I wholeheartedly agree! "That a man of his low character is the best hope for THOSE NOT YET LOST TO RADICAL LEFTIST MADNESS AND DEGENERACY* is a very sorry state of affairs." I am going to post a link of Michael's column and Prodigal's comment to Democracy Now!, on X.
"The Cryptocracy does not fear Israeli zealot Trump so much as they fear a revival by his enthusiasts of a campaign that will outlive him, populism—the 20th century American movement that united Leftists, Conservatives and independents in a valiant struggle contra the Money Power."
Unfortunately, most of Trump's "populist" groupies are of the usurious "Tea Party" and have no interest in uniting with anyone other than fellow Trumpsters. Thomas Massie is a hope for the future. He was prescient in opposing Trump's COVID stimulus, which jump-started inflation. As you know, Massie is in the crosshairs of AIPAC.
"Ike Perlmutter, a billionaire former chief executive of Marvel Entertainment, has himself started a pro-Trump super PAC."
IMHO:
This is fitting, in that Trump is as profound as a comic book character. I am willing to bet one hundred dollars (only if the bet can be made legally with guaranteed payment to the winner) that a large minority of Americans, for whom a presidential election is a "beauty contest", will give Trump an electoral college victory.
Between these two characters, and with Talmudic Rabbi Cryptocrats behind the scenes, unless something changes, the legalized River Styx underworld of the Money Power will continue to shape the nation's, AND THE WORLD'S*, future. Not to be too dark, but Mavronéri (Greek: “BLACK WATER”) is a river identified with the River Styx of Greek mythology according to Hesiod's description in Theogony. Blackwater is, of course, the former name of an infamous American military mercenary "contractor" outfit.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: One Word of Truth Outweighs The World by Ralph R. Reiland:
"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie... "One word of truth outweighs the world.” Solzhenitsyn also stated very clearly what the only thing is that we can really do as individuals: "The Lie may enter the world. The Lie may even win. BUT NOT THROUGH ME!"
The only power we have as individuals is to reject the lie. The truth is more powerful than the dismissal and rejection of the majority. We know for sure that the wave of the world is going in the wrong direction. Truth bearers are seldom welcome, but they do a lot of good. Example; Jesus.
(Katya), yes, this is marvelous, as is your quote below to me. Still, I think of Peter after Jesus was arrested. I want to recommend a book by Andy McSmith, a British journalist whom I know nothing about, called "Fear and The Muse Kept Watch" -- obtainable cheaply from Daedalus Books (I know, very woke but occasional gems). This is a searching exploration of the lives of poets, composers, movie makers, other artists under the cancel culture we know as Stalin. Of course, Soviet Archives are open now as they were not before 2000. Russian American Dmitri Orlov shocked me by calling Solzhenitsyn a fraud. Me, a true believer! But McSmith's book reveals conditions and savagery that are hard for us to imagine. There is so much we can't know. And to be "lead" by the likes of "Beavis and Butt-Head", as Dugin refers to our "candidates" who will control nuclear weapons, bodes . . .I can't say it! The Russians were classically educated people . . . and what are we? "There is no better tool against [satan] than the glorious name of Christ," --Israel Shamir, another Russian.
Michael Hoffman thank you for speaking the uncompromising truth. Like jumping into icy cold water it is shocking but also totally wakes you up. I’m going to follow your advice and write in Thomas Massie.
(Katya here, thank you Roscoe, who also plans to write in Rep. Massie)
First, deep sorrow over the passing of Thomas Massie's beloved wife, Rhonda, on Thursday. Prayer for the Massies.
And second, thanks to Michael for a wonderfully honest and well balanced column about the debates in the midst of the uncivil clamor of our contemporary journalism. This includes a collection of wonderful comments.
Civility in our country is like a garden after an intense hailstorm, much shredded. But plants grow back.
Lastly, a quote from Russian literature:
From Tolstoy 's War and Peace, p.1008;
"The plight of [our 2024 America] is like the plight of a wounded animal that feels itself perishing and does not know what it is doing." Tolstoy goes on to say (a paraphrase because I can't find the p.#),
that when human society is attacked and overwhelmed by a force of evil men, other men everywhere of honesty and good will must rise up to resist it.
The novel War and Peace is about the triumph of Christ and love and life. Hope truly springs eternal.
A quote from Shahid Bolsen: "There is no Right wing or Left wing in America,; there's a right lane and a left lane on a one way road". Does Bolsen mean "on the road to Erehwon"?
Katya here again, A: on Solzhenitsyn, this matters. Dmitri Orlov is the son of Soviet dissidents who supported Solzhenitsyn and defected, only to discover that Solzhenitsyn was a liar who plagiarised the diaries of someone who despised him (cf. KunstlerCast 371, February 16, 2023 -- almost the first words).
One year ago, Michael Hoffman gave a talk in which he talked about the Psy-War function of media deceit, which is to create in us a"loss of probity" and erosion of our ability to resist. Pretty much because of the humiliation of being forced to participate in social and governmental lies.
We lose completely all sense of being made in the Imago Dei and are dehumanized.
Solzhenitsyn, who hit the West like a meteorite in 1964 was part of the propaganda. In no way am I praising the USSR, but our American minds work in the way you describe with the one way street. As Solzhenitsyn says in The First Circle in a chapter called "the Rosicrucians," "the secret police mold the minds of the public."
"Dmitri Orlov is the son of Soviet dissidents who supported Solzhenitsyn and defected, only to discover that Solzhenitsyn was a liar who plagiarised the diaries of someone who despised him...Solzhenitsyn ...was part of the propaganda."
Please expand on these serious accusations. Thank you.
Yes, as best I can. We have been followers for decades of the work of both James Howard Kunstler and Dmitri Orlov, when Orlov wrote his Club Orlov Blog --I believe that blog is no more. JHK was a good friend until the parting of the ways on Oct. 7, 2023. The podcast from February 16, 2023 on Kunstler.com is still an excellent discussion with Dmitri, where we were shocked to hear his words about Solzhenitsyn. The book that I recommended, "Fear and the Muse Kept Watch" sheds great light on Stalinist times, maybe not as the author intended, and caused me to realize that the impact of Solzhenitsyn obscured two works that might reveal greater truths about the situation in Russia (Dr. Zhivago in 1958, The Master and Margherita in 1963, hidden by Bulgakov and published long after his death). As a young scholar of Russian in the late 70's, early 80's, I was of course up to speed on Solzhenitsyn and so never questioned "the Cold War." But I see now that S's eruption in the West in 1964, along with the Hollywood film of Dr. Z, served to distract from deeper understanding, which you call dissimulation, I think. We needed ammo for the Cold War. And do you know anyone who has read Bulgakov's great novel? Lost in the dust.
The media creates the personalities that we are to worship and believe. The media is very black and white, and Solzhenitsyn 's writing complements this, and lacks in the nuances and many layers of meaning that, say, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak have. And so our minds are subsequently shrunken and disabled. We have trouble with points of view that differ from our received truth, and nothing polarized us as the Cold War did, as the current version of it does now.
Katya here one last time with an addendum dedicated to my children and grandchildren on this July 4th in a very threatened world. Also dedicated to a deep study of Michael Hoffman's work, most especially 'The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome', where we see the exposure of many double-purposed men whose service to the church lay in MISDIRECTION: Pico della Mirandola, the "sorcerer abbot" Trithemius, and Johannes Reuchlin, among many others. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn might be a figure after this pattern.
From Timothy Ware on the Russian Orthodox Church, p. 260, "In the dark days of their history -- under the Mongols, the Turks, or the Communists -- it is to the Holy Liturgy that the Orthodox people have always turned for inspiration and new hope." In the USSR, Pasternak the poet, Bulgakov the satirist, expressed in the writing of their novels the celestial beauty and light of the worship that was forbidden. They gave their lives to written works that were acts of worship. Acts of hope for redemption.
Like everyone else, I was truly taken by Solzhenitsyn, and had my family read him. I did not see how well skilled in the technique of polemics and "ad hominem argument" he was, as Fr. Seraphim Rose points out. I am startled to realize that his works do not contain inspired light, don't serve God, but may serve the purpose of misdirection. His works appealed to an increasingly police -state minded people in the U.S., which people today, I am exceedingly sorry to say, support the psychotic sadism called "defense" going on in the Middle East. Having embraced Solzhenitsyn once, how can we now be so blind to the slaughter of women and children?
There were writers under Stalin who believed in the eternal salvation of our souls. Solzhenitsyn, converting he said to Orthodoxy late in life after exile, was not one of them,
and his influence has eclipsed works that might have helped us perceive truth, to our present mortal peril.
I am not a historian, but a careful reader of our culture's classical literature. It was Dostoevsky's novel 'The Idiot' that first gave me eyes to see at age 19. At the time many of us thought that reading was a gift from God. Many of us also thought that the Cold War was in error. I am afraid we have followed false prophets and may lose our immortal souls. May God help us to correct our thinking, and cleanse our minds, and save us, tho we are so terribly undeserving.
(And when history couldn't be remembered and written down truthfully, as is happening here now, it is these Christian novelists who gave us what could be our more authentic memories and access to our souls.)
Katya, you are definitely a very deep person. I'm not sure I would discredit Solzhenitsyn based on a JHK podcast. Solzhenitsyn gave credit to Varlam Shalamov for describing conditions in the Soviet slave labor/death camps better than he did. I read one volume of Shalamov's "Kolyma Tales". From what I understand, Solzhenitsyn gave unqualified support for US involvement in the Vietnam War. If true, I believe he was wrong for that. But we can't assume he would have supported those of the depraved, sadistic Trumpster Right Wing mindset who cheer the genocidal assault on Palestine. I believe Solzhenitsyn was friends with Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres. But Solzhenitsyn also wrote "200 years together" which put some blame for the Bolshevik coup and subsequent atrocities on Judaic communists.
Katya ancora: All I really meant to do, A., was to defend writers and composers whom I love from unfair accusations by Solzhenitsyn for being cowards in not standing up to Stalin, as documented in McSmith's book. The quote you gave about Truth reminded me of what Dmitri Orlov had said. I hope we never know Stalin-like times.
I agree that it was easy and thoughtless for Solzhenitsyn to accuse people of being cowards for not doing something that likely would have gotten them killed. In this forum we discuss things that happened long ago and thousands of miles away, and rightly so. But as Michael has emphasized, it is locally and regionally that we can do some good. There is some risk in standing up to power in this country, but not as much as in a Stalin-like, Hitler-like or Mussolini-like "spirito dell'epoca". We should all get to know our local and regional representatives and attempt to partner with them in resolving the concerns that most directly affect our daily lives.
As noted, I believe representative Thomas Massey could lead our nation effectively, honestly and patriotically
I wholeheartedly agree! "That a man of his low character is the best hope for THOSE NOT YET LOST TO RADICAL LEFTIST MADNESS AND DEGENERACY* is a very sorry state of affairs." I am going to post a link of Michael's column and Prodigal's comment to Democracy Now!, on X.
(*Emphasis mine)
I agree with most everything in this excellent article.
"The Cryptocracy does not fear Israeli zealot Trump so much as they fear a revival by his enthusiasts of a campaign that will outlive him, populism—the 20th century American movement that united Leftists, Conservatives and independents in a valiant struggle contra the Money Power."
Unfortunately, most of Trump's "populist" groupies are of the usurious "Tea Party" and have no interest in uniting with anyone other than fellow Trumpsters. Thomas Massie is a hope for the future. He was prescient in opposing Trump's COVID stimulus, which jump-started inflation. As you know, Massie is in the crosshairs of AIPAC.
"Ike Perlmutter, a billionaire former chief executive of Marvel Entertainment, has himself started a pro-Trump super PAC."
IMHO:
This is fitting, in that Trump is as profound as a comic book character. I am willing to bet one hundred dollars (only if the bet can be made legally with guaranteed payment to the winner) that a large minority of Americans, for whom a presidential election is a "beauty contest", will give Trump an electoral college victory.
Between these two characters, and with Talmudic Rabbi Cryptocrats behind the scenes, unless something changes, the legalized River Styx underworld of the Money Power will continue to shape the nation's, AND THE WORLD'S*, future. Not to be too dark, but Mavronéri (Greek: “BLACK WATER”) is a river identified with the River Styx of Greek mythology according to Hesiod's description in Theogony. Blackwater is, of course, the former name of an infamous American military mercenary "contractor" outfit.
* Putin's rabbi is Berel Lazar
Dear A. Ellis
Hope springs eternal in the followers of He who defeated death and gave His life so that we may live in freedom from bondage.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: One Word of Truth Outweighs The World by Ralph R. Reiland:
"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie... "One word of truth outweighs the world.” Solzhenitsyn also stated very clearly what the only thing is that we can really do as individuals: "The Lie may enter the world. The Lie may even win. BUT NOT THROUGH ME!"
The only power we have as individuals is to reject the lie. The truth is more powerful than the dismissal and rejection of the majority. We know for sure that the wave of the world is going in the wrong direction. Truth bearers are seldom welcome, but they do a lot of good. Example; Jesus.
(Katya), yes, this is marvelous, as is your quote below to me. Still, I think of Peter after Jesus was arrested. I want to recommend a book by Andy McSmith, a British journalist whom I know nothing about, called "Fear and The Muse Kept Watch" -- obtainable cheaply from Daedalus Books (I know, very woke but occasional gems). This is a searching exploration of the lives of poets, composers, movie makers, other artists under the cancel culture we know as Stalin. Of course, Soviet Archives are open now as they were not before 2000. Russian American Dmitri Orlov shocked me by calling Solzhenitsyn a fraud. Me, a true believer! But McSmith's book reveals conditions and savagery that are hard for us to imagine. There is so much we can't know. And to be "lead" by the likes of "Beavis and Butt-Head", as Dugin refers to our "candidates" who will control nuclear weapons, bodes . . .I can't say it! The Russians were classically educated people . . . and what are we? "There is no better tool against [satan] than the glorious name of Christ," --Israel Shamir, another Russian.
Superb.
the tragedy/farce cycle is speeding up
Michael Hoffman thank you for speaking the uncompromising truth. Like jumping into icy cold water it is shocking but also totally wakes you up. I’m going to follow your advice and write in Thomas Massie.
I too agree with much of this article. And just who the hell does Trump think he is, lashing out at Rep. Massie.
(Katya here, thank you Roscoe, who also plans to write in Rep. Massie)
First, deep sorrow over the passing of Thomas Massie's beloved wife, Rhonda, on Thursday. Prayer for the Massies.
And second, thanks to Michael for a wonderfully honest and well balanced column about the debates in the midst of the uncivil clamor of our contemporary journalism. This includes a collection of wonderful comments.
Civility in our country is like a garden after an intense hailstorm, much shredded. But plants grow back.
Lastly, a quote from Russian literature:
From Tolstoy 's War and Peace, p.1008;
"The plight of [our 2024 America] is like the plight of a wounded animal that feels itself perishing and does not know what it is doing." Tolstoy goes on to say (a paraphrase because I can't find the p.#),
that when human society is attacked and overwhelmed by a force of evil men, other men everywhere of honesty and good will must rise up to resist it.
The novel War and Peace is about the triumph of Christ and love and life. Hope truly springs eternal.
A quote from Shahid Bolsen: "There is no Right wing or Left wing in America,; there's a right lane and a left lane on a one way road". Does Bolsen mean "on the road to Erehwon"?
Katya here again, A: on Solzhenitsyn, this matters. Dmitri Orlov is the son of Soviet dissidents who supported Solzhenitsyn and defected, only to discover that Solzhenitsyn was a liar who plagiarised the diaries of someone who despised him (cf. KunstlerCast 371, February 16, 2023 -- almost the first words).
One year ago, Michael Hoffman gave a talk in which he talked about the Psy-War function of media deceit, which is to create in us a"loss of probity" and erosion of our ability to resist. Pretty much because of the humiliation of being forced to participate in social and governmental lies.
We lose completely all sense of being made in the Imago Dei and are dehumanized.
Solzhenitsyn, who hit the West like a meteorite in 1964 was part of the propaganda. In no way am I praising the USSR, but our American minds work in the way you describe with the one way street. As Solzhenitsyn says in The First Circle in a chapter called "the Rosicrucians," "the secret police mold the minds of the public."
Katya wrote:
"Dmitri Orlov is the son of Soviet dissidents who supported Solzhenitsyn and defected, only to discover that Solzhenitsyn was a liar who plagiarised the diaries of someone who despised him...Solzhenitsyn ...was part of the propaganda."
Please expand on these serious accusations. Thank you.
Yes, as best I can. We have been followers for decades of the work of both James Howard Kunstler and Dmitri Orlov, when Orlov wrote his Club Orlov Blog --I believe that blog is no more. JHK was a good friend until the parting of the ways on Oct. 7, 2023. The podcast from February 16, 2023 on Kunstler.com is still an excellent discussion with Dmitri, where we were shocked to hear his words about Solzhenitsyn. The book that I recommended, "Fear and the Muse Kept Watch" sheds great light on Stalinist times, maybe not as the author intended, and caused me to realize that the impact of Solzhenitsyn obscured two works that might reveal greater truths about the situation in Russia (Dr. Zhivago in 1958, The Master and Margherita in 1963, hidden by Bulgakov and published long after his death). As a young scholar of Russian in the late 70's, early 80's, I was of course up to speed on Solzhenitsyn and so never questioned "the Cold War." But I see now that S's eruption in the West in 1964, along with the Hollywood film of Dr. Z, served to distract from deeper understanding, which you call dissimulation, I think. We needed ammo for the Cold War. And do you know anyone who has read Bulgakov's great novel? Lost in the dust.
The media creates the personalities that we are to worship and believe. The media is very black and white, and Solzhenitsyn 's writing complements this, and lacks in the nuances and many layers of meaning that, say, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pasternak have. And so our minds are subsequently shrunken and disabled. We have trouble with points of view that differ from our received truth, and nothing polarized us as the Cold War did, as the current version of it does now.
Hope that helps.
Katya here one last time with an addendum dedicated to my children and grandchildren on this July 4th in a very threatened world. Also dedicated to a deep study of Michael Hoffman's work, most especially 'The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome', where we see the exposure of many double-purposed men whose service to the church lay in MISDIRECTION: Pico della Mirandola, the "sorcerer abbot" Trithemius, and Johannes Reuchlin, among many others. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn might be a figure after this pattern.
From Timothy Ware on the Russian Orthodox Church, p. 260, "In the dark days of their history -- under the Mongols, the Turks, or the Communists -- it is to the Holy Liturgy that the Orthodox people have always turned for inspiration and new hope." In the USSR, Pasternak the poet, Bulgakov the satirist, expressed in the writing of their novels the celestial beauty and light of the worship that was forbidden. They gave their lives to written works that were acts of worship. Acts of hope for redemption.
Like everyone else, I was truly taken by Solzhenitsyn, and had my family read him. I did not see how well skilled in the technique of polemics and "ad hominem argument" he was, as Fr. Seraphim Rose points out. I am startled to realize that his works do not contain inspired light, don't serve God, but may serve the purpose of misdirection. His works appealed to an increasingly police -state minded people in the U.S., which people today, I am exceedingly sorry to say, support the psychotic sadism called "defense" going on in the Middle East. Having embraced Solzhenitsyn once, how can we now be so blind to the slaughter of women and children?
There were writers under Stalin who believed in the eternal salvation of our souls. Solzhenitsyn, converting he said to Orthodoxy late in life after exile, was not one of them,
and his influence has eclipsed works that might have helped us perceive truth, to our present mortal peril.
I am not a historian, but a careful reader of our culture's classical literature. It was Dostoevsky's novel 'The Idiot' that first gave me eyes to see at age 19. At the time many of us thought that reading was a gift from God. Many of us also thought that the Cold War was in error. I am afraid we have followed false prophets and may lose our immortal souls. May God help us to correct our thinking, and cleanse our minds, and save us, tho we are so terribly undeserving.
(And when history couldn't be remembered and written down truthfully, as is happening here now, it is these Christian novelists who gave us what could be our more authentic memories and access to our souls.)
Dedicated also to Dagmar Barnouw.
Katya, you are definitely a very deep person. I'm not sure I would discredit Solzhenitsyn based on a JHK podcast. Solzhenitsyn gave credit to Varlam Shalamov for describing conditions in the Soviet slave labor/death camps better than he did. I read one volume of Shalamov's "Kolyma Tales". From what I understand, Solzhenitsyn gave unqualified support for US involvement in the Vietnam War. If true, I believe he was wrong for that. But we can't assume he would have supported those of the depraved, sadistic Trumpster Right Wing mindset who cheer the genocidal assault on Palestine. I believe Solzhenitsyn was friends with Israeli war criminal Shimon Peres. But Solzhenitsyn also wrote "200 years together" which put some blame for the Bolshevik coup and subsequent atrocities on Judaic communists.
Katya ancora: All I really meant to do, A., was to defend writers and composers whom I love from unfair accusations by Solzhenitsyn for being cowards in not standing up to Stalin, as documented in McSmith's book. The quote you gave about Truth reminded me of what Dmitri Orlov had said. I hope we never know Stalin-like times.
I agree that it was easy and thoughtless for Solzhenitsyn to accuse people of being cowards for not doing something that likely would have gotten them killed. In this forum we discuss things that happened long ago and thousands of miles away, and rightly so. But as Michael has emphasized, it is locally and regionally that we can do some good. There is some risk in standing up to power in this country, but not as much as in a Stalin-like, Hitler-like or Mussolini-like "spirito dell'epoca". We should all get to know our local and regional representatives and attempt to partner with them in resolving the concerns that most directly affect our daily lives.