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“The People’s Pundit”: “Don’t delude yourselves into pretending it isn’t #NeverTrump behind the push for Ron DeSantis to fracture the party… It most definitely is them to include McCarthy and McConnell”

November 06, 2022

Rich Baris “The People’s Pundit”

@Peoples_Pundit

Folks, I don’t really care for whom you vote. But don’t delude yourselves into pretending it isn’t #NeverTrump behind the push for Ron DeSantis to fracture the party in a primary if and when Trump obviously runs. It most definitely is them to include McCarthy and McConnell.

7:53 PM · Nov 5, 2022

·Twitter for iPhone

Rich Baris “The People’s Pundit”

@Peoples_Pundit

You missed something. If they both run, then Joe Biden or his replacement are the president for 4 more years because that’s what D.C. hopes this accomplishes.

Quote Tweet

Mark Robinson Stan  #BolducArmy

@MRobinsonStan

·

13h

If Ron DeSantis doesn’t run in 2024, Trump is the 2024 nominee and DeSantis is likely the 2028 nominee. If Ron DeSantis DOES run in 2024, Trump is still the 2024 nominee and someone else is the 2028 nominee. I don’t care what side you’re on, that’s the reality.

8:40 PM · Nov 5, 2022·Twitter for iPhone

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Joan van  walter neville • an hour ago • edited

Paul Ryan loves DeSantis, nuff said.

PDJT is separating the wheat from the chaff. He has suffered enough under the Uniparty for 7 years, his endorsement is what pushed DeSantis over the top, and RDS’s response to the Mar a Lago raid was to wait 5 days, offer some lame comment and start campaigning against President Trump!

I’m surprised PT waited this long to call this political patsy for the RINO’s out.

The Mar a Lago raid should have had DeSantis up in arms. And where was his response to the 2020 Steal and the J6 DC gulag? Crickets. This was his moment to show his support for the man who got him into office and the MAGA Americans now suffering under the Steal.

On top of that, DeSantis has aligned himself with Trump hating RINOs to the

tune of $ 200 milion and his ads are straight out of RINO playbook.[https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/11/president-trump-takes-major-jab-desantis-pa-rally-pundits-weigh/?ff_source=Email&ff_medium=the-gateway-pundit&ff_campaign=dailypm&ff_content=2022-11-05]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html 

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.SHARE

Elon Musk: a champion of anti-globalism?

The news of Elon Musk’s 44-billion-dollar purchase of the world’s leading social media platform, Twitter, came right on the heels of his proposal for a solution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict more favourable to the interests of Moscow than to those of Kiev. In conservative circles, this reinforced Musk’s image as an iconoclastic visionary, hostile to the globalist elites who rule the world. But is this really the case?

The South-African-born business magnate and founder of companies like the electric car manufacturer, Tesla, and SpaceX, which aims to conquer other planets, is the richest person in the world, according to Forbes, with assets estimated at 223.8 billion dollars. He presides over the Musk Foundation and, like Bill Gates, presents himself as a philanthropist who aims to improve the world. His goals include that of reducing global warming through the use of renewable energy and of establishing a human colony on Mars.

On 10 March 2018, speaking at a panel discussion dedicated to the science fiction series Westworld, Musk said:

“There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity.”

To emphasise this idea and explain his plan to conquer space, he then added:

“There’s a guy called Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, one of the early Russian rocket scientists. He had a great saying, ‘Earth is the cradle of humanity, you cannot stay in the cradle forever. It is time to go forth, become a star-faring civilisation, be out there among the stars, expand the scope and scale of human consciousness.’ I find that incredibly exciting. That makes me glad to be alive. I hope you feel the same way.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), the father of Russian “cosmonautics” to whom Musk refers, was not only a scientist and designer of rockets and satellites but also a philosopher of the school of panpsychism, according to which all living and non-living beings possess mental capacities, and matter itself is “thinking”. Scholars like Svetlana Semёnova (1941–2014) and George M Young incorporated his vision of the world into cosmism movement, founded by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov (1828–1903).

Fyodorov claimed to be a Christian but denied the doctrine of Resurrection of the dead, which according to the Gospel will take place “on the last day” (Jn 6:39-40, 44, 54; 11:24), at the end of the world. He was convinced that human ingenuity, with no need for God’s intervention, could preempt the Resurrection of the dead, using the power of science to put back together their remains scattered in nature. The procedure for resurrecting the dead, entrusted to scientists, would consist in the recovery and synthesis of all the molecules and atoms that make up the remains of the dead in order to reconstitute the human body. Fyodorov proposed setting up scientific and technological centres next to cemeteries and exhuming dead bodies in order to put them through the processes of molecular synthesis and genetic reassembly. The resurrection of the dead, which would entail an overpopulation of the earth, would have to be followed by their transfer to other planets, on spaceships superpowered by advanced human technology. In his posthumously published book, Philosophy of the common task (1906–1913), Fyodorov foresaw an age in which science would allow humanity to overcome the limitations of nature, resurrect the dead and colonise the stars in order to accomodate them. (George M Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers, Oxford University Press, New York 2012)

The first generation of Bolshevik leaders, the so-called “builders of God”, were influenced by Fyodorov’s ideas. Michel Eltchaninoff, in a fine book dedicated to cosmism (Lenin ha camminato sulla luna, Italian translation Edizioni e/o, Rome 2022, pp. 47-70), recalls the names of philosopher Alexander Bogdanov, art theorist Anatoly Lunacharsky, writer Maxim Gorky and engineer Leonid Krasin, all with high-level involvement in the Bolshevik movement. Cosmism was not just a revolutionary fantasy of the 1920s; it proposed the creation of the “New Man”, emancipated from God and nature, as the French Revolution had done before.

In the Soviet era, scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, creator of cosmonautics, sought to implement the second part of the Fyodorov plan: the conquest of space to accommodate the resurrected dead. Tsiolkovsky, unlike Fyodorov, was a professed atheist and materialist; but like Fyodorov, he believed in the physical immortality of humanity, destined, thanks to the progress of science, to live for eternity and to populate the whole cosmos. To the names of Fyodorov and Tsiolkovsky must be added that of the Russian philosopher-scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945) who, while having no intention of bringing the dead back to life, did intend to transform the human being into a creature interdependent with the “biosphere”, the living matter in which he is immersed. Vernadsky was also responsible for spreading the concept of the “noosphere”, a favourite of the evolutionist theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Vernadsky is considered the forerunner of radical environmentalism and of the Gaia hypothesis, a cosmological vision that presupposes the interconnection of all the beings (animate and inanimate) of nature and the dissolution of every boundary between man and the world. The Earth and its biosphere form that complex and all-encompassing system which seemed to provide inspiration for the 2019 Synod for the Amazon.

Cosmism is an ideology akin to transhumanism, with which it shares the evolutionist vision of the universe and the idea of a self-transcendence of human nature. This philosophical system, atheistic and pantheistic at the same time, has taken root in America no less than in Russia. Vladimir Putin has never cited Fyodorov but, in 2013, he had a town near the Vostochny cosmodrome named after Tsiolkovsky and, that same year, ordered grand celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Vernadsky. However, according to Eltchaninoff, for a few decades now, cosmism has had a second home in Silicon Valley, with heirs like Elon Musk and the Russian-born entrepreneur Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google.

Lenin ha camminato sulla luna, p. 15“Another figure of transhumanism, Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, condemns ‘the ideology of the inevitability of death’. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, invests in rockets and in companies that work in anti-ageing … The search for eternal life and the conquest of space are connected.”

Elon Musk’s reference to Tsiolkovsky confirms Eltchaninoff’s thesis, and is disturbing. The political vision of the Tesla boss is that of an anarcho-conservative who wants to make Twitter a free, uncensored social network where all are able to express their opinions. This position has aroused the hostility of globalists like Bill Gates, who attacked Musk in a panel discussion organised by the Wall Street Journal on 4 May 2022. At bottom, however, both Musk and Gates believe in the utopia of the regeneration of humanity through science, and reject Christian cosmology which affirms the existence of an order of values based on the immutable nature of man and on a transcendent God who created the universe and orders it to its end. Are the two “brother enemies” part of the same planetary conspiracy? There is no conspiracy when everything is stated openly, but there does exist a revolutionary process that opposes the New World Order of the globalists with the false anti-globalist alternative of the New World Disorder — a process with a variety of dynamics, converging in the struggle against a single enemy: the Church and what survives of the Christian West. (Roberto de Mattei)

The Left Were the 

Mad Scientists,

We Were Their Lab Rats

Once the Left took the presidency, 

the House, and Senate,

they tried a deadly experiment 

on the American people.

By Victor Davis Hanson

American Greatness

November 2, 2022

As the midterms approach, one way of looking at America’s current disaster is that we, the American people, were lab rats. And since 2021, the Left were the mad scientists, eager to try out their crackpot leftist experiments on us. 

The result is that the housing market is tottering on the verge of collapse. 

As interest rates soar, our $31 trillion national debt crowds out everything else in the budget. 

Inflation roars at a rate of 8-9 percent per annum, higher than at any time in 40 years. Yet the prices of the stuff of life—food, fuel, shelter, energy—are far steeper still than the official rate. 

No one is safe from thugs anymore—whether a commuter on a New York subway or the Pelosis in Pacific Heights.

The country reportedly has a 25-day supply of diesel fuel—the energy source that runs the nation. Meanwhile, we keep draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of oil—a commodity we have in abundance but refuse to produce fully.

We never fixed the supply-chain crisis of last year, and so still face shortages of key consumer goods. 

The labor participation rate is at an all-time low—given fat government COVID subsidies, the Siren-song appeal of staying home after the lockdowns, fear of COVID, and millions of workers with long COVID.

The post-Kabul Pentagon is quiet about the depletion of its critical stocks of weaponry. We have sent billions of dollars worth of howitzer shells, javelin missiles, and Hilmar rocket launchers to Ukraine without replenishing our own arsenals. The Army’s recruitment rate is off 50 percent this year.

Our broken Navy is ossifying as China expands its fleet in expectation of absorbing Taiwan. 

When we look to the president for an accounting for these madcap experiments, we get nothing. In the last few weeks, Joe Biden has lied that gas was $5 a gallon when he took office when it was half that. 

He falsely swears that he passed his student-loan amnesty plan by one or two votes when he simply signed away a half-trillion dollars in debt by executive order and bypassed Congress. 

Kamala Harris is our border czar but she avoids the nonexistent southern border like the plague. 

As the country depletes its petroleum reserves, she gushes about “solutions” like transforming the nation’s school bus fleet to battery power. 

On the rare occasion, she is allowed abroad, Harris has no idea what North Korea’s official name is—only that it is supposedly one of America’s staunchest allies. 

We are now headed for a decisive midterm election. Strangely the hard-left architects of the last two years neither offer a defense of their failing agendas nor agree to change them.

No Democratic congressional candidates brag about the 3 million people who illegally crossed an open border. 

None boast that they helped cancel key pipelines, reduced federal leasing of gas and oil and shut down the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. None take credit for hammering investments in fossil fuels. 

None preen over the no-bail and defund-the-police policies of left-wing, big-city prosecutors and mayors who have spiked crime. 

None insist that an annual 8-9 percent inflation rate is a desirable spreading of wealth. 

And yet odder still, no Democratic candidate, state or national—and most certainly not Joe Biden—offers to alter these toxic policies.

If they won’t defend what they have done, they apparently will not even undo what they have wrought. 

No Democratic gubernatorial candidate wants one foot built of a new border wall. No Democratic House candidate demands that the Keystone pipeline be finished. No Democratic senatorial candidate calls for fiscal discipline to lower inflation. 

Instead, they stay mute. 

Biden mutters lies about MAGA extremists under every bed while daily offering yet another made-up tidbit of his fantasy autobiography. 

State and national candidates either avoid debates with their Republican opponents or delay them in hopes they will become irrelevant since millions of mail-in ballots are already cast. 

Rarely have voters turned over their country to radicals, socialists, and nihilists. 

We did in 2020. 

And once the Left took the presidency, the House, and Senate, they tried a deadly experiment on us the American people, their veritable lab rats. 

It failed—and has now nearly destroyed us along with the country. 

Yet in November the Left apparently demands more time for more experimentation on more of us. But to do what exactly?

ü Pass more no-bail laws and promote more defunding of the police? Make the jails and prisons emptier?

ü More destruction of what’s left of the southern border? 

ü More biological men overpowering women in sports?

ü More printing of money?

ü More cutting back on federal gas and oil leases and canceling pipelines? 

The only thing that will stop their mad experimentation is that they have run out of us—their once-willing lab rats.

Anatoly Lunacharsky

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Anatoly Lunacharsky Анато́лий Лунача́рский
Lunacharsky in 1925
People’s Commissar for Education
In office 26 October 1917 – September 1929
Premier	Vladimir Lenin Alexei Rykov
Preceded by	None (position established)
Succeeded by	Andrei Bubnov
Personal details
Born	Anatoly Aleksandrovich Antonov 23 November [O.S. 11 November] 1875 Poltava, Russian Empire
Died	26 December 1933 (aged 58) Menton, Alpes-Maritimes, France
Political party	RSDLP (Bolsheviks) (1903–1918)  Russian Communist Party(1918–1933)
Alma mater	University of Zurich
Occupation	Politicianessayistjournalist

Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky (Russian: Анато́лий Васи́льевич Лунача́рский) (born Anatoly Aleksandrovich Antonov, 23 November [O.S. 11 November] 1875 – 26 December 1933) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and the first Bolshevik Soviet People’s Commissar (Narkompros) responsible for Ministry of Education as well as an active playwright, critic, essayist and journalist throughout his career.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Contents

• 1Background
• 2Early career
  • 2.1Vpered
  • 2.2World War I
• 3People’s Commissariat for Education (Narkompros)
  • 3.1Education
  • 3.2Culture
    • 3.2.1Art
    • 3.2.2Cinema
    • 3.2.3Theatre
    • 3.2.4Literature
    • 3.2.5Music
• 4Personality
• 5Later career
  • 5.1Death
• 6Personal life
• 7Legacy
• 8Works
• 9See also
• 10References
• 11Further reading
• 12External links

Background[edit]

Lunacharsky was born on 23 or 24 November 1875 in Poltava, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) as the illegitimate child of Alexander Antonov and Alexandra Lunacharskaya, née Rostovtseva. His mother was then married to statesman Vasily Lunacharsky, a nobleman of Polish origin, whence Anatoly’s surname and patronym. She later divorced Vasily Lunacharsky and married Antonov, but Anatoly kept his former name.^[5] In 1890, at the age of 15, Lunacharsky became a Marxist. From 1894, he studied at the University of Zurich under Richard Avenarius for two years without taking a degree. In Zürich, he met European socialists including Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He also lived for a time in France.

Early career[edit]

Lunacharsky in 1899

In 1899, Lunacharsky returned to Russia, where he and Vladimir Lenin‘s sister revived the Moscow Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), until they were betrayed by an informant and arrested. He was allowed to settle in Kyiv, but was arrested again after resuming his political activities, and after ten months in prison he was sent to  Kaluga, where he joined a Marxist circle that included Alexander Bogdanov and Vladimir Bazarov.^[7] In February 1902, he was exiled to Kushinov village in Vologda, where he again shared his exile with Bogdanov, whose sister he married, and with the Legal Marxist Nikolai Berdyaev and the Socialist Revolutionary terrorist Boris Savinkov and others. After the first issue of Lenin’s newspaper Iskra had reached Vologda, Bogdanov and Lunacharsky organised a Marxist circle that distributed illegal literature, while he also legally wrote theatre criticism for a local liberal newspaper.^[8] In March 1903, the governor of Vologda ordered Lunacharsky to be transferred further north, to Totma, where they were the only political exiles.

In 1903, the RSDLP split between the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, and Mensheviks. Lunacharsky, who by now had ended his period in exile and was back in Kyiv, originally believed that the split was unnecessary and joined the ‘conciliators’, who hoped to bring the two sides together,^[9] but he was converted to Bolshevism by Bogdanov. In 1904, he moved to Geneva and became one of Lenin’s most active collaborators and an editor of the first exclusively Bolshevik newspaper, Vpered. According to Nadezhda Krupskaya:

Lunacharsky turned out to be a brilliant orator and did a great deal to assist in strengthening the Bolshevik positions. From then on Lenin became on very good terms with Lunacharsky, became jolly in his presence, and was rather partial towards him even at the time of the difference with the Vpered-ites. And Anatoly Vasilyevich was always particularly keen and witty in Lenin’s presence.”^[10]

Lunacharsky returned to Russia after the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution. In Moscow he co-edited the journal Novaya zhizn and other Bolshevik publications, which could published legally, and gave lectures on 

Elon Musk’s reference to Tsiolkovsky confirms Eltchaninoff’s thesis, and is disturbing. The political vision of the Tesla boss is that of an anarcho-conservative who wants to make Twitter a free, uncensored social network where all are able to express their opinions. This position has aroused the hostility of globalists like Bill Gates, who attacked Musk in a panel discussion organised by the Wall Street Journal on 4 May 2022. At bottom, however, both Musk and Gates believe in the utopia of the regeneration of humanity through science, and reject Christian cosmology which affirms the existence of an order of values based on the immutable nature of man and on a transcendent God who created the universe and orders it to its end. Are the two “brother enemies” part of the same planetary conspiracy? There is no conspiracy when everything is stated openly, but there does exist a revolutionary process that opposes the New World Order of the globalists with the false anti-globalist alternative of the New World Disorder — a process with a variety of dynamics, converging in the struggle against a single enemy: the Church and what survives of the Christian West. (Roberto de Mattei)

YESTERDAY AT 4:26 PM

Elon Musk: a champion of anti-globalism?

The news of Elon Musk’s 44-billion-dollar purchase of the world’s leading social media platform, Twitter, came right on the heels of his proposal for a solution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict more favourable to the interests of Moscow than to those of Kiev. In conservative circles, this reinforced Musk’s image as an iconoclastic visionary, hostile to the globalist elites who rule the world. But is this really the case?

The South-African-born business magnate and founder of companies like the electric car manufacturer, Tesla, and SpaceX, which aims to conquer other planets, is the richest person in the world, according to Forbes, with assets estimated at 223.8 billion dollars. He presides over the Musk Foundation and, like Bill Gates, presents himself as a philanthropist who aims to improve the world. His goals include that of reducing global warming through the use of renewable energy and of establishing a human colony on Mars.

On 10 March 2018, speaking at a panel discussion dedicated to the science fiction series Westworld, Musk said:

“There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity.”

To emphasise this idea and explain his plan to conquer space, he then added:

“There’s a guy called Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, one of the early Russian rocket scientists. He had a great saying, ‘Earth is the cradle of humanity, you cannot stay in the cradle forever. It is time to go forth, become a star-faring civilisation, be out there among the stars, expand the scope and scale of human consciousness.’ I find that incredibly exciting. That makes me glad to be alive. I hope you feel the same way.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935), the father of Russian “cosmonautics” to whom Musk refers, was not only a scientist and designer of rockets and satellites but also a philosopher of the school of panpsychism, according to which all living and non-living beings possess mental capacities, and matter itself is “thinking”. Scholars like Svetlana Semёnova (1941–2014) and George M Young incorporated his vision of the world into cosmism movement, founded by the Russian philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov (1828–1903).

Fyodorov claimed to be a Christian but denied the doctrine of Resurrection of the dead, which according to the Gospel will take place “on the last day” (Jn 6:39-40, 44, 54; 11:24), at the end of the world. He was convinced that human ingenuity, with no need for God’s intervention, could preempt the Resurrection of the dead, using the power of science to put back together their remains scattered in nature. The procedure for resurrecting the dead, entrusted to scientists, would consist in the recovery and synthesis of all the molecules and atoms that make up the remains of the dead in order to reconstitute the human body. Fyodorov proposed setting up scientific and technological centres next to cemeteries and exhuming dead bodies in order to put them through the processes of molecular synthesis and genetic reassembly. The resurrection of the dead, which would entail an overpopulation of the earth, would have to be followed by their transfer to other planets, on spaceships superpowered by advanced human technology. In his posthumously published book, Philosophy of the common task (1906–1913), Fyodorov foresaw an age in which science would allow humanity to overcome the limitations of nature, resurrect the dead and colonise the stars in order to accomodate them. (George M Young, The Russian Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and His Followers, Oxford University Press, New York 2012)

The first generation of Bolshevik leaders, the so-called “builders of God”, were influenced by Fyodorov’s ideas. Michel Eltchaninoff, in a fine book dedicated to cosmism (Lenin ha camminato sulla luna, Italian translation Edizioni e/o, Rome 2022, pp. 47-70), recalls the names of philosopher Alexander Bogdanov, art theorist Anatoly Lunacharsky, writer Maxim Gorky and engineer Leonid Krasin, all with high-level involvement in the Bolshevik movement. Cosmism was not just a revolutionary fantasy of the 1920s; it proposed the creation of the “New Man”, emancipated from God and nature, as the French Revolution had done before.

In the Soviet era, scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, creator of cosmonautics, sought to implement the second part of the Fyodorov plan: the conquest of space to accommodate the resurrected dead. Tsiolkovsky, unlike Fyodorov, was a professed atheist and materialist; but like Fyodorov, he believed in the physical immortality of humanity, destined, thanks to the progress of science, to live for eternity and to populate the whole cosmos. To the names of Fyodorov and Tsiolkovsky must be added that of the Russian philosopher-scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945) who, while having no intention of bringing the dead back to life, did intend to transform the human being into a creature interdependent with the “biosphere”, the living matter in which he is immersed. Vernadsky was also responsible for spreading the concept of the “noosphere”, a favourite of the evolutionist theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955). Vernadsky is considered the forerunner of radical environmentalism and of the Gaia hypothesis, a cosmological vision that presupposes the interconnection of all the beings (animate and inanimate) of nature and the dissolution of every boundary between man and the world. The Earth and its biosphere form that complex and all-encompassing system which seemed to provide inspiration for the 2019 Synod for the Amazon.

Cosmism is an ideology akin to transhumanism, with which it shares the evolutionist vision of the universe and the idea of a self-transcendence of human nature. This philosophical system, atheistic and pantheistic at the same time, has taken root in America no less than in Russia. Vladimir Putin has never cited Fyodorov but, in 2013, he had a town near the Vostochny cosmodrome named after Tsiolkovsky and, that same year, ordered grand celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Vernadsky. However, according to Eltchaninoff, for a few decades now, cosmism has had a second home in Silicon Valley, with heirs like Elon Musk and the Russian-born entrepreneur Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google.

Lenin ha camminato sulla luna, p. 15“Another figure of transhumanism, Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, condemns ‘the ideology of the inevitability of death’. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, invests in rockets and in companies that work in anti-ageing … The search for eternal life and the conquest of space are connected.”

Elon Musk’s reference to Tsiolkovsky confirms Eltchaninoff’s thesis, and is disturbing. The political vision of the Tesla boss is that of an anarcho-conservative who wants to make Twitter a free, uncensored social network where all are able to express their opinions. This position has aroused the hostility of globalists like Bill Gates, who attacked Musk in a panel discussion organised by the Wall Street Journal on 4 May 2022. At bottom, however, both Musk and Gates believe in the utopia of the regeneration of humanity through science, and reject Christian cosmology which affirms the existence of an order of values based on the immutable nature of man and on a transcendent God who created the universe and orders it to its end. Are the two “brother enemies” part of the same planetary conspiracy? There is no conspiracy when everything is stated openly, but there does exist a revolutionary process that opposes the New World Order of the globalists with the false anti-globalist alternative of the New World Disorder — a process with a variety of dynamics, converging in the struggle against a single enemy: the Church and what survives of the Christian West. (Roberto de Mattei)

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Mariana Mazzucato’s Reveal

MICHAEL PAKALUK

By the Pontifical Academy for Life’s own statutes, Mariana Mazzucato should be removed as a member. This is obvious. But how did she ever get appointed? Archbishop Paglia’s explanation that her works were vetted beforehand is inadequate. In her books, she voices support for the U.N.’s goals of sustainable development. Goal #5, women’s equality and “reproductive health,” is notoriously ambiguous. The goal was deliberately written in such a way as to make it possible for both pro-life and pro-abortion constituents to sign onto it. The Vatican even issued a statement saying that it could support the goals only on condition that #5 was not interpreted to include legal abortion.  

Archbishop Paglia was therefore under a responsibility of what is known as “due diligence.” Mazzucato’s support of Goal #5 was a “red flag.” It was Paglia’s responsibility to defuse the reasonable doubt by putting to her the question, “Do you believe that women’s equality implies access to ‘safe’ abortion?” He could have done so through an email, or in one of Mazzucato’s visits to the Vatican. He wouldn’t have needed to discover her views through her tweets.  

I don’t believe that Mazzucato will be removed. But her continued tenure, I think, may prove a blessing in disguise because it reveals a serious lack of awareness in Catholic laypersons that really needs to be remedied, quickly. And Mazzucato’s approach to the Covid crisis reveals questions which must be answered if we are to assess properly what really happened.

Some have defended the appointment by saying that it makes sense for the Vatican to seek input from all kinds of views. But Mazzucato has been giving input to the Vatican, in an official role, for over two years. In April 2020, she tweeted that she was thrilled to be working with the Vatican’s Covid-19 Task Force, preparing weekly briefings which, she claimed, the pope went on to use in his speeches. No need, then, for her to be made a member in the Academy for Life in order to give input.

But what did she think of the Covid lockdowns? “Let’s not let this crisis go to waste,” she urged.  Covid was an occasion for the government to seize control over the economy, she said, so that henceforth businesses would be compelled to advance a green agenda. “As companies…come asking for bailouts [c]onditions can be attached.” This radical reset of the economy “must be done now, while government has the upper hand.” She attacked Donald Trump in particular, of course: “This is no time for nationalistic thinking.”

Catholics are unaware of her more general economic views. They accept, perhaps at face value, Paglia’s assertion that Mazzucato is a scholar of “absolute importance.”  

Let’s step back for a moment here. What does such language mean? I’ve never heard any scholar or scientist described in this way. Any reasonable person would disclaim being of “absolute importance.” I suppose if we accepted that she was “absolutely important,” then that settles it and all controversy must come to an end.

Others, who apparently doubt her “absolute importance,” have wondered why it was not possible to find someone to advance the same economic views who was also at the same time pro-life.

Here we come to a more interesting question. The pro-life position is marked by exquisite realism. To be pro-life means to be attentive to nature, to accept reality, and to accept responsibility for lasting consequences of our actions, especially difficult consequences. But is it possible to find an economist with such an outlook who would embrace Mazzucato’s broader economic views?

She is a firm defender, for instance, of that exercise in wishful thinking known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). “It is indeed true that a household can’t go on spending more than it earns for long without selling possessions, securing more income or cutting expenditure,” she says, “But governments don’t work that way. The reason is simple: they print the money.” She scouts the idea that governments need to borrow or tax in order to spend. This is “reverse logic” because, “In reality, [government] spending itself creates money.”

These quotes are from a book advocating what she calls “moonshot capitalism”—her view that the government should take control of the economy to achieve idealistic “missions,” the way that NASA sent a rocket to the moon.  

With positive glee she celebrates the U.S. Federal government’s multi-trillion-dollar unfunded deficits in 2020 and 2021: 

When Congress agrees to spending measures, it usually sends two instructions to the Federal Reserve. One is to add dollars by computer to the credit of the U.S. Treasury…the other is to subtract dollars in the form of agreed taxes. In the case of the $2 trillion [“stimulus”] package, however, the instruction was only to add dollars. Money was indeed created out of thin air.  

She then wonders why similar money hadn’t been created in the past “to provide clean drinking water for the residents of Flint, Michigan” or, “for that matter,” to create a national health system fully stocked with hospitals and good doctors. Surely $2 trillion (and the $3 trillion added in 2021) would be a good start toward such a system? (“For that matter,” one might wonder with her, why doesn’t the Vatican institute a sovereign currency, print money, and thus create wealth for itself, instead of relying on German gifts?)

But is there no limit to government spending, she asks? If government can create money by spending, why doesn’t it just spend and spend and spend? “The answer is inflation and how much of it can be tolerated.”—Ah, right, inflation. Reality check.—Which has nothing to do with equality, although it robs especially the middle class of its equity.

Elsewhere, she raises doubts coming from so-called “public choice” economics about the government’s ability to steer the economy in the manner of the Apollo mission. She gives a fair statement of such concerns: 

Policymaking…is considered to be subject to capture by interest groups, in particular those most able to influence policymakers because they have power and money. Capture might involve nepotism, cronyism, corruption, rent-seeking…misallocation of resources…or unfair and damaging competition. Capture by special interests is all the more possible, it is argued, because collective action by voters tends to be weak.… In public administration, the lack of competitive pressures leads to “bureau-maximizing” behavior, whereby departments and agencies look after their own survival rather than the “common good.” 

Yes, all completely correct, I can tell you, as a resident of the Washington, D.C., area; except I would say, more accurately, that departments and agencies look after their growth not their mere survival. They take success at their work and year-over-year increases in their budget to be the same.

After stating all of these problems very accurately, Mazzucato then says—I kid you not—no empirical evidence has ever been found to support them. And thereafter in her book she simply ignores these issues!

In the face of all this, I say: Catholics, become educated. Use Mazzucato’s appointment as a goad to read her books. Start learning how people like that think, since the policies she supports, shared by many powerful global actors, will impoverish you and your children, and, ultimately, are not compatible with a free society.

[Image Credit: Enel]

By Michael Pakaluk

Michael Pakaluk is professor of ethics and social philosophy in the Busch School of Business in The Catholic University of America. His latest book is Mary’s Voice in the Gospel According to St. John (Regnery Gateway).

THE CATHOLIC MONITOR

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#Pelosigate & “THE PLOT THICKENS: The David DePape Websites Have Multiple Issues – Shocking Connections”

October 31, 2022

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Evidence Shows David DePape Could Never Fit Through the Hole in Broken Window in the Rear of Pelosi Home #Pelosigate

By Joe Hoft
Published October 31, 2022 at 9:50am
1062 Comments

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New evidence shows that there is no way that David DePape could have broken into the Pelosi house through the door in the back.

David DePape was identified by the police at the Pelosi home on early Friday morning at around 2:30 am.  The police claim that he broke into the house. [https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/10/breaking-exclusive-evidence-shows-david-depape-never-fit-hole-broken-window-rear-pelosi-home/]

THE PLOT THICKENS: The David DePape Websites Have Multiple Issues – Shocking Connections:

The Mainstream media is trying to claim that David DePape is a conservative who broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco in an attempt to assault the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

As you now know, David DePape was found with Paul Pelosi early Friday morning at the Pelosi home by police in San Francisco.  The mainstream media immediately tried to cover for the Pelosi family.  They then attempted to align the man found with Paul Pelosi as a conservative.  But it was all a lie…

… The site Godisloving.wordpress.com was shut down on Saturday.  The other site listed, www.frenlyfrens.com/blog is no longer active as well.  It too was shut down on Saturday.  The only activity reported on the Wayback Machine on this site was on Friday and Saturday as well.

Now we know more about the sites. The Frenlyfres.com website shows attributed to David DePape but at an Alabama address.

The Godisloving.wordpress.com website is registered via the same company DomainsByProxy that is listed on the CityVisions.com website at 1822 Shasta Street which is the address listed on FrenlyFrens website.

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One of the accounts mandated that you become a member but this functionality was not working on Friday morning per one of our sources.

It is unreasonable to believe that David DePape, who lived on the streets, was able to put together a website that mandates users create an account before they could enter his site.  

So who created these websites?  More shocking connections coming.

 [https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/10/plot-thickens-david-depape-websites-multiple-issues-shocking-connections/%5D

#pelosigate – Twitter Search / Twitter

:

Jack Posobiec 

@JackPosobiec

·

22h

Actual interview of neighbors from Paul Pelosi’s attacker doesn’t line up with the mainstream media narrative at all https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/neighbor-des

cribes-pelosi-attacker

Andrew Wortman 

@AmoneyResists

3h

Nick Depape was not Paul Pelosi’s lover They were not in ‘just their underwear’ or ‘having sex’ when police arrived The right spreads vile conspiracy theories to distract from the fact that it incited a MAGA terrorist to try to assassinate the Speaker of the House #PelosiGate

Dinesh D’Souza

@DineshDSouza

EXCLUSIVE: Two Far-Right Websites Attributed to David DePape to Smear Conservatives Were FABRICATED – They Were Created Friday and Deleted Saturday

HE PATRIOT OUTPOST

@1PatriotOutpost

·

13h

Happens all the time, a guy in his tightie whities shows up, brings a hammer and runs into another guy with a hammer sporting his tightie whities. Clearly, your average MAGA attack. #Pelosigate

tRUMP Virus!

@BidenVaccine

·

3h

#PelosiGate is not real. tRump heading to prison is real!

Catturd ™

@catturd2

Funny how the actual 911 call stated Paul Pelosi said the attacker was named “David” and he was a “friend” – and now the police have suddenly changed the story to say they didn’t know each other. The actual 911 call doesn’t lie and can’t spin. How did Paul know his name?

5:05 AM · Oct 31, 2022·Twitter Web App

Pamela Hensley

@PamelaHensley22

If Paul Pelosi called the cops when his attacker let him use the bathroom, why didn’t he lock himself in there until the cops came? [https://twitter.com/hashtag/pelosigate]

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.

Francis Notes:

– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:

“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)

Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]

– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html

– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html

 –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:

The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”

–  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:

“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”

– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:

“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.

Election Notes: 

– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]

– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html

– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1

– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1

What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1] 

Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.

Pray an Our Father now for America.

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.SHARE

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Elon Has Great Fun With Meltdown Over His Hillary Tweet, Teases More Info to Come

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Elon Has Great Fun With Meltdown Over His Hillary Tweet, Teases More Info to Come

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Published on October 31, 2022

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https://lockerdome.com/lad/13743530879440998?pubid=ld-3176-639&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Frepublicandaily.com&rid=&width=697

Elon Musk had a lot of Twitter talking on Sunday after he took on Hillary Clinton, who lied and blamed the Paul Pelosi attack on Republicans spreading “hate” and conspiracies, then linked to a story about David DePape, the suspect in the case. Not only did she lie about Republicans, but given all the hate and conspiracies that she helped to push against President Donald Trump, she should be the last one to blast anyone else on the subject.

Musk responded, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” He later deleted the tweet, likely because it contained a link to a site that had speculation without evidence to back it up. But Musk’s greater point — that there are a lot of questions here that need answering — showed right off the bat that he wasn’t going to be afraid to put out things that the powers that be weren’t going to like.The police have answered some of those questions — saying there was no third person who opened the door and that the suspect was not a friend of Paul Pelosi’s, despite what was said on the dispatcher’s audio. But then there are still questions out there: Who let the police in then if the two men were struggling with the hammer when the police walked in? Where was the security? Why was there an initial report about the suspect being in his underwear, why was it pulled back and what was he wearing? Whose hammer was it — did the suspect bring it in or was Pelosi using it in self-defense? If the suspect came with no weapon, it doesn’t sound like much of an assassination attempt. When are we going to see the video/body cam or are they going to hold that back from us? So Musk was making a valid point.But Musk doing so, of course, caused a meltdown from folks on the left, including some of the same people who have pushed Russia collusion and other anti-Trump lies without any concern about the truth behind them.Warning for graphic language:

Scraping Advantage Off a Crime Scene Floor

by Noah Rothman

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE

There’s a terrible rhythm to how we react to episodes of violence with a political dimension. Paul Pelosi’s brutal assault is no different.

Targeted, premeditated attacks like this one, we soon learn, are cooked up in an addled mind, but something as unsatisfying as madness fails to suffice for a motive. So, we go about the flawed human practice of seeking patterns and applying rationality to the irrational. In this ritual, we exercise the agency chaos has otherwise stolen, even if it usually manifests in the unconstructive practice of assigning blame for violence to the non-violent.

From what we know of Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker, the preponderance of evidence indicates that he was a sick man. The paranoia to which he was attracted of late has an unmistakably rightwing flavor. He seems enticed by the collection of lunatic conspiracy theories espoused by disciples of “QAnon,” which the Associated Press summarizes as “the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles, and baby-eating cannibals.” This was, however, a recent conversion. His neighbors describe the alleged assailant as a transient drug addict, well-known around infamously left-wing Berkeley, California as a pro-nudity activist and a “hemp jewelry maker.” His online activities include a variety of anti-Semitic themes, which is a common feature of the psychologically deranged, whatever their politics.

This presents a maddening conundrum. When America’s mental-health crisis is discussed at all, it is either an intractable Gordian Knotor another example of how America just won’t throw enough money at its problems. Irresponsible conspiracy peddlers in media and politics display no sense of accountability. They’re not listening to these admonitions, nor are their audiences. The only people listening to reason, in fact, are the reasonable. So, that’s who you must train your fire on.

Listen and Subscribe to the Commentary Podcast

---

In Politico, reporters Sarah Ferris and Jeremy White point an accusatory finger at Republican ad makers, who may have contributed to the violent mania exhibited by Pelosi’s alleged assailant by crafting messages critical of the Democratic Speaker of the House in an election year. The article notes that Republican committees and candidates have used Pelosi as a foil for well over a decade—a fact the reporters believe supports rather than disputes the notion that this year’s fare crossed a line.

“The attack on Paul Pelosi is becoming the latest inflection point in an American political discourse that’s grown exponentially coarser since Republicans first embraced Nancy Pelosi as an attack-ad bogeywoman,” Politico asserted. The Democratic lawmakers the outlet quotes place the blame at the feet of Donald Trump and the Republican political “machine,” which “led directly to this attack.” The president himself echoed these sentiments within hours of the attack on Pelosi.

This attempt at advantage-seeking in the wake of this episode of violence is as familiar as it is sordid. It’s precisely what the New York Times editorial board engaged in when it alleged that a paranoid schizophrenic with a deluded grudge against English grammar shot Rep. Gabby Giffords because Sarah Palin’s PAC placed “Democrats under stylized cross hairs.” It’s of a piece with the efforts to establish a causal relationship between “martial metaphors” and attempted murder. That is a source of psychological comfort, insofar as those are things that are at least theoretically within our control. As a bonus, it is also a tool of political utility.

It would be nice if we had a more responsible political class (though the dominant figures in 2010 were more responsible by any definition, and that didn’t stop the commentariat from blaming everyone but the violent for their violence). There was no time in American history when our politics were unsullied by notions that a secret cabal is plotting against the public interest, but it would be great if American political life weren’t as conspiratorial as it is today. We know that radical notions can radicalize the disturbed, and we’ve seen a lot of radicalizations recently; only some of them right-wing.

The would-be gunman who was charged with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh was moved to violence by apocalyptic rhetoric around the Court’s rulings on abortion and gun rights. But that episode was “not especially hair-raising,” and it inspired no soul-searching.

When one of Marco Rubio’s campaign canvassers was beaten to the point of hospitalization, reportedly, “because he was a Republican,” Florida Democrats said the staffer’s history was perhaps behind the attack. He was “a misogynist and a racist,” a “white supremacist,” someone with a “history of being tied to hatred and bigotry,” and who should be “condemned” by the campaign that hired him.

The man who almost killed a number of Republican members of Congress in 2017 populated his social-media accounts with eschatology that Donald Trump’s presidency would supposedly fulfill. In 2020, American cities burned over the conspiratorial notion that the United States is founded in evil and remains wholly dedicated to the subjugation of its minority population. This year, dozens of pro-life pregnancy centers have been targeted with violence over the notion that their “campaign of oppression” is an existential threat.

Some of these conspiracy theories are more fashionable than others, but they are all poison. We should demand more seriousness and sobriety from our representatives. But even if a better politics were bestowed upon us tomorrow, it wouldn’t rid us of the violently mentally disturbed. It would, however, prevent our political actors from leveraging acts of violence to squeeze out whatever political rewards bloodshed provides the unscrupulous. As the attack on Paul Pelosi suggests, we’re a long way off from that.

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Noah Rothman is the Associate Editor of Commentary and the author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.

OCTOBER 31, 2022 POLITICS & IDEAS

Scraping Advantage Off a Crime Scene Floor

by Noah Rothman

There’s a terrible rhythm to how we react to episodes of violence with a political dimension. Paul Pelosi’s brutal assault is no different.

Targeted, premeditated attacks like this one, we soon learn, are cooked up in an addled mind, but something as unsatisfying as madness fails to suffice for a motive. So, we go about the flawed human practice of seeking patterns and applying rationality to the irrational. In this ritual, we exercise the agency chaos has otherwise stolen, even if it usually manifests in the unconstructive practice of assigning blame for violence to the non-violent.

From what we know of Paul Pelosi’s alleged attacker, the preponderance of evidence indicates that he was a sick man. The paranoia to which he was attracted of late has an unmistakably rightwing flavor. He seems enticed by the collection of lunatic conspiracy theories espoused by disciples of “QAnon,” which the Associated Press summarizes as “the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles, and baby-eating cannibals.” This was, however, a recent conversion. His neighbors describe the alleged assailant as a transient drug addict, well-known around infamously left-wing Berkeley, California as a pro-nudity activist and a “hemp jewelry maker.” His online activities include a variety of anti-Semitic themes, which is a common feature of the psychologically deranged, whatever their politics.

This presents a maddening conundrum. When America’s mental-health crisis is discussed at all, it is either an intractable Gordian Knotor another example of how America just won’t throw enough money at its problems. Irresponsible conspiracy peddlers in media and politics display no sense of accountability. They’re not listening to these admonitions, nor are their audiences. The only people listening to reason, in fact, are the reasonable. So, that’s who you must train your fire on.

Listen and Subscribe to the Commentary Podcast

---

In Politico, reporters Sarah Ferris and Jeremy White point an accusatory finger at Republican ad makers, who may have contributed to the violent mania exhibited by Pelosi’s alleged assailant by crafting messages critical of the Democratic Speaker of the House in an election year. The article notes that Republican committees and candidates have used Pelosi as a foil for well over a decade—a fact the reporters believe supports rather than disputes the notion that this year’s fare crossed a line.

“The attack on Paul Pelosi is becoming the latest inflection point in an American political discourse that’s grown exponentially coarser since Republicans first embraced Nancy Pelosi as an attack-ad bogeywoman,” Politico asserted. The Democratic lawmakers the outlet quotes place the blame at the feet of Donald Trump and the Republican political “machine,” which “led directly to this attack.” The president himself echoed these sentiments within hours of the attack on Pelosi.

This attempt at advantage-seeking in the wake of this episode of violence is as familiar as it is sordid. It’s precisely what the New York Times editorial board engaged in when it alleged that a paranoid schizophrenic with a deluded grudge against English grammar shot Rep. Gabby Giffords because Sarah Palin’s PAC placed “Democrats under stylized cross hairs.” It’s of a piece with the efforts to establish a causal relationship between “martial metaphors” and attempted murder. That is a source of psychological comfort, insofar as those are things that are at least theoretically within our control. As a bonus, it is also a tool of political utility.

It would be nice if we had a more responsible political class (though the dominant figures in 2010 were more responsible by any definition, and that didn’t stop the commentariat from blaming everyone but the violent for their violence). There was no time in American history when our politics were unsullied by notions that a secret cabal is plotting against the public interest, but it would be great if American political life weren’t as conspiratorial as it is today. We know that radical notions can radicalize the disturbed, and we’ve seen a lot of radicalizations recently; only some of them right-wing.

The would-be gunman who was charged with the attempted murder of Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh was moved to violence by apocalyptic rhetoric around the Court’s rulings on abortion and gun rights. But that episode was “not especially hair-raising,” and it inspired no soul-searching.

When one of Marco Rubio’s campaign canvassers was beaten to the point of hospitalization, reportedly, “because he was a Republican,” Florida Democrats said the staffer’s history was perhaps behind the attack. He was “a misogynist and a racist,” a “white supremacist,” someone with a “history of being tied to hatred and bigotry,” and who should be “condemned” by the campaign that hired him.

The man who almost killed a number of Republican members of Congress in 2017 populated his social-media accounts with eschatology that Donald Trump’s presidency would supposedly fulfill. In 2020, American cities burned over the conspiratorial notion that the United States is founded in evil and remains wholly dedicated to the subjugation of its minority population. This year, dozens of pro-life pregnancy centers have been targeted with violence over the notion that their “campaign of oppression” is an existential threat.

Some of these conspiracy theories are more fashionable than others, but they are all poison. We should demand more seriousness and sobriety from our representatives. But even if a better politics were bestowed upon us tomorrow, it wouldn’t rid us of the violently mentally disturbed. It would, however, prevent our political actors from leveraging acts of violence to squeeze out whatever political rewards bloodshed provides the unscrupulous. As the attack on Paul Pelosi suggests, we’re a long way off from that.

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Noah Rothman is the Associate Editor of Commentary and the author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.