Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
Every GOP strategist, consultant, and candidate should be forced to participate in a role-playing exercise this morning.
Your name is Bob. You’re a 49-year-old blue-collar worker in Ohio. You’ve always struggled to make ends meet. The good jobs were all shipped to China and the few remaining pay a pittance wage, undercut by endless illegal labor.
You’re a 3x Trump voter because you believed he would finally make America great again.
You put your son through Ohio State. He graduated cum laude in computer science. You couldn’t have been prouder. After months searching, he landed an entry-level job at Microsoft. Beneath his qualifications, but a good start for a smart kid.
Then he got laid off. That same month, Microsoft applied for 150,000 more H-1B visas because it can’t find qualified Americans.
Your son has spent six months back in his childhood bedroom, sending hundreds of applications without landing an interview.
On TV, Trump boasts about the greatest economy in history and how many women and minorities are finding jobs.
You decide a father-son steak night might cheer him up.
Gas is $4.50 a gallon. Filling your truck costs over $100. At Kroger, ribeyes are $30/lb. You settle for hamburger, even though 70/30 ground beef still costs $10+.
At checkout, a fat black woman is screaming at the cashier because her EBT will only cover most of the filet mignon and lobster in her cart.
You think to yourself how the Iran war has made everything expensive, but at least we’re stopping their nuclear bomb. You weren’t even sure where Iran was before you googled it after we first bombed them in March.
After dinner, you take your son to the county fair. Half the people aren’t speaking English. Virtually none of the crowd looks like you. You’re forced to leave early after a “teen takeover” turns violent. A foreign born judge pledges none of them will go to jail.
Back home, you turn on the TV. Vivek Ramaswamy is lecturing the crowd about American mediocrity and why Ohio needs more foreign talent.
Your son grows upset. You change the channel.
Now a Republican surrogate, the daughter of a governor or wife of an elderly billionaire, explains that young White men are the REAL welfare queens. They’d rather play videogames in their parents’ basements than work.
Your son says nothing. He just goes back to his childhood bedroom. You turn off the TV.
Then your neighbor starts blasting reggaeton and cracking open Modelos. He brought his cousin’s family from Mexico to help with all the minority-business contracts his construction firm keeps winning. Tonight they’re celebrating his nephew’s birth, the family’s first birthright American citizen.
You sit alone in your living room.
You worked hard, paid taxes, obeyed the law, and raised your son to do everything right. You voted Republican again and again because you believed somebody in Washington would finally fight for you.
Instead, your wages are stagnant. Groceries are unaffordable. Your community is unrecognizable. Your country is fighting another foreign war.
And upstairs, the son you sacrificed everything for is lying awake in the bedroom he slept in at twelve, wondering what the heck he’s even supposed to do with his life now.
Every time you turn on the TV, the Republicans you elected are either congratulating themselves or explaining why you and your son are the problem.
For ten years, they told you America’s future depended on your vote. Now you aren’t even sure America has a future worth defending.
The Republican Party needs to answer one simple question this morning:
You’ve spent a decade demanding Bob’s loyalty. You’ve given him stagnant wages, unaffordable groceries, another foreign war, and a son who did everything right but can’t find work.
And when they complain, you call them lazy, entitled, and racist.
What possible reason have you given Bob and his son to vote Republican? Do you honestly think you deserve their vote?
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
In Nebraska I was told a number. I did not believe it. I have since checked it, and I still do not believe it.
The football stadium in Lincoln has sold every seat, for every home game, since November 3, 1962.
Every game. Not the good years. Every game. Through seasons the state would rather not discuss. Through blizzards. Through years when leaving early would have been reasonable, and nobody left.
I asked a man named Gary how two million people keep a promise for that long.
He said, "You buy the ticket."
I asked what if the team is bad.
"You buy the ticket."
I asked what if it is snowing.
He looked at me with real patience. "You buy the ticket."
Here is the part that undid me. The first game of the streak, in 1962, they lost. Thirty-six thousand people came out the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, watched their team lose to Missouri, and came back for the next one anyway. And the next. It has not stopped.
The streak began with a loss. Nobody in Nebraska finds this ironic. They find it obvious.
This summer there was worry. Ticket sales were slow. People wrote articles asking whether it would finally end. I read them in a diner over a slice of pie I did not finish, and I confess I was afraid for a state I do not live in.
Then this week they announced the opener is sold out. Four hundred and eleven in a row.
In my land, a lord who kept his word for sixty years was written into the temple records.
Nebraska has kept its word since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no temple. There are eighty-five thousand people who bought the ticket.
Gary is going Saturday. It is not snowing. He would go if it were.
A promise is easy in a winning season.
Nebraska has kept one through every other kind.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
We've lost our damn minds.
The Lindsay Clancy mass psychosis proves that a lot of people need to have their Wifi taken away. But this psychosis started many years before TikTok...
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
Apparently, the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts has determined not to count letter grades toward its freshmen’s GPAs during their first semester, starting in 2027. The reason given is that this move will address the growing mental health crisis among young people. Nothing could be further from the truth. It will, in fact, exacerbate the crisis.
Across cultures, one can discern a common pattern in the initiation rituals of primal peoples. The elders of the tribe rip a young person from the comfort of his home during the night. He is then scarified or otherwise physically marked in some way—a tooth is knocked out or his face is cut—in order to impress upon him that life is difficult.
Then he is introduced to the lore and history of his people, and finally he is taken to the edge of the wilderness, given a few simple provisions, and told to make his way for an extended period of time.
The entire purpose of the exercise is to break him free from the dominance of his self-regarding feelings and to orient him to the achievement of objective goods.
Plato famously compared the soul to a horse-drawn chariot. The animals represent the passions, which provide energy for the vehicle, and the driver represents intelligence and refined moral consciousness. As long as the charioteer is in place, the chariot makes its way purposefully. But if the charioteer is kicked out, the horses will run amok.
Our “suicidally empathetic” culture, which consistently privileges feeling over objective value, has produced armies of dangerously uninitiated young people. In terms of Plato’s metaphor, it has given rise to lots and lots of chariots with no sense of direction, crashing into one another.
Electing not to count first-semester grades toward students’ GPAs in order to spare the delicate emotions of eighteen-year-olds is, spiritually speaking, about as dumb a move as a university could make.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
"You're a rockstar, man."
"You've been a huge help for me as I've come into the Church."
"Behold Your Mother is the best Marian theology book I've read."
Happy retirement, Tim ❤️
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
The horror film “Obsession” is a surprise hit at the box office this summer. Made for around one million dollars, it has already grossed over a hundred and fifty million. But it's not only a financial success; it's also a spiritually quite interesting film. What drives the plot is a young man's ardent desire to be loved by the woman whom he loves. Seeking a gift for Nikki in an occult store, Bear finds a device that advertises itself as “One Wish Willow.” If you break the stick and make a wish, it will come true. In his desperation, he follows the instructions, and it works like a charm. The previously diffident Nikki becomes totally devoted to the delighted Bear. All his dreams, it seems, have come true. Then things go, shall we say, south. I won't spoil any more of the plot. Suffice it to say that Nikki proceeds to devour the young man and push him toward despair.
Throughout this film, I kept thinking of Oscar Wilde's famous line: “the only thing worse than not getting what you want is getting what you want.” The spiritual issue here is one that the masters have recognized for centuries and one that stands at the very heart of Biblical revelation: if you tie your deepest desire to anything or anyone other than God, you will find, not satisfaction, but destruction. This is the moral teaching behind the great Shema prayer: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone.” Jesus reiterates this when he says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your strength.” The psalmist affirms it when he sings, “Only in God will my soul be at rest.”
During the rite of Confirmation, I ask the young people a series of questions, the first of which is “do you renounce Satan and all his works and empty promises?” Up and down the ages, Satan has made the same empty promise: I will give you something less than God and it will make you happy. In point of fact, it will ruin you, and the more you seek to acquire it, the unhappier you will become. What becomes clear in the course of “Obsession” is that the owners of the occult shop where Bear bought the fateful wish-willow are in fact involved with very dark spiritual powers. In my conversations with exorcists, I hear over and over again that those who get ensnared by the devil commence by dabbling in the occult.
“Obsession” is a good horror movie. If you like the genre, and you're not too squeamish, go see it. For it won't just scare you; it will offer some important spiritual truths.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
Just like every season opener since I was a little kid, I'm excited to see this iteration of the Cornhuskers.
That's our QB! Go be great AC🌽🌽🌽
NEW: Nebraska QB Anthony Colandrea tells @PeteNakos expectations have changed in Lincoln👀
"You’re not here to just not win a national championship. I’m not coming here to just win eight or nine games. I want to win a national championship; I want to go to the playoffs. I have high expectations, and we have high expectations as a team. When I first got here, it felt like the bar was eight or nine wins, and I was like, no — we want to win 11, 12 games. We’ve got to go win. That’s the biggest thing."
Exclusive: on3.com/news/anthony-colandr…
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
As a Catholic, I have to admit that this is the BEST argument for demonstrating that the Calvinist heresy is worse than the Lutheran heresy.
Anabaptists cannot be taken seriously.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
Ah yes, another Protestant denomination split is incoming. ELCA is not LCMS is not WELS. Welcome to your dysfunctional Lutheran heresy.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
When the world shut down over a 99.9999% survivable virus, I had to tell a few dozen rig hands they were out of a job.
Then I had to tell even more frac hands. Then snubbing hands.
Then I went home to wait for my layoff.
Then I spent 6 months applying for jobs with no interviews because corporate America had banned White men in honor of Saint George Floyd, Patron Saint of Fentanyl.
A great Twitter friend who I am indebted to forever got me a job with a 25% pay cut, and I had to work physically harder than I had in a decade.
Anyway. Nobody in news media ever reached out for my story. And it wasn’t a unique story, I was one of a couple hundred thousand guys going through this.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
I'm sorry, I just don't see it... Purgatory, the Mass, and especially the authority of the Church and the papacy.
Luther said if he could not be convinced from Scripture, he would not assent. St. Augustine says despite your disagreement from Scripture, you must assent to the Church's teaching. He says the sacrifice of the altar is the very same as that of the cross, which, when offered for the Christian dead, lessens their temporal punishment and forgives sins (not reception of the sacrament, but the offering of the sacrifice for non-participants).
How is this at all a seed for Luther?
I haven't read St. Augustine extensively on justification, so maybe you mean that?
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
In Luther's Small Catechism, the explanations of the three Creed articles use first-person language ("I," "me," "my") about 23 times total to personalize faith—e.g., "created me," "redeemed me," "called me," "all my sins," etc. Hacker cites this dominance of the "I" as central to the reflexive character of Luther's fides reflexiva, where the believer's assurance turns inward. Not exactly 25, but close in most English translations.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
Yes, according to Paul Hacker's analysis in *Faith in Luther*, Martin Luther developed a concept of "reflexive faith" (fides reflexiva). It involves the believer not only trusting God's promises but also reflexively assuring themselves of their own faith and justification within that act—especially in his expositions of the Apostles' Creed, where the "I believe" turns inward to the ego. Cardinal Cajetan, during their 1518 Augsburg meeting, viewed Luther's "special faith" in sacraments as a new subjective element diverging from traditional Catholic teaching on objective grace and absolution.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
Yes. Nazi propaganda displayed copies of Luther's "On the Jews and Their Lies" at Nuremberg rallies in a glass case. In 1937, the city of Nuremberg gave Julius Streicher (Der Stürmer editor) a first edition, which the paper called the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.
Kristallnacht (Nov 9–10, 1938) coincided with Luther's birthday (Nov 10). Pro-Nazi Lutheran bishop Martin Sasse wrote: "On 10 November 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany," applauding it and urging Germans to heed Luther as "the greatest anti-Semite of his time" who warned against the Jews. Some historians call the pamphlet a blueprint Nazis exploited.
Sailing Pluto 🇻🇦🌽 retweeted
“I read the Bible.” Yes—often encouraged by protestants, who taught them doctrines that simply aren’t part of historic Christianity whatsoever. That’s why Our Lord and the Apostles excoriate false teachers so often, because they take advantage of the ignorant and the unlearned, virtually always covering their poison with a biblical veneer to make it seem legitimate, in order to convert them to beliefs never prior held by anyone, at the cost of leaving the ancient Christian faith.
The false doctrine I hear praised most often by ex-Catholics who become protestant is “once saved, always saved” (or another variant of it). It is unfortunate, but entirely predictable that this false doctrine is embraced with such enthusiasm: very often, it functionally comforts the flesh, denies our responsibility to take up the cross every day until the end, and offers the unstable fantasies and delusions about their own supposed security that ALL our Christian ancestors for countless generations would have warned them was folly and dangerous to their souls (to say nothing of the very consistent witness in Scripture itself).
But no, instead of listening to that constant and millennia-long series of witnesses—saints, martyrs, etc.—they CHOOSE (root word of “heresy”) to listen to the most recent batch of heretics, who like all past heretics claim to have the right interpretation of the Bible (against the Church), and propound doctrines never before heard by anyone, drawing them away from the Catholic Church into some small sect that 500 years later continues to divide and sub-divide, at war with both the Church and itself.
I didn’t realize much of this when I was a protestant myself. So many who fall for this do so in some degree of ignorance. But the ancient and consistent witness of our Christian Fathers showed me in no uncertain terms that I had been deeply deceived, and in turn opened the depths of Scripture in ways I never knew as a protestant.
Fortunately, many are waking up to the fact that they have been similarly deceived, and are coming Home. There is often a dopamine rush in rebellion. But true and enduring satisfaction comes upon returning Home.
