The Dis-Mantled

September 2, 2024 Leave a comment

A certain meticulous copyist, a bibulous tailor, a prominent personage, and a coat-stealing ghost walk into a short story by “Russia’s most baffling comic writer” Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). Satirical and sobering, The Overcoat depicts the smallness of human concerns and the smallness of human hearts in the life of a ‘nobody’ dealing with exposure, humiliation, and public injustices. The Overcoat covers the dehumanizing problems of the “little man.”

The “little man” is a theme employed in 19th century Russian literature: “Due to his low social and career position, the “little man” had a difficult fate, which consisted only of difficulties and obstacles. “Little Man,” modest and meek in nature, was forced to endure humiliation. No one ever noticed such people who were completely defenseless against circumstances, no one helped them, which is why the life of a “little man” ended very tragically.”

The main character in The Overcoat is an unremarkable figure – a low-ranking government clerk. He is portrayed as a raw stripped-down version of humanity. He is a ghost of a man in the sense that his place in society is little or completely invisible.

Clerk Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin lives a meager existence. He wears a patched-up overcoat that, with much wear, has also becomes meager. It doesn’t keep out the cold of the St. Petersburg winter.

Gogol’s clerk is also a “little man” in that his vital interests are extremely narrow, his world small. His self-contentment is derived from his copying work. There is something almost petty about his solitary life dedicated to repetitive work.

Unmarried and not gregarious, he doesn’t copy others who wanted more in life. Unlike many of his coworkers, he indulges in no diversion of any kind, not even the taste of his soup at night, to focus on copying. He goes to bed, after copying papers for pure enjoyment, “smiling at the thought of the next day and wondering what God would send him to copy.”

Of Akaky, Gogol writes:

“. . . in a certain department there was a certain official—not a very high one, it must be allowed—short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and short-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. . .  he was what is called a perpetual titular councilor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry, and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.”

We learn that Akaky was given his father’s name, making him a copy of his father, a government official. When baby Akaky was christened, it was said that “he wept and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councilor.”

(A titular councilor was ranked at 9 out of l4 grades in the hierarchy of government positions.)

Akaky is seen as unchanging fixture and not human:

“When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same attitude, the same occupation; so that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in undress uniform with a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. . . His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.”

Akaky’s job was to copy official documents by hand and he is diligent in doing so. He worked, “as his companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.” Akaky doesn’t hate his uninteresting job:

“It is not enough to say that Akaky labored with zeal: no, he labored with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment was written on his face: some letters were even favorites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have been made even a councilor of state.”

When given an opportunity to advance and do more – change titles and edit pronouns – Akaky tries the new work, gets flustered and says “No, give me rather something to copy.” He does not want to deviate from his first love – the repetitive work of copying. (He seems to spend a lot of time in his head. He does have an imagination as we find out later.)

“Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes: his undress uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty- meal color.   Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day in the street. . . Akaky Akakievitch saw in all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines . . . “

And though Akaky kept to himself and minded his own business, he is nonetheless made sport of by those around him. He is a running joke in the office. His overcoat – “they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape.”

But Akaky silently endures ridicule from co-workers, asserting himself only when they go too far. (He reminds of the quirky oft-rejected collator, Milton Waddams, in the movie Office Space.)

“The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakievitch answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work: amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter.”

Then one time, Akaky does protest the harassment: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”

These words affect a new hire who had participated in the constant teasing:

“In these moving words, other words resounded —” I am thy brother.” And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and noble.

Akaky is chaffed, not only by his fellow workers, but also by St. Petersburg’s Northern cold. His overcoat is threadbare and unable to fend off the icy wind. He goes to see his tailor, Petrovich, the imbiber, for another patch job. Living on a meager salary, Akaky goes to Petrovich with a budget amount in mind.

Seeing the state of the coat – “the cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces” – the tailor balks at any more repair. Akaky is told that the coat is beyond salvation and he needs a new one. Hearing this, Akaky is beside himself. He doesn’t have the money on hand to pay for a new overcoat. After an unsuccessful back and forth with the tailor in hopes of another patch job, Akaky sets out on a singular life-mission to buy a new coat.

Pinching his salary of only four hundred rubles, he begins living an ascetic lifestyle for the space of one year. He curtails his living expenses and doesn’t eat at night. Less food, more imagination, and a labor of love for Akaky:

“He even got used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak. From that time forth his existence seemed to become, in some way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented to travel along life’s path with him, the friend being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a goal.”

The desired overcoat becomes a substitute for the bond of normal human love. Is it also a symbol of dignity that needs repair? A chance at survival?

 Akaky is finally able to get the money together to buy the material needed for the coat. He is overjoyed with it. He wears the overcoat to work and coworkers notice it. Gaining new status among them, he is invited to a party that night to celebrate the new coat and a birthday.

Leaving the poor side of town, Akaky crosses St. Petersburg square to reach the party. He muses about the people living on the other side of town. For one night he becomes a socialite, joining in the food and fun. Around midnight, he picks up his coat from the floor, brushes it off, and heads home.

On his way he is assaulted by two thugs who steal the garment. The Square’s watchman is no help. His landlady tells him he must go straight to the district chief of police. She has some connection with him.

Akaky goes to the district chief of police and finds that he is never makes himself available. When Akaky finally asserts himself and gets in to see him, the chief of police, instead of listening to the stollen overcoat matter, begins to question Akaky about his late-night behavior – as if Akaky was to blame for the stolen coat. He leaves the office not knowing what will happen.

A co-worker, “moved by pity, resolved to help Akaky Akakievitch.” He tells Akaky that the best thing for him to do is to go see a certain prominent personage who would expedite the matter.

“The reader must know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person.”

To increase his image, the prominent personage copied the protocol of what he saw being done by those in positions above him. For “In Holy Russia all is thus contaminated with the love of imitation; every man imitates and copies his superior.”

And so it was that “The manners and customs of the prominent personage were grand and imposing, but rather exaggerated. The main foundation of his system was strictness. “Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!”

Akaky arrives at the office of the prominent personage and has to wait. The prominent personage is in no hurry. When Akaky finally appears before him in his worn undress uniform, he gets a curt greeting: “What do you want?” Fearful and confused, Akaky explains that his new overcoat was stolen and that he came to him as an intermediary with the police.

The prominent personage then upbraids Akaky for not strictly following protocol. Akaky did not go through the layers of bureaucracy leading up to the prominent personage.

“But, your excellency,” said Akaky Akakievitch, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, “I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—are an untrustworthy race.”

This response is taken as another breach of etiquette and the prominent personage goes ballistic:

“What, what, what!” . . . “Do you know to whom you speak? Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? do you realize it? I ask you!” Then he stamped his foot and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakievitch.”

Akaky is stunned and becomes weak. He has to be held up and carried out by porters. The prominent personage is quite pleased with himself “that his word could even deprive a man of his senses.”

Coatless Akaky staggers home slack-jawed in St. Petersburg snow and cold, the wind blowing from everywhere. He catches a cold that becomes a severe fever and dies. Enter the ghost. And justice?

I’ll not say more so you can read what develops. My purpose here is to introduce the story.

I see the overcoat as symbolic of different viewpoints:

For Gogol, the old threadbare overcoat represents bar-bone humanity. How much can be removed from a person’s life before the person is gone? For Akaky, it meant just getting by with another patch job.

The idea of the future coat, as imagined by Akaky, represented no longer being cut off from life. The new threads are a life-line. When he finally gets the new overcoat, it represents a goal achieved, a baseline of survival in the cold, and acceptance in society where appearances matter.

For thugs, the new overcoat represented an object of illicit desire – “But, of course, the cloak is mine!” For the victim, Akaky, the dis-mantling meant a life changed forever.

For bureaucratic overlords, the stolen overcoat represented a nuisance. They could make better use of their time. They amuse their selves with their selves.

And for the ghost, the dis-mantling of the prominent personage represented justice for the dis-mantled “little man:

“Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that—by the collar! I need your cloak; you took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me; so now give up your own.”

~~~~~

Though you might not be a fan of Russian literature, Gogol’s last short story The Overcoat is considered one of the best in Russian literature and worth a read. And you are likely someone who can relate to those who are made fun off, insulted, considered unworthy, acknowledged only in negative terms, ignored by society, shown disrespect by bureaucrats, and robbed of dignity and life by those who boost themselves up by pushing others down

Both realistic and supernatural, The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol is an appeal for compassion for the barely visible “little man” and the dis-mantled.

The Overcoat, short story by Nikolay Gogol, published in Russian as “Shinel” in 1842. The Overcoat is perhaps the best-known and most influential short fiction in all of Russian literature. Gogol’s Dead Souls and “The Overcoat” are considered the foundation of 19th-century Russian realism.

The Overcoat | Russian Literature, Satire, Comedy | Britannica

From the Father of the Golden Age of Russian Literature, Nicolai Gogol’s The Overcoat is one of the greatest short stories of all time. This satire on Russia’s 19th century bureaucracy is amusing, pointed and has influenced many renowned Russian writers.

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol | Goodreads

Gogol was also capable of piercing insight into the human condition, satirizing the banality of everyday life while not losing sight of the pathos of those who struggle to rise above it.

“Absolute nonsense”–Gogol’s tales | The New Criterion

THE OVERCOAT – Nikolai GogolDownload

~~~~~

Another unnoticed fixture?

A 60-year-old Arizona Wells Fargo employee scanned into her office on a Friday on what appeared to be an ordinary workday. Then, four days later, she was found dead in her cubicle.

Officials probe death of Wells Fargo employee found in her cubicle 4 days after last scanning into work (nbcnews.com)

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Filed under Gogol, humanism, Russian Literature Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Masters of the Future, Masters of Faith

January 22, 2023 Leave a comment

Klaus Schwab, the creepy front man for the World Economic Forum, opened the annual confab of the global cabal in Davos, Switzerland with a call to “master the future.”

“We couldn’t meet at a more challenging time. We are confronted with so many crises simultaneously. What does it mean to master the future?”

“I think, to have a platform where all stakeholders of global society are engaged. Governments, businesses, civil society, the young generation—and I could go on. I think is the first step to meet all the challenges.”

Challenges? Stakeholders? Resolutions?

The WEF Declares 2023 the Year of “Polycrisis”:

Regarding the “polycrisis,” the WEF assembled an extensive matrix of threats facing the world. The top five short-term risks were the “cost-of-living crisis, natural disasters and extreme weather, geo-economic confrontation, failure to mitigate climate change, and erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization. . . “the top four most severe risks over the next 10 years are all environmental.”

Note: except for Natural disasters and extreme weather (force majeure) the “unprecedented multiple crises” or “Polycrisis” mentioned above have all been manufactured by stakeholders to produce a certain outcome.

The extensive matrix of threats facing the world are media hyped. Fear mongering using disaster scenarios and the urgency to act – without a second thought – is found in media narratives. If it doesn’t bleed a crisis narrative, it doesn’t lead.

Natural disaster and calamity are given to us to remind mankind of its powerlessness, and to turn us aside from our arrogance. But that doesn’t deter the proud.

Here in America, inflation and the cost-of living crisis is a crisis the Biden regime created with its socialist green new deal along with the ruinous overspending by Congress (see the recent $1.7 trillion Omnibus Bill). Geo-economic confrontation (wars and rumors of wars?) occurs because greedy and pompous leaders see themselves as masters of the future. The climate change catastrophe is a manufactured crisis as was the COVID pandemic. Erosion of social cohesion and societal polarization –Marxists erode social cohesion; the WEF supports race relations antagonism and the fragmentation of society.

The WEF future peddlers and predators view all of the world as one that can be controlled – reset – and mastered. They plan to do all this by 2030.

“Under the theme of ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’, we’ll look at how we can tackle the numerous and interlinked challenges the world is facing and find solutions through public-private cooperation.” –Davos 2023 Day 1: What to expect | World Economic Forum (weforum.org).

So, many of the same people who created the havoc and hell on earth with the COVID planned-demic and talked “Build Back Better” will be the same people “cooperating” in a public-private way to “fix’ things for the future.

Here, in three short videos, is International independent journalist Noor Bin Ladin reporting from Davos about the WEF’s “mastering the future” agenda:

“If no one power can enforce order, our world will suffer from a global order deficit.” 

-Klaus Schwab

Davos 2023: Major institutions, corporations, billionaires and governments, along with the media, are actively consolidating forces to produce a “one power” world. To wit, the FBI has been “cooperating” with big tech to purge dissenting Americans the DOJ has labeled “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists” from public discourse. The following should scare the heck out of you:

One writer says that we should fear the Globalist American Empire more than the bond-villain-like Klaus Schwab. I agree. The GAE are more manipulative. Another writer says that All NWO Roads Lead to Israel. I also agree. And, this would comport with the what’s written in the Revelation of John. I would have no doubt that many godless and Christ-rejecting Jews are behind “mastering the future” programs. They will chose lesser gods.

If you have listened to or read any of the WEF’s grandiose word-salad propaganda, you never come across a mention of God. The WEF, you see, is a humanist and materialist anti-Christ organization. It is not aligned with “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Rather, it is aligned with” My kingdom come, My will be done, on across the earth as it is in my stake holdings.”

The Globalist Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for more wealth transfer. To wit, per Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State “a significant new security assistance package to help Ukraine” is in the works.

This package, which totals $2.5 billion, will bring total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to an unprecedented approximately $27.5 billion since the beginning of the Administration. (Emphasis mine)

(Ukraine is not a U.S. ally. It’s a money laundering country. Ukraine’s border problem is Europe’s issue. Let Europe pay for guns and supplies. U.S., DO NOT escalate this fight. Nuclear war is on the table!)

“The theme of our meeting in Davos is cooperation in a fragmented world,” Klaus stated. In what the WEF calls the “Year of the Polycrisis,” Klaus declared that “economic, environmental, social, and geopolitical crises are converging and conflating, creating an extremely versatile and uncertain future.

The resolution of uncertainties is a very human concern. For the WEF and its Globalist cabal, resolution of uncertainties entails wealth transfers, complete digitization of life, monitoring every move, purchase, and association. We will eat and live as we are told. This will be our Orwellian future under the “masters of the future” unless we say “NO!” to their every incursion into our lives.

*****

Perspective:

I cannot know individual motives. I can only base my opinion on messaging and methods and the obvious.

Let’s start here. The WEF has an underlying set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe. The WEF has a “global order” moral code to govern the conduct of human affairs. As you will learn, globalist morality will be compulsory.

Any institutionalized system that practices, with ardor and faith, a cause, principle, or system of beliefs and creates disciples is a religion. The WEF has obvious characteristics of a religion. (Even the godless have to believe in and worship something.)

The Global Order religion views the world through a materialist lens. Its practitioners employ a faith in means – the means to an end, as in seizing the means of production. Such is their communistic bent. They will take control of businesses for “the greater good”.

What we are witnessing now, via the WEF, is a “cooperative” takeover of businesses. But once the New World Order is fully established, those who think that they will remain in control of their businesses will find out that another, perhaps a DEI candidate, will be in charge. NWO party commissars will be in charge to teach party principles and party loyalty.

The Global Order religion will use everything in their stakeholder power to force a New World Order in our “hyper partisan, hyper polarized time”.

The Global Order religion is not a new way of thinking about and managing mankind and civilization. “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” is the opening sentence of Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–1778) essay The Social Contract.

Rousseau, like many since, assumed that man by nature is a free and innocent being. Man, he insisted, was born with the potential for goodness but civilization, with its envy, self-consciousness, and competition has made men bad. 

Fellow philosopher Voltaire charged Rousseau with primitivism, accusing him of wanting to make people go back and walk on all fours. One will find similar noble savage myths in the environmental movement’s talk of the Axial Age and the Dark Green religion (see Iain Proven’s Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World That Never Was)

When institutions are fixed, Rousseau believed, mankind will respond in positive social ways.

Today we hear of “systemic racism” and the need for “change we can believe in”,  “fundamental transformation” and a “Great Reset”. As more and more American institutions become aligned with the globalist collective, it will be out with the old and in with the new Global Order religion.

And with each transition we see the perverse irony in the WEF’s “rules-based order” and the consensus implied in The Social Contract of Rousseau:  man who is “born free”, is to take on the “chains” imposed by the institutions of the globalist collective for a better “future”. With each transition we see that globalist utopia means global dystopia.

For the Christian, the materialist view of the world is way too small and incomplete. Christians view the world through a much broader lens. The wide-angle lens includes both the physical world and, by the operation of faith, “the things that can’t be seen. After all, the things you can see are here today and gone tomorrow; but the things you can’t see are everlasting.”  (2 Cor. 4:18).

It is a down-to-earth view that includes man, not as an innocent being, but man as corrupted by sinful choices and yet redeemable because of Christ. It is a view that sees that the whole of creation is groaning as it waits for redemption. It is a elevated view that sees the Kingdom of God and the restoration of the cosmic order.

The Christian views the material world relation to the transcendent. For one example, read the poem God’s Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Faith, as described in Hebrews 1: 1-3, is the means to bolster our confidence about things we can’t see or see as puzzling reflections in glass (1 Cor. 13: 12). Faith is the means to see past, present and future in the hands of the One who is the same yesterday, today and forever.

With confidence bolstered we can move out from a dark cave-dwelling existence of disturbing shadows – the Shadowlands – and look ahead into the broad daylight and Reality. We faith it out as did Abraham:

“Off he went, not knowing where is going.” . . .  “He was looking ahead, you see, “to the city which has its foundations, the city of which God is the designer and builder”. (Heb. 11:8, 10).

Did Abraham really imagine a city such as that? We don’t know. We do know that tent-dweller Abraham who lived under a starry canopy had been promised descendants as many as the stars . . .. “the designer and builder” of all that is above would make sure of it.

Challenges? Stakeholders? Resolutions?

Christians deal with challenges not by making others do want we want as the WEF is proposing. We face challenges head on by faith. Read Hebrews 11. There, we read of people whose faith transcended the threat of pain and death by political mercenaries.

Christians are stakeholders in both the seen and unseen. We seek resolutions to a disordered cosmos. And so, we pray, we faith, we work. We pray, we faith, we work.  We pray, we faith, and we work every day.

Who holds the future? Not those called to “master the future” by the World Economic Forum. Masters of faith know Who holds the future and act accordingly.

Why were you and I born in this space and time? It was to know the grace and love of God in our times and to hold the world, the flesh and devil in check.

“God leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterward, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us.” -Paul Tournier

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. – Søren Kierkegaard

*****

The imagination plays an important part in faith. It should be no surprise to a Christian that the media militates against imagination leading to faith. The media images and sounds are from a world moving in the direction of the NWO. The media constantly lies, telling us to deny what know to be true. The media is paid to do so.

Protestants have banished images from their religious practice. And yet they fill their lives with media images. Huh. How can faith take hold without a holy imagination?

More on this in another post.

*****

Wise words from Fr. Chad Ripperger on the State of Evil in the World, Jan. 5th, 2023.

“The demons know their time is coming.” He speaks of a remnant. “God made man for rightly ordered worship.”

https://youtu.be/-yxCn5P2F-4

*****

The Men Who Made Klaus Schwab and The World Economic Forum – The Expose (expose-news.com)

The WEF Is A Cult Wrapped In A Grift Wrapped In An Enigma – Climate Change Dispatch

Elite Attend Davos In Private Jets, Tout ‘Carbon Footprint’ Trackers For Plebs – Climate Change Dispatch

Former UK Prime Minister Calls for “National Digital Infrastructure” to Track People’s Vaccination Status in the Event of Pandemic (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com)

WEF: U.S. Will Soon Make Hate Speech Illegal, Says EU Commissioner (breitbart.com)

*****

The Controlled Opposition: Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Dennis Prager

Has Moody Bible Institute become controlled opposition?

The Disturbing Origins of Ben Shapiro and the Rest of Conservative Incorporated | The Red Elephants (gab.com)

Comedian Tyler Fischer does hilarious impressions of Ben Shapiro, Jordan Petersen, and other “influencers” and their online drama… – Revolver News

*****

Informed Dissent:

Let’s start with fear porn . . .

Hmmmm:

Vax used for population control . . .

EXCLUSIVE: Pfizer’s secret guide for how to make a vaccine “safe and effective” (substack.com)

Even more proof: Masks don’t work (substack.com)

Opinion | How to stop overcounting covid deaths and hospitalizations – The Washington Post (archive.is)

“BBC is the Virus” – At Least 6 BBC Buildings Across UK Covered with Photos of People Who Died from COVID Vaccine (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com)

Sudden “Coincidental” Deaths:

25-Year-Old Doctor of Pharmacy Who Ran Multiple “Vaccine” Clinics Dies Suddenly ⋆ 🔔 The Liberty Daily

Former American Idol Contestant Dies Suddenly at 31 After Suffering ‘Apparent Heart Attack’ (thegatewaypundit.com)

2-Year-Old Child Dies Suddenly One Day After Receiving Both the COVID Vaccine and Annual Flu Vaccine (thegatewaypundit.com)

Dr. Harriet Hall, Staunch Critic of Anti-vaxxers and Alternative Medicine, Dies in Her Sleep (thegatewaypundit.com)

UPitt Pharm Student Lindsay Heck Dies Suddenly At 25 Years Old | Dauphin Daily Voice

MUST SEE: Ultra MAGA Combines Blatant Lies by Fauci and DC Elites with TGP TRUTHS… “No Question – It’s Mass Homicide” -EPIC VIDEO (thegatewaypundit.com)

Our Representatives:

Congressional Democrat Moves to End Free Speech for White People – National File

Indiana’s Todd Young voted for respect for Marriage Act

“gays just want to get married” – Isn’t that what many conservatives have no problem with.

Todd Young, Indiana’s senator, you replied to my message speaking against the “Respect for Marriage” Act saying that you voted for the Act to give married gays “dignity’. I replied that you don’t know the LGBTQ community. Gays discharge dignity to live their lifestyle. You virtue signaling fool!

According to a copy of the 17-count indictment Townhall has obtained, the adoptive dads allegedly performed oral sex on both boys, forced the children to perform oral sex on them, and anally raped their sons. . . .

William admitted to forcing his 11-year-old adopted son to perform an act of sodomy, a.k.a. “oral copulation,” on him “with the intent to satisfy his own…sexual desire,” reads a sworn affidavit filed in support of William’s overnight arrest back on July 27. . . .

An updated criminal affidavit says the child sexual abuse was filmed by William’s husband Zachary, “with whom he routinely engaged in sexually abusive acts” on the boy. Zachary, the household’s breadwinner, confessed to being the cameraman, and authorities allegedly found a folder on his cell phone—labeled “US”—that contained videos of William sexually abusing the child.

UPDATE: Gruesome Details Released in Gay Activist Couple’s Crimes on Their Adopted Sons (Warning on Content) (thegatewaypundit.com)

Investigation Uncovers an LGBTQ Pedo-Ring Using Adopted Kids For Sex and Porn Videos (bitchute.com)

Filed under 2023 current events, Christianity, Communism, cultural Marxism, Culture, Political Commentary, Progressivism, social commentary, social engineering, socialism, totalitarianism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Bit By Bit

September 25, 2022 Leave a comment

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Revelation 22:1

In his farewell address sixty-one years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned the nation.

“. . . we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

Today, we must stand against both the massive military–industrial complex that stands ready to generate kinetic military action to sustain itself AND the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the bio–industrial complex also ready to sustain itself.

As I write this, a conjunction of medical, scientific, industrial, and economic cohorts is being formed to bring about the r-evolution of mankind (Man 2.0). And with it comes the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power. Joe Biden, who Is not in control of his own faculties, issued a recent executive order (in parallel with World Economic Forum efforts) facilitating the re-engineering and control of bodies and brains and society.

Reading past the executive order’s sales pitch – “to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security” – we get a sense of what the bio-meddlers are up to.

The order states . . .

We need to develop genetic engineering technologies and techniques to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers; unlock the power of biological data, including through computing tools and artificial intelligence; and advance the science of scale‑up production while reducing the obstacles for commercialization so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.

And from the executive order’s Sec. 13.  Definitions.

(b)  The term “biotechnology” means technology that applies to or is enabled by life sciences innovation or product development.

(c)  The term “biomanufacturing” means the use of biological systems to develop products, tools, and processes at commercial scale.

(d)  The term “bioeconomy” means economic activity derived from the life sciences, particularly in the areas of biotechnology and biomanufacturing, and includes industries, products, services, and the workforce.

(j)  The term “key R&D areas” includes fundamental R&D of emerging biotechnologies, including engineering biology; predictive engineering of complex biological systems, including the designing, building, testing, and modeling of entire living cells, cell components, or cellular systems; quantitative and theory-driven multi-disciplinary research to maximize convergence with other enabling technologies; and regulatory science, including the development of new information, criteria, tools, models, and approaches to inform and assist regulatory decision-making.  These R&D priorities should be coupled with advances in predictive modeling, data analytics, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, high-performance and other advanced computing systems, metrology and data-driven standards, and other non-life science enabling technologies. (Emphasis mine)

(k)  The terms “equity” and “underserved communities” have the meanings given those terms by sections 2(a) and 2(b) of Executive Order 13985.

The disastrous rise of misplaced power? A LifeSite news article comments on a major concern for all of us:

Raising further privacy-related questions is Executive Order 14081’s establishment of a “Data for the Bioeconomy Initiative,” which calls for “biological data sets,” to include “genomic” (gene-related) information deemed critical for societal advances.

The Executive Order further calls for a “plan to fill any data gaps” and “make new and existing public data “findable” and “accessible.” This proposal raises the question of whether and how individuals’ genomic information might be publicly disclosed, and whether it would be done so only with informed consent.

if you used 23andMe you can be pretty sure that your DNA data will not remain private. Going forward, nothing about you will remain private as the executive order requires filling “any data gaps”. Are you willing to be “findable” and “accessible”?

1945. C.S. Lewis came out with the final book of his space trilogy. In the prescient That Hideous Strength we learn of the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) N.I.C.E. is a scientific and social engineering agency and a front for dark supernatural forces. There are significant parallels of N.I.C.E. activity to what is happening today.

Henry F. Schaefer III, Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, describes the workings of N.I.C.E. in C. S. Lewis: Science and Scientism:

The aims of the NICE, according to Lord Feverstone (who was Weston’s co-conspirator Dick Devine in the first book of the space trilogy) include “sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including prenatal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain.” Lewis was certain that a union of applied science and social planning with the power of government would result in the loss of freedom and individuality.

Mary Cuff, in That Hideous Strength: A Prophecy for Our Times, comments that Lewis wrote about the transformation of the main character who was in the ghastly hands of technocrats:

Importantly for us, while the N.I.C.E.—our era’s Sodom and Gomorrah—meets a fiery and bloody fate, Lewis is more interested in showing the arc of redemption for modern Adam and modern Eve. Jane and Mark spend most of the novel physically apart from each other, and yet they creep ever closer to that original harmony between man and woman. When Mark is suddenly confronted with the horrifying reality of the N.I.C.E., it is his relationship to the absent Jane that stirs his nobler instincts and allows him to discover both his manhood and his humanity. 

Are you willing for technocrats to transhuman you? Are you willing to be tinkered with? To be genetically modified along with the crops? Are you willing to be used as a biotech R&D project, just as humans were used as lab rats for the biotechnology of the mRNA jabs? Are you OK with someone messing with your DNA?

This executive order isn’t about making new and improved artificial limbs or pace makers. This order is about eradicating the imago Dei in human beings and replacing it with coded genetics and AI that serves the elites. This executive order is about abiding in stakeholder programs and not abiding in the True Vine. For, there is no mention of God anywhere around this order. Have you ever heard Klaus Schwab acknowledge God? Where do you think such “progress” comes from?

Self-referential humanists view themselves as gods. With access to tremendous wealth, they are able to exploit technology for their own ends. With such means they believe that they can achieve immortality via genetic engineering. With such means, they come to see themselves as transcendent – all-seeing, all knowing, and all powerful- and above death itself.

As gods, they demand your servitude, your praise and your worship. As the Transhumanist Psalm says . . .

For it was the WEF who reformed my inward parts;

WEF put me together in its genetics and molecular biology lab

I praise WEF, for I am genetically and socially remade.

Wonderful are your stakeholder programs,

That is what you would have me say.

With growing digitalization, do you see that app by app, rung by rung, command by command, and bit by bit we are being programmed for The Great Reset? With each input and AI response you and I engage in, we are being coded (trained) to execute certain functions in certain ways within a “stakeholder” program designed “to make positive change” as decided by the gods among us.

Globalist programmers chose the variables, the syntax, the keywords, decision making, the loops, the arrays, the functions. Data type “Human” is being concatenated with data type “Machines”. Our God-given high-level programming code is to be rewritten and compiled down into the lowest-level software to create an executable stakeholder program activated via an imbedded machine interface. With digitization driving everything, the once secure border between human and machine becomes an open border where “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist”.

I choose the crystal clear “river of the water of life” over a murky and mucked up data stream.

*****

Science can only describe things on a physical level. On that level we are complex chemical machines . . .

“A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries….”  -R. Buckminster Fuller, US architect & engineer (1895 – 1983) 

*****

Follow Joe:

Joe Allen on Twitter: “WHY “TRANSHUMANISM” IS THE ISSUE OF OUR AGE Technocracy is rising all around us. We’re watching a cultural revolution. If LSD was a precursor to the PC… If ubiquitous TVs are a precursor to the Metaverse… If 24/7 screen time is a precursor to neurotech…” / Twitter

*****

*****

Informed Dissent:

Trends in COVID Anxiety – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)

Booster Nations – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)

Tell your congressman no more money for bad CDC policy and no more data collection | Stand for Health Freedom

Dr. Paul Offit, one of the world’s most respected vaccine experts, is now officially an anti-vaxxer! (substack.com)

Study Reveals Masking Kids In School Made ‘No Significant Difference’ In Stopping COVID Spread. (thenationalpulse.com)

Transgender Surgery- Common Sense and Decency are Needed (substack.com)

“It’s big money”.. what they aren’t telling you about the shock video promoting trans mutilation of children… – Revolver News

Dr. Malone – Inventor of the mRNA tech that was used by Pfizer and Moderna to develop their covid injections:

“The more DOSES you receive…, the HIGHER your RISK for INFECTIONS, DISEASE and DEATH compared to the unvaccinated.”

Florida Versus Davos – The American Mind

Digital Harassment, Intimidation:

Biden Regime Moves Forward with US Central Bank Digital Currency So They Can Ban, Censor and Shut Down Accounts of Boisterous Conservatives and Starve Them Out (thegatewaypundit.com)

“e” is for Evacuate:

Good Grief Green Energy:

The Global ‘Green Energy’ Push is Causing Fertilizer Shortages and Threatening The Human Food Supply. (thenationalpulse.com)

(WATCH) Power Problems | Sharyl Attkisson

Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One – WSJ (archive.ph)

Huh?

Liberal Logic: Martha’s Vineyard Calls 50 Illegal Immigrants a “Humanitarian Crisis” – But 4.2 Million Illegal Immigrants Crossing a “Secure Border” (thegatewaypundit.com)

No, No, No! to ESG:

Elon Musk [ESG] “has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

Analysis: Musk’s ESG attack spotlights $35 trillion industry confusion | Reuters

The ESG Investing Backlash Arrives – WSJ

Financial Advisor IQ – Peter Thiel-Backed Startup Rolls Out ‘Profits Over Politics’ ETF

DRLL ETF Alert: What to Know About the New Anti-ESG Fund for Energy Stocks | InvestorPlace

Economic Disaster:

WARNING SIGNS: Estimated GDP by Atlanta Fed CRASHES 1 FULL POINT This Week! (thegatewaypundit.com)

Defeating the Marxian Panopticon | Michael O’Fallon, Charlie Kirk, James Lindsay

Filed under 2022 current events, humanism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Science, social commentary, social engineering, The Great Reset, transhumanism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Message

July 25, 2021 Leave a comment

In his current state, it might take years for Vic to recover his right mind. He’s been flaying around and mumbling the whole time in the back seat of my car. His mind, no longer aware of surroundings, seemed to be in a state of virtual reality. And that is the reason for the all-night drive.

I was told to not bring a phone or any electronic device with me. I was given a hand-drawn map with sketched landmarks to direct me once I left Highway 16.

Down the backroads, I questioned what I saw. Those Aspens by a fence – is that what’s shown here? Was that the rock formation I was supposed to turn at?  Where are the three lone towering Ponderosa Pines? Is that the field of wildflowers I drive alongside?

After two hours I found myself at a huge rock formation that jutted out northward per the “N” on my map. According to the sketch, an Indian would be there waiting for me. What happens now?

Out from behind a rock came the Indian. He came over to my car and looked inside. When he saw Vic, he shook his head. He looked at me, pointed to himself and said “Notah”. He asked me if I had any electronic devices. I assured him that I didn’t. He told me to follow his pickup truck.

After driving an hour or so, somewhere around Bighorn National Forest, we drove up to the off-the-grid Fire and Flame Human Refuge. Notah helped me walk Vic to the door of the lodge. A petite older woman came out and helped me walk Vic inside. I turned to thank Notah but he was gone.

Inside, there was pine wood everywhere. I felt I had returned to summer camp. A door swung open and the room filled with the aroma of baked corn bread . . . and chili?

With the woman’s help, I brought Vic into the Great Room. I settled him in an arm chair that faced outside. A field of wild flowers was in view. In the distance, fir tree-skirted mountains. Vic put out his hand and began twitching his thumb as if flicking a TV remote button.

There must have been twenty-five people in the Great Room. Catatonic people.

Sharon introduced herself. She was the one who had helped me with Vic. I learned that she managed the refuge. I asked about the people in the Great Room.

“Do you see that woman standing by the window?” Sharon pointed.

“Yes.”

“That is Marisa. She is not looking at the wilderness in front of her. She sees only her reflection in the glass. Up till now Marisa has spent most of her time taking selfies and posting them on social media.”

“What about that man who seems to be constantly scrolling with his finger?”

“Before Bill came here, he was constantly checking social media pages for updates. He developed the scrolling-finger habit as part of a social-validation feedback loop. Dopamine was released into his brain when someone liked or commented on something he posted. Right now, he’s in withdrawal from the social-validation feedback of dopamine.”

“What about that teenage girl over there? The one with the wide-eyed look?” I asked.

“Myra was brought here by her mother. She had isolated herself from her family. She spent hours of the day on social media. Myra has a fear of missing out. It is a common phenomenon for teens to want to be socially connected. Technology offers a non-stop social-validation feedback loop. A teenager, fearing the possibility of social alienation, goes online constantly for validation.

Myra developed a sleep disorder after staying up all night texting. Her school work suffered. She developed poor eating habits and gained weight. The negative effects of her social media interface made her depressed, angry and less social. Technology presents teenagers with a false sense of relational security while ignoring those in the same house.”

“Is that young boy here for the same reason?” I nodded my head in the boy’s direction.

“Yes, similar reasons. His father brought him here. John was online playing games for hours and hours. His father asked him to spend time with him outside – play catch, go fishing. But John refused. Like Myra’s social-validation obsession, when John didn’t play or interact with the games, he thought he was missing out. His father could see that John was missing out on life, so he brought him here.”

“What about that older couple sitting in the arm chairs?”

“They are Jim and Sally. Their close friends brought them here. They were very concerned for them. They told me that Jim and Sally would get up in the morning, turn on the TV and listen for the weather forecast. They would leave the TV on the rest of the day and sit and listen to the world’s take on things and the advertised solution: problem, problem, problem, cure; problem, problem, problem, cure; problem, cure; day and night.

By their friend’s account, Jim and Sally had become terrified, angry and even despairing by what they heard. Honestly, that’s what Noise does to people. C’mon. Let’s listen to them for a moment . . .”

“Jim, you are a racist.”

“We both are Sally. They said so.”

“They’re telling us that we could die from cancer or climate change or COVID or the guy in the White House if we don’t do something.”

“How about we just die, Sally, and be done with the whole business?”

“Now Jim. We should listen to them. They know better than us. They’ve told us so many times that we can’t trust our own thinking . . .”

“I am glad their friend brought them here,” Sharon said. “They needed relief from the Noise . . . At Fire and Flame, we don’t give people sedatives. We give them space to work out their salvation.”

Sharon then asked me why I brought Vic to Fire and Flame.

“Vic has been a friend of mine since high school. We hung around each other and kidded each other all the time. But then things changed when he got devices. He was no longer present with me or to anyone, really. It seemed to me and his other friends that Vic was using technology to avoid us. He talked incessantly about what this and that could do.

Vic’s other friends gave up on Vic. They had come to find out that Vic had spent large portions of his paycheck on new devices. He bragged about the new devices until one day he came to one of his friends and asked him for a loan. Vic wasn’t able to pay the mortgage. He had to borrow money. But that wasn’t the breaking point for Vic.

I heard from a friend that Vic wanted to join me at the Remnant camp to escape the COVIDians. Two people had come to his door and asked him for his Vax papers. Vic learned the reason they came to his door: they had been monitoring him through his devices. He didn’t have Vax papers because he refused to be vaccinated.

The two COVIDians declared Vic “unsafe’ and told him that he was banned from the Internet, email and online accounts. They took away his phone, laptop and internet connection. They wrote his name down on a ledger and said they would be back the next day.

I relayed back to Vic that he could come to the Remnant camp but he would have to go to Fire and Flame first.”

As I was talking to Sharon, Vic got out of his chair and began walking around the Great Room. He was again flaying his arms and mumbling to himself.

“When they first come here,” Sharon said, “they are agitated.” They haven’t been used to having their hands free. They are restless, hyperactive, and full of nervous energy. They cannot tolerate a sense of boredom and look for highly stimulating activity. They walk around and say and do things and are unaware of the effect they have on others. It will take time for Vic to become focused and to stay focused on reality.

“Fire and Flame . . .?”

“Fire and Flame is a portal to a world away from the constant pinging of digital devices. The Dark Forces of this world produce relentless Noise. It is meant to unsettle and distract you from The Message. Here, there is Signal not Noise.”

“Message? Signal?” I asked.

“You will find out tonight.” Sharon replied. “C’mon I’ve prepared a room for you. You can rest before dinner.”

****

A bell rang. We were summoned to dinner and I was again reminded of summer camp. I got up, splashed some water on my face, got dressed and headed down the hallway.

 The dining room was another pine-paneled Great Room: floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides and a fireplace. Twenty-four pine-wood tables filled the room.

When everyone had gathered and were seated, Sharon asked “Evangelist Mark” to please ask the Lord’s blessing on the meal. Evangelist Mark stood up and prayed the blessing on the cornbread, chili, salad and the lemonade (what I used to call “bug juice” in my camp days). Odd how the past and present comingle and not just in my dreams.

I looked around the room. Six people sat at each table. And though so many filled the Great Room, there was little chatter. I saw many somber faces. Some stared off and ate, unaware that others were sitting across from them. Others fidgeted with their silverware and played with their food. A few were animated and tried talking to those around them but received no response.

Sharon sat down and gave a big sigh. She and her helpers had made sure everyone had food before sitting down. “How’s the food?”

“Delicious! The aromas had made me when I came in this morning,” I replied. “Is that Bach I hear in the background?

“Yes. Bach is the sound of redemption. It is particularly effective in helping to balance our brains between dissonance and consonance. The mind is then able to focus and attain deep concentration. This enables an inner quickening of the imagination, creativity, memory and intuition.”

Across the table from the two of us sat Joe. Sharon asked Joe to tell me why he had come to Fire and Flame.

“Well,” Joe began, “. . .  a 5G network. I was told that it was the bee’s knees. They said it was designed to connect virtually everyone and everything together including machines, objects, and devices. With it, I was to be almost omniscient – aware of everyone and everything through a mobile ecosystem.

But using it day after day I found myself thinking about the device and what it wanted me to be aware of and wanted me to do next. I had become connected to an impersonal object that was directing my life with its AI. I was fooling myself – actually, I was subverting myself – pretending to be aware and to be in control of my life.

“That’s what brought me here. The addiction to being omniscient and to controlling things was intense. I spent most of my time working the device. I was doing apps, pushing buttons – nonstop! I finally asked myself “Why does my heart tell me to think like this? Inside my head . . . it was like John Cage music playing over and over.

One day I heard of Fire and Flame from a neighbor who was fleeing the COVIDian and Woke persecutions. He said that he was going to the Remnant camp. One night I left everything behind when his car showed up. He drove me here.”

Joe ended his account with a smile.

“Jennifer,” Sharon leaned over. “This afternoon Vic broke into my office. He was looking for a device to get on the internet. I have none. Then he started breaking into cars and trucks looking for a way to connect and found nothing. Then he ran into the woods. Notah found him and brought him back.”

“Vic may try again tonight. If he does Notah will follow him. No one is a prisoner here. We understand it’s a major struggle to be free from Noise. Notah will ask if he wants to return. If not, he will take Vic to a bus stop many miles away from here.

“We are a refuge for humans. We can’t help trans-humans, if that is what Vic wants. They are wired for Noise. We are to live as humans, we are to love. Trans-humans cannot live, cannot love. They only obey digital prompts and inputs.”

****

At twilight, the group from dinner came down to the fire pit. We sat down on the semi-circle of logs around the bonfire. The sun had gone down behind the horizon of mountains and no longer gilded their peaks.

Above us, in the blue-to-black July sky, a conjunction of terrestrial objects – Venus, Mars and the moon. They were easily visible. Venus shone brighter and slightly below the red planet. The familiar moon was making its circuit below.

Across that cosmic vista came a silhouette of a black whirring object. And then another. Sharon leaned over and told me “They are the regime’s Charon drones. They are keeping an eye on us. The regime and the people of the Noise are terrified of the people of the Signal”.

At that moment, a young boy, maybe ten or eleven years old, got up and stood next to the fire. He began . . .

Psalm 1

Happy are those
    who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
    or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees . . .

The boy recited the Psalm from memory. He sat down and then an older woman – a grandmother? – got up. She began to recite Psalm 61 from memory . . .

Hear my cry, O God;
    listen to my prayer.
From the end of the earth I call to you,
    when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock
    that is higher than I;
for you are my refuge,
    a strong tower against the enemy . . .

When she had finished, a teenage girl stood up and recited Psalm 104 from memory . . .

 Bless the Lord, O my soul.
    O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honor and majesty,
    wrapped in light as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a tent,
    you set the beams of your chambers on the waters,
you make the clouds your chariot,
    you ride on the wings of the wind,
you make the winds your messengers,
    fire and flame your ministers . . .

When she had finished, she sat down. Each of them had recited their Psalm as a dramatic reading. The words came from their soul.

The drones, now four of them, blotted out starlight as they hovered and circled. I looked around. Was I the only one who noticed them?

Someone yelled “Evangelist Mark! Give us the Good News!” More joined the call.

A man, fiftyish, got up. He took off his glasses and handed them to Sharon. (I learned later that they were husband and wife.) He covered her with a blanket.

The night air had become chilly. More wood was thrown onto the bonfire. People huddled together under blankets. Faces became animated with the fluctuating glow of the roaring fire. All eyes were on Evangelist Mark.

This is where the good news starts – the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son . . .

I recognized the words from the opening of The Gospel According to Mark.

“A shout goes up in the desert; make way for the Lord! Clear a straight path for him! . . .” . John the Baptizer appeared in the desert . . . “Someone a lot stronger than me is coming close behind” . . . This is how it happened . . .After John’s arrest, Jesus came in to Galilee, announcing God’s good news. “The time is fulfilled! God’s kingdom is arriving! Turn back and believe the good news!” . . .When the sun went down and evening came, they brought to Jesus everyone who was ill, all who were demon possessed . . .

Jesus went back to Capernaum . . . a crowd gathered with the result that people couldn’t even get near the door as he was telling them the message . . . A party arrived: four people carrying a paralyzed man, bringing him to Jesus. They couldn’t get through to him because of the crowd, so they opened up the roof above where he was . . . they used ropes to let down the stretcher the paralyzed man was lying on.  Jesus saw their faith and said to the paralyzed man, “Child, your sins are forgiven!” . . .

Evangelist Mark, from memory, continued his dramatic narration of the whole gospel to its conclusion . . .

When Jesus was raised, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first of all to Mary Magdalene . . . Later Jesus appeared to the eleven . . . he told them off for their unbelief and hardheartedness . . . “Go into all the world and announce the message to all creation” . . . When the Lord Jesus had spoken with them, he was taken up into heaven, and sat down at God’s right hand. They went out and announced the message everywhere. The Lord worked with them, validating their message by the signs that accompanied them.

For over an hour, the fireside group sat captivated by The Message. When Evangelist Mark sat down, someone in the group began singing. Then others joined:

If we die with him, we shall live with him;

If we endure patiently, we shall reign with him;

If we deny him, he will deny us:

If we are faithless, he remains faithful. For he cannot deny his own self.

While they sang, I looked for Vic. Then I saw him leaning against a tree, back from the group. Shadows came and went across him, as many began walking back to their rooms. Was that a sparkle of belief in his eyes? Was that the glistening of a tear?

Sharon and her husband Tom – “Evangelist Mark” – walked me back to the refuge rooms. I was tired. Tomorrow I would make the long drive back to the Remnant Camp and to people of the Signal there. Sharon told me that Notah would help me ditch the drones. He knew when they came and went. He could tell by their noise.

©Jennifer Ann Johnson, Kingdom Venturers, 2021, All Rights Reserved

*****

https://youtu.be/xcNj9f4oykU

*****

War Room Episodes:

“Episode_1093 The people aren’t waiting politicians to save them anymore, and we discuss the effects of the vaccine.”
“Episode_10979 Our military is being weakened and Christian churches are under attack in Canada”

*****

Who is Dr. Malone?

*****

Informed Dissent:

Camilla Canepa was operated on by Gianluigi Zona, director of the neurosurgical and neuro-traumatological clinic of the San Martino hospital: “I had never seen a brain that was affected by such an extensive and severe thrombosis.”  . . .

The girl arrived in the emergency room in the Lavagna hospital on June 3, just a week after the AstraZeneca shot. She had complained of severe headaches.

Beautiful young Italian girl killed by Vaccine… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

Aussie police execute door to door ‘Vaccine Education’… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

Two studies: Covid-19 vaccines trigger Graves’ disease in some female health care workers | Sharyl Attkisson

Biden’s Door to Door Vaccine Sales Pitch Leaked: Tells ‘Ambassadors’ to Ignore ‘No Solicitation’ Signs and to Withhold Vaccine Side Effects (thegatewaypundit.com)

(UPDATED) Exclusive Summary: Covid-19 Vaccine Concerns | Sharyl Attkisson

‘Unvaccinated should not be allowed to work, have access to children’… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

Macron — The un-Vaccinated officially become second class citizens… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

Natural infection vs vaccination: Which gives more protection? – Israel National News

45 Year Old John Hopkins Hospital Employee Dies After Reaction To Mandatory Covid Shot – The Empoweror

Vaccinated people now make up almost 47% of all new Covid cases, symptom-tracking app claims | Daily Mail Online

“This Is Worrying Me Quite A Bit”: mRNA Vaccine Inventor Shares Viral Thread Showing COVID Surge In Most-Vaxxed Countries | ZeroHedge

Archbishop Viganò: Vaccines made with fetal tissue are a ‘human sacrifice of innocent victims offered to Satan’ | Blogs | LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

Woman Has Both Legs and Hands Amputated After COVID Jab | Populist Press 2021 ©

Bombshell lawsuit: Gov’t whistleblower says coronavirus vaccine deaths at least 45,000 | News | LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

47 studies confirm ineffectiveness of masks for Covid and 32 more confirm their negative health effects | News | LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

*****

Anti-vaccine groups changing into ‘dance parties’ on Facebook to avoid detection (nbcnews.com)

How anti-vaccine groups are camouflaging themselves on Facebook (yahoo.com)

Added 7-27-21:

>>>>>>> You will want to listen to this video about the COVIDian vaccines before it is removed from YouTube:

“. . . So, it is absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form . . . permanently damaged lungs . . . “

https://youtu.be/5sIWb9GTbbE

Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, cultural Marxism, Gospel of Mark, pandemic, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, Public Health, Short Story, short story, The Gospel of Mark, totalitarianism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

My Times are Not in Your Hands

August 4, 2019 Leave a comment

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.
—Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals

During the recent Democratic Presidential ‘debates’, the Progressive Element candidates for president reveal just how incongruous Progressive thinking has become. Two of the candidates, Biden and Booker, stated that they want to beat up Trump, inciting the crowd with their aggression. This within the Progressive mindset that publicly denounces bullying and violence. The Communism appropriator Bolshevik Bernie Sanders and Cherokee heritage appropriator Elizabeth “Angry Eyes” Warren push for collectivist health care as a “yuman right” (a “right” that will consume all of your hard-earned property rights). This while the Progressive Element condemns the Trump campaign of Russian collusion. There’s more from these bizarre Progressivists.

CHARLESTON, SC – JANUARY 17: The stage at the Gaillard Center is prepared for tonight’s Democratic debate on January 17, 2016 in Charleston, South Carolina. Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley spent yesterday campaigning in South Carolina in lead up to tonight’s debate. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Biden offered a new and improved Obamacare, a dismal and expensive failure for the consumer. The other candidates want to ditch him, Obamacare and Obama’s legacy for their own new and improved version of collectivism.

Biden said that healthcare is the most important issue facing voters and Buttigieg says climate change is the most important issue. This while the Progressive Element legalizes full-term abortion, promotes physically harmful sexual activity and travels to a climate confab at Google camp (Sicily) in private jets and mega-yachts.

According to Italian media reports, guests were expected to arrive in an eye-popping 114 private jets.

The Post guesstimated that with 114 flights from Los Angeles to Palermo, the planes would have pumped an astonishing 100,000 kilos of C02 into the atmosphere.

A-listers arrive in private jets, mega yachts for climate confab

One of the anti-Semitic socialist spice girls, Ocasio-Cortez Spice, has declared that the world will end in twelve years if we don’t do something about climate change. So, I understand the need to confab and to add ‘fuel’ to the narrative before it’s too late. Our betters need to show us a better way.

“Reparation H” Kamala Harris wants you to pay for slavery that didn’t happen on your watch. This from the party of the KKK and Jim Crow. And new age guru Marianne Williamson thinks all you need is love. And that means open borders for the lot of them. This while the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and others under Democrat control for decades are becoming third-world-like hell-hole cities – overrun with the homeless, rats, used needles, human feces and the spread of infectious diseases. This from the Democrat socialists who say they will do socialism better than what history accords. This – their love for humanity knows no dystopian bounds.

Open borders? They are Progressivism’s response to the perceived authoritarianism of the Right. For borders, boundaries, and laws are too legalistic, fundamentalist and not inclusive. So, they will promote lawlessness as a means to an end – diluting the country with illegals who will vote for more “Anything Goes” Progressivism. This while the streets west and south of “Welcoming City” Chicago are swarming with the law-unto-themselves gang members who slaughter at will. This while they treat our laws as a three-year-old girl who decides she is a boy.

Who are Progressives? The Progressive Element? Besides offering a narrative that Progressivism’s vision will make the world a better place while being equally detached from the reality of this world, Progressivist’s ideological worldview has many other unsettling characteristics.

Economist Thomas Sowell in his book A Conflict of Visions, Ideological Origins of Political Struggle, provides background and understanding of Progressivism’s “unconstrained vision”.

In the Summary and Implications section of the Visons of Social Processes chapter, Sowell writes comparing the “unconstrained vision” with the “constrained vision”:

The two visions differ fundamentally as to the sources of human survival and progress. According to unconstrained vision, the patterned behavior of society is successful, just and progressive insofar as it reflects the articulated rationality of man in general and of the most intellectually and morally advanced people in particular. Order – and especially a just and progressive order – is the result of design, backed by the commitment of people dedicated to the general welfare. In broad outline, this is the vision of the “age of reason”, which began in the eighteenth-century France and has spread throughout the Western world and beyond.

In the constrained vision, where man – individually and collectively – lacks both the intellectual and moral prerequisites for such deliberate, comprehensive planning, order evolves historically without design, and more effectively than when it is designed, Language is one example of such order without design and its complexity, subtlety, and effectiveness exemplify the power of systemic processes which tap the experience of all, instead of relying on special wisdom or nobility of any individual or council. A prominent element within this tradition has applied the constrained vision to economics…. given full expression by Adam Smith and is exemplified today in the writings of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

Sowell goes on to describe the difference of the two visions regarding social processes:

The unconstrained vision tends to judge processes by their results – “Is it right? Is it good? …The constrained vision judges rightness and goodness as process characteristics rather than the results: A foot race is fair if it is run under the proper conditions – regardless of who wins or loses, or how often the same person wins. Justice, in the constrained vision, thus means adherence to agreed upon rules, while in the unconstrained vision, something is just or unjust according the end results.

 Progressivism manifests its end result vision with the likes of participation trophies, allowing men to use the women’s locker room and restroom and to participate in women’s sports. Its version of end result equality is a driver for socialism – making every outcome equal. It is also the thinking behind ad hoc justice, which eschews the rule of law, applicable to everyone, and rules on the basis of individual circumstances and narratives rather than behavior and accountability. Progressivism’s ‘justice’, as Sowell describes above, says that the systems and processes produced the criminal. The individual is therefore not accountable for these things. This feeds the narrative that our betters must be in control to produce better people.

To produce equal outcomes, though, requires control of individuals and processes. And that is what the Democrat candidates are proposing in various ways. They want your times in their hands.

To gain control Progressives paint a dystopian future without them in power. Per them, the world will end if we don’t act, democracy will end if they are not given control, and rights, such as slaughtering the human in your womb and men disguised as women appropriating women’s concerns, will be taken away by the Right. Hence the calculating narrative described in my previous post, Manipulated to Follow the Course of This World. The blatant irony of the narrative is that it does not invoke the Age of Reason”. Rather, it invokes a mercenary army of passions to fight for the Progressive narrative.

Reading these ideological vision characteristics one can begin to see that the Progressive Element sees its members, its candidates, as your betters, as Anointed Ones. It was not long ago that one of the “Anointed Ones”, Hillary Clinton, gave the world her “unconstrained vision”:

It Takes a Village: Picture Book

“It Takes a Village offers a universal, unifying message. It captures perfectly Clinton’s vision of a multicultural America working toward a constructive goal. So hopeful and forward-looking.” —The Washington Post

 More could be said but I’ll end here. I’ve written several posts about the Progressive Element with a desire to inform the reader of its diabolical ways. Though proclaiming a roadmap that is just and fair and caring it acts in just the opposite ways. They make excuses for their behavior while condemning and persecuting those who do not serve its narrative. They pronounce good “evil” and evil “good”. Their means to ‘equality’ is to bring others (males, whites, the rich…) down and to say that two things that are not equal are equal (male-female marriage and homosexuality). They become enraged when gendered pronouns are used. Coercing language and humans into confusing nonsense is characteristic of Progressives and certainly of the Evil One and his minions.

The values the Progressive Element extols, couched in humanist and even Christian terms, comes from the father of lies. There is no truth in the Progressive Element. The road map these false prophets propose is the “wide way” Jesus talked about (Matt. 7:13-15. Progressives “come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.”

 

Therefore, I will not put my life in their hands. Rather, I submit to the One True Narrative…

My times are in your hand;
deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors. -Psalm 31: 15

Filed under 2019 current events, Culture, humanism, Lawlessness, Liberalism, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, socialism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lost in Self-logos

March 31, 2019 Leave a comment

 

Thus, in the conception of Humanity, the three essential aspects of Positivism, its subjective principle, its objective dogma, and its practical object, are united. Towards Humanity, who is for us the only true Great Being, we, the conscious elements of whom she is composed, shall henceforth direct every aspect of our life, individual or collective. Our thoughts will be devoted to the knowledge of Humanity, our affections to her love, our actions to her service. -Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism [1848]

 

Mankind learned centuries ago, by the efforts of men like Polish astronomer Copernicus, that we do not exist in a geocentric universe. Now, according to some physicists, mankind is at the center of the cosmos. In order to avoid a Creator scenario, these scientists promote the anthropic theory:  the reason for the perfectly-tuned universe, for its fundamental physical constants, and the reason why things exist as they are on earth is that human existence required it. To support this theory, they posit a multiverse scenario with infinite trials and errors until man could exist.

Amir Aczel, PH. D., in his book Why Science Does Not Disprove God, describes some physicists’ viewpoint:

…if we are here, and the parameters need to be perfectly chosen for us to be here, then surely there must be infinitely many other places where parameters are wrong. We are here because we can only live where the parameters are right for our existence.

Now, I have no issue with the possibility of multiverses. But as Dr. Aczel writes, the proposed multiverse-as-cause theory to replace the creation narrative offers no mechanism to create the multiverses. The theory proposes an infinite number of somehow existing parameters doing something over and over infinitely many times to finally ‘create’ the perfect conditions for a habitable zone. Dr. Aczel goes on to state, “The anthropic theory is the weakest route to the multiverse.” As I see it, the theory has no mechanism for merit other than those who promote a God-less universe. The theory is basically one of effect with no Ultimate Cause. It is a theory of chance which says man is the reason for his existence.

Man-centered philosophical endorsement would come from the likes of Nietzsche. His “God is dead” rejection of Christian values was a push for mankind to move beyond good and evil and to loving necessity. One is therefore to live with uncertainty as a “superman”, above and center of it all. From the mighty-warrior Nimrod to Wagnerian heroes to the present FX-ed generated superheroes versions of Nietzsche’s “superman” have been around since the Garden. The “superman” notion is akin to Darwin’s theory natural selection and the survival of the fittest. In Nietzschean terms, What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

Social scientists place man at the center of the universe. Since Adam and Eve’s forced exit from the Garden of Eden, man, it seems to me, has always struggled to reclaim the Garden. Many seek to create a Garden Utopia through a relentless and self-directed improvement of the species. Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species supplies the process: selection, struggle, favored, preservation. Engels and Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and MaoTse-tung used Darwin’s theory of natural selection as justification for their “class struggle” political and economic theories. Millions have been imprisoned and slaughtered under the banner of “class struggle”. Strands of this ‘societal improvement’ is behind the current humanist thinking which is now being promulgated systematically by the Progressive Element. For Progressives, the social multiverses are the identity-centered tribes they select and deem struggling and require favored status and preservation.

Man, as the principle cause and logos of the universe, creates his own values. Thus, the religion of humanity. Secular humanitarianism is the tie that binds the Progressive Element: atheists, agnostics, deists, social Darwinists and those who buy into sentimental Christianity for the sake of progress. The creation of man-as-logos values produces a querulous society of competing values, hence the culture wars. Amorphous and relativistic values are promoted under the high-sounding and ambiguous rubric of “social justice”. Individualism is turned inward toward self-centered anodyne interest to be protected by “rights”. Progressivism inverts The Second Commandment: “love me as you love yourself”.

Vying for special status, groups call themselves “marginalized” and “victims”. This self-centered push for center stage drives identity politics: self-designated victims ‘struggling’ to ‘survive’ require ‘protection’ (rights). “I’ll make you care about what I care about – me” is the right to impose myself on others and call it “social justice”. Man, as logos, defines the impetus of the “social justice warrior:  resentment disguised as compassion which drives the will to power.

Resentment? Life is not easy to begin with. The arbitrariness of life and the forces beyond our control fuel resentment when contemplated in the context of others. Resentment leads to claiming that one’s gender or sexual proclivity or income status or healthcare as being victimized by others. Such a worldview, one without meaning except for self and necessity and a belief that relationships are defined by power, breeds contempt for those having some perceived advantage. Hence, the demand for societal and economic reparations and at any cost to others. Resentment is fueled by zero-sum thinking: one does not have because someone else has.

Resentment disguised as compassion? Man, as logos, wants to be seen as a self-justified humanitarian. Virtue signaling accomplishes that while being resentful at the same time. It is no-cost faux-altruism intended to make one appear empathetic and compassionate without appearing resentful except for those who question their virtue signaling. This is underneath the self-righteous clamor for the right of universal healthcare, of potable water, of inclusion, diversity, equity and the host of arbitrary self-placating categories.

Resentment disguised as compassion which drives the will to power? In an age that is increasingly nihilistic, power has become the transcendent meaning to life. And once you believe that relationships are defined by power you exercise the will to power to subjugate others to the relationships you desire. The exercise of the will to power implements mental-conditioning of its subjects, hence the revision of language and of history, to fit the narrative. The power to create one’s own truth is what is desired.

The best way to sum this mash of words is with the clarity of two Scripture readings from today. The first relates the man-as-logos worldview. The second reading describes those who are Logos centered.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son was the gospel reading for today: Luke 15: 11-32. The would-be Prodigal Son demands his rights (inheritance) from his father. The son considers his father dead to him. The father transfers assets over to his son. His son turns his shares into cash as he sells the property his father had accumulated over time through the father’s effort. The universe of one departs with his values and his will to power. He’s off to a distant land, far from the logos he knows. He leaves behind his father and the remaining older son to pick up his portion of work.

A lifestyle of nihilistic (sever famine) and sensate pleasure (self-directed compassion) has him eating slop in a pig sty. He’s sees that he is just another animal. His humanism ran out of money. He returns to his senses and heads home. His father sees his son a long way off and runs to meet him. The prodigal repents and the father rejoices in his return from the distant land of self. There is a celebration for the son who was lost but is found … alive. They are reconciled. But the brother has a growing resentment disguised as compassion for his father (“I’ve been slaving for you all these years!”) which drives his will to power to up his rights. He feels his rights, his pride of place, is diminished by his brother’s return and the father showering him with a wealth of unintended consequences.

The second reading is from the Epistles: 2 Corinthians 5: 16- 17. Paul writes about a Logos worldview that sees humanity from a kingdom perspective. He writes what the Prodigal experiences when he returns to the Logos and what the other brother claims as his right to experience.

From this moment on, therefore, we don’t regard anybody from a merely human point of view. Even if we once regarded the Messiah that way, we don’t do so any longer. Thus, if any man is in the Messiah, there is a new creation! Old things have gone, and look – everything has become new!

 

 

~~~

I recommend reading The Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis for insight into humanism.

Filed under Christianity, cultural Marxism, Culture, humanism, Liberalism, nihilism, Progressivism, social justice, social science Tagged with , , , , , ,

The West: Moral Courage or Moral Chaos?

April 20, 2015 Leave a comment

“…Obama and modern liberal world view of moral equivalence:” * are key words to understanding America’s weakness in the face of Evil.

I believe that the philosophy of Epicureanism, a philosophy inculcated into mankind’s worldview hundreds of years prior to the Renaissance and The Enlightenment periods of history, is found in the DNA of American thinking. America’s make-shift democracy was shaped by that philosophy. America’s democracy now suffers moral ambiguity from that same sensory pleasure, godless philosophy.

Also shaping the foundation of America, the Puritans brought with them an ethos of Judeo-Christian understanding; an ethos that negated Epicureanism and that would become the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the rule of law. But over time with sensory pleasure and materialism being pushed as elementary rights and with God being pushed into the attic America’s moral stance is afloat in the ether. Democracy is helpless to bring man back to his senses. It has, in fact, become the aggregate of a growing amoral demos.

Epicureanism, embraced by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and other early American founders is inherent to that driving force that summons the “American Dream” from the depths of sheer pleasure. It has created an America that is prone to moral equivalency (basically, lacking in judgment and discernment; synthesizing good with evil) and to a lack of moral courage, the latter Alexander Solzhenitsyn addresses in his speech below.

Solzhenitsyn’s speech also provides for us an accurate description of our current leadership from his then vantage point of 1978 and his years spent in gulags for writing truth to power.

Excerpts from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speech at Harvard, June of 1978, “A World Split Apart” (emphasis mine):  Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

When the modern Western states were created, the principle was proclaimed that governments are meant to serve man and man lives to be free and to pursue happiness. See, for example, the American Declaration of Independence. Now, at last, during past decades technical and social progress has permitted the realization of such aspirations: the welfare state.

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and of such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness — in the morally inferior sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to attain them imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings. Active and tense competition fills all human thoughts without opening a way to free spiritual development.

The individual’s independence from many types of state pressure has been guaranteed. The majority of people have been granted well-being to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about. It has become possible to raise young people according to these ideals, leaving them to physical splendor, happiness, possession of material goods, money, and leisure, to an almost unlimited freedom of enjoyment. So who should now renounce all this? Why? And for what should one risk one’s precious life in defense of common values and particularly in such nebulous cases when the security of one’s nation must be defended in a distant country? Even biology knows that habitual, extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.

…

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale than the legal one is not quite worthy of man either. A society which is based on the letter of the law and never reaches any higher is taking very scarce advantage of the high level of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses. And it will be simply impossible to stand through the trials of this threatening century with only the support of a legalistic structure.

….

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

And what shall we say criminality as such? Legal frames, especially in the United States, are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorist’s civil rights. There are many such cases.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature. The world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems, which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.

The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media.) But what sort of use does it make of this freedom?

…

And yet — no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being. Nothing is left, then, but concessions, attempts to gain time, and betrayal. Thus at the shameful Belgrade conference free Western diplomats in their weakness surrendered the line where enslaved members of Helsinki Watchgroups are sacrificing their lives.

Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost; there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development. But one must be blind in order not to see that oceans no longer belong to the West, while land under its domination keeps shrinking. The two so-called world wars (they were by far not on a world scale, not yet) have meant internal self-destruction of the small, progressive West which has thus prepared its own end. The next war (which does not have to be an atomic one and I do not believe it will) may well bury Western civilization forever.

Facing such a danger, with such splendid historical values in your past, at such a high level of realization of freedom and of devotion to freedom, how is it possible to lose to such an extent the will to defend oneself?

How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about? How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.

This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.”

There too many nuggets of truth to post. Here is the link to the speech: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm

*The above quote and this post, a revised version of a comment I made, are from this post: “Sharansky: The U.S. has “lost the courage of its convictions”

****

BTW: from the Wikipedia link above, the section “On Russia and the Jews” regarding Solzhenitsyn’s supposed anti-Semitism: “Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel denied this claim and insisted that Solzhenitsyn was not an anti-Semite: “He is too intelligent, too honest, too courageous, too great a writer.” He added he wished Solzhenitsyn were more sensitive to Jewish suffering, but believed his insensitivity to be unconscious.”

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Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-Ware v. 2.015

February 7, 2015 Leave a comment

As my last post noted Greece, the home of the ancient philosopher Epicurus, rejected fiscal restraint and austerity in exchange for “Hope is coming” debt finagling.

Epicurus sans hammock

Epicurus sans hammock

 “Syriza” or “Let the Good Times Roll Without Repercussions Party” has won a short-lived victory in Epicurean Greece: “Avoid pain or at least spread it around. Give it to someone else. Let us work a few hours a week and then let us seek our pleasures. Let us surround ourselves with good friends and good drink. Forget the creditors. Those fools believed we would pay them back”. And so it goes in ancient modern Greece.

 Well, back in the day Epicurus had an even bigger dilemma than a fiscal crisis. But it was a problem that he was able to philosophize or finagle away with even bigger denial than today’s Greeks. I am talking about the problem of evil.

 The problem of evil–whether viewed as a man being burned alive or as a Roman crucifixion or as someone stealing cigars from a mini-mart or as one neighbor lying to another neighbor-is in our face daily. This enormous topic can only be glanced at in this post. I will give you a perspective to consider. First, let’s see what Epicurus foisted on his followers from his hammock ‘high horse’.

 From Wikipedia Chapter One, verse two:

Logical problem of evil

The originator of the logical problem of evil has been cited as the Greek philosopher Epicurus and this argument may be schematized as follows:

  1. If an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god exists, then evil does not.
  2. There is evil in the world.
  3. Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God does not exist.

This perspective of the problem of evil is held by many in the world. It is a perspective which atheism willing points to and one that bothers agnostics. It is a perspective that lends itself to the myopic religion of scientism where everything can only be validated through scientific proofs or, basically, through one’s senses (a more refined Epicurean philosophy). Yet, the above logical problem of evil is self-defeating. It assumes knowledge of good and evil.

One has to ask, how did Epicurus determine good and evil and the truth that defines them? Did he feel their effects via his physical senses? Did he and his friends determine what is good and what is evil via their collective senses? Did Epicurus make up ‘truth’ about good and evil by what his friends let him get away with saying? Or did Epicurus as a proto-Foucault define ‘regimes of truth’ as “the historically specific mechanisms which produce discourses which function as true in particular times and places”? Or, did Epicurus, as President Obama has recently done at the 2015 National Prayer Breakfast, use moral equivalency or relativism (in this case, high horse lecturing Christians with historical error) as a basis to decide what is a good and what is a bad by comparison (with God as a rubber stamp). It should be noted that none of these premises and perspectives is based on a perspective outside ones’ self or on an Absolute reference point. At the epicenter of these premises is self-serving man, ergo the likes of the American Humanist Association and their motto: “Good Without God“.

 If you believe as pre-Darwin-pre-Enlightenment-pre-scientism Epicurus believed-that humans are just randomized atoms (as he called them) that “swerved” and collided to form the materialistic world-then how did a rational concept of good and evil enter our gardens of random atoms? Remember, in Epicurus’ worldview god had been expelled from the garden of good and evil.

 This early formulation of the logical problem of evil, as I see it and now describe it, is when the Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware began its download hactivism into the software of our networked psyche creating a down-through-the-centuries botnet. This Mal-ware put God in the “Recycle Bin” and made Him inaccessible. It also redirected our boot up executable file to scientism, making it our default root drive. Social manipulation by amoral hactivists and humanists keeps the botnet going.

 The Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware searches for any thought of God and seeks to delete it from your consciousness. It causes doubt spam and creates a zombie-like effect with regard to outside-your-senses thinking. You are made subservient to a ‘regime of truth’, to those who now have the power to control truth. And, there are many who would desire to do so in this present age. And remember, Pontius Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” as if Pilate could willy-nilly define truth through his earthly power.

 For the sake of brevity I think you will agree with me that the logical problem of evil comes down to premises and perspectives. You may also agree with me that there is a need to wipe clean the hard drives of our minds of all Epicurus “High-Horse” Mal-ware.

 Here is a proper perspective from Dr. Ron Rhodes regarding the existence of evil:

 …it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point which is absolutely good. Otherwise one is like a boat at sea on a cloudy night without a compass (i.e., there would be no way to distinguish north from south without the absolute reference point of the compass needle).

The infinite reference point for distinguishing good from evil can only be found in the person of God, for God alone can exhaust the definition of “absolutely good.” If God does not exist, then there are no moral absolutes by which one has the right to judge something (or someone) as being evil. More specifically, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate basis to judge the crimes of Hitler. Seen in this light, the reality of evil actually requires the existence of God, rather than disproving it.

If Epicurus had read the even more ancient book of Job perhaps he would not have been so clueless and the “High-Horse” Mal-ware would never have been downloaded with its intent on hacking into our truth files.

One more perspective regarding truth, good and evil and moral equivalency:

C.S. Lewis has a few words to say about the matter, too:

“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”

 “Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.”

 “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”

Filed under Atheism, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Culture Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

No Way But Up

May 27, 2012 Leave a comment

What’s at the core of America’s problems today? Is it partisan politics or is there a greater rift in the American people?

 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian during his commencement address delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978, gave us his diagnosis.  His speech is a stinging indictment of the West –  its materialism, its enabling of the abuse of individual freedom, its self-serving inbred media and its disavowal of its spiritual roots:

 However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. … State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.

 And…

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.” (emphasis mine)

And…

“It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?”

Take a look at what drives you and perhaps you will see why America is no longer a nation under God, no longer a nation of civil courage, of moral decency.  Perhaps you will see why people would vote for a president who uses class warfare rhetoric to promote the sands of material security as foundational to life and not the rock of spiritual fortitude.

Filed under 2012 election, Christian character, Christianity, commentary, History, Human Interest, Life As I See It, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When You Wish Upon Obama…

May 13, 2012 Leave a comment

you enter the Disneyland-like fantasy world of smoke and mirrors, the amusement park of progressives.  It is there that …

…you live under Chicago style politics instead of the U.S. Constitution.

…you receive Eric Holder – Black Panther style justice which is no justice.

…your liberty is traded for political hype: “Hope and Change’: “Yes, We Can”.

 …the extreme Left receives all manner of special interest goodies. The resulting financial shortfall will be devastating (see Greece, Spain, Portugal, California).  Our children and grandchildren will receive the enormous debt burden.

…the government becomes a monopoly, a monopoly that cannot and will not be broken down. Because of this the competition of the free market system, a system that works to lower consumer cost and to ensure better quality products and customer service will vanish from the scene. You will have to take what the government gives you or go to a black market.

…under Obamacare you have health coverage (you are fined for not having it) but not health care. You will have bought the lie.

…whatever health care you do receive will be meted out by bureaucrats (czars) who will tell how much, when and what kind of health care you will receive. They will also decide who lives and who dies, who benefits and who goes without.

…you are free when Obama says you are free.

…you will have your “fair share” when you understand that running from and resisting the Tax Man is impossible and you surrender. You then become enslaved and live on Obama’s Progressive plantation.

…the only good energy policy is the energy policy that financially powers the Obama candidacy and his progressive agenda.

…America will become a subset of the European Union. (BHO wants to eventually become the potentate of the world.)

…democracy will become meaningless because you will have ceded your liberty to a small group of people who you will be told have your best interest at heart. Your vote will mean nothing. Czars and bureaucrats will replace your representatives.

…a top down government will break the back of the states and in the process also destroy individual liberty. All of this for the sake of controlling costs, controlling your money and controlling you the citizen.

….Christians will be persecuted. The main stream media (powered by Obama’s political and secular colonialism) will openly attack Christianity as not being inclusive enough, as being too extreme. All this and more while homosexuals will be allowed to teach your children their moral values in the public schools.

…absolute moral truth will be replaced with the increasingly vogue secular religions of fairness, egalitarianism, environmentalism and political correctness. These ersatz religions are based on relativism and humanism. These ersatz religions will become the state religions and be reinforced by those who are in power using the main stream media.

…your voice will be silenced (i.e., the fairness doctrine) by the Obama regime if you disagree with his message. And, if you believe that the fairness doctrine will only neutralize conservatives, you are in complete denial. Totalitarians always direct the conversation. Controlling the message, the ideology and indoctrination are central to controlling the citizen on the plantation. See North Korea. See China. See Stalin’s Russia. See…

…your voice will be silenced in deference to a few well-connected intellectual elites who will be exalted within their “ivory tower” college professorships. Your “worker bee voice” will be not be heard.  Instead, your life will become ‘handled’ by these self-promoting social-scientists who receive their power from above.

…America will be divided into those worship the Obamic Vision and those who do not. The race card will be used extensively to promote a divided nation. And, more and more people will claim minority status so as to indemnify themselves against “hate speech”.  Class warfare rhetoric will be used to conflate fairness with an unjust confiscation of property

…your whole purpose in life under Obama will be to become a complacent useful idiot, no more, no less. Through taxation you will be required to buy into the BHO lottery: “Hand me your money and your liberty and we will take care of the rest. Yes, we can.”

…the subsequent rioting in the streets that will occur because of all of the above will be quashed by use of the totalitarian forces put into power by you the voter.

When you wish upon Obama you get the president and the government you deserve.

*****

Course correction needed.

Filed under 2012 election, commentary, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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