Introduction
One lesson that is soon learned in pastoral ministry is that you don’t try to counsel people, or evangelize them either for that matter, when they are drunk. Save your energy for sweeping water uphill.
But the tenderhearted feel so sorry for the person who is, um, impaired, that they want to step in and help out right away. Tell them about Jesus. But the person who is impaired is prevented from appreciating or understanding any offered kindness precisely because of that impairment.
The impairment might be caused by many things, and so this caution against trying to fix things with mere words applies to all them. Drunkenness, drugs, grand mal seizures, or—what we have in the current European rioting disease—a guilt-ridden case of suicidal empathy. As one insightful soul on Twitter put it, “Europe will be destroyed by women who project onto those animals the motherhood that belonged to the children they aborted.”
But as Michael Knowles pointed out, there is a problem with the popular takeaway that Muslims immigrants are rioting and causing all this mayhem. The reality is a bit more complicated than that. This is not to exonerate the Muslims over their involvement, because they certainly joined in what they consider to be. the festivities. But as Knowles made clear, such riots are a recurring reality of French life, and have been since the Revolution in the eighteenth century. This has happened scores of times before. The point Knowles made with this, a point which I think has some force, is that runaway immigration did not cause these riots. Rather the runaway riots over the course of centuries are the thing that caused the runaway immigration.
Godless secularism has no center, no arche. The Void provides no foundation for stable governance, and moreover cannot do so. Instead of getting magistrates with integrity, you get existential philosophy professors talking learnedly of despair, smoking cigarettes, and boinking undergraduates. Sartre concluded that Hell is other people, and then you look around at France on fire, and you admire his prescience.
In contrast to all such vapid nonsense, every nation needs to turn to Christ. In the case of France, they need to return to Christ.
Don’t Get Me Wrong
So returning to my first point at the top, there is no sense in trying to counsel a drunk.
It is not that words are irrelevant, wrote the man who was working hard at typing his words. The issue is where the words are directed. It will do no good to talk to the drunk. But you might need to talk to the by-standing cops, who for some reason are reluctant to take the drunk into custody. So it is not whether you use words, but rather where the words are aimed.
It is no use to speak to an insane people. But at some point it might do some good to talk with the sane people who are letting the insane people run amok. But maybe not though. At some point, standing there looking sane while insane people destroy your homes and habitation is itself a form of quiet insanity. Is it not?
But the words may do some good in some quarters. At some point, there is going to be a massive European recoil. So these words are for any evangelical believers who are caught up in the midst of that. You must take care not to listen to those dulcet voices who have talked you into this disastrous state of affairs in the first place. They will coo at you soothingly, like the Green Lady in The Silver Chair, and they will tell you to be very, very careful. They will say that reactionary forces, if allowed their way, will get very ugly.
But friend, don’t you see? It is very ugly now.
The Left Does Have a Plan
On the assumption that there are some rational actors behind all of this madness, what might their calculations be? There is insanity in the streets, to be sure, and there is also incoherence from the politicos who are called upon to explain their feckless selves. But it should not be assumed that there is no plan. There most certainly is one. Somebody has one.
That plan, as I take it, has two contingent options. The thing might break in one of two directions.
The first is that the left has undertaken a relentless drive to make Europe absolutely dysfunctional. And when the final crisis comes, and the thing breaks down in a heap, they will put themselves forward as the potential saviors of Europe. They will, of course, need to have plenipotentiary powers granted to them. The reason their nostrums haven’t worked up to this point is that they were restricted and tied up with the red tape of history, customs, laws, traditions, and all that jazz. If only they be given free rein to use the fullness of their newly acquired powers judiciously, they will fix “all this” in a jiffy.
That is one scenario.
The other scenario is that the pending crisis will eventually result in a reactionary explosion. Old Europe will blow up, and in that reaction, a lot of the predicted ugliness will come out to play. In other words, there will be a massive crowd of ordinary people who simply want Europe back, and because they think that Europe has a heritage worth preserving, they will be promptly categorized as fascists. But their approach will be simple—deport the problem.
But then . . . throw into the mix that unique sort of personality that thrives on trying to become the embodiment of all the leftist slanders. So look for the formation of various splinter parties that actually are fascists. What the moment calls for is the swastika reborn. Let us call them the retard right.
These uber-based types will accuse the European normies, those who simply want to deport all the Muslims, of being race traitors because do not advocate for the drawing and quartering of all the Muslims. These ferocity bros will see Vlad the Impaler as the voice of moderation, as something of a liberal.
These guys will get lots of air time because they are essential to the second contingent plan of the secular globalists. They are actually key players in it. The progressives will point to the rise of this fascism as an existential crisis, the crisis of our time, and one that must be dealt with immediately. In order to accomplish this, they will require—you guessed it—plenipotentiary powers.
It turns out that whatever happens, they will demand more power. And because they currently have a working alliance with the Islamists, they can probably arrange to have a few more cathedrals burned down in order to reinforce the urgency of their demands. They can thereby demonstrate for us how much they are needed.
Where Whataboutism Fails
Just try to imagine if the people burning Paris down were . . . Jews. What would the reaction be? That’s right. You can’t do it. The absurdity needle is bouncing off the right side of the gauge. This bizarro-world we are living in reminds me of that classic and evergreen Norm Macdonald tweet, off to the right here.
If you want to function in this new world order, you will need to learn the rules. This requires a great deal of flexibility in the joints. The Jews are to blame for burning everything down and the evidence for this is that they have not been seen burning anything down. The Muslims, or as the European media likes to call them, “youths,” are rampaging around, burning down this and that, and that part of spectacle is entirely invisible to them.
But let me reiterate that this mess started with leftist students rioting, which means there were some “youths” involved, and this is the very French way. But lighting off these periodic conflagrations is a lot more dangerous than the “French way” used to be because of all the Muslim fumes in the room now. All those who are playing with fire are playing with fire.
A Concluding Word
What we are up against is a religious frenzy. And this is precisely the point where you don’t try to talk sense to the drunk. The thing required is action, but the action needs a religious foundation as well. Not only so, but it must be a different foundation than the one that lies underneath secularism. That’s right . . . we come back to this again. It really is Christ or chaos.
This helpless nihilism on the part of the authorities is not a mysterious failure to protect secularism. This is secularism in full bloom. All the premises have come home to roost, if I might mix my metaphor.
I understand why those who are drunk on the violence cannot understand what I am saying. But there are many observers of this chaos who are not drunk. What say you? Is it not time to face facts? The French need to repudiate the Revolution. If you are going to burn something down, burn that down. Abolish Bastille Day. Declare a fast, and cry out to the Lord. The Lord Jesus, I mean.