Idiocracy

Yesterday, August 27, 2025, really must be counted as one of the worst days of my life.

Because the Mets swept the Phillies? Honestly, I really couldn’t care less. Baseball, like. getting to the ocean, used to be one of the things that made Summer what it was. That hasn’t been true for some time now, so whether Keith “I snorted the first baseline” Hernandez thinks the Phillies are overrated is more amusing than anything else. Keith should know. He has a New York kind of nose for hype.

Because my alma mater, Villanova, is still recovering from some internet terrorism called swatting–I still don’t know what “gaslighting” is or how it differs from bullshitting, but small matter. Here I thought “swotting” was something Oxbridge types did before they covered themselves in Triple-Starred Firsts (“highly coveted” don’t you know). Nope. Nor Swatties, which is slang for the nerds who attend Swarthmore College (and, yes, We Wildcats salute you. Until lately, you were celebrated for a faculty that complained when your football team had a winning season. That was infra dig, right? Holy God, Weirdo. Get a Life.) So there is swat, swot, swattie. An irregular verb of the millenial sort. Got it? No? Well, me neither.

Because our Dear Leader, aka Agent Orange (a chemical herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War (1962-1971) to clear vegetation and destroy crops, and it contained the highly toxic contaminant dioxin), reputedly syphilitic and feeble of mind, not to mention devoid of any redeeming human quality, decided to station National Guard troops in Our Nation’s Capital? And guess what–cut carjackings? Which the Democratic Mayor of DC was hard pressed to critique, although like Mussolini (who???), Trump will now take over Union Station and make Amtrak run on time. Yeah, fascism works if the rule of law is an inconvenience. And it is. Ask Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone, with whom Trump has certain affinities–other than brains. Getting into some identity hissy fit over fascism is really sort of lame when there are so many other reasons to detest it. Like 100 million people killed (a new estimate of civilian casualties proposed by Cormac O Grada with Princeton University Press, publisher to the stars, so how can it be wrong?) during the Wars to End All Wars. Aww, that’s DWM history and so boring. Quite. Here. Read a book. You know how to do that. Sort of like Betty Bacall teaching Bogie to whistle. But try not to move your lips.

Well, no.

Because of ANOTHER Mass Shooting (ho boy, here come the tasteless puns). Well, yeah, this one did sort of bother me. Because it involved Catholicism and kids and, apparently, gender confusion. Wait. Aren’t those synonymous? Ouch. You mean Fr McGillicuddy cavorting with brown-limbed acolytes behind the rectory? Again? No, not quite. But the stench of the scandal is somehow always there. Trust me. As a Cradle Cathlick, I’d know. And I can’t wait for some son of a Texas dentist to further torment the innocent with tales of how this was all just a hoax. Right? You know. Alex Jones. Sandy Hook. That sick bastard.

So many to choose from. The fact that children–for God’s sake–children were cut down at a Mass by some disturbed wacko with a gun is bad enough. This was precisely what made the abuse scandal so wrenching. You know, “Suffer the little children come to me for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Any murder of any number of any kind of people is awful. But here you were talking about 2d and 4th grade age kids supposedly giving God thanks for the opportunity to journey a little further, and not just in academic stuff, but in understanding what it means to be a community. In my youth, they said “People of God” and that didn’t mean some “Christian” bigot who paraded their virtue around, reeked of sanctimony, and could have taught the Pharisees a trick. Uh Uh. It isn’t about hate. It’s isn’t even about the Ten Commandments, which those sickos on the right have appropriated for their political use. It is about what Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mountain. Love one another.

That doesn’t mean you have to like someone or the principles by which they orient their existence–or if their values are different. But you do concede the same bundle of civil rights and duties to them as you do to anyone else. And as long as they observe the law (and the law is not inevitably lawful when it is trying to deprive people of their wellbeing–which we have to face in America) and don’t harm you, their actions are private whether you happen to like them or approve off them of not. I understand that these questions become horribly complicated in implementing in the real world, but for God’s sake, we try in good faith and with an open mind to do so. If not, YOU are the problem, not the dudes across the street who cohabit in some arrangement of which you do not approve. Is that so damned hard to understand. Isn’t that what Christ taught us?

So yeah, it was a very bad day. A terrible, horrible, bad day. It suggested to me that the moral rot at the heart of our political class is no accident. It is a reflection of what we do or do not value.

Cardinal Newman says it starts in small things. What are they? You’ll know. Start with a little civility in your daily life. Be surprised how far we’ve fallen. I don’t do politics. Fine. Do something nice for someone you don’t really like, or even a total stranger. We can start there. You can carry a Cross in public later. Christ started small too. He sweated the big stuff later.