Orthodox Reflections

Right after chow one morning, we had a lecture that I dimly recall was on the topic of “Urban Warfare.” I remember the major teaching the class had a last name resembling a line on an eye chart. I was only 19 back then. Officers and NCO’s in those days always used some kind of “hook” at the beginning of their lectures to engage the audience. Jokes were common. Some used film clips. Others read book passages or newspaper articles.

This major read us a story written by an eyewitness to the Sack of Constantinople. For a few minutes that morning, we listened as blood ran in the streets and children were slaughtered in front of their parents. Shrieking mothers were gang raped alongside their daughters before all of them were brutally decapitated. Old men were drug down the streets by their white beards for sport. Books representing thousands of years of accumulated knowledge were burned. Some of the greatest art in the world was despoiled in a frenzy of hate and violence.

When he finished reading, the major asked us what the moral of the story was. Marines in the audience ventured various guesses. The major seemed increasingly annoyed by their efforts. Finally, he closed the book sharply and said, “The moral of the story is – don’t f**king lose.”

Over thirty years later, I still remember the moral of that story. In the meantime, I’ve learned a lot, gotten old, and become Orthodox. Now I recognize that many of those Greeks died as martyrs for Christ. They are in a place of peace as they await the resurrection and their everlasting reward. But as a father and husband, I also recognize that if they had had a choice, few of them would have voluntarily watched helplessly as their loved-ones suffered such horrible deaths.

So yeah. Don’t f**cking lose. Once you do, whatever happens next is completely out of your control. And historically speaking, what comes next can be really, really bad if the winners hate your guts.

Tens of millions of us are looking out over the landscape of contemporary America and feeling besieged. This year, we’ve watched BLM / Antifa rioters allowed to pillage and burn with impunity. Police stood down in the face of violent disorder, and refused to protect innocent civilians. Citizens who tried to protect themselves and their property were vilified and some have even been charged with crimes. Not even senior public officials such as senators and congressmen were safe from the fury of the mobs. The riots have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses causing billions in damages. Churches have not been spared, some even being attacked while worshippers prayed inside. Statues of Jesus, the saints, and American heroes have been pulled down and desecrated.

The media and the politicians have made excuses for all this or intentionally downplayed it. The words “mostly peaceful” have entered our lexicon now, along with “flatten the curve” and the “new normal.”

The mobs were also active on social media. As a result of pressure campaigns, historical place names are being changed. Books are being banned. Beloved authors are being consigned to the memory hole because they were the wrong color or because they wrote about the wrong topics. As the old American culture is erased bit-by-bit, a new one arises that none of us can even recognize.

Truly the barbarians have breached the gates.  Only this time, the rulers invited them in.

But it’s not just the violence in the streets and the pressure of woke Twitter mobs that are changing our nation. We’ve watched with concern for decades as executive power has grown unchecked, only to discover in 2020 that the situation is even worse than we could have possibly imagined. Mayors, health officials, and governors can lock us in our homes, shut down our businesses, close our churches, close our schools, and even change the rules for how we vote. Police around the country enforce these clearly unconstitutional orders as if they were the law of the land. City councils, state legislatures, Congress and courts have all proven ineffectual in reigning in executive overreach. On the off chance a court declares one arbitrary rule or another unconstitutional, the executives seem to always find a way to keep their boots on our necks.

If the fear of a virus with a 99.7% survival rate can be leveraged to transform our entire society, are there any limits on what government can do in a “crisis”?

Throughout this nightmare of a year, we consoled ourselves with one thought – at least we can vote the bastards out. Or, maybe not…

According to the official narrative, COVID-19 is going to kill millions any day now and Joe Biden campaigning from his basement, after 47 lackluster years in politics including two failed presidential bids, was able to win 81 million votes. There is so much evidence of fraud in this election that a blind squirrel could find it. And that leaves Red State voters asking each other, “If they can steal an election this brazenly, does it matter if we vote ever again?”

Despite all the evidence, the courts are not interested in even hearing the cases brought before them. The state legislatures appear uninterested in exercising their constitutional duty to oversee the selection of electors in a fair manner. The old guard of the Republican Party can’t seem to surrender fast enough.

But Trump is refusing to concede. In court challenges and through other Constitutional means, Trump is not giving up. And in his fight to stay in office against the powerful forces of tech, media, academia, religion, and the Deep State, his supporters are largely there with him. They are willing to fight for Trump, to turn out at rallies a month after the election, because they feel Trump is willing to fight for them. For decades, the Republican Party’s only use was to negotiate slightly better terms of surrender. The old joke was, “The Democrats propose burning down the country. The Republicans want to phase it in over 5 years!” Trump is by no means perfect, but at least he has shown the courage to withstand vicious attacks that would have cowed most any other Republican into submission. His intestinal fortitude has seeped into the Republican Party as a whole, and the post-Trump party is stronger as a result.

Conservatives are angry at what they perceive as having their votes stolen. And they do love The Fighting Orange Man. But there is another, extremely important reason that conservatives refuse to accept the results of this election. They are terrified that the last year has only been a dress-rehearsal for what comes next.

Conservative Americans realize they are facing the very real threat of being governed by politicians that absolutely hate us and who have no meaningful restraints on their power.

We started out as “deplorables” and have now progressed to “f**kers.”  We are even being dehumanized by some writers and cartoonists as “rats.” In the current storm of insults, Trump supporters are even being cast as traitors. At least one Democratic congressman has called for attorneys representing the president in legal challenges to be disbarred and to strip House members who supported Texas v. Pennsylvania in the Supreme Court of their seats in Congress. One of the defendants in that case described it as a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) went on CNN with this accusation, “These senators and members of Congress who have refused to acknowledge that we had a free and fair election in which Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 7 million votes, are bordering on sedition and treason.” Not only can we not get our day in court, even asking for one is tantamount to treason.

These are not necessarily just empty words. In 1918, at a time when our constitutional order was much more robust than today, the Democrats gave us the Sedition Act which made it a felony to criticize the government. More than 2,000 American citizens were arrested and prosecuted pursuant to the Sedition Act before Republicans, victorious in both houses of Congress in the mid-terms, could repeal it. That is just one example of criminalizing dissent. There are many more marring our 240+ year experiment in self-rule. Not only can such things happen in America, they have happened in America.

To cement their power, the Democrats openly discuss transforming our system of government by abolishing the Electoral College, admitting new states to the union to gain permanent control of the Senate, and packing the Supreme Court with reliably liberal votes to rubber stamp everything. Conservatives also hear calls for retribution from progressives that include “re-education,” “truth and reconciliation commissions,” and nationalizing the lockdowns and mask mandates (see ya’ free state of Florida). Those proposals are just for starters, as the in-coming Biden Administration also keeps discussing executive orders to “deal” with gun violence, forgive student loans, and further “reform” the criminal justice system. And the granddaddy of them all – climate change, of course.

Climate activists are chomping at the bit to use the “COVID” model of economic lock downs by executive fiat to combat “climate change.” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) in a Washington Post op-ed wrote, “The climate crisis is an emergency, and President-elect Joe Biden needs to treat it that way. That means using every tool available to him, including declaring a national climate emergency and using emergency powers to take unilateral executive action.”

Combatting climate change is central to the The Great Reset, the latest project by very intelligent people to remake the world into a centrally-planned Utopia. The plan started with COVID, but will be completed during the next crisis. The slogan of the project appears to be “Build Back Better,” a line parroted by politicians around the globe. The goal of “building back better” appears to be herding regular people into urban techno-prisons, while the world reverts to an idyllic greenspace for billionaires and their minions to enjoy. Sort of Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park on a global scale, but without the annoying lines as the average people will all be locked up at home.

Whatever is left of our economy after fighting COVID will surely be finished off fighting climate change.

Conservatives fear they are facing a string of emergency orders that will destroy our economy and rob us of our freedoms. These orders will be issued by politicians with unchecked power, supported by rampaging street mobs, who hate conservatives passionately and consider them sub-humans with no rights. The politicians will be protected from electoral accountability by an intricate system of election rigging hidden in plain sight. This is a nightmare scenario conservatives will be powerless to resist by any legal or constitutional means. 

Such fears tend to bring out fanatical tendencies in even the most even-tempered of people.

Biden has said he wants “unity.” Fine – acknowledge the problems with this election, allow full investigation of voting irregularities, commit to national, transparent standards for future elections, tell your supporters to stop talking about retribution, stop the talk about “sedition,” quit holding Antifa / BLM in reserve as a street army (prosecute them instead), and commit to constitutional principles as part of your plans for governance. That would include foreswearing the declaration of a “climate crisis” that would allow for unconstitutional executive orders. For a man who truly wants to govern all of America in peaceful co-existence, that should not be a hard set of promises to make and keep.

It is not the job of nervous Americans to reassure themselves. That would be the job of the incoming administration. A job Biden and company had better take seriously, because the alternative is tens of millions of potentially ungovernable Americans who question the very legitimacy of the government in Washington. Talk the talk, walk the walk, appoint some people to government that we can trust, and maybe we can work together to avoid some really bad potential outcomes.

Otherwise, may God have mercy on us all.

Nicholas – member of the  Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America, a COVID refugee from the GOA