Reproach them Father, For they Know Damn Well what they're Doing

Woke up early with nothing to do, and this post is the result: nothing doing. Or nondoing something.

Here's a thought:

The noble man feels the need to admire, to venerate, to worship; the vile man on the contrary tends to belittle, even to mock, which is the way the devil sees things; but it is also diabolical to admire what is evil, whereas it is normal and praiseworthy to despise evil as such, for the truth has precedence over everything (Schuon, The Transfiguration of Man).

Come to think of it, Fr. Garrigou says something similar vis-a-vis the reductio ad absurdum of our cosmic situation, which comes down to a binary choice between True God and radical absurdity. The rest is either florid bloviation or metastatic tenure.

Under the progressive tyranny of relativism, "There are no longer any lies," -- because no Truth -- "but merely successive opinions." They say everyone has an opinion, but it's the other way around: opinions have the mind that permits them entry and propagates them.  

Regarding the need to admire, venerate, and worship, the Padre writes of how there is "nothing greater than a saint kneeling and humbling himself," and of how "we must form the habit of bowing profoundly before God and before whatever is divine in all souls."

Know what I mean? On the other hand, 

Respect for all opinions, however false or perverse they may be, is only the proud denial of respect due to the Truth. Sincerely to love the true and the good, we must have no sympathy with error and evil. Truly to love the sinner and further his salvation, we must detest the evil in him (emphasis mine).

Know what I mean? So-called "tolerance" always devolves to the totolerantarianism of cancel culture. 

Now, mockery is an essential characteristic of the left, as is the open admiration of evil (e.g. socialism, BLM, Antifa, Castro, CRT, racial discrimination, fake news, criminality, anti-religious bigotry, etc.). As such, it is both vile and diabolical. 

Except to say that the left isn't diabolical because it is evil, rather, the converse: it is the most evident instantiation of the diabolical in the contemporary world (bearing in mind that the corruption of the best is the worst, which is why, say, Youtube or the Enemedia are worse than the CCP, since no normal person expects anything of the latter).

Lies, smears, and violence have characterized the left's methods ever since... Well, no matter where we draw the line there's an ideological ancestor, but let's begin with Lenin; you will note that the left continues to follow his advice -- venerate it, one might say -- down to the letter:

In Lenin's view, a true revolutionary did not establish the correctness of his beliefs by appealing to evidence or logic, as if there were some standards of truthfulness above social classes. Rather, one engaged in "blackening an opponents mug so well it takes him ages to get it clean again."

If ever. Today's Leninists simply displace class to race, gender, and perversion preference: identity politics is just repackaged Leninism -- both approaches deny the truth of the individual, who is (diabolically!) dragged down and swallowed into the collective. It's no wonder they love their masks: no face, no problem.

When ideological opponents 

objected to Lenin's personal attacks, he replied frankly that his purpose was not to convince but to destroy his opponent.... You can see traces of this approach in the advice of Saul Alinsky -- who cites Lenin -- to "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it."

.... there was no need to understand opposing views before denouncing them, since the very fact that they were opposing views proved them wrong -- and what was wrong served the enemy and so was criminal. 

Trump, for example, only became a criminal, racist, and fascist the moment he posed a threat to Democrat (and Republican) power.  

I can't think of any trollian commenters (the merely fatuous ones excepted) on this blog whose first and last method of argument doesn't involve the ad hominem fallacy.  Over the years I have of course been called racist, fascist, and all the rest. It comes with speaking truth to the left.

You're one to talk, bOb! Aren't you engaging in the even worse fallacy of ad demonem? 

Could be, but the last person to determine this would be a secular leftist who denies the existence of the demonic even while demonizing his opponents. 

From their perspective, "attacking the demonic" would constitute nothing more than wrestling with one's own imaginary psychic projections, AKA mental illness. In other words, I am merely projecting my unconscious demons into the left, as a way to manage my own tenuous emotional equilibrium.

Again, could be. In fact, I am willing to concede that either I am doing this, or Sandy Cortez is -- or Al Sharpton, Michelle Obama, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, Joy Reid, Don Lemon, Rachel Maddow, etc. If they are normal, then I am certifiable. 

But when I speak of the diabolical, I am speaking of something I believe to be, 1) quite real, and 2) quite specific. It is not a vague projection, much less a smear. Conversely, the leftist does not say, "you're not describing the Evil One accurately." Rather, "you're either crazy or lying."

How are we to distinguish between mere error -- to which everyone is subject, without exception -- and something more sinister, something suggesting the soul has been hijacked by naughty vertical influencers? 

Let's consider the question from various angles. "The devil," writes Schuon, is "the humanized personification -- humanized on contact with man -- of the subversive aspect of the centrifugal existential power":

strictly speaking, evil or the devil cannot oppose the Divinity, who has no opposite; it opposes man who is the mirror of God and the movement towards the divine. 

Fr. Reginald says something similar, that God "cannot be the principle of error or of evil." Rather, "Our deficiencies require only a deficient cause, which is ourselves."  

Thus, "Evil cannot be absolute, it always depends upon some good which it misuses or perverts" (Schuon); nor is it "by definition what causes us to suffer, it is that which -- even when accompanied by a maximum of comfort or of ease, or of 'justice' so-called -- thwarts a maximum of souls as regards their final end" (ibid.). "Social justice," for example, is the inverse of justice, and therefor its denial in principle -- a principle that cannot come from above, only below.

Two further points, the first from Garrigou, the second from Schuon:

1) Wisdom is "the science of things through their Supreme Cause; in other words: the science capable of making known the ultimate reasons for things."

2) "Progressivism is the wish to eliminate effects without wishing to eliminate their causes; it is the wish to abolish calamities without realizing that they are nothing other than what man himself is; they necessarily result from his metaphysical ignorance, or his lack of love of God."

Which brings to mind a third point, Reynold's Law, which goes to the difference between wisdom and progressivism:  

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits -- self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. -- that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.  (https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/464961)

We'll conclude with this bit of common nonsense, which alludes to the fact that for the left, every damn crisis is a damnable opportunity -- an opportunity for diabolical mischief, going back to... to page one of the Theo-Drama.

It makes no sense to believe in the devil and then each time, when he appears -- most often exploiting a specific situation -- to deny that he is involved (Schuon).