December is the Cruelist Month: Watch Out, Student Debtors

 T.S. Eliot was wrong: December is the cruelest month, not April.  

We think of December as a time for rest after a toilsome and anxious year--a time to prepare for Christmas and reconnect with our loved ones.

Yet, December can bring a lot of nasty surprises--shocking us when our hearts are mellow and our guard is down.

For example, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 

The Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.

George Washington's ragtag army sneaked across the Delaware River and surprised the Hessians on Christmas Eve, 1776.

Poor Napoleon was shocked when he reached Moscow in December of 1812. He thought he had beaten the Russians, but he was wrong. By the time he got his army back to France, he had lost 90 percent of his soldiers. 

So here are my predictions for the month ahead: Americans will receive two rude shocks.

First, the United States is prosecuting a hot war by proxy in Ukraine. Americans believe that the plucky Ukrainians are beating the crap out of Russia.

I don't think so. The Russians are masters of winter warfare and still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Vladimir Putin will remind America there is a price to pay for mucking around in eastern European politics. 

Second, the crypto craze will blow up next month, and everybody who bought crypto coins will be wiped out. You will be surprised to learn the names of famous people who got duped.

These two bombshell events will rock the American economy and make us all poorer.

If you are a college student, this is the December to be on your guard. Now is a terrible time to take out student loans to pay for your studies. This might be a good time for you to take a gap year, get a job, and start thinking seriously about what you will do to make a living. 

If you're majoring in liberal arts, now is an excellent time to consider changing majors. You may love literature, but you will need more than a bachelor's degree in English to get a job.

My advice: select a vocationally oriented major and read Henry James on your own time.

Surprising the Hessians during the holiday season

Shaun King Threatens Catholic images of Jesus, Mary and the Saints: Where is Bishop John Hughes When We Really Need Him?

Shaun King, a "writer-in-residence" at Harvard Law School, delivered this thuggish online threat to destroy Christian images of Jesus, Mary, and the saints:

Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been…. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.

As Casey Chalk pointed out in Crisis Magazine, Mr. King is a pretty influential guy. Time Magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet in 2018. He and Bernie Sanders are buddies. In fact, King introduced Bernie at the kickoff rally for Sanders' presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, King is a jackass, and his call for the destruction of Christian images is a direct attack on the Catholic Church. After all, Catholics believe that images of Mary and the saints help the faithful communicate with God's most holy people, who intercede for us from heaven.

King's threat brings to mind the Philadelphia Bible riots of 1844. Nativists rioted in response to a mild request by the local Catholic bishop to excuse Catholic children from reading from the Protestant (King James version) of the Bible in the public schools.  The riots stretched over several months.  Two Catholic Churches were burned down, and around fifty people were killed or wounded.

Irish immigrant John Hughes was the Catholic Bishop of New York during these events, and he feared anti-Catholic violence would spread to New York City. Hughes organized Catholic laymen to guard the parish churches and sent a message to the City's municipal leaders: “If a single Catholic Church were burned in New York,” he warned municipal officials, “the city would become a second Moscow.” 

Bishop Hughes was referring to the destruction of Moscow after Napoleon captured the city in 1812. Shortly after Napoleon's troops marched into Moscow, fires erupted that destroyed vast swaths of the town. Napoleon himself barely escaped the flames.

Today's Catholic bishops are too busy trying to fend off bankruptcy to confront bigots like King, which is a pity.  We could use some bishops imbued with Archbishop Hughes' militant spirit.

Bishop John Hughes threatened to turn New York City into a "second Moscow."