"God is Dead and I Hate Him!"

We're still on the topic of the mass hysteria of the left, which cannot be explained with recourse to the usual psychological categories -- which means the mass can't just be "hysterical" but must be drawing upon a deeper source.

While casting about for inspiration this morning, I've been thumbing through an oldie but goodie, Father Rose's Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age. He would certainly agree that the left is diabolically inspired. Which is the point of the book.

He notes that the Revolution -- and the desire for Revolution is what distinguishes the left from classical liberalism -- "has a theological and spiritual foundation, even if its 'theology' is an inverted one and its 'spirituality' Satanic." The revolutionary impulse is destructive and nihilist at its core, although always disguised as a desire for "change."

Destruction, of course, must precede the change, but it turns out that destruction is the change. As Stalin, used to say, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." But as the rest of the Soviet Union asked, "where's the omelet?"

And it goes without saying that if you like your eggs you can keep your eggs.

Now, "construction" is not possible in the absence of truth. This is as true on the concrete/material plane as it is on the abstract/metaphysical. Just as you cannot build, say, a functioning airplane without knowing about the laws of nature, you cannot have a functioning civilization without knowing about the laws of man. The left starts by denying the latter, but they also have no compunction about meddling with the former (e.g. "climate change," gender nonsense, IQ denialism, etc.).

Rose alludes to the nihilist "revelation" that "there is no truth," which is functionally equivalent to the death of God. Truly, if one is intellectually honest -- and cognitively adequate -- one understands that the choice is between God and Nihilism. There can be no third, except in an imaginary or magical sense.

The other day I read a piece about the Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. I don't have the link to the piece, but it mentioned a number of ideas derived from him which the contemporary left has followed to the letter, including:

--There is no truth, only competing agendas.

--All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

--There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

--The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

--Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

--The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

--For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

--When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Call them planks in Satan's platform. Or Bernie Sanders's Bucket List.

For those who relate to this diabolical madness, "an entirely new spiritual universe opens up, in which God exists no longer, in which, more significantly, men do not wish for God to exist" (Rose). In the words of the Aphorist, The atheist devotes himself less to proving that God does not exist than to forbidding Him to exist.

Nevertheless, The death of God is a report given by the devil, who knows very well that the report is false. And Atheism is the prelude to the divinization of Man (which is when hell breaks loose from its transpersonal restraints).

Formal atheism is merely "the philosophy of a fool," whereas "antitheism is a profounder malady" (Rose). While the former "errs through childishness" and "plain insensitivity to spiritual realities," the latter "owes its distortions to a deep-seated passion that, recognizing these realities, wills to destroy them."

"It may be doubted, indeed, if there exists such a thing as 'atheism,' for no one denies the true God except to devote himself to the service of a false god." You gotta serve somebody, as the poet said.

It is important to note that these hyperkinetic zombies are anything but spiritually "lukewarm." Rather, they are en fuego for the Evil One, a truth easily discerned in the demented faces of their howling mobs.

I suppose there exist some a-theists who are able to live in a fragile equilibrium between God above and infrahuman below. But most fall into an aggressive and destructive anti-theism that worships its own false absolute.

Fr. Rose quotes the anarchist Proudhon, who wrote that "The first duty of man, on becoming intelligent and free, is to continually hunt the idea of God out of his mind and conscience. For God, if he exists, is essentially hostile to our nature.... Every step we take in advance is a victory in which we crush Divinity." It's called progress.

The Serpent could scarcely have said it better. Bakunin channelled the same Serpent, expressing the view that if God actually existed, "it would be necessary to abolish him."

Man cannot be happy unless his existence comports with the nature of things. But the counter-faith of the left does precisely the opposite; not only does it fail to comport with the nature of things, it is at war with those "naturally supernatural" things.

Thus, the left's spiritual illness revolves around "envy, jealousy, pride, impatience, rebelliousness, blasphemy -- one of these qualities predominating in any given personality." (He left out raw stupidity and refusal to learn -- or more generally, refuse to submit to, or even recognize, one's superiors -- which is often mingled with the others.)

"This rebellion, this messianic fervor that animates the greatest revolutionaries, being an inverse faith," is driven to destroy its "rival faith." Thus, we commonly see how "doctrines and institutions" are "reinterpreted" by the left, "emptied of their Christian content and filled with a new, Nihilist content" (ibid.).

Which calls to mind Iowahawk's apt description of the strategy of the spiritually intoxicated left: