How Did You Like Your Semen-and-Breast-Milk Souffle?

It’s gotten to the point where it’s plausible to think that we’re living in some sick weirdo’s computer simulation. What else can explain John Podesta’s –the man who might become Hillary’s Chief of Staff should she be elected–occult predilictions?

This latest stuff from Wikileaks is just plain sick. I can’t for the life of me understand why a normal man would want anything to do with a “performance artist” who serves people concoctions made of breast milk, placenta and semen. And he’s not alone. Her parties are all the rage among the glitterati.

Then there’s the fact that Bill and Hillary Clinton as well were both frequent attendees at Jeffrey Epstein’s Pedophile Island. Thanks to an internal civil war at the FBI and Justice, we are now beginning to see more clearly the outlines of a great criminal, demonic conspiracy.

Mind you, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, never have been. Until I see better evidence, I still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed JFK. Having said that, there is no doubt that criminal conspiracies do exist. The KKK, the Cosa Nostra, the various Color Revolutions that have brought down foreign governments are among the most famous.

And what is the HRC campaign but a vast conspiracy to hide the truth about Hillary’s medical records and influence peddling while at State? For all the hosannas that are being sung on the Left because James Comey decided to abide by his earlier declaration in July, they forget that there are at least four other active investigations into the HRC campaign. Comey said nothing about them at all.

Leaving Comey and his investigation aside for the moment, it’s becoming more clear with each day’s revelations that there is something very weird, very unsettling and very disturbing at the heart of our Oligarchy. That probably explains why they’re pulling out all the stops to push her over the finish line. No matter how debilitated, how infirm, how compromised a President Hillary Clinton would be, one thing she won’t do is investigate the moral and criminal rot that pervades our Establishment. Comey won’t be fired but his investigation will be effectively shut down. (This is not to say that individual agents won’t go rogue: they’ve been doing that all along now, at least since he made his initial decision in July.)

I believe what we are seeing are the consequences of some actions that were initiated several decades –if not centuries–ago. Make no mistake: ideas do have consequences. The idea that our Elites are involved in some eccentric cultic behavior is no longer as far-fetched as it would have seemed just a year ago. Think of it: how normal is it to lie naked in a coffin and spill your darkest secrets to perfect strangers? That’s the initiation ritual for Skull and Bones in case you were wondering. The initiation into Freemasonry is more modest than that but these guys have spun out of control ever since the French Revolution. Just look at the Vatican banking scandal back in the eighties. Yup: Propaganda Due, a supposedly irregular Freemasonic lodge.

Then there’s Bohemian Grove. Grown men parading naked in front of a 20 foot tall owl. Seriously guys? We’re talking major players like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, George Schultz and God knows who else. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to cut it than to say this is major league weirdness, you don’t even have to be conspiracy theorist to see that. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Sometimes you just have to go where the evidence points and if it points to hidden –and that’s what “occult” means–conspiracies, then so be it.

Bohemian Grove, the Bilderburg Group, the Freemasons are staid, boring affairs compared to the crap that the Podesta emails are offering us. These “Spirit Cooking” meals on the other hand are nothing short of actual Satanism. So is what takes place on Jeffrey Epstein’s Pedophile Island.

I certainly can’t dismiss out of hand anymore those prophecies put out by certain Pentecostals that have been all the rage on Youtube ever since Donald Trump announced his candidacy. Especially the ones which stated that before the election, God would reveal the wickedness and corruption in high places to such an extent that we could never again plead ignorant. We could never again lie to ourselves that we are a good nation led by decent, patriotic leaders. In this respect, God has been very merciful to us, in that before His judgment is exacted, we will at least have time to repent of our sins. And for those who don’t repent then they will at least know what it is that we are being judged for.

So what is one who can’t abide a President Trump to do? He’s a boor, a womanizer, a crude vulgarian. I get it. I’ve been following his career more or less since the late seventies and because he’s a brash New Yawker, I never really cared for him all that much. I cringed when he began his campaign back in June of 2015. Did he say “Mexican rapists”? OH MY GOD! How could he? “He just committed political suicide!” I told my wife as we were watching the spectacle live on FOX.

Only he didn’t.

With each new supposed outrage, I began to realize that he was pushing the Overton Window way to the right. And I liked it. After discovering Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) I learned that he was a “Master Persuader,” something we’ve always known on an intuitive level even if we didn’t know what that word meant (or ever heard it in the first place).

And then sometime in October of last year, a light bulb went off, I had an epiphany if you will. It became obvious that his most vociferous critics were not people of sterling character. Only later would we find out that even some of those supposedly upright men in the Republican Party were themselves lacking in moral character in a very deep and manly way. They all pledged that they would support their party’s nominee but when the time came to do so, Jeb! Bush, John Kasich and Pansy Graham went back on their word. They lied to us. And in a public fashion. No matter what happens tomorrow, they will forever bear this mark of Cain. Mitt Romney, a Mormon bishop no less, bears an especial contumely for his stunning lack of character.

This is clearly a kakistrocracy –a government in which the worst people rule. Never have so many decent, hard-working and productive citizens been looked down upon by people who are so marginal, mediocre and unaccomplished (and that’s being charitable). It’s us who are “homophobic” or “Islamophobic” or “xenophobic.” Those who work for a living and play by the rules are being screwed over by people who have sex with pre-teen girls or admire photos of them. Or people who eat semen-and-breast-milk-encrusted pies. It’s a bizarro universe where Superman is a fat slob who is roused to use his superpowers only in the defense of evil and where Captain America overthrows legitimate governments and shoots prisoners who surrender.

And then there’s our beloved president who just yesterday told people to break the law and go vote even if they’re not eligible. That there would be “no consequences” for them. If that isn’t Exhibit A that we have gone off the rails as a Republic governed by the rule of law, nothing is. If this stands, I’d have to say that it’s over.

Thanks to Wikileaks and Project Veritas, I don’t know how a future president will be able to look America in the eye from the Oval Office and intone: “America is a great nation because it is good.” Reading Podesta’s and his correspondents’ emails, it’s clear that that train left the station long ago. We’re talking pedophilia, necromancy and perversion of a likes that beggars the imagination.

We should have seen this coming last year with the Planned Parenthood videos. After the initial shock a certain “ho-hum” attitude settled over the national consciousness. Certainly the moralists in the GOP-dominated Congress dropped the ball big-time. I mean, if there ever was a gift handed with a pretty ribbon on top to those who champion their “pro-life” cred, this was it. But no, the “pro-life” Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to defund Planned Parenthood, even when these malefactors were caught on videotape bragging about murdering pre-born babies and slicing and dicing them up for profit.

I don’t know how this is going to play out. It appears that the bottom has fallen out of Hillary’s campaign, despite Comey’s recent announcement. The trend line for Trump is certainly heading in the right direction. But even if he wins, this will only be a reprieve for America. Unless there is severe fasting and repentance on a national scale, then all a Trump victory will do is buy us some time to get our affairs in order.

Lord have mercy.

Comments

  1. Joe Katoof says

    The people’s tyrant: what Plato can teach us about Donald Trump

    Trump put fascism on the ballot this year, and millions of people said “yes.”
    Updated by Sean Illing@seanillingsean.illing@vox.com Nov 7, 2016, 9:10am EST

    Plato thought political regimes followed a predictable evolutionary course, from oligarchy to democracy to tyranny. Oligarchies give way to democracies when the elites fail, when they become spoiled, lazy, profligate, and when they develop interests apart from those they rule.

    Democracies give way to tyrannies when mob passion overwhelms political wisdom and a populist autocrat seizes the masses. But the tyrant is not quite a tyrant at first. On the contrary, in a democracy the would-be tyrant offers himself as the people’s champion. He’s the ultimate simplifier, the one man who can make everything whole again.

    Sound familiar?

    With Trump, we have a glimpse of what this sort of evolution looks like: A vulgar right-wing populism emerges out of a whirlwind of anti-establishment hysteria; a strongman fascist promises to stick it to the elites and says only he can make the country great again; he gives the people a familiar boogeyman, some alien other, on whom they can dump their resentment.

    For a fractured and embittered citizenry, this is a rhetorical balm, and, according to Plato, just the sort of thing that sends the city over a cliff.

    The American founders were skeptical of democratic rule for all the reasons Plato spelled out. They created a firewall against the tyranny of the majority, which is why we have a republic instead of a direct democracy.

    Trump is the firebrand they feared.

    You might see his political existence as our democracy’s response to its own decay. People no longer believe in the authority of public institutions, which amounts to a loss of faith in constitutional democracy. That Trump made it this far proves that the country can be whipped into a frenzy and that fascism is only an election away.

    If Trump fails, it won’t be because he was too illiberal or too anti-democratic but because he self-sabotaged, because he was too incompetent to execute his half-baked vision. But it’s easy to imagine a future Trump, a candidate who shares his tyrannical nature but is skilled enough to capture a plurality.

    Perhaps we’ll survive this time, but we walked right up to the edge of the abyss. Next time we may tumble into it.

    Getty Images / antonis kioupliotis photography
    What Plato said
    “Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” — Plato

    Whether Donald Trump wins or loses, he did the country at least one service: He revealed the rot at the core of our politics. His success shows just how vulnerable we are to demagogic shocks.

    Earlier this year, Andrew Sullivan wrote an essay for New York magazine in which he argued that America is ripe for tyranny. With Plato as his lodestar, Sullivan lamented the excesses of democracies and warned how easily they devolve into dictatorships.

    Trump, he argued, is an “extinction-level” threat.

    There’s much to disagree with in Sullivan’s piece, but his diagnosis was largely right: the very possibility of a Trump presidency constitutes a crisis for our democracy.

    What’s happening in this election cycle isn’t new or incomprehensible. The character of Trump and the reasons for his rise are explained in remarkably prescient terms by Plato over two centuries ago in his most famous book, The Republic.

    The Republic is a series of dialogues about many things — justice, human nature, education, virtue. Among the most important is a conversation between Socrates and friends about the nature of regimes and why one is superior to another.

    Socrates says: “Let us place the most just regime side by side the most unjust, and when we see them we shall be able to compare ….” Though it’s not the aim, what we get at the end of the dialogue is a theory of regime decline, with Socrates explaining why governments sink from higher to lower forms.

    Oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny — in that order — are said to be the worst forms of government, and they are defined more or less in modern terms.

    An oligarchy is a regime in which the rich have power and the poor are deprived of it. A democracy is a system of maximal freedom in which the people hold sway. And tyranny is rule by one man, who is both unjust and unqualified.

    Oligarchies become democracies for predictable reasons: “As the rich grow richer and richer, the more they think of making a fortune and the less they think of virtue.” The inequality and corruption spread like a disease. “Democracy comes into power,” Socrates says, “when the poor are the victors, killing some and exiling some, and giving equal shares in the government to all the rest.”

    Democracy, for all its charms, is said to be a poor substitute for oligarchy. It’s an “agreeable form of anarchy,” Socrates tells us. Like every other regime, a democracy collapses of its own contradictions. It’s full of freedom and spangled with every kind of liberty imaginable.

    Over time, though, this boundless freedom degenerates into herd hysteria. Belief in authority atrophies. A spirit of excess takes hold and, eventually, “the state falls sick, and is at war with herself.”

    Tyranny springs from democracy in the same manner democracy springs from oligarchy. Just as the blind pursuit of wealth occasions a thirst for equality, so “the insatiable desire for freedom occasions a demand for tyranny.”

    There’s a logic to this dynamic, a kind of political physics. Each regime succeeds the previous one as its opposite and as a reaction to it.

    So the shift from democracy to tyranny is simple enough: a surplus of freedom produces an excess of factions and a multiplicity of perspectives, most of which are blinkered by narrow interests. To get elected, those factions have to be flattered, their passions indulged. This is fertile soil for the demagogue, who manipulates the masses in order to “overmaster democracy,” as Plato put it.

    In this way, it’s the very freedom of democracy that opens the way to tyranny. The love of tolerance devolves into a kind of unraveling licentiousness. Communal bonds wither. When things get bad, as they always do, the people grow restless and yield to a swindling demagogue who cultivates their fears and positions himself as the protector.

    This is how democracy passes into despotism.

    Rally At 39th Anniversary Of The Death Of Former Dictator General Franco
    MADRID, SPAIN – NOVEMBER 23: A man speaks to a small crowd of Franco supporters during the 39th anniversary of the death of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco at Plaza Oriente square on November 23, 2014 in Madrid, Spain. Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images
    Trump as the people’s tyrant
    “States are as the men are; they grow out of human characters.” — Plato

    Plato insists that it takes a particular kind of person to win over a democratic mob.

    The Republic is based on an assumption of a parallelism between the city and the soul. It’s difficult to summarize, but Plato held that for every kind of government there existed a corresponding kind of man. This is what he means when he writes that states “grow out of human characters,” and this is what Socrates means when he says that “the city is the soul writ large.”

    In The Republic, systems of government are defined by the end they most pursue. Oligarchies, for instance, esteem wealth. In democracies, freedom is the highest good. In tyrannies, it’s the will of the tyrant.

    There are five regime types for Plato and thus five kinds of human characters, each following the other in corresponding order. Describing them all is beyond the scope of this article, so instead let’s focus on the most relevant: the tyrant.

    A tyrant, for Plato, wasn’t just someone who ruled over others; a tyrant is someone who can’t rule over himself. He’s Eros incarnate — pure impulse. He’s always in the thrall of his own lusts and passions.

    Plato likens the tyrant to a drunken man, in whom there is a constant “succession of passions, and the new gets the better of the old and takes away their rights.” Because he can’t get along without domineering or being served, moreover, he “never tastes of true freedom or friendship.”

    Trump is the tyrannical soul par excellence. His instinct is always to stifle dissent. The examples here are endless. He has threatened to “open up” federal libel laws and partially repeal the First Amendment in order to sue newspapers for the crime of challenging him.

    During one of the presidential debates, he vowed to jail his political opponent for imagined non-offenses. “I’ll tell you what,” Trump said, “I didn’t think I’d say this … and I hate to say it: If I win, I’m going to instruct the attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.” He then warned Clinton that, if he were president, “You’d be in jail.”

    Almost everything we know about Trump testifies to this need to punish and humiliate. Consider this revealing Politico report about Richard Branson’s memorable encounter with Trump several years ago. Here’s how Branson recalls it:

    “Some years ago, Mr. Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted … Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.”
    Branson later said that Trump’s “vindictive streak” would “be so dangerous if he got into the White House.”

    This emotional incontinence is what sets Trump apart as a uniquely tyrannical figure. To watch him on stage is to witness a frenzied parade of inner consciousness. He’s simply incapable of restraining himself, and all of his “handlers” have learned this the hard way.

    He has very few actual friends because other people are ornaments for him. He treats women as playthings. He mocks the disabled. He encourages supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters. He even withdrew medical benefits for his nephew’s infant child as retaliation for a dispute over his father’s estate.

    Pathology is the only term for this kind of behavior.

    As Plato predicted, Trump’s tyrannical psyche manifests in his political views. He has proposed killing the family members of terrorists; waterboarding suspects because “they deserve it anyway”; refused to accept the results of a free and fair election; toyed with deploying nuclear weapons in regional conflicts; suggested banning all Muslims from the country; and said a federal judge’s Mexican heritage disqualifies him from office. This list hardly captures all of Trump fascistic musings, but the point is obvious enough.

    This is a man with no respect for democratic norms, no understanding of compromise, no sense of inclusiveness, and, worst of all, no self-awareness. His burning ignorance is matched only by his baseless confidence. “Nobody knows the system better than me,” he said during his convention speech, “which is why I alone can fix it.” [Emphasis mine.]

    The tyrannical drive cannot be distilled any better than that.

    Indeed, with Trump we see the transition from democracy to tyranny in real time. And his message resonates for reasons familiar to Plato: Trump is a reflection of the people to whom he appeals. What distinguishes him from his followers is wealth and celebrity, but it’s his ingratiating crudity that does the real work.

    A democratic tyrant slips into power by dint of deception: he is usually rich but he carries himself as a commoner. “In the early days of his power,” Plato writes, “he is full of smiles, and he salutes every one whom he meets … making promises in public and also in private, liberating debtors, and distributing land to the people and his followers, and wanting to be so kind and good to everyone.”

    But the honeymoon is brief. The populist begins as the people’s champion; later, having tasted power, he becomes their tyrant.

    Donald Trump
    What next?
    Plato wasn’t a prophet. His critique of democracy is wildly exaggerated, and there’s a streak of illiberalism in his thought that ought to offend the modern reader. But his analysis is valuable nevertheless.

    At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Elbridge Gerry, who later served as the fifth Vice President under James Madison, declared the chaos in state governments a result of an “excess of democracy.” “The people do not want virtue; but are dupes of pretended patriots,” Gerry said, “and are misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men.”

    Trump is a designing man, and his political existence is a warning. He let loose something dark in this country, and whatever happens on Tuesday, the fact remains: Trump put fascism on the ballot this year, and millions of people said “yes.”

    • You liberals see Hitler in everyone you don’t like. Never the less you are wrong. The existential threat is Hilary and the vast corrupt machine behind her. You may not like Donald Trump but he is all our Republic has left and yet he can be a beginning. Hilary is the tyrant you speak of, you just can’t see it.

      • Gail Sheppard says

        As dan said, “never the less, you are wrong,” Joe. Had it been up to me, I would never have printed your tirade, but George is a better person than me.

    • Remember, that’s just one man(?)’s oplnion.

    • And Plato was not an Orthodox Christian. There was a limit to his vision and to that of de Tocqueville et al.

      One man’s “tyranny” and “despotism” is another man’s monarchy or sovereign democracy.

      Were all the holy Christian emperors (some saints) tyrannical despots? Were the Church Fathers tyrannical, despotic minded men?

      Perhaps. But no Orthodox Christian who actually believes his Faith would assert that.

      Moreover, have you forgotten Cincinnatus?

      One can be an “Americanist” and one can be an Orthodox Christian. But one cannot be both.

      At best, America was not the last best hope for mankind. At best, America was intended not to be a democracy, but a republic governed by a well educated, religious, landed gentry – very far from a popular democracy and very far from what we have now. Nor were our Founding Fathers saintly when compared with the Fathers of the Church. Americanism makes a god out of a republic/”Caesar”.

      It may be true that Trump is the next natural progression from the stinking debacle that we have now. But I do not think that is necessarily negative. In fact, given the choices, it is the only positive one at this point apart from full blown revolution.

      The “populist tyrant” riding into town on a banner of red, white and blue is a popular meme, but the only totalitarians on the ballot are Democrats.

    • I have only skimmed your lengthy piece and I can tell its just all
      “lib-speak” same opinions you hear spouted over and over ad nauseam by
      the MSM. You probably watch too much CNN/MSNBC. Problem with
      you liberals you are all way too “impressionable” and believe too much
      what the television tells you. You ramble with all your Trump/Plato jargon forever
      however with Hillary you are a complete total nothing, a ZERO. Vote for that abomination and her husband and all the “epstein’s and soros’s and weiner’s and pedesta’s” and all those devils and see where it lands you on JD.

    • Peter Millman says

      Greetings your Grace,
      I wasn’t going to post here anymore, but I feel it is necessary to respectfully challenge some of your assertions.
      First of all, your Grace, on election day, we have 50 presidential contests plus the District of Columbia. The candidate who wins the majority of electors from these 50 contests is elected President.
      Secondly, your Grace, President- elect Trump won the popular votes cast because they don’t count the absentee ballots unless the margin of victory is less than the absentee votes. When absentee ballots are counted, Republicans historically defeat Democrats by an over two to one margin. In truth, Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes and probably won over one million more votes than Hillary out of all the votes cast. I reiterate, Donald Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote. President- elect Trump won the Presidency fairly and squarely.

      • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

        Peter Millman! On November 13 you wrote: ” In truth, Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes and probably won over one million more votes than Hillary out of all the votes cast.” It’s ten days later. Mrs Clinton’s 400,000 more votes than Trump’s are now 2,000,000 more than Trump’s!
        I inform you because on November 13 you addressed me with: “Greetings your Grace,I wasn’t going to post here anymore, but I feel it is necessary to respectfully challenge some of your assertions.”

        • Peter Millman says

          Greetings Your Grace,
          You are correct; it looks like Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote by 2,000,000 votes. When the Associated Press finally calls Michigan for Trump, he will have won 306 electoral votes. Two million votes is quite a bit to lose the presidency.
          I would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving Day.

          • Peter and Vladyka, at the risk of being tiresome by repeating myself, Mrs Clinton didn’t “win” anything, other than the states that gave her the Electoral College votes she got.

            There is no such thing as a popular vote victory, since neither side was playing that game. Both were trying to win 270 EC votes. We will NEVER know who would have won a true popular vote election.

            I hope we never do, because it would be a nightmare on many fronts. I think it is reasonable for states to divide up by Congressional districts, but we know how that would turn out, given the composition of the House. Trump would still win.

            By the way, the GOP won the “national popular vote” in Congressional races by 3.5 million votes. If we were a parliamentary system like Britain Paul Ryan would be our Prime Minister. In Canada, Britain, and other parliamentary systems, it is also possible for a party to lose the “popular vote” and still control the government.

            • George Michalopulos says

              For what it’s worth, I’d bet the rent that the overwhelming percentage of the 2 million votes she won in the heavily Hispanic states (CA, CO, NV, NM) were the result of fraud, pure and simple. I’m talking not only illegal aliens but resident aliens and of course the dead.

              • Michael Bauman says

                Plus no one here who is disingeuously in favor of a popular vote has replied to my question as to how to balance the population distribution problem that would effectively disenfranchise most of the states in the country.

                Maybe that is what they want.

              • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                George, I agree with your hedging: “For what it’s worth” indeed!

            • Peter Millman says

              Hello Edward,
              I’m really learning the wisdom of refraining from discussing politics. Vladyka is an 84 year old retired bishop; I was very disrespectful to him in the past, a great sin on my part for which I’ve sincerely repented, and, which, he has forgiven me.
              I posted erroneous information which I got from a fake news website; I was just trying to correct the errors of my previous post to Vladyka. By the way, it seems to be a real possibility that they are going to recount the ballots from Wisconsin.

            • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

              Edward, what you wrote is partly SO TRUE! “There is no such thing as a popular vote victory, since neither side was playing that game.” Neither SIDE, indeed. However, the votes of the individual voters are not “sides.” Those individual voters’ votes are called, where I went to school, the “popular” vote, They EXIST. And the sum of the individual votes for a particular candidate that exceeds that of the other(s) is correctly called a “popular vote victory.” It would have been more accurate to opine that a popular vote victory does not mean an election victory.

              • No, Vladyka, you are wrong. A victory implies a contest, and neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Trump were tring to win the natonal popular vote. I have already used the football analogy, where the team who loses may have gained the most yards.

                Another analogy would be two kids going into the schoolhouse after recess, and the one first in the door turns to the other and says, “I beat you and am faster than you.”

                Maybe he is faster, maybe he isn’t, but unless there was a “let’s race,” there can be no victory.

                There was no race for the popular vote, and thus we will never know who would have won such a contest between Trump and Clinton, just as we will never know who would have won such a contest in any of the other close Presidential elections in our history.

                After all of Democratic bragging about the blue state EC “firewall,” this is self evident.

                • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                  Edward,I find it hard to believe that neither Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump WAS trying to win the national popular vote! I believe that they both sought that desperately, though each knew the electoral victory depended, in the first place, on the votes of the electoral college (votes that have not yet been cast). Why would not ANY candidate strive to win the national popular vote, Edward? Yet, you produced this, to me, bizarre assertion: “A victory implies a contest, and neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Trump were tring to win the natonal popular vote.”

                  • If Mrs Clinton were trying to win the national popular vote, she would have had massive GOTV efforts and TV ads in places like CA, NY, MA, and IL. She would have had rallies in Rhode Island and Connecticut rather than scrapping for marginal numbers of votes in places like North Carolina. She would have made the same efforts in Vermont as in New Hamphire and the same in Maryland as in Virginia. Maybe more, since she could probably get more votes by shaking the tree in the former than the latter.

                    She would also have worked hard to maximize urban voting in states like Tennessee, Missouri, and Texas that she had zero chance of winning.

                    Same for Trump, who would have campaigned to run up the score in red states, and who would have campaigned hard in upstate NY, downstate IL, and the vast red parts of CA, even though he could never win those states.

                    I don’t know who would have won such a contest — nor does anyone else.

                    Of course both would want and hope this year to win the popular vote, but that was a secondary concern at best for both, quite self evidently.

                    The GOP “won” the national popular vote for the US house by 3.5 million votes. But does this mean anything? Both the GOP and the Dems spent their time and money not on trying to “win” a national House vote, but on trying to win in those races where the seats were actually in play.

                    My assertions are hardly bizarre, Vladyka. They are common sense. What is at least as bizarre is the idea that the national popular vote as it was tabulated can be said with certainty to reflect how the vote would have turned out had the outcome actually depended entirely on a national popular vote.

                • Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: Madam, how like you this play?
                  Gertrude, Queen of Denmark: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
                  Hamlet: O, but she’ll keep her word.

                  • Michael Bauman says

                    That’ll be the day.

                    • Sec. Clinton’s not relevant, if that’s what you thought I meant by citing this.
                      Think! You’re the theatre guy, right? Mise en scène: play within a play — inducing secret thoughts, and guilt, to be self-revealed. Elective affinities permitted to bud and flower and bear fruit, then . . .

                    • Sec. Clinton’s not relevant, if that’s what you thought I meant by citing this.
                      Think! You’re the theatre guy, right? Mise en scène: play within a play — creating a scenario through which secret thoughts, and guilts, might be self-revealed. Elective affinities permitted to work themselves out, to bud, flower and bear fruit, then . . .

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Here’s a helping of Monomachos’s “Semen and Breast Milk Soufffle” from that Proto-Liptard and Arch-Proglib, Newt Gingrich”
                      Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) said tweeting a lie about voter fraud was the worst thing President-elect Donald Trump has done since winning the election. While speaking Tuesday on USA Today’s “Capital Download,” Gingrich said presidents “can’t randomly tweet without having somebody check it out.”
                      “It makes you wonder about whatever else he’s doing,” Gingrich said. “It undermines much more than just a single tweet, so I’d say that’s probably the biggest single thing he’s done wrong.”
                      In a tweet Sunday afternoon, Trump alleged there were “millions of people who voted illegally” in this year’s presidential election. That claim has been rejected by a number of states, election law experts and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Gingrich has been a long-time supporter of the president-elect, but he hasn’t shied away from pointing out Trump’s mistakes. Gingrich called Trump’s racist comments about federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel “inexcusable,” saying in June it was “one of the worst mistakes Trump has made.”

                      Gingrich has also repudiated Trump’s economic plan and struggled to defend Trump’s tendency to make false remarks.

    • Peter Millman says

      Joey,
      You could have written your stupid, tendentious diatribe in one sentence. You are one extremely obnoxious, boring guy.

      • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

        Peter Millman. Joe’s summary was crippled by a lack of some data. He didn’t know what WE know: Trump is appointing all millionaires, billionaires, and DC insiders to our government!

        • Peter Millman says

          Hello your Grace,
          His nominee for Secretary of the Department of Education is the billionaire wife of the founder of Amway’s son. As you probably know, Amway is little more than a ponzi scheme. There have been a litany of destroyed distributors’ lives due to their involvement in the Amway cult.
          Network marketing is a scam in which the people at the top make all the money while the people at the bottom lose it. Trump University was also a scam. I was surprised to learn that Donald J. Trump was involved in network marketing. It is a business for charlatans.

        • I doubt that Reince Priebus is a millionaire.

  2. Make Monomakhos Great Again! says

    At this point, it truly is the “silly season”.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/04/no-john-podesta-didnt-drink-bodily-fluids-at-a-secret-satanist-dinner/?tid=sm_tw

    I’m still trying to figure out what crazy conspiracy theory or supposed shocking expose is so over the top and ridiculous that even the denizens of Monomakhos look at it and go “hmm, that seems a bit much”. If ‘Spirit Cooking’ isn’t even it, then I suppose there are probably people on here that believe the 30,000 guillotines conspiracy too. Sad!

    • Sure. Watch more television. EVERYTHING on television is true and accurate. EVERYTHING Hillary and Bill tell you is true and accurate. EVERYTHING NY Times and Time Magazine is true and accurate. Hillary of course only makes “little mistakes” thats all. Obama never never distorts, never never tells you anything at all deceitful, no, of course not.
      The Middle East under Hillary/Obama tutelage has prospered like never before. Quality of life for the masses is excellent!! They live SAFE happy prosperous lives, the masses, they have open fair society, Saudis do wonderful, WONDERFUL humanitarian work donating many millions to the Clinton Foundation Global Initiative. LOOK just look how many hospitals they built in Haiti after the earthquakes with these millions in donations from the Saudi’s and Qatari’s ?? All for the poor !! Now them Saudi’s sure can help Trump on how to treat women !! Women in Saudi Arabia have more “lady” rights than anywhere else in the world. But if the Middle East so peaceful and prosperous how about Europe and especially in the last several years or so? Look how amazingly wonderful everything is in Europe, Germany France Sweden particularly. All those wonderful gentleman that have immigrated there the 100’s of thousands, Europeans owe Hillary and Angela a big big thank you for that. They bring civility, ethnicity and diversity along with a tradition of religious generosity and peace, humility and meekness. Brits regret their Brexit and they’re all clamoring to get some of these highly sought after immigrants. Look at how wonderful race relations are in the US after 8 years of an Afro-Am President. Look how well the police are doing. There are no protests or riots or looting, none, all make believe. BLM is a patriotic organization that works for police-fireman charities and they organize softball leagues throughout the Mid-West. BLM is trying to improve SAT scores for its student members. Tutor math and science. Flint Michigan is leading the way in 21st Century urban water delivery technology. Oakland Philadelphia Jersey St. Lousi Detroit Chicago Miami these all now the safest cities in the country walk anywhere you like at any hour of the day and its safe, and you know why? Because they are all working, they have good paying jobs and no drugs own the street, the projects have really cleaned up. National Debt ???? What ???? Obama paid it off, there is no Debt. Unemployment and GDP stellar. Nobody is on Food Stamps, almost nobody at all. No one working part time, everybody full-time, Obamacare is CHEAP, and next year even cheaper, the premium is being cut in half. Illegal Immigration brings more jobs to America. Its the drug cartels that want to build a border fence so that their drugs don’t escape their own country they want to keep the drugs all for themselves.
      Climate change, of course of course, can’t even tell the difference between Hawaii and Alaska anymore. But we need more Carbon Taxes never have enough carbon taxes. Everything is as it appears to be what they report on the news. Putin wrote all 650,000 “wiki” e-mails all by himself, thats the latest ..

    • Gail Sheppard says

      So “Make Monomakhos Great Again!” whoever you are, you are ignorant. READ!!!!

    • Michael Bauman says

      The current political/economy makes conspiracy theories grow and propagate like mold. As the insanity of our culture increases such theories seem more and more credible. Who knows some of them even may be true.

      Of course the only real conspiracy is that of satan against Godliness. There is a cabal of evil and as Solzhenitsyn pointed out it has a certain residence in each human heart.

      That is why the disciplines of the Church are the most effective means of combatting the conspiracy.

      Prayer, fasting and almsgiving in a context of repentance and worship and forgiveness.

      That, however does not appeal to our analytical minds with delusions of control and choice.

      God forgive us.

  3. George, you nailed it. This has been my perspective too since 9/11. Wish others could see it.

  4. George,

    It’s become quite obvious no-one cares about the character of candidates in either camp. Not because we lack values ourselves, we simply have only two choices if we want to participate. We have also come to expect our politicians to naturally have some skeletons,because quite frankly they’re politicians, comes with the territory.

    Trumps appeal is a western traditionalist last hope, and trying out the unknown and untested. Clinton has been exposed, regardless if prosecuted or not, will still appeal to the left, so long as she continues the Obama train. As sickening as your essay was of things left, Americans are becoming hard and cold, most don’t care, so long as their priorities are met. Mentally we are becoming Russia or Ukraine, just get the job done, if a few are maimed or killed, oh well.

    So now as the left and right bases have pinched their noses, those in the middle will decide who are next president will be. It’s actually a great gauge as to what our country has become. Western right leaning traditionalist or secular left leaning globalist. No doubt the world puppet masters are keeping score, and planning accordingly.
    God bless America Tuesday, and Lord have mercy!!!

    • “Mentally we are becoming Russia or Ukraine, just get the job done, if a few are maimed or killed, oh well. ”

      Would that it were true. Not hardly. More like West Ukraine than anything.

      Russia has seen the end of the road upon which the Progressives want to lead us. That is precisely why Russians generally dislike Obama and Hillary.

      There is no moral equivalency in this election. I have not seen one valid charge leveled against Trump that amounts to more than a speeding ticket (crass comments regarding women). None of the other stuff is credible in the least. All of it is just projected mirroring of Clinton dirt to make it even, apart from the guaranteed largesse that Clinton promises.

      You recall the book Primary Colors by Joel Klein (I think he later endorsed Hillary in a soulless lapse). The author was obviously attempting to reflect the insider press’s view of the Clinton White House.

      You recall the underage girl down South? The lesbian political operative that had her pick of interns at the campaign headquarters?

      None of the accusations against the Clintons are the least bit unbelievable. In fact, they all make perfect sense given what we know about them already, even from left wing sources.

      That should be very disturbing to Progressives but it is not. Why isn’t it? Because the ideology is God. They believe that there is no Santa Claus, no Tooth Fairy and no God. God is a sweet idea and fine as far as it goes so long as it is a lapdog. Even then, most of them would rather do without “it”. So if there is no God, the only one to say what is right is Us/We.

      Surely “We” know what we’re doing, right?

      So the absolutely most terrifying thing ever to rear its head is the thought that maybe “We” DON’T know what we are doing.

      That is tantamount for them to the sudden realization by a lifelong, devout Amish that there is no God.

      Absolutely terrifying.

      Because that means it’s Wild Kingdom out there. The only civilizing ideology of which they are aware dies and they are left with a Darwinian nightmare worse than they would ever have imagined. No reference point. No God. No atheism. No . . . progress.

      Eternal . . . merciless . . . conflict.

      They . . . are . . . totalitarians. It’s not about democracy or the rule of law or anybody’s idea of right and wrong. It’s about the ideology, stupid.

      And about the vanguard that rides it in power.

      They have sold their souls.

      Is Trump a saint? Nope. Is he a corrupt monster? Nope.

      Is Hillary, and more broadly “Clinton, Inc.”, a corrupt monster?

      Obviously.

      It is a bad sign that your candidate has barely escaped indictments before the election yet has ongoing investigations pending. In civilized society, that usually comes after the election and some significant political squabble. Trump University is a frivolous civil suit, not a serious criminal investigation or prosecution.

      Comey has already testified to the public that Clinton violated the law dozens of times. He did it last July. He, Justice, Obama and the Democrats and the press just tried to bury it. But it is laying there in full view for all to see.

      Same with the Clinton Foundation and the Thornton Law Firm scandals. All illegal as h*ll and all public knowledge.

      It is not about right and wrong to Progressives anymore, if it ever was. It is about their personal power and collective ideological vision, nothing else. Full throttle totalitarianism open for all to see. Nothing more, nothing less.

      So, Happy Election Day.

      • Misha,
        Russia, and Ukraine only mentally in the sense of not able to shock any longer. America in general used to have a degree of innocence, but aftet a couple of decades of exposure to all things of our fallen nature, especially in regards to politicians we are now numb to it all.

        Other than that. Agreed.

      • Gail Sheppard says

        3rd post for today . . . Misha, I’m liking you again. (Never really stopped, but you knew that.)

      • Peter Millman says

        Hi Misha,
        When a person uses the popular word “Progressive,” it almost sounds like a compliment. I prefer the word” libtard,”which is derogatory.

  5. Gail Sheppard says

    I don’t have anything to add . . .

  6. Good afternoon, George.

    Yeah, it’s a jagged little pill, isn’t it? All I can do is live according to the Law of God and let the chips fall where they may.

    I’m sure the Clintons and the DNC would like to click their heels, chant, “there’s no place like home” and make it all go away.

    But this ain’t Kansas and God ain’t Toto.

    What will be left in the aftermath (you know that was the title of a Rolling Stones’ album)?

    You might call this katharsis. At least a start at such a thing.

    Now, in human terms, it could get better or it could get worse. Perhaps de Tocqueville was indeed prophetic. If Hillary yet manages to get elected Obama will have to impose a police state to keep the peace. Let us pray that that is not the eventuality to which we are headed.

    If Trump is elected . . . it is unclear what the Progressive Establishment will do. It seems more likely by the minute, but we may never know the true numbers.

    Life’s like that.

    Well, this subject of the Kingdom of New Jerusalem will watch in awe as God unveils either what He has in store, or what He is willing to allow . . .

    Edgy days are these.

  7. so Joe K. where do you put Hillary? Is she really the best candidate?

  8. The “spirit cooking” mentioned is from British occultist Aleister Crowley’s Thelema sex magick. It is based on tantric concoctions as Crowley drew on Hindu sources, the Kabbalah, and other occult traditions. At the “mystical level,” it is akin to the dictum practiced by Sabbatai Zevi, the 17th century Kabbalist who claimed that by sinning one makes oneself “pure.” Crowley himself, a member of the Golden Dawn and later a Masonic initiate, supposedly brought these sorts of practices to the highest levels of mystical Masonry. The idea of sex magick — the use of ritualized sex to practice theurgy — probably dates back to Sumeria and Babylon, though was certainly present, too, among some of the Gnostics (hint to Elaine Pagels: that’s why, in part, the ancient church was against it!). Mystical Freemasonry, as evidenced by Pike’s “Morals and Dogmas,” makes generous use of the Kabbalah and Gnosticism and is said by some to engage in these kinds of activities at the higher levels. In this way, America has had numerous politicians, judges, and other officials who are linked to what is clearly an occult tradition that has its roots in the ancient mystery religions of Babylon and Egypt.

    In fact, Abraham Lincoln was friends with Paschal Beverly Randolph, a practitioner of sex magick and a “spiritualist.” More recently, Reagan engaged in the Biblically forbidden practice of consulting soothsayers while Hillary Clinton sought to talk to Eleanor Roosevelt via Jean Houston. Both Bushes were Skull and Bones, as is John Kerry. Cherie Blair, Tony Blair’s wife, was known to dabble in the occult which presumably had a role to play in the reported “re-birthing” ritual she and Tony took part in while visiting Mayan ruins as reported on by the London Observer and London Times. And, as we speak, the leader of South Korea is in hot water because it was discovered that her confidante is a sort of shaman who enabled the leader to talk to his dead mother. Ironically, part of the scandal broke when a discarded hard drive owned by the confidant, Choi Soon-sil, was discovered to contain confidential documents and materials. Hmmm . . .

    So, one might claim that the role of the occult in the highest levels of politics isn’t so much a conspiracy as it is a common theme throughout history (see John Dee and Queen Elizabeth). As far as Crowley, he has left his mark on music, art, movies, and politics — in regard to the latter, he was a secret agent for the British Crown during WWI. And the woman who held the spirit cooking event? Her name is Marina Abramovic and she is, according to the wiki entry on her, the grand niece of the Patriarch of Serbia.

    • There is a parallel here with Halloween that should be made.

      Americans are starved for spiritual nourishment but are not given it through the PC establishment’s approved mechanisms of liberal “Christianity”. It is lifeless pablum. Thus they need some edgy spirituality to satisfy that “God shaped hole”.

      That seems to me to be the attraction to the occult and the visceral attraction of Halloween, in the sense of witches’ Sabbath, ghosts and goblins. Western Christianity it too far fetched. Eastern Christianity is either not on the radar or, if it is appreciated at all, almost universally misunderstood in the West, even by most of its adherents.

      From the pulpit you rarely hear this Gospel:

      The human being is an immortal nous/soul, clothed in flesh which was originally designed to be imperishable but which, through the fall of Lucifer and later Adam, became perishable, as did the world in which we live. But this is a temporary state of affairs. For humanity, it only lasts til the Second Coming. For each individual, it only lasts until each of us dies. Then the Truth is revealed and the curse is lifted.

      Christ came to annul the curse, which He did. He took on humanity in all its vulnerable particulars, lived it perfectly and died, tortured by His enemies. We sinners in our fallen state are all His enemies until we repent and believe. Yet in Christ there is no condemnation and death has no sting. He rose on the third day in a resurrected, real, physical and yet spiritualized body. A perfected body. In this, He overcame death by means of death. What was assumed was deified. What He gave us was a way out of hell – compassion to the least of these; and a way to the Kingdom of Heaven – theosis. Theosis/The Kingdom is both here and now and in the future life to come. It begins here for some (in a sense, for all, for in a sense creation itself is the beginning of theosis) and is largely completed here for a few but only consumated upon His Second Coming when our physical limitations and any residual spiritual ones will be overcome. His Resurrection is also a preview of our own.

      And yes, this world is but a vestibule for the next. Kindergarten or first grade. Physically perfected, we continue our spiritual perfection in the next life, many ruling whatever realms that be for and with Christ.

      That’s the treasure, though some are hell bent on fighting over peanuts here on earth.

      “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”

      • Jerry Wilson says

        You sound more like a Mormon ….

        • Hmmm . . . you’d have to explain that. I am only familiar with Orthodox theology, not Mormon.

          • Don’t worry Misha. Having had the misfortune of attending a funeral if a Morman friend during which I was subject to a roughly two hour sermon on Morman theology, you are not Morman.

            I would make the observation that it seems you have the order of creation of man backwards. We were formed out of mud first and then God breathed His image and likeness into us. Thus St. Gregory of Nyssa says we are mud, commanded to become God. This order is critical in my understanding. Thus there are Orthodox who maintain that we are not naturally immortal, but become that way as part of God’s gift of Himself (His energies) to us.

            In Morman theology God the Father was once as we are and evolved spiritually to be far greater, God the Son, a separate being is not quite as evolved and Gid the Holy Spirit, yet a third separate being is altogether different but related. I suppose there is an overlord somewhere but all is created and evolves.

            If we follow the teachings of the Morman Church, we too can progress to become Lord of our own planet etc. A lot of mixed up nonsense.

            • actually the breath of life is not the image and likeness of God, we were designed to be that once alive, the breath of life MADE ADAM INTO A LIVING SOUL. think traducianism, taken for granted by St. Paul in explaining why Jesus’ Melchizedec priesthood is superior to the Aaron/Levi now defunct priesthood. they paid tithes to Melchizedec when Abraham did so because still in Abraham’s loins, not yet even conceived. we inherit a bit of the souls of our parents, but the soul being more fluid than the body is more changeable for good or ill. and a contamination from Adam is present.

              basically we don’t HAVE souls we ARE souls. Genesis in describing what died in the Flood says all that had the breath of life died, including clearly animals. so they are souls also just not the same kind of soul as us. One early Father suggested that the body design itself had something to do with the image of God, not that God is anthropomorphic but something about it says something about God. Certainly the permanent bipedal form with free hands and large brain makes one better at ruling over the earth tending the garden and keeping it.

              • Michael,

                We are souls and our souls were breathed into our potentially corruptible bodies. But we were not born to die, that is a mistake. The bodies were only potentially mortal. Man is an immortal soul clothed in a body which, due to Adam’s sin, became mortal.

                “I would make the observation that it seems you have the order of creation of man backwards. We were formed out of mud first and then God breathed His image and likeness into us. Thus St. Gregory of Nyssa says we are mud, commanded to become God. This order is critical in my understanding. Thus there are Orthodox who maintain that we are not naturally immortal, but become that way as part of God’s gift of Himself (His energies) to us.”

                I do not have the order of creation backwards. Before the Fall, we were “naturally” immortal. Were we not, the story of the Fall would make no sense whatsoever. Death was the curse that resulted from our sin of consuming the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil. No sin, no curse, no death. The post-Resurrection body of Christ was probably what we were designed to be before the Fall. That is the type of body the living and dead will be transformed into at the General Resurrection, in the “twinkling of an eye”.

                • I am no theologian, but saying that we are fundamentally really souls, and that those souls are “clothed in bodies” strikes me instinctively as being problematic somehow from a standpoint of Christian anthropology. We are soul and body together. It is true that the the soul can exist without the body, but it is a highly unnatural state.

                  And we have this from the Liturgy: “In the grave with the body, in Hades with the soul as God, in Paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit wast Thou…”

                  The point being that in his human nature, Christ’s bodily existence is in these verses given the same weight as his human soul.

                  “Souls clothed in flesh” instinctively strikes me as a bit of Gnostic sounding terminology. I am NOT, though, saying you are a Gnostic! I would be interested in comments from those more knowledgeable.

                  • Michael Bauman says

                    Me too. It is off through. We are a soul-body unity.

                  • I do not discount the body at all or suggest that matter is somehow evil. The “We” to which I refer is human beings and thus we are souls clothed in bodies or, to put it a different way, a human being is a soul clothed in a body. Originally, our bodies were imperishable but became perishable due to our sin. In the end, our souls will again be clothed with imperishable bodies forevermore. That is the Orthodox faith.

                    • The terminology still strikes me as strange and odd. If it is the Orthodox faith, there should be a plethora of patristic writings using that terminology. I would appreciate references.

                    • To precisely what terminology are you referring, Edward?

                    • Michael Bauman says

                      Misha, the way you are saying it gives a distinct dualistic flavor to what you are saying.

                      I am sure you do not mean it that way.

                      We die so that sin does not become eternal so there is s sense that we are meant to share in God’s uncreated life but St. Athanasius describes our struggle with sin as a tendency toward nothingness.

                      God’s grace alone prevents that from happening, not anything created least of all our souls.

                      Still the separation of body and soul is also the result of sin and not the way in which we are created. The separation is a consequence of sin. The restoration in the resurrection is a result of Christ’s victory.

                      There is no dualism here.

                    • The terminology that human beings are souls clothed in bodies or clothed in flesh.

                    • “Misha, the way you are saying it gives a distinct dualistic flavor to what you are saying.”

                      Michael, you misunderstand me. What else does “incarnate” mean but enfleshed?

                      “We die so that sin does not become eternal so there is a sense that we are meant to share in God’s uncreated life but St. Athanasius describes our struggle with sin as a tendency toward nothingness.”

                      I do not know what to do with your phrase “so that sin does not become eternal”. That is very odd. Sin is error, deviation, missing of the mark. It cannot become eternal because it is simply a choice of free will, the gift given to us that is necessarily a double edged sword. Sin could not become “eternal” under any circumstance.

                      On the other hand, sin is most certainly a “tendency toward nothingness” since evil has no ontological reality behind it.

                      What was breathed into the material body made from the earth is nous/soul. That is the manner in which it was wrapped in (originally imperishable) flesh. We were created to be that complete creature – Adam/Man. After the Curse, Adam was rendered perishable and thus all other men were enfleshed in perishable flesh. Yet the nous was created immortal. In this sense, we really cannot “die” at all. That is the great illusion which haunts mankind, the threat of being reduced to nothingness. But, though one may suppose nothing is impossible for God, that is not the way we were made. The nous does not die.

                      Thus Christ’s Resurrection annulled the curse. In assuming fully our humanity, He deified it. The product was what He became in His post Resurrectional appearances. That is what we are meant to become. That is good news indeed since this perishable world and our perishable bodies are but a foretaste of the imperishable eternal life that awaits us.

                      Slava Bogu!

                      Parallel in a sense to all of this physical metamorphosis is a spiritual metamorphosis which begins in this life and is only fully completed in the next. That is theoria and theosis. As in Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus, as one gradually through spiritual growth realizes what he was created to become, what he really is, what God really is and so on, one becomes more possessed by God so to speak. Logismoi are defeated and one eventually acquires dispassion and unshakeable faith. Other gifts accompany this to which the Fathers have attested, some are granted clairvoyance, others healing, etc.

                      It’s all quite wonderful and real, thank God.

                    • RE: “clothed in flesh”:

                      “Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honouring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God. How could God be born out of lifeless things? And if God’s body is God by union, it is immutable. The nature of God remains the same as before, the flesh created in time is quickened by, a logical and reasoning soul.” – St. John of Damascus

                      “Do not overlook the poor and let not his tattered rags incite you to contempt, but let them rather move you to pity your fellow creatures. For he is also a man, a creature of God, clothed in flesh like yourself, and perchance in his spiritual virtue mirroring God more than you.” – St. Photios

                      “He had concern also over the honour of His Mother, but much more over the salvation of Her soul and the good of men, for which He had become clothed in flesh” – St.John Chrysostom, Commentary on John, Homily 21

                    • Misha, two of your three quotations involve God taking on human nature, which is a quite different thing. Quotations abut Christ would only be appropriate if you found something from the Fathers that said that the hypostatic union was really between the Son and a human soul — and that this union of God and a human soul then was “clothed in flesh.”.

                      Which leaves you with one quotation from St. Photius — an incidental phrase as part of his making another point. It isn’t an exposition of the Orthodox teaching of what man is. “Consensus patrum” it is not. Your categorical statement that “this is the Orthodox faith” should have been able to do better than that.

                      Check out key modern texts that address patristic anthropology in depth, such as numerous detailed books by Metr. Hierotheos Vlachos or Fr. Michael Pomazansky’s book on Dogmatic Theology. I don’t even have to open them to know that they never use your novel terminology. Which they would if what you wrote was “the Orthodox faith.”

                      Stankovich’s quotation from St. John D is directly to the point that I am making and addresses what my concern was about your terminology. In fact, he took the time to highlight a key phrase (although it is the entire exposition that matters.)

                      I have been reading patristic writings for 30 years and have a keen interest in the patristic understanding of anthropology, so I know when terminology is used that strikes me as foreign or novel. Yours struck me as both.

                      Many a heresy begins almost by accident, with novel ways of describing something about man or God “off the top of ones head” as Stankovufh puts it. It then hardens because of pride. I am still not prepared to say with certainty that your terminology is heretical or that no fathers have ever used it. But you have done nothing to convince me that it is even a prominent alternative patristic way of describing human beings, let alone “the Orthodox faith.”

                    • Edward,

                      I stand firmly behind every word I wrote, as usual. Stankovich is daft and does not even have the faculties to sense when something is relevant or not. If you can tell me in very precise terms what you think is wrong with the way that I have described it, I might possibly be interested. But your feelings about it do not concern me in the least. You should be able to do better than that.

                    • Misha wrote: “If you can tell me in very precise terms what you think is wrong with the way that I have described it, I might possibly be interested.”

                      I did, and you weren’t. The problem is that it is not the consensus way that the Fathers have described human beings. I said that the Fathers didn’t describe man the way that you did You stated that your formulation is “the Orthodox faith.” Therefore simple logic dictates that you must demonstrate that it is the patristic way of describing man, since it is impossibless for me to prove this particular negative. If I were to make a statement and preface it with “this Gospel” and underscore it at the end with “this is the Orthodox faith,” I would be able to supply reams of quotations, ancient and modern. That you cannot demonstrates that it is your personal formulation, not that of the Fathers.

                      Your formulation states that humans really, at root, are souls, full stop. And that our bodies, however honored in theory, are in reality no more than clothing for the soul. But Christianity teaches that our body is an intrinsic and inextricable part of our individual being no less than is our soul. There is more, but these are the points I have already made quite clearly and specifically — although I attempted to keep it low key.

                      You then go on to say this, which is exactly the same thing you said the last time I directly challenged you when you were drifting off into your own made-up theological world: “But your feelings about it do not concern me in the least.”

                      And to which I will respond exactly as I did last time (with no substantive response from you): “What feelings?” Seriously, identify one expression of emotion on my part anywhere in my posts.

                    • Edward,

                      Very well stated, as is normal for you. I always appreciate your comments and learn from them.

                      For what it’s worth, my question really was a question and not a defense of anything Misha wrote. Your response to him is simply what prompted the thought.

                      My reason for asking has to do with what I wrote earlier, as well as my sense that we know very little about what man is – truly – either according to his original creation or in terms of what he shall be, at least not with the kind of understanding that comes of experience. What we know is known by revelation and not our experience of corrupted life in this world, Christ being the revelation of what it is to be human (or so I have been taught).

                      And so again I wonder: Can the creation of man be properly contemplated apart the Incarnation? This is a question, not an answer, and one that is perhaps only tangentially related to the soul/body language Misha used.

                      I would be interested in your thoughts or those of any others.

                    • “Your formulation states that humans really, at root, are souls, full stop.”

                      I cannot see where you get that from what I wrote. I wrote:

                      “The human being is an immortal nous/soul, clothed in flesh which was originally designed to be imperishable but which, through the fall of Lucifer and later Adam, became perishable, as did the world in which we live.”

                      If you’re suggesting that the comma after nous/soul was put there to state somehow that man is in fact a “bodiless nous who simply happens to be clothed in flesh” as opposed to being “a nous clothed in flesh”, then that is not what I meant. Re-reading it, all that I would change to clarify it is add another comma:

                      “The human being is an immortal nous/soul, clothed in flesh, which flesh was originally designed . . .”

                      That accurately states the matter (as did the former to anyone who assumes Orthodox anthropology) and is not meant to imply that the soul sans body is fully man any more than the body sans soul. The particular thing I was trying to get at is that the death of the body need not be feared in the slightest since we, as souls, survive death and will receive perfected resurrected bodies.

                  • M. Stankovich says

                    “Joining with the Fathers before us”:

                    He creates with His own hands man of a visible nature and an invisible, after His own image and likeness: on the one hand, man’s body He formed of earth, and on the other, his reasoning and thinking soul He bestowed upon him by His own inbreathing, and this is what we mean by “after His image.” For the phrase “after His image” clearly refers to the side of his nature which consists of mind and free will, whereas “after His likeness” means likeness in virtue so far as that is possible.

                    Further, body and soul were formed at one and the same time, not first the one and then the other, as Origen so senselessly supposes. The soul is bound up with the body; whole with whole and not part with part: and it is not contained by the body but contains it as fire does iron, and being in it energises with its own proper energies

                    God then made man without evil, upright, virtuous, free from pain and care, glorified with every virtue, adorned with all that is good, like a sort of second microcosm within the great world , another angel capable of worship, compound, surveying the visible creation and initiated into the mysteries of the realm of thought, king over the things of earth, but subject to a higher king, of the earth and of the heaven, temporal and eternal, belonging to the realm of sight and to the realm of thought, midway between greatness and lowliness, spirit and flesh: for he is spirit by grace, but flesh by overweening pride: spirit that he may abide and glorify his Benefactor, and flesh that he may suffer, and suffering may be admonished and disciplined when he prides himself in his greatness : here, that is, in the present life, his life is ordered as an animal’s, but elsewhere, that is, in the age to come, he is changed and— to complete the mystery— becomes deified by merely inclining himself towards God; becoming deified, in the way of participating in the divine glory and not in that of a change into the divine being.

                    But God made him by nature sinless, and endowed him with free will. By sinless, I mean not that sin could find no place in him (for that is the case with Deity alone), but that sin is the result of the free volition he enjoys rather than an integral part of his nature ; that is to say, he has the power to continue and go forward in the path of goodness, by co-operating with the divine grace, and likewise to turn from good and take to wickedness, for God has conceded this by conferring freedom of will upon him. For there is no virtue in what is the result of mere force.

                    The soul, accordingly , is a living essence, simple, incorporeal, invisible in its proper nature to bodily eyes, immortal, reasoning and intelligent, formless, making use of an organised body, and being the source of its powers of life, and growth, and sensation, and generation, mind being but its purest part and not in any wise alien to it; (for as the eye to the body, so is the mind to the soul); further it enjoys freedom and volition and energy, and is mutable, that is, it is given to change, because it is created. All these qualities according to nature it has received of the grace of the Creator, of which grace it has received both its being and this particular kind of nature.

                    Furthermore, we also believe in the resurrection of the dead, for there really will be one, there will be a resurrection of the dead. Now, when we say resurrection, we mean a resurrection of bodies. For resurrection is a raising up again of one who has fallen. But, since souls are immortal, how shall they rise again? Well if death is defined as a separation of soul from body, the resurrection is the perfect rejoining of soul and body, and the raising up again of the dissolved and fallen animal. Therefore, the very body which is cor- rupted and dissolved will itself rise up incorruptible. For He who formed it in the beginning from the slime of the earth is not incapable of raising it up again after it has again been dissolved and returned to the earth whence it was taken by the decision of its Creator.

                    St. John of Damascus, Expostion of the Orthodox Faith (“The Fount of Knowledge”)

                    It pays to rely on the Fathers rather than Google and speaking off the top of your head.

                    • Which Fathers? It is where the Fathers agree that we find Tradition, not in their personal opinions. St. John was speaking against Origen’s personal theology of the pre-existence of souls. Thus he states that the soul is not contained by the body and then proceeds to explain how the soul “contains” the body as fire “contains” iron. Paradox.

                      We agree that the soul and the body are to be distinguished and yet are joined to make man. We are also in agreement that it is the soul that proceeds to the particular judgment upon death and then, hopefully, to a heavenly repose until the general resurrection.

                      All comments to the contrary and rejections of the “soul clothed in flesh” language are childish ill considered posturing against imagined Gnosticism.

                      Just let it go. You’re wrong. Go condescend to someone who respects your opinion.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Let me see if I understand you correctly, Scott: we are to discount the “personal opinion” of St. John of Damascus, perhaps the single greatest Orthodox dogmatic theologian – as his Kontakion states, “the composer of hymns, the star and teacher of the Church, the defender of her doctrines: through the might of the Lord’s Cross he overcame heretical error” – and most importantly, beloved of the Church and its Patristic Tradition, and believe… you. You, of the Google/Wikipedia school of theology, who has made the Fathers a “project” and whose entire authority is you. I am as wrong as our Blessed Father John is wrong, and my opinion is the “opinion” of “the enlightener of the universe and the adornment of hierarchs.” You are a poseur.

                    • Edward,

                      The “soul/body” thread has gotten so long I thought I’d start anew

                      I, too, find something not quite right with the language of “soul clothed in flesh.” I cannot put my finger on it exactly, although I am satisfied with Misha’s clarification that both together make a human person.

                      I am no theologian, nor will I pretend to play one on the web. But there is an aspect to this conversation that hasn’t been considered. Your comment on the fact that two of the three quotations Misha referenced refer to the Incarnation is what brought this to mind.

                      Regardless of the soul/body discussion, to be the image of the risen and (Misha forgot to mention) ascended and glorified Christ is what it means to be fully human – a deified, glorified man “raised up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenlies.”

                      Saint Paul says that Christ was “crucified before the foundation of the world.” In time – that is to say linear, historical time – the eternal Son of God took flesh (soul and body) of the holy Virgin and was crucified for us. Yet since He took this humanity and raised it to eternity (in which past, present, and future are without meaning), there is a sense in which it can be said that our (Adam’s) having been made in the image and likeness of God is/was in fact to be made like the glorified, INCARNATE Christ. Our iconography speaks to this when it depicts Him in the creation – not as a ‘Spirit-only God,’ but as the incarnate Christ working His work of creation, creating man to be like Himself.

                      And so I have to wonder: Can the creation of man be properly contemplated apart the Incarnation? We live in time and are accustomed to think and to speak in terms of linear time, and I certainly do not deny- rather I strongly affirm – the historical aspect.

                      It is a mystery, to be sure – something that I suspect it is better to contemplate than try to explain.

                    • “Let me see if I understand you correctly, Scott: we are to discount the ‘personal opinion’ of St. John of Damascus, perhaps the single greatest Orthodox dogmatic theologian . . .”

                      Yes, he was dead wrong about God the Father icons as well. Go figure. As to the quote you raised, it simply does not prove your point because he says two things which are seemingly mutually exclusive, which goes to show that the Fathers were often inexact and certainly not of a mathematical or technical mindset when it comes to theology.

                      In general, your opinions are beneath contempt so I won’t address it any further.

                      ” . . .but contains it as fire does iron, and being in it energises with its own proper energies . . .”

                      Your own quote betrays you and we are arguing about nothing at all.

                    • The reason the language sounds not quite right is because it isn’t. It is novel and is (albeit probably unintentionally) Gnostic in flavor or leaving open some sort of Origenist separate creation of souls that were then later put into bodies (which is kind of where this started when someone commented that Misha sounded a bit Mormon — that, and the “ruling realms” bit).

                      I am still waiting for anything from the Fathers or from a modern scholar of the Fathers that uses that terminology to describe man, and will not be satisfied with his sort-of backpedalling until he shows that such terminology reflects the consensus of the Fathers — or until he acknowledges that his language is not that of the Church.

                      Remember, he started with the bald assertion: “The human being is an immortal nous/soul, clothed in flesh which was originally designed to be imperishable…”

                      When called on this, instead of saying that he had misspoken, Misha doubled down in the next post: “We are souls and our souls were breathed into our potentially corruptible bodies.” (My emphasis.)

                      When again called on this, again instead of saying that he had misspoken, he threw out a non-sequitur: “I do not discount the body at all or suggest that matter is somehow evil.” No one had accused him of saying that matter was evil.

                      He continuedin that same post by very slightly shifting and softening the terminology: “The “We” to which I refer is human beings and thus we are souls clothed in bodies or, to put it a different way, a human being is a soul clothed in a body.” Still problematic, though.

                      He continues on with “Originally, our bodies were imperishable but became perishable due to our sin. In the end, our souls will again be clothed with imperishable bodies forevermore.” (my emphasis) Which is itself a rather odd way of talking about it, because the Christian faith holds not that our souls will be clothed with just any imperishable bodies, as though a body were a suit of clothing — perhaps a brand new suit in Misha’s understanding? It is hard to say given how garbled things are getting at this point.

                      Christianity rather holds that this very body that we have here on earth will be resurrected, perfected, and made imperishable.

                      And again, just as Misha introduced this whole controversy by saying “From the pulpit you rarely hear this Gospel” — meaning that what he was about to say was the Gospel, now on the third time around he made the even more astounding emphatic assertion about his curious way of putting things: “That is the Orthodox faith.” Anyone who says something like that had better have a lot of backup.

                      So that is where I entered the debate for the first time and challenged him. If this is the Gospel, if this is the Orthodox faith, it should be very easy to come up with a plethora of Orthodox sources, both patristic and modern, saying that a man is an immortal soul clothed in flesh or that “we are souls” and that those souls are breathed into flesh, or things that are very similar. I made that challenge being quite certain that he wouldn’t be able to produce that plethora of sources proving that his odd terminology was the consensus of the Fathers.

                      He then goes on to produce another one what would be a real howler, if the implications weren’t so very unfunny: “Michael, you misunderstand me. What else does “incarnate” mean but enfleshed?” As Stankovich would say, “mama mia!”

                      Where, anywhere, at any time, does ANY Father speak of man as being “incarnate?” That terminology is used uniquely regarding the Godhead — namely the second Person of the Trinity becoming incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. The Latin term quite literally means “to be made flesh” or to take on flesh — and I am unaware that the Greek and Slavonic terms mean anything different. A human being self-evidently is not “made into flesh” and does not “take on flesh,” since flesh is inextricably part of being human from the very moment of each human’s beginning — unless you believe in Origen’s pre-existence of souls or the modern Mormon variant of that patristically condemned idea.

                      The incarnation is furthermore not merely the second person of the Trinity taking on a human body, but His taking on as well the human soul that is inextricably bound to the human body. So it is sheer nonsense at best, and perhaps a Christologic heresy at worst, to indicate that a human being (other than Christ) is “incarnate.”

                      Again, instead of saying that maybe his terminology was poor, Misha goes on to quote St. John of Damascus thinking that the quotation defended his odd formulation (and of course it did no such thing, since the quotation was about God becoming incarnate — not about the composition of us ordinary human beings). And then when Stankovich provided a lengthy quotation from this giant of a Father — whose very claim to fame is precisely that he does summarize with exactitude the consensus of the Fathers who went before him — suddenly what St. John of Damascus has to say on the subject is dismissed by Misha as a “personal opinion” and somehow not reflective of the consensus of the Fathers? As Bp. Tikhon would exclaim, “what an idea!!!” Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with St. John of Damascus and his Exposition would never wade in and call anything in that work a “personal opinion” unless one were truly armed for bear with clear statements from a lot of Fathers.

                      Misha then compounds his error by again misapplying another quotation — this time from St. John Chrysostom — who was also talking specifically about the incarnation of Christ, and not describing an ordinary human being. Anyone who makes these kinds of elementary errors would do very well to back out gracefully from this kind of discussion, rather than doubling down on his arrogant certitude of being able to express “the Orthodox faith.”

                      To anyone who would think that I am being excessively picky, I would point out that a correct understanding of patristic teachings on anthropology are hardly minor issues. There are tremendous implications to getting the terminology right — because the terminology reflects and shapes the thought behind the terminology, and because that thought has a direct impact on our being able to achieve theosis. The Fathers hammered out their theology with great specificity of language and no little dispute. Because it matters.

                      I have no expectation that Misha/Scott will acknowledge that he is terribly wrong, or even a little wrong — in all of this time on this forum, I’ve never seen that happen, and I don’t expect to see it today. After all, he claims to be free of the passions, unlike the rest of us. But anyone who takes the time to read this will, I hope, see him for the reckless would-be “theologian” that he is — who is in way over his head, and treat anything he has to say on such subjects accordingly.

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Michael Stankovich, your replies to “Misha”-Scott are quite apt and they show your knowledge of the Fathers is not just senior in age to “Misha”-Scott’s, but deeper and better digested, while his researches are shallow and are the result of searching for arguing points, period!
                      He lashed out: “I stand firmly behind every word I wrote, as usual. Stankovich is daft ” Did you ever watch that English tv comedy, “Are you being served” or “Have you been served”? One of the main characters, a “Mrs Slocum.” liked to polish off any indignant remark of hers with, “And I am UNANIMOUS in this!”
                      Oh, the days are too short!

                    • Edward,

                      You have to realize, I do not recognize that either you or Fritz have any authority or experience to call me to account for anything. What you write is of no more significance to me than what Frankie Schaeffer might offer; i.e., totally beside the point.

                      You have not been able to tell me why you associate what I wrote with Gnosticism and your naked assertion is evidence of nothing but your childish petulence.

                      Good luck in making me into a Gnostic, but it is not possible because nothing I have written should give anyone that impression and the fact that you are jousting at windmills reflects poorly on you, not me.

                      “Christianity rather holds that this very body that we have here on earth will be resurrected, perfected, and made imperishable.”

                      Stating that again we will be clothed in imperishable bodies indicates nothing about which bodies. I.e., it does not suggest that our bodies will not be the same ones we have now, only perfected. I’m not sure where you think you learned to reason, but you should go back to the drawing board because your whole argument is a cluster f*ck of an attempt to make something out of absolutely nothing.

                      In both the case of Christ and each man, something is joined with the body, with Christ the Word becomes flesh, with other men the soul is joined with the body, no one disputes this, and thus your imagined Christological heresy is just that, imagined and non-existent. The problem is not that you do not have some grip on theology. The problem is that you do not have a sufficiently experiential grip on it.

                      But joust away if you wish. It’s nothing to me since you have no one to whom to appeal and I can go on indefinitely.

                    • This whole conversation could have been succinctly concluded along the following lines:

                      Edward: Misha, did you mean to suggest by the language “clothed in the flesh” the Platonic notion of the soul imprisoned in the flesh?

                      Misha: No.

                      Edward: Thank you.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Now, Edward, you give the boy his ball back and apologize immediately. You wouldn’t want him to take a fit.

  9. It is a great revealing, the Lord is indeed merciful to us. I have been following this stuff for a number of years, I am surprised how fast everything is coming out. The emails confirm that so many of the “conspiracies” are true. This process will shatter the world view of many, who long ago forged loyalties to parties, ideas and systems that compromised their Christianity. It will be painful for so many. But so much of this was hidden in plain sight, we just couldn’t – or wouldn’t – connect the dots. Now we are being forced to.

    To understand these leaders, you need to understand that they believe. Just take one of my “favorite” links from Lucis Trust, the organization that is heavily involved in the UN and sponsors their meditation room:

    https://www.lucistrust.org/arcane_school/talks_and_articles/the_esoteric_meaning_lucifer

    Their beliefs couldn’t be stated more clearly.

    Here’s a link to the people involved in his organization:

    http://www.temcat.com/001-TC%20Letters/LUCIS%20TRUST%20JAN%2009.pdf

    Many have known about this for years, Is it any wonder why things are progressing the way they are? That PDF is from 2009. The people on top are enemies if the true faith.

    Yes, a new age is upon us, it can’t go back now. Please Lord, Have Mercy on Us Sinners!

    • To amplify what you’ve said here — interestingly enough, Abramovic has said that when these things happen in the setting of an art gallery, they are “performance art;” but, when they take place in private, they are “ritual.” A natural question arises as to how the public / private distinction can really change the nature of what is “going on” in these kinds of things: if you’re defiling yourself or holy things in an art gallery, how is that not “ritual” if the only way to make sense of what is going on is to recognize it as a defilement? Occultists often misdirect and lie to cover their tracks and this distinction here seems to be a bit of a revelation. Abramovic has influenced Lady Gaga and other pop stars and “artists.” When Lady Gaga and other proteges perform occult-laden concerts and televised events — such as the Grammy Awards, the Super Bowl halftime show, and other similar spectacles — they are engaging in ritual parading as “performance art.” How could it be otherwise? The use of psychodrama, Jungian archetypes, and occult symbols are intended to transform the viewer’s consciousness.

      Crowley himself, probably picking up on certain influences from the French Symbolists who were dripping in the occult, advocated combining drama, music, and drugs in order to affect a spiritual experience in the audience. From this perspective, one has to wonder if the modern Dionysian rock concert isn’t what he had in mind.

  10. Back in the day when an author wrote something he didn’t like or decided it was just not well penned; he”d throw the paper in the trashbin. With modern computers, the trashbin doesn’t get as much thought.

    Before you hit post George-some friendly advice for you-consider the bin a bit more.

    The combination of promoting a guy who says I grab em by the ya ya and your lack of trash can reflection is becoming ugly and whitespaces more desirable. Not your best work-sorry to tell you. Vulgarity is not enjoyable reading content here.

    • George Michalopulos says

      Well, having never met a man who never engaged in locker-room talk when in private, I think I’m on pretty safe ground endorsing Donald Trump over a lying, deceitful kleptocrat like Clinton.

      Really, it’s a no-brainer. Thanks for your concern though.

      • Make Monomakhos Great Again! says

        I must have missed the Russia visit retrospective post when George Michalopulos and a bunch of monks were kicking around over glasses of vodka discussing their best lay.

      • Oh, this isn’t about those two politicians.

        It is about your loose tongued pen.

        Not a fan of this essay. How often have you been told that?

        • George Michalopulos says

          Whistling past the graveyard aren’t we Anny?

          • I have never told you I didn’t like an essay.

            It was in poor taste for an Orthodox Christian.

            • George,

              It was one of your best, actually. In it, you looked through most all of the illusions and set them aside. I was proud of you reading it.

              Morality matters.

              Suffice it to say, progressives and traditionalists define different and contradictory things as being respectively good or evil. My God is a progressive’s demon from straight out of hell.

              So when the matriarchy is questioned . . . progress, equality of outcomes, affirmative action, black social culture, the sanctity of a woman’s right to “choose” . . . well, it is hard for a traditionalist and a progressive to even communicate. What they call hell, we call home – and vice versa.

              This is going to be exceedingly difficult for some people.

              • George Michalopulos says

                Wow. Beautiful.

              • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                George and “Misha.” DO give each other “wows” and high-fives and awe-struck admiration. You BOTH undressed for us when you disparaged “black social culture.” Now that Trump is President-elect, you have license to give vent to what’s been bothering you about the incumbent for the last eight years: that black incumbent who did NOT have to depend on the electoral college to save his bacon as did that big white lard-butt who’s due in court as a defendant before he’s inaugurated!

                • You can defend matriarchal, gang glorifying, 70%+ of births out of wedlock (baby-momma’s instead of wives/mothers), absurdly high crime rate (mostly black on black) black “culture” all you care to, Fritz. The late senator Pat Moynihan saw this coming fifty years ago

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Family:_The_Case_For_National_Action

                  Total train wreck of a culture. Disfunctional, pathological and dangerous to all, including themselves.

                  That’s just one piece of the ugly pie that America has become.

                  • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                    Misha, why not consult with a cultural anthropologist before dogmatizing about paranoid white visions of the Afro-American population’s culture? “Dysfunctional?” Tina Turner, Marian Anderson, Martin Luther King, President Obama, General Colin Powell, Ben Carson? How many of the mass shootings and terrorist acts in America arose from pathological BLACK culture? Can you answer that or not?
                    Are you still suffering from seeing a black family in that nice white house? That’s it, isn’t it? “How could a “n…..” go so far when I didn’t go ANY PLACE?” That’s what just eats away at the Obama-haters here and in the Trump camp! As Darlene McBride put it: “a big black melting pot just boiling over on a nice, WHITE stove!”

                    • That’s your own dark side talking, Fritz. Not mine. I don’t really look up to any of the people you mentioned. Not even Ben Carson. We know about Tina’s marriage, King’s philandering and plagarism, Obama’s many shortcomings, Powell’s affirmative action career, etc.

                      Are there blacks I look up to? Not really. Not as role models. But for a black child or black man I would posit a successful black attorney or businessman who has his spiritual life in order, or a black saint, even better.

                      But if you want to wallow in the filth of hateful stereotypes and reactionary dialogue, be my guest. It doesn’t get you very far.

                      “It don’t really matter to me,
                      Everybody’s had to fight to be free,
                      But you don’t have to live like a refugee.” – St. Thomas the Heartbroken (Petty)

                    • BT, what a load of ideological crap. It is nothing but lies and unwarranted oppobrium on Misha. Your words are so far outside your calling as to warrant a rousing Anaxios!

                      You sir ought to be ashamed.

                    • Terrorism, your Grace?

                      37 shot, five of whom were killed, just last night in Chicago alone. Total for the year is approaching 3000 in that same city. 75% of the dead are black, many of who are children, and an approximately equal percentage if the shooters are black. Concentration of the killing? West side and south side neighborhoods – all predominantly black.

                      Compare this to Islamic terrorism. There is no comparison.

                      You may ask the overwhelming majority of decent, law abiding black people who live there whether they believe they are being terrorized, not to mention deprived of economic prosperity as a result of their unsafe neighborhoods. And sad to say, cooperation with the police is tantamount to a death sentence. If living in constant fear isn’t terrorism I don’t know what is. But hey. let’s blame the police (also predominantly black in these neighborhoods, as is the chief of police) because after all, black lives matter.

                      And that is the point; isn’t it. Black lives matter for one thing: votes. It is tragic in the extreme, but did a president’s being black make any difference in the quality of their lives? None at all. If anything, he made it worse by his pandering to the worst elements in the culture.

                      As for any perceived racism on my part, see my comment to MS, and don’t bother to go there.

                  • Indeed, Misha. Criticism such as that of BT is empty leftist nonsensical propaganda that sees hate in every truth and does nothing – ABSOLUTELY NOTHING – to improve the lives of black people.

                    I often say that Senator Danial Patrick Moynihan was among the last of what used to be many honest, patriotic Liberals. A reasonable person could disagree with men such as he but still find them worthy of respect because they were willing to see reality for what it is, thus giving substance to their views.

                    Today most of those who falsely claim the legacy of such men have completely lost touch with reality and have nothing left but this nonsensical, useless, meaningless propaganda.

                    The evils that have destroyed black communities are the same evils that are now destroying white communities. But if one dares to speak this out loud one is a hater. And so we are: haters of evil.

                    • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                      Brian, instead of branding what I wrote as empty leftist nonsensical propaganda, why not point out what you thought was nonsensical in what I wrote, hmmm?
                      Couldn’t you answer just this one question which I asked? “How many of the mass shootings and terrorist acts in America arose from pathological BLACK culture?”

                    • And it was that late, great Sen. Patrick Moynihan who first said, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”

                      Facts in general have taken a beating in American public discourse during the past 25 to 30 years, if not longer. *sigh*

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      These are two of the outright stupidest, most ignorant interpretations of history and the late Senator and Statesman Daniel Patrick Moynihan I have ever read. Both of you are ignorant racist morons who would not know truth if it smashed you in your donkey faces.

                      The fact is, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote less than one page specifically about “Negroes & welfare” in what later became the Moynihan Report, and never intended it for general release, but as a polemic for welfare reform among White House discussants (who leaked it through Lyndon Johnson to AFDC), by simply stating:

                      The AFDC program, deriving from the long established Mothers’ Aid programs, was established in 1935 principally to care for widows and orphans, although the legislation covered all children in homes deprived of parental support because one or both of their parents are absent or incapacitated. The steady expansion of this welfare program, as of public assistance programs in general, can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States. the welfare bureaucracy of the Federal establishment are responsible for misleading the citizenry regarding AFDC statistics.

                      More importantly, and most importantly is what he later wrote to then Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz:

                      One of the things it seems to me has got to be said before long is that the greatest single danger facing the Negroes of America is that the whites are going to put them on welfare. It would be a good deal easier just to pension the Negroes off than to accept the major and sometimes wrenching changes in our way of doing things that will be required if we are going to bring them in as full-fledged members of the larger community. This process is already in evidence. Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) goes up and up and up. Half the recipients are Negro. Nothing would be more terrible, if it should come to pass. We will have created an entire subculture of dependency, alienation, and despair. We have already done as much to whole sections of Appalachia, as also to the Indian reservations. It is in truth the way we cope with this kind of problem. As against giving the men proper jobs and a respectable place in their community and family. The issue of welfare is the issue of dependency. It is different from poverty. To be poor is an objective condition; to be dependent, a subjective one.

                      And his most powerful statement, even as Bill Clinton signed the nearly toothless and worthless Clinton Welfare Reform Act of 1996, Moynihan said:

                      In a very little while as the time limits come into effect, I estimate a 5-year time [limit] might put half a million children on the streets of New York City in 10 year’s time, and we will wonder where they came from. We will say, ‘why are these children sleeping on grates? Why are they being picked up in the morning frozen? Why are they horrible to each other, a menace to all, most importantly themselves? Freedom was not enough.

                      Apparently, I am one you would so broadly paint as “falsely claim[ing] the legacy of such men [and] have completely lost touch with reality and have nothing left but this nonsensical, useless, meaningless propaganda.” I was raised in a home where a mother and grandmother were forced to work outside the home, and myself & young brother listened to the fine “ethnic Orthodox” ladies who talked loudly enough behind us, scolding that our family allowed us to be “raised by niggers.” We couldn’t afford more. The “niggers” in our neighbourhood couldn’t afford to have a man in the house if they wanted AFDC. When I asked my grandmother what this all meant, she did not say a word, picked up her hat, but I could hear her Serbian several blocks away. End of story. She delivered holiday baked goods to the neighbours undeterred.

                      Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fastidious; his congressional letters came frequently, informing us, his constituents, of the latest news from Washington. I saw them on the ground, in the snow, in the dirt, in the rain, because so many couldn’t read, or if they could, they certainly didn’t understand. But as human beings, they stood head and and shoulders above the two of you fellows. Head and shoulders. What killed my neighborhood was people like you; entitled, self-righteous, racist morons. You are the engineers & pilots of the trainwreck you created and you are shameless.

                    • Michael,

                      I am baffled by your reply.

                      To be fair, although I have mentioned it in the past, you couldn’t have known that of my eleven God-children (whom I support, for whom I pray, and with whom I maintain close personal contact) three are black. This Friday the family of one of my black God-daughters will be in my home celebrating her 15th birthday. And no, this family isn’t educated, upwardly mobile middle class. They are poor, inner-city people. You couldn’t have known this any more than you know me or any of my black friends and neighbors so please don’t toss these epithets – not my way, at least.

                      If you are saying (I’m sometimes not certain of exactly what you are saying) that what can loosely be called the ‘Welfare culture’ has decimated inner-city communities as well as every community regardless of race (Appalachian, Native American, poor Southern, etc.) that it has infected I completely agree. And unless I am mistaken in my memory of the Senator, this is precisely what he sought to avoid. Whether one agreed with his prescriptions or not, he saw it coming and had a sense of TRUE compassion, as opposed to the “throw them a bone and let them alone until election time” we see today.

                      As I’m sure you know, there are more whites (even large communities of whites) on welfare than blacks. It isn’t a question of race. It is a question of policies that systematically rob people of their dignity by providing financial incentives for behavior that is destructive to a culture. Poor as they were, all these communities were stronger as communities prior to what has become generational dependence. But when anyone has the nerve to question these policies – policies that clearly constitute the political power of some – the first epithet thrown is “racist,” the motivation almost always being the maintenance of political power. The epithet may apply in some cases, but I suspect it is uncalled for in the case of most, if not all, those who comment here. Some of us are generally against, not welfare itself, but the degradation of the welfare culture, and we freely give of our OWN substance rather than demanding that others be taxed in order to care for our neighbors.

                    • Terrorism, your Grace?

                      37 shot, five of whom were killed, just last night in Chicago alone. Total for the year is approaching 3000 in that same city. 75% of the dead are black, many of who are children, and an approximately equal percentage if the shooters are black. Concentration of the killing? West side and south side neighborhoods – all predominantly black.

                      Compare this to Islamic terrorism. There is no comparison. Would it be fair to call this “mass shooting”?

                      You may ask the overwhelming majority of decent, law abiding black people who live there whether they believe they are being terrorized, not to mention deprived of a chance at economic prosperity as a result of their unsafe neighborhoods. And sad to say, cooperation with the police is tantamount to a death sentence. If living in constant fear isn’t terrorism I don’t know what is. But hey. let’s blame the police (also predominantly black in these neighborhoods, as is the chief of police) because after all, black lives matter.

                      And that is the point; isn’t it. Black lives matter for one thing: votes. It is tragic in the extreme and beyond shameful that the appropriate resources are not allocated to stop it. But did a president’s being black make any difference in the quality of their lives? None at all. Did he ensure the appropriate resources were allocated to end this madness? No. He merely promoted the narrative that panders to the basest elements in the culture.

                      As for any perceived racism on my part, see my comment to MS, and don’t bother to go there.

                    • M. Stankovich says

                      Seriously, Fr. Hans, if you have the arrogance to invoke your privilege to jump on this site, ahead of everyone else, day or night, then man up and raise some sand. I know these documents like the back of my hand, and my copy of The Negro Family: The Case for National Action was signed by Senator Moynihan himself (and cost $0.41 from the GPO) at the NYU Law School celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the 24th Amendment, and the Voting Rights Act. The history is exactly as I presented it, and is exactly as Moynihan described it. And seriously, the only people who found and continue to find the Moynihan Report “one of the most controversial documents of the twentieth century” and beyond are employed, home-owning white people in the suburbs. All Moynihan did was begin the destruction of the nuclear family by declaring it rife with “pathology”; or as the late prophet and sociologist Christopher Lasch wrote in Haven in a Heartless World: The family Besieged The real objection to the Moynihan Report is that it exaggerates the distance between the ghetto and the rest of American culture, which in some ways has come to resemble a pale copy of the black ghetto. Without minimizing the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks, we can see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life gives rise to similar strategies for survival, a similar search for non-binding commitments, and a similar toughness (combined with an underlying dependence) in the young. Indeed, the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that it now speaks to a general condition, the most striking feature of which is a widespread loss of confidence in the future.Seriously, Fr. Hans, did you shoot over here to tell my eyes were “lying?” That there isn’t something fundamentally wrong with being rejected because of where you live, or what you wear,? Or someone (read that as the police) presumes something about you for the same reasons? Or you can’t do your laundry, or play, or whatever in the basement because your grandmother ran into a rat again, and the guy from the city can’t come until later… I know all about those two documents, Fr. Hans. And my Senator signed one of them for me, and I shook his hand. It is pitiful that you have to go “digging around” to entertain your following of racist creeps and crackers, and there is not a single utterance of disgust on this forum beyond Vladyka Tikhon for their hateful racist words disguised as truth. Why not jump to head of the line and address that, Fr. Hans?

                  • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                    Michael Baumann! You accused me of : ” .nothing but lies and unwarranted oppobrium on Misha.” You can’t identify even ONE lie in my message! Nor any UNWARRANTED opprobrium “on” (your language) Misha. I guess you, too, are frustrated by my QUESTION:
                    “How many of the mass shootings and terrorist acts in America arose from pathological BLACK culture? Can you answer that or not?”
                    Not a complicated question,
                    is it?

                    • Michael Bauman can speak for himself, but I answered your question in the long-ended reply thread a couple of comments above. It is not a complicated question at all, nor is the answer; but it is one for which your party has no solution whatsoever. Whether the president elect does remains to be seen.

                      Were I in charge of finding a solution to the violence that plagues these neighborhoods, I would not only dedicate the necessary law enforcement resources, I would also consider letting the citizens of these neighborhoods decide via ballot: What real or perceived constitutional rights might they be willing to forgo FOR A SPECIFIED PERIOD OF TIME (stop and frisk in particular, perhaps some others within reason) in order to allow the police to restore order and prosecute the perpetrators (most of whom are already known to the police and the community) in order to end the terrorism that a tiny percentage of their population is foisting on all of them.

                      As long as such a ballot proposal was reasonable and TEMPORARY, I suspect most would be in favor. I would be if I had the misfortune of living there. If I can be frisked and searched at random in order to board a relatively short flight, why not be willing occasionally to endure the same for the sake of the safety and peace of the place I have to live every day of my life?

                      I would be among the first to say that, by and large, white (and let’s face it, almost exclusively Democratic) politicians helped create this problem by ignoring and/or pandering to these communities while black politicians make it worse by lying to their constituents about the cause of – and realistic solution to – their plight. But regardless of who’s responsible, the current state of these neighborhoods is what it is, and it will not improve without drastic action. Let the communities themselves decide what they want. How much do they REALLY want to be free of the violence? At least give them a choice. Right now they have none.

                • Peter Millman says

                  Greetings your Grace,
                  I wasn’t going to post here anymore, but I feel it is necessary to respectfully challenge some of your assertions.
                  First of all, your Grace, on election day, we have 50 presidential contests plus the District of Columbia. The candidate who wins the majority of electors from these 50 contests is elected President.
                  Secondly, your Grace, President- elect Trump won the popular votes cast because they don’t count the absentee ballots unless the margin of victory is less than the absentee votes. When absentee ballots are counted, Republicans historically defeat Democrats by an over two to one margin. In truth, Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes and probably won over one million more votes than Hillary out of all the votes cast. I reiterate, Donald Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote. President- elect Trump won the Presidency fairly and squarely. He’s your President and my President.

                  • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

                    Please, Peter Millman! Instead of all that, why not just give us the actual reported numbers of votes for each candidate, without making up any numbers not in existence for any reason whatsoever. Don’t tell us how many dead people WOULD HAVE VOTED, for example. Just the legally recorded numbers!

                    • Peter Millman says

                      Hello your Grace,
                      This is from the website 70 news- sharing news that matters to you.
                      Popular vote totals:
                      Donald Trump-62,972,226
                      Hillary Clinton-62,277,750
                      Electoral College:
                      Donald Trump- 306 electoral votes
                      Hillary Clinton-232 electoral votes.

            • Bishop Tikhon (Fitzgerald) says

              “ANONYMOUS”! I agree. “Cuckservative”, “Dikileaks”, “Wiener” instead of Weiner, “Alpha Male”, Semen and Breast Milk, etc., are not just a sign of repressed predilections, they are reminiscent of childish fascinations with the scatological and perverse, and unusual in mature Orthodox men.
              Oh well, if Abraham Lincoln was fond of sleeping with men, what’re ya gonna dew?

  11. “. . . The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.

    The worst interpreters of complex events are rather similar:

    This election has decimated the Democrats. Almost 35% of Democratic Senators and Congressmen come from only 3 states. The party is almost extinct in the south. Over 900 Democratic statehouse seats have been lost since Obama was elected eight years ago. The Trump revolution has been brewing for a long time. . .

    “This election has decimated the Democrats.”

    False.
    First of all, the Democratic Party won four state chambers previously held by Republicans: both chambers in Nevada, the Washington Senate and the New Mexico House. Republicans picked off three: net win of 1 for the Democrats. Of the 5,415 [evident typo in article linked below] state legislative seats up for grabs Tuesday, Republicans got 30 state senate seats and Democrats 5 state house seats, for a net R pick-up of 25, or .04%.

    . . . In the half-century since the Supreme Court mandated legislative redistricting on the basis of “one man, one vote,” the party winning the White House has gained an average of 129 state legislative seats.

    Not this year. Not anyone’s idea of decimation.

    Republicans picked up 3 governorships, Democrats are probably on the verge of 1 pick-up in NC. Net gain of 2 out of 12. Due to an electoral schedule madly out of sync, the LA Senate run-off is on 12/10. An unlikely but still possible win for Campbell would mean a minimal 51-49 R majority in the Senate. Trump’s nominations and favored legislative agenda will have to contend with 3 open foes among these Republican Senators as it is, and who knows how many less open ones. That will all sort itself out soon enough.

    “Almost 35% of Democratic Senators and Congressmen come from only 3 states.”

    The sense of this assertion escapes me, given that every state gets 2 senators, and last I checked there were 48 Democratic Senators, and 35% of 48 = about 17. Congressmen are apportioned strictly by population, so it sounds to me like people must be fleeing in droves from most of these other states. Perhaps Fr. J. can elaborate on this bizarre comment. As is stands it is nearly without merit.

    “Over 900 Democratic statehouse seats have been lost since Obama was elected eight years ago.”

    In fact the number is just over 800, which does indeed represent a significant atrophy of Democratic seat holders in the Southern states. No doubt the reasons for this are sociologically quite complex, but racist resentment about the black professor son of the two professorial parents and his two terms in the White House might well be a factor. As you seem to suggest in your sly way.

    “The Trump revolution has been brewing for a long time. . .”

    Trump revolution ? . . .

    Last but not least, face some portentous facts about our Presidential election:

    1) Sec. Clinton is now ahead by a cool 1 million in the popular vote (as of 10 pm PDT), with many millions of ballots still uncounted* in CA, WA, OR and HI. Here’s a rock-solid prediction you can take to the bank: when the counting’s finished next week, she’ll be closer to 2 million, for a 1.5% win in the popular vote. And incidentally, I’d rather be Applegate (D) than Darryl Issa (R) in the 49th Congressional District race, in the light of how these CA ballots are panning out.

    2) For some perspective on just how arbitrary this EC result is:

    In the alternate universe where FL’s panhandle is part of AL/GA and MI’s Upper Peninsula is part of WI, Clinton is celebrating her victory.”

    The ~ 1 million residents of the Redneck Riviera, as everyone in the region call the 18 counties of the Florida Panhandle, are demographically more akin to Alabama and Georgia than the rest of the state, which Clinton lost by 120,000. The 4 counties of the Michigan Peninsula are geographically, physically part of Wisconsin; their ~100, 000 residents are separated from the rest of Michigan by two Great Lakes. Were these 22 counties part of WI, AL and GA, Trump would have lost the electoral vote in addition to his 1.5 – 2 % popular vote defeat. 29 FL + 10 MI = 268 Trump, 270 Clinton.

    So please spare us any more bogus chattering about a “landslide.” Shift a few counties and we’d have a very different story here. The one thing that won’t change though: Clinton won the popular vote by 1.5 million, at least. Probably nearer to 2 million.

    You Orthodox legalists will rush to remind me that the rules is the rules. And you’re right — Trump won. But you have nothing even remotely resembling a clear and unambiguous mandate from the American electorate. Yeah, he won, and he’s the legitimate President-elect at this point, but he won it by lying non-stop and cynically appealing to many of the worst instincts in his fans, rending the social fabric of this nation perhaps irreparably. It was an ugly victory, one of the ugliest in modern history, in any Western nation.

    1 Kings 19:18

    *The lying meme that went viral, spreading from the disinfo trash posted at the vile americanthinker[sic].com and posted here by the noted (Putinista?) propaganda specialist “Centurion” — and uncomprehendingly parroted by Peter Millman, in his uniquely puerile fashion — is completely false: in the United States of America, every absentee vote, every mail-in vote is counted. Every provisional ballot is checked and if valid, it is counted.

    https://www.fvap.gov/vao/vag/appendix/faq

    • George Michalopulos says

      Boy, Mike, are you dreaming. The Dems control just 5 states (governor, both legislative houses). They’re electoral strength is now the Far West and Nevada. Virginia (!) would have gone Red but for the 60,000 pardoned felons, which curiously was also the vote margin.

      Hillary should done her Christian duty and listened to her husband who told her that she needed to pay attention to the white working class in the Rust Belt. Instead, she thought that the angry lesbian/beta-male/illegal alien/hijabi coalition of Starbucks baristas was the way to go.

    • The point to the “decimation” is that it is an inclusive process that began in 2010. It doesn’t mean that Republicans won a whole wave of new positions on Tuesday — how could they, when they already had the lion’s share of House seats, the strongest control of state legislatures in a century, and a healthy majority of governorships? The Dems are already reduced to their hard-core liberal rump, just as Republicans were largely reduced to their conservative rump after the horrible 2006 and 2008 elections. (A remind of how fast things can change.)

      The decimation comes from the fact that the political power of Democrats in the age of Obama comes solely from one thing — holding the Presidency and the vast federal bureaucracy that he controls. Lose that, and the position of Democrats right now comes into stark contrast.

      Republicans came to this sharp realization under the Carter and (especially) Clinton presidencies: basing one’s political relevance on control of the presidency is a chancy business, but a lazy Republican party which had controlled the Presidency for all but 3 terms between 1952 and 1992 didn’t do the hard work of making themselves a grassroots national party — which includes being a party able to attract and support more moderate candidates in blue states, and getting down into the nitty gritty of races other than that for President. Most importantly, it involves persuading people that your party better aligns with what they think and want. The left might want to think about that, instead of remaining dedicated to a weird aggressive position that uses a Sherman-in-Georgia determination to completely humilate and silence any dissent on cultural issues.

      The working assumption of the Democratic party has been that their supposedly hard-core coalition of the ascendant will demographically overwhelm Republicans eventually, and thus there is no need for any trimming of the liberal sails — no need to be a coalition party that includes a diversity of views and policy positions. We will see if they continue on with what I think is a foolhardy exercise — trying to be a national party, but with a “diversity” of views that only ranges from A to B.

      One final note on the “alternate universe scenario.” If the Washington suburbs were incorporated into DC or Maryland, Virginia would have gone solidly for Trump. If the eastern 3/4 of California were part of Nevada, with which they have more in common than with the coastal elite (or if parts of Las Vegas were transferred to California), Trump would have won that NV comfortably. If the eastern 4/5 of Washington and Oregon were to be part of Idaho, with which they have far more in common, Idaho would have even more electoral votes. Hell, I’ll bet there are ways to redraw the map in which even the hapless Jimmy Carter might have defeated Reagan. We can play the gerrymandering game all day long — and both Democratic and Republican states do it with Congress and state legislatures.

      California did not have a single county (even in the Bay Area) where Clinton carried 60% or more of the vote. But you would never know it from the composition of its Congressional delegation (and yes, 35% of the Democratic House delegation is from CA, MA, and NY). Same for Texas on the GOP side.

      I realize that the comments about the MI UP and the FL panhandle are about ways to reconcile the popular vote with the EC, which is an interesting exercise. But if you compare the county by county map of states like MI, WI, FL, PA, etc. of Obama in 2012 vs Clinton in 2016, you will see that Trump’s gains were all over those states. But such reconciliations are again academic, since the real point is that neither side was campaigning with the goal of maximizing the popular vote. We don’t know who would have won such an election.

      But you are absolutely right about one thing: this is hardly a landslide, and the GOP isn’t in some sort of dominant position. The nation is closely divided, and it really doesn’t matter who gets a million votes more than the other — that is still true. The EC was designed to make sure that those who win the Presidency have a broad base of support across the country. I’m only aware of one President in modern history who has won the Presidency without winning a majority of states (JFK in 1960 only won 22 states). And that is a good thing.

      • Edward,

        You are correct. The GOP is not in a “dominant position” at all. Trump is.

        Trump can either change the Republican party over to his values, attracting considerable defection and/or support from the Democratic side, or build a new “Centrist” party out of those Republicans and Democrats who will sign on to “Trumpism”. That much is clear.

        Again, I remind you how impressed Bill Krystol was this weekend regarding what Trump has accomplished. He rode right over the Bushes, Clintons, Democrats, Republicans, mainstream media, academia the Times and the Post.

        This isn’t about Democrats and Republicans. It isn’t about Conservatives or Progressives.

        This is about Trump. You all really need to come to grips with the fact that he changed the game.

        • Agreed. The sneering little Bill Kristol is indeed impressed by power, and little else. He will be trying to weasel his way into Trumpism if Trump pulls it off. His gamble was that Trump would lose and he would be even more powerful after that loss.