Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. The left strike again

In Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s recent letter to Donald Trump, he writes, “just as there is a deep state, there is also a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.” Naturally, the deep church resented the letter. But it particularly didn’t like that Trump tweeted about it, saying: “So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it!”

An imagined deep church? How dare Viganò notice that an entrenched bureaucracy of clerics opposed to Catholic teaching exists in the Church.

Members of the deep church quickly moved into action, pooh-poohing the significance of Viganò and seeking to discredit him. The vanguard of the deep church, the Jesuits, led the charge. They used their magazine, America, to remind people that the former papal nuncio to the U.S. — brace yourselves — adheres to Catholic teaching on marriage and other matters. This, in their estimation, makes him “outside the mainstream” of “global Catholicism.”

Michael O’Laughlin of "America" writes,

The archbishop’s tenure in the United States was largely uncontroversial, but a new book by the Vatican reporter Christopher Lamb about Pope Francis, The Outsider, claims that during his time in Washington, Archbishop Viganò ‘aligned himself with culture warriors and anti-Francis supporters.’

Oh my. He is a dreaded “culture warrior,” which means that, unlike the deep church, he actually takes Church teaching seriously and opposes the West’s culture of death. America also finds fault with him for daring to support a marriage clerk opposed to gay nuptials:

Archbishop Viganò made global headlines in September 2015 when he orchestrated a meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed for refusing to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples. News of the meeting came at the end of the pope’s visit to the United States and created a storm in both the church and secular media, given the pope’s relatively positive views of outreach to L.G.B.T. Catholics. The Vatican later revealed that Pope Francis had been blindsided by the encounter, saying the pope was unaware of Ms. Davis’s background. In 2018, Archbishop Viganò disputed the assertion that he had deceived the pope, though Vatican spokesmen pushed back against that claim.

A 2018 story in The New York Times quotes Juan Carlos-Cruz, a clerical sexual abuse survivor who has become friendly with Pope Francis, as saying the pope told him that he “fired” Archbishop Viganò because of his role in arranging the meeting.

Yep, that sounds like Pope Francis. Remember, papal nuncios, never “blindside” him by introducing a Christian to him. In another America article, titled Archbishop Viganò is aligning with Trump to stay in the spotlight. Pay him no attention,” James Keane writes, “Mr. Trump was responding to yet another public letter from a marginal figure, one who has made a growth industry over the last two years of writing increasingly paranoid and disturbing missives against Pope Francis, the Second Vatican Council and many other enemies real and illusory, including most recently against an imagined ‘deep church’ that he told Mr. Trump parallels the purported ‘deep state’ that the president has blamed for so many of his troubles.” An imagined deep church? How dare Viganò notice that an entrenched bureaucracy of clerics opposed to Catholic teaching exists in the Church. Where could he have ever gotten that idea? America finds it very troubling that Viganò would praise a pro-life president who, unlike the Obama-Biden administration, isn’t warring on Catholics. Keane calls that “pandering”:

Archbishop Viganò, marginalized by his own rhetoric, wants to stay in the public spotlight by whatever method possible. In this case, it is by yoking his cause to that of President Trump. But this tells us more about Archbishop Viganò than it does about the Catholic Church or President Trump or anything else, and thus answers only unimportant questions. Our response at this point should be the one that so baffled us when Pope Francis first adopted it in August of 2018: Pay this man no attention.

And yet the deep church can’t stop talking about him. For such a “marginalized” man, he has struck an extraordinary number of nerves. The deep church is trying to mau-mau him into silence precisely because he is an effective voice against its liberal revolution. Like the deep state, which can’t abide critics like Trump, the deep church fears criticism from believing Catholics. Its project to take Catholicism out of Catholicism has crippled the Church, to which Viganò is drawing much needed attention. Let’s hope his “irrelevance” continues.

SOURCE 






Outrage Mob: With Tensions Running High, Cancel Culture Is Spinning Dangerously Out of Control

For more a more nuanced and substantive deep dive into the problem of outrage mobs and "cancel culture," I'll self-servingly direct you to the book I co-authored on this exact subject in 2015, which I'm afraid is holding up depressingly well. I've also written a number of posts lately about the aggressive purging of "wrong thinking" in American newsrooms, resulting in the resignations and reassignments of several senior editors at major publications. But the current spasm of preening intolerance and vengeance is hardly limited to the news media; it's also spreading like a destructive, intimidating brushfire in the entertainment world, academia, sports, and other corners of American life. It's becoming difficult to track and document all of the examples, but here is the beginning of a partial list:

(1) A sports broadcaster was fired from his radio show, then resigned from his play-by-play job, after stating that "all lives matter...every single one!" As I've written previously, "all lives matter" as a rejoinder to "black lives matter" misses the point of the latter sentiment, and people who disagree would be well advised to listen to why many black people feel that way. But asserting the value of all human lives should not be a professionally sanctionable event, let alone a fireable one.

(2) At UCLA, a lecturer has been put on leave after students demanded his firing for declining to grant special dispensation for black students on an exam, a request reportedly made by a non-black student. According to the Washington Examiner, instructor Gordon Klein emailed this reply to the student:

"Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we've been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?...Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the 'color of their skin." Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK's admonition?"

He's now out. His is not the most sensitive response one could imagine, but did it merit being put on leave? Klein isn't the only member of the UCLA faculty whose position is at risk after quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecturer W. Ajax Peris, who is white, read from MLK's iconic "letter from Birmingham jail," and showed portions of an explicit documentary about lynching, each of which contained the N-word. Peris continued his lesson on the history of anti-black racism despite objections from some students, leading to an investigation by the university, prompted by students' complaints. Teaching about such an ugly topic surely requires sensitivity and care, but the ugliness of the subject matter itself cannot be avoided in this context. It's arguably the point.

(3) The long-running reality television series "COPS" has been canceled, with other police-centric programming potentially in peril. The epic film "Gone With the Wind," an important classic that portrays a bygone era, has been unceremoniously de-platformed by HBO, pending "context." Both actions appear to have been at least partially spurred by woke op/eds demanding such outcomes. Satire and reality are becoming indistinguishable:

(4) In the world of theater, some community members in Los Angeles have circulated a document keeping track of which entities are "speaking out" in a manner deemed proper or sufficient. The ruling mob in this case is judging both the speed with which statements and approved actions are undertaken and the correctness of the language used. Insufficient obedience is not tolerated:

Andrew Alexander, the CEO and co-owner of famed The Second City improv theater, said he is stepping down after a former performer leveled accusations of racism against the comedy institution. In a lengthy letter posted on the company’s website, Alexander said he “failed to create an anti-racist environment wherein artists of color might thrive. I am so deeply and inexpressibly sorry.” ... Alexander’s announcement Friday followed online criticism from Second City alumnus Dewayne Perkins, an actor, comedian and writer (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”). Perkins said the company had refused to hold a benefit show for Black Lives Matter unless half of the proceeds also went to the Chicago Police Department, and it also created obstacles for performers of color.

Alexander was driven out of his comedy company because an alumnus of the program said he was upset that Second City didn't conduct a specific fundraiser that met with his approval, in addition to unspecified complaints about "obstacles" for performers of color. Action is being taken to mollify the purgers: Alexander "vowed Friday that he will be replaced by a person of color...a Second City statement Friday laid out steps the company planned to take regarding the hiring and training of artists of color, along with diversifying its theater audiences and making donations to fight oppression and support black-owned businesses and schools." The aggrieved comedian celebrated this scalp collection on social media.

(5) The professional soccer franchise in Los Angeles has parted ways with a player over problematic posts by...the man's wife:

The LA Galaxy said it has released Serbian soccer star Aleksander Katai on Friday after his wife, Tea Katai, shared a series of "racist and violent" social media posts in response to the George Floyd protests occurring across the country. The Major League Soccer club met with Katai on Thursday after it was made aware of two of his wife's Instagram posts that she shared the day before. After fans protested outside the LA Galaxy stadium, the club announced in a one-sentence statement on Friday that it would drop Katai from its roster. The club said the two sides had "mutually agreed" to part ways.

The woman's Instagram posts were undoubtedly offensive. They were deleted after being condemned by the team and by the player himself, her husband. But he's out anyway. As others have noted, it seems as though wokeness now requires high profile men to...keep their women in line, and censor them, if necessary? This is progress?

The list -- which is being updated and aggregated here -- goes on and on. It includes an academic under fire for not emoting or communicating 'correctly' about racial issues and social unrest, a Yale student who could face discipline or expulsion for a highly offensive social media post made when she was 15, a fitness company getting canceled despite its CEO's resignation, editors of lifestyle and entertainment publications facing purges for various sins, and a food writer getting dragged for an old Halloween costume considered by some to be offensive. Question: If prominent 'progressive' politicians who've worn blackface on multiple occasions were not hounded from office, what's the standard for people with less power?

Scrolling through the expanding roster of supposed transgressions above and elsewhere, you may find certain examples more distasteful or problematic than others. What bothers me more than anything is watching the rapid spread of this rapacious, life-ruining bloodsport in which social infractions are ravenously sought out, in order for endless self-righteous applications "justice"  to ensue -- often performed with satisfaction, bordering on glee. For some of its practitioners, this may be a power trip. For others, it may be rooted in an overzealous desire to prove one's commitment to the cause, or the manifestation of learned over-sensitivity. It may also amount to old-fashioned score-settling in certain cases. Whatever the various motivations may be, marauding mobs stampeding from one target to the next, carrying virtual torches and pitchforks, feels medieval, destructive, and frightening. Grace is not only shunted off to the side; it's wielded as evidence of complicity. How can people whose careers or lives get bulldozed by all of this pull things back together, or demonstrate true contrition or evolution? And where do innocent victims go to restore their names when the mob crucifies the wrong sinner?

Around 10 p.m., [Peter Weinberg] received an irate message on LinkedIn from someone he didn’t know. He brushed it off, thinking it was probably just spam. Then he got another. And another. The third message was particular strange, as it mentioned something about the cops coming to find him. Perplexed, he watched as the messages continued to pile up. They were all so similar: angry, threatening, accusatory. His profile views suddenly soared into the thousands. He began to panic. He decided to check Twitter.  In his mentions, disaster was rapidly unfolding. People accused him of assaulting a child. Of being a racist. They shared a selfie he’d taken in sunglasses and his bike helmet and analyzed it alongside blurry images of another man in sunglasses and a bike helmet. The other guy had been captured on video hitting children and ramming his bike into an adult after becoming enraged that they were posting fliers around the Capital Crescent Trail in support of George Floyd...

But the Park Police had made an error. “Correction, the incident occurred yesterday morning, 6/1/2020,” they wrote in a follow up tweet. As with most such clarifications, it had only a fraction of the reach: a mere 2,000 shares. It was based on that initial, false information that Weinberg had become a suspect for the internet mob...His fiancée in New York, he spent the night alone, refreshing Twitter, watching helplessly as people tried to destroy his life. And Weinberg wasn’t even the only one: Another man, a former Maryland cop, was wrongly accused, too. The tweet accusing him was retweeted and liked more than half a million times.

The grim coda: "As for the woman who shared his home address: She deleted it and posted an apology, writing that in all of her eagerness to see justice served, she was swept up in the mob that so gleefully shared misinformation, depriving someone of their own right to justice. Her correction was shared by fewer than a dozen people." This was the equivalent of a social media drive-by shooting that perforated the wrong man's life. When mob ringleaders finally got around to recognizing their mistake, their corrections barely attracted any attention at all. People are hooked on the thrill of the virtual kill and had moved on to the next target, with little regard for what how the previous objects of their fury -- "guilty" or not -- are impacted. This is not how a civilized society operates.

SOURCE 






Black Woman Has a Meltdown... Over Not Being Able to Loot Neighborhood Stores

A black woman in Chicago filmed a Facebook live video of armed citizens defending local businesses. According to the woman, people should be allowed to loot stores because they're already insured.

"They let these people come outside with they AK-47s. Ak-47s to protect they stuff from black people. They ready to kill black people, the Arabs, the fake a** Ramadan mother f**kers. They got M-16s, AK with they people's out here. Everything y'all. Look at this s**t," she said, flipping the camera to a nearby store. "They got mother f**kin' AKs out here and I'm going to get my cousin that's a police officer right now and ask him are they legally able to carry these mother f**kin' guns like this."

The woman said she planned to call her cousin who is a homicide detective because she wanted to know if it was legal for the men to stand outside the stores with firearms.

"You tell me that those mother f**kers that don't live here, they don't live here. This is not a United States citizen and he is sitting outside with a whole AK-47 ready to blow black people's brains out, but they say they from America. And this is how they protect cheap a** sh*t."

The woman went on a tirade, saying the men outside are from Morocco and aren't legal citizens.

"They ready to kill black people over this cheap a** sh*t they got from China! They ready kill somebody," she said. "Got a black man out here with these guns ready to kill us! They said don't break into they store but they on our turf and this some mother f**kin' cheap a** China building supplies fake a** mother f**kin' Boost Mobile fake a** sh*t. And this is how they protect they sh*t. They ready to kill me!"

She went on to say she knows the men didn't have an Illinois license to carry.

"This isn't a right to bear arms! These people got the black man out here ready to kill more black people if we decide to loot they store. They ready to kill us!" she exclaimed. "But b**ch we gonna come back and you gotta have that gun all mother f**kin' day because you don't even know who I am!"

To make matters even more interesting, the woman drove off and asked her Facebook Live audience where the police were.

"I'm talking to the Chicago Police because I wanna know, can Arabs that don't have no mother f**kin' citizenship, can they carry AK-47s to protect their s**t that came from China? And I'm talking to the CPD right now!"

The woman pulled up on two officers in a nearby parking lot. She alerted the pair to the incident down the street. The police made her aware that the stores in question were outside of their territory.

"She gone say it ain't they district. That's what I'm gone tell you about these b**ch a** police. They don't want none of this, but I'm gonna go back over here because I wanna look at these punk mother f**kers," she said.

According to the woman, people shouldn't be defending their business because they're already covered by insurance.

"Mother f**ker, our life ain't insured!" she screamed.

SOURCE 






White Liberals' 'I Am Spartacus' Moment

In the classic movie Spartacus, the climax of the film sees the defeated slave army of Spartacus sitting dejectedly on the ground as a Roman soldier announces that instead of crucifixion, the slaves’ lives would be spared if they identify “the body or the living person of the slave called Spartacus.”

Spartacus, played with great skill and pathos by Kirk Douglas, appears ready to stand up and give himself up when his friend, Tony Curtis, beats him to it.

Slave after slave, one after another, stands up and proclaims “I am Spartacus” in solidarity with their commander. In the end, the Romans crucify all of them.

We are seeing something similar happen today. White, guilt-ridden liberals are proclaiming their solidarity with the radical, sometimes violent black activists of Black Lives Matter.

But unlike the slaves who stood up in solidarity with Spartacus, these white liberals have no such feelings of togetherness and unbreakable affection based on bonds forged in war and fellowship. The white liberals who so openly announce their support are making sure the rest of us know that they are morally superior. They are virtue-signalling — even if they fool themselves into thinking they really, really care about blacks.

Activists aren’t looking for and don’t desire “solidarity” with white liberals. They treat them with almost as much contempt as they treat white racists. But they find them useful to achieve their ends.

Vox:

In the past five years, white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typical black voter.

This change amounts to a “Great Awokening” — comparable in some ways to the enormous religious fomentin the white North in the years before the American Civil War. It began roughly with the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, when activists took advantage of ubiquitous digital video and routine use of social media to expose a national audience in a visceral way to what otherwise might have been a routine local news story.

In effect, these white liberals believe being an ally of activists is all about them. It’s their advocacy. It’s their support. It makes them better than the rest of us. It allows them to stand on the battlements, waving the bloody shirt, and calling for the rest of us to follow them.

Black activists know this and are tired of it.

San Francisco Chronicle:

“That’s why black people get brutalized by police officers over and over again, because white people go, ‘That was so bad, I feel so bad.’ But then a couple of weeks later (they say), ‘Back to my yoga classes,’” Bell told Conan O’Brien on his TBS show last week.

“It’s really about how are you in your personal life, because if your personal life is correct, your public life usually is more correct,” Bell said.

White liberals measure their “wokeness” by the level of the grandiosity of their gestures. But the key, always, is to let people know that you are woke and support Black Lives Matter.

Of course, that means dismissing the violence, the burning, the looting, and the murders as “anger” at “systemic racism.” Sacrificing your judgment about condemning riots by calling them “protests” shows just how eager, how desperate while liberals are to be seen as tolerant.

I have no doubt most white liberals sincerely want to help. But the way to assist your black brothers and sisters is to stand up for the law. There is no justice without law. There is no peace without order. To believe otherwise is to believe in the law of the jungle.

And that doesn’t help anyone, whether you’re woke or not.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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