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Invasion
of the
Soul
Snatchers
By Phil Ropp
Radio New Jerusalem
For Christian
Democracy Magazine
September 1, 2013
Diane
Reidy, who in recent days has become the most famous stenographer in
America, is also the latest public example of life imitating art, as
she spoke a warning reminiscent of Dr. Miles Bennell's to the U.S.
House of Representatives and, it turns out, the nation and the world...
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In
the 1956 sci-fi cult classic Invasion of the Body
Snatchers,
Dr. Miles Bennell returns home from a medical conference to find his
hometown of Santa Mira, California, in the midst of a silent and
invisible, yet growing and deadly crisis. "At
first glance, everything looked the same," he tells his audience
in a voice-over that sets up the story about to unfold. "It
wasn't. Something evil had taken possession of the town." Indeed,
something had. And, of course, what unfolds is the now
familiar tale of seeds that arrive from outer space, take root in a
nearby farmer's field, and produce seedpods that replicate the
townspeople and replace them with inhuman, unemotional duplicates
while they sleep. A boy's mother isn't his mother, yet here she is,
quietly and calmly the same as ever. A young woman's uncle isn't her
uncle, yet there he is, unfazed and about his familiar chores as
usual. And on it goes...
For
Dr. Bennell, the peaceful and familiar facade of this small town,
"any-town" America gradually gives way to the horrific
realization that these alien duplicates are coldly, effectively and
relentlessly about the task of taking over first Santa Mira, then the
nation and the world, one person, one family, one town at a time.
Through resolve, sheer determination and luck, he ends up being the
one yet to be replicated citizen of Santa Mira to make it out of town
and to the highway, where he frantically and hysterically runs from
car to car with his urgent warning:
"Help!
Wait! Stop! Stop and listen to me!... These people who're coming
after me are not human! Look, you fools, you're in danger! Can't
you see?! They're after you! They're after all of us! Our wives,
our children, everyone! THEY'RE HERE ALREADY! YOU'RE
NEXT!"
Diane
Reidy, who in recent days has become the most famous stenographer in
America, is also the latest public example of life imitating art, as
she spoke a warning reminiscent of Dr. Miles Bennell's to the U.S.
House of Representatives and, it turns out, the nation and the world.
Mrs. Reidy is the wife of non-denominational pastor Dan Reidy, and
this couple, along with their seven year old twin daughters, present
to us an image of the all-American family that would fit in
seamlessly in the fictional world of 1950's Santa Mira, California. In
period dress and hairstyles, we can easily see Dan as a local
pastor, and Diane as a secretary. In fact, she'd be a nice fit as
the receptionist in Dr. Miles Bennell's office. And given Diane's
remarks from the House floor, we would certainly be safe in assuming
that no insidious alien organism had yet grown her duplicate in a pod
and assumed her identity -- which does happen to the good doctor's
receptionist in the film.
Here
is how this event was preserved on Wikipedia
for all posterity -- until it was deleted
and created a momentary, last minute editorial crisis. Fortunately,
the original
post
was preserved intact on the Day's
World
blog:
"Diane
Reidy
is an official stenographer
for the U.S.
House of Representatives.
On the evening of October 16, 2013 Reidy was forcibly removed from
the house when she interrupted the proceedings by speaking into a
microphone to all those assembled. The late night session of the
house of representatives was in the process of counting votes for
legislation to end the government
shutdown
and raise the debt
ceiling,
averting a possible unprecedented default
on the U.S. debt. Reidy's outburst occurred at the culmination of a
major fiscal and governmental crisis, coinciding with historically
low public approval of congress.
"The
media reaction to Reidy's statement described it as a 'rant', a
'meltdown' and 'crazy'. In contrast, the fiscal crisis created by
the politicians cost the United States an estimated 24 billion
dollars, shut down major parts of the civil service for 16 days, and
damaged the country's reputation internationally."
Here
is a reconstructed transcript
of what Diane Reidy said:
"He
will not be mocked! He will not be mocked! The greatest deception
here is this is not one nation under God! It never was! Had it
been, it would not have been... No, it would not have been... The
constitution would not have been written by Freemasons! They go
against God! You cannot serve two masters! You cannot serve two
masters! Praise be to God, Lord Jesus Christ..."
Like
Diane Reidy's remarks, those of Dr. Miles Bennell concerning the
alien presence in Santa Mira can also be referred to as a "rant,"
a "meltdown" and "crazy." This scene is often
described using just these terms, or ones very much like them. And,
like Dr. Bennell's remarks, this makes her's no less true within the
context of the U.S. House of Representatives than his were within the
context of Invasion of the Body Snatchers -- and no less
frightening.
Since last
month's column
contained elements of a rant on some Catholic media, it seems no more
than right to point to a couple of Catholic writers who made some
fair and cogent observations concerning this incident. Thomas
McDonald, who writes the God
and the Machine
blog, had this to say about Diane Reidy's comments in a piece
entitled, "The
Congressional Stenographer and the Holy Spirit:"
"Honestly,
is there anything in that paragraph that says, “nuts” to you?
Anything at all? Because I got nothing here.
"Like
Reidy, I’m a bit … cautious about the idea that America’s
founding enjoyed some kind of divine sanction.
"Even
if it did, what of it? The one nation in history that surely enjoyed
the favor of God was Israel, and the Old Testament is one long story
about the Israelites wandering off in search of strange gods while
the One God yanks her leash to bring her back in line.
"As
for the Freemasons, Reidy isn’t the only one troubled by the
involvement of a secretive organisation with occult trappings being
present at the founding, and shaping the destiny of the nation to
such a degree that their esoteric symbolism still marks our money and
monuments. There’s a reason Catholics and Freemasons don’t mix."
And
Mark Shea, who writes the Catholic
and Enjoying It blog,
along with numerous pieces for other publications (including this
one),
had this to say about Mr. McDonald's article:
"One
of the many reasons I love Tom McDonald is
that he doesn’t go for the cheap and obvious, but
tries [to] have human empathy for odd people. In
that, he is deeply Catholic since we are a Church of odd people. The
world says, 'Don’t stick out or be strange. Fit in!' Even the most
non-conformist worldling tends to be part of a herd of
independent minds all bravely facing the applause of their peers. The
Faith celebrates true eccentrics. Cuz now and then they turn out to
be prophets."
Amen
to that. The Old Testament is also one long story about the
Israelites that points this truth out repeatedly -- and for these old
time prophets, "eccentrics" is putting it rather kindly. Such modern
eccentrics as the fictional Dr. Miles Bennell, and the
very real Diane Reidy, are all the more effective and powerful as
prophets because they possess a genuine, traditional American
normalcy from which they proclaim a message that is, by contrast,
widely perceived to be insane. They must be in some kind of
meltdown. They must be crazy. Or they just might be prophets.
For
Diane Reidy, proclaimed by her husband and virtually all who know her
to be a paragon of this genuine, traditional American normalcy, her
behavior was both a deviation from this norm and inspired by God, as
evidenced by this
October 17 quote
from The
Daily Beast:
"'For
the past 2 and 1/2 weeks, the Holy Spirit has been waking me up in
the middle of the night and preparing me (through my reluctance and
doubt) to deliver a message in the House Chamber,' Reidy told Fox.
'That is what I did last night.'"
And,
in an
interview with Michael Daly of The
Daily Beast, Dan
Reidy concurs with his wife's understanding of this episode:
"'Waking
several times a night feeling that God’s just been pressing on her
to open a Bible and get into his word,' Dan Reidy says. 'Reading a
Bible is not foreign to us, but getting up in the middle of the night
definitely is. It’s just not a part of our life.'"
"The
circumstances were so unusual as to make a command from on high seem
all the more real to her.
"'If
that’s not’s (sic) God’s spirit…' Dan says."
While
some in Catholic and other Christian media are at least open to
giving Diane Reidy the benefit of the doubt concerning the
possibility that her self claimed divine inspiration might just be
genuine, Mr. Daly feels it necessary to insert the somewhat
self-conscious disclaimer, "The circumstances were so unusual as
to make a command from on high seem all the more real to her,"
before proceeding to finish the quote from Dan Reidy that indicates
his belief that it was exactly that: a command from on high; "God's
spirit." This represents the underlying assumption of the
secular, mainstream media which is that God does not insert Himself
into the lives of mortal human beings in this way, and that anyone
who believes differently, and behaves accordingly, is delusional,
crazy, and must be in the midst of a psychiatric meltdown. Michael
Daly's fear of even the appearance that he might accept the reality
of the Reidys' as his own is such that he feels the need to insert an
editorial disclaimer to the contrary in mid-quote so as to make his
own sanity -- and the position of the publication he writes for --
completely understood. And the dark and ironic humor latent in this
is found in the idea that a publication that calls itself The
Daily Beast goes
to such pains to reassure the public that it puts no stock in divine
revelation.
The
secular, mainstream media is merely reflective of the government of
the United States which sanctions it. This whole situation with
Diane Reidy is perhaps most interesting in that it points out exactly
how much this is so by demonstrating how tightly our spiritual
reality has come to be defined for us by the government, and how this
definition is then spun to the waiting public as an assumed and
unassailable truth. Anyone who believes in God, studies the
Scriptures, and prays and receives answer to prayer that inspires the
proclamation of the revealed truth of God in public (and it gets no
more public than the halls of Congress) is unequivocally and
certifiably insane: a danger to oneself and society at large. As
Catholics and Christians, this should concern us because the Biblical
tradition in Testaments both Old and New, and the history of the
Church and the world for the past two millennia, are soaked in the
blood of those who have done exactly this, including, and especially,
our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ Himself.
It
is also interesting that this episode has taken place as the motion
picture The
Fifth Estate
is quickly fading into oblivion as the unqualified flop of the year. It
deserves this fate. However, it is a well made and thought
provoking film as well as one which is highly compromised. It poses
then answers the question of why Julian
Assange
and his WikiLeaks
empire had to be brought down, eventually coming to focus on the
revealed atrocities of the U.S. government and military in
Afghanistan, and the way in which the publication of classified
documents and private diplomatic correspondence endangered the lives
of innocent individuals. In the end, it is Assange's most trusted
collaborators who determine that the greater good is served by
destroying the WikiLeaks database to assure more innocent lives are
not jeopardized. This also assures that this unique window into the
clandestine, highly unethical and grossly immoral functioning of not
only the U.S. government, but the entire global community, is closed.
And the film leaves us with the message that the phoenix that will
arise from the ashes of the WikiLeaks experience will be a Fifth
Estate
that will so inform the Fourth
so as to assure we, the people, an even greater access to the truth:
a laundered, tightly defined political truth, designed to dovetail
neatly with our tightly defined and anti-Christian spiritual reality.
It is a propaganda piece within a propaganda piece, and the public
isn't buying it. Good for them.
The
goal of this column remains that of pointing out that the dilemma we
face in America runs far deeper than debating whether it is the
Democrat or the Republican devil that is the greater of the evils we
face. It is instead the devil they both serve: the devil who tells
us Diane Reidy is crazy, and the devil who points to Julian Assange
and tells us to "pay no attention to the man behind the
curtain." It is the devil whose minions pull feverishly at the
levers of worldly power, and write to us of smooth things and deceits
in the mainstream press.
The
point Diane Reidy illustrates for us should be well taken: The
United States was founded by Freemasons
and deists,
and it never was intended to be a "Christian" nation
(especially in the way that this has been defined for us by the
so-called "religious right"). As Catholics, we should
quickly recognize the former as a
holdover from the ancient pagan mystery religions,
and the latter as heretical
to the highest degree:
the Freemasons as a longstanding and anti-Catholic occult secret
society, and the deists as Protestants who had, by the time of the
founding of the United States, theologically and spiritually removed
God so far from the human equation that it is truly inaccurate to
call them Christian. What they came up with was the idea of an
elective government that would mirror the hearts and minds of the
people, and that would ideally reflect the deepest and most noble
inner workings of the best of these hearts and minds. When these
hearts and minds are Christian, so goes the country. And, when this
ceases to be the case, the result is what we have now: a government
that has lost its Christian identity because the soul of the majority
has ceased to be Christian in any meaningful way. In a government
founded upon the principles of being "of the people, by the
people and for the people," when said people lose their souls to
the rampant and jealous secularism of the post-modern culture -- a
culture that has moved on to a place in time in which the Cross is no
longer perceived to have any relevance -- then the government of, by,
and for these people will reflect this reality. And so it does, and
so Diane Reidy called out those who are the representatives of this
soulless populace as God so directed her to do. And the lesson
stands for all of us to see.
Before
the release of Invasion
of the Body Snatchers, the
hopelessness of the story was seen as so stark that the studio
insisted that an alternate ending be added to the film that offered a
ray of hope. In this alternate ending, Dr. Miles Bennell's seemingly
insane story is validated by an accident in which a truck has
overturned on the highway and spilled its load of strange, alien
seedpods. The psychiatrist evaluating him suddenly realizes the
truth of his strange tale and, in turn, alerts the authorities. Diane
Reidy has gone to Washington D.C. and learned, to her horror,
that these authorities are possessed of an evil similar to that which
afflicted the residents of mythical Santa Mira, California; an
insidious evil that snatches not merely the bodies of its victims,
but their very souls. And the true terror in her tale is found in
the greater realization that these authorities are merely the
representatives of their constituencies, populated by like and
countless soulless automatons, who have chosen, of their own free
will, to sacrifice their faith in Jesus Christ upon the altar of an
inhuman and godless secularism.
Because
of this, the United States stands deeply mired in crisis at the
crossroads of history. The government is comprised of two soulless
parties, each of which offers a hypocritical and false lip service to
God, and neither of which looks to heaven for guidance. They offer
alternatives designed to put the people at each others throats, and
they offer no real solutions, merely different routes to the ruin of
the nation: a looming disaster of Biblical proportion that includes
economic collapse, governmental breakdown, and apocalyptic social
upheaval. Diane Reidy has warned us and, like Dr. Miles Bennell, she
has been shuttled off for psychiatric evaluation. And when Julian
Assange turned over a truck full of seedpods on the information
superhighway, the soulless scriveners of Hollywood came up with The
Fifth Estate,
which stands as a cop at this intersection of information and
history, and tells us all to move along; that there is nothing to see
here.
What
remains to be seen is whether or not those last Christians among us
will react or merely go quietly into that last goodnight. Are there
still those who have not fallen asleep in their faith and awakened to
find their souls absorbed coldly, effectively and relentlessly into
the godless secularism of these last days in America? Are there any
who will not succumb to the calming suggestion of those who have
already lost their souls; who urge them to just relax and let the
godless future come -- that it's a good thing? To those like Diane
Reidy, who remain awake, unchanged and true to Christ, the haunting
words of Dr. Miles Bennell echo down through time and space from an
imaginary highway leading away from the mythical town of Santa Mira,
California:
"Help!
Wait! Stop! Stop and listen to me!... These people who're coming
after me are not human! Look, you fools, you're in danger! Can't
you see?! They're after you! They're after all of us! Our wives,
our children, everyone! THEY'RE
HERE ALREADY! YOU'RE NEXT!"
Invasion
of the Body Snatchers quotes
from Wikiquote: Invasion
of the Body Snatchers (1956 film)
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