A number of my readers have written to me recently, mentioning that the world has gone mad. I suspect they have been slow to notice.

True, more of life every day is determined by the rulings of the “spittle-flecked nutties” — increasingly in positions of power. A friend sent me this morning, for instance, an official poster from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, instructing all faculty and students, whether familiar with each other or not, to begin every conversation with her/his/their/zir/hir name, and preferred pronouns. (Seehere.) The humour, while real, is entirely unintentional; the instruction is deadly serious. Note that it makes sense, given the delusional premiss, that one’s sex is something that one chooses. That premiss is insane, and what follows from it becomes necessarily more and more strange, until it passes from laughable to frightening.

Or as I’m writing this, another email arrives, with links, and subject line: “What are they smoking in Indiana?” And another — this from Ottawa — about a proposal from the consortium of Canadian universities to expel from membership all that ignore their latest, bat-feathered, “diversity” guidelines, thus depriving them of all public funding and degree recognition. (See immediately above.)

Madness of this sort is contagious, as the history of the world attests; but as Our Lord advised, we must stay aloof from it. That is to say, do not allow yourself to be pulled into the vortex of evil, while it spins. (“Resist ye not evil.”) Item: do not let the spittle-flecked nutties turn you into a spittle-flecked nutty.

Sanity is precious. Someone has to laugh. The Saints and the Martyrs are all of them agreed, that we are not the playthings of the gods. We are in better hands, and should remain cheerful — come what may.