Stalin, Transgenderism & Reinventing Reality

on June 5, 2015

A new biography of Stalin’s daughter records that her understanding of him as a monster solidified when she overheard her father on the phone, when hearing that a Soviet Jewish leader was murdered on his own orders, instructing that “Mikhoels was killed in an automobile accident.” After hanging up, Stalin repeated to his daughter, “Mikhoels was killed in an automobile accident.” And so he was! Stalin and his police state had the authority to decree reality, and any who openly doubted that supposed reality were treated as the executed Jewish leader.

Dictatorships, especially totalitarian ones, recognize no objective truth, only what is determined or accepted by the state or ruling elites. Truth is a tool of control, enforced by coercion. The primary tools against this subversion of fact are the transcendent authority of religion, and what is observable in nature, confirmed by conscience. Christianity broadly understands that every conscience has been gifted by God with some notion of reality, however corrupted by fallen nature. When the supposed fatal car accident of the Soviet Jewish leader was announced, most thoughtful people must have known inwardly it was not so. But their interior common sense didn’t matter. Stalin and the Party controlled reality, and all but martyrs bent to their truth.

Obviously the United States is not a totalitarian police state by any means. But our postmodern secular culture, as it becomes more divorced from the constraints and wisdom of religion, is becoming more detached from reality and more angrily intolerant of any dissent from its evolving fantasies. Any skepticism about the secular elites’s latest shibboleths is treated with horror and vociferous denunciation, followed sometimes by coercive efforts to silence or drive from public life the dissenters if they refuse to go silent.

This month’s coercive cause is the demand that not only Bruce Jenner is a woman, but that he was always a woman, even if he did not fully claim that identity until recently at age 65. Of course, it is now required to point out, Jenner is not now, was never, and will never be a woman. Neither he nor anyone else can make him a woman. But the ideologically rooted falsehood that he is and has always been a woman cannot withstand or tolerate pointing out the truth of what everyone deep down, including Jenner himself, really knows, which is that he is a man. Christianity teaches that on the Last Day, Jenner’s body, which is eternal, will resurrect and stand before God as a man.

The hectoring pretense that Jenner was never a man, even when as a famous male athlete his masculine body appeared on millions of cereal boxes, magazine covers and television sets, almost recalls the Stalinist habit of doctoring photos to remove politically incorrect persons who officially no longer and never existed. Stalin’s police state once employed thousands to literally splice from encyclopedias, history books and old newspapers any record of de recognized persons.

Transgender ideology does not have a police apparatus per se, but it has captured one of our great political parties, much of the media, academia, eventually much of government, including probably the judiciary, and of course much of corporate America, which is never slow to prostitute itself to avant guard forces of popular culture. Children will be instructed in public schools that gender is malleable and divorced from physical reality. Liberal clergy will preach it to their empty churches. Professional witch hunters will expose, attack and try to browbeat into silence, if not criminalize, dissent from transgender orthodoxy.  

Ideologies premised on deep falsehood by definition require coercion and threats. When the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco recently described transgenderism’s variance with church teaching, and reality, a Religion News Service reporter mocked his “judging, judging, judging.” Of course judging, and punishing, transgenderism’s dissenters is not only fine, it will become, and maybe always is, a requirement for entrance into the ranks of cultural elites.

What’s the cure for this rancid ideology that wars on many fronts against reality and liberty? Public dissent and mockery are important tools against pretentious falsehoods. Silence, especially from fear or indifference, only offers complicity. The Church, if committed to the Gospel and to genuine service to humanity, will be bold in reminding us all, despite the threats and harangues against it, that popular culture, even if armed with political and economic power, doesn’t have the power to reinvent reality. Truth flows from the throne of God, Who is Himself Truth. Faithfulness to and love for Him will require telling the petty cultural Stalin wannabes of our day, no, it was NOT a car accident.

  1. Comment by David F. Miller on June 5, 2015 at 8:58 am

    Mark, Good column. I generally agree with you; however, on what basis do you claim that Bruce will appear before God as a man?

  2. Comment by Beau Jackson on June 5, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    He is a man.
    It’s impossible to fool God.

  3. Comment by MarcoPolo on June 5, 2015 at 4:05 pm

    For all those who have met with God to determine exactly how He must think, please document those moments so we can all learn how to be crazy! Sheesh!
    And to realize that Caitlyn Jenner will resurrect as a man is certainly something I’d pay to see!
    Personally, I think he’s rather attractive! Certainly more so than his wife.

  4. Comment by fsdgfd on June 7, 2015 at 4:37 pm

    ummm….the fact that he is a man. Was that a serious question??

  5. Comment by David F. Miller on June 15, 2015 at 2:50 pm

    Apparently society is ready to take him/her as a woman.

  6. Comment by Dennis Linthicum on June 12, 2015 at 8:02 pm

    This happens to be scientific reality. All of the trillion, or so cells in his body are screaming with XY chromosomal structures. Remember, males have two distinct sex chromosomes (XY) which actually contain one’s DNA. We tend to refer to DNA as the fingerprint, but the chromosomes are the hand where the fingerprints reside. This is true regardless of how one happens to “feel” about it. (Mutations aside because Bruce is not a mutant.)

    Mark’s analysis relies beautifully on God’s revelation, our scientific understanding of natural law and common sense to make his point. He notes, in fact, these are the only weapons at our disposal.
    “The primary tools against this subversion of fact are the transcendent authority of religion, and what is observable in nature, confirmed by conscience.”

  7. Comment by brookspj on June 5, 2015 at 9:49 am

    Tired of the old Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, the IRD moved on to the more trendy Reductio ad Stalinum irrelevance fallacy. Same fallacy, same defiance of logic, new dictator. Bravo!

  8. Comment by Palamas on June 5, 2015 at 10:22 am

    Asserting a logical fallacy is not the same thing as demonstrating it. Mark explains why he analogizes the transgender movement to Stalinism, and I certainly agree with him regarding the parallels that he mentions. Care to try again and actually show why the parallels are invalid?

  9. Comment by Karmasue on June 14, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    Whew! Just a Stalin-type transgender crime. For a minute there, I thought Caitlyn had committed murder, or something that us fallen secular people might consider evil.

  10. Comment by Pudentiana on June 11, 2015 at 4:49 pm

    Regrettably, there are many examples of evil one can choose from in this life. Evil is identifiable when you really want to avoid it. Mr. Tooley has used a good instance which reflects the character of evil as long ago was expressed by a serpent in a garden. Denying the Truth just doesn’t work for long.

  11. Comment by DD on June 5, 2015 at 10:07 am

    It’s mental totalitarianism. Lie, and force people to accept the lie. It degrades both the liar and the one being lied to. A culture where truth is up for grabs is not a good place to live.

  12. Comment by Eric Cureton on June 5, 2015 at 11:21 am

    Wait… Stalin vs Caitlyn = Truth vs Lie? So, a person who feels that they are one gender trapped in the body of another genders body is compared to someone who killed anyone that didn’t agree with the thinking of the party? If others don’t agree with your way of thinking, would that make you Stalin? Would you erase them from existence because they believe differently? Tell me again why this is your problem, why you have an issue with what others do to their bodies, but does not cause malice to you? Are we forcing our beliefs onto others? Because it’s not something you would do to yourself, does that give you leave to criticize others for their beliefs? Now onto religion….

  13. Comment by Palamas on June 5, 2015 at 11:43 am

    You’ve missed the point. This column isn’t about methods (Mark specifically says that America isn’t a police state). This is about a movement that wants to stifle all dissent, and consign its opponents to the fringes of society (at best). It is about a movement that seeks to transform a culture and will brook no opposition to its goals, and that has captured the elites of the culture to do its bidding. If you can’t understand that, it’s probably because that movement has captured you as well.

  14. Comment by Beau Jackson on June 5, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    Yes, trannies DO force their beliefs on others, they want people to go along with their fantasy that they are the opposite sex. If Bruce Jenner wants to pretend to be a woman, fine, no problem, but these poor sick people want the rest of us to address a “he” as a “she,” which means we’re liars. Reality should be non-negotiable. If a guy tells me he is a navy admiral and that I am to address him as “Admiral,” I won’t.

  15. Comment by MarcoPolo on June 19, 2015 at 8:55 am

    You will always have the right to dismiss other people’s reality, so don’t fear the mutual liberties guaranteed by our (shared) Constitution.

    If a person legally changes their name, do you deny them that? If a person undergoes cosmetic surgery, do you judge them for being disingenuous?

    These individuals aren’t pretending…they are simply trying to live the life they feel is their true identity.
    So what harm have they caused YOU?

  16. Comment by ivanvivian on June 6, 2015 at 2:20 am

    Dumbass! Take a look at his DNA. It is that of a man, and will always be that of a man!

  17. Comment by MarcoPolo on June 19, 2015 at 8:48 am

    Do you have privilege to Caitlyn’s medical records?
    Who’s the “dumbass” now? And isn’t that Christ-like language? Sheesh!

  18. Comment by MountainMan on June 5, 2015 at 11:43 pm

    The elite globalist left has been conducting a war on reality for some time now.

  19. Comment by Richard S. Bell on June 12, 2015 at 3:51 pm

    Jesus said, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The Apostles — Paul, especially — drew various contrasts between the flesh and the spirit. These contrasts were very important to the Reformers. How much has traditional Christianity lent to the plausibility of transgenderism’s assertion that one’s flesh does not determine one’s true, spiritual, sexual identity?

  20. Comment by David F. Miller on June 15, 2015 at 2:50 pm

    HUH??

  21. Comment by Richard S. Bell on June 16, 2015 at 6:03 pm

    Maybe “HUH?” means you do not understand my question. If so, I put it in other terms. Transgenderism seems to assert that one’s sexual identity (male or female) is not determined by one’s flesh. Traditional Christianity seems to assert that one’s kingdom identity (Satan’s or God’s) is not determined by one’s flesh. Both, therefore, distinguish spirit from flesh and to some extent privilege spirit. Christianity came first. Has Christian culture been unusually hospitable to transgenderism?

  22. Comment by MarcoPolo on June 19, 2015 at 8:45 am

    Christianity does not predate Transgenderism. There were humans loooong before there was religion!

  23. Comment by Richard S. Bell on June 19, 2015 at 12:58 pm

    Since the Fall, I think, there have been “transgendered” humans. But “transgenderism” is an ideology of very recent times.

  24. Comment by MarcoPolo on June 19, 2015 at 5:12 pm

    Not being familiar with your terminology, I am wondering what is “the Fall”?
    The proverbial fall from grace? Old school!

    And hairsplitting on the Trangender-ISM versus those who are/were Transgendered seems rather petty.

    And I’m quite sure they existed long before any Religion came along. Old terminology, or new terminology, the “cat is out of the bag”, or should I say, out of the closet?

  25. Comment by Beverly Stevens on June 13, 2015 at 3:15 am

    SHARING on http://www.fb.com/reginamagazine

  26. Comment by Karmasue on June 14, 2015 at 2:06 pm

    And so you compare Stalin’s heinous order, and subsequent cover-up of the ordered death of a Jewish leader, to transgenderism. Now there’s a real “leap of faith” for ya! When Caitlyn and Stalin are standing side by side awaiting judgement (not yours, of course since we already know what that is), I wonder which one will get the eternal fire and brimstone hell?

  27. Comment by Raina Senae on March 30, 2017 at 2:22 pm

    yikes. respecting other people’s individualism is not thought policing. i feel like it’s a core tennant of our democracy and it’s sad to see a democracy blog fall into the same old patterns of human fear of the other.

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