#‘how dare you have information on the history of religion?!’ scandalous

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Getting off my ass and downloading my favorite fics to put on a jump drive I bought with a fuck tonne more storage than the two I already had from when I was in school and, wow, this is actually so much easier than the rest of the stuff I’ve been downloading for various reasons (articles on stuff I want to have around but worry might be impacted by this new presidency). You just pick pdf (or whatever you like) and bam! It’s right there in your downloads ready to be stashed away, no annoying nitpicking where I have to delete stuff I don’t need in the document or huge blank spaces, it’s just ready! Like, listen. I love “print friendly and pdf” Firefox extension, but I always have to end up deleting some stuff that is just taking up space. It does its job! It’s just not going to be neat and tidy when the website doesn’t intend for you to do this. Archive of our own does that whole thing of making a pdf themselves! This is going to go so much faster than the other stuff I’ve been downloading as pdfs

Anyway, I love you as well Smithsonian magazine website for not only being free, but also just having that extension on all your articles! That’s actually how I found it in the first place. Before that I was copy pasting every paragraph into a pages document and it was way more tedious.

[ducavalentinos]

Origins of the Borgias Black Legend: The Savelli Letter:

“The expedient expropriation of the Colonna, the confiscation of Palombara and other possessions from the Savelli and their delivery to the Orsinis, the distribution of the spoils among the heirs of the fourth generation of the Borgias, provokes a desperate reaction from both families. Since they don’t dare an armed counterattack, they give birth to a demolishing libel, a true monument of the pamphleteer literature, a precedent sound of a weapon that will be vital in later centuries, political propaganda, disqualification at any price of the enemy, of the rival. A document that will become famous and that, together with others of the same fallacious  origin, will be converted into reliable sources, in the supposed data with which the black legend of the Borgia is built. 

We refer to a text that under the title of "Letter to Silvio Savelli, being a refugee in the court of Maximilian", appears in November 1501. […] The author would be a Neapolitan literate, Gerolamo Mancione, if some indications given by Agostino Nifo [1] and accepted by Ferrara are true [2].

The Pope [Alexander VI] wanted them to read Mancione’s pamphlet to him, as all the insulting anonymous writings were made to be read. At times he laughed with loud laughter from a satisfied, burly man; at other times he smiled from ear to ear with his sensual lips. He was convinced that no one could believe so many fantastic things, product of resentment and envy. But he was deeply mistaken. He should have responded point by point, dismantled inventions with facts, countered with all the detailed information at his disposal. By not doing so, the Borgias sinned with pride and arrogance; history punished them harshly.

According to some historians, it was commissioned by the Colonna family. In the pamphlet it carries the date of November 25, 1501, but there are comments on subsequent events, such as the departure of Lucrezia to Ferrara and even the conquests of Urbino and Camerino, which had just happened just a few days before. It is dated in Taranto but has been published in Germany. Cesare is outraged because the verbatim says of him: “His father spoils him because he has the same perverse character, his cruelty: it is difficult to say which of these two beings is more execrable.” Alexander comments to the ambassador of Ferrara, who will collect his words: “The duke is a good man but he does not know how to tolerate offenses. More than once I have told him that Rome is a free city and that everyone is its own master of writing whatever they want.” Almost incredible, to tell the truth, so much liberality. Because the letter spares no insults nor accusations: “Of all the anti-Borgia requirements, it was the most violent and factious without any doubt, says Gervaso [3].

“So often announced by the Prophets, the time of the Antichrist has come,“ says the letter, “because there has never been a worse enemy of our faith, more declared adversary of God, more fierce destroyer of the religion of Christ … Oh, terrible times!”

Allegedly sent from the “royal camp of Taranto”, headquarters of the troops of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, the fiery speech was destined for the “Magnificent Don Silvio Savelli”, exiled from Rome and refugee in the court of Emperor Maximilian. The moment chosen to spread this libel in the courts of Europe was not at all accidental: the announcement that the marriage transactions between the Vatican and Ferrara had been concluded and it provoked the fury of Maximilian of Germany. The father, “infamous beast, whose perfidy extends over the human race… Rodrigo Borgia, the greatest evil of all ages; the son, "a fratricide who, as a cardinal, has become a murderer … On his orders, one could be killed, thrown into the Tiber, poisoned or ruined”; the daughter, “with whom [the Pope] has an infamous trade. To return the boat of St. Peter to the port, to eradicate from Rome “a plague generated for the destruction of Christianity." The letter of Taranto appeals to the strength of the emperor of Germany and all Christian princes and even to distant kings. ”

He strongly recommended his addressee to disseminate this writing, and to have it read “before the crowds gathered for Mass”: “Goodbye,” said the anonymous author. “Remember that you are one of ours and that you are Roman. Therefore, again, goodbye.,” The “letter of Taranto” was intercepted by Cesare’s spies and ended up reaching the eyes of the Pope. According to Burckard it was the Cardinal of Modena, Giovanni Battista Ferrari —who is called in the letter “a crime minister, Cerberus at the gates of hell”, and who is attacked as harshly as the Borgias due to his scandalous enrichment—, to whom it fell the painful and necessary duty of making the pontiff aware of the incendiary pamphlet.

Source: José Catalán Deus, El Príncipe del Renacimiento: Vida y Leyenda de César Borgia. 

Notes: [1] Agostino Nifo, he was a philosopher somewhat after the events that in 1523 he wrote De regnandi peritia, a religious arrangement of The Prince by Machiavelli, where he blackens Cesare’s memory, “verum ulciscente deo, illum pariter cum patre ignominiose perditit”. [2] Orestes Ferrara, Il Papa Borgia, 1940. [3] Roberto Gervaso, I Borgia: Alessandro VI, Il Valentino, Lucrezia,1976.

@borgialucrezia​ I finally posted it Tha, hope you like the final result!

[confrontingbabble-on]

After Jesus was crucified, everyone had a different understanding of what Jesus had wanted them to do...even those who had never met or heard Jesus’ teachings, like Paul. Christianity is the result of those who thought Jesus wanted them create a religion...to collect money, and side with murderous/immoral political rulers...so they could gain status and political power (to cover up their immorality and avoid legal punishments)...legally steal pagan temples and property...and replicate pagan ceremonies...

“When it comes to religious history, the list of Catholic Church transgressions makes for pretty uncomfortable reading. Despite exalting virtue and kindness in its teaching, Church leadership has spearheaded a long history of outright unforgivable Catholic actions...

Though Vatican violence goes way back, there are a number of disturbing episodes from recent history. Some of this repugnant behavior comes from Popes, some was Church-endorsed, and some, most unsettlingly, was just straight-up regular Church practice.

Dark Church history contains scandal after scandal rife with every vice and taboo you can imagine. When the Church was at the height of its power (at which point it was the most powerful organization in the Western world), it's safe to say everything went to its head. Combine that with the fact that Church leaders seem to stubbornly resist adapting to changing(improving) morality...and you've got a whole lot of unforgivable moments on our hands.

** Systemically Covering Up Tens Of Thousands Of Cases Involving Sexual Misconduct:  Remember the time there was a systematic cover up of abuse, molestation, and rape at the hands of priests that went all the way to the top of the Church? A conservative estimate says there were 17,200 victims in the US alone, and this type of mistreatment happened world-wide. When complaints came in, priests and other offenders were transferred, rather than punished. The extent of their actions will probably never be fully understood, because of the decades of cover up. But the Church isn't denying it anymore. The archdiocese of Milwaukee acknowledged the severity of the issue and agreed to pay a $21 million settlement to 300 victims. But these types of settlements are few and far between.

The molestation of children is still happening at the hands of priests, 15 years after the Boston Globe broke the story. In fact, in August 2018, a grand jury reported that internal documents from six Pennsylvanian dioceses noted that over 300 "predator priests" were "credibly accused"...of harming more than 1,000 child victims; the alleged violations go as far back as 1947.

Due to statute of limitations, only two priests were charged with abusing minors. In February 2019, however, Pope Francis publicly acknowledged the systemic maltreatment and vowed to combat the problem. He said, "I think that it’s continuing because it’s not like once you realize it that it stops. It continues. And for some time we’ve been working on it."

** The Crusades...Or, Incapacitating Jews And Muslims For 300 Years:  In 1095, when Pope Urban II made a plea for war with Muslims, armies of Christians in Western Europe took up the charge. The pope promised serfs freedom if they went, galvanizing the masses. In the First Crusade, an army of peasants led by Peter the Hermit was massacred by the Turks. When an army of knights went after them and captured Jerusalem, it was said they massacred Muslims until the streets ran with blood.This was only the beginning. Waves of the Crusades continued until 1396, marking three centuries of warfare, and incalculable human suffering. "Taking the heads of slain enemies and impaling them upon pikes appears to have been a favorite pastime among crusaders. Chronicles record a story of a crusader-bishop who referred to the impaled heads of slain Muslims as a joyful spectacle for the people of God. When Muslim cities were captured by Christian crusaders, it was standard operating procedure for all inhabitants, no matter what their age, to be summarily killed. It is not an exaggeration to say that the streets ran red with blood as Christians reveled in church-sanctioned horrors. Jews who took refuge in their synagogues would be burned alive, not unlike the treatment they received in Europe."

** Pretty Much Everything Done By Pope Boniface VIII:  Boniface VIII (1230 -1303) was guilty of many horrible crimes that, sum total, make him seem like a sadistic Roman emperor. Among other things, he oversaw the complete destruction of Palestrina, a city that peacefully surrendered. Palestrina was completely razed, and Boniface ordered a plow driven over it to prove it had been reduced to nothing but earth and rubble.  You know priests take a vow of celibacy, right? Apparently, Boniface VIII didn't take his too seriously. He once had a three-way with a married woman and her daughter, but was even more well known for saying that having sex with young boys was as natural as rubbing one hand against the other. So, obviously, he was raping (or at least fornicating with), children. To celebrate his many great accomplishments, Boniface VIII just loved erecting statutes of himself. So add hubris to his list of sins.

** Burning Joan Of Arc For Dressing Like A Man:  You may know Joan of Arc as a saint, but the Church didn't always hold her in such high esteem. In fact, at one time, she was pretty much the Catholic Church's public enemy number one. In 1429, 17-year-old Joan of Arc, believing God had spoken to her, instigated an uprising to get the English out of France, but some high-powered Catholics who sympathized with the English weren't pleased. French king Charles VII wisely accepted Joan's help in his fight against the English, and together, they won some major battles.

When Joan was captured, Charles VII, unsure of whether he trusted her as an emissary of God, handed her over to the Church, which did what Catholics do best, put her on trial for heresy with no evidence. To make things one step more ridiculous, Joan was denied counsel, which was against Church rules. Despite this, she is famed for remaining cool, calm, and dripping with integrity throughout the trial. Because there was no evidence of heresy, Joan was found guilty of one of the 70+ other charges brought against her, wearing men's clothes (shirt and pants, like every country girl today!) , for which she was burned at the stake in 1431 in front of a crowd of thousands. In 1456, Charles VII ordered an investigation into Joan's trial. The result? She was declared innocent and made a martyr. The Church followed suit and, in 1920, canonized her. Talk about a change of heart. Maybe since all male Church officials wear dresses they pretend are robes, they decided it was okay for Joan to dress a little (country!). 

** Burning William Tyndale For Making A Vernacular Bible For The Masses You'd think the Church would make the mass distribution of its core text a main priority. As it turns out, in the 16th century, this was the last thing powerful Catholics wanted.  Scholar William Tyndale, on the other hand, wanted this so badly he went into hiding to translate the Bible into English, so lay people could read it for themselves. The Church was not happy about this, and when copies were smuggled around Europe, Catholic authorities demanded they be burned. And what of Tyndale? He was captured, tried for heresy for daring translate the bible, and burned at the stake. When Church authorities decided printing Bibles in English was okay, they borrowed a whole lot from Tyndale's translation. And never apologized.

** Slaying Countless Women As Witches Because Pope Innocent VII Was Paranoid: The Catholic Church wasn't the only group involved in witch hunts, but it kicked things off with Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches), a doozy of a book written in 1487, after Pope Innocent VIII declared, by papal bull, witches were real and a threat (due to their involvement with Satan). He wanted that sh*t investigated stat, so clergymen Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Krämer (using his Latin name, Henricus Institoris) took up the call and literally wrote the book on witches, Satanists (which were invented for this book), and hunts thereof. And boy, was it a success. It was so popular that, for 200 years, it was second only to the Bible on the sales charts. The problem? Well, for one, the book was hugely sexist and focused almost only on women, promoting burning them at the stake,  a common punishment for heretics. So who knows how many deaths it inspired; its influence was too huge to quantify. The book is also filled with somewhat dubious information, such as the following facts about witches and Satanists: they stop cows from giving milk; they rode through the air on broomsticks on their way to forest orgies; they ate infants.

** Absolving Sins For Cash Payments, Including Sins Not Yet Committed:  If one bit of Catholic Church history got drilled into your mind in high school, there's a good chance it was the selling of indulgences and Martin Luther's reformation. Now synonymous with money-grubbing, the idea of an indulgence isn't so bad in theory. According to Church doctrine, "[an] indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain defined conditions through the Church’s help when, as a minister of redemption, she dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions won by Christ and the saints." A little wordy, but potentially inoffensive.

In the 16th century, however, indulgences got out of hand. Pope Leo X had expensive taste and wasn't above using shady means to satisfy it. Indulgences were peddled as "pay X to absolve you of Y." Basically, money gets you into heaven. To give some indication of how crazy things got, Dominican friar John Teztel was named Grand Commissioner of indulgences in Germany (so, overseeing indulgence was his only job), where he sold absolution for future sins. So: "Hey, give us some gold, it's all good if you kill that dude next week."

If you were poor and ignorant, as most poor people in the period probably were, you basically just believed you were hopelessly f*cked and did your best to prepare for an eternity spent frolicking in the torments of hell. So what happened? Martin Luther, none too pleased, wrote his 95 Theses, effectively kick starting the Reformation.

** Orchestrating The Fall Of The Knights Templar To Appease A Broke King:  ...the Knights Templar, a stateless military fraternity assembled to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, were the subject of gossip a long time ago. They were endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church in 1129, and were famous valorous service in the Crusades. They were also really good with money, which shouldn't have been a problem, but King Philip IV of France owed them (and others) a whole lot of it. Philip took advantage of growing fear of the Knight Templar's power and pressured the Church into dropping the mighty anvil of god down on them. What the Church did next wasn't great. In 1307, Pope Clement V had members arrested and tortured, gaining false confessions of heresy. In fact, he got enough such confessions to justify disbanding the order in 1312. Various Knights confessed to spitting on the cross, fraud, and secrecy (which was apparently a crime?), and nobody cared the confessions arose from torture and were recanted afterward. Archbishop of Sens Philippe de Marigny, who ran an investigation into the Knights, had dozens burned at the stake. A fine repayment for all of that fighting in the crusades. In 2007, a secret document showing Pope Clement V absolved the Knights before later deciding to disband them was published. Historians believe this document provides essential proof that the Church caved under King Phillip's pressure. Good news for the Knight's integrity, bad news for the Church's.

** Burning Someone 43 Years After He Passed Because He Upset Some Important Catholics:  As if having your enemies killed wasn't enough, Catholics gotta burn the corpses, too. What gives? Trying to outdo what the Romans did to JC and John Wycliffe (1320 – 1384), famous English theologian and vocal critic of the Church, was a forerunner of the Reformation. Among his many criticisms was a belief the Church should give up its worldly possessions. As you can imagine, not an idea the church was happy to have spread around. Wycliffe also promoted and worked on the first English translation of the Bible, hoping to give people direct access to the word of god. Again, not a fun idea for the Church, which liked its monopoly on power.

William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, made moves against Wycliffe after retiring (gotta stay busy). Wycliffe's writings were banned in certain areas, but it didn't end there. It didn't even end when Wycliffe died of a stroke in 1384. Instead, in 1415 (31 years after he died), the Council of Constance declared Wycliffe a heretic. Not only did they order his books burned, they ordered his body exhumed and burned. And it took them 12 years to do that. So, 43 years after Wycliffe died, his corpse was torched and his ashes thrown in the River Swift. So much for resting in peace.

** Executing Jan Hus For Working Out Some Tricky Theological Philosophy: The Church tends to be pretty brutal with its critics, of which the treatment of Jan Hus, born 1372, is one of the best (or worst) examples. A Czech priest, Hus felt the Church, run by humans, who are by nature flawed, must necessarily also therefore be flawed, while the Bible, the direct word of God, had no flaws. He was, therefore, openly critical of Church practices, especially the papal schism and indulgence sales. So, not very happy with Hus, the Church convened the Council of Constance and invited him to join them. Nothing to worry about, just a wee chat. Or so they said. Instead of having that wee chat, the Council arrested Hus and put him on trial (and then in jail) for, you guessed it, heresy. He was kept in a dungeon and, when he refused to recant his teachings, was sentenced to death. The Church even refused him his last rights before burning him at the stake. And to think they said they just wanted to talk.

** The Joust Of Whores Organized By Pope Alexander VI: The Joust of Whores is just one example of the corrupt and ridiculous popes of yore. In 1501, Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia, if that rings any bells), who was known to have some pretty refined hobbies, like watching horses fornicate, took things way over the top. According to historian Tony Perrottet, he invited 50 women to strip at the pope's table. Then things got weird.As Perrotet writes: "Alexander and his family gleefully threw chestnuts on the floor, forcing the women to grovel around their feet like swine; they then offered prizes of fine clothes and jewelry for the man who could fornicate with the most women."It's rumored Alexander VI was killed by his son, Cesar. Just to show how truly f*cked up Alexander was, his body was expelled from the basilica of Saint Peter. Why? He was considered too evil for sacred soil.

** The Roman Inquisition, During Which Judaism And Love Magic Were Serious Crimes: The level of the Church's involvement in various inquisitions can be argued. It's important to remember Pope Innocent IV (ironic name, that) explicitly condoned torture as an Inquisition interrogation technique in his papal bull Ad extirpanda in 1252 (which bull probably deserves its own place on this list). The Spanish Inquisition, most famous of these murder orgies, was carried by Spanish royalty and friars, who were Catholic, but not working directly for, or under direction of, the Vatican.

But wait, kids! Don't forget the Roman Inquisition, or the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, which was 100% the church's doing. In 1542, as part of a Counter-Reformation against Protestantism (seriously, didn't these people have anything better to do than overreact to other Christians who pissed them off?), the Spanish Inquisition's gentle cousin, the Roman Inquisition, was born. Galileo and Copernicus were among those questioned. While Church staple heresy was a popular dish during the Inquisition, the menu had a number of options, including blasphemy, Judaism (which is a crime how?), immorality, witchcraft, love magic (yes please), and anything else wrathful Papists could shoe-horn in. John Bargrave, a  contemporary English writer, described how he was questioned in Latin (rather than Italian) to prevent uneducated guards from understanding what was being said. He was also prevented from carrying books "printed at any heretical city, as Geneva, Amsterdam, Leyden, London, or the like." Not as bad as the Spanish Inquisition, sure, but very much related and equally dogmatic, close minded, and power-mongering. A Church specialty

** Imprisoning Galileo In His Home For Years Because He Suggested Science Was Greater Than God:  The Church and science have a complicated relationship, to put it nicely. In 1633, Galileo Galilei, the father of, like, all science, was put on trial by the Church for saying the sun is the center of the universe and the earth moves around it, rather than the other way around. Which is, you know, true for the most part (sure, okay, the sun isn't the center of the universe, but still, he was onto something). But that didn't matter. Pope Urban VIII was having none of it, seeing Galileo's statement as horrific heresy. So, 10 cardinals sat in judgment of Galileo, who was threatened with torture, imprisonment, and even being burned at the stake. Galileo, 69 at the time and in a "pitiable state of bodily indisposition," eventually renounced his beliefs. Because of this, the church went easy on him and, rather than torture, he was subjected to house arrest until he died. What a way to treat the father of modern of science. And what does the church have to say on the subject now? "We today know that Galileo was right in adopting the Copernican astronomical theory," Paul Cardinal Poupard, the head of an investigation into the matter said in 1992. So, only 350 years too late.

** Cutting Funding For Immigrants Because Of Their Connection To The LGBTQ+ Community:  Not all Catholic faux pas come from the past; there's been some dodgy stuff in modern times, as well (see priest rape bonanza), and the church's relationship with the LGBTQ+ community continues to be a source of frustration. But here's a humdinger: For years, the Church gave thousands of dollars to Compañeros, a nonprofit helping Hispanic immigrants access healthcare, understand laws, and meet other basic needs. That is, until the Church found out Compañeros teamed up with a gay and lesbian rights group, at which point Nicole Mosher, executive director of  Compañeros, was informed their funding was in danger. Compañeros is but one example of organizations the Church threatens for not falling in line with the most strident dictates of Catholicism. The New York Times explained in 2002, "Since 2010, nine groups from across the country have lost financing from the campaign because of conflicts with Catholic principles."On the one hand, of course it's okay for the Church to withhold money from causes in contradiction with its beliefs. Like, say, an abortion clinic. But cutting off funding to aid the needy simply because of an association with the LGBTQ+ community seems extreme and unfair, especially given Church doctrine on helping the needy and feeding the poor. What's more, members of the LGBTQ+ community can identify as Catholic and go to church, but can't be helped by that Church? This is all the more more difficult to swallow when considering the Church's $1.6 billion stock portfolio...”

From https://m.ranker.com/list/most-unforgivable-things-the-catholic-church-has-done/lea-rose-emery

[fear-the-0ld-bl00d]

hello! i was curious, if you feel comfortable discussing it, what does it mean to be a luciferian? i’m not familiar with that term, i’m assuming it’s a religion, but i was just curious what luciferians believe :)

Oh my, this is going to be a long reply but I hope that it will help.

Okay, first of all, I guess I can’t say much about theistic luciferianism from the practical side because of one simple reason - it’s not something I practice. I’m an atheist who finds luciferian philosophy as empowering and simply right, the reasons I will explain later. Just as there is theistic satanism (aka worshippers of devil) and atheistic satanism (good example may be the Church of Satan), there are theistic and atheistic luciferians.

By my understanding, theistic luciferians do believe in God but they find him as the bad guy. From luciferian point of view, he’s a tyrant, a despot. He’s a liar (Eve was told she would die if she had eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge, which was not true), he’s selfish (guy basically made humans because he wanted someone to worship him and angels weren’t enough), he’s sadistic and cynical for his believers (remember what happened to Hiob?), he destroys everyone who dares to not believe in him or oppose his morality (many stories from the Bible, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah). He tries to defend himself with this whole free will nonsense but at the same time he claims that there’s a special place where everyone who don’t believe in him or does something he doesn’t approve will suffer forever. Simplifing, this is how we, the luciferians, interpret the figure of God.

On the other hand, there’s Lucifer, literally the bearer of the light. He’s the fallen angel who opposed the tyrany of God. He didn’t want to fulfill God’s irrational will and decided to no longer serve him. Because of that, he was banished from the Heaven. He’s the very first rebel against God. While God is seen as a despot, Lucifer is a warrior for our free will. Also, Lucifer is the one who made Eve eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. In other words, he is the one who gave us the knowledge and the ability of critical thinking which is essential in analyzing reality and making rational choices (so he gave us the enlightenment). The fact that this one thing made God mad enough to banish humanity from Eden is another evidence of God’s despotic nature.

So as you can see, in luciferian philosophy Lucifer is the good guy who helped humanity to evolve mentally. Being inspired by Lucifer is to seek knowledge and truth, and to rebel against foolish will of authorities. It may be social constructs, it may be government - just think critically and decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong.

As I stated at the beginning of this post, I can’t say much about theistic luciferianism but I’ve seen that many of these people also practice magic. It’s a kind of occult religion, I guess.

End of the most informative part, let’s get to my personal story related to luciferianism.

So here’s my point of viewl. I’m from country where like 85% of people (and there are over 38 millions of us) claims to be Catholics. I would say that the Catholic Church has a huge impact on politics and general life there especially since a conservative party won last election. One of the things I guess are pretty rare in other countries is the fact that there’s a special lesson of catholicism in school and it’s financed from the government budget (so well basically everyone’s taxes). It’s not compulsory but the sole existence of this subject tells a lot about my country I guess (other religions such as islam don’t have such a lesson in our schools). I liked it in middle school because I had had a nice teacher and we learned mostly about the culture and symbolism of specific scenes and events in the Bible then but when I went to high school I escaped this shit after idk month I guess. The priest showed my class a lecture about ‘exorcisms’ which wasn’t about exorcisms at all - but it surely was about spreading hatred against other religions, other sexual orientations, the victims of rape(!) and women who had abortion (the lecturer literally told something about their wombs being haunted and ghosts of the ‘killed children’ possessing another children of these women). And it’s something common in the Catholic Church there.

But it’s just one of many examples of absurds related to the Catholic Church. A Catholic organisation, Ordo Iuris, tried to reduce already limited abortion laws there. Right now, our women can have abortion only in 3 cases: the pregnancy being caused by prohibited action (such as rape or incest), the pregnancy being a serious threat of women’s life or if there’s a suspicion of a serious defect of fetus (such as Down syndrome or toxoplasmosis). The Ordo Iuris wanted to deprive women of the second option, forcing them to give birth at cost of own life. Aaaand the Catholic Church there obviously approved. Fortunately, because of huge and loud protests it hadn’t enter into force.

Something like half a year ago there was finally a sentence in case of a young girl being several times raped by a priest. She had been held in his mother’s apartment, raped and tortured for long time. As an adult, she’s in ruin now, had had several suicide attempts and will never know the peace. He ruined her. And the judge decided that his order should pay her a huge (about 259700 $) reparation. Well, it pissed Catholics off. Many people attacked her on social platforms and it hadn’t even been regular citizens. Even politicians and important journalist mocked her saying things like ‘even whores don’t get so much money’. She tried to kill herself again. She still lives and I hope that she’s better now. This is the Catholic love of neighbor there.

Saying about recent scandals, during Lent, one of parish in Gdańsk decided to make an event for children. They had to bring things related with other religions or occultism in their homes and then... Burn it outside the church. Like, what the heck??? Among burned things were books like Harry Potter but also a traditional African mask. The Church there literally burns things related to other religions or cultures. Also, few days ago there was a huge scandal because of Burning of Judas in one town. It’s a kind of an old folk ritual and there wouldn’t be anything special about that if... their Judas wasn’t designed after the stereotypes about Jews. It had huge nose, payots, and a big wide-brimmed hat. People beat it (encouraging children to do the same), then cut off it’s head and burned the doll at the stake. And that day was an anniversary of the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Do I have to say more?

As you can see, because of many reasons I guess I have a right to be angry and see this institution there as a bunch of dangerous fools. I don’t have anything against Catholics in general and I mourned the victims of Sri Lanka, but the very institution is just toxic for the society. In my opinion and regarding history, the Catholic Church had always been against people and progress, both cultural and scientific. Because of that, I do and I will oppose them and their tyranny, just like Lucifer once did. He’s my role model and encourages me both to rebel against injustice in society and to improve myself as a person and a scholar.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk *drops the microphone*

[wildflower8281]

Books! How Reading Has Elevated My Mind & Heart Post-Convent

In the convent we were only provided with catholic books. There were libraries in every convent and we were reading all the time actually, but it was all catholic culture, doctrine, spirituality, thought. I have undoubtedly read the life of every single religious nun in church history. When I came home, it took me awhile to not feel scandalous reading other material or books. Even flipping through a regular magazine felt borderline sinful because of what I was exposing myself to - articles about sex, humans in underwear or bathing suites, products enhancing vanity, etc. As I state everywhere, the Program is real and it took me probably about a year before I ‘strayed’ into reading non-catholic books.

Eventually I headed over to the library, got myself a card and wandered through the great halls and explored. It was one of the most liberating moments post-convent, for me. To be able to freely wander these fantastic long rows of all the books I could ever want! It was an introvert and writer’s dream! Fictional stories about different places, books on nature, animals, travel, art! Books on psychology, the brain, nutrition, health! And of course, books on all the religions and spiritualities in the world. It was definitely a moment of mental liberation and thrill for me when I realized how much of the world had been kept from me and how much I was now totally free to explore! Yes, in religious life we were exposed to music, art, history, philosophy - it was actually a very rigorous academic formation - but it was all within the context of the church, it was all always catholic in some form or fashion.

Reading took me into the world at large and let my mind breathe outside of the church confines. I reveled in reading a book about the brain! I relaxed and enjoyed the comfort of a good fiction book on a snowy day. Reading definitely played a huge part in deprogramming my mind from not only all the convent culture, but the catholic programming as well. As someone who is naturally docile and a pleaser, I had accepted mostly everything without question (which is why I was fantastic as a religious superior by the way.) There were always a minority of sisters who were intellectually curious and rebellious, who would question the things or care enough to ask. I didn’t really. It was easier to just assent and move along. However, reading helped me not only open my mind, but begin to use it again, to learn the questions, to integrate new information regarding the church, the world, and myself. No wonder they don’t let religious read more non-catholic stuff - it creates free thinking humans!

Ok, so here is my list of some truly life-changing books, in my geek-opinion. I would recommend these books to any person, whether they were a nun in a past life or not, male or female or any gender identity honestly. I think they are good for the human spirit and mind to learn about, to traverse and integrate!

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: This is an international forever best seller, life-changing type of book. It is published in 56 languages and has won the Guinness World Record as the most translated book by a living author. Need I say more? It is in essence a fable about a young man who traverses the desert and has different experiences, searching for his purpose. Underneath the story, the mythical characters, the magical desert landscapes are truths about life, love, and self that will resonate if you have a beating heart. There is really nothing more to say here.

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown: This amazing woman is generally more known for her Ted Talk and for her book, “Daring Greatly,” however for me, it was ‘The Gifts of Imperfection’ that really spoke to many things I was struggling with on my road back into the world. She is famous for her TedTalk on Vulnerability, which probably every human should watch. She teaches on courage, authenticity and showing up as yourself, not faking for anyone. The things she speaks and writes have always resonated with me, because she speaks the language of being human. This book however is a short and sweet version of her overarching philosophy. It’s divided into bite size chapters, packed with real stories and good fodder for thinking, as well as practical ways to implement the practices into your life. Since a lot of convent programming focused on: self-denial, sin, staying busy, keep working, rules, control, falling in line - this book focuses on things like playfulness, creativity, letting go of what people think, self-compassion, heeding intuition, and rest! It’s kind of like an antidote to much of the rigorous mental & physical sides of religious life. For me personally, it kickstarted my curiosity regarding art and creativity specifically. It led me to try new things, to grab some art supplies and begin to just play. Finding art and play was a very deep part of my re-integration and self-confidence that is still with me today. In art and play, I learned to be fully myself without filters. Due to the happiness I found in art & being creative, it opened an entire universe of creativity, movement and freedom for me, mentally, spiritually and physically. Do yourself a favor and grab this short & sweet life manual!

Women’s Body, Women’s Wisdom by Dr. Christianne Northrup, MD: This is basically an anatomy textbook that is fascinating and is helpful if you have a body. True confession: I’m a total geek about the body and enjoy learning about how we work, so dipping into this book was fun for me, however -  if you have a body that you live and move and breathe in daily, I highly recommend getting to know how it works for you in exquisite detail at each moment! It’s a big book and that can be off-putting. I get it. The bible is also a big book, but how do you read it? You don’t read it in one sitting, nor do you read it from front to back. You pick it up and read wherever you are led. This is how I read books like Women’s Body, Women’s Wisdom. I read the contents, then skip to any chapter or parts that I’m curious about.

What does this book have to do with life post-convent?

Basic Health: Well, in religious life there was a lot of programming around ignoring the needs of the body, which leads to ignorance in general about how our bodies work and how to take care of them. Also, in religious life, we kind of eat whatever we are given or served. Learning about our bodies and nutrition empower us to choose how we want to nourish our bodies for maximum efficiency and replenishment. This helps us to feel amazing mentally and physically, aiding in our journeys onward. Eating crap and not taking care of our bodies will make the transition into the world - an already rocky one at best - that much more difficult, as our brains will be sluggish, anxious or depressed and our bodies will feel tired and weary. Knowing our bodies and caring for them is perhaps the single most important foundational piece to transitioning back to the world serenely.

Coming Home: Lastly, and personally most important for me was just reconnecting with my body, on the energetic and spiritual level. In the convent (and often in the church,) we live so much in our heads, such an academic and spiritual atmosphere. For a decade, I barely thought about the needs or feelings in my own body. It’s like the priests and nuns are a bunch of heads running here and there. The simple act of sitting and listening to my breathing, or just stopping to notice my heart beat were transformational moments for me. I felt like, ‘Wow, this living, breathing body has been here all along, working for me, taking care of me, doing what she needs to survive, assimilate foods, move for me. And I have utterly ignored every need and feeling from her.’ It was a coming home and a reconciliation for me.

This book will help any human understand their bodily systems much better. It is not heavily scientific, even though she is a renowned doctor. It’s written for the regular person, living a modern-day life. It connects the body with stress effects, the basics of nutrition and shows the energetic connection between the body, mind and illness. It is not new-agey or woo-woo. It’s grounded in legit science and medicine (I say this for the skeptics, because I do believe also in energetic medicines - my Mom is a massage therapist and Reiki practitioner!) It is approachable and easy to read. It’s more like a manual or reference book, but indeed should be read or at least present in any human household!

The Female Brain by Louanne Brizendine, MD: This is along similar lines to Women’s Body, Women’s Wisdom except that it is focused soley on the brain functions and hormones. This book blew up my mind space about my cycle, my hormones and explained so much about how being a menstruating woman feels. I formerly thought that all the hype around pms and cyclical hormones was just that - cultural hype, making fun and being dramatic. This MD explains, again using scientific research in an approachable manner, how exactly our brains work, how our cycles work and how they are connected with the waves of the three main hormones that pulse through us. It’s not a joke, it’s not a drama, it’s basic science and anatomy and how the female brain and reproductive system works. Every human should read it - if they are a menstruating person, or if they know one. Men need to read this book if they are dating women, married to women or are dad’s to women!

This book also empowered me (I rarely use that word because it feels so overused these days, so know that the fact that I’m using it for these two books is noteworthy!) to know myself and my body even more. It helps explain why, as women, we sometimes feel fantastic, strong, outgoing and sexy while other weeks, we may simply want to cozy up in a blanket with a book for 3 days, and not talk to anyone. It helped me understand why sometimes I feel emotionally and mentally resilient, like I can take shit and move on with my day, whereas other days every small comment causes an emotional upset. Understanding my cyclic nature has helped me plan my social life, my errands, my work life, my exercise routines and greatly assisted in relationships. It has given me ownership over my body and being that I am no longer confused or embarrassed by, but rather proud of and make no excuses for. I always know where I am in my cycle and I don’t get freaked out if I am feeling a little low energy or gloomy some days. Additionally, when I am feeling the extra bounce of energy provided by my hormones on the rise, I take full advantage to make social plans, be adventurous and get things done!

Spiritually, I’ve been able to connect the cyclic nature of my body to the cyclic natures of creation and this most definitely has helped me to find peace in each season of a cycle. We cannot be going all the time, just like the flowers are not constantly blooming, and it’s not always Spring. There are seasons of hibernation and stillness, just as much as there are seasons of bursting forth and vibrancy. The ocean waves ebb and flow, the moon waxes and wanes. We go forth and retreat. I’ve written an entire blog on this you can find here (insert link.) Our society and culture, including the culture within the convent, is constantly pushing us to work, keep going, moving always forward (adelante) - however, if we take some wisdom from Nature, we will see that nothing in Nature is always pushing outward. Literally nothing. Things grow and bloom in seasons, in cycles of going forth and pulling inward. This is what our menstrual cycle reminds us to do. Our magic and power as women dwells within us and the only way to tap into that is to have time to go inward. This is why we bleed, why our hormones drop, why we yearn for solitude, quiet and stillness. It’s nature giving us the time we need, just like other living beings, to listen, nourish, incubate the light, love and creative works that we are called to bring forth into the world.

Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd: This provocative title drew me and I also love a good autobiographical account. This is the real story of Sue’s personal spiritual journey, her Story of a Soul, one that began in the christian church world and led her across the world in search of the divine. I was never one to buy into or pay much attention to the charged lingo like ‘patriarchy’ and ‘misogynistic’ things that people said about the church, but when this book found me, I had processed enough of my time in the convent, to read and be open minded about this woman’s journey and search for not only the divine, but truth in the church and rituals. It helped me see with a lot of clarity how things in the convent, especially how we revered the priest ad nauseum, how we served and drove them everywhere, how Mass and many rituals are focused on them - is perhaps a little skewed and off. And I am someone who still holds love for many a priest in my life. I think it’s ok to not be in agreement with the male power in the church, and at the same time truly enjoy the persons that are specific priests in our lives. The book is not all about this, but it was one of the first pieces of literature where - since I was drawn into her personal journey - I read about how patriarchy and men in power can affect one woman’s experience of the Divine and of Church. She takes a beautiful journey that is full of connections to her heart, body, the earth, rituals and a sincere seeking of the Divine.

A few others that come to mind, a short list:

Falling Upwards by Fr. Richard Rohr: This Franciscan priest elaborates on how the second act in someone’s life is often accompanied by great spiritual growth and what we sometimes label as failures or falls actually catapult us forward and upward in wisdom and light. What he connects here regarding veterans who return to civilian life was very helpful & affirming with how many of us feel returning to life in the world, after a unique and extreme situation. Great, helpful read!

The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron: If you experience sensory overwhelm, have introvert tendencies, don’t like loud places, people, violent movies, etc - this book is for you. It helped me feel normal and be more confident asking for what I need in life, relationships, work and saying no to what I do not enjoy. About 15-20% of humans are HSP, and of that number, 70% are introverts. There is a website dedicated to this book with a quiz you can take to see if you fall into this category.

Quiet by Susan Cain: For all my introverts, do yourself a favor! For all my extroverts, learn about your friends, family and lovers here! This book upped my confidence and self-awareness even more, enabling me to find strength and confidence in my innate, interior, introverted gifts.

The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman: If you plan on loving humans, read this book or at least go to the website, take the quiz and know your own languages. Do you know how you recieve love? Are you a gift person, or acts of service? Do you love physical touch or would you rather have someone compliment you? Also - are you giving love to your loved ones in the language they speak? If you give compliments to someone who prefers acts of service, your compliments will mean nothing. Again, just great to know if you are human and plan on loving and being loved on any level.

Ok, that’s all for now. I could add dozens to this list! Happy Reading!

[dfroza]

An escape route

seen in Today’s reading in the process of Paul being wrongfully accused in ancient History and written down as inspiration in the here & now.

Acts, chapter 23 that contains an ancient letter. and the writing of the Scriptures are Spirit inspired Letters that illuminate the path and the treasure of grace discovered in the Son.

[Before the High Council]

Paul surveyed the members of the council with a steady gaze, and then said his piece: “Friends, I’ve lived with a clear conscience before God all my life, up to this very moment.” That set the Chief Priest Ananias off. He ordered his aides to slap Paul in the face. Paul shot back, “God will slap you down! What a fake you are! You sit there and judge me by the Law and then break the Law by ordering me slapped around!”

The aides were scandalized: “How dare you talk to God’s Chief Priest like that!”

Paul acted surprised. “How was I to know he was Chief Priest? He doesn’t act like a Chief Priest. You’re right, the Scripture does say, ‘Don’t speak abusively to a ruler of the people.’ Sorry.”

Paul, knowing some of the council was made up of Sadducees and others of Pharisees and how they hated each other, decided to exploit their antagonism: “Friends, I am a stalwart Pharisee from a long line of Pharisees. It’s because of my Pharisee convictions—the hope and resurrection of the dead—that I’ve been hauled into this court.”

The moment he said this, the council split right down the middle, Pharisees and Sadducees going at each other in heated argument. Sadducees have nothing to do with a resurrection or angels or even a spirit. If they can’t see it, they don’t believe it. Pharisees believe it all. And so a huge and noisy quarrel broke out. Then some of the religion scholars on the Pharisee side shouted down the others: “We don’t find anything wrong with this man! And what if a spirit has spoken to him? Or maybe an angel? What if it turns out we’re fighting against God?”

That was fuel on the fire. The quarrel flamed up and became so violent the captain was afraid they would tear Paul apart, limb from limb. He ordered the soldiers to get him out of there and escort him back to the safety of the barracks.

[A Plot Against Paul]

That night the Master appeared to Paul: “It’s going to be all right. Everything is going to turn out for the best. You’ve been a good witness for me here in Jerusalem. Now you’re going to be my witness in Rome!”

Next day the Jews worked up a plot against Paul. They took a solemn oath that they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed him. Over forty of them ritually bound themselves to this murder pact and presented themselves to the high priests and religious leaders. “We’ve bound ourselves by a solemn oath to eat nothing until we have killed Paul. But we need your help. Send a request from the council to the captain to bring Paul back so that you can investigate the charges in more detail. We’ll do the rest. Before he gets anywhere near you, we’ll have killed him. You won’t be involved.”

Paul’s nephew, his sister’s son, overheard them plotting the ambush. He went immediately to the barracks and told Paul. Paul called over one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the captain. He has something important to tell him.”

The centurion brought him to the captain and said, “The prisoner Paul asked me to bring this young man to you. He said he has something urgent to tell you.”

The captain took him by the arm and led him aside privately. “What is it? What do you have to tell me?”

Paul’s nephew said, “The Jews have worked up a plot against Paul. They’re going to ask you to bring Paul to the council first thing in the morning on the pretext that they want to investigate the charges against him in more detail. But it’s a trick to get him out of your safekeeping so they can murder him. Right now there are more than forty men lying in ambush for him. They’ve all taken a vow to neither eat nor drink until they’ve killed him. The ambush is set—all they’re waiting for is for you to send him over.”

The captain dismissed the nephew with a warning: “Don’t breathe a word of this to a soul.”

The captain called up two centurions. “Get two hundred soldiers ready to go immediately to Caesarea. Also seventy cavalry and two hundred light infantry. I want them ready to march by nine o’clock tonight. And you’ll need a couple of mules for Paul and his gear. We’re going to present this man safe and sound to Governor Felix.”

Then he wrote this letter:

From Claudius Lysias, to the Most Honorable Governor Felix:

Greetings!

I rescued this man from a Jewish mob. They had seized him and were about to kill him when I learned that he was a Roman citizen. So I sent in my soldiers. Wanting to know what he had done wrong, I had him brought before their council. It turned out to be a squabble turned vicious over some of their religious differences, but nothing remotely criminal.

The next thing I knew, they had cooked up a plot to murder him. I decided that for his own safety I’d better get him out of here in a hurry. So I’m sending him to you. I’m informing his accusers that he’s now under your jurisdiction.

The soldiers, following orders, took Paul that same night to safety in Antipatris. In the morning the soldiers returned to their barracks in Jerusalem, sending Paul on to Caesarea under guard of the cavalry. The cavalry entered Caesarea and handed Paul and the letter over to the governor.

After reading the letter, the governor asked Paul what province he came from and was told “Cilicia.” Then he said, “I’ll take up your case when your accusers show up.” He ordered him locked up for the meantime in King Herod’s official quarters.

The Book of Acts, Chapter 23 (The Message)

and a point about the heart and the words we speak made in Today’s chapter of the book of Proverbs:

[Healing Words]

Listen carefully, my dear child, to everything that I teach you,

and pay attention to all that I have to say.

Fill your thoughts with my words

until they penetrate deep into your spirit.

Then, as you unwrap my words,

they will impart true life and radiant health

into the very core of your being.

So above all, guard the affections of your heart,

for they affect all that you are.

Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being,

for from there flows the wellspring of life.

Avoid dishonest speech and pretentious words.

Be free from using perverse words no matter what!

[Watch Where You’re Going]

Set your gaze on the path before you.

With fixed purpose, looking straight ahead,

ignore life’s distractions.

Watch where you’re going!

Stick to the path of truth,

and the road will be safe and smooth before you.

Don’t allow yourself to be sidetracked for even a moment

or take the detour that leads to darkness.

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 4:20-27 (The Passion Translation)

my reading from the Scriptures for Saturday, the 4th of may, day 46 of Spring and day 124 of the year

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Good news for the housing market, at least for now (Bloomberg) Armed with the lowest mortgage rates in history, Americans are feeding a suburban buying frenzy, one driven by urban exiles hunting for space to quarantine in comfort, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. The effort however is being helped by policymakers who have temporarily frozen foreclosures, cut borrowing costs and flooded the economy with bailout cash.

US faces opposition to demand to ‘snap back’ Iran sanctions (AP) The Trump administration ran into immediate opposition after its top diplomat officially informed the United Nations it is demanding the restoration of all U.N. sanctions on Iran, with allies and opponents declaring the U.S. action illegal and doomed to failure. Russia and China, along with European allies Britain, France and Germany, who often disagree, are united in declaring the U.S. action “illegal” on grounds that you can’t withdraw from a deal and then use the resolution that endorsed it to re-impose sanctions. How this dispute plays out in the weeks ahead remains to be seen, but Thursday’s U.S. move set the stage for a showdown in the United Nations that could lead to a crisis of credibility for the Security Council, its most important and powerful body. As soon as Pompeo delivered the letter invoking “snap back,” Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, tweeted: “Looks like there are 2 planets. A fictional dog-eat-dog one where US pretends it can do whatever it wants without ‘cajoling’ anyone, breach and leave deals but still benefit from them, and another one where the rest of the world lives and where intl law and diplomacy reign.”

Poor Planning Left California Short of Electricity in a Heat Wave (NYT) Everybody had known for days that a heat wave was about to wallop California. Yet a dashboard maintained by the organization that manages the state’s electric grid showed that scores of power plants were down or producing below peak strength, a stunning failure of planning, poor record keeping and sheer bad luck. All told, power plants with the ability to produce almost 6,000 megawatts, or about 15 percent of the electricity on California’s grid, were reported as being offline when temperatures surged last Friday. The shortfall, which experts believe officials should have been able to avoid, forced managers of the grid to order rolling blackouts in the middle of a pandemic and as wildfires across the state were spreading.

Pandemic pushes expansion of ‘hospital-at-home’ treatment (AP) As hospitals care for people with COVID-19 and try to keep others from catching the virus, more patients are opting to be treated where they feel safest: at home. Across the U.S., “hospital at home” programs are taking off amid the pandemic, thanks to communications technology, portable medical equipment and teams of doctors, nurses, X-ray techs and paramedics. That’s reducing strains on medical centers and easing patients’ fears. The programs represent a small slice of the roughly 35 million U.S. hospitalizations each year, but they are growing fast with boosts from Medicare and private health insurers. Like telemedicine, the concept stands to become more popular with consumers hooked on home delivery and other Internet-connected conveniences. Eligible patients typically are acutely ill with—but don’t need round-the-clock intensive care for—common conditions including chronic heart failure, respiratory ailments, diabetes complications, infections and even COVID-19.

Western religious decline (Foreign Affairs) Since 2007, there has been a remarkably sharp trend away from religion. In virtually every high-income country, religion has continued to decline. The most dramatic shift away from religion has taken place among the American public. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. Near the end of the initial period studied, Americans’ mean rating of the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a ten-point scale. In the most recent U.S. survey, from 2017, the figure had dropped to 4.6, an astonishingly sharp decline.

Renewing Your Passport (Lifehacker) Given the lingering coronavirus threat and the ongoing travel restrictions, it may be a while before your next international getaway. But that doesn’t mean you should wait to apply for or renew your passport, because there may be a long line ahead of you. As USA Today reports, the State Department cut back on passport operations from mid-March through early June as part of the efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19. As a result, the application backlog ballooned to 1.8 million by the time workers returned in June. The State Department isn’t at full capacity—and those applying for non-emergency passports will still experience a delay. “All applicants should continue to expect processing delays of several months as we work to get through a high volume of applications,” the agency said in a tweet on August 10. Even if your passport doesn’t expire for several months, you should begin the renewal process now. It may save you from the stress of waiting for your passport to come through after you have already booked a trip—and you may avoid paying extra for expedited service later.

Mexico’s Political Elite Engulfed by Scandal as Document Leaked (Bloomberg) Three Mexican presidents and over a dozen former ministers and legislators were accused of bribery, according to a document attributed to a key witness, in another chapter of a growing corruption scandal that is shaking the country’s political elite. Former presidents Enrique Pena Nieto, Felipe Calderon and Carlos Salinas de Gortari are among 17 Mexican politicians and a journalist named by Emilio Lozoya, the disgraced ex-head of state oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, in his purported testimony to Mexican prosecutors, according to a leaked copy of his deposition seen by several media organizations. While the Attorney General’s office wouldn’t confirm the authenticity of the document, stamped Aug. 11, it opened an investigation into how it was leaked to reporters.

Greenland ice melting (AP) The numbers are in, and in summer 2019 Greenland lost 586 billion tons of ice to melting, the highest on record, or approximately 140 trillion gallons of water. That’s up from the yearly average of 259 billion tons since 2003, and north of the previous record of 511 billion tons in 2012. This would cover the state of California in four feet of water.

Shipwreck in the Mediterranean (Foreign Policy) At least 45 migrants died in an Aug. 17 shipwreck off the coast of Libya, the deadliest such incident this year. The boat’s engine exploded off the coast of the city of Zuwarah. More than 300 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya this year, according to the United Nations, but the real figure could be much higher. Local fishermen rescued 37 people from the wreckage, who were detained by Libyan authorities. On Wednesday, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees and the International Organization for Migration called for international search and rescue efforts to be stepped up. The European Union has shied away from launching its own rescue operation.

Boris Johnson is splitting the check with millions of Britons who dare to dine out (Washington Post) They say there’s no free lunch. But in Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is willing to split the check—for the entire country. In an audacious (panicky?) scheme designed to save the country’s flagging hospitality industry and tempt people fearful of the coronavirus out of their home-bunkers, the British government is offering half-off on fish and chips—and everything else on the menu, sticky toffee pudding included. The “Eat Out to Help Out” campaign, as it is officially known, has been wildly popular. In its first two weeks, the government has subsidized more than 35 million meals at 85,000 participating eateries. As the Treasury Ministry put it, that’s “the equivalent to over half of the United Kingdom taking part and supporting local jobs.” One in 10 of the country’s restaurants have signed on. So, if not the New Deal, it’s a Happy Meal. Instead of a make-work program, it’s a make-dinner program.

Navalny flown to Germany after suspected poisoning (NYT) A prominent Russian opposition figure was flown to Germany for treatment of suspected poisoning on Saturday, his spokeswoman said, after a day of delays. The opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, who had been in a coma since Thursday, was flown from the Siberian city of Omsk to Berlin on a Challenger 604 air ambulance arranged by the foundation of a movie producer based in the German capital. The evacuation came after a team of German doctors, who had arrived in Omsk on the air ambulance, stated unequivocally on Friday that it was safe for him to travel. After Mr. Navalny’s arrival at the hospital in Omsk, his family and associates were bitterly critical of the authorities, who refused to release detailed information on his condition, denied he had been poisoned and contended that he was too unstable medically for travel.

‘Telegram revolution’: App helps drive Belarus protests (AP) Every day, like clockwork, to-do lists for those protesting against Belarus’ authoritarian leader appear in the popular Telegram messaging app. They lay out goals, give times and locations of rallies with business-like precision, and offer spirited encouragement. The app has become an indispensable tool in coordinating the unprecedented mass protests that have rocked Belarus since Aug. 9, when election officials announced President Alexander Lukashenko had won a landslide victory to extend his 26-year rule in a vote widely seen as rigged. Peaceful protesters who poured into the streets of the capital, Minsk, and other cities were met with stun grenades, rubber bullets and beatings from police. The opposition candidate left for Lithuania—under duress, her campaign said—and authorities shut off the internet, leaving Belarusians with almost no access to independent online news outlets or social media and protesters seemingly without a leader. That’s where Telegram—which often remains available despite internet outages, touts the security of messages shared in the app and has been used in other protest movements—came in. Some of its channels helped scattered rallies to mature into well-coordinated action.

Thailand Police Arrest Activists, Escalating Protest Crackdown (NYT) Dechathorn Bamrungmuang, a member of the Thai collective Rap Against Dictatorship, was arrested on Thursday on charges of sedition, human rights lawyers said, part of a mounting crackdown by a government seemingly allergic to dissent. A day earlier, the authorities took into custody for the second time a lawyer who had publicly called for the Thai monarchy’s powers to be reined in. At least six pro-democracy activists were also arrested on Wednesday and Thursday on charges of sedition, a crime that can carry a seven-year prison sentence, the organization Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said. Another rapper was taken in, too. Yet more student activists were served with papers that appeared to indicate they could be imminently detained. The legal actions followed weeks of protests by students that culminated on Sunday in the largest street rally in Thailand since a military coup six years ago.

Doctors strike in Nairobi over pay, lack of COVID protection (Reuters) Doctors in most public hospitals in Kenya’s capital went on strike on Friday to protest against delayed salaries and a lack of protective equipment when handling patients who may have COVID-19. The strike began at midnight on Friday, said Thuranira Kaugiria, secretary general for the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union. He said 320 doctors employed by the Nairobi County government were taking part in the strike because they had inadequate health insurance, poor quality protective gear and too few isolation wards to treat COVID-19 patients.

[how2to18]

STEVE ALMOND is the author of 12 books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times best seller Candyfreak and Against Football. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, and New York Times Magazine, among others. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism program at Harvard University. His newest book, which occasioned this conversation, is Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country (Red Hen Press). William Giraldi is the author of the novels Busy Monsters and Hold the Dark, and a memoir, The Hero’s Body. His newest book is a collection of criticism, American Audacity, to be published in August. This conversation was conducted over email in January.

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WILLIAM GIRALDI: With many millions of my fellow baffled Americans, I’ve been trying to comprehend, as the subtitle of Bad Stories has it, what the hell just happened to our country. It wasn’t until reading your synthesis that I began to get the myriad cultural and political forces that needed to align, over several decades, in order for Trumpism to prevail in 2016. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. Nothing comes out of nowhere. Your take on the Fairness Doctrine is one of the most riveting sections of the book, something I didn’t know about. Can you speak about the Fairness Doctrine and why it’s necessary to understand it in order to understand what’s happened?

STEVE ALMOND: To begin at the beginning, our Founding Fathers simply never envisioned the technologies that comprise our modern media. To them, the Fourth Estate consisted of broadsheets and pamphlets. When radio emerged, early in the 20th century, our leaders suddenly had to contend with a medium that could reach millions of Americans instantaneously. The smart ones were good and freaked out by that prospect. Back in 1926, the Texas lawmaker Luther Johnson said this:

American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations, for publicity is the most powerful weapon that can be wielded in a republic. And when such a weapon is placed in the hands of one person, or a single selfish group is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership or dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare differ with them. It will be impossible to compete with them in reaching the ears of the American people.

These concerns led lawmakers to pass various measures, culminating with the Fairness Doctrine, which said that broadcasters should use the public airwaves to serve the public interest, not private gain. They had a duty to cover important issues and to provide “reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints.” It was basically a spoiler plate for propaganda.

Under Reagan, the head of the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, arguing that “the perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.” I realize that sounds kind of wonky. But what he’s saying marks a precise fault line in our history as a country, the moment when our free press became, officially, a for-profit industry.

And the effect was immediate: a revolution of conservative talk radio hosts (and later Fox News anchors) who have spent three decades telling the bad stories we’ve come to associate with Trumpism. A government that seeks to redistribute wealth or curb greed is evil. Brown people are lazy and/or dangerous. White men are under assault. Elites and academics are mocking you. The mainstream media can’t be trusted. It amounts to a retailing of what the historian Richard Hofstadter calls “the paranoid style” in American politics.

This proudly ignorant aggression, which cloaks itself in the language of self-victimization, is the mindset that now animates much of our electorate. Guys like Rush Limbaugh have been indoctrinating their dittoheads for three decades. Talk like a populist and rule like a plutocrat — that’s the basic con. Trump didn’t create a movement. He simply inherited audience share.

Americans have come to accept the demented idea that for-profit demagogues have a constitutional right to use the public airwaves to spout falsehoods and propaganda. As a result, we now have a sitting president whose consciousness is guided by the caffeinated misinformation of Fox & Friends.

Which brings me to another important facet of Bad Stories: your analysis of the astounding moral vacuity of our Fourth Estate, their conscious and unconscious credo of entertainment over information. During the primaries and the election, even the outfits that were against Trump’s lunatic bluster — CNN or MSNBC, say — seemed helpless not to cover him incessantly. It was a ratings rodeo for them, and to hell with the fact that they were helping to elect him. Or consider even The New York Times giving front-page prominence to FBI director James Comey’s nothing-letter on the Clinton email nonsense, mere days before the election. You have an expert appraisal of Neil Postman and his masterwork, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Say a little about Postman and his ideas for those who might not be familiar with them.

Postman was a cultural historian. In 1984, he was asked to deliver a lecture at the Frankfurt Book Fair about Orwell’s 1984. But he argued that Reagan’s United States could be better understood by examining Huxley’s Brave New World. He saw a population mired in passivity and egoism, a republic that had devolved into an audience. The resulting book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, argues that every aspect of our culture (politics, religion, news, education, commerce) has been “transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice.” Public figures, therefore, are no longer judged on experience or competence. All they need is “a talent and a format to amuse.”

Candidate Trump’s training as a tabloid and TV star endowed him with the talent. And cable news, as you note, supplied him the format. Networks aired his speeches and fulminated against his antics and cast his tweets in shrieking chyron. They treated him like a celebrity. If they had covered him like a traditional politician — Jeb Bush, say — he never would have claimed the GOP nomination. His inexperience and erratic nature would have reduced him to a fringe candidate. He became the frontrunner because he was treated as the frontrunner.

And the networks made no secret of this double standard. The most shocking statement uttered during the entire campaign came from CBS CEO Les Moonves, who noted that Trump’s campaign “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. […] The money’s rolling in and this is fun. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.” I probably don’t need to tell you that Moonves said all this at a media conference sponsored by Morgan Stanley.

This is exactly what happens when you turn a civic institution (“the Fourth Estate”) into a business. You wind up with a cash register rather than an editorial sensibility.

What’s so astounding about Postman’s book is that he saw all this coming down the pike more than 30 years ago. He knew TV news was destined to become a sewer of disinformation. He predicted the rise of parodic news programs that would convert our dysfunction into disposable laughs. He foresaw that Americans would “come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” I think about that statement every time I pull out my smart phone, and every time I get on the subway. What I see is a car full of people locked onto their tiny screens, amusing themselves to death.

Postman’s book helped me understand the 2016 election was ultimately a coup we engineered against ourselves, arising from unseriousness and bad stories.

And part of how we’re currently amusing ourselves deathly is by viewing the daily, almost hourly dramas of the White House as another reality TV show, albeit one with annihilating consequences. After Watergate, Gore Vidal pointed out that Americans had become addicted to scandal. That was nothing next to what we’re seeing now. It’s stunning to me how Trump’s every asinine tweet is treated by the media as something worthy of our attention. When a soulless and intellectually incurious entertainer with dysphasia steals the presidency with the help of a hostile foreign power, we really shouldn’t be continually surprised when he behaves like a soulless and intellectually incurious entertainer with dysphasia. One of the stories Bad Stories tells is the one about how Vladimir Putin saw his chance with Trump. Can you speak a bit about Tsar Putin?

One of the problems Americans have always had is a kind of ingrained solipsism, one born of privilege. We’ve been incredibly lucky as an empire. We have vast natural resources and weak neighbors. We’ve never been invaded, let alone occupied. Because we’ve been so sheltered we are, broadly speaking, unaware of, and incurious about, history. We live in the Capitalist Now, an era of monetized distraction, “within the context of no context,” as George W. S. Trow put it. Our national stories are either downright false (“all men are created equal”) or dangerously naïve (“the Cold War is over and we won!”). The Berlin Wall came crashing down. We all danced to shitty new wave music amid the rubble.

But what if we looked at our democracy through the eyes of Putin, a fiercely nationalistic KGB officer who was in Dresden when the Wall came down? The driving force in his life has been to restore the stature of his disgraced homeland, to Make Russia Great Again. Jump into that guy’s head and ask yourself: Is the Cold War really over?

Of course not. One of Putin’s central goals as a leader has been to attack the American empire. He’s smart enough to recognize that he can’t hope to win a military or economic war. So his attacks have come in the form of cyber-warfare and disinformation. When Russians hacked into the Democratic National Committee, they were doing the same thing as the Watergate burglars, and for the same reason: to smear the Democratic nominee.

During Watergate, the “story” was about the burglars — who had hired them and why. In 2016, journalists barely bothered to ask those questions. Instead, they eagerly spread the smears. They essentially did Putin’s dirty work for him. He knew they would, because he could see the cracks in our democracy: a free press that had degenerated into a for-profit tabloid operation, widespread voter apathy and disaffection, a conservative media complex devoted to stoking racial grievance, social media platforms that happily amplified Russian propaganda, state-sanctioned voter suppression.

For Putin, Trump represented a kind of geopolitical unicorn: the useful idiot abruptly elevated into a Manchurian candidate. His entire agenda mapped to Putin’s intentions. Trump consistently sowed discord among Americans, and undermined their faith in liberal democracy. His foreign policy called for the United States to retreat from the world stage, leaving Putin free to expand Russian ambitions. Putin also knew more about Trump’s financial entanglements than the US electorate.

Putin is a brutal autocrat. But he understands history, that empires, from the Incas to the Romans to the Mongols, ultimately collapse from within. They are made vulnerable to foreign invaders by internal divisions and delusions.

That’s the most chilling aspect of 2016. Whether or not they ever shook on it, Putin and Trump made a deal. But only one of them understood the true terms of the deal. Putin knew Trump was a long shot, given his flaws. But he could see the magnitude of the payout: the chance to elect a man capable of initiating what the Soviet Union never could — an era of permanent American decline.

One of the ways Bad Stories shines is by not being another lefty screed fueled by pharisaical grievance and holier-than-thou condemnations. It doesn’t traffic in the cliches and sanctimony and anti-art that fouls so much of what we now see coming from the commissars, and it even manages to have a goodly bit of mercy for Trump’s base. You can also be pretty critical of lefty sacred cows, among whom are the comedic minds liberal America, in its ballooning desperation, has taken for their prophets and seers. What’s your view of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?

They’re both brilliant comedians who have used their shows to call out the bullshit that predominates our media and political classes. In doing so, they’ve trained viewers to think more critically, and helped educate lots of low-info citizens. Those are real and laudable achievements. The problem, as you observe, is these guys — our high-tech court jesters — have become the prophetic voices of our culture, the moral backstops. And that’s never good. Think of King Lear. When only the fool can speak truth to power, the kingdom is kaput.

Another way of putting it would be that these guys represent a kind of opiate for the left. While conservatives gin up votes by casting the United States as a horror film (with various dark-skinned villains — “thugs”/Muslims/immigrants …), the liberal response to our civic dysfunction is to cast the United States as a farce. Stewart and Colbert and their disciples convert our anguish and rage into disposable laughs. Look at all those corrupt politicians and pundits! What fools! It’s the same message Trump delivered over and over on the stump.

Why are we laughing at the moral erosion of our democracy? To protect ourselves from the fear and rage we should be feeling, the kind of destabilizing emotions that might force us to get off our fucking couches and take action. Meanwhile, those fools we’re laughing at are having the last laugh, because they’re the ones steering our ship of state. They’re deporting kids and slashing our safety net and strip-mining the EPA and reshaping our federal judiciary and turning our tax code into an open-air kleptocracy. Ha-ha-ha.

Again, I’m not criticizing Stewart and Colbert. Those guys are just doing their jobs. What troubles me is that we’re mistaking mockery for genuine political engagement. It’s not an act of protest to share the latest Saturday Night Live clip or Samantha Bee screed. It’s an act of therapeutic passivity. It makes us feel a little bit better about a circumstance that we shouldn’t feel better about.

Mencken once declared that “as democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

He was joking. But it’s not funny anymore.

I’m reminded of a line that’s almost always with me, from D. H. Lawrence’s characteristically seditious take on our nation’s literature. He lived in New Mexico for a spell, and he says at one point, in Studies in Classic American Literature, that he’s never been in a country where individuals are so downright terrified of one another. He saw us as a land of great violence and divide. “The essential American soul,” he says, is “hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” Look, he said, at the “Orestes-like frenzy of restlessness in the Yankee soul, the inner malaise which amounts almost to madness.” Bad Stories tries to parse that inner malaise and madness. What else could have led to the election of the gilded Mafioso currently in the White House? Your book stars Trump, of course, but it isn’t specifically about him. It’s about Americans — the American soul. Do you agree with Lawrence’s take on us?

I use that very quote in my last book, to explain the predominance of violent sport in our country. But to be completely honest, it’s a reductive statement. There is no “essential American soul.” There are more than 300 million people in this country, and each of them, presumably, has a soul. What the 2016 election cast into bold relief was not some lofty, monolithic version of the American soul, but a soul in conflict with itself. After all, 70 million Americans voted for other candidates, and 65 million for Hillary Clinton. It was only a very small percentage of Trump voters whose minds and hearts were filled with violent ideation. We saw and heard a lot from them, because they make for good TV. But they were hardly stoic, or isolate. They were, in fact, emotionally wounded and lonely and desperate for a sense of belonging.

Hannah Arendt discusses this in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. She argues that totalitarianism is a kind of organized loneliness, one that takes root in societies where people feel angry and dislocated, left behind by capitalist expansion. People who lose this sense of identity and rootedness come to feel superfluous, and this makes them frantic to find a grand narrative that will grant their life meaning and direction. (As noted, conservative demagogues on the AM radio dial have been working this market for decades.) But most Republicans recognized their standard-bearer as ethically and intellectually unfit to serve. They voted for him out of an ethically enfeebled tribalism.

It’s important to note this, because it’s really another bad story to suggest that Americans are doomed to express their most savage and self-destructive impulses. I don’t believe that. I believe we can and will do better. But only if we can rouse ourselves from the thrall of hate-watching this administration.

In this sense, the book that presages the 2016 election is Moby-Dick, an epic that is entirely driven by the seductive power of wounded masculinity. Consider the moment Ahab appears on deck to announce the true nature of his mission. He’s not interested in harvesting whale blubber. He’s out for revenge.

“All visible objects […] are but pasteboard masks,” he roars. “If man will strike, strike through the mask! […] Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me.”

Who does that sound like?

That’s what Trump channeled: the volcanic sense of grievance and spiritual poverty that lurks within America’s absurd material plenitude.

But here’s the thing about Moby-Dick: everyone goes along with Ahab. The crew signs on for his doomed crusade. That’s the most powerful analogue to the election. Whether in rapture or disgust, Americans turned away from the compass of self-governance and toward the mesmerizing drama of aggression on display, the capitalist id unchained and all that it unchained within us. Trump struck through the mask. And it was, alas, enough.

There’s another analogue to consider, too, when it comes to Ahab: Melville modeled him in large part on Milton’s Satan, the greatest poetic quester in the canon, rebellion incarnate, sublime hero of the seditious, “self-begot, self-rais’d” by his own “quick’ning power.” One of the bad stories you tell is called “Trump Was a Change Agent,” a story that tried to peddle him as an outsider, a self-begot rebel who would overthrow the greedy gods in Washington and usher in a kingdom of the neglected. We know how that story ends for Satan in Paradise Lost, and we know how it ends for Ahab. The question is: How will that bad story end for us? Your book doesn’t close with either manufactured uplift or resigned despair, but rather a levelheadedness and inwardness devoid of sloganized idealism. What’s your vision for us now?

America has always been a nation of high ideals and low behaviors, of all men are created equal and slave labor. The moral regression we’re seeing today — the overtly bigoted policy, the cronyism, the exploitation of fear and loathing — is nothing new. Just ask any woman or person of color or immigrant. Part of what I’m trying to articulate in the book is that history is cyclical. You have moral atrocities, such as slavery, which lead to moral corrections. You have the economic and social upheaval of the Great Depression, which led to the New Deal. The War on Poverty. The Great Society programs. The Civil Rights movement. Those are examples of the American people enacting their high ideals. That is still possible.

I know there are days — a lot of them — when the ravings of our current president and his congressional quislings feel like the apotheosis of a certain inexorable capitalist decadence. Maybe Mencken is right, “that the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.” But if that’s the case, it’s not because Americans are “downright morons.” It’s because too many of us have sworn allegiance to bad stories, stories that encourage us to weaponize our self-doubt, to project our destructive impulses onto others, to drown our shame in aggression. But evil is never purely borne. It is the distortion of love, not its absence.

The question is whether we can begin to tell better stories, ones in which our citizens muster the courage to confront the dire threats facing not just our democracy, but our species and planet. It’s possible to see the 2016 election as a warning and a wakeup call, a reminder that moral progress is inconvenient but not impossible.

I’m getting at a question of faith, I guess. Can we renew our faith in the basic principles of the Enlightenment — science and reason, liberty and tolerance, the common good? Can we rouse ourselves from the twin spells of cynicism and distraction? Maybe America can be made great again only by facing what we are at our weakest.

The post Bad Stories in America: A Conversation Between Steve Almond and William Giraldi appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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