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WOKE RAMADAN
From Rod Dreher's Diary
June 03, 2024
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PREFACE:

 Rod is spot on and I share his sentiments about this whole month of militant and evangelical Alphabet-soupism.   WOKE is a religion, the viel of totalitarism, and they mean to destoy the past and attack they very foundation that gave them freedom.  I want to beleive for manh with same sex attaraction it used to be about being free to love who you wanted and not fear violence an rejection, but after the Supreme Court permitted Same-Sex Unions, the gays got pushed aside and the Transwakos now run the bus.  The one people to end this madness are those individuals who want to be free to celebrate, but the Transwakos and militant gays have silence and intimidated them.   My 2 cents, Padre

Woke Ramadan

It’s Pride Month now, or as some of us call it, Woke Ramadan. You all know that I am no observer of this disgusting holiday. But this year, I am even more disgruntled than usual. I’ve had more than enough of it. Look:

  

Every other day or so in this space, I highlight one or more examples of the LGBT movement conquering more space in public and private life. It’s like the religion of white liberals, and corporate America. I’m old enough to remember when we were told by Andrew Sullivan and others that legalizing gay marriage would introduce bourgeois values into the gay community. Didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite happened, and the broader culture has allowed itself to become as obsessed with sex and sexuality as many LGBT people are.

If you had told normies twenty years ago where all this was headed, they wouldn’t have believed you. I know this for a fact, because I did, and was considered to be a fanatic and a bigot. I’m to the point now where I don’t expect society to say, “Enough.” But there does seem to have been a change of some sort. Look:

  

It’s the never-ending propaganda that’s doing it. I think most people by now don’t give a damn if gay and lesbian people pair up and get on with their lives. In Budapest, I see gay people walking almost every day, hand in hand, on the streets. Nobody’s going to mess with them. That’s what Sullivan et alia promised. If it had stopped there, things would be stable. But of course it didn’t. The trans thing exploded, and the same logic of individual autonomy, and sexual autonomy, kicked in. It’s insane, but people, especially educated people (always the most vulnerable to this kind of crap), accepted it as revealed truth. Now we are a society where the sexual mutilation of children is approved and encouraged by the highest authorities in the land, including the President of the United States.

This is seriously corrupt. And I see every day on social media hard evidence of the colonization of the minds of very small children by this garbage, at the hands of their teachers. We are assured by the Professional Calmers that it’s not happening, and if it is happening, it’s good that it’s happening. At this point I’m so cynical that I doubt the American people have it in them to say no. But maybe I’m wrong.

Look:

  

Who’s that, the Clyde Tolson Rangers? Ten years from now, on current trends, the national security state will have been weaponized to track down orthodox Christians and other hate-crimers who refuse to conform. If you can’t read the signs here, I don’t know what to tell you.

Maybe the Trump verdict will wake some folks up, and make them realize how state and institutional capture by the Left stands to affect anyone and everyone who dissents from what Mary Harrington calls “the Omnicause.”

In Seattle, the city is undertaking a manhunt to capture the person who defaced a Pride crosswalk. In this video, a city leader breaks down into tears over it. If they catch the guy, they’re going to charge him with a felony. A felony! And they say blasphemy laws are a thing of the past. Note well that Trump’s behavior by paying off Stormy Daniels, if it was illegal at all, was a misdemeanor — until DA Alvin Bragg used an arcane legal theory to bump it up to a felony, in this transparently unfair trial.

On that subject, read former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy’s autopsy of that political show trial. Excerpt:

If you think this was a one-off, you’ve not only missed the last 15 years of what passes for law enforcement under both the progressive-prosecutor project in America’s big blue cities and — for most of that time — Democratic Party control of the Justice Department. You’ve missed over a century of American legal devolution, during which the law was reimagined into an extortionate weapon of social “progress,” due process devolved into punitive process, and bad precedents were inevitably exploited into monstrous precedents.

What happened in Manhattan was monstrous. The fallout is the antithesis of a constitutional republic that presumes innocence, imposes the burden of proof on the state, venerates its due-process rules, and guarantees equal protection of law. The antithesis is now the norm. Regardless of what happens to Donald Trump, all of us will live to regret it.

Donald Trump is very far from an anti-gay figure. But I wonder if the serious erosion of confidence in American public institutions among his supporters, brought about by this sham trial, will transfer into a greater willingness to reject other aspects of elite rule — such as the High Holy Month Of Pride.

I’ll say it again: if you come to Budapest, what you will see, in part, is what the world looked like when gays and lesbians were a normal part of public life — Budapest is a liberal city — but did not utterly dominate it with their narcissism. Get on the train, travel 2 1/2 hours to Vienna, and you’ll see what a conquered city looks like.

(By the way, today is the feast day in the Catholic Church of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions. They were martyred in the 1880s in Uganda, for refusing the sexual advances of the lustful King of Uganda, and refusing his commands to abandon their Christian faith. The king martyred a large number of Catholics and Anglicans both. If ever there was a saint for our times, it is St. Charles Lwanga.)

It’s just the fakery of the whole progressive project, you know? This captures it well:

  

And the lies, like this one about the German cop killed the other day by the stabby Afghan “refugee”:

  

Sorry, I’m rambling. It’s that kind of morning. I have a big and very unpleasant day ahead of me, and am trying to avoid getting started.

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Local's Lounge - All are welcome

Padre - Tom Miller invited you to a Microsoft Teams Meeting series:

The Local's Lounge with the ADD Irregulars - Home of Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.

Coffee Talk - 6:00 AM Central - Daily
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Other Chats as scheduled by the community.

Please look for notifications for Speakeasies, Tea Times, Schmoozes & Afterhours for gatherings of the gang. New comers welcome, become an Irregular today!!

Wednesday, January 1, 2025
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Meeting link: https://teams.live.com/meet/9392334144614?p=4Lr3AcWswEWjbzgHsZ

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Practice Gratitude - A reprint and expanded post
Gratitude changes everything

Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Wednesday Friends & Refugees, Early Birds and Later Dayers, Conversants and Lurkers, Phamily & Misfits, ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, and Curmudgeons!  Today's reflection is one of my favorite ones from the past.  David Whyte's wonderful book Consolations - The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.  It is a treasure trove of reflection on the gift of language and the power of words.  His reflection on gratitude is outstanding.

GRATITUDE is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event; it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege, that we are miraculously part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the colour blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full, miraculous essentiality of the colour blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully the beauty of a daughter’s face is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit inner lives beneath surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participant and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort; this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Being unappreciative might mean we are simply not paying attention.

Paying attention- LOVE IT. One of my most frequent reminders in my preaching. We get more out of life by paying attention and not simply existing. a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life. The gifted nature of life- hold on to that thought, the gifted nature of life makes all the difference in what we think about our story.

that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege - EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS PRIVILEGED - some more than others, but every single one of us. A personal philosophy built on the dialectic of privilege & victimology will lead to legions of unhappy and resentful souls, and not because they lack privilege, but because they lack the appreciation of the gift of living. To focus on what you lack will never help you discover what you possess and what is unique about you. To be a someone amongst all other someones - welcome to LIFE, Digital Neighbor. 😁 The people I love the most and care for the least are still someone amongst someones. It is not always easy to remember that when thinking ill of those you care for the least.

We sit at the table as part of every other person’s world while making our own world without will or effort; this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege. Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets all other presences. Amen.

Thank you all for allowing me to sit and share at your table.  I have been so blessed by the people God or fate has placed on my life path and I have been delighted that these digital paths have opened up my horizon so wonderfully.  I greatly appreciate the personal sharing, the cultural commentary, the political ranting and wrangling, and above all the shared laughter and memes.

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Gratitude for freedom
Gratitude changes everything

Easter Monday – Gratitude for Freedom

Good morning, Digital Neighbors!  Happy Monday and Blessed Easter Friends to all you good souls on Locals and Substack.   Yesterday ended up being a catch-up day after Mass and brunch with my sister’s family. It was a great day to celebrate the joy of the Risen Lord.   I caught up on some sleep and some of the issues I missed while away from the time drain that was my typical internet habit.  I am sure I will return to some active consumption, hopefully with a more intentional attitude than I had before my Lenten media abstinence.

I caught up on some of the Douglas Murray – Dave Smith JRE and much of the debate that followed on it.  I have read a couple of Douglas Murray books, and I watched many hours of his interviews and appreciate his common sense and insightful commentary.   The internet, as divisive and drama driven as it I always is, seems to have fallen into the Dave Smith is dunce and Douglas is right or Murray is an elitist and credentialist who doesn’t believe in free speech.

I will still have to take some time before I have a more comprehensive understanding of this, but I tend to tilt towards free speech absolutism in the arena of public discourse and debate.  I am a fan of self-determined groups deciding among themselves the degree of free speech that they want to share within their group.  After all it is a voluntary group, and one is free to leave the group if you disagree.  If you don’t have freedom of association then you have even bigger problems than lack of freedom of speech. *cough* *cough* All the proponents of groupthink and herd feel demand conformity of thought or silence of opinion.

I have added this clip from the Darkhorse Podcast which has always remained one of my favorites for honest and critical thought.

I think Brett and Heather are very fair minded in this clip.  Can one admit they are ever wrong, mistaken or ignorant on a topic?   Brett and Heather fall into the circle of based conversationalists like Gad Saad, Scott Adams, and our gracious hosts at RR and Phetasy. Each has their own style but are all directionally pointed towards freedom rather than compulsion.  There are many others, but Scott is an adamant critic of calling out the arrogance of the experts. Some experts are reliable because they keep asking questions and offering critical thought. They are not only knowledgeable about their subject, but they are also capable of self-criticism and humble admission of error. It makes one more credible, not damaged goods. If someone has repeated and consistent errors most of us will stop listening to them. Some experts are not reliable because their commitment is to their preconceived and pre-committed ideas.  Such idealogues can be charismatic and convincing, but in the end, they champion a cause and not the honest discussion of the topic. It happens in every field. It used to just be religious institutions that compelled thought and behavior for centuries, now it can be any group with real or perceived authority and power. Just ask the Enemedia and Academia.

Arriving at approximate truths in public discourse takes time, is messy and requires some humility to admit when you went down the wrong path and committed too much energy to being in error.  I don’t know that most of humanity can embrace such raw honesty and humility. Imagine spending years on a particular cause to find out you are wrong? It is too easy to think that one has wasted their time and effort, but if you are honestly seeking is it ever a waste of time?  I don’t think so.   5 years down the road and I am happy that I asked questions during Covid. It opened the door to more questions and patience.  

·       I appreciate experts, but I don’t take their opinions as Gospel.

·       I appreciate questions asked in a critical manner.

·       No one and no idea are above question or criticism.

·       Yes, even dumbasses can ask critical questions of experts and should not be dismissed because they are a dumbass.  One can acknowledge their history of error, incompetency or ignorance, but if they have an honest question, its dismissal reveals the dishonesty of the expert.

·       Experts can be blind to their bias just like any of us. Experts can lie just like any of us.  Experts can be joyfully mistaken.

·       Arriving at the shores of understanding and approximate truth/testable reality takes time.  I am suspicious of anyone demanding immediate compulsion of thought and subsequent behavior.

Sorry, more than I wanted to write on a Monday morning.  Thank you if you took the time to real. Comment always welcome.  

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Easter Sunday - Morning Light
Gratitude changes everything

Easter Sunday

Good morning, Digital Neighbors!  Happy Sunday and blessed Easter Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Phamily and Misfits, ADD Irregulars and WSN Curators & Contributors!    I have been mostly off-line during Lent and I had gotten out of the habit of daily posting on the Report and on Phetasy prior to Lent. I still lurked about but was not very engaged in posting or even liking posts.  Most of my focus had been on Padre’s and sharing my thoughts and various posts there.  Over these next 49 days between this Sunday and Pentecost I hope to share some thoughts and musings on gratitude and thanksgiving.  We will see where the Spirit leads me in my morning rambles but know that I come back to one of my on-line homes at the Report and at Phetasy and I am thankful for the hospitality and leadership of Dave Rubin & Bridget Phetasy. 

During 2020 and all of its madness the communities of the Rubin Report and Phetasy became places of connection, community and healthy conversation (sometimes laced with a bit of ranting and fist shaking at the absurdities of the Covid Czars and flunkies) apart from the constant compelling and compliant droning of the Enemedia.  Demanding conformity in thought & behavior while preaching “diversity” seems about as hypocritical as one can get. The Cabal is all about hypocrisy and completely blind to it.

I think back over these five years and I am thankful for all the fine souls I met through Locals and its various communities.  Some of these people I have had the chance of talking to in real life and meeting. It has been a profound blessing to me. Locals became the home of free speech and common sense.  Those two issues go along way towards good conversations and even meaningful disagreement or variances of opinion.  The maturity level attracted to Locals is a real blessing. I am not talking about the humor and the memes, but rather about no one losing their SH over disagreements or other emotional implosions that I have seen in other communities in the past. I know these communities are not perfect, but Locals was a vast upgrade from FB and other social sites.  If there were people I didn’t care to read I either ignored them or simply blocked them and it was without the drama that became so commonplace on other platforms prior to Locals.

Living in the heart of gratitude means taking nothing for granted. I do my best to remember and practice the giftedness of each day and not forget the blessing and joys that come from that attitude.  I am far from succeeding but I do see progress when I let go of my expectations and begin trusting and accepting more of life as it unfolds.  It is not easy to work on serenity, I am tempted to spend too much time trying to control things I can’t and too little effort ignoring things I can change.  But no matter what, I am blessed and thankful for another opportunity to take a swing at living and loving.  Have a great Sunday Digital Neighbors!  Know of my prayers, appreciation and love even if I don’t visit as much as I used to and spend too much time tending my home community @ Padre’s.

 

MORNING LIGHT

Each day the soul decides whether or not

to enter yet one more time into this carousel,

blinks open the body’s eyes to nearly morning light,

lifts the head in glory to God’s vast sky,

climbs the legs out of bed to keep moving

on this journey to understanding the mystery

and beauty of being alive.   – Barbara Schmitz

 

Gratitude Prayers: Prayers, Poems, and Prose for Everyday Thankfulness (p. 33). Andrews McMeel Publishing. Kindle Edition.

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