Ark of the Lost Angels

Pope Francis overlooking Saint Peter’s Square, 2017 _{(Credit: ABC News)}

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It’s been an odd week to say the least. Between Pope Francis dying on Easter Monday, the surprise release of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered on Tuesday, and my having seen the new film Warfare by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza on Tuesday evening, this week has consisted of contradictory thoughts and interests. I didn’t really have a connective tissue until this morning, when I thought about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent plans for people with autism, depression, and ADHD. Bear with me, this one’s a bit of a journey.

Legacy

The pope’s passing is a complicated moment for me. On the one hand, I walked away from the Catholic Church over a decade ago for very valid reasons. I grew up as the truth about the Catholic Church covering up decades of sexual abuse by priests was coming to light. I struggled with being in that environment as an organization which so publicly called themselves servants of a just, benevolent, caring, and protective God could commit such horrific abuses, and the established protocol became to hide their crimes rather than seek the justice they preached about. Not even the justice on earth by the laws of man, but the moral requirements necessary to live in Jesus’ footsteps.

My issues with the Catholic Church ran far deeper than just that. I grew up in the Catholic Church, went to Catholic school, even thought about becoming a priest when I was younger. I felt that was what I was supposed to do as a good Catholic. My parents taught me to think for myself. We weren’t the most observant at home, which gave me the freedom to question. And question I did, in school, asking questions to resolve logical conundrums that plagued me. I wanted to understand so I could be the good Catholic I was supposed to be. I was met with dismissiveness from teachers and religious leaders. They never answered my questions because I was not supposed to be asking them. I was supposed to fall in line and listen to those who came before me.

At the same time, I became a student of history. Saw how religion provided the perfect excuse for the dominant political power to do whatever they wanted. In every culture, in every society, in every corner of the globe. By claiming to speak with the authority of your deity of choice, your society was duty-bound to listen to you. Religion became the justification for war, conquest, genocide, repression, slaughter, hatred, and so on and so forth. Heresy became justification for imprisonment or execution of those with ideas which threatened the ruling powers, even if the evidence was mere hearsay.

God gave you power, and you used that power to crush anyone you didn’t like beneath your heel. While your holy books claimed it was your responsibility to live peacefully, to leave judgement up to your god, to take care of your neighbors, and to respect the world which was given to you by the divine.

So, when my younger self came to this crossroads, coupled with watching the servants of God abuse children and systematically conceal it for decades, it shattered my belief in the Church as an institution. The more I divorced myself from the trappings of the Roman Catholic Church, the more powerful grew my desire to walk away from Christianity entirely.

I grew up in Pope Benedict XVI’s Roman Catholic Church. I was only seven years when John Paul II died, and Benedict was elected to the papacy. He instituted changes which saw the conservatism of the Catholic Church take the reins. He felt as though the old ways were better, that the Church must become more traditionalist. I watched as one of the most influential organizations across the globe marched backward. In many ways, it emboldened those who used religion as a cudgel. It felt more about tearing ourselves down because God is so great instead of lifting everyone up as Jesus spoke about. I felt other Catholics were more motivated by keeping people in line than doing good. So, I started walking away from the Church and from religion entirely.

And then the unthinkable happened. Amidst criticism of homophobic rhetoric, actively covering up child rapists, and a global population leaving religion behind on the whole, this conservative stalwart announced that he would be stepping down as the Pope. Benedict was the first Pope in 600 years to resign. Look, I understand that he grew up in Germany in the 1930s, and being in the Hitler Youth was compulsory at that time. However, I always felt that placing someone who was previously associated with the Nazis as the head of an organization with monumental global influence as late as the 2000s felt like the wrong move, even if just from an optics standpoint. I already felt like the Church was irredeemable based on the hatred I felt it promoted in the name of God’s love. I was now an outsider throwing stones, which I was fine with. Dogma bothered me on an instinctual level, so I didn’t mind being one to criticize the Church harshly, I felt like I had no dog in the fight other than lingering resentment from that infamous Catholic guilt.

Then this former nightclub bouncer turned Jesuit priest from Buenos Aires became the Pope. He traveled on the train. He worked with the less fortunate directly, even as he ascended the ranks of the Church. He believed in ministry and backing up good deeds. He curtailed the powers of the Church to cover up its crimes, and changed how Popes are elected so men with a few years left on their lives at best aren’t making decisions which will outlive them. He pushed the Roman Catholic church in a progressive direction, which came as an utter shock. What’s more is that Francis knew how to play the game in an ancient organization with a history of conservative backlash. Francis had to play a delicate balancing act to avoid a revolt or schism from the old guard, and I was continually impressed with how he managed to thread the needle. Preaching acceptance for the LGBT community, speaking on climate change, and making reforms to ensure that the Church was following Jesus’ teachings the best it could were things I never expected to see from the Vatican in my lifetime.

I will not sit here and say that the Church is a good organization now. I have serious qualms with religion in general, seeing every religion across every part of the world being used to justify things as horrific as the Crusades or September 11^th, 2001, or the unconscionable barbarity Israel is committing in Gaza and the monstrous Hamas attack which prompted Israel’s latest escalation into insanity. But it says a lot when the Pope has called the Christians in Gaza every night for the last eighteen months of his life. The chapter of my life where I subscribe to religion is closed, for many reasons, but I recognize that Francis was a sorely needed force for positive change in a titanic pillar of global influence. I can only hope that the next pontiff to come out of this Papal Conclave will continue on Francis’ work.

Homeland

In America, religion’s influence has become dangerously intertwined with politics. The conservative movement is infested with people who feel like voting for Donald Trump is their duty to God. It has morphed from Christian to something even more sinister and grotesque. It has empowered the worst among our society. Charlatans and liars and fascists who seek power at all costs. It has legitimized lunatics like Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his dangerous ideas about autism because his benefactor is believed to have been ‘Sent by God.’ This attitude is so far fetching that conservatives are saying that Pope Francis is not an authority on the Bible – a laughable idea if these people did not use the Bible to justify deportations or worse – or even that his death is ‘evil being defeated.’ These are not the mutterings of fringe lunatics, they represent the mainline belief of these people.

When running for President in 2024, RFK Jr. suggested sending people on prescription medications for ADHD or depression to labor camps. A man in charge of the nation’s health believing prescription medications for depression are addictive or cause school shootings should cause the nation which appointed him to such a post to become an international laughingstock. Jesus said to love thy neighbor, take care of the sick and the lame and the poor, to show mercy to the sinners, to not pass judgement. He said, “Whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.” He spent time amongst the rejects from society. These are all moments in the Bible. Whatever you choose to believe, I don’t think man who said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” would be that wild about forced labor camps for people who use prescription medication to function in and contribute to modern society, especially from a group which claims to act in his name. Especially when Pope Francis often spoke about how modern medicine is not antithetical to Christian teachings.

RFK Jr. is setting up a national registry of autistic people. In addition to being blatantly illegal as it violates federal privacy laws regarding healthcare, this is morally repugnant. RFK Jr. believes that autism is a disease. He believes that autistic people are unable to function in society. A journalist at MSNBC who was there would argue otherwise. Seeing as how the current administration is not shy about paralleling history of the Nazis in other avenues, like State Department officials call for sterilization of ‘low-IQ trash’ or their mass deportations of ‘undesirables’, it does not take a great leap of imagination to think that something more sinister will follow in short order. Autistic people being in a listed registry is the first step towards a mass eugenics program, the kind which served as a testing ground for the mass extermination campaign we call the Holocaust.

Aktion T-4 was a Nazi program beginning in 1939 which systematically killed children with disabilities. It began with state officials pressuring families with children who had disabilities to admit their children to special state run hospitals which were supposed to care for the children. Then the families would get letters claiming their children had died of tuberculosis, a burst appendix, or some other seemingly innocuous cause of death. By 1940, this program would expand to include patients who suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, dementia, encephalitis, and other chronic psychiatric or neurological disorders. Additionally, those not of German or “related” blood, the criminally insane or those committed on criminal grounds, and those who had been confined to the institution in question for more than five years were included. The racial cleansing was expanded to those in the territories the Nazis conquered, especially in the east. The use of gas chambers and crematoria would be used in the concentration camps which killed six million Jews, and five million others, including Christians. These programs were described as something to enhance the health of the nation. RFK Jr. paints autistic people as being diseased, and a detriment to society. The lunacy would be almost humorous if RFK Jr. wasn’t running the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Nazis hadn’t also twisted science to justify mass exterminations. World War II took six years and millions of lives to attempt to crush that ideology until it could not rise again, efforts which have obviously failed. Most Americans did not experience the effects of total war on our shores, so we don’t have a cultural frame of reference.

The fires of war burn everything without regard for borders, ideology, or humanity.

Fire

War is a collection of catastrophes which you pray costs the other side more than it costs yours. Warfare demonstrated that wholeheartedly. The movie follows a group of Navy SEALs supporting a Marine Corps air element in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. One of the SEALs gets wounded by hostile militants, and during the attempt to evacuate the wounded, an IED blows up and causes more problems. The SEALs regroup with the other element and figure a way out of the situation they’re trapped in, while the Iraqi families living in the home they commandeered are cowering in a bedroom. The movie is gritty, visceral, and goes to great lengths to show the horrors of combat, both physical and mental, as the recreation of the mission plays out in virtually real time. There is no glorious triumph, just mentally and physically broken men barely getting out of a harrowing situation. The movie is smart enough to let the audience draw their own conclusions about the Iraq War and the reason why those men faced the hell which they did, but it is very unambiguous enough to present that hell in as much gory detail as possible. It was an uncomfortable film to watch for all the right reasons.

Coupled with Garland’s Civil War, which released last year, Warfare is a look at the reality which may soon be upon us.

Revolutions do not work, as a matter of course. Ripping through a society as though a hurricane or tornado would, revolutions see instability follow in their wake. The American Revolution is an exception since it should be classified as a war of secession. This means that the United States has never seen a true revolution on its shores and should be frightened of one’s arrival. We should learn from historical precedent in case a revolution is necessary so as to not make the mistakes that France made in 1789 which led to Napoleon, or Russia made in 1917 which led to the Russian Civil War and Stalin, or Iran made in 1979 which led to the entrenched Islamic Regime today.

Yet we in the so-called greatest country in the world may find ourselves in the same situation as so many other ‘dustbin’ or ‘third world’ nations which we decry or deride. No one will come to save us from ourselves. Those with the power to do so don’t wish for us to be strong, or they have more immediate threats to attend to. America will stand alone against itself because we have alienated everyone who would stand with us.

Which means all the fighting in the streets will be done by us. Our institutions are burning and they will be ash. People will starve. Houses will be occupied for a military operation and blown to hell in a firefight. Cities will become rubble. Monuments will be torn to pieces. Children will starve to death or have their limbs blown off. People will get shot and die of infection and blood loss in streets because there is nowhere safe to take them and no resources with which to treat them. Bodies will decompose on the battlefields because it is not safe to retrieve them, and the land on which to bury them will be uprooted with trenches and bunkers. It will not be a glorious fight for the salvation of our nation, but a brutal slog with blood and screaming and death which will have above our heads for generations. Civilization will be reshaped by the lack of access to resources, and the pain and struggle to rebuild amidst the ruins of a shattered empire. The only casualties will be Americans and the unfortunate souls who came here seeking a better life and we treated with disdain. As with all revolutions, the lives claimed will be the least among us. The ones who could not afford to leave or earn cushy positions in any of the opposing groups. The ones who fight for survival, not for any ideological cause. That is war. The glorification of war is something which every generation experiences until they are so traumatized by it that they vow never to let it happen again, until their children grow up and repeat the cycle. You can say that we reap what we have sown across the world, but it does not change the fact that as with all war, the fires will destroy everyone once they begin to burn.

The reality is upon us, and no amount of ignoring it will make it go away.

Tomorrow

Pope Francis set a moral example across the world for how to be a good person, even when divorced from a Christian context. Helping neighbors, criticizing systems which breed inequality and ruination, accepting everyone regardless of differences are all ways to build a better world. Pope Francis was unafraid to speak truth to power. The truth of the matter here in America is that America is sprinting towards Nazism. We are well on our way to being a fascist country and the eugenics are coming down the line. If this does not stop, then all hell may break loose.

Oblivion Remastered seems to be the odd piece out in this linking of loosely connected events. There is a literary concept called The Call to Adventure. It is the first step on the Hero’s Journey, in which the protagonist of the story feels compelled to leave their safe life behind in search of the adventure awaiting them. Often times, they are reluctant heroes which refuse that call. That is why the trope exists named The Call Knows Where You Live. At its basest level, this trope ensures that the hero cannot ignore that call to adventure. Oblivion begins with the player character in a prison cell. After some mockery from the prisoner in the cell across the hall, an unexpected visitor comes to your own. The Emperor and his bodyguards are on their way out of the Imperial City because the Emperor is targeted by assassins, and the escape route leads right through your cell. You travel with them until the Emperor tasks you with finding the last heir right before he is struck down by an assassin’s blade. You then face destiny as you help the heir shut the gates of hell itself when its ruler threatens the world with total annihilation, facing cities razed to the ground, and friends and allies laying dead by the end. If you did not act, then all would be lost.

The Emperor is passing through our prison cell. The call has come to all of us to stand up and act. To speak. To put as much pressure on our leaders as possible to ensure they cannot take one step farther forward. It is important to learn from Pope Francis’ example and build a world of compassion, empathy, charity, goodwill, and peace. It is important to learn from history that tolerance of those who seek to burn the world cannot be stopped by well wishes alone. They are not invincible. They are not unstoppable. We must not let inaction be our downfall. If these plans are allowed to come to fruition, there will only be two types of people left: traitors and cowards.

I do not make this claim lightly. However, a large number of Americans may find themselves in the position of having to commit damnable acts in order to secure a better tomorrow. From a pragmatic standpoint, mad tyrants with first strike capabilities are a danger to the entire world, and it is our responsibility to contain them. From an idealistic standpoint, this nation has principles worth fighting and dying for. We should not allow the worst among us to hold themselves as the greatest patriots with no pushback. Our past is covered in blood, and we must atone for it. However, it is still up to all of us to chart our future. I, for one, don’t intend on letting these bastards have the only say as to what America stands for.

Nor do I intend to go quietly if the jackboots knock on my door and ask me to come with them.