The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

By Charlie Johnston

Up until I was in my late 40’s, I could not wear a watch. If I tried, within three days it would stop. Every time. If I took it off, after a few days it would start running again. But if I put it back on it would rarely last an hour. My doctor examined me when I was in my teens and told me my body produced excessive electrical energy, which would magnetize and stop the inner working of watches. He added it should wear off in my 20’s. Made sense because it turned out my Dad had the same problem until he was 17. But it held on much longer in me.

Some of my buddies in school thought it was ridiculous and told me I was making it up. On an extended road trip with two of them in 1975, we were at the Smithsonian Institute and came upon a machine that would measure the electrical energy in your body. It had two sensor pads and an oscilloscope. Hoo-whee…my buddy, the late Dana Powers, was thrilled. Now he was going to show what poppycock it all was. He and my other buddy went first to establish a baseline. When each of them put their hands on the sensors, spiky lines appeared. Now it was my turn. I put my hands on the sensors. No spiky lines appeared. Rather, the screen suddenly resembled an old TV test pattern in the midst of a violent explosion. Then the machine started making a low, rumbling growl that kept getting louder. Finally, my buddy, Dana, conceding defeat with some Star Trek humor said, “Get your hands off, captain, or it’s going to blow.”

It was impressive. But it annoyed me that I could never wear a watch. Finally, it seemed to level out. From my late 40’s until recently I had no problems.

Now it’s back. Fortunately, though, it runs in a much longer cycle. It takes me three to five weeks to magnetize a watch until it stops running. Instead of getting rid of my watch, I just got a second one. Now, every Sunday I switch watches. It gives the one resting time to de-magnetize. It is a little annoying that my watches need to take a break from me on a regular basis. But with my new system, I always know what time it is.

It’s always nice to figure out how best to play the hand you were dealt.

*********

Clowns on the activist left, including corporate media and Democrat officials, constantly and absurdly compare current American policies as bearing a striking resemblance to the run-up to the Nazi takeover of Germany. Only complete historical illiterates and intellectual frauds can make that ridiculous leap.

There are some eerie cultural parallels to the run-up to the Russian Revolution that are giving me pause, of late, though. I have been saying for some time that the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart is visibly on the horizon, but that it is up to us and how we act that will determine whether it is just a few years – or more than a few decades – away. Increasingly I am coming to believe that our midterm elections in America will serve as a barometer to tell us how far we must travel and how deeply we must suffer to get there.

First, a brief synopsis of the Russian Revolution and its prelude. In the late 1800’s Russian culture was undergoing profound changes. Pressure was rising for reforms in land distribution, the treatment and legal status of serfs, and localizing greater authority in zemstvos – town councils and groups of village elders. There was a rising tide of intellectuals who were determined to have a socialist democracy. Tsar Alexander II was exactly the sort of reform Tsar one would think they were pushing for. But he was assassinated by the revolutionary “intellectuals” in 1881, which led to a crackdown on the liberal reforms he had championed.

From about 1880, revolutionary pressure simmered and bubbled constantly beneath the surface of Russian society. It boiled over into an abortive revolution in 1905. Again came a crackdown. Tsar Nicholas was a weak, largely gentle ruler who did not seem to much like being Tsar. Very deferential to his wife, Alexandra, he allowed the madman Rasputin to take on ridiculous influence over the royal family and, later, affairs of state. (Rasputin is often called the “mad monk,” but I have never seen any evidence he was a monk at all – just the Russian version of a talented grifter. The gift that cemented Rasputin to Alexandra, in particular, was his ability to ease the suffering of her hemophiliac son, Tsarevitch Alexis.)

The volatility of Russian society generally, wedded to the uncertain, mercurial rule of the shy Nicholas proved a formula for disaster. After the abortive revolution of 1905 Russia seated its first national legislature, the Duma. It was a weak body that the Tsar could prorogue anytime he saw fit, but it gave the Russian people their first effort at a real grassroots national body. The downfall of the Tsarist system was probably ensured in early 1915 when Nicholas personally took charge of the Russian army and departed for army headquarters on the German front in the early days of World War I. This left Empress Alexandra and, in effect, Rasputin in charge of the Russian government. A parade of top officials were continuously relieved of duty and replaced according to Alexandra and Rasputin’s whims. (Don’t assume that the two were having an affair. There is no evidence of that. Rather, Alexandra was emotionally dependent on Rasputin for the relief he gave to her son, Alexis.)

Paradoxically, as volatile intrigues rocked the royal court constantly after Nicholas’ departure for the front, life got much easier in the rural provinces. At least until the disastrous harvest of 1916, which caused Russia to enter the winter months with serious shortages of food. This led to the February Revolution in early 1917. The Duma seized power and demanded the abdication of Tsar Nicholas. Nicholas abdicated on the train headed back from the front. This left Russia solely controlled by the Duma which was constituted of deputies primarily from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (SDLR).

The SDLR had several major factions, the largest of which was the Mensheviks. Though all the SDLR was Marxist, the Mensheviks were for broad membership, participatory democracy, and reform of existing institutions along socialist lines. The Bolsheviks were much smaller – and also much scarier. They believed in having a small cadre of professional revolutionaries running everything, imposing their agenda on an often unwilling proletariat. They gloried in direct action, force and violence to achieve their aims. But they had little initial effect on the Duma – and most SDLR members did not expect this small, pushy minority to ever have much influence, however much trouble they caused.

Alas, through a great food crisis throughout 1917, the greater SDLR dithered, obsessed by legalisms and processes. The people were getting no relief from their newly empowered, but nearly impotent, Duma, which busied itself arguing over abstractions while people starved. Then came the October Revolution. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, had been exiled under the Tsar – and the newly ruling Duma had no desire to let him back in. The Germans, formally the enemy of Russia at the start of World War I, snuck Lenin back into Russia on a train – hoping that he would add to the chaos that paralyzed Russia. It was a great success for them.

In October, to almost everyone’s surprise, the Bolsheviks seized control from the Duma by taking over St. Petersburg – with the help of the Russian Navy. The Mensheviks did not go quietly. They fought in a Russian Civil War as the Whites while the Bolsheviks campaigned as the Reds. Though the Mensheviks had far more territory and more people, the Bolsheviks had more ruthless will and were organized more tightly. By 1921 the Bolsheviks had prevailed, and Russia’s long national nightmare began. Ironically, the food crisis got worse. Communism provides little but misery and shortages despite its promises.  

Except for a relatively small (but loud) cadre of ruthless ideologues, almost all the revolutionaries from 1880 on dreamed they would end with a western style democracy. They dreamed of the sort of freedom and prosperity they saw in much of Western Europe and in America. They chose socialism because, superficially, it seemed more representative and fair to them. What they got was Lenin’s “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  Within a year many party advocates started grumbling openly that it was actually a dictatorship of one man – Lenin. Shortly before he died, hobbled by a stroke, with Josef Stalin taking strong control, Lenin wrote that he feared that only his brutal tactics would remain under Stalin, without the idealistic ends he had hoped to use those brutal tactics for.

No one expected that the most violent, brutal, overmatched minority faction would prevail. In America we are in a similar situation right now. Most Republicans are rejoicing at the Democrats’ civil war. I am, too, yet I can’t help but recall that, just over a century ago, an annoying and violent minority that few thought could ever prevail seized power. It led to the murder of over 100 million people over the next century and the terrifying enslavement of the Russian and many other peoples for 74 years. It was not just because few took it seriously – but that was a major contributing cause.

Of course, Russians had been conditioned over centuries to submit to authorities and suffer stoically. For all the left’s yowling, America is not and has not been inclined to submit willingly to authoritarians. Admittedly, Old Joe Biden and the left gave it the most serious go in our history at the beginning of this decade. But it didn’t work out for them. Frankly, I think the left should be thanking their lucky stars that Trump won. If he hadn’t, we would be on the verge of or already in the midst of a shooting civil war. Americans do not cotton to being pushed around by uppity politicians and bureaucrats who, truth be told, are actually just America’s clerical help. So there are plenty of differences as well. But as Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself. But it rhymes.” The rhyme here is a little too spooky for me.

In a larger sense I think we are in the final battle between the city of man and the City of God. The American Revolution was the last major such revolt that acknowledged and submitted to God, building their new society according to Judeo-Christian principles writ large under natural law. A little over a decade later came the French Revolution, which insisted that man is the only god there is. This kicked off the orgies of blood and brutality that have followed ever since, each hideously proclaiming itself to be for the “rights of man” as its leaders slaughtered all actual men who crossed them. Such revolutions are only for the rights of the men who aspire to rule everyone else.  

In modern times, a big sector of our polis – and an entire major political party are arguing seriously over absurdities that, a generation or two ago, would have been swatted away, dismissed as beneath the dignity of a serious people. Can a man become a woman? Should children be able to decide to have themselves mutilated? Should we punish violent crime? Should people who refuse to go through the process to lawfully immigrate remain unmolested? Are people who attack law enforcement to protect criminals heroes or criminal themselves? Should the government have the power to decide what medicines you must take and what views you cannot speak? Is a man entitled to the fruit of his own labor?

Natural law, the founding doctrine of America, posits that all rights come from God, that the government grants no rights, but is tasked with protecting and defending those rights that come from God. It is the most basic test of legitimacy for any government. Yet the elitists in one party and the bulk of our establishment media do not understand such a basic concept at all. Just a month and a half ago, MS NOW hostess Katy Tur ominously asked a panel if House Speaker Mike Johnson was putting God over the Declaration of Independence by asserting that all rights come from God. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) aptly noted that Johnson was literally quoting the Declaration, which, itself, put God over it.

We have high officials claiming seriously that we should not allow there to be such a thing as a trillionaire. What business is it of anyone how much I should be “allowed” to create? A man such as Elon Musk should be a source of inspiration because of all he has created, not a target of rage by people who have created little or nothing and will not rouse themselves to do so.

The conservative definition of equality is that we all begin from the same starting line. Then, by our creativity, intellect, and industry, are guaranteed opportunity to accomplish what we may. The leftist definition of equality is that we must all finish at the same point simultaneously regardless of those qualities – and it requires an army of commissars to pull anyone down who shows any notable initiative. All in the name of “fairness.”

Modern leftism is founded on seven pillars:

1. Pride –     You all know this one. Perverse sexuality. We are just finishing up a month devoted to it by those who would be our secular masters.
2. Envy – All things are owned by the government, the collective, and distributed at their pleasure or indulgence. If anyone exhibits superior performance, they must be humbled and stripped of the fruits of their labor.
3. Greed – Favored groups of people are allowed, nay, encouraged to defraud ordinary citizens of their tax dollars by mounting massive fraud in every government program to their own benefit. Create a “Quality Learning Center” to strip the people of tens of millions of dollars without helping anyone but yourself, if you are a favored group, it is the ordinary people who complain of and try to stop it who must be punished, not you.
4. Lust – Every unnatural or perverse sexual act must be celebrated by all – and any ordinary heterosexual behavior, contained in the institution of marriage, must be sneered at, if not prohibited. This, of course, is closely connected with Pride.
5. Gluttony – to eat, drink, and act to excess without any regard for the sensitivity or needs of others. You can see it in abundance at any “mostly peaceful protest” mounted by Antifa and other leftists.
6. Wrath – The sheer and constant rage of people who are “offended” by something that does not affect them and is offensive to no reasonable person is ubiquitous in the modern left. They seem to get up in the morning only to mount a desperate search for something to be offended by and rage against it, all the way up to and including violent mayhem.
7. Sloth – A whole sector of our modern leftists do nothing but act as professional, raging, protestors. They create nothing, they help no one, they just “rage against the machine.” They claim their sloth as righteousness.

These are the signal virtues of the modern left. Through most of our history, they have been known as the seven deadly sins. Modern empiricists insist there is no such thing as sin – or God – only offenses against the collective (which vary by the day).

This is the ultimate battle between the city of man and the City of God for supremacy. Modern elitists, such as the Mayor of New York, the Squad in Congress, the new Democratic Socialists who are eating away at the old Democratic Party consider themselves enlightened  for supporting a system that has failed every time it has held sway,  murdering over a hundred million innocents in just over a century and oppressing many more that that. They don’t even seem to be aware of its history – not feeling the need to actually learn anything to be violently certain that they are right and that they should rule over lesser beings.

Eighteen years ago, I declined an opportunity to serve as a communications consultant to the Republican National Committee, telling my recruiter that I feared that the stupids might have become the majority in this country. If that was the case, we would inevitably crash and burn – and some of us must work to survive that we might rebuild civilization from the ashes the leftists leave behind them.

I have come to think that America’s mid-term elections are the world’s spiritual Groundhog Day. If leftists who believe there is NO power greater than themselves prevail, even by the skin of their teeth, we have decades of grinding strife, mayhem, and misery left before we will be sufficiently chastened to become a people God can work with. If not, and we rededicate ourselves to the principles of faith, family and freedom, we are only a few years away from glorious renewal. I think we will prevail, but it is a much closer thing than I would like.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

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