Don't Take the Bait

If you are a mouse or a 21st century American I have some advice for you: learn to identify traps, then don't take the bait.

While driving down the road, several of my sons and I were watching some 20-somethings put up Black Lives Matter yard-signs in a neighborhood around West 150th Street in Cleveland. My oldest son stated it best. "Everyone believes that black people count just as much as whites, except for racists. So when someone says to you 'Black lives matter' what they really mean to say to you is 'You're a racist.' It's just an accusation."

He's right obviously. It's the same leftist abuse of language which infects the pathetic chant of the Occupy Movement "We. Are. The Ninety-nine Percent!!" But they're not; they are a tiny sliver of the American populace. They may speak for somewhere between 5% and 15% of the victicrat population, but that's probably generous of me.

Unfortunately some people who aren't anywhere near the fringe left have taken the rhetorical bait. The group Blue Lives Matter is one which I heartily support, but Oh! how I wish they hadn't named themselves that. Once you realize that saying "Black Lives Matter" is really a challenge which could be phrased as the question, "Are you going to support us or the police?", then saying "Blue Lives Matter" can be interpret as answering "No, I don't support you; I support the Police." It is a way to inadvertently perpetuate the perception that the police are out to get anyone who is black. That perception is a win for BLM and left's booming victim industry.

The latest abuse of this comes from the Charles Sheldon-style Protestant Socialist contingent in the form of WWJD-ing the rhetoric. The first place I saw this was a Facebook placard which simply appropriated the voice of Christ saying things like "Jesus didn't say all lives matter, He said leper's lives matter. Jesus didn't say all lives matter, He said the poor's lives matter." And on and on. The truth is that Our Lord didn't speak in hashtags and soundbites at all, and that is the best counterpoint here. One could point out the many times that Jesus used universal language (ever hear of John 3:16?) but I'd be wary of taking the bait.

The other place I saw something similar was a Patheos article which I won't even link to. It actually uses the Beatitudes in an attempt to make a similar point. It has a cartoon of Christ saying "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and a listener objecting "No, Jesus! Blessed are we ALL!" So the message is that anyone who says "All lives matter" is telling Jesus to shut up. One could point out that none of the Beatitudes mention race, but again, I think that getting into a theological discussion on this is getting into pearls/swine territory and we know how that ends. It's best to stay in one piece.

So the best comeback to shouts of "Black Lives Matter!" is not "Blue lives matter" or even "All lives matter". Calling out the Black Lives Matter movement for what it is, an organization profiting from civil unrest and organized by racist agitators, is the best reaction to anything touching which smells of their caustic rhetoric. Christians and especially American Christians have to become aware of real motives and quit being so gullible. Jesus instructed us as much.

The rules about blowing bubbles

Just a quick review...

Educational Video about Islamic Jihad and Sharia

Hat-tip to the Clarion Project for this succinct and accurate video about the threat of civilizational jihad and sharia as the motives behind terrorist acts. This is the sort of thing people in the west need to know. So what did YouTube do. They banned the video. read more about that at the Counter Jihad link.

This video was produced by the Center for Security Policy, an excellent organization started by very knowledgeable people in the world of fighting Islamic terrorism.

Open Comment Thread (2016-07)

Here's a new open comment thread you all, my friends! Speaking of friends....

Stop the madness, or proceed with the madness, or go halfway or maybe two thirds... Or, how about do 3 sets of 12 madness lifts twice a day. Or maybe have a madness shake with some kale and blue berries? Or something.

I was thinking that maybe a good topic to discuss here is frenetic, undisciplined migrations to nearby towns and whether that is a conservative value. Or maybe moving because no one understands you or sour cream vandalism going on that you can no longer protect your family from. This might be a good post to review for starters as well.

BenOp PineApp

One of the ways I keep up on what's going on with Rod Dreher is by reading a Topix forum dedicated to him by the residents of St. Francisville. Here's one of the latest entries, suggesting that Dreher flew to Hawaii to bring back a parting gift in the form of a pineapple for his priest who's leaving his backyard church. The real story will be forgotten, though, while the memory of that picture lives on forever....

The natives were so grateful for his missionary work they gave him a pineapple.

You just can't get a pineapple worth eating around here, you know.

Too funny.

Not evil, just awful

Kotkin sums up exactly the way I want to respond every time I hear a Trump supporter/defender say "he's not racist". Okay; walking like a duck is something our intelligent species can do without becoming ducks, but why would we do it? Maybe to get some really gullible ducks to follow us around.

In reality, Trump is not a classic racist, but rather an ugly opportunist willing to use ethnic divides for his own benefit. He’s been compared to Adolph Hitler, a monster whose philosophy revolved around race, but Trump has no real theory that extends beyond self-glorification, resentment, and attracting the fetching female; “The Art of the Deal” is not “Mein Kampf.”

Trump will play the race card as a way to satisfy his narcissistic need for enthusiastic admirers. This does not mean his approach does not echo the racism of the past. His claim of bias by a U.S.-born judge of Mexican descent, as well as his suggestions that Muslim jurists are incapable of ruling independently, recall the worst of the pre-Civil Rights South. His proposals to ban Muslim immigrants in general recall approaches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which targeted Chinese, Japanese and, ultimately eastern and southern Europeans.

In short, you don't have to be Hitler to be awful, or to have bad intentions, or to be a wrecking ball for your own movement. When people were calling Obama a communist back in 2008 I was cringing because I knew it would be pretty easy to dismiss the charge. After all, what communist would save General Motors? Barack Obama had to have been secretly smiling every time someone tossed that accusation at him or its even stupider twin sister—the charge that he was born in Kenya. Leave the fact that it wouldn't have mattered if he had been (his mother is an American citizen), it just made everyone making it seem like an instant racist to the general populace.

Yes, Virginia—that general populace. The one which elects Presidents. Not the subsection of critical thinkers or people with degrees in the hard sciences.

So when I heard people saying Trump could be the next Hitler I cringed as well knowing that a few black and Jewish friends will effectively dismiss that charge while a host of others would point at the media, shout "See they call us all racist!" and reflexively support Trump even though his rhetoric is incendiary.

I am not the only person who sees it this way. Larry Elder had been more generous to Donald Trump than many of the other Salem Radio hosts, but boy, did he about lose it when the whole thing about the "Mexican" Judge came out. This all happened shortly after Trump had all but secured the GOP nomination. Elder's conclusion is worth noting: "As found as people are of Donald Trump, if you give him a pass on this it means you have no integrity."

I should probably just accept my new status as politically homeless. Get out the cardboard and lets light a barrel fire.

Ah! So the Benedict Option is...Oh...

...I tell everybody I can that yes, the Benedict Option is simply the church doing what it ought to have been doing all along, but hasn’t been,...

Oh. Well...

Still, who better to instruct the church - which church? why, any church - how to do what it ought to have been doing all along, but hasn’t been than lifelong religious buffet nibbler Rod Dreher?

But to find out how to fix your broken church and maybe even remove that stubborn hard water residue you're going to have to wait until next year when the cure is finally bottled and for sale.

The essential additive without which your church cannot function properly

This will give you ample time to resolve in advance the obvious ethical dilemma which will confront you at that time: give that $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is not Rod Dreher, or give that $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is Rod Dreher.

If you give your $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is not Rod Dreher, you obviously risk cultivating in that person a dependency on handouts over personal industry.

On the other hand, if you give your $20 which can only be spent once to a person in need who is Rod Dreher, you obviously risk cultivating in that person a dependency on handouts over personal industry, for example the industry of having made any effort at all over the prior ten years to think about, midwife, shape, create, critique, test, re-examine, and in any other conceivable way produce anything remotely resembling substantial content to back the hollow marketing phrase "Benedict Option" prior to having finally landed a book contract and being forced to dash out the needed filler for it over the space of a few months.

Still, if God can create the earth in seven days, why can't the next best thing for your church, Rod Dreher, invent the Benedict Option out of whole cloth in just seven months to meet a contract deadline?

Boy, tough call on that $20, I know.

Hey...here's an idea. Maybe just give it directly to your church.They've been invested in this whole Christian thing quite a bit longer and view it through a lens somewhat larger than merely hustling a book contract.

UPDATE (as they say): I'm tacking this on here because it's not enough to fill a post of its own, but mainly because it's the essential question implicit in this post itself.

Why is the Benedict Option for sale?

Why is, according to its inventor, Rod Dreher, the only remaining hope for orthodox Christianity being peddled as just another market commodity, like a  Hula Hoop, a pack of condoms, or a six pack of light beer?

Because it is for sale. According to Rod, he put the finishing touches on the only definitive prescription to save orthodox Christianity last night.

But it's not as if Rod and his family would starve if this one salvic treatise  were simply given to the faithful like Christ's sermons themselves. Rod gets paid round the clock for his writing.

So if the Benedict Option is the only real hope for millions of Christians, why is it being strategically priced and peddled the way Martin Skreli hustled Daraprim?

But if its just another Dreher book meant to keep its author in wine and oysters, how important can it really be?

Huh?

In today's output, Dreher offers an early peek into the Benedict Option book, using his standby mechanism of a quote from an alleged reader:

Millenials are like the Bynars from one of the early episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation.  They are so merged in with their technology that one does not know where the human begins or ends and where the technology is.  Their memories, both short and long term, have been altered.  They have no idea of what community is because in the real world it does not exist.  And changing genders is part of high tech.  Shape shifting is part of this generation.  Look at the popular media.  If you don't like who you are, you can change yourself by being a super hero, or zombie, or become something else.  So, in a way it is not surprising that this is happening.  Alot of the changes in society are here because of technology and how it has become a master over us.

To which Dreher adds this analysis (emphasis added):

I think this is true.  The Technology chapter of The Benedict Option explores this insight.

He thinks what is true?  That "alot of the changes in society are here because of technology and how it has become a master over us", say, as opposed to our human nature that has persisted since the Fall?  Or is he agreeing that millennials "are so merged in with their technology" that they don't know "where the human begins or ends and where the technology is"?  If so, someone's been hiding bad sci-fi inside their MacIntyre so the Mrs. doesn't yell at him to get off his duff.

Anyhow,  if you can figure out what this is about, please enlighten.  To the extent it makes any sense (not much), it's patently false.  In any case, the "Technology chapter" ought to be a doozy.