Professionalism and objectivity out the window: Madeleine Baran from Minnesota Public Radio
In covering the issue of the media and Catholic sex abuse for over a decade now, we do not believe we have seen reporting as dishonest and biased as that from Madeleiene Baran from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR).
Indeed, Baran has shamelessly smeared an innocent priest, has claimed facts which were either outright false and misleading, and has produced a three-part series that was an inaccurate and irresponsible screed against Church officials based upon thin evidence and innuendo.
Perfect soulmates
Therefore, it was little surprise when we saw that MPR's Baran will be a headline speaker at this year's annual conference for the lawyer-funded, anti-Catholic group SNAP.
As we have reported in the past (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), SNAP's annual get-togethers have little to do with actually providing support for victims as they do with providing a forum for speakers to rail against the Catholic Church on topics that have nothing to do with sex abuse and allowing Church-suing contingency lawyers to further bankroll the organization.
Indeed, past conferences have included such speakers as the radical pro-abortion advocate Eleanor Smeal and the wacky Rev. Barry Lynn railing against the Church over left-wing political issues.
And the world's leading Church-suing contingency lawyer, Jeff Anderson, regularly acts as the carnival-barking fundraiser when it comes time to ask attendees, from which there are other plaintiff lawyers, to pony up their cash. We have already shown that the vast majority of money raised by SNAP at its conferences comes from Church-suing lawyers.
By appearing at SNAP's conference, Baran has shirked any pretense of fairness or objectivity when it comes to her reporting of abuse in the Catholic Church. Baran has conceded that she has taken sides in her reporting and has herself become a participant and advocate in the story she is covering as a so-called journalist.
Baran will fit in perfectly with this crooked crowd.
I've never heard one anti catholic remark made at the 2 SNAP conferences I've attended (The first and the one in 2008)
Anti hierarchy, yes, depending and pro hierarchy depending. That's it. All SNAP talks about is how great SNAP is period. It's a false flagged effort.
The St Paul District Attorney. Has spent many thousands, investigating the Archdiocese of St Paul. The Coverup, and Corruption. So has the media. Especilly Minnesota Public Radio.
The Vatican has done what it continues to do. Absolutely Nothing. Meet the New Pope. Same as the old Pope.
TrueCatholic, June 10, says that Minnesota Public Radio has investigated the Church. She/he also mentions that other media and also the District Attorney have done the same. Well I do hope their respective investigations have been better than that of 'TrueCatholic' . Why? Because a thorough investigation would have revealed that Baran has already admitted to have taken sides, and now is a supporter and advocate for a cause. Which immediately disqualifies her as an impartial investigator. Something a real journalist strives to avoid… as it undermines their professional independence.
Some time ago I watched a media magnate when he was interviewed on T.V. Somebody suggested to him that the media sometimes "makes the news" and sometimes even "shapes public opinion". He affected a kind of hurt humility and said "all we do is hold up a mirror to society….we just reflect back what is already out there"
Yeah right. So I guess we can reflect back to him something that Joseph Goebbels said….."the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed".
Your devotion to your faith Malcolm isn't coloring your take on this scandal?
Convicted murderers aren't given "the other side" in the media; nor are child molestors; nor prelates who enable child molestation by hiding the crimes of child molesting clerics from the unknowing parents of possible victims.
This entire scandal is your prelates own doing. Theirs and those who deny the crimes that happened, happened. True Catholic is right in her/his opinion and name.
Maicolm
Archbishop Nienstedt, is a lying son of a bitch, and you know it. But just like the Archdiocese, and the Catholic League. You choose to smear the messenger. And anyone else who exposes the facts.
On the 11th JR suggests that personal faith may be colouring my take on this scandal. Well my faith does not obscure my understanding that the rule of law must prevail… and apply to everybody.. Whatever their status or religion.
My real concern is that the rule of law is being circumvented, and this is being done with the help of some sections of the media. Surely it is understood that a victim of any alleged crime must go to the police and report it. Then charges are laid against the accused. Then a impartial court decides guilt or innocence… after due process has been followed.
What I am objecting to is 'trial by media' and back-room deals done by lawyers and insurers.. It means the accused priest is denied his constitutional rights. The payment of a settlement is seen as an admission of his guilt. Although guilt has not been proven at all, The alleged victim has usually made an emotive accusation which is uttterly unsupported by evidence. This is not due process… and therefore is a denial of justice. Hence my frequently repeated words about a 'witch hunt'.
This madness snowballs when one payout encourages other dubious claimants. Before long the 'pile-on' effect makes the priest look like a serial offender. Then the Bishop is accused of covering up.
It's crazy because if all these alleged victims successful hid the abuse from their parents…then how on earth could the Bishop be expected to have known. In reality any person who abuses children is very secretive, for fear of being reported to the police.
So it's not just the rule of law that is being deranged, it is also our rational assessment of the whole narrative.
Well, let’s get to it.
On the 9th at 842AM we are assured by JR that he “never” did hear even “one anti catholic remark” (sic) … this global “never” made on the basis of the merely two SNAP conferences he attended, for which the date of the first is not given.
We are not given his deductions from this factoid (presuming its accuracy in the first place); perhaps he is going for this: since in the 2 conferences he attended he never heard an anti-Catholic remark, then SNAP is demonstrably not anti-Catholic.
Be that as it all may, once he makes the further distinction between ‘anti-Catholic’ and “anti hierarchy” (sic) we wind up essentially at the same conceptual point since what distinguishes Catholic Christianity from other types is precisely the vertebracy provided by a hierarchy created by Apostolic Succession.
This is what has sustained the Catholic Vision and ecclesial polity while other Christian variant polities have had to attach themselves to governments (the Church of England) or have fractalized over the sequelae of freedom of Biblical interpretation (this group thinks this, that group thinks that, this individual thinks this, that individual thinks that) or have been unable to withstand the pressures and currents of various historical epochs and have simply mutated themselves to go with the historical flow, or some combination of the foregoing.
Indeed, we might consider the present excitements in the Church generally today as being sited deeply in this matter of hierarchy: the contemporary West generally sees all authority as potentially ‘oppressive’ and thus as bad by definition (echoing the sly Marxist/Leninist gambit: power and authority in Tsarist Russia and in all capitalist countries is ‘oppressive’ of the peasants and workers, therefore sweep it away … which resulted in 74 years of – waittttttt for itttttttttt – the Soviet Union and all its pomps and all its works).
And in the post-1960s USA, this trope was reinforced by the Boomery infatuation with ‘liberation’ and such, which is equally averse to power and authority, resulting in both the National Nanny State (as if the National Security State wasn’t trouble enough) and in the various sequelae of invertebracy such as we see all over the place even in such issues as the burning gender questions of the current day: what is a ‘woman’, what is a ‘man’, who has the power and authority to say, and what difference does it make anyway?
And as for the point in the final paragraph of the comment: yet again: the question at issue in regard to SNAP (or ‘new-SNAP’, as I explained in my comment on the immediately prior thread) is not whether it is “false flagged” (sic) but rather whether this new-SNAP is a creature and tool of the Church or of the torties.
On the 10th at 340PM ‘True Catholic’ (hereinafter: TC) appears satisfied merely to note that the Twin-Cities area DA has been “investigating” the Archdiocese there and “so has the media”, naming especially Minnesota Public Radio.
On this site we have examined at length both the performance of the local police and DA (that weirdly stunted investigation of the computer hard-drive a year ago or so) and the ‘reporting’ of MPR, and the problems with their performance remain.
Perhaps, rather than merely deliver quickie drive-by assertions, TC would care to review all that and proffer some serious thought or even rebuttal. Otherwise, on the basis of what we see from the TC comment here, we are simply getting an echo of the same modus-operandi we have seen from other variously-challenged commenters.
On the 11th at 1044AM JR will – waitttttt forrrrrrrr ittttttttttt! – counsel ‘Malcolm Harris’ that MH’s predisposition (i.e. “devotion to [his] faith”) might be “coloring [his] take” on this matter (JR slyly uses the characterization of “scandal”). And – ummmmmmmmmmm – would JR’s knee-jerk anti-religious and atheist predispositions be perhaps doing that very thing? (Short answer: No, because JR is completely and rationally in control of all of his material and it is ‘sociopathic’ to think otherwise.)
In the second paragraph he will try a bit of his signature ‘logic’ by trying to bridge the rather large gaps between “convicted murders” and “child molesters” (correction supplied) and “prelates who enable child molestation” … the point of the exercise being to emotionally link all three as if they were equal.
And as if there were a large number of “convicted” child molesters and as if priest/sex-abuse trials (what few of them there have been) are reliable demonstrators of properly-conducted jurisprudence and law.
As to the composition of “this entire scandal”: it remains to be seen just how much of its causation can be laid at the door of the prelates (and I would say that surely some it can be) and how much of it can be laid at the door of those synergistic interests who managed to get the Stampede going in this country, where the actual issues involved were quickly engorged to an astronomical degree by linking them to i) the prospects of huge payouts with little risk of adversarial examination (via the torties’ stratagems) and ii) the lionization status of ‘victim’ (via the media’s soap-opera presentations in accord with best Victimist doctrine and agitprop).
And in the same paragraph, JR will slyly work in a whack at all of “those who deny the crimes that happened” – as if many of those (alleged) “crimes” have been satisfactorily demonstrated to have actually happened. Once again, we see here the strong echo of allegants and payees who had apparently presumed – no doubt with the torties’ assurances – that the national infatuation with Victimism would shield them from any later doubts about their stories and claims.
Because in the Victimist Playbook: if you ‘claim’ it, then you have ‘reported’ it and you are presumptively the ‘victim’ and whomever you have accused is presumptively the ‘perp’ and that’s all there is to it.
Which is an approach bound to be attractive to minds used to working on the open-and-shut, that’s-that, and ‘that’s all there is, folks’ modality.
And this comment concludes with a shout-out to TC and its value readers can consider as they will.
And on the 11th at 1147AM TC will – marvelously – demonstrate at just what level s/he operates: we see both the scatology, the epithet, and that slyly manipulative rhetorical “and you know it” bit that we have so often seen from Abuseniks here.
Additionally, the presumption – so dear to Abusenik mentality and practice – that if you doubt Abuseniks then you “smear” them (whereas to characterize a person as a “lying [sob]” is … not to smear?).
And this apparently would be so because the Abusenik is a (add here ‘heroic and truthy’ if you wish) “messenger”. Although, as noted, you are going to be called names if you doubt or question the message of the messenger.
And as an extra add-on to “messenger”, we are given “anyone else who exposes the facts” – although you are going to be called names if you question or doubt “the facts” pushed your way.
Excellent post P, you once again took apart JR
You wrote a 3 page article.
"Knee jerk"? The only jerk I read around here is you.
What does my atheism have to do with Minnesota???
With NO proof you say what percentage of victims have no proof of their rapes by your priests?
A victim doesn't just make an accusation and that's that. Case over.
We have to show what proofs we have. Like did we know the priest (s)? Did they have access to us as children? What we were like before and after our abuse?
Has anyone looked at this international scandal? Your cardinals and bishops behaved the same criminal way, world wide. Hiding and transfering; transfering and hiding. All ways the same. You pick a country where they behaved righteously. You can't; can you?
You can lie and will lie to your heart's content. If you live in a glass house don't throw stones. If you have proof a victim has brought false charges against a cleric. I'll support him in clearing his /her name but I see none. Show me one and the proof and I'll agree with you.
But you can not. Can you?
And shit 4 brains, P pretends to have what exactly on victims? Whip it out P! where's any proof you have to back you up. He offers te readership none as usual.
Vince, go fuck yourself! you desperate little bully wanna be.
When was SNAP more anti Catholic than anti victim?
Is it anti catholic to echo the latest catholic sex abuse revelation? I don't think so.
Don't you want to know when your priests rape your children?
Don't you want to know when your cardinals and bishops failed to protect your children by transferring known serial child rapers over and over again?
SNAP doesn't reveal these things. The justice system (police D.A.'s judges) reveal media worthy stories and SNAP piggybacks a "news" event all hailing SNAP by victims so ghings look like they are being dealt with by victims. When thanks to SNAP victims are being manipulated for the church's benefit. SNAP's made to look like it hates the church.
victims don't care about the church or they love the church or they hate the church. victims are all over the map on the church.
Listen, the Soviet Union lost 20 million people to the catholic backed Nazi's. The Soviets then cleaned Hitler's clock all the way to Berlin. While the catholic church set up a rat line for Mengele and co. to South America.
What's to doubt in the reality of my abuse? It happened. Prove it didn't. I proved it did.
But you question it again and again.
You want to question all victims again and again? After awhile a victim might think you don't believe her/him no matter what we say.
So you, with out one example to back your position, have ruled yourself out of a impartial judge's position. Haven't you? Since you believe no one; from judges to juries to D.A's to victims. The only person you seem to believe is you, P. Bad choice.
You are older than boomers and we are nearlly in our 70's. You are very old and very unwise. You have not waxed in wisdom as you've aged. Pity.
Have frequently been surprised by co-incidences that liink this site to current events. On the 12rh Publion made reference to how the Catholic Church compares to other Churches. In particular it's record of independence, from monarchs and governments. Pointing out that many other Churches have been taken over by monarchs.. or the state. Guess some well known examples would be the Church of England (King Henry V111) and the Russian Orthodox Church (Soviet State and Stalin). But the Catholic Church has maintained it's indepedence, despite threats and persecution, from all secular powers. This may be due to the unbroken line of apostolic succession from the first apostles, who were appointed by Jesus himself.
The modern day link is in the fact that we are now commemorating the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Charter. Generally believed to be a turning point in the history of western civilization. Some believe all of our human rights, our democracies, our laws, can be traced back to this historic event. Yet only two media commentators yesterday mentioned the name of Stephen Langton, the then Archbishop, who was really responsible for it''s effectiveness… and bringing about real change. One commentator seemed to think that Stephen Langton was a Church of England prelate. Of course that church was only created by Henry V111 about 300 years later. In 1215 we know that all the churches in England were Catholic Churches and Langton had been appointed by the Pope in Rome. He considered himself to be independent of King John… and was not intimidated by the King or his Barons. Therefore he felt himself free to obtain, and enshrine, rights for the common man in the Magna Charter. This…. he and other clerics, eventually managed to achieve.
But what would have happened if Langton had been appointed by King John and was beholden to him?. Virtually no progess at all, because once the Magna Charter had fullfilled it's purpose, for the King, it would have been thrown away, It wasn't thrown away because the clerics protected it and promoted it. They saw their authority coming from a higher authority.
So the Magna Charter is primarily an achievement of the Catholic Church, The same Catholic Church that secularist are trying to reshape or destroy today. But their threat is not from the executioner's axe. Today's threat is character assassination…… and don't we know it?
Malcolm your church is destroying itself.
Fake perfection and lack of real love for your neighbor is wrenching it apart.
It's own contradictions are destroying it.
You didn't live up to the church's founder's teaching.
The church was used to getting it's way but humanity has walked away.
Explain 62% of Irish catholics voting for gay marriage.
It's over. Your church can not adapt. The world has out loved you.
The secular world is more loving of it's fellow human than the religion of love is.
You've ended your church yourselves.
And on and on.
As to the 15th at 803PM:
In the first paragraph: we get an epithet.
In the second paragraph: JR asks what his atheism has to do with Minnesota? He invites a distracting comparison of apples and oranges here, but it’s rather too obvious. Instead I will say that his knee-jerk atheism requires him to go along with anything that looks like it might create more plop to toss at the Church.
And that “anything” presently encompasses “Minnesota”, that hugely dubious project, undertaken in the home city of Jeff Anderson, that we have been following for a year now. Has he forgotten all the many problematic aspects covered at length on this site? Or has he ignored those problematic aspects, in order to milk the Minnesota spectacles for as much as he could? But he has never refuted or explained them as anything other than a last gasp of the Stampede, carried out in the last bastion of Anderson’s influence.
I would further add that if, as appears now to be happening in “Minnesota”, a DA tries to bring a criminal case against not an individual but a corporation (i.e. the Church) then we are seeing the attempt – long practiced in tobacco and asbestos cases – to force the target corporation to create a ‘fund’ for ‘victims’, which has resulted, as I have noted in prior comments on prior threads, in creating a fresh and large piñata (the ‘fund’ thus created) against which anyone enterprising enough might lodge a claim for monies (represented, but of course, by a tortie whose task is almost nothing more than administratively filing the necessary paperwork).
In the third paragraph: we are merely proffered a repeat of his sly attempt to i) shift the burden of proof of accusations upon those who question them rather than on those who have propounded them while simultaneously ii) avoiding the towering reality of the Probability that those stories are open to much serious doubt and question.
And while the first Jay Report tallied up the allegations, it did not report the results of those allegations (at that time quite possibly not adjudicated by trial nor handled through settlement). So we still don’t know how many of those 68 actual-rape allegations have been proven to be true.
In the fourth paragraph: we are merely proffered a repeat of his bit about “A victim doesn’t just make an accusation and that’s that – case over” (correction supplied). But, actually, that is precisely how the Victimist Playbook wants the process to go and that is precisely how the general sex-offense Stampede and the specific Catholic Abuse Stampede were supposed to go. We saw this as early as the Tawana Brawley affair a quarter-century ago and we have seen it even recently, not only in such recent cases as the Duke Lacrosse case and the U/VA case, but also in the efforts made to make the accuser presumptively credible and the accused presumptively guilty in military law (unsuccessful in that specific attempt) and in state statutes enacted in regard to university sex-abuse ‘court’ procedures (successful in CA and proposed by the governor in NY – although none yet ripe for judicial review in those venues).
LMFAO!
The church has ruined itself by it's actions; not by any actions of the victims you'd like to blame. You stink!
And in the fifth paragraph: we are merely proffered a repeat of his attempt to now presume (and get us to accept) that through their allegations being ‘settled’ – through the tortie and Anderson Strategies gambit of bringing lawsuits with so many plaintiff/allegants that the Defendant (i.e. the Church) is forced to settle rather than seek trial for each plaintiff/allegant’s allegation and claim – then that somehow ‘proves’ that the allegations and claims were proven to be true.
Nor is it the practice in law for torties to ‘prove’ that the allegations of their clients are ‘true’ before the lawsuit is filed. That is a result to be determined only through court trial; and the multiple-plaintiff tactic is precisely designed to avoid the trial route. (And it is on this basis that I have wondered whether the torties in the Catholic Abuse Matter have not crossed a line between the permissible burnishing and propounding of their clients’ stories and claims, on the one hand, and on the other hand, a perpetration of a fraud upon the court and/or a form of extortion under color of law.)
And – to save time here – it is also not dispositive if such a Defendant, having no real choice when confronted with such a multiple-plaintiff lawsuit, is required by the torties as a condition of the settlement to provide some form of written ‘apology’, especially when we do not have the exact wording of any such letter as might be issued.
And in the fifth paragraph: we get merely a repeat in furtherance of the riff in the fourth paragraph: that in the lawsuit process “victims have to show what proofs we have”. As has been made clear in such cases as we have been able to examine here, that ‘bar’ is set so very low that torties may legitimately be considered in many cases to have set no ‘bar’ at all. Unless, of course, such cases as we have been able to examine here were proffered to us without the key dispositive ‘proofs’ that had been shared with the torties.
And we have already covered in great detail and at great length here the many Causality problems posed by the gambit of relying merely on an allegant’s claim as to what s/he was “like before and after our abuse”. We have seen stories that require the ‘abuse’ to function almost as that ‘magic bullet’ in Dallas. And in the Doe Philadelphia case, we have also seen just how quickly those lethal problems reveal themselves once any amount of serious and sustained examination is conducted.
And in the sixth paragraph: we get merely a repeat of the “international” aspect of this scandal, although in that regard we have not only seen the conceptual possibility that this type of phenomenon is merely an effort to mimic or repeat the efforts so successful (for allegants/torties or for government and political purposes) in the U.S., but we have also seen now the significant failure to produce anything substantive in both the Dutch and Irish cases of recent years. The Australian efforts are still in process, although it remains to be seen if we shall see a result different from the Dutch and Irish efforts.
And in the seventh paragraph: we get yet again an effort to characterize uncongenial doubts and questions and examination as ‘lies’ – with no supporting explication, thus reducing the assertion to the merely epithetical.
And also – yet again – the effort to hide behind the Playbook effort to escape the burden of proof by shifting that burden of proof from the accusers to the accused.
Thus the eighth paragraph fails as well.
And in the ninth paragraph: we get what is merely an outright epithet, and we get that “pretend” trope again. Whereas, under the principles of law, it is the allegants who may well be ‘pretending’ the claims of abuse and/or the sequelae of the alleged abuse. There is no way whatsoever of escaping that probability, given all the material we have seen and discussed here.
And we see as well a repeat of the old I’m Not/You Are dodge, whereby JR simply tries to paint himself and the Abuseniks as the aggrieved parties here, since their stories and allegations and claims are not immediately accepted as veracious and instead – the outrageous horror! – are subjected to examination.
And – again – I point out that the burden of proof lies on the Abuseniks to ‘prove’ anything, while I have provided at great length and in great detail the many reasons why the Probability of false-accusations not only exists but exists with such force of reason and rationality as to require further examination.
And in the tenth paragraph: we get a vivid example of the juvenile way Abuseniks respond to comments they find uncongenial, adding to the usual scatological epithet the further epithet that somebody making such uncongenial comments is – have you been waitttttttting forrrrrrrr itttttttt? – a “bully”.
And in the eleventh paragraph: we are proffered a question the sense of which escapes me in light of the issues presently on the table here.
And in the twelfth paragraph: we get yet again a sly effort to manipulate us into presuming that what we see from Abuseniks or SNAP is a demonstrable “revelation” rather than just another effort to Keep The Ball Rolling for the Stampede.
Thus too then, the thirteenth paragraph fails because it merely presumes to build upon the highly dubious characterization proffered in the twelfth paragraph. Bolstered, as it were, by the sly rhetorical effort to place the burden upon questioning readers: “don’t you want to know?”. To which I would simply respond that we very much want to “know” on this site, and it is vividly clear that the Abuseniks are heavily invested in making sure that we don’t “know” and have been all along.
And ditto the fourteenth paragraph, which also seeks to deploy more rhetorical manipulation by use of that “serial child rapers” when in actuality very few cases at all ever involved actual ‘child rape’, let alone “serial” ‘child rape’.
And in the fifteenth paragraph we get the remarkable assertion that “SNAP doesn’t reveal these things”. Is this claim at all to be believed? But the method in the madness here is to somehow leave JR – tah dahhh! – as the only truthy revealer. How nice for him.
And the paragraph continues: the attempt here is to spin SNAP as being merely a parasitical afterthought to the hard work done by “the justice system”. But that is hardly accurate. SNAP – as a front organization operating synergistically to do its bit among the many other ‘interests’ that fomented the Stampede – is an active player and not an inconsequential one, especially as it has masked itself as a ‘victims-interests’ organization in an era of Victimist frenzy. It provides the Pure and Innocent face so necessary to hide the far darker motivations and interests that lie behind and beneath it.
But – yet again – the further assertion that “thanks to SNAP victims are being manipulated [that bit again] for the church’s benefit” remains, as always, utterly undemonstrated.
As is, then, the follow-on bit about SNAP being “made to look like it hates the church”. And whether SNAP organizationally does or does not “hate” the Church is, really, neither here nor there. Its operation as a front-organization for the torties and the other interests in carrying on the Stampede is the real question at issue here.
Thus to the sixteenth paragraph – with its clear lack of punctuation and its essential lack of sense: on the one hand “victims don’t care about the church” yet immediately thereafter, on the other hand, “they love the church or they hate the church”. Which bit is then rendered even more nonsensical by the next sentence, in which – if we are to credit JR’s assertion of knowledge in the matter – “victims are all over the map on the church”.
I wouldn’t presume to know how “victims” feel about the Church. Although I do think it is first necessary to distinguish between genuine victims and ‘victims’ otherwise classifiable.
Moving on then to the 15th at 809PM:
In this ongoing orgy of repetition from the shoebox, we are again proffered – with the Wiggy instruction to “Listen” – the assertion that the Nazi’s were “catholic-backed” – which has been dealt with at great length in many prior comments on prior threads, and without credible rebuttal from JR.
But the method in the madness of this repetition here at this point is to somehow equate the Soviets’ anti-Nazi success with an ‘anti-catholic’ success (the Soviets, then and thus, striking a massive blow for freedom of religion or freedom of independent thought and lifestyle against the theocratic and Puritanical Nazi regime – go figure).
And as for the Catholic “rat line” that enabled assorted lower-order Nazis to get to South America: as I had noted quite a while back in comments, during the war years the Vatican, at papal direction, went to the extreme length of making available to Catholic clergy in Europe signed blank-forms of papal documentation attesting to the Catholicity of whomever’s name was filled in on the blank line. This was done to make it as quick and easy as possible for Catholic clergy (not just bishops and hierarchs but lower clergy as well) seeking to assist Jewish folk and any other hunted persons to effect an escape from the Reich’s grasp.
After the war, unused specimens of that huge batch of forms were put to a different use by some individual clergy: such a form, using whatever false name the Nazi had selected, became (merely) part of a packet of documents intended to create a false identity on the basis of which the individual might secure a visa (often with Red Cross assistance) to this or that South American country, several of whose governments were desirous of receiving such immigrants and were not inclined to be overly picky about the supporting documentation.
But there was never any actual evidence of a Vatican-directed program (during or after the war) specifically designed to effect such escapes – that bit is merely an effort by various types to deduce the existence of such a program from the bare fact that those papal forms were used as supportive documentation in some instances of Nazis seeking to flee Europe to friendly and receptive South American countries in the immediate postwar era.
I try reading your latest tirades but they are reactionary lies and false postulates as well as being unremittingly dull. I don't have that much time left on earth to waste it on reading you.
I've asked for one, just one, example of the fraud you claim to be rampant. You rant on and on and never provide one.
You are the fraud. Why don't you see if the Nazi rat line has some papers for you?
You really are stupid.
Victims don't care about the church Victims love the church. Victims hate the church. Take your pick.
There are as many different kinds of victims and kinds of reaction to the church by victims as there are victims.
There is no chronological order to JR’s put-ups, so I’ll take them as they appear (identifying them by date-time of course).
As to the 15th at 819PM:
In the first paragraph, as if none of the abyussal problems with his own story/allegation have ever been identified and examined and discussed, JR will try to start ‘de novo’ with the Wig of Plaint asking “What’s to doubt about the reality of my abuse?”. Followed, again repetitively to the umpteenth degree, by both sides of his grossly flawed trope: “Prove it didn’t. I proved it did.”
In regard to which last two bits: It is up to the allegant accuser to prove the claim and JR has proved nothing. All that has happened is that we have seen how i) the torties carefully avoided trial process and examination and ii) the Abuseniks – having cashed checks resulting from that sly strategy – are now trying to have their cake and eat it too by now claiming that they ‘proved’ their various stories, claims and allegations. But they didn’t and now they can’t have it both ways.
And the torties would have known that because that’s the trade-off by going the settlement route rather than the trial route. And it is quite probable that after it was all over they advised their money-fattened allegants to stay out of sight and not draw attention to themselves, which was a shrewd bit of advice. Because we have seen and continue to see on this very site what happens when a successful check-casher decides to come back and dine-off the game by putting himself in the public eye (as best he can manage).
Then in the second paragraph – the Wig of Honest Bemusement – JR wonders that I “question it again and again”. (We will be seeing a great deal of the Wig collection as this goes on.)
Then in the third paragraph it is clear we are going to get a riff on “question it again and again”. To which I can only say: it was never questioned the first time around (when it should have been) but better late than never – especially when even the most modest examination reveals the kind of stuff we have seen.
And in the second sentence of that paragraph JR goes for the Wig of Hurt Innocence: “a victim might think you don’t believe her/him no matter what we say”. To which I respond: I don’t as a rule believe allegations (or the allegators who allegate the allegations) until I have had a chance to examine the supporting and corroborating evidence. But, of course, this is precisely the type of attitude that Victimists and Abuseniks and torties absolutely do not want to see and will do everything they can to deride, derail and avoid.
Then in the fourth paragraph we are started off with a “So”, meaning that we are in the midst of one of JR’s play-block ‘logical’ constructions. Here, I have somehow “ruled [my]self out of a impartial judge’s position” (sic). Which is rather humorous, since the very last thing Victimists and Abuseniks and their Playbook want is to face an actually impartial judge.
Nor have I ever claimed to be a judge. I have examined, raised questions, and the results from the Abuseniks are in the record here for all to see.
And do we not hear an echo of the type of school-kid who considers any grading or criticism to be ‘judgmental’? That was a 1970s meme, but the ‘non-judgmental’ bit of that era was tailor-made for the kind of people who had a great deal to fear judgment-about.
Nor have I ever said, nor does JR here offer accurate quotation that I have ever said, that I “believe no one”. Once again he creates something never said in order to b) appear to have something to say and to a) avoid having to face whatever was actually said.
All of which leads up – yukkety-yuk – to the concluding snarky bit that – on the basis of the ‘logic’ deployed by JR (or his muse) here – presumes that “the only person you seem to believe is you”. For which JR and His Muses have proffered not a whit of evidence (which is a habit with them) but which makes a nice epithetical plop-tossy sort of bit.
As to the 15th at 824PM:
JR will now inform me and everyone else – on the basis (as always) of no evidence whatsoever – that I “am older than boomers” (sic). This appears to be coming from far far left field but then we see the method (such as it is) in the madness here: this irrelevant age bit is merely a lead-in to a snarky bit of epithetical plop-tossing to the effect that I am “very old and very unwise”. We can take JR’s assured word for that, just like we can about his ‘abuse’.
And the riff continues on to its conclusion with some un-JR-like archaic usage: I have not waxed in wisdom”. My my. Followed and concluded by a trot-out of the Wig of Bemused Pity: “Pity”.
On then to the 16th at 1142AM:
JR will lecture “Malcolm” (demoted or promoted from “Mr. Harris”, take your pick) on today’s JR laundry-list of Church bits from the stack of 3x5s in the shoebox.
But the form of the comment, with its gnomic structure and almost haiku-like rhythm, points to a source other than the mind responsible for so much of the material we usually see under JR’s heading.
On then to the 16th at 1151, which is self-explanatory and self-revelatory and returns us to the – as it were – genuine JR.
On then to 16th at 1156AM which repeats a couple of the bits from the preceding haiku while also gives the genuine JR a chance to put in his two-cents: with – have you been waittttttting forrrrrrr itttttttt? – an epithet that instantly transports us back to the lower grades of grammar school. Such magic.
On then to the 16th at 1149, where we are now treated to a performance by the Wig of Decent and Honest Exasperation: poor JR has tried – really, honestly tried – “reading [my] latest tirades” and … what? Has he not been able to complete the project? Because he then immediately gives an assessment of them, which indicates either that he has indeed read them or that he is in the habit of making assessments without first reading the material.
And what is the assessment? My “tirades” are “reactionary lies and false postulates”. Now, the “lies” bit is a familiar one with JR, as is the utter absence of any demonstration or corroboration or explication of his claim. And maybe we can accept “reactionary” too. But “false postulates” comes from somewhere else, as does – had you been waittttttttting forrrrr itttttttttttttttttt? – JR’s feeling that I am “unremittingly dull”. As I have often said, large numbers of polysyllabic words dealing with concepts, expressed in adult grammatical forms, will often have that effect on certain types of minds. Not my problem.
Which is followed by another exercise in JR’s lifelong passion for making excuses for himself: he just doesn’t “have that much time on earth to waste it on reading” my material, doncha see? Which merely serves to remind us that the juvenilia we read here issue – in large part, anyway – from the mind of a chronological adult of 68 or so years.
And in the second paragraph – yet and yet again – JR will invent something I did not say in order to have a less inconvenient subject about which to Wig onwards: the Wig of Exasperated and Patient Inquiry plaints that he has “asked for one, just one, example of the fraud you claim to be rampant”. I have never claimed fraud to be rampant in an assertion; I have explained at great length – after extended and shared examination – why the Probability of such fraud is rather clearly high. There is – it apparently has to be pointed out to JR – a rather significant difference between an assertion-of-fact and a determination-of-probability.
And had there been a court trial then perhaps we would have a transcript that would provide more dispositive material upon which a legitimate assertion of fraud might be made. But that was not how the Abuseniks chose to go, since – no doubt the torties informed them – the prospect of a bigger payout was much better if they went the multiple-plaintiff lawsuit route.
But this oft-repeated bit of his thus serves to platform the Wig of Plaint yet again, and it is followed by the Wiggy and epithetical declamation that I “rant on and on and never provide one”. I have provided extensive and broad basis for concluding that the Probability of fraud is high from what we have managed to examine on this site; and – again – we might have had more solid and dispositive material to examine if the Abuseniks had chosen the trial route, but they didn’t and it was their decision to make and they made it.
And in the third and concluding sentence of the comment we get the Wiggy and epithetical declamation that concludes the comment: I am the fraud (another crystalline example of the juvenile signature I’m Not/You Are gambit). Followed – pitch-perfectly – by an epithet that slyly manages to recall his plop-tossing about “the Nazi rat-line” without actually addressing the problems with this particular bit of his plop-tossing. So, by the by, if you question Abuseniks then you are not only a ‘sociopath’ and ‘un-Christian’, but you are also a “Nazi”.
And do we wonder at all why the torties realized that they had to avoid – at whatever cost – putting such minds up on the stand to perform in front of a judge and jury?
No, you are a Nazi. You really are.
Your Hitler's the church right or wrong.
You don't care that the church is wrong you care that it's being called out on it's wrong doing.
As a moralist you are a Nazi fraud. You are also a sociopath and therefore un-christian.
So far you're batting 1000.
If you aren't the devil; you are the devil's beau.
On then to the 16th at 1204, where we get another epithet that transports us back to grammar school.
JR cannot provide a sensible and coherent take on ‘victims’ responses – doncha see? – because “there are as many different kinds of victims and kinds of reaction to the church by victims as there are victims”.
Passing over the grammatical illogic of that declaration, we see yet again a variant of the Victimist Playbook dogma that by the very nature of being a victim of something, then victims cannot be expected to react coherent or rationally but rather they may respond along an almost infinitely variable line of possible reactions. A neat manipulation of the toy-blocks, to be sure.
But there are abyssal problems with this bit, which itself amounts to nothing more than a pre-emptive excuse to harrumph-away the many problems with Victimist story-telling. We are all humans; and unless you want to posit the claim that human beings have no common characteristics (or even common human nature), and thus that each human being is so utterly unique and plastic that utterly no characteristics can be ascribed to them nor expected-from their reactions to any experience X, then there indeed should be some predictable bits in their reactions to that experience X (in this case, sex-abuse) which they all have in common.
It has been a profoundly sly dogmatic element in Victimism that has managed to dogmatize-away any legitimate expectation of characteristic reactions. This gambit has managed to cast as wide a net as possible in order to make as much room as possible for any and every story-telling bit and pose that any particular self-declared victim might proffer. And, as we have seen here before, the ‘next logical step’ for such a presumption is to insist that stories of the (alleged) abuse need not be, and indeed cannot be, expected to be rational, coherent, or even plausible (let alone verifiable) – as seen in the Abusenik attempt to explain-away the abyssal problems with the Billy Doe story (or stories) in Philadelphia.
(A curious variant echo of this total and utter plasticity and unpredictability of characteristics is the current dust-up in Washington State where the outspoken, vociferously black woman in charge of the NAACP office in Spokane has now been indubitably revealed to have been a white female all along. Further, having resigned yesterday, today she claimed that whether she was born black or not, she has always “self-identified” as being black. Taken in the context of the national scene, we are barely at the point of seeing ‘gender’ (or even the lack of it) as being a matter of ‘choice’ and ‘preferred self-identification’, before we see the very same dynamic touted as applicable to race, and in an instance where fraud of one sort or another was surely perpetrated upon the NAACP and the public.)
But – as we see in the third paragraph of the comment – even the grammar belies the assertion: JR repeats the term “victims”, which leads toward the presumption of some sort of commonality among them. And, I would say, this commonality is not simply the (alleged) experience of sexual-abuse, but also the commonality of being human, which reasonably leads us to expect some commonality of expectable reactions.
But once you set parameters and criteria, then some ‘victims’ are not going to fall within those parameters and criteria, which would constitute a basis for questioning or doubting their claims, which is utterly prohibited by Victimist dogma and the Playbook.
The Victimist game here is simply to get people to accept the story, whatever it is, and go from there directly into outrage. Which was also Goebbels’s claim about Hitler’s record: “Mehr als dies braucht ihr nicht zu wissen!” – “more than this you don’t need to know!”. But this isn’t the Third Reich and victims aren’t protected Party members and we do indeed need to know more than just the story and allegation and claim. But in this quest, we can expect no support from Victimist dogma and from its Playbook. Indeed, we can expect distraction, squelching, and everything but the truth.
Thus the problem for JR and the Abuseniks generally is that we really aren’t that “stupid”. Which actuality irritates them endlessly.
This thing, in Minnesota, is far from over. It's just begining. The lid will be fuly blown off. That liar, Archbishop Nienstedt, and his criminal staff. Several more shoes are fixing to drop. Don't be suprised if a few more child rapers, and their enablers, aren't marched off. In handcuffs.
Nobody's keeping secrets on the victims side; we've told what happened to us again and again. Those of us who wanted to tell. You really are stupid. It's your stupidity that is the only irritant I face here. That and your wilfull meanness.
We proceed.
On the 16th at 721PM: Once again, a repetition of an old favorite: it’s not the victims who are “keeping secrets” because – had you been waitttttttttttting forrrrrrrrrrrrr ittttttttttttttttttttt? – “we’ve told what happened to us again and again”.
This bit – to repeat yet again – doesn’t work for a number of reasons.
First, it would be conceptually and practically unwise for any tortie to risk putting a lot of these stories in front of a judge and jury for serious and sustained examination: a) the stories may well not hold up and b) Abuseniks tend to show their seriously unpleasant sides when they don’t get what they want or when they are questioned.
Second, we have Federal judge Schiltz who revealed that at least half if not more of settlement ‘secrecy’ agreements were at the behest of the torties. Again this would make sense since we have seen what happens to Abusenik stories and Abuseniks when even modest analysis and examination is applied.
Third, JR – and does he really have any other option here? – ignores the profound difference between ‘personal truth’ and ‘third-party’ truth. All ‘victims’ have actually done is to share what is in effect their ‘personal truth’; and simply on the basis of being told, third-parties have utterly no way of determining whether that ‘personal truth’ is accurate or not.
The asylums – proverbially – are full of people whose ‘personal truth’ is that they are Napoleon. But that indubitable actual fact does not require the Brits to urgently start looking around for another Nelson and another Wellington.
As to the 16th at 732PM:
We get again the curious zen-koan structure.
Which platforms an imaginative riffing on Nazis and the Church and so on. (None of this is JR’s usual style nor does it reflect his usual form of mentation; so there’s a muse in this somewhere.)
But JR and the muse share the essentially epithetical bent, even if their structural and conceptual styles are clearly different.
Nor is either of them particularly concerned to provide any quotations that would back up their characterizations. Thus each line is an assertion of characterization for which no explication or supportive explanation is provided.
(This has been difficult, but I think my favorite example would have to be the fourth line: “As a moralist you are a Nazi fraud. You are also a sociopath and therefore un-Christian”. Wheeeeeeeeeee! And – while we’re on the subject, that he also raised in the most recent spate of comments on the Clohessy thread – is it not in any way, even in the dimmest possible glimmering, apparent to JR why no front organization pretending to seriousness, competence, credibility and reliability, would want to risk putting this mind before cameras and a microphone?)
Then on the 16th at 725PM – with apparently no sense of awareness or irony in light of the two zen-koan comments here or anything else, such as his ‘personal truth’ – JR will demonstrate yet again the wondrous workings of clinical projection: I “declare things true with no proof they are true”.
This is followed by his signature juvenile I’m Not/You Are defense: “You do what you accuse us of doing”. Readers may judge this gambit as they will.
And – as if we haven’t been over it before – JR proffers as “proof” “the wreckage of our lives … that you pretend doesn’t exist”.
Now let me put this as clearly as possible: I have at no time in any way denied the “wreckage” (indeed, I think I could put together a pretty good list of the elements).
But the key question is: which came first – the “wreckage” or the (alleged) abuse? Which is the Cause and which is the Result? As we have seen in the Philadelphia Billy Doe trial, you can easily begin to wonder if – instead of the (alleged) abuse causing the “wreckage” – we are seeing an example of the “wreckage” prompting the allegations of abuse.
And “you are such a fraud” – viewed under the lens of clinical projection – need only be left up there where it was put.
And on the 16th at 740PM we get another zen-koan type of thing. And what I have said in regard to the previous such submission applies here as well.
And, lastly, on the 17th at 206PM we get another drive-by bit from self-declared ‘True Catholic’. As far as I can see, TC’s favored form of ‘thinking’ is to daydream about the most awful things s/he would like to see happen to the Church, and then declare that daydream to be the Coming Future, with a hefty dollop of nastiness tossed in for good measure. Charming.
In regard to the most recent effort there on Jeff Anderson’s home turf, the primary instance that is the gravamen of this curious criminal case against an organization (i.e. there are no individuals named as Defendants) involves a priest whose case happened under the tenure of Archbishop Flynn, before Archbishop Nienstedt ever arrived.
We can add this to the lengthening list of legal curiosities attached to this “Minnesota” thing.
You just declare things true with no proof they are true. You do what you accuse us of doing. Only we don't just declare our abuse true; we have the proof of the wreakage of our lives. That you pretend doesn't exist. You are such a fraud.
SNAP's the church.
Doyle's the church.
Berry's the church.
Anderson is controlled by the church at the very least.
And you're the church.
Did I leave anybody out? Oh yes all the rest of humanity; and we are not the church.
Why don't you pray more and politic less? You should loose your tax free status.
Is no one else curious as to who Publion really is; and why he wrties what he does here?
Since he hyper=criticizes everyon who isn't him or his lackies here. I ask, again. Who are you in real life . What are you? It's very important, inho, that we know who you are. Who's axe are you grinding. If you're so smart; why the need to hide?
More crystalline examples from the Playbook.
On the 22nd at 1116AM – with all the material on the table here – JR instead retreats to that tried-and-true distraction as to “who Publion really is” and “why he writes what he does here”.
And – you may also notice – his questions are cast in the form of a plaintive bleat (using the Wig of Earnest But Frustrated Inquiry).
But we are not to think of these questions as plaintive bleats designed to manipulate and distract. Because – doncha see? – I am doing nothing but ‘hyper-criticizing’. And, as we know, this is not how the Game is supposed to be played; the Abuseniks were assured that once they had self-proclaimed as ‘victims’ then they (and their stories, claims and allegations) would be immune to criticism or inquiry or doubt or question.
Thus, then, of course, any amount of questioning or examination must qualify as “hyper”, since the Victimists had set the original baseline amount of permissible questioning or examination somewhere south of absolute-zero.
But, then, of course, JR can’t go and admit that. So he has a covering excuse: “It’s very important … that we know who you are” and “who’s axe you are grinding” (sic).
For the umpteenth time: since all my material is conceptual and I make no claims or assertions that would in any way whatsoever require any act of faith or belief by readers in my own personally-claimed background, then there is in no way whatsoever any need for information about me personally. If JR would like to rebut or demolish me, he has all my material right here in front of him and always has had it. (Which, it would clearly appear, is precisely the problem facing him and the problem he must very much avoid.)
But – of course – JR isn’t at all interested in trying to demolish the points I make or the questions I raise (derived clearly from Abusenik material and assertions and claims and stories). Rather, he’s a plop-tosser and he’s hoping that he could distract the whole thing by going after the questioner and thus avoid the questions themselves.
Whose axe am I grinding? I am grinding the Axe of Truthful Inquiry. Am I grinding exceeding fine? Well that’s just because the job was not done properly back when it should have been and this is about the only site on the Web where the job can be done at all. And it’s a job that very much has to be done.
And, as we see here clearly, the Abuseniks don’t like it one bit. Not my problem.
And the comment concludes with a nice bit of illogic: if I’m “so smart, why the need to hide?”.
And – for the umpteenth time – I am not ‘hiding’. I’m simply keeping the discussion on the material on not on myself. If my material is rebuttable, then let the Abuseniks rationally and clearly rebut it. But the spread of Victimist process has precisely been built upon the tactic of avoiding substantive discussion and analysis and exchange, seeking instead to go the route of plop-tossing and distraction.
El Papa's just creamed you and your support of capitalism.
He's still a complete shit about gay people and the church's sex victims.
But Francis is spot on about the rich.
The only problem is he heads the richest religion in the history of Western "Civilization".
Clean your own house first, Frank.
And on the 22nd at 335PM we are given a nifty example of the torturous problems facing inveterate plop-tossers. To toss some plop at me (as to my alleged “support of capitalism”) he will refer to the Pope (presumably the most recent encyclical).
But then he finds himself in bed with the Pope and that can’t be allowed, so JR will immediately take a swipe at the Pope.
But then he has to make sure that his original plop is not undermined so he immediately reiterates that the Pope is “spot on about the rich” (among whom JR does not, apparently, include himself).
And then tosses in a bit he has on a 3×5 about Christianity being “the richest religion in the history of Western ‘Civilization’”. It is the primary religion of Western Civilization and has been since 313AD (Constantine) or 385AD (Theodosius), and I would also say the constitutive religion of Western Civilization. Which is why it is only prudent – although vitally and fundamentally prudent – to be very careful when trying to rip it out or rip it apart, since – to borrow from Shakespeare – the flesh of Western Civilization and the blood of Christianity are so profoundly and interactively entwined that Western Civilization might not be able to sustain its existence without the Christianity.
But JR – marvelously – has a solution to that problem: he’s not a fan of “Western ‘Civilization’”, doncha know? What reader would not already know that? He is neither a fan of Western Civilization nor is he very familiar with it. Just whose problem that might ultimately be, I leave to the readership to decide.
The comment from Publion on the 23rd, concerning Shakespeare, made my memory cells kick in about hard-earned experience.
I was unaware that Shakespeare had expressed the view that ….the flesh of Western Civilization and the blood of Christianity are so profoundly and interactively entwined that Western Civilization might not be able to sustain its existence without Christianity.
I may have mentioned previously that I worked as an auditor for over a decade. The demands of that particular work caused me to think long and hard about ethical issues, and moraliity in general. It also caused me to realize that popular opinion was often wrong. And that ignorance speaks in a loud voice…. whilst wisdom speaks softly. As for what we call Western Civilization I compared it to a fragile fabric… which holds back the jungle. Every now and again the jungle breaks through that fabric. Then it is up to the auditors and policemen to push the jungle back and repair the damage to the fabric. The rule of law in this process is absolutely critical. So it was inevitable that my mind would ask itself what the fabric consisted of?. What would make it stronger and what might make it weaker?
From my observation of small clubs and societies in the community I noted that they would frequently choose, as their Treasurer, a practising Christian. They wanted to have a guy they could trust and they thought a Christian was a safe bet. As their Honarary Auditor I can tell you that their judgement was good. Because cannot recall an instance when they got it wrong. Will hasten to add that am not talking about Christians in general, but only the practising Christians. Those who try to live their lives according to their actual beliefs.
Granted that most Christians are only 'tick-a-box' Christians. Anyway I concluded that my personal experience might have a much wider implication, in regard to Western Civilization… and that fabric I spoke of.
Came to the conclusion that Christianity was a vital element in the material that made up the fabric. To water down or remove Christianity would weaken the fabric…. the jungle would break through more frequently……it would ultimately overwhelm us all.
Those who say I got it wrong, must now also say that Shakespeare got it wrong. But I reckon we were both right…. despite being four centuries apart.
In regard to ‘Malcolm Harris’s comment: I was working off the image (from ‘The Merchant of Venice’) of the “pound of flesh” being inseparable from the blood and fluids that infuse the flesh. From that I went forward with my own applications and derivations. But: Yes, I think Shakespeare had some solid sense of the role of Christianity in human experience, certainly in the Western world he knew.
For that matter, I came across a book review article (in ‘The Claremont Review of Books’, Spring ’15; Lucas E. Morel reviews Richard Brookhiser’s new book “Our Fathers”, pp.49ff) in which Morel discusses Abraham Lincoln’s stated preference for Claudius’s speech in “Hamlet” (Act 3, Scene 3) rather than for Hamlet’s more commonly-recognized soliloquy (“To be or not to be …”).
Claudius, having murdered the king, usurped the throne, and married the queen, realizes that “O, my offense is rank” but in thus addressing God, Claudius realizes that he cannot obtain forgiveness and redemption while simultaneously holding on to his ill-gotten gains. Claudius chooses to retain his earthly gains and thus to reject God’s (stern) mercies, while realizing exactly what a lethal and fateful spiritual decision he is making.
It is Morel’s opinion that Brookhiser fails to grasp the depth of Lincoln’s religious or spiritual appreciation of this profoundly existential problem with which Claudius is wrestling; Brookhiser remains interested only in the “rhetorical” attractions Shakespeare’s works held for Lincoln.
Compared to Claudius’s chillingly sober soliloquy, Hamlet’s seems more shallow and self-absorbed, as is perhaps to be expected in a youth.
One might also compare and contrast Claudius’s tortured self-consignment to the poisonous fruits of his actions with Huck’s decision regarding Jim in Twain: “Alright, then, I’ll go to hell!”.
What have you got against jungles? Could we be any more savage or animal than we are?
Life is no picnic for anybody and none of us get out alive anyway. Respect and kindness between human beings is the best we can do. Not that easy but really not that hard either. It's a choice.
One can attempt to remove the past by ignoring it but it's there with us or without us.
I can safely say: Christians have killed more people than any other religion on the planet. Not bad for a religion of love.
Moving right along.
On the 24th at 449PM in the first paragraph we are given yet another juvenile rant-bit about the state of human nature (“savage or animal”). So easy for the sophomoric mind to feel knowledgeable by simply tossing plop.
But then in the second paragraph the Wig changes completely (and he didn’t even leave the stage to change it): “Respect and kindness between human beings is the best we can do”. How nice. How true. Depending, of course, on how one defines “respect” and “kindness” (time-saver: in the Abusenik Playbook, “respect” and “kindness” are code for not-questioning stories, claims and allegations).
And also taking into account the pervasive incapacity of human nature to perfectly fulfill that noble ideal of always practicing “respect” and “kindness” (which – not to put too fine a point on it – is why one must always question and assess; or – as President Reagan put it in regard to the USSR: “trust … but verify”. And – yes – this point will probably elicit nothing more than whatever is on a 3×5 in the shoebox about ‘Reagan, Ronald’).
Nor does JR seem to accurately understand the profound pervasiveness of incompleteness and imperfection in human nature. Thus the bit of doubletalk about “Not that easy but really not that hard either”, which – to the extent it does anything at all – merely rhetorically manipulates us toward it not being that “hard”.
And thus that anyone who isn’t – in the Abusenik dictionary – ‘respectful’ and ‘kind’ has made “a choice” not to be ‘respectful’ and ‘kind’. And thus – have you been waitttttttttttting forrrrrrrrrrr ittttttttttttttttt? – anyone who goes and makes such an awful “choice” must be (pick one or several: sociopathic, un-Christian, Nazi, hateful, evil). Neato.
Then a gnomic bit about the “past” always being “there”, “with us or without us”. Apropos of whatever manipulative purpose is behind this bit of fortune-cookie pronouncement.
And then and then and then: the Wig of Informed Declamation doth inform and declaim that JR “can safely say” that “Christians have killed more people than any other religion on the planet”. He can prove that, can he? How many people would that be? In the decade of the Taiping Rebellion 20 million were killed. The Monoplanar religion of Communism killed how many?
And if it’s so easy for humans to exercise “respect” and “kindness”, then how have so very many humans met violent ends regardless of any religious affiliation or purpose? In his efforts to toss whatever plop seem available, JR’s position here becomes incoherent.
And given the fact that governments or sovereigns so often went to war, then to what extent is Christianity as a religion responsible for that?
And is war itself ‘un-Christian’? It is certainly not a desiderandum, but is war at all times and in all cases to be avoided and prohibited?
Has JR (or his muse here) really thought this whole thing through?
And, once again, JR concludes by demonstrating that he is profoundly unfamiliar with the problems of the English language in discussing ‘love’ (for which the Greeks had several terms describing several very different types of ‘love’).
And is a government, entrusted with the well-being of its people, bound to the same Gospel command of ‘love’ as individuals are bound? And is violence in defense of others not a form of ‘love’?
And if JR cares to claim the purist position (i.e. violence is never acceptable in any way at any time) then why did JR not refuse his induction? Might he not have “sat on the tracks”, so to speak, as he so often indicts the Poles of the WW2-era for not doing in regard to the death-camp transport trains?
No, JR cannot “safely say” anything. And he hasn’t here. But it was a nice bit of posturing and mimicry.
Ah! but I do include myself with the rich, dumb-bell. I'm wealthier than most but my income is only $25,000 annually so I'm no Donald fucking Trump.
"In bed with the Pope"? No thank you.
"Western Civilization(" if it is civilized, given the mountains of dead humans it's made in it's "civilized" wars and imperialism) could be no worse for wear without the catholic church's fake sanctimony that helped create such huge piles of dead people.
Oh yes Malcolm it's done some good things too but let's not leave out the bad it's done and continues to do. It's attitude towards it's own victimized children, for example; and towards gay people. There your church gets a big red F.
And as I've said before. Charity starts at home. Let the richest christian religion start redistrubtion of it's own wealth as an example to follow.
On then to the 24th at 1146AM, where we get merely a re-hash of the sophomoric hash against Western (or any, it would have to be said) ‘civilization’. And if no civilization then the alternative would be … what? And how much worse might human nature have done without ‘civilization’?
JR will try to whistle by this graveyard of thought he has created for himself here by allowing as how ‘civilization’ – and even “Western Civilization” – has “done some good things too but let’s not leave out the bad”. Well, is the glass half-full or half-empty, then? And has JR (and/or his muse or muses) got a better replacement handy? Or should we wreck the civilization we’ve got and just figure something – anything – better will automatically pop up to replace it? This was Rousseau’s pipedream. And Voltaire very much wanted to get rid of the Church but then worried to no end as to what would or could replace the Church as the anchor and ground of society and culture and civilization (History’s short answer: the Revolution, the enthronement of Reason and the General Will, the Terror, and then Napoleon).
But suddenly we are back to smaller issues: suddenly it’s not Christianity but the Church, and JR is on about the Church’s “attitude toward its own victimized children” (correction supplied) – but we really still don’t know how many genuinely ‘victimized’ there were and the Church has now made herself the most child-safe organization on the planet (as is evidenced both by the regulations now in place and by the stupendous fall-off even in the number of fresh allegations).
And as to “gay people”: the fact that the Church has problems with the Gay Agenda as it has evolved in the U.S. over the past few decades earns it “a big red F” only if one subscribes in great part to the Gay Agenda as it has evolved (or mutated) in the U.S. over the past few decades.
And the whole bit concludes with more platitude-posturing about “charity”, indicating only JR’s (and/or his muse’s or muses’) unfamiliarity with the concepts of ‘caritas’ and ‘agape’; and they are limited to (and betrayed by) their insufficient grasp of the concepts they are tossing around.
If somebody wants to jump off a tall building on the assumption that it will all work out well and he really really wants to do it, is it ‘charity’ to tell him you’ll be tolerant of whatever he decides to do? And will that be ‘charitable’ to anybody upon whom he happens to land down on the crowded street below?
As for the economic bit about “redistribution”, no nation that has tried it has had success with it (JR is welcome to provide us with an example to the contrary). The Soviets made the most sustained stab at it, but it not only wrecked their economy, but also wrecked the morale of the Soviet citizenry (resulting in that achingly poignant bit of Soviet worker humor: the government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work). Castro survived only by handouts from the Soviets and then by greatly reducing the Cuban quality of life. The (still-Red) Chinese are currently trying to blend Communist totalitarian populism and capitalist independence and initiative, but things have only gotten more wobbly over there.
More ‘logic’ on the 24th at 1150, where ‘Malcolm’ is instructed as to “Jesus’ basic and primary commandment of loving your neighbor”. And which definition of ‘loving’ – transposed through Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin thought and language – are the Abuseniks going with here? (They are equipped, alas, only to toss plop in English.)
And thus the rest of this bit fails here as well.
Love is love. It's either there or it isn't.
You fool know one. Even people who are illiterate know what love is. The only people who don't know what love is are sociopaths just like you.
You need many definitions of love because you can not experience love. I pity you.
You toss plop with every word you write and with every pathetic little false judgement you make. May your god forgive you. I won't.
The glass is both half full and half empty at one and the same tims. Both are true.
Malcolm if christianity can be defined by Jesus' basic and primary commandment of loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Then the 62% vote for gays and gay marriage in Ireland means real christianity is really winning in the West. The secular world as out loved you.
And P you're just a bitch. That's all you do. You're so negative.
On then to the 27th at 1142AM.
Here we get nothing more than a brassy assertion: JR will dispose of his rather serious definition-of-‘love’ problem by simply donning the Wig of Pronouncement and pronouncing that the problem does not exist: “Love is love. It’s either there or it isn’t”.
So, then, the love that is sexual and the love between friends and the love demonstrated in responsible participation human life and affairs and the love based in the ultimate reality of God’s having created all life … these are all the same thing? And are thus interchangeable?
But notice how – for some minds – a Cartoon can serve to mimic authoritative thought and knowledge if you simply puff out your chest and put on the right Wig and make a pronouncement: the cartoonishly simplistic “Love is love”, put forward with the appropriate Wig and delivery, makes it sound like one is getting not only a) an authoritatively informed idea (from, of course, an authoritatively informed thinker) but is also getting b) an idea so breath-takingly penetrating and incisive that it can accurately reduce the whole complex matter (that has exercised human thought for millennia) to a one-liner sound-bite. There are precincts on the Web where this could pass as a good day’s work.
But this bit in the comment’s first paragraph is then bolstered in the second paragraph by – had you been waittttttttting forrrrr itttttttttttt? – an epithetical and signature I’m Not / You Are bit of juvenila: “You fool know one” (correction not supplied).
And – slyly trying to maneuver readers around the howler made with his Hamlet remarks – JR will also decide that the literature game isn’t worth the candle anyway because – doncha know? – “Even people who are illiterate know what love is”. And thus: Books? We don’t need no stinking books! Thoughts? We don’t need no stinking thoughts!
And consider the content of his assertion here: Lots of people who know nothing about literature (or anything else) get along just fine in life because they already “know what love is”.
But is it not an abiding problem in human nature and life – seen with especially vivid clarity on the contemporary scene – that very large numbers of people precisely do not know what “love is”, confusing it with mere sexual activity or with whatever particular life-activity they happen to favor?
Is it not an increasingly whacked-out element of contemporary society that nothing is considered independently real of what any individual personally ‘chooses’ it to be? At this point, as we have seen, not only gender but even race is nothing but a matter of ‘choice’ and you can ‘be’ whatever you personally feel moved to choose to be. And you can do whatever you feel you want to do based on your ‘choices’.
Imagine sitting in an aircraft heading out to the runway and having the pilot announce that ‘we here up in the cockpit really really deeply feel that our airplane is actually a boat and that’s how we’re going to operate it today as we sail it through the water to our destination’. Because life is essentially Disney World and you can design it yourself as if it were just another virtual reality imaginary world you can create on your computer and you can design it to be anything you want it to be and you can be anything you choose to imagine yourself to be in that imaginary world you have chosen to create.
Reality is ‘oppressive’ by its very nature and since nobody and nothing has the right to ‘oppress’ one, then one has every right to construct a less oppressive reality for oneself and live in it and also to require others to accept its real-ness. This is a symptom-of and recipe-for widespread mental and maturational un-health.
And the paragraph concludes with another familiar epithet that also tries to mimic genuine thought and logic: only “sociopaths” – “just like you” – don’t really “know what love is”. Which merely leaves us, really, with the question as to how it may be that in a knowledge-base otherwise utterly innocent of psychological knowledge, JR has somehow glommed on to being a “sociopath” (such as he personally chooses to define that term and phenomenon) as his sole psychological 3×5 bit.
Continuing with thoughts about the 27th at 1142AM:
But the deceptive mimicry doesn’t stop there. In the third paragraph JR (and his muse of the moment here) will try to further transmute their broad abyssal ignorance into the ‘gold’ of actual thought by using this alchemical bit: the more definitions and complexities you see in “love” then the less you really know about it “because you can not experience love” (sic).
Imagine yourself again in that airplane, with the pilot announcing that ‘we up in the cockpit didn’t need to go to school to learn to fly this thing because all you need to do is pull up and down on the stick and the thing flies pretty good – there are no complexities to the whole process and don’t let anybody tell you different’. Would you be feeling more confident in the probable outcome of your flight?
And – now channeling Mr. T. from the old ‘A-Team’ series – JR will then don the Wig of False Sympathy to pronounce “I pity you”. Thus the condescension of those day-room denizens who have figured it all out and need only look out through the (secured) windows to pity the ignorant world.
And the comment concludes – as so very often – with another variant of the I’m Not/You Are kiddie gambit: it is I – doncha see? – who doth “toss plop” and I do so “with every word you write”. Oh, and with – in his “judgement” I do so with “every little pathetic false judgement you make” – no examples given, of course, and readers, as always, may reflect once again on the marvels of clinical projection.
But then, in the suddenly-donned Wig of Outraged Decency and Denunciation, we hear the Teeth of Rage chattering like cheap castinets: God is drafted into the epithet here, but only in a supporting role, because the prime player here – as always – is JR, who delivers the final pronouncement with stentorian bray and heaving bosom: he won’t be ‘forgiving’ me.
And one can easily see why: inveterate cartoon-viewers and gamers don’t ever ever like to be disturbed when they are playing their games. Because the game is all they’ve got.
As far as Hamlet goes: I could never figure out why Hamlet wasn't made king when his dad died. It's never mentioned in the play. Is it subtext? like Hamlet father's ghost haunting the play with Hamlet and the entire court ignoring that particular elephant in the room. Like a loud but never spoken undertone to all the action?
On the 25th at 117AM we are back to the genuine (as it were) JR. Forget all the wildly variant styles and formats we have seen of late – in this 117AM comment you see the article in the original package.
And what is the Abusenik response, then, to all the problems observed in their assorted assertions, claims, declamations, pronunciamentos, and denunciation? Merely that the observers are “so negative”. Ooooh and Ouch. So apparently, if actually confronted with all of the problems with their material and agenda, then the Abusenik response (as has been the Victimist and radical-revolutionary response of past decades) is that attributed to Gorbachev on a poster that was popular back in the day: “Don’t vorrrrry. Be hapski!!!”
Readers are welcome to consider adopting that approach.
Then on the 25th at 957AM we are simply given whatever happened to be on a hastily-retrieved 3×5 in the shoebox under ‘Hamlet, Prince’. Which bit turns out to have nothing to do with the discussion between MH and myself. But it’s all JR’s got so up it goes. Although – slyly – it gives him a chance (irrelevant as it is) to toss in “subtext” as term and as dynamic. But let it never be said that JR don’t know nuffin about books and shxt.
How long hss the Soviet Union been gone, 25 yrs? And Fidel and the Cuban Revolution still live.
For those keeping a notebook on the Playbook, more examples of how the game is played.
On the 26th at 1236AM, we get material from the economics-politics-history realm:
First, a question that would appear to have no sensible relevance at all – since it comes to us without any explanation: “How long has the Soviet Union been gone, 25 yrs?”. What would be the point of the question? That the USSR succeeded right up until 25 years ago when for no reason it suddenly dissolved itself one day? That if something merely exists then it is successful in its goals and intentions methods and policies?
Then we are told that “Fidel and the Cuban Revolution still live”. But for all we know they “still live” just like the USSR was ‘still living’ in the time before the USSR suddenly wasn’t still ‘living’. And the Cubans do not appear to have, or to have ever had, a migrant problem, with people seeking to get into the country (nor, for that matter, did the USSR or any of the Soviet-bloc countries ever have shoals of people trying to get in by any means necessary – perhaps JR doesn’t recall or never knew why they built the Wall between East and West Berlin).
And neither of the examples JR proffers touch the core point I had put forward: that no country (as we see from JR’s proffered examples here, large or small) that has ever tried JR’s oft-bruited “redistribution” has ever had success with it. And I could add: Indeed, just the opposite happened … they wrecked their economies at a fundamental level.
But the 3x5s in the mental shoebox aren’t designed to be deployed in the furtherance of “dialog” and exchange or even in the service of increasing understanding and knowledge. Rather, they are simply sound-bitey bits designed for ‘comebacks’ and deployed to serve as mere mimicry of thought and reason. It’s all “pretend” – to use JR’s own not inapt phrase – and “theater” (ditto).
Really! You are sooooooooooooo negative.
Can you say at least 3 things nice about me? Can you say anything nice about your church's victims?
Could you say anything nice about victims when we were children being raped?
And on the 27th at 1131AM, merely a repetition of a familiar gambit: there’s no need for JR or the Abuseniks to engage the myriad of problems with their material because confronting them with the reality of those problems is “Really!” just “sooooooooooooo negative” (with ‘o’ to the 13th power!).
So in addition to being un-charitable, un-loving, un-Christian, un-Jesus-like, and sociopathic, confronting Abuseniks with the reality of the problems with their material is also just “sooooooooooooo negative”.
And you can imagine – as assorted torties must have seen when waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat – the vision of an Abusenik under cross-examination on the stand simply bleating out in open court that the witness doth refuse to answer the question because is it just “sooooooooooooo negative”, Your Honor.
But we can also see here how Victimist agitprop dogma sought to prevent this very type of event from ever taking place: you cawn’t question somebody who claims to be a ‘victim’ (or – to use a very recent concept – ‘self-identifies’ as a ‘victim’).
Then a new tack: the Wig of Pleading Decency: can’t I “say at least 3 things nice about” JR? Thus: let’s forget the problems with the content and just get ‘personal’.
This gambit is sly but hardly unfamiliar.
And what “3 nice things” might JR have in mind? Perhaps he has a list. I seem to recall quite a few nice-things JR has proffered about himself: truthy, heroic, progressive, maturely scatological, acutely insightful, forthrightly assertive, comprehensively informed, robustly diligent in the pursuit of his ‘personal truth’ (or rather: in getting people to conflate his ‘personal truth’ with actual, objective truth), and in most respects generally a Tribune of Truth and People (or rather: those people who self-identify as ‘victims’). But I confess I am at a loss: I can’t imagine a single Wig that would handle all that … although a Napoleon hat might be the very thing.
But then that bit is also then buttressed by – had you been waitttttttting forrrrrrrr itttttttttttttt? – a manipulatively plaintive plea that seeks to get us to simply accept that we are undeniably well-informed about “your church’s victims”.
Which theme is then remixed and presented as an enhanced coda: could I not “say anything nice about victims” – waittttttttttt forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr itttttttttttttttttttt! – “when we were children being raped” … ?
Readers may easily imagine how well this bit would play on one of those TV shows – popular since the 1980s – where a self-selected audience ooohs and ahhs and claps and boos and cheers on cue under the masterful baton of a talk-show host/hostess.
But – it apparently has to be pointed out to JR – this is not a TV talk-show.
And when I am rationally persuaded that I am dealing with such genuinely victimized individuals, I will indeed make empathetic note of the fact.
You are a lying sociopathic loser.
You need to say who you are so that the world might hold you and the people who support you responsible for the dreck you write. You're a priest or a nun hiding and sniping. Insulting and degrading; and offering no proof for the "truth" of any of your arguments. You are the perfect example of why people are walking away from your church in droves. If you didn't count children born into your faith you would have negative growth, membership wise. You should hold yourself accountable for said adult membership loss. It's your TYPE of catholic that repels good people. Congratulations you must be proud. Mission accomplished your own private religion for and about sociopaths.
And what have we now?
On the 29th at 1151 a comment that opens with an epithet (or triple epithet, if you wish) and no surprise there. The only useful aspect of it would be from the point of view of clinical projection, but in that regard it is rather pithy indeed.
In the second paragraph a sly effort – yet again – to change the focus from a) the content of my ideas to b) me personally: I “need to say” who I am – doncha see? – “so that the world might hold you and the people who support you responsible for the dreck you write”.
So the whole bit is based on nothing more than JR’s evasive assertion – delivered without any supporting examples – that I write “dreck”.
And once again we see JR donning the Wig of Universal Tribune as he doth declaim and pronounce and denounce on behalf of “the whole world” (that Napoleon hat seems increasingly apropos).
Then the paragraph continues with an extended phantasmic riff as JR consults his tea-leaves (thus, as always, avoiding having to deal with the content of my ideas), and also tries to make me somehow a “perfect example” of the Church’s problems (as he sees them). Might he, then, be considered a “perfect example” of Victimism’s problems?
And again we see this reversion to the “sociopaths” bit, from a person who has demonstrated an almost perfect innocence as to any psychological knowledge and – for that matter – who doesn’t really demonstrate much knowledge of sociopathy either. Somewhere along the line, for whatever reason, he appears to have had an uncongenial run-in with the classification of ‘sociopath’. Which is perhaps not surprising.
Your Jesus didn't say be empathetic when you feel like it. He called you to be empathetic, especially, when you didn't feel like it. At least that's what the good sisters of st. Joseph of Carondolet taught me about loving one's neighbor and or enemy.
EMPATHY, look it up and try and decipher what it means. (WARNING This could cause a sociopath, like yourself, to implode.)
On the 29th at 1157AM we are instructed by the Wig of Theological and Religious Knowledge about Jesus. It apparently has to be pointed out to him that Jesus never mentioned “empathetic” at all; rather, this is an echo of the Victimist effort to i) reduce Christian “love” to mere ‘empathy’ and then to ii) to insist that the only Christian response to allegants’ allegating of allegations is to be ‘empathetic’ which iii) means don’t doubt or question or try to think about them – just let yourself go with the flow of emotive outrage.
And my lack of ‘empathy’ here has nothing to do with my not ‘feeling like it’; rather, it has to do with the fact that after exhaustive consideration (which I have shared here) I am not persuaded that ‘empathy’ is called-for, and certainly not as the primary response to the allegants’ allegating of allegations.
And we can retain our respect for “the good Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet” (corrections supplied) without denying that they couldn’t succeed with all of their pupils.
And as for the concluding instruction from the Wig of Instruction that I look up “empathy” (scare caps omitted): it’s not a matter of what “empathy” is so much as it is a question as to whether “empathy” is the accurate and proper response to an allegant’s allegating of allegations. However, I strongly support JR’s nascent respect for dictionaries and I can only urge him further along that worthwhile path.
And lastly, it would be more clinically accurate for a ‘sociopath’ to explode rather than to implode; they tend to externalize their frustrations by projection and displacement (he can look up those two terms in a dictionary; it would be good practice).
As far as talk show hosts go. Oprah and Phil Donahue and Jerry Springer (when he did intelligent interviews) etc. all "authenticated" SNAP as THE VICTIM'S( scratch victims we're SURVIVORS) GROUP from the '80's on. These shows said Jason Berry; fr. Tom Doyle; Barbra Blaine; and David Clohessy were virtueous people working against an obviously oppressive church. (Obviously oppressive because of how the hierarchs wilfully transferred abusive priests with no consideration for innocent catholic children and our families)
It was '80's talkshows (the 3, I've mentioned, originating in the mid west and Chicago, in particular, the home of SNAP) who created "faith" in SNAP by victims who had no personal experience with SNAP nor VOTF or any of the "concerned" groups that sprang up, fully grown over night in this crisis.
3 victims (of the 4 who've posted here) who have worked alongside SNAP left them and their control. If one broadened that 3 out of 4 demographic to all victims; then who follows SNAP? None of us but the very "limited" (read the word stupid for "limited') P.
On the 29th at 1216PM we receive JR’s thoughts on TV talk-shows. We are informed that Oprah and Phil and Jerry all “’authenticated’ SNAP as the victim’s group”. That would be my impression as well; the 1980s crop of such shows took the burgeoning Victimism that accompanied the rise of a feminist sensibility as their stock-in-trade and ran on for quite a while with the whole thing.
Does that mean, then, that we should include those shows and their hosts and all the others like them as more candidates for JR’s list of Church-controlled patsies who sought to make victims look bad? It would appear so, since JR presumes that since they supported the Victimist SNAP then they must surely be Church-dominated, which bit is then ‘supported’ in the second paragraph by the factoid that SNAP and the three shows he mentioned all “originated in the mid west and Chicago”.
Although it is anybody’s guess whether the various Victimist groups “sprang up, fully grown over night” (corrections not supplied). This gambit would try to insinuate that since they all did so, then they must have had a powerful organization (i.e. – had you been waittttttting forrrrrrrr itttttt? – the Church) masterminding them.
But as D’Antonio reveals, SNAP was going nowhere until Anderson invited Blaine for coffee that morning. It was the connection to the torties that really gave these organizations their Big Push, although certain secular and religious ‘liberal’ media were giving play to these organizations before the torties got into the game.
And we see again that queasy Victimist filching of the Holocaust ‘survivors’ trope.
Then in the third paragraph JR declaims about that the “3 victims … who’ve posted here” – although that has not been demonstrated and remains assertion rather than demonstrated fact.
Anyhoo, those “3” are also claimed to have “worked alongside SNAP” and then “left them” (meaning SNAP, presumably) and “their control”. From this dubiously asserted factoid, JR (or a muse) will then try his hand at statistical extrapolation: if 3 out of 4 “victims … who’ve posted here” have rejected SNAP, then … “who follows SNAP?” (because – doncha see? – that extrapolates out to 75 percent of ‘victims’ rejecting SNAP). Suffice it to say that four individuals is an impossibly small research sample from which to draw any conclusions, especially extrapolative conclusions.
And – as if to nail down the fact that he doesn’t bother to read what people write – JR then tries to get in an epithetical dig at me: only “the very ‘limited’ (read the word stupid for ‘limited’)” “follow[s] SNAP”. I don’t “follow SNAP”, but since I don’t buy much of JR’s stuff, then in his cartoonish construction of reality, I am therefore a ‘follower’ of SNAP.
And, again, I cannot hold the good Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet responsible for this performance by JR, such as it is.
You should have known who SNAP really was by the first word of it's name "SURVIVOR'S".
Why would a front group for tort lawyers ignore the basic premise of this scandal.
We were/are VICTIMS.
A good tort lawyer would be pushing the fact that we are victims not "SURVIVORS"
We weren't on the Titanic.
We were raped by catholic priests and religious and were set up, to be raped, by ALL the hierarchs who protected, not your innocent children, but your guilty priests.
This is the reality that cost you at least $1.5 billion (your insurors paid half).
So why would a front for tort lawyers want to emphazise how "strong" we are by calling us "Surivors" before we are even seen as vicims? The word, "Survivor's" alone tells you who SNAP works for. We survivors are sooooooo strong; that we can skip our being victims at all and go on with our lives. Except we are'nt strong.The facts are we are damaged. crippled by what was done to us.
On then to the 29th at 1236PM:
We have now a different format and style.
In the first paragraph, nonsensically and incoherently (in light of his immediately prior deployment of “survivors”) he tells us that we “should have known who SNAP really was by the first word of it’s name “survivors” (scare-caps omitted, corrections otherwise not supplied). But the sense of ‘survivors’ was used positively in the comment of 1216PM and here at 1236PM it is used (somehow) negatively.
In the second paragraph we are asked to consider “why would why a front group for tort lawyers ignore the basic premise of this scandal?” (correction supplied). What precisely is “the basic premise of this scandal”?
And, more to the point, what was the basic objective of the torties? It was to do some seriously remunerative ambulance-chasing, which is what torties do. And why would they then want to distract themselves with any other or further considerations or complications or spins on the subject?
In the third paragraph – yet again – nothing but a mere assertion as to the ‘victim’ status as claimed by JR and so on (scare-caps omitted).
In the fourth paragraph: I would say, again, that “a good tort lawyer” wouldn’t care much about anything except as it was useful in achieving the payouts (and fees and expenses). The “survivors” bit would only be useful in front of a jury or in front of media cameras and microphones. Among the attorneys for both sides sitting at a long table, such posturing and spinning would have had little traction and they wouldn’t waste their time with such bits.
As to the fifth paragraph, if any reader can suss out the meaning of the bit about “we weren’t on the Titanic” that reader is welcome to share it here. The best I can make of it is: JR is trying to counter my airplane metaphors – but apparently has to be advised that RMS “Titanic” was not an airplane. And I stand by the validity of my actual airplane metaphors.
As to the sixth paragraph: merely the still-iffy assertion as to being “raped” and – riffing on that – “set up to be raped” and so on and so forth. This bit is included in the hopes that waving that bloody-shirt will distract readers from assessment and manipulate them into an “amygdalic rush”.
In the seventh paragraph, an irrelevant bit about whether the Church or the Insurers paid the settlement monies (although even if the Insurers paid, then the premiums may well have been increased proportionately).
And in the eighth and concluding paragraph, a further bit on the ‘survivors’ element in SNAP’s name. Apparently JR had forgotten that SNAP had named itself (in a perfectly appropriate Victimist fashion) before the torties ever got involved through Anderson meeting Blaine. So the actual question, to the extent there is any question at all, would have to be: why didn’t the torties insist on a name-change for SNAP once Blaine had indentured SNAP to them? And the reason might simply be that the group’s name already had the vital public name-recognition that would be an essential element in SNAP’s value as a front organization.
But again, we see a fundamental incoherence here: in Victimist usage, the filched ‘survivor’ trope is used in a positive sense. Whereas JR has here been trying to spin the use of that term as if it were negative to ‘victims’. Thus the assertion that “the word ‘Survivor’s’ alone tells you who SNAP works for” fails. Because the Church surely would not want to support a group whose very title reinforces the undemonstrated presumption that any person coming to the group is a genuine victim/survivor.
And that paragraph concludes by n-o-w trying to spin ‘victims’ as n-o-t being ‘survivors’ because they “aren’t strong” (which is the positive sense of the word’s use) but instead ‘victims’ are “damaged … crippled by what was done to us”.
But this bit simply reintroduces the fundamental Causality Problem (as seen in the Doe case in Philadelphia): which caused which? Did the Abuse create the Damage, or did the Damage create the allegation of Abuse?
But it has to be said that this entire gambit is a new one: the Tribune of the Victims now breaks with standard Victimist usage by playing-up the damaged aspect of victims (“crippled”, even) rather than playing-up the heroic, ‘survivor’ aspect. It’s a change of emphasis; although the duality involved (‘crippled’ vs. heroic) has been present in the basic Victimist script from the beginning.
On the 28th at 1.36 pm Publion comments that we should imagine torties waking up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, after having a disturbing dream of their clients on the witness stand …. being cross-examined. Because I also believe it would be their worst nightmare come true. The house of cards might collapse in an untidy heap.
But his words"waking up in the middle of the night" can be used as a lead-in to an crucial question. Imagine a woman who wakes from sleep after hearing a noise downstairs,
She listens intently and hears it again, then she wakes her husband. Together they go downstairs and switch on the lights. They discover an intruder filling his bag with their family possessions. He tackles the guy to get their things back… but tragedy ensues. The burglar produces a knife and stabs her husband many times. She is paralyzed with fear and just stands there powerless. The attacker then flees. She recovers sufficiently to phone for ambulance and police. The ambulance takes them both to hospital. Her husband dies from his wounds….she is sedated and kept for observation. Next day she is interviewed by police… giving a good description of the attacker. An arrest follows, and with the help of forensics, a charge of murder is layed against him.
Six months later she is asked to give evidence at the murder trial. She is forewarned that the cross-examination may be traumatic. Because she may feel as though she is re-living that tragic night. Nevertheless she wants to see justice done, and agrees to go on the stand. She does actually break down but bravely soldiers on….eventually answering all questions put to her.
This is hypothetical.. but could have happened somewhere in this world.
Yet we are asked to believe that a alleged victim of sexual abuse, cannot relate events that happened forty years before. Because it would cause emotional trauma and make him/her re-live the abuse. Well if they really wanted justice they would be prepared to face all questioning,…. just like the woman whose husband was stabbed to death before her eyes.
My advice to these insurance companies is to change their lawyers…. ASAP.
My my how clever you aren't.
Say something nice about victims of your church, P.
Come on. say something nice about your church's victims with out reservations, or qualifiers.
Say something nice about me.
Say something positive about what to do to stop the "Stampede", even.
What's to be done that you might win this self created unnecessary conflict; that you've invented?
How can you turn this lumpen proletariat "herd" of criminal catholic children (now grown and obviously ignorant of the old Jesuit motto "Give me a child for 7 years and we,the church, will have them for life") and a press (that has no investigative reporters anymore) from destroying the financial wealth (THE most important issue to you) and unblemished reputation (LOL!) of your church?
On the 30th at 1018AM:
In the first paragraph, a shot at epithet and snark. No content.
In the second paragraph, we begin an extended riff (or perhaps there is a crack in the mental record) with the “say something nice” bit, repeated in the third paragraph (although we have not yet even established just who is and isn’t a genuine ‘victim’ of clerical abuse) and then repeated in the fourth paragraph with the repetition of the demand for me to “say something nice” about JR.
But then in the fifth paragraph – as opposed to the content-less nature of the preceding paragraphs – we get something that might be useful: I am exhorted to “say something positive about what to do to stop the ‘Stampede’”.
I shall do so gladly: First, begin from an objective (i.e. non-Victimist) stance toward claims, stories, and allegations. Second, determine clear definitions of each of the specific gradations of ‘abuse’. Third, then actually re-examine all allegations and claims in order to determine as best as possible whether the alleged events actually happened or at least have a persuasively credible probability of having happened. Fourth, on that basis compile actual figures demonstrating just how many actual events of ‘abuse’ we are actually dealing with. Fifth, on that basis – and with accurate reporting by the media so as to accurately inform the public – take requisite action in the cases of those accused. Sixth, design and implement a more professional and state-of-the-art set of guidelines and ‘professional best practices’ for clergy and Church workers.
I forego any backward-looking efforts to recover monies already paid-out on the basis of claims, stories, and allegations which – under serious and objective analysis – fail to establish themselves as genuine.
I also forego for this discussion, but consider it ultimately necessary to implement, the legislative cleansing of a laws and jurispraxis and investigative techniques that have enabled the profoundly anti-Constitutional visions and methods of Victimism to gain the traction they have.
But – demonstrating his manipulative presumptions that have been active all along – in the seventh paragraph JR will try to wish-away or spin-away the problems of the Stampede and the Abuseniks’ credibility as “this self created unnecessary conflict; that you’ve invented” (corrections not supplied).
I have merely pointed out problems; but to the Abusenik mind (as it were) pointing out problems is simply to create “unnecessary conflict” because – had you been waitttttttting forrrrrrrrr itttttttttttt? – if questioners just shut up then everyone could be manipulated into an “amygdalic rush” and would stampede like spooked cattle and thus there would be no problem at all (for the Abuseniks). Wheeee.
The final paragraph is – as readers can see – grammatically incoherent as written. But of course, it may well be that there was no guiding insight in the mind of the comment-writer and the paragraph was merely designed to platform as many epithetical bits as might be stuffed into it.
At any rate, I would not hold St. Ignatius any more accountable than the good Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet for the clear failures occasioned by this or that pupil.
And it can only be as amusement and entertainment that we behold here an Abusenik bemoaning the lack of “investigative reporters anymore”: if there had been actual and genuine “investigative reporting” (rather than merely shilling for the Victimist and Stampede Playbook) at the outset, then the Stampede would never have gotten off the ground and the torties would have had far less success in running their piñata game.
The basic premise of this scandal is that the rulers of your church, knowing full well that certain religious were sexually abusing minors in their care, (Evidently a hidden "perk' of the priesthood since it was done universally), transferred, to innocent children and parishes, sex abusors, known as such, to the hierarchs. That's the scandal
On the 30th at 1028AM JR delivers himself of a definition of “the basic premise of this scandal”. (We recall that on the 29th at 1236PM on this thread JR posed the question: “Why would a front group for tort lawyers ignore the basic premise of this scandal?” (correction supplied)
But in what way, then, has SNAP or the other front-organizations ‘ignored’ all the bits JR puts in play here? Surely, JR’s recitation here could have just as easily come from any of half a thousand SNAP press releases.
And in light of the demonstrated tendency of these sensational charges and assertions and allegations to suddenly melt like ice-cream in July when actually subjected to even modest sustained examination, then I would say that the more significant scandal is the Stampede itself and how it managed to keep going for so long.
The "Doe" case in Philidelphia, Ahhhhhhh!
Still nothing proven against Mr. "Doe" but that should all "change" during the pope's visit. That's the plan; isn't it?
Maybe Mr. Doe was given "an offer he couldn't refuse". Maybe from the suppliers of his heroin,perhaps? Or just maybe he has been telling the truth of his abuse all along. I will judge Mr. Doe by what happens in Philly before; during and or after Franks visit.
I can only hope Frank explains socialism to the Philly Mafia.
I had not noticed JR’s of the 30th at 1045AM.
That “Ahhhhhhh!” in the first paragraph, in regard to the Doe case, gives us an indication of JR’s palpable relief that he has something for which there are some well-worn 3x5s in the shoebox.
But the rest of the comment gives us nothing but innuendo and insinuation, which is just as well since any attempt to link the bits together will result in incoherence.
Why “should all [that] ‘change’ during the Pope’s visit?” (correction supplied).
What “plan”, precisely, is it that JR implies exists?
Then a bunch of “maybe” bits. But it is impossible to assess the assorted “maybe” insinuations until we know what “the plan” is in the first place, and JR has – who can be surprised? – not provided an actual explication of this “plan” he sees or claims to be unfolding.
And the comment concludes – in a truly weird bit – with some effort to link the Pope, “the Philly Mafia”, and “socialism”.
On the 30th at 1053AM JR informs “Malcolm” that the only reason the Church settled was “because they knew they would lose even more gelt if there were trials”. And once again: JR knows that for sure … how?
Especially when we have seen how creating such strategic conundrums for targeted Parties-Defendant is a time-honored tortie stratagem: bring so many allegations simultaneously, lumped into one large or even massive lawsuit, that no Insurer would want to pay for the astronomical cost of all of the individual trials.
This stratagem maximizes the possibility of settlement (thus avoiding the profound risk of putting Abuseniks on the stand and exposing the whole game) while also providing the ancillary benny of payees later being able to claim that for all practical purposes their stories, claims and allegations were indeed ‘proven’ by the mere fact that they got a check, and by whatever Letter(s) the torties tacked on to the settlement agreement, along with – in so many cases – a demand for secrecy to prevent the public from seeing the type of stories, claims and allegations that received hefty payouts.
And to think that without JR we would never have really gotten a chance to examine this scam. We owe him a debt of gratitude indeed. (There – wasn’t that saying something nice about JR … ?)
And the paragraph continues with more mere insinuation: doesn’t MH “think the Church knows exactly how many victims are telling the truth about our rapes?”. But in how many cases could any hierarch be sure? And even in the cases that have gone to criminal trial, we have seen such difficulties that it would appear none of this type of case ever seems to be capable of clear and definitive resolution in the courts.
The allegants were not actually “paid to go away”. The lawsuits had to be processed, either through trial (see my comments immediately above about the tortie strategy) or through settlement (ditto). And from what we have seen here about Abusenik stories and how Abuseniks operate under the pressure of even modest examination, it hardly seems unreasonable to imagine that the torties were the most relieved of all when settlements were reached (and their clients were thus removed from the professionally disquieting possibility of demonstrating/revealing the weaknesses of their material and themselves in open court).
And the comment concludes – as so often – with the telltale scatology and the bit about the Abuseniks merely being truthy truth-tellers.
On the 30th at 1219PM JR informs me – yet again – that “SNAP’s the church”. This bit – replete with all its fundamental inaccuracy on so many levels – has already been discussed here.
Then in the second paragraph – had you been waitttttttttting forrrrrrrrrr itttttttttttttt? – JR tosses in a distraction: he raises the point that he is addressing me “directly”. And so what?
But the third paragraph then reveals where he’s trying to go with this irrelevant bit: the Wig of Outraged Being-Ignored bleats that I only ‘talk about’ him (rather than address him directly). There are two reasons I have for that: a) we are dealing with ideas here, not with personalities; b) we have all seen just how quickly JR gets irritated when the kitchen starts to heat up and why distract matters here by toying with that unnecessary risk of distracting fireworks?
But then he tries – slyly – to shoehorn in another issue altogether: that in not addressing him directly I am not addressing his “questions”. I address all the points in his material that appear to require comment.
Granted, his insinuation questions are exposed for what they are rather than ‘answered’; and his abiding question as to my actual identity has been addressed at length a number of times: we are dealing with ideas here, not personalities. For all I know (and it is hardly impossible, given what we have seen on this site) JR is himself a tool of some element seeking to “make victims look bad” but as far as I am concerned that possibility is irrelevant to the purposes of our discussion here, which is to examine the Stampede.
And then – vividly and yet again – JR demonstrates either a profound reading-comprehension problem or a willful and deliberate (but convenient for his purposes) mis-reading of my material: he again tries to spin me as ‘defending’ “ SNAP as being what it pretends to be”. Naturally, he provides no quotations from my material since they don’t exist.
So I will say again: SNAP is a front for the torties and has been at least since Blaine said Yes to Anderson; and before that it was some sort of oppositional agglomeration started or soon-taken over by a very disaffected Doyle, who gathered assorted like-minded types around him in order to create his own fiefdom, since the Bishops rejected his 1985 Report/Proposal.
The fact that I don’t buy JR’s cartoon theories about SNAP as a tool and creature of the Church does not in any way mean that I buy SNAP as a free-standing and genuine victim-interest organization.
And then – marvelously pitch-perfect – JR (or some muse) provides a vivid demonstration of the old Playbook tactic of Insinuation with that “Hmmmmmmm?”. Shall I, for the purposes of demonstration here, toss that ball back?: JR sure seems to be hugely effective at making victims look bad and why would that be – hmmmmmmm?
And then in the sixth paragraph merely a repetition of the “real victims” bit. But he also says that I ‘ignore’ or ‘discredit’ or ‘disbelieve’ their stories, claims and allegations. That’s not quite so.
I certainly don’t ignore their claims (and indeed are they not irritated by the amount of time and attention I give to them?); I examine their material, raise questions, and demonstrate the possibility or probability of problems with their material, but in that case the ‘discredit’ is inherent in their material, not in my attitude toward the material; and on the basis of that I am not rationally persuaded of the credibility of the material so – yes – I disbelieve what I have demonstrated to be not-believable.
But all of that flows from the proffered material. And if the material were less problematic, then my assessment would be different.
But they had been led to presume – and perhaps characterologically primed to enjoy – that in declaring themselves ‘victims’ they were automatically going to be immune to question and would be paid as well.
What can I say? One out of two isn’t bad, especially when the ‘one’ included the cash.
And we see again as well JR conflating himself with “victims” generally as to what they think and don’t think. So what? Aside from the Napoleon hat (or Wig) that simply brings us back to square-one and moves nothing forward.
Nor would I be so quick to throw around “Ye shall know them by their deeds” since the only deeds about which we can be quite certain here are that Abuseniks have committed the “deeds” of proffering stories, claims, assertions and allegations that do not at all seem credible or probable, nor do their efforts (or “deeds”) to bolster those stories, claims, assertions and allegations do much to burnish or repair what we “know” of them through those “deeds”.
Malcolm your church and it's insurors settled with victims because they knew they would lose even more gelt if there were trials. You don't think the church knows exactly how many victims are telling the truth about our rapes? They don't want you, the people in the pews, the money fount, to disappear. That's why they paid us to go away; we were fucking with the fount by simply telling the truth of what happened to us.
P, SNAP's the church.
Readership please notice how I speak directly to P.
P. only talks about me i.e. "JR in his third paragraph" etc. never to me or my questions.
He sure defends SNAP as being what it pretends to be though.
Hmmmmmmm?
Real victims who've posted here;he ignores or discredits and disbelieves; but SNAP's a different matter with P. He's sure their fake but working for our lawyers. Victims don't think so and have said that here.
We know SNAP's the church just like P.s the church."Ye shall know them by their deeds."