Demons in the Wild, Part 2

Demonic First Principles and Human Suffering

May 22, 2022

This is Part 2 of a series. Please read Part 1 before proceeding.

Until last week, the scariest book I ever read was The Amityville Horror. Someone gave it to me as a Christmas present in 1977. I was in seventh grade. My sister married just before Christmas, and the post-nuptials drew all the drinking-age people from our house almost every night between Christmas and New Years. That left me alone in our big, 100-year-old frame home every evening. So, I read…

3 years ago · Bill Hennessy

Part 1 ended with a tweet:

Gus Lloyd @GusLloydTweets

Today on my radio show a guy called in to justify his stance on abortion. He was upset at me for saying “killing a baby.” I said, “What else do you call the intentional taking of an innocent human life?” He just screamed, “Stop saying kill!” They hate the truth.

Nothing really special about the tweet, but it was emblematic of many tweets I’ve seen in the past few years. They follow a similar pattern:

Someone says something benign
Someone else plunges into a psychotic rage because of it

The benign statements could be anything, such as Gus Lloyd’s observation that abortion is the “intentional taking of an innocent human life.”

We saw similar psychotic behavior when Trump won in 2016, when Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, and when Robert Mueller exonerated Donald Trump and his campaign from the Russia collusion fraud.

These psychotic rages occur almost exclusively among leftists. When you dig into their online backgrounds a bit, you almost always find they have these things in common:

Hard left politics
Hatred of tradition
Hatred of the United States
Hatred of religion
Hatred of families, especially their family of origin
Hatred of work
Hatred of responsibility
Hatred of beauty
Hatred of order
Hatred of nature

Some of these incidents are undoubtedly the result of actual, physical psychosis. Most, however, are likely the result of diabolic influence of form—something more intense than simple temptation.

I say this, in part, because exorcists worldwide have reported a marked increase in the number of valid, confirm cases of demonic obsession, oppression, and possession in the past six years. Moreover, these exorcists state the time required to relieve a person of demonic attacks has gone from days to months. And an increasing number of such cases take years to resolve.

Accepting that the exorcists are right, let’s look at how demonic attack leads to the human suffering seen in these leftists who lose their minds over benign and common words and events.

Demonic First Principles

In Dominion, Fr. Ripperger conveniently lists the first principles of fallen angels.

Principle 1: Anything but God
Principle 2: Inversion
Principle 3: Lie, even when the truth sounds better
Principle 4: Anything but moderation
Principle 5: Never reveal what you know
Principle 6: Perpetuity

Frankly, that list could serve as the platform of the 2024 Democratic National Convention. It is the observed policy of hard leftists everywhere, and all six principles are applied to every issue causing the destruction of Western civilization.

Let’s look at these principles in action the USA, but let’s hold the first for last. You’ll see why.

The Principle of Inversion

Transgenderism is the attempted inversion of the most basic fact of life. Carried to its surgical extreme, transgenderism involves the mutilation of the genitalia to resemble in some degree its inversion.

More broadly, everything the left accuses its enemies of doing, the left is doing and has done and intends to do again. We saw this with Russia collusion fraud where Hillary Clinton and her campaign colluded with Russians to create a false dossier of alleged Trump crimes, then accused Trump and all around him of colluding with the Russians.

How about so-called “disinformation.” The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, all the major news outlets, and all Democrat politicians accuse conservatives of spreading disinformation. Recently, the DHS created a Ministry of Truth, whose sole purpose was to remove from the internet any news or opinions in conflict with the “approved” truths. Yet, it has been the left and its minions in the FBI and CIA that has perfected the art of disinformation. The CIA and the Defense Advance Research Project Agency (DARPA) have been testing mass formation psychosis techniques on the public for at least 15 years. They brag about it. In DARPA’s own words (from circa 2012):

DARPA launched the Narrative Networks program to understand how narratives influence human cognition and behavior, and apply those findings in international security contexts. The program aims to address the factors that contribute to radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency, and terrorism among foreign populations, and to support conflict prevention and resolution, effective communication and innovative PTSD treatments.

What could be more inverted than abortion where a child is murdered in the very sanctuary of its mother’s womb? Thus, the left turns the safest place on earth into the most dangerous. And turns the person humans are engineered to trust most—their mothers—into their primary and most lethal enemies. (Read about mothers, natural law, and baby formula.)

You can probably think of a dozen more instances of inversion that occur every day, where good is proclaimed evil and evil good. While inversion is almost exclusively practiced by the left, inversion is always of the devil. And it always involves lying.

The Principle of Always Lying

Everybody lies.

When people lie, they usually do it because they believe lying will produce a better result than the truth.

Example: You’re 15 and you spent the night at a friend’s house. The next day, your mom asks you, “Were his parents home?” You say “Yes,” even though his parents were in Jamaica. Everything’s cool, right?

But that’s not how demons operate. Demons have what psychologists call Obsessive Defiance Disorder. They will lie even the truth would be better for them.

If a demon’s mom asked if his friend’s parents were home, he’d say “no” if they were home and “yes” if they weren’t. Demons will always lie unless compelled to tell the truth by Jesus Christ. A demon will tell a lie even when the truth is in his best interest. Like Joe Biden.

I watched a few clips of various Biden Administration officials testifying before Congress last week. Almost every answer they gave to every question was an obvious lie. Commentators even said they’d been better off telling the truth, but they lied nonetheless. For example, US Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland refused to admit that gasoline prices are too high when asked repeatedly by a Republican Senator. Also, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, continues to claim the FBI is not targeting conservative parents who speak up at school board meetings, even though FBI agents have admitted to harassing parents who speak up at school board meetings. And Joe Biden continues to blame inflation on Vladimir Putin even though every major newspaper and leftist “fact checker” has concluded that’s a lie.

Why do demons and some people lie even when they know they’d be better off telling the truth?

Remember that Jesus is the truth. To a demon, telling the truth is to reflect Christ. But demons refuse to reflect Christ, so they lie even if the truth would be better for them.

In mortals, this tendency to lie even when the truth would produce a better result is often observed in people diagnosed with Opposition Defiance Disorder, or ODD. People with ODD, too, see the truth as the thing some authority figures wants, therefore, they will refuse to comply. A person with ODD who did not break the lamp might well falsely claim to have broken the lamp to avoid satisfying the inquisitor. The satisfaction gained from denying another’s desire for the truth is worth the punishment for breaking a lamp—even though they didn’t break the lamp.

I find it interesting that so many demonic principles—and their effects—mirror human behaviors and personality disorders. That’s not to say all personality disorders are demonic in nature, but I wouldn’t deny it, either.

The Principle of Anything But Moderation

According to Fr. Ripperger, “virtue lies in a mean between excess and defect.1” Because demons hate virtue, they push people to do things to excess or not at all. Thus, the addict goes from total immersion to total abstinence. Yet, neither extreme has virtue in it. Perhaps abstinence frees the addict of the consequences of abuse, but moderation is in the mean, not the extreme.

Almost every leftist movement of the past 100 years has been the personification of Anything But Moderation. From the temperance movement of the early 20th century to the green movement today, moderation is prohibited. You can’t drink a little—you must not drink at all. You can’t just cut back on waste—you must produce nothing.

We see “Anything But Moderation,” ironically enough, in social media moderation policies. For over a year, nothing was allowed that in any way conflicted with or questioned the opinions of certain health personalities and institutions. Nothing.

We also see this diabolic principle manifest in schools and businesses and sports. Instead of handling exceptions, institutions simply ban whatever they think might occasionally cause exceptions. For example, fans at St. Louis professional sporting events are never allowed to stand unless told to stand by the public address announcer. (My nephew was inelegantly ejected from a Blues playoff game some years ago, not for standing, but for defending a row of college students who were standing to cheer the team in overtime. And a few years ago, an usher told me if I stood up again, she would have me ejected after I jumped thinking the Blues had scored a goal. Moments later, the PA announcer warned fans “for the safety and comfort our guests” to refrain from standing at any time while the game is underway.)

This demonic principle also appears in the LBGTQ world, doesn’t it? A few years ago, we were told only to refrain from ridiculing a dude in a dress. Now, we can be fired—and in Canada and the UK, arrested—for using a pronoun someone doesn’t like. If you follow the progression, soon everyone will be forced to undergo sex reassignment surgery whether we want to or not. In other words, whenever the demon-influenced left begins demanding tolerance, it ends demanding universal participation. You may not simply leave others alone; you must ratify their every whim and do as they do.

Anything but moderation.

The Principle of Never Revealing What You Know

“For demons, knowledge is power,” writes Fr. Ripperger, “because if you know something you can manipulate and control others who do not know.2”

First, I feel I must confess I have operated by this principle many times. I did not know it comes from the devil, and I will, with God’s grace, refrain from using knowledge as a weapon.

Oh, how often we see our modern world apply this principle, not just in political matters, but in every walk of life. In the business world, we operate in almost total secrecy, and I’m not talking about trade secrets and intellectual property. Business people do not share information unless they have to, even with their closest colleagues. Once you mention it, you lose control. Your idea will be taken away and given to someone else. Or hidden away forever—buried in a drawer with the other ideas. So, you hold your thought until there’s a crisis you can solve.Every business crisis is the result of knowledge withheld until a catastrophe creates a need for ideas.

This principle infects every level of the corporation, from the board of directors to the facilities maintenance staff. We keep secrets from our bosses, our co-workers, and our subordinates. We keep secrets from customers. We dole out bits of information like random pieces of a jigsaw puzzle—uselessly incomplete—to see how people react. If people react in a way we can’t control, we keep the knowledge hidden.

In the business world, careful knowledge control is considered a virtue. I wonder if that attitude would change if larger numbers of people knew that “knowledge is power” is a demonic principle.

We were warned of this principle in the Bible. Luke 2:34-35

Simeon blessed them, and said to his mother Mary, Behold, this child is destined to bring about the fall of many and the rise of many in Israel; to be a sign which men will refuse to acknowledge; and so the thoughts of many hearts shall be made manifest; as for thy own soul, it shall have a sword to pierce it.

And, again, Luke 12:2:

What is veiled will all be revealed, what is hidden will all be known;

Look around. The FDA wanted to withhold test results of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for Covid for 75 years. The DOJ refused to release even to defendants tens of thousands of hours of security video from the January 6 protest. The Department of Homeland Security kept hidden its Ministry of Truth until after the ministry had been launched and a director hired. For two years, the government knew masks do nothing but cause breathing problems, but refused to admit the fact. Dr. Fauci knew Covid came from a lab in Wuhan, but he refused to even address the issue—and Twitter, Facebook, and Google banned any mention of a lab leak for a year.

Abortionists have tried make it a federal crime to show a pregnant woman an ultrasound of her own baby. They fly into a rage at photos of videos of a baby in the womb. They try to block scientific evidence of fetal heartbeats, brainwaves, and responses to pain.

We also see this principle of hiding things among the Catholic hierarchy. Bergoglio’s famous “not one word,” for example. Or the bishops and cardinals who block on Twitter anyone they suspect of orthodoxy—which another word for Catholicism. Recently, Archbishop Wilton Cardinal Gregory, the racist and pro-LGBTQ ordinary of Washington, DC—blocked Matt Gaspers, an orthodox Catholic blogger. Gaspers is not allowed to even see the heresies Gregory posts. (Sin loves the dark.)

Makes you wonder what Gregory’s saying that he doesn’t want Gaspers to hear, doesn’t it?

In each of these cases, the culprits know the truth but do everything in their power to prevent its release.

If we are to be children of light, we must refrain from practicing the demonic principle of never revealing what we know. Rather, we must share our knowledge even if our knowledge is imperfect. Even if we hold only a few puzzle pieces, laying them on the table might elicit more pieces from others.

As Christ told us in Luke 12:2 above, our secrets will be revealed. The sooner, the better.

The Principle of Perpetuity

Fr. Ripperger says, “This basically consists in trying perpetuate one’s influence at all costs.3”

This is why demons tend to cause generational problems in which their influence is passed from one generation to another by perpetuating their possession or influence within families, communities, etc.

Nowhere is this demonic principle of perpetuity more obvious than in the US government. As an example, read this passage from a recent Brownstone Institute article on the CDC:

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was founded in 1946 as a backwater quasi-governmental agency with a negligible budget and a handful of employees tasked with a simple mission: “prevent malaria from spreading across the nation.”
Seventy-five years later it has metastasized into a multi-billion dollar bureaucratic behemoth that oversees and controls virtually all aspects of public health programs, policies, and practices across the United States.4

To give you an idea of how powerful the CDC is, most doctors who work for corporation will knowingly injure a patient following CDC guidelines rather than adjusting treatment for a particular case.

The rancid Department of Education has similarly metastasized from a clearinghouse of educational information under the Eisenhower administration to a massive bureaucracy that engenders gender dysphoria on kindergarteners as student achievement plummets.

The Department of Defense evolved from the Department of War (a much better name) into a global bludgeon used to coerce behavior in the United States and abroad. Same for the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Transportation, the godawful Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services—essentially every function of government.

And, look at how proponents of child sacrifice enshrined their diabolic sacrament into the Constitution without so much as edit marks! Seven upperclass white men in 1973 simply imposed a new “right” into a 200-year-old document to perpetuate an evil ritual that always results in at least one death.

Fr. Ripperger suggests that demons use generational influence to build a platform for their wickedness. Thus, Planned Parenthood supports every demonic cause, just as the teachers’ unions led the charge in forcing abortion, contraception, and gender dysphoria into the primary grades of elementary schools.

I would go even further and say the concept of a “perpetual corporation” is manifestly the work of the devil. Through a series of Supreme Court decisions culminating with Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission in 2010, the courts have determined that corporations are fully human, possessing all the privileges, immunities, and rights of a human person. Similar to Roe, the court invented this Constitutional “right” out of whole cloth. The Constitution is silent on the matter.

But the second- and third-order effects of Citizens United have effectively reintroduced slavery. Human beings are owned by a few corporations, and we mortals are almost powerless to break those change or escape to a free state. The reason is perpetuity.

Almost every corporation—from my little LLCs to Disney—are formed as “perpetual corporations.” But humans are born with an expiration date of about 80 to 100 years in the best of cases. The fact that you and I are going to die relatively soon gives Disney an unfair advantage in all things. Mortals simply cannot compete with immortals.

To level the playing field, we might want to think about a Constitutional amendment to either deny human rights to corporations or to cap the life of a corporation at 100 years. Either remedy would restore some balance to what is now a boxing match between a heavyweight champion and a child.

When you wonder how so many formerly great American companies have gone so “woke” and evil, look to the demonic principle of perpetuity for answers. Corporate executives want to perpetuate their companies. Demons want a platform to steal souls from God. It’s a match made in hell.

Which brings us to the pinnacle of demonic principles.

The Principle of “Anything But God”

Where Western Civilization was built on the a priori cause that God, the Father, created heaven and earth, and Jesus Christ, His only Son, was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, our culture now holds an a priori belief that God is, at best, irrelevant, if He exists at all.

What’s worse, the Roman Catholic Church under the current pope, Bergoglio, seems eager to adopt the world’s new motto: “Anything but God.” We saw this in 2020 and 2021 as the pope and every ordinary5 in the world gleefully shut down the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and all sacraments, including Baptism, to please the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum. We see this “anything but God” principle in the Church’s hatred of Tradition and of the constant teachings of the Church since the time of the apostles.

Last week, a German bishop apologized to the world for the Church’s long teaching of St. Paul’s letters regarding homosexuality, as if he knows better than St. Paul who wrote to the Romans 1:24-27:

That is why God abandoned their lustful hearts to filthy practices of dishonouring their own bodies among themselves. They had exchanged God’s truth for a lie, reverencing and worshipping the creature in preference to the Creator (blessed is he for ever, Amen); and, in return, God abandoned them to passions which brought dishonour to themselves. Their women exchanged natural for unnatural intercourse; and the men, on their side, giving up natural intercourse with women, were burnt up with desire for each other; men practising vileness with their fellow men. Thus they have received a fitting retribution for their false belief.

Then, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

Yet you know well enough that wrong-doers will not inherit God’s kingdom. Make no mistake about it; it is not the debauched, the idolaters, the adulterous, it is not the effeminate, the sinners against nature, the dishonest, the misers, the drunkards, the bitter of speech, the extortioners that will inherit the kingdom of God.

When I first read this first principle of demons, a thousand recent headlines flashed in my mind at once. From the wickedness of the Catholic hierarchy to the “separation of church and state” to the school board wars over sexuality and race hatred being taught in public schools, to abortion, to vaccine mandates and mark-o-the-beast passports—too many to list, and right down to the monkey pox pandemic (which is spread almost exclusive through male-on-male sex.)

Above all the demonic principles Fr. Ripperger lists stands this one, just as it stands above every controversial issue in the United States today. We will try anything but God. We will trust anything but God. We will please anyone but God. We will obey anyone but God.

When the abortionists storm the Supreme Court building, they will do so under the banner, “Anything But God.”

When the US government orders a nationwide monkey pox lockdown it will justify the order by “anything but God.”

And this principle explains so many problems. The time we spend on social media not thinking about God. The time we spend on children’s activities not thinking about God. The time we spend discussing politics without thinking about God. The money spend on Disney World vacations so our kids don’t feel like they missed out without thinking about God. The Sundays we spend golfing or gardening instead of thinking about God. The hours we spend glued to the hockey game without a thought of God.

I will beat my head against a problem for weeks before thinking about God and asking for His help. Multiply me by 300 million, and you see why we’re in the trouble we’re in. Our society will try anything but God. Thus, most of our efforts are futile and all of our victories pyrrhic. All we do without God reminds us of the demons in Matthew 12:25 who are driven out but return with numbers to make the man’s life more miserable than before:

Thereupon, it goes away, and brings in seven other spirits more wicked than itself to bear it company, and together they enter in and settle down there; so that the last state of that man is worse than the first. So it shall fare with this wicked generation.

Demonic Principles and Human Suffering

One thing you’ll notice watching Libs of TikTok or news stories and interviews with leftists: they’re not happy. Ever. Their laughter is usually derisive, their smiles tinged with wickedness. Often, their hair, makeup, and other external representations seem designed to disgust, offend, or insult anyone looking upon them.

These leftists live frustrated lives. They are, in Epictetus’s words, “hindered and disturbed.” Hindered from getting what they crave; disturbed by the conflict between their will and their intellect.

But aren’t we all?

I want many things that I don’t have. Just this morning, while I was working on this post, I found myself scrolling around on a Jeep parts e-commerce site looking for new ways to make my Jeep look more bad-ass. I want to upgrade my fender flairs, but I really need to replace the stock rear bumper, too. And I don’t want to plunk down enough money to do both.

This conflict between my will and my intellect (which tells me not to splurge on silly Jeep parts) leaves me hindered and disturbed. (If you can’t tell, I love those words.) In that state, I write poorly, so I stop writing and make a cup of coffee. Then I play with the dog. Anything to avoid writing.

Anything but God.

Until this moment, I did not consider the possibility of turning the matter over to Him. But now I have. Hindrance gone. Disturbance vanquished.

I am fortunate that I have recourse to God. I am blessed to have been gifted some amount of faith. I am privileged to have studied salvation economics and know that I can offer up my hindrances and disturbances and get back to my work.

Those poor creatures of TikTok do not have such recourse. Or, they do have recourse to God but don’t know it. Or their path to God is blocked by demons who’ve grown comfortable vexing and influencing their human slave.

I know of a young man who has decided he is a young woman who later decided he was a man. Twice round the cycle: man, woman, man, woman, man. I believed that pretending he was a woman would fill the painful yearning he’d felt his whole life. So, I left home and lived as a woman, hormones and all. But his pain soon returned—sevenfold worse than before. So, he quit the hormones, cut his hair, and continued life as a man.

This was good up to a point, but the yearning to be a woman returned. So, he repeated the process. He was happy for a time pretending to be a woman, but soon the pain returned. Being a woman wasn’t masking it.

I’ve read too many similar accounts of gender-dysphoric people to count. And they all remind me of Matthew 12. We kick the demons out, but they return because we filled the void left by the departing spirits with anything but God. And God was what was missing all along.

Fr. Ripperger’s Dominion includes a chapter on the hierarchy of angels. At creation, God made the hierarchy perfect, but a third of the angels fell which created gaps. The gaps were filled by good angels doing double duty.

Some theologians speculate that saints replace the fallen angels. Perhaps when every fallen angel has been replace, the world will end. Perhaps taking an angel’s place is the reason we are on earth.

Reading Domion, one cannot help but see how human civilization reflects the angelic world. Humans naturally create hierarchies that work almost exactly like the angelic hierarchy. Fr. Ripperger notes the similataries between the choirs of angels and the organizations structure of an army.

Likewise, we can see the heavenly hierarchy in our lives. In our souls. And in our suffering.

We suffer most because of a void—the absence of necessary part. We suffer cold when the gas is shut off, or when a child dies. Transgender people suffer for lacking the chromosomal arrangement of the opposite sex. Alcoholics suffer from having nothing to drink. Racists suffer from their inability to coerce people whose skin they despise.

Or, maybe, those sufferings are the brain’s flawed hypothesis. Maybe we experience loss or emptiness and our brains offers answers based on available knowledge.

Or, maybe, sometimes, we feel the void and a demon offers an explanation for the pain. “You’re sad because there’s nothing to drink.” “You’re picked on because you were supposed to be a girl.” “You’re scared of the future because you’re pregnant.” “You’re restless because you’re missing something on the internet.”

Have a drink. Cut off your penis. Kill the baby inside. Scroll Twitter for an hour.

You feel better. For a moment. Then, you feel worse. While you were scrolling through Twitter, they shut off the gas.

So what’s the answer to human suffering?

“Anything but God,” the world tells us. And we listen to the world because God made the world and God is good, therefore the world must be good. And a good world wouldn’t give me bad advice, right?

Anything but God.

And, yet the void is there. Or a demon. Or a demon and seven of his friends, each more vicious and cruel than the first. Demons who fell at creation leaving a void in heaven. The void you were meant to fill.

Human suffering, then, would be simply the absence of God and the presence of demons that rushed into to fill the void.

The screaming, crying, threatening abortionists you see are empty of the only thing that can fill them, quiet their screams, dry their tears, and neutralize their threats.

The deeper I look into myself and observe my own behavior, the more I realize I act like a demon. I want reality to be other than it is. I don’t want to disobey God; I want Him to substitute His judgement for mine. In matters large and small, I want to live in an alternate universe where God is God but with different rules. In short, I want to carry my baggage back to my original place in the angelic hierarchy.

The Good News

Unlike demons (fallen angels), our will is not action. And our will can, by the grace of God, change.

I like to think that my purpose on earth is, indeed, to replace a fallen angel in that hierarchy. Perhaps that’s what St. Paul was talking about in Romans 11:17:

The branches have been thinned out, and thou, a wild olive, hast been grafted in among them;

Paul was writing about the Jews who failed to recognized the Christ and the gentiles who took their place. But isn’t the Kingdom of God also known as the New Jerusalem? If we were grafted into the olive tree of Israel, wouldn’t it fit that we can be grafted into the hierarchy of angels?

If so, everything I suffer is because I am not in that place yet. Life is a drudgery because ascending to an angel’s throne is a might steep climb. But only when making the climb can I feel any sense of accomplishment and worth. Only when I pull myself up to a new, higher ledge do the demons stay away from my countless voids.

Anyone who lifts progressively heavy weights knows that squats are painful and the brain can do nothing under the bar but push it up. You can’t think about problems at work or an argument with your wife or why the gas was cut off. You can do nothing but push.

As we work toward our place in that angelic org chart, we can only avoid suffering by putting our all into the climb. It’s one, long squat at double our body weight. And it’s the inversion of the first demonic principle. Nothing but God.

In part 3, we’ll try to understand why the largest chapter in the book is devoted to explaining Authority and Power in natural law and divine positive law. I will tell you that I thought about skipping this chapter (too boring), but I’ve learned that it’s impossible to understand just how broken we are without understanding authority and power.

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