This is not as much about Mutterings around the place as comments that we need to consider. The first is that the church, as an institution, is vulnerable. To convergence.

It has always been vulnerable to convergence. For people will enter it with an agenda of destruction. People will try to appease those around them. There is a cult of being nice. And thus, we should expect, not merely bad popes and patriarchs and bishops, but very bad preachers in megachurches. And they will deceive many.

Particularly if men do not protect the church.

We really must disabuse ourself of the notion that the Church is immune to the destructive whims of bad men. When the Lord tells us that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church, we must understand ‘prevail’ to mean a final victory. Temporary victories can easily be won against the Church, we see them throughout history. Is an internal coup some special form of defeat that the Church is immune to? Not in the slightest. As I said, the Church transcends its priesthood and bestows favor upon those who follow it in righteousness. We are believers in the degeneration of society, and for many of us, this has a metaphysical quality, a corrosion of a deeper plane of existence, inevitable in history and limited in duration. Just as laborers and merchants and even ‘monarchs’ are subject to this corrosion, so is the priesthood.

The question, therefore is how. And this week we have some examples. Peter Thiel is funding Wesearchr, after taking down Gawker.

Funding libel suits is a tactic.

Operation Disrespectful nod — writing emails to sponsors telling them about ethical violations of people they either find directly or via magazines — has led to many journalists freelancing (aka begging on Patreon).

Briefly summarized, WeSearchr is an online information marketplace that crowdsources funds for desired information bounties. First, someone puts up a bounty for some information — say, evidence of wrongdoing by a politician. Then, the bounty gets funded according to how much money people are willing to pay to hear it. Someone else – a researcher, whistleblower or journalist – then has a serious and obvious incentive to acquire the information. If they do, they get paid and the desired information is released. Somebody out there hiding something gets skewered. The gory details can be read here.

There are a lot of start-ups with snappy slogans and big, pie-in-the-sky dreams, but WeSearchr is one that is, at best, understating its significance. The home page proclaims: “WeSearchr crowdfunds the truth.” That sounds innocuous enough to an honest man. Liars might take notice, however. There are a lot of them out there, and in a late-stage democracy such as ours, lying is something between a national pastime and the structural basis of society. Such a society ought to watch the truth warily.

To such a society, the truth might be positively explosive.

Now, this is going to blow up a few memes. Because the truth is getting around. The major channels are being ignored. And the logic of the left is failing.

Locally, this is showing up in more convergence. The Labour party is sitting under 20% in the polls and has a memorandum of understanding to work with the Greens. There is of course, one problem… the greens cannot win, and last election, when it seemed that Labour would govern with them, people voted Tory, in part to keep them out.

Of course, this is big in Twitter.

But, as the UK Labour party could tell you, twitter is not votes. The tide is turning, and nations want, again, to be nations. For good and for ill. Both of the parties led by the smug mugs above are competing for the votes of teachers, nurses and academics. Not tradies, not waitresses, not street cleaners, builders. And definitely not farmers, who make the milk and meat we sell to bring in the goods that make life nice in our frozen island in the South Pacific.

The more we quietly speak home truths and ignore the powers that preach words written by their masters, the less power the spin doctors have. And the closer we will come to reformation.