Fourteenth or Twenty-Second

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

In which century would you love to live, the 14th or the 22nd?

History tells me we are in a period where Americans are fighting for their choice. Just 48 hours after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933, several trade agreements were about to expire. With large lumber imports from Austria and a 200 million Reichsmark trade deal with Russia pending, Hitler’s finance minister Count Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, was told an immediate decision was needed in getting their team elected in the upcoming Reichstag elections which Hitler needed to win to retain power.

Hitler had shown a felonious disregard for economics and finance matters by owing 400,000 Reichsmarks in back taxes with no sources to pay them. Like our current malignant narcissistic president, Hitler said: “Inflation was a lack of discipline. I will see to it that my Brownshirts (SA) will keep prices stable, although the Jews are responsible for Germany’s woes.”

Gottfried Feder, his chief economist since 1932, came up with the first Nazi economic plan in 32 pages: a plan featuring strong, high tariffs. Remind you of anyone we know who has his Make America Great-Wealthy-Healthy-Wise Again, with his Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters to back him up?

So, Donald J. Trump, with a history of six bankruptcies and background of never paying banks, contractors and workers, said he would rescue the country from the Liberals by implementing the highest tariffs in history. He bragged in a MAGA rally in 2016, saying, “We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much. And I’ll say, ‘No, it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’” Said by a man who is surrounded by losers, suckers, rapists, murderers, thieves, criminals, stupid lawyers, lying judges and…

Opus Dei, the Heritage Foundation, Policy 2025, and MAGA choose the 14th

I have just heard the news that Pope Francis has died. He was not a supporter of Opus Dei. In my last column I wrote I would present a history of the ultra-conservative Roman Catholic organization. It was founded by Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer de Albas in 1928, a Spanish priest trained as a lawyer. The purpose was to encourage laypeople and priests to become more religious while they were working in their chosen professions. The members would “seek personal Christian perfection and strive to implement Christian ideals and values in their occupations and in society as a whole.”

Members, almost 100,000 world-wide including 2,100 ordained priests, promise to attend weekly meetings to receive spiritual “formation” and annual retreats. They practice self-sacrifice, which includes fasting, abstinence from “certain” pleasures, and self-mortification, such as the wearing of a spiked chain called a cilice around the upper thigh for two hours a day. It can cause bleeding. Members are also awarded a spiked whip which is used on the back while praying. New members are on probation for five years before being fully admitted. Some members called rumeraries devote almost all of their free time to Opus Dei while living in the world and working secular occupations. They are required to remain unmarried and celibate. Most members are free to marry if they continue to financially support Opus Dei while demonstrating Christian virtues. Donors, called cooperators, do not have to be members or even Christians.

Opus Dei, which means “Work of God” in Latin, was approved by the Vatican in 1950 as a secular instrument of a new form of religious organization whose members “profess a new form of religious institute that professes evangelism.” John Paul II, a most conservative pope, loved it. In 1982, he approved it as the only personal prelature in the church with jurisdiction over people rather than geographical area. (Perhaps you remember the albino-monk hitman in the movie “The DaVinci Code” sent by the leader of Opus Dei to keep the secret that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child. His tight spikey cilice made his thigh bloody.) John Paul II named a bishop to lead it, but Pope Francis, considered a moderate progressive by conservative bishops and cardinals, removed the bishop recently, perhaps downgrading Opus Dei a little in the conservative Vatican. It will be interesting to watch the smoke to see whether the politics of the new pope will be red, blue, or purple while the radical and secretive Opus Dei possibly regains the power it once had under John Paul II.

What will life be like in 2030 if you follow 1430 Catholic Opus Dei rules?

The Project 2025 rules were designed by a leader of the local Washington Opus Dei. When Trumpistan is established during King Donald’s reign, they will certainly bedevil the population of the once-upon-a-time Divided States of America.It might depend upon how many lawyers have become judges in state and federal Supreme Courts. How many Catholics on the DSA Supreme Court are also members of Opus Dei? There’s little doubt that Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was a member of Opus Dei for many years. How about Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito? Maybe Amy Coney Barrett? She and her husband are or were members of a Catholic organization with rules similar to Opus Dei.

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and the leader of Project 2025, assisted by about 100 conservative groups, is certainly a member in good standing of the Washington affiliate of Opus Dei, which has local units in at least 70 countries. Roberts says he has attended monthly retreats at the Opus Dei-sponsored Catholic Information Center (CIC) and weekly meetings in the K Street office manned by an Opus Dei priest. They celebrate mass each week and exchange formative religious guidance.

The following list contains just a few of the policies supported by the ultra-conservative lobbying group: ban all birth control, ban contraceptives, ban abortion except for medical emergencies of the fetus or mother, ban the LBGTQUIA+ community, ban same sex marriage, teach abstinence and encourage methods often referred to as Vatican Roulette, ban IVF procedures, establish the two gender rule, ban public and private unions, establish Christianity as the state religion and oppose the ordination of women and appointments of women to church policy committees. This is just a very short list of a long one.

Roberts is encouraging the growth of Opus Dei in charter, middle, and high schools where it is important to teach that boys and girls are “different,” that they learn differently, are inspired by different things, and that boys are taught by “manly men” who serve as role models. In kind of a laugher, a “New Yorker” cartoon was drawn to look like the pope sitting in a chair at a service in St. Peter’s surrounded by bishops and priests and two in conversation: “There are secret things, but mostly we just share tips on how not to pay taxes.”

It’s a reminder that the Vatican owns 200 million acres of land in the world. Maybe that’s one reason Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum needs help from Musk’s DOGE to supervise the 500 million acres of the DSA owned by the federal government.

In a speech, Roberts cited the battle Opus Dei fights: “Right now, we have to fight on religious liberty and, in particular, religious liberty as it relates to institutions of faith. And that’s not a time for strategic retreat. It’s not a time to be savvy. It’s not a time to be sweet. It’s not a time to develop friendships with the other side. It is time to take our fist, figuratively, and bust them in the nose because they hate what you and I believe.” Does this sound like a politician who is capable of compromises, keeps church and state separate, and plans to create a more perfect union?

Today the Supreme Court can save Democracy from Trumusklicans

I’m writing this on April 22, the day our Supreme Court will question if students can read books about our history and inhabitants. Montgomery County, Maryland — a county where thousands of government workers live in what is estimated to be the most religiously diverse county in the country — is the scene. An ultra-conservative organization called the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is challenging the school board’s policy that parents cannot opt children out of reading books and materials approved by the board. Some parents say such compulsory education violates First Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion.

As an example, In November 2022 the county board of education mandated that elementary children must read “LBGT-inclusive” storybooks containing gender transitions, same-sex playground romance and questioning “cisnormalitivity” and “power hierarchies.” This decision is a huge deal and raises many questions in maintaining a democracy:

How can citizens participate in a society if they have learned nothing about 10% of the population belonging to the LBGTQUIA+ community with a minimum of 74 different genders evident in 2025?

How can citizens live in and govern a society where at least 15% of the population has special needs that require many different services not known to those who have been opted out of classes?

How can citizens live in a society that covers up the negative events in the history of the country such as slavery, Jim Crow, racial segregation, race riots, economic inequality, and that health care is a privilege of wealth rather than a right?

How can we keep bragging about American exceptionalism and “shining cities on hills” when we have more than 670,000 homeless per day in overcrowded shelters and in squalor-tents along dirty rivers and under noisy overpasses?

Why does the richest country in the world, dominated by more than 800 billionaires consuming the world’s resources, end up in 24th place on the United Nations annual Happiness Survey?

The Divided States is flooded with lies and crazy executive orders

In 2019, Trump’s “Bad-Boy-Buddy” Steve Bannon of social media fame revealed his plan to demolish the “deep state” devoted to liberals in power. His plan was based on increasing the “muzzle velocity” of extreme policy changes.

“All we have to do is flood the zone,” he told“Frontline” on PBS. ”Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one and we will get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”

At last count, the Grand Wizard, the CEO of the United States Federal Corporation, the 45th and 47th president of the Divided States of America, the jerk, prick, asshole, sociopath, psychopath, malignant narcissist and sexual predator who has at least 150 negative characteristics, has signed 124 executive orders to date covering everything from shower heads, drinking straws, to two genders. He is following Bannon’s plan. Evidently the muzzle is the Lyin’ King’s mouth. But, saddled with his 150 negatives, he is incapable of managing a two-car parade.