cTwelve

When was the exact moment when everything started going downhill in America? I say when Barack “Barry” Obama was elected.

ELON MUSK: “We’re going to have universal high income. We’ll basically just issue money to people." "AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that they’ll run out of things to do for humans." "Money will stop being relevant at some point in the future." "AI won’t use human currency. It will care about power and mass: wattage and tonnage.” ME: “So just as you’re becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value?” ELON: “Yeah, pretty much.”

The year is 1949. The Nobel Prize in Medicine has just gone to the man who invented the lobotomy. Your doctor suggests one for your sister, who has not been herself since the baby came. It is the most celebrated advance in psychiatry of the age, and he is simply current. By the time the prize curdles into an embarrassment, close to twenty thousand Americans have had the operation, and proportionally more here in Britain. The year is 1956. Lay the baby down on his front, the doctor says. So does the most trusted childcare book ever written, the one on every new mother's shelf. On his back he might choke, the reasoning goes. Millions obey. The advice holds for nearly thirty years, long after the evidence has quietly turned, and a generation of cot deaths is counted before anyone thinks to roll the babies over. The year is 1966. A bestselling book informs your wife that menopause is a disease, that she is, in the author's word, a castrate, and that a small daily pill will keep her youthful and tolerable to live with. Her doctor agrees. The drug becomes one of the most prescribed in the country. Nobody mentions that the author sat on the payroll of the company that made it. That detail surfaces decades later, in the same year the landmark trial is halted early for raising rates of breast cancer, stroke and clots. The year is 1979. Your ulcer is caused by stress and sharp food, the doctor explains. Calm down, drink milk, take the antacid that happens to be the best-selling medicine on earth. Two Australians are about to prove that most ulcers are caused by a bacterium and cured by a fortnight of antibiotics. The profession laughs. One of them eventually drinks a beaker of the stuff to settle the matter. The establishment takes the better part of twenty years to stop laughing. The Nobel lands in 2005. The year is 1985. Butter is dangerous, the doctor says. Switch to margarine, it is modern, it is heart-healthy, the experts are united. The spread he nudges you toward is loaded with trans fats, which the next decade will identify as the genuinely dangerous one, and which will eventually be banned outright. The butter goes quietly back in the fridge. No correction is ever printed at the volume of the original warning. The year is 1992. There is a pyramid on the surgery wall, and the very same one in your grandchild's classroom. Bread, cereal, rice and pasta form the broad virtuous base, up to eleven servings a day. Fat is exiled to the tiny tip. The chart was reportedly held back a year while the relevant industries had their say. It is wrong at the bottom and wrong at the top. Now it is today. Your doctor has new guidelines, new studies, a fresh consensus, delivered with precisely the steady confidence of every guideline above. He believes it, and he has good reason to. So did every doctor in this thread. None of them were villains. Each was sincere, most were kind, and all were certain, reading from a map that somebody else had drawn and handed them. That is the part worth sitting with. So when the man in the white coat tells you what to eat, what to fear, and what to swallow every morning for the rest of your life, you are allowed to ask. Who paid for the study. What the evidence says beneath the headline. What he was just as certain about thirty years ago, and where that advice sits now. Then make up your own mind. Call it scepticism, or call it whatever your grandmother called it when she ignored the advert, kept the butter where it was, and lived to ninety-one. It has outlasted every consensus on this list. It will outlast this one too.

Okay Americans I need your help! Looks like I‘m going to have around 7-10 days of free time after the World Cup final, where do you suggest me to go from New York? Little road trip down the East Coast? 🚗🇺🇸

WATCH: US Bishops dedicate and consecration the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

ELON MUSK: “WE’RE GOING TO HAVE UNIVERSAL HIGH INCOME. WE’LL BASICALLY JUST ISSUE MONEY TO PEOPLE. WE’RE GOING TO HAVE DEFLATION. AI AND ROBOTS ARE GOING TO MAKE SO MUCH STUFF THAT THEY’LL RUN OUT OF THINGS FOR HUMANS TO DO. MONEY WILL STOP BEING RELEVANT AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE.” DIAMANDIS: “SO JUST AS YOU’RE BECOMING A MULTI-TRILLIONAIRE, MONEY STARTS TO HAVE LESS VALUE?” ELON: “YEAH, PRETTY MUCH.”

Vatican II and the New Mass. The SSPX, as such, says the quiet part out loud, that virtually all committed trad-Catholics believe. The other groups, while manned with many good priests (I don't doubt this for a second), are in a position where they can't do so. Unfortunately, although not always, this means that various ED group associated publications, like Claves in France, will spend a lot of time going after the SSPX, but won't utter a peep about the actual problems in the Church. I know that, for many, this approach by various ED groups is seen as prudent -- "if they speak up, we lose our Mass" --, and I get it. But, at a certain point, when the revolution becomes indefinite policy, you are kidding yourself that staying quiet will save you. Also, there is a difference between the virtue of supernatural prudence and what is called "carnal prudence" or "prudence of the flesh." The latter is a natural virtue, which pagans can acquire, and it is a prudence, but with factors such as human respect, place in society, material goods, etc, as animating principles. Whereas, supernatural prudence is the Catholic version wherein the rights of God are held higher than the rights of man, and this is fundamental to all decision making. At a certain point, one has to wonder, when is that line crossed in the wrong direction. As Lefebvre masterfully said, ""At the hour of my death, when Our Lord will ask me, 'What have you done with the graces of your priesthood?' I do not want to hear from the mouth of the Lord, 'You have contributed to destroying the Church with the others!'" No, I am not saying ED groups are "destroying the Church" and I would NEVER say that. Nonetheless, we are very far from the fog of war that loomed over the Church in 1988, wherein it was hard to see where lines were drawn, what the consequences would be, etc. The DDF now openly attacks the Virgin Mary with the Pope's approval, among many other things. It has become so common that we are almost desensitized. At a certain point, you have to speak out as a priest or bishop, because Napoleon III is really only different in degree than kind: he still needs you to accept revolution, even if he lets you do it while looking Catholic.

26 year olds today: "my anxiety is high, I am overwhelmed by my email job" 26 year olds in 1944: