THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS

- Sticker on Woody Guthrie's guitar, the intention that heartfelt words in a pleasantly edgy folk song softens the soul of the worst tyrant

Everybody seems to be obsessed with fascism these days. You know, how those evil heteropatriarchal imperialists just have too damned much power. Errgh!

By contrast they seem to be enamored with socialism, and so many seem to feel that even Jesus was a socialist. You know, how much he wanted to help the poor and at the same time rip a new asshole on every rich person he met. Woo-hoo! You go Jesus! Fighting for the downtrodden and disenfranchised!

For everyone to get on board with making sure everyone is emphatically treated equally in every single area of life, it really requires...

A fascist.

Remember, the term fascist comes from the fasces, a bundle of rods around an axe denoting institutionalized hegemonic strength, indeed a biblically ordained seven-fold dominion — check out the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis for more. Fascism technically refers to the nationalistically directed administration of a region's social and commercial activity.

Yale professor Jason Stanley recently wrote a somewhat well-received book about its manifestation in today's Trumpworld, How Fascism Works. Reading through it you'd have confirmed what you'd thought all along: President Trump is the worst fascist on the planet.

Stanley methodically highlights all the ways Trump and his supporters are merely American fascists, mindlessly executing unjust power-trips through every strata of society. Annnd of course the most guilty are older whiter angrier stupider males. (Mr. Stanley exempted of course, because he has been sufficiently enlightened and proves it by writing prodigiously about it.)

His catalog of fascistic tendencies includes a pronounced emphasis by the reigning fascist on law and order — except how does Mr. Stanley expect to most rigorously implement his enlightened ideas? He says fascists appeal to a "mythic past" — except what historical precedents does he promote to advance his cause without having a "mythic past" himself? He states fascists will portray themselves as victims to engender sympathy — except how it is he is not doing the same making the case that the fascists are victimizing him, and quite mercilessly he whines!

There are a dozen different inane declarations Stanley makes, and they are not inane because they aren't true, they're inane because he claims they only apply to the fascists! He takes perfectly fine things, rural values and sexual morals and healthy inquiry among the others, twists them into perversities, and then applies them to the propaganda and policy of the autocrat. I mean, it wasn't that hard, really. He wrote his book after Trump became president, so he could prooftext like a mad man.

If Mr. Stanley and his legion of cohorts got their way — essentially ensconcing the gloriously utopian ideals of socialism fully into the public endowment — they must be just as fascistic as those they revile. Every civic leader is a fascistic hegemon, and Mr. Stanley is just as much one himself.

What is goofier is that Mr. Stanley insists that he does not have the truth, even bleating that ridiculously typical trope "Anyone who says they have the truth is dangerous!" Really? Then what, precisely, is Mr. Stanley saying when he speaks? What is the substance of that? If what he says isn't truth, why should we listen to him? He sanctimoniously virtue signals his stature beyond those unattractive truth claims, then claims to know unassailable truths we should all embrace.

The reality here is that all these young-blooded broad-minded googly-eyed fascists are living in a postmodernist fog where they think they can reject truth because it is all so much power-grabbing, yet at the very same time tell others that their truth is the one to which they must conform — nope, no rank exertion of oppressive power there, no.

Remember that fine Oscar-winning film Gladiator? The main character, Maximus played by Russell Crowe, was not even the most interesting one. He was certainly a quite compelling and deeply sympathetic protagonist, but the most riveting character was the one played by Joaquin Phoenix, Commodus, the psychopathic tyrant who sought the people's affections even in his awkwardly depraved cunning.

The first of two classic lines in the film comes from him.

"Am I not merciful?!" he furiously screams into the ear of his sister. Doesn't the entrenched autocrat desperately want to feel justified in his institutionalized repressive behavior?

The second comes from Maximus, who sarcastically shouts "Are you not entertained?" after putting on quite a show albeit an extraordinarily bloody one. Later, however, Commodus feels the need to prove his metal in the arena and pitifully wails similar much more sincere sentiments to the colosseum crowd he wishes to arouse in his favor.

Sounds as much like a stridently progressive Ivy League scholar as it does a pathologically insecure dictator.

Every assigned leader in a System position does this, every one of them Caesars and every one fascists by definition. Their jobs are well-defined because every one of us is indeed one of two kinds of slaves, there is no other. The first is the one enslaved to his or her own sin, as such by default Caesar must do business with them — could be priest or minister, could be banker or bureaucrat, could be that overbearing father/mother figure whose immersion in the System and its protocols is so calcified that the ravenous codependent lifestyle is all one knows.

Or, an individual is a slave to that second thing, to that second Person, the Holy Spirit — God as Counselor to lead one with His forgiveness, His mercy, His charity, His righteousness, His salvation, His lovingkindness.

You are a slave.

The question is: to whom are you enslaved?

Do you know?

A meme capturing the fancy of many conservative-minded folk out there is the "NPC." NPC is the acronym for "Non-Playing Character," referring to the anthromorphs in a video game whose actions are dictated by the computer as opposed to another live participant controlling them in multi-player mode. Essentially they are the CGI-generated figures there on the screen you can blow away and score points along the way. Or not.

The point of the NPC is that it is an incisively profound metaphor for so many out there who simply do whatever the "computer" tells them to think or do or say. The computer is essentially the World System. Typically they blither things like "Trump is a fascist," which is why the NPC is frequently pictured blurting "Orange man bad." They are so distressed!

There are a few who know precisely why "Trump is a fascist" does indeed have a great deal of veracity. It is just the NPCers don't because they're hypnotically entranced to say it by World Operatives convincing them the socialist paradise is juuust within their reach and that it certainly does not involve acts of violence on behalf of their beloved fascist leaders as they trudge to the demonstration eagerly stretching their jowls to prepare for the inevitable confrontation.

The whole whirlwind is just another of the hundred avenues along which the officially protracted rebellion metastasizes. Take a gander at the third chapter of Ezekiel. God repeats a number of times how rebellious Israel has been and that is the reason she is enduring her exile. How many times He wants Ezekiel to share that truth with them — in the most dramatic ways! He even supernaturally transports him to the place where people need to hear it!

I think about that whole episode and note that the instrument of Israel's judgment a hundred years before was Assyria, notorious for its cruel and vicious —  shall I say it — fascist law enforcement. The more amazing thing is God loved the Assyrian people just as much. Look at the book of Jonah, the one with the story of the guy swallowed by the fish. That's what everyone thinks about, but the theme of the book is how God wants Jonah to tell Assyrians about Him, so they'd turn and be His. Wow.

God loves the worst fascists.

This is the stuff of The Kingdom.  

The stuff of the World is designed, arranged, propelled, and fomented by the Society. It isn't that we're on the path to socialism — it's already firmly in place... and because you need an authoritarian administrator in place to effectuate it, it means we really do have fascism firmly, intractably, comprehensively in place. All around us, here in the United States, right now. Shock: Donald Trump actually has one of the smaller roles in the whole marionette cabaret.

Democracy is a showcased fantasy ruse; the reality is the stratospheric roller coaster — rebellion retribution rebellion retribution — again check out that fourth chapter of Genesis, it already tells us everything we need to know about Cain and his ordained work ministering to a reprobate populace. Jason Stanley is merely a crack intelligence officer from a top System office, doing his job exceptionally well.

The Resistance feels sooo good.

It is extraordinarily violent, however, and eternal souls are in great peril.

You don't have to be in that maelstrom...

There is The Kingdom, right there next to you. And there in that place far, far away from the System...

Christ is Freedom, The Joy in the midst of all that.

I had intended to end this piece right there but I can't help but add one more thing. I posted this officially yesterday, but I just have add this, I just have to.

Today on the Christian radio show host Roger Marsh was speaking about the festering social blight having to do with how lonely we all are and how much we long for community and what all the demographic numbers there are that go with it and all the rest of it.

The book he mostly referenced was Them written by Ben Sasse, a U.S. Senator from Nebraska who has been climbing in popularity for his brazenly earthy homespun take on things. What struck me about it was recalling the subtitle of Jason Stanley's book: "The Politics of Us and Them."

Tomes and tomes and tomes are written about the pandemic scratching and clawing to find some common ground, to victoriously attain that method for us all to get along. These kinds of things have been around for eons, and they ultimately don't say very much. In this country they're just Americanist blabs that certainly inspire people to remain in their heinous immoralities in the name of achieving some spunky unity.

The Bible tells us an entirely different story, one that even the most religiously minded people reject in droves. It says we're all hopelessly evil and there is nothing we can do about it. We're alienated from one another because each of us is pretty much consumed with murderous impulses, and it's worse when we imaginatively smother it with the deceit and fraud required for the zealous attempt to rationalize what's going on in our grotesquely charred hearts. We can try really really really hard to smile and pat each other on the back and talk about the weather as if agreeing there's a 75% chance of rain tonight makes it all good.

Of course there is something Jesus has already done about it, afforded to each one of us out of His immense agape, but many of the most hifalutin Christianly oriented people don't even get that. They may have all the right Jesus language down, but so inured to their System obligations they are incessantly crushed and crippled by their overwhelming burdens. They cry in the depths of their souls "I can never be good enough but I must keep trying!"

In fact the main reason socialists spew what they spew is because their insecurities drive them into the most rabid virtue signaling. "Let me be the one to rescue you. Put me in a position of power and I'll do good things for you even if it means taking from some to give to you." Yesterday I caught just a minute of C-SPAN's television coverage of the House proceedings and right there was U.S. Representative John Garamendi showing a placard with a quote Franklin Roosevelt shared to lobby for the New Deal. It was something like "We must take from those who have and give it to those who are needy." He proudly spoke about it as if it were a core American value.

Marx and Engels are partying in their graves right now.

The members of the Society of Jesus are having a riotous celebration in their rectories right now, definitely.

No, Jesus said something very different than this. He said those who have will be given more, and those who don't will have whatever it is they do have taken from them. The servant who put in the covered hole whatever it was he was given to invest was excoriated by Jesus, simply because it is one of the most contemptibly disrespectful acts to take the blessing God has given you and fearfully hide it.

Thing is, World Ops have taken what their Superior has told them and succeeded in getting people to secure positions of power by telling their constituents, "Don't do anything, be needy, let me take care of you." Sounds quite a bit like Cain's words, in a very profound sense: "Am I by brother's keeper? If so, I will go build that city to show you I can be."

The fascist does indeed have the duly authorized power as much as he humbly screeches "AM I NOT MERCIFUL?!"

And on the altar of human sacrifice you go.

At least you'll all be there together getting along with one another just fine.