From the Narrow Desert

On April 17, Ann Barnhardt launched her spinoff site BarnhardtMemes.com, her inaugural post being "Barnhardt Meme Barrage 17 April, ARSH 2024." I discovered this this morning (April 18). The second meme in the barrage just happens to prominently feature gold bars in China:

That's kind of a confusing cartoon, actually. Shouldn't "currency wars" between the US and China involve the respective currencies of those two countries? Instead, we have gold (helpfully labeled "gold") and unlabeled banknotes which I assume from the color are US dollars. Where does the renminbi fit into the picture? And what exactly is being depicted? The Chinese buying lots of gold from the US, I guess, but how is that a currency war? I guess the upshot is that you, too, should invest in gold like those savvy Chinese, preferably via Merk Investments, LLC.

My post about Chinese gold bars was part of a larger cluster of syncs centered around bread, including my April 15 post "The Bread Cult," about a fictional cult that worships bread. An anonymous commenter said that reminded him of a Chick tract ridiculing the Catholic belief in transubstatiation (i.e., that the Eucharistic bread, or Host, literally becomes the Body of Christ). It was for this reason that another meme in Barnhardt's barrage caught my eye:

Sorry, Ann, but this is another crap meme. That thing on the right, by the way, is a monstrance, used for displaying the Eucharistic Host, but I know that only because of my research on Tarot iconography. I've attended Catholic Mass a dozen or so times but have never seen such a thing in person, and I'm not sure how many people would find it immediately recognizable. (Apparently, it is used primarily for something called the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament -- i.e., from the non-Catholic's point of view, worshiping bread.) A picture of a priest holding up a wafer would have communicated the idea much more effectively.

Beyond that, though, what is the point of the meme? Watch out, if someone supports abortion, that's a subtle warning sign that they may not believe in transubstantiation? Whose mind is that going to change? Is there anyone who might be willing to compromise on a little thing like killing babies but draws the line at voting for anyone who doesn't believe the sacramental bread literally becomes the flesh of Jesus Christ?

The idea that a baby in the womb is a person and shouldn't be killed is natural, spontaneous, and emotionally powerful. The idea that a piece of bread is actually God is counterintuitive and bizarre. It's not effective to argue for the former by assuming the latter. So strange does transubstantation seem to most non-Catholics that the cartoon (slightly modified) would almost be more effective as a pro-abortion* meme:

The message in this modified version is clear: People oppose abortion only because they subscribe to kooky religious dogmas that don't make any sense. If they try to tell you a clump of cells is a person, keep in mind that they probably believe a piece of bread is a person, too! (The reason I say this would almost be an effective pro-abortion meme is that transubstantiation is a distinctively Catholic belief, while the anti-abortion movement in the US is heavily Protestant.)

* I refuse to use the idiotic euphemisms both sides insist on.

"Maskies are the real science deniers" implies that the peer-reviewed "findings" of careerist researchers are the standard of truth.

"It takes way more faith to be an atheist than a Christian" implies that "faith" is something irrational and undesirable.

(On the other side, an atheist saying, "The Bible doesn't say anything about abortion," implies that the Bible is the source of moral standards.)

I know such statements are often an attempt to "meet people where they're at," or to prove something by argumentum a fortiori ("Even if I accept your assumptions, you're still wrong!"), but I think the actual effect of such rhetoric is almost always to further entrench assumptions that ought to be challenged directly.