Ours has become a politics and culture of hysteria: shrill, excited, agitated, anxious, indignant, emotional, irrational, vulnerable, threatened; absence of sobriety, respectful dialogue, steadiness, interior peace and confidence, quiet, restrain, reasoned consideration, openness to listening to the other side. I have...we all have...family and friends with whom we cannot speak about certain topics because they become SO upset. They have to walk away, if they don't erupt into indignant rage. I am shunned, quietly and courteously, because my views ...traditionally Catholic, morally conservative...are emotionally unbearable for many who are close to me. I am, well not me personally but my viewpoint, is, in their "feeling world,"...racist, homophobic, ignorant, misogynist, reactionary. In this private, anonymous blog, I am safe to express myself. Were I a famous figure and articulate on my views of gender, sexuality and race relations I would be a pariah. I would not be able to speak; I would be banned from college campuses; I would be shamed on social media; protests with BLM signs would surround my humble house in a mixed, low-income area of Jersey City.
"Hysteria" is a woman's reaction when she is unprotected by gentle, strong men; when she is vulnerable, threatened, exposed. With the demise of virility and paternity, an entire society and culture becomes hysterical. The men, insecure in their own masculinity and weakened in confidence, themselves mimic this hysteria. The defining reality of our society, our time, our culture...since the 1960s...is the demise of virility, the absence of fathers, the prevalence of hysteria, and the triumph of cultural liberalism.
The cultural liberalism that erupted and prevailed 50 years ago is defined by a rejection of fatherhood. It distrusts the paternity of God. It redefines "patriarchy" as oppression, domination and violation of the weak and vulnerable. It is suspicious of paternity as: authority, tradition, moral law, rational argument, and moral law. It's favored scapegoat is the the quintessentially masculine, paternal institution: the police, renamed as "pigs." Closely related to this defining dogma are correlatives:
- Release of sexuality from marriage; contempt for masculine chastity and fidelity.
- Deconstruction of gender and disparagement of masculinity and femininity as forms; the neutering of the human person.
- Destruction of the innocent and the vulnerable: unborn, disabled, senile.
- Dependence on the mega-state as Mother.
- Privileging of alleged victim groups: blacks, gays, women, etc.
Cultural liberalism is, in my view, more evil, vile, and destructive than communism, fascism, jihadism all together..because it strikes at the core dignity and beauty of the human person: the sacredness of innocent life, the sanctity of sexuality and marriage, the iconic splendor of masculinity/femininity, the authority of God and the godliness of all real authority.
Personalizing and Emotionalizing of politics is the hallmark of most liberal discourse. The attack goes right to the person: you are racist, you are homophobic. This characterizes, not women as such, but a overly-femininzed, de-masculinized mind that gets emotional, personal, and hysterical about political and social issues. The masculine mind is structured such that it separates arenas of life: I can fight you on the basketball court or in an argument and then laugh over a beer. The feminine mind integrates and synthesizes life. Supremely with Trump but even in regard to reasonably decent conservatives (Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, George W. Bush) the liberal shows a deep, personal and unmanly resentment.
Feminism I am myself the most passionate champion of feminism if by that is meant admiration for the distinguishing strength, resiliency, sensitivity, generosity, intuitive wisdom, compassion, holiness and exquisite loveliness (inner and outer) of women. But "Feminism USA Post-1960s" is something different: largely the urge to imitate masculinity at its worst. But more deeply it is the honestly, truthfully, validly hysterical cry of woman violated. The desecration of women is the most despicable of all mankind's sins; it is Satan's solitary delight. Abortion itself is the quintessential scream of woman violated, abandoned, vulnerable and desperate. It is a five-fold desecration: the profane sexual invasion itself (if extramarital, even if consensual); refusal to protect and provide for mother and child; the violence against her own womanly flesh; the destruction of her little one; the deception, that this act is right or good or necessary, that elicits her collaboration; the inner wound that remains; and the ideology that denies her pain and blocks grief, regret, conversion and healing. If Satan is delighted by misogyny, he is thrilled by abortion which is misogyny's ultimate consumation.
Black poverty, deprivation and suffering is rooted primarily in the lack of fatherhood. About 75% of black children are abandoned by their fathers. That doesn't count the aborted...and the abortions may exceed births of blacks. If you are conceived black, you will probably be aborted; and if born you have 25% chance of having a father. If black women, children and particularly young men are enraged and hysterical, who can blame them. But scapegoating the cops ("father figures") and pervasive white racism is not helpful. The broken black family and father have historical roots in slavery. But the black family was about three times stronger in 1970 than in 2020 measured by out-of-wedlock births. The deterioration is not due to systematic white racism. It is due to: cultural liberalism which has had an inordinately destructive effect on lower income folks, white and black; the "racist narrative" that tells the young black that he is victim and implicitly that he is impotent; and the welfare culture of of dependency upon government handouts. The disparagement of police, the quintessential masculine image in society, further alienates young blacks from a positive internalizing of virility, honor, and gentle strength.
The stated belief of the Black Lives Matter website is: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other a extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable." No mention of fathers here...None! The father is entirely marginalized. The hostility to traditional marriage is blatant. Just prior to this mention is made of the rejection of patriarchy. The contempt for marriage and fatherhood could hardly be more shameless and blatant. While black children need, above all good fathers, BLM intends to systematically organize society without men or fathers.
What are the worst, very worst, very-very-very worst things you can tell a young man?
- You are a victim, powerless and vulnerable and impotent.
- You need the state, specifically the Democrats, to provide for you: reparations, welfare, full medical coverage and free education.
- Authority (fatherly) figures like cops are evil and out to destroy you.
- You can have sex and not worry about the children; if there is a pregnancy, abortion is easy, convenient, inexpensive and entirely wholesome. If the mother refuses and gives birth, you can leave her and hook up with other women as long or short as you want and then leave them.
Do you notice? These diabolic lies are the core beliefs of cultural liberalism: black men (and gays, women) as victims and impotent; salvation from a liberal state; evil of cops and really all authorities (we are just buddies; no authority needed, especially not that of God); sexual license.
Homosexuality is wounded masculinity. The craving for masculine love...of father, of male friends...becomes eroticized and can become compulsive. The interior wound seeks relief in sexual acts that themselves aggravate the suffering: like the tormented teen that cuts herself or purges. The acts make things worse. The "gay as victim" narrative, similar to that of the "black victim, " expresses and intensifies the feeling of impotence and vulnerability. It further diminishes his already weak sense of masculine agency, confidence and value. "Gay pride" resembles the rage of Black Lives Matter: it is a hysterical, anxious rage; it is a mimicry of genuine masculine strength; it is the sanctification of acts that are inherently evil and self-destructive. To say what I am saying is to be shamed as homophobic. I am confident that my love for the homosexual is more true and pure than the "gay friendly" approach that endorses acts that futile, sterile and harm-inflicting. Homosexual men deserve chaste, non-sexual, intimate relationships...paternal and fraternal...with other men; they deserve support in their weakness and encouragement in their strength, virility and paternity...as do we all.
Right wing hysteria. More pervasive on the left, it is becoming more evident on the right. For example, a emergent narrative is that the the global virus lock-down was a conspiracy of the left to increase its control. This idea, like the black anxiety and homosexual shame, is not without basis in reality. Cultural liberalism of the last half century (in contrast to the entirely noble political liberalism of my father and uncles 1945-65) is totalitarian: it closes our Churches but allows violent demonstrations; it compels moral conservatives to pay for abortions and contraception; it requires that we bake wedding cakes for what we think is not a wedding but a mortal sin; it closes our adoption agencies because we refuse to place a little girl with two gay men. This issue, like racism and the dignity of the homosexual, are realities deserving serious consideration and discussion. But there is an emotional, indignant, unbalanced, paranoid tone. It is evident, for example, in Fox News anchors like Hannity, Tucker and Ingraham. Others, by contrast, hold conservative positions but maintain a professional sobriety and objectivity: Bret Baier, Chris Wallace, Shannon Brean, and Martha MacCallum (at her best.) I was saddened by the most recent letters of Archbishop Vigano, one to President Trump and another on the covid lockdown. He expressed a hysterial, paranoid and polarizing version of the culture war and the covid crisis. His underlying concerns are reasoned; but his tone extreme, emotional and irrational. One of my favorite intellectuals, R. Reno of First Things, tweeted in a hysterical, unhinged manner about the "cowardly culture of masks." He apologized. I hope that he was drunk and that the offensive tweet did not reflect his sober thinking. The "conservative mind" at its best is virile in its sobriety, balance, clarity of thought, open-mindedness, quiet confidence, passion free of emotionalism. Hysteria I expect from liberals, not from conservatives.
Trump is a symptom of and aggravation of a hysteria of the right, anxiety and rage of the white underclass involving: unemployment, poverty, downward mobility due to loss of industrial jobs, and xenophobic fear of foreigners. Even more it is resentment, justifiable, at the privileged, liberal elites in their contempt for low-income, rural "rednecks." But even more, it is a mirror of the pathology of the black underclass: broken marriages, fatherless children, sexual license, dissolved faith and community organizations. The irrationality of the right...widespread support for Trump in his vile, incompetent, vain agenda of fear and anger...is the same hysterical contagion as that of the "Trump Derangement Syndrome." This condition really is serious; I take it to be clinical. Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a high state of obsession, agitation, hysteria, and distorted thinking. It destroys friendship and families and renders otherwise intelligent, restrained and decent people incapable of sober reflection and respectful discussion. So Trump, in his vanity pursuit, has succeeded on a cosmic level in garnering attention, polarizing the nation and indeed the globe, and inciting mimetic hysteria and rage on both ends of the political spectrum. As a powerful, overwhelming male figure he is the Anti-Father: vain and selfish rather than generous and sacrificial; compulsively lying rather than truthful; shamelessly lustful rather than chaste and faithful; polarizing rather than uniting. That Vigano would not merely endorse him, but sanctify him as "leader of the children of light" is breathtaking: surely a sign of dementia.
Covid Lockdown. Living in Jersey City, right next to NYC, I agree that the severe lockdown was prudent and reasoned given the uncertainty of the virus, the catastrophe in Italy, and the probability that our medical system would be overrun. Fauci and Birz were steady, sober and reassuring in tone even as they probably overestimated the danger in a reasoned excess of caution. In this they were a remedy to the ridiculous, self-centered denial and wishful thinking of our President. The pervasive anxiety was grounded and reasonable; but a hysterical dimension did emerge. I was personally smothered by the solicitude of my women...I deferred as best I could, because I knew it was their tender love and care for me and also because they were correct that I am stubborn, dismissive and minimizing of dangers. As noted, a hysteria on the right has emerged in the narrative expressed clearly by Vigano of a worldwide plot of the Left to take control. Personally, I experienced hysteria most painfully in the timidity and failure of our bishops to defend our right to the sacraments and worship.
The Church. The loss of fatherhood has attacked the Church in a far more sophisticated, profound, demonic manner. Obviously: the priest sex scandal. Abuse by priest is similar to but worse than that by police: both hold sacred authority and awesome power and abuse of such is a sacrilege, a sin warranting the lowest depths of Dante's or anyone's hell. The cover-up by bishops was worse than the "blue code" that shields violent cops. Sadly, the papacy of Francis has deepened the crisis. He has utterly failed to clean up the corrupt finances of the Vatican. His performance on sex abuse is weak at best: the McCarrick report is still not available after two years; the allegations of Vigano remain unanswered. He is himself emotional and lacking in sober, sound theological thinking. In his partisan zeal about immigrants, capital punishment and global warming, he has muted John Paul and Benedict's stirring call for masculine chastity and fidelity by destroying the John Paul Institute in Rome and empowering cultural liberals in the Vatican to spread their toxins. I am not alone in feeling "fatherless" as a Catholic, for the first time in 73 years.
Signs of Hope
- We are given exemplars to contemplate and emulate. A new 1,000 page biography of Joseph Ratzinger by Seward will give us an consideration of this epitome of patience, long-suffering, interior serenity, erudition, sobriety, equanimity, silence, wisdom, restrain and holy humility. Just thinking about him as I type is making me a better person. I was also pleasantly surprised to read a review of a documentary on Clarence Thomas. I never resolved the Anita Hill thing, but I have considered him an intellectual light-weight for the Supreme Court. But the anecdotes about his life convinced me that he is a man of sterling character who has been brutally persecuted, indeed "lynched", and has endured it with exquisite dignity. Thanks be to God for Joseph Ratzinger and Clarence Thomas (his character, not necessarily his rulings.)
- My son-in-law, troubled like myself by social developments, told me he needed to get off social media. A few days later he felt better. Good idea: detach as much as possible from the social insanity.
- My lawyer son has not been drinking during this time: he knows he can get argumentative and aggressive when under the influence. Good idea: protect your sobriety, serenity, and social harmony.
- That same son left me with an exhortation: "Dad: manly silence and restrain!" Wow! This is the son mentoring the father!
- My theologian son laughed that I am more like Socrates than like Jesus in my ferocity about Truth. He echoed his mentor Balthasar that today Truth and Goodness will not win hearts; it is Beauty that will do that. That message was confirmed by my young parish priest who echoed Bishop Baron, another protege of Balthasar: it is only Beauty that will win hearts and minds and souls. I find myself murmuring a prayer I never had before:
"Lord, make me beautiful with your beauty; that others may be attracted to the Beauty in me, that is You."
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