“We whip the groaning masses … towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can see.”
– Rubashov, a functionary of the Communist Party in Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
“Rebuilding Trust” – the theme of this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos Switzerland.
The mission of the “international” WEF, as the link states, involves “public-private cooperation” by engaging “the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas”. Sounds rather benign, so far.
To advance its “agendas”, the WEF needs the buy-in of the rich, the powerful, and the celebrated:
As we face an increasingly fractured and polarised world, this year’s World Economic Forum summit will look at ways of rebuilding and strengthening trust amongst global stakeholders.
But what about the trust between the global stakeholders and the common man? This was brought up by the CEO of Allianz.
Unusual for this to be said at Davos 🤔.
The president of Allianz:
“We have a growing disconnect between the political elite and the working class. The population does not trust the elites, and we need to start telling people the truth.” pic.twitter.com/KjkU9wYrlz
Leaders speaking the truth would be a great start. But someone saying “I have to invest hundreds of billions in transforming our economy” is a non-starter for the common man who is to foot the bill for WEF “agendas”. And, our well-functioning economy won’t survive DEI, Degrowth and a lot of tinkering.
What I hear this guy saying: “the common man should know how he will be exploited for the cost of future WEF projects as if he was all in in their determination.
Behind the façade of benign WEF is malign WEF. The organization that presents itself as an instrument of deliverance is actually an instrument of totalitarianism. The WEF, while working to “Rebuild Trust” amongst global stakeholders, is intent on destroying trust in anything besides itself – the elites in cahoots.
The World Economic Forum has declared that anybody who promotes a “different perception of reality” and questions the authority of “experts” should be considered “more dangerous” than a terrorist in 2024. [sounds like Dictator Biden’s J6 speech: “We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.”]
The danger for the global elite, according to [WEF managing director Saadia] Zahidi, lies in the fact that non-authorized viewsare capable of encouraging “different perceptions of reality” which can encourage people to question whether the mainstream media and global elite are telling the truth.
[non-authorized views? Tyranny? Anyone?]
“If some of those views start spilling over into very different perceptions of reality, when it comes to health, when it comes to what people are thinking about education, what people think about specific people, who then becomes the owner of the truth? “
WEF managing director Saadia Zahidi discusses the WEF's Global Risks Report 2024, released ahead of their Annual Meeting in Davos next week.
Unsurprisingly, misinformation and disinformation rank #1. Especially during an election year, as emphasized: pic.twitter.com/CX1kEtRmku
For the WEF to be the sole owner of truth – The party is never wrong! – digital technology has been and will continue to be deployed to monitor content (via smartphones, online social media, and digital devices in your home and car) and circumscribe all aspects of one’s life (via social credit scoring and CBDC) so as to crush “misinformation”.
Did you know that information warriors are engaged in the act of shutting down dissent. . .
“At the height of the pandemic, the United Nations recruited over 100,000 “digital first responders’ to push the establishment narrative on COVID via social media.
“The revelation actually slipped out in October 2020 during a World Economic Forum podcast called ‘Seeking a cure for the infodemic’, although it is only going viral on Twitter today.
“In the podcast, Melissa Fleming, head of global communications for the United Nations, explains how the COVID pandemic and lockdowns created a “communications crisis” in addition to a public health emergency.
“Fleming acknowledged that in order to fight so-called “misinformation” about the pandemic, the UN tapped up 110,000 people to amplify their messaging across social media.
““So far, we’ve recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels,” Fleming stated.
“That was nearly 2 years ago. It is not known how many ‘digital first responders’ have been recruited up to this point.”
You can listen to the WEF podcast in question here.
And so it is, the WEF in concert with the UN and the WHO, mankind’s Nemesis triumvirate, will enact its inescapable ‘divine’ retribution against those committing hybris or insolence towards them. For, we are to believe, the world needs the “owners of truth” to shape global, regional and industry agendas to make them instruments of deliverance from all that ails the world, so help themselves.
“Whip the groaning masses towards . . . a theoretical future happiness, which only we[f] can see”?
Not heard, herded?
Tell me. Does one “Rebuild Trust” by censoring voices? Doesn’t rebuilding trust involve hearing each other out? Doesn’t rebuilding trust involve embrace and not exclusion?
Speak out against the WEF madness!
~~~~~
Regarding the quote at the top:
The main character of Darkness at Noon, Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, was at one time a “Commissar of the People” but he fell out of favor. He wasn’t discreet. He talked to his friends concerning his doubts about the effectiveness and correctness of certain Party policies. He is imprisoned and subsequently put on trial.
Rubashov is contemplating the suffering of the masses deliberately caused by the Party and its methods of control. He questions these draconian and inhumane actions because they are based only on a theoretical notion of the future. The Party thinks it can see the future it is whipping the masses toward, but in fact it can’t possibly know what future its actions will create.
The Party line is that the suffering of the masses will be compensated by future happiness. But, again, this happiness is purely notional and may never come about. Still the Party imposes pain on the people in the name of this unknown, hypothetical future.
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was influenced by Darkness at Noon, as Jonathon R. Eller writes in his essay The Story of Fahrenheit 451 in the 60th Anniversary Edition of the book:
Bradbury was initially inspired by Arthur Koestler’s riveting exposé of Stalin’s political terrors and finally motivated to write by the emerging climate of fear during the early years of the Cold War. His hatred of all totalitarian regimes came into sharp focus in his “Day After Tomorrow” essay, published in The Nation just as he was about to finish the final draft of Fahrenheit 451: Consider the similarity of two books—Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” laid in our recent past, and George Orwell’s “1984,” set in our immediate future. And here we are, poised between the two, between a dreadful reality and an unformed terror, trying to make such decisions as will avoid the tyranny of the very far right and the tyranny of the very far left, the two of which can often be seen coalescing into a tyranny pure and simple, with no qualifying adjective in front of it at all.
Seems to me, based on the suppression of dissent, the use of legal forums for political purposes – “lawfare”, and the central planning going on, that the Biden regime, the Uniparty, big tech, the WEF, the UN, and the WHO are coalescing into a tyranny pure and simple, with no qualifying adjective in front of it at all.
Biden calling Americans “extremist” for their objections to the above and to the direction their country is being taken is tyranny.
Lawfare seeking to keep Trump off the ballot and from being elected president is not “saving Democracy”. It is the opposite – tyranny.
Arresting J6ers and giving them horrific sentences and prison conditions for a made-up “insurrection” are draconian and inhumane actions. This injustice, highlighted by a J6 show trial, was meant to instill fear and to silence protest in Americans. Do not be silent about the injustice done to J6ers and the tyranny pure and simple it represents.
During COVID, voices opposing “the science” were censored. They were not to be heard. For, people were to be herded in one direction – toward big pharma.
The voice of millions was stolen during the 2020 election. For, “Democracy!” was to be herded in one direction – toward the OBiden regime and tyranny.
Isn’t ironic that while the Left is subverting systems of power in the name of social justice, critical race theory, and whatever so as to be liberated, they are creating a top-down monolithic power that will enslave them.
All one has to do to go along with the coalescing tyranny: remain isolated, remain silent and remain dependent on the state media.
Not everyone is ready to turn over their lives to a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance from inequality, poverty, sickness, and manufactured crises, e.g., “the climate crisis”.
President of Argentina Javier Milei demolishes socialism in front of a bunch of socialists at the World Economic Forum.
“I’m here to tell you that the western world is in danger and it is endangered because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inextricably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.”
“Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others and others motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste.”
“The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause.”
🔥🚨NEW: JAVIER MILEI, the president of Argentina slams socialism in front of a bunch of globalists and socialists at the WEF:
“I'm here to tell you that the western world is in danger and it is endangered because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West… pic.twitter.com/eMATjpFC1N
In a society where so many feel unseen and unknown, how do we become the kind of people who deeply see and know those around us? The conflict and division in our society demonstrate the need for people committed to pursuing human connection, even across lines of difference. What can we do – as individuals and in community – that will help us really understand the people in our lives?
In this podcast, David Brooks, discusses his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. What do you think?
That’s what I said to my parents as a teenager back in the 60s. I don’t remember what occasioned me to say this, but I can still hear myself saying it.
No doubt adolescent idealism played a part in the negative perception of my inherited church. And no doubt the countercultural 60s played a part in me speaking up about it. For the 60s were a time of social unrest and revolt against norms, materialism, and war. People organized and worked for change in the social order and in government. Raised in the church and on plenty of scripture, I saw the church operating as just another establishment enterprise and as one that was evocative of the nearby country club.
Wasn’t the church a social venue, a private club where members came together for banquets and weddings and as something to belong to? Wasn’t the member-run church I attended flush with country-club type politics? Weren’t there were bitter disputes over issues during church business meetings? Wasn’t there a membership cost for upkeep and to have a say on what was what?
With that familiar system in place, one could play a round on Sundays on a familiar course and be reminded of green pastures, still waters, and hazards. A bit cynical? Perhaps. But that is how teenage me saw things. And I wasn’t alone in my opinion that the church I inherited resembled something other than what is described in the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles.
The Jesus People Movement, begun on the west coast in the late 60s, was a spiritual awakening that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, took place outside the established church and on the street. The JPM sought a reset and a return to the life of the early church, a life that included the gifts of the spirit, miracles, signs and wonders, healing, prayer, and simple living.
What first alerted me and several in our church youth group about the Jesus People Movement, I don’t recall. There was no internet back then. Some of what was going on in Haight-Ashbury San Francisco was covered in the secular media. But Chicago media had no local Jesus People reports.
May 5, 1973: Hundreds of Calvary Chapel members line Corona del Mar beach for baptism ceremony.
I do remember Jesus People music showing up at a local Chrisitan book store and seeing event flyers posted there. That’s how I came to hear long-haired Larry Norman sing I Wish We’d All Been Ready at the DuPage County fairgrounds one night. And that’s how I learned of street preachers and their meetings at local high schools. And some preached in farmer’s fields and baptized in a pond.
While parents and church leaders tuned into the evening news and read the newspapers trying to see where things were headed and, perhaps, wondering if their established ways were under attack, us ‘radical’ youth met in homes and read scripture, specifically the Acts of the Apostles, from our “One Way” New Testaments. And that was when we saw what the church was to be and what it wasn’t. And that was when our church, in typical establishment practice, decided to hire a youth leader to “oversee” and manage the youth.
I write these things not as the judge of the church. Read the book of Revelation and the letter to the seven churches in Asia for the One who does judge the church. Rather, I write as am a member of the body of Christ. My concern: has the body transitioned into something akin to the bride of the world?
My 60s assessment signaled this. The Jesus People Movement signaled this. What about the Church of 2024 – is it the Bride of Christ? Why are people leaving the church? Does ensuring that everything is done “decently and in order” mean the Holy Spirit is restricted to only work within a corporate power structure and hierarchy? Wasn’t the body of Christ given one spirit to drink? (1 Cor. 12:13)
~~~~~
Why is church after church succumbing to corruption and false doctrine? Yes, it’s the result of greed, immorality, and a lust for power. But we’ve had those vices forever. So, why is there an epidemic of corruption in the church now?
Author, pastor, and church planter, Lance Ford, who’s worked inside pastor training networks for decades, answers that question with a line reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign motto: “It’s the system, stupid.” Lance explains more in this enlightening edition of The Roys Report, featuring his session from our recent Restore Conference.
I walk into Katy’s Place just after seven AM and look for my sister. I don’t see her so I look for a table. Seven men and a woman, each in a police uniform, are sitting at a long table eating breakfast. Two tables have not been bused yet from the day before. The other tables, except for one, are taken by couples and one family. I sit down at the last open table.
It’s Sunday morning in this small Indiana town. The streets are quiet. Traffic lights blink red. Some folks, I figure, are at home getting ready for church and others are sleeping in except for a gaggle of seniors sipping coffee down at the MacDonalds. The rest are here in this small diner near the town square and the courthouse and halfway to my sister’s house. It’s my first time here.
There is only one waitress and she can’t keep up with the tables. Is it always this busy early on a Sunday morning? It’ll be some time before I can ask for coffee and some menus. But it doesn’t matter. I’m waiting for my sister to drop off my eight-year-old niece.
While I wait, I look around. There’s a half-wall between the long table where the police are sitting and the entrance. Across the room there is a partial wall separating the kitchen from the served. On the wall I’m facing is a picture of a black horse standing in profile in front of a white fence. The horse reminds me of Black Beauty, a horse-memoir book my grandmother gave me when I was a little girl.
The waitress comes over and asks me what I want to drink. I tell her coffee and chocolate milk. I let her know that there will be two of us. Waiting for the coffee, I have an idea. I give my friend Anne a call. I ask her if my niece and I could come over this morning after breakfast. Anne says “Sure!”
I’m spending the day with my niece. My sister is headed to a day spa for the works: a massage, manicure, pedicure, and facial. She told me when she called yesterday and asked about today that she has to get rid of a lot of built-up stress.
The waitress brings my coffee and the chocolate milk. She takes two menus from under her arm and plunks them on the table. And she’s off.
After a half-hour I see Mandy and my niece come through the door. They walk over to the table. My sister looks at me and says “Aimee wants to be called Adam. Be sure to say Adam.” I don’t know what to do with this information. I have no place for it. I just tell Mandy that we have a big day planned and that I’ll bring “my niece” home later this afternoon. Mandy says “That’s fine” and then tells “Adam” to “behave with aunt Nora”. She begins to leave and I stop her.
“Listen,” I say to my niece, “this is our special day together. No phones.”
Mandy looks at me, her eye brows in a ‘V’, and says “Really?”. I say “Really”.
My sister takes the phone from my niece and says “Just for today. Just for aunt Nora.” She pockets the phone and leaves.
My frowning niece sits down where I put the chocolate milk. I ask about the chocolate milk. She takes a drink and says “It’s good”. She uses her tongue to wipe her upper lip. Her blue eyes follow her tongue like they’re connected. I can’t help notice that my niece’s beautiful blond curls have been cut off, the sides of her head are shorn. I didn’t say anything. What was I going to say?
“Did your mom take you to church last Sunday for advent?”
“She took me to the library. For story hour.”
My sister is the head librarian in her town. She has a Masters of Library and Information Science. I think that means that she should be really good at putting things in their proper place. But now I am having doubts about that.
The out-of-breath waitress comes over. I tell her we’re ready to order. I don’t want to keep Anne waiting. I order a stack of pancakes for my niece and some scrambled eggs with bacon and an English muffin for myself.
The room is loud with conversations, shuffling chairs, and some piped rock music. I want to have a conversation with my niece but I’m having a hard time hearing her, so I have her sit next to me at the table.
“Did you hear about Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus at story hour?
“No.”
“What did you hear about?
“Ah, something about, ah, boys liking boys, girls liking girls and a girl who wanted to be a boy. Stuff like that. It wasn’t Charlotte’s Web. Like last time.”
“Who read the stories to you?”
“Ah, some man wearing ah dress and a wig. He talked funny.”
“Did he say it was OK to pretend to be a boy all the time?”
She nodded yes.
“Does your teacher call you Adam?”
“Uh-Huh.”
“Do the kids in school call you Adam?”
“Uh-Huh. Miss Bigelow said they had to or they would be punished.”
I raised five kids and never had to deal with any of this. My kids chose what musical instrument they wanted to play and what sport to play in. At this point in the conversation, I hear myself wanting to come down on the whole gender switcheroo business, but I stop myself. I’ll just be Aunt Nora today and see what happens.
Our food arrives. I watch my niece take her time carefully lathering the pancakes with butter and then pouring syrup on the stack. Looking at her wide wonderful eyes, I feel that I can’t say nothing. I want to say things without saying things.
“You know,” I began again, “A woman runs this place. This is Katy’s Place. And that police officer over there (I point my head) is a woman. Both were girls once.” I hear myself forcing things with the obvious and tell myself that it’s time to shut up.
With a mouthful, my niece looks over at the long table. She turns back, swallows and says “What is advent?”
“Advent is the season of arrival – the arrival of Jesus our Savior into the world.”
“Oh.” She went back to eating.
“Hey kiddo. We’re gonna have a fun day. Right after this we’re going to a horse farm.” My niece tilted her head to one side and her eyes lit up. “My friend Anne has a new foal she wants you to see.”
We finished our breakfast and I paid the bill.
~~~
We drive over to next county where Anne has twenty flat acres of white-fenced property. The long driveway leading to her ranch house and the horse barns is lined with evergreen-shaped trees. The leaves are a deep green with a bluish tint. Birds dart back and forth between the dense branches.
I park the car near the front of the house and we get out. Anne leaves her porch chair and walks over. I introduce her to “my niece who wants to be called Adam” with a shake of my head “No”. Anne understands. She leads us over to the barn and the foaling stall. Inside is a baby horse – a foal.
“This filly was born last night,” Anne tells us. “I was sleeping by the stall and then got up for a bathroom break. Came back and found her waiting for me. It happens that quick.” Anne tells us that it takes around 11 months for a foal to fully develop inside of the mother- “the mare”.
“This one is already walking around, “I say.
“Foals can stand, walk, and trot shortly after birth,” Anne says. “They’re up and nursing within two hours of being born. It’s important that foals nurse. They get what they need in their mother’s milk. In about ten days they’ll be eating grass and hay.”
“What else can you tell us about fillies?” I ask, hoping she’ll say things without saying things.
“Like all foals, this one will grow rapidly and be playful. During their first year, they learn to walk, run, and develop strong bonds with their mothers. Fillies are delicate and refined in their build compared to colts. They are known for their grace and agility. They are calmer than colts.”
Anne turned to my niece. “What shall we call her?”
My niece’s jaw dropped and then, ten seconds later, out came “Addie. Let’s call her Addie.”
“Why Addie?” Anne asked.
“For Advent,” my niece came back.
“Addie it is,” Anne said. “Do you want to learn some tips on horsemanship?”
My niece said “Oh yeah.”
Anne started heading to the tackle room with my niece in hand but I stop them.
“Anne, hearing you say “tips” just reminded me that I forgot to leave a tip at the restaurant. Dear Lord! I get into my head and lose track of things like my keys and my glasses and tipping. I need to go and make this right before the waitress leaves. Can my niece stay with you while I do this?”
“Sure,” Anne replied. “There’s lots to see and do here.”
Back at the restaurant I walk past the tables and behind the kitchen wall. The waitress is surprised to see me. I hand her the tip money and apologize for forgetting. She looks relieved. Walking out, I see the horse picture again. On the way back to Anne’s I think about Black Beauty.
The story of a highbred horse’s life is told by Black Beauty. As a colt, Beauty enjoys carefree days on the farm. But things change when owners sell him. Some owners are kind, some are cruel, and some are bungling when it comes to horses.
Under one master, Beauty and his best horse friend Ginger are forced to wear the check rein – a piece of a carriage horse’s harness to keep the horse from lowering its head. This was done to make the horse look fashionably noble in Victorian times. But the check rein caused lasting pain and undercut a horse’s pulling strength. Beauty and Ginger had to learn to live with this.
Another owner, a man with a drinking problem, didn’t look after Beauty’s shoes. Beauty’s legs collapse at one point and the owner is thrown off and dies. After a corrective medical procedure, Beauty’s legs are permanently scarred. No longer considered presentable enough, Beauty is put to hard work as a job horse.
Beauty is rented out by drivers who do not know how to properly take care of horses. As a result, Beauty incurs long-term physical harm. The author Sewall wrote the story from the horse’s point of view “to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses”.
Back at Anne’s place I find my niece sitting on a chestnut horse called Sassy and wearing one of Anne’s wide-brimmed cowboy hats. From the look on my niece’s face, I didn’t have to ask Anne how it went.
Later, as my niece and I head to the car, Anne offers to have us come every weekend to see Addie grow and to teach us western riding. I ask about that.
She explains that it involves learning how to sit deep in the saddle, how to walk, jog, lope, and gallop a horse, how to hold the reins with the non-dominate hand, and teaching a horse to be responsive on very light rein contact to move in the direction you want instead of a pulling motion.
At the car, Anne tells my niece “Going forward, I’ll need your mom’s approval”.
“We’ll talk to her,” I say looking at my niece. “Let’s see what happens.”
What do we talk about when we talk about apocalypse?
Are we talkin’ Steppenwolf and his legions of Parademons attempting to take over the Earth using the combined energies of the three Mother Boxes?
Are we talkin’ nuclear war? World War Z?
Are we talkin’ The Late Great Planet Earth?
Are we talkin’ a supposed climate change catastrophe prophesied as either a meltdown or an ice age?
In popular use, “apocalypse” tags something with the worst possible outcome usually in terms of an end-of-the-world scenario and mankind’s role in events much bigger than himself. But the Greek word apokálypsis, from which “apocalypse” is derived, means an uncovering or revelation.
In terms of scripture, “apocalypse” is a genre in which God reveals His point of view. Such are the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Zechariah, Daniel and Revelation. The “apocalypse” as an author’s vision of the end times or the end of the age became a distinct literary genre during the Second Temple period and into the Common Era.
Apocalyptic “non-canonical” literature helped pave the way for the Jesus movement in the first century CE. Many in Israel, based on these writings and OT texts (Psalm 146:7-8, Isaiah 61: 1-2), held a belief in a Messianic Apocalypse – the anointed one, a divine messianic agent, revealed at the end time who executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, and lifts up those who are bowed down.
Within this millenarist writing context and using explicit connections to the Old Testament via quotes, and with accounts of eyewitness testimony, the four gospels record God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as the Messianic Apocalypse. And, they record the apocalyptic pronouncements of Jesus, including Matthew 24 (The Destruction of the Temple and Signs of the End Times) and in Matthew 25 (The Sheep and the Goats; Judgement). Jesus’ words and works throughout the four gospels disclose God’s POV.
Near the end of the John’s gospel account we are given the reason why John wrote to reveal Jesus:
“Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that the Messiah, the son of God, is none other than Jesus; and that, with this faith, you may have life in his name.” (Jn. 20:31)
The gospel according to Mark, written from a Petrine perspective, recorded what Jesus did and said in the presence of his disciples so that with the centurion standing watch at the cross, we might say “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:39)
Throughout the first six chapters of the gospel according to Mark, chapters I am memorizing, I find Jesus over and over again revealing who he is to the Twelve and the group of disciples around him. Yet, they are not making the connection. They consider him a great prophet and a maybe-Messiah Apocalypse but nothing more.
When Jesus is in the synagogue teaching, the gathered are astonished by his teaching. He speaks with authority. Then a man with an unclean spirit reveals Jesus’s identity:
“What business have you got with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” he yelled. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: you’re God’s Holy One!”
Jesus commands the unclean spirit to be quiet and then casts out the unclean spirit. The buzz begins.
“What’s this?” they started to say to each other. “New teaching – with real authority! He even tells the unclean spirits what to do and they do it!”
Before chapter one ends, Jesus has healed many people suffering from all kinds of diseases and cast out many demons – exactly what Psalm 146 and Isaiah 61 talk about.
I learn from Mark that Jesus won’t let the demons speak. They would reveal his identity. I understand this as Jesus wanting each person to come to grips with who he is on their own.
In chapter two, Jesus heals a paralyzed man. But first he recognizes the faith of those who bring the man to him. He tells the cripple that his sins are forgiven. Upon hearing this the legal experts in the room start grumbling “Its’ blasphemy! Who can forgive sins except God?” They are so ready to pounce that they don’t understand who is standing before them. And why would they?
Who would expect the invisible God to be incarnate, to be physically present? And who would expect a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24) to be in their midst?
Chapter Four: After teaching a huge crowd about the kingdom of God, Jesus and the disciples set sail across the sea. A big wind storm comes up. Waves beat against the boat and it quickly begins to fill up. Jesus, however, is asleep on a cushion in the stern. Very anxious disciples wake him up and say “We’re going down. Don’t you care?”
Now, I don’t believe that any of the disciples were thinking that Jesus would get up and end the storm. They were likely thinking that they needed another hand to bail water out of the boat (kind of like my prayers at times).
Jesus gets up. He scolds the wind and says to the sea, “Silence! Shut up!”. Nature calms down but not the sailors. They had been ‘apocalypsed’. Someone in their boat just took control of the cosmic order. Someone in their boat just revealed God-like properties.
Great fear stole over the crew (survivors in the mini-Noah’s arc). “Who is this?” they said to each other. “Even the wind and sea do what he says!”
Jesus had looked at them and said “Why are you scared?” Don’t you believe yet?” That was his response to the disciple’s “Don’t You care?”
Jesus’ response to the disciples was not to shame them. It was to reveal their unbelief in what has been revealed to them: God was walking among them; God was in the boat with them; God’s love as demonstrated would see them through.
“Don’t you care?” is the corporate expression of anxious Israel waiting for Messianic Apocalypse.
“Don’t you care?” is the corporate expression of an anxious world that, with chronic uncertainty, is focused on a coming the-ship-is-going-down apocalypse and not on the certainty of the revelation of Jesus.
What do I talk about when I talk about apocalypse? This: what’s been revealed of Jesus is greater than what could ever possibly be revealed – whether in nature or alien or made-made or imagination-made.
2024: “We’re going down. Don’t you care?”
“Don’t you believe yet?”
~~~~~
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang and Curt Thompson
We are in an anxious age. By some estimates, a third of all Americans will struggle with anxiety in their lives, and nearly 20% currently suffer from an anxiety disorder. For those suffering the mental distortions of anxiety, life can be difficult, and hope elusive. And for many Christians who have tried and failed to stop their slide into fear and worry by simply “laying down their burdens,” they may feel an added sense of spiritual failure as well.
We’re joined on our podcast by psychiatrist Curt Thopmson and theologian Curtis Chang who help us explore a counterintuitive approach to understanding our anxiety:
Hope in an Age of Anxiety with Curtis Chang and Curt Thompson – the Trinity Forum
How do we seek, find and share hope and healing in hard times?
Psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson and Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder discuss healing, grace, and reintegration — both for our individual and spiritual lives, and our shared life together. Together they consider how being known and believing what is true about our stories can transform our perspective and bring hope and healing:
“Shame is the antithesis and is that force that evil wants to use to undermine not only our ability to be known by one another deeply, which we were made for, we were made to be known, but we were also made to be known on the way to creating artifacts of beauty, whether those artifacts are relationships, whether they’re new pieces of music, art, businesses, and so forth.” – Curt Thompson
The room is dark now except for the lights on the Christmas tree. Tired of all the pharmaceutical commercials promising smiles on users, she’s shut off the TV. There is no real hope to be found anywhere in media. She’s had it with the fake, the clichéd and the unmitigated gall of nihilism that says “life has no meaning so keep watching for the meaning we give to it”.
She’s a flesh-and-blood human. She wants real, not CGI. She wants no part in manipulated drama, no part of AI. And she wants nothing of a New World Order and its utopian nightmare. Right now, she wants signal and not noise. Past, present, and future, like specters, enter her thoughts.
She recalls losses. She recalls past sorrows. She recalls her soul’s constant groaning and lamenting and crying out for rescue arising from its well of wordlessness. Drawn from that well are her tears, tears that now blur the glowing angel atop the tree.
The present is a world that is hurting and she feels helpless. When she prays she feels like a Secret Santa and not like a hands-on saint like Mother Teresa.
Tonight, many will end the year with loss. Some have lost a loved one and some a job and some the means to continue.
Tonight, some will end the year struggling with addictions.
Tonight, some will end the year alone and alienated.
Tonight, some will end the year struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide.
Tonight, some will end the year struggling with respiratory illness or the effects of the COVID vaccination.
Tonight, some will end the year in the hospital with a debilitating illness, some with cancer.
Tonight, some will end the year estranged from their families with memory loss, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.
Tonight, some will end the year with war injuries and memories of loved ones killed in battle.
Tonight, the entire creation is groaning. The future looks as bleak.
Is the cosmic and historical drama moving toward the ultimate reconciliation of things?
Will the evil of the human condition, our sufferings and our failures, reveal their redemptive meaning when seen from the vantage point of ultimate salvation?
She has chosen the vantage point of an Aslan Christmas and not of a Charlie Brown Christmas. She has chosen to embrace a hope that will not put her to shame – a bold noble hope, a hope that has faced lions and suffering first hand, a poured-out-love hope and not a mopey introverted “Oh, Bother” cartoonish perspective.
Will the Holy Spirit work all things together for good with those who love him and are called according to his purpose?
She has chosen to live in the realm of the Spirit. For the Searcher of Hearts knows what the Spirit is thinking. The Spirit comes alongside her – she doesn’t know how to pray as she ought – and pleads on her behalf. And that pleading is the wordlessness welling up in her tonight.
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Scripture can become a weapon in the hands of the ultra-certain. As if every pain or suffering is part of “God’s divine plan.” So how should we understand and apply the Bible to our real lives with our real-life problems?
NT Wright, a New Testament scholar, is a trusted expert to help us understand what truths resound across time and circumstance and which don’t. In this conversation, Kate [Bowler] and Tom [NT Wright] dig in especially on Romans 8:28 which is the Pauline version of EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON. Is that what Paul intended to say? Is there maybe another, more life-giving way to interpret it instead?
Kate and NT Wright also discuss:
The importance of lament as a response to the human condition
Why we have such a low tolerance for uncertainty
Which scripture to turn to when life comes apart (and which to avoid)
What our response should be to others who are in pain or experiencing tragedy
The italicized words are from Leszek Kolakowski’s essay Can the Devil Be Saved as published in Modernity on Endless Trial, Leszek Kolakowski, The University of Chicago Press, 1990, 75
Romans 5 & 8 are referenced.
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Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice O let thine ears consider well: the voice of my complaint If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss: O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee: therefore shalt thou be feared I look for the Lord; my soul doth wait for him: In his word is my trust My soil fleeth unto the Lord: Before the morning watch I say, before the morning watch O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy: And with him is plentеous redemption And he shall rеdeem Israel: from all his sins
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The 1951 b&w A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim is the best movie version of Dicken’s classic.
When have entered a dark season. Houses and yards are lit up. And, perhaps, some of the residents.
“The holidays are always bad” – Frank Martin.
American writer Raymond Carver published a story about a man trying to move from an addiction to alcohol toward sobriety. The story, set over three days, includes New Years Day. Where I’m Calling From first appeared in theNew Yorker in 1982.
Written in Carver’s no-nonsense economical fashion, the story is told by a nameless Narrator who immediately draws us into the residential treatment center where he finds himself and another because of an inability to stop drinking.
“J.P and I are on the front porch at Frank Martin’s drying out facility. Like the rest of us at Frank’s Martin’s, J.P. is first and foremost a drunk. But he’s also a chimney sweep. It’s his first time here, and he’s scared. I’ve been here once before. What’s to say? I’m back.”
From the opening words we learn that alcoholism can take over one’s identity. The Narrator labels both J.P. and himself and everyone at the treatment center. But then the Narrator does go on to say that he knows J.P. as more than “a drunk”.
We also learn, from the Narrator’s “I’m back”, that the struggle with alcoholism can become a cycle of drinking and drying out. And then we find out that it can also become the ultimate wake-up call.
Let’s listen in . . .
“We’ve only been in here a couple of days. We’re not out of the woods yet. J.P. has these shakes, and every so often a nerve — maybe it isn’t a nerve, but it’s something — begins to jerk in my shoulder. Sometimes it’s at the side of my neck. When this happens, my mouth dries up. It’s an effort just to swallow then. I know something’s about to happen and I want to head it off. I want to hide from it, that’s what I want to do. Just close my eyes and let it pass by, let it take the next man. J.P. can wait a minute.
“I saw a seizure yesterday morning. . .”
A large man nicknamed Tiny had the seizure. As the Narrator tells us, Tiny was showing signs of improvement and looking forward to going home for New Year. But then Tiny collapsed at the table before all of them and was rushed to the hospital. The physical signs of alcoholism and withdrawal from it – shakes, spasms, swallowing issues and a seizure – have a major effect on the Narrator.
Loss of self-control brought the Narrator and the “drunk” others to Frank Martin’s drying out facility. And now the loss of physical control due to alcohol use disorder – the Narrator doesn’t want to countenance that. He recoils and hopes for the best – to “let it pass by” to someone else at the table.
“But what happened to Tiny is some-thing I won’t ever forget. Old Tiny flat on the floor, kicking his heels. So every time this little flitter starts up anywhere, I draw some breath and wait to find myself on my back, looking up, somebody’s fingers in my mouth.”
Reading on we get a sense of the need for company and storytelling that withdrawing from alcoholism produces. J.P. and the Narrator sit on the front porch of Frank Martin’s drying out facility. The Narrator listens to J.P.’s story.
The first thing we hear about is a childhood trauma. Twelve-year-old J.P. happened to fall into a dry well near a farm near where he grew up. It wasn’t until later that day that his dad found him and pulled him up. We find out from the Narrator the effect on J.P.:
“J.P. had wet his pants down there. He’d suffered all kinds of terror in that well, hollering for help, waiting, and then hollering some more. He hollered himself hoarse before it was over. But he told me that being at the bottom of that well had made a lasting impression.”
(So far, two lasting impressions from life-or-death situations.)
J.P. remembers looking up at the circle of blue sky from the “bottom of that well” and seeing passing clouds and birds and hearing rustling (of insects?) and the wind blow over the opening. To me this is a picture of the alcoholic at the bottom of the well (the bartending term “well” comes from one of the many names for the underneath of the bar top) and who now looks up and sees life going on without him and a “little circle of blue” that represents hope. The Narrator relates what J.P. said about that time:
“In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well. But nothing fell on him and nothing closed off that little circle of blue. Then his dad came along with the rope, and it wasn’t long before J.P. was back in the world he’d always lived in.”
J.P. receives a lifeline. The Narrator wants to hear more.
“Keep talking, J.P. Then what?””
We learn from the Narrator that J.P. meets Roxy, a chimney sweep, at a friend’s house. J.P. says that he could “feel his heart knocking” as she looked him over. J.P. receives a “good luck” kiss from Roxy.
“He could feel her kiss still burning on his lips, etc. At that minute J.P. couldn’t begin to sort anything out. He was filled with sensations that were carrying him every which way.”
J.P. asks to date her.
“Then what?” the Narrator says. “Don’t stop now, J.P.”
We learn that J.P. and Roxy date. To be close to Roxy, J.P. becomes a chimney sweep and begins working with her. The two later marry, have two kids, and buy a house. The Narrator relates what J.P. felt at the time and adds a comment:
“I was happy with the way things were going,” he says. “I had everything I wanted. I had a wife and kids I loved, and I was doing what I wanted to do with my life.” But for some reason — who knows why we do what we do?— his drinking picks up.
J.P. goes on to talk about how he began to drink more and more, even taking a “thermos bottle of vodka in his lunch pail”. But then he stops talking.
The Narrator, who’s using J.P. story to help himself relax and avoid his own situation, coaxes to J.P. to continue.
J.P.’s drinking effects his relationship with Roxy. Their fights became physical – a broken nose for J.P. and a dislocated shoulder for Roxy.
“They beat on each other in front of the kids. Things got out of hand. But he kept on drinking. He couldn’t stop. And nothing could make him stop. Not even with Roxy’s dad and her brother threatening to beat hell out of him. They told Roxy she should take the kids and clear out. But Roxy said it was her problem. She got herself into it, and she’d solve it.”
Roxy fixes things by getting a boyfriend. J.P, finds out and goes berserk – like pulling off her wedding ring and cutting it in two. Things for the “drunk” J.P. go downhill – like falling off a roof and breaking a thumb and being arrested for drunk driving.
The Narrator wants us to know that he and J.P. are staying at Frank Martin’s of their own free will and that they’re trying to get their life back on track. Since it’s the Narrator’s second visit, Frank encourages him to stay longer – “The holidays are always a bad time.”
We then learn from the Narrator how J.P. arrived at the residential treatment center. Roxy’s father and brother drive J.P. to Frank Martin’s drying out facility, carry him upstairs and put him to bed. A couple of days later, J. P’s out on the porch with the Narrator telling his stories.
At one point, when the two are on the front porch, Frank Martin, who the Narrator says looks like a prize fighter and “like somebody who knows the score”, comes out to finish his cigar.
“He lets the smoke carry out of his mouth. Then he raises his chin toward the hills and says, “Jack London used to have a big place on the other side of this valley. Right over there behind that green hill you’re looking at. But alcohol killed him. Let that be a lesson. He was a better man than any of us. But he couldn’t handle the stuff, either.”
Frank then encourages them to read London’s Call of the Wild. The book is in the house, he tells them.
J.P., who wants to hide when Frank’s around, says he wishes he had a name like “Jack London” instead of his own name, Joe Penny. (Does the initial using J. P. feel that the shame, failure, and disappointment of being a “drunk” is attached to “Joe Penny? Does he desire a new name because of his tarnished name?)
The Narrator then tells us about his two trips to Frank Martin’s. When his wife brought him here the first time, Frank said he could help. The Narrator wasn’t sure:
“But I didn’t know if they could help me or not. Part of me wanted help. But there was another part.”
The second time, the Narrator was driven to Frank Martin’s by his girlfriend. He had moved in with her after his wife told him to leave.
This second trip to the treatment center came after their drinking bouts around Christmas. The girlfriend had received horrible news in the form of a medical report. With that kind of news, they decided to start drinking and get “good and drunk”. On Christmas day they were still drunk. After a lot of Bourbon, the Narrator decides to go back for treatment. The drunk girlfriend drops him off. The Narrator is not sure if she made it home OK. They haven’t talked on the phone.
New Year’s Eve morning. The Narrator tries to contact his wife, but no answer. He recalls their last conversation. They screamed at each other. “What am I supposed to do?” he says, thinking that he can’t communicate with her anyway.
We learn that there’s a man in the group who’s in denial and says his drinking is under control. He says he doesn’t know why he’s at Frank Martin’s. But he also doesn’t remember how he got there.
New Year’s Eve. Frank made steaks for the group. But Tiny doesn’t eat. He fears another seizure. “Tiny is not the same old Tiny”.
After dinner Frank brings out a cake. In pink letters across the top: HAPPY NEW YEAR – ONE DAY AT A TIME.
Eating cake J.P. tells the Narrator that his wife is coming in the morning, the first day of the year.
The Narrator tries calling his wife collect, but there’s no answer again. He thinks about calling his girlfriend but he decides that he doesn’t’ want to deal with her. He hopes she’s OK but he doesn’t want to find out if there is something wrong with her.
In the morning, Roxy arrives. J.P. introduces his wife to the Narrator. The Narrator wants a “good luck” kiss. The Narrator can see that Roxy loves J.P. She uses “Joe” instead of “J.P.”
This scene seems to trigger something in the Narrator. Lighting a cigarette, he notices that he has the shakes. They started in the morning. He wants something to drink. Depressed, he turns his mind to something else.
The Narrator remembers a happy time with his wife in their house and the house painter that surprised him one morning. These were good vibes: “And at that minute a wave of happiness comes over me that I’m not him — that I’m me and that I’m inside this bedroom with my wife.”
Sitting outside on the front steps, the Narrator thinks about reconnecting – calling his estranged wife again and then his girlfriend. He tries to remember any of Jack London’s books he’s read. “To Build a Fire” comes to mind. It’s a life-or-death story set in the Yukon.
The Narrator thinks again about reconnecting – calling his estranged wife and wish her a “Happy New Year” and to let her know where he’s at when she asks. After that, he’d call his girlfriend hoping that her mouthy teenage son won’t pick up the phone.
“Dirty Realism is the fiction of a new generation of American authors. They write about the belly-side of contemporary life – a deserted husband, an unwanted mother, a car thief, a pickpocket, a drug addict – but they write about it with a disturbing detachment, at times verging on comedy. Understated, ironic, sometimes savage, but insistently compassionate, these stories constitute a new voice in fiction.”
Carver’s influences include Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor to some degree and others.
Like with Chekhov’s stories, Carver’s stories are like windows you can peer through and get a sense of the characters and what’s going on. Though indirect and conveying things without moral pronouncements, Carver’s stories suggest much with details that can say many things. Falling into a well and the mention of Jack London, for example, in the story above.
J.P.’s account of falling into a well gives us some idea of how it feels to be an alcoholic – helpless, in over your head, scared, and looking for a lifeline and a way out.
The Narrator, at the beginning, says “We’ve only been in here a couple of days. We’re not out of the woods yet” and at the end Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” comes to mind. I see his initial admission of trekking through the woods to sobriety and his later hint of his attempts toward sobriety (building a fire in the woods) as an inclusio or framing of the Narrator’s struggle with alcohol. His journey to sobriety will require a set of survival skills he doesn’t yet possess.
The setting of “To Build a Fire” is in the extreme cold of the largely uninhabited Yukon Territories. The unnamed (like the Narrator) solitary hiker is walking on a side trail in the woods toward an outpost. His self-confidence in hiking and survival skills has him disregard an old man’s advice about not traveling alone in such harsh weather.
Remember the Narrator saying this about his first arrival at Frank Martin’s?
“But I didn’t know if they could help me or not. Part of me wanted help. But there was another part.”
The hiker thinks that he can keep trekking toward the outpost without building a fire, despite it being 50 degrees below zero. His dog seems smarter than the hiker who underestimates the power of nature and the possibilities that can arise. While the hiker has some practical smarts, he lacks wisdom. A quote from the story describes the hiker:
“The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.”
At one point the hiker, almost frozen, finally decides to build a fire. Because it was easier to gather the wood needed, he builds his fire underneath a canopy of tree branches. The boughs above his fire are laden with snow. The jostling of his twig gathering and the heat of the fire cause the snow to fall onto the fire and quench it. The hiker tries again, this time out in the open, but he’s freezing up. His hands can’t function. He eventually resigns himself to his frozen fate.
One could see parallels between the unnamed hiker’s folly and the Narrator’s struggle with alcoholism. For one, there’s a self-reliance that paid off in the past that goes on to think it can handle all things. Maybe that’s why Frank Martin brought up Jack London:
“Jack London used to have a big place on the other side of this valley. Right over there behind that green hill you’re looking at. But alcohol killed him. Let that be a lesson. He was a better man than any of us. But he couldn’t handle the stuff, either.”
Another would be building a fire (drying out) under the pretense that you’ve got things figured out and under control. And that could end up in a cycle of a cycle of fires going out and building another fire, of drinking and drying out. Or worse.
Besides the hidden clues, discernable themes of addiction, self-destructive behaviors, addiction’s effect on others, loss of control while under the influence of alcohol, identity, loneliness, alienation, failure, vulnerability, and the need for human connection and story – they’re found in Where I’m Calling From.
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Raymond Carver described himself as “inclined toward brevity and intensity”.
Characterized by an economy with words, Carver’s stories focus on surface description and its subject matter. Things are laid bare. No flowery words. No adverbs. Meaning is found in the raw context.
“Carver decided to explore minimalism in writing. He showed, in his text, real situations of everyday life; some of them could be crude, or complicated to understand, but still, he represented feelings that everyone could recognize: sadness, loneliness, failure, etc.”
Raymond Carver once said “I’m a paid-in-full member of the working poor.” He wrote stories that a blue-collar reader could connect with – of unremarkable people and the seemingly insignificant details that affect them. His own life was a constant struggle with alcohol addiction.
Carver had self-destructive issues with drinking. Alcohol shattered his health, his work and his family – his first marriage ended because of it. He stopped drinking on June 2nd 1977.
The Life of Raymond Carver documentary with Rare Interview (1989):
Hailed as the American Chekhov and short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize at the time of his death, only ten years earlier Raymond Carver had been completely down and out. In this vintage program filmed just a year after he died, Carver’s second wife, Tess Gallagher, and writers Jay McInerney and Richard Ford, his close friends, explore Carver’s artistic legacy: his stories and poems about the other side of the American Dream. In addition, excerpts from two of Carver’s most famous stories are dramatized. “No one since Steinbeck had written about these people,” says McInerney, “the people whose dreams go belly-up.”
Why do I read Carver? Because he writes about people like me and my lived experience. I can relate to J.P. and the Narrator. I’ve known alienation, loneliness, shame, brokenness, failure. I’ve made bad decisions. I’ve been at the bottom of the well. And the bottom of the well has been in me.
Several years ago I had a chat with the rector of the church I was attending. It was midweek when he and I met in the church hallway. I had just dropped off some bags of groceries to be delivered to a homeless shelter in the area.
We hadn’t talked in a while and he wanted to catch up. So we sat down in a room just off the entrance to the chapel. I could tell, first off, that he was eager to convince me to share a room with another single woman during the upcoming trip to Israel that he was heading. When I let him know that I wasn’t interested, he asked me how I was doing.
I told him about work and that I was thinking about retiring at some point. Then, I don’t remember why – maybe to tell him Where I’m Calling From, I told him that there was a well of pain so deep in me that if I brought any of it up, I didn’t know what would happen.
He responded with “Hmmm.” When our conversation ended, he prayed for me.
What I like about Carver’s stories is what I like about Anton Chekov’s stories – I don’t find sanctimony or moralizing. There is no rush to judgement. There are common shared experiences.
Where I’m Calling From, for the most part, is narrated in the present tense. If narrated in the past tense, we’d be in a position to judge. We’d be in the “I told you so” position.
But the present tense narration draws us in. We become involved. We wait and see what happens. We listen to the stories being told. We don’t judge. We understand. And we connect. As a follower of Jesus in this dark season, this is what I’m called to do.
The entire creation is groaning and that includes me.
We have entered a time to reflect on incarnational reality – the presence of God both with us and within us.
The Nativity by Gari Melchers
With awe we marvel at the birth of Jesus and the reversal of power. God humbly took on the appearance of man and became man’s servant.
We remember our own birth from above which opened our eyes to the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. Two realms – heaven-and-earth – together in our temple being.
We now acknowledge that new creation poured into well-worn no longer flexible ways of religion that have stretched to the limit and become brittle will be lost in the process. New wine needs new wine skins, for new wineskins are able to expand by grace as needed.
And we admit that the inappropriateness of trying to redeem things with a new unshrunk patch of legalism will cause more damage than what it attempts to fix.
We accept that new creation means the renewal of the present world rather than its abandonment and replacement by some other kind of world altogether.
We retell the course of events before Advent and the promises fulfilled.
We contemplate ultimate purposes and ultimate or final things.
We acknowledge the darkness that surrounds us and remains with us. We turn once again to the True Light that defies the darkness. We light candles and say “The Light of Christ”.
We sing “Joy to the World” with the longing and expectation of the world being put right with the return of the King as he establishes his reign of justice, mercy and peace.
But hold on. I wonder what sort of advent we’ve fallen into.
Recall this advent advert?
“The Great “Reset”, nee “Build Back Better”, is the scheduled advent of a man-made new world order and, we are told, a “better future”. Should we hope that with this advent things will be put right? Will the “The Great “Reset” bring joy to the world? Will it bring justice, mercy and peace? Will it bring relief from the burdens of life? So far, the Build Back Better Plan/Inflation Reduction Act has created more burdens.
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” bring peace on earth, goodwill toward men? Or will it, like critical theory and The Accuser, constantly find fault and offer no hope of forgiveness and redemption? Will it promote more ill will, division, and hate?
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” advance beauty and truth and goodness? Or will we recoil in horror at its manifestation? Will it be antihuman? Will it be Beastly?
With the arrival of “The Great “Reset” will the darkness that surrounds us now increase? Human forces and agencies were not able to contain the Gerasene demoniac.
What is the telos of “The Great “Reset”? Will it be like the kingdom of God on earth which turns everything upside down – power, privilege and wealth. Or, will it promote a world where the loudest, strongest, wealthiest, and most privileged people prey on the less fortunate. Will it be the Californication of America?
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” be good news that will cause great joy for all the people? Or, will this advent be the start of a countdown to the collapse and the end of the world? Will human trafficking end? Will drug trafficking end? Will justice be blind? Will depression and suicides decrease? Will it be a time of depopulation?
Herod the king, in his raging, Chargèd he hath this day His men of might in his own sight All young children to slay. -Coventry Carol
Will the arrival of “The Great “Reset” mean that the meek, the mournful, and the merciful are held in contempt so the rest of the world can have the “right” to ease and comfort?
Should we hope that with the advent of the New World Order that things will be put right? Should we expect justice, mercy and peace? Or should we expect pseudo-justice, pseudo-mercy and pseudo-peace in the form of pseudo-religion? Socialist activist and communist party leader in Italy Antonio Gramsci is one of many who promoted the latter:
“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”
Do you want the infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media and the transformation of the consciousness of society in the New World Order? Have you already joined this religion? What sort of advent have you fallen into?
Maybe you should take a look at the advent of the man-made New World Order:
Here’s the best summary video I’ve seen of the advent of the NWO and what is coming for you, me, and our children and grandchildren. It begs the questions “Why was I born at this time?” and “Which advent do I choose?”
To put things right, per a globalist worldview, the UN has an 2030 goal agenda. The virtuous-sounding goals touch on andseek to monitor and control, through digital technology, every aspect of human life for a “better world”. But, DO NOT Be Fooled!
To exist in the UN’s 2030 NWO society, people will have to submit their biometrics to the digital industrial complex. Each will be assigned a digital carbon footprint identity to monitor and control their behavior. Freedom, human agency and human dignity will be a thing of the past. Religions will be replaced with materialism.
Digital socialism and communism with centralized assets and resources will ration out resources to each person deemed socially responsible. The world court, world police, and the world health organization will control everyone via digital currency and digital IDs.
UN’s 2030 agenda goals:
The oldest liturgical prayer that we know: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
This advent, you can either pray the incarnational prayer “Come, Lord Jesus!” or the Globalist prayer “Come, Klaus Schwab!”
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A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF TWO MYTHS THAT DRIVE CULTURE: THE AXIAL AGE AND DARK GREEN RELIGION
“Most people, I believe, do not comprehend the way in which each of us is inevitably caught up in what theologian Ched Myers has called the “war of myths” – a battle of overarching stories that claim to explain life (what it’s about, where it’s going, and what its purpose is).” – Iain Proven, retied E. Marshall Shepherd Professor of Biblical Studies (Old Testament) at Regent College.
The contemporary world has been shaped in part by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers’ ‘axial age’ myth as narrated by Karen Armstrong and others and the myth of the ‘dark green golden age’ as narrated by David Suzuki and others. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In this lecture, Iain Provan engages critically with both myths, explaining why we should not embrace them and why it matters if we do. This was recorded at the University of British Columbia Graduate and Faculty Christian Forum.
“We have a ruling class in the United States defined by its hatreds. Not its loves, not its hopes, but by its hatreds. They hate all kinds of people, large groups of people: the deplorables, the bitter clingers, America’s entire blue-collar population, the unfashionable people. They’re hated by the people who run our country.
But no one is hated more by them than a man called Alex Jones.”
Ep. 46 The Alex Jones Interview
TIMESTAMPS:
2:46 Alex Jones predictions 15:07 Deplatforming 21:59 Dividing us on race 25:37 The border 28:09 Austin 32:12 New World Order 42:09 Brian Stelter demon video 50:57 Depopulation 1:07:51 Food 1:13:51 Whiskey 1:16:22 Presidential… pic.twitter.com/IsJAQDUzDc
“I thought about safety, security, good jobs, good education — all that stuff is very important to my family and my community,” she recalled. “And when I broke down those values between Democrats and Republicans, to me it was obvious who stood up for my values.”
“We calculate the toxicity of the vaccine for all ages,” explained Dr. Rancourt, “given the number of doses given worldwide to conclude that 17 million people would have been killed by this vaccine.”
The paper is based on 17 countries in the Southern Hemisphere and equatorial region. A definite causal link is shown between many peaks in all-cause mortality and rapid vaccine rollouts. The authors quantify the fatal toxicity risk per injection, which is exceedingly large in the most elderly.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection on Nov. 13, analyzed mask use among 3,209 individuals from Norway. Researchers followed them for 17 days, and then asked the participants about their use of masks. The team found that there was a higher incidence of testing positive for COVID-19 among people who used masks more frequently.
Between 2021 and 2022 when most of the now-fully vaccinated world got jabbed, cancer deaths skyrocketed, particularly among young people, according to data from the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).
We are entering a season of celebrating Good News – the birth of a good King, the King’s establishment of a good kingdom and the King’s means for new creation. But hold on. Have we been invaded by body snatchers?
They look like us. Exactly like your loved ones or even possibly yourself. Replacement people. Exact copies yet devoid of empathy and humanity.
The 1978 film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers takes place in San Francisco. The plot involves Matthew Bennel and Elizabeth Driscoll. Both work for the Health Department. Elizabeth is the first to suspect that something strange is going on. She awakes one morning to find her boyfriend Geoffrey being cold and distant and doing odd things. And it’s not just him. Everyone now seems strange to her.
Elizabeth Driscoll: I keep seeing these people, all recognizing each other. Something is passing between them all, some secret. It’s a conspiracy, I know it.
Matthew Bennel: There can’t be a conspiracy!
Elizabeth Driscoll: Matthew, I’m telling you something is going on here.
Matthew suggests they speak to his friend, pop-psychiatrist David Kibner. They drive over to the bookstore where Kibner is promoting his new book. On the way they encounter “They’re coming!”
Dr. David Kibner:
Elizabeth, could you please tell me, in your opinion, what is going on?
Elizabeth Driscoll:
People are being duplicated. And once it happens to you, you’re part of this… thing. It almost happened to me!”
Kibner confirms that several of his patients are claiming that their spouses are not who they seem to be. But he puts it down to mass hysteria until Jack and Nancy Bellicec, Matthew’s friends, discover a mysterious embryonic adult-body resembling Jack in the mud spa they run.
Elizabeth Driscoll:
I have seen these flowers all over. They are growing like parasites on other plants. All of a sudden. Where are they coming from?
Nancy Bellicec:
Outer space?
Jack Bellicec:
What are you talking about? A space flower?
Nancy Bellicec:
Well why not a space flower? Why do we always expect metal ships?
Jack Bellicec:
I’ve NEVER expected metal ships.
Together they figure out that humans are being replaced with flawless biological copies who are emotionless. The cold unthinking replicant has one quest – its survival. It must bring others into the fold . . . of the alien plant pods.
How does replacement happen? Organically over time. Strange spores drifted to earth from space. Mysterious pods began to grow. The pods begin replacing the dominant species by spawning emotionless replicas. The original bodies disintegrate into dust after the duplication process. The pod people outwardly resemble the people they have replaced, but are completely empty and soulless.
This happens to San Francisco’s residents one body at a time – when the citizen falls asleep near the pod. The ‘Podified’ then distribute the pods for more replication.
Spores en route to your home.
A ‘Podified’ Professor David Kibner explains the why of Pod Life:
“We came here from a dying world. We drift through the universe, from planet to planet, pushed on by the solar winds. We adapt and we survive. The function of life is survival.”
And so it is that when the credits roll, apparently there are no more humans left in San Francisco. Alien pods have consumed human’s emotional individuality for their survival. Only hollow replacement clones and a screech remain:
Pod people, alike as “two peas in a pod”, have a collective mindset and are extremely persistent. They want to replace humanity with a replicant humanity for their own survival. So America be warned. Pod people – They’re coming! Welcome to 2024 and communism.
Body Snatchers have invaded Progressive San Francisco. We see empty and soulless people acting in weird parasitic ways for the survival of the Left’s Pod People collective.
These had been lulled into replacing their humanity with an invitation for mindless wellbeing. We watch a ‘Podified” Elizabeth Driscoll try to pacify Matthew into acceptance:
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. They were right. It’s painless. It’s good. Come. Sleep. Matthew.”
People who fall asleep with media ‘pods’ wake up different people. These are the people Leftists want.
Leftist’s want Pod people who are devoid of individuality and filled with a collective consciousness. Free will and human agency are to be subsumed to create a monolithic culture. Take away one’s voice (except for the screech) and one’s power, and one’s free will and you have compliant Pod people.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers? There are several indicators:
Queer theory and critical race theory seek to Pod people with an alternate universe.
And there is Google which plants pod seeds. People who search with Google wake up as different people. For Google’s strange seeds drifted into cyberspace from the deep state. Mysterious pods begin to grow and take over minds. See The Big Brother of Silicon Valley video below.
(One disturbing aspect of the movie I noticed is that the men, including the male lead, disbelieve and gaslight the females. I don’t know if this was intentional or just indicative of society.)
Moderna ADMITS That DNA Contamination Can Lead to Cancer
• Moderna has a patent that acknowledges RNA is preferable to DNA in vaccines due to risks of insertional mutagenesis, which might activate oncogenes or inhibit tumor suppressor genes, Dr. @RWMaloneMD explained.
A whistleblower from New Zealand has gone public with vaccine data from the New Zealand Ministry of Health.
New Zealand: a COVID vaccine administrator has gone rogue and turned into a full-blown whistleblower, revealing, for the first time, the actual number of deaths related to a “bad batch” of the Pfizer vaccine.
Professor Dr. Didier Raoult and colleagues pioneered the use of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin for treatment of COVID-19 disease.
Conclusion (Fauci lied people died)
Although this is a retrospective analysis, results suggest that early diagnosis, early isolation and early treatment of COVID-19 patients, with at least 3 days of HCQ-AZ lead to a significantly better clinical outcome and a faster viral load reduction than other treatments.
We are entering a season of celebrating Good News. But hold on. There are some, the same some since before 2016, who are now heralding a disastrous 2024.
Today, at the top of media’s Richter scale of catastrophic “Oh Nos!” and bumping “climate crisis” to number TWO is word of a disastrous new year as speculated in The Economist magazine article Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024 !!!!
To add to the hysteria known as Trump Derangement Syndrome, unhinged Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe said that Trump “will end democracy as we know it.” Wow!!! What a power calculus!!
Joe, hyperbolizing on a New York Times Op-Ed [“Trump’s Dire Words Raise New Fears About His Authoritarian Bent”] went beyond calling Trump an authoritarian. He implied that Trump’s a murderous fascist: “he will imprison” “he will execute” enemies if reelected. Scarborough knows this because of “his past”. (I’d like to see those press clippings. Anyone?)
N.B.: MSNBC is where people go to completely lose all touch with reality because Orange Man Bad.
Here’s Mika man:
Joe Scarborough:
"Trump will imprison, he will execute whoever he is allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country. Just look at his past. It’s not really hard to read.” pic.twitter.com/NC0vo48xAe
And there’s more from the ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ MSNBC:
“Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that “everybody should vote for” President Joe Biden if they wanted democracy to survive.” Wow!!! Again!!!
Before we exit the land of the unhinged, there’s another unbalanced MSNBC political contributor who weighs in on Trump: former Democrat U.S. Senator of Missouri, the very rich Claire McCaskill.
McCaskill claims that Donald Trump is “even more dangerous” than dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler!!! In the process of loathing Trump, McCaskill also has to mock MAGA supporters. You should know that the schtick of MSNBC contributors – our hoity-toity betters – is making their viewers feel superior to the deplorable hoi polloi.
The above insanity should tell you that the Left – Wokes, LGBTQ+ mafia, Antifa, the climate overwrought, BLM, race hustlers and all – are terrified of Trump. And they want you to be terrified of him, too. They see their world, supported by the vast administrative State that sustains their power and control over America, as threatened by Trump. For, in Trump’s next term, he will begin to pull apart the leviathan deep state apparatus that destroys Democracy and America itself.
That and the Left’s constant lawfare against Trump is an indicator to me that Trump is the right man for the job. He’s about saving what’s left of our Republic – namely, the Constitution, free speech, the right to bear arms, religious freedom, and due process which prohibits the states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” (14th Amendment).
The Left, on the other hand, want to abandon all that. The Left wants to seize life, liberty, and property and create a system of producing and distributing collectively owned goods via a centralized government that plans and controls the economy. The left’s economic reforms increase centralized state control to the extent that private ownership becomes virtually impossible.
See Mao’s Great Leap Forward for one example of the effects of collectivization. A Progressive’s collective communist State means that all labor, money, and production go to the State and the State determines who benefits and who must go without based on political loyalty.
And see North Korea for the Left’s brand of “Democracy!” which the braying MSNBC crew says is under threat and not because of their dictatorial ways but because of the guy who wants to keep them from their dictatorial ways.
Trump has also shown that he wants to ensure our country’s sovereignty. And that means a closed border with legal immigration. He also wants to safeguard America from another war. The Left, under the Biden regime, has shown us that open borders with constant war and anarchy are its will.
Another indicator that Trump is right for the WH job is that there are those, not just domestically but internationally, who want Trump and those around them out of the picture, e.g., Iran-linked hitmen. Trump is bothering all the right (evil) people.
Going forward, I sure don’t want someone representing me in the WH who folds or capitulates under pressure. I sure don’t want appeasers and accommodationists like members of Congress. I sure don’t want someone who, at one time in Indiana, looked the part of a respectable Christian leader but turned out to be a squish: Don’t Ever Forget That Mike Pence Threw Religious Liberty Under the Bus | National Review
Results, not presentation, earn my respect.
And though New Yorker Trump could always pick out better words and phrasing to explain his thoughts and his frustrations with the stolen 2020 election, he wasn’t chosen to be president in 2016 and 2020 and once again in 2024 because he’s a poet laureate or a pastor or a prefab politician. Trump’s a producer for the American people.
The firing-on-all cylinders low-inflation economy (before the subterfuge of COVID) and the strong dollar Trump delivered – both are being destroyed by the Biden administration’s willful neglect of the American people as are the times of peace Trump fostered.
Since the illegitimate President took office in January 2021, our southern border has been invaded. Biden-Mayorkas have allowed in (6 million +) all kinds of illegal immigrants including narco-terrorists, gangs, CCP migrants, Hamas terrorists, and more unsavory types along with fentanyl and disease. 2024 will be disastrous as the effects of the open border hit home.
Under the corrupt, compromised, incompetent, and incorrigible Joe Biden, Americans now risk getting pulled into wars on three major fronts: Europe, the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. That didn’t happen under Trump.
But MSNBC stands by their man Biden . . .
Unlike those who are “ashamed” or “embarrassed” by Trump and want to condemn his unrefined ways as being beneath them, my working life was spent in the real world outside the cloisters of academia, religious organizations, and armchair punditry. I learned which people get things done and what needs to get done.
As a business partner in a multi-million-dollar manufacturing enterprise for many years, I found out who was needed and what was needed to bring success to both employees and the bottom line. The things that Trump got done during his first term allowed me to get things done in the Kingdom of God.
N.B.: There are imperfect people like Trump and tax-collector Matthew in the kingdom of heaven. (Mk. 2:15-17). So, it is best for the offended and the ‘high-minded’ to stick with the gospels and to stay away from tea leaves.
Consider a Trump economy. With a thriving economy, I am able to support myself and give to help others in need in a closely tied relationship. But under a Leftist Joe Biden economy, disposable personal income shrinks. Financial survival kicks in. And worse.
You should be aware that Leftists are intent on neutralizing Christianity and its charity. As mentioned above, the Left wants everything to be funneled through the State and the State to be the only effect on society. This is what Progressives do. They make everyone and everything dependent on ruling class ‘good will’. And that is the substance of State media’s MSNBC and their ilk.
So, while the prophets of Baal, enflamed with Trump Derangement Syndrome, shout louder and slash themselves with swords and spears in the hope that viewers will pay attention to their frantic prophesying and let their fire rain down on Trump, let’s turn to the Good News that has already come down from the heavens with its fire poured out through the Holy Spirit.
The beginning of Mark’s Gospel (εὐαγγέλιον or euaggélion – literally, “God’s good news.”):
This is where the good news starts – the good news of Jesus the Anointed King, God’s son.
Everything in Scripture (and specifically Isaiah 40-55) up to this time pointed to the Kingdom of God on earth. Mark writes (vs.14-15):
After John’s arrest, Jesus came into Galilee, announcing God’s good news.
“The time is fulfilled!” he said; “God Kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news!”
“Turn back”? When Jesus launched the long-promised kingdom of God on earth, allegiances and lifestyles began to change direction, as he began to talk about and show what that meant.
Jesus spoke of kingdom of God in parables and directly, as in Matthew 5-7. He showed what the kingdom of God meant – unclean spirits are cast out (Mk. 1:39), people are healed (Mt. 4:23), there is restoration (Lk. 15) and resurrection (Jn. 11:38-44). And, that the kingdom of God on earth was a fulfillment of the Law and Prophets (Mt. 5:17-18).
When he taught his disciples how to pray, he prayed
May your kingdom come,
May your will be done
As in heaven, so on earth
I wonder. Is that prayer being realized? Instead of allegiance to King Jesus the ultimate restorer and to the kingdom of God on earth, have the followers of Jesus become accommodationists of the world to fit in and find ease?
Have the followers of Jesus understood what the good news is? Have they reduced the gospel (euaggélion) to the formulaic four spiritual laws and an escape from the world into heaven?
Below are two podcasts that offer an understanding of the Good News and the kingdom of God on earth. Download and listen as you enter the season of celebrating the birth of a King who brought us good news and a kingdom.
But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever. Daniel 7:18
We, the King’s holy ones, are to herald the good news of God’s Kingdom with a new way of life to a world that sees answers in profoundly short-sighted ways rather than in the Way of King Jesus. And then . . .
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.” Rev 11:15
~~~~~
On Earth as it is in Heaven
Anglican Bishop, and New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright makes clear, Jesus’ good news wasn’t about giving advice, or founding a new religion, or even where a soul goes when the body dies. Jesus was inviting his hearers into a new way of understanding Israel’s ancient story and the cosmic significance of its sudden fulfillment.
A year of determination, the help of world-renowned doctors, and this mother’s research exposed the world to the known toxins in the Covid-19 vaccines that nearly killed her son.
“In 2021, after my then 21-year-old son went from running miles a day to walking with a cane, diagnosed with a rare, catastrophic blood disorder, this mom knows it is time for vaccine injury victims & families to ignite an intelligent, rational conversation about what the mRNA vaccines put into our bodies. We don’t buy food or health products without reading the labels and knowing the ingredients, and it’s time we do the same with the vaccines for our children.”
Livestock raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are routinely given a range of veterinary drugs to prevent disease, and some of those drugs could potentially impact the health of those who eat their meat.
Thousands of vials of biological substances — including some labeled “HIV” — and a freezer marked “Ebola” were found inside a secret Chinese-owned biolab in California which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and FBI initially refused to investigate, according to a House committee report released Wednesday.
“This is really a massive cover-up. And I suspect it’s because there’s many more links to the funding, and there was probably discussion of the funding,” says Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
Not your usual Thanksgiving fare . . . If you live in Disneyworld, then don’t bother reading further.
May 19, 1925. Saloth Sar, as the eighth of nine children, is born into a well-off and well-connected farming family, landowners in Kompong Thong province in central Cambodia. He arrives in a time when the kingdom of Cambodia is a French protectorate within French Indochina.
Sar’s childhood is strict and sheltered in the capital city of Phnom Penh. He spends a year at a Buddhist monastery prep-school before attending a French Catholic primary school. He involves himself with the violin, drama, soccer and carpentry. His Cambodian education continues until 1949.
Having won a scholarship to study abroad with a group of some 200 students, Sar journeys to Paris to study radio technology. During the one-month boat trip in 1949, Sar meets Mey Mann. Mann would later describe Sar at that time as being a pleasant man who showed little interest in politics. But in Paris during the early 1950s, Sar becomes a different man. He turns his conscious into consciousness.
What Happened? Marx and Mao happened.
“Though a Roman Catholic and a devout Jeffersonian [preferring agrarian life over city life] coming out of high school, Sar attended university in Paris, 1949-1953, where he came under the influence of several Marxists, especially the radical former nazi-collaborator Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).”
In Paris, Sar is in the company of fellow travelers – radicalized Cambodians. He joins their reading group and immerses himself in the writings of Marx, Lenin and Mao. Sar connects with the ruthless ways of Lenin and Mao. He joins France’s Stalinist Communist Party.
As a result of neglecting his studies, Sar loses his scholarship. He then returns to Cambodia in 1953 to bring revolution to Cambodia. Mey Mann, who also went off to Paris as a young college student, also came back a leftist revolutionary.
Back in Cambodia, Saloth Sar joins Vietnamese communists who were intent on ridding South East Asia of western influence. When he becomes the leader of the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) he takes on the nom de guerre Pol Pot, which means “the original Cambodian.” His family’s ancestry traced back to Cambodian royalty.
William Branigin, who spent 19 years overseas, reporting in Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East and Europe, provides background to Pol Pot’s growing revolutionary activism and his Maoist leanings in his article ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE WAS UNREPENTANT TO THE END – The Washington Post:
After years of secret communist activity in Phnom Penh, Pol Pot rose to the leadership of the underground movement in 1962. The following year he fled to the countryside to escape a crackdown by the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who dubbed the revolutionaries “Khmers Rouges,” or Red Khmers. . ..
Ensconced in the Cambodian northeast in an isolated jungle base protected by Vietnamese communist guerrillas who were then his allies, Pol Pot and his followers concocted a strange ideological brew of Marxism and what one scholar described as “badly digested Maoism.” During this period Pol Pot was apparently influenced by a five-month trip he made to China at the beginning of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and his economic “Great Leap Forward.” It was marked by the partial evacuation of Chinese cities and purges of “class enemies.”
. . .
Pol Pot then launched his own version of the “Great Leap Forward,” but with an apparent determination to jump even farther. The Khmer Rouge promptly emptied the cities, viewed as breeding grounds of capitalism, and began slaughtering old-regime soldiers and officials. The aim was to establish an agrarian Utopia in a single giant bound over the various stages of Marxist development. It was “Year Zero,” and people were entirely expendable. . ..
Pol Pot combined Stalinist and Maoist models with a focus on an agrarian society. With support from rural Cambodians, North Vietnamese, and the Chinese, Pol Pot was able to take control of the country in 1975. The Khmer Rouge began inverting the entire structure of Cambodian society.
Children, indoctrinated into the new ideology, were given power. Taught to “harden their hearts” toward their countrymen and their own families, they decided who was ideologically pure and who must be purged. But that was not enough for Pol Pot. He remained obsessively paranoid, as Branigin writes:
But soon the revolution began devouring its own children, as Pol Pot launched repeated purges of those he believed were plotting against him or working for his Vietnamese or American enemies. Thousands were tortured into making “confessions” at Tuol Sleng, a Phnom Penh school-turned-jail whose director reported to Pol Pot.
In pursuit of their dreams of a communist Utopia, the Khmer Rouge abolished money, commerce, religion and traditional education. They suppressed family relationships, individualism, intellectuals and ethnic groups, slaughtered anyone who showed recalcitrance and enforced unquestioning obedience to “Angka,” the organization.
Thousands were beaten to death, then dumped in mass graves in the regime’s “killing fields.” Many more succumbed to starvation, disease and overwork. Out of a population of about 8 million, demographers and researchers estimate, at least 1 million, and possibly as many as 1.7 million, died.
But as the killing intensified, the revolution increasingly turned on itself, targeting “enemies” whom Pol Pot perceived to be multiplying like germs, creating what he called a “sickness in the party.”
There is much to the Pol Pot murderous legacy that is not written here. This brief intro describing Saloth Sar’s fundamental transformation into genocidal dictator Pol Pot is meant to open eyes to the fundamental transformation -subtle and not so subtle – that is taking place in our country right now.
I want my readers to recognize the signs of the coming onslaught on humanity. The Biden regime, the Merrick Garland DOJ, Leftist judges and the media, are showing signs of demanding ideological conformity to their form of totalitarian “Democracy!” The Left’s constant lawfare against Trump is just one indicator of this.
And though implemented in more efficient ways today, e.g., digital technology, the same Lennin Think and Maoism is being used by the intelligentsia to control every aspect of our lives – from thought to word to deed, from sunup to sundown and throughout the night.
To understand Pol Pot’s way of thinking and that of today’s intelligentsia, listen to the podcast below – Thinking Like Lenin with Gary Saul Morson.
The three videos below reveal the man Pol Pot and the political horrors of his regime. Learn about the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and the genocide, one of the worst in recorded history, of about half the Cambodian nation. Learn from the firsthand accounts of Dith Pran and Haing S. Ngor.
Dith Pran, a Cambodia-born journalist, helped bring to light the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. His three brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Haing S. Ngor, Cambodian physician and actor, is best known for his Dith Pran role in the movie The Killing Fields (1984), which depicted the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that Ngor himself had also lived through.
Watch Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields to see what is coming our way under the growing despotism.
Also, you may want to watch the third in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Tribology, The Dark Knight Rises, to get a sense of the anarchy and destruction just beginning to be released upon the world to bring about change. Gotham’s (Western Civilization’s) infrastructure is set apart for destruction by Bane and his “social justice” henchmen.
And learn about dehumanizing Marxism:
“Marx’s mechanical theory of society reduces real individuals, with their hopes and fears, beliefs and desires, to mere abstract “classes”. He subordinates reality—messy, limited, and all too human—to a perfect model in which utopia is the only possible outcome. As [Theodore] Dalrymple puts it: “Marx’s eschatology, lacking all common sense, all knowledge of human nature, rested on abstractions that were to him more real than the actual people around him.””
You say you want a revolution . . . so, with bloodlust, you can rid the world of monarchy and colonialism, of Christians and Jews, of the West, and of “oppressors” and replace it with an oppressive murderous regime and a descent into hell; to create a colony of insect peasants, war slaves, and execution squads, of senseless brutality, mind-numbing torture and purges; to create a society where indoctrinated children decide ideological purity among its members and where families cease to exist . . . well, you can count me out.
Mey Mann on the origin of Pol Pot’s murderous ways:
“On many occasions, Mey Mann said he tried to understand why the Khmer Rouge had turned to the killing fields. He asked Ieng Sary and Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea many times when Pol Pot had changed, when Saloth Sar turned into the leader of a murderous regime, but he never got a clear answer.
““Nobody knows. I don’t know why it happened like that, why they tried the extreme way,” Mey Mann said. “When we were students, we thought in a good way and did everything step by step. I don’t know which year Pol Pot changed his attitude.
““Maybe Pol Pot wanted to follow China and be strict like that. He was too biased to China and needed support from them because he hated Vietnam,” he said. “But Pol Pot forgot that Cambodia has only 10 million people. If China goes the tough way and kills 100 people, they have many more people so it doesn’t have a big effect. But here, that’s a big killing.””
“What influenced me most was the actual situation in Cambodia,” Pol Pot told American journalist Nate Thayer. When he came home from Paris, he found that his family had fallen on hard times. A once prosperous uncle had become a rickshaw puller, and other relatives had lost their land and livestock.
”I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,” the infirm, 72-year-old Pol Pot argued to Thayer. ”Even now, and you can look at me: Am I a savage person?” he asked, adding: “My conscience is clear.”
“In order to survive you have to pretend to be stupid.” -Dith Pran, about life in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge
“I see … a pile of skulls and bones. For the first time since my arrival, what I see before me is too painful, and I break down completely. These are my relatives, friends and neighbors, I keep thinking … It is a long time before I am calm again. And then I am able, with my bare hands, to rearrange the skulls and bones so that they are not scattered about.”
— Dith Pran, writing about his return to Cambodia for The New York Times in 1989.
“This is sad for the Cambodian people because he was never held accountable for the deaths of 2 million of his fellow countryman. The Jewish people’s search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people’s search for justice doesn’t end with Pol Pot.”
— Dith Pran, upon the death of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in 1998, quoted in The Times.
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
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“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
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“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
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“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
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
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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
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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
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“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 
Not Heard, Herded
January 21, 2024 Leave a comment
“We whip the groaning masses … towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can see.”
– Rubashov, a functionary of the Communist Party in Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
“Rebuilding Trust” – the theme of this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos Switzerland.
The mission of the “international” WEF, as the link states, involves “public-private cooperation” by engaging “the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas”. Sounds rather benign, so far.
To advance its “agendas”, the WEF needs the buy-in of the rich, the powerful, and the celebrated:
As we face an increasingly fractured and polarised world, this year’s World Economic Forum summit will look at ways of rebuilding and strengthening trust amongst global stakeholders.
But what about the trust between the global stakeholders and the common man? This was brought up by the CEO of Allianz.
Leaders speaking the truth would be a great start. But someone saying “I have to invest hundreds of billions in transforming our economy” is a non-starter for the common man who is to foot the bill for WEF “agendas”. And, our well-functioning economy won’t survive DEI, Degrowth and a lot of tinkering.
What I hear this guy saying: “the common man should know how he will be exploited for the cost of future WEF projects as if he was all in in their determination.
Behind the façade of benign WEF is malign WEF. The organization that presents itself as an instrument of deliverance is actually an instrument of totalitarianism. The WEF, while working to “Rebuild Trust” amongst global stakeholders, is intent on destroying trust in anything besides itself – the elites in cahoots.
From The People’s Voice:
The World Economic Forum has declared that anybody who promotes a “different perception of reality” and questions the authority of “experts” should be considered “more dangerous” than a terrorist in 2024. [sounds like Dictator Biden’s J6 speech: “We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.”]
The danger for the global elite, according to [WEF managing director Saadia] Zahidi, lies in the fact that non-authorized views are capable of encouraging “different perceptions of reality” which can encourage people to question whether the mainstream media and global elite are telling the truth.
[non-authorized views? Tyranny? Anyone?]
“If some of those views start spilling over into very different perceptions of reality, when it comes to health, when it comes to what people are thinking about education, what people think about specific people, who then becomes the owner of the truth? “
For the WEF to be the sole owner of truth – The party is never wrong! – digital technology has been and will continue to be deployed to monitor content (via smartphones, online social media, and digital devices in your home and car) and circumscribe all aspects of one’s life (via social credit scoring and CBDC) so as to crush “misinformation”.
Did you know that information warriors are engaged in the act of shutting down dissent. . .
Per the Centre for Research on Globalization:
“At the height of the pandemic, the United Nations recruited over 100,000 “digital first responders’ to push the establishment narrative on COVID via social media.
“The revelation actually slipped out in October 2020 during a World Economic Forum podcast called ‘Seeking a cure for the infodemic’, although it is only going viral on Twitter today.
“In the podcast, Melissa Fleming, head of global communications for the United Nations, explains how the COVID pandemic and lockdowns created a “communications crisis” in addition to a public health emergency.
“Fleming acknowledged that in order to fight so-called “misinformation” about the pandemic, the UN tapped up 110,000 people to amplify their messaging across social media.
““So far, we’ve recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels,” Fleming stated.
“That was nearly 2 years ago. It is not known how many ‘digital first responders’ have been recruited up to this point.”
You can listen to the WEF podcast in question here.
And so it is, the WEF in concert with the UN and the WHO, mankind’s Nemesis triumvirate, will enact its inescapable ‘divine’ retribution against those committing hybris or insolence towards them. For, we are to believe, the world needs the “owners of truth” to shape global, regional and industry agendas to make them instruments of deliverance from all that ails the world, so help themselves.
“Whip the groaning masses towards . . . a theoretical future happiness, which only we[f] can see”?
Not heard, herded?
Tell me. Does one “Rebuild Trust” by censoring voices? Doesn’t rebuilding trust involve hearing each other out? Doesn’t rebuilding trust involve embrace and not exclusion?
Speak out against the WEF madness!
~~~~~
Regarding the quote at the top:
The main character of Darkness at Noon, Nicholas Salmanovitch Rubashov, was at one time a “Commissar of the People” but he fell out of favor. He wasn’t discreet. He talked to his friends concerning his doubts about the effectiveness and correctness of certain Party policies. He is imprisoned and subsequently put on trial.
In Darkness at Noon, The Second Hearing: 7 we learn:
Rubashov is contemplating the suffering of the masses deliberately caused by the Party and its methods of control. He questions these draconian and inhumane actions because they are based only on a theoretical notion of the future. The Party thinks it can see the future it is whipping the masses toward, but in fact it can’t possibly know what future its actions will create.
The Party line is that the suffering of the masses will be compensated by future happiness. But, again, this happiness is purely notional and may never come about. Still the Party imposes pain on the people in the name of this unknown, hypothetical future.
“Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler | A Podcast Summary of Classic Novels (youtube.com)
Interesting to note:
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was influenced by Darkness at Noon, as Jonathon R. Eller writes in his essay The Story of Fahrenheit 451 in the 60th Anniversary Edition of the book:
Bradbury was initially inspired by Arthur Koestler’s riveting exposé of Stalin’s political terrors and finally motivated to write by the emerging climate of fear during the early years of the Cold War. His hatred of all totalitarian regimes came into sharp focus in his “Day After Tomorrow” essay, published in The Nation just as he was about to finish the final draft of Fahrenheit 451: Consider the similarity of two books—Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” laid in our recent past, and George Orwell’s “1984,” set in our immediate future. And here we are, poised between the two, between a dreadful reality and an unformed terror, trying to make such decisions as will avoid the tyranny of the very far right and the tyranny of the very far left, the two of which can often be seen coalescing into a tyranny pure and simple, with no qualifying adjective in front of it at all.
Seems to me, based on the suppression of dissent, the use of legal forums for political purposes – “lawfare”, and the central planning going on, that the Biden regime, the Uniparty, big tech, the WEF, the UN, and the WHO are coalescing into a tyranny pure and simple, with no qualifying adjective in front of it at all.
Biden calling Americans “extremist” for their objections to the above and to the direction their country is being taken is tyranny.
Lawfare seeking to keep Trump off the ballot and from being elected president is not “saving Democracy”. It is the opposite – tyranny.
Arresting J6ers and giving them horrific sentences and prison conditions for a made-up “insurrection” are draconian and inhumane actions. This injustice, highlighted by a J6 show trial, was meant to instill fear and to silence protest in Americans. Do not be silent about the injustice done to J6ers and the tyranny pure and simple it represents.
Ashli Babbitt was murdered that day.
Time for Truth and Accountability J6 Committee (declassified.live)
During COVID, voices opposing “the science” were censored. They were not to be heard. For, people were to be herded in one direction – toward big pharma.
The voice of millions was stolen during the 2020 election. For, “Democracy!” was to be herded in one direction – toward the OBiden regime and tyranny.
Isn’t ironic that while the Left is subverting systems of power in the name of social justice, critical race theory, and whatever so as to be liberated, they are creating a top-down monolithic power that will enslave them.
All one has to do to go along with the coalescing tyranny: remain isolated, remain silent and remain dependent on the state media.
Think local, not global.
~~~~~
Mattias Desmet / Tucker Carlson – MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS [Mirror] (youtube.com)
~~~~~
Not everyone is ready to turn over their lives to a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance from inequality, poverty, sickness, and manufactured crises, e.g., “the climate crisis”.
President of Argentina Javier Milei demolishes socialism in front of a bunch of socialists at the World Economic Forum.
“I’m here to tell you that the western world is in danger and it is endangered because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inextricably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty.”
“Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others and others motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste.”
“The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause.”
Javier Milei slams the west for ‘abandoning freedom for socialism’ in Davos (bitchute.com)
Sweden Scraps Agenda 2030 Goals – The People’s Voice (thepeoplesvoice.tv)
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In a society where so many feel unseen and unknown, how do we become the kind of people who deeply see and know those around us? The conflict and division in our society demonstrate the need for people committed to pursuing human connection, even across lines of difference. What can we do – as individuals and in community – that will help us really understand the people in our lives?
In this podcast, David Brooks, discusses his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. What do you think?
Episode 67 | How to Know a Person with David Brooks | The Trinity Forum (ttf.org)
~~~~~
DAVOS Watch:
Davos Elite’s Vision Of Your Future | Davos Watch Ep. 1 (youtube.com)
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Filed under 2024 Current Events, Political Commentary, totalitarianism, WEF, WHO Tagged with Biden, censorship, Darkness at Noon, Davos, Globalism, Klaus Schwab, totalitarianism, tyranny, World Economic Forum