Why the World Is Going Mad

Charlie and Erika Kirk

Demonic possession is real. It is as Chesterton supposedly said, “When people cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.”

This is something Jesus said in the Gospels: 

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” – Matthew 12:43-5. See also Luke 11: 24-5.

The only way to avoid delusion is to make sure your house is occupied. Occupied, that is, by a permanent relationship with God. Descartes, too, reasoned this through, step by step. God alone is our assurance of the reality of anything else. Otherwise we cannot tell delusion from reality.

Belief in God is therefore our sole protection against delusion. Which is again why Christianity spread so quickly throughout the ancient Roman world, and then through Northern Europe, and then through the Americas, and now through Africa: because it was able to efficiently cast out demons, which is to say delusions, which were then so prevalent. 

And this is again why “mental illness” and mass psychosis has again become so prevalent in recent years, since the early 20th century. It is because with scientism, faith in God has been in decline. This way madness lies.

Our intuition tells us things are not random. We see the patterns, especially the brightest among us, showing some intelligence is obviously behind events. Things are not random. We have been lied to that they are. If we will not accept that God and the Devil are behind it all, we will resort to conspiracy theories, which become paranoid delusions: the classic schizophrenic delusions. It is the CIA. It is the Jews. It is the greedy capitalists. It is aliens. It is the WEF. It is the Vatican. It is the Jesuits. They are out to get me. They are trying to control my thoughts.

It is demons trying to control your thoughts. They may at times use other people for their purposes.

Not that all conspiracy theories are wrong. Which makes it all the harder to resist the temptation to see them everywhere.

I believe Candace Owens has recently fallen off this wagon, and us an illustrative case in point—despite the fact that she has fairly recently publicly converted to Catholicism. Not all who say “Lord Lord” really believe. I don’t think her conversion has been sincere—more like an expression of anti-semitism in reaction to her employers at the Daily Wire.

To my mind, the clearest evidence Owens is off the glory train is her conviction that Brigitte Macron, the French president’s wife, is a man. Suppose she is. Why do we care? Why is it anyone else’s business? This is gossip, which is always at best a temptation to the sin of calumny. And this looks like the sin of calumny. That Candace is going so hard after this shows she is at best ignorant of her supposed Catholic faith. 

But it is an impressive, compelling conspiracy theory—and salacious. Imagine—the entire French government and the world press has been subverted! What else might this explain?

Ownes has also, of course, gone after the Jews. She responded “Jesus is king” to Ben Shapiro in a heated exchange, seeming to me to use her religion as a club. Not good-hearted, at best.

I always take antisemitism as a sign of the Devil. The Jews are, after all, God’s chosen people. The Christian Bible says so; Jesus himself affirms it in the gospels. And all the evidence of history says so: the miraculous Jewish survival and record of accomplishments for civilization in general say so. Anyone who goes after the Jews is explicitly going against God, therefore, and committing the sin of Cain: envy.

But the Jews are the convenient universal scapegoat if you are craving a good conspiracy theory. They are a closed group, and they are amazingly influential.

Finally, Owens is now going after Turning Point USA, accusing them, and Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika, of conspiring to assassinate Charlie Kirk.

I can see why she thinks so. My intuition tallies with hers in finding Erika Kirk’s reaction to his death profoundly insincere. And it is all delightfully salacious. It is always self-gratifying to think ill of successful people. For women, of a beautiful and accomplished woman like Erika Kirk, a former beauty queen.

But look at the practical effects of Owens’ campaign: it is attacking the victims of a crime in their time of grief. It is calculated to destroy Kirk’s organization, his legacy, and all that he was trying to do. If Erika Kirk did not assassinate Charlie Kirk, Candace Owens is trying to do so. This is the sort of calling-card the Devil leaves in his wake. He is always doing the opposite of what he pretends to do.

Owens’ conviction that French intelligence and/or Israel and/or the CIA or someone are trying to assassinate her is the next step in her paranoia.

It is not lovely to watch.