When all you can do is laugh — and pray

“What can men do against such reckless hate?” –Theoden, King of Rohan, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh.

That’s why the Babylon Bee has been so invaluable since it arrived on the scene. It is next-level parody and satire at a time when it is desperately needed — not only for the comic relief, but to dispense with all manner of nonsense in a way that others simply are incapable of or refuse to do.

But it has also become clear that there are limits to satire in such a cosmically broken universe. Not because some content matter is simply beyond its humorous reach, but because satire itself has become reality.

When that happens, there really is no margin for laughter any longer. The joke isn’t on you — it is you.

Your civilization and nearly everything in it is a walking, talking punch line. And so instead of doing comedy, you are simply a stenographer now. Reporting objectively what happened in real time, and such reporting is as likely to draw tears as knee-slapping because of the grotesqueness of the portrait.

Case in point this week from the Babylon Bee is this headline: “Christian Just Voting For Whichever Political Party Less Likely To Make His Faith Illegal One Day.”

And now the evidence from the same week that was written:

*The Knights of Columbus, purveyors of delicious pancake breakfasts at Catholic parishes across the land, are now a controversial hate group that must be disavowed, according to Democrat Sens. Kamala Harris, Calif., and Mazie Hirono, Hawaii. At least, that is, if federal judicial nominee Brian Buescher thinks his Catholic rear end in going to get a promotion. Hirono, no stranger to hysterics, went so far as to demand that Buescher refrain from further membership in the Knights if he was to be trusted as a legitimate arbiter of justice on the bench.

Coming on the heels of Sen. Diane Feinstein’s “the dogma lives loudly in you” treatment of Amy Coney Barrett, Buescher’s treatment can’t simply be written off as an insane one-off. This is a hateful and bigoted pattern of behavior that at least one Democrat, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Hawaii, determined to be in need of an intervention.

So she wrote a thoughtful op-ed in The Hill that reminded her party that it included the proud legacy of JFK and Al Smith among its history.

Burn the witch!

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Twitter troll Jill Filipovic called Gabbard “a fraud” for defending an “extreme right-wing anti-choice anti-LGBT all-male organization.” So if that’s the treatment a Democrat gets for not rolling the progressive bones correctly, what chance in literal hell do we have?

*A court system with a penchant for lighting as many progressive bonfires as possible simply couldn’t bring itself to crush the First Amendment quite yet because of how brazenly the Colorado “Civil Rights” Commission continues to persecute baker Jack Phillips.

Like the Catholic nuns before him who were persecuted to serve the sexual tyranny of Obamacare, the degree to which bureaucrats in the smart set continue to feel comfortable with trashing the lives of those who humble themselves to God is chilling. Because, as with the nuns, the groups having regulatory fun at their expense simply won’t take “no” for an answer, just like the mob outside Lot's House that is their spirit animal.

When told to leave Phillips alone by a court, the “Civil Rights” commission immediately doubled down and went after him again, forcing Phillips once more to not only defend his honor, but stand a post against usurpers that few seem willing to do these days under far less arduous circumstances. Such a shame that Phillips is apparently the only baker in all of half-baked Colorado. There must be no other options for the Rainbow Jihadists to carb up.

Perhaps the biggest mockery of all, the “Civil Rights” commission fought against Phillips’ attempt to hammer this farce out at the federal level by arguing that he “should be required to exhaust all available state remedies before availing himself of federal court.”

That’s rich. The very progressives who have used federal power to run roughshod over all manner of local decency are now arguing for local control. Adorable.

*Speaking of “won’t take no for an answer,” the Washington Post’s Robert Costa tweeted that “the official now leading OMB and the Trump team’s shutdown response nearly had his nomination derailed due to his comments about Muslims."

Gee. Red herring much, Robert? The guy he’s referring to is Russ Vought, the current head of OMB, whom Democrat Bernie Sanders hazed a while back from the halls of Congress because he is a Christian who believes the only acceptable atonement for human sin is the cross of Christ. Which has been taught out of the New Testament since 600 years before there was ever a single Muslim.

The main theology of progressivism is unmistakably to hate the things of God, because its creed for this world is "ye be like god." So it only makes sense that the progressive inquisition would seek to snuff out the worldview that opposes its sprint toward Gomorrah. Real recognize real, as the kids say today.

Against such reckless hate, scathing humor and wit can only take us so far, with no small thanks to the Babylon Bee for perhaps taking us as far as humanly possible along those lines. But if satire is dead because reality has eclipsed it and our political affiliations are no longer aspirational but instead a matter of self-defense, the cliche "we have nothing to do but pray" has never meant more. Spiritual problems require spiritual solutions.