“. . . the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day or the pestilence that stalks in darkness or the destruction that wastes at noonday.”Psalm 91
You wake up in a news cycle that never sleeps. With a cup of coffee, you read what ‘doomcasters’ are saying about end-of-life scenarios appearing on the horizon. Now you are fully awake and wondering what to do with these high alert headlines? Do you let existential crisis into your life?
You sip your coffee and remember that not long ago the world was subjected to pandemic hysteria. Coronavirus, the “global crisis of unprecedented reach and proportion,” started making headlines at the beginning of 2020.
You recall the WHO declaring the coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern.” And the headlines declaring surges in COVID-19 cases attributed to the Omicron variant, a “tripledemic” – COVID combined with flu and RSV, and of overwhelmed hospitals and healthcare systems and dancing nurses.
How could you forget that Biden imposed OSHA vaccination and testing emergency standards on your business or the reality-warping restrictive policies involving mandated lockdowns, masking, social distancing, fines, and vaccines, or the CDC predicting people will die?
You pour yourself another cup of coffee and look out the kitchen window. You see the couple next store – Vivian and Zoe – walking their dog Baxter. The other day, when you took the garbage can to the curb, the apoplectic twosome accosted you with “Democracy is threatened by the likes of you extremists, fascists, racists, homophobe Christian nationalists!” and “Trump is Hitler!” They saw you going to church last Sunday.
You drink your coffee troubled that Viv and Zoe had been beaten down by another media existential crisis campaign, akin to the rollout of the COVID-19 marketing campaign that told us to worry about it, and how to worry about it.
Under the spell of the “Democracy is threatened” campaign, Viv and Zoe were in a state of emotional panic. And that had them beat down on the closest person who didn’t share their views or the views of the commercial-sponsored media. The media’s inordinate influence has you very concerned about the collective fear and confusion its campaigns were causing to psyches.
The beat down goes on . . . in our heads.
~~~
How shall we then live in the context of existential dread?
Day after day imagination is battered with dire predictions– the end of this and that unless we do this and that. The steady beat of amplified headlines overwhelms one’s patience, strength, and soul.
How do we respond to headlines telling us that we are done for? Should we let fear and helplessness dominate our lives? Can we live in terms of “accepting disharmony from the outset and defying it”? This last way of going forward is the directive C.S. Lewis prescribes in his essay “On Living in an Atomic Age.”
Published in post-war 1948 and at the beginning of the atomic age, the essay provides a reality-check perspective and presents a scenario of how to live in life-ending times.
The following is an excerpt from the opening of Lewis’ short essay. During COVID the excerpt was passed around on the internet, with “atomic” replaced with “coronavirus.” Certainly, the essay can be applied to any dire life-threatening circumstances.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
The full essay, in the document below, contains questions and positions Lewis maintains, such as
Are we “accepting disharmony from the outset and defying it?”
Do we “hold up our own human standards against the idiocy of the universe?”
Are we the product of blind physical forces and therefore unable to provide answers to questions of a fatalist existence?
“But suppose we really are spirits? Suppose we are not the offspring of Nature…?”
“We must go back to a much earlier view.”
“We must simply accept it that we are spirits, free and rational beings, at present inhabiting an irrational universe, and must draw the conclusion that we are not derived from it.”
“If there is no straight line elsewhere, how did we discover that Nature’s line is crooked?”
“Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs.”
“On Living in an Atomic Age” (first published 1948) by C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) From: Present Concerns: Essays by C.S. Lewis (edited by Walter Hooper; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pages 73–80
Born a few years after the above essay was published, I became well aware of ‘doomcasting’ headlines. I recalled some of the headlines in my January 2025 post Surface Readings.
The post began with the words of poet W H Auden – “Now is the age of anxiety” and my own take on things: “Impending doom has been in the news during my entire lifetime.” I wrote about the headlines and pronouncements of those anxious times which included the book The Late great Planet Earth based on the modern and heretical notion of dispensationalism.
~~~
Imagination Reset
Taking in the spirit of the times, imaginations are exposed to the negation of life and dire predictions often made for political ends that use fear to move power into the hands of the few.
Taking in the digital tabloid times is the “WHAAM!” of a Roy Lichtenstein Ben-Day dots painting. Imagination is amped up and ready to pop with a Pow!
What happens to our imaginations when we are constantly confronted with crisis? And, how do we live with dire predictions?
“If you live today, you breath in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.” ― Flannery O’Connor
What we shouldn’t avoid are resources such as poetry, art, classical literature and music to help us cope with and see beyond the terrors of the modern age. We need the signal of those who came before and dealt with all kinds of things and not the clamoring noise of influencers.
Poet Wallace Stevens, in “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words” writes that poetry, as it interacts with reality and the imagination, can shape our perspective and provide meaning and comfort in a world that often feels overwhelming and harsh.
Wallace emphasizes the role of imagination in countering the beat down of life. If you are a Christian, you already know that the poetry of the Psalms does just that, e.g., Psalm 91.
Naomi Wolf with Outspoke: “I’m here tonight to talk about a huge news story that broke in the last couple of days. It could be thread that unravels the whole COVID virus/vaccine perpetrator issue.
“A criminal syndicate, essentially.
“Even just this initial gesture is so transformational. It breaks the spell of, “No one can be held accountable, no one can be investigated from the untouchable third rail COVID vaccine rollout, COVID virus rollout.””
For a long while now the main stream media has been staging professional wrestling matches with day-of-reckoning plots. The scrappers include Hurricane Climate Change, Mysterio Misinformation, Equalizer Inequality, Undertaker Pandemic, and The Hammer “Democracy!” Opponents will take the fall.
A lot of sponsor money is backing the theater. So, a team of writers pen the storylines. And though the plots are predetermined and the moves choreographed, the staged spectacle must appear real to wrest control of the public’s interest. The rigged and scripted matches must provide the illusion of legitimacy of an actual unprecedented threat.
The wrestlers’ character and in-ring actions must look authentic and connect with the audience. Even so, Joe Blow is not watching as a critical thinker. He’s partaking in the bloodlust.
The nature of the high-stakes fiction captures his full attention. He is soon whipped into a state of frenzy. Animal spirits, “the spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction” (M. Keynes), are released. He can barely contain himself.
What’s this! In tonight’s audience is another professional wrestler. The Snake! wants in on the action:
Former FBI Director James Comey posted a photo of sea shells arranged into the numbers “86 47” on his Instagram account today, before shortly deleting the post.
OK. The pro wrestling imagery is not perfect, but here’s the thing . . .
High-stakes fiction – existential threats posed by climate change, misinformation, inequality, democracy, and who knows what’s next – is meant not only to capture the full attention of Joe Blow but also to overwhelm and exhaust his resolve. Such is the nature of psychological oppression. To wit:
“A gleeful, self-satisfied Mr Punch was often heard to remark: “That’s the way to do it.” Today we examine how Mark Poynting, one of the BBC’s top doom-mongering Net Zero activists, uses the trusted ‘scientists say’ message to turn a centennial sea level rise of around 30 cm into prose stating: “The world could see hugely damaging sea-level rises of several metres or more over the coming centuries””
The constant messaging of threats – “It creates a state of utter helplessness, a state in which you are far more pliant.” So writes Thomas Buckley, of the Brownstone Institute in the web article The Existential Threat of the Existential Threat. Why do this? Buckley continues:
And those invoking that dread are waiting nearby to do just that – take society by the shoulder, offer it comfort on the form of entertainment, medication, and basic sustenance, and lead it away.
The real existential threat, as Buckley notes, is that which denies our individual human agency and seeks to combine us into communitarian compliancy with “the ethereal economy of government agencies, civil society actors, non-governmental organizations, foundations, and academia, all aided by the information cabal. Together they do, in fact, currently have the power to foist something upon civilization that truly is transgenerational, global, and terminal.
The benefit of a pliant public is all theirs, as Buckley writes:
The climate being threatened is their silver sheened scrubbed personal environment – the actual environmental destruction that is occurring is out of sight, the denigrating of the sub-Deltas who inhabit other places, is immaterial.
A new paper by Dr. Judith Curry, one of the world’s most prominent scientists skeptical of a looming human-caused climate catastrophe, and economist Harry DeAngelo cautions investors and the public that “the apocalyptic climate narrative is a seriously flawed guide for public policy.” Why? “Because it radically overstates the risks to humanity from continued global warming.” Wide-scale suppression of fossil fuel use will not measurably change future temperatures, but “a sharp decline in quality of life would surely ensue.”
“The past 24 hours have been something of a Rorschach Test for the Supreme Court. In the birthright citizenship case, the Court made clear that in emergencies, the judiciary must retain the power to enter universal injunctions, even if Article III does not otherwise permit such injunctions. And in A.A.R.P. v. Trump, the Court made clear that in emergencies, the court should certify a class without going through Rule 23, and grant an ex parte tro without considering any of the usual TRO factors.
“What lesson should lower court judges take away? In cases of perceived emergencies, forget all the rules and make stuff up. When the executive branch takes such actions we call it an autocracy. When the courts do it, they call it the “rule of law.””
“In 1982 there was a crisis. A depraved madman had laced many Tylenol capsules with potassium cyanide. The ensuing deaths and shock at such a malicious and evil act swiftly brought an industry and FDA forces to action and together started enforcing strict guidelines for tamper-evident packaging.”
By now, June 2023, you are used to tamper-proof and tamper-resistant packaging making packaging physically harder to open. Current regulations require that all OTC human drug products be packaged in tamper-resistant packaging. Requirements of the tamper-resistant packaging (TRP) regulations covering most OTC products were published by FDA in the FEDERAL REGISTER of November 5, 1982.
“A tamper-evident package is one having one or more indicators or barriers to entry which, if breached or missing, can reasonably be expected to provide visible evidence to consumers that tampering has occurred.”
If you have children, you are also aware that . . .
“Child-resistant (C-R) packaging, also referred to as “special packaging,” is used to reduce the risk of poisoning in children via the ingestion of potentially hazardous items including certain prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications, pesticides, and household chemicals.”
“Barriers to entry” promote product safety, i.e., no disastrous events, and the integrity of the product, i.e., quality control.
In 2021 there was a crisis. Depraved madmen began lacing humans with mRNA-altering-aborted-fetal-cell permeated vaccines. Tampering with human subjects had occurred.
The clinical trials for the mRNA jabs were shut down after two months. The FDA approved the mRNA jabs even though long-term risks and complications hadn’t been properly assessed. The ensuing deaths and lack of shock at such a malicious and evil act swiftly brought an industry and FDA forces to action and together they doubled down and began recommending boosters shots, shots for pregnant women and shots for children. (The effects of the vaccines are being properly assessed now by others not tied to Pfizer and Big Pharma.)
The Biden regime mandated the COVID-19 vaccination tampering for a large swath of the American workforce who told to take the jab or wear a mask and be continually tested. If you were in the military, you were told to take the jab or be relieved from duty. Religious exemptions were not allowed.
(In 2021 I worked for a major engineering company that was a federal contractor. The Biden regime mandated via OSHA that any federal contractor with over 100 employees had to impose the jab on their employees or make them wear a mask and be continually tested. I put in a religious exemption. I would not take the jab or wear a mask or be tested. I didn’t want to be tampered with. My company wisely allowed me and others to work from home.)
Remember the concerted push to break through the barrier to entry, the tamper resistance, so that humans could be laced with the untested mRNA-altering-aborted-human-fetal-cell permeated vaccine?
We agree based on trial that a “barrier to entry” promotes product safety, i.e., no disastrous events, and it promotes the integrity of the product, i.e., quality control for OTC medicines, household chemicals and food products. But what about “barriers to entry” to protect the life and integrity of the nation and its citizenry beyond packaging? What about “barriers to entry” that protect Americans from anyone wanting to tamper with America?
For the common good, shouldn’t there be a barrier to entry at our southern border? Why is our southern border porous? Why is the Biden regime lacing our country with fentanyl that poisons and kills Americans? Why did the Biden regime end rapid DNA testing at the border? Why was this “barrier to entry”, which protected immigrant children from abuse, removed?
And why is the Biden regime allowing in the criminal element from other countries? Why is the safety of Americans and integrity of America being tampered with? Because depraved madmen – globalists all – want to lace our country with low-cost workers (and supposed Democrat voters) and with immigrant women and children to be used for sex trafficking. Because depraved madmen do not care about the safety of American citizens nor about the integrity of the U.S.
Why are our children being tampered with in public schools? Because depraved madmen want to lace our children with poisonous indoctrination. Because depraved madmen want to break through the parental “barrier of entry” that protects children from all manner of societal evil. Because depraved madmen want to groom children and traffic them for sex. Because depraved madmen want them to grow up and become useful idiots for the gospels of CRT and climate change.
Why are the Biden regime and many of our representatives willing to turn over U.S. sovereignty, a “barrier of entry” that protects our nation’s integrity, to the World health Organization and the World Economic Forum? Because they are depraved madmen who want to lace Americans with the poison of a New World Order. Depraved madmen will forcibly break through any tamper resistance to their ideological programs.
Why has everything gone woke these days? ESG scores.
Here is BlackRock CEO Larry Fink along with the CEO of AmEx explaining his desire to “force behaviors” (2017): pic.twitter.com/wCoeoJBD8x
Tell me. Are you hearing anything in the media or from your representatives about the coming National Digital Health ID being implemented by the Federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology? It looks like the “barrier of entry” to our health privacy will be smashed even though the HIPPA Security Rule defines “confidentiality” to mean that e-PHI (electronic protected health information”) is not available or disclosed to unauthorized persons. Depraved madmen want their way with you.
Tell me. Are you hearing anything in the media or from your representatives about the World Health Organization taking over the sovereignty of the U.S.?
Tell me. Are you hearing anything in the media or from your representatives about the World Economic Forum pushing digital ID systems (built on the premise that certain entities need to know who they are dealing with)?
Most U.S. Citizens have no idea of what is being tampered with under the guise of public health safety and “for a new era of global responsibility and cooperation”? Why are these things not talked about openly? Why are these things off of the radar of our representatives?
Why do our representatives in Congress protect everything except our Bill of Rights? Our right to privacy? Our right to free speech? Our freedoms? Our Constitution?
What I’ve learned over 70 years and especially since 2020 is that you cannot trust the government, the media, many judges, and some political candidate to maintain our Constitution’s “barrier to entry” that protects our free speech, our privacy, our due process, and our freedoms. Each of these has had their integrity “barrier to entry” broken through. They are all compromised. But these must know, in no uncertain terms, that you will not be compromised, that you will not be tampered with.
Here’s Christine Anderson, a member of the European Parliament, with words you must heed:
Tell your representatives by email, letter and phone repeatedly that you want nothing to do with the following:
–Environmental and social governance (ESG) for your state’s finances. (I told my retirement funds financial consultant that I do not want any of my funds invested in any ESG funds. She said that many of the clients have stated the same thing.)
–Digital currency replacing physical currency
–A National Digital Health ID System
–The World Health Organization. Trump had pulled us out of WHO control, and the Biden regime put the U.S. back under WHO’s thumb. Tell your rep that you want the U.S. out from the WHO.
–The World Economic Forum (Dear God, save us from elites – “omnipotent moral busybodies”.)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis
As individuals within a family, a church, and a community, we must become Tamper-proof and Tamper-resistant. Say “NO!” to digital IDs, to digital currency, to the WHO, and to the WEF. So “NO!” to the media – turn it off. (I stream Home – Real America’s Voice News (americasvoice.news) for the signal, not the noise.)
We must not become porous, letting in the lacing influences of depraved men. Depraved men? G.K. Chesterton makes it clear: “Take away the supernatural and what remains is the unnatural.”
We must champion freedom of choice and bodily autonomy.
We must champion parental rights (we do not co-parent with the government).
We must champion and protect data privacy – health, financial, location, etc. – no matter how much pressure is forced upon us to break through privacy’s “barrier to entry” with the ploys of public health safety and a climate change crisis. Resist. Resist. Resist.
2023 and there is a crisis. Depraved madmen are attempting to lace our lives with their madness. Be the barrier to entry.
*****
I believe the main reason for the lies about the novel virus is a desire for total predictability and control, with the clearly articulated intention of transforming society; beginning by dismantling the financial system through lockdowns and furlough, while the immediate practical goal of lockdown was to provide the causus belli for injecting as many people as possible with materials designed not to induce immunity, but to demand repeat inoculation, to cause injury and death, and to control freedom of movement. I’m sure they’re pretty content with getting at least one needle into 6,000,000,000 people. . . .
As I always say, I cannot know much for sure. I don’t have a copy of the script of this, the greatest crime in history. But, whatever Covid actually is, I don’t believe that what was called influenza disappeared conveniently in early 2020. It’s another lie. It’s what they do. It’s all they do. –Dr Mike Yeadon
Dr. Sherri tenpenny: “On Tuesday, June 8, 2021, I gave testimony at the Ohio Legislature Health Committee in support of HB 248, a bill that supported freedom of choice and bodily autonomy. During that testimony, I was asked by Representative Dr. Beth Wagner Liston, “Have you observed any abnormal side effects?””
Medicare will run out of money in 2028. Social Security will run out of money in 2034. Neither the recent debt ceiling bill nor the $1.7Tn Omnibus bill before it was the answer to their solvency. PFA has an answer.
“Milton Friedman was a staunch advocate for privatizing Medicaid and Social Security, relying on the free market to regulate healthcare. The ‘Plan for America’ (PFA) is a proposal to bring this vision to life.” Milton Friedman’s Vision: A ‘Plan for America’ and the Future of Entitlements – The Heartland Institute
With the arrival of Earth Day, a movie and novella come to mind.
Contact is a sci-fi movie involving science, politics and faith.
“Dr. Ellie Arroway is employed in the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She was inspired to pursue a career in science and communication, starting with amateur radio, by her father who has since passed away. Her work involves listening to radio transmissions from space in the hopes of finding signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life.” Contact (1997 American film) – Wikipedia
My favorite line of dialogue in the movie occurs early on. Ellie’s father offers his daughter words of wisdom as her youthful enthusiasm and curiosity about topic of interest innocently overlooks the time and effort required before useful results are encountered: “Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.”
With these simple words, I hear Ellie’s father preparing Ellie for proper scientific method and how not to science: “You’re excited. You want results. Don’t get ahead of the facts. Be patient in your quest for results. And, don’t propose applications born out of your passion, but only out of established facts. There is form and function in place in the cosmos. Don’t get ahead of it and don’t go around it to get results you think you should find. If you focus on one thing going wrong then you’ll miss what works and what is going right. Don’t fixate on one thing to the exclusion of all else. Small moves, Ellie, don’t Greta it.”
Small measured moves in one’s research for factual results – there is no rush (except where motives are compromised) – should also be exercised in the proposed application of one’s findings. Stay away from hyperbole. In other words, don’t fashion computer models with overstated feedback loops that generate hockey stick graphs that are intended to accelerate human, societal and environmental change in a desired direction. That is immoral and unethical. And . . .
“We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.” Christopher Hitchens
How Dare You!
“The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it, not a sentimental pretense but an idea: and an unselfish belief in the idea–something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…” ―Marlowe in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness, an 1899 novella by Joseph Conrad, takes place in the Congo. There “the Company”, an unnamed European organization, is running a colonial enterprise – Congolese doing enforced labor to harvest ivory. The exploitation of a land and its people is at the heart of the story.
“. . . while the text is widely recognized as an indictment of the greed and ruthlessness that generally drove European imperialism in Africa, most readers are unfamiliar with the fact that the setting is the event in imperial history so uniquely horrific in its sheer scale of suffering and death that it has been termed the African Holocaust. As Conrad himself would [later] characterize the situation . . . it was “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience.”
-A. Michael Matin, Introduction to Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction, Barnes & Noble Books, 2003, p. xxxiii
Elephants and native Africans both died as a result of man’s pursuit of ivory. The entire enterprise was rotten at the core. The cruelties and greed at work in this “conquest of the earth” are part of a greater, timeless evil.
Now cobalt, mined by the Congolese (and the Uyghurs in China), is a coveted substance in man’s conquest of earth. And we find, if we dare to look, that Green Energy-based colonialism is no different than the ivory-based colonialism talked about in Heart of Darkness. Both exploit people and resources. “The horror! The horror!
“Some 60% of the world’s cobalt supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where nearly three-quarters of citizens live in extreme poverty.”
“Cobalt is widely used in the production of goods, including batteries for smartphones, computers, and electric vehicles, for which demand is growing. The DRC is a global leader in cobalt production and accounts for over 50 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves. Children routinely work in these mines, often under hazardous conditions. While mining is on the DRC’s list of hazardous activities for which children’s work is forbidden, the majority of cobalt mining in the DRC is done informally, where monitoring and enforcement are poor.”
“Cobalt is essential to power the rechargeable lithium batteries used in millions of products sold by Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft and Tesla every year. The insatiable demand for cobalt, driven by desire for cheap handheld technology, has tripled in the past five years and is expected to double again by the end of 2020. More than 60% of cobalt originates in DRC, one of the poorest and most unstable countries in the world.”
“Around one-fifth of cobalt mined in the DRC comes from small-scale artisanal mines. People, including children as young as 7 years old, work in hazardous conditions without gloves to protect them from contact dermatitis, breathing cobalt-laden dust that is associated with a potentially fatal lung disease. Miners work in unsafe tunnels that are liable to collapse and bury them, all in settings that are prone to violence and sexual exploitation.”
“Products that are fundamental to nearly all global “green pledges” — including electric vehicle batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and industrial-grade storage batteries — require minerals that are produced with significant human rights violations.
A green transition will require the development of advanced technologies which require certain minerals found in mines across the globe. These minerals, though, are largely sourced from regions with few labor and environmental protections such as China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Russia.”
“A lithium producer for carmakers including BMW AG and Tesla Inc. is beginning work to assess battery metals projects in Xinjiang, deepening links between electric vehicle supply chains and a region at the heart of human-rights allegations against China.”
Copper is used in wiring and construction as well as electric vehicles, solar panels and other green technologies. Electrification is expected to increase annual copper demand to 36.6 million metric tons by 2031 . . .
“While electric cars reduce fossil fuel emissions once they are on the road, the production of the lithium-ion batteries that power them causes more displacement and CO2 emissions than the production of regular gas-powered cars. Disposal of the batteries at the end of their life cycle is also a growing concern.” Lithium: Not as clean as we thought – Climate360 News (lmu.edu)
*****
Early in my life I asked God for wisdom. And like Solomon of old, I received wisdom and didn’t always make use of it. Folly, foolish impulses and knee-jerk responses followed out a practice of self-deception. You can’t fool wisdom, so consequences followed. Wisdom and her words never left my side.
These days I’m interested in discerning the truth and in not being exploited. I am a Christian realist and not gullible. Before retiring I had worked the last fifteen years in the electric grid modernization division of a stellar engineering company – a global leader in power and energy with expertise in grid modernization, renewable energy, energy storage, nuclear power, and fossil fuels. I am a proponent of nuclear energy. So, when I heard this> Germany shuts down last nuclear power plants, some scientists aghast (cnbc.com) I was stunned. The shutdown of the final three reactors was “a blow to climate advocates who support nuclear energy as a clean, zero-carbon source of electricity”. Fear was the driver of the shutdowns and of an emotionally driven choice.
As a Christian, I have found God’s messaging to be true and faithful. At the same time, I am very skeptical of the world’s messaging, knowing man’s voracious hunger for power, man’s insatiable greed to possess land, people, and goods, and man’s endless capacity for evil. Add to this man’s susceptibility to peer pressure and GroupThink. As such, wise words and small moves are not guiding today’s science towards useful ends.
A rush to judgement and then a rush to be on the side of consensus is not useful, except for those with an agenda. Deceit and drastic moves seem to be the guiding science and populations toward a designated outcome. One recent horrifying example has been burned into our conscientiousness.
Deceit: to avoid oversight and the Obama administration’s ban on gain-of-function research, Anthony Fauci moved the gain-of-function bio-weapon and vaccine research to China. Funding came from the CIA and the Dept. of Defense via money laundering institutions.
We are now aware, despite all of the deceitful media coverup, that Anthony Fauci’s unauthorized gain-of-function nightmare escaped the Wuhan lab. People died from COVID and Fauci lied about gain-of-function research to Congress.
Drastic moves: any enthusiasm and curiosity on the public’s part to know the source of COVID was thwarted with labels of “misinformation” and “conspiracy theory”; doctors and scientists who bucked “the science” consensus were silenced; a constant “the science” narrative permeated the media; fear of death was promoted; business and job-destroying mandates were rolled out; lockdowns; masks; untested mNRA vaccines were pushed endlessly; OSHA was employed to enforce vaccine compliance.
There was a rush to get big pharma’s product to market and keep it there. Hence, the blocking of existing and effective repurposed drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin took place so that an “emergency-use vaccine’ could be employed.
And with the vaccine, lives were lost with sudden deaths occurring and adverse effects are multiplying. Not useful results unless you love profit and power. Not small moves nor wisdom. Rather science used for exploitation.
The COVID psyop did some of the work of enslaving and colonizing people and resources the Great Reset. Now, there is the myth of apocalyptic anthropogenic-produced climate change. The myth is hyped as an existential threat that requires immediate action. Computer models, media reports and web articles have produced consensus outcomes. Follow the money and the desire to be on the “right” side of the narrative.
And so, U.S. and European Union governments, the U.N. and WEF have made drastic pledges of our tax money for a so-called green transition away from fossil fuel dependence and toward renewable energy production in an effort to stave off “cataclysmic climate change”. This despite the fact that fossil fuels, namely crude oil, natural gas and coal, continue to supply more than 80% of the world’s energy needs and the electric grid, power generation plants, and EV chargers are nowhere near ready to supply electric power needed to support the people of the world. Their answer: there should be less people and use children to do what we want.; that’s why we have open borders.
(FYI: a SpaceX rocket is not powered by an EV charger.)
Based on my examination of the climate change topic, I’m a climate realist. Climate change is occurring but at a small level – not at catastrophic levels. Some of the warming may be due to coming out of ice age not long ago. Computer models DO NOT tell the whole story of climate change nor should they be used as (end-of-the world) predictors. There are too many moving parts in our ancient biosphere to account for. Most important: should we exploit land and people to “save the planet”?
Now consider these well-known facts: inflation Is not under control, the southern border is out of control, government spending is out of control, the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine is not under control. Democrat cities are not under control. The same people in charge of these things tell you that the “climate crisis” is real and they will work to control it. I would not entrust the earth and my life to these people. They have mismanaged and destroyed what they are responsible for, including lives in their charge.
Small circumspect moves, not based on hyperbole and overstated feedback loops but based on factual information, in the direction of mitigating climate change is a wise Christian position. There is no climate emergency no matter how times it is repeated in the media.
You can listen to a climate emergency debate at this link Yes, the Climate Is Changing. No, It’s Not an Emergency | Opinion (newsweek.com) (Note: the “crisis” advocate Heather speaks from a hyperbolic viewpoint. She repeats “the science” without including science facts and insists that what she relates about global warming is “not debatable”. She goes on to call for a “systemic transformation”. I immediately sensed that she has been socially-emotionally schooled in the climate narrative and is therefore has been made its communications director.)
Not only are children being exploited to supply metals for Green Energy mandates, children are also being exposed to climate change trauma in their schools. Why? Why traumatize kids and create stress, anxiety, and depression in our children about a supposed “existential threat” to the planet? Where are the adults?
Greta is a prime example of a child that has been traumatized by the climate change narrative. The narrative stole her childhood.
Why exploit children by programming them to repeat narrative words “crisis” and “the science” like the “crisis” advocate mentioned in the podcast above? Why are children being taught that science involves accepting “the science” narrative and forming a consensus (groupthink)? Why are children not being taught that science involves curiosity and inquiry?
“The results of this study add to the growing body of evidence that higher domain-specific knowledge is associated with lower domain-associated anxiety. They also contribute to the emerging literature on the construct of climate change anxiety, which so far has focused on demographics, attitudes, and personality characteristics as predictors and neglected the role of environmental knowledge. . .”
The Frankenstein climate change narrative “lives” if social media has its way:
“The changes, which will go in effect on April 21 to mark Earth Day, will crack down on “misinformation” (information harmful to powerful interests) about climate change and elevate “authoritative information” (information amplified by powerful interests invested in pushing the man-made climate change hoax).”
You’ll likely hear these words: “Our climate is changing at an unprecedented and alarming rate with profound impacts on human life.” Please don’t buy into this lie. Be skeptical of such hyperbolic claims.
“Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet. A purely rational education will not suffice.”
It has been said by those who have gone on before us that in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. The Left, with its love of death and taxes and underworld ideology, have added to what is said to be certain: racism and climate change.
Racism’s certainty, as claimed by those who seek to benefit, is the Heart of Darkness inherent in all white people from time immemorial – a sweeping generalization that ignores vast accounts of reality. (Union troops killed in action: 110,000. Total dead: 360,000. Wounded: 275,200. And you need reparations? You need your head examined!)
As wielded by the Left, racism is that which does not accord with that which comes out of the Left’s mouth or pen. That is a well-documented documented certainty. A charge of racism is meant to silence dissent and to proclaim the above forgone conclusion. For, one is even deemed “racist” just for opening one’s mouth in utter disbelief upon hearing the Left speak.
Regarding the other certitude candidate, the Left is working the climate change apocalypse narrative up to a fever pitch of do-or-die certainty. Do what you are told or the world will end. This they know, for The Science tells them so. The media and classrooms are the Sunday Schools of the climate religion.
“Climate realists should gird their loins in preparation for the pending onslaught of stories in the mainstream media proclaiming this or that seasonal weather event is being enhanced by anthropogenic climate change to some degree somehow or other.
For the past two decades, every year as winter wanes and spring springs, the media has engaged in its contemporary rite of spring: climate fear.”
The first day of spring this past week and, lo and behold, rain is forecasted. Heavy rains and flood warnings are noted for certain areas. Low lying areas, flood plains, areas close to existing water and sewer systems that cannot handle the runoff will see flooding, as expected.
TV viewers will again see pictures of flooded streets and videos of some reporter dude flapping his jaw in flapping rain gear in a flapping storm. No one likes flooding. Some have incurred it and have dealt with it. We can’t control weather but we can control what we do with the weather given us. But hold on! Climate bookies are telling us the stakes have been raised.
“Never before extreme weather” is being forecasted based on the certainty of assumptions:
The hydrological cycle is expected to intensify with global warming, which likely increases the intensity of extreme precipitation events and the risk of flooding. (Emphasis mine)
As global warming increases the likelihood for more extreme weather events to occur, risks will expand beyond the high-risk areas known today. More extreme flooding must be expected, and for the towns and cities where flooding has already occurred, theirs will no longer be a ‘once in a lifetime’ risk but now far more frequent. (Emphasis mine)
Will the risk of flooding in your area soon be media-ascribed to an anthropogenic-caused risk level of RED based on the transmission of rain drops in your area? Anything is possible as we have seen with the COVID plandemic. Flatten the curve of that nonsense.
H. Sterling Burnett, PhD recommends that “when you see stories this year claiming climate change is causing an apocalypse of allergies, maple syrup disappearance, floods, hurricanes, drought, and wildfires, check the facts. It will make you feel better. The Heartland Institute provides the fully referenced data on these and other extreme weather trends at ClimateRealism.com and ClimateataGlance.com.”
Here’s a podcast discussing green imperialism and what myopic climate activism does to poor
Manmade extreme flood conditions, not of the hydrologic kind, are upon us. Economic flood waters, digital flood waters and cultural flood waters are rising quickly around us. They are devasting in nature.
Economic Flood Waters:
Food costs, fuel costs, declining and stagnant wages, high interest rates, the inverted yield curve, and increasing levels of personal debt are some of the major indicators of the catastrophic effect of the reckless control of the economy.
The Fed is ‘trying’ to get the flood waters of inflation under control while the Biden regime along with Democrats and feckless Republicans are flooding the economy with massive inflationary spending. The $1.7 trillion Omnibus bill is the latest torrential rainfall. More dollars are chasing fewer goods. The dollar is being devalued. It makes perfect nonsense.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell are incompetent in their roles. They should never have been put into their respective positions.
When it comes to inflation incompetence, look no further than Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. In her powerful position, Ms. Yellen is supposed to advocate sound economic policies that help the American people. But when millions of hardworking families were struggling with out-of-control inflation not seen in 40 years, Ms. Yellen helped pave the way for the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which had nothing to do with reducing inflation. Even Paul Krugman at The New York Times admits: “The strategically misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act is mainly a climate bill.” –In Biden’s incompetent Cabinet, how has no one been fired or asked to resign? – Washington Times
Jerome Powell has no economic background. Both Yellen and Powell talk the talk as they are Washington insiders. They are also puppets of the Biden regime and that doesn’t bode well for Americans who are under water. And there’s this:
The people entrusted to secure the U.S. dollar and the financial system are incompetent and politically biased and that means that low and middle class people like you and me will be soon overwhelmed by the extreme financial events pouring out of bad decisions.
For people who are acutely aware of their debts, higher rates intensify the woes, said Ashley Agnew of Centerpoint Advisors in Needham, Mass. “It feels more like a punishment than an interest rate,” she said.
Keep in mind: the people who are mishandling the economy and bringing about the managed decline of the country are some of the same people who call you names and want to control the climate.
Digital Flood Waters:
We immerse ourselves in digital streams. We own handheld devices for texting, paying, playing, watching and talking. We are walking data streams. And driving data streams.
Late model cars have digital tracking. It’s there for “roadside assistance” and to track your wear and tear on the car. Drive Safe & Save type apps used to monitor your driving habits and to automatically record trips. The app will give you feedback about your acceleration, braking corner, speeding and distracted driving. The insurance company rewards you (premium discount) for being enrolled in their data stream.
To Enjoy an “Easier and Better Life With Smart Home Devices” we buy smart TVs, smart appliances, smart thermostats, smart cameras, smart locks, smart security systems, smart speakers, etc. etc. We are embedded in data streams and may have them embedded in us. And that’s a problem.
There are enormous risks in involved with online data. For example, at the end of last year I learned that the company I had been working for had received a ransomware attack. I received a letter from the company saying that my personal information had been stolen. The company set me up with a credit monitoring company but my personal information is out there in the cyber underworld.
There are home title thieves who can go online and steal your title and leave you holding enormous debt and no title.
On the receiving end of your data are people and/or AI systems monitoring you. Neither consider you a person. You are a data stream that for one, can be monetized and for another can be controlled to be the perfect consumer. You already know this and go along with it with every click.
So, you should know that when the Fed comes out with Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and replaces physical cash, your whole life will then be a data stream not under your control.
Your purchases of food and gas, of everything, will be monitored and controlled by ESG AI algorithms who don’t give a hoot about you and your situation. A social credit system will be employed to the end that you will be made to submit to whatever the gods of this world decide atop the DAVOS ziggurat.
Many have been seduced by the programmable digital world. Many spend their time knee deep in digital streams. But the manmade digital flood that is coming will overtake them. They will be left hanging on to whatever non-digital flotsam you can find to hold on to.
Below is a brief summary of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and how they can be wielded against society to enforce ESG compliance. From Digital Dollars – The Heartland Institute:
A digital dollar’s threats to privacy and freedom are real. First, the government could easily block transactions. This already happens as government pressure has led banks and PayPal to cancel accounts. The Canadian government blocked funding for the Freedom Convoy truckers. A CBDC empowers government micromanagement of our transactions.
Second, digital dollars could have expiration dates or automatically lose value. This undermines money’s ability to serve as a store of value, or let people hold onto purchasing power. Non-counterfeit money represents unconsumed production, the accumulated pay you never spent. It should not expire, ever. (Emphasis mine.)
Tell your representatives that you do not want CBDC and to kill UCC modification bills. Tell your representatives that you are not all happy with the managed decline of America that they are taking part in.
Open wounds and rashes exposed to floodwater can become infected. Vibrios, for example, are naturally occurring bacteria that live in certain coastal waters and can cause skin infections when an open wound is exposed to them. This can happen during floods. To protect yourself and your family: Avoid exposure to floodwater.
It is difficult to avoid the bacterial flood waters of our culture. Without proper borders, it flows in and infects.
The culture’s bacterial flood waters have entered our home via TV, the internet, and smartphones. Children are babysat by TV programs that infect and wound young susceptible minds. It is no different for teens and adults, as they passively invite in the bacterial flood waters with its deteriorating effect on their being.
Bacterial flood waters have entered our education systems via the degenerate sponsors of CRT and the sexualization of children. Our school children are becoming infected with gay porn that is promoted in the classroom and in school libraries.
Bacterial flood waters have entered our churches via “acceptance” and “inclusion” policies and via mega church structures that hid sin. Catholic congregations are becoming infected by priests who promote open borders and homosexuality. Moral failings, abuse, toxic internal structures, and the utter hypocrisy of leadership as seen in mega churches like Hillsong and Willowcreek reveal the church has been infected with the cultural bacteria.
Sewers have backed up from torrents of hedonism that rain down on us from the digital clouds. One is easily infected, via devices, with the bacterial sewer water of a hedonistic lifestyle. “You need such and such or so and so to be truly happy. Click here.”
Those who practice abortion, homosexuality, and “affirming care” leading to permanent mangling of children’s bodies have crossed a cultural Rubicon, unaware that they have been led there by Malthusians.
Those who are forced to use pronouns that do not match a person’s gender are being forced to lie to their neighbor.
Our culture has been infected by bacterial flood waters brought about by the manmade deluge of the misuse, disordering and dysfunction of Nature – a product of cultural climate change activism.
Gay Iconoclasm: Holding the Line against the Radical LGBT Agenda
The massive flood of illegal immigration created by the Biden regime’s manmade open border policy is altering the cultural landscape of our country. The U.S. will soon be covered in the flood waters of economic opportunists (not refugees), terrorists, gangs, drugs dealers, pedophiles, criminals, and fentanyl.
As such, the U.S. will become a third world country – just what the fundamental-transformation-hate-America ideologues have so desired. Then U.S. citizens will be ordered around like Venezuelans are dictated to by Nicolás Maduro and Brazilians by CCP controlled Lula de Silva.
The open border’s flood of illegal immigrants is not being done as an act of compassion and generosity on the part the Left. It is being done to destabilize America. It is being done to flood the zone of American’s resolve against a New World Order leadership that wants to own America, with those who come in depending on government, aka the Biden regime.
A very brief history of back in time:
In the beginning the cosmos, established by God, was non-ordered. The primary act of creation was bringing into existence the ordering of the material cosmos and human society. God brought order to our world and at the same time left non-order for humans to “subdue and rule”, i.e., work with God to bring about order.
“God didn’t produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.” – John Polkinghorne
Disorder stands in opposition to order. Disorder works to move the center of order from God to man who says “I will order life my way”. Order and the yet-to-be-ordered are affected by the inherently evil disorder. Chaos – out of order – ensues, as evidenced in our world today. Human disorder flooded the days of Noah and is flooding our lives today.
“The suffering and evil of the world are not due to weakness, oversight, or callousness on God’s part. But rather, are the inescapable costs of a creation allowed to be other than God.” – John Polkinghorne
Hyperbole was used by a Hebrew author to describe a devastating flood just like other Ancient Near East (ANE) account authors did. For example, reading these accounts one gets the idea that the flood was universal and covering the earth. But there is no geological record of such a worldwide flood. The flood is certainly wide-ranging in its devastation, so it is not a local flood either. Hyperbole was used to make important theological points.
In ANE accounts the gods were dependent on humans to supply their needs. They became unhappy with unruly mankind and decided to flood the earth and wipe away mankind. A remnant was saved to continue serving the gods’ needs.
The Hebrew flood account can be understood as a God “order-bringing event” to the creation he once ordered. Noah is to be the order-preserving remnant.
“The connection of Noah’s name to the flood suggests that besides being presented as an act of judgement, grace and deliverance, the narrator is recounting this event as a sort of “reset button.” God uses non-order (the waters) to eliminate disorder (pervasive violence) and then to reestablish optimal order (even as he recognizes that disorder remains [Ge. 8:21]).” – Tremper Longman III & John Walton, The Lost World of the Flood, Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate, 118
What I see happening in our world today is similar to the ANE accounts of the flood. The gods of this world, who are dependent on humans to supply their needs, specifically wealth and power, have become unhappy with mankind. Mankind is too independent and not organized the way they want. They have decided to flood the earth and bring about a Great Reset: “We will order life our way”. A flood of disorder, they assume, will wipe away the God-ordered world. But they are off center . . .
The human mind may devise many plans, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will be established. -Proverbs 19:21
The climate apocalypse narrative is hyperbole. It is being used as hyperbole to produce a theological point: that transformational change, not of the climate but of humanity, away from the image of God, is necessary. The gods of this world will use any means necessary, including and not limited to the above, to bring about devasting disorder that they believe leads to a New World Order.
As we have seen, the NWO gods used “The Science” for the COVID plandemic to move people to a place of submission. Consider the devastating disorder brought upon people with mandates and the untested mNRA DNA altering vaccine.
They are now using “The Science” in the climate change narrative for the same reason. “The Science” will be used again and again to bring about the NWO.
Now, because I don’t accept NWO theology and won’t submit to NWO gods does not mean that I reject science. That is an oft used criticism used by NWO gods to say that I’m not thinking straight or that I’m not thinking about the right things. I don’t reject science. I reject the NOW’s “The Science” hyperbole.
Having said all this, what are you prepared to do . . . about devastating disorder?
*****
Climate Change – What is the science behind this?
*****
Alarmism? I guess that I am somewhat inured to it. The year the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific, I was born. There were Duck and cover drills in my elementary school.
I have lived with a heightened state of alarm brought about by the prospect of nuclear war, the state of the Cold War, and the burgeoning unrest centered around the Viet Nam War. And, there was and continues to be the alarming outcomes brought about by the economic mishandling of policy makers.
And there was the end of the world eschatology alarmism of The Late Great Planet Earth and later, the Left Behind series.
I don’t know of anyone on the earth who is omniscient or all knowing. And that includes scripture and science prognosticators. False prophets abound. They over promise and under deliver.
All of the above situations and alarms were manmade.
On another familiar subject . . .
My own experience with flooding goes way back to the time my father was mayor of a suburban Chicago village. Continuous rain flooded a creek that runs from the Wisconsin border down into the Des Plaines River and right through the eastern section of the village.
The flooding caused significant damage to commercial and residential property. The overflow of the creek’s waters blocked the main throughfare through the village, preventing commerce.
Illinois Senator Charles Percy came down to meet with my father. The two of them got into a row boat to survey the damage. State monies came later to shore up the creek, to pay for the damage, and to help with storm water management. A year later a tornado hit our village and tore up some apartment buildings. Extreme weather happens.
The village was situated on a flood plain. Our basement flooded every spring until my father put in a sump pump. He saw what would happen again and adapted.
*****
Informed dissent:
Notice the increase. These terms and “white supremacy” are used more and more to silence dissent and to program you to react the same way.
🚨 Fmr. CDC Director Dr. Redfield: "This Pandemic Was Caused by Science"
"I think it was done probably as part of a biodefense program that largely was trying to make a vaccine vector…but unfortunately that virus escaped…probably somewhere in the September [2019] timeframe.… pic.twitter.com/Gm841fLuk7
What Ed Dowd says here is the most powerful assessment of the humanitarian catastrophe wrought by public health authorities (& those who control them) via their demonstrably & increasingly insane policies of mass toxic vaccination with denial of effective, cheap early treatments. -Dr. Pierre Kory
Informed Dissenter:
These “public health” hoodlums (Fauci & Bowser) come to the hood to push vaccines but not Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to save lives.
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.
Looking for new ways to part with money, science, common sense, and freedom? Well, you are in luck. There is a Pyramid Scheme called “Climate Change Crisis”.
The UN recruits investors during annual media-doting climate conferences. The recruits come to believe that they are part of a global response to a “climate emergency”. They make commitments to “substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit the global temperature increase in this century to 2 degrees Celsius while pursuing efforts to limit the increase even further to 1.5 degrees” per the UN webpage.
That’s the ploy. But no one knows exactly how much carbon needs to get cut to produce results. We don’t know how much to cut, where to cut it, or why some industries need to work on this issue and others do not. Any reporting of a country’s carbon emissions cuts back to the top of the pyramid, of course, would be as questionable as the climate science data is.
And since “climate emergency” is the scheme’s appeal, unlimited draconian measures are urged and so is open-ended financing.No one knows exactly how much one should be forced to take the brunt of green agenda which would include carbon taxes, soaring energy prices, and population control. And, no one knows exactly how much one is forced to pay into the scheme. That’s the “beauty” of the wealth redistribution pyramid scheme! In return, for a(ny) price the scheme provides the pretense of climate activism while scamming the public.
Climate Recruits are led to believe that they are sending “financing to developing countries to mitigate climate change, strengthen resilience and enhance abilities to adapt to climate impacts.” Note: there’s no real product or business venture in a pyramid scheme. In the climate scheme there’s just questionable numbers coming out of a messaged computer program feeding even more questionable weather forecasting. There’s only GIGO climate data that fits the Greenies pyramid scheme narrative of “climate crisis”.
The UN: “The climate crisis is pushing more and more people to the brink in a year of unprecedented hunger. World leaders at COP27 must act swiftly to help millions of people facing rising hunger and famine.”
(Have you noticed that those who live in areas not conducive to agriculture and not supportive of life are not suffering the effects of climate change? Rather, they are suffering from an unwillingness to move to better environmental conditions. Climate cash will not change the environment.)
According to the current estimates, developed countries will be obliged to contribute up to $450 billion a year by 2020 to the GCF, which will then “redistribute” the money to developing countries allegedly suffering from the effects of global warming.
Robert Mugabe, the dictator who ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, salivated at the prospect of redistributed global warming cash.
Would-be dictator Obama pledged $3 billion to the Paris Agreement. Future annual contributions would continue increasing, per Obama. Note: the $3 billion did not come out of Obama’s pocket. Future payments will not come out of Obama’s pocket. Obama recruited U.S. tax payers into the pyramid scheme. You and I, our children and grandchildren and their children are on the hook.
The scheme’s recruits, which include “Heads of State, ministers, and negotiators, along with climate activists, mayors, civil society representatives and CEOs” are expected to make payments to the UN Green Climate Fund established in 2010 via negotiations that took place in Cancun, Mexico. But, as we have learned, the UN Green Climate Fund started in 2010 is “slush fund for global dictators.” Anyone staying in the agreement is contributing to this issue.
COP-27 is the latest convention promoting the pyramid scheme. (You can find the COP27 marketing material on the UN Climate Action webpage here.)
UN: “Faced with a growing energy crisis, record greenhouse gas concentrations, and increasing extreme weather events, COP27 seeks renewed solidarity between countries, to deliver on the landmark Paris Agreement, for people and the planet.”
World leaders, climate groups and activists are meeting in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the largest annual gathering on climate action. They are there to thrash out plans on how to safeguard the future of the(ir) planet. Expect a lot of photos of pyramid people lined up in solidarity. They will be smiling, ready to shake you down.
These global grifters flew in – using some 400 private jets– to tackle the “climate emergency” and commit to “finance climate action in developing countries” (with your tax money!). Carbon emissions from jet planes? No worries. These nomadic negotiators will chow down on vegan meals and use recycling containers and various “carbon offsets” for unavoidable emissions caused by the conference.
Of course, the busy bodies of Paris Agreement must also tamper with the social climate. The agreement veers into absurd political and ideological language, requiring countries to address extraneous themes like gender equity, biodiversity, poverty eradication, migrants, disabled persons, a “just transition of the workforce,” “creation of decent work,” and so on.
“A pyramid scheme” you ask? Consider that the recruits, called “stakeholders” by the WEF, expect to receive payments in terms of money and political profit from their media-generated recruits (i.e., taxpayers). When the number of new recruits (think psyop targets) fails to sustain the hierarchical payment structure the scheme collapses with most of the participants losing the money (and proposed climate bennies) they put in via taxes. Those at the top of the pyramid (and dictators) make off like bandits. In the meantime, the scheme generates wealth redistribution – from us to them.
(Isn’t it something how the govt. takes money out of our paychecks for Social Security and when we retire the govt. parcels the money back to us as a “Benefit”! The American people have been suckered so many times by so many schemes to separate us from our money.)
And this: The government doesn’t determine what is a “benefit” for me. I do!)
We are being sold into an OT Egyptian type slavery thanks to the pyramid scheme of Greenies. And, you can be sure that slavery will not include free speech. Climate Change “misinformation” censorship is next:
Big pharma made billions of dollars selling the clot shot. Big box stores did very well. But the little guy had to give it up. He was told to stay home and obey the Fauci TV.
You won’t hear Psalm 104 read at COP27. The godless and those who think that God is an absentee landlord come up with their own stewardship plans. Their stewardship plans involve your money, your freedom and your life via the climate change pyramid.
With the gathering of the climate grifters near the cradle of civilization, the fertile crescent, it would be good to remind ourselves of just who the ultimate Climate Change Caretaker is.
Psalm 104
God the Creator and Provider
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[a] chambers on the waters; you make the clouds your[b] chariot; you ride on the wings of the wind; 4 you make the winds your[c] messengers, fire and flame your[d] 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[e] 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[f] 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,[g] 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!
*****
On the back of tee shirt worn by a tornado damage recovery worker:
“LEAVE IT BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT”
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Leave the stewardship of the earth to us Hobbits. Elites just go and have your picture taken.
[Dr. David] Nixon has shared his findings with Wendy Hoy, professor of medicine at the University of Queensland who has called on the Australian government and its health authorities to explain the apparent spontaneous formation of chips and circuitry in mRNA vaccines when left at room temperature, and the abnormal objects that can be seen in the blood of vaccinated people. Hoy thinks that these are ‘undoubtedly contributing to poor oxygen delivery to tissues and clotting events, including heart attacks and strokes’ and asks why there is no systematic autopsy investigation of deaths to investigate the role of the vaccine in Australia’s dramatic rise in mortality. (Emphasis mine.)
I see everyone on the right fighting about Trump vs DeSantis for 2024 and I just laugh to myself. The presidency in 2024 is a pipe dream, with DeSantis or Trump on the ticket. To be frank I don’t know if we’ll ever see a Republican president again. Millions and millions of illegals pouring over our border and being distributed to key swing states. An electorate trained to believe that hundreds of thousands of mail in ballots appearing is normal. Demographics is destiny. He who controls the machines controls the outcome. We didn’t fix 2020 and we didn’t build the wall so don’t expect another “free and fair” election. – Andrew Torba, founder and CEO of Gab
–Man diverts asteroid: NASA tested a new planetary defense mechanism by crashing the robotic Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft into Dimorphos, a small asteroid spanning about 170 meters across. Protecting our Earth from potential future impacts was the impetus to take action.
–Man deigns to keep the lights on: France’s Macron announced the restarting of 10 idle nuclear plants in the coming weeks. Also announced, plans to build up to 14 new nuclear reactors. Action is being taken to provide a buffer against volatile energy prices and to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
–Man develops CO2 capture projects: Five carbon capture projects in the U.S. and a host of others will act to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere These projects endeavor to store the CO₂ deep underground or put it to some use.
–Man defaces sunflowers: Two members of Just Stop OilvandalizedSunflowers, a Vincent Van Gogh painting at the National Gallery in London. The two vandals then proceeded to take glue sticks, rub them onto their hands, and place their glued hands on the wall next to the painting. Action was taken that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all of oil production. (Sorry Sorry Day.)
#Telangana– CCTV visual of #Secunderabad e-bikes showroom fire accident that killed 8 people, left 10 injured. From the video, it appears that there was an explosion, and then the fire spreads to other floors. Cops suspect an e-bike or generator explosion. #Hyderabadpic.twitter.com/Uoxn1YMvfC
Call me irresponsible: Dim the sun and you may as well throw out solar panels and wind turbines. The sun causes wind. Neither of these “green” devices can support a base load as it is.
El cant dels ocels (Song of the Birds) - (Arr. P. Casals for Cello & Piano)
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE
“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
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“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
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
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
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“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
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
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.
*****
“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
*****
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
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“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
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“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
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“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
**
“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
*****
“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
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
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
*****
“…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
*****
Cindy Wity 
And the Beat Down Goes On
May 4, 2026 Leave a comment
“. . . the terror of the night
or the arrow that flies by day
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.” Psalm 91
Fires, floods and extreme weather will imperil a third of all life on land in the next 60 years.
Nobel Physicist Predicts END DATE For Modern Civilization: And it’s quite soon…
The New York Times’s Resident Catastrophist Delivers Another Subscription to the End of the World
You wake up in a news cycle that never sleeps. With a cup of coffee, you read what ‘doomcasters’ are saying about end-of-life scenarios appearing on the horizon. Now you are fully awake and wondering what to do with these high alert headlines? Do you let existential crisis into your life?
You sip your coffee and remember that not long ago the world was subjected to pandemic hysteria. Coronavirus, the “global crisis of unprecedented reach and proportion,” started making headlines at the beginning of 2020.
You recall the WHO declaring the coronavirus a “public health emergency of international concern.” And the headlines declaring surges in COVID-19 cases attributed to the Omicron variant, a “tripledemic” – COVID combined with flu and RSV, and of overwhelmed hospitals and healthcare systems and dancing nurses.
How could you forget that Biden imposed OSHA vaccination and testing emergency standards on your business or the reality-warping restrictive policies involving mandated lockdowns, masking, social distancing, fines, and vaccines, or the CDC predicting people will die?
You pour yourself another cup of coffee and look out the kitchen window. You see the couple next store – Vivian and Zoe – walking their dog Baxter. The other day, when you took the garbage can to the curb, the apoplectic twosome accosted you with “Democracy is threatened by the likes of you extremists, fascists, racists, homophobe Christian nationalists!” and “Trump is Hitler!” They saw you going to church last Sunday.
You drink your coffee troubled that Viv and Zoe had been beaten down by another media existential crisis campaign, akin to the rollout of the COVID-19 marketing campaign that told us to worry about it, and how to worry about it.
Under the spell of the “Democracy is threatened” campaign, Viv and Zoe were in a state of emotional panic. And that had them beat down on the closest person who didn’t share their views or the views of the commercial-sponsored media. The media’s inordinate influence has you very concerned about the collective fear and confusion its campaigns were causing to psyches.
The beat down goes on . . . in our heads.
~~~
How shall we then live in the context of existential dread?
Day after day imagination is battered with dire predictions– the end of this and that unless we do this and that. The steady beat of amplified headlines overwhelms one’s patience, strength, and soul.
Climate change, pandemics, wars, “Democracy!” AI Could Make Humans Irrelevant!
How do we respond to headlines telling us that we are done for? Should we let fear and helplessness dominate our lives? Can we live in terms of “accepting disharmony from the outset and defying it”? This last way of going forward is the directive C.S. Lewis prescribes in his essay “On Living in an Atomic Age.”
Published in post-war 1948 and at the beginning of the atomic age, the essay provides a reality-check perspective and presents a scenario of how to live in life-ending times.
The following is an excerpt from the opening of Lewis’ short essay. During COVID the excerpt was passed around on the internet, with “atomic” replaced with “coronavirus.” Certainly, the essay can be applied to any dire life-threatening circumstances.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
The full essay, in the document below, contains questions and positions Lewis maintains, such as
Are we “accepting disharmony from the outset and defying it?”
Do we “hold up our own human standards against the idiocy of the universe?”
Are we the product of blind physical forces and therefore unable to provide answers to questions of a fatalist existence?
“But suppose we really are spirits? Suppose we are not the offspring of Nature…?”
“We must go back to a much earlier view.”
“We must simply accept it that we are spirits, free and rational beings, at present inhabiting an irrational universe, and must draw the conclusion that we are not derived from it.”
“If there is no straight line elsewhere, how did we discover that Nature’s line is crooked?”
“Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs.”
https://www.matthewaglaser.com/living-in-an-atomic-age
“On Living in an Atomic Age” (first published 1948) by C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) From: Present Concerns: Essays by C.S. Lewis (edited by Walter Hooper; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), pages 73–80
Born a few years after the above essay was published, I became well aware of ‘doomcasting’ headlines. I recalled some of the headlines in my January 2025 post Surface Readings.
The post began with the words of poet W H Auden – “Now is the age of anxiety” and my own take on things: “Impending doom has been in the news during my entire lifetime.” I wrote about the headlines and pronouncements of those anxious times which included the book The Late great Planet Earth based on the modern and heretical notion of dispensationalism.
~~~
Imagination Reset
Taking in the spirit of the times, imaginations are exposed to the negation of life and dire predictions often made for political ends that use fear to move power into the hands of the few.
Taking in the digital tabloid times is the “WHAAM!” of a Roy Lichtenstein Ben-Day dots painting. Imagination is amped up and ready to pop with a Pow!
What happens to our imaginations when we are constantly confronted with crisis? And, how do we live with dire predictions?
With the 24/7/365 news cycle, it’s little wonder that “News Avoidance” is becoming a common way to deal with the constant specter of troubling things, as Thaddeus G. McCotter writes in I Didn’t Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Embracing the ‘News Avoidance’ Pandemic
“If you live today, you breath in nihilism … it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.” ― Flannery O’Connor
What we shouldn’t avoid are resources such as poetry, art, classical literature and music to help us cope with and see beyond the terrors of the modern age. We need the signal of those who came before and dealt with all kinds of things and not the clamoring noise of influencers.
Poet Wallace Stevens, in “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words” writes that poetry, as it interacts with reality and the imagination, can shape our perspective and provide meaning and comfort in a world that often feels overwhelming and harsh.
Wallace emphasizes the role of imagination in countering the beat down of life. If you are a Christian, you already know that the poetry of the Psalms does just that, e.g., Psalm 91.
In the video below, Dr. Jason Baxter, author of The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis discusses his book, Why Literature Still Matters.
Why Literature Still Matters: An Interview with Dr. Jason Baxter | Classical Home Education
~~~
If you need a quick antidote to climate hysteria, Itxu Díaz provides his take on the news of impending doom: Climate Change Scientists Set a Date for the Arrival of Hell on Earth: the Year 2085.
~~~
Naomi Wolf with Outspoke: “I’m here tonight to talk about a huge news story that broke in the last couple of days. It could be thread that unravels the whole COVID virus/vaccine perpetrator issue.
“A criminal syndicate, essentially.
“Even just this initial gesture is so transformational. It breaks the spell of, “No one can be held accountable, no one can be investigated from the untouchable third rail COVID vaccine rollout, COVID virus rollout.””
“The Shocking Story of NIH Secretly Funding COVID”
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Filed under 2026 Current Events, Climate change, COVID-19, Death, Depression, journalism, media, nihilism, pandemic, Political Commentary, social engineering, war Tagged with apocalypse, art, books, C.S. Lewis, Climate change, COVID-19, death, Democracy, entertainment, journalism, media, nuclear war, pandemics, social media, writing