Let Us Reason Together -- The Pope In Rome and Other Things of Interest and Import (3)

I gave up on the Catholic Church too many years ago to count, as have many nominal Cat-licks. There's just no way to maintain one's faith in the face of an institution so rotten to the core.

And then comes Francis, Pope in Rome, to seem to say, "Well, what is to be done, then? What are we to do about it, eh?"

Left to their own devices, institutions -- whether the Church (yes, I still call it that) or governments or major market enterprises -- fail. They fail themselves, they fail their duty, their communities, and in the case of the greatest institutions, they fail the world.

I've written fairly extensively since about 2000 on the topic of The Failure of Institutions in the post-modern era. The Catholic Church seemed to be leading the way, demonstrating daily how to fail monumentally... and yet survive. Hollowed out, perhaps. Irrelevant. But still there.

So here we had a case of a Nazi-Pope retiring... and a new fellow from Argentina, well known around the Curia but hardly known to the public outside Buenos Aires, being elected Pope and all of a sudden he's out there using his bully pulpit not so much to condemn and denounce and demean and discourage (Benedict, creature of the Inquisition, never could get over that part of his "ministry") as to uplift and encourage and call out the real evils that have for too long been tolerated if not actively undertaken by his Holy Institution. It's time for change.

And so, millions of people around the world, Catholic and no, have hope again, whereas many of those who have given up on the Church are in wonder at this man and his humility, his humor and his good cheer. Hope that he will reform the Church? No. Not that. But at least he might put a more human face on it. Somewhat less ghoulish is always good, yes?

Meanwhile, the mean people are OUTRAGED!!!!™ It's hard to explain what a big change this is, for until very, very recently, it was the good people who were constantly seething with impotent rage at the blindness and cruelties of their Betters. That the good people should be in a constant state of rage and rebellion at the depredations of the Overclass, but would never be able to do anything about it was taken for granted as the way things were supposed to be. The Overclass laughed at the impotence of the masses, remember? It wasn't all that long ago.

And then comes Francis and says, "You know, this has got to change." The world turned upside down.

Behold.

The cruelties haven't ended, but the Overclass isn't laughing any more. And more and more, governments are once again wondering if they should actually pay attention to their people rather than continue to rule contrary to the public interest.


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"Other things to come."

What the New Year Holds

This is apparently what The Powers That Be want us to endure next year: the Pauls, Father and Son, holding forth endlessly, and bringing the operations of the Government to a grinding halt while they propound about the Constitution As It's Supposed to Be (cf: the Confederate Constitution) and the Universe twirls around them, first around the one and then around the other.

I put the Son before the Father (sacrilege, I know) for the simple reason that he will be seated as a Senator from Kentucky, and as a Senator, individually, he will have essentially unlimited power to bring the body to a screeching halt. This is a power all Senators have, but only Republicans are allowed to exercise it according to the rules and ancient traditions of the body. The Father cannot single-handedly bring the House to a halt, but he will no doubt do his best, and likely will achieve his objective by strategy -- a strategy of burying the House in investigatory fervor, everything being "wrong" and all. Since 1787. So it all has to be "reviewed."

Why The Powers That Be would want this is something of a Mystery, but clearly they do, and no doubt while the Government is completely paralyzed, they will set in motion their Final Solution. The outlines have been obvious for years. They don't believe in Constitutional Self-Government and they want to replace it with something more like a "Directed Democracy" in which the constitutional forms of the past are retained in large part, but they are non-functional. Instead, Rule is achieved through and from what amounts to the Throne, which is not so much an independent executive as it is the agent of the Ruling Faction of Private Interest. The People, essentially, have no say in the matter, nor are they even expected to know what's going on. The Government is to exist as the enforcement arm of the Ruling Faction of Private Interest, nothing more. The heady days of "self-government" will be well and truly over.

A dictatorship? Well, it could be, especially if the Pauls, Father and Son, are able to completely paralyze the functioning of Government. There will have to be a sharp -- and quite possibly final -- intervention from... somewhere... which will have the effect of irrelevating Congress altogether. If Obama can't engineer it and implement it appropriately, I have little doubt he will be replaced, and not with Joe Biden. The most likely replacement would be General St. David Petraeus who would step in as a kind of Interim Protector, the Presidency and Vice Presidency being temporarily vacant.

That role could easily become permanent.

It's already quite clear that internal factional disputes within the Ruling Class have reached critical mass. There will be a fierce and potentially violent struggle between factions for ultimate control, a struggle that will make the internal factional disputes of the Clintonian Interregnum seem almost quaint. How it will resolve is difficult to tell. But whatever the result, the New America that emerges will look little like what we once knew, its path will be set in a different direction, and just like today, many around the world will follow.

Whatever the case, it is not our struggle.

[Note: I am recovering from pneumonia. I refused hospitalization -- for the simple reason that the last time I was hospitalized I was nearly killed (twice) through medical error and neglect. Recovery will be long and slow at home, but it wouldn't have been any faster in the hospital...]