By Charlie Johnston
We are postponing my planned East Coast swing the middle of this month to January or February. Plenty of folks were interested in coming, but almost everyone who could host was caught up with beginning plans for the Christian holidays. I have made some individual appearances in November before, but we usually stay away from regional swings for just this reason.
I will, however, attend the WSFI annual gala at the Double Tree in Mundelein, Illinois on Saturday, Nov. 14. WSFI is the EWTN-affiliate radio station in the Chicago area. This will be a regular old home week for me. Not only is it in what was my home county for most of my life, the hotel used to be the Holiday Inn of Mundelein which, some 45 years or so ago, I was Deputy General Manager of. Not only that, one of my old high school hot girls is trying to rearrange her schedule so she CAN be my date for the dinner. I’m gonna have myself a time. Hope I see some of you there.
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I originally wrote a different version of this, but in one of those weird computer glitches, it was completely deleted, so I had to start over from scratch. There may be a message somewhere in there for me, but I have no clue what it is.
Everyone is on tenterhooks today, waiting for election results to come in. I’m not. Oh, yeah, I think what I said a couple of weeks ago is accurate, but only the tactics change if I’m dead wrong. Nothing of substance does. In some very important ways, this is the most irrelevant election of my lifetime. It is not a decision; it is prelude to battle.
Modern Democrats are not the Democrats I argued with, laughed with, and often collaborated with when I was younger. They have replaced God with government. The lust for power is their only aim. They do not seek to govern, they intend to rule. Banishing God entirely from their lives distorts everything…and opens a hole in their hearts which is a welcome mat for demonic infestation. Demons are violent, vicious, and never content, howling with the pain and frustration of their very existence. They call any dissent from them “violence” and any violence they commit in service of seizing power to themselves “demonstration.”
When the only meaning you get in life is the acquisition of power, there is no meaning in your life – and nothing will ever satisfy. It reminds me of the old AA wisdom about alcoholics: “One drink is too many and ten are not enough.” Fail to get what you seek and the frustration leads to misery and rage. Get what you seek and the emptiness of it all deepens the misery and rage. That is a gilded invitation to the devil’s playground.’
Those who have given themselves over to the god of raw power will not cease until they have seized it or have been comprehensively and completely defeated. They showed us what they were about during the Biden administration. Unlawful mandates and bullying, efforts to silence and punish any dissent, the forced mutilation of children who survive the toxic wasteland so many wombs have become, and raw power exercised as vigorously as they believe they can without triggering serious backlash. Now, the left has decided that the mistake of the Biden years was that they did not hit hard enough, quickly enough, or decisively enough. If the vain pursuit of transient, raw, temporal, power is your highest goal, you will not rest until you achieve it or are utterly defeated – and the ballot box is but a speed bump, not a fortified wall.. Only the tactics in the pursuit of power change, not the quest, itself.
If the left wins today, ironically, it will not be as immediately dangerous as if they lose. There will still be much wailing and gnashing of teeth as they ramp up the lawfare and seek Congressional “investigations” of all who resist their will to power. They will make up crimes to accuse dissenters of, they will pressure banks to debank Christians and conservatives, and social media sites to censor them. Elon Musk will become a bigger target to them than Donald Trump – for Musk’s X site is the biggest drain on their ability to control the narrative. But for all the sound and fury, for two years we will have Donald Trump there to stalemate them. Though the left has successfully littered the federal judiciary with activists in robes who will ignore the law and rule in whatever manner gives them the most authoritarian power, the Supreme Court is unreliable for them. Sadly, it is unreliable for us, too, though less so – for now. Thomas and Alito are the only consistently full-throated voices for liberty and citizen sovereignty. Jackson-Brown and Sotomayor are consistently hostile to American principles. Kagan usually is. Roberts and Barrett are completely unreliable. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lean towards liberty, but cannot be relied on when serious social pressure is on. We can stave off the fall of the Republic for at least two years despite the performative madness coming. It might even serve to cement in ordinary peoples’ minds how dangerous and hostile to liberty the left has become, putting us in a stronger position in two years.
If Republicans win (which is my preference, despite the greater immediate danger it poses) the final battle begins quickly, probably before the end of the year. The brilliant X researcher, Jennica Pounds (better known by her handle, DataRepublican), secured hard evidence in the last couple of weeks that a coalition of former USAID and CIA officials, along with some retired military officers and some blue state governors have been planning for over a year for a color revolution in America if Democrats do not prevail strongly enough. A color revolution is a form of psy-op that leads to the overthrow of an existing government and system of governance. The X account of Cynical Publius gives the broad outlines of the planned coup and a deeper explanation of how a color revolution works. It is tempting to dismiss this as a fever dream, but the people involved are mostly the same people who have successfully mounted about a dozen color revolutions around the world this century.
Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass) largely confirmed this in a local Boston TV interview. He didn’t do it because he opposes the attempted coup. Rather, he is probably in early or intermediate stages of dementia and thinks it is a good thing – which he fully supports.
Stephen Green of PJ Media gives the most comprehensive look at the specific steps the coup plotters have planned. The American Spectator’s Scott McKay goes into some detail on how deep the infection runs in society and in the modern Democratic Party.
If you are not up to snuff on this story, you really need to be. I ask you with sincerity and urgency to read those last four links. The klaxon should be shouting, “This is not a drill!” – because it is not. This is the Democrats plan to deal with a loss, and they aren’t particularly coy about hiding it anymore. (For those of you my age, this is when Robby the Robot starts frantically waving his arms and shouting, “Danger, Will Robinson!)
One of the things that persuaded me that Republicans were going to win the elections by a large margin was the relative quiet coming from the conservative side. It’s classic human behavior. Remember when you were a kid? If your parents were hollering and raising Cain, it was a bit chaotic but it usually wasn’t serious. If you had done something wrong and your parents were preternaturally quiet, that was always a signal that big trouble was coming. God forbid that you were still showing out while your parents were dead quiet. This holds in adulthood, too. When people have decided enough is truly enough, they are unusually quiet about it, figuring the time for arguing is over. That, as much as anything, persuaded me that this was going to be a big movement towards the right. For conservatives, it is out of conviction. For honest liberals, it is a form of self-defense: they are liberal, but not insane, and many will NOT make common cause with the crazy caucus anymore. If I have read that right, Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn) and Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D-Mich) may truly be in the catbird seat to serve as the embryo of a genuinely liberal, genuinely responsible, genuinely American party to replace the insanity that the modern Democratic Party has so eagerly embraced.
Even so, if my supposition is true that the more immediate danger comes with a decisive Republican victory, why would I be in favor of that? Because this battle must come. I have largely known that, temporally, for three decades. The Democrats have, since Bill Clinton, moved progressively further and further from the principles of Western Civilization that the American project refined to greater purity than ever. We no longer merely have different approaches to what are largely the same goals. The left is determined to go down, normal people want to go up. There is no compromise possible. One side must prevail entirely. If the Dems win, the stasis is such that the fundamental battle will be held off for two years. I prefer now, when I know we have a backstop in the White House for two more years.
I have been heartened by seeing real fraudsters and authoritarians being held accountable for real crimes these last few months rather than the made-up nonsense the left tried to get Trump, his associates, pro-lifers, and Christians with during the Biden era. If actual crimes are vigorously and consistently prosecuted, it could all peter out. More likely, the left will get intensely more violent in their revolutionary fervor. The biggest danger is that public opinion decides to let bygones be bygones. If so, the chaos will continue and grow. I trust the administration to deal with what is coming AND with leftist activists in judicial robes whose contempt for the rule of law is shown in their consistent choice of leftist priorities, whatever the law says.
For a very long time, many have come to understand that this battle is unavoidable, but have hoped that someone else would take care of it and it would pass them by. There is now no place to hide. If we confront it with fortitude and determination, this evil WILL be defeated. If we waffle and waver, hoping for the best it will prevail for a time – and your children and grandchildren will be serfs and slaves for a while. Those are the stakes.
The devil, of course, has a far greater intellect than any of us…than all of us, for that matter. Intellect is not the satan’s weakness. His temperament is his fatal flaw. He is so filled with malice towards humanity that he often does things he knows will ultimately backfire on him, so long as it makes people suffer now. He can’t help himself. For those few who have knowingly given themselves over to his service in these times, there is a critical piece of information they don’t understand either. Though the satan would prefer that people of genuine faith suffer, if it has to be his minions, he is good with that. As long as humans suffer, whoever they are or which side they are on, it is not a total loss for him.
This battle must come. I don’t think it became inevitable in 1995. I think it became inevitable much earlier than that. But that was when I was told that the storm was the only thing strong enough to move us from our deadly course, that it was a form of divine chemotherapy to rid us of the deadly cancer that had long been growing in us. 1995 was when I was finally able to bear that truth. Even so, I idiotically still pleaded that the storm might pass us by for another five years, until I was memorably and definitively rebuked for it, made to understand that when I asked for that, I was asking that God just let the cancer metastasize in our culture and destroy us. Knowing this, I sinned by asking.
The left has become a wounded animal by getting some consequences for its depredations. If it loses big today, it will become a cornered, wounded animal. Such are deadly dangerous and must be treated as such. Even so, their pain is real, even if they have no clue from whence it came or how to relieve it.
So when I tell you to put on the full armor of God, I am not only telling you to fight the battle with determined fortitude, but even in the midst of this to call out to those we are engaged in battle with as to what will give them true balm and true meaning in their lives – to relieve their unending agony. Few will heed the call, but we do not know who they are. We are obligated to make the call even as we do battle, if we would truly be the Master’s good servants – without flagging in our determination. Contemplate the Agony in the Garden from the perspective that, perhaps, Jesus’ greatest agony was of knowing the magnitude of what He was about to accomplish and how many would still refuse to renew themselves in Him.
This election does not mark the end of strife however it goes, but the opening curtain of the final battle between good and evil. Be sober, be serious, put on the full armor of God, and comport yourself in a manner that ushers in the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart in a few years, rather than a few decades.
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.
Find me on X at @JohnstonPilgrim
The Corps of Renewal and Charity (CORAC)
18208 Preston Rd., Ste. D9-552
Dallas, Texas 75252
Amen. Amen. And, again, Amen! (Love the pic.)
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