"Infiltration" Book Review

This moment in history has been shaped by ideas. 

And ideas fluctuate. They change between people, and with time. They are reinterpreted and misinterpreted. They are sound and they are flawed, and their usefulness depends on their moment. We are living in a history that was both created, and destroyed, by ideas.  

Truth seems like an idea. Like an idea, truth can guide history. But unlike ideas, truth is absolute and guides history toward the good. 

As the Son of God, Jesus Christ spoke the truth and was crucified for it. Then he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. This truth, recorded by faithful eyewitnesses, spread. Christ's mystical body and the Catholic Church became the same entity. It became the duty of the Catholic Church to uphold the truth of Christ because like Christ, it was the sacrament of the world.

We are living at a point in history when truth is optional. This 'optional truth' idea is no longer just coming from Freemasons, modernists, or secularists, but the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Bishop, the Pope himself. 

Dr. Taylor Marshall has written a book about how these ideas could have possibly infiltrated the Catholic Church. The book, called 'Infiltration' was written for Cultural Catholics under the spell of secularism. (Traditional Catholics would be more familiar with the events Dr. Marshall outlines.) That the Church is reneging on the truth is made sadder by the fact that many people are unaffected by it. Some are jumping from what they consider a sinking ship, believing incorrectly that they will fare better in the ocean. 

Dr. Marshall writes subjectively about the methods and reasons for this infiltration of the Catholic Church. I don't mean that Dr. Marshall cannot be believed, but the takeaway cannot only be that 'some Bishops were Freemasons.' Some Bishops believed ideas over the truth they were expected to protect. It is therefore undoubtedly true that some of the leadership of the Church was corrupted by certain aspects of Modernist ideas. But to place them firmly inside the sect of Freemasons requires a Caro-esque approach to this material, which is shrouded in secrecy. It would also make the book the length of a few Bibles and take the Pontificate of a few Popes to complete.

Nevertheless, the current Church leaders are officially changing Church doctrines to better fit ideas that are popular for this particular moment in history. Dr. Marshall argues that this is by design.

(His book is a rather quick survey for a conspiracy that involves the salvation of the souls of mortal man, just as this review doesn't do justice to cover the extent of his research.)

Dr. Marshall begins this story with the dissolution of the Papal States: The Papal States of Rome were established in the year 800 when the Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas. For the next 1,000 years the Pope would be the spiritual pastor and temporal governor of the states as the embodiment of Christ. Charlemagne would hold the security. 

There were many historical events that lead to the dissolution of the Papal States in 1870. The revolution in France--a traditionally Catholic country influenced by ideas of the Enlightenment--and the unification of the Italian peninsula by conquest just to name two. Rome was then occupied by Napoleon, and Italy declared war against the Pope, who was confined to the Vatican quarter of Rome.

The rise of the plot of Freemasonry to conquer the Catholic Church was published in the Alta Vendita and then predicted by an apparition of the blessed Virgin Mary in La Salette.

(A later apparition of  an angel appeared to three children in Fatima, Portugal in 1916 and predicted the fall of Russia.)

As the Freemasons formed and grew powerful they had goals of influencing the doctrines of the Church to reflect the pantheistic, naturalistic and relativistic worldview of their natural religion, itself opposed to Catholicism, a supernatural religion. 

Freemasonry fought Catholicism "behind-the-scenes" with ideas to justify the "evolution" of its dogma through belief of modernism. Masonic modernism had a Catholic veneer by reinterpreting the Bible and Jesus's teachings through rationalist post-enlightenment philosophy. Supernatural miracles of the Bible were given a natural explanation. They should have always been interpreted theologically.

The secularist belief in ideas like relativism have created excuses for secularists to practice beliefs of their own curation. 

Catholicism is challenging. Adherents accepting the challenge move closer to the goodness that God offers through Jesus Christ. The plot of the Freemasons, if successful, would relinquish the Church of its moral power over people. 

Pope Pius X opposed this new secularized Italian rule over Rome. He also opposed modernism, which he saw as incompatible with Catholic Dogma. 

Pope Pius XI signed the Lateran Treaty, which regulated the state of Italy with the Vatican by its Prime Minister, Benito Mussolini, and granted the Vatican independent sovereignty to the Holy See. A newly united Italian peninsula also decided to award the Vatican with financial compensation for the loss of its territory in the Papal States. 

These secular governments helped to make official this separation of Church and State. This weakened state of Rome made future Popes susceptible to a desire for relevance among changing public attitudes in the secular European States. Popes like John Paul II and Pope Francis are the latest in a long line of Popes who have slowly changed the definition of truth as a reaction to modernist dilemmas.

Every Pope since Pope Pius X has varied in their conservatism and changed the doctrines of Catholicism over time. Archbishop Montini, who would later resume Vatican II as Pope Paul VI (despite Canon Law to discontinue councils with the death of a pope) had provable meetings with the organizer Saul Alinsky! That a Pope would come to know and respect a man like Alinsky, whose radical methods of artificially stimulated conflict were suspect. Not Freemasonry necessarily, but definitely not Catholic.

Not since the Council of Trent had there been discussed Church changes as there were in the years leading up to Vatican II. Dr. Marshall discusses the details for the justification of Vatican II. It is very political, and cannot be summed up in anything less than a book.

Another architect of Vatican II, Prelate Bugnini, is accused of Freemasonry by Dr. Marshall, but he doesn't definitively prove it. It would be nice though, since Bugnini was Secretary of the Commission that worked on the reform of the Liturgy for Vatican II. For Traditional Catholics he is a controversial figure. The lack of his association with Freemasonry doesn't discount Bugnini's actions. He may not have been acting for Freemasonry and Protestantism by changing the oldest Liturgy in the world for a personal experiment, but he did violate his faith in the truth by changing the oldest Liturgies in the world. 

When it came time for Vatican II there were only 10% of council bishops were resistant to modernism. Vatican II council focused on unity with non-christians by compromising beliefs. Laypeople need to be able to perform rites, reducing to utility the traditional Roman Rite. 

(The book goes into much more detail, but the astute reader can also research more.)

As predicted by the apparition, the fall of Russia resulted in the Communist takeover. Communism, much like capitalism, was considered by the Church to be a looming, evil threat.

According to ex-Communist Bella Dodd there were communists that infiltrated the seminaries and rising in the ranks of the Church! But for the same reason Senator McCarthy had a hard time proving that accused Americans were indeed communists for the same reason that Dr. Marshall has a hard time providing evidence that Archbishop Bugnini, architect of Vatican II, was a Freemason. The same reason that anti-racists haven't produced evidence against Donald Trump: it can be assumed with the evidence, but it cannot be proven. No one can prove thought. 

Unlike dogma, beliefs are fluid. Bishops should not believe anything but the truth--that is what we rely on them for--but beliefs can be uncontrollable.

The rejection of Goodness, Truth and Beauty for the Relativism of Freemasonry does not make them change. Sliding standards means subjective standards....different standards means no standards. No standards, no truth. No truth, no beauty, no goodness. Man has the natural ability to choose truth, and he can heal through the redemption of sin if he so chooses. 

The inability of the leadership of the Catholic Church to respond to modernism with truth and instead embrace it has caused this crisis. The Church needs to fix itself, and a faithful clergy can only pray for it. Let us pray that modernism exposes itself as the empty ideology that it is. 

Unsolicited Advice #5

Dear Amy, 

I am a 16-year-old girl in high school. I met a guy through a church event six months ago. We started talking, and then a month later he came to my house to hang out during the weekend.

His uncle was with him when he came over and met my mom. 

I started dating the guy, and my mom started dating my boyfriend's uncle! 

Now my mom is going to marry his uncle, a person she's known only for four months. 

I plan on being with my boyfriend and marrying him; I truly love him. 

Since my mom is marrying his uncle that would make my boyfriend and me cousins by marriage. 

It is not legal where I live to marry my cousin. 

What should I do?  

Confused Almost-Cousin

It isn't legal to marry first cousins in most places. Namely, disease. Also, it makes people squeamish. Both good reasons.

But this isn't a legitimately illegitimate first cousins marriage. Yours would be a first-cousins-by-marriage marriage. You're not blood relatives, so it is legitimate under God, which means you have a good case that can be made to the state/county for your marriage's legitimacy.

You didn't tell me your family history, but it seems that your father is absent, thus your mother's quick marriage. It is appropriate to celebrate your mother finding a worthy man.

Things can only get tricky if your boyfriend's uncle is also his father figure. That would put the two of you in the same house during a time when your relationship still needs time to mature. I don't want to make assumptions here, but you don't want to end up like your mother.

I think it is a sign of maturity to want to marry so young. In the meantime take it slowly.

Dear Amy,

I am the oldest of three (the only daughter). My dad has died, and my mom insists on having her funeral at "The Smith Funeral Home." This is a place that I would rather not give our business to. 

My closest childhood friend is a funeral director at another funeral home, and I would like to utilize her services instead. 

My mother's reason is that we have buried our grandparents and my dad from the Smith Funeral Home. My father also did business with them when he was alive. 

Amy, I think my family has given them enough of our business. 

Do I go with my mother's last wishes? If I do, it will upset my friend and I am sure some people will wonder why I wouldn't choose her funeral establishment. 

My mother is very stubborn, and there is no talking to her about anything. 

Believe me, I get the bulk of her nastiness since her health is giving her issues. My brothers could not care less. They leave me to do everything, and my mom backs them up entirely. 

Daughter Dearest

For the first time in a long time your mother is going to be without her best friend. Make this transition as smooth as possible for her, and give her this simple request. This isn't about you and your friends and what other people think; it is about the legacy of your father for your mother's sake.  If you really prefer your friend's funeral services over your parent's legacy you can bury your mom in your friend's funeral home when she passes.

SJWs don't matter

Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) were a long time coming. I first noticed them when I was in college in 2010, but I didn't know what they were until I was educated by Vox Day and Sargon of Akkad during GamerGate in 2014.

Unsurprisingly, SJWs campaigned for Democrats in 2016 on an anti-Trump platform of anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-xenophobia...but then Trump won despite their opinionated tantrums.

SJWs didn't go just away though. (We will have SJWs for at least another generation.) This loosely grouped cabal of privileged millenials re-branded themselves as anti-Trump. Needing something to fight for, they latched onto their hatred of Trump the point where SJW is more and more synonymous with TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).

But Trump doesn't matter. He is just a figurehead that I'll write about another time.

And if Trump doesn't matter, and he has the power, then the people that hate him must really not matter!

(To be clear, their opinions don't matter. They still matter to the people that love them.)

SJWs don't matter because they only believe themselves.

An argument isn't very good if it cannot convince another person of its truth. SJWs are good at talking to each other because they all have the same truth, the truth of the hive mind. This hive mind of truth is defined by the Fake News, which is the SJW Bible. Anyone that doesn't share the same truth will be bored by an SJW lecture on "Diversity Day" or shamed publicly. It is their choice.

Unbeknownst to the SJW, there are plenty of smart people who do not trust the news and therefore do not read the news. These people aren't as dumb (brainwashed) as their local, news savvy SJW believe; they are just "uneducated." (This is actually worse because they then require ineffective SJW re-education.)

SJWs are college graduates full of politician approved factoids. They are miserably useless and plucked for humiliation by Right Wing pundits in YouTube videos.The lowest hanging SJW fruit might be tricky and clever with their words, but words are easily dismissed by other words by any person with a few years of life outside the college plantation.

Their ideology is disputable, and they are rightfully humiliated. But, they have the arrogant resolve of a hive mind thanks to 4 years of indoctrination, and don't change their minds so quickly.

SJWs were once a movement, but now they are so easy to pluck that debating them has dissolved into two echo chambers! Their rhetorical antics have filled a vacuum created by SJWs and inspired an anti-movement of "Right Wing" neocon pundits plucking SJW fruit for personal politics!

Sigh.

The SJWs are on a plantation where bad opinions masquerade as facts, and everyone congratulates themselves. Thus, they have inspired "Right Wing" Gatekeepers to speak on behalf of chattel they keep on their own plantations! Basically, as long as someone, somewhere is offended, everyone is wrong.

If you are an SJW, best of luck. You have been brainwashed by the media and higher education and your opinions are a mockery for everything you hate to become stronger.

The spirit is under attack, and the battle between the opinions of the SJW or the anti-SJWs is a mighty distraction.

SHS "Diversity Day"

I don't want to have to say it....but if I don't say it now, someone will say something else:

This isn't a right wing blog!

"Right Wing" is just what the leftists label anyone that isn't pro-Diversity Day.

This is a place of nuance, not political points.

I understand that I can't choose what readers will label my blog, but I can resent being labelled "right wing" for much the same reason the student body resents "Diversity Day:"

At SHS the leftist faculty had a wonderfully "exclusive" idea for their 95% White student body and  dubbed this idea "Diversity Day." (Does anyone say WASP anymore?)

I groaned. This is as corny as it gets.

I am going to be completely honest: I don't know what "Diversity Day" entails, but I can guarantee that it is going to be boring at best, and preachy at worst.

And it doesn't matter what "Diversity Day" entails, because as I predicted, parents hated it!

According to sources within the school district, there was a 'racist' threat of hatred toward White liberals in the form of an anonymous phone call!

And the parents of some 120 kids wouldn't let them attend school! (That's more than half of a single grade!)

The teachers were shocked, appalled and humiliated: What could we have possibly done wrong by bringing diversity to students? 

"Some parents must hate diversity!"

No. Wrong. I'm sorry to sound like a crabby atheist with my ad hominem smears, but that is just so stupid and the words are just so loaded that no one has time for any of this.

(The leftists will think whatever they want to think about anyone not willing to think exactly like them. Let them think it. They are a lost cause....with power of popular opinion. Sigh.)

Here is where you went wrong, leftist teachers: you called it Diversity Day.

'Diversity' is one of those words that has been weaponized by the political left. You cannot reach across the aisle with it. Sorry.

The truth is, you can't call it Different Cultures Day, or even MultiCultural Day, without giving off red flags to "right wing" parents that weren't born yesterday. 'Diversity' will never be more than a stunt by politicians of major parties.

If Diversity Day is going to mean what it says, then avoid the loaded political lingo and call it something like: Love Thy Neighbor As Thy Brother Day. That's what you really want, isn't it? For brown cultures to be treated equally with white cultures? Whatever that means?

That's fine, so long as the 'diverse' cultures we celebrate have similar, universal values to our own. We can't welcome cultures without holding them to similar standards. And we shouldn't whitewash cultures for the sake of "diversity," economic controversies aside.

And it's not because "the parents hate diversity" either. It's because they hate your version of Diversity! They hate the political grandstanding and the misrepresentation of their beliefs for some party hack to win a major election.

The political right sees this and knows they are going to be lectured, so they keep their kids out of school for the day in protest. The political middle knows that they are going to be bored, and they put up with the lecture because they can doodle, or work on other assignments.

This is what makes this not a right wing blog by the way: I get why some kinds of diversity should be celebrated. However, I can tell that the superficiality of "Diversity Day" is going to be more skin color for representation's sake than finding similarities in culture. Your students are in high school, not grade school. They are just here for the food and you are just going to piss off parents that can vote 'No' on a budget in the Spring.

Now for a dash of old guard right wing: Today, grandparents can remember when they weren't the 'white' in liberal. They were more than just 'white, middle class'; they were Catholic, or Anglo, or Protestant. They were from Italy, Poland, Germany. They weren't just white, middle-class from Westchester and Coram.

The secularizing of society has made the children's children identity-less, and the children's parents bitter. The culture of their parents has been used and left by the wayside. All that matters now is weaponized Diversity of the "new culture" for some globalist hack.

There is no old Country. Why would there be? This is an Empire now! Leave old identities in the past. What matters is the illusion of electing new power seekers.

That's why the parents are mad!Understanding that means starting the process of not being a political tool anymore.

Life issues

Some life issues have kept me from posting frequently. I'll be back once my brain has fully recovered.

two days late: Ben Shapiro

For all of the fair debate tactics that Ben Shapiro praises, it is more than disappointing to watch him exercise the juvenile tactics that he claims to despise. These are the tactics of a 'morally bankrupt' ideology, he claims. They are the tactics of 'the left'. As a person that is morally correct, it is beneath Ben to practice such tactics. His ideology isn’t so susceptible to fair criticism that it must sink to level of its enemies.

Until it is.

The leftist agenda is undeniably pervasive, and until Ben Shapiro went on his college tours and started a daily podcast, the only alternative figureheads in the conservative tradition were the crusty old men at Fox News: Bill O’ Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly. Rush Limbaugh is on the radio, but all the kids are listening to podcasts now.

For modernity-brainwashed college students, these men are the old guard. They defend principles and values that are obsolete. It is only a matter of time before they all die of being fat and old for the inevitable progress of the world to continue.

Enter Ben Shapiro: a smart, quick and principled young man. Not only does he defend the same traditional values as the old guard, but he conveys the reasons for their indispensable importance in ways that will make other young men listen…

“Facts don’t care about your feelings,” says encyclopedia Ben. Suddenly, all of the inconvenient facts of the left are unveiled in a public forum. The leftist ideology, so commonly the loudest voice on the college campus, is revealed to the politically agnostic as a radical fringe. Turns out the other side of the spectrum had their own reasons for their opinions. And they started to make sense! Turns out that all the students really needed was some context, something that college campuses purposely exclude. Those soft, young minds belong to us, Ben!

Debates all start to sound alike once Ben Shapiro’s facts also become talking points. His new recruits were never meant to formulate opinions from these talking points anyway! (They were meant to parrot Ben Shapiro!)

Although justified in proselytizing against abortion, Shapiro piggybacked on it. Infanticide is evil, agreed. Genocide is evil too. But there are exceptions, like when it pertains to issues of a certain geopolitical importance.

For all of the criticism against identity politics, Ben Shapiro is himself an identity politician that uses his minority status as a shield against bad policy and deceptive ideas. As an Orthodox Jew, it makes sense that he would defend the state of Israel’s right to exist. And if he can do it without deceiving his recruits into believing that a Jewish state is in the interest of Judeo-Christians, a term he coined but could not defend without throwing a tantrum on the BBC, then he is as righteous as his cause.

I’m two days late, and we’ve all seen the interview by now. He used the same debate tactics as the leftist identitarians he became famous for debating. And DESTROYING. Therefore, he deserves all the criticism he has received. His credibility as a sharp debater might be restored with an apology for his behavior, but he will be a hypocrite as long as he is a Jew.

Unsolicited Advice #4

Dear Amy, 

My husband and I have a good relationship, but last night a small argument spiraled out of control.

I told him that it makes me feel anxious when our lawn is the last one on the block to be mowed. Such a small thing, I know, but his response really got under my skin.

First, he said that if I really cared about the lawn, I wouldn’t have asked him to drop by the store on the way home. I wasn’t asking him to mow last night, but was just expressing my feelings about it.

His response made me feel like he was questioning my feelings. I wish he could have just said, “OK, I understand. I’ll do it tomorrow” or even, “My back is really hurting me tonight; but I’ll get to it soon” or something other than his snide comeback.

I felt like he was gaslighting me. I told him that he was gaslighting me, and that is when things spiraled.

He called me an “ass,” slept in the basement, and this morning he emailed me a list of websites that define gaslighting. He rehashed our conversation, point by point, to emphasize how wrong I was about everything. He also asked for an apology.

I wasn’t trying to name-call, but I really did feel like he was gaslighting me.

I haven’t apologized, because I feel like this is manipulative behavior. Now he’s saying he’s not coming home tonight. Am I totally in the wrong here?

Gaslit?

You were wrong to say he was gaslighting--which he wasn't--and he was wrong to sleep on the couch, then threaten not to come home unless he receives an apology.

For those who do not read relationship blogs, gaslighting is a term used to describe the behavior of an abuser that manipulates information in such a way as to make their victim question their sanity.

It is a completely loaded term and should always be avoided, especially during a disagreement between husband and wife in an otherwise healthy relationship.

If you are going to call your husband a gaslighter, then call him a liar. In this case, you asked for him to lie, and gave examples of acceptable lies: back hurts, tired, etc. Instead of lying he placed the blame on you.

This isn't manipulation to make you think that you are crazy. He isn't saying that the lawn shouldn't be mowed and that you are imagining its length compared to the neighbors. He is your good husband, so give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had a tough day and wrongfully blamed you for mismanaging his precious weekend time.

You were right to defend yourself against this blame, but you were wrong to say that he was gaslighting; that denotes abuse on his part. If you have a good relationship with him then you'd understand that his hurt feelings were the source of his overreaction.

Start by apologizing to him. Then when he comes home explain why it was wrong to call him an abuser. After he accepts your honest apology you can explain why the blame he laid on you caused you to think things that you know are not true. Give him the benefit of the doubt, as he will give you, and then move on.

The only time gaslight can be used is when the relationship is over, and one person can specifically cite all of the times they were purposely mislead as a means their spouse used to control their behavior. It is as bold an accusation as it is a death knell.

criticism at a crossroads

If it can be created, it should be criticized.

Some creations are good, and some creations are bad. The purpose of criticism is to honestly address what works and what does not. If an idea is good, it will withstand criticism.Therefore, creation and criticism need one another.

(If the populace is cleverly deceived, then a good idea will be perceived as a bad one.)

The risk of bad critique is never enough to stop the creator from creating. (It can even be a reason for creating, in the case of modern art.)

Without creation, there are no ideas, no inventions, no progress. Likewise, without honest criticism bad inventions will maim children, and bad ideas will starve them.

An honest critic will never receive the praise that a good idea or a grand invention will receive. For the most part, it just isn’t brave to hold an inconsequential opinion on a good creation.

Moreover, criticizing real power can be dangerous. That is why it is only courageous to hold and voice an unpopular opinion when there is imminent harm from touchy creators. This is known as martyrdom and reserved for activists.

Civilians should critique one another’s ideas and inventions and behavior as candidly and tactfully and frequently as possible. A conversation for its own sake among dissenting opinions is worthless if it is not honest. Celebrating a neutered conversation is as meaningless as celebrating a choice for its own sake.

For a civilian critic to be taken seriously, they have to have good reasons for their differing point of view. Good reasons come from truth. Truth can come in a number of forms, from the position of a hoodwinked consumer who purchased a faulty product, to a defector from a cult or a regime.

The reason so much mediocre shit exists is because the creator’s greed clouds the intellectual judgement of a brain-dead populace; industries collude with its critics.

Honest creation relies on honest criticism. They need one another to stay honest.

novel vs autofiction

A novel is a fictitious prose narrative of book length. Autofiction is a form of fictionalized autobiography.

Alt-Lit, the defunct online literary movement popularized by Tao Lin, has co-opted the term 'autofiction' to legitimize its narcissism as a literary genre.

Tao Lin's poetry and fiction is the introvert's Bible. The guy's serious talent is evident in the amount of copy cats the sub-genre created. His writing relied heavily on lived experiences as an NYU undergrad, and his pensive, introverted "character" resonated with the computer lit, bedroom dwelling, self-impoverished aspiring writer millennials. Loneliness, reference rich relationships, drug use and shoplifting all helped to romanticize this classic New York existence.

Creation is exhausting, and 'autofiction' is one of those pseudo-genres coined by critics to categorize the agonizing work of writers trying to create something completely unique. Uncreative millennial writers--focused more on their style than their substance--have discovered this convenient new term to describe their work, now that the Alt-Lit label is all but a reference to anything written between 2009-2012.

Critics collude with their writer friends to sell books to other wannabe writer friends. The writer friends live in an endlessly uncritical circle of other writer friends that all think the same and act the same, to further confirm their importance among themselves.

This collusion is human nature. It is only a problem for someone like myself, who looks inside the circle, but won't change opinions to be accepted inside of it.

Autofiction is flawed because the writers that write this stuff rely on reveling in their flaws. There is nothing in 'autofiction' that is unlike Alt-Lit except that the authors are older and have convinced legitimate publishers, through their small following of like minded wannabes, that they are the newest voice of a generation. They may well be, but it hardly speaks well of this generation.

Take Megan Boyle's Liveblog. I was a fan of hers for a long time, until I read the first 100 pages of her 'novel.' I am aware that personal growth doesn't always happen overnight. It is usually the accumulated result of bad decisions made over the course of years. (The less years wasted the better.) One might hope that if a person writes down exactly what they are doing and thinking every moment of every day for 6 months, they might see a pattern of self destruction and see exactly where they need to change their behavior. It takes courage to publish your life as a foolish (and clever) loser. But this is a circle where destructive behavior is encouraged for the sake of reality and good art.

Except that Liveblog is not good. (It might be an achievement.) Boyle does not change. She repeats the same actions over and over and over without showing any change in character or outlook. It is futile to believe that finishing the book would somehow yield a change within her.

The newest piece to receive this praise is Juliet Escoria's Juliet the Maniac: A Novel. The title itself so much a white lie that "A Novel" had to be included in its title! She couldn't go so far as to change the main character's name from her own! It is difficult to believe that this book is more fiction than auto.

The problem of course, is that all of these Alt-Lit AutoFiction writers think the same as one another. Their lived experiences, while differing slightly in the details, are neatly contained within their group of friends and masturbatory worldview. They live aimless lives of content introspection of perpetual loneliness, sadness, insanity, drug use and disappointment in themselves.

Besides, an author isn't read for their life experience. Biography and autobiography are reserved for those that have actually lived, learned and changed! Authors don't have that same kind of life experience; they sit around on their computers, writing all day. Writing is the opposite of experience! It is invented experience!

But these autofictioneers cannot invent life experience! That is really hard. They take inspiration from their impoverished and hedonistic lives, and then call it a novel!

As much as I like to buy books I never finish, I can't buy books I intend to hate-read, and I cannot support proud abortion apologists like Escoria and Boyle. I lost all respect for Megan Boyle when I read that she had an abortion in Liveblog. Made me sick that I even bought it, and had her sign it. For the same reasons I cannot support Juliet Escoria. Proud to defend her excuses, then profit from similar abominations.

Alt lit was always going to become autofiction, and the biggest names in Alt Lit were always going to realize that they only knew how to write about themselves.

Alt-Lit has aged, but it hasn't matured. It's authors are mired in their own obsession with their own lives and found a new, temporary label for its generational narcissism.

two days late

Without a large scale war, the mainstream media relies on reporting small scale 'disputes' in regions of little relevance to its mainstream audience.

This violence, while rarely justified, approaches meaningless without historical context. Only in retrospect can history weigh the importance of these recorded events. Meanwhile, the mainstream media can only give so much historical context in a headline. It has to play on our ability to feel compassion and sympathy, and to make the best of our own lives while we are healthy and free.

Unfortunately, the amount of innocent lives lost to regional violence is not enough to make historical every event. Unfortunate too is my inability to feel real grief. It's already hard to actually care when someone else's phone is lost or stolen.

This coverage makes an impact. It makes a story. But stories make me jaded.

The Easter bombing in Sri Lanka and the most recent skirmish in Israel/Palestine, while sad, doesn't have any personal impact on me: I have never been to these countries, my ancestors are not from these countries, and I did not know any of the victims. I try to imagine what it is like to feel like my life is in danger in my own neighborhood, but my imagination is lacking.

The very reason they were killed is tragic: worshipping the Lord on the holiest day of the year, caught in the fire of a border dispute. I feel sad that people have no choice but to live as best they can in these dangerous conditions, and when they succeed, and they let their guard down to celebrate--or cross a street--they are unfairly destroyed. I grieve for the evil triumphing over good. Where there is no hope on Earth, there is hope in heaven.

The world pretends to grieve, but it moves on only as quickly as the news cycle stops barraging them with coverage. I'm two days late on this opinion and already the bloodshed in Israel/Palestine--coined "the worst since 2014" by The New York Times--has been replaced by the most recent overrated episode of Game of Thrones in twitter trends.

Last time on the Arab-Israeli Conflict.....

Where I live, there is an overdose everyday. The local news cannot report them all. There might be a retrospective at the end of the year for all of the junkies that died in that year, but their families would feel that their privacy was violated, and wouldn't want their loved one to be publicly remembered by local strangers for dying a junkie.

I celebrate Easter, and I knew junkies. I feel sadness for both victims. To really care for someone's death, I would have to know them, and care for them. To know someone enough to care for them takes time. 

It is always sad when innocent people are killed. I want to be more Christ-like, but I don't feel grief for people I never knew in a place I've never been.

This is the purpose of prayer. I can pray for those whose lives are prematurely extinguished. I don't necessarily need historical context. I don't need to know who is right or wrong, or what is or isn't justified.

The news media's cynical purpose might be to sell stories, but without it, we wouldn't know what war torn regions to pray for. Or which junkies aren't in their basements anymore.