THE Covid operation is a form of systematic mass torture, Amazing Polly argues --- and I entirely agree. We are not locked up in a prison or concentration camp, but we have been manipulated, confined and made to suffer physically, mentally and economically by our torturers. Our humanity is under attack in an effort to bring about blind submission. The New Normal is the New Subnormal.  

  CATHOLICS scrub graffiti from the statue of St. Louis, in St. Louis, Missouri.  

MANY readers have written to me over the years to say how much they enjoy the posts of “Alan,” my correspondent from St. Louis who has never lost his love for his home city or his indignation over the decline of the little, wholesome pleasures. 

I wrote to Alan a few weeks after the Covid shutdown began because I hadn’t heard from him and was concerned about his welfare. He wrote back and told me he had no access to the Internet because of the closure of the local library. He referred to the general situation as a “nightmare.”

I hope to hear from him again soon. In the meantime, here is a post by him from March of 2012.

ALAN writes:

The descent of modern culture into decadence can be traced through much of American popular music.

It was common fifty and sixty years ago to hear new songs that reflected virtues like honor, hope, optimism, romance, loyalty, good-natured humor, and the joy to be found in simple pleasures. All of that music incorporated a set of virtues that added up to what Ayn Rand called “a benevolent sense of life.”

(more…)

  "HE WHO has read the lives of the ancient fathers of the desert without being touched, without feeling profound admiration, and being filled with grave and lofty thoughts; he who, treading under his feet with indifference the ruins of an ancient abbey, has not called up in fancy the shades of the cenobites who lived and died there; he who passes coldly through the corridors and cells of convents half-demolished, and feels no recollections, and not even the curiosity to examine — he may close the annals of history, and may cease to study the beautiful and the sublime. There exist for him no historical phenomena, no beauty, no sublimity; his mind is in darkness, his heart is in the dust." --- Jaime Luciano Balmes (1810-1848), Protestantism and Catholicity: Compared in Their Effects on the Civilization of Europe. Library of Alexandria. (Kindle Edition.)  

“A LOYAL READER” writes:

I have enjoyed Peggy Hall’s videos on mask confusion.  She shares the latest Pacific NW wackiness which has unfortunately spread through this country faster than Covid.  Her local health departments “exempting” “LGBTQ, homeless, and people of color” from wearing masks because these groups are “marginalized” is the government’s way of admitting to those who care to listen the true reason for its requiring masks in the first place.  It has NEVER been about anyone’s health.  It is a way of segregating and MARGINALIZING those who are compliant from those who are not.  Evil will always tell you what it is doing.  The fact that the government admitted this is yet another dead canary in the coal mine.

I read a comment on another blog recently with a commenter’s four words in response to all of these unlawful mandates.  I WILL NOT COMPLY.  He also quoted 2 Tim. 1:7, “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”  This has been on his heart from day one of the “crisis.”  My sentiments exactly! (more…)

FOUND on Twitter: "From the Masonic French Revolution to the present day, the revolutionary Left, both Liberal and Marxist, has always been used to empower the kabbalistic globalist oligarchy that is headed by international finance. "From a purely materialist perspective, "Woke Left" is simply the next logical step in this evolution. the oligarchy no longer needs revolutionaries to depose any national state leader, but to relentlessly disrupt its conquered serfs to prevent counter-revolution. "This is one of the main reasons they're currently destroying every foundation upon which a strong nation is built - family, religion, national spirit, culture, hierarchy, health, etc. "You can't overthrow an oppressive oligarchy with a nation of these:"    

AT Winter Watch, a writer who claims to be a black man does a nice job of revealing the divide-and-conquer agenda: As an African-American male, I am deeply appalled at the divide-and-conquer agenda we’re seeing in film and television. They are putting out films that portray black history as “unfair” and “vengeful” against whites. They are trying to incite blacks like me into aggression vs whites. Propaganda 100%. If you don’t know by now, the MSM and TPTB (The Powers to Be) are in the final stages of their New World Order. In this phase, they are orchestrating a massive “collapse” of society, in which a “new order” will be offered to the masses as a way to usher in stability and order again. This collapse has a few main elements to it. [cont.]  

"CASES" are climbing. That's because more people are being tested as they go back to work. But there is no significant increase in deaths. Heather Mac Donald reports at The Spectator: Since April 24, the daily case count started declining, then began rising again after around June 9. What virtually every fear-mongering story on America’s allegedly precarious situation leaves out, however, is the steadily dropping daily death numbers — from a high of 2,693 on April 21 to 808 on June 24. That April high was driven by New York City and its environs; those New York death numbers have declined, but they have not been replaced by deaths in the rest of the country. This should be good news. Instead, it is no news. [...] There are no crises in hospital capacity anywhere in the country. Nursing homes, meat-packing plants, and prisons remain the main sources of new infections. Half the states are seeing cases decline or hold steady. Case counts are affected by more testing; the positive infection rate captured by testing is declining. The current caseload is younger, which is a good thing. The more people who have been infected and who recover, the more herd immunity is created. Meanwhile, daily deaths from heart disease and cancer — about 3,400 a day combined — go ignored in the press.  

THE C-virus likes parties, but not protests. It seems to have strong political feelings.  

  THE tradition of communal bonfires on June 24 in honor of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist has never been widely observed in this country. It's a shame, partly because bonfires are so much fun but mostly because of the effects of these fires on the soul. They uplifted and cheered. They spoke of happiness and the light that unites human beings. The custom has its earliest origins in pagan celebrations of the summer solstice. Skeptics will say "Aha!" when they find that a Christian feast has its roots in pagan culture. Holidays are just made up, they say, and change with human whim. But it is fitting that celebrations would evolve to reflect greater human knowledge. God has revealed Himself gradually, not all at once. Christ said that John the Baptist was a "a burning and a shining light" (Jn 5:35) and hence the custom of bonfires in honor of his birth by the barren Elizabeth and the blind Zachary was born. Tradition in Action has background on the custom: The fires were traditionally lit at the moment that the sun set, except for in the far Northern countries where the sun would not set on this night. St. John's fires were lit all over Christendom from Russia to South America on every mountaintop, hilltop, valley, seashore and fiord. In cities, old furniture would supply the fuel for fires that lit every street. How glorious is this tribute…

THE FLOWER
—  by George Herbert

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown. (more…)