Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a pernicious habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train. Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. – Uncle Screwtape, describing the strategy of Hell toward the “Prolife” Movement for the past 45 years
The only real achievements of the MAGA “prolife” movement are this kind of shit.
The actual defenses of human life are almost entirely imaginary now.
If you do not love your neighbor and her family whom you have seen, you cannot love the unborn child in her womb, whom you have not seen.
Advertisement
14 Responses
I have heard MAGA people laugh about alligators eating illegal aliens, like it was a joke. Rep. Nancy Mace of SC joked about alligators developing a taste for immigrants. This is a US Congresswoman.
It is curious that many of these MAGA people who want immigrants thrown to the alligators consider themselves to be “good Christians.” Indeed.
In red states, rabid Republican legislators have crafted “pro life” laws that make it virtually impossible for doctors to treat miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. They seem to think that women who have miscarriages should be punished. How Christian.
This MAGA version of Christianity, which seeks to brutalize immigrants and punish pregnant women is a perversion of Christianity. No thanks.
This doesnt justify directing your own malice outward toward some nebulous stereotype of mean conservatives.
You aren’t a victim. Quit whining. You defend a demographic that is overwhelmingly committed to the defense and emulation of a lawless rapist, fraud, traitor, and racist thug. Be silent and repent your self-pitying bullying of those who call out your antichrist cult of death.
MAGA are not “conservatives.” They are right wing pseudo Fascists. Not the same thing. Classic conservatives are not mean. Fascists are.
I don’t support Trump or MAGA, I just know from recent experience since I’m actually in frequent contact with conservative, pro-life Catholics, that a lot of them don’t like Trump either, and hold a variety of political opinions. It seems like a lot of your posts are attacking a broad stereotype of conservativism where you seem comfortable with a malicious or at least over-the-top polemic against some “other” who are on the outside of your circle. I think Trump is basically a neo-fascist dictator.
If you are not actively working to oppose and defeat him, you are supporting him. If your first, last, and only response to criticism of the Cult that still gives him a 90% approval rating is excuse-making for the passive supporters who are still, at this late day, not in open rebellion against the Cult, you are supporting him. You are not a victim. They are not victims. They, and you, are giving aid and comfort to a criminal and traitor who is persecuting the innocent. https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/no-good-people-dont-still-support
Let’s let God be the judge of whether pro-life Trump supporters are “good people” or not. You aren’t going to convince anyone that their political ideology is wrong if you act the same way, stereotyping and condemning people beyond your authority or experience. I agree Trump needs to be resisted, but I don’t think your uncharitable way of talking about these issues is actually doing that
Sending people to Sudan right now, especially without resources or any connections to the place is essentially a death sentence.
In fact If I were one of the detainees designated for that fate , I’d prefer the alternative of a clean execution.
There needs to be some modern Nuremberg trials when all this is over.
We must bluntly and relentlessly name these actions as un-Christian, non-Christian, perversely and thoroughly anti-Christian. We must not allow for a veneer of Christianity to be offered and to go unchallenged by calling these actions a version of some kind of Christianity. They are, in point of fact, NO kind of Christianity. We must dismantle the permission structure that permits any – and I mean any – version or flavor or category or iteration of Christianity to be considered as any part of these actions, or adjacent to these actions, or anywhere near these actions. To hold up the actual Jesus of the Gospels, the push back must be immediate and everywhere. No quarter given that these actions might be confused with those who follow Jesus.
Those “conservative, pro-life Catholics” might not like Trump, but they supported him. And now we must all live with the consequences of Trump and MAGA back in power. How many times have I heard “I don’t like Trump, but…”. So they justify supporting this dime store Fascist, by talking about overturning Roe. As if that’s all that matters. So will you continue to support this Neo Fascist dictator?
The MAGA movement is not made up of good people who got hoodwinked and hold their noses to endure it in the service of some greater good.
That might have been true in 2016. Today these people are 100% complicit in an agenda that is grotesquely evil.
Most of them are cheering for the concentration camps and the arbitrary detention and torture of people who are virtually all Christians.
They cheer on a genocide carried out largely with our nations weapons in Gaza.
They giggle with glee at the reality that dozens of millions of brown skinned women and children are dying because we withheld the scraps of our immense food surplus to make sure billionaires gained a bit more wealth.
No sir. These are not good people who are unfairly maligned.
How about Mr Galvin? Still support the dictator? Still justify dictatorship and ignorance? Please enlighten us, O wise one.
I don’t justify malice toward anyone for any reason, including MAGA types. But I especially don’t like the double standard of demonizing all conservative, pro- life Catholics as being part of the same group as MAGA, and then accuse them of doing the same thing to immigrants. You can’t dehumanize one group and say they deserve it because they dehumanize other people.
I know conservative, pro-life Catholics who don’t support and didn’t vote for Trump for many of the same reasons Mark talks about on this blog, although they probably would have voted Republican prior to Trump. I know some who did vote for Trump who I think were just following their consciences and are not pharisaical monsters. And yes, there are plenty who do support Trump and seem wilfully blind to obvious facts like mass deportations can’t be done without massive human rights abuses.
I think that this article and a bunch of others I have read on this blog did the same thing Screwtape was saying but in reverse where you are directly your malice to the outside of your peripherals by lumping together “MAGA” and “pro-life,” as though all conservative Catholics are one group that can be collectively judged for any bad thing that happens on the political right. Malice is malice whether it’s directed your outer circle of fantasy or your immediate circle of friends.