Random thoughts on a Thursday

• I've just been reading two essays by Iantto Watt, who posts on the William M Briggs site. Both are horrifying, particularly the janissary one because we can see that happening in every public school in America. 
  
  
  
  
• Who are the American civilians still in Afghanistan and why did they stay after May? How many of them are really Americans? I live in Northern Virginia where most middle to upper class people are either connected to the government in some form or fashion or are contractors. I know that contractor money is really sweet. Do a good job for one to five years and your bank account will be nice and plump when you get back home.  I get the financial incentive, but come on! What were these people thinking was going to happen when the American military left? 
  
  
  
  
• Water seeks its own level. Australia started out as a penal colony and despite its jolly image it has returned to it's beginnings.
  
  
  
  
• Although this particular story has a strong whiff of lie, (Remember the Belgian women! Remember the Kuwaiti preemies!) it's pretty obvious that the education money that American tax payers lost to Afghanistan didn't take. In 2021, people there still believe that they could ride on the outside of a plane like an overloaded truck. 
  
  
  
  

• Every moral panic or fad that grips America has its day and burns out. Usually these panics have victims whose lives are ruined or ended and the media runs off like to the next man-made crisis. To those who survive the covid era, please don't forget it. Please remember how your own family members cut ties with you over your vaccination status. Please remember that your neighbors lost their jobs. Please remember the dancing nurses and the doctors who said your unvaccinated uncle deserved to die. Please, years from now when it's all swept under the rug, those who survived  remember those who did not.
  
  
  
  

• May the souls of the Marines killed today in Kabul rest in peace and when Joe Biden goes to Mass this Sunday may the priest mention them in the prayers of the Faithful. 
  
  
  

Pray for Cardinal Burke.

 Cardinal Burke is a fat old man who travels a lot. This is not an insult, just a plain statement of the obvious. Doctors have a joke that pneumonia is the old man's "friend." It means that pneumonia and other respiratory issues tend to follow the elderly. It's not surprise that he is ill but I hope that the reports that he is on a ventilator are not true. I can tell you that if you see a report that he's on the vent and talking then the reporter is either lying or knows nothing about life support. Nobody on a vent is talking. You are heavily sedated. A person on life support is obviously, seriously ill and weak and getting them strong enough to be weaned off the vent is very hard. 

My uncle, Sonny Boy got pneumonia and a collapsed lung and needed the vent. He never was able to fully get off it. 

Now since we are in the age of the great pandemic,  pneumonia and flu seem to have vanished. Possibly untrained medical staff  overdid it with the vents last year and quite likely killed a lot of people. Presumably due to trial and error they have recovered their knowledge of how to use the machine. God willing poor Burke will come out of this alright but IF he has pneumonia and/or Covid and IF he is on life support Cardinal Burke's situation is very poor. I hope that his family or whoever has power of attorney for him is strong and sharp witted. 

Folie a deux

 I've said before that something is seriously off with Church Militant. It's like watching a  documentary on Folie a deux syndrome. Pardon my language, or not, but everything that comes from these people sounds like it was written by a rat who partied too hard at the outhouse and has gone insane. 

Randy Engel has been sounding the alarm for years about CM and there have been multiple incidents and  commentaries by big time bloggers about CM which I won't discuss here but it became clear to me that CM is not blessed with soundness on many matters.  I try to avoid anything out of CM because watching a folie a deux is disturbing. Please don't tell me that CM has done good work in the past. Right NOW it reminds me of the time I was a little girl playing in my grandmother's yard one long ago Summer.  I turned over a large rock in the soft red soil and exposed hundreds of gray, squirming bugs. I was repulsed and fled inside to never try that experiment again. If it is true that CM is an Opus Dei side project then the Escrivites need to reign it in because it has become embarrassing.

Look to the saints for your guidance in spiritual matters, not some media production of dubious provenance.