Panicking Satanically

Before I get too deep in the weeds here: stop. Breathe. Ask how you can be kinder to yourself. Then, instead of assuming how you can be kinder to people around you, listen and follow their lead.

So this happened:

And that’s fucking terrible, right? A travesty. St. Patrick has been beheaded. Behold the horror. A martyr of our modern times. Here’s a news report about it from the local ABC affiliate. The police have a suspect in custody. A nameless 23-year-old from [emote] squints [/emote] Saline county? Where the fuck is that? [emote] checks map [/emote] Oh. That’s about 100 miles north of where the attacked church was. That’s just… weird. That’s weird. AND there was a burned US flag? AND a Satanic website which apparently didn’t get photographed and I can’t seem to find hide nor hair of? AND it was St. Patrick’s Church on St. Patrick’s day weekend? AND it’s happening near the time frame of a “Black Mass” that Gov. Kelly rightly said was okay to do because the 1st Amendment is a thing?

Also, let’s talk about that “Black Mass” thing. It’s run by a group called “The Satanic Grotto” which seems more like a kink grift than a serious religious movement. For my part, I’m not linking their site because I rolled my eyes SO. GODDAMN. HARD. when I was reading it, not because I have something to hide by not linking it. It has less of the religious trappings of Douglas Mesner’s (yes I’m deadnaming this fascist asshole) “The Satanic Temple” with their spoken ideas about religious liberty and endless farcical lawsuits and more of a vibe of “We’re gonna party at the capital and sell merch!” Which, given the above screencap talking about “working class Latinos” and what the Catholic Church has a history of doing (this is where the Catholics, the Satanic Temple, and Anton Levay’s Church of Satan can all agree on some things): hypocrisy and genocide… I’d take the Satanic Grotto’s approach above any of them. HOWEVER, given too that the website scrawled was apparently LIKE the one holding a black mass at Kansas state capital and not THE group holding a black mass…

…maybe the Kansas Catholic Conference, and the Holy Roman Catholic Church more broadly, can take the fucking L and quit while they’re ahead. Some of us do still remember things, some of us see what’s left out of frame, and some of us do hear what does and doesn’t get said.

Oh, and there’s also a possibly that, similar to how Tom Araya of Slayer is a huge Catholic these Satanic Grotto weirdos are also Catholics just trying to stir up controversy and cause useless distraction from… like… just being a decent fucking human being? And to what end? It’s like we’re living in the cave from Plato’s allegory and they’re making their own shadow puppets rather than figuring a way outside if that’s the case. Which brings to me back to my question: why? To what end?

UPDATE: Okay. WPD has a guy in custody and he’s apparently a “Real Bad Dude™️” on account of having served a prison sentence. I’ll take the L on THAT. ONE. THING. Maybe. However, I saw a Facebook comment that mentioned swastikas??? And… holy fuck at this point it’s all nothing but hysterical hearsay and I fucking hate the way the cops and the Catholic leadership is handling this because it’s all fucking power maintenance all the way down. And the guy? He’s fucking 23. He’s a child. The only thing I want to be judged for with regard to my life at 23 was my decision to transition. And that was at 21 socially. After surviving being thrown into the meat grinder of the military by my abusive step-mother and pedophile father two months after I turned 17. If you need dead white guys to back up my decision: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason when he wrote about a priori knowledge (I.E. my self awareness came from within me) and Dostoevsky’s “Rebellion” chapter from The Brothers Kamarazov. For the suspect w.r.t. St. Patrick’s in Wichita, KS? Who the fuck knows? Too many variables. One thing is clear to me, though that I hope to impart to you: power maintains itself through a variety of means. In this case, carefully crafted PR generated a lot of sympathy for a church that likely only helps insofar as it serves their own needs. Which is why the Catholic Church is so invested in getting survivors of domestic abuse ensnared in their web of despair and putting them to work. After all, when else does that Kansas Catholic Conference give a damn about “the working class” except to use the phrase to garner pity.

Anyways, speaking of church stuff, I need to go draw Jesus as a chicken for some reason? THE POWER OF SATAN COMPELS ME WITH DEMON MAGIC I PROMISED TO GIVE UP FOR LENT BUT FOR SOME REASON JUST CAN’T SEEM TO???