President Biden, Ukraine, and Michelle Obama: Americans Are Sickened By Lies

Recently, I reread Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and this passage struck me:

You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.

I immediately thought about our national life; it's one big lie. Media commentators and Democratic Party hacks (Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, etc.) claim that Joe Biden is a mentally competent and fully functioning adult--that he has all his marbles and is making rational policy decisions based on moral considerations and our national interests. But that's a lie.

Biden is suffering from severe cognitive decline and dementia. The symptoms grow worse with each passing week. Everyone knows it, and the refusal of our political and media elites to be honest about the President’s mental health is frightening.

President Biden, the Democratic Party leadership, and the legacy media insist Biden is running for a second term. That’s another lie. The puppeteers in the White House rafters have already chosen Biden’s successor. I predict the new candidate will be announced this summer shortly before the Democratic Party's National Convention. I believe that Michelle Obama, not Joe Biden, will be on the presidential ballot next November.

I feel sure that Biden’s handlers have already written the presidential decree pardoning Joe's son Hunter and other family members of all their crimes. Undoubtedly, the President has already signed that decree in case he keels over prematurely in the coming months or is incapacitated by a stroke.

Our war in Ukraine is another lie. Ukraine is losing that war, which has produced millions of refugees and perhaps a million battle casualties. Although our government is lying about it, the United States is directly at war with Russia, a nuclear power. For what?

The people propagating these gross lies don’t care that they are hiding the truth. Perhaps, as Joseph Goebbels suggested, they have lied so many times that they’ve come to believe the lies themselves.

However, I think the White House press officers, the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post know they’re lying about the Biden administration. And I think they know that Americans don’t believe the bullshit they’re spewing.

They don’t care that they’re being written off as liars and dissemblers. Why? The mainstream press doesn't give a damn whether the American people think the press is trustworthy, and that’s scary.

Our Lady of Sorrows looks worried: Reflections in a historic New Mexico plaza

If  Madalyn Murray O'Hair were alive today, she would turn over in her grave.  

O'Hair spent her whole life trying to stamp religion out of public life. Now she is dead, and a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows stands confidently in the town plaza of Las Vegas, New Mexico.

As all good Catholics know, our Lady of Sorrows bears seven sad burdens, including Christ's crucifixion. Some statues have seven daggers circling her heart, but the statue in  Las Vegas has but one dagger, which represents all seven sorrows.  It is an impressive statue--12 feet high, and Our Lady looks totally at home in the Las Vegas town plaza.

I have often viewed this particular Marian image on my journeys through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to my family's cabin near Taos. On my last visit, I examined her again, and it appeared to me that Our Lady of Sorrows looked worried.  Of course, she is always sorrowful about the seven tragic episodes of her life, but I thought I detected new distress.

She has a lot to worry about, and I worry with her. Americans are killing themselves at a shocking rate. Suicides are up, death rates are rising among working-class white people, and almost 100,000 Americans die from drug overdoses each year--more people than were killed during the entire Vietnam War, which lasted 11 years.

Perhaps Our Lady is also worried about the disintegration of our universities, which have turned into lunatic asylums. Nihilistic professors spout racist bigotry and give all their students an "A" grade because, they say, the grading system promotes white supremacy.  Students borrow money to pay for this drivel, which they can't pay back--setting themselves up for a lifetime of penury.

Our newspapers, which once understood the difference between an editorial and a news story, have adopted the journalistic ethics of Joseph Goebbels, who just made up the news from day to day to fit the Nazi narrative.

Yes, Our Lady of Sorrows has a lot to be worried about.  And perhaps, like me, she worries most about our nation's grandchildren. 

I grew up in an optimistic world. People believed their future would be better than their past. My grandchildren will live in a world of growing divisions around class and race, increasing disparities in wealth and opportunity, and growing bitterness and conflict. My grandchildren's lives will be harder than mine was because my generation strangled the American dream--strangled it through greed, sloth,  mendacity, and viciousness. 

One day, our grandchildren will curse us. Maybe Our Lady of Sorrows will curse us, too. Perhaps she will shake off her mantilla of sadness and wrap herself in the tilma of wrath. That's what we deserve.