At the cross. At the burial. At the empty tomb. Three wait-and-see days. Three women.
The gospel according to Mark begins with the ushering in of “the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son” (Mk. 1:1). Composed of short narratives that could be easily visualized by those who heard its reading, Mark’s terse and unembellished gospel clears a straight path so that the reader can see and perceive Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises (Mk. 1:3).
For example, Mark uses literary bracketing (inclusio) to focus in on that fulfillment. Two accounts of blind men receiving their sight bracket Jesus telling his disciples (three times) that he will be rejected, handed over to the authorities, killed and then rise from the dead after three days. (Beginning Bracket: Mark 8:22-26; End Bracket: Mark.10:46-52.)
Because of their own unwillingness to really really look at Jesus (cf. Mk.8:25) the disciples do not perceive Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises through death and resurrection.
At a mission critical point in the gospel account -Mark chapter 8 – Jesus reproaches his disciples for their lack of understanding. We learn from the brutally honest account that those closest to Jesus, each with two good eyes and two good ears, still did not grasp that the Messiah had to be crucified and then rise again. We hear that in Peter’s repudiation of that mission (Mk. 8:32).
Peter is Mark’s principal eyewitness source of what Jesus said and did and of the disciple’s reactions. But after the end of Mark chapter 14, where Peter’s denial is recorded, Peter and the male disciples are nowhere to be seen or heard from.
Three women are introduced into the passion narrative (Mk 15). They are the source for Mark’s passion account. They are eyewitnesses of what occurred at the cross, at the burial and at the empty tomb.
Earlier in the text, Mark wrote of the blind gaining sight, of those with two good eyes not seeing and not perceiving what was taking place. Mark now places emphasis on seeing that would lead to perceiving and, hopefully, to belief. He records the seeing of the women seven times:
Henry Ossawa Tanner
At the cross. Some of the women observed from a distance. They included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome. They had followed Jesus in Galilee, and had attended to his needs. There were several other women, too, who had come up with him to Jerusalem. (Mk. 15: 40-41).
(Note that Mark added that these women had also been with Jesus for most of his ministry. He is telling us that they had observed Jesus from his early ministry to the empty tomb. These women likely heard Jesus teach his disciples new things: about him being handed over to be killed and his rising from the dead after three days. (Mk. 8:31-32; 9:31-32; 10:32-45)
At the burial. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses observed where he was buried. (Mk. 15:47)
At the empty tomb. After the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they could come and anoint Jesus …” who’s going to roll the stone away for us?”
Then, when they looked up, they observed that it had been rolled away. (It was extremely large.) (Mk. 16: 1-4)
So they went into the tomb, and there they saw a young man sitting on the right hand side. He was wearing white. They were totally astonished.
“Don’t be astonished,” he said to them. “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazarene, who was crucified. He has been raised! He isn’t here! Look – this is the place where they laid him.
“But go and tell his disciples – including Peter – that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there, just like he told you.” (Mk. 16:5-7)
The earliest manuscripts of Mark’s gospel account end at 16: 8:
They [the three women] went out, and fled from the tomb. Trembling and panic had seized them. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
This is a curious ending for a gospel that begins with “the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son”. Mark clearly wanted the readers to perceive Jesus as the Messiah, God’s son. He clearly wanted the reader to take in the crucifixion of the Messiah and his bodily resurrection. Why end good news with fear and trembling?
Mark’s gospel account may have had a longer ending. If the original manuscript was written on a scroll (likely), the edge of the scroll containing his ending may have deteriorated. This also happened to many dead sea scrolls.
Later copies of Mark contained appended text (Mk. 16: 9-20). This text may have been added by a scribe in the second century who was familiar with Luke’s gospel account. There are similarities. Mark’s promise of “the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son” has been restored- fulfilled – with the added text. And so was Mark’s emphasis of those not perceiving what is taking place.
Mark’s narrative emphasis on hardness of heart leading to unbelief – rejecting what has been seen and heard by eyewitness accounts– is reinforced in the added text:
When Jesus was raised, early on the first day of the week, he appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told the people who had been with him, who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that he was alive, and that he had been seen by her, they didn’t believe it.
After this he appeared in a different guise to two of them as they were walking into the countryside. They came back and told the others, but they didn’t believe them.
Later Jesus appeared to the eleven themselves, as they were at table. He told them off for their hardness of heart, for not believing those who had seen him after he had been raised. (Mk. 16: 9-14)
At the cross. At the burial. At the empty tomb. Three wait-and-see days. Three women seeing seven times. Eleven hard-hearted disciples. And you? You still don’t get it? (cf. Mk.8:21)
All God’s promises, you see, find their yes in him: and that’s why we say the yes, the “Amen,” through him when we pray to God and give him glory (2 Cor. 1:20)
The eyes have it. Amen.
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“Nowhere in early Christian literature do we find traditions attributed to the community as their source or transmitter, only as the recipient. Against the general form-critical image of the early Christian movement as anonymous collectivity, we must stress that the New Testament writings are full of prominent named individuals . . . Compared with the prominence of named individuals in the New Testament itself, form criticism represented a rather strange depersonalization of early Christianity that still exercised an unconscious influence on New Testament scholars.”[i]
[i] Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI), 2017), 297
Just a few centuries before the first Palm Sunday, Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.) promoted to his followers the notions of another ancient Greek philosopher, Demetrius (c. 460 – c. 370 B.C.). Demetrius’ had proposed the theory of Atomism to account for nature.
The theory in brief: the universe is a material system governed by the laws of matter. The fundamental elements of matter are atoms. Random, unguided ‘atoms’ smash into each other, thereby creating the world and life as we know it. Epicurus went on to tweak Demetrius’ theory by saying that atoms do not always go in straight lines but can “swerve, avoiding atomism’s inherent determinism and allowing for free will – just like the gods.
Per Epicurus, the gods were off somewhere happily doing their thing unconcerned about anything. They existed without needs, were invulnerable to any harm, and were generally living an enviable life, not anxious about anything. As such, they exemplified what Epicurus’s followers should seek to attain in their limited human nature.
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by aponia, the absence of pain and fear, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space. –The Epicurus Reader
Epicurus also taught that nothing should be believed except for that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction – believed via the sensate and reason. Based on such thinking along with having the viewpoint that the gods were distant and uninvolved and therefore unrelated to ‘thinking’ and ‘sensing’ man’s life, man had to make do with the atoms he had been dealt. Don’t look to a personal God for help.
What was most important in Epicurus’ philosophy of nature was the overall conviction that our life on this earth comes with no strings attached; that there is no Maker whose puppets we are; that there is no script for us to follow and be constrained by; that it is up to us to discover the real constraints which our own nature imposes on us. ―The Epicurus Reader
As Epicurus evaluated the Greek and Roman gods of his time and man’s attempt to please and cajole the gods to obtain favors, it would make sense for him and his followers to deduce that “there is no Maker whose puppets we are”. And, for Epicurus to further reason the problem of evil paradox:
“The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?” ― Epicurus
The Epicurean paradox was answered with another paradox: What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8:4
In the fullness of time, including Epicurean times, the Lord of the universe put on human flesh – dust fashioned from the created elements including about 18% carbon – to deal with the problem of evil. There was nothing ambiguous or theoretical or abstract about the appearance of God’s own son Jesus. There was direct observation -seeing, hearing, and touching – by his followers.
Philosophers and atheists, before and after Epicurus, pronounced judgement on God for all the evil in the world.
The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven. – George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce
To address evil, Jesus announced the kingdom of God on earth. What was begun in Genesis – the ordering of material creation to build God’s temple on earth so that God would dwell with man – was reinstated by Jesus. This blueprint or worldview was on the books long before Epicurus arrived on the scene. And so is the record of God’s faithfulness. God, as revealed in Jesus, puts things to right.
Jesus entered space and time flesh and blood to pronounce judgement on evil. He did so without equivocation. Jesus did not succumb to pleasure seeking to avoid pain. He did not succumb to Satan’s temptations to find happiness. Evil unclean spirits were cast out. Hypocrites were denounced and death itself was overturned. Jesus suffered the full force of evil on the cross – an act of redemption from evil’s ransom.
The King of Glory wept over Jerusalem and his chosen people. The Israelites had so often rejected their reveal-to-the-world-the-one-true-God vocation. They had not been faithful stewards of God’s vineyard. Did Epicurus see no difference in their God and the Greek and Roman gods?
On that first Palm Sunday, just a few centuries after Epicurus taught that there was no personally involved God, the King of Glory, emptied of his glory, rides a donkey into Jerusalem to meet evil head on and to put the world right. The “Epicurean Paradox” would be addressed and soundly answered.
What will you do with the knowledge that the infinite-personal God, embodied in human form, speaks to the very human concerns behind Epicurean philosophy?
The article drew me in with the transition mentioned in the title. The first paragraph offered more detail about the move:
. . . Beth Moore left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021 and soon after was seen in a photo serving Communion at an Anglican church.
The article went on to disturb me as I read of the appalling way Christians treat other Christians. The author, Rick Pidcock, relates some of the ‘ex officio’ and corrosive reaction to Beth Moore prior to her leaving the SBC in 2021.
At the Truth Matters Conference in 2019, which was a gathering to celebrate John MacArthur’s five decades of ministry, Todd Friel asked MacArthur to play a word association game with the two words “Beth Moore.” To which, MacArthur famously replied, “Go home.”
MacArthur’s henchman Phil Johnson added, “The word that comes to my mind is ‘narcissistic.’”
Then MacArthur jumped back in to say: “Just because you have the skill to sell jewelry on the TV sales channel doesn’t mean you should be preaching. … The church is caving in to women preachers. … Women are not allowed to preach.”
Dear God! A celebration of five decades in ministry and grown men on a stage mocking a woman in public? Is this how Christian men should treat a Christian woman and even when they think they possess all the Truth that Matters (and, apparently, none of the grace that matters)? I understand, though. Some men want to play Elijah.
One would think that after five decades Mr. Sola Scriptura would have learned that Christians were not given the Word of God for the purpose of belittling and calling down fiery scorn onto women of faith. The Word, its understanding by the spirit, and the fruits thereof are given to inform our love, our grace and our prayers for others along with our worldview.
It remains to be seen if John MacArthur and his henchmen are mature Christians. Was Beth Moore present to defend herself against the scorners? And, did those present smile and laugh in agreement? Will MacArthur speak to Beth Moore, confess what he did, and ask for forgiveness? It remains to be seen.
Women are not allowed to preach: MacArthur’s authoritarian intransigence reminds me of another insular authoritarian: Dr. Anthony Fauci. During the media’s COVID pandemic Fauci preached “the science” dogma. If you disagreed with “the science” you were declared a heretic, exiled from social media and from any and all discussion. Period. And like MacArthur, Fauci has a fan club to ensure that the doctrine-of-what-he-says is in your face. Science Matters.
The behavior of the Truth Matters men gives the appearance of a pride of place smack down, their use of authority and power as “Truth is what I say it is”.
Their behavior also recalls the either-or-or thinking of James and John – the “sons of thunder” as Jesus calls them (Mk. 3:17). Either you think and do as I say and get with the program or you are against us and we will demand that you stop. And if you don’t accept us then we will call down fire from heaven and burn you up, just saying.
“Master,” commented John, “we saw someone casting out demons in your name. We told him to stop, because he wasn’t part of our company.”
“Don’t stop him,” replied Jesus. “Anyone who isn’t against you is on your side.”
As the time came nearer for Jesus to be taken up, he settled it in his mind to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers ahead of him. They came into a Samaritan village to get them ready, and they refused to receive him, because his mind was set on going to Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Master, do you want us to call down fire from heaven and burn them up?” He turned and rebuked them, and they went on to another village.
Do those, who sit in the seat of scoffers (Ps. 1:1), think that Beth Moore is now a heretic because she serves in a capacity they adamantly deem to be unfitting for a woman?
Apparently so, as the article states:
When Reformation Charlotte recently discovered that Beth Moore was wearing a robe and serving Communion in her new church, they called her an apostate, posted screenshots of the service and of the church’s volunteer schedule, and reminded the world of their prediction that “it would only be a matter of time before Beth Moore becomes full-on gay-affirming.”
Slippery slope arguments are not arguments. They are cheap shot syllogisms done to create fear and disdain among the hearers. Slippery slope arguments are prayer avoidance techniques – why talk to God about this when I can foresee the future because I possess all the Truth that Matters? In this instance, it is the grease on the slopes of Truth Mattershorn.
No Christian woman should ever be treated in this way. And, certainly not by a group of authoritarian church leaders who believe they have rightly divided the word of God by cutting women out of heralding the Good News.
Two of the three reasons Jesus summoned, appointed, and named twelve “apostles” was 1) to be with him (as eyewitnesses), and 2) to be sent out as heralds (of what they witnessed). (Mk. 3:13-15). * Let us be reminded that many, many of the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection were women. They heralded what they saw:
Some of the women were watching from a distance. They included Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome. [From the beginning] They followed Jesus in Galilee, and had attended to his needs. There were several other women, too, who had come up with him to Jerusalem. (Mk. 16: 40-41)
After Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, and when the sabbath was over, it is Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome who bought spices so that they could come and anoint Jesus. They find the stone rolled away. They are greeted by a herald.
The angel tells them to go herald the news (Mk. 16: 7):
But go and tell his disciples – including Peter – that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You’ll see him there, just like he told you. (What, Jesus talked to women? Women receive revelations from God?! Isn’t that setting up a slippery slope scenario?! And go tell the Matterhorn of the church?!)
Does anyone think that these women – and so many other female eyewitnesses of the ministry of Jesus, e.g., Mary and Martha and the resurrection of Lazarus – does anyone think that these women didn’t herald in their community and synagogue what they witnessed?
And who can forget that two disciples (Cleopas and one unnamed- likely a woman named Mary) met Jesus as they were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day that Jesus rose from the dead. They invited Jesus to come home and eat with them. (Luke 24)
Women are not allowed to preach. Huh? What about the female apostle Junia (Romans 16:7)? Junia minsters in partnership with Andronicus and Paul, is well known to the apostles and is a fellow prisoner (for preaching?). It is very likely that Junia had seen the risen Lord.
You may not hear this acknowledged in your androcentric church: beyond a Proverbs 31 characterization of the “good wife”, women are featured prominently in the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection narratives in the gospels. And women, like those mentioned above, continued to herald the events of those narratives to the growing church and to all who would listen. (I use the word “herald” in the Apostle-choosing sense noted above so as to not trigger certain males with the word “preaching”.) The topic of women in ministry deserves a dedicated post.
Now, I don’t know much at all about Beth Moore. But with regard to the ongoing slander of a Christian sister, I agree with the apostle Paul: When people persist in sin, rebuke them openly, so that the rest may be afraid. (1 Tim 5:19).
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As mentioned above, the article drew me in with the transition mentioned in the title. The author uses Moore’s evolution to relate his own journey from Baptist to Anglican. He notes at one point that he is no longer Anglican because his spiritual journey kept going beyond where the Anglicans were willing to go. He goes on to say . . .
The Anglican Church drew me in from my Baptist heritage because it acknowledged my exile and gave me space to move. While I was there, it gave me a taste in the particular for what is true everywhere. But ultimately, it allowed harmful voices within its walls to speak to my children and built walls for women and LGBTQ people that I believed needed to be knocked down.
Pidcock goes on to acknowledge My Baptist-to-Anglican journey may be different than others.
My own church progression has been from Baptist to Evangelical Free to Anglican. My journey has also been about breaking down walls but not in the sense and direction that Pidcock is willing to go to – I will not be an LGBTQ activist. The walls that kept me from growing spiritually were within me and surrounded the outer court – the church setting.
For example, the Bible church services I attended during much of the sixties and seventies seemed to reenact the ‘62 and ’71 Billy Graham crusades in Chicago. Sunday services had calls to walk down the aisle and commit your life to Christ. Then, it was understood, one was supposed to go to church, straighten up and fly right. Church approved options were “go into ministry” and “become a missionary”. Church approved options for women: women could dream of being a pastor’s wife or a missionary wife. Tra-la.
Wasn’t there more to the Christian life than talk of sin, judgment, and salvation and producing more expositors of sin, judgement, and salvation? What did it mean to walk in the spirit and to abide in Christ? To grow up in Christ? And, I never once heard a sermon about serving Christ as an engineer, high school band director, artist, writer or poet. Secular occupations were not deemed Godly enough, I guess.
There was and still is a part of Just as I Am before my commitment to Christ that needed to grow and not linger in the aisle of salvation sentimentality. I became disheartened and disillusioned by the church. I felt intellectually and spiritually stunted just being there. Sure, there was plenty of Bible teaching. But getting Bible knowledge was not enough for me. (Sounds heretical, doesn’t it?) And, it seemed that the church wanted to remain Just as It Was. I wasn’t the only one to notice.
During the late ’60 and into the ‘70s I was involved in the Jesus People movement in Chicago. Our local group often read from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. The contrast between the church in Acts and the church I was attending was stark. I didn’t respond well to the disparity.
I began a prodigal journey that, like the parable account, brought me all kinds of loss. Looking back, it wasn’t until I began attending an Anglican church in my fifties that I began to lead a redeemed and productive journey. The author of the above-mentioned article put it this way regarding his own transition to an Anglican church:
For many people who come from conservative Baptist backgrounds, finding the Anglican communion feels like coming out of exile and returning home to everything that had been growing in you for years.
Those words resonate with me in this key regard: the Anglican church I attended offered the Real Presenceof the Lord in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the pinnacle of the Anglican liturgy, not preaching. I realized that that is what I have been looking for all of my life: a confirmation of the presence of the Lord in the elements and in me as I partake.
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” T.S. Elliot, Little Gidding
In the Anglican church setting the Book of Common Prayer informs the liturgy with readings, collects, the prayers of the people and rites. I savor this type of intellectual atmosphere. The liturgical format allows me to listen and think and grow. Rick Pidcock put it this way:
While my theology was shifting, the liturgies felt like anchors that were keeping me from getting swept away. And in the liturgy of the Eucharist, I could receive an experience of the presence of Christ with all my senses.
How did this transition happen? Before coming to the Anglican church, I tuned out Bible teachers. I cleared my head. Preaching and personalities were getting in the way of my understanding. I avoided the either-or thinking of the John MacArthurs. I stayed away from “red in tooth and claw” Christianity.
As revealed above, there are those “sons of thunder who believe they have a right and are justified to talk and act the way they do because they walk around with their body of truth and must defend it from outliers and Samaritans. During much of my life I operated the same way. I was judgmental, lacked grace, and hurt many along the way. I was just like the “sons of thunder”. But Jesus would have none of that.
I acknowledged my own sorry disposition and began a self-imposed apprenticeship to understand Jesus and his worldview. I read extensively outside what I have been taught, assessing the new knowledge against the old. Walls were breaking down. I began to view the Christian life as a series of spectrums. (See the article’s quote of Thomas McKenzie’s The Anglican Way.)
During the apprenticeship process, my eyes were opened to many things, including . . .
-The either-or thinking that uses the pulpit to make fun of others and speaks of grace as something only doled out when you are acceptable.
-The reductionist young earth creation account that I was taught in ‘Bible” churches. A “plain reading” of Genesis is vastly different for the ancients who read Genesis than it is for moderns who impose their version of “plain reading”.
In short, Genesis begins, not with the material creation of the universe, but with the ordering of and function-giving to the preexisting non-functional material creation. The ancients reading Genesis understood that a cosmic temple was being built.
What happens within the 7-24-hour days? Day One God gave humans the function of time. Day Two God gave humans the function of weather. Day Three God gave humans the function of food. Each function is necessary for a human-oriented world.
Days Four to Six parallel Days One to Three but now roles are assigned to functionaries. Humans are given the image of God imprint.
Day Seven is when God has complete setting up his temple and now sit down (the earth is his footstool) to oversee his work. Humans are given the responsibility to care for the cosmic temple. This is where God and man are to dwell together.
-The certainly of the presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. Scripture says this is so and I have experienced it. My life has changed.
-God declared (imputed) me “righteous” in the law court scenario Paul presents in Romans.
-There is no such thing as the “rapture”. That is a misreading of the text. God will not abandon his creation. He is rebuilding the temple: Don’t you see? You are God’s temple! (1 Cor. 3:16)
-We are saved not just so that we get go to heaven when we die. More reductionism. Rather, we are born again so that Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. As new creations we are to advance the kingdom of God on earth, reflect God’s glory on earth, his cosmic temple, and wait for our Lord’s return to put things to right. “Heaven” is just a short-term way station before “new creations” return to earth with the Lord.
-Memorizing large portions of Scripture enables me to meditate, gain insight, instill the word into my life, and cross reference and contextualize Scripture. I have memorized four Psalms and the first five chapters of the Gospel According to Mark.
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I will always have a desire to explore and push myself further than where I am now. Once I know what is out there, I will reflect back on where I started and understand it using my new knowledge.
Having gathered what I have learned and the tools acquired over time, I have become a journeywoman for Christ. Where the Lord uses me is up to Him. When he does, the world won’t end and the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
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* Could it be that one reason Jesus chose men to be apostles was not for a “created order” motive but for very practical ethical reasons. Spending 24/7 time with women would raise questions and offer temptations to everyone involved.
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Miroslav Volf and N.T. Wright talk about the future of the Church:
“Episode_1743 economy, biolabs, Ukraine, serfdom, w/Steve Cortes, Don Jr., Dr. Naomi Wolf, Dr. Robert Malone, John Solomon”.
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Informed Dissent:
The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 to 2022 has exposed for all to see how evidence-based medicine has been corrupted by the governments, hospitalists, academia, big pharma, tech and social media. They have leveraged the processes and rationale of evidence-based medicine to corrupt the entire medical enterprise.
Of course, the New York Times should be teaching by example. In fact, it has not supported free speech, protected the First Amendment, or allowed honest debate. It has not allowed competing perspectives about the most important issues of the day. It has been a mouthpiece for greedy corporations and corrupt government officials.
Moderna’s co-founder created a quantum dot tattoo to track the vaxxed. The company is now using AI to generate endless mRNA jabs. Welcome to Transhumanism, Inc.
In this world of spiritual warfare, theological compromise and Republicans losing the White House, there lives a group of men, mostly white, who put on their armor, saddle up and ride into the glorious battlefield known as Twitter. They alone wear the belt of truth as they stand firm against the wiles of the Devil.
Who are these men? They are the Theobros.
Their mission? Correcting women’s theology on Twitter.
There are many who say, “O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!” Psalm 4: 6
The day came when Jesus arrived at a synagogue in Capernaum with a small group of swarthy fishermen. The leader of the synagogue asked the newcomer to speak to the gathered. The reaction of those assembled is recorded in the gospel according to Mark (1: 22).
They were astonished at his teaching. He wasn’t like the legal teachers; he said things on his own authority.
The hearers were εξεπλησσοντο – astounded, amazed, struck out of their wits, and were being knocked out. No second or third-hand hearsay accounts from Jesus.
Continuing the valid data stream (ευαγγελιου: Mk.1:1) begun of Peter’s eyewitness account of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son, Mark reports (Mk. 1:23-26):
All at once, in their synagogue, there was a man with an unclean spirit.
(You will read in Mark’s gospel account that the presence of Truth, very Truth, causes vile things to come crawling out of the woodwork and be exposed for what they are.)
All at once . . .” 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!”
“Be quiet!” ordered Jesus. “And come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed the man, gave a great shout, and came out of him. Everyone was astonished.
Those in attendance were awe-struck not just by word but also by deed – the exorcism.
“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!”
In chapter two of Mark’s narration (Mk. 2: 3-12) Mark reports the reaction of another gathered group to the healing of a paralyzed man. You know the story?
After ministering to people in the open country – the crowds were becoming massive – Jesus returned to Capernaum. When word got around that Jesus was at home, a large crowd gathered once more with the result that people couldn’t even get near the door as he was telling them the message – God’s kingdom was arriving.
Four people arrive carrying a paralytic on a stretcher. They can’t get near Jesus because of the crowd. So, with know-how and dogged determination to bring about the restoration of one of their community, the four neighbors create Plan B: open up the roof and lower the stretcher. (NB: The men didn’t lower their expectations. Their faith finds a way to place their ‘concern’ into the hands of God.)
Jesus saw their faith, and said to the paralyzed man, “Child, your sins are forgiven!”
Legal experts, who were among those gathered in the house, were likely there to investigate “mis-information”. Notice their reaction in the presence of True Authority.
“Who does this guy think he is. It’s blasphemy! Who can forgive sins except God?”
Jesus, knowing in his spirit that thoughts like this were in the air, poses a question to everyone’s Who does this guy think he is question.
“Is it easier to say to this cripple ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your stretcher, and walk’?
“You want to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins?”
Not just by the word of forgiveness but also by deed, Jesus turns to the paralytic and tells him to Get up, take up your stretcher, and go home.
The man got up, picked up his stretcher in a flash and went out before all of them.
Everyone was astonished, and they praised God. “We’ve never seen anything like this!” they said.
The authority by which Jesus forgave the man’s sins and then raised him up to new life amazed the people who witnessed it all. They had never visualized that this would happen – We never saw it on this fashion. They were so filled with awe, in fact, that they began to glorify (δοξάζειν, doxa) God, reimagining what it meant for God to dwell with man in his temple on earth. Themes of redemption, restoration, and resurrection were invoked that day when the hand of God reached from Scripture into their lives:
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live[a] so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
Not everyone’s reaction, though, was recorded by Mark. That reporting would take up volumes. No doubt, though, that the four men who carried the stretcher were relieved of their burden and went back to their community to rejoice with the healed man.
Let’s go on to reactions of fear, as recorded in Mark (chapters 4 & 5).
In chapter four we read about Jesus teaching a massive crowd as he stands on a boat just off shore. The evening of that same day, Jesus and the disciples sail over the sea to the land of the Gerasene’s.
Chapter five records Jesus encountering a man with an unclean spirit – a “Legion” of unclean spirits. The man’s brutish behavior undoubtedly frightened the people living in that area. They tried to restrain him but without luck.
Well, in between the off-shore teaching and reaching the far shore where the untethered demon-possessed man lived, a big wind storm blew up. The boats that Jesus and his followers sailed in began to fill with water. Jesus, according to Mark’s/Peter’s account (Mk. 4:38), was asleep on a cushion in the stern. (I would have no doubt that standing in the hot sun on a boat projecting your voice for hours would exhaust anyone.) They wake him up.
He got up, scolded the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence! Shut up!”
The wind died and there was a flat calm. Then he said to them, “Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?”
Great fear stole over them. “Who is this?” they said to each other. “Even the wind and the sea do what he says!”
Terror gripped the disciples. They were in the presence of . . . who? It appears that their reaction indicates a petrifying reimagining of Jesus as God with us.
The disciples certainly had been taught in synagogue to fear God (Deut. 10: 12-13). It appears that their reaction also indicates a reimagining of what it means to fear God – not just holding ultimate respect for God but also holding onto the reality of his sovereign power over all creation. They undoubtedly knew of God holding back the Red Sea so Israel could cross over and escape the Egyptian army. Now this! Right in front of their eyes!
Their fear would become a proper φοβος (phobos) or phobia and not an irrational phobia, of say, pagans. The disciples had seen God and lived to tell.
Fear abounds in Mark chapter five when Jesus does what no one had the ability to do: tie up the “strong man” and plunder his house (Mk. 3: 27). Jesus exorcises the man with the “legion” and commands the unclean spirits to enter a herd of pigs per the request of the spirits. The spirits didn’t want to leave the country. (My guess: the unclean spirits were given territory to control by the Satan.)
The herd of about two-thousand pigs rushing into the sea and drowning caused a panic.
The herdsman fled. They told it in the town, they told it in the countryside, and people came to see what had happened. They came to Jesus: and there they saw the man who had been demon-possessed, who had the “legion,” seated, clothed and stone-cold sober. They were afraid. The people who had seen it all told them what had happened to the man – and to the pigs. And they began to beg Jesus to leave their district.
The unknown and uncontrollable had happened. Folks were awe-struck, gob-smacked, and beside themselves with fear.
We then read that Jesus got back into the boat and the recovered soul asked to go with him. Jesus wouldn’t let him.
Go back home,” he said, “Go to your people and tell them what the Lord has done for you. Tell them how he had pity on you.”
He went off and began to announce in the Ten Towns what Jesus had done for him. Everyone was astonished.
All men did marvel. And it could be said – as taken from the Greek wording – that people in the brief accounts mentioned were astounded, amazed, awe struck, put out of place, knocked out and beside themselves with fear. The hand of God will do that.
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Tell me. What blows you away? Announcement of a new iPhone? A blockbuster sale? A blockbuster movie? Is it the computer-generated imagery (CGI) that Hollywood keeps cranking out? CGI has never block-busted me, not even fantastical sci-fi smash hits. I don’t marvel at Marvel comics on the big-screen. What’s to believe about what it offers? People in funny costumes role playing about saving the earth from made up monsters? (It unsettles me when I hear grown men talking about Star Wars and Spiderman movies. Ant Man?!)
What causes you to be afraid? It could be any number of things.
The hand of God may astonish you and make you wondrously afraid. Any fear should not be to the point of begging Jesus to leave, as the account above details. One of scripture’s most repeated commands is “Fear not”.
Ask Jesus to heal your imagination so that you will see the hand of God at work in your life. Then let the hand of God astonish you and make you reverently afraid. You will come to REAL-ize that you are I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
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Personal note: Shane (1953) is my favorite western. No CGI used. No PC. No soy boys involved. Just homesteaders in Wyoming territory defending their homes and farms against a bully named Ryker.
Ryker claims ownership and rights to the range. He ultimately brings in a hired gun to deal with the homesteaders and the mysterious Shane, a hired hand on a homestead.
The parallels to the abuse of power today are striking.
Special request: Congress members, including Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham, should be made to take sobriety tests before they deliberate, pass laws and speak to the public in their capacity as congressional representatives.
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One can pretty much tell what the media wants you to focus on by the changing yards signs of the virtue signalers in your neighborhood. Around me the signs have changed from . . .
If you have ever gardened you know that stewardship of the garden matters.
Now that mask mandates are being discarded in blue states ahead of mid-term elections and the troll Anthony Fauci is back in his hole, and the COVID-political vortex is dying down, it is time for a State of the Stewardship accounting.
Exposed recently: piles of toxic waste – noble lies, half-truths, and flat-out lies – have been dumped into our lives. So-called stewards of science, media and capitalism have poisoned the soil of our lives and have done so with impunity.
A FOIA request by TheBlaze forced Pfizer to unmask documents it tried to keep hidden for 75 years. We learn from those documents that the Biden cartel took $1 billion of your tax dollars and paid, via HHS, nearly the entire corporate media to push the deadly vaccine, and hide its adverse effects.
In response to a FOIA request filed by TheBlaze, HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.
The propaganda was perpetrated by the national COVID-19 Public Education Campaign which “aims to connect with Americans from a wide range of backgrounds. . . .to build confidence in vaccines, . . . Through a nationwide network of trusted messengers . . . The Campaign uses products . . . such as . . .Comprehensive vaccine confidence ads created for multiple platforms (radio, TV, social, digital, print, out-of-home”” to increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, . . .”
Interesting correlation:
Just the other day I went through company training about cyber security. I learned the following:
Phishingis the act of sending email that falsely claims to be from a legitimate organization. This is usually combined with a threat or request for information: for example, that an account will close, a balance is due, or information is missing from an account. “Act first, think later!” And,
Vishingis a form of phishing using a telephone to the prospective victim.
So, based on these definitions and the above revelation . . .
Vaxxing as a form of phishing using media with its pretense of legitimacy to cajole and threaten its victims to “Vax first, think later!”
We also learned about some of the effects of the toxic waste dumping: The Pfizer Vaccine Only has 1,291 Side Effects! The adverse effects include everything from heart attacks to strokes to ALS to paralysis to clots.
Evil stewards have manipulated, deceived, misled, scammed, and lied to us. We have been cajoled to accept things that are not true e.g., two weeks to flatten the curve; a one size fits all response is required for COVID; the vaccine is effective. Toxic waste has been dumped into the landscape with the effect of hurting and killing many.
Because of toxic stewardship, people who could have avoided the hospital and death were told by government authorities that readily available lifesaving therapeutics would not work. “Go home,” they were told, “and wait until things get bad before coming to the hospital”.
Because of wrong-headed and willful authoritarian stewardship, life has been turned upside. People have lost jobs. Businesses have closed. People, young people, have committed suicide. Parents and grandparents have died with no family by their bedside.
Follow the stewards of “the science”? No. Instead, follow the profit motive that propagates a vaccine narrative that dumps happy talk into our lives. Ask yourself. Do any of the vaccine PSAs contain risk information?
The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth. Prov. 15:22
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A recent TV PSA says that getting vaccinated means going back to normal. Implicit in that ad: you do not control normal. And, “normal” compared to what? Healthy soil or a landscape of contaminated soil?
Apparently, “normal” requires a controlled opposition. And, a controlled opposition requires a mediated atmosphere. Hence the masks, the mandates, and the media blitz of a COVID doomsday model over the past two years.
Hence the climate change doomsday model being marketed now to replace the COVID crisis. Again, “Act first, think later!”
Hence, the fascistic ideological programs that impose regulations on what we say, think, accept and live by: DEI, CRT, ESG, LGBTQXYZism. A handful of people – who do not know you or care what you think and hold to be true- want to tell you how to steward your life.
I was a loyal Soviet citizen until the age of 20. What it meant to be a loyal citizen is to say what you are supposed to say, to read what you are permitted to read, to vote the way you are told to vote and, at the same time, to know that all this is a lie. In fact, the reality is different, but the reality you can discuss only with your friends and the family.
Now consider, for example, ESG. Do you know that ESG will be controlling your life in the near future?
ESG is the acronym for Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance, the three broad categories of interest for what is termed “socially responsible investors.”
“Each of the three elements of ESG investing – environmental, social, and corporate governance – comprises a number of criteria that may be considered, either by socially responsible investors or by companies aiming to adopt a more ESG-friendly operational stance.”
Using ESG metrics is an extended version of Marxist Critical Race Theory- scoring, reshaping, and mastering the financial world using Marxist tactics. It is form of control. Not only do they want to control what companies do by mandating adherence to green, social justice, and approved political views, but they want to control the entire supply chain that even supports the company. In essence–they will control everything. Only those companies who align with their ideology will be allowed access to banks, receive financing, and participate in our nation’s financial processes.
Big Banks are going in this direction. Credit card companies are going in this direction. McDonalds has joined the ESG mob. Companies that want to appear to be socially responsible and environmentally conscious in the eyes of social justice Pharisees will seek to avoid or minimize reputational risk. And that means avoiding you, if necessary, to appear socially conscious.
Consider that your bank account – business or personal – or your credit accounts will be cancelled because your “reputational risk” (ESG language) doesn’t fit with the globalist’s metrics scoring, reshaping, and mastering the financial world.
(Side note: The means to control is creeping in everywhere.
Last fall, OSHA was demanding a list from companies of over one-hundred employees: who was vaccinated and who wasn’t and being tested. When I submitted my religious vaccine exemption document to my employer last fall, I asserted four exemptions: from vaccines, masks, testing and being put on a list.
I had become aware prior to that time that ADP and other payroll services were offering to put vaccine status on pay statements. I did not want my vaccine status to be known and to later have it be considered an ESG-type “reputational risk”.)
Controlled opposition will come about through the takeover of your property. This will occur through digital technology that people have taken into their lives with abandon. How, you ask?
Stewards of the U.S. dollar are devaluing the dollar with printing-press dollars and, with terrible foreign policy, the dollar’s demise as the world’s reserve currency. There is now talk of a central bank digital currency.
A cash-less digital currency means that you will become a slave and your property will be under the control of the fascistic One World system – do what they say ESG and otherwise or you will not have access to your accounts.
The coming “normal” requires a controlled opposition. So, you and I will be managed and controlled by unjust and unfaithful stewards who currently mismanage our resources.
We can fight ESG:
Use local banks or credit unions instead of big banks. Hold gold, silver and precious metals. Crypto? Crypto may soon be regulated by you know who.
I remember the stewardship of the milquetoast Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). UGH. I remember the gas lines, the hapless foreign policy, Carter’s “Malaise Speech” and the misery contained in the misery index.
Jimmy Carter (D) quoted the misery index extensively during his 1976 Presidential campaign to unseat Ford, even though Ford actually presided over a declining Misery index. Carter, on the other hand, presided over an increasing misery index of his own, starting his term at 12.72% and increasing to levels well above Ford’s highs. Carter’s misery index peaked at 21.98% in June of 1980. His misery index was still above 20% come November 1980, so Reagan (R) was able to use Carter’s own words and the misery index against him in the following election and make Carter a rare one-term President.(emphasis mine)
I remember the Jimmy Carter years because the misery being produced by the Kackle and Hide-n stewardship of the U.S. economy makes its so. Stewards of the U.S. economy have created the highest inflation since January 1982.
3-10-22: The gas station down the street has the price of regular gas at $4.59+/gal. During the last administration the cost of gas at the same station was around $2.29/gal.
Why does the Biden regime want to shut down U.S. oil and gas production and make the U.S. – you and me – dependent on foreign sources for both? Does it make any sense whatsoever to hamstring America energy production for climate change whims? Where is the discussion?
On his first illegitimate day in office, “lunch bucket” Joe signed an executive order to shut down the Keystone pipeline thereby choking off U.S. energy independence and eliminating over 10000 jobs. Did anyone hear a discussion about doing this? Was there talk about the intended and unintended consequences on the majority of Americans? Or, was this done to appease others?
Did Biden make this mindless decision so as to look good in the eyes of his globalist superiors and to throw a bone to a handful of climate and environment fanatics? Forcing everyone into EVs is insanity.
The 1.5 trillion dollars Omnibus bill is an orgy of spending. The U.S. does not have the money to spend. This bill is reckless and irresponsible stewardship of taxpayer money. The bill will add to the national debt and make future U.S. citizens globalist slaves to that debt. The stewards of appropriations in Congress are terrible money managers. They have disregarded their fiduciary responsibility to U.S. citizens.
The Left – Progressive democrats and many on the Right – want people to believe that they are the magnanimous ones. They offer you all kinds of goodies – single payer healthcare, student loan payoff, COVID stay at home money, and yadda yadda yadda – with all kinds of rights. It cost Progressives nothing to offer other people’s money and rights that effect the rights of others.
Look around. Consumer prices have risen 7.9% compared to last year. Commodity prices have increased. We are likely to see a recession in the third quarter of this year.
During the last administration, America was energy independent, inflation was low (see above) and misery was going away. “Orange man bad” stewardship of America was positive and life affirming. Under the Biden regime, the stewardship is reckless, careless and destructive. The Regime has no clue about the common man – there is a massive disconnect between us and the Progressive Left.
President Joe Biden told Congress Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address to pass legislation to lower insulin prices — after he suspended, and then rescinded, former President Donald Trump’s executive order to lower them.
As under the COVID “public health” stewardship, we will continue to witness Democide.
Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others. Prov. 12:15
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A controlled opposition requires messaging and stewardship that subverts.
This past week the woman’s professional network at my company invited me to celebrate International Woman’s Day (IWD):
Happy Women’s Day!Annually, March 8th is celebrated as international women’s day; a global holiday to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. This year’s theme is Break the Bias. Thank you to all of you for continuing to break the bias. Today – celebrate by writing a thank-you note to a fellow employee that inspires you by breaking the bias or write yourself a love note praising yourself for who you are and how you break the bias (or bonus point for doing both).
When you go to the Break the Biaslink you get the following gobbledygook meant to warm the cockles of your heart.
Imagine a gender equal world.
A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination.
A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
A world where difference is valued and celebrated.
Together we can forge women’s equality.
Collectively we can all #BreakTheBias.
A week or so before IWD, the Women’s Professional Network met for a Community of Practice (COP) session. The topic was the stewardship of your mental health. Apparently now, using the IWD messaging, one is to blame others for the stewardship of your sorry life. Finding-fault-with-others Marxism is rampant.
I’ll #BreaktheBadNews: IWD is a meaningless participation trophy recognizing a Leninist-feminist approach to life: forsake your family and live for some ideological notion of equality.
(I wonder. Does “equality” mean that males can participate in women’s sports?)
Note to self: More of the feel-good break-the-bank-money is being appropriated by the stewards of equality in Congress for more messaging effluence:
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he will ask Congress for $2.6 billion for foreign aid programs that promote gender equality worldwide, more than double the size of last year’s request.
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Many people, stewards of their property, put fences around their yard. Many put alarm systems on their property. Many put up chicken wire around their gardens to keep rabbits out. People protect what they have and what they want to see flourish. But, the current unfaithful stewards of America do not protect what we have. They don’t seem to care if Americans flourish.
Often on social media: an open borders policy is touted as being humane and a magnanimous Christ-like gesture. But a one-sided open borders policy is leaving America exposed to whatever.
Would you leave your computer open to a computer virus? The operating system could be exposed to malicious software.
Such a virus could alter the way a computer operates. It is designed to spread from one computer to another. The virus operates by inserting or attaching itself to a legitimate program or document in order to execute its code. In the process, a virus has the potential to cause unexpected or damaging effects, such as harming the system software by corrupting or destroying data.
The virus is capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs to many other networks. Some viruses use your information and some lock up your computer with ransomware. One is held hostage by the virus.
An open borders policy is an attack not only on your health of your own operating system, it is a pernicious attack on the sovereignty and operating system of a nation.
An open borders policy is not about helping refugees fleeing bad circumstances as advertised. An open borders policy is about corrupting America and holding it hostage for globalist purposes.
Politically bent unjust stewards (where is the justice if Americans are exposed to all kinds of injustice?) have put in place an open borders policy which leaves Americans unprotected and at the mercy of whoever and whatever comes in.
Americans, many of us, are generous fair-minded people. We welcome those immigrants who come in lawfully and want to assimilate. The open orders policy is not American. Rather, it is a globalist one-world tactic to dilute American values and produce a subservient class of people for the currently-being-fabricated globalist community of worker ants.
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If you have ever gardened you know that stewardship of the garden matters . . . if you want things to flourish.
This post has been a brief accounting of the current state of stewardship. All told in this ledger, the current stewardship has been inept, negligent, cruel and manipulative. And deadly.
The people who presented themselves as the source of truth about a fabricated pandemic continue to present themselves as climate change experts, economic experts, cultural experts, and foreign policy experts. This kind of stewardship should scare the heck out of you.
Media, as we learn above, serves the interests of the intelligentsia and globalists because there is status and money to be had by doing so. Truth is no longer a journalist’s bread and butter. Insta-“Likes” are. The media, with a profit and status-as-power motive, facilitates the degradation and servitude of humanity by promoting the templates of globalization that are repugnant to most people.
The current stewards -our ‘betters’ the intelligentsia – include university know-it-alls, Progressive politicians, Progressive Jesuits, globalists, members of the World Economic Forum, and their ilk. These would have us submit to the jab of cultural repudiation.
We are to forsake what we hold to be true and value including the garden stewardship commission given to us by God in Genesis. Without question we are to accept the jabs of their moral effluence. These stewards cultivate the same lie that’s been around since the garden: “Do this. It’s for your own good.”
If we resist it is because we know better or feel instinctively that something is wrong and we need more information.
The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge, but fools broadcast their foolishness. Prov. 15:23
And while the typical thing is for shrewd snake-like stewards to blame others for the bad and even horrific outcomes of their stewardship, we must see through their lies and hold these stewards legally and voter- wise accountable – politicians, office holders, the media, and church leaders. Don’t go along to get along.
I recommend that after every State of the Union speech that there be a State of the Stewardship speech.
Humankind has been entrusted with the responsibility to tend to God’s kingdom on earth. We, as stewards, will be held accountable.
Readings:
The Parable of the Talents – Matthew 25:14-30 Find out about the “worthless slave”.
The Parable of the Dishonest Manager – Luke 16: 1-13
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Personal note: I do not like being lied to or manipulated. So, I haven’t watched CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC or any of the legacy media. I will not read the NYT or any newspapers except for the comic and crossword puzzle sections.
Clearing the air of climate change apocalypse: an intelligent conversation on cost benefit analysis, fracking, energy innovation, the Paris accords and more:
If you have ever gardened, you know that soil conditions matter.
Jesus, as recorded in the gospel of Mark chapter four, teaches a massive crowd as he stands on a boat just off shore. He speaks of the Sower and the seed. He uses the ordered functions of creation (cf. Genesis 1: 11-12; Ps. 104:14) to illustrate. The crowd hears of four scenarios for seed that is sown.
The first three scenarios: seed laying by the path is eaten by birds, seed on rocky soil springs up and withers away, and seed sown among the thorns is unable to grow and produce a harvest. The fourth scenario is of seed on good soil.
The good soil receives the seed and produces a harvest of varying increases up to one-hundred-fold. One could say that the outcome from the good soil is for the greater good. But, what about outcomes from the first three scenarios? We may get a hint from what happens next.
The evening of that same day, Jesus and the disciples sailed over the sea to the land of the Gerasene’s.
As they get out of their boats, they are immediately confronted by a man with an unclean spirit. He was emerging from a graveyard which is where he lived. No one had been able to restrain him, not even with chains. He’d often been bound with chains and shackles; but he tore up the chains and snapped the shackles. No one had the strength to tame him. On and on, night and day he shouted out from the graveyard and the hillside and slashed himself with stones. (Mk 5: 1-20)
A seed putting down roots into good soil, sprouts and grows and produces a harvest for the greater good. And a man who has put down roots in a graveyard, his humanity defaced by his choices to let evil in, produces shouts and screams and endless trouble for everyone. The contrast of outcomes illustrates that the soil of one’s life matters
For good soil, composition matters.
• Good soil tilth. • Sufficient depth • Proper levels of nutrients • Good drainage • Large populations of beneficial organisms • Resistance to weeds and degradation • Resilient when unfavorable conditions occur
Add to the good soil attributes above the humus of humility, a fertilized imagination and a desire to be cultivated. In other words: you have ears to ear, you see God working, and you work with God.
And, of course, good soil surrounds us. It has existed since the beginning of time. Good soil must be preserved and cared for. But the good soil of civilization is being threatened by Progressives and the advocates of the Build Back Better New World Order.
The acid-rain they produce will remove the life-producing minerals and nutrients found in good soil civilization. And then life will become arid, barren, desert-like and unsuitable for growth. We may find ourselves living in a graveyard shouting day and night and slashing ourselves with stones.
In the following video, English philosopher Roger Scruton (1944-2020) speaks from a humanities viewpoint about what civilization offers. Progressives will pooh-pooh what Scruton says. They are the high-minded with no root in themselves.
Now, add to good soil civilization the values of integrity, dignity and community. These three values were sown into the soil of my life during elementary school in Chicago during the fifties and sixties and by my parents and the church. These values were sown by the caretakers of good soil civilization. These days, it seems that the number of good caretakers is diminishing. Being thought of as a Progressive and avant-garde and “not-one-of-them” seems to be the fashion.
The Left champions itself as revolutionary in approach. Those on the Left assume they know all there is to know. They talk down to people. They produce 3rd grade level communications. They pay no attention to what the past has given us or what they will pass on to future generations. The present is theirs to rework the good soil in order to produce the crops of collectivist kitsch they so desire.
Progressives work to destroy the created order to impose their creation of disorder and dysfunction, e.g., males participating in women’s sports.
As a reminder . . . So far under Joe Biden – a short list:
-Record Inflation.
-Mandates galore.
-Disaster in Afghanistan.
-Supply shortages.
-Russia invading Ukraine.
-USA a joke on the world stage.
Progressivism’s ideological weeds choke out the sun so that nothing can grow under its canopy. Hence, Progressive’s use of uncertainty and fear to produce ideological outcomes.
In the past two years there are those on the Left who have sown the good soil with dishonesty, disrespect, and division. Dr. Robert Malone voiced his concern about this during his Defeat the Mandates speech in Washington, D.C. He emphasized good soil civilization ethics:
“Integrity is a commitment to truth . . .”
“Dignity flows from respect for ourselves, for others and the world we live in “
“Community is what binds us together, to each other, and gives our lives purpose and meaning”
“. . . a commitment to truth . . . “ Good soil life and good soil civilization require truth.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote his essay Live Not by Lieswhile still living in the Soviet Union. The day after the text was released, he was exiled to the West. I have included a pdf copy of his essay below.
What follows is a quote from the essay followed by Solzhenitsyn’s proposals to meet his challenge:
So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: Whether consciously, to remain a servant of falsehood—of course, it is not out of inclination, but to feed one’s family, that one raises his children in the spirit of lies—or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man worthy of respect both by one’s children and contemporaries. . . .
· Will not write, sign, nor publish in any way, a single line distorting, so far as he can see, the truth;
· Will not utter such a line in private or in public conversation, nor read it from a crib sheet, nor speak it in the role of educator, canvasser, teacher, actor;
· Will not in painting, sculpture, photograph, technology, or music depict, support, or broadcast a single false thought, a single distortion of the truth as he discerns it;
· Will not cite in writing or in speech a single “guiding” quote for gratification, insurance, for his success at work, unless he fully shares the cited thought and believes that it fits the context precisely;
· Will not be forced to a demonstration or a rally if it runs counter to his desire and his will; will not take up and raise a banner or slogan in which he does not fully believe;
· Will not raise a hand in vote for a proposal which he does not sincerely support; will not vote openly or in secret ballot for a candidate whom he deems dubious or unworthy;
· Will not be impelled to a meeting where a forced and distorted discussion is expected to take place;
· Will at once walk out from a session, meeting, lecture, play, or film as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda;
· Will not subscribe to, nor buy in retail, a newspaper or journal that distorts or hides the underlying facts.
JUST IN – Large German health insurance company analyzed data from 10.9 million insured individuals regarding vaccination complications. The new data is “alarming,” says BKK board member Schöfbeck in a report by WELT.
Democrats think, not in terms of freedom, but in terms of control:
“I’m gratified that the Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s restraining order, meaning that if a school mask mandate needs to go into effect in the future, we continue to have that authority. I’m also extremely pleased to say that because the CDC has recommend that masks are needed only in areas of high transmission, the State of Illinois will move forward to remove our school mask mandate, effective Monday. We will recommend that school districts follow CDC guidance and will update our existing guidance in the coming days. (Emphasis mine)
-J. B “Jelly Belly” Pritzker, Governor of ILLANNOY
The war on cash is a global effort being waged on many fronts. My view is that the war on cash is dangerous in terms of lost privacy and the risk of government confiscation of wealth.
From the beginning, Peter had the determination of three boys his age. Out of earshot, some called him “stubborn” and “bull headed”. Others called him “a little terror”. And others, teachers mostly, said he needed medication just to be around. His parents, a minister and his wife, called their gift from God “Mr. Resolute”.
When little Peter decided something, he would plead endlessly with “Now!” He wouldn’t take “No” or “Not now” for an answer. The first of five children, Peter often wore his parents down with the strength of his will. And though Peter could badger them non-stop, Peter kept on himself even more to complete a task.
When focused on an activity – his parents came up with problem solving activities – Peter found it hard to give it up or move away until he accomplished the objective. His parents saw potential in Peter’s persistent ways – he could become a high achiever who followed his passions.
So, they chastened and channeled the stubborn streak. With sternness and loving care, Peter’s parents applied the proverb The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.
They responded to Peter’s repeated demands with “I hear you. Can you come up with a solution?” When Peter became frustrated, they urged him on saying “You can do hard things” and “Sometimes we make mistakes, and that is how we learn.” When Peter worked through his frustration and completed a hard task, they recognized the effort with “How’d you do that?” and “You have what it takes. You have grit.”
The only time his parents saw five-year-old Peter temper his assertiveness was when folks from the church watched Peter on a date night. Peter played doctor with their daughter who was two years older than Peter. Her self-assuredness captured Peter’s attention. “This is what a doctor would do” she would tell Peter.
One Sunday, years later, Peter’s father preached a sermon titled Making the most of your time, because the days are evil. Peter decided to make a decision to follow Jesus that day. Almost immediately impure thoughts and desires became glaringly obvious at this new intersection. There were two directions he faced: towards Laurie, a high school junior, who had been flirting with him non-stop and who was “easy” according to his friends and toward Jesus who wasn’t defined as “easy”.
The summer before his freshmen year, the high school’s track coach saw the tall gaunt Peter running along a road. The coach pulled his car up, opened the window and talked with Peter as he ran. He said that Peter should give cross-country a try and then drove off.
Peter joined the team and began running 5K races. What Peter soon realized was that the long-distance running – the regular practices and the meets – were a means to direct the fire within him. His daily pattern of run-eat-school-run-eat-study- sleep kept him burning the fuel that would otherwise consume him. He told himself that the only lines he would cross were the starting line and the finish line of a race worthy to run.
During high school Peter mastered his school work and was selected to become a member of the National Honor Society. And during those four years he had several part-time jobs and summer jobs that kept him focused.
After high school graduation, Peter looked for ways to channel his stick-to-itiveness. His minister father suggested that his never-back-down attitude would serve him in the army. Peter could sign up and get up to full college tuition, as well as money for housing and books through the Post-9/11 GI Bill.
The minister knew that Peter’s resolve and wisdom would be tested in the army. Would he hold up, his mother feared. She prayed that Peter would return sound in mind and body. On his eighteenth birthday Peter entered the army. He went through rigorous training and learned to obey orders.
Then one day, three years later, the staff sergeant told his squad “Vaccine – get ‘er done!” Peter didn’t submit to the order. Though he was twenty-one and felt indestructible, his gut – or was it the Holy Spirit? – told him to stay away. The sacred space and spiritual fortitude which steeled him would not be gutted by an experimental vaccine.
His parents had raised him on reason and revelation. The mandated vaccine didn’t fall into either category. Wasn’t he training to go into battle to defend and secure freedom and democracy? “Uncle Jab wants you,” is the vacant stare that came down from the top.
Like many soldiers, Peter submitted a religious exemption. Aborted fetal cells, used in the production of the vaccine, precluded taking the vaccine. Others submitted medical exemptions. All of the vaccine detractors, talking amongst themselves, became aware of the mounting adverse effects and casualties caused by the vaccine.
But the military hierarchy ignored medical and religious exemptions. The military demanded unquestioning obedience to the COVID vaccine and to the new Critical race Theory and Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs. Those programs never included religious convictions, as Peter witnessed firsthand.
Some in his squad were saying “The army has become a clown show” and “The army cares more about superficiality than substance, culture than character”. The army discharged Peter and over 3000 other soldiers for not taking the unholy clot shot.
When he returned home, Peter’s father said “You were right to reject the military on those terms. You signed up to serve your country and see the world. Now go see the heartland on your own terms.”
*****
From the beginning, Lena had a knack for nurturing. She played veterinarian with her dog and neighborhood pets. She played house and doctor with the young boy living next door. During high school she helped care for her grandmother who suffered from dementia and spent a couple of hours each weekend at a hospital.
Her Swedish parents, both medical professionals, were hospitable people. They encouraged Lena to interact with their many guests – medical staff of Doctors Without Borders. Lena kept a diary of who she met and what was talked about. They each encouraged her to go into medicine. She made an entry after talking to one nurse:
You can’t buy time. Choose wisely.
After high school Lena set out on a course in nursing. When she stepped into those shoes, she took an oath to practice and uphold the standards of her profession faithfully. Nursing was a perfect match for Lena’s desire to provide care for others.
Six years into working as an ICU nurse, though, Lena left her job at a hospital in Indiana. She told her parents that “policies were being rolled out at the hospital that would ultimately initiate the segregation of its staff on who was vaccinated versus who was unvaccinated.
I was uncomfortable with that and unwilling to cooperate with that kind of treatment. I had seen this treatment play out on my patients as well where doctors and some nurses that I worked with were bullying and harassing my patients for making a medical decision on their own. They were treating people like dementia patients – like they were unable to think for themselves.
Hospitals began mandating vaccinations. I knew I wouldn’t take the COVID vaccine. I pushed back because hospitals have an absolute commitment to follow the data. Ignoring natural immunity in a vaccine discussion is just criminal.
Over a hundred of us resigned from the hospital due to the vaccine requirement. We can’t tell the patients what risks or adverse effects could occur with the vaccine. It’s criminal. This kind of health care is against everything I stand for. Dementia patients are running the public health programs.”
****
Peter turned on the radio.
All in for the Win, Illinois. Getting vaccinated protects you from catching or spreading COVID-19 — and it’s our best shot at beating this pandemic and getting back to living our full lives. And now, getting the vaccine gives you a shot at winning up to $1 million. As an Illinois resident, if you’ve been vaccinated or are about to get vaccinated, you’re automatically entered in for a chance at part of our $10 million vaccine sweepstakes. Let’s go all in for the win Illinois.
Peter turned the radio dial.
. . . I tried a laxative that is both fast and effective . . .
Peter turned the radio dial.
What’s Your Warrior? Travel, Career Opportunities, Education. . . find your inner warrior . . . Army . . .”
“Yeah, I found my inner warrior. I’ll travel and educate myself.” Peter turned the radio dial.
In 2019 Illinois Democrats elected a fat-cat governor to represent their lottery dreams and Chicago Democrats elected a Woke NFT – a bug-eyed gay black female to represent the law and order of intersectionality.
In 2020 and 2021, the obese governor locked down and masked any opposition to his mandates. State licensing was the gun to the head.
In 2022, “well-meaning” Democrat state representatives decided a medical apartheid in Illinois was necessary. So, they created a vaccine registry and a quarantine town. The southern Illinois quarantine town is called New COVID.
While unvaccinated illegal aliens cross the southern border by the thousands, Illinois citizens are being herded into New COVID because of their vax resistance and claim of natural immunity.
As mRNA COVID vaccines fenagle the operating system of Americans, so illegal immigrants fenagle America’s operating system. Both experiments disregard the integrity of the host’s system . . .
Peter turned off the radio. He had reached the US 65 Whitesville exit. He took the exit and after two right turns he reached the fulfillment center. From the cab he called the traffic manager’s office to let them know he had arrived. He was told to wait in line. Ten trucks were ahead of him.
With the rig idling, Peter walked over to the dock door and went in. The bathroom and the vending machines were to the right. Truckers were coming in and out. Peter headed into the vending machine room and dropped some coins for some black brew. He sat down and waited for his phone to ring.
Outside the vending room, forklifts zipped back and forth with pallets. The drivers were loading and unloading the trailers. Peter had seen this a thousand times before. What he hadn’t seen before was a blonde pony-tailed-hard-hat wearing woman with a yellow and blue plaid shirt zipping by on a forklift. When the yellow and blue plaid spun by again, Peter was able to catch a glimpse of the driver’s kind smiling eyes.
****
After leaving the ICU nursing position, Lena found work at a distribution center in Whitestown, Indiana. She had a student loan to repay. And though for the moment it didn’t look promising, Lena hoped that when the courts ended the COVID mandate madness, she would be back nursing again. She put her resume online. In the meantime, Lena earned eighteen bucks an hour over a 36-hour pay period. She loaded and unloaded semi-trailers.
It was during one shift that she caught a glimpse of a tall scrawny guy with steel-blue eyes. He was talking on the phone in the vending room. On her return trip past the vending room, he was gone.
A trailer backed into bay 7. Before reaching the bay’s bumpers, the driver jumped out of the cab and opened the trailer doors. The driver then backed the truck up to the bumpers up and set the brake. Lena pulled the loading dock release chain and the loading dock came up and unfolded. Then she put her weight on it to have it come down on the bed of the trailer. It came down with a loud “clunk”.
A trucker driver came through the dock door and was heading over to Bay 7. Lena, driving up in a forklift, noticed him walking and looking at his watch. She pulled the forklift up next to him and told him “I’ll get ‘er done!” Peter raised his eyes and said “Yes, ma’am. You will. I am five hours behind schedule.”
Peter handed her the shipment receipt. “I’m Bill . . . Bill Lading.”
Lena laughed. If you’re “Bill Lading, I’m Kari Awai. Go have some coffee and I’ll get this done fer you.”
Peter watched her unload the first pallet. She maneuvered the forklift in, picked the load, and then backed out across the diamond plate. Then she headed off to some aisle in the warehouse. The blonde ponytail, the sky-blue eyes, the pixie smile – What maneuvers do I have? Peter asked himself as he headed back to the vending room. “I’m not much to look at. I’m so skinny I don’t even have a shadow.”
In the vending room Peter called his next stop to tell them that he was behind schedule. There weren’t enough people to unload trucks, he told them. “I’ll be there sometime after eight-o’clock.”
Forty-five minuets later, Lena came into the vending room. She handed Peter the signed bill of lading and a tin foil-wrapped package.
“What’s this”, Peter asked.
“It’s your bill, Bill, and some banana bread I made last night.”
“Well, that just dills my pickle”
“You from the south?”
“No ma’am. I just end up talking to southerners at the truck stops.”
“I see. Should I go on pretending your name is Bill Lading? My name is Lena.”
“No ma’am. Name’s Peter. And thanks for the banana bread. I need something beside this varnish remover I’ve been drinking.” Peter pushed aside the paper cup of vending machine coffee.
“Are you back this way again?” Lena raised her eyebrows.
“Yes ma’am. I’ll be here next Tuesday. I drive a circuit: Whitestown to Edwardsville, Illinois to Nashville and then back here. How about you? You work on Tuesday’s?”
“I do. My circuit is this warehouse 36 hours a week.”
“Well ma’am. I hope our paths cross again. I look forward to that. I gotta get back on the road.” Peter tipped his hat. “Miss Lena, thanks for unloading and loading me up. You are the bee’s knees.”
“See you, Peter. Safe travels” Lena responded and then watched him walk out to his rig.
****
Week after week Peter and Lena crossed paths at the warehouse. Their conversations, though constrained by work, offered more and more insight into each other’s life. From the beginning there seemed to be a purpose for their relationship. Then, one Tuesday, Peter didn’t show up.
Then another week went by and then another. Six weeks passed and no Peter. Though nothing had been formalized between them, the loss of a friend had Lena beside herself.”
Week seven and Peter’s rig appeared in the driveway. Lena met him at the dock door.
“What happened to you?” Lena asked wide-eyed.
“I was put in COVID jail. I drove into Illinois a few weeks ago. The State police stopped me at a weigh station at Marshall. They said I wasn’t in the vaccine registry. So, they hauled me off to the quarantine townNew COVID. That’s where I have been this whole time. I had heard about New COVID on the radio but I thought that was all just talk – nothing like that could happen in the U.S. But I was wrong.”
“Jeepers. Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I had COVID a long while back. I have immunity. But that wasn’t good enough for those COVID crusaders. What is not OK is my route. I asked to change my route. I will not go back into Illinois. I will not download their COVID tracking app. I will not deliver to any Blue state. Enough is enough. I will only drive through free states. I dunno what will happen. I may not have a job soon.”
Listen, I came straight here from New COVID to see you. I have nothing to unload. When your shift is done, do you want have dinner in town? We can talk.”
“OK, Peter. Let’s have dinner and talk. I clock out at 4:30. Leave your rig in the back lot and I’ll drive us over to the café in town.”
“Sounds good, Lena. Right now, I’m gonna head over to Love’s Travel Stop across the way and see if I can find me a clean shirt.”
****
At the Most Café, Peter and Lena each ordered a bowl of soup and a half sandwich. Lena started the conversation by asking Peter what got him into trucking. Peter was ready to talk.
“After being discharged from the service for not getting vaxxed, I was depressed. I had enlisted ready to give my life for my country. After giving up almost two years of my life to the Army, the first skirmish I got into was over the experimental vaccine. I didn’t enlist to be experimented on.
“Lena, I gave almost two years of my life to the Army and you need at least two years of active duty to qualify for the education benefits. The whole situation made me angry and depressed.
“I came home, went into my bedroom, and shut the door. My father knocked on the door after I hadn’t come out for a while. I think I told you my dad’s a minster.”
Lena nodded. Peter asked the waitress for more water and then continued.
“My dad knew that I was miserable. He must have figured out that I was dealing with my depression and anger by looking at stuff online. My room was dark except for the computer screen. Anyway, he came in and told me that I had to get my act together. “You can handle the hard stuff”, he said. Then he told me that a friend was out front asking for me.
“That was Rick, a high school buddy of mine. He told me about trucking. He helped me get my CDL and I began long hauling. So, instead of seeing the world with the Army, I began seeing the countryside. My father gave me his blessing and a flip phone to use if I was in trouble. He told me “Best stay away from those porn shops along the highway exits. You weren’t compromised by the unholy vaccine. Don’t become compromised with pornography.”
“Lena, Wow! Just wow! I never said that to anyone before. I . . . wow! . . . I talk about this stuff because . . . well, you . . . you are not like anyone I know. I feel safe with you. “
Lena grabbed Peter’s hand. “I love it that you are being so open with me, Peter. Please go on.”
Peter took a bite of his sandwich and put it down.
“The commanding officers wanted us grunts to compromise our bodies with an experimental unholy vaccine. They wanted to compromise our reason by telling us that being white is being racist and the country we serve is racist.
“The base was made to watch a video portraying American history as racist since 1619. I am a de facto white supremacist per a Critical Race Theory video. It’s crazy! I was bunking with a black guy. I am best buddies with him and with Jose the Hispanic guy in the next bunk.
“You know, I enlisted voluntarily. I didn’t enlist to become a showcase for an unholy vaccine. I didn’t enlist to give up my mind and soul – my inner warriors. I volunteered my time in return for an education. I didn’t sign up to be converted from alpha male into a check-your-privilege-soyboy-beta-bot . . . there’s another word for that on the base.
“I enlisted into the army and not a culture club. With the Army’s diversity, equity, and inclusion program we’d end up equally dead — but safely ‘vaxxed’. No wonder recruitment and retention are down.
“So, here I am – driving a rig, making good money and saving to go to school. How about you, Lena?” Peter gulped down some water.
“Well, I’m driving a forklift,” Lena began, “because I left an ICU nursing position. I worked so hard last year. I mean, I was there through thick and thin when we had no help… it was horrible. The people that put forth the rules and kicked one-hundred and twenty of us to the curb, they weren’t there. They weren’t even in the building to be seen for months. They were staying at home while we were doing all the work.
“Before the mandates had been rolled out, the hospital wasn’t forcing us to take the vaccine or be fired, but they were rolling out policies that gave different treatment to vaccinated people versus unvaccinated people. I couldn’t believe it. I was there to treat patients, not just the chosen patients. When did healthcare become choosing winners and losers? The Nursing Code of Ethics that I’m supposed to adhere to includes a patient’s autonomy and right to self- determination.
“The hospital then rolled out a mandatory vaccination program with products marked for “emergency use”. We were told to treat the EUA product as fully authorized.
“I chose to forego the emergency use authorization vaccine because I possessed natural immunity after contracting the coronavirus. “I had COVID last summer, I don’t need that vaccine,” I told the hospital but natural immunity was not an option at all. I was escorted out the door by security.
“I’m driving a forklift because I have a school loan to repay. I won’t take that experimental vaccine, I won’t abide medical apartheid, and I won’t take government money to make the loan go away.
“So, here I am – driving a forklift, making OK money and sending my resume out.”
“Wow,” Peter wiped his mouth, “This world has gone mad. I’ve got friends in Illinois who have a gun to their head. Three of them had their business license taken away for violating Covid emergency public health mandates that seem to come out of someone’s ass – Oops, sorry for the language.”
“Peter, I work around truckers all day,” Lena replied.
“It’s getting late. I guess we better head out.” Peter paid the check and left a tip.
Lena drove Peter over to his rig, where he’d spend the night. Before getting out he asked Lena for her phone number. She gave it to him and a kiss on the cheek. Peter’s smile bunched his bushy mustache.
“You know, us truckers have to hurry up and wait. We have to get to our destination on time and then wait to be unloaded. When I saw you that first time on your forklift waiting became a lovely day. That day went down in my log book and tonight will too. I’ll be calling you Lena. Count on it.”
Peter got out and Lena drove home.
The next morning, Peter bought some jumpy juice at Love’s and headed to Tennessee. He was looking to buy a truck route that would keep him out of COVID jail and for a place to settle down.
****
Five months passed. The evening phone conversations between Lena and Peter turned toward the future. They talked of children and adopting. They talked logistics.
Peter told Lena that he’d gotten a route that kept him in Tennessee. “I’m living in a townhome not far from a hospital and the truck’s terminal,” her told her. He also mentioned that he was going to school on the weekend taking EMT classes. He invited Lena down to take a look.
Using a one-week vacation, Lena came down to Tennessee with her mother Alma. Lena wanted her parent’s blessing on marriage to Peter. Lena also wanted to get back to nursing.
Lena submitted her resume to a clinic outside Nashville. The clinic assisted women and couples facing unexpected pregnancies, offering them life- affirming, free, and confidential medical services including pregnancy testing and ultrasounds. The OB/GYN who ran the clinic hired Lena. She was told that she could start in six weeks to allow for the move to Tennessee. Lena broke the news to her mother and to Peter. That same day and with Alma’s blessing, Peter proposed to Lena. The trio went out to celebrate.
A month later Peter left Chattanooga, drove north to Nashville, and parked his rig. He then drove his car north to Carmel Indiana for the six-o’clock wedding rehearsal. Peter, his eyes burning from driving his rig from Chattanooga to Nashville and then up north through constant sleet in southern Indiana, closed his eyes for a moment.
Peter’s father received a call at seven-thirty. Peter hit an overpass and died on the scene.
(While a student at Moody Bible Institute, I had a close friend named Denny. Denny had a Culbertson Hall roommate named Steve. The three of us were in the concert band. During out-of-state concert tours we spent a lot of time together.
Steve was the nicest guy in the world. You could tell that he loved Jesus. He liked working with kids during his PCW assignments.
During a winter break Steve left Chicago and drove back to Kansas for his wedding.
We learned later that Steve, back in Kansas, drove to his wedding rehearsal in blinding snow. High winds whipped the snow across the open highway. The family said that after the long drive from Chicago, Steve may have closed his eyes for a second. He hit an overpass and died that night on a Kansas road.)
*****
“Episode_1611 We discuss the Olympics, Soros, the military, and take a deep dive with Dr. Robert Malone.”.
“Statutory rights have attempted to be bypassed through the issuance of Executive Orders and Emergency Rules … This type of evil is exactly what the law was intended to constrain.”
Democrats are Obsessed with power and control (as of 4-7-2022):
As of February 1st, only nine states, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington, require residents to wear masks indoors regardless of whether or not they’ve been vaccinated.
Some states are removing mask mandates. Illinois is removing masks but not from children. Gov. Pritzker wants to please the teacher’s union for their support in the upcoming election. It was never about science.
A direct attack on the First Amendment – You are a Domestic Terrorist if You Question the State:
If you have an opinion and/or fact that counters the government narrative about the election fraud and COVID-19 you are now considered a domestic terrorist. Who determines what is “unsubstantiated”, a “conspiracy theory” or a “misleading narrative”?
1) They contact city/county governments of potential store sites to make nearby localities compete with one another by offering Walmart free infrastructure (roads, sewage, drainage) and tax rebates (typical store gets $10M in tax rebates for their first few years)
2) They build a store using their national contractors, depriving most of the local tradesmen of any of the work to build the store
3) They offer wages above the prevailing market wage to lure employees away from other employers (don’t worry, these go back down later.)
4) They scout locally owned competitors for pricing, and undercut them
5) Let’s say that your town happened to have a Carhartt factory, Walmart Corporate starts demanding lower and lower wholesale prices. Because Walmart represents 50% of Carhartt’s sales, they can’t afford to say no. So they start making cheaper products. Then they start manufacturing overseas. Soon the plant closes. You’re still paying the same price for a Carhartt jacket, but now it’s poorly made, and your neighbor Jim, who worked at the plant, is out of a job.
6) Your local mom & pop retailer, having lost some of their employees and still having to pay normal Carhartt wholesale prices, can’t compete with Walmart. They go out of business. So now your neighbor Barbara is out of a job.
7) Your town is now devastated, with no manufacturing and no retail other than Walmart. As employees are treated poorly and quit, new employees, having nowhere else to turn, are forced to accept lower wages and part-time positions. They are forced to rely on welfare to feed their kids. Every year, everyone gets a little bit poorer as Walmart’s corporate profits & stock price go up, and the last bits of wealth are extracted from your town and sent to Chinese manufacturers and Wall Street Shareholders. Many people now leave your town to look for better opportunities, splitting up families. Young adults go off to the big city and lose touch with their roots. Others turn to drugs out of despair, fueling an overdose epidemic. All the while, they have no choice but to shop at Walmart, due to a lack of options or due to the financial blight that the Walmart itself has brought to them and their family.
Now repeat this story 3,000 times across the country. So no, I don’t care if people shoplift from Walmart. Walmart made the calculation that the cost of security plus the risk of a lawsuit wasn’t worth stopping shoplifters when they can just let them take whatever they want and charge you, the consumer, for it.
Just the other day I received a company-wide email. The email updated employees with the latest leadership changes, new business opportunities, employee highlights, COVID testing kit availability, and about a recent DEI meeting.
The DEI blurb included a video and PDF. Both items, titled Let’s Talk Pronouns! Common Mistakes & What To Do Instead, were used in the meeting.
Thank you to everyone who attended the first [ ] meeting in December. The featured topic for the meeting was pronouns. Participants discussed common mistakes and what how to avoid them, including examples of language to use when sharing your own pronouns, asking others about their pronouns, or correcting yourself if you’ve mistakenly used incorrect pronouns. If you missed the meeting, you can watch the 10-minute video of this part of the discussion or download the PDF summary below.
Remember, when you take time to think about how others choose to be referenced and use their correct pronouns, you’re helping create an affirming workplace culture where all employees can feel fully seen, respected, and valued.
A couple of months before this DEI meeting an anonymous questionnaire was sent out asking opinions about bias. The responses, it stated, would be used to formulate DEI meeting topics. Here’s a couple of the questions and my responses:
Do you see bias in the company?
My response: “If you are looking for bias you will find it.”
What concerns about bias should DEI meetings address?
My response: “Why is [ ] turning the company over to children? (I should have added “Where are the adults?”) And with regard to bias, “Why not follow the Christian DEI understanding – Love your neighbor as yourself – instead of a Marxist program that separates people into disparate groups instead of unifying them?”
I should note that our company’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) initiative started in 2021. This was after the company began an aggressive hiring campaign during the OSHA COVID vaccine mandate disaster. At least fifteen percent of over 2000 employees had submitted exemptions to the vaccine and testing mandate. (I was one of them.)
Many of the new hires came from universities where they had been indoctrinated into the DEI stream of consciousness. Thereof, I suspect, was the impetus for our company’s DEI initiative – providing a “safe space” in a corporate culture that new hires were led to believe was non-affirming, disrespecting and devaluing. Getting paid and acknowledged for doing quality work in an engineering community is not enough for the narcissistic.
(Isn’t abstracting one’s self with absurd pronouns (ze/zir/zirs and zhe/zher/zhers, etc.) much like the deconstruction and obscuring of the human form in a cubist painting? And, isn’t the current pronoun mania much like the current tattoo mania?)
Of course, what’s behind the DEI pronoun façade is not only the willful and arrogant perversion of language, but also the pronoun warriors desire for power and control. As I see it, the owners of the company effectively handed over control of the business to the government by complying with the OSHA mandate and by venturing into wonderland with DEI.
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
*****
I have a questionnaire for you. The questions relate to the foundations of our current sand castle culture:
Would you spend your time talking about pronouns?
Would you describe what Disney produces as sublime?
Do you subscribe to the Disney channel?
Will you watch the Woke live action movie copied from the original animate film Snow White? Will it be called Snow Blanca and the Seven Pronouns now that dwarfs living in a cave are out?
Should M&M’s become inclusive and allow one of their own to identify as a Skittle.
Is the word “entertainment” in scripture?
Do you believe that the U.S. government, via its representatives and bureaucrats, is altruistic?
Are you OK with all of your devices listening to your conversation via 5G?
Should we scrap everything and Build Back Better toward a “green prosperity” based on climate change hype?
Are you OK with The Great Reset forcing you to be part of their social experiment?
Are you OK with banks, the Federal reserve and elites bringing our country to economic collapse so as to Build Back Better?
Are you OK with the U.S. becoming a socialist hell-hole like Venezuela?
Are you OK with eugenics –vaccine and implant induced – to produce a better human race?
Do you trust the elites?
The World Economic Forum's Great Narrative Conference: "The good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more… the bad news is that the majority of people trusted that elite less…" pic.twitter.com/c4I4zlew1p
— James Lindsay, anti-Communist (@ConceptualJames) January 21, 2022
Should a village raise a child?
“If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children.
. . . Now, I recognize that some naysayers, hopelessly attached to their privilege, will dismiss such a policy as ghastly, even totalitarian. But my proposal is quite modest, a fusion of traditional philosophy and today’s most common political obsessions.”
“It soon could be unremarkable for a child to have three or more legal parents.After months of political wrangling over how to support families, this may sound fantastical, but it’s fast becoming reality: Six states — California, Delaware, Maine, Vermont, Washington and most recently Connecticut — have enacted laws over the past decade expressly allowing a court to recognize more than two parents for a child. Many others, including Massachusetts, are considering similar proposals.”
Are you willing to live in a house designed by the architects of the new world order?
*****
Jesus taught, as he often did, using nature to present truth.
“So, then, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Heavy rain fell; floods rose up; the winds blew and beat on that house. It didn’t fall, because it was founded on the rock.
And everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t do them – they will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. Heavy rain fell; floods rose up; the winds blew and battered the house – and down it fell! It fell with a great crash.” – Jesus as recorded in the gospel according to Matthew 7: 24-27
*****
We know from nature that sand forms when rocks break down from weathering and eroding over thousands and even millions of years. We know that cultural sand forms from the breaking down and erosion of longstanding truth. The culture of repudiation produces cultural sand almost overnight.
The rock crushers call themselves Progressives. They are dismissive of every aspect of our cultural capital, human nature and tradition. They rush in to create the negative, for they are nihilists. They are the jack hammers that leave nothing standing and reduce the rubble to dust and sand. They use diatribe chisels – “racist” “homophobe” “xenophobe” “racist”, “sexist”, and the like- to chip away at the bedrock of culture.
Many today sustain a quasi-religious belief in Progress. These build pronoun sand castles. These build sand castles of “hope and change” fundamental transformation and of Build Back Better. Sand pails are provided by The Great Reset elites who sit on the beach and watch them play.
You don’t need to be a civil engineer to know that rock and sand are two different footings. A wise builder makes sure the footing is stationary and stable. What’s the point of building if it isn’t?
Fools, reactionary fools, build their lives, their hopes, dreams, and future, on shifting sand. But all for a naught!
*****
“And you all say, ‘The times are troubled, the times are hard, the times are wretched.’ Live good lives, and you will change the times by living good lives; you will change the times, and then you’ll have nothing to grumble about.” — St. Augustine
“ . . a judge ruled that the FDA and Pfizer would have to answer [Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency] FOIA requests. Among the first reports handed over by Pfizer was a “Cumulative Analysis of Post-authorization Adverse Event Reports” describing events reported to Pfizer up until February 2021. It reveals that the drug behemoth received more than 150,000 serious adverse event reports within three months of rolling out its COVID shot, but here we will focus on Table 6 of the data on pregnant and lactating women who received the shots in the first few months of the rollout, which began December 11
“OSHA announced in the federal register that although the temporary emergency rule was being removed, it would be retained as a proposal for a permanent rule in the future.” (emphasis mine)
A dust collecting barge circling the globe is not the most exciting life. And, when I say “circling the globe”, I don’t mean chugging down Amsterdam canals one week and slogging down Bangkok Klongs the next. I mean orbiting the globe.
Dealing with circumplanetary dust – comet dust, asteroidal dust, interstellar dust, floating paint chips, and the like–is my business. I’m the street sweeper of cosmic dust. I leave the large objects, the meteoroids and minimoons, for others.
At last count there are about 35,000 pieces of debris and over 12,000 satellites in orbit around the earth. And, despite requirements for satellite deorbit and disposal, the junk continues to escalate.
And, when I say “my business” I mean my punishment. I was exiled by a group I call MASK – Massive Administrative State KGB. MASK is a conglomeration of bureaucrats under principalities and powers.
MASK insurrectionists took over on November 3rd, 2020. That was the day democracy was denied There were no lawful elections held after that day. The Committee for Democracy Security comprised of big tech, big pharma, and White House personnel made sure of that.
In the year following the November 3rd insurrection, MASK instituted the Four Vexations Campaign. The four vexations -the unvaxxed, climate change deniers, Christians, and cosmic dust – are said by MASK to severely threaten public health
I was exiled into space because I vexed MASK all four ways. I was never willing to be vaxxed, so I became an outcast. I refused to pay the fine for not owning an EV, so I became a climate change criminal. I inaugurated the worldwide Christ the King Day, so I was charged with sedition, and by default, I am cosmic dust.
Delores, my wife, turned me in to MASK agents at Krocer’s. I just happened to sneak into the store without a mask. I was in aisle five looking for taco sauce. As I surmised later, masked Delores was in the produce department flirting with the masked produce guy Joey.
Joey touted the latest store promotion to Delores: “Turn in the unvaxxed and receive a month’s food ration from Krocer’s and five credit score points”.
So, Delores received a month’s food ration at MASK-approved Krocer’s after serving me up. How would you like to learn that after forty years of marriage you are worth thirty days of food? Our marriage was banished to the dust bin of history.
Now, when I say “my wife turned me in” I mean she was not alone. When I refused vaccinations, a criminal risk assessment algorithm used my social credit score to determine the likelihood that I would be a repeat unvaxxer. On International COVID Justice Day I was pronounced “Guilty of Non-compliance with Rules 7 & 8 of the COVID Justice Code”. I was sentenced to orbit the earth until I vaxx or die.
*****
“Collection One to Base Two. Collection One to Base Two. I’m ready to dump this load.”
“Copy Collection One. Atmos7 will approach at 1300 hours SCET.”
“Copy Digitilissimo.”
The Base Two commander doesn’t like it when I call her Digitilissimo. She has made herself known to me in no uncertain terms: “I am a Latina. I am a woman of color, I am a mom, I am a cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder,” . . . “I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise.”
This woman is not qualified to run anything but she checks the boxes for her MASK bosses. That explains her “generalized anxiety disorder”.
Why the nickname Digitilissimo? The woman is no longer human. She has vaccine-delivered nano circuitry up the wazoo. I have her IP address.
*****
My dust barge Collection One is fitted with a huge microbe tank. There is a large intake/dump valve at one end. Inside the tank – genetically-edited dust eating microbes. When they eat their fill of cosmic dust particles, they poop out pellets. The pellets are then extruded into bars and then loaded onto disposal ships like Atmos 7.
Disposal ships take the cosmic debris a half a parsec or so away from our solar system. Then they shoot the load off toward the black hole Pōwehi, where it will be added into a swirl of dust, stars, gas, and visible light that circles the edge of the hole before being sucked inside.
For my grandkids who may someday hear this recording, the name Pōwehi or “embellished dark source of unending creation” came from an ancient Hawai’ian chant called Kumulipo or source of darkness. The chant describes the creation of the universe. Pōwehi is roughly 54 million light-years away from my dust trawler
Grandkids. How many now?
I hear nothing from anyone. I didn’t take Alphonse with me into space. Bringing a parrot into space would, of course, be a first. Imagine the mess! Sadly, MASK agents reprogrammed my parrot during my solitary confinement at Base Ten. Alphonse now repeats “Wear a mask” and “Get the jab”. There is another parrot on board.
The ship’s intercom repeats over and over again “Your individual choice affects everyone. Give up your individual rights and freedom for the greater good! Conform!”
The loop is part of the reprogramming technique used by the party. What party, you ask? The CCP – Committee for Conformity of Practice. The endless droning narrative is meant to “instill” into the subconscious a desire for behavioral change – submission to the CCP. So, I put on my unplugged headphones to block the blather. Another technique is isolation.
Beaglegeuse, my dog and right hand, I had to leave behind. MASK is now training him to sniff out the unvaccinated. I also had to resign my position in the Society for Acronym Suppression and Extinction. That’s S -A -S -E for the acronym dependent.
*****
Spending a year in microgravity, circling the Earth constantly at nearly 8km/s, really does change a person, not that I needed changing.
I am now over 6 feet tall. I am 3% taller than my earth height because my spinal disks are no longer compressed by gravity. My heart rate has increased to maintain blood pressure compensating for the 20% decrease in the volume of blood in my body. And, because I no longer need to fight gravity my muscles atrophy and osteoporosis will also occur.
Since I’m moving faster than my twin on earth, I will be younger than Emmett if I ever return to earth. That’s according to special relativity. According to MASK special relativity, Emmett may be in orbit trawling for dust soon. Last I heard, he was detained by MASK agents in a 7/Eleven. He was buying a roll of Lifesavers without wearing a mask.
There are things unchangeable about me. But now, in whirling exile, the unchangeable me is reached only by recall: I am rain in the forest – effervescent, beading, dripping onto the trail. I am wind that shakes the leaves into shivers. I am bursting cracking thunder. I am torrent, rippling, babbling, tranquil water. I am field of sunbathing sunflowers. I am blade of grass. I am dust and I am resistance in mega-ohms.
No, I am not a tree-hugging soy boy softie. If I was, I wouldn’t be floating in a hunk of metal sweeping up the long-decayed cometary trails and the remains of digital communication satellite collisions.
I don’t miss the digital world one bit. I hate logging in. I hate usernames, passwords, two-pass authentications. I hate network errors. I hate needing security software, firewalls, and VPNS. I hate the whole 64-bit process. I prefer paper and conversations and meeting actual people.
I hate streaming media. I hate the utter annoyance of commercials and clichés. I do miss Mystery Science Theater, however. I asked MASK for a regular MST broadcast but MASK took it personally and said “NO!”.
Anyway, I hate viewing life through a screen – authentication error! I hate digital images. I hate the pretense of significance the frame provides. And, why give your life to streaming bits and bytes? Why not climb K2 or hike the Appalachian Trail?
With the rise of mass media including the “internet of things”, madness has accelerated and deepened. Why the hell speed up and support the ultra-wide band of mass formation psychosis with 5GUW? In orbit, during the analog of my days devoid of digital diversion, I am able to think outside the data-streaming box. I can pray without unceasing noise.
In case you are wondering, I keep busy. Orbit is orbit, so, I don’t have to bother much with dials and buttons except to keep track of the barge’s dust level gauge. Day to day, beside getting taller and Gumby-like, I’m working on a transactional reality self-help book: I’m OK, You’re CONTROLLING.
The book focuses on the State-as-parent-citizen-as-child relationship. That unnatural bond is enforced by the MASK overloads in their pursuit for COVID justice. I provide insight as to how to throw off that unhealthy and even deadly co-dependency. Briefly, one creates a sphere of truth in a parallel society apart from the State.
The State, as my own account relates, is controlling and manipulative. Mother State, with its media teat, suckles citizens into dependence. Mother State’s milk supports perpetual adolescence, hence the Neverland of citizens that refuse to grow up.
The emotional abuse produced by the “Glorious Motherland”-State has several characteristics, as detailed in my book:
Big Motherdoesn’t respect your boundaries.
Big Mother competes for your attention via State media.
Agents of Big Mother have an ON/OFF empathy switch that is used for their own ends – ON to cajole into submission, OFF to ignore your concerns; they appear caring in public and in private, cruel and unfeeling. Theirs is the Ministry of A PAT ON THE HEAD AND A KICK IN THE PANTS.
Agents of Big Mother want you to think you are crazy for not listening to them. To show that they ‘care’ they use shaming tactics such as enforcing mask mandates to get citizens to listen. Big Mother declares itself the Adult with “the science”. Citizens are posited as crude and ignorant test subjects.
Agents of Big Mother present themselves as victims, manipulating any situation to garner sympathy and support. Mother State uses existential threats to consolidate power.
Agents of Big Mother avoid personal accountability and use other people for their own ends.
A play – Death of a Dustman – is my next project. The play, soon to be autobiographical, ends with the last days of a dustman to provide comic relief for his family. The main character is a dust barge pilot who dies on board and then is eaten up by dust-eating microbes and then excreted out into space. The dustman’s remains reanimate on Jupiter’s moon Ganymeade and become an endoparasitoid lifeform that consumes mandators. The life form returns to earth to feed. The sulphury smell of the mandators makes them easy prey.
I’ll have Dale Arden – that’s my nickname for Betty – sneak these manuscripts and this recording back to earth. I’ll hook up with the ISS and Dale in a couple of months when my barge is restocked. Dale is not one of those Clay people that melt or blend into the background. She doesn’t wear the veneer of intersectionality. Dale is an adventurous, independent and beautiful woman. When I think of Dale, I hear Astor Piazzolla’s tango music. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that!
I have noted in my log book that every once in a while, out of the corner of my eye, I see a dark image flash by. The image is not in or outside the barge. It is somewhere to my right. I know that seeing this isn’t due to my time in space. I’ve seen the same fleeting dark images on earth. Dark forces are at work in the cosmos. Dark forces have joined forces with the self-proclaimed earth-gods. The Mother State feeds on Dark Power.
Earth-gods, you see, feed on the experience of power to charge the battery of their self-importance – their pride of life. Jesus was tempted to do the same. During forty days in the wilderness, Jesus, was offered a power ‘opportunity’ by the Satan. Jesus saw the psyop offer as an abuse of his power: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
Now, how do you discern the humans from the earth-gods? Humans, with a notion of the transcendent, attach themselves to creative forces to multiply and flourish. Humans accept responsibility for their actions. Humans are capable of love which does not defame, entrap or hold hostage another.
The earth-gods, bound to their notion that man is just a clump of chemical-reaction-neuron-firing cells, attach themselves to power in order to replicate their deformed simulacrum of man in humans. The earth gods never accept responsibility. The earth gods instead blame others. The earth gods live in the moment, beyond judgement and shame. They choose power over love.
Because of the unchecked desire for unchecked power, the earth gods are wreaking havoc on earth. To wit: during 2022 a worldwide famine began which continues to kill millions. People can no longer find fresh drinking water because of the decay.
*****
I see that the dust level gauge is approaching overload. Looks like I have to wrap up this recording.
Remember grand-kiddos: the earth-gods are dust. They will experience the end of their power in a dust to dust and ashes to ashes recall.
The earth-gods resent the new creation. That is why I am in orbit and not on earth fighting the good fight. And that is why you must continue the Christ the King celebration. I want all Christians everywhere to take days off and celebrate Christ the King. I want there to be royal fanfares and parades, royal decrees, lavish feasts – food, wine, music, and dancing – with men and women in courtly costume, and fireworks.
When you dust a shelf, think of me. And when I say “think of me”, I mean . . .
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky — “The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four co-morbidities. So really these are people who were unwell to begin with.”
During his confirmation hearing, we didn’t understand that something had broken inside of Brett Kavanaugh. Unfortunately, many of us believed he was a sincere conservative. pic.twitter.com/BovNA4vEQh
You might be aware of the TV miniseries Mysteriesof the Unknown, a show that seeks answers to our history’s mysteries.
I want to propose another miniseries: Mysteries of the Known Knowns – a show that seeks answers to the things we know we know from our recent history.
Here are six suggested episodes with background references:
Episode 1 – Why are we being used as lab rats?
How is it that government entities demand our accountability about all things COVID BUT the manufacturers of the vaccines are NOT held accountable for what they dispense? If the risks are not discussed, how can there be informed consent?
“Dr. Vliet further clarified that Remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug that proved ineffective and highly toxic, is used as the FDA’s approved COVID treatment, and is associated with organ toxicity, making patients sicker and more likely to require a ventilator, and hence more likely for the hospital to get a larger bonus payment.”
If these agreements were retroactively rescinded would the vaccine mandates go away?
Episode 2 – If it can’t be questioned, is it science?
Bureaucrat overlord Anthony Fauci has effectively declared “I am the Way, the Science and the Life. No one comes to COVID freedom except by me.”
Another self-appointed COVID messiah, NIH director Francis Collins, told Fauci to rain down fire on scientists who don’t fall in line and obey them without question. Collins, now ‘retired’, wanted to shut down all scientific debate. And so it is that YouTube, Twitter, and their ilk are banning scientists who question “the science”.
If it can’t be questioned and debated, is it really science?
Episode 3 – Are the people of the world being subjected to COVID terrorism?
Background:
What a lovely new world we are living in when you go out for a meal and a squad of police barge in, persecute a little boy then demand to see everyone else’s papers. This is the vax passport world so many are begging for. #NotAboutAVirus#NOVAXPASSPORTSpic.twitter.com/ZQFnybs4ly
Episode 4 – Is COVID Absolutism behind the Current Psychic Epidemic?
How is it that countries with the majority of their populations vaccinated are in panic mode? Why are there calls for more panic, lockdowns, passports, and mandates? Is science, logic or even altruism behind this? OR, is the desire to create a new social order under totalitarian control behind creating a fear-based populism?
Why are people going along with the manufactured panic? Why do “the masses whole-heartedly accept everything that Dr. Fauci or other national and global health officials proclaim”? (See article below)
Why the collective psychosis? Why accept mandatedmental illness?
Background:
A recent web article shares the theory behind mass formation psychosis posited by Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium. “He explains the [four basic] societal conditions under which a population ends up willingly sacrificing their freedom.”
“A lack of societal bonding. It is easily argued that members of Western society struggled with loneliness long before the pandemic, and then with the ongoing lockdowns, isolation, and general fear of one another”, the lack of community continues.
“The second condition is met when the majority of people view their lives as being without purpose or meaning.”
“Free floating anxiety is the third condition for the rise of mass formation.” Record numbers of anxiety/depression medications are being prescribed.
“The fourth condition is high levels of frustration and aggression, with no discernible cause.” Open hostility on social media and on the streets is evident.
The following link and video go into greater detail about mass formation psychosis:
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, on CNN’s “The Lead”, said that rising prices were a “good thing” because it meant more people were buying goods.
Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Inflation is skyrocketing as I don’t need to tell you. The prices for home heating costs, cars, groceries, furniture, rent, gasoline are hitting Americans right in the wallet. The White House response has been generally to say, ‘Hey, inflation shows we’re coming out of the recession. It’s a good sign.’”
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
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“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
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To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“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.
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If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
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“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
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“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
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Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“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).
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God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
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From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
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“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
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One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
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“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
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God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“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
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This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…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 
State of the Stewardship
March 13, 2022 Leave a comment
If you have ever gardened you know that stewardship of the garden matters.
Now that mask mandates are being discarded in blue states ahead of mid-term elections and the troll Anthony Fauci is back in his hole, and the COVID-political vortex is dying down, it is time for a State of the Stewardship accounting.
Exposed recently: piles of toxic waste – noble lies, half-truths, and flat-out lies – have been dumped into our lives. So-called stewards of science, media and capitalism have poisoned the soil of our lives and have done so with impunity.
A FOIA request by TheBlaze forced Pfizer to unmask documents it tried to keep hidden for 75 years. We learn from those documents that the Biden cartel took $1 billion of your tax dollars and paid, via HHS, nearly the entire corporate media to push the deadly vaccine, and hide its adverse effects.
In response to a FOIA request filed by TheBlaze, HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.
The propaganda was perpetrated by the national COVID-19 Public Education Campaign which “aims to connect with Americans from a wide range of backgrounds. . . .to build confidence in vaccines, . . . Through a nationwide network of trusted messengers . . . The Campaign uses products . . . such as . . .Comprehensive vaccine confidence ads created for multiple platforms (radio, TV, social, digital, print, out-of-home”” to increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, . . .”
Interesting correlation:
Just the other day I went through company training about cyber security. I learned the following:
Phishing is the act of sending email that falsely claims to be from a legitimate organization. This is usually combined with a threat or request for information: for example, that an account will close, a balance is due, or information is missing from an account. “Act first, think later!” And,
Vishing is a form of phishing using a telephone to the prospective victim.
So, based on these definitions and the above revelation . . .
Vaxxing as a form of phishing using media with its pretense of legitimacy to cajole and threaten its victims to “Vax first, think later!”
We also learned about some of the effects of the toxic waste dumping: The Pfizer Vaccine Only has 1,291 Side Effects! The adverse effects include everything from heart attacks to strokes to ALS to paralysis to clots.
Nurse Reads 9 Pages of Adverse Effects that Pfizer Concealed from Everyone – DailyClout
Evil stewards have manipulated, deceived, misled, scammed, and lied to us. We have been cajoled to accept things that are not true e.g., two weeks to flatten the curve; a one size fits all response is required for COVID; the vaccine is effective. Toxic waste has been dumped into the landscape with the effect of hurting and killing many.
Because of toxic stewardship, people who could have avoided the hospital and death were told by government authorities that readily available lifesaving therapeutics would not work. “Go home,” they were told, “and wait until things get bad before coming to the hospital”.
Because of wrong-headed and willful authoritarian stewardship, life has been turned upside. People have lost jobs. Businesses have closed. People, young people, have committed suicide. Parents and grandparents have died with no family by their bedside.
Follow the stewards of “the science”? No. Instead, follow the profit motive that propagates a vaccine narrative that dumps happy talk into our lives. Ask yourself. Do any of the vaccine PSAs contain risk information?
The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in those who tell the truth. Prov. 15:22
****
A recent TV PSA says that getting vaccinated means going back to normal. Implicit in that ad: you do not control normal. And, “normal” compared to what? Healthy soil or a landscape of contaminated soil?
Apparently, “normal” requires a controlled opposition. And, a controlled opposition requires a mediated atmosphere. Hence the masks, the mandates, and the media blitz of a COVID doomsday model over the past two years.
Hence the climate change doomsday model being marketed now to replace the COVID crisis. Again, “Act first, think later!”
Hence, the fascistic ideological programs that impose regulations on what we say, think, accept and live by: DEI, CRT, ESG, LGBTQXYZism. A handful of people – who do not know you or care what you think and hold to be true- want to tell you how to steward your life.
I was a loyal Soviet citizen until the age of 20. What it meant to be a loyal citizen is to say what you are supposed to say, to read what you are permitted to read, to vote the way you are told to vote and, at the same time, to know that all this is a lie. In fact, the reality is different, but the reality you can discuss only with your friends and the family.
Activist Natan Sharansky: ‘Moral Behavior Is the Most Profitable Behavior’ – Knowledge@Wharton (upenn.edu)
Now consider, for example, ESG. Do you know that ESG will be controlling your life in the near future?
ESG is the acronym for Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance, the three broad categories of interest for what is termed “socially responsible investors.”
“Each of the three elements of ESG investing – environmental, social, and corporate governance – comprises a number of criteria that may be considered, either by socially responsible investors or by companies aiming to adopt a more ESG-friendly operational stance.”
Everyone will be affected by ESG. From the link:
Using ESG metrics is an extended version of Marxist Critical Race Theory- scoring, reshaping, and mastering the financial world using Marxist tactics. It is form of control. Not only do they want to control what companies do by mandating adherence to green, social justice, and approved political views, but they want to control the entire supply chain that even supports the company. In essence–they will control everything. Only those companies who align with their ideology will be allowed access to banks, receive financing, and participate in our nation’s financial processes.
Big Banks are going in this direction. Credit card companies are going in this direction. McDonalds has joined the ESG mob. Companies that want to appear to be socially responsible and environmentally conscious in the eyes of social justice Pharisees will seek to avoid or minimize reputational risk. And that means avoiding you, if necessary, to appear socially conscious.
Consider that your bank account – business or personal – or your credit accounts will be cancelled because your “reputational risk” (ESG language) doesn’t fit with the globalist’s metrics scoring, reshaping, and mastering the financial world.
(Side note: The means to control is creeping in everywhere.
Last fall, OSHA was demanding a list from companies of over one-hundred employees: who was vaccinated and who wasn’t and being tested. When I submitted my religious vaccine exemption document to my employer last fall, I asserted four exemptions: from vaccines, masks, testing and being put on a list.
I had become aware prior to that time that ADP and other payroll services were offering to put vaccine status on pay statements. I did not want my vaccine status to be known and to later have it be considered an ESG-type “reputational risk”.)
Controlled opposition will come about through the takeover of your property. This will occur through digital technology that people have taken into their lives with abandon. How, you ask?
Stewards of the U.S. dollar are devaluing the dollar with printing-press dollars and, with terrible foreign policy, the dollar’s demise as the world’s reserve currency. There is now talk of a central bank digital currency.
A cash-less digital currency means that you will become a slave and your property will be under the control of the fascistic One World system – do what they say ESG and otherwise or you will not have access to your accounts.
The coming “normal” requires a controlled opposition. So, you and I will be managed and controlled by unjust and unfaithful stewards who currently mismanage our resources.
We can fight ESG:
Use local banks or credit unions instead of big banks. Hold gold, silver and precious metals. Crypto? Crypto may soon be regulated by you know who.
The ‘genius’ argument to BANNING ESG that America may need – Glenn Beck
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I remember the stewardship of the milquetoast Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). UGH. I remember the gas lines, the hapless foreign policy, Carter’s “Malaise Speech” and the misery contained in the misery index.
Jimmy Carter (D) quoted the misery index extensively during his 1976 Presidential campaign to unseat Ford, even though Ford actually presided over a declining Misery index. Carter, on the other hand, presided over an increasing misery index of his own, starting his term at 12.72% and increasing to levels well above Ford’s highs. Carter’s misery index peaked at 21.98% in June of 1980. His misery index was still above 20% come November 1980, so Reagan (R) was able to use Carter’s own words and the misery index against him in the following election and make Carter a rare one-term President.(emphasis mine)
U.S. Misery Index – Inflation + Unemployment (inflationdata.com)
I remember the Jimmy Carter years because the misery being produced by the Kackle and Hide-n stewardship of the U.S. economy makes its so. Stewards of the U.S. economy have created the highest inflation since January 1982.
3-10-22: The gas station down the street has the price of regular gas at $4.59+/gal. During the last administration the cost of gas at the same station was around $2.29/gal.
Why does the Biden regime want to shut down U.S. oil and gas production and make the U.S. – you and me – dependent on foreign sources for both? Does it make any sense whatsoever to hamstring America energy production for climate change whims? Where is the discussion?
On his first illegitimate day in office, “lunch bucket” Joe signed an executive order to shut down the Keystone pipeline thereby choking off U.S. energy independence and eliminating over 10000 jobs. Did anyone hear a discussion about doing this? Was there talk about the intended and unintended consequences on the majority of Americans? Or, was this done to appease others?
Did Biden make this mindless decision so as to look good in the eyes of his globalist superiors and to throw a bone to a handful of climate and environment fanatics? Forcing everyone into EVs is insanity.
The 1.5 trillion dollars Omnibus bill is an orgy of spending. The U.S. does not have the money to spend. This bill is reckless and irresponsible stewardship of taxpayer money. The bill will add to the national debt and make future U.S. citizens globalist slaves to that debt. The stewards of appropriations in Congress are terrible money managers. They have disregarded their fiduciary responsibility to U.S. citizens.
The Left – Progressive democrats and many on the Right – want people to believe that they are the magnanimous ones. They offer you all kinds of goodies – single payer healthcare, student loan payoff, COVID stay at home money, and yadda yadda yadda – with all kinds of rights. It cost Progressives nothing to offer other people’s money and rights that effect the rights of others.
Look around. Consumer prices have risen 7.9% compared to last year. Commodity prices have increased. We are likely to see a recession in the third quarter of this year.
During the last administration, America was energy independent, inflation was low (see above) and misery was going away. “Orange man bad” stewardship of America was positive and life affirming. Under the Biden regime, the stewardship is reckless, careless and destructive. The Regime has no clue about the common man – there is a massive disconnect between us and the Progressive Left.
President Joe Biden told Congress Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address to pass legislation to lower insulin prices — after he suspended, and then rescinded, former President Donald Trump’s executive order to lower them.
Joe Biden’s Plan to Defeat Inflation: ‘Lower Your Costs’ (breitbart.com)
As under the COVID “public health” stewardship, we will continue to witness Democide.
Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others. Prov. 12:15
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A controlled opposition requires messaging and stewardship that subverts.
This past week the woman’s professional network at my company invited me to celebrate International Woman’s Day (IWD):
Happy Women’s Day! Annually, March 8th is celebrated as international women’s day; a global holiday to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women. This year’s theme is Break the Bias. Thank you to all of you for continuing to break the bias. Today – celebrate by writing a thank-you note to a fellow employee that inspires you by breaking the bias or write yourself a love note praising yourself for who you are and how you break the bias (or bonus point for doing both).
When you go to the Break the Bias link you get the following gobbledygook meant to warm the cockles of your heart.
Imagine a gender equal world.
A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination.
A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
A world where difference is valued and celebrated.
Together we can forge women’s equality.
Collectively we can all #BreakTheBias.
A week or so before IWD, the Women’s Professional Network met for a Community of Practice (COP) session. The topic was the stewardship of your mental health. Apparently now, using the IWD messaging, one is to blame others for the stewardship of your sorry life. Finding-fault-with-others Marxism is rampant.
I’ll #BreaktheBadNews: IWD is a meaningless participation trophy recognizing a Leninist-feminist approach to life: forsake your family and live for some ideological notion of equality.
(I wonder. Does “equality” mean that males can participate in women’s sports?)
Note to self: More of the feel-good break-the-bank-money is being appropriated by the stewards of equality in Congress for more messaging effluence:
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he will ask Congress for $2.6 billion for foreign aid programs that promote gender equality worldwide, more than double the size of last year’s request.
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Many people, stewards of their property, put fences around their yard. Many put alarm systems on their property. Many put up chicken wire around their gardens to keep rabbits out. People protect what they have and what they want to see flourish. But, the current unfaithful stewards of America do not protect what we have. They don’t seem to care if Americans flourish.
Often on social media: an open borders policy is touted as being humane and a magnanimous Christ-like gesture. But a one-sided open borders policy is leaving America exposed to whatever.
Would you leave your computer open to a computer virus? The operating system could be exposed to malicious software.
Such a virus could alter the way a computer operates. It is designed to spread from one computer to another. The virus operates by inserting or attaching itself to a legitimate program or document in order to execute its code. In the process, a virus has the potential to cause unexpected or damaging effects, such as harming the system software by corrupting or destroying data.
The virus is capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs to many other networks. Some viruses use your information and some lock up your computer with ransomware. One is held hostage by the virus.
An open borders policy is an attack not only on your health of your own operating system, it is a pernicious attack on the sovereignty and operating system of a nation.
An open borders policy is not about helping refugees fleeing bad circumstances as advertised. An open borders policy is about corrupting America and holding it hostage for globalist purposes.
Politically bent unjust stewards (where is the justice if Americans are exposed to all kinds of injustice?) have put in place an open borders policy which leaves Americans unprotected and at the mercy of whoever and whatever comes in.
Americans, many of us, are generous fair-minded people. We welcome those immigrants who come in lawfully and want to assimilate. The open orders policy is not American. Rather, it is a globalist one-world tactic to dilute American values and produce a subservient class of people for the currently-being-fabricated globalist community of worker ants.
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If you have ever gardened you know that stewardship of the garden matters . . . if you want things to flourish.
This post has been a brief accounting of the current state of stewardship. All told in this ledger, the current stewardship has been inept, negligent, cruel and manipulative. And deadly.
The people who presented themselves as the source of truth about a fabricated pandemic continue to present themselves as climate change experts, economic experts, cultural experts, and foreign policy experts. This kind of stewardship should scare the heck out of you.
Media, as we learn above, serves the interests of the intelligentsia and globalists because there is status and money to be had by doing so. Truth is no longer a journalist’s bread and butter. Insta-“Likes” are. The media, with a profit and status-as-power motive, facilitates the degradation and servitude of humanity by promoting the templates of globalization that are repugnant to most people.
The current stewards -our ‘betters’ the intelligentsia – include university know-it-alls, Progressive politicians, Progressive Jesuits, globalists, members of the World Economic Forum, and their ilk. These would have us submit to the jab of cultural repudiation.
We are to forsake what we hold to be true and value including the garden stewardship commission given to us by God in Genesis. Without question we are to accept the jabs of their moral effluence. These stewards cultivate the same lie that’s been around since the garden: “Do this. It’s for your own good.”
If we resist it is because we know better or feel instinctively that something is wrong and we need more information.
The wise don’t make a show of their knowledge, but fools broadcast their foolishness. Prov. 15:23
And while the typical thing is for shrewd snake-like stewards to blame others for the bad and even horrific outcomes of their stewardship, we must see through their lies and hold these stewards legally and voter- wise accountable – politicians, office holders, the media, and church leaders. Don’t go along to get along.
I recommend that after every State of the Union speech that there be a State of the Stewardship speech.
Humankind has been entrusted with the responsibility to tend to God’s kingdom on earth. We, as stewards, will be held accountable.
Readings:
The Parable of the Talents – Matthew 25:14-30 Find out about the “worthless slave”.
The Parable of the Dishonest Manager – Luke 16: 1-13
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Personal note: I do not like being lied to or manipulated. So, I haven’t watched CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC or any of the legacy media. I will not read the NYT or any newspapers except for the comic and crossword puzzle sections.
I watch Real America’s Voice and read credible(actual journalist) sources.
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Informed Dissent:
Massive Study of 145 Countries Finds Huge Increase in Death Following Vaccinations – DailyVeracity
Senior Epidemiologist Apologizes to Daughter’s Generation For “Morally Wrong” Lockdown Measures – Summit News
PART 2: Maajid Nawaz: How Our Elites Destroyed Public Trust and Created a Recruiting Ground for Extremism (theepochtimes.com)
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Clearing the air of climate change apocalypse: an intelligent conversation on cost benefit analysis, fracking, energy innovation, the Paris accords and more:
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Filed under 2022 current events, Economic World Forum, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social engineering, social science Tagged with Build Back Better, culture, democrats, economy, ESG, Joe Biden, Marxism, media, politics, progressivism, State of the Union, stewardship, vaccines, World Economic Forum