It’s Halloween, the day when we playfully face the darker side of existence. Some of our ancestors, newly Christianized, adapted their old feast day of the dead to the new truths of faith. Instead of dressing up as ghosts whom they’d once believed really prowled the earth, they put on mocking costumes. The monks who’d won them to Christ reassured them. The very next day was the feast of All Saints. The day after that they devoted to prayer for every soul.

So they pulled out gaudy outfits. They paraded around in a parody of their previous pagan feast. Sure, some of them were ambivalent. They still held old superstitions. But the Church at every occasion reminded them that the old gods had been defeated. Exposed as frauds or demons. Put to flight by the Light of Christ.

Any non-Catholic Christian who wants to read the Catholic case for Halloween can find it here. The key paragraph’s this one.

[Catholics] picture the Church in three unequal slices: a golden sliver, already enjoying beatitude; we dung-spattered soldiers still slogging through the trenches here on earth; and the vast military hospital [Purgatory] where most of us hope to end up, a very big tent indeed where souls heal from the damage they did themselves on earth and are made whole enough to be welcomed into Heaven. When we do ourselves up in costumes and tromp through the streets on Halloween, we are marching in a kind of Veterans’ Day Parade in honor of the sinners who went before us, not yet into glory but into the painful, therapeutic shadow it casts outside its doors.

Halloween Reminds Us of the Darkness

The cultural function Halloween’s supposed to serve is clear. It reminds us of the grim realities behind the sanitized surface of orderly normal existence. We all dance with death, and fend it off day by day. We all play for infinite stakes at a poker table where we never chose to sit.

Our opponents? The most intelligent spirit, apart from God Himself, ever created. And one third of the angels, eager to drag us down with them. But Christ is dealing the cards. If we follow His lead, we cannot lose. The question is, will we?

One sure way to make sure we don’t, that we ignore the Dealer and lose? To convince us the game isn’t real. That we’re playing for pennies, instead of infinities. Or that the game is fixed, and we’ll win whatever we do.

Believe either thing, and you’ll take your cues from the other players, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. You’ll ignore the broad hints or outright commands from the One who’s dealing the cards. You’ll bet your everything on losing hands, or fold when it’s time to stand firm.

We Play for Infinite Stakes

The real purpose that lurks behind the frippery and fun of Halloween? It’s a solemn reminder of the stakes we’re really playing for. And the fact that we really can lose, lose everything and forever. In the next life, our souls really might be grotesque, eternal horrors like the ones marching down the street. That hinges on our decisions, here and now.

Including our political decisions. We’d like to banish the shadows, pretend everything’s okay. It would be nice to pretend that the next election is between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Or Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. That is, between representatives of two mainstream, patriotic parties with a common vision of freedom and civic virtue, but different means of advancing them.

Wouldn’t life be easier if we could nod and smile at our friends and relatives who back the Democrats? If we could pretend that America’s playing for nickels and dimes this time? But we know different. We know that we’re playing for lives and souls, against principalities and powers. To say otherwise at this point isn’t simply avoidance or denial. It is lying.

Time for a Political Halloween, Where the Masks Come Off

So it’s time for a political Halloween. Time to peel back the friendly faces and bourgeois veneers that cover the howling abyss of iniquity. To that end, I have an idea. Each major Democratic candidate should have to dress up in the costume of one of the evil ideas he publicly favors. Not in some mock-scary costume, such as a Christian might wear to mark the triumph over Satan. No, in a genuinely hideous guise that warns the voters what each one’s offering.

• Joe Biden, the addled, unprincipled creeper who demands Holy Communion from priests despite his advocacy for abortion? Dress him as Teddy Kennedy, complete with tight, rumpled suit, empty Jameson’s bottle, and dangling car keys.
• Kamala Harris, secret policeman in service of Planned Parenthood? She should dress as an employee of KFC, but the Styrofoam container she carries should be full of fake baby body parts.
• Pete Buttigieg, friend to fetus-collecting abortionists of Indiana? Dress him as the Indian Goddess Shiva, with a necklace of 2,246 tiny skulls. That cross-dressing is also a nod to his sexual politics.
• Elizabeth Warren, faux Indian, genuine socialist? Put her in the worst dime store Indian squaw costume available. She can chug and stiffly offer her husband a bottle of “fire-water.”
• Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union and defended the Sandinistas? Dress him up as a “Zek” from a gulag camp, with pot of clearly labeled “Fish Head Stew” around his neck.
• Beto O’Rourke, who wants to tax to death churches that won’t play footsie with the LGBT lobby? Dress him in the little green suit favored during the Cultural Revolution, with a cap bearing Mao’s Red Star. His plan for permitting only “patriotic” churches that tow the Party line is clearly of Chinese origin.

But the worst is still to come. A video has appeared online that I hesitate to recommend. It’s sickening, even Satanic.

Imagine MAGA Supporters Laughing at a Lynching

Imagine if a video emerged of conservatives enacting an old-style lynching. If on a stage at a bar a man in degrading minstrel blackface goggled his eyes and licked his lips while a noose went around his neck. And a crowd of evangelicals and Trump supporters cheered and laughed, as the noose closed and the “black” man died.

The existence of such a video would rightly create an enormous scandal. Every Republican, and Christian minister, in America would rightly step forth and denounce it. And every MSM outlet would be playing it, 24/7.

You know that’s what would happen, don’t you?

Well, now I must tell you that a comparable video exists. Except that it’s much more pertinent, much closer to what the Democrats actually stand for. No Republican politician favors lynching, or segregation, or white nationalist politics. Not one member of Congress, or of the Senate, and no one in the White House.

But virtually every Democrat running for president favors the LGBT agenda, and abortion till close to birth. Most of them favor drag queen story hours for children. So I think that every one of them should be forced to comment on this video.

This video itself? It shows a drag queen up on stage who’s visibly pregnant, cutting out her fetus and holding it up triumphantly. This transgender “woman” is doing what Planned Parenthood asked for. She’s “shouting her abortion.”

If you really must see the video, it is here. [WARNING: Extremely graphic, disturbing content.] I recommend you don’t watch it all the way through. But do consider forwarding it to friends who might vote Democrat. Ask them what exactly is wrong with it. Don’t take “tasteless” for an answer.

Why NOT Show this at Drag Queen Story Hour?

Apart from it’s being “icky,” what exactly does each Democrat find objectionable in it? What principled reason would they have for not showing it to children? Why shouldn’t it be featured in the next drag queen story hour?

The Democrats don’t have answers. They’ve embraced the Darkness. They’re racing like Gadarene swine over the cliff, and they hope that we’ll blindly follow them.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration.