Thoughts On American-Global Totalitariamism

To fellow Americans who may read this:

I call to mind words of Thomas Jefferson written to his friend John Holmes in 1820, on the occasion of the Missouri Compromise and what he saw coming in American politics:

...But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened
 and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the
Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only,
not a final sentence…

“The fire bell in the night,” the death-knell of our American political order is what one can hear if one is listening, and thinks about what we see unfolding in American political and social life. What we experienced in years past as a democratic republic has ceased being a republic and a democracy, but has increasingly become a totalitarian empire ruled by Progressive Gnostics seeking to “transform America” into part of a globalist society of fellow-traveling rulers, intellectuals, bureaucrats, bankers, multinational corporate head, educationists, and media-propagandists.Their domination over American political and social life is nearly complete. 

That our American political regime and way of life are in truth becoming totalitarian I submit, for the present, a few facts: 

1. It is increasingly evident that our country is dominated by a closed ruling elite, made up of members of both major political parties, who know that they have much more in common with each other than they do with the masses whom they dominate and seek to continue to control. This ruling class seeks total domination over the citizens, and endless perpetuation of their ever-increasing power. 

2. The ruling elite is dominated by forms of Gnosticism, especially of a Progressivist-Socialist variety, amalgamated from Comte’s Progressivism, Marxian Socialism, elements of classical Liberalism, with other planks pulled from various ideologies. They are close-minded in thought, certain that they possess “the truth,” and seek to impose this “truth” not only on the USA, but on the entire world. To an alarming degree, they have been successful. 

3. The killing of the unborn, increasingly with public funds and statesponsorship, is not incidental or just one promoted policy, but a revealing model of the "brave new world" they seek to create: a realm of total domination of powerful rulers over the ruled. The most helpless, defenseless members of our human community-infants in the womb-are subject to a reign of terror in the form of "abortion on demand." It is one step towards power to put to death any individuals or classes of citizens deemed "unwanted," or deplorable," or "unproductive." In addition to the unborn, most vulnerable victims include newly born infants (some of whom are left to die), unwanted children, various "irredeemables," elderly persons declared to be "socially useless," and the terminally ill who may be "euthanized." American death camps include abortion mills, hospitals, "care facilities," and even inner cities where often drug-crazed gangs terrorize citizens with real and threatened violence. Abortion mills and inner cities together show the accepted and promoted reign of terror in America. 

 4. The ruling elite has proven itself willing to use totalitarian techniques to keep their monopoly of political power. One primary means of control are the mass media which enter nearly every home and every citizen’s consciousness, especially through television and movies, but also through the internet, and which seek to dominate thinking, prevent independence of thought and judgment, and remake all citizens in the image of the ruling elite. 

5. Another primary means of ongoing control of the citizens is through Progressivist domination in mass “education” (propaganda) from pre-school through secondary education, into college and graduate schools. The lack of freedom of thought in American academia is astonishing, but well known to anyone who has spent years in this system and dared to “think outside of the box,” that is, outside the realm of Progressivist Gnostic ideology. The grip on teachers and students is ironclad and nearly complete. The cost for refusal to accept the dominant ideology is poor performance, failure, or unemployment in the area of one’s expertise. 

6. As we have seen in the recent Presidential election, a challenge to elite domination has been met with rejection of virtually the entire ruling class, media manipulation, screening out of diverse views, character assassination, and even covert, fomented violence at political rallies to make it appear that the interloper is “a dictator,” when in fact the monopoly of power belongs to the ruling clique. Citizens have been mugged, property has been stolen or damaged (as in “keying cars,” and defacing campaign signs), persons have been threatened. What shows up to discerning eyes is the severe loss of freedom of expression and action in American politics. 

In short, the United States of America is neither a republican form of government, nor a mass democracy. These terms are used and promoted as part of a democratic mythology intended to keep the masses uninformed and living in a dreamlike state of illusion, as the rulers continue their quest for domination over all aspects of American life. The American regime has increasingly become a form of Gnostic totalitarianism, similar in form to the Soviet Union, Communist China, National Socialist Germany, Communist Cuba, Socialist Europe, and such regimes. What is called “American democracy” is in reality a virulent cancer destroying our body politic. 

What are we to do?

First, we must open our eyes and try to see clearly what has been happening to us as a people in history. Living in illusions—such as the myth of being “democratic”—prevents clear sightedness and coming to grips with reality. 

Second, the use of violence to overthrow the regime, as our Founders rebelled against the British Crown, is neither possible nor beneficial. The monopoly of power in the hands of rulers in government is extreme. And too many innocent lives would be destroyed in any attempted coup d’état. 

Third, the Gnostic-Progressive ideology must be examined and dissected for the diseased non-thought that it is. And it must be rejected as spiritually and intellectually diseased. For example, when candidate Obama proclaimed, “We will transform the world,” American citizens foolishly accepted such nonsense, rather than rejecting the verbiage and its goal as destructive. It was accepted because we have been instilled with such nonsense for over a hundred years. The origin of such thought in the young Karl Marx was neither analyzed nor understood. As President Obama has shown himself to be living in a Gnostic dream world, with dire consequences for American domestic and foreign policies. The man is not stupid, but he is a blind fool on account of his ironclad Progressivist ideology. 

Fourth, we must not be deceived: Mrs. Clinton would continue the same would-be totalitarian domination of American life evident in our leaders for decades: from the reign of Progressives such as T Roosevelt and W Wilson, through recent rulers—Clinton, Bush, Obama. Those who can observe and think should now understand that both major political parties are, at the top levels, part of the same dominating clique bent on changing American society into part of the globalist utopia of their dreams. One result of this utopian dream is perpetual warfare, as our rulers seek to impose their diseased vision on an often recalcitrant world. Here we find not “one empire, one people, one leader” of National Socialism, but “one world under our total domination” by the globalist, Gnostic elites. What the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were on a national or imperial scale, we are now becoming on a global scale.

On Those Who Trust In Themselves

A tree praying

For all of our lives we have read on U.S. coins and currency, “In God we trust.” Historically this phrase was a slight modification of words from the poem we know in the “Star-Spangled Banner”:   “In God is our trust.” Whatever the specific origin, the phrase, “In God we trust,” embodies the immersion of our Founders and Forefathers in the biblical tradition of Judaeo-Christianity. For the usage of similar phrases is common throughout the Bible, the book most read by generations of Americans.  Especially in the book of Psalms—“the prayerbook of the church”—one finds repeated instruction to place one’s trust in the LORD (YHWH), in God (Elohim). At the root of distinctly Christian faith is the act of placing one’s faith, one’s trust “in Jesus Christ and in the God who sent him,” to use a typical phrase. The foundational, grounding experience of the Apostles and earliest Christians was the act of entrusting one’s self, one’s life, soul, loved ones, to the providential care of the all-good, all-merciful God.This experience of entrusting oneself to God-in-Christ was in turn a response to discovering in Jesus the presence, life, mercy, liberating power of the Creator-God. A man or woman first spiritually discerns that God is present in Jesus and acting for our salvation, our complete benefit; and the inspired response to this spiritual insight is self-surrendering, self-abandoning trust. This action is not done once, but often, in words or in a more direct glance of the heart. And we see it beautifully expressed by Jesus on the cross in St. Luke’s account of the Passion: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” In agony or in joy, in times of plenty or of great want, the faithful soul lovingly entrusts itself to the One in whom alone we find true life.

The parable of two men going up to the Temple to pray, given to us only in St. Luke’s Gospel, depicts two ways of life—one leading to fulfillment and peace with God, the other condemning oneself to the hell of a self-absorbed, self-centered life. Once again, Luke is a master story-teller, and in this short parable summarizes these two ways of life in a way that all of us can understand and remember. One person’s “prayer” is itself nothing but self-absorption, and is even spoken “with himself,” or, more literally, “to himself.” (What kind of human being prays “to himself”?) God does not enter into this prayer at all, because the one offering it is closed to God.  How can God enter into an ego-filled consciousness, into a person whose thoughts are ever about himself? This person can love neither God nor human being, but despises others as beneath contempt, as deplorable, perhaps not even as truly human at all.This big shot, trusting in himself, has both feet squarely on earth, and his mind has not risen up into the Kingdom, into the Presence of God. He is empty, alone, self-satisfied, spiritually dead. In himself he now lives; in himself he will die. He looks impressive from the outside, but inside is all “waste and void.”

The other man does not take pride in himself or in his life. Rather, conscious of his own shortcomings and failures, humbly faces the ground—an outward expression of inner surrender. And he cries out to the one who is Love itself: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (or literally, “to me, to the sinner”). To this person, there is one who is merciful—God—and only one known sinner—I myself. This man, this sinner, not only addresses his heart and prayer to God, but is already graced by God, for it is the LORD himself who is moving this man to be conscious of his failings, and to turn to the LORD in his need.This man prays to God, with God, in God. Although he may not know it, his very words are being moved by the Creator, to lift his heart and mind into a union with God possible only to the humble—that is, to the self-emptying. Casting himself onto God, he is in reality already in the Kingdom of Heaven.  

St. Luke knows this experience from the inside, because he lives, prays, writes his gospel not out of himself alone, but out of his faith-union with God. As he writes at the end of his Gospel: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he spoke to us along the way and opened to us the Scriptures?” He knows

well of what he speaks, for he is focused not on himself, but on the presence of God as Christ and Spirit in his own soul, his consciousness.

What I have offered is an example of reading a spiritual text, such as a passage of a Gospel, in light of the experiences out of which the author is writing. To do otherwise, and to offer another kind of interpretation, disrespects the text and its author, and allows one to read in anything he wishes. An example of such reading would be a doctrinal interpretation (to fit with dogma), or an allegorical interpretation, as the Church Fathers often used. Others get caught in minutiae of biblical games. Remember, Christ is far greater than ourselves.  

Questions and a Note

Two weeks ago at Mass, I asked each of us a question: Does your faith bring you into contact with God? Does your faith make a difference in your life, in how you experience the world around you, and within you? Do you have an ongoing sense of God’s Presence in you, or do you feel alone, apart from God? 

Now I ask you little question based on our readings last week. Let’s see who can guess the answer. Why did Naaman the Syrian want dirt? Naaman says to the prophet Elisha, “Please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for I will no longer sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD.” What is the connection between dirt and worshipping the LORD? 

And now my note: An anniversary is an occasion to remember milestones in one’s life, and to recall the original event with gratitude. Today I remember 15 October 1988, the day I was ordained a Catholic priest. My sense of being a priest, and what it means to me, came vividly to mind this past week as I visited a former parishioner from Great Falls who is dying. The family honored me by asking me to pray for their mother, Rose, and we prayed the Last Rites. Priesthood is not a matter of status or possession, but a means to help others in time of spiritual need. In loving service one feels gratitude and joy in God.

A Mini-Homily

Last week at Mass I asked each of you a question:  Does your faith bring you into contact with God?  Does your faith make a difference in your life, in how you experience the world around you, and within you?  Do you have an ongoing sense of God’s Presence in you, or do you feel alone, apart from God?  

Now I ask you one little question.  Let’s see who can guess the answer.  Why did Naaman the Syrian want dirt?  Naaman says to the prophet Elisha, “Please let me, your servant, have two mule-loads of earth, for I will no longer sacrifice to any other god except to the LORD.”  What is the connection between dirt or earth and worshipping the LORD?

Let’s see who figures this out. 

A Few Thoughts On Thinking

To be conscious is to be awake, alert, purposeful, aware of one’s “place” in the whole of reality. 

Some persons appear to be awake, but when questioned, it turns out that their mind was unfocused, or barely awake, or almost in a semi-dreaming state: You speak to them, and they say, “Whaaaat? Where am I? What’s happening’, man?” It seems to me that many persons, much of the time, are in this semi-dreaming state between genuine alert wakefulness and full sleep. They are unconsciously conscious, or unwakefully awake. To be truly awake and alert, open to reality and responsive, takes much work, practice, dedication, love. It is all too easy for a human being to sit or lie down, and enter into a kind of twilight zone of mindlessness. Television watching encourages this kind of unconscious consciousness. By the effects on consciousness, every television show is, to some extent, a variety of “The Twilight Zone.” 

To be mindfully conscious, alert and responsive, is no easy task, and seems to be especially difficult and all-too-uncommon in our present culture. Bodies move around, or sit on a sofa, or mouths move, but not much thought or awareness of reality is exhibited. For example, much of what passes for political discourse is nearly a mindless mouthing of words, slogans, or lawyerly smokescreening, detached from practical reality. For a man of common sense, such verbal meanderings are quickly recognized as “b s.” The politician I have heard the most words from in my life is Barack Obama, as he has so often appeared in the news, talking—more Twilight Zone. Much of what he says exemplifies what I call lawyerly smokescreening. He says many words to avoid saying something of pithy and of consequence. Politicians of both parties engage in the same verbal games. They are not thinking or dialoging with us, or engaging our minds, but seeking to dominate minds by mere verbiage. The right purpose of speaking is to engage other minds, to open us up more fully to reality, and not to dominate, confuse, baffle, or entomb our minds. 

                                                        Dialectics and eristics 

What is thinking? Thinking in the proper sense is a movement of thought from one point to another, if in the practical sphere, leading to a decision and taking action. Intellectual thinking, in which one explores some problem or question, is far better done in writing, because writing channels and disciplines the mind. “Wool gathering” or anxiously going over any matter is not really thinking, but a form of neurotic worrying. Much of what people call “thinking” is anxious worrying, not a genuine search for truth leading to insight or to concrete action in the world. 

To think in the intellectual sense is to pose questions and to explore answers. For example: What are the differences between constructive thinking and anxious, worrisome “thoughts”? Much of what is called “thinking” in our society is not thinking in the proper sense, but spinning of words or images in the mind, not leading to action or definite insight. Genuine thinking requires a discipline of the will, hard work, and an ongoing search for truth. If one is not seeking, how can one find? If one does not question, what could “answers” possibly mean? 

Following Plato, I wish to distinguish two kinds of “thinking” that may appear as intellectual, or constructive, or as searches for truth. One kind he terms “dialectics,” the other he calls “eristics.” Dialectical thinking is a search for truth within the in-between of existence, as the human inquirer questions reality as it presents itself to him in consciousness. This genuine thinking is in truth a movement between the divine and human partners in being. One who thinks in this mode is not alone, isolated, or self-enclosed, or “introspecting.” Nor is he or she speculating on what might be, or on some imagined deity dwelling “out there” somewhere—in the Twilight Zone. Dialectical thinking is a response to the divine mind moving one to question and to seek the truth. And this kind of thinking is limited to the exploration of concrete experiences, to reality as it presents itself to consciousness. It is a movement within reality; or in other words, reality is becoming conscious in the thinking of the one seeking truth that emerges between the divine and human partners. Dialectically, one questions because one is moved to question; and the one who seeks, finds. “What are you seeking?” are the first words of the Christ in the Gospel of John. One seeks by questioning reality as it presents itself to consciousness. 

Eristics is argumentative, speculative, intellectualistic, and not grounded in experienced reality. The best examples of eristic thinking in our western culture came from hardened religious positions taken over centuries: one accepts or “believes” certain dogmas or opinions, and then argues about them, trying to instill the same opinions in others. At least since the Enlightenment of the late 18th century, religious “thinking” or “beliefs” became far less tolerated by the intellectual elites, who turned instead to ideological, secular, political, inner-worldly eristics. Whether liberal, conservative, progressive, Hegelian, Marxist, feminist, or so on, these “thinkers” engage in the semi-conscious and more or less irrational practice of eristics: speculating or “reasoning” about matters outside of the human-divine in-between, and seeking to replace reality with a second reality, an imagined world. The genuine exploration of reality engaged in by scientists exploring real problems is a wholly different matter; but speculating on science and its place in culture is often a matter of either “science fiction” or scientism, the latter being an ideological elevation of “science” to the position of a monopoly of truth about reality. A physicist may know much about the causes and effects of gravity, for example, but that knowledge tells him virtually nothing about the nature of consciousness and the human condition. Philosophy dialectically explores the in-between reality of consciousness; eristics speculates on reality or realities more or less divorced from concrete experiences of consciousness. 

In this regard, a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist, a progressive intellectual, and a Marxist are essentially doing the same thing: speculating on reality without due recourse to concrete experiences of consciousness. If one were to examine actual states of consciousness rather than mere doctrinal or scriptural beliefs, one may well discover that there is no essential difference between a Christian or Muslim fundamentalist or “believer.” Differences among concrete human beings may emerge if one asks real questions: “Does this person truly love God and neighbor? Is this person seeking to do good, to enhance life, or destroy it? Is this person seeking truth, or does he presume that he has already discovered truth? What actions is this person actually taking to do the will of the that which he calls “God” or “Allah”? Similarly, one can ask of the true believing Marxist: “How does he or she really live? Are they open to the truth of reality as it presents itself to consciousness, or do they seek to impose on reality pre-conceived intellectualistic categories? What is the end state of human society according to the Marxist conception? Can violent action now truly produce a state of peace and justice? Can human beings truly “change the world” as Marx said; or are there fundamental structures in reality which all beings, including human beings, must observe and respect? What are these fundamental structures that transcend human volition and action? What is the nature of reality in which we exist? Or should one follow Marx’s dictum: “Do not think. Do not ask questions,” because the “socialist man” does not ask such questions, but “knows” that he “creates himself by his own labor.” 

To think properly requires that one work within the given structures of reality, and seeks to explore these structures, “the nature of things” as they were called by the ancients. The sphere of human action, and what may be changed for the better, requires discovery, and working within the limits set on human activity. It is the old lesson taught by the story of Daedalus and Icarus: one must not seek to fly either too high, or too low, but stay within the limits set by reality. Dialectical thinking, or philosophy, seeks to understand human being’s place within the mysterious whole of reality, and to help us adjust to that reality, and make the best of our apportioned time of living on earth—or rather, our existence between time and eternity. For present human existence is mysterious indeed, as we participate by our bodies and minds in the whole range of reality, from inert matter up to the mind of God. Our lot is to explore the realms of reality, seeking truth and doing good within the relatively brief compasses of our lives; and to do so even as we stretch ourselves out towards “that which is immortal and everlasting,” sharing even now, by “faith working through love,” in what is by long tradition called “God.” 

To be conscious is to explore the truth of existing within the whole of reality, and to move, by “the voice of this calling and the drawing of this love” into eternity present here and now.

On Listening to Beethoven's Late Quartets

Sitting quietly at Felix House, I have been listening once again to the slow movements from Beethoven’s late quartets.

A few observations:  In Beethoven’s major compositions, he is ever concerned with God, in some form. In such works as the Eroica and 5th Symphonies, Beethoven is in a state of open rebellion against God, against his fate, against going death, against mortality itself.  He may have conflicts with particular human beings, but they largely reflect his inner conflict with God.

In the late quartets, for reasons of which I am not sure, one can hear that Beethoven is communing with the divine partner of his soul.  Some struggle remains, but it is within the partnership, not against it. Beethoven’s late quartets are composed within the Metaxy, within the Platonic in-between, the realm of the spiritual, between God and human being.  In listening to these quartets, one is listening to an inner dance, a conversation between two lovers in four voices.  It is not that some instruments represent the one, and some the other partner; rather, the two are ever together, moving in harmonies with one another, playing together in various senses of the word.  

If one wants to know what Plato-Voegelin means by the in-between, and the mature Jung by the psyche, listen to Beethoven’s late quartets.  They arise from within the in-between, and this reality gives the music not only its unearthly-earthly beauty, but a kind of inevitability or ineluctability about it:  from the first few notes of a given (slow) movement, one can hear the seemingly effortless, “natural,” inevitable unfolding of sound.  It is what it must be, and its being is a sheer gift, not only to the composer, but through Beethoven to anyone who enters into his songs of divine-human communion through the art of listening between.

Ah, the Cavatina: adagio molto espressivo from the Quartet #13 in B-Flat.  Listen.  How thankful to be alive, to be able to sing together, to listen to one another.  Beethoven is delighting in his immortal Beloved, who may be embodied in a human being, but who is first and foremost the divine presence within his soul, and is now embodied in exquisite, metaleptic music.  And not only in one movement, but in the whole set.  Listen to the Adagio ma non troppo e molto cantabile from the Quartet #12 in E-Flat. To listen well is to enter into that which is heard, so that it is coming, as it were, from the depths within one’s psyche. The music truly heard is also one’s own communal song with God.

Goethe wrote words to the effect that listening to a good string quartet is like listening to four adults in conversation. Perhaps, as when hearing Mozart or Haydn, or early or middle quartets by Beethoven. But in listening to the late quartets of Beethoven, one is hearing two in conversation:  the divine and human partners of the in-between, the psyche open to the fullness of reality, and especially to the ground from which all blessings flow. 

Closed Heart + Closed Mind = Living in Hell

Christ’s story of the rich man and Lazarus, as told by St. Luke, packs a punch. If you do not feel personally confronted or convicted by it, then you should wonder if you are spiritually dead. Or at least take your pulse to see if your heart is still beating. To be spiritually dead is to have a heart insensitive to the workings of God and the sufferings of human beings; to be spiritually dead is to have a mind closed to the divine breaking in Here and Now. 

The rich man in the story is not named, because he is you, he is me. He is not moved by the man dying of hunger on his doorstep; nor is he aware that God is visiting him in the same beggar. Indeed, the living God is pleading for the rich man to get up from his table and feed the one who is starving, feed Jesus Christ in the form of the dying man. If the rich man were open to the presence of God in his own soul, he could not be closed to the real needs of the man-Christ on his doorstep. No one can love God and be deaf to the cries of his fellow human beings. A hard-hearted human being is less moved by the God of compassion than is a dog who licks the poor man’s sores, seeking to heal his wounds and comfort him. As the end of the story tells us, this man has cut himself off from God, now and into eternity. In his lifetime, he may hear Moses and the prophets, but his hearing is superficial, does not penetrate his stoney heart. As many times as he has heard the Scriptures read, he is not moved to action by the impassioned words of the prophets: “I was hungry, and you gave me no food; I was grieving, and you did not comfort me.” The rich man lives in luxury and at ease, but in fact he is already living in hell. And what is hell? A self-enclosed, self-contracted, self-absorbed life. Hell is a human being closed to the life-giving God. 

I wonder if those who knew this rich man realized that he was living in hell on earth? Knowing people, most of them probably envied this fellow because he was rich. They wanted to be like him. They did not stop and think about the rich man’s soul—or inner life, or sheer lack of inner line. Nor did this fellow consider his inner wretchedness. No doubt he thought about his “stuff,” his loot, his belly, and “having fun,” to use our terms. His body may have been sleek and sound, his balding head well-oiled and shiny, but his soul was like a shrunken head, and rock hard. Although alive in body, he is dead in spirit. And that is what we call “hell.” 

The story is not meant to provide fodder for speculating on the afterlife, but that is the way it has often been used or abused by Christian interpreters. Words about Lazarus being “carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham,” about “a vast chasm that prevents anyone from crossing over,” about “suffering torment in these flames,” and so on, are all poetic images meant to communicate spiritual reality: being open to God and alive with God’s love; or being hard-heartedly closed to God and to his creatures, and living a hellish life even on earth, as sketched out above. And of course how we live now affects our eternal destiny, for living in eternity begins now. In telling this story, Jesus is not trying to feed speculation about what happens after death. Rather, he is warning his hearers to wake up, open one’s heart and mind to God coming to them in the needs of others, and to leave one’s self-contained “comfort zone” and take God’s compassion to those who suffer. 

To be hard-hearted, indifferent to the sufferings of others, closed to the cries of God in his creatures, is the worst fate for a human being. To allow the real needs of others to penetrate one’s heart and mind is the price of being truly alive with and in God. That is the lesson I hear Jesus teaching in this powerful little story. What do you hear? Or are you listening?