The Grift

You're on the grift, same as me.

THE GRIFTERS

There was a movie that came out in 1990 called The Grifters. It was based on the excellent noir novel from Jim Thompson. I recommend this genre of fiction and movies because it provides a moral education. Noir deals with the underside of life and humanity. This particular movie has influenced me for years with its language. It gave me one of my favorite words--the "grift."

The grift is in opposition to a day job or a trade. There is a certain type of person who can't do honest work. Here is a classic bit of dialogue from the movie:

Lilly: I guess you won't be getting a straight job, either.

Roy: Not this week.

Lilly: Not ever.

Grifters can't abide hard work. This is why they have to get over on other people. Today, the grift is no longer confined to the underbelly of con artists and organized crime but has metastasized into all areas and institutions of life--politics, academia, athletics, corporations, entertainment, and religion. We can lament this state of affairs, but we should not be surprised by this state of affairs. As I am fond of saying, people trade in a free market but only if they can't steal. This is a direct challenge to the libertarian notion that virtue flourishes in anarchy. It doesn't.

There are two paths you can go down. If you love money and material things while hating work, you get on the grift. If you are indifferent to money and material things and love work, you play it straight. The Gentle Reader can already recall people from the workplace and life that were either on the grift or playing it straight.

For the grifter, life amounts to pulling off tricks for money. They are like that chicken that could play tic-tac-toe. The chicken doesn't know how to play tic-tac-toe. It just knows that pecking at that board will dispense some corn. Grifters are just like that chicken.

When grifters take over, the world becomes a game of tricks. This is the appliance that doesn't work. This is the airplane that falls apart as quality control vanishes. This is the politician who says one thing to get elected and does the other thing to get paid. There is no higher level of thought behind all of this. This is a culture and a society that cares for nothing more than material and worldly pleasures. This is what happens when you lose religion. The culture becomes debased.

The Roman Catholic Church is not immune to this. Currently, the Church is under the control of sodomites who love money, sex, and drugs and hate working. Being a good priest is hard work, but being a bad priest is a sweet ride. It is made even sweeter when you can con the laypeople into performing a good chunk of the liturgy in the Novus Ordo. I suspect that the appeal of the Novus Ordo comes from a desire of the priest to sit down for most of it..

For these fiends, religion is nothing more than a trick played on the faithful to get money to pay for cocaine and male prostitution. They don't actually believe in any of it. They lack supernatural faith. This didn't begin with Vatican II but has been there for all time. Religion is a great con. It doesn't matter if the "priest" is pagan, Jewish, Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant. There have always been those who didn't believe in the religion but saw in it an easy escape from honest labor. This is why Saint Paul made tents and supported himself to negate this notion that he was just one of these religious con artists.

It is fairly easy to tell the good guys from the fiends. Good guys have a good work ethic. The same applies to priests. A lazy priest is a grifter. It begins with not praying the Divine Office and extends to not offering confession times beyond 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon. They spend their time watching television shows instead of studying and praying. Then, they lament the laziness of all the pewsitters and their lack of giving. Remember, Gentle Reader, that these pewsitters are the ones with real jobs who do real work. They are not on the grift.

It is fairly easy to cure grifting. Let the grifters starve. When there is no corn, the chicken stops playing tic-tac-toe. Likewise, when the money dries up, the grifter moves on. This is why pewsitters need to stop giving beyond the bare minimum needed. Once the Roman Catholic Church is impoverished, these parasites will leave like fleas from a dead dog.

All of this is straight from Saint Paul. The love of money is the root of all evil. If they don't work, they don't eat. Poverty and hard work cleans out a lot of filth in the lives of priests and religious. It will also clean out the filth from the rest of society. Work hard and live a simple life. Everything else is the grift.

***

Recycled from the Smoke of Satan blog

https://smokeofsatan.wordpress.com/2024/04/07/the-grift/

The Nominal And The Devout

There is only one true devotion but there are many that are false and empty. If you are unable to recognize which kind is true, you can easily be deceived and led astray by following one that is offensive and superstitious.

SAINT FRANCIS DE SALES

Generally, there are two types of Catholics--the nominal and the devout. Their state in life does not matter as we see that even religious, priests, and bishops can be described as Catholic in Name Only. Devotion comes from supernatural faith and true love for our Lord. This devotion can be faked for a season, but the truth always comes out. This is why God permits us to be tested with trials and temptations. The Devil called Job a gold digger, but Job never lost his love for God even after he lost everything else. Conversely, the nominalist is the gold digger who sees God as an instrument for his own ends. His love for God is insincere.

These thoughts came to me as I witness nominalism among the laity. These are not fellow pewsitters, but those who attend Mass rarely. One fellow griped that when he attended a meeting for first communion preparation for his children that the priest had the audacity to expect the parents to actually attend Mass on a weekly basis. The nerve of that priest! That griping nominalist reminds me of the guy who told the Baptist preacher that he didn't come to church to get preached at.

Nominalism is what motivated me to become interested in Opus Dei. I did not want to be a nominalist but have a life of devotion. I fell prey to the very thing Saint Francis de Sales warns about in the opening quotation. Opus Dei and other cults in the Catholic Church attract laypeople who have sincere desires to live devoted lives. The lie these cults peddle is that the devout life cannot be found in the ordinary parish but only by following their special paths and learning their secrets. At some point, disillusionment hits these people leading to bitterness and anger. If the poison is strong enough, they will leave Catholicism altogether. In the interim, the devout get sidelined into these movements where their positive influence in the wider church can be negated. This has the same effect that shadowbanning has on the internet. You're still in the game, but no one knows you're there.

The devout life is hard, but it is not complicated. It is all right there in your parish, the sacraments, your Bible, your rosary and scapular, and in the writings of the saints which are readily available. What God requires He also supplies. The reason these things are overlooked is a consequence of Vatican II which diminished but did not destroy the practice of the faith. They replaced the Old Rite with the new. They replaced the old catechisms with new social justice coloring books. They replaced the rosary and the breviary with centering prayer and yoga classes. They have replaced the spiritual with the "practical." They have replaced love for God with love for neighbors mediated through a Marxist social service agency or government program. They focus on the stomach instead of the soul, yet both go empty.

Changing this is fairly simple. When you live a life of devotion, it catches on with others. When a priest has supernatural faith, the parishioners know it. When you have a small group fervently praying for the parish, that parish becomes alive. None of this fruit is the product of a "program" or a PR campaign. Those things have the opposite effect.

Devotion begins with you. This is a lesson that I am constantly relearning. We focus so much on others that we forget to look at ourselves and how we are not loving God as we should. I attend weekly Mass for my obligation, but I let days slip by without praying the Rosary. Externally, I am perfect. Internally, I belong on death row. As they say on the airplane, put the mask on yourself first before trying to help others. Dead people don't save lives.

The purpose and end of life is to become a saint. Nothing should distract us from this purpose and end. We are to be the wheat even in a field full of weeds. This is the call to the devout life. It all comes down to a personal decision to choose devotion over nominalism.

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Recycled from the Smoke of Satan blog

https://smokeofsatan.wordpress.com/2023/10/29/the-nominal-and-the-devout/

A- Pre- Post-erous Situation

This binding of Satan began when the church began to spread from Judaea into other regions, and lasts yet, and shall do until his time be expired.

SAINT AUGUSTINE

The title of this post comes from a lame joke I heard at the Calvinist seminary I attended in the mid-1990s before losing my faith and becoming an atheist. When asked about his view about the millennium as told in Revelation 20, one of my professors cracked that it was a "a- pre- post-erous situation" as he wrote the term on a dry erase board. It was a mnemonic device to help remember the three viewpoints--amillennialism, premillennialism, and postmillennialism. As lame as it was, it worked. I still remember it almost three decades later.

This post is about eschatology which is the study of what's going to happen in the future according to Scripture. At the outset, I have to dispense with the most foolish of ideas which is the Rapture, a concept very popular among evangelical Protestants and pounded into them by those Left Behind books. The Rapture is a mistaken interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:12-17 which refers to the Second Coming of Christ and not some pre-advent of Christ making the Second Coming the Third Coming. Evangelical Christians love the Rapture because they place no redemptive value on suffering and have imagined for themselves an escape hatch from the Tribulation that is to come. These folks are not alone in this desire as I will point out later. What I can say is that the Rapture is an error that I rejected even before I became a Roman Catholic.

The millennium is a thousand year reign of Christ. The debate comes down to how long and when it happens. The premillennialists believe that Christ's Second Coming comes at the beginning of this thousand year reign which ushers in an age of peace where Satan gets released at the end to get defeated by Christ. The postmillenialists believe that Christ's Second Coming comes at the end of the millennium as Christians defeat Satan and offer up the world as a shining prize to the Lord. The amillennialists believe that the millennium is not a literal thousand years but refers to the present age between the First Coming of Christ and His Second Coming. This age will end with that Second Coming.

What is the right answer? I can't tell you the right answer because many faithful Catholics, saints, and theologians have differed on the matter and are free to do so. The Roman Catholic Church has issued no firm doctrine on the matter. The amillennial position is the most popular position because this was the position of Saint Augustine who came around to it after initially being for premillennialism. I don't care to debate the viewpoints, but I do wish to highlight the "cash value" of each position on the minds and lives of believers.

Premillennialists are a gloomy bunch waiting for the total destruction of the world. Instead of being busy as Christians, they take a retreatist strategy and try to remove themselves from the conflicts with the world. They don't want to fight since they are prophesied to lose. This attitude is captured best in Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option which was very popular among Catholics despite being written by a schismatic who couldn't take the suffering of being a Roman Catholic anymore and opted for the Russian Orthodox Church. Fundamentally, these folks take the same strategy as those Rapture believing Protestants. The goal is to find the escape hatch from suffering.

Postmillennialists are an optimistic bunch. They believe they are going to fight and win the battle for Christ. Among the orthodox faithful, the person who best typifies this mindset is Taylor Marshall with his Jericho Marches and campaign for President. I have no idea if he is a premill, postmill, or amill in his theology. But his attitude and actions are firmly postmillennialist because they are "manly" or something. I think they are stupid.

Postmillennialism also feeds into liberalism and modernism. Since the world must be subdued for Christ and made perfect, this fits well with Marxism and liberation theology. The postmillennialist tends to be worldly and political. Ultimately, does it really matter if Christ returns since His followers did the job for Him?

Amillennialists are in the middle of these extremes. Essentially, they work not to create Heaven on earth but to prevent Hell on earth. This is why they can vote for the lesser of two evils knowing that Christ is the only Messiah. Christ reigns now and keeps the world from descending into total chaos. When things become as bad as they will ever get, Christ will return at that moment to put an end to all the evil. The result is that amillennialists are neither given to triumphalism nor defeatism but patience. The Gentle Reader will understand now why I always counsel patience for almost every ill and setback we encounter. I am an amillennialist.

Sometimes, we get a win like the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Other times, we take a loss when some new scandal involving priests and bishops explodes. Regardless if the season is one of refreshment or adversity, the amillennialist looks to the Return of Christ for his ultimate hope. The key is to be busy until that return. The goal isn't winning. The goal is not quitting.

When I read Revelation 20, it is obvious to me that it is amillennial. In the long term, I expect things to get really dark before the dawn of Christ's Second Coming. In the short term, things can be better or worse as Saint Peter referred to them in Acts 3:20 as "times of refreshment." This is an age of mercy and penance. If you are comforted, rejoice. If you are afflicted, offer it up. The seasons do not matter because we are to be fruitful in season and out of season. The main thing is to not lose the faith because of foolish hope or despair. If you are a postmillennialist, you can't win. If you are a premillennialist, you can't escape. You are called to fight a losing battle that only Christ can win. Christ wins in the end. Be on the winning side when the end comes.

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Recycled from the Smoke of Satan blog

https://smokeofsatan.wordpress.com/2023/06/09/a-pre-post-erous-situation/

How I Live With A Dumbphone

Before I'd be checking everything, such as buses and restaurants, on my smartphone [when travelling]. Now that is impossible, so I have learned to do all those things beforehand at home. I got used to it.

PRZEMEK OLEJNICZAK, Not smart but clever? The return of 'dumbphones'

I have never owned a smartphone. My preferred device is a flip phone. I have owned a few flip phones over the years, and I keep them until they break or the network no longer supports the device like the move I made to 4G in 2019. My current model is a Kyocera rugged phone from Verizon. It is a beast.

My phone calls and sends texts. I am able to do group texts now which I couldn't do before with my old phone. It has a camera which takes pictures that are good enough for me. It has a mini-browser that isn't worth using. I do not have any social media accounts, so I never use the phone for those distractions. It does not support apps, and it has no navigation function like Google Maps or Waze. It is a dumbphone.

I believe in a thing called the tech-hedonic treadmill. It is the hedonic treadmill applied to technology. Basically, you adjust to whatever tech is in your life and get used to it. This goes in both directions. If you upgrade, you adjust to that until it becomes indispensable to your being and life. If you downgrade, there is a withdrawal phase as you adjust back to what life was like before smartphones. Eventually, you like the simplicity and lack of distractions.

When I whip out my flip phone, I get the same questions. Is that your work phone? Is that the only phone that you can afford? How do you live with that thing?

I choose the dumbphone because I don't care to live a life of chronic distraction. I already have enough on my plate without adding more to it. Because I have never had a smartphone, I live as I have always lived before these devices became ubiquitous. Here is how I deal with various things.

1. Navigation

My wife and I use a dedicated Garmin GPS in the car. I have used this thing for years. Once, a coworker tried to use her phone instead of my Garmin. We got lost. I suspect that those apps have improved since then, but I prefer my Garmin.

As a backup to the Garmin, my wife and I will print out the directions from Google Maps. I also hang on to my paper maps and atlases. You can get many of these for free at interstate welcome centers and rest stops.

2. Email

I use my computer or my wife's Chromebook to check my email. Some jobs require constant contact, but that doesn't apply to us. I think being able to ignore email is awesome.

3. Coupons

We print our coupons with a Brother printer before going to the store. My wife is like me in not ever owning a smartphone. She laments that she can't check prices in real time at a store until I remind her of what a new iPhone costs.

4. QR codes

I wouldn't scan these things even if I had a smartphone. Some clever hackers have taken to posting fake QR codes that take you to malicious websites. We rarely eat out, but we usually read the menu online before ever going to the restaurant. Personally, I think restaurants that don't have physical menus aren't worth your patronage.

5. Paying for things

Cash is king. The check is in the mail. Swipe the debit card. Cut up the credit cards. Laugh at anyone behind you who is annoyed at you for taking the extra 30 seconds for an old school payment method. Inevitably, everyone will take the mark of the beast, but I won't.

6. Social media

I don't have any social media accounts. I had a Twitter addiction years ago that I beat after many tries, and that was with a desktop computer. I can only imagine the nightmare for me if I was using a smartphone.

7. Pictures

The cameras on dumbphones aren't the greatest. The reality is that a smartphone is a camera that can make a phone call. I have a phone that can take a picture. Those pictures are as good as the ones I used to take with my disposable Kodak camera back in the day. If I need a high quality camera, I will buy the dedicated camera once instead of upgrading to the latest iPhone every two years (or less.)

8. Uber

I refuse to use an Uber. I call the real taxi service not some psycho with an app on his phone. I keep the taxi number in the contacts list on my dumbphone.

9. Internet access on the road

My wife has a Chromebook that we take with us. We use WiFi at hotels and coffee places for essential information. Otherwise, we try to enjoy the real world instead of the fake online world.

10. Waiting rooms and checkout lines

When people end up waiting for more than 30 seconds, out come the phones! This would annoy me except I usually look at magazines as I have done for my entire life. I have a high tolerance for boredom because I never got addicted to the constant distraction of the smartphone. I don't have any clever games on my dumbphone either. I just watch, observe, listen, and think to whatever is in my surroundings.

11. Audio entertainment

I listen to my podcasts on my desktop computer with a set of headphones. I like to turn off the lights and close my eyes while I listen. I listen to the radio or my old school Sony Walkman the rest of the time. Radio is my primary listening.

12. Taking notes

I keep a notebook and a pencil in my pocket for writing things down. If I don't have the notebook, I send a text to my email account where I check it later.

13. Calculator, calendar, and flashlight.

My flip phone has these tools. It has some other features, but I never use them.

Gentle Reader, this is how I live without a smartphone. Because I never had a smartphone, I don't realize any inconvenience in not having one. I live as if it is still 2007. For some odd reason, many people online wish they could go back to that simpler time. I never left it.

UPDATE: I found this post on the dumbphone reddit that I quote in its entirety in anticipation of deletion:

I'm tired of all the "Need a Dumbphone that has [insert smartphone app]" posts

Mods can remove this if they want, I have no problem with it, but I want to vent.

I've been on this community for a while, and the number of posts I see about this topic is ridiculous: "is there a dumbphone with social media?" "can I play games on this phone?" "looking for a dumbphone with spotify" You're completely missing the point of a dumbphone by asking these questions. Here's the reality: dumbphones suck, and I don't mean this in a way of saying you shouldn't get a dumbphone, but dumbphones are supposed to be unenjoyable. They are supposed to suck so you can spend the time doing other things, like living more in the present. Isn't that why we're all here in the first place? We feel so consumed by technology so we use dumbphones to get a break from smartphone life, and guess what? the things we're leaving behind include things we like doing, like using social media, music, and games. And sure, there are some dumbphones with these things, like the jelly phones (which jose has a great dumbphone finder in the subs community bookmarks that answers all these questions). I just [think] the people who are asking these questions constantly on this subreddit are missing the point of a dumbphone.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbphones/comments/1grmvu0/im_tired_of_all_the_need_a_dumbphone_that_has/

I totally agree with the original poster. Getting a dumbphone and demanding that it do smartphone tricks is pure idiocy. The middle solution is to get a smartphone and dumb it down to essentials. I have taken to recommending this to people who have to use a smartphone for work or whatever. A smartphone without social media apps is smart. You just have to possess the discipline to not reload those social media apps.