Selective Timidity

It is gratifying that David French decided to flick Dreher and his Bunker Option* off like flies. Just a quick requote of a couple paragraphs from his piece:

I’m sorry, but I have a real problem — in an era when Christians are getting their heads sawed off in the Middle East — with the idea that, say, an American sociology professor feels to scared to proclaim his real beliefs on a liberal campus. I have a real problem — in an era when young Americans have been dying by the thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq in defense of liberty — with the idea that Americans on campus are too timid to even attempt to exercise those blood-bought freedoms. I have a problem with Christians — despite the example of Christ and the Apostles — who are too fearful to share the reason for their eternal hope. No one’s asking you to be a street preacher or some kind of unthinking loudmouth, but you should be ashamed of your timidity.

Every single person who is a Christian who stays “in the closet” — who’s timid about his or her faith — provides fuel to the PC fire, contributing to the notion that there really is something to be ashamed of, that what he believes is somehow wrong.

David French is correct to call Dreher's behavior timidity. The TIME piece was plaintively timid, first explaining that non-Christians should understand that Christians don't see not baking a cake as equal to lynching blacks in the Jim Crow south, then going on to use the analogy of racism himself and include lines like "It is understandably offensive to have a baker refuse on religious grounds to make their wedding cake." This is pure concession and surrender. It should not be offensive to them. That's the real point here. It is no wonder that liberal TIME magazine hand-picked Dreher to write this weak-tea, weak-kneed response in their gay issue.

But here's the thing about Rod Dreher's timidity. It is very, very selective. Dreher is all for "standing up" if he is "stand[ing] up to people like Governor [Scott] Walker." Being outraged that someone doesn't share your high value for a liberal arts education is fine. But let's stay in our bunker over religious issues. Being outraged at your family, dead sister and all, so much that you tell the story over and over again is fine because they didn't like you enough, and they didn't run anyone out on a rail when you got a couple wedgies on the field trip and wouldn't eat your French fish soup. No turning the other cheek for those atrocities. But if some gays are upset about a baker or a pizza place or who knows what other humiliation, well... that's understandable, everybody. After all, we heterosexuals wrecked marriage by getting divorced. (We did? Oh, yeah, some of us did. That's the "Royal We", sorry.) Let's be wiser in choosing our battles, people.

Rod Dreher has a history of showing no timidity when he "stands up" to people like Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, Olympian Michael Phelps (no, really), etc. And of course those horrible Catholic Bishops.

He has always had a softer touch for cases like Andrew Sullivan, Brian Williams, Dan Rather, etc. And, of course, Russian Orthodox pedophiliacs.

Certainly it is almost impossible at this point not to be able to predict how Rod Dreher will react to any event based on a small number of factors. He will come out of his Bunker Option to shake his fist when he perceives that conservatives have behaved badly. He will go back into the Bunker Option to read his Bible where it won't offend gays and atheists. And he will come back out again to take food selfies until it's time to cut the grass and he is taken back to the Bunker Option on a stretcher.

What an unreliable moral guide. Only a Judith Regan would look at this guy and see a Virgil.

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* - I refuse to take St. Benedict's name in vain on the Pope Emeritus's B-day.

Abuseniks

Manufactured anger is in the news right now with President Obama's latest stage performance over the VA scandal. Rush Limbaugh is talking about it right now with a fun montage made up of about 5 years worth of unconvincing Obama play-rage over things like the IRS scandal, the healthcare.gov fiasco, etc. Limbaugh also makes the very astute observation that the mock outrage is messaging which targets people he calls "low-information voters", not those of us who know play-acting when we see it.

The Media Report has a great example of the same sort of mock-rage-as-messaging with this piece about Mitchell Garabedian's recent fit asserting that the Catholic Church is "once again acting in the most immoral way by allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children" merely because the church wouldn't pony up over a false accusation:

Garabedian probably thought he would have it just as easy when he filed a similar lawsuit, also in 2012, against the Diocese of Fall River, alleging abuse by a priest starting in the late 1970s. In his suit, Garabedian made the astonishing claim that a priest abused two parishioners for nearly a decade starting when the boys were 9 or ten years old and lasting until they were seventeen.

Alas, however, the diocese hired independent investigators to look into the matter, and they concluded that the evidence did not support Garabedian's claim. Most notably, the accused priest died in 1996 at 83 years old, and not a single allegation had ever been made against him.

Yet even though no evidence of abuse was found by investigators, the diocese agreed not only to offer free counseling for the men but to also enter a mediation process to bring closure to the case.

However, as the Diocese of Fall River reports, Garabedian recently abruptly "ended the mediation process."

In other words, when the diocese apparently refused Garabedian's demand for money, he unleashed his tirade that the Church was now somehow "allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children."

Ah, yes, those pesky details. Why do you Catholics want evidence of wrong-doing? CAN'T YOU SEE HOW ANGRY I AM ABOUT THIS?!? GIVE ME MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!

The real treasure in this post is the comment posted by Publion. I'm including the full text here. It's long, but it does a great job at summing up what is really going in the Catholic Church-only abuse industrial complex.

I would also ask of ‘Another Mark’ (the 19th, 952PM) the same question that ‘Mark’ asks (the 20th, 652AM): why trust this lawyer (hereinafter: ‘MG’)?

Readers may recall my mention of a Boston attorney in D’Antonio’s book who was involved in various bits of quite possibly prohibited and unlawful skullduggery in helping the Boston Globe get its series published in early January 2002 (D’Antonio is pro-Stampede and sees MG’s activity as sort of charmingly enterprising). That attorney D’Antonio was discussing was none other than MG. And MG is certainly a prime candidate for inclusion among those torties who have taken the Anderson Strategies into the big-time.

And on what basis are we supposed to credit ‘Another Mark’s (hereinafter: ‘AM’) unsupported and global assertion that “the church HAS allowed the wholesale abuse of children”? [giveaway exaggerated formatting retained]

Which is then followed by snark to the effect that MG “must be doing something right now that David Pierre must attack you”.

Which also includes the classic Playbook legerdemain of presuming that the reporting of a historically and actually verifiable fact (i.e. MG’s publicly stated ire at the Diocese of Fall River) constitutes “an attack”.

And then a mere epithet about it being “laughable” that MG treats the Church as “a trip to the ATM”, also a juvenile bit from the Playbook that has been seen here many times.

And I would add that where the Church asks (as many organizations do) for “donations”, it does not try to take potential ‘donors’ to court in order to obtain vast sums from them on the basis of legal charges almost completely unsupported by any evidence.

Then a blunderbuss blam of a bunch of (otherwise quite rationally explicable) Church decisions in regard to “closing churches” that had been built – we see the smarmy heart-string pulling manipulative bit from the Playbook here – with “your hard earned heartfelt donations” from “you and your parents”.

Then a fresh paragraph with more Playbook stuff.

First, to the effect that “David Pierre acts as if every victim is a money sucking leach” [sic]: if anyone deliberately tried to bring a lawsuit against you, alleging acts from the long-ago for which they have no evidence but merely a story, and publicizes the whole thing highly, what would you consider such a person to be?

But then again: DP has never said any such thing as “money sucking leach” [sic] and I can’t recall any commenter using the term either.

But then again: in the Abusenik Playbook, if you don’t totally buy the script, then you are ‘attacking’ them. (The Abusenik objective here is to distract you from the fact that they may well be involved in something characterizable as the activity of a “money sucking leach”[sic] and therefore try to quickly get you (the reader or hearer) to focus on the (merely alleged) victimization of the whole thing.)

Second, we get – yet again – the mere but utter presumption of “the damage done” by alleged acts the nature and even the very existence of which has never been demonstrated. And I would also recall here the recent material here discussing the cautious use of “potential” in the statements of various scientific papers and research results. ‘Potential’ is not synonymous with ‘certain’ (and so even some phrase like ‘an absolutely certain potential’ would not move things forward at all in this regard).

Third, the Wig of Bemused and Honest Innocence with that “sadly”.

And then fourth: the use of the presumed “attacks” (discussed above in this comment of mine) to cluck condescendingly that “such attacks [do not] somehow support our church”. Would that be “our” Church? And is it not ‘supportive’ to point out how the allegations are unfounded and highly dubious and seriously improbable?

And in regard to “responsability”: did so many Abuseniks go to the same school of misspelling? There seems to be a pattern here.

And then fifth: the old “enabler” trope, right from the Playbook.

And then the next paragraph works toward whistling-away the profound and abyssal evidentiary and veracity problems with the Stampede and the Abuseniks: “simply because no one came forward while the priest was alive does nothing to prove he did not abuse during his lifetime” [correction supplied]

No, the fact that “no one came forward while the priest was alive” does not provide conclusive evidence that the alleged abuse never happened. But it also a) provides no evidence that the alleged abuse did happen and b) provides an element of increased-probability that the story was concocted opportunistically after the priest died, in order to cash in on the Stampede piñata game.

And it also provides some grounds for doubting the conceptual chops (and perhaps good faith) of anybody who would try to pass off such a conceptual misch as if it were clear and pristine logic, upon which he might base his assertions with no further need for explication.

And if the Church’s paid investigators “found no evidence” – although the Church (or Diocese, here) must know that it would very likely have to rely on those investigative findings in a public forum – then the same can be said for any investigators the tortie might engage (although, as we know, given the now-established dynamics of the Anderson Strategies in the Stampede, the tortie might well expect that his client’s claims and allegations and stories would never be required to face public and objective scrutiny in the first place anyway).

Abuseniks “really do see” us as “dumb blind sheep”, but “fortunately” – and especially through the work on TMR – that is not the case.

Which is what moves the Abuseniks to toss up the type of stuff we see here in the AM comment.

"Dump blind sheep", "low-information voters", whatever you want to call them the terms do not apply to us here. But I think "money-grubbing ambulance-chaser" applies to Mitchell Garabedian.