Clutching at Fake Straws...

Clutching at fake straws seems to be a favourite activity among those who might regard themselves as "conservatives" or "on the Right" or "based" - those sensible, moderate, realistic, constructive, pragmatic folk; who prefer actions to words; who seek to roll-back leftism, atheism and materialism bit-by-bit and by traditional means. 

I mean those incorrigible optimists (i.e. those who fail to realize the severity of the situation, and refuse to learn from experience) who continue to take an active interest in mainstream politics in general, and elections in particular. 

Those who get excited by the positive possibilities of allegedly-dissenting persons who participate in public discourse and feature in the mass media.

Those who seek radical change from reforming current institutions; by infiltrating and re-occupying enemy-held ground. 

Those most vocal in criticizing and boycotting those that seem most-extremely-evil among powerful, wealthy, high-status corporations and bureaucracies. 

Those who seek support for building new more-functional, more-effective, more-efficient organizations to outcompete the current market leaders.

And so on. 

Putting energy and resources and hope into such activities; is not just clutching at straws in relation of the vast bulking haystacks of current trends; but it always turns-out - over-and-over again - that these are fake straws...

Pseudo-straws whose covert connections and this-worldly motivations mean they are just another part of the haystack - part of the problem; not an alternative source of "nourishment".

Grasping at fake straws is not just a waste of time, it is a consuming distraction from what we ought to be doing..

Not just a distraction, but The Wrong Thing Altogether. 

Things are much, much worse than such people think; and failure to grasp this is fatal, because it reveals a failure of discernment; which is itself revelatory of corrupt collusion. 

This is a spiritual war; and if we are not fighting the war spiritually - then we are not fighting it at all. 

 

Building imaginary castles in the air, from fake straws

A while ago, I wrote a post about the determined optimists of "the Right" (especially people who still, falsely, believe there is such a thing as "the Right") - who busily build their optimism from "fake straws" they have clutched from the maelstrom of a collapsing civilization. 

Following the US election results, I can hardly believe the extent to which people are using fake straws to build grandiose but wholly imaginary castle in the air; that are supposed to represent their hopes of the kind of society that they want.

(Straw castles are bad enough, daydream castles are bad enough - but to daydream a castle made of fake straws! Well...)

Meanwhile... nothing has happened except words and emotions and speculations; and, by now, we ought to realize that (as of 2024) these do not amount to any good thing. nothing is cheaper than "words" in the West, in 2024 - being the most untruthful/ anti-truthful society in the history of the world. 

It should, however, be remembered that thoughts are real, even air castles made of straw - but not necessarily real in the ways intended; and certainly not necessarily real in A Good Way. 

What is apparently real, is that (perhaps) surprisingly large numbers of those who purport to oppose the totalitarian Leftist project; apparently believe (and are saying it) that decades of cumulative civilizational decline can be stopped and reversed by a mainstream election, leading to a new selection of mainstream political figures, being put in charge of an unchanged bureaucracy and media...! 

They are saying that! (Although maybe they don't really believe it.)

What is also apparently real, is the thoroughgoing mundane materialism of what such people want: they want so very, very little - just these politicians instead of those, these laws instead of those... just common sense instead of institutionalized insanity. 

The fake-straw optimists are therefore eminently reasonable - hence they cannot possibly succeed; because if almost-everything stays the same, then we will have the same, or worse.  

They accept geopolitics, but want a different arrangement of nations and distribution of power. They want "business as usual" - but without the weird excesses of the post-millennial era. They want people to be sensible - and "sensible" in a normal, mainstream, hard-headed context.  

They merely want, in other words; a different flavour of Leftism*. 

And Leftism is oppositional and necessarily destructive, because Leftism is fundamentally a-theistic and a-spiritual.  

"The art of the possible" is in actuality asserting the im-possible. 

It will never happen, it can never happen. It ignores and suppresses the need for motivation, and that motivation requires purpose, and that purpose requires the context of a purposive creation. 

And for creation to motivate us, requires that creation be of-God; and for God to motivate us we must have a relationship with God. 

And for our relationship with God to have implications of truth, virtue and beauty; that relationship must be one of Love. 

If we don't have that - we have no positive purpose, and insufficient motivation to do anything Good. 

Which is exactly our situation. 

And election enthusiasm is not merely irrelevant, but actively and powerfully hostile to what is absolutely necessary.  

*Note: there is a Left, but no "Right"; because Leftism is oppositional to religion-in-general, Christianity in particular - and the spiritual and next-worldly nature of Christianity, to be exact (Christianity - not churches, who are all of-the-Left). The only valid options in the West are therefore various flavours of Leftism - or Christianity. 

Clutching at straws versus hope; Benefit of the doubt versus abetting evil

I am now sure that our 'civilisation' is going to end soon; and also that this is a necessary thing because of the great evil that we are attempting (satanic transhumanist totalitarianism).

There is not the critical mass of well-motivated and courageous people necessary to salvage society - indeed, there are not enough such to be called a 'mass' - which is another way of saying that very nearly everybody is on the wrong side.

There isn't much awareness of this; partly due to two sins masquerading as virtues: these are clutching at straws and giving the benefit of the doubt to the powers of evil.


An example of clutching at straws is the pathetic belief that people who are on the 'moderate' wing of the wrong side will somehow 'save us' - even though these people do not even want to save us. Examples would be Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

All Christians know that Hope is a virtue; and fake Christians may use this to defend their own delusional refusal to acknowledge what they, deep down, know to be the case. Consequently, they embrace the lie of virtuality - which is just about the worst and most anti-Christian thing that they could do. 


This also links to 'the benefit of the doubt' - which is the justification for failing to acknowledge the reality of purposive evil, even as it stares you in the face - often because evil dishonestly, and however incoherently or implausibly, claims good motivations.

This is most evident when a new leader arrives at an institution or in a bureaucracy. Despite that all leaders of all significant social institutions are actively evil and that bureaucracy is intrinsically evil; there is always a call to give the new bass 'the benefit of the doubt', and 'a chance'.

But there is no doubt (or no grounds for reasonable doubt). So, what this means in practice is to collaborate in evil under the pretence that it might actually be good. 

Even worse, nowadays, even when agents of evil state exactly what evils they are intending to do, and make clear their own wicked reasons for doing it; too many people nevertheless excuse their own compliance with such evil will - on the grounds that 'They don't really mean it...'.


At root; such excuses are merely thinning disguises either for moral cowardice, or for sharing the objectives of the virtuality.

And its about time that serious Christians recognised them as such. In such times we need to know our enemy - even, or especially, when that enemy is almost-everybody-else, and when the enemy is treacherously pretending to be a friend.


Note: I suppose that it behoeves me to state what - if not clutching at straws nor giving the B. of the D. to servants of evil - I suppose that Hope really is... My answer is that Hope is ultimately the faith, belief and trust that we will (by love) personally attain to eternal resurrected life in Heaven, as promised by Jesus Christ; and (inextricably related to that), that this world is God's creation, with all that entails.

Donald Trump and the latest Pope (for example): People grossly underestimate How Bad Things Are

As a solid and nearly universal generalization: "People" grossly underestimate how bad things are. 

We see this almost everywhere, including among those who regard themselves as radical, uncompromising, anti-Establishment, Christian-motivated - or whatever. 

Think of the past US elections, and the way that so many people really seemed to believe that the situation in the USA was such that DT might make (or would make, or indeed already has made!) a significant difference for the better! 

I can only shake my head in amazement. Do they really believe that the nature of the deepening and widening problems could possibly be reversed by DT? 

Do they honestly suppose that this was, or is, the genuine intention? 

The expressed level of enthusiasm and indeed hope (!) engendered among some Christians by Trump's early announcements was frankly embarrassing, when it was not merely ridiculous. And it is (to say the least) dismaying to realize that the observable fact of regime-continuity, and the failure of any positive overall US or world change to manifest, and the continuation of malignity in core strategies of the US-led West; are so easily and eagerly explained-away.  

Because - with things as bad as they are and worsening long-term; unless the trends were not just slowed or stopped but reversed - decisively and unambiguously reversed (and not in words but in observable overall results) - then any potential variation of "politics as usual" is utterly futile. 

So why discuss it? - discuss it frequently and endlessly, and with all appearances of regarding oneself as saying something fundamental? 

Or the new Pope. It's all "probably some improvement", "wait and see", "something to be said on both sides"; or "give the bloke a chance", "benefit of the doubt" kind of stuff. 

As if a (?) slightly-better Pope than Francis, would have the slightest benefit in a Roman Catholic Church that is collapsing like an avalanche, and putrescent with pervasive corruption and incremental apostasy at every level!  

If the new Pope does Not have what it takes, and that is 100% for sure; then why be so diffident and nuanced about stating the fact!

Clutching at fake straws, wherever you look. 

It really ought to be blazingly obvious that things are very bad indeed and have been continually getting worse for a long time, and with no hint of an upturn. 

This insight isn't exactly rocket surgery. 

When someone doesn't start with that level of recognition, then their discourse is revealed as merely compulsive gossip - whatever their pretentions of depth and seriousness.  

The virtual-reality, echo-chamber bubble within-which the Western Leadership dwell, is only a more concentrated version of the mind-set of the Western masses

The dissident internet is altogether too keen on the "I'm a victim, others are to blame", resentment-fuelled, attitude of the mainstream Western civilization. 

One version is to describe (accurately enough) the us-and-them, insulated-from-reality nature of the Western leadership class; without mentioning that this is just a more exaggerated version of what is the normal, standard, prevalent attitude and life of the Western masses. 

An instance is the mass media, and the journalists who inhabit (infest?) it. The mass media are widely recognized - at least at the level of lip-service - to be shallow, selfish, sensation-seeking, completely irresponsible, and utterly untruthful...

What is left-out is that the Western masses are both helplessly and willingly addicted to exactly this mass media (often absorbed indirectly, via the even-worse amplification systems of social media). 

The Godless materialism and selfish short-termism of the Western "elites" is well-described and much bemoaned - yet the Western masses are subject to exactly the same un-repented sins - albeit at a quantitatively lower level. 

The fire-hose of lying pseudo-compassion from public figures, masking lust for pleasure for themselves, terrified grasping at safety, and a spitefully-motivated destruction for those they dislike or fear - is common to both leaders and led in The West.  

The West is a civilization that has, again and again for many generations, made the wrong strategic decisions at every level. Again and again we have chosen the superficial over the profound, the immediately gratifying over the purposive; the material over the spiritual.

And perhaps most importantly of all: chosen untruth above truth: For many decades, more and more, faster and faster - we have made purposive and systemic dishonesty into Our World.  

By now we are very deep in a mire of our own choosing - and we continue to choose it. 

This is much worse than a (mere) "failure to act" - it is a failure to understand, to think, and to desire what is Good - and this is compounded by the failure even to want to do the right things. 

Our situation is not one that can be "fixed" by common sense and pragmatism; because CS and P are operating on the basis of cumulative evil decisions; and will only lead us deeper into the mire of superficial materialism that is killing us - by past and continuing choices.  

Such are the realities - and such is unsayable; because we have become so spiritually-weak and faithless that we cannot face reality without despairing - reality cannot be faced by the ruling classes, and it cannot be faced by the masses, and it cannot be faced by most of those who call themselves Christian. 

(Who are so lacking in faith that they routinely muffle their ears and shriek "Help! That nasty man is blackpilling me!" Such is their dependence on optimistic materialism, the feebleness of their spiritual hope, that they can do no other than denigrate the messenger and deny the message.)

So we get multiple and sustained hysterical outbursts of facile and counterproductive this-world optimism: clutching at fake straws has become an intellectual industry - including among even the serious advocates of traditional church Christianity.     

Yet matters really are very simple - and hope-full. We find ourselves painted into a corner, everything mainstream, traditional and publicly validated merely adds to the surrounding paint... 

We cannot escape without first understanding properly the situation: recognizing the extent and depth of our predicament.  

But then we can personally and spiritually escape the predicament - which is the only real and possible escape.

And then? 

Well, then, who knows what? 

God's loving relationship is primarily with each of us, and salvation is likewise an individual business first and foremost. 

A truly-better society (insofar as this is possible) is not (and never has been) planned and imposed top-down; but is emergent from better people - starting with ourselves.  

No matter our many weaknesses; faith in God the creator and our loving Father; tells us clearly that we are each fully equipped, by God, for the task ahead in the times in which we find-ourselves. 

That's all we need to know. 

 

When Mens' core motivations are defective...

The depth of The Problem in current civilization is located at the most basic level of motivations: i.e. primarily in what people want; secondarily in how strongly they want it. 

There is a significant defect in the strength of motivations, which arises ultimately from the wrongness of motivations - we cannot be strongly-motivated over time, by fake or feeble motivators. 

Potentially (and in the past) the strongest innate motivators for Men are 'religious' - and since religion has been excluded (or severely weakened) the remaining motivators are all labile, short-termist and selfish - for example sex (or the desire for any other pleasurable sensation). 

The short-termist and selfish desires of sex are not capable of being synthesized into any kind of coherent strategy for life, or The World; and the un-repented effort to do so has led to the self-contradictory, self-defeating, negations of the evolving (de-volving) sexual revolution - which began in propagating a hedonic free-for-all, and has becoming a bureaucratic, totalitarian minefield . 

In other words; people are trying and failing (over and again) to make a life and a philosophy of life, from the strongest motivators that remain to them after the spirit has been deleted - which are the evanescent (and zero-sum) pleasures of sex, travel, intoxication, status, power, resentment, fear, sadism and spite... fleeting daydreams or nightmares of various kinds. 

But so long as the spiritual dimension is excluded, ignored or downgraded - persistent failure never leads to insight, learning and repentance - so Western man chases will-o-the-wisps with all his energies -- until dragged-down by despair, disease, or death.       

Yet religious motivations are failing as well. They have, in The West, become so enfeebled that a large majority of the most devout church goers (of all types  of church, including Christian) are indistinguishable from the Godless-masses when it comes to supporting the core evil agenda strategies. 

Even when religious people discern the proximate, in-your-face, evils of Western Civ; such people fail to understand that these are the inevitable, baked-in, product of remote but primary ultimate causes that often enjoy their unthinking, habitual, or even passionate, support. 

Thus there is a double-whammy of weak motivations - because the only valid motivators are long-term, cosmic in scope, and coherent. 

The usual response is to 'thrash-around' seeking immediate, socially-approved and momentarily-rewarding motivators from the content of modern culture - all of which are all evil and manipulative in origin; such that they are invariably temporary in effect, and leave people positioned in ever worse - ever more desperate - situations; drowning in tidal despair while grasping-at (ever-smaller and soggier) straws of optimism.

Taking a step back and trying to understand more deeply the ultimate causes of this situation in order to find a strong and valid motivation for our-selves is now an absolute necessity; the alternative to which is spiritual death. 

In such a pervasively and overwhelmingly corrupt culture; this deeper and larger consideration absolutely must be done by individuals; done by each and every human being. 

This seems to be 'asking a lot' of people - who have, through much of history, either followed their instincts, been given-out a spirituality to live-by; or had trusted sources of institutional guidance which they simply needed to obey. 

It may be 'asking a lot' of people to 'go-it-alone' in the quest of true-motivation - it may seem 'unreasonable' to require every single individual to do this for himself...

But consider: Who will benefit? 

The answer is that each individual will benefit from his own efforts; not merely temporarily in this mortal life (by the benefits of discovering and choosing a strong and lasting motivation from-which this mortal life may be created); but also forever.  

And this is something that - exactly because only-we can accomplish it - our loving God has therefore made possible for anyone to accomplish - if only they make the serious attempt. 

How much more incentive do we need?