The United States in 2020—and Mexico in 1988

The mural decorating the bedroom wall in Mexico City featuring Che and Pancho.

As we bid farewell to 2020, a year overloaded with the ridiculous and the outrageous, full of comfortable lies and unacceptable truths, I find myself pondering death. Not so much the death of 350,000 who, we are told, succumbed to a plague unleashed from China, but the otherwise unheralded death of our dear Uncle Sam. 

Admittedly, the patient had been declining for some time. Since the 1960s, the elderly gentleman had ceased making the really hard decisions in his deliberative centers. In the early stages of his dementia, he devolved all of the truly difficult, unpopular, and detrimental decisions onto an unaccountable committee made up of black-robed trustees who cared not a whit for his best interests. 

More recently, Uncle Sam found that he could no longer manage his finances. Instead of making a budget and sticking to it, his dereliction had progressed to the point where he could only pay his bills by taking on more debt. Yet, despite his economic straits, his list of dependents, heirs and hangers-on grew longer. It seemed that every verminous bloodsucker on earth wished to attach itself to the old man as he fumbled confusedly with his checkbook.

Over the past twelve years, we have watched the pitiable old man's executive functions fail him. Foreign pathogens were introduced into his system which spread corruption throughout his central command pathways. One by one, he lost control of even his most vital organs.

During the past four years, the patient was placed on life support with little hope of survival. In private, his heirs gathered around him like vultures, anxiously awaiting his coming demise while upholding the public fiction that he was still perfectly healthy. They recorded the time of his death in secret: 2:00 AM on November 4, 2020. Some say that he died peacefully in his sleep. I, however, think that the old man was snuffed by his unscrupulous heirs while those meant to stand guard were bribed or drugged.

Rather than continue on with this somewhat maudlin metaphor, let us return to reality wherein we find that the American Republic has ceased to function as it was meant to. For how can a republic built on the bedrock of free elections of representatives by a free and virtuous people, continue on in a circumstance where that foundation has been drilled away by individual corruption and corporate vote fraud on an unimaginably galling scale? 

Blatant, widespread electoral fraud on the scale needed to overturn a national election, as we have witnessed in 2020, is the hallmark not of a free republic, but of a banana republic. We are presented with a situation where the the chosen candidate of the DC oligarchy (Uncle Sam's corrupt heirs mentioned above) said overtly before the election that they had, "put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics." Some maintained that Mr. Biden's words have been taken out of context or that he simply misspoke. Personally, I think we witnessed in that instant the demon speaking through him, forcing his pride-addled brain to say the quiet part out loud, much like the way he had previously bragged about bribing Ukraine to stop investigating Burisma. 

Mr. Biden's stolen victory has wakened many Americans to the fact that the free republic represented in our traditional schooling is now largely a fiction, much as the Roman republic under Lucius Domitus Ahenobarbus, though maintaining the forms and offices, was a fiction. 

As of 2021, we must face the fact that we are not a shining city on a hill. We have no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We are Venezuela. We are Argentina. We are Mexico. 

I was in Mexico City when the PRI stole the Mexican presidential election in 1988. At that time, the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional or Revolutionary Institutional Party) made up most of the Mexican federal government, having ruled Mexico for 59 uninterrupted years. By 1988, the PRI were entrenched, unaccountable and disconnected from the average Mexican—much like the the DC oligarchy is in the US. Hence, they were deeply unpopular with the people who nonetheless felt powerless to change things. Like the American oligarchs, the PRI controlled most of the institutions along with the broadcast media.

In the immediate aftermath of the election of 1988, there were mass protests. I distinctly remember lying in a bedroom decorated with murals of Pancho Villa and Che Guevara and hearing fireworks or gunfire go off outside in the early evening. One of my roommates said, somewhat nervously, "Let's hope they're not coming for the gringos."

Our Lord or Rambo? You decide. 

The people I was staying with were middle-class Mexican Catholics but with a distinct tilt toward the radical left. In their dining room was a picture of Jesus well-equipped with bandoleras. These folks insisted that there was clear evidence of fraud and were furious that the government had cheated them out of their victory. The official results had been withheld, with the Secretary of the Interior blaming the delay on a computer system failure. The opposition party candidate, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, claimed that the computer failure was caused by a manipulation of the system used to count votes. It turned out that he was right.

Cardenas was kept out of the presidency, despite maintaining that he had won. In the end, the election was upheld by the PRI-dominated media and institutions, and Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the PRI became president of Mexico. Three years later, all of the ballots from the 1988 election were burned. 

Then, in 2004, Miguel de la Madrid, Mexico's PRI president at the time of the 1988 election, admitted in his autobiography that, on the evening of the election, he received news that the PRI was going to lose. That same year, the New York Times published this article:

Ex-President in Mexico Casts New Light on Rigged 1988 Election. 

The article read in part as follows:

Initial results from areas around the capital showed that Salinas was losing badly to the opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. “I felt like a bucket of ice water had fallen on me,” de la Madrid recalled. “I became afraid that the results were similar across the country and that the PRI would lose the presidency.” 

Thus began the frantic staging of a fraudulent victory. In his writing of the event, the all-powerful former president chooses his words carefully and describes himself more like a supporting actor than the lead strategist. If he did anything wrong, it was on the advice of his staff, and for the stability of the nation. 

On election night 1988, de la Madrid said, the secretary of the interior advised him that the initial results were running heavily against the PRI. The public demanded returns, de la Madrid wrote. And rather than giving them, the government lied and said that the computer system tabulating the votes had crashed.

What was Mexico in 1988 is now America in 2020.

Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan in the suburbs of Mexico City, 1988.

It should be recalled that Mexico under the PRI was described by leftist Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa as "the perfect dictatorship."

"The perfect dictatorship is not communism, not the Soviet Union, not Cuba, but Mexico, because it is a camouflaged dictatorship. It may not seem to be a dictatorship, but it has all of the characteristics of a dictatorship; the perpetuation, not of one person, but of an irremovable party, a party that allows sufficient space for criticism, provided such criticism serves to maintain the appearance of a democratic party, but which suppresses by all means, including the worst, whatever criticism may threaten its perpetuation in power." [Mario Vargas Llosa]

The United States enters 2021 as a one-party system under even deeper cover than Mexico in 1988. The Kabuki-style conflicts between Republicans and Democrats are merely part of the costume. If nothing else, the rigged election of this past November, which removed the outsider Trump and replaced him with the ultimate corrupt DC uniparty insider, with the consent and tacit support of both political parties, has helped the average American peek through the disguise.

It is worth remembering that the 1988 election was a watershed moment for Mexico and marked a period of sharp decline for the PRI which would ultimately lose the presidency to Vincente Fox in 2000. It remains to be seen if the 2020 elections will signal the ultimate downfall of the DC oligarchy, the renewal of the American Republic, and a general national recovery, or serve simply as a way-station on the road to terminal decay and decline.

A dim photo of the tilma of St. Juan Diego from 1988.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for the US and for Mexico.

The Miracle-Attended Death of Saint Ambrose of Milan as Recorded by His Secretary, Paulinus

Detail from The Death of Saint Ambrose by Bon Boullogne, ca. 1706.

Readers of this blog will recall that I have written frequently on the eventful life of Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church, including his acclamation as bishop even before he was baptized, his discovery of the remains of Saints Protase and Gervase, his conflicts with the Empress Justina, and his confrontation with Theodosius the Great.

On this feast day of Ambrose, let us examine some of the strange and portentous events which attended his death in AD 397, as attested by his secretary, Paulinus, who was witness to these things and wrote at the behest of Saint Augustine shortly thereafter. 

Writing in his Life of Saint Ambrose, Paulinus records that when Ambrose fell sick, the potential loss of so great a man was dreaded by all, including the military commander of the Roman west, Stilicho, who likely feared the instability that the naming of a new bishop of the important see of Milan might bring:

Click for more info.

But after these days, when a bishop was ordained for the church of Ticinum, [Ambrose] fell ill and while he was being confined to his bed for many days by this illness, Count Stilicho is reported to have said that with the departure of so great a man from this life, ruin would threaten Italy. Therefore after calling together into his presence the nobles of the city whom he knew were beloved by the bishop, partly with threats and partly with soft words, he persuaded them to go to the holy bishop and induce him to seek of the Lord the privilege of a longer period of life for himself. When he heard this from them he answered: “I have not so lived among you that I am ashamed to live nor do I fear to die, because we have a good Lord!” 

In the meantime, the Church authorities in Milan took to discussing who Ambrose's successor might be while the old man was on his sickbed:  

At the same time when Castus, Polemius, Venerius, and Felix, then deacons, were together in the farthest part of the portico in which he lay, and were conversing among themselves in such a low tone that they could scarcely hear each other, as to who should be consecrated bishop after his death, and when they spoke of the name of Saint Simplicianus, Ambrose as if taking part in the conversation—although he lay placed far away from them—exclaimed thrice in approbation: “Old but good.” For Simplicianus was ripe in years. When they heard this voice, they fled greatly terrified. But when he died, no other succeeded him in the episcopacy than he whom he had designated three times as good but old. And to this Simplicianus, Venerius was the successor, whom we have mentioned above, while Felix to this day ruled the Church of Bonona. And Castus and Polemius, however, nourished by Ambrose, the good fruits of a good tree, are performing the duties of the diaconate in the church of Milan. 

Other holy bishops from the region had premonitions of Ambrose's impending death, one of whom was wakened from sleep in time to give the last rites: 

In the same place, however, in which he lay, as we have learned from the report of Saint Bassianus the Bishop of the Church of Lodi who had heard it from the Saint himself, when he saw the Lord Jesus advance to him and smiling upon him. And not many days after he was taken from us. But at the very time when he departed from us to the Lord, from about the eleventh hour of the day until the hour in which he breathed forth his spirit, he prayed with his arms extended in the form of a cross. We indeed saw his lips move but his voice we did not hear. Honoratus also, the bishop of the Church of Vercelli, when he had lain down to rest in the upper part of the house, heard a voice calling him three times and saying to him: “Arise, hasten, because now he is about to depart.” And he going down offered the Saint the Body of the Lord and when he took and swallowed it he breathed forth his spirit, bearing with him a good viaticum so that his soul refreshed by virtue of this food now rejoices in the company of the angels, according to whose life he had lived on earth, and in the society of Elias, because just as Elias never feared to speak to kings or any powers, so neither did he for fear of God. 

The day after his death, the newly baptized claimed that they could see his spirit in the basilica:

And then at the hour before daybreak in which he died, his body was carried to the greater church and it was there on the same night in which we kept the vigil of Easter. And many baptized children as they were coming from the font saw him, so that some said he was sitting on the throne9 in the sanctuary, while others pointed him out with their fingers to their parents as walking, but the latter, on looking, were unable to see him because they did not possess clean eyes. And many related, moreover, that they had seen a star over his body. 

The unholy were also impacted by Ambrose's death and reacted accordingly:

But on Sunday at daybreak when, after the sacred rites had been performed, his body was being taken away from the church to be carried to the Ambrosian Basilica in which it was placed, thereupon a crowd of demons so cried out that they were being tormented by him that their wailing could not be endured. 

As was common among Christians, a huge crowd of the devout sought relics from the remains of the deceased saint, including what modern Catholics would term "second class relics": 

And this grace of the bishop remains even to the present day not only in that place, but also in great many provinces. Crowds of men and women also threw their handkerchiefs or girdles that the body of the Saint might in some way be touched by them. For the crowd at the obsequies was numberless, of every rank and of every sex and almost all ages, not only of Christians but also of Jews and pagans. Yet the ranks of those who had been baptized led the way because of their greater favor. 

Amazingly, a letter was received after Ambrose's death in which the correspondents claimed that they had seen a vision of him. This letter was dated, according to Paulinus, on the precise day of Ambrose's death. 

But on the very day on which he died (as the text of the letter says which was received by his successor, the venerable man Simplicianus, sent from the East to Ambrose himself as if still living with us, which letter even to this day is preserved in a monastery at Milan), he appeared to certain holy men, praying with them and placing his hands upon them. For the letter which was sent has the date, and when we read this letter we found that it was the day on which he died.

Paulinus goes on to describe other miracles associated with Ambrose after his death, including a vision in which he appeared to the general Mascezel during his campaign against the rebel Gildo in Africa. This vision heartened Mascezel and he was able to defeat the rebellion. For the complete account as well as several others, read Paulinus's The Life of Saint Ambrose in full. 

For details on Ambrose's early life, here's a quick video complete with a few images of Ambrose and his family from ancient and Medieval art.

December 2 ~ Saint Bibiana, 4th century martyr during the reign of Julian the Apostate.

Saint Bibiana refuses to sacrifice to the pagan gods, by Pietro da Cortona, AD 1626.
This fresco is from the Church of St. Bibiana in Rome.

On December 2, Christians commemorate Saint Bibiana, a Roman martyr of the 4th century AD. Unfortunately, the facts about Bibiana's martyrdom are few as the surviving account of her passion is considered unreliable, recorded as it was centuries after her death. We know for sure that Bibiana was an early martyr as a shrine was built for her in Rome which exists to this day. Sadly, the present-day Church of St. Bibiana sits adjacent to the Termini train station in a shabby section of Rome, complete with graffiti, even on the exterior walls of the Church itself. 

We know that the original church was built by Pope Saint Simplicius in the late 5th century as there is a notice in the Liber Pontificalis for his reign which states:

"He dedicated…another basilica of the blessed martyr Bibiana within the city of Rome beside the Licinian palace where her body rests." [Loomis, Liber Pontificalis, p. 105]

Alban Butler in his Lives of the Saints, attempted to disentangle the factual bits of the martyrdom account of St. Bibiana from the fictional interpolations of later ages. His account may be read in full here: December 2: Saint Bibiana, Virgin and Martyr

Street-side view of the church of St. Bibiana in Rome as it looks today.
It has been rebuilt and renovated extensively over the centuries so that little
of the original church erected by Pope Simplicius remains. 

In summary, Bibiana's family (father Flavianus, mother Dafrosa, and sister Demetria) were devout Christians and ran afoul of the prefect of Rome who was apparently a pagan. Flavianus, a man of some stature, was stripped of his rank, tortured and banished. He would die of his injuries a short time thereafter. Dafrosa was imprisoned in her house and later beheaded outside Rome. Demetria and Bibiana survived for some months and it seems that the prefect attempted to compel them to sacrifice to the pagan divinities. The women suffered starvation and torture when they would not accede to his demands. Demetria apparently expired while standing before the tribunal. Bibiana remained steadfast in her confession and were thereupon scourged to death.

In his account, Butler says that the prefect of Rome at the time was a man named Apronianus who was appointed to his position by the emperor Julian the Apostate. Apronianus is mentioned several times in the Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary historian of Julian who was favorable to him. In Book XXVI, Chapter 3 of this work, Marcellinus gives us a fascinating account of the goings on at Rome during Apronianus's tenure:

While the changing lots of the fates were unfolding these events in the Orient, Apronianus, prefect of the eternal city, a just and strict official, among urgent cares with which that office is often burdened, made it his first main effort that the sorcerers, who at that time were becoming few in number, should be arrested, and that those who, after having been put to the question, were clearly convicted of having harmed anybody, after naming their accomplices, should be punished with death. And that thus through the danger to a few, the remainder, if any were still in concealment, might be driven away through dread of a similar fate. In this work he is said to have shown special activity for the following reason, namely, that after his appointment by authority of Julian, when he was still living in Syria, he had lost one eye on the way, and suspecting that he had been attacked by wicked arts, with justifiable but extraordinary resentment he tracked out these and other crimes with great energy. 

In this he seemed cruel to some because more than once during the races in the amphitheater, while throngs of people were crowding in, he investigated the greatest crimes. Finally, after many punishments of this kind, a charioteer called Hilarinus was convicted on his own confession of having entrusted his son, who had barely reached the age of puberty, to a mixer of poisons to be instructed in certain secret practices forbidden by law, in order to use his help at home without other witnesses. And he was condemned to death. But since the executioner was lax in guarding him, the man suddenly escaped and took refuge in a chapel of the Christian sect. However, he was at once dragged from there and beheaded. But efforts were still made to check these and similar offenses, and none, or at any rate very few, who were engaged in such abominations defied the public diligence. 

But later, long-continued impunity nourished these monstrous offences, and lawlessness went so far that a certain senator followed the example of Hilarinus, and was convicted of having apprenticed a slave of his almost by a written contract to a teacher of evil practices to be initiated into criminal secrets. But he bought escape from the death penalty, as current gossip asserted, for a large sum of money. And this very man, after being freed in the manner alleged, although he ought to be ashamed of his life and his offense, has made no effort to get rid of the stain on his character, but as if among many wicked men he alone was free from any fault, mounts a caparisoned horse and rides over the pavements, and even now is followed by great bands of slaves, by a new kind of distinction aiming to draw special attention to himself. Just as we hear of Duillius of old, that after that glorious sea-fight, he assumed the privilege, when he returned home after a dinner, of having a flute-player play soft music before him.

However, under this Apronianus there was such a constant abundance of all the necessary articles of food, that there never arose even the slightest murmur about a scarcity of victuals — a thing which constantly happens in Rome. [Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, Book XXVI, Chapter 3].

It is especially interesting to note that the condemned charioteer, Hilarinus, sought refuge in a Christian church, and also that he was dragged out by the magistrates of Apronianus who, apparently, had little respect for said churches as places of sanctuary. This may also indicate that Apronianus was using the accusation of sorcery—a crime that even Roman pagans had condemned for centuries—as a way to incriminate Christians. It should be remembered that Julian had specifically enjoined his officers not to persecute Christians directly in the style of Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian, but to act against them with more subtlety.