In the early chapters of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, we are introduced to the winsome character Stiva Oblonsky. With a smile and self-possessed mannerisms, he draws the attention and affections of many. He comes across as likeable, amiable and nothing out of the ordinary – as one of us. Yet, the first thing we read is that Stiva has thrown his household into chaos.
We immediately learn that he has been unfaithful to his wife, Dolly. He’s had an affair with their children’s former governess. We go on to learn that Stiva is remorseful of the exposure of the affair but has not one iota of remorse about what he has done: “He repented only that he had not done a better job of concealing this fact from his wife.”
When confronted by a note exposing his adultery, Stiva worried more about his response than about the hurt he caused his wife. The narrator gives us insight into that moment:
“Instead of taking offense, disavowing it, justifying himself, begging forgiveness, even feigning indifference – anything would have been better than what he did do! – his face, quite involuntarily (“the reflexes of the brain,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich, who was fond of physiology), suddenly, and quite involuntarily, broke into his usual good-nature, and thus foolish, smile.”
Stiva passes the blame for the mess he’s in: “That foolish smile of mine is to blame for everything”. It is his smile that first endeared him to Dolly. And now, as a response that appears to mock remorse, the smile allows Dolly to begin to see what lies behind Stiva’s beguiling demeanor.
Stiva’s evil is not the blatant action-taking evil. History has a record of such people. Rather, it is the absence of good. Stiva forgets, neglects, and fails to act. We get a sense of this in Part III, chap. 7:
“No matter how hard Stepan Arkadyevich (Stiva) tried to be a concerned father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.”
Remembering is unresolved grief. It’s not for a committed hedonist such as Stiva. He would never embrace suffering. And remembering brings guilt and guilt is suffering, so he is willing to tolerate a sense of sin to get on with life. Life’s unpleasantries are a bother. His forgetfulness is achieved with a smile and social acceptance. Stiva “was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone”.
Behind Stiva’s good-natured smile is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood”. Stiva fostered an easy-going liberal mindset:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Reading further, we find Tolstoy contrasting the ordinariness of self-giving love, as expressed by Dolly, with the ordinariness of Stiva’s self-satisfying evil, expressed without ill-will or bitterness. Making waves would disrupt his complacency and the slight fog diffused in his brain.
For many years I’ve enjoyed reading Russian literature. Russian history has veered toward extremes – totalitarianism and atheism produced by the intelligentsia aka politically connected radical socialist atheists. Russian literature offers a window into the life and times of Russia, its people, and the thinking that led to so much suffering.
Realism abounds in the works of Solzhenitsyn, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Ultimate questions and meaning of life issues are openly dealt with. No AI. No BLM, CRT, LGBTQ, pandering, no Wokey-dokey or playing with pronouns. Just serious adult things.
With Anna Karenina Tolstoy portrays prosaic good and evil, self-deception, and the nature of love – the seemingly fate-occurring dramatic love of romance vs. the committed non-trumpeting prosaic love that does good, i.e., cares for the family. With more than a dozen major characters and around 800 pages, the novel fleshes out the first line: “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Once you read Anna, I think you’ll find that Tolstoy’s characters, including the absence-of-good Stiva, are not unique. You may find yourself in their stories and perhaps the impetus for change.
*****
Consider that Stiva is the first transhumanist. Look at his utter acquiescence to whatever is printed and accepted by the majority. And look at his attitude– cooly dispassionate and compliant. He’s a non-entity with a pasted-on smile.
*****
I coined the term “pornservatives” to describe the type of person who on paper or in person looks like a good old-fashioned red-state conservative, but in practice is living a morally dubious lifestyle antithetical to anything that resembles “conservatism” or “trad” values.
“So [the effect of the COVID vaccine] is negative, and that continues. The magnitude of that negativity increases over time. What does that mean, folks? It literally means that the people who received that vaccine were more likely to contract COVID-19 after seven months than the people who did not. That is a fact, has the CDC or FDA ever said a word about that? No.”
Tell me, where is the wisdom of financially befitting – with tax-payer dollars – NGOs like Catholic Charities who are doing the bidding of godless globalists under the pretense of Christian charity? Such groups aid and abet illegal border crossings which undoubtedly involve the trafficking of children, of criminals and of fentanyl? Such involvement serves to dilute and weaken the U.S. with an America hating Progressive/Globalist agenda.
Tell me, where is the wisdom when you employ out-of-control spending and money printing that leads to expected out-of-control consequences such as inflation and devaluation of the dollar?
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been embraced by progressives, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who see MMT as the means for increased government spending that could help finance initiatives such as the Green New Deal policy on climate change and, of course, buy votes.
MMT says that a government can basically blow as much money as it wants to boost its economy as long as that government borrows in its own currency because it can always just print more money. This allows the government plenty of room for free spending without forcing it to raise taxes. It also means it would be impossible for that government to default on its debts.
“The central idea of MMT is that governments with a fiat currency system under their control can and should print (or create with a few keystrokes in today’s digital age) as much money as they need to spend because they cannot go broke or be insolvent unless a political decision to do so is taken.” – Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): Definition, History, and Principles (investopedia.com)
“According to MMT, the only limit that the government has when it comes to spending is the availability of real resources, like workers, construction supplies, etc. When government spending is too great with respect to the resources available, inflation can surge if decision-makers are not careful. (Emphasis mine)
And so it is the political decision of Democrats and Globalists to leave the southern border wide open for the infusion into the economy of low-cost workers to help finance MMT spending for such progressive legislation as universal healthcare and other public programs for which governments claim to not have enough money to fund:
During the past 25 years, low interest rates and highly expansionary monetary policy with little apparent inflation have created the illusion that a government can simply print money to fund exorbitant deficit spending with no repercussions. This core tenet of so-called “modern monetary theory” ignores the fact that deficit spending is constrained in the long run by a government’s ability to satisfy creditors. (Emphasis mine)
"There were all these lies about the Emergency Authorization. They needed the Emergency Authorization to get the Vaccines down everybody's throats."pic.twitter.com/Rh8p57k72Z
Too many doctors and nurses to count in recent months have told me about the alarming rise in sudden cancers in young people since the introduction of the experimental COVID vaccines.
Reporter goes scorched earth on outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot:
"You revoked my media credential. That should never happen in a free country… You can pack your suitcase and get the hell out of my city!"pic.twitter.com/pYaA4ChGud
We need your help to protect parental rights in Indiana! HB1407 is the bill we emailed you about a few weeks ago that protects parents’ rights to direct the care and upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children. The bill passed through the House at the end of February, but with concerns held by a few judges. The bill’s author, Rep. Dale DeVon, advocated hard for the bill on the House floor and thankfully, the bill passed through to the Senate.
Sadly, several groups are trying to kill this important piece of legislation, despite Rep. DeVon’s assurances that the judges who have reservations would be able to testify in the Senate committee, as well as his vow to work with them on amendments that would resolve their concerns.
HB1407 is a parental rights bill that protects parents’ rights to direct the care and upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children. The bill passed through the House at the end of February, but with concerns held by a few judges. The question is whether the Senate will hear and pass the bill despite the judges’ concerns.
Where are other pastors like Pastor Derek Reimer? Are they hiding behind Romans 13?
BREAKING: Pastor Derek Reimer has been arrested again, this time for breaching his bail conditions following his previous arrest for protesting an all-ages drag event.
In caving to corporate and elite pressure to “fix” Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Gov. Mike Pence and the rest of the state’s laughingstock Republican leadership have ironically bungled into amending it in a way that now makes Indiana the most hostile state in the country to the conscience rights the original law was designed to protect.
The strength of green feeling here, both for and against, is a bellwether for the struggle to come in other countries and farming economies. But BBB [the Farmer Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging] should not be dismissed as ‘anti-green’; rather farmers are more of a lime green versus the dark green of the eco activists, both of whom claim they want to protect the land.
January 2020. Chicago. J.P. is at work when word of a Beast– afierce and untamable infectious agent created by science gods in Red China – is unleashed upon the world.
The Beast crosses the globe. Disorder dysfunction and dread ensues. The non-stop reporting on sightings of the Beast causes widespread alarm. Deep rotting fear begins to possess people. They become infected with it. J.P., on the other hand, won’t let fear run his life.
Holding on to the long-standing wisdom of his tribe, he understands that fear is a paralyzing sickness that crawls into the soul of anyone who engages it. He was not raised to live with fear. “I’ll strike it from my heart, he said. “I’ll not bring it home. I’ll run my life with the understanding I’ve been given.”
March 2020. The satrap of Illinois tells residents that priests of The Science have spoken: “All tribes and all villages must perform certain rituals for two weeks to ward off the Beast.”
Residents are told that they must wear masks, social distance, shut down their small business and church, and lock themselves down in their homes. They are not to be in close company with anyone, not even the elderly or dying. Then and only then, citizens are told, will panic be flattened and the Beast quashed.
But after two weeks the Beast is still roaming the land.
So, the priests of The Science begin using incantations to bring about obedience to The Science: “We’re all in this together” ‘Follow The Science” “We must flatten the Curve”.
When not cajoling for submission, The Science magistrates threaten with business license forfeitures, fines and, jail time. False tests are used to quarantine many in isolation camps. Vivid and horrifying tales, not of the Beast but of the fierce and untamable priests of The Science, set the stage for their next ritual.
“You want to slay the Beast and be accepted by the priests of The Science? Then you must drink the blood of babies sacrificed to Molech!” “Then and only then,” citizens are told, “will The Science be satisfied and the Beast put down”. “Then, and only then, will you be allowed to get back to normal.” “Then and only then, will you get their stuff back.” And so came the saying “The Science gives and The Science takes away. Blessed be The Science.”
The media acolytes of The Science said “You must follow what the priests of The Science tell you. Follow us for their words of wisdom.” And many did. Many walked around sheepishly wearing masks. And many drank the cup of salvation promoted by the acolytes who were paid to promote it. But J.P. would not drink the beastly potion. So, his head was to be put on the chopping block.
J.P. was told that he would lose his job if he did not drink the cup of salvation. J.P. resisted. He said that his god wouldn’t allow him to drink it. It was unwise to do so, he said. Such a drink would hollow you out, he said. And finally, hoping to eclipse the glaring scorn the priests of The Science focused on him, he said that he worshipped an almighty god, one who spoke into the darkness and created the light. He would serve that god.
Now, none of what the priests had ordered, deemed the height of wisdom by media oracles, seemed wise to J.P. And none of what the priests signaled they were doing –pursuing the Beast – was true. They were actually chasing after J.P. to take him down.
The fierce and untamable priests of The Science, you see, were not happy with those who wouldn’t worship The Science. The priests mocked and stigmatized those unwilling to submit to their rituals. They painted them as outliers, social outcasts and, weirdos. As such, they were used for media target practice. J.P. outran the media arrows and kept running.
Before it all and through it all, J.P. stayed the course of his imago dei tribe. He continued to order his life with a health regimen of vitamins, good food, and exercise outdoors. He didn’t wear a mask. Doing so was unwise.
J.P. told himself “If I get the virus, my body will deal with it. If I get the virus, then I’ll have immunity just like every other time. And, more importantly, I will not have served a foreign god”.
He continued to function by working from home. He refused to be tested and to wear a mask and to sit isolated from everyone as the workplace required. He stayed the course. That was wisdom of practice.
Looking back, J.P. questioned who created more chaos and suffering– the Beast or the predatory priests of The Science? The Beast attacked had his tribe. Some suffered and a few died. Wisdom remains with the remnant.
On the other hand, it was the madness of the fierce and untamable priests of The Science that had created the Beast. It was these priests who sanctioned threats, and the capture and sacrifice of people everywhere. It was these priests who demanded subjugation to the unholy cup of salvation the wizards of The Science had created.
And, just like the gods of ancient tales, the priests of The Science sought destruction for the purpose of reconstruction. They attempted to reduce the population because of their discontent with humans. They loved data and their own thoughts more than humans.
Tactics of fear and chaos theory were employed to see how people would react to the creation of a new world order under The Science. With all this, the priests of The Science revealed themselves to be the Beast.
The Beast continues to grow larger. It feeds on lies, vows of submission and money. It will arrive on our shores again.
And J.P., guided by wisdom, will again be led down straight paths where his steps will not be hampered. He will run again and not stumble. He will hold on to wisdom and not let it go. He will guard it well for it is his life.
*****
“Happy people have no history . . . of mNRA vaccination.” A 2023 proverb.
.@RobertKennedyJr Explains Why Fauci Had Such a Problem With Early Treatment
"Tony Fauci's problem is this: there's a little known federal law that says, 'You cannot give an emergency use authorization to a vaccine if there is any medication approved for any purpose that is… https://t.co/pkGCKjSqqEpic.twitter.com/qffF1BIWDU
🚨 Breaking: Former CDC Director testifies that he was excluded and kept out of the loop by Fauci and the rest of the establishment because he had a different opinion about Covid origins, which he believes came from a lab.pic.twitter.com/LDkL2NskbL
Z codes for underimmunization status (Z28 series) were introduced in 2016 by the World Health Organization. One code used for religious exemptions was labeled “patient decision for reasons of belief or group pressure.” . . .
The CDC also specified that “underimmunization status” can be documented in a medical record by a clinician other than their provider. Most ICD codes can only be documented by the provider “legally accountable for establishing the patient’s diagnosis.”[ix]
Make no mistake, this is about tracking the unvaccinated. “Track” is the exact word used by those discussing this addition to the ICD-10 on the September 2021 National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) call.
HR79, the WHO Withdrawal Act, has been introduced in Congress but has not yet been scheduled for a hearing by the Foreign Affairs Committee, despite ongoing negotiations and proposed adoption of the new treaty in May 2024.
Just before 9 AM every seat is taken except for one at the counter. Gilberto turns from the grill when I sit down. “You beat the rush.” I nod with a smile.
Saturday morning. I’m sitting at the counter of a local diner. Across from me is a grill heaped up in the back with a pile of steaming potatoes. Two Hispanics work the orders on the front of the grill. Eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, pancakes, plating. Eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, pancakes, plating.
I order my usual. Before Elena hands him the food order, Gilberto has already started the eggs sausage and potatoes.
Today the diner’s owner Gilberto is one of the guys working the grill. His son David manages the tables and the Hispanic waitstaff of four. Gilberto is training his son to take over the restaurant. I know this, as Gilberto and I have talked when he’s had a moment’s break from the grill.
Gilberto works six days a week keeping the 7 AM to 2 PM diner going. He purchased the grill a few years ago from the previous owner and has since put in countless hours to make his enterprise work. And now he wants to have another day off. So, he’s training the cook working beside him as he had trained his son before him.
Just now I catch his tired eyes looking off somewhere. At a daydream perhaps. Perhaps he’s thinking of life outside the restaurant. Or, of something else he has to do before he goes home.
Three families arrive. Gilberto turns back to the grill. People need to be fed and tables turned. Employees need to be trained and paid. Work needs to be done. Gilberto thrives on that.
*****
“[Work] is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”
Right before our eyes, America is losing that ability to sustain the complex systems that are the markers of modern civilization. Even more appalling, this transformation is a choice.
Mike Rowe explains why more workers are ‘quietly quitting’.
I’d rather watch Dirty Jobs than play video games, watch movies and waste my time on social media. I’ve done dirty jobs. And I’ve done alright. There is something rewarding and holistic about getting your hands dirty doing things that need to get done and working with people who do the same. Some people wouldn’t understand.
Some think manual labor is beneath them – they’d get their hands dirty, and besides, they were meant for greater things. Some think a degree ups their pay grade and attitude. It is elites like these who run our country and sneer in the direction of the dirty-hands worker while basing all their reckless spending on the full faith and credit of such hard-working Americans.
Did school teach you what you do for a living? It didn’t for me.
“… schooling isn’t paying off the dividends the school counselors promised. Do yourself a favor and start asking people if school taught them what they do for a living. Many will attest they learned most of what they know and do outside the classroom. Our instructors desperately want us to believe that learning happens in school, but for most the current industrial (or is it now post-industrial?) model of “schooling” is the impediment to exploration and true learning. Yet we pursue the lie, . . .
Examine today’s heroes and ponder if their schooling taught them how to rebel, invent, podcast, lead, write, speak, or any other of their myriad accomplishments, as they attempt to thwart the globalist’s plot of world destruction. The elites need children in school, where they are trained to obey.”
My recommendation is to discuss this with your doctor or seek a specialist in holistic or naturopathic medicine who is experienced with the safety profile of nattokinase in a range of applications. -Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
Pfizer and the regulators had data by June 2021 showing a serious safety signal for miscarriage. They not only ignored it but suppressed access to the documents. -Dr. Ah Kahn Syed
Equity” is a Neo-Marxist euphemism for resource redistribution to favored racial and ethnic groups. Equity isn’t equality; its meaning and use are deliberately inverted to mislead the gullible and ignorant public.
Now comes Nandita Bajaj advocating to “save the planet” with fewer life forms. Imagine living a childless life because some climate clown said it would save Mother Earth.
In the end, alarmism about population decline is a distraction from the real crisis demanding attention: the human enterprise in overshoot, overwhelming the natural systems that enable life on Earth. Norms need to shift so that having fewer or no children is understood as a legitimate, positive choice and lower fertility is recognized as a path to a positive future.
Support SB 480 – Prohibits a physician or other practitioner from knowingly providing gender transition procedures to an individual who is less than 18 years of age (minor) that are intended to alter the gender of the minor or delay puberty.
SB4 (egregious spending and bureaucracy): “We are disappointed to report that SB4, the expansion of public health bill, passed out of the Senate today 41-7. The bill will now move over to the House for consideration, where we have been working with representatives to prepare amendments to improve the bill or ultimately, defeat it.”
Prohibits the Indiana public retirement system from investing in certain restricted entities or restricted investment products, including particular investments publicly confirmed to be controlled by the People’s Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party.
Life is not like a box of chocolates. Life is more like a PEZ dispenser of dopamine and you know what you’re gonna get when you do what you do.
That’s what I gathered reading dopamine nation by Anna, Lembke, MD.
From her website:
This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
In her best-selling book, Lembke provides client counseling anecdotes under such chapter titles as “Our Masturbation Machines”, “Running from Pain”, “Dopamine Fasting”, and “Radical Honesty”. As mentioned in the blurb above, the premise of this book is about finding balance. She offers Lessons in Balance:
The relentless pursuit of pleasure (and avoidance of pain) leads to pain.
Recovery begins with abstinence.
Abstinence resets the brain’s reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy in simpler pleasures.
Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine-overloaded world.
Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
Pressing on the pain side resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
Beware of getting addicted to pain.
Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy, and fosters a plenty mindset.
Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing in it.
It is no secret that the world around us promotes seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. But we may not have noticed that pleasure and pain operate like a seesaw, as Lembke illustrates in her book. The consumer of pleasure tips the pleasure side of the seesaw to the ground. The pain side goes up in the air. But, as the familiar saying goes, what goes up must come down.
Pleasure and pain work like a balance. Our systems seek to restore balance or “physiologic equilibrium”. (See Pleasure and Pain Are Co-located, p. 50, dopamine nation).
Looking for balance? Per Lembke, “Abstinence is necessary to restore homeostasis”. Stopping and standing apart from that which is used to obtain pleasure helps us see the cause and effect of choices.
Does self-promotion, virtue signaling, and even advocacy tip the seesaw to the pleasure side? It would seem so based on the amount of self-aggrandizement that occurs in the media – social and otherwise. Radio personalities, from Howard Stern to Dennis Prager, are in the business of self-promotion for profit (and ego, and dopamine?)
And could it be, based on what we learn about dopamine, that when we give, pray, forgive, and fast in ostentatious ways that we are immediately rewarded with not only someone else knowing our act of devotion but also with dopamine? Could it be that we reward ourselves in the moment at the expense of a future reward secured in our relationship with the Lord?
When you are practicing your piety, mind you don’t do it with an eye on the audience! Otherwise, you won’t have any reward from your father in heaven (Matt. 6:1).
Jesus’ treasure on earth vs. treasure in heaven warning is heard a bit later in his kingdom of God discourse on the mount (Matt. 6:19-21). It follows his cautions about how we go about our devotion to God. We are admonished to let go of the desire to play-act and to promote ourselves and to let God recompense:
When you give . . .
. . . to the poor, don’t sound a trumpet in front of you. That’s what people do when they are play-acting, in the synagogues and the streets. They do it so people will be impressed by them . . . they’ve received their reward in full (Matt. 6:2).
When you pray . . .
. . . you mustn’t be like the play-actors . . . shut the door and pray to your father in secret who is there in secret (Matt 6:5-6).
. . .don’t pile up a jumbled heap of words reckoning the more you say the more likely you will be heard (Matt. 6:7).
. . .here’s how you should pray . . . Our father in heaven . . . (Matt. 6:9-13).
If you forgive . . .
. . . people the wrong they have done, your heavenly father will forgive you as well. (If not, then no forgiveness for you) (Matt. 6:14-15).
Forgiveness is included in these cautions. Forgiveness is a letting go of the wrong and the bitterness born out of it. Forgiveness seeks reconciliation just as God has sought with us with His forgiveness.
An unwillingness to forgive and to hold on to the wrong is the willingness to hold something over another at the cost of that relationship and at the cost of one’s own mental and spiritual health. One may find pleasure in giving another relational pain, but the seesaw will tip the other way.
Forgiveness is not saying “nothing happened”. It is saying that what happened has no power over me. And, more importantly, it admits “I’m in no position not to forgive”.
“If we believe rightly in Jesus Christ who unconditionally embraced us, the godless perpetrators, our hearts will be open to see from their perspective. In Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested that faith enables us to take “distance” from our own immediacy and take into ourselves the tension filled polyphony of life, instead of pressing life into a “single dimension.”
Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Miroslav Volf, 1996, Abingdon Press, Nashville, p. 215
When you fast . . .
. . . don’t be gloomy like the play-actors. They make faces quite unrecognizable, so that everyone can see they’re fasting. I’m telling you the truth: they have received their reward in full. (Matt. 6: 16).
This lent, consider who you are in relationship with. Those in relationship with themselves and the world desire to trumpet their doings. They gain followers on social media and “likes” for the advocacy that promotes them to the world. But the followers are a fickle bunch who need more and more stroking to bring them pleasure.
Those who follow the Lord have given up trumpeting what they do. They live in an intimate relationship with the Lord (Jn. 5:15). They know that the Lord knows what they do (Matt 6:4, Jn. 10:27). And that’s all that matters. Play-acting doesn’t work with God. God is not impressed with outward earnestness or public shows of it, because . . .
“God is in secret, and He sees us from a secret place; He does not see us as other people see us, or as we see ourselves. When we live in the secret place it become impossible for us to doubt God. We become more sure of Him of than anything else.” – Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
Put another way, Christians are like musicians in a symphony orchestra giving a concert of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. They follow a maestro – not of this world – and they keep his rhythm in their soul and not with their feet.
LEnT go of play-acting, of self-aggrandizement, of being drama queens, of grudges and bitterness.
The ordinary Christian life remains ordinary by every measure except heaven’s.
LEnT go of that which brings disorder and non-function to your life and to those around you. We were endowed with the imago dei so that we would bring order and function to the world.
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
― Jim Elliot, one of five people killed during Operation Auca, an attempt to bring the gospel to the Huaorani people of Ecuador.
Note: I write these things not because I have mastered self-denial. On the contrary. I write these things to spur myself to take courage and to have faith to do what is necessary day in and day out. I write to encourage and grow faith for myself and for others.
“. . . without faith it’s impossible to please God; for those who come to worship God must believe that he really does exist, and that he rewards those who seek him. – Hebrews 11:6
Informed Dissent:
Listen to these videos>>>>
“Nobody should be taking anything. That’s my professional opinion.” -Sasha Latypova
“Here we have an implemented model of fascism.”-Sasha Latypova
“What were they doing? They were play-acting.” Sasha Latypova
Dr Arne Burkhardt. The testes of a 28 year old man who died 140 days after injection. Had healthy son b4 injection. Spike protein is in the testes, almost no spermatocytes in here. "If I were a woman in fertile age, I would not plan a motherhood from a man who was vaccinated." pic.twitter.com/FmPXFmapzP
The poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can’t be eliminated by punishing people who’ve escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn’t work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it’s warm there in the winter. -P.J. O’Rourke
and this:
Hoy en la madrugada, en un solo operativo, trasladamos a los primeros 2,000 pandilleros al Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT).
Esta será su nueva casa, donde vivirán por décadas, mezclados, sin poder hacerle más daño a la población.
-Give up notions that the U.S. government is altruistic and “for the people”. Like with our southern border, our government has been invaded by opportunists who don’t give a damn about our country except for what they can take from it.
-Big Pharma
Bill Maher and Woody Harrelson are what liberals used to be, before most became authoritarian hacks for global corporate power. pic.twitter.com/p4J7cet2lM
There are Democrat initiated bills that are titled one thing and do the exact opposite of their label when enacted. For example, the Inflation Reduction Act that won’t reduce inflation and inflates government instead and the unaffordablegovernment-growingAffordable Care Act.
There is no end to the fraud or deception perpetrated by shifty pols who shift conspicuous things to hide something else– the name shell game. And just as countless, there is no shortage of labels and vitriol applied to those who do not want to play the name shell game. Those of us questioning the ‘games’ played by those in government are now deemed as being “the biggest threat to American democracy today” – another label that, here, shifts conspicuous meaning so as to hide something else what’s going on underneath. The label barrage continues.
In Biden regime terms, we are “extremists” – [We] embrace anger, thrive on chaos and live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies, per Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” harangue.
If we don’t vote for Democrat massas, we are “not black”.
In politicized DOJ terms, we, as groups of parents, are characterized as “extremist hate organizations” for showing up at school board meetings, our protests categorized as the “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” In other words, we are “domestic terrorists” for accepting what has always been accepted up until Democrats with stolen power said only certain things are acceptable.
In terms of the CDC, big pharma, the media, and the untested gene-altering mNRA vaccine, we are the “strongly hesitant”, “hesitant” or “hesitant” and unsure” for not embracing “the science” and becoming lab rats in a hugely suspect and, as it turns out, a hugely profitable medical experiment.
In terms of the COVIDian politicians, we are “public health” and as such we are to be managed via social experiments that include lock downs, useless masks, life-wrecking mandates, and vaccine passports.
In terms of those who spend and spend and spend, we are “taxpayers” who are obligated by law to pay “our fair share” (despite over half the nation not paying taxes). But you won’t hear this label used for us: full faith and credit – a phrase used to describe one entity’s unconditional guarantee or commitment to back the interest and principal of another entity’s debt.
Those of us who pay taxes are the surety behind the U.S. debt that pledges to fulfill its payment obligations in a timely manner. And yet the ruling class treats us like dirt, e.g., sending $100 BN of hard-earned taxpayer money to protect Ukraine’s border and leaving the southern border wide open to all kinds of opportunists (they are NOT refugees).
The ruling class, with its name shell games, continues to syphon money from us through taxation. And they also tax us with the high inflation they’ve created with their new shell game the Green New Deal. Wealth redistribution is the name of the game.
The labeling salvos continue in the media, in colleges and universities, and in social media. We are everywhere labeled “homophobic”, “transphobic”, “xenophobic”, “racist”, “white supremist”, “science denier” and on and on. The intelligentsia (not the intelligent, idealogues) will use labels to defend their projects from critical examination, e.g., one is “racist” if one disagrees with the myopic 1619 Project or the racism invoking CRT.
It’s easy to see what’s behind the pernicious labeling. There is projection, condescension, fear, insecurity, and bullying (they’ll denounce it in the school yard and dispense it in the classroom and media). Labeling is used for leverage as in a form of self-righteousness fostered by the social justice religion that gives purpose to an otherwise pointless life. A rush to judgement, ubiquitous today with the help of anonymity, is often followed with labeling.
*****
Who are “we”?
We are ordinary “salt of the earth” people. We are simple folk. We do what we have to do and do it every day. We work. Many of us do hands-on Dirty Jobs (and so we are looked down upon by the intelligentsia ruling class).
We avoid drama and delight in simple things, like a meal with family and friends.
We do what is needed and do so without fanfare, without tweets and Instagram posts, without calling attention to ourselves.
We don’t involve ourselves in self-deception and denying the truth for a crust of bread.
We speak truth in love to our neighbor.
We pray for our neighbors and not talk about them behind their backs. We don’t scold them with labels.
We relish the good and beautiful and moments of Gold in Sand:
Gold in sand: That is what true happiness is like. It occurs at ordinary moments and does not call attention to itself, much as Dolly does not call attention to herself. And yet it is moments like these that make a life meaningful.
In novel terms, we are not the narcissistic romanticist Anna Karenina. We are Dolly Oblonsky. whose everyday goodness, ceaseless efforts for her children, and fundamental decency attract no attention, but are the most meaningful of qualities, exemplifying religious virtue and “living for the soul”.
We are the Full Faith and Credit and “Soul of the Nation”. It goes without labels.
Joe Biden and his cabinet should be governing in Portland, where being diverse and different is so important and where progress towards utopia has already started:
*****
Jen’s Proposed Tax Plan for America:
No one ever pays more than 10% of their income during their lifetime. Those honorably discharged, no more than 5% tax over their lifetime.
No corporation pays more than 10% tax on their profit during its existence.
No more IRS. 10% comes out of each paycheck direct to the federal and state treasuries. What is spent is delineated in yearly statements to the dollar sent to taxpayers. (Reverse accountability)
No more welfare programs. Communities and churches care for the poor.
No more federal education. No more Dept. of Education. Each community decides the school and teachers.
No more pork barrel projects.
Social security tax ends in 10 years. Balance due recipients is paid from monies allocated for Ukraine, climate change and pet projects.
No real estate taxes.
No sales taxes
10% total tax is divided as follows:
7% to state
3% to federal government. Of the 3% 1% goes to pay down U.S. debt.
The natural and the supernatural, separated into categories of science and faith since the times of Enlightenment, were not split apart in the ancient Near East worldview. Ancients believed that the gods were always active in the world in countless and often undetectable ways. The apostle Paul brought this into his dialogue with stoic and Epicurean philosophers at the Areopagus (Acts 17:22-31):
“In him we live and move and have our being,” (from Cretica, Epimenides, Creton poet, ca .600 BC)
“[It is with Zeus that every way has to do,] for we are also his offspring.” (from Phainomena, Aratus, Cilcian poet, 315-240 BC)
Psalm 104, a Hebrew Hymn of Creation with Parallels in Pharaoh Akhenaten’s Hymn, depicts ancient Israel’s cosmology. It may have been written during the times of David and Solomon. Its author is unknown, so let’s call him Naturalist Observer.
Naturalist Observer looked around at the known world at that time and ascribed its ordered functioning to God. He did so, apparently, with background knowledge of Genesis.
Linocut Print by Mark Hearld
The psalm celebrates God’s creative function giving and care taking of the natural world. God is praised for creating a habitable world that continues day after day. Nature has a home to come home to, as God had promised.
As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Gen. 8:22
Naturalist Observer has taken note of “the waters”, “the deep”, “springs”, “streams”, “the sea”. Water is contained and directed by God to function in support of life.
Water pours from the sky (vs.13) producing sustenance (vs. 14-16) within habitats of forest, valley and mountains (vs. 16-18)
Note: water is mentioned some 700 times in the Bible – from Genesis 1:2 (the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters) to The Revelation of John 21:1 (no longer any sea, i.e., no more chaos, no more scary deep, no more fear of the unknown)
Verses 19-23 are about time. (For Jews, each 28-day lunar month started with a new moon. Each new day started at 6 o’clock each evening when the sun goes down.)
Naturalist Observer reflects with awe at the breadth of God’s works (vs, 24-26).
Naturalist Observerrecords (vs. 27-30) God’s involvement in the cycle of life. The breath of every living thing depends on God (vs. 29-30). (Note: death before the Fall.)
Naturalist Observer ends his mediation (vs. 31-35) by recounting some of the means God has used to have humankind focus on the purpose of His creation – a sacred place where God dwells with man.
Earthquakes and volcanoes (vs. 32), speak of God’s awesome power to disrupt things and thereby get people’s attention (Ps. 97:4). And once God has their attention, He gives them his terrifying-but-mediated presence and the means to live in his presence (Ex.19:18). God, who touches the mountains and they smoke, is petitioned (Ps. 144:5-6) to come down, show His power, and put fear into the enemies of his people.
The wicked, as they ignore God and live according to their own ways – exchanging the natural for the unnatural (Rom. 1;18-32), bring disorder to what God called good or functioning as purposed. Naturalist Observer, having taken account of God’s ordered creation and knowing from history the disruption man’s wickedness brings to it, intreats God (vs. 35):
Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more
Here, Naturalist Observerappears to be thinking of Elijah, the prophets of Baal, and fire from heaven (1 Kings 18).
We would do well, as Naturalist Observer has done, to spend time observing our sacred bio-space and meditating on the work of God’s hands. I do this while walking.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts. – Søren Kierkegaard
We would do well not to polarize science and faith and make them adversarial, as both function in God’s ordered realm. At certain points, one may view science and faith in conflict. But that’s why study, reflection, and meditation are required – you don’t have all the information. Denying one and accepting the other says that you don’t think God has set up an ordered and functioning cosmos.
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. – Soren Kierkegaard
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” ― Sarah Williams,Twilight Hours: A Legacy Of Verse
*****
Psalm 104
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, 2 wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent; 3 you set the beams of your chambers on the waters; you make the clouds your chariot; you ride on the wings of the wind; 4 you make the winds your messengers, fire and flame your ministers.
5 You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken. 6 You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7 At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight. 8 They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys, to the place that you appointed for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
10 You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, 11 giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. 12 By the streams the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. 13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
14 You cause the grass to grow for the cattle and plants for people to cultivate, to bring forth food from the earth 15 and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine and bread to strengthen the human heart. 16 The trees of the field are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. 17 In them the birds build their nests; the stork has its home in the fir trees. 18 The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the coneys. 19 You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. 20 You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out. 21 The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. 22 When the sun rises, they withdraw and lie down in their dens. 23 People go out to their work and to their labor until the evening.
24 O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. 25 There is the sea, great and wide; creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. 26 There go the ships and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.
27 These all look to you to give them their food in due season; 28 when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. 29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. 30 When you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works— 32 who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke. 33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. 34 May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord. 35 Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord!
*****
Brothers, above the starry canopy There must dwell a loving father. Do you fall in worship, you millions? World, do you know your creator? Seek Him in the heavens; Above the stars must he dwell.
Below are three short videos from a series of Oxford Conversations with Oxford Professor Andy Gosler.
Podcast: Professor Gosler talks of his coming to faith, Richard Dawkins, Genesis, faith and science, Darwin, biology, conservation, the natural world, sacred bio-space and more. The paper below is discussed in the podcast.
“As rare metals have become ubiquitous in green and digital technologies, the exceedingly toxic sludge they produce has been contaminating water, soil, the atmosphere, and the flames of blast furnaces.”
“Mining requires the extraction of solid ores, often after removing vast amounts of overlying rock. Then the ore must be processed, creating an enormous quantity of waste – about 100 billion tonnes a year, more than any other human-made waste stream.
Purifying a single tonne of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic meters of water, which then becomes polluted with acids and heavy metals. On top of that, imagine the destruction and energy required to obtain these essential metals:
18,740 pounds of purified rock to produce 2.2 pounds of vanadium
35,275 pounds of ore for 2.2 pounds of cerium
110,230 pounds of rock for 2.2 pounds of gallium
2,645,550 pounds of ore to get 2.2 pounds of lutecium
Also staggering amounts of ore are needed for other metals.”
This is what digital technology is leading to – for your “safety” (a la COVID digital tracking):
World Economic Forum… “Battle for your Brain”… Under the guise of *safety* every single thought you have will monitored by you boss, police and government. pic.twitter.com/VOURZc1vBQ
“. . . the war I’m talking about is an even broader war. A war that is taking place everywhere on the globe, even as I write, and that involves virtually everyone on the planet, young and old, male and female, military and civilian. It is the war of every government against its own population and every international institution against free humanity. . ..
We have a choice. Either we continue going into this technological, corporate matrix—which involves even things like buying the next generation of iPhone, which they’re already saying is going to have its own fingerprint scanning technology, and all of these corporate, military, Big Brother elements to it that we’re willingly signing up to every day of our lives, and actually paying money for—or we start to create alternative structures which don’t rely on that system. It’s a choice that we have to make in our lives, I would say more quickly than has been apparent at any other time in human history. . ..”
what I am proposing here: the creation of a parallel society.
In sum, we are living in anarchy, as institutions themselves have become nihilistic and weapons of the revolution. The Left, in viral fashion, took over the DNA of America’s institutions, and used them to help destroy their creators.
If we are bewildered why Harvard law-graduate prosecutors let out violent criminals just hours after their arrests; or why hyper-rich, pampered athletes who live in near-apartheid enclaves insult the flag, ignore the National Anthem, and sloganeer woke platitudes, it is because they were taught to undermine the status quo by fundamentally becoming it.
The reason Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction is being reprinted is because the Left Behind film franchise was renewed in 2023. Kevin Sorbo stars in “Left Behind: Rise of The Antichrist” with the tagline, “What Happens After the Rapture?” “I think it’s perfect for the time we are living in right now. You see the craziness of what governments are doing around the world right now. The fear, the pandemic, the anger, the hate, the cancel-culture and wokeness,” Sorbo stated in an interview. “If the rapture hasn’t already happened, it feels like it’s on the way.” How many times have we heard that the “rapture” is “on the way”? It was the tagline for most of the 20th century. It’s been more than 50 years since Hal Lindsey’s prophecy blockbuster The Late Great Planet Earth was published and intimated that the “rapture” would take place before 1988. A lot has happened since that false prediction has long been forgotten. I suspect that most people who will watch the new Left Behind film have no idea how inaccurate the prophetic speculators of a previous generation were. . . .
The promised false hope is that Christians will miraculously escape this soon coming “Great Tribulation” that the latest reiteration of the Left Behind film franchise depicts. Watch it, the tagline tells us, so you won’t have to experience the horrors of the Great Tribulation and possibly go to hell! But what if the entire Left Behind approach to Bible prophecy is more fiction than fact? That’s what this book is about.
-Samwise Gamgee to Frodo Baggins, reflecting on their journey
The twelve of us are in fishing boats anchored just offshore. Four of us – me, Andrew, James and John – are fishermen and the rest, landlubbers.
Jesus, the one who called us together to be with him, is standing on one of the fishing boats facing a huge crowd on the shore. He is teaching about the kingdom of God in parables.
At the end of the day Jesus says, “Let’s go over to the other side.”
Our boats leave the crowded shore and head across the sea toward the land of the Gerasenes. On the water, wind in our sails, we have downtime. Jesus is asleep on a cushion in the stern of my boat. I guide the craft with oar and sail and reflections. Where have we been and where are we headed?
I look around. The twelve of us come from small villages in Galilee. Most of us have attended synagogue. The tax collector hadn’t shown his face there until Jesus called him to follow along. We each share some common knowledge about God and our world. Is that why Jesus called us to follow him?
In synagogue we recited Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. We were taught that our God brought order out of chaos when He formed the world. We were taught that God gave the created order functions and promised As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. We learned that our God is involved in our world.
We were taught that we are made in the God’s image and that we are to function as God’s image in this world.
We learned the history of our people. The law, the prophets, and psalms were read.And there was talk of someone that would save Israel from her oppressors.
Jesus came along and announced that the kingdom of God has arrived. He began teaching us to understand things in kingdom of God ways. I cast a net into the sea and I catch fish and men. I plant a grain of wheat and wheat grows and the kingdom of God grows.
We’ve heard Jesus say astonishing things in synagogues across Galilee. We’ve witnessed Jesus casting out demons and healing all kinds of afflictions. Right before our own eyes we saw him restore order and function. It is exciting and daunting to be with Jesus. What’s next in our journey?
Suddenly, the wind starts whipping our sails back and forth. A big storm is upon us. Monster surface waves are beating on the boats. Can we stay afloat? Each boat is quickly taking on water and with it the fear of the destructive power of nature. What are twelve men and a carpenter-teacher against such a storm on open water?
Andrew rouses Jesus.
“We’re going down! Don’t you care?”
Jesus gets up, his garment soaking wet. He scolds the wind and says to the sea “Silence! Shut up!”
At once, the wind died and there was a flat calm. Order was restored. Jesus looks at our terrified faces. “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?”
A great fear washed over us. Believe what? Hair on the back of my neck stood up.We looked at each other trying to comprehend who and what just happened. “Who is this? Even the wind and the sea do what he says!”
After that, thoughts came flooding in. How could they not?
In synagogue we had heard that the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God] swept over the face of the waters and that God created great sea monsters. We heard that God brought order and function to the churning, chaotic primordial deeps.
The deep, the wind, the storm, the great sea monsters – everything serves God.
As a fisherman, how could I forget the words of the Psalm I heard in synagogue last Sabbath?
Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters; they saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their calamity; they reeled and staggered like drunkards and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. Let them extol him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
And the Sabbath before that . . .
You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.
And the Sabbath before that . . .
At your rebuke the waters flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.
And the words of Job, the Sabbath before that . . .
The pillars of heaven tremble and are astounded at his rebuke. By his power he stilled the Sea; by his understanding he struck down Rahab
Could that mean . . .?! Whoa whoa whoa! I lived to tell this!
Adapted from the gospel according to Mark, chapter four.
Additional Texts: Psalm 89, 104, 107; Job 26
*****
You and I are in a tale of cosmic proportions. It’s a tale of the unseen as more real than the seen and where mysteries are revealed. For God is always active in the world in countless and often undetectable ways.
It’s a tale of learning to practice the presence of God. It’s a tale of life in sacred space. For God is with us. And should we then be presumptive of God and domesticate him with our theology? Or, should we learn to be practitioners of his presence come what may?
*****
Mark Chapter 5: when the boats reached the land of the Gerasenes, Jesus and the group of twelve are met by a man with an unclean spirit. The demoniac, feared by everyone around, brought disorder to God’s creation. People tried to bring about order by restraining him with chains and shackles. But he tore up the chains and snapped the shackles.
Jesus sent the Legion of demons into a herd of pigs. The herd rushed down the steep slope into the recently “ordered” sea and drowned. He restored order in that district.
Only God is able to bring order out of cosmic disorder. (The World Economic Forum cannot no matter how many shackles and chains they apply.)
*****
Order and function in all that is:
As Kingfishers catch fire
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
“Each of these objects does exactly what its nature dictates, in a kind of (unwilled) self-assertion. More generally, every “mortal thing” might be thought to do the same: to express that essence that dwells inside (“indoors”) of it.”
BREAKING: @Pfizer Director Concerned Over Women's Reproductive Heath After COVID-19 Vaccinations
"There is something irregular about their menstrual cycles…concerning…The vaccine shouldn't be interfering with that…It has to be affecting something hormonal…"#Pfertilitypic.twitter.com/XAuMPJNShD
It is the most expensive “free” product of all time.
Pfizer colluded with the federal government to siphon off $100 billion dollars from the American taxpayer last year, in filings announced Tuesday by the drugmaker. $31 billion of that massive haul amounted to pure profit, which was up 43% from 2021. (Emphasis mine.)
Representative Andy Harris’ HR118 – No Vaccine Passports Act
Representative Andy Biggs’ HR72, which prohibits the use of federal funds to maintain or collect information that can be used to identify any individual to whom a COVID-19 vaccine is administered, as well as for other purposes.
Representative Thomas Massie’s HR185, which will terminate the COVID vaccine mandate on foreign travelers flying to the United States.
Representative Chip Roy’s HR343 – No Taxpayer Funding for the WHO Act
Representative Andy Harris’ HR79 – WHO Withdrawal Act
That’s what my 89-year-old mother told me on a Sunday afternoon phone call. I had asked her to recall a time in 1959 that she had never mentioned.
Much of the past had been lost to mom because of time and her meds. And when her husband of 67 years and my father passed away a few years before, memories began to be wiped away with tears and “Why did he leave me behind?”
***
Some memories lie under coats of paint. So, when I recently came across old photographs and saw original hardwood flooring, I began scraping to expose more of it during that Sunday afternoon call.
Some memories have been laid bare; the paint worn away with retraced steps.
When you are six-years old you take account of things like busy streets, alleys, empty lots, school buildings with playgrounds, creaky back porches, neighborhood kids, cereal, cartoons and the predatory smell of cigarettes. You know, kiddom.
In 1959 our small family – dad, mom, me and my younger brother – lived in a three flat on Franklin Boulevard in Chicago. Our two-bedroom apartment was the one above the garden apartment. An open grey back porch with creaky boards and stairs connected each flat to the small back yard. Whenever I ran out the back door a voice from somewhere would yell “Don’t run down the stairs!”
Nikki, a single woman, lived downstairs. From time to time, Nikki babysat us two boys while my parents went out. I can’t recall who lived upstairs. Maybe it was the voice.
The Wood Back Porch – Photo: trippchicago/Flickr
Our three flat was the second one in from a busy street corner. On the other side, two empty lots. The street in front was lined with trees. Behind us, an alley.
The empty lots were a dirt playground where neighborhood kids gathered. There, we played tag, cowboys and Indians, and baseball among the rocks, sticks, and clumps of overgrown grass. Those empty lots were grounds for all kinds of childhood amusements.
A tire-tracked path ran through the middle of the two lots. Sometimes a van drove onto it, parked, opened up its side and gave us tracts and Bible stories with puppets. Sometimes an ice cream truck drove on to it and handed out multicolored popsicles from its open side. And sometimes a shoe repair van came with repaired shoes and to claim shoes in need of repair.
I played with my younger brother at least one time.
The two of us decided to play catch, not on the empty lot, but on that small stretch of grassy space between our building and the corner building. There was a chain link fence separating the yards. What could go wrong?
Well, young arms don’t throw straight. I stood between the buildings and my brother, who had to chase my last throw, threw from the backyard. Crash! The baseball went through the neighbor’s bathroom window of his garden apartment. An angry face appeared within the jagged edges. “Can’t you boys find somewhere else to play!”
Dad was none too pleased. He apologized to the neighbor and paid for the repair. We were sent back to the turf of the empty lots with a whiffle ball and bat. Our nickel allowances were put on hold. The moment they returned, I made sure to hold on to it. I put the nickel in my mouth.
When you jump on the bed with a nickel in your mouth one tends to forget the nickel in all the wild up and down. The nickel went into my throat and I went into the living room going “ga gaaa ga gaaa ga gaaa! My father picked me up by the ankles and shook me until the nickel popped out. He later gave a piggy bank to hold my loot.
Jumping on the bed before being put to bed was a way to release all the pent-up energy in a glass of Ovaltine. It’s also the way for your head to encounter a radiator. My parents rushed me, in my cowboy pajamas, to the hospital. I received ten stiches in the back of my skull. That impact and three later concussions may account for a whole of things popping out of my noggin. But the blows didn’t knock 1959 from my memory.
***
Across the alley from our three flat and the empty lots stood a four-story brick apartment building with the same grey connected porches. Clothes drying on clotheslines, dogs barking, kids running up and down stairs, people yelling, radios blasting, furniture moving up or down, and aromas of all kinds of food– the Chicago back porch, meant as a second fire escape, was where melting pot life vented.
We knew it was supper time when a short plump woman wearing an apron came out onto the wooden porch of her second-floor apartment, leaned over the railing and bellowed in a thick Italian accent “Carmennnnn Carmennn”. When her son, a baby-faced replica of his mother, toddled home we knew it was time to go in.
Of course, our group of neighborhood friends teased Carmen and each other mercilessly. It was a way of having fun at each other’s expense. We operated at the limits of friendship. If we went too far, we backed off and included the teased in whatever fun we devised to make it all better. Sometimes a ball went through a window and we needed to apologize and repair it.
A black and white class photo, found in a box of keepsakes, confirms that I attended “Ryerson Elementary First Grade Class”. In the photo I’m seated in the second row with classmates. I am grinning with a gap-toothed smile and freckled face. With a colorized version of the photo, you’d swear it was Alfred E. Neuman sitting there. I have red hair.
I recall school being a few blocks from home.
Memory has me sitting at my desk in my first-grade class. A tall figure approaches me. He leans over and says “Danny, you brother has left school. He’s walking home. Go after him.” I put on my coat and go after him.
The next thing I see in my head: I am walking my brother across a busy street corner. Cars are stopped at the light. I bring him home. End of reel.
My mother had never mentioned that time once over a lifetime. And that is why when I recalled it, I asked her about it that Sunday. Maybe for her it was just another thing, like a spill, and it was wiped away and forgotten. Life and neighborhoods were different then too, less charged.
Certain memories have charges, though. Besides being my brother’s keeper, I was the subject of humiliation.
Memory has it that I am standing in line in the school hallway with my first-grade classmates. We were waiting to go out on the stage, one at a time, and say our piece to a room full of parents. I don’t recall the what the presentation was for.
One of the room parents was going down the line putting lipstick on the kids. She grabbed and held my chin and began to apply red stuff to my lips. When she finished, I immediately used the back of my hand to rub off it off. A big red smear went across the right side of my face. The parent went “Ohhhhgggugg! Danny! You can’t go on!” That was fine for me.
I don’t know where the red lipstick ended up. Maybe on the sleeve of my white shirt. And I don’t know where my mom was in all this. She’s not in the memory. Was she in the audience waiting for me to come out? Did she see the red smear on my face and sleeve? The memory ends after the smear.
I think it was Kierkegaard who said Why bother remembering a past that cannot be made into a present? Maybe that’s why my mother said the past leaves you behind.
Klaus Schwab, the creepy front man for the World Economic Forum, opened the annualconfab of the global cabal in Davos, Switzerland with a call to “master the future.”
“We couldn’t meet at a more challenging time. We are confronted with so many crises simultaneously. What does it mean to master the future?”
“I think, to have a platform where all stakeholders of global society are engaged. Governments, businesses, civil society, the young generation—and I could go on. I think is the first step to meet all the challenges.”
Regarding the “polycrisis,” the WEF assembled an extensive matrix of threats facing the world. The top five short-term risks were the “cost-of-living crisis, natural disasters and extreme weather, geo-economic confrontation, failure to mitigate climate change, and erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization. . . “the top four most severe risks over the next 10 years are all environmental.”
Note: except for Natural disasters and extreme weather (force majeure) the “unprecedented multiple crises” or “Polycrisis” mentioned above have all been manufactured by stakeholders to produce a certain outcome.
The extensive matrix of threats facing the world are media hyped. Fear mongering using disaster scenarios and the urgency to act – without a second thought – is found in media narratives. If it doesn’t bleed a crisis narrative, it doesn’t lead.
Natural disaster and calamity are given to us to remind mankind of its powerlessness, and to turn us aside from our arrogance. But that doesn’t deter the proud.
Here in America, inflation and the cost-of living crisis is a crisis the Biden regime created with its socialist green new deal along with the ruinous overspending by Congress (see the recent $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill). Geo-economic confrontation (wars and rumors of wars?) occurs because greedy and pompous leaders see themselves as masters of the future. The climate change catastrophe is a manufactured crisis as was the COVID pandemic. Erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization –Marxists erode social cohesion; the WEF supports race relations antagonism and the fragmentation of society.
The WEF future peddlers and predators view all of the world as one that can be controlled – reset – and mastered. They plan to do all this by 2030.
“Under the theme of ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’, we’ll look at how we can tackle the numerous and interlinked challenges the world is facing and find solutions through public-private cooperation.” –Davos 2023 Day 1: What to expect | World Economic Forum (weforum.org).
So, many of the same people who created the havoc and hell on earth with the COVID planned-demic and talked “Build Back Better” will be the same people “cooperating” in a public-private way to “fix’ things for the future.
Here, in three short videos, is International independent journalist Noor Bin Ladin reporting from Davos about the WEF’s “mastering the future” agenda:
“If no one power can enforce order, our world will suffer from a global order deficit.”
-Klaus Schwab
Davos 2023: Major institutions, corporations, billionaires and governments, along with the media, are actively consolidating forces to produce a “one power” world. To wit, the FBI has been “cooperating” with big tech to purge dissenting Americans the DOJ has labeled “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” from public discourse. The following should scare the heck out of you:
FBI Director Christopher Wray:
"The level of collaboration between the private sector and the government, especially the FBI, has made significant strides." pic.twitter.com/MPOhYxEpLG
One writer says that we should fear the Globalist American Empire more than the bond-villain-like Klaus Schwab. I agree. The GAE are more manipulative. Another writer says that All NWO Roads Lead to Israel. I also agree. And, this would comport with the what’s written in the Revelation of John. I would have no doubt that many godless and Christ-rejecting Jews are behind “mastering the future” programs. They will chose lesser gods.
If you have listened to or read any of the WEF’s grandiose word-salad propaganda, you never come across a mention of God. The WEF, you see, is a humanist and materialist anti-Christ organization. It is not aligned with “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Rather, it is aligned with” My kingdom come, My will be done, on across the earth as it is in my stake holdings.”
The Globalist Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for more wealth transfer. To wit, per Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State “a significant new security assistance package to help Ukraine” is in the works.
This package, which totals $2.5 billion, will bring total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to an unprecedented approximately $27.5 billion since the beginning of the Administration. (Emphasis mine)
(Ukraine is not a U.S. ally. It’s a money laundering country. Ukraine’s border problem is Europe’s issue. Let Europe pay for guns and supplies. U.S., DO NOT escalate this fight. Nuclear war is on the table!)
“The theme of our meeting in Davos is cooperation in a fragmented world,” Klaus stated. In what the WEF calls the “Year of the Polycrisis,” Klaus declared that “economic, environmental, social, and geopolitical crises are converging and conflating, creating an extremely versatile and uncertain future.
The resolution of uncertainties is a very human concern. For the WEF and its Globalist cabal, resolution of uncertainties entails wealth transfers, complete digitization of life, monitoring every move, purchase, and association. We will eat and live as we are told. This will be our Orwellian future under the “masters of the future” unless we say “NO!” to their every incursion into our lives.
Noor Bin Ladin Issues a Direct Message to Klaus Schwab & His Handlers
"My name is @NoorBinLadin. I am a human being—not a QR code. I don't want to eat the bugs. I don't want to live in the pod. I don't want to be trapped in a digital jail, and nothing they can do will make me." pic.twitter.com/B8EA9xZPwV
I cannot know individual motives. I can only base my opinion on messaging and methods and the obvious.
Let’s start here. The WEF has an underlying set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. The WEF has a “global order” moral code to govern the conduct of human affairs. As you will learn, globalist morality will be compulsory.
Any institutionalized system that practices, with ardor and faith, a cause, principle, or system of beliefs and creates disciples is a religion. The WEF has obvious characteristics of a religion. (Even the godless have to believe in and worship something.)
The Global Order religion views the world through a materialist lens. Its practitioners employ a faith in means – the means to an end, as in seizing the means of production. Such is their communistic bent. They will take control of businesses for “the greater good”.
What we are witnessing now, via the WEF, is a “cooperative” takeover of businesses. But once the New World Order is fully established, those who think that they will remain in control of their businesses will find out that another, perhaps a DEI candidate, will be in charge. NWO party commissars will be in charge to teach party principles and party loyalty.
The Global Order religion will use everything in their stakeholder power to force a New World Order in our “hyper partisan, hyper polarized time”.
DAVOS WATCH: The WEF declares they must establish a NEW WORLD ORDER
They also openly acknowledge they may not be successful establishing a NWO right now due to times being “hyper partisan and polarized” but are hopeful to establish it in the near future #wef23pic.twitter.com/H9gykczzbf
The Global Order religion is not a new way of thinking about and managing mankind and civilization. “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” is the opening sentence of Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–1778) essay The Social Contract.
Rousseau, like many since, assumed that man by nature is a free and innocent being. Man, he insisted, was born with the potential for goodness but civilization, with its envy, self-consciousness, and competition has made men bad.
Fellow philosopher Voltaire charged Rousseau with primitivism, accusing him of wanting to make people go back and walk on all fours. One will find similar noble savage myths in the environmental movement’s talk of the Axial Age and the Dark Green religion (see Iain Proven’s Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World That Never Was)
When institutions are fixed, Rousseau believed, mankind will respond in positive social ways.
Today we hear of “systemic racism” and the need for “change we can believe in”, “fundamental transformation” and a “Great Reset”. As more and more American institutions become aligned with the globalist collective, it will be out with the old and in with the new Global Order religion.
And with each transition we seethe perverse irony in the WEF’s “rules-based order” and the consensus implied in The Social Contract of Rousseau: man who is “born free”, is to take on the “chains” imposed by the institutions of the globalist collective for a better “future”. With each transition we see that globalist utopia means global dystopia.
For the Christian, the materialist view of the world is way too small and incomplete. Christians view the world through a much broader lens. The wide-angle lens includes both the physical world and, by the operation of faith, “the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting.” (2 Cor. 4:18).
It is a down-to-earth view that includes man, not as an innocent being, but man as corrupted by sinful choices and yet redeemable because of Christ. It is a view that sees that the whole of creation is groaning as it waits for redemption. It is a elevated view that sees the Kingdom of God and the restoration of the cosmic order.
The Christian views the material world relation to the transcendent. For one example, read the poem God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Faith, as described in Hebrews 1: 1-3, is the means to bolster our confidence about things we can’t see or see as puzzling reflections in glass (1 Cor. 13: 12). Faith is the means to see past, present and future in the hands of the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever.
With confidence bolstered we can move out from a dark cave-dwelling existence of disturbing shadows – the Shadowlands – and look ahead into the broad daylight and Reality. We faith it out as did Abraham:
“Off he went, not knowing where is going.” . . . “He was looking ahead, you see, “to the city which has its foundations, the city of which God is the designer and builder”. (Heb. 11:8, 10).
Did Abraham really imagine a city such as that? We don’t know. We do know that tent-dweller Abraham who lived under a starry canopy had been promised descendants as many as the stars . . .. “the designer and builder” of all that is above would make sure of it.
Challenges? Stakeholders? Resolutions?
Christians deal with challenges not by making others do want we want as the WEF is proposing. We face challenges head on by faith. Read Hebrews 11. There, we read of people whose faith transcended the threat of pain and death by political mercenaries.
Christians are stakeholders in both the seen and unseen. We seek resolutions to a disordered cosmos. And so, we pray, we faith, we work. We pray, we faith, we work. We pray, we faith, and we work every day.
Who holds the future? Not those called to “master the future” by the World Economic Forum. Masters of faith know Who holds the future and act accordingly.
Why were you and I born in this space and time? It was to know the grace and love of God in our times and to hold the world, the flesh and devil in check.
“God leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterward, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us.” -Paul Tournier
And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. – Søren Kierkegaard
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The imagination plays an important part in faith. It should be no surprise to a Christian that the media militates against imagination leading to faith. The media images and sounds are from a world moving in the direction of the NWO. The media constantly lies, telling us to deny what know to be true. The media is paid to do so.
Protestants have banished images from their religious practice. And yet they fill their lives with media images. Huh. How can faith take hold without a holy imagination?
More on this in another post.
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Wise words from Fr. Chad Ripperger on the State of Evil in the World, Jan. 5th, 2023.
“The demons know their time is coming.” He speaks of a remnant. “God made man for rightly ordered worship.”
“In fact what we are signing up for is a digital jail” @NoorBinLadin discusses the reality of digital surveillance systems. @Ezralevant then gives the real world perspective of how digital ID has already been weaponized and used against the citizens in Canada. #WEF23pic.twitter.com/EoaFPh5Ufq
“gays just want to get married” – Isn’t that what many conservatives have no problem with.
Todd Young, Indiana’s senator, you replied to my message speaking against the “Respect for Marriage” Act saying that you voted for the Act to give married gays “dignity’. I replied that you don’t know the LGBTQ community. Gays discharge dignity to live their lifestyle. You virtue signaling fool!
According to a copy of the 17-count indictment Townhall has obtained, the adoptive dads allegedly performed oral sex on both boys, forced the children to perform oral sex on them, and anally raped their sons. . . .
William admitted to forcing his 11-year-old adopted son to perform an act of sodomy, a.k.a. “oral copulation,” on him “with the intent to satisfy his own…sexual desire,” reads a sworn affidavit filed in support of William’s overnight arrest back on July 27. . . .
An updated criminal affidavit says the child sexual abuse was filmed by William’s husband Zachary, “with whom he routinely engaged in sexually abusive acts” on the boy. Zachary, the household’s breadwinner, confessed to being the cameraman, and authorities allegedly found a folder on his cell phone—labeled “US”—that contained videos of William sexually abusing the child.
A recent trip to a modern eatery has me wondering about our digital destiny.
Last Sunday I visited a “Test Kitchen” in my area. There, under a single roof, three separate kitchens offered three different low-priced menus. I had lots of choices, as shown on the order touch screen.
I poked out my choices and then “Checkout”. The screen told me to swipe or insert my credit card or use a mobile app to pay. I was taken aback. I came prepared to pay cash.
Not only was there no cash drawer, there was no human interface. Humans were scurrying around back in the kitchen filing orders. But I was forced to conduct business with a machine.
I understand the implications of hiring humans to deal with cash registers. There is the search for and interviewing of willing and able prospective employees. There is the decision to hire people who can add and subtract and think on their feet. There is the training of new hires to understand the system and to be customer friendly. There is the constant monitoring of the cash drawer for pilfering, and more. To those time-consuming aspects of hiring, add the cost of incentives, hourly salary, and benefits. Business sense would act to cut out the middle man – the counter person.
Outside forces also work to cut out human engagement. Idiotic COVID mandates created social distancing guidelines. Empathy was sold as hiding faces behind masks and staying away from people including your aged and dying parents.
Minimum wage laws increase the use of robots. (What’s next? Minimum employee laws with DEI hiring requirements? Governments can’t pilfer tax money from robots.)
My recent trip to a modern eatery was a trip to a vending machine. The machine took my order. The machine took my payment and the machine took my phone number so it could text me when my order was ready. How nice of the machine to do this!
The machine later texted me asking about my “recent experience”. The text contained radio button choices but no comment space for actual opinion. I deleted the text. I didn’t want to be part of the machine’s feedback loop.
For me, human interface is enriching, and even when the person behind the counter has purple hair, nose and mouth jewelry, tattoos and an attitude. My attitude comes from following Jesus and reading about his interactions with people that included Samaritans, self-righteous types, and sinners.
A man-man interface is what I look for in a “recent experience” and not a man-machine interface. That is why I prefer eating at diners. There, at least, I’m part of a community and not just a node in a network.
Another “recent experience” left me concerned about our digital destiny. Last fall I received an email from the church I had been attending. The email asked for my opinion. It contained an online poll with, as I recall, over a hundred questions with radio button choices and some comment spaces.
The poll questions ranged from quality of pastoral care to aspects of ministries involving children, youth and adults to questions of homosexual involvement and whether political topics should be addressed from the pulpit.
I didn’t take the poll. My first thought was “Why did the three priests and vestry need to send out a poll to know the status of things in the church?” Apparently, they didn’t know the status and didn’t know the people of the church or the mind of God for that matter.
And like the test kitchen text, I was asked to provide feedback about my “recent experience” into the system. Was this done to hone the church into an efficiently run operation and a satisfactory customer experience?
There was never any reason to keep me at data’s length. If anyone in that church wanted my opinion they could come up and ask me – face to face, just as Jesus did with his disciples: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And then individually: “What about you? Who do you say that I am?” (Luke 9: 18-20)
And my understanding of the Christian church is a human-to-human engagement with the Living Lord and not a relationship with a business or corporation with bills to be paid and customers and stockholders to be mollified and handled.
Where am I going with all this? Honestly, I’m trying to be vigilant on my watch. I see the benefits of digital technology and I also see how digital technology can be used to condition, control and denigrate humanity. I see how digital technology polarizes just about everything including the user.
I am old enough to remember a time when digital devices were not around. There was no constant pinging and no bits and bytes clamoring for attention like carnival attractions. Vending machines were the man-machine interfaces. In 1964 I could put a dime into the machine for a bottle of pop. It was a simple hassle-free transaction. Buy anything today via digital means and one is constantly hounded to buy more and to provide feedback.
Back then, instead of a tracking device carried on my person that constantly wanted to sell me something there was a phone on the wall with a cord that limited its reach.
There was no need for a usernames and passwords. Friends used nick names.
Instead of logging onto web sites with two-pass authentication using purchased security software on a purchased laptop I walked to the library to check out books.
Instead of online banking I received paper statements that I used to reconcile my accounts.
Instead of social media I had neighborhood, school, and church friends. There was no façade of community that social media offers.
Instead of the internet of things I had books, games, LPs and 45s, a transistor radio, and lots for room for imagination. I can’t say that digital technology has improved my “recent experience” with regard to any of the above interests.
And, if the gov’t wanted to spy on me, they would send a couple of guys in overcoats and have them sit in a parked car across the street. And to monitor my phone calls, a wiretap order from a judge would be needed. In this digital age I’m not sure who is spying on me. Maybe the FBI and CIA are surveilling my every word and association.
Working as an engineer for most of my life, I understand how digital technology and the internet of things (IoT) supports engineering projects and a business’s bottom line. There are benefits galore. But the IoT doesn’t bolster my bottom line. Human connectivity, for me, is more desirable than being on a network with me as one of its nodes. Thankfully, that was my experience at work.
When I announced my retirement, managers and coworkers mentioned that they were grateful for my efforts and the time they spent working with me. Chirag, manager of the comms group I was part of, called me when he heard I was retiring. We had had many conversations on MS Teams regarding projects and some personal topics. We talked about my move to Indiana among other things.
During my call with Chirag, I said that he was the best manager I had worked with during my time with the company. I told him that he was personable and easy to talk to. He had listened to what I said and worked on solutions to issues I raised. I thanked him for my time working with him. I never felt managed. I felt engaged.
Chirag’s’ reply to my comments: “I treat people like humans.”
I’m not a sentimentalist. I don’t want to go back in time. But over time I have sensed a growing loss of the analog human-to-human interface for . . .. digital efficiency’s sake. Organic human connections are being disconnected. This loss is occurring not only in everyday transactions such as self-checkouts at stores but also in a politically determinative sense.
With increasing connectivity, I see digital communications acting to divide, isolate, and condition people “efficiently” for political ends. We saw this with the creation of digital vaccine credentials such as “VaxPass”. We see this with gaslighting bots on Twitter warping reality. We see this with the brainwashing, weaponization, hostilities, and persecutions that have come about as people share their thoughts on social media. More digital destruction is beaming our way.
5G towers are going up everywhere and with them, ways to monitor and manipulate the public. Janet Yellen, the worst Secretary of the Treasury ever, is working to do away with physical cash (and the corresponding human to human transactions). Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is coming and so is social credit scoring using smartphones and facial recognition software. Working on a digital chain gang will become a reality. Our digital destiny is the Inhumanity of Things.
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You must view this, especially as the 5GW information involves digital matters:
Raise your children to have good values and not the values the state wants them to have
Grow your community. Create networks of friends.
Create white space – terrain and obstacles that slows down enemy advances, including privacy.
Communications – decrease reliance on cellular and internet communication. Get away from using Smartphones – intelligence collection sensors. There is no more effective tool used against the American people than the smartphone.
The internet is nothing more than data going through servers. The “Cloud” is your data on someone else’s computer.
Feedback loops – Here’s something you should be sensitive to. Your kids might be getting affirmation from all the wrong places:
Social Media May Alter Brains of Children — Study
Habitually checking social media as a young teenager is linked to hypersensitivity to peer feedback and may potentially lead to permanent changes in the brain’s reward and motivation centers, neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina suggested in a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
The study looked at a group of 169 teens as their brains developed between the ages of 12 to 15 and their self-reported use of Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
When those with usage the researchers classed as “habitual” – meaning they checked their accounts 15 or more times a day – played a game that modeled feedback in the form of peer approval, they became increasingly sensitive to that feedback.
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“ . . . a terrifying item buried within the Biden-McConnell “infrastructure” legislation, which passed in August 2021. According to [Congressman Bob] Barr, the government will now have the power to shut off your vehicle if they determine you are partaking in any “illegal” activity.
Does anyone really believe the Biden Regime will not abuse this newly obtained power?”
“COVID-19 is unquestionably the largest, most sophisticated propaganda operation in history. Psychological techniques were extensively used during 2020 to incite fear and panic in the population, while other persuasion strategies were used to get people to support and defend COVID measures such as masking, isolation, social distancing, lockdowns and jab mandates.”
Dr. McCullough: The C19 Shots Sets Up Heart Inflammation and Adrenaline Triggers Injury and Death
"The vaccines set up the heart inflammation … and then it's the big surge of adrenaline … during a basketball game — during sports, that's triggering these deaths." pic.twitter.com/FotBSQyZx9
“CDC’s VAERS safety signal analysis based on reports from Dec. 14, 2020 – July 29, 2022 for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines shows clear safety signals for death and a range of highly concerning thrombo-embolic, cardiac, neurological, hemorrhagic, hematological, immune-system and menstrual adverse events (AEs) among U.S. adults.”
🚨 BREAKING: Pfizer scientist Chris Croce was aware that their experimental mRNA "vaccine" was the likely cause for the myocarditis. #ProjectVeritaspic.twitter.com/10RWrZHh8F
The numerous mandates birthed by the onset of the Covid-19 scenario were all designed to deliberately break the global economy and crush small businesses as well as break people’s minds, will and the social fabric, in order to “build back a better society” that conforms to the dystopian visions of the psychopaths waging this class war. . ..
Put simply, Covid-19 was not a widespread medical emergency, it was a money laundering scheme, a massive psychological operation and a smoke screen for a complete overhaul and restructuring of the current social and economic world order.
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
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“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
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“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
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“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
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Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
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“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
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“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
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“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
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“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
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“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
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“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
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“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
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Cindy Wity 
Daylight on the Garden of Good and Evil
March 19, 2023 Leave a comment
In the early chapters of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, we are introduced to the winsome character Stiva Oblonsky. With a smile and self-possessed mannerisms, he draws the attention and affections of many. He comes across as likeable, amiable and nothing out of the ordinary – as one of us. Yet, the first thing we read is that Stiva has thrown his household into chaos.
We immediately learn that he has been unfaithful to his wife, Dolly. He’s had an affair with their children’s former governess. We go on to learn that Stiva is remorseful of the exposure of the affair but has not one iota of remorse about what he has done: “He repented only that he had not done a better job of concealing this fact from his wife.”
When confronted by a note exposing his adultery, Stiva worried more about his response than about the hurt he caused his wife. The narrator gives us insight into that moment:
“Instead of taking offense, disavowing it, justifying himself, begging forgiveness, even feigning indifference – anything would have been better than what he did do! – his face, quite involuntarily (“the reflexes of the brain,” thought Stepan Arkadyevich, who was fond of physiology), suddenly, and quite involuntarily, broke into his usual good-nature, and thus foolish, smile.”
Stiva passes the blame for the mess he’s in: “That foolish smile of mine is to blame for everything”. It is his smile that first endeared him to Dolly. And now, as a response that appears to mock remorse, the smile allows Dolly to begin to see what lies behind Stiva’s beguiling demeanor.
Stiva’s evil is not the blatant action-taking evil. History has a record of such people. Rather, it is the absence of good. Stiva forgets, neglects, and fails to act. We get a sense of this in Part III, chap. 7:
“No matter how hard Stepan Arkadyevich (Stiva) tried to be a concerned father and husband, he never could remember that he had a wife and children.”
Remembering is unresolved grief. It’s not for a committed hedonist such as Stiva. He would never embrace suffering. And remembering brings guilt and guilt is suffering, so he is willing to tolerate a sense of sin to get on with life. Life’s unpleasantries are a bother. His forgetfulness is achieved with a smile and social acceptance. Stiva “was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone”.
Behind Stiva’s good-natured smile is what Tolstoy described as “the liberalism of the blood”. Stiva fostered an easy-going liberal mindset:
“Stepan Arkadyevitch took and read a liberal newspaper, not a radical one, but one advocating the viewpoint maintained by the majority. And even though neither science, nor art or politics held any particular interest for him, he firmly maintained the same views on all these subjects that were maintained by the majority and by his paper, and he changed them only when the majority changed them, or, better put, he did not change them at all; they imperceptibly changed within him . . .
“And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.”
Reading further, we find Tolstoy contrasting the ordinariness of self-giving love, as expressed by Dolly, with the ordinariness of Stiva’s self-satisfying evil, expressed without ill-will or bitterness. Making waves would disrupt his complacency and the slight fog diffused in his brain.
For many years I’ve enjoyed reading Russian literature. Russian history has veered toward extremes – totalitarianism and atheism produced by the intelligentsia aka politically connected radical socialist atheists. Russian literature offers a window into the life and times of Russia, its people, and the thinking that led to so much suffering.
Realism abounds in the works of Solzhenitsyn, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Ultimate questions and meaning of life issues are openly dealt with. No AI. No BLM, CRT, LGBTQ, pandering, no Wokey-dokey or playing with pronouns. Just serious adult things.
With Anna Karenina Tolstoy portrays prosaic good and evil, self-deception, and the nature of love – the seemingly fate-occurring dramatic love of romance vs. the committed non-trumpeting prosaic love that does good, i.e., cares for the family. With more than a dozen major characters and around 800 pages, the novel fleshes out the first line: “All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Once you read Anna, I think you’ll find that Tolstoy’s characters, including the absence-of-good Stiva, are not unique. You may find yourself in their stories and perhaps the impetus for change.
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Consider that Stiva is the first transhumanist. Look at his utter acquiescence to whatever is printed and accepted by the majority. And look at his attitude– cooly dispassionate and compliant. He’s a non-entity with a pasted-on smile.
*****
I coined the term “pornservatives” to describe the type of person who on paper or in person looks like a good old-fashioned red-state conservative, but in practice is living a morally dubious lifestyle antithetical to anything that resembles “conservatism” or “trad” values.
Hicklibs on Parade – The American Mind
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Tell me, where is the wisdom when you promote experimental COVID vaccines and refuse to promote safe, effective, and cheap repurposed drugs? (REPORT) US heath officials hid urgent recommendation to use ivermectin for Covid | Sharyl Attkisson
“So [the effect of the COVID vaccine] is negative, and that continues. The magnitude of that negativity increases over time. What does that mean, folks? It literally means that the people who received that vaccine were more likely to contract COVID-19 after seven months than the people who did not. That is a fact, has the CDC or FDA ever said a word about that? No.”
“I’m Not Sure Anyone Should Be Taking Them” – Florida Surgeon General Declares mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines Have a “Terrible Safety Profile” (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit
Tell me, where is the wisdom of financially befitting – with tax-payer dollars – NGOs like Catholic Charities who are doing the bidding of godless globalists under the pretense of Christian charity? Such groups aid and abet illegal border crossings which undoubtedly involve the trafficking of children, of criminals and of fentanyl? Such involvement serves to dilute and weaken the U.S. with an America hating Progressive/Globalist agenda.
Tell me, where is the wisdom when you employ out-of-control spending and money printing that leads to expected out-of-control consequences such as inflation and devaluation of the dollar?
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has been embraced by progressives, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who see MMT as the means for increased government spending that could help finance initiatives such as the Green New Deal policy on climate change and, of course, buy votes.
MMT says that a government can basically blow as much money as it wants to boost its economy as long as that government borrows in its own currency because it can always just print more money. This allows the government plenty of room for free spending without forcing it to raise taxes. It also means it would be impossible for that government to default on its debts.
“The central idea of MMT is that governments with a fiat currency system under their control can and should print (or create with a few keystrokes in today’s digital age) as much money as they need to spend because they cannot go broke or be insolvent unless a political decision to do so is taken.” – Modern Monetary Theory (MMT): Definition, History, and Principles (investopedia.com)
“According to MMT, the only limit that the government has when it comes to spending is the availability of real resources, like workers, construction supplies, etc. When government spending is too great with respect to the resources available, inflation can surge if decision-makers are not careful. (Emphasis mine)
The Failure of MMT Is Now Evident (noqreport.com)
And so it is the political decision of Democrats and Globalists to leave the southern border wide open for the infusion into the economy of low-cost workers to help finance MMT spending for such progressive legislation as universal healthcare and other public programs for which governments claim to not have enough money to fund:
During the past 25 years, low interest rates and highly expansionary monetary policy with little apparent inflation have created the illusion that a government can simply print money to fund exorbitant deficit spending with no repercussions. This core tenet of so-called “modern monetary theory” ignores the fact that deficit spending is constrained in the long run by a government’s ability to satisfy creditors. (Emphasis mine)
MMT and Government Finance: You Can’t Always Get What You Want | Richmond Fed
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Informed Dissent:
“I Was Severely Injured by the Moderna Vaccine” – Former Pussycat Dolls Member Shares Her Vaccine Injury Story (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit
UPDATE: Contracts Released For CDC Purchasing Of Phone Data To Track Americans’ Compliance With COVID Lockdowns | The Gateway Pundit
Too many doctors and nurses to count in recent months have told me about the alarming rise in sudden cancers in young people since the introduction of the experimental COVID vaccines.
“Turbo Cancer” Comes For The Vaccinated (substack.com)
(REPORT) US heath officials hid urgent recommendation to use ivermectin for Covid | Sharyl Attkisson
TRAGIC: 37-Year-Old Italian Swimmer Reportedly Took His Own Life After a Long Period of Suffering Due to COVID Vaccine Reaction | The Gateway Pundit
Chicago:
Indiana:
We need your help to protect parental rights in Indiana! HB1407 is the bill we emailed you about a few weeks ago that protects parents’ rights to direct the care and upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children. The bill passed through the House at the end of February, but with concerns held by a few judges. The bill’s author, Rep. Dale DeVon, advocated hard for the bill on the House floor and thankfully, the bill passed through to the Senate.
Sadly, several groups are trying to kill this important piece of legislation, despite Rep. DeVon’s assurances that the judges who have reservations would be able to testify in the Senate committee, as well as his vow to work with them on amendments that would resolve their concerns.
HB1407 is a parental rights bill that protects parents’ rights to direct the care and upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children. The bill passed through the House at the end of February, but with concerns held by a few judges. The question is whether the Senate will hear and pass the bill despite the judges’ concerns.
Take action here to support HB1407>>>>
INDIANA: Parental rights bill in danger | Stand for Health Freedom
Health Freedom Advocacy Center | Stand For Health Freedom
Under the guise of “health education” the grant focused on coercing those in poorer communities to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Florida’s Collier County rejects CDC/NIH grant, logging an important win for health freedom | Stand for Health Freedom
Canada:
Where are other pastors like Pastor Derek Reimer? Are they hiding behind Romans 13?
Read this for background on above >>>>
Breaking: Calgary pastor arrested protesting new law limiting anti-drag show demonstrations – Rebel News
J6 FedSurection:
HE HAS THE PROOF: DC Gulag Political Prisoner and Decorated Army Special Forces Soldier Jeffrey McKellop Reveals Extent of Government Agents at J6 Capitol Protest – IT WAS A COMPLETE SET-UP! (Audio) | The Gateway Pundit
DOJ Claims Trump Tweet Started Jan 6, but Bodycam Suggests Tear Gas Sparked Crowd – Valiant News
J6 Political Prisoner Matthew Webler: The FBI Raided His Home After He Walked into the US Capitol with a Flag – Then Feds Came Back and Took His Son | The Gateway Pundit
Ugh! Mike Pence:
Mike Pence Pandering To D.C. Media Is Pathetic And Disqualifying (thefederalist.com)
In caving to corporate and elite pressure to “fix” Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Gov. Mike Pence and the rest of the state’s laughingstock Republican leadership have ironically bungled into amending it in a way that now makes Indiana the most hostile state in the country to the conscience rights the original law was designed to protect.
Indiana Is Now The Most Hostile State To Religious Freedom (thefederalist.com)
Professor: Indiana RFRA ‘Fix’ Could Send Christians to Jail (breitbart.com)
The Netherlands:
The strength of green feeling here, both for and against, is a bellwether for the struggle to come in other countries and farming economies. But BBB [the Farmer Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging] should not be dismissed as ‘anti-green’; rather farmers are more of a lime green versus the dark green of the eco activists, both of whom claim they want to protect the land.
Dutch farmers’ party secures landslide victory – The Post (unherd.com)
Unchanged Climate Change:
Banking Climate Change:
WSJ oped discusses why Silicon Valley Bank failed (unusualwhales.com)
Woke Silicon Valley Bank Gave Over $73 Million to Black Lives Matter Movement | The Gateway Pundit
Congress Takes Brief Pause From Sending All Your Tax Dollars To Ukraine To Send Them To Silicon Valley Bank | Babylon Bee
Why would anyone use a Tier 2 Bank… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS
“It doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s still privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.
So is your $250,000 bank guarantee you currently enjoy.
You have to have a deposit guarantee.”
“Biden’s Spending, Leads to the Biden Inflation, That Leads to the Biden Bonds, that Leads to the Biden Banks” – Steve Bannon Puts Entire Blame for Massive Financial Crisis We Are In Today on Biden | The Gateway Pundit
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Filed under 2023 current events, Climate change, Globalism, Literature, Political Commentary, Politics, Short Story Tagged with Anna Karenina, evil, Globalism, Mike Pence, Modern monetary theory, open border, Tolstoy, transhumanism