Monday, July 9, 2018

Mark Shea Attributes Inner City Violence to Trump and the Ku Klux Klan

In a recent public post on Facebook, Catholic commentator Mark Shea used the euphemistic spelling of America as AmeriKKKa — indicative of the Ku Klux Klan — to make point about anti-immigrant, racial violence. To this remark, a commenter points out that the man of Mexican heritage was attacked by a black person.

"AmeriKKKa? The attackers were black."

I checked out the claim and discovered that the commenter was correct. This seems to be a good illustration of posting before you have fully thought through the implications of your assertions. I can type the words Trump's AmeriKKKa in about 2 seconds, Whereas watching the full video took me several minutes. It is possible that Mark Shea did not even watch the video which would explain why he imagined white Southerners committing the crime.

Furthermore we are informed that this is happening in the context of "Trump's America", (sorry, I got tired of misspelling my country) so we are asked to dutifully accept the assertion that this is one of the 4% of black females who voted for Trump. In the Willowbrook section of Los Angeles.

We have to buy that Brooklyn Bridge.

Once again, everything goes back to white racism for Mark Shea, and Republican white racism even when in the inner city a Mexican is beaten by blacks.

Donald Trump received a paltry 24% of the vote in Los Angeles.

Exposing your own thought process in this way would seem to indicate that you are unaware of your own prejudices to a degree which would make the man with the "beam" in his own eye blush.

This is Facebook activism, not sound reason or sensible commentary. Mark Shea is not a reliable guide on moral matters nor on Catholic matters. Period.

21 comments:

  1. As The American Catholic points out, every time you think Mark has hit bottom, he goes even lower. When will the insanity end?

    Now he is attacking Trump's SCOTUS nominee, a faithful pro-life Catholic. Of course. It's so sadly predictable.

    He called a devout Catholic woman who disagreed with him an "enemy of Christ."

    Pace Tom, surely Mark's bishop must have a clue. Mark isn't just an anonymous pew-peon like the rest of us. He is a well-known Catholic apologist, a former NC Register and Catholic Answers honcho. And he is endangering souls.

    I'm sorry, but this cannot be minimized, excused, or explained away. Before anyone gives me a Church Lady Lecture: I do not write to bishops, so please do not even go there. But this is getting way, way, way beyond the pale. And I am getting tired of being told that it's all just fine and dandy and hunky-dory, because what would a clueless pew-peon like me know?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It has always struck me as ironic that people have even considered that writing letters to bishops is necessary to effectively combat this kind of thing. What is needed is the publicity and sunlight that Brandeis recommended. Certainly many people will not venture into the sewers of social media to see what people like Shea spew forth in their rage and acrimony. But I am willing to do so to help bring this stuff into the light.

      If you are on the left politically and you feel like Shea is speaking for you, then by all means, go hither unto his FB page and drink in to your heart's content.

      But if you find this stuff vile, misguided and silly then I hope it makes you think twice before investing in his multi-volume set about the Blessed Mother. Neither St. Alphonsus nor St. Louis de Monfort had facebook pages.

      Delete
    2. If you check his page today you will see a bunch of bad-news stories about people being hurt with the accusation that "you _____ are sadists who LOVE this stuff" and you can just substitute the bogeyman of the day for the blank. Christianists, white supremacists, Jeff Bezos, evangelicals, etc.

      Delete
  2. Lol, I can just imagine.

    Recently he posted a pic of a cop tazing a black guy during a traffic stop, with a comment to the effect of, "This is what so-called pro-lifers gloatingly and sadistically cheer for." Excuse me???? I do not know one single normal, ordinary person who would cheer for such a thing. Where does Mark get these vicious fantasies?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It sounds to me like this Shea character needs to get out more among actual people, both on the street and in his parish. Nobody with the slightest bit of good will who has day-to-day experience with real live people could actually think this way, could they?

      Delete
    2. @pikkumatti - I would actually agree with you, except I've heard stories of Seattle such that I wonder if maybe he actually has been doing this. That place is... apparently crazy.

      Delete
    3. Yes, I think you have to immerse yourself in an environment where everyone thinks like you. It's the only way you can continue to characterize people as *loving* police violence (as Diane pointed out) or cheering for family separation at the border.

      (In other news, that p*rn star accusing Trump of whatever just got arrested in Columbus. Now I *will* cheer for that....)

      Delete
  3. Oh my gosh, that Trump "interview" was hilarious. It sounded *exactly* like Trump. 😂

    ReplyDelete
  4. That Mark embraces the modern racism is itself problematic. That he doesn't care about facts or truth in his accusations is even more of an issue. Even then, however, it's his reliance on judgmentalism, calumny, character assassination and personal insults and stereotypes that is the real problem. Nonetheless, that he continues to get praise and thumbs-up from Catholic leaders, ministries, publications and other outlets says more about things in the Church than it does about Mark.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Who gives him praise? I seriously would like to know. I mean, other than crazies like Mary Pezzulo, etc.

      Delete
    2. Quite a few people. He is still on radio, and regularly interviews various Catholics and Catholic leaders. He still gets invited to parishes, and is published by Catholic publications. All of those things go to say "We approve his message.'

      Oh, thanks. I have my moments.

      Delete
    3. I should add it was my son's observation, I'm merely proud to repeat his keen assessment of the obvious.

      Delete
  5. This never stops being funny...

    "If somebody questions whether you know what you are talking about, you don’t deal with the question of whether you know what you are talking about. You simply say, “So! You want to make excuses for the murder of innocent people by religious bigots!” in the same tone you use to say, “You left your soiled underwear on my coffee table.” For, of course, at the end of the day, it will remain the case that some number of people (46 million? Several thousand?) were put to death… well, not by the Inquisition exactly but certainly by the secular authorities working with the Inquisition. So the story is close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades and that’s all that matters. The idea is not so much accuracy as truthiness: the sense that you have righteously scored off bad guys. And if they are bad guys, then they don’t really deserve to be spoken of accurately, do they? They should have thought about that before they started killing off their millions, or however many it was. The point is: I am righteously angry and when I have righteousness on my side, I don’t need to know what I’m talking about so long as I land some good hard punches on the jaw of Evil.”

    Source?

    Mark Shea 2010

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, thanks Nate. Actually I tried to comment about this over at The American Catholic and my comment got "eaten".

      Delete
  6. Shea's latest 'splaining of "Christianism":

    "Prolife" Christianists think inflicting pain and death is *awesome* when they get to do it to brown people. They *love* this sadism. It makes them feel righteous because they can congratulate themselves that the suffering and death they impose is God's judgment on sinners. Sadistic cruelty *and* the smug approval of their own conscience all wrapped up in a tidy bow of diabolical pride for the worshippers of this dimestore antichrist. And then smother any final protests of guilt in the back of their mind with the lie that their critics are undoubtedly babykilling liberals, so that just proves they are being persecuted for righteousness' sake.

    Christianism is an antichrist cult.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I'll give Mark one thing, though: He finally has Dreher's number.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I remember back in college (this was way back, farther than I care to say) coming across "Amerikkka" for the first time in a free newspaper. Copies of it seemed to make it every newstand on campus- it was the uproarious "MIMNotes", MIM being the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Our "Catholic" journalists use the same ridiculous vocabulary as campus Maoists. Awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ridiculous, yes. Using Amerikkka is also intellectually lazy and juvenile. The good news is that using slang like this repulses most of the sensible members of their potential audience. The bad news is that they rile up those who agree with them.

    Mark Shea as a (somewhat) respected Catholic writer gives some credence to this type of usage. I'm starting to think that David Griffey and others are right about something needing to be done about Mark Shea.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well, I haven't ventured over to Mark's wall in a few days. I imagine he's pretty much seething with volcanic rage over the whole Trump-Putin brouhaha. Best to steer clear until the next crisis erupts, I'm thinking!

    ReplyDelete