Satire and Evil (and Good), Pt. 2

Note: At one point in this video, I mention amendments to the satire posted earlier. Not all of those amendments -- if any -- will go into effect. To injure the rhetorical effect of the satire by rendering it facile would be to diminish the necessary seriousness of approach to this difficult issue.

Satire and Evil (and Good), Pt. 1

A Royal Abortion

The Unspared Heir

Flakstad, Norway
THE SWIFTIAN POST

Courtesy of mydaily.co.uk

Lately, much news has been circulating regarding the new Royal Baby and his (her?) blushing parents. Indeed, as the laws were changed in 2013, the sex of the child doesn't matter: boy or girl, Will and Kate have provided the essential "spare heir".

Or they would have if Kate hadn't made a shocking announcement yesterday afternoon. Kate says she will not be having the Royal baby. Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, next Queen of England, will instead be having a "royal abortion", as some have termed it.

Sources say that the Duchess has a consultation next week with a clinic in New York. Kate says that "the abortion legacy in America is one of its largest accomplishments; Planned Parenthood enjoys a name of near-greater import than its host country. Time to add a pound of royalty to the pile!"

When questioned as to why, after so much excitement in the media -- and indeed in the hearts of people worldwide -- the Prince and the Duchess have decided to eradicate the newest princeling, Kate replied, "Well, it was mostly my decision. Sometimes I have to hold baby George when his nanny is preparing lunch. It just takes so much energy out of you. Every time I see him, I know that I'll never shake that responsibility, and it's exhausting."

When pressed, the Duchess said pointedly that "It's a women's issue, really. I feel it's my responsibility to show people that the right to abortion rests for no one, regardless of lineage. Even a royal baby can be aborted."

Courtesy of huffingtonpost.com

Prince William, though remaining vaguely supportive of Kate's decision, has expressed some concerns. "There is the problem of the 'spare heir', it's true. G** forbid that something happen to little George, it's possible that the royal line will be broken because of this miss-, well, soon-to-be missing link." The Prince seemed somewhat nervous and confused.

Kate's response to Will's apparent indecision was firm confirmation that this was her choice: "If I don't want to birth another heir at this point, then I don't have to. ... How does it go? 'My body, my choice'? Will will just have to wait." However, the Duchess did suggest that another royal birth is highly unlikely anytime in the near future.

The Duchess then volunteered the following information: "After the, you know, procedure, we're going to have an abortion shower, where we plan to ... well, there's a secret ... but we plan to show everyone just how beautiful abortion is! I guess you could say there's going to be a reveal."

After the brief press meeting at their summer cottage in Norway, Kate hurried off to a "Loopy Luau" party on the couples' private cruiser, leaving a dazed Will dreamy-eyed on the patio. The extended royal family is concerned over what seems to have been an extended breach of character over the last few weeks.

Some of Kate's college friends have remarked on social media that "this is the Kate we remember", but insist on the maturity and propriety of her decision to abort the royal child. One twitter user, 86girlpower86, declared that "no one has the right to chain you down, not even Prince charming or his little princeling."

While news media adjust to the transition from "Royal Baby" to "unplanned pregnancy", some fear what may come of these events in the weeks to come, which will certainly be a fragile period in Britain's political history. Stay tuned for more news of the "royal abortion reveal."



DISCLAIMER: This article is completely and utterly fabricated. The persons and places mentioned are real, but the corresponding events, actions, and utterances have been generated specifically for satirical purposes, and are not intended as a factual record. 

Where is the Horse and the Rider

or 'Why you see few art-related posts on my page'

"Where is the horse and the rider?

Where is the horn that was blowing?

They have passed like rain on the mountains,

Like wind in the meadow

The days have come down in the West

Behind the hills into shadow..."

Where is the love of beauty? Where is breathtaking art and poignant song, and where are those who will seek them, praise them, cherish them, and show us how to see?

Like the brief, ephemeral art of our generation, they have been abruptly hidden from sight. Rinsed as from the slate -- no tablet of wax bearing the imprint of centuries' wisdom. Rather, the clean slate of a frontier school that started clean one day and started clean again the next.

Just as we are minimalists in ownership, we are minimalists in understanding or in seeking, in knowing and in wishing to know. And so we receive what we desire, we reap what we sow, which is so close now to nothingness. Where is the love of beauty, the devout appraisal of art? It is as it is in our hearts. Do we expect the tiny race of the people of culture to shower us with the Gospel while we wonder whether we are Princess Belle in her green dress or blue, or which Buzzfeed quiz will show us our best virtues?

Can you hear the overwhelming silence of the artists? I can hear the sea ceasing to sing, ceasing to whelm us over with the peace that she has given the imagination and the further peace that the imagination has given her. Did we think the artists would not starve? But they have all starved -- starved from a destruction of beauty in the world, a destruction of real living, of the seemingly invincible subject. The world has died, and art imitates life as life imitates art. Have you seen the imitation of death? I know that I have.

"The everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world" has come upon the artists in their silence. And as much as they have loved her, adorned and graced her with their innumerable lavishments, they wish nothing now but for her destruction, her punishment, her fall from pride into desolation and suffering and noisome darkness and fear. Repentance.

The fuel of the artist is life -- life that breeds more life -- life teeming and bursting at the seams -- life burgeoning unstoppably and never ceasing to unfold into new and eternal glories. Is it any wonder that the artists are silent, or that the lesser imitate death until it takes them.

Here is the demand of beauty: life. What prodigies have we killed, or allowed to die? No more.

The death of society is at hand. Were we more bitter towards the slaughter of our friends, we would have burned the fortresses of darkness and salted the earth, leaving the festering fields of evil forever barren.

We wish to intervene against the Islamic State in the Middle East. This is a just impulse. But, in our haste to tender retribution, do we forget the thousands slaughtered daily at home. Are the lives of countless children less worthy than the preservation of political potency in names: in "Yezidi", in "Christian", in "Shi'ite". Do we wish to save lives? Is that our intent? Or do we wish to save particular lives for particular reasons? Are the unborn not our brothers and sisters, and do they not live next door. Do they not die next door.

Can you justify your willingness to stop the IS against your unwillingness to stop the Abortionist State? Is it easier to fight a tyrant thousands of miles away?

The lauds of the poet fall silent. The artist in anger and desperation hurls his brush. Is there beauty in the world.

Can you justify not -- at the very least -- standing in prayer before the clinic, adjuring those who would be murderers to abandon their course? Rationalize, I beg you. Rationalize. Rationalize a way to avoid preventing murder when power is in your hands. I have dispensed with the arguments. I have had them all. I have heard them all. There is not one left with integrity. The truth cries out like a stone. It will not move.

The poet falls silent. The artist's heart roils and burns, and a black anger rises.

If you would have the soldiers stopped who terrorize in the name of Islam, but you will not place yourself in danger for your brother who perishes at the hands of the mercenary next door, the only judgement left to you is that of coward and liar.

Go out into the world. Go out. You have been sent out to bring the good news. The good news begins with the gospel of life. You must protect life, from conception to natural death. If you have not done this basic duty, this basic act for the ongoing creation of society, if you watch society crumble -- you too will fall with it.

Go out into the streets and pray, and beg God for mercy. I too will go with you. Come alive, and reject the systematic destruction of the human person. Overthrow the deathly edifice. This is our duty. It is undeniable. It is irrefutable. It is the supreme test of faith in our time -- the supreme evil, that which requires the most devout action in opposition.

If you wish to have good things, you must give, and you must first give life.

Where is the horse and the rider?

The beauty of the warrior lies in that which he defends.

Radicalize the Pro-Life Movement

Some of you who knew me during my college years may recount what seems to be a fierce dichotomy in my character. On the one hand, I have a profound, indeed religious appreciation for art, while on the other, I may become violently passionate with righteous furor when abortion is mentioned.

You might recall the days I spent in front of the new cafeteria, constantly accosting our fellow students: "Will you join us in peaceful protest at a Charlotte abortion clinic?" How many refusals. Stranger yet, how many assented and did not follow through? 100 signatures. Less than 20 protesters.

Others of you who read my blog may one day see a contemplative review of a film by Kieslowski. On another day, a declamation on our guilt as a society.

My heart is tender for beauty. It is of steel for violence.

Or some of my male peers may remember a controversial Facebook challenge to which they did not respond, the challenge that said we are black as hell if we do nothing to stop this horror.

Here we are amidst the horror.

In 8 years of being someway involved in the Pro-Life Movement, I have often asked the question: "Why do we allow this to continue when we have the power to stop it?" It is a simple question -- thus the significance of its persistence, the problem of its remaining unanswered.

I remember when we founded the pro-life apostolate, Crusaders for Life, at my parish church. One of the first events we organized was a training by the archdiocesan sidewalk counseling ministry. We were told of these mythological creatures (including priests) of the past who chained themselves to clinic doors, who -- unfortunately, we were told -- gave the movement a reputation of radicalism. We should never attempt any sort of rescue, for fear of reinstating this reputation.

Thus, for the last near-decade, I have stood, I have prayed, I have conversed kindly and calmly with the Watchers at the Gate.

But as I see the same structure that taught non-intervention (that is, an avoidance of physical protection for the unborn, an avoidance of peaceful civil disobedience) clothed in fine linen suits at their brunches with legislators, I wonder again: "Why do we allow this to continue when we have the power to stop it?" The man power. 300,000 strong at the so-called March for Life.

Even we in the pro-life movement have been a force for the dehumanization of the unborn. How? In refusing to acknowledge the gravity of murder -- the murder of even that first legally slaughtered child. What are we afraid of? asks Stephanie Gray in a LifeSite opinion piece. I would ask the same of her. Why do we stop at "speaking up"? Would you merely "speak up" to a Nazi official who wouldn't listen, especially if you could raise a free army of 300,000 to blast the gas chambers standing within the reach of your arm, to liberate those emaciated figures you observe as they stumble towards the ovens?

Is your reaction sufficient? Is this an adequate response to the evil you see at hand? If you fail at your appeal, will you turn your back as the murders continue, ready to chat it up another day? Did American soldiers ask the Nazi governors to stop the killings, or did they move in and stop them?

Well, America is worse off than Nazi Germany. We have achieved new heights in the field of human extermination. We cannot see it, and so even those who deem themselves "pro-life" allow themselves to relax for a day -- go shopping, play video games, have a beer with friends, scroll for hours on Facebook, vacation, have me-time. We have killed far more, and we protect our consciences from effect by expressing indignation at the Nazis and the Republicans [sic].

This piece seems too detached for my liking, and I am sick of being deprived of action. I am sick of the entire structure, but this does not excuse me from first concentrating on the evil which is first in the world: abortion. And I must do at all times what I can.

LISTEN! Open your ears! You have been at war, and you have let the enemy into your beds. The child of your mating is already aborted. Look at the impotence, 300,000 strong!

Remember the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What was it for?

Remember the beheading of John the Baptist. What was it for?

Remember the Crucifixion of Christ. What was it for?

What is the definition of modern sacrifice? A weekend stroll round the telephone pole with a sign in your hands and a diaper in your pants? It is long past the time to act. The night has darkened on our souls. We have been 40 years a slave to the fear of humiliation, the fear of degradation, the fear of reprise, the fear of harm to our persons. We have let fear drive us to the rationalization that the very system that allows tyranny to reign and bloodshed to flourish would pander to our delicacies.

And fear, as is its wont, has affected our reason so severely that we value our own safety and livelihoods before the very lives of others.

But fear not, for "Actions done under stress of fear, unless of course it be so intense as to have dethroned reason, are accounted the legitimate progeny of the human will, or are, as the theologians say, simply voluntary, and therefore imputable." If we omit, then we commit. It is time to rise, lift up our mats, and walk.

There is no need for us to walk alone. We are all brothers. Let us spread the word, the word which is difficult, and which, because of this, seems all the more to be true. Speak, my friends, and act, and count not the cost upon yourselves. As Dr. King said, "the first question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’"A noble cause calls good men to act.

As always, I stand with Pope Francis on non-violence: "it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underline the verb: stop. I do not say bomb, make war, I say stop by some means. With what means can they be stopped? These have to be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit."

  

America and ISIS: Blood on our Hands

Cardinal O'Mally shaking the hand of SS John Kerry

It is legal to murder Christians in the Islamic State, the friendly new caliphate that has recently arisen on the Middle-Eastern frontier. Over 5,500 civilians thus far have been killed. This is surely a great number, surely indicative of a business-like offensive on the part of the Islamic State. These fellows know what they want, and they are willing to fight for it. 

In fact, their progress towards the goal that is nothing short of ummah is not so impressive as the remarkable progress of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, who have easily and gainfully slaughtered tens of millions of innocent boys and girls not because they were Christian, but because they were (are) human.

What? Yes, because they are human. This is an intellectual breakdown of cosmic proportions.

We have a larger crisis on our hands. This is not to say that the murder of Christians in Iraq and Syria is a negligible event, but we must approach massive genocidal crises with a sense of proportion: in a few days time, the number of murdered children in America will surpass the number of murders perpetrated by members of ISIS. How long have we been preoccupied with ISIS? A few months.

HuffPo gives this number for one month of ISIS terrorism:

"1,922: The number of people killed in Iraq in June, according to government figures, making it the deadliest month since May 2007. Official figures report 1,393 civilians, 380 soldiers and 149 policemen among the dead. Another 2,610 people were wounded, the majority of them civilians."
Whereas abortion statistics in America go thusly: 100,516 every month.

Compare the following paragraph to the first paragraph of this post.

It is legal in America to destroy the life inside of a mother's womb merely to protect personal convenience: i.e. it is legal to murder a person because he/she is a person. Over 56 million murders have been committed by medical professionals against other humans since 1973. This is surely a number beyond the wildest nightmares of most, a number utterly staggering, a number beyond the reach of imagination. Stalin's regime is responsible for c. 20 million deaths, Hitler's for c. 42 million. Americans are responsible for the murder of over 56 million persons.

We sit here scrolling while our own countrymen are hard at work, churning in the voiceless victims, churning out bloody corpses, meanwhile condemning ISIS or some other terrorist group.

I don't know what else to say. It has come to this. It has come to a blindness, a hypocrisy too unwieldy to address. We must stand to defend our own! How can we pull the speck from our brothers' eyes with an M16 if we aren't willing to pull the telephone pole out of ours with a few arrests and some non-violent physical interventions? An easy price for 56 million lives!

We are not as yet morally equal to ISIS. We do not yet have their resolve. If we are to be true to anything, we must end this complacent political shmoozing with the enemies of humanity and protect our brothers and sisters who die as I write.

There are some who say that it is not well to always have abortion or other vital issues in mind. That sentiment is a bit too Aryan for me, and just as effective.

As a movement, we do need leadership. We need leadership that exhibits not excellent taste in business attire or the ability to finagle daytime TV hours for interviews, but the heartfelt determination to end abortion, to "stop", as Pope Francis says: "it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underline the verb: stop. I do not say bomb, make war, I say stop by some means. With what means can they be stopped? These have to be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit."

We have the numbers, and we have the truth: it is far easier to prove that innocent children be saved from slaughter than it is to prove the same for Christians in the Middle-East (and this truth is universally accepted).

Without a leadership that is intent on stopping murder from occurring, we are lost in a senseless legal battle with the same forces that will force an unwilling man to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding.

Such inanity does not merit dialogue, but the use of nonviolent physical resistance. If we do not do more than make a show with our chanting and free concerts at the March for Life, there will be blood on our hands. There is already blood on our hands.

Fear and Freedom

Healing the Hurts of the Earth, and Resisting the Orcs

Lúthien Tinúviel, Allan Lee

I recently signed a petition that constitutes a sort of "please cease and desist" request from two private individuals to their local Planning Department. The story need not be told here, but, in summary, the local government very clearly overstepped its bounds and intruded upon the peace of honest citizens as they made an act of good faith by attempting to confirm the legality of their living situation.

We have been seeing this sort of intimidation very often recently, and it has become more and more apparent that government positions are increasingly attractive to power-minded individuals, those who would "lord it over" their fellow man: "Dominion and service, egoism and altruism, possession and gift, self-interest and gratuitousness: these profoundly contrasting approaches confront each other in every age and place" (Homily, Benedict XVI, St. Peter's Basilica, 18 Feb. 2012).

Not all would agree with the theological account of "the beginning", but many in this day and age agree that a certain stewardship of the earth, a relationship with nature that is mutually beneficial, is laudable, and may, in its various forms, be the one appropriate vocation of man.

It just so happens that the persons at the center of the story mentioned above were seeking to grow vegetables, raise chickens and goats, and otherwise live a very "green" lifestyle from a converted, off-grid school bus. They were seeking to perform a deeply human function, following deeply human desires. They were doing no different from the first people of this country, English immigrants in America, the frontier families, and indeed many peoples in various countries, cultures, and economies throughout the world today. It seems odd that their quiet, unobtrusive, and humble lifestyle should cause any stir whatsoever.

It should cause no stir unless it be an inspiration to live in like manner.

That county officials sought to extend the tentacle of arbitrary conformation is a clear sign that America is no longer free, and that the government has made itself an enemy of humankind and of nature, enforcing -- and thereby merely postponing the certain demise of -- a flailing social and economic doctrine.

Why should we expect fear and intimidation when we seek to do the simplest of things, when we choose to do that for which we were made? Why should we balk at the idea of freedom?

Before even it has become illegal to practice one's religion in this country (an impending doom, no doubt), it is illegal to own private property. You are certainly allowed to hand over your life's saving for a deed, title, and other proofs of nominal ownership, but you are not permitted to do as you will with the earth that you cultivate. Instead, the agents of cookie-cutter suburbia come knocking at your door, demanding some blathering nonsense.

The environs are foggy, but the choice is clear.

The current state of affairs, the current tone of local government (and certainly state and national government) effectively precludes any chance of overcoming absurd legal boundaries on an individual basis. What can one man do? He can do something. A foundational principle of the American nation was that a man can't tramp all over you merely because he has the bigger stick. We no longer live in that nation. We live in a state of passive-aggressive cold war with our governing bodies.

And we must put up a rampart of defense against what is clearly an infringement upon our rights as human persons, which include the right to produce food for our own sustenance and shelter against the elements, without restrictions based on our means or some pitiable norm of "success". It is not a moral wrong to be poor. It is a moral right to care in the best way one may for oneself and one's family.

It is time for persons and families of like mind and similar pursuits to band together and live as they see fit, and to reject all unreasonable molestation as well as the consequences of that rejection. We must no longer allow ourselves to be punished for the basic activities required of existence. We must no longer allow arbitrary policies to define our very nature.

We are human beings born in a place, and this is no crime. We have every right to preserve our existence in this place without interference, especially if we obtain property and cultivate it to our liking. It is time to take a stand, and to reject unjust discrimination by a nihilistic society pressured by a police state. It is time for "the adornment of Arda and the healing of its hurts" (Tolkien, quoted in Patrick Curry's "Iron Crown, Iron Cage ..."). It is time to raise happy families to join in the work that has been set out before us. It is time to reject the jealousy of Cain, and justly preserve the pursuit of innocence.