One of the greatest Christian writers of our time was novelist Walker Percy. A satirical masterpiece he wrote on the theme of finding meaning in modern life was Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. That work inspired me when I wrote The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins. Specifically, I enjoyed his use of deceptively simple, harmless quizzes, of the kind found in pop magazines, to explore profound existential questions.

I finished each chapter in that book with such a quiz, allowing each reader to diagnose himself, and where he stood on the moral spectrum—which extends from a Deadly Sin at one end, to an equally deadly Neurosis (or moral overreaction) at the other. The goal, of course, was to find the Golden Mean in between, where true moral Virtues reside. For the quiz on Lust, see this excerpt online.

Now, in the service of sanity, virtue, and my own personal calling to red-pill the Body of Christ, I offer a quiz in that spirit, assessing how wisely each reader is interpreting controversial current events. Please answer honestly, tally your score, and see where you land on what psychologists nowadays call “the spectrum.” And don’t share your answers via electronic media because … oh, who am I kidding? The Deep State already knows who you are.

Up, Up and Away in My Beautiful Balloon

Question One: An apparent Chinese spy balloon floated over U.S. soil for thousands of miles undetected, then flew unmolested for several more days before it was destroyed by an embarrassed Pentagon. This week, several more flying objects of unidentified origin were detected and quickly destroyed. What does this really mean?

a) It means whatever White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says it means, and what our Mainstream Media report. They are dedicated to truthfulness, transparency, and avoiding misinformation. People who question them are disloyal, perhaps domestic extremists seeking to promote false narratives that could lead to violence. (10 points)

b) It means that we’re not spending nearly enough on high-tech defense equipment, or preparing adequately for our impending military confrontation with China and Russia simultaneously. Even though we haven’t spent enough, we will prevail in such a conflict, because we represent freedom. And if you don’t believe that, you probably belong in the same D.C. jail as the January 6 insurrectionists. (7 points)

c) Joe Biden is a Chinese spy balloon. It’s hard to see why they need to bother to send any others. (3 points)

d) It means that the “principalities and powers of the air” are trying to terrorize us, preparatory for the imminent arrival of the Antichrist. (0 points)

The Most Secure Election North of Guatemala

Question Two: The 2020 elections were disputed, with claims by Donald Trump that he and other Republican candidates were cheated, thanks to mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and other COVID-era lapses of election security. TIME magazine ran a triumphalist news story asserting that Facebook, Soros-linked non-profits, and various government agencies had cooperated to “protect democracy” from a Trump reelection win. The Mainstream Media poured scorn on any fraud claims, as did Fox News and even Newsmax — which interrupted Mike Lindell on-air to read an official statement denouncing his claims of election fraud. What really happened?

a) The 2020 elections were the most secure in history. Donald Trump’s claims to the contrary were totally unfounded, just more evidence of his aspiration to rule the U.S. as a dictator. Those who second his claims are dangerous “election deniers,” motivated by white supremacy, religious bigotry, transphobia, and vaccine misinformation. These critics should be investigated, infiltrated, and surveilled by federal law enforcement. You should trust Whoopi Goldberg on all this. (10 points)

b) The 2020 elections were honest enough, and at least they came out right. Trump’s claims are just more proof that he’s a rank amateur with no place in American politics. He and his redneck supporters should just go back to their NASCAR rallies and snake-handling “revivals,” and let responsible people like Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney manage our opposition to the Democrats. They know how to win elections, and win the hearts of the common man. You should trust Sean Hannity on all this. (7 points)

c) The 2020 elections were almost certainly stolen, and the way paved for that by intentionally induced panic over COVID. Blue state governors spiked COVID death statistics by dumping infected patients needlessly into nursing homes, killing thousands of American citizens. This justified their illegal “states of emergency” and allowed them to loosen voting procedures, preparatory to stealing the election for Biden and other Democrats. You should trust Steve Bannon on all this. (3 points)

d) Apart from the 2016 presidential race, all U.S. elections have been stolen for the past 40 years. We no longer have a constitutional republic, and states must secede from the Union, seizing control of nuclear missiles within their borders to defend themselves from attack by the Bidenist Occupational Government. You should trust Nick Fuentes on all this. (0 points)

An Unwanted Needle in Your Arm

Question Three: The COVID experimental gene therapies developed as “vaccines” after President Trump launched Operation Warp Speed have continued to prove controversial. A massive effort worldwide was made to coerce citizens in most countries to take these injections, all of which were either developed from or tested on clones of tissue cut from the organs of dying aborted babies. Thousands of people lost their jobs, hundreds of U.S. military personnel were dishonorably discharged, and millions were stigmatized and threatened with denial of life-saving health care, for refusing to take these “vaccines.” Hundreds of doctors, nurses, and researchers were ostracized, censored, and penalized professionally for seeking alternative treatments such as Ivermectin. What should we really think?

a) Of course the vaccines were developed responsibly and safely, by public-spirited corporations working with our must trusted public health authorities, such as Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. There is no need to see their private research documents for the next 70 years. Those who refused the vaccines weren’t exercising their privacy rights or insisting on the Nuremberg Principles. They were selfishly putting their private fears over the health and safety of their neighbors. They do not deserve to work alongside the responsible, vaccinated and boosted majority, and should be given lowest priority for health care. The federal government should keep their identities in a database, and monitor them for spreading misinformation, hate, and extremism. (10 points)

b) Yes, yes, the vaccines were perfectly safe and morally fine. Would we own so much stock in Pfizer and Moderna if there were any risk or moral hazard involved? The same conservative experts (the Ethics and Public Policy Center) who assured us the Iraq War was just and necessary have insisted that the abortion ties of the vaccines don’t matter. Their connection with abortion is “remote,” and not important enough to have you people causing trouble about. Geez, wasn’t appointing Gorsuch enough for you? Even Pope Francis signed on, and issued a Vatican coin celebrating the vaccination of kids. Look at the shiny coin and do what your pastor tells you (unless he’s one of those nut jobs). (7 points)

c) The experimental gene therapies that Big Pharma rushed into development were a massive and reckless overreaction to the Chinese bioweapon, which came about because of criminally irresponsible “gain of function” research that should be illegal worldwide. These companies colluded with globalist power brokers to trample our freedom and rake in profits, legally immunized from liability lawsuits. The reliance of these “vaccines” on organs pulled out of the still-living bodies of abortion victims should render them morally questionable to anyone not in imminent danger of death — akin to eating the human flesh of murder victims. (3 points)

d) The “vaccines” were intentionally developed to render people sterile, even kill them, as part of a globalist scheme to reduce world population and turn entire continents into biodiversity nature parks. (0 points)

Whee, Whee, Whee, It’s World War Three!

Question Four: When Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to let the captive nations of the Eastern Bloc withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, and elect democratic, non-Communist governments, the U.S. agreed in return not to expand NATO any closer to Russian borders. Since then, the U.S. has invited most of Russia’s neighbors to join that military alliance, which commits the U.S. to fight a war if any of them are attacked.

Ukraine was part of Russia for longer than the United States has existed, and includes vast territories full of Russian speakers who claim they are mistreated by the Ukrainian government. Russia claims that Ukraine allied to NATO poses the same kind of threat to Russia that a Soviet-allied Cuba, with nuclear missiles, posed to the U.S. in 1962 — which led President Kennedy to the brink of nuclear war.

The U.S. helped overthrow a pro-Russian elected Ukrainian government in 2014. Joe Biden used his leverage as vice president to remove a local prosecutor investigating his son Hunter’s massive financial investments in corrupt Ukrainian companies. Anti-Trump Republicans, followed by the Clinton campaign, created a phony “dossier” asserting that Donald Trump was a treasonous asset controlled by Vladimir Putin. The FBI and CIA colluded in promoting that false charge through most of Trump’s presidency. Trump faced impeachment for even trying to investigate Biden’s ties to Ukraine.

In the presidential campaign of 2020, anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats in the intelligence community colluded to convince the media that Hunter Biden’s laptop wasn’t genuine, but had been planted as part of “Russian disinformation.” According to opinion polls, this claim helped swing the election to Biden, amounting therefore to a 2014-style coup — albeit in the U.S. itself, not Ukraine.

Now the Biden administration is urging the United States to the brink of war on behalf of Ukraine — which has banned opposition parties, banned dissident churches, and enlisted thousands of neo-Nazis as its key front line fighters.

What should we conclude?

a) Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Peter Strozk, and John McCain were all being patriots when they warned us of Donald Trump’s treasonous collusion with Vladimir Putin. We must spend whatever resources are required, and risk any conflict with Russia, to promote democracy, diversity, inclusion, and equity in Ukraine. There is no reason to be distracted by Biden’s business ties to Ukrainian oligarchs. Those are merely foreign businessmen, and questioning them is xenophobic. The U.S. must keep the conflict going until every last document linking any Democrat to any Ukrainian perishes in the fires. In the meantime, we must turn Ukraine into a quagmire that bleeds Russia dry of manpower, regardless of civilian casualties. (10 points)

b) The U.S. must confront Russia as aggressively now as it did when it was ruled by Josef Stalin. Putin represents a grave threat to Western Europe and Western values, and we must be prepared to fight a Third World War if necessary to defeat him, and keep Ukraine’s borders where they were when Nikita Khrushchev redrew them in 1960. The arms companies in which we have invested will patriotically step forward and provide us the means to triumph as comprehensively as we did in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. (7 points)

c) The U.S. has no business interfering in the border disputes between two distant, economically insignificant and corrupt Slavic oligarchies. Instead of expanding NATO, we should be disbanding it, and leaving the wealthy Germans and French to finally defend their own continent. We ought to promote a negotiated peace in Ukraine as soon as possible, with borders adjusted to match the ethnic population of the given regions. (3 points)

d) Vladimir Putin is a hero of Christian culture and morality, battling against the Satanic abortion/LGBT machine that is the West. We ought to be praying for the total victory of Holy Russia over the worldwide Soros conspiracy that seeks to enslave us all. (0 points)

Score Yourself on the Sanity Quiz

30-40 Points: You might be too dumb or too deluded to live. Try to avoid operating automotive or other mechanized vehicles, or handling any objects sharper than a butter knife or Popsicle stick. There might not be much medical science can do for you at this point, but we ask that you avoid harming others by posting your opinions online, sharing your ideas with your children, or voting in any way.

20-29 Points: You enjoy being part of the “smart set,” and hearing your ideas echoed by the other folks at the country club. You consistently speak with vast self-assurance on subjects you know little about, convinced that it’s “more important to be confident than to be right.” You’re “moderately religious,” but “without all that nutty stuff.” Please, if your finances allow it, emigrate to some other, posher country, like Switzerland or Dubai. America doesn’t deserve you. Really, it doesn’t.

10-19 Points: You’re sane, and you’re paying attention. Cold comfort it will prove, I can tell you. You’ve realized that the world right now is the Enemy’s punchbowl, but at least you can be the dead rat floating in it. Stay strong, my friend.

Under 10 Points: You unwittingly took the black pill instead of the red pill. You’re living in a much more exciting and melodramatic world than most of us, waiting for the Reptilians to reveal themselves or the Nazis to emerge from the Hollow Earth and go to war with the Illuminati. Try to pray for guidance, and go ahead and take those prescriptions the social worker keeps offering you. They’ll make the Voices stop.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”