toss-up at this point.

Worse for the left, it’s a two-fer in that it makes Trump a prophet and invalidates the incident at Charlottesville. Not only will this cause independents and thoughtful liberals to think more highly of Trump’s prophetic powers, it will cause a swelling of the ranks of the Alt-Right. Because both Trump and the true conservatives told everybody that this was never going to stop with the Confederate flag.

And it won’t.

Maybe, just maybe there are still enough sensible liberals out there who will now come to the conclusion that the progressive movement has been hijacked by demonic forces (see the previous post) and that their end-game is nihilism.

One can only hope.

Comments

  1. George Michalopulos says

    For a sardonic, somewhat hilarious take on this madness, please read this satirical piece from Powerline:

    http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/10/how-churches-die.php

  2. It ain’t your church.

    Imagine if someone told you what portraits to hang on the walls of your home or church.

    It is a big who cares.

    Money laundering Manafort is the big news.

    It delegitimizes Trump even more than losing the popular vote.

    Like some newsguy said today….you’d think Manafort would have avoided exposing Trump; so it really makes you wonder about the Donald, right or wrong.

    • And when Manafort is pardoned; Trump will become even less relevant.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Re: Manafort –not at all. I’m of the opinion that this thing will escalate in ways that the Dems will not want. Already Tony Podesta is under the microscope next.

      Prediction: before this is over the left will wish that Russia was never brought up in the first place.

      A Rumination: Whether Putin is a rival or an enemy is beside the point. If he wanted to tear apart the American body politic he couldn’t have planned this better.

      • Alitheia1875 says

        From a conservative liberal’s viewpoint of someone who doesn’t care for Trump or the Clintons: the difference between the Trump issue and the Clinton issue is that if the Clintons are guilty of anything it is doing illegal things for their own financial gain whereas what the Trump issue is about is involving a foreign power in the governing of the United States. So, take your pick, which one first with each being necessary to be investigated: money laundering, of which there are many similar things done every second and every minute by the rich and powerful, including the Trump dynasty, or quite possibly treason. Which will affect the common citizen more?

        • anonymus per Scorilo says

          The Trump = treason logic you use resembles an old Radio Erevan joke:

          “Question: Is it true that the great Soviet poet Pafnutiev received a car as a gift from the Soviet State ?
          Radio Erevan answers: it is absolutely true, with 3 small corrections: first, it was not a car but a bike, second, it was not the Soviet State but some private citizens, and third, he did not receive it but it was stolen from him”

          It is not Trump but one of the many many people he associated with, it was not Russia who paid the guy but Ukraine, and it was not to influence US politics but Ukrainian politics.

        • Will Harrington says

          I don’t think you understand what treason actually is in the United States. It is engaging in war against your country or giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Russia is not an enemy. We are not involved with a war or even a military intervention against Russia (now all the aid that somehow ended up in the hands of ISIS just might qualify some people for treason, but that hasn’t been mentioned). Russia is not an ally (due to our greed and stupidity after the fall of the USSR) but they are not an enemy. Period. Why should they not involve themselves in our elections, do you really think that would be anything other than tit for tat? Wasn’t Yeltsin our guy? So criminal activity is what we should worry about and I would love to see Bill Clinton fall at least as hard as that comedian with the same given name fell. There are many problems with Trump, but treason is not among them.

    • Tim R. Mortiss says

      “It ain’t your church”.

      Actually, it is, though I’ve never been an Anglican. I’m just one of countless refugees from “what ain’t my church” anymore, in my case, Presbyterianism.

      Sure, it ain’t my church. We have our Greek festival, they have their placards to George Washington. Who was he? Who cares?

      There was more zeal, more missionary fire, packed into the Western Churches (sorry, “churches”) for centuries, than there has been in Orthodoxy.

      One hardly knows what to say. We should lead them all. They Christianized the Western Hemisphere, Korea, South-Saharan Africa; now China; on and on. Where are we? Every Orthodox congregation is packed with potential energy that they don’t even know they have. What will release it?

      Well, they have their pictures and placards, we have ours. As you say, “who cares”?

      • George Michalopulos says

        TimR, very poignant. Though I consider myself a Traditionalist/anti-Ecumenist, I’ve never bought into the paradigm that whenever something ridiculous happens in some Western church “we’re OK because we’re the True Church”.

        What those damned Piscies did at Arlington deserves the greatest opprobrium. Things like this make me rethink the Inquisition.

      • I guarantee one thing that won’t release the ‘energy’ you speak of….

        Some love for past politicians.

        The Scriptures tell us to avoid it.

  3. I’m sure everything will work out okay, now that the Anti-Fa is back from their conference with Al-Qaeda and Isis to plot the destruction of Donald Trump:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5018141/ISIS-connection-anarchists-revealed-Ed-Klein-book.html

  4. Monk James says

    There are events in every one of our personal experiences which we regret, and it’s very kind of people to forget about those episodes.

    But the deeds of public figures are on the public record, and — no matter what we do — those deeds will remain there. Attempts to erase their names will not erase their deeds.

    Whatever George Washington did more than two centuries ago was done in a different time and frame of mind, and it is unreasonable for us moderns to hold him to our standards.

    In any event, the record of his attending a particular church has nothing to do with anything else in his life. That record should remain in place as a historical marker in that church.

    Washington was a man of his time and place, and was well respected then and there. He didn’t know what we know; He didn’t think as we think, but he did a great many good things, and is rightly regarded as ‘the father of his country’ –as difficult a burden for him to bear as it was.

    In addition to all that, we must remember that a parish of the entirely-too-politically-correct American Episcopal Church is doing this.

    So let’s consider the source and not get too worked up about this.

    • Michael Bauman says

      Monk James, what is going on is all out war on the history and structure of this country. More and more “professors” are coming out and saying that white people are the problem. It is virulent, violent racism of the type that triggers genocide.

      Of course Christianity, being a white man’s religion, has to go as well.

  5. Greatly Saddened says

    What next … will we be taking our Presidents’ faces off our paper and coin currency? We should learn from our history, not change our history!

  6. Nate Trost says

    George Michalopulos wrote
    invalidates the incident at Charlottesville

    What an absurd, preposterous statement. The removal of a matching pair of plaques honoring George Washington and Robert E. Lee together (a detail Michalopulos omits) from a church somehow invalidates a white supremacist murdering a person and injuring more in an attack against their protest of his ideology?

    One can picture George Michalopulos running up to Heather Heyer’s mother in a referee uniform, blowing the whistle and tossing a yellow flag. “Removal of plaques, 15 yard penalty. Your daughters death is invalidated! Repeat second down!”

    • George Michalopulos says

      So you’re absolutely certain that everybody who marched in Charlottesville was a white supremacist?

  7. Peter Ray Millman says

    George,
    This is an interesting article, but I must respectfully disagree with your article and Monk James post. Monk James said Washington was a man of his time. A truly great member of the British Parliament by the name of William Wilberforce was a fervent abolitionist during Washington’s time period.
    George Washington was not a great man; he was an especially cruel slave master. I think his church made the correct decision. I think this country should go further. We should rename Washington D.C.; the state of Washington, the Washington Monument, Ronald Reagan Washington Airport, and everything else that bears the name of George Washington.

    If Great Britain knew that slavery was wrong, and took steps to eradicate it, what excuse does George Washington have? Slavery should never have been legal in the colonies. Every slave owner who ever lived is unworthy of commemoration. Yes, remove all confederate statues, all honor given to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and all the rest of the slave owning founding fathers. Slavery has always been wrong, and the statement,” he was a man of his time” simply doesn’t cut it.
    As we all know slavery was America’s original sin, then we can discuss the theft of Native American lands, and the mistreatment and theft of Mexico.

    George, please allow me to be perfectly clear and transparent: although we disagree, neither you nor Monk James have made any racist statements whatsoever, and neither one of you has a racist bone in your bodies. You are a patriotic American, and the last time I checked there are patriotic Orthodox saints.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Peter, you raise some interesting points there. I’m not sure that you aren’t mimicking Jonathan Swift but in the event you’re not, I still believe that this madness has to stop. There’s a wise Arab proverb: “he who denies his past denies himself”.

      What will future generations think of us? I for one gave up the religion of historical progressivism long ago. In fact, I think it’s more evil than egalitarianism. At least in the theological sense we are all equal before the Dread Judgment Seat of Christ. If anything, we’ve regressed to a latter-day Roman neo-paganism what with our baby-killing and glorification of sodomy.

      • Peter Ray Millman says

        George, The only way I can respond to your post mentioning Jonathan Swift is that I used to post on Al Jazeera. A former member of AiPaC( now anti- zionist) wrote a column in which I took the opportunity to express my displeasure with his article. I used my ” benighted, dimwitted” line, and a few other choice words. He responded to my post by saying, “this is really great satire, I salute you.” I thought his response to me was fantastic.

        The part about you and Monk James not being racists was sincere.

    • Monk James says

      Peter Ray Millman (November 1, 2017 at 6:22 am) says, among other things:
      ‘Monk James said Washington was a man of his time.’
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      This is incomplete, and so almost false.

      What I wrote here was that George Washington was a man of his time and place. This is an important difference.

      In 18th-century Virginia and in the rest of the southeastern British colonies in America, Washington was no different from — and regarded no differently than — other landed gentlemen OF HIS TIME AND PLACE. I am unaware that he was cruel to his slaves. In fact, this is the first I’ve heard such a thing.

      William Wilberforce in England is to be admired for his (eventual) opposition to slavery, but — at least in the cultural environment of England’s intention at the time to ‘rule the world’, slaves and all — he was an anomaly. It’s unfair to compare/contrast him with Washington.

      Wasn’t it Wilberforce who wrote the poem ‘Amazing Grace’ once he’d seen the light? That poem was later set to music and is now played/sung at all sad events here in the United States — mostly inappropriately, in my opinion — and I’m tired of hearing it.

      Anyway, hoping to clear up that little bit of correspondence here, I’m grateful to Mr Millman that he recognizes that I’m not a racist.

      • George Michalopulos says

        Agreed. I’m coming to the point in my life where I despise chronological bigotry as perhaps the worst sort. I’m sure in time God will have a laugh when our descendants look back in horror at our proclivities.

      • Peter Ray Millman says

        I apologize Monk James, I didn’t realize the last word in your sentence. You are right: the last word makes a great deal of difference. You are definitely correct, and I am definitely wrong. I agree with you about Amazing Grace as well. That was very sloppy thinking and poor reasoning on my part.

        • Monk James says

          That was very kind of you, Mr Millman. Apology gratefully accepted. My prayers for you and yours.

  8. Michael Bauman says

    Wilberforce did not write Amazing Grace an ex-sea captain of slave ships did as a statement of his repentance, John Newton. He was a mentor to Wiberforce. I love the song particularly on bag pipes.
    “I once was lost but now am found…”. Applies to us all does it not?

    BTW, Wilberforce was able to mount and maintain his campaign against slavery because he was elected to Parliment from a “rotten bourgh”. He was guaranteed election as long as he stood for office.