A Tale of Two Follies

by Lee Duigon

Which will prove to be the worse disaster as a leader of the world—Communist China under President-for-life Xi Jin Ping, or the Vatican under Francis I, the Red Pope?

It’s not a trick question. It’s an unanswerable question.

Red China has just launched a new app to make it easier for—I won’t call them citizens; “slaves” would be more accurate–to report each other for “mistaken opinions”. Western liberals howl and smite their breasts in paroxysms of envy.

But next month the Vatican will host a “world health conference” (you are excused for laughing; I know it’s hard not to) in which the Pope will buddy up with Doc Fauci, abortion cheerleader Chelsea Clinton, and New Age superstar Deepak Chopra—plus assorted Big Pharma CEOs, movie stars, rock stars, and other fabulous celebrities you never heard of. No, it’s not a PBS pledge drive. I don’t know what to call it. Together they will expound the meaning of life. While pushing for a global government.

Is any of this real, or is it just some really bad dystopian movie that hopefully is almost over? I mean, really—Deepak Chopra?

The Chicoms hope their captive people will enthusiastically “supervise” one another. Sort of like DYFS on steroids. Tick off your neighbor, and he can make you disappear. Any criticism of the Communist Party, its leaders, its policies, or of China in general, in any way, shape, or form, is to be reported to the government. I think I just heard Mark Zuckerberg cry out, “Why didn’t we think of that?” But our own Big Tech oligarchs are used to playing catch-up to the commies.

But don’t sell Pope Francis short. If nothing else, he sticks to the task at hand. This, after all, is the pope who twice had “Pachamama”—a heathen thingy from the Amazon—carted into the Vatican gardens to receive what looked very like a form of worship. He had to do it twice because the first time some Catholics carried the idol out and dumped it into the Tiber. Francis had it salvaged and brought back. This time he seems to have taken pains not to invite any Catholics to the Vatican.

How do you choose between rock-hard, jackbooted tyranny, a la Xi, and subtle, seductive, really cool and trendy B.S., a la Francis and his new playmates? Or do you have to choose at all—because either one seems likely to lead to the same end? You can either be bullied into submission or driveled into it.

Wow, though. Imagine a whole country of a couple billion people all trained and encouraged to rat each other out to the government. It takes one’s breath away. Can’t you just see Chuck Schumer frantically jumping up and down and shouting “Here, here, here! We want it here!” And China will have the new app coupled with its existing “social credit system,” so that any deviation from the party line can be punished instantly: and you can be just as instantly rewarded for turning someone in. Oh, boy—a free slurpee at my nearest Seven-Eleven. I’ve gotta find some more lives to wreck!

We mustn’t make the mistake of thinking the Pope and Red China are competing with each other. Does anyone compete with China? They’ve already bought our sports leagues, dozens of our most influential politicians, whole platoons of college professors, squads of scientists, and most of Hollywood. Who’s left to compete with them?

Think, rather, of Francis and Xi working in harmony, virtually in tandem, to bring about the socialist paradise they both crave so passionately: a world in which Diversity is guaranteed by complete, coerced uniformity of word and deed, and liberty is strictly controlled, limited, and, well, erased. Think of an unholy matrimony of church and state.

And then pray very, very hard it never happens.

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Stop in for a visit, while it’s still allowed; just click the link. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/ .

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net