Mrs. Brown and I run a small business. Last night, we were invited to meet with a vendor. Normally, I steer clear of vendor events, but this particular product has some merit and the meeting was a complimentary dinner with drinks at the Fleming’s in Salt Lake City. Fleming’s isn’t a restaurant we can normally afford, so we decided to check it out.
Navigating through traffic, I found myself stuck for several blocks behind a car with a bumper sticker that read “Feminism, Satanism, Coffee & Cats.” If there ever was a Gen Z bumper sticker, this was it. the driver could probably tell me all about feminism and his/her/its favorite coffee and give me a detailed biography of each of their cats. I doubt this person knew much about Satanism.
Of course, this was in Salt Lake, and the driver likely added the bumper sticker because they hoped that the words “feminism,” “Satanism,” and “coffee” would enrage the Mormons and other assorted normies. Letting one’s counter-cultural flag fly is a bit of a cottage industry in Salt Lake. It is across the rest of the nation, too, but there is a long-standing tradition in SLC of thumbing one’s nose at the LDS church. No doubt, the driver of the care derived a certain amount of glee and satisfaction from their bumper sticker.
Like the antisemitic students protesting across the U.S., most of whom have no idea what they are inviting into the midst, those who have recently embraced Satanism either as a cultural badge of relevancy or who engage in it because it is the antithesis of traditional beliefs do not fully understand with what they are flirting. Although on a superficial level, they do. Those who sport pentagrams or provocative bumper stickers find personal satisfaction and their identity in what they oppose and who they can scandalize.
Although by no means biblical canon, Milton’s “Paradise Lost” depicts Satan as one who would rather rule in Hell, as miserable as it may be, than serve in Heaven. It may be Hell, but it is his Hell, which he is free to manage however he wishes. Not content that he and his fallen angels should be the only ones condemned for eternity, he sets about finding those to whom he can draw unto himself.
In Genesis, Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden for their disobedience, but that disobedience was born of a desire to have something for themselves that had been denied to them. In the Book of Job, Satan, in the role of the accuser, sets out to destroy Job by attacking those things which people by their nature crave: family, property, prosperity, etc. Take away what Job loves and makes him happy, and take away his faith.
The transgender movement is not merely about choosing one’s gender. It is about having what one wants and demanding that the rest of the world want the same things. It is the expectation that every person on the planet will conform to the gender, pronoun, or even species one is embracing on a particular day — and not simply to conform, but to actively participate. My pronouns. My gender. My species.
Setting aside the debates over incest, rape, or health concerns, those championing elective abortions are also fixated on the self. They owe no fealty to the life growing inside them and do not wish to exchange their complete and total free agency for the joys of raising a child.
The addict who drinks, snorts, swallows, or injects their drug of choice seeks only to satisfy a craving. The cost to family, friends, or even themselves is forgotten, so long as the next hit or drink is available. The addict may be in Hell, but it is his hell. Even in the various incarnations of the media in which I have worked, I have noticed that the most important pronouns are frequently “I,” “me,” and “mine.”
In Chapter 22 of C.S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters,” the demon Screwtape writes to his nephew Wormwood:
The sense of ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and in Hell and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another! It is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love’s sake, in titular command of some great province, under the real rule of wise counsellors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the forests, and the corn, in the same way as he owns the bricks on the nursery floor.
We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the different senses of the possessive pronoun—the finely graded differences that run from “my boots” through “my dog”, “my servant”, “my wife”, “my father”, “my master” and “my country”, to “my God”. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of “my boots”, the “my” of ownership. Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by “my Teddy-bear” not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but “the bear I can pull to pieces if I like”. And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say “My God” in a sense not really very different from “My boots”, meaning “The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit—the God I have done a corner in”.
And all the time the joke is that the word “Mine” in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything. In the long run, either Our Father or the Enemy will say “Mine” of each thing that exists, and specially of each man. They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong—certainly not to them, whatever happens. At present the Enemy says “Mine” of everything on the pedantic, legalistic ground that He made it: Our Father hopes in the end to say “Mine” of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.
This brings us to this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, which is a yearly event sponsored by the European Broadcasting Union. Riverdance rose to prominence because of its successful Eurovision outing. This year, one of the front runners is Bambie Thug, a queer, satanic singer from Ireland. I’ll let her introduce herself.
Listening to Ireland’s ‘Satanic queer witch’ Eurovision song entrant speak feels like being hooked up to an intravenous line and having the CRINGE directly hitting the blood supply. Full report here: https://t.co/0JMSTAjrV1 pic.twitter.com/dOdDEK1mug
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) May 8, 2024
Someone should probably tell Ms. Thug that she is about as special as a manhole cover. Queer witches are a dime a dozen in the 21st century. She’s pedantic by current standards. But notice that she is eager to proclaim to the world that SHE is special because SHE is a queer witch. There is no place in her life for other people. While she may not realize it, she is not the sole occupier of the throne she has built for herself.
Ms. Thug claims that one of her songs about satanic sacrifice is a hit not only with her regular fans but parents and their children. Here is a sample of one of her offerings:
Ireland’s queer non-binary witch Eurovision entrant who performs a song about Satanic sacrifice claims parents say their children love watching it. Report here: https://t.co/0JMSTAjrV1 pic.twitter.com/xi5OigAqL3
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) May 8, 2024
The website Modernity had this quote from Ms. Thug:
I’m really grateful to have this platform, especially as a non-binary person and as an alt little goth I’m super proud and I’m just excited to go and kick some a** on stage. I’ve had so many people drawing me, making me bracelets, and making cute things. [I’ve] had loads of lovely messages from parents about their children loving the song.
Ms. Thug may or may not be embracing a role. She may not be aware of the ramifications of her actions, but her starting and ending points are herself. Like the students chanting “Free Palestine!” and creating havoc in the name of peace, she is mainly interested in herself. That is the first step to damnation, no matter one’s professed faith.
Such people may occasionally glance up from their makeup, their sexuality, their drugs, or their rage and realize that they are still not satisfied. But they will content themselves with the fact that while they are in Hell, it is their Hell, built on their terms, which is all that matters.