 H.L. Mencken once noted: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Americans don’t read Mencken anymore. Or much else. But the imaginary hobgoblins keep coming. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, lazily tacked on as an afterthought two years after the Constitution became effective, begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Like the rest of the Old Parchment, that particular clause is D-E-A-D. To wit: On November 20, 2025, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson and two of his Republican colleagues, Don Bacon and Austin Scott, sent a letter to putative U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. In their joint missive, these paragons of democratic virtue requested the federal government investigate Orthodox Christianity in America, specifically, for now, Russian Orthodoxy. One assumes the OCA, the Greeks, Armenians, et al, are next. No, I don’t think this is the beginning stage of bringing Georgia Briggs’s novel, Icon, to life. At least, I hope it isn’t. Regardless, our esteemed public servants allege: “Credible evidence indicates that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) continues to serve as an instrument of the Kremlin and its security services.” It could be, as someone once said, “You lie!” Read the whole letter, as found HERE, and decide for yourself. If the concern were about AIPAC, the ADL, and “Israel” and its security services, then it would be most warranted. Of course, Wilson is a hardcore anti-Russian activist, ever seeking to help “free and democratic” Ukraine fight NATO’s war against Moscow, thereby potentially allowing Western financial looters unfettered access to the world’s largest repository of valuable resources and a vector for containing all those pesky Orthodox Russians. As the war in Europe is all but lost for NATO, its pet Nazis, and gentlemen like Wilson, perhaps turning the imperial guns on Russianesque Christians in the American homeland is the best consolation the hobgoblin wranglers can muster. None of this is new, by the way, being but the latest facade on the same old anti-Christian American storefront. Washington, D.C., is, as I have written and mapped out before, a gigantic freemasonic-satanic temple. Such a hideous design is fitting, as what passes for a government in America is now completely controlled by satanists. The American experiment was kicked off on April 10, 1606, in London, when a band of wealthy masons and their sodomite King chartered what was essentially a hedge fund. The colonies, first corporate, then Royal, were populated largely by Protestants—Anglicans in the South, Puritans in the North (roughly speaking). Orthodoxy, for the longest time, was unheard of in America. Roman Catholicism was limited, mostly, to Maryland. It was 1962 before the Protestant base nation saw fit to elect their first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. While he was popular with the people, he was, as is well known, most unpopular with the ruling elite. Hence, they got rid of him. Orthodoxy came to America in small, quiet pieces. A large and organized concentration of “Eastern” Christians came, thanks to Russia, to Alaska and what became the Northwestern states, maybe as far south as California. Now, with the Latin Church caught in a Sedevacantist spiral, and American Protestantism weakening and fracturing exponentially, Orthodoxy enjoys healthy and deserved growth nationwide. The alternative, which is, sadly, also growing by leaps and bounds, is found in paganism, new ageism, witchcraft, and satanism. These latter “religions” serve the luciferian globalist agenda in America; Orthodoxy does not. America is the only country in history to drop an atomic bomb on a church, Nagasaki’s Immaculate Conception Cathedral in 1945 (500 meters is close enough to count with horseshoes, hand grenades, and, especially, A-bombs). America just helped “Israel” bomb Christians and their churches in Gaza. America assists the Kievan Nazis in their looting and murder of Christianity in the former Ukraine. And America has run sophisticated psychological operations pitting various religious groups against each other, from Japan to Syria. The oppression has been martial, but also legalistic. In its early days, Wilson’s South Carolina made Catholicism illegal. Again, Orthodoxy was virtually unknown at the time. Interestingly enough, back then, Judaism was permitted. Wilson is, for the record, a Presbyterian. Presbyterianism is a Scottish-English dissent denomination that broke from the Church of England in the mid-1600s. The Church of England broke from Rome a century earlier. Rome broke with the other Patriarchies in 1054. One supposes God is perturbed, if unsurprised, by our long-running follies. I consider that most, but perhaps not all, individual members of all three super denominations are, in fact, Christians. Pride, heresy, and misunderstandings abound, but I personally believe that the ultimate Trinitarian beliefs of all of these kinds of Christians are a testament to the Power of Christ, Who has little trouble reaching through our manufactured discontents. His Truth, to the majority of the faithful, cannot be dimmed. However, some of the heresies and a large dose of a certain American faux Christianity lend themselves well to ecclesiastical or theological fantasy. And that fantasy goes hand-in-hand with America’s peculiar political jingoism, “us” against “them,” we’re better, they’re wrong, “freedom fries,” etc. Come to think of it, dysgenically low IQs and reading levels don’t help either. Back to Wilson’s letter, one of the few things it almost got right is the connection between the Moscow Patriarchy and the Russian government. The current arrangement is a continuation of a standoff agreement that allowed an "official" Church to retain some of its cultural heritage and influence in the face of early atheistic Communism in the U.S.S.R. That link, along with a healthy contingent of Orthodox Russians who fled underground or abroad, preserved Christianity for the duration, until the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Resilience has lately turned into resurgence, praise be to God. The Bride of Christ is triumphing over worldly domination in Russia. Perhaps, if any Yankee investigation is honest, it will conclude that something similar might be able to preserve a remnant of Christian civilization in whatever becomes of America. After all, the Lord works in mysterious ways. And He sometimes uses, in His works, strange fellows, letters, and investigations. DEO VINDICE!
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 Picture from Click Americana, 2021 Before mass financialization killed American prosperity, say back in 1969, the federal minimum wage was $1.30 per hour. Today it’s $7.25 per hour. As I have calculated before, it would be around $45.00 had wages kept pace with housing costs. It would be $37.75 if adjusted to match the (2750%) increase in drugstore cigar prices since 1969. Look at the picture. A Gray Drug façade in some American mall in 1969. The look from the days of Peak America: clean, modern, and without so much gaudy flash as developed near the end of the century. In the center of the photo, one can plainly see the large “Tobacco—Cigars” awning hanging over an aisle shelf and display case. A closer inspection reveals that the cigars, cigarettes, pipes, and accessories are open and available on the shelf. One could just walk right up, select some cigars—El Producto, Dutch Masters, Garcia y Vega, King Edward, Muriels—and buy them like any other product. One could smoke in the mall, there were no idiotic identification checks, and prices were affordable (10 to 25 cents in most cases). This was, kids, before Americans gave away their freedoms. Pa, my maternal grandfather, loved Muriel Magnums. He could have probably purchased a box of them in that picture for five dollars or less. If he were still around, I think he’d agree that I should declare victory, hang up all this socio-political-economic bullshit, and just concentrate on writing fiction. He and I would then smoke some Muriels. Well, okay, Muriels are a little hard to come by these sad days; I suppose we’d have to make do with Cubans Rounds or something. Come to think of it, I’m going to go make do right now! (If one just has to have another thousand words, then go back to the Gray photo.) Fumi vindice! This piece was published at Perrin Lovett on Oct. 17 2025.
 Fall, my favorite season, has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. Hurray! The weather is pleasant, there are football games, the cigars taste better, and my brain reactivates after the usual summer slumber. In the wider world, the new polycentric order moves forward. China actively formulates the 15th Five-Year Plan. Vladimir Putin just held his annual upbeat discussion with the Valdai Club. Yet Russia, China, Iran, and the rest must still pay close attention to that odd nation-shaped kind of place between Mexico and Canada. Amerika continues to be as strange and threatening as ever. The U.S. Department of Defense (aka, the Department of War) (aka, the Department of Incompetence) appears to have largely abandoned plans for a splendid new war with China—for now. One defeat at a time, right? As for NATO’s war against Russia, who really knows at this point? Perhaps the U.S. will leave the assorted chihuahuas of Europe to their demise. Or, maybe some combination of Tomahawks won’t do the trick. Nothing will work, and even the dunderheads in D.C. seem to accept the truth begrudgingly. Still, something tells me they’ll hang around and do as much damage as possible before taking an eventual exit ramp. Meanwhile, Iran, Venezuela, and maybe even Afghanistan should look forward to a little more old-fashioned Yankee gunpoint meddling. The way the Department of Incompetence is positioning hardware and personnel, it very much looks like destabilization strikes are imminent against Caracas and Tehran. The U.S. national interests in both countries are clear: oil and energy with the former, and whatever “Israel” wants with the latter. Amerikans, this is what you get when you surrender your country to usurious con artists and Zionist lunatics. Something tells me that the adventurism won’t work out in D.C.’s favor, but still, friends in Iran and Venezuela, please stay vigilant and defiant. There’s also the endless Yankee support for the Zionists’ genocide of the Palestinians and the pursuit of “Greater Israel.” Sixty-six thousand Palestinians, most of them women and children, are already officially dead. It’s seventy-five thousand if the “missing” are included. And that’s probably a terrible undercount; the current estimates now include an upper bound of 680,000 dead. This will go down in history as one of the most horrible slaughters ever. History will not look kindly on the satanic perpetrators and enablers of the Gazacaust. Future chronicles will favorably remember the Resistance, both in West Asia and in the larger multipolar order. The Palestinians will be remembered kindly, lionized even. God forbid, if they are literally exterminated, then they will become eternal legends to overshadow the Spartans at Thermopylae, the holdouts at Masada, and the doomed denizens of Melos. Future annals will also likely carve out a special study of those most gullible and insouciant of all peoples, the Amerikans. Few will understand how such seemingly intelligent, well-armed, and allegedly Christian folks just sat idly, stupidly by and did nothing. And that leads me to a quick take on the nearly incomprehensible happenings on the Amerikan homefront. For the life of me, I still haven’t figured out exactly what rules over Amerika. I know it’s a “what” and not a “who.” Whatever it is, and it’s probably demonic, has no use for free and happy Amerikans. They will be its final victims once all of the overseas madness fails. Donald Trump is no more in charge than his brainless predecessor, Sleepy Jo-- Wait a second! I just remembered that I have been reliably and repeatedly informed that “things have changed” in Amerika following the alleged assassination of a secular saint, diversionary gatekeeper, and hardcore Judeo-satanic apologist known as the “Man of Steel.” I think it was his Freemasonic circus ceremony, er, excuse me, his “funeral” that did it. Good thing too as it saves me from discussing the fate of the Amerikan people. I had suspected that they were being set up for permanent slavery or worse, but there’s no point in rehashing any of that. Few Amerikans care much about their future, and even fewer care abroad. Lastly, and ending on a high note, there’s the usual fall literature. For those who caught it, I hope you enjoyed my review of The Thorn and the Carnation by Martyr Yahya Sinwar. I’m in the middle of The Water Dancer, an unusually good novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome, Episode I: Bad Boy by the base master of English novelization, Chris Orcutt, is coming early next year. I’ve already written my review of Bad Boy, so stay tuned. I’ll have a new novel out before too long, so there’s that. All of these books, by the way, carry important messages and lessons about life, death, hope, and endurance. When all else fails, there are always books. Deo vindice.  I had intended to follow up my survey of American values—usury, sodomy, and genocide—with some brief notion of looking above and beyond. Perhaps the best I can offer at this point is the first rung of the Ladder of Divine Ascent: Renunciation. Leave the demons to their sad games and have as little to do with them as possible. And, speaking of demons! In keeping with his agenda to “Make America Great Again,” or, as Max Blumenthal calls it, “Miriam Adelson’s Goals Achieved,” the wise and benevolent Trump has resurrected the U.S. Department of War!
As usual, the Trump engages in a slight misunderstanding of history and reality while simultaneously slapping his neck to keep it orange. And nothing says “Secretary of War” like a dude who signals (doomed) tactical mission plans to half of D.C., a reporter, and somebody’s brother. USA! USA! Seriously, this might be one of Trump’s better moves. The Department of Defense was a complete and total failure. For all the money wasted on it, it never defended America. It did nothing as the country was invaded and conquered. The change also amounts to a word game; Americans appear to love word games more than substantial existence itself. Win-win! For its latest hijinks, the Department of Defense, or, excuse me, War, allegedly bombed a speedboat somewhere in the Caribbean. The official story is that the dastardly tyrant (i.e., elected leader) of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, sent [checks notes] a team of his narco-terrorists(!) to smuggle [checks notes] drugs … somewhere. Genocide, Inc. claims to have neutralized (i.e., murdered) eleven hombres malos during the operation. As it was the official story, we can safely discount it as a complete and total lie. Methinks, however, that they did kill someone, because that’s what they do. The Empire has it out for Maduro because he sides with BRICS+ and refuses to play D.C.'s rigged game. No one outside of D.C. has ever heard of his narco terror cartel, a group Mexico insists does not exist. Fishing boats might be the last targets the Empire can reasonably be expected to deal with effectively, if by “effectively,” we mean by acts of piracy and homicide. If the Lord Secretary of War, his Commander-in-orange, and their handlers escalate, and, if recent patterns hold, then look for Venezuela to shoot down a bunch of imperial drones and maybe sink a destroyer or two. In any event, someone stupid will declare victory, FOX will pontificate, the Boomers will boom, Russia and China will continue to walk all over the remnants of the West, the Gaza Genocide will proceed apace, more college students will become illiterate, and wise Americans will progress to the next rung, Detachment. There’s more, of course. But for now, there’s just no point. Deo vindice. This piece was originally published at Perrin Lovett on Sept. 6, 2025.
 Having covered the luciferian American “values” of usury and sodomy, herein I now briefly examine their companion principle, genocide. This one was the most difficult to write because it is hideous, because I am disgusted by the Satanic States and its retarded heathen population, and because I’m plain tired. The term “genocide” was coined during the early 1940s by a Jewish attorney from Poland, Raphael Lemkin. Lemkin spent a great deal of his life campaigning against genocide, drafting the treaty against genocide, and generally hating the wanton mass slaughter of people. Genocide Watch and other organizations continue his work. Genocide Watch lists ten stages of a pogrom. Frequently, multiple stages are in play at the same time. Number nine is the active extermination phase. The key to the formula and the title, the hallmark of a literal genocide, is the numerical reduction of the targeted people. Number ten, by the way, is denial. As an example of observing multiple stages in action at the same time, as the people of Gaza starve to death, during the Gaza Genocide, the fat sack of shit, Randy Fine publicly told the Gazans to “starve away.” [Stage Nine.] He added, “This is all a lie anyway.” [Stage Ten.] America, during and before the era of the United States, has a long history of genocide. I recently read an estimate that 150 million Native American Indians were exterminated during the European colonization of America. While I find this number speculative, and it is, if it were close to accurate, it would not surprise me. Of course, in that sad regard, the Anglo-Americans had copious help from the Spanish, French, Dutch, and—few like to lump them in—but, in part, from the Indians themselves. On the U.S.’s watch, once about 95% of the Tribes were eradicated, the program turned from murder into patronization. Indians were then expected to ditch their savage ways and become good little (third-class) White Americans. Yankee General Richard Henry Pratt had a term for those proud Indians who refused to submit: “racists.” (That one came back to bite you, eh?) The U.S. also ran genocidal programs against Blacks, Southerners, Irish, Catholics, Chinese, the poor, Mexicans, and just about anyone else who ever got in the way of ruling elites. It’s still a work in progress. Currently, we’re in year ten of the stage nine elimination of White “posterity” Americans, though theirs is largely (and inexplicably) an auto-genocide. Before any other groups in America start feeling smug about that last part, know that you’re all on the “get-to” list. Everyone is. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has murdered an estimated 30 million people abroad. And I don’t think that includes the death toll from the COVID-19 attack, a U.S. biowarfare genocide attempt on mankind. Including the modified nCoV bug and the fake vaccines could double the previous number. Let’s not overlook America’s abortion genocide, with around 70 million American babies murdered during the past fifty years. The U.S. atrocity matches the greater calamity worldwide; over 1 billion babies have been slaughtered globally during the same time period. One could ask Americans, especially American women, if everyone else was throwing their children off a cliff, would they do it too? Of course, there is no need to ask, is there? Despite the repeal of the idiotic and reprehensible Roe v. Wade, the killings continue. The two primary foreign projects at the moment are in Ukraine (with ~1.7 million dead Ukrainian soldiers alone) and Gaza (~400-600,000 dead, as estimated by outside academic groups). Survivors of other recent wars and genocides have almost unanimously described what is happening in Gaza as far worse than what anyone else has experienced. There are three reasons for that: 1) the extreme disparity between Hamas and the Occupiers backed by their superpower pet; 2) the fact Gazans are locked in a damned cage with no escape; and, 3) the whole world is watching, for the first time in high definition, and doing little to nothing. There is a scene early in The Thorn and the Carnation where several families take refuge in a makeshift bunker during the 1967 Setback. Their trauma is limited, non-lethal, and over in a few days. Imagine it being unlimited, overly lethal, and unending. Thanks to thousands of pictures and videos flooding Telegram, one need not imagine. Icing on the devil’s cake! A very few children from Gaza, horribly injured by the Zio-Yankee satanism, were lucky enough to get Visas for medical treatment in America. Thanks to a vile-looking witch named Laura Loon(er), Secretary Foamio, and the orange circus clown-in-chief, their appointments have been canceled. There’s more, of course, but I’m stopping here. Thus ends the late trilogy. Deo vindice.  Here follows a cursory look at the second of America’s faux Western “values” (usury, sodomy, and genocide). But first, some semi-related news about an alleged Washingtonian misunderstanding over the fate of Gaza. According to sources, no sooner had Lindsey Graham lisped, “Level the place,” than Randy Fine asked, “What? Like me sit on it?” And now… Sodomy, in the American or Enlightenment context, is not limited to mere homosexuality. It may be considered a catch-all category for all manner of deviance and sexual immorality. Perhaps the worst of the associated wanton licentious behaviors is divorce and the breaking of the nuclear family unit. Unchecked usury, as noted by Michael Hudson and David Graeber, can and will wreck a culture. However, to ensure that a society is utterly destroyed, and destroyed as fast as possible, nothing works like abolishing morality and family structures. See J.D. Unwin’s exhaustive 1934 book on the subject, Sex and Culture. Usury and sodomy usually come along together as if parts of the same nefarious plan. America’s plight for the past sixty years or so is nothing new. Michael Hoffman described the tandem nature of the two “values” as they affected fifteenth-century Florence: “By the time usury was in the ascendant in Florence, sodomy was too. … [once usury was essentially deregulated] [i]t was reported that an elated city official declared, ‘Thank God, now we can sodomize!’” See Usury in Christendom, p. 93. (Note: the blasphemous official was a Renaissance Italian, not an American Republican.) American Republicans and conservatives generally are constantly thwarted by their allegiance to legalism, regardless of the nature of the particular legality. The only law it appears they don’t care to follow, or to tremble over, is God’s Law. In this short, concise, and stirring VIDEO, Father Josiah Treham looks at what ten years’ worth of legalized homosexual “marriage” has done to America. It is not pretty, and it represents only one small pane in the great broken window. My only quibble with Father Josiah’s otherwise deft reflection is that America was only ever at best pseudo-Christian. Or, rather, while there were always many Christians in America, theirs was never the prevailing religion. Friends, there is a reason why Washington, D.C. (Devil’s Coven) is physically a giant freemasonic-satanic temple. Conservatives (and all others) can safely forget the poor rhetoric about freedom of religion. Only one religion is freely allowed and protected. Likewise, the so-called “wall of separation” only exists to protect satanists from Christians. In fact, at this late hour, pretty much all American law may be dismissed as null and absurd. Rhetoric and the “law” notwithstanding, consider the late case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, wherein luciferian federal nazis order Catholic nuns to pay for abortions. Got that? Catholics, the Orthodox, Lutherans, or any other Christians who pray to end abortion can and will be imprisoned for felonies. Pay, not pray, is the sodomite Yankee way. Anything deviant and destructive is celebrated, promoted, and practically mandated in American sociosexual life today. Divorce, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, pedophilia, cannibalism, vampirism, child sacrifice, contraception, abortion, asexuality, transvestitism, promiscuity, feminism, and more are “good.” Pay no attention to their lethal effects on society. Pay no attention to the relationship between these evils and the financial class’s profit motives. One of the main reasons women are heavily favored in ruinous divorce settlements and child custody proceedings is that such favoritism radically increases all manner of social instability, which, in turn, cycles and expands the fake credit substitute money through the system faster and harder. Families die, vampires benefit. It is now a certainty that, along with SIDS and autism, the incredible increase in homosexuality and other deviant afflictions over the past several generations is driven by the chemical, neurological, and physical effects of so many dangerous and useless (yet mandatory) childhood vaccines. There is a reason why corporations, banks, and the U.S. State Department place so much faith in and attention on the devil’s rainbow. There is a reason why no Democrat or Republican appears to care about the Epstein files anymore. And on and on and on it goes. When anything and everything goes, generally going for illicit profit, except for traditional morality, it is safe to assume that the culture and its laws are completely broken. As I will cover in my next installment, this collapse fosters a craven societal acceptance of any and all maladies, no matter how unconscionable—even genocide. Just about all of the aforementioned wicked behaviors were illegal in America in the not-too-distant past. They are still illegal in civilized countries. In America, Christians go to prison for praying to end abortion or refusing to bow to sodomite supremacy; in Russia, simple promotion of degeneracy leads to confinement. In America, abjection leads to fame or elected office; in Iran, it leads to psychiatric treatment. There are many reasons why Americans are always told to hate traditional nations. Voting will not solve these problems. Court challenges will not solve these problems. Protests, witty memes, and letters to the editor won’t help either. In many ways, democracy is the problem. Trusting, tolerating, and supporting any of the idiotic malevolent monsters who created this mess will only make it worse. What will work—really, the only thing that will—is a complete renunciation of this wickedness and a return to Christian law and civilization. I might add that those directly responsible deserve to get a full introduction to the lex talionis via so many tight ropes, crackling fires, and dull blades. Thank God, now we can avenge! Deo vindice. This piece was published at Perrin Lovett on August 13, 2025.
 Every once in a while, one hears something about cherished, if undefined, “American values.” I’ve looked into them and I can now define the primary three. They happen to coincide almost perfectly with Evangelical ”Christian” Zionist values and the values of the fallen, post-Enlightenment West. They are usury, sodomy, and genocide. These values overlap and work together. Herein, I briefly examine the first value, usury, with further commentary on the others to follow. But first! A joke. In perhaps a world first, a passing whale in Florida called emergency services to report seeing a beached Randy Fine. And now… It took me a long time to realize the truth about the country I grew up in and used to love. Both the essence and the official history of America is largely a matter of intentionally contrived falsehood. The immediate post-peak America I grew up in was mostly a pleasant but dishonest veneer—a façade now completely fallen away. Very little about what we’ve been told about the American experiment is accurate, much of it being maliciously misleading. Books like Nonsense of Stilts by Paul Graham and The Nation That Never Was by Kermit Roosevelt III are, in fact, revisionist histories. They revise the historical record so as to make it truthful. Professor Michael Hudson perhaps best summed up the first American value, usury, as it relates to the country as a whole, when he essentially said that America, like all Western, post-Enlightenment nation-states, is little more than an agent for the international financial class. It is, and it always has been that way. English America’s history began in earnest on April 10, 1606, at Westminster, London, with the chartering of the Virginia Company of London. The Company was essentially a hedge fund that operated in a way equivalent to modern ventures. All risks and costs were borne by the people and all the profits went to the shareholders. Then, the formula was simple: kill or push back the native American Indians, loot everything for profit, manipulate English law as needed to maximize profit, and run the whole scheme with slave labor, at first using poor English and Welsh servants, then Polish and other European thralls, followed by African chattel slaves. While the names and parameters have changed, four hundred years later, the plan is still operational, though now on a global scale. The patterns established in early colonial America were applied against Russia and Ukraine beginning in the 1990s. On the back of US imperial meddling, banks and funds rushed in, stole what they could, and worked with Washington to conquer, enslave, loot, and destroy. Thankfully, the general wickedness met a roadblock. I consider that if the Native Americans had had Russian weapons, then I would be writing from the Catawba Nation. I’d probably be writing about something else entirely. Almost everything in American civic life revolves around usury and profit for the satanic international elites. The once-sovereign Dollar was replaced by pure usury or super usury, a unique arrangement whereby money is nonexistent and what passes for money is utterly under the control of the commercial banks. They conjure it, via fake loans, out of nothing and for free, and the people, literally sacrificing their lives, work like slaves to repay it. This evil system, in direct contradiction of the commandments of Almighty God and Jesus Christ, channels all value and ownership into the clawed hands of the elites. The effects of the mass financialization are, as I have noted time and again, ruinous for the people. By design, and as compared to large ticket items (houses, education, healthcare, etc.), salaried purchasing power has declined by over ninety percent since 1950. That means that, on average, in order to live as his grandfather did, the modern American man would have to work ten full-time jobs. As an elementary math student from the near past could tell one, there is a problem with that situation. Along with other factors, most of them related to the elements of sodomy and genocide, the loss of purchasing power is one of the key reasons why young Americans do not date, marry, or have children. Super usury is dysgenic and dyscivilizational. Americans tolerate this evil for a variety of reasons, including hopelessness, insanity, stupidity, and sheer wickedness. Rather than hunt down and slaughter the relatively small cadre of their oppressors, they continue to go along with the plan, many of them still happily participating in the failed, fake, and dead institution of democracy. Many of them will continue to do this until the final collapse. The rest of humanity should continue doing what they are doing now—moving onwards and forward, away from the debased evil of the West. They should also memorialize the lessons of the Enlightenment as a warning for the future. Learn from it, but do not trust or emulate it! In this monetary case, they should lock money and banking tightly under sovereign control and strictly prohibit any form of usury. They’re already doing it, so this is somewhat superfluous, but they also need to do whatever is necessary to keep the dying rabid dog of America and the West at bay until the beast ceases to be of any threat. Even if it is never reborn in its homelands, the spirit of the original West will live on in other civilized, sovereign cultures. That is a great hope and reassurance of this age! Deo vindice. This piece was published at Perrin Lovett on August 8, 2025.
 Who, really, doesn’t love a good, old-fashioned gibbering about nothing in particular? Well, love it or not, like it or not, it’s all I have this week. I had high hopes for this one, but sometimes we must settle. I started a draft about Russia banning the de facto national religion of the GAE, but then I thought, “Why bother?” Indeed. The late political circus idiocy of the former US is of little interest to me. So there was nothing there. I mean, it’s over, folks. Maybe it’s not time to move on just yet, but it’s probably a good time to start packing. It’s hot as blazes this summer. But that’s most summers down here. The heat zaps a certain degree of my creativity, though I try to make up for it in other ways. Results vary. Et cetera. While great commercial success still eludes me, Judging Athena has turned into my first critically acclaimed and award-winning book. Thanks, readers and reviewers! The manuscript of AURELIUS, Tom Ironsides’s next hard-charging action novella is with Green Altar Books now. So there’s that. Once the heat and my mind settle a bit, I’ll be polishing the next literary installment and working on the drafts behind it. Due time, due time. Rumor has it that children in Gaza took a break from starving to death to raise funds to buy some SlimFast for Randy Fine. Generation X, I have some great news for you! I’ve been most privileged to read the first installment of a new American epic that will debut in January, Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome, Episode One: Bad Boy by Chris Orcutt. In fact, all American generations are in for a treat: a literal time warp back to the middle of the 1980s. It’s almost indescribably good. Much more on that soon. As for other summer reading, I’ve done my usual. Some of it was great, some less so. A few reviews will be forthcoming. Right now, among several others, two notable novels I’m working on are The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates and The Thorn and the Carnation by Martyr Yahya Sinwar. Both show great promise. While one is never quite certain about these things, I fear I will miss the end-of-summer and fall fun up at the world’s greatest amusement park, Tweetsie Railroad. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to. In August, kids of all ages will delight in The Ghost Riders in the Sky and Railroad Heritage Weekend. Come the middle of September, the Ghost Train starts those spooky night runs. All that is in addition to the usual merriment. And … that’s all I gotz. More and better soon. Quality will improve tomorrow. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!! Deo vindice. This piece was published at Perrin Lovett on August 1, 2025.
 Briggs, Georgia, Icon, Chesterton: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2017. Today, my friends, we owe a debt of gratitude to the wonderful Matushka Emma Cazabonne for recommending I read a relatively new novel by a talented young Southern author. (Thanks, Emma!) The book is a new take on an old story, or, rather, an old and persistent threat to civilizational states, especially those grounded in Christianity. It is a somewhat disturbing look at an alternative contemporary or near-future Alabama and America.
Icon, by Alabama author Georgia Briggs, is a stirring dystopian story told from an explicitly Orthodox Christian point of view. Briggs succeeds brilliantly in melding her faith with her genre. If I am not mistaken, this was her first novel, ergo, her success is an amazing achievement and a great testament to her ability. Icon is available from the Ancient Faith Store and Amazon. Also, please visit Briggs at her website. In Icon, young Euphrosyne learns that an innocent mistake at school quickly leads to death, oppression, and terror. Some might find the plot initially confusing, especially since it unfolds in the new and grand “Era of Tolerance”. However, others will wisely recall that tolerance was one of the chief sins of King Jeroboam. Euphrosyne, her family, and her friends find themselves living in an occupied state that tolerates everything … except Christianity. Clinging to tradition in this new age results in brutal and relentless intolerance. Briggs does a fine and fascinating job portraying how the repression transpires and how it affects those caught in the crosshairs. That she does this so convincingly from the primary perspective of a twelve-year-old girl is very impressive. But the choice of Euphrosyne’s eyes should not necessarily be surprising because, while all people suffer under tyranny, perhaps none are so afflicted as children. The real world gives us constant, daily reminders of that sad fact for those willing to see them. I will leave the hows and whys behind the rise of Brigg’s draconic fool’s paradise for the discovery of the reader—and the reader will thoroughly enjoy the journey of revelation. Yet I will say I thought Briggs’s moniker for those in control of the new Alabama and new America was a poignant bit of genius. She took an old and famous name from America’s nineteenth-century transcendent enlightenment and progressed it forward to a fanciful but very natural and plausible zenith. Plausibility. Interestingly, Briggs wrote Icon in 2017, eight years before I read it. Those eight years have been packed with incidents and trends that should have dropped the veils or blinders from many American and Western eyes. In short, only the truly blind (or the complicit) do not, at this point in our history, begin to at least suspect that something has gone very wrong. A century before Briggs’s pen crafted her tale so artfully, J.B. Bury was busy lauding what he thought were the then-present achievements of the Enlightenment and the coming golden age of free thinking and tolerance, the triumph over Christianity and tradition. See A History of Freedom of Thought (1913). As the entirety of the Enlightenment was a lie and a rank inversion, things didn’t work out exactly as promised. Instead of a peaceful, happy Shangri-la, today’s America sees Christians beaten and imprisoned for praying in public. America openly and even proudly supports, funds, and participates in war and genocide against multiple parties of the innocent around the world, a sizeable portion of them Christians. It is not too far a stretch, certainly within fiction, to foresee an America that openly exterminates Christians. In addition to a moving, alarming story of warning, Briggs also provides an antidote. At certain points in Icon, particularly at the end, I found myself silently hoping for stern physical retaliation from the oppressed or liberating action from outside parties. I will divulge that as the Orthodox Believers of Alabama are hunted, Russian Spetsnaz troops do not arrive to save the day. But Briggs had a far better idea. Someone does show up at the end, and there is no earthly substitute for the deliverance and compassion he brings to Euphrosyne. It is a miracle in a book full of miracles. Just when all feels lost, the young protagonist wins the ultimate fight, via her Christian faith and her acknowledged (if not so-named) eschatological optimism. “[Y]ou lived well,” she is told. Indeed, she survives in glory and learns the true meaning behind Jesus’s reassurance when He said, “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you. …[B]ut I have chosen you out of the world...” John 15:18-19. Briggs salvages eternal beauty out of tragedy and perfidious horror. Her plot, purpose, scenes, and settings are vivid, valid, and believable. Her characters bring to life the best and worst of human behavior and capability. As for the good potential within Christians, she delivers with convincing eloquence stern adherents to our faith who are, despite all else, joyous, reflective, defiant, zealous, and selfless. For a shorter work, and one marketed for the young adult audience, the spiritual lessons within Icon are astounding. Oh, and THE icon is as much a character, as much a hero as he is a title! For all these reasons, and for those the reader will find beneath the cover, I happily recommend Icon by Georgia Briggs. I also recommend buying a few extra copies to give as gifts to children, grandchildren, students, parish friends, neighbors, or any other young people the reader might know and care about. Help spread the word. Deo vindice. Your reviewer owes the late, great Tom Moore for helping discover the subject matter of today’s critique. I’m not sure if Tom ever read anything by Chris Orcutt, but I know that if he had, then he would have enjoyed it. As I have written before, Tom was an extremely good friend and my adopted big brother. He also served admirably as my mentor en écriture de fiction, wingman, and general conspirator. Sometime after his death, I stumbled across Orcutt’s website while randomly looking for new authorial inspiration. The first thing I read was his essay, “Being a Novelist Isn’t a Job, It’s a Lifestyle”. I approved. Tom would have approved. Read it yourself and you’ll catch a glimpse of an artist as dedicated to the craft as may be found anywhere. Now it is my honor to briefly examine one of his many novels, the fun, daring, and masterfully written One Hundred Miles from Manhattan.  (Stately, eclectic cover design by Elisabeth Pinio.) *Orcutt, Chris, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan, “Wellington”, NY: Have Pen, Will Travel, 2014 (2017 2nd Kindle edition) One Hundred Miles from Manhattan has been occasionally deemed a collection of short stories. And it is. But isn’t every novel chapter a short story? Probably. So by linking a series of these things together, especially if they are well-linked, a legitimate novel—however we define “legitimate”—is born. Orcutt describes his book as a “modern novel”, see the cover above. That is true in the sense it is contemporary fiction and that it innocently defies certain conventions or preconceptions in a manner to make Gustave Flaubert or Julian Barnes proud. The ten stories or chapters offer ten different perspectives on a series of independent yet related tales. Orcutt sets up a fine plot of points, which are then connected by the reader’s immersed mind. The book reminded me of a few other works. Orcutt’s stories, all of them vivid and engrossing, take place in the fictional town of Wellington, New York. That geographic commonality at once suggested, in my mind, Mary Morrissy’s Prosperity Drive. (You leave the Aussies intact, Lassie?) Characters reappear and themes recur here and there. And Wellington itself becomes a perpetual personality in much the same form and fashion as the titular character in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Street”. And just like Morrissy’s Prosperity Drivers and Lovecraft’s Lane, albeit in distinctive locution, Wellington and its population are adroitly, entertainingly, and guardedly presented as offbeat. Who doesn’t love to hate the rich? Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 24:19. Confucius said, “Wealth and honor are what people want, but if they are the consequence of deviating from the way, then I would have no part of them.” It’s not necessarily that the wealthy are wicked. Or it’s not that, in a sense of totality, money is evil. Part of the stigma of the well-to-do is that their fortune allows them the opportunity to engage in behavior inherent to all of us with unfettered ease and unadulterated excess. That alone might explain much of the universal caution against the trappings of great opulence. Forewarned or not, Wellington is overrun with wealthy people, both of the generational landed gentry and the nouveau riche Manhattanite yuppie kinds. Much of the narration involves horses. Horses are fine and noble beasts, yet horse people are about as weird as they come. If one knows, then one knows: from California to Kentucky to Florida, it’s the same pattern. Wellington’s “hilltoppers” are sterling examples of horse and general monied eccentricity. However, safely confined within the pages of a book, their various follies make for excellent fiction. Orcutt opens with a quote by Anton Chekhov. He then proceeds with a story about an unusual “shooting party”, one led by a rather determined woman. Her self-imposed exile at the end appears happier and less taxing than, say, tenure at a standard labor camp. Another tale delves deeply into the lethally neurotic absurdity of fighting over a literal pile of trash. Perhaps you, dear reader, have heard of or imagined such things? Yet another story reminds us that little to nothing will come between the hobby engineer and his model train set layout. Assorted cautionary themes run the length of the book. In a sense, perhaps an inverted sense, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan might be considered an American ode to the Russian village fiction of the twentieth century. Lavish as it is, there is a certain pastoral romanticism associated with Wellington. And in keeping with the spirit of Valentin Rasputin, et al, a level of hardship is keenly examined—though it is volitional hardship, not so much on the local peasantry but, rather, on the peculiar affluent residents. Some of the presented rural fascination is coupled with criticism of modernity, subtle yet palpable criticism delivered with ranged emotion. Orcutt’s writing is crisp, evocative, and arresting. He balances, very well, a technical precision with great relatability. Somewhere, he mentioned he writes stories he would like to read. He succeeds with aplomb, which is a testament to several factors (that I can think of): a deeply contemplative philosophical outlook, high creativity, and an ability to accomplish that hardest and most critical aspect of writing—being able to jot it all down in such a way that the reader not only understands but mentally makes the story his own. He’s noted in several places his admiration for different great authors of the past. If he ever tried to emulate some of their manners or tack—and all of us try that to some extent—then he has succeeded in channeling the best as required and where necessary; but, he has also developed a most unique and enjoyable style all his own. More of Orcutt’s rare distinctiveness is on humorous, insightful display in his 2017 book, Perpetuating Trouble: A Memoir, which is part biography, part story-telling, and part poignant writing guide. I highly recommend it, to writers and all, along with, of course, One Hundred Miles from Manhattan. I’m also looking forward to 2026 and the coming first segment of Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome, a nine-episode novel, twice the heft of War and Peace, about Gen X and our glory in the greatest of all decades, the 1980s. Grab the Swatches and pop those collars! Evidently, Orcutt spent the past decade locked in the last functioning Aladdin's Castle mall arcade researching and refining the chronicle. If dedication equals perfection then… Okay, honestly, I was there. Did that and all. Part of me really wants to relive the majesty. But part of me is a little wary that once pulled back… I won’t want to leave again! Rad. This piece was published at Perrin Lovett on July 5, 2025.
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