The Fall of Rome ~ Part II

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Francis

History moves in a circular motion. The old civil / military Roman Empire was a power which disintegrated in the 5th century mostly from internal rot and corruption. In the vacuum left behind there arose a new kind of Ecclesial Roman Empire. We know it today as the Roman Catholic Church. But, like its predecessor, this ecclesial empire is on the verge of crumbling, again mostly from the effects of internal corruption. Granted, throughout the intervening centuries it has threatened to topple more than once, beset by mismanagement and even moral corruption, yet it is still with us, undoubtedly through Divine support and assistance. But the present crisis is acute and alarming as any that Ecclesial Rome has ever had to face to date. It seems many in the highest echelons of the Church’s leadership have decided to align themselves with the Freemasonic secular globalist agenda, even to the point of persecuting their own clerics who remain faithful to the Church’s most long-held traditions.

The following is excerpted from my recent follow up essay on Masonic Illuminism (which I will shortly post in its entirety) entitled: Masonic Illuminism ~ “Elites” Waging War on Humanity; on Religion; on your Family. Please read this section, and share widely with your friends and family, concerning the subtle attack on the historic Faith of our Fathers at the hands of “progressive” theologians such as Karl Rahner, beginning back in the 1960s. If we are not aware of a threat we cannot intelligently oppose it and, following the example of our neighbors and great patriotic Canadian truckers, this fight cannot wait till another day.

Taken from Masonic Illuminism, Part 3 ~ Illuminism’s Final Assault

Renowned theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand rightly notes that (Rahner’s) ambiguity (regarding Communism, Freemasonry, etc.) is less an error than an outright deception which only gives the impression of sharing common ground. He goes on to observe, “Such a misrepresentation of the facts leads not to dialogue, but rather to a wishful (and dangerous) minimizing of the differences between Christianity and Communism… The ambiguous use of terms by (such) Catholics, therefore, only serves Communist propaganda and spreads confusion among Catholics themselves.”

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Following the Evidence

Posted on November 24, 2021 by Francis

Nothing better illustrates the “woke reality” world toward which our society is dangerously tipping in its “social justice” dance macabre than the recent Kyle Rittenhouse trial and acquittal. Despite the sober, common sense result reached by a jury of 12 ordinary citizens after being presented with overwhelming evidence that this was a clear case of self defense, the woke mob is howling in outrage because, for their ilk, meting out political justice holds a higher priority than attaining actual justice. Their’s is the “don’t bother me with the facts, I’ve already made up my mind” attitude, an attitude which has become increasingly prevalent in large segments of both the institutional media and academic sectors.

In the first place, this case should never have been prosecuted or brought to trial based on the outstanding facts. Assistant district attorney Binger had access to loads of exculpatory video evidence showing that Rittenhouse was clearly acting in self defense, and yet he chose to either ignore or attempt to hide that evidence while proceeding to charge Mr. Rittenhouse with numerous crimes. By abusing his authority to indict an obviously innocent teenager, no doubt to curry favor from his political base, Mr. Binger grossly violated numerous legal ethics as well as Kyle’s right to due process, even as he brazenly lied about crucial facts of the case and falsely claimed that Rittenhouse had no legal right to be armed that night. For Binger it would seem that evidence is something to be selectively used or ignored in order to achieve one’s preferred outcome which, in this case, was to satisfy a howling leftist mob by convicting an innocent man.

Related to this case, a different kind of “mob justice” was meted out last April to Norfolk, Virginia police lieutenant William Kelly who, as a private citizen, had the temerity to make a $25 donation to the Kyle Rittenhouse legal defense fund. For that act of political correctness heresy Lt. Kelly was fired from his position at the Norfolk police department. So, wanting to help a wrongfully accused person defend himself has now become an acceptable reason to terminate a good cop. The whole woke scenario smacks of the French Revolution or Stalinist Russia where a simple denouncement, unsupported by any kind of evidence, is all that is needed to punish supposed transgressors. Such incidents ought to terrify any people who are theoretically protected against such arbitrary retaliation by a Constitution and Bill of Rights meant to curb abuses of official power.

Presumed guilt or innocence today has little to do with actual evidence, at least in the increasingly oppressive and hyper-politicized court of public opinion, i.e., the mass media and academic elites who control the flow of information and craft the official narratives. In their rarefied worldview, judgments about others are not based upon facts and evidence but instead become a function of one’s political persuasion, religious ideology, or more often color of skin. In their enlightened reckoning, “the lighter the skin, the greater your sin.” This whole tangled mentality reminds me of the once widely touted, but today utterly discredited, “science” of phrenology by which 19th century criminologists claimed they could predict a person’s criminal tendencies by mapping the bumps on their head! The same sort of mumbo jumbo is being applied today in order to determine a person’s character. The only difference is that head bumps have been replaced by wearing a MAGA hat on one’s head. And who needs evidence when we have available such refined scientific indicators to help us root out “domestic terrorists?”

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Rushing to Judgment, and Fr. James Jackson, FSSP

Posted on November 13, 2021 by Francis

As a friend and former parishioner of Father James Jackson, FSSP over the past 15 years or so, I feel no need to rush to his defense against the contemptible charges being made against him for the simple reason that no defense is truly necessary. This is a priest beyond reproach who, for reasons only known to God, has been entangled in a bizarre and suspicious cyber-sting operation which smacks of a deliberate frame-up either by corrupt officials, a malevolent hacker who took offense at something this priest wrote or said, or a combination of both. Nor would Fr. Jackson be the first innocent person to be accused or convicted of child porn possession and distribution. Today there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent people whose lives have been ruined by similar accusations. A Nov. 8, 2009 NBC News / Associated Press investigative article bears this fact out. It begins “Of all the sinister things that Internet viruses do, this might be the worst: They can make you an unsuspecting collector of child pornography.” The piece goes on to report the ease with which malignant viruses can capture an unsuspecting user’s PC and load it with porn. (the complete article can be found at http://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna33778733)

Are we to believe that somehow, 12 years later, this problem has abated even as major corporations and vital pipelines have been hacked and compromised by malicious malware? If Yahoo, Target, and Colonial Pipeline, employing legions of cyber-security experts, cannot prevent such breaches, are we also to believe that someone with a minimal literacy in computers, such as a Fr. Jackson, would be invulnerable to malicious hackers? His case has all the earmarks of the recent Cardinal George Pell travesty in Melbourne, Australia: a patently false accusation and prosecution, apparently orchestrated by corrupt Vatican insider Cardinal Angelo Becciu, himself now disgraced and under indictment for financial fraud. And although ultimately exonerated by Australia’s high court, Pell’s slandered reputation will never be restored.

So before rushing to judgment over such ludicrous accusations, as most of the media has already done, I would beg my readers to view the classic 1953 Alfred Hitchcock thriller I Confess starring Montgomery Clift. Clift’s character is Fr. Logan, a priest accused of murder who cannot exonerate himself without breaking the seal of confession. Consequently, he must watch the ruin of his reputation, face criminal prosecution, and the wrath of a hostile mob. Perhaps we are now being treated to a case of art imitating life, because there is an uncanny physical resemblance between Clift’s Fr. Logan and the real Fr. Jackson that we who know him well have come to love. I wish more Catholic media reporters would reflect on the sins of both slander and detraction before jumping to rash conclusions, but Mr. Dan Dougherty addresses that issue better than I could which is why I have included his recent letter as an addendum, below.

The Fr. Jackson I know is a quiet, thoughtful, and very humane individual whose real desire was to be a contemplative monk. In fact he has spent a year or so in a monastery in France before God called him into an active priestly ministry. Although naturally reserved, he loved playing rugby and became a Marine Corps chaplain before finally joining the traditional Latin FSSP community in 1996. Fr. Jackson is a hard-nosed realist who possesses a truly contemplative soul that longs above all for God. His writings show it, his sermons demonstrate it, his gracious and courteous manners around all sorts of people manifest it, and above all his great love of beauty all indicate how his life is totally ordered to union with the Divine Will.

Such a man does not suddenly turn, after 66 years, to a trifling, soul deadening amusement like pornography. One does not suddenly acquire such a degrading habit at that age. I work with the Road to Purity, a recovery program designed to help people caught up in pornography and sexual addictions, and if such a propensity had been there all along it would have surely manifested itself long before this point. Father Jackson is not naive about human nature. He wrote with real insight about priestly life in his weekly parish bulletins. For instance, “Without the faith (I mean real belief in God) and the pursuit of the interior life, celibacy just creates a class of professional bachelors who are still saying Mass and doing baptisms, but are overcome with isolation and even depression… They naturally turn to the natural for consolation,” he warned. “And with that turning from God, there is hell to pay.”

These are the measured words of someone with a rich interior life, fully aware of the corrupt McCarrick culture infesting the modern Church, so one must ask, what is the real story behind this Kafka-like turn of events? Are we witnessing just another burlesque script from the same authoritarian bureaucrats and media lackeys who have been feeding us Russian collusion, a false pandemic, and now imposing medical tyranny? My perspective is that Fr. Jackson is being targeted for the crime of pointing out unpopular truths: whether it be calling out “psychosexually dysfunctional” priests or challenging an emasculated priest-class he calls “professional bachelors” or leading a prayer rally against a Satanist black mass in Salem. All these things will earn you great enmity in the world. After all, if his foes can take down a high ranking prince of the Church like Cardinal Pell, how difficult would it be to target some lowly unknown pastor in Providence, R.I.?

But at a deeper level we must realize that the priest acts in persona Christi – in the person of Christ, and it was Christ himself who was falsely accused, condemned, and led to crucifixion. “If the world hates you remember that it first hated me.” (Jn 15:18) The faithful priest must therefore be prepared for immolation in the world which is exactly what I see when I behold the sad, pensive expression in Fr. Jackson’s eyes from the police mugshot. “Like a lamb led to slaughter, he was silent and opened not his mouth.” (Is 53:7) That, to me, represents the true essence of our Fr. Jackson – a willing victim suffering vicariously for his beloved flock.

In the end, Fr. Jackson will be vindicated, perhaps not in the eyes of the world but in the court that truly matters – the eternal judgment seat. Falsely accused, falsely judged, and wrongfully treated is, for his faithful priest, a sign of God’s special love and providence. Please keep him in your prayers, and also those who are persecuting him. We are living in a time of white martyrdom, and Fr. Jackson is not alone among the many faithful priests today who are likewise being “led to the slaughter” simply for speaking the truth.

Francis J. Pierson + a.m.d.g.

Addendum: Letter of Dan Dougherty to Church Militant below

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Tolerance Corrupted

Posted on May 20, 2021 by Francis

Living in a pluralistic society such as ours, a keen spirit of tolerance is essential to ensure social harmony. In fact, our American republic is founded on the presumption of mutual tolerance, something we pride ourselves upon. Yet how easy it is through excess for human nature to turn a virtue into a vice. The philosopher Karl Popper shrewdly observed that unlimited tolerance eventually produces intolerance. Popper warned about pursuing tolerance to extremities, for when that happens the thing turns into its very opposite, and brings about a culture of intolerance.

This is what we are quite plainly seeing in our society today, rife with its “woke” cancel culture. There needs to be some natural limit to what people will tolerate because unchecked tolerance does not produce social peace and harmony. Instead it empowers the most intolerant factions to weaponize tolerance against the very same well-meaning individuals who are busy tolerating everything and everybody. For the intolerant, tolerance is always a one-way street, namely the obligation of you to tolerate whatever I may say, do, or think with no corresponding obligation on my part to be tolerant of your views.

A good example of this lopsided dynamic has been the infiltration of liberal democracies such as France by radical Islamists who have taken full advantage of the freedoms provided by that liberal democratic state to impose their very illiberal Shariah law upon certain neighborhoods around Paris and other large cities. And once control is seized by an intolerant minority any real semblance of toleration evaporates like the morning mist. In short, unlimited tolerance fails to provide a secure peace because it enables and shields the most intolerant factions to bully the more tolerant population into submission. Such feckless tolerance refuses to confront evil before it assumes tyrannical proportions. And any protest after the fact is too late, and too feeble, to restore the necessary balance.

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The Lord of the Rings vs. the “Jab”

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Francis

This so-called pandemic has provided ample demonstration of the old adage about government, that the only area in which it shows competence is incompetence. And now, after a year of fumbling and incessant contradictions we are being advised by countless governments to put our undying faith in an untried, experimental “vaccine” which is, in reality, and experimental gene therapy with totally unknown and untested long term consequences. Being touted by Popes and bishops, presidents, celebrities, and corporate honchos as the salvation of mankind ~ a claim entirely unproven ~ the “jab” has taken on a mystical aura; a kind of 21st century Holy Grail.

But how “holy” is a therapy produced at the expense of innocent human lives, aborted in order to produce cell lines from which the “jab” has directly descended? Ethicists, bishops, and assorted sophists are taking the line that the remoteness of the initial intrinsic evil excuses one’s participation in and profiting from such a monstrous evil. I am immediately reminded of arguments found in that greatest of 20th century literary classics, “The Lord of the Rings.” The solidly Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien perfectly understood, and clearly saw through, such Jesuitical reasoning. As I re-read his great trilogy I am beginning to understand the metaphors and symbolisms he employed in much greater depth. Tolkien, in fact, tackles the very point that is being bantered about today regarding the moral efficacy of the “jab.”

The Ring represents Original Sin which, in a larger sense, can be described as man’s concupiscent “will to power.” Remember in Genesis we read “you shall be like gods” (Gen 3:5) emanating from the lying tempter’s mouth. Likewise, the Ring gives its bearer power to be like a god – but there is always a catch. The Ring answers not to its current bearer but to Sauron, the dark Lord: the Power of Evil. Rather than bestowing liberty, it ultimately enslaves. This explains why the only creature fit to be the Ring bearer is a humble hobbit. Hobbits are the least corruptible precisely because they are the least powerful. Tolkien makes this very clear throughout his tale. It is the childlike qualities of hobbits: their simplicity and purity of heart that protects them from the Ring’s corrosive, corrupting influence. Men and even wizards are the ones who fall most easily under its spell. The one most corrupted is Gollum of course, once a man but now a hideous creature enslaved by the Ring’s evil power.

Tolkien is saying that we cannot compromise with evil – ever – and still hope to come out on top. One cannot use an evil means, even for the most noble cause because, like the Ring, evil has a will of its own, or rather the will of the Evil One behind it who will twist, corrupt, and bend those who foolishly employ it to his own ends. In this regard, Tolkien is perhaps a better moral theologian than many of today’s “experts.” Like Boromir, they are tempted to use evil against itself. Boromir reasons, “valour needs first strength, and then a weapon. Let the Ring be our weapon, if it has such power as you say. Take it and go forth to victory!” “Alas no,” said Elrond. “We cannot use the ruling Ring… It belongs to Sauron and was made by him alone, and is altogether evil… The very desire of it corrupts the heart… For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.”

Tolkien shows his true brilliance in this passage. To compromise one’s morals is to be eventually consumed by the very evil one might seek to curtail. Remember the claim 50 years ago that contraception would strengthen and even save the family? I do. Much like the Ring, any small evil will overtake the one who wishes to use it for some good end. The widespread acceptance of contraception quickly ushered in the greater evil of abortion. It also opened the door to unrestrained extra-marital sex which in turn undermined both marriage and the family. And today, researchers routinely traffic in body parts from aborted children in order to find new “cures” and make “vaccines.” Yet numerous Catholic clerics, administrators, and especially politicians have so seriously compromised their Catholic principles to the degree that many are no longer even recognizable as Catholics in spite of their outward claims. They have come to resemble pathetic “Gollums” transfixed by and obsessed with their “precious” rings of power.

The point is that in a sense we are all Ring bearers because each of us is carrying the burden of original sin – that human “will to power” celebrated by Nietzsche. “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mk 10:15) So powerful is that burden of original sin that even for the humble hobbit, Frodo, at the critical moment of decision even he faltered, unwilling to destroy the Ring that had been such a burden to him. Positive evil is real and it is powerful. It is not something to be trifled with. It will inevitably deceive the one who sees some potential for good in it, just as the Ring betrayed any who would use it for their own ends.

“Ah, the Ring! Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing? So small a thing…” reasons Boromir. “You seem ever to think only of its power in the hands of the Enemy… of its evil uses not its good… But why, if it were with us?” The “jab” is so small a thing that most bishops have waved away any moral objections to its use, and in fact most have taken it themselves. But leave it to a small hobbit to remind us all of larger realities. “Were you not at the Council?” answered Frodo. “Because we cannot use it, and what is done with it turns to evil.”

Our human “will to power” is a kind of pride driven lust that drives us, like Gollum, to possess “my precious.” We are busy at one end of the line tugging at some object of desire, much like a fish nibbling on bait. But we need to consider who, or what, is at the other end of that same line waiting to reel us in. There is another kind of will, the Free Will, which when supplied with grace, can defeat that dark brooding “will to power” which is the residue of original sin. But we must become humble as hobbits in order to conquer it. For if we refuse to destroy “the precious,” namely that concupiscent will, our fate will be the same as Gollum’s, eternal destruction. For the Ring does not ultimately grant one power but slavery to the same Dark Lord that it was made to serve. To compromise with evil is to approve it. Nobody understood that better than Tolkien. Perhaps now, if we could only get our pastors to carefully read Tolkien’s great classic, they too might gain a hobbit’s courage. And wouldn’t that be wonderful!

Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.

Confession: So Good for the Soul!

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Francis

Confession is good for the soul, or so they say. That may be so but it also occurs to me that half the fun in committing a crime is being able to brag about it later. And so the time has come for the Left to take its bows over last November’s election. Every performer needs an audience in order to be completely fulfilled which is the spirit in which Time Magazine correspondent Molly Ball relates the back story of the shadiest election in American history. In classic “Newspeak” fashion she calls her piece, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election.”* So much for snappy headlines! *(Time Magazine, February 15, 2021)

The main thrust of this lengthy tome is that America’s democratic election system is so broken down that we can no longer trust citizens to simply go to the polls and make their choice. Election laws in 50 states are so fraught with built-in bias that no one can reasonably trust the process to work as it has for over 200 years. And who really needs to verify a voter’s identity, or that they live in the state in which they are voting? Such requirements are only a drag on democracy. That is why according to Ball it took “conspiracy to save the 2020 election.” Mind you, we are talking about “white hat” conspirators here: virtuous actors ready to ride to the defense of democracy so that, “every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” quoting Ian Bassin, co-founder of Project Democracy, one among any number of Leftist advocacy groups working to save democracy. So who is to be in charge of determining a “proper outcome?” Apparently none of those deplorable, ill-informed Trump voters.

Notice how the emphasis was subtly shifted from eliminating interference in the election process to assuring a proper outcome. Voila! Ball, as spokesman for the elite media establishment, anoints groups like Project Democracy with the moral right to decide ahead of time what the proper outcome of any election ought to be, and then make certain that such an outcome is delivered. If this sounds to you vaguely a lot like Soviet style elections you get to move to the head of the class. ALL elections in Socialist paradises like Venezuela and Red China result in the proper outcome ─ 100% of the time! Surprise is a highly overrated stimulant after all.

Ms. Ball then teasingly lets the cat out of the bag just a bit more, revealing the workings of “a well funded cabal of powerful people… working behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information.” Did her readers catch all of that? I have always understood that in this country changing rules and laws is intended to be an open, public process accomplished through legislation. And isn’t media coverage supposed to be independent and unbiased, not steered by some invisible hand? Yet here she openly brags about powerful people encouraging unilateral executive and judicial actions which skirt the established rule-of-law.

Up until now, people who suggested the existence of such high level back door dealing or collusion between journalists and politicians were generally dismissed as conspiracy kooks. But suddenly conspiracy is the “in thing” ─ depending on whose conspiracy is being promoted anyway. There are virtuous conspiracies, undertaken by the Left of course, and evil Trumpian conspiracy theories: “baseless claims” which must be zealously extinguished lest they incite dangerous extremists to horrible deeds.

We now get to the real heart of the 2020 election confession, in typical “Newspeak” parlance: Time’s own backhanded way of laying guilty admissions on the table. Ball relates, “They (Project Democracy and fellow Leftist partisans) were not rigging the election, they were fortifying it.” Translated into common English this reads: “yeah, we threw the election results in several key states by “fortifying” the tally with thousands of phony ballots.” But an exculpatory rationalization immediately follows this implicit explosive admission of election rigging. “The public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.”

I wish I were making this stuff up but it’s coming right off the pages of Time Magazine, a supposed paragon of journalistic truth and integrity. This is tantamount to an open confession that various Leftist groups, so concerned about the fragility of our Constitutional system, did everything possible, fair or foul, to insure the proper outcome of the 2020 Presidential election. And they feel no compunction about such fraud because, instead of subverting the election process, they were gallantly “fortifying” it against its inherent “fragility.” After all, it’s not really fraud when one is only insuring the proper outcome.

If outright theft failed, the Left was prepared to unleash another round of urban rioting on our nation because the proper outcome was not achieved. This was to be the sort of indiscriminate violence that had been occurring all summer long with hardly a word of protest from media outlets or Democrat politicians who either cheered it on or cavalierly dismissed the chaos with, “people will do those things.” Ball speaks glowingly of the Democracy Defense Coalition which created a force of “election defenders” and “activists who “began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election.” She boasts how “More than 150 liberal groups… from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition… listing 400 planned post election demonstrations to be activated by text message as soon as November 4. To stop the coup they feared, the Left was ready to flood the streets,” says Ball. This is a candid admission of pre-planned nationwide “insurrection” if things didn’t go their way, two full months before the staged “false flag insurrection” at the capital.

In other words, there was a concerted and planned effort to further intimidate and terrorize society if election results were not to the liking of the Democrats. Ball passes it all off as “protecting fragile democracy.” She introduces mastermind Mike Podhorzer, who knew a full year ahead that “the election was headed for disaster ─ and determined to protect it” with hundreds of millions of dollars from various “patriots” like Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg. Most of the funds were used to alter statutory election procedures, implement mail in ballots, enable widespread ballot harvesting, and train partisan election tabulators. Podhorzer was confident. “He could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.” Miraculously, despite holding significant leads at 10:00 p.m. on election night, at some time in the wee hours of the morning enough votes materialized in places like Atlanta and Detroit’s TCF Center that democracy was saved.

Ball continues, “So the word went out, stand down. “Protect the Results” announced that it would not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate it if necessary.” Does that sound like a dog whistle warning judges, state legislators, even the Supreme Court that anyone daring to investigate “baseless claims” of election rigging might have to deal with serious consequences? Intimidation, or just a friendly warning? You be the judge. But if all those claims were truly baseless, investigation would surely confirm the fact. It was a perfect opportunity to debunk Trump voter fraud claims, but nobody jumped on it. Huh?

Ball relates the story in Detroit. “A busload of Republican election observers had arrived at the TCF Center, where votes were being tallied. They were crowding the vote-counting tables, refusing to wear masks, heckling the mostly black workers. Art Reyes, who leads We the People of Michigan… made his way to the arena and sent word to his network. Within 45 minutes dozens of reinforcements had arrived… they entered the arena to provide a counterweight to the GOP observers inside.” Anybody who has listened to sworn testimony by many GOP observers would immediately recognize this narrative as pure fiction. First, it’s awfully hard to “crowd vote-counting tables” from a distance of 30 or 60 feet which is as close as Republican observers were allowed to get. Many were either denied entry outright or summarily escorted out for asking questions even though they were credentialed to be on the floor. And if credentials were required, how is it that un-credentialed “reinforcements” from Art Reyes’ network gained admittance to the arena when credentialed Republican observers were routinely being denied admittance?

These are the sorts of questions investigative journalists are paid to ask. Is Ball suggesting that the few Republican observers who actually got in the door were inherent racists with nothing better to do than heckle black workers from a distance of 60 feet? One such observer who testified under oath about apparent irregularities was herself a black Republican woman. She was later threatened with physical harm for having the temerity to speak up. The silliness of the whole report was graphically illustrated by an accompanying photo showing dozens of Republican observers, obviously packed and cordoned behind a glass wall in a lobby area ─ locked out from the actual arena floor. A ludicrous caption reads: “Trump supporters seek to disrupt the vote count at TCF Center.” How one could effectively disrupt a game of jacks from behind a full ceiling-height barricade is anybody’s guess.

But poll observers were not the only ones being pressured. Ball relates that on November 17 “activists flooded the Wayne County canvassing board certification meeting to certify the Detroit vote.” She freely admits, “Election boards were one pressure point; another was GOP controlled legislatures.” Why then, if your candidate has apparently won and any questions of irregularity amount to “baseless claims” was there such an extraordinary need to flood the chambers over a routine certification? “Me thinks thou doth protest too much,” observed Shakespeare. Like Rodya Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment, there seems to be a subconscious need to confess one’s crimes. Ms. Ball is apparently the Left’s chosen instrument for making a public general confession of election theft. Of course any disclosure must be opaque enough to sustain plausible deniability, and yet clear enough to be constructively interpreted as an admission of guilt. Catharsis achieved, we can then all move on.

In the end, Ball indulges in a lot of congratulatory back patting. “I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot… Democracy won in the end.” Is this not an inverted admission that it was not the electorate who thwarted Donald Trump but a “well funded cabal of powerful people?” And who are the real plotters here? In classic Freudian fashion the perpetrators exhibit a psychological need to project their own “plottings” onto the victim. One’s own sins demand a scapegoat, in this case Donald Trump. So, even after the crime is successfully executed, the Left can’t seem to let up. As an encore they drum up a sham impeachment trial for a president no longer holding office. We are witnessing a historical deja vu moment, reminiscent of that macabre ritual when a dead medieval Pope was exhumed and put on trial in order to be posthumously deposed. This current climate reveals just how twisted the human mind can become, and we are witnessing some very twisted political theater these days.

Ironically, there is both much truth and yet precious little truth in Ms. Ball’s bizarre telling of an even more bizarre conspiracy. She seems to want badly to reveal just enough to titillate without upturning the apple cart entirely. Her task is a deft balancing act, blending deception and honesty in just the right proportions to prevent the cake from falling. She does make one truthful observation, however, although in a sense which she obviously did not intend it. Her own words have turned on her, probably without her realizing it. “There is an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it is a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.” Truth does have a way of peeking its head out through the cracks of deception, we only have to know where to look for it.

Francis J. Pierson +a.m.d.g.