Mysteries of the Known Knowns

January 2, 2022 Leave a comment

You might be aware of the TV miniseries Mysteries of the Unknown, a show that seeks answers to our history’s mysteries.

I want to propose another miniseries: Mysteries of the Known Knowns – a show that seeks answers to the things we know we know from our recent history.

Here are six suggested episodes with background references:

Episode 1 – Why are we being used as lab rats?

How is it that government entities demand our accountability about all things COVID BUT the manufacturers of the vaccines are NOT held accountable for what they dispense? If the risks are not discussed, how can there be informed consent?

Background:

Pfizer Engineered Agreements With Governments Stating They Had to Pay for Covid Vaccines Whether They Worked or Not – NO Recourse for Injuries – Rights and Freedoms (wordpress.com)

Leaked Document Reveals ‘Shocking’ Terms of Pfizer’s International Vaccine Agreements – The Burning Platform

“Dr. Vliet further clarified that Remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug that proved ineffective and highly toxic, is used as the FDA’s approved COVID treatment, and is associated with organ toxicity, making patients sicker and more likely to require a ventilator, and hence more likely for the hospital to get a larger bonus payment.”

Hospital Death Camps Exposed | Columnists | thedesertreview.com

See this thread:

Ehden @ TELEGRAM CHANNEL: T.ME/EH_DEN on Twitter: “PFIZERLEAK: EXPOSING THE PFIZER MANUFACTURING AND SUPPLY AGREEMENT. (thread) Background: Pfizer has been extremely aggressive in trying to protect the details of their international COVID19 vaccine agreements. Luckily, I’ve managed to get one. #PfizerLeak #Pfizer https://t.co/1JlyJzxByb” / Twitter

If these agreements were retroactively rescinded would the vaccine mandates go away?

Episode 2 – If it can’t be questioned, is it science?

Bureaucrat overlord Anthony Fauci has effectively declared “I am the Way, the Science and the Life. No one comes to COVID freedom except by me.”

Another self-appointed COVID messiah, NIH director Francis Collins, told Fauci to rain down fire on scientists who don’t fall in line and obey them without question. Collins, now ‘retired’, wanted to shut down all scientific debate. And so it is that YouTube, Twitter, and their ilk are banning scientists who question “the science”.

If it can’t be questioned and debated, is it really science?

Background:

CDC Makes Major Change Overnight – They Got Is Seriously Wrong — The Republic Brief

BUSTED: CDC Inflated COVID Numbers, Accused of Violating Federal Law – National File

57 Top Scientists and Doctors: Stop All Covid Vaccinations – Rights and Freedoms (wordpress.com)

Episode 3 – Are the people of the world being subjected to COVID terrorism?

Background:

“By Complying with the COVID-19 Guidelines I Would Be Participating in Terrorism” – VA Nurse Sends Out Letter and Compared the Guidelines as an ‘Act of Terrorism’ (thegatewaypundit.com)

HORROR: Four Young Soccer Stars from Four Different Countries Die This Week After Suffering Sudden Heart Attacks (thegatewaypundit.com)

Leaked files expose Syria psyops veteran astroturfing BreadTube star to counter Covid restriction critics – The Grayzone

Door-to-door Covid jab teams to be sent to homes of the five million unvaccinated Britons | Daily Mail Online

You need 6 Covid shots… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

Live updates: Israel’s PM warns of coming COVID-19 ‘storm’ (msn.com)

Episode 4 – Is COVID Absolutism behind the Current Psychic Epidemic?

How is it that countries with the majority of their populations vaccinated are in panic mode? Why are there calls for more panic, lockdowns, passports, and mandates? Is science, logic or even altruism behind this? OR, is the desire to create a new social order under totalitarian control behind creating a fear-based populism?

Why are people going along with the manufactured panic? Why do “the masses whole-heartedly accept everything that Dr. Fauci or other national and global health officials proclaim”? (See article below)

Why the collective psychosis? Why accept mandatedmental illness?

Background:

A recent web article shares the theory behind mass formation psychosis posited by Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium. “He explains the [four basic] societal conditions under which a population ends up willingly sacrificing their freedom.”

  1. “A lack of societal bonding. It is easily argued that members of Western society struggled with loneliness long before the pandemic, and then with the ongoing lockdowns, isolation, and general fear of one another”, the lack of community continues.
  2. “The second condition is met when the majority of people view their lives as being without purpose or meaning.”
  3. “Free floating anxiety is the third condition for the rise of mass formation.” Record numbers of anxiety/depression medications are being prescribed.
  4. “The fourth condition is high levels of frustration and aggression, with no discernible cause.” Open hostility on social media and on the streets is evident.

The following link and video go into greater detail about mass formation psychosis:

MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS – by Robert W Malone MD, MS (substack.com)

Episode 5 – “good sign” and ‘transitory” Inflation Raises the Question “Who’s in Charge?”

Is inflation, the loss of purchasing power over time, a “good sign”? Is inflation good for America and Americans in general?

And, why did Joe Biden increase food assistance benefits by 25% if inflation was transitory?

Background:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, on CNN’s “The Lead”, said that rising prices were a “good thing” because it meant more people were buying goods.

Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Inflation is skyrocketing as I don’t need to tell you. The prices for home heating costs, cars, groceries, furniture, rent, gasoline are hitting Americans right in the wallet. The White House response has been generally to say, ‘Hey, inflation shows we’re coming out of the recession. It’s a good sign.’”

WH’s Psaki Defends Inflation — ‘Good Thing’ Because It Means ‘More People Are Buying Goods’ (breitbart.com)

Tucker Carlson: This is what inflation really is in the United States | Fox News

Episode 6 – Why are people fleeing Blues states for Red states?

Background:

Illinois sees largest population decline in state history… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

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Filed under 2021 current events, COVID-19, Depression, nihilism, pandemic, Political Commentary, Progressivism, social commentary, social engineering Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

As the World Turns

May 30, 2021 Leave a comment

The made-for-TV melodrama General Fauci has aired for a year and a half. Its storyline of a global pandemic, mimicking the fantasy narratives of the “We’re-all-gonna-die-unless-somebody-from-science-saves us” pandemic movies of recent years, has a twist. Instead of the pandemic creating zombies, the pandemic mitigation methods – masks and vaccines – creates zombies.

The main character of General Fauci is scripted as the main character of pandemic policy for the nation. His background in funding gain-of-function research and of telling people what to do is the basis for his moral high ground authority. Entire episodes are viewed through the eyes of the main character.

The doctor believes that he can bring about a Great Reset of humanity if only people would do what he says. The supporting cast, media and other hand-wringing types, is an approving Greek chorus. But the audience is kept guessing as to what the doctor is saying, as noble lies come out of both sides of his mouth.

Each daily soap episode presents the same cast of grim-Woke actors and the same set and props. Each daily soap episode is designed to play on emotions to gain viewership. Each episode is a storyline to be continued to gain repeat viewers.

A subplot of the General Fauci soap was added last November: insurrectionists install a feeble-minded puppet dictator in the White House. The Great Reset of humanity is placed in his hands.

Before General Fauci aired, a Washington-based Dark Shadows style soap production aired for over a year. All My Collusions depicted the creepy, campy, and cultish world of psychotic Democrats.

Now, after a year and a half airing of the tedious General Fauci, viewer’s questions arise: “When does it end?” and “Is there more to life than meets the media eye?”

In answer to viewer’s first question, the word on the street is that a new soap opera is in the offing. As the General Fauci series winds down, another melodrama will replace it: a climate justice series called “The Days of Our Earth”

The new soap will present the daily ordeals and hardships of Mother Earth as she deals with the effects of climate change. Fearing the immediate end of the earth, Dark Green religionists join the Build Back Better Brotherhood to save Mother Earth by ridding her of excess carbon-based humans. Script writers have been working on the soap for several years.

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Fluff. Ubiquitous fluff. Cheerios for breakfast. Disneyland for vacation and TV productions for 24 hour-a-day viewing. Fabrications of fluff abound in art, architecture, and cinema. Because of fluff’s pervasive immediacy, you may not have noticed that it is a replacement of what is real. Fantasy objects are the substitute. These offer a quick detachment from reality and immediate gratification as real emotions become involved.

As people subject their healthy truth-seeking imaginations to today’s pandemic of fantasy, more and more fluff is required to be injected into their minds. This past year we’ve seen that political correctness and scientism abhor a vacuum. Both have gone wherever people let it in. And, so has Marxism.

Now under the cover of the “Build Back Better” (BBB) promotion, Marxism proposes, using historical materialism as its determinant, salvation via a collective will.  We are to believe that through BBB, man will have the ability to perfect himself. And, that BBB will overcome the world’s ills: pain, suffering, poverty, conflict and sadness. And that the earth will be saved from mankind. And through BBB, technology will produce a transhuman man who will be immortal – basically, a nihilist who’s all fluff for all time.

Despite its almost universal marketing by college and university professors and by the “Build Back Better” political harpies, Marxism is a dangerous fantasy drug. Those who take Marxism into their lives will feel a sense of security and power at first. But they will soon come to feel great loss and emptiness. For, the Marxism addicted are injecting the fluff of nihilism into their system.

Polish philosopher and historian Leszek Kolakowski, called a “thinker for our time” by philosopher Roger Scruton, was exiled from Poland in 1968 for his criticism of Marxism and Communism. He had firsthand knowledge of the fantastical machinations of Marxist ideology. Consider the following passage from his 1976 essay On the So-Called Crisis of Christianity:

Christianity is thus the awareness of our weakness and misery, and it useless to argue that there exists or could exist a “Promethean Christianity,” that is, that Christian faith could be reconciled with hope for self-salvation. Two great ideas of the nineteenth century which, despite all that separates them, perfectly embodied this Promethean expectation –those of Marx and of Nietzsche – were anti-Christian in their roots, and not as a result of accidental historical circumstances.  Nietzsche’s’ hatred of Christianity and of Jesus was a natural consequence of his belief in the unlimited possibility of mankind’s self-creation. Nietzsche knew that Christianity is the awareness of our weakness., and he was right. Marx knew this too, and from the young Hegelians, he took over and transformed the philosophy (more Fichtean than Hegelian) of self-creation and futuristic orientation. He came to believe that the collective Prometheus of the future would reach a state in which his thought and action would be indistinguishable and in which even “atheism” would lose its reason for existence, since people’s self-affirmation would be entirely “positive”, not negatively dependent on the negation of God.

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To answer the soap viewer’s second question “Is there more to life than meets the media eye?” we must look elsewhere. . .

Have a good look at the birds in the sky. They don’t plant seeds, they don’t bring in the harvest, they don’t store things in barns – and your father in heaven feeds them! Think how different you are from them! Can any of you add fifteen inches to your height just by worrying about it?

And why worry about what to wear? Take a tip from the lilies in the countryside. They don’t work; they don’t weave; but let me tell you, not even Solomon in all his finery was dressed as well as one of these. So if God gives that sort of clothing even to the grass in the field, which is here today and on the bonfire tomorrow, isn’t he more likely to clothe you too, you little-faith lot?

So don’t worry away with your ‘What’ll we eat?’ and ‘What’ll we drink?’ and ‘What’ll we wear?’ Those are all the things the Gentiles fuss about, and your heavenly father knows you need them all. Instead, make your top priority God’s kingdom and his way of life, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow can worry about itself. One days’ trouble at a time is quite enough. (Matt. 6:26-34)

Long before the melodrama of General Fauci, long before “emergency use” vaccines, and long before historical materialism’s death toll of millions, the Son of Man walked 30-some years in an unsanitary disease-filled world. All manner of health threats – smallpox, parasitic infections, malaria, anthrax, pneumonia, tuberculosis, polio, skin diseases including leprosy, head lice, scabies and more – existed in the first century.

Jesus was fully aware of the pain, suffering and groaning of his creation. He was fully aware of the reality that people were dealing with. He knew that many people of that time had only the bare necessities. Many lived hand-to-mouth. What did Jesus offer when he saw the growing crowds and went up the hillside, sat down, took a deep breath and began to teach them? (Matt. 5:1-2)

Jesus did not offer vain words and soap operas to play on emotions. He didn’t paint people as victims. He didn’t peddle ideology. He didn’t offer the Power of Positive Thinking. He didn’t offer critical theory. He didn’t offer diversity, equity and inclusion training. He didn’t pander for their attention with talk about skin color or gender or sexual preference. He didn’t offer collective Promethean self-salvation.

Jesus didn’t tell the crowds to rise up as one collective will to revolt and destroy what is and build a socio-economic system to produce the outcomes they desired. No.

What did Jesus offer? Jesus offered the kingdom of God – a physical-spiritual reality that Marxism denies. He offered a new Torah that fulfilled the old Torah. He offered a change of focus. Outsiders are now insiders. The first will be last. Washing feet, and not stepping on feet to get ahead, is the kingdom way.

Jesus spoke in terms of individual human agency. He said that his followers would be blessed if they acted in the ways he described. They would know the happiness and joy of life in the kingdom of God (not available under Marxism (cf. Psalm 4: 7)).

He offered awareness of reality from the perspective of a shepherd caring for his sheep. Jesus’ hillside discourse is found in the gospel according to Matthew (Matt. 5, 6 & 7). The first verse of Matthew’s gospel records that Jesus is a descendent of David, a shepherd who became king.

As we read in the Matthew passage above, Jesus offered the world as it turns – a cosmology of Creator love and care. He pointed to aesthetic flora and forage-to-mouth fauna as empirical evidence of his Father’s love and care for the evolutionary creation he put in motion some 13.8 billion years before.

“When does the melodrama end?” It’s up to you. People believe what they want to the believe. Psalm 1 tells us that there are two paths that one could follow.

“Is there more to life than meets the media eye?” It’s depends on where you look. Psalm 103 relates a worldview of good – blessing and benefit, compassion and concern, and righteousness and redemption – as man relates to God.

As the world turns you may feel like you are in a dryer drum on an Air Fluff cycle. In such a state you easily become discombobulated and distressed. You will want to take to heart Psalm 4 – David’s plea for deliverance from fluff – vain words and lies – that disturbs his sleep.

Turn off the Air Fluff cycle and remove the lint from your life. Have a good look at the birds in the sky. Take a tip from the lilies in the countryside. The unchanging One who put the universe in motion, feeds the birds, and dresses lilies in lavish beauty will look after you as the world turns.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17

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Psalm 1Download
Psalm 103Download
Psalm 4Download

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“Episode_983 Lock Step of Tyrants … Dr. Naomi Wolf on Vaccine Passports and Nigel Farage”. Released: 2021.
“Episode_986 The American Generals Speak Part III”. Released: 2021.

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The following is not a soap opera. Pastor Artur Pawlowski was recently arrested by the Canadian Stasi for his staunch defiance of the pandemic lockdowns. Pastor Pawlowski conveys the reality of the self-salvation ideology of Marx, Nietzsche, and the collective Prometheus. He speaks of God’s salvation.

FROM COMMUNISM TO GOD

Pastor Art Pawlowski Tells His Life Story: From Communism to Man of God – Rebel News

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Keep these people and their needles away from your kids:

Day 110: The Same People Who Lied to You Over the Wuhan Lab Now Want You to Vaccinate Your Kids. (thenationalpulse.com)

Number of COVID Cases in Delhi Crashes After Mass Distribution of Ivermectin (humansarefree.com)

Keep these people and their pornography away from your kids:

Earth to Loudoun County — We have a problem… – CITIZEN FREE PRESS

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Call to action:

Actress Samaire Armstrong: “What’s coming down the road is so much bigger than this moment.”

Actress Armstrong Gives Powerful Call for Moms to Fight Back Against Filthy Disgusting Masks on Kids (rumble.com)

America’s Frontline Doctors Sue the Federal Government to Prevent Forcing Experimental COVID Vaccines on US Children (thegatewaypundit.com)

“Understand, you are agreeing to be in a medical study when you take any of the COVID-19 vaccines.”

PDF >>TEN MEDICAL FACTS REGARDING THE COVID-19 EXPERIMENTAL VACCINES

509290635-AFLDS-10-Facts-Experimental-Vaccine-Cole-4-12-21Download

“{The AFLDS is] seeking temporary injunctive relief against any existing or further authorization for use in children under the age of 16, of any of the COVID-19 “vaccines”1 that have been approved under the Emergency Use Authorization (“EUA”) . . .”

509292976-AFLD-MotionDownload

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COVID Court:

Dr. Peter McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine and he is warning against the Vaccine.

Facebook exposed in global effort to silence dangers about Vaccine.

Facebook Whistleblowers LEAK DOCS Detailing Effort to Secretly Censor Vax Concerns on Global Scale – YouTube

Mask Psychosis: NYT Confirms The Liberal Mask Cult Is Here to Stay – Revolver

commie lee jones on Twitter: “MIT researchers ‘infiltrated’ a Covid skeptics community a few months ago and found that skeptics place a high premium on data analysis and empiricism. “Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.” https://t.co/jsoAG8G2VT https://t.co/CpEvCKz2HK” / Twitter

Model Stephanie Dubois Suffers Blood Clot, Dies Days After Getting COVID Shot (newsweek.com)

[Michigan] is working through a process to make permanent its workplace COVID-19 rules, enforced through the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Michigan’s push for permanent COVID-19 rules sparks battle with business leaders – mlive.com

Will the legal dept. save us from some COVID totalitarianism?

“The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has put employers on notice that should they attempt to require employees to receive injections of experimental COVID-19 gene-therapy vaccine a resulting adverse reaction will be considered “work-related” for which the employer may be held liable.”

Employers may be liable for ‘any adverse reaction’ from mandated coronavirus shots: OSHA | News | LifeSite (lifesitenews.com)

40 Million Fake Masks, 200,000 Counterfeit COVID Tests Seized. – The National Pulse

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A Story of Survival

Like humans, flowers inherit their appearance from genes. Pigments are “born” into these plants, producing a range of colors across the spectrum. The same chemical, carotenoid, that produces pigment in tomatoes and carrots, also produces yellow, red, or orange color in certain flowers. Another chemical, anthocyanin, is responsible for producing red, pink, blue, and purple-colored flower petals. While many people see these plants as purely decorative, flowers aren’t colorful just to be pretty – they need their color for survival.

Why Flowers Have Color (konicaminolta.us)

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The Manufacturing of a Mass Psychosis

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U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division Museum, Cantigny, Wheaton, IL

Image © Jennifer A. Johnson, 2021

Filed under 2021 current events, Christianity, COVID-19, cultural Marxism, Culture, pandemic, Political Commentary, social commentary, socialism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

You Violate My Terms of Truth

April 27, 2021 Leave a comment

It didn’t take long. This morning I found the following YouTube notice (shown below as a screen capture). The “removed’ video was posted in Forcing Dysfunction on Sunday.

In the “removed” video, Dr. Carson spoke about the benefit of hydroxychloroquine as used by an African population – the people had a very low rate of COVID cases. He also spoke encouragingly of herd immunity.

Apparently, a site called YouTube is not about your narrative. It is about YouTube publishing a forcing function narrative on you.

Youtube’s mission statement? “Ignorance is strength.”

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984

The following video – The Manufacturing of Mass Psychosis, Can Sanity Return to an Insane World? – may explain YouTube’s menticide machinations. It certainly explains what has been going on the past 399 days.

Think about this video when you are ordered to submit to more mandates from the Fauci/CDC/Biden regime.

Watch before narrative publisher YouTube takes it down.

We need to talk about “parallel structures” . . .

Filed under 2021 current events, Culture, social commentary, social engineering, The Great Reset, totalitarianism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

The First Noël

April 17, 2021 Leave a comment

The following took place during my thirteenth year . . .

A week before Christmas Day, a gaggle of us self-conscious teenagers loaded into three cars. We headed to Elgin State Hospital, formerly called the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane. Our church’s youth group leader had decided that, in the spirit of Christmas, his charges should bring hope and joy to the less fortunate.

Four of us sat bunched together in the back seat of one of the cars. We kidded each other about who was the crazier. We cackled and fidgeted and sniffed the mimeographed sheets of Christmas Carols and became giddier. None of us knew what to expect. “But for the grace of God” is all I heard the youth group leader say before I got in the car.

The high school senior driving our car asked us if we wanted to hear about “Elgin State.” We became quiet and ready to squeal like when the four of us sat at a campfire last summer. Jeff slowly spun out his words and waited for our reaction.

 “They say the place is . . . haunted … horrific experiments had been performed there . . . spirits of the unclaimed dead walk the cemetery grounds and, . . .  in the buildings, . . . the criminally insane live there.”

It didn’t take much. Jeff’s description of Elgin State and the winter wind that howled through Jeff’s rusted-out car gave us goose bumps. I wound and unwound the pretty purple printed sheets. Lise snapped her gum. Mary kicked the front seat and Joan kept biting her nails.

The three cars drove through the front entrance and down a long driveway towards the largest brick building I had ever seen. I suddenly felt out of place. I saw no signs of Christmas anywhere.

We parked along the front of the building. The youth group leader led our group of sixteen through the front door. He announced us at the front desk. Soon an older gentleman came down the stairs.

Dr. I-Forget-His-Name was bald and wore thick-rimmed glasses. In his white lab coat, he looked like the mad scientist I’d seen in a movie that I wasn’t supposed to watch but watched anyway at a friend’s house. Up close, I could see small blood vessels on his nose and cheeks. Whispering to Lise, I wondered if that is what happened when you work here. I tried not to stare when he escorted the group upstairs.

On the second floor he directed us to a double-door entrance. We walked through it. The room before us was bigger than any church sanctuary I had been in. There were large windows along the length of the room. They were foggy, providing a pale spectral light. None of the patients stood near them.

There were no curtains around the windows. There were no pictures on the walls, no paintings, and no Christmas tree or decorations. The furniture, wooden chairs and tables, was scattered around the room on the dull linoleum floor. The hall seemed soulless and indifferent toward the fifty gowned inmates within it.

The patient’s voices, moans, yelps, and shrieks sounded like they were coming out from a deep cave. Many sat staring off blankly. Some of them bobbed their head endlessly. Those who walked around seemed content to be walking in no specific direction. Our appearance at the double-door made no difference to them.

We gathered in two rows just inside the doorway and began signing Jingle Bells. Our voices reverberated and then seemed to go off somewhere. Our captive audience didn’t stir. We followed with Silent Night. There were a couple of moans of recognition. Then we sang The First Noël.

The First Noel the angels did say
Was to certain poor shepherds
In fields as they lay
In fields where they Lay keeping their sheep
On a cold winter’s…

Out from the hallway behind us came a naked man. He began shouting and writhing right in front of us. One of the girls shrieked. The patients whooped and hollered.

Two men with white coats tried to grab the man. But he squirmed and threw them off again and again. He jumped and shouted and flung his arms right in front of us. He wanted to be right in front of us.

More white coats came to help. They surrounded the man and subdued him. He was dragged from the room.

It took a few minutes for our youth group leader to get us back to singing. When we did, we kept looking behind us to see what was next. But nothing happened after that.

When we finished singing our host escorted us down stairs. At the door, he thanked us for coming. On the way home we had a lot to talk about. Jeff said nothing.

That night I told my parents about my experience at Elgin State. Father said he was reminded of the Gadarene demoniac. Mom said “That poor man.”

Two weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, I was allowed to stay up late. I sat with my father as he watched the newsman recap what had happened in 1965. Something was said about demonstrations and Vietnam and The Great Society. But I sat there thinking about “that poor” wild “man” in Elgin State. He sure reacted to The First Noël.

Filed under Christianity, mental health, Short Story, short story Tagged with , , ,

Tales from the Lockdown Crypt

September 26, 2020 Leave a comment

 

DuPage County, Illinois:

“Coroner Richard Jorgensen issued a warning Thursday that the number of suicides in the county between Jan. 1 and June 30 rose from 44 in 2019 to 54 in 2020, a 23% increase.

…This year overdose deaths are 52% higher than the same time last year, with the majority occurring after the COVID-19 measures were implemented in the state.”

DuPage coroner reports 23% Increase in suicides in the first six months of 2020, suggest link to isolation during pandemic

 

Cook, Lake and DuPage Counties, Illinois:

“The fallout of what happened with the quarantine is going to be pretty bad … for people’s mental health and people’s livelihoods, and that is not a good recipe.”

Why the pandemic is leading to more opioid overdoses

 

Above are just two local headlines. One can extrapolate the local effects of the COVID-19 mitigation to a national scenario.

At the beginning of the lockdown the messaging coming down from our overlords was that hospitals and medical resources would be overwhelmed if we didn’t obey the stay-at-home orders. Yet, we who are locked down (those at risk and the healthy) were not told that we would be overwhelmed. That was not in their consideration. As indicated above, there has been an increase of depression, anxiety and substance abuse leading to overdoses and death. Who would have thought that imposing social isolation, mask muzzling, loss of employment, loss of one’s business, etc. would have had such a devastating effect on humans? Our nanny overlords did not.

If it bleeds it leads. I have no doubt that the 24/7 news coverage of cases and deaths related to COVID-19 (Tales from the Crypt) exacerbates mental health problems, especially for those with pre-existing mental health problems. That coverage and the constant PSAs telling us to wear masks and stay home has got almost everyone spooked.

The line for early voting yesterday morning was outside the door, down the sidewalk and down another sidewalk. Some sixty people, standing apart in the UV light of the hot sun, were wearing a mask. I did not. I did wear one inside the county building to cast my vote. I didn’t want create a scene.

(There is no medical science behind wearing a mask outdoors. Yet, medical-scientism demands, like its counterpart climate-scientism, mindless herd-submission to its specious dogma.)

Personally, I am infinitely more concerned about the effects of the lockdown on humans than about the effects of COVID-19.  More and more COVID-19 cases are reported. So what? More and more people are being tested. People get it and build immunity to it. Deaths are reported but are the deaths only caused by COVID-19 or by pre-existing conditions and COVID-19? We are not told.

We all know that those with pre-existing conditions -respiratory illness, compromised immune systems, the elderly and, the obese, like Illinois’ governor J.B. Pritzker – should be quarantined. The rest of us should be set free. The lockdown should have ended two weeks after it was started.

Along with the excuse given for the lockdown: “to keep from overloading the hospital and the essential workers” (“workers”, a term used by Marxist sympathizers), was the “flatten the curve” excuse. The conditions for ending the lockdown were mutating. It mutated again with “we’ll wait for a vaccine”. We don’t need to wait for a vaccine to end the restrictions. The only vaccine I want is one which inoculates me against contracting bureaucrats into my life.

People need to get back to their livelihoods. Restrictions need to be lifted off of businesses and churches. No one should be deprived of a right to earn a living and to be fruitful. Kids need to be in school *(God protect them from the Progressive/Marxist/BLM indoctrination virus.) The paranoia imposed on us from the media and the overlords must stop. End the lockdown now! We are a free people who know how to protect ourselves and others. We’ve made it this far. Stop the spread of fear. Flatten the rhetoric.

It is not good for man to be alone. The COVID-19 mandates and our inability to cope with isolation creates a public mental health crisis. Mitigate this.

We need to protect the vulnerable – that is all of us – from the exasperating fear foisted on us by the “If it bleeds it leads” media and the tyranny of isolation imposed by the overlords who continue to de-humanize the population with their mandates.

 

*The Moral Case for Reopening Schools – Without Masks

Added 10-15-20:

“I am a left-leaning New York City public defender who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries and Hillary Clinton in the general election. I have never voted for a Republican candidate. I chose my career because I wanted to help those most defenseless in our society: indigent people accused and convicted of crimes and facing the awesome power of the state. 

Until I saw the catastrophic effects that the lockdowns were having on the very people I sought to help…”

Lockdowners Speak with Privilege, and Contempt for the Poor and the Working Class.

In a radio interview discussing her article, Ms. Younes, a lifelong Democrat, said she is voting for Trump based on the COVID-19 restrictions the Biden/Harris ticket would impose if elected.

The Great Barrington Declaration

“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.”

Added 1-26-2021:

Surge of Student Suicides Pushes Las Vegas Schools to Reopen

Filed under Current Events 2020, Depression, Disorders, pandemic, Political Commentary, social commentary Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Dead to Rights

June 17, 2018 Leave a comment

 

Close to 800 000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. Many more attempt suicide. Suicide occurs throughout the lifespan and is the second leading cause of death among 15-29 year olds globally… There are indications that for each adult who died of suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide. –Mental Health, Suicide Data, World Health Organization

 

Overdoses killed young and middle-aged Americans at a breakneck pace as the country battles a crippling opioid crisis, adding to the first two-year drop in life expectancy since JFK was President.

More than 63,600 people died of a drug overdose in 2016, the National Center for Health Statistics found. The startling rate was 21% higher than the number of fatalities a year earlier. – Opioid overdoses kill more people in U.S. than guns or breast cancer

 

The numbers quoted above are not insignificant. These instances of mental illness are not insignificant. And, these statistics represent only a small fraction of the de-humanizing effects of mental illness. Most of the effects of mental illness are hidden from the public eye until a person’s mental illness reaches a peak. The media then reports the violence done to others or done to one’s self in the form of suicide. Mentioned briefly by the newscaster: mental illness and the need to find a way to deal with it.

Again, the numbers quoted above are not insignificant. The quotes tell us in effect that mental illness influenced a person’s choice to self-harm. The quotes (and newscasts) do not tell us the choices that led to a mental illness that in time led to an act of violence. A post about mental illness could go in many directions. Here, I will take the path less traveled. I want to talk about what I see as the genesis of most mental illness – people’s choices.

 

Certainly, there are forms of mental illness which are not based on a person’s choices. Some prominent forms of mental disorder such as Bi-Polar Disorder have been ascribed primarily to a person’s genetic make-up. Some mental disorders are related to a chemical imbalance. Either abnormality can result in abnormal brain structure and function. Much progress has been made to mitigate the effects of these disorders. Some mental disorders may have come about through a child’s early environment. Talking in therapy and building good trust relationships can bring about healing.

Beyond physiological and early childhood causes, there is a spectrum of mental illnesses due to a person’s choices, choices that have been assessed and weighed based on one’s belief system and emotions. Each of us make deliberated decisions using our free will.  We may choose to act in a mentally healthy way or in a mentally harmful way. We may choose to turn the other cheek or we may choose to imitate revenge (Copy-Cat Revenge). We may choose to endure pain or we may choose to commit copy-cat suicide (the Werther Effect). Choosing to choose to act against God, oneself and others is evil-based mental illness. Evil-based mental illness involves a person’s choices.

Adam and Eve made a choice and learned of evil through their disobedience. Their son Cain made a choice when he murdered his brother Abel. God, acknowledging Cain’s mental distress, let him know that his choice figured in his distress:

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”-Genesis 4:6-

One’s choice makes all the difference for one’s mental state. And, when a person makes the wrong choice, there are public and private consequences. There are mental health consequences. A descent into madness is one of the consequences.

“This is the interpretation, Your Majesty, and this is the decree the Most High has issued against my lord the king: You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the ox and be drenched with the dew of heaven. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes. The command to leave the stump of the tree with its roots means that your kingdom will be restored to you when you acknowledge that Heaven rules. Therefore, Your Majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue….

Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.

At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. – Daniel 4:24-27, 33-34 (emphasis mine)

We live in a world where choice is king. And, people want to reign as king or queen of their choice. What you won’t hear these choice-driven folks say is that they are responsible for the choices they make. If their choice doesn’t work out the way they planned they blame others, including the government. Scapegoating is a characteristic of evil-based mental illness. For example, I was once accused by LGBT advocates on Twitter of likely going on to cause the depression and suicidal death of gay community members because I spoke out against homosexuality. The advocates of the LGBT will tell you that any resistance to the homosexual lifestyle equates to depression and death for the LGBT. People want choices and want to rule in them but it their choices which cause the mental breakdowns, depression and worse. Resistance to accountability is another characteristic of evil-based mental illness. The Apostle Paul insists on accountability to the Lord as he reminds the Ephesian church that there are those who by their choices have darkened their minds:

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. -Ephesians 4:17-20

A darkened mind, evil-based Mental illness, starts with small concessions to evil. One acknowledges and then accepts these concessions and compartmentalizes them in part of the psyche. They are filed away from the conscious and away from public view. One goes on to absolve and protect oneself from outside reference with a half-truth: “It’s a hard life and I must do what I have to do to make it”.

One goes on to concede more ground to evil because the appetite for defiant free will choice has been whetted and there have not been any immediate consequences. The addiction to compromise has begun. The conscious is silenced. One’s mental health begins to deteriorate because thoughts are confused and growing darker; the light has been switched off. One becomes duplicitous. A public face is put on because one’s sanity is on shaky ground but others must see you as proudly self-assured and in control. And what better place to hide your self-deceit and look respectable:

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? … I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them. – Martin Buber 

When mental illness is discussed, evil-based mental illness should also be discussed. But I believe the reason evil-based mental illness isn’t discussed is because it involves putting people’s choices under scrutiny. Twitter users become afire when I speak against homosexuality as a lifestyle acceptable for the church. They have told me that I am not like Jesus; I am judgmental. In truth, as a Follower of Jesus, I am trying to help the world around me become fully human. In the process, I’ve come to learn that Evil is defensive of its territory – humans.

Because Evil is nothing and has no substance, it must have access to human choice to act. Evil can, by human will, pervert what God created and called good. A glaring example of this hideous conversion from the good and absolute to sliding scale values and Epicureanism is the growing Christian acceptance of homosexuality as an acceptable good. In truth, it is a queering, a perversion, of the good.

It is a curious state of affairs today and a clear indication of evil’s degenerative effect: there are those today who demand rights for this and that while at the same time say they have no control of themselves or they can’t help themselves in their behavior. They want special human rights and the right to live as animals at the same time. They take Pride (Month) in this. De-humanization (e.g., giving over your free will and conscious to animal impulse) is a guaranteed effect of the choice to dwell in mental illness. Renouncing sin and turning back to the One true God will begin restoring your humanity and sanity. Just ask King Nebuchadnezzar.

 

The church should be the place for evil-based mental illness to be addressed. Sadly, many mainline churches have been comprised and now affirm evil as good, thereby increasing evil-based mental illness among its members. Read the Word and receive the Eucharist. The Word and prayer can help put you back in your right mind.

I am laid low in the dust;
preserve my life according to your word.
I gave an account of my ways and you answered me;
teach me your decrees.
Cause me to understand the way of your precepts,
that I may meditate on your wonderful deeds.
My soul is weary with sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word.
Keep me from deceitful ways;
be gracious to me and teach me your law.
I have chosen the way of faithfulness;
I have set my heart on your laws.
I hold fast to your statutes, Lord;
do not let me be put to shame.
I run in the path of your commands,
for you have broadened my understanding. -Psalm 119: 25-32

 

 

Are You a danger to yourself or to others? If so, what choices have you made to bring you to this place? You are dead to rights accountable for the wrong choices. But your life doesn’t end there. Have more fear of what you may end up doing than talking to someone. Seek out a Christian and begin talking. Ask God for wisdom and do so with no doubt of receiving it, as a matter of mental health. For, “A person who doubts is like a wave of the sea which the wind blows and tosses about. Someone like that should not suppose they will receive anything from the Lord, since they are double minded and unstable in everything they do.”

 

Interactive media has influence on your mental health, if you let it. Added 6/19/2018:

What is gaming disorder?

Gaming disorder is defined in the draft 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.

 

Filed under Christianity, mental health Tagged with , , ,

Mental Illness or Moral Illness or a Life Well-Lit

August 3, 2015 Leave a comment

“See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.” Jesus, from an eyewitness account recorded by Luke the physician, chapter 11, verse 35.

“The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” Jesus as recorded in the eyewitness account of Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6, verses 22 and 23.

~~~

I don’t have to tell you that mental health and the lack thereof has been in the news lately. Tied mainly to reports of mass killings, the national mental health issue has been spotlighted when evil rears its ugly head. This post is about perspective on the mental health industry from someone who knows and for those on the treadmill of psychoanalysis.

~~~

We learned the other day that the mass murderer Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez supposedly suffered from depression “…Abdulazeez’s family said he suffered from depression for years, and condemned the “heinous act of violence.””

Yet, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez willfully and coherently texted “an Islamic verse: “Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, then I have declared war against him.” Then, Abdulazeez immediately acted out those words by killing four Marines and a sailor.

Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez

Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez

GIGO: Abdulazeez was not depressed. Rather, he was unhappy, bored and dissatisfied with his view of the West and probably with himself. Stoking his ego with radical Islamist mal-machismo and personal grandiosity, Abdulazeez thought he would become bigger than life itself by becoming part of something that he thought was even bigger than himself – Islam’s Grand Jihad and the Slaughter of Innocents.

Psychology would not have benefitted the mental health of Abdulazeez. Psychology does not judge right from wrong. Psychology is the multiculturalism of all values, the egalitarian leveler of all thoughts into equal subjective and even political values.

Could it be that psychology, like gun laws is ineffectual due to the depraved moral character of the persons involved? Could it be that the individual’s eye and society’s eye is NOT focused on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”  (From the apostle Paul’s to epistle to the Philippian church, chapter 4, verse 8.)

With regard to mankind’s focus and his progress in the area of proper human self-reflection…”Psychology is not a key to self-understanding, but a cultural barrier to such understanding as we can achieve…” from the Preface of “Admirable Evasions, How Psychology Undermines Morality” by Theodore Dalyrymple, 2015.

Admirable Evasions

Admirable Evasions

Who is Theodore Dalyrymple? Theodore Dalyrymple is a pen name used by retired prison psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Daniels. I have written about Dalrymple in a previous post (see below).

 

Theodore Dalrymple aka Anthony Daniels, retired prison psychiatrist

Theodore Dalrymple aka Anthony Daniels, retired prison psychiatrist

“Admirable Evasions” sheds much-needed light on the mental health industry and in particular on the proactive diagnosis of depression.

Commercially advertised medications are prescribed to stave off unhappiness, dissatisfaction and ennui. Depression as a mental health state is used in courtrooms (and the media, as shown above) as a defense. Thus, responsibility for one’s felony first degree murder is not correlated to one’s accumulated misbehavior or evil compounded into utter darkness.

Dalrymple’s book, as the sub-title puts forward, exposes the absolution of patients from moral culpability. Psychology, instead, seeks to divine a secret knowledge through its Sisyphean scientism efforts in hopes of uncovering the ‘deep’ mystery of the patient’s unhappiness. We read also of the consumer’s constant demand for felicity and the bottom line commercialism behind antidepressant prescriptions. Dalrymple also provides a brief and sardonic history of psychoanalysis.

“The purpose of such all-encompassing understanding, other than moral self-aggrandizement, is the evasion of one’s own moral responsibility; for it follows that if no one is to be judged (because to judge is to judge harshly), then one is not oneself to be judged-not even by oneself. This, in effect, means carte blanche to do as you feel like, because all behavior is put on equal moral footing; it is only to be understood.” (Chapter Four)

Briefly, scientism is a coupling of the lexicon and theories of science with pop culture, anthropology, politics, popular consensus and ultimately with Neo-Darwinism. Scientism becomes a form of ‘truth’ through repetition and consensus opinion. Scientism is the appearance, the apparition, of science and not the reality of science.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) for example, is a frequent scientism apparition. And, just as in the opening scene of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the apparition of AGW sets a macabre and eerie tone while foreshadowing a theme of death.

Scientism, like Hamlet’s apparition’s appearance is expected by ‘those in the know’ to be feared and revered-the spirit of Mother Gaia is to be worshipped.

But scientism, uncoupled from reality and from this earth, is not subjected to honest reflection on the empirical science or the realities of cost to benefit analysis (see my previous post). Scientism seeks to generate free-floating angst meant to separate you from your money for the ‘right’ environ-mental cause and candidate.

~~~

Theodore Dalrymple has worked in the mental health industry over a course of a lifetime, mostly with prison inmates. With characteristic insight, candor, humor and background Dalrymple empowers the reader with his common sense observations about the mental health industry. He tells us that the mental health industry is NOT based on science. (This pseudo-science has to finance its own grandiosity by repeating its weekly psychic readings.)

Using his logo centric cerebral scanner Dalrymple gives us his diagnosis of mental health scientism where experimentation becomes published ‘settled science” until the next ‘sure’ thing comes along. Counseling “initiates” sooner or later are subjected to new ‘insights’ but the game is always to designate them as “victims”, victims who need to forgive themselves and/or learn to churn out positive self-esteem so as to inflate the ego and ward off scary intruders. And, remember Primal Screaming? “Shout, shout, Let it all out.”

“We [the mental health industry] need everyone who suffers to be a victim because only thus can we maintain our pretense to universal understanding and experience the warm glow of our own compassion, so akin to the warmth that a strong, stiff drink imparts in the cold.” (Chapter Four)

From Chapter One: “The first psychological scheme of the twentieth century to provide man with the illusion of much expanded, if not complete, self-understanding, together with hope of an existence free of inner and outer conflict, was psychoanalysis, then came behaviorism, after which came cybernetics, Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology were next; and now neuroscientific imaging, together with a little light neurochemistry, persuades us that we are about to pluck out the heart of our mystery. Suffice it to say, by way of deflation of exaggerated hopes and expectation, that 10 percent or more of the population now takes antidepressants, a figure is all the more remarkable as the evidence is lacking that they, the antidepressants, work except in a very small minority of cases; rather the reverse. That they are taken in such quantities is evidence more of dissatisfaction with life than of increased understanding of its causes, as well as of the spread of superstition regarding neurotransmitters and so-called “chemical imbalances.” (emphasis added)

Dalrymple goes on to talk about the absurdities of Freudianism and of Freud himself: [Freud] belonged more to the history of techniques of self-advancement and the foundation of religious sects than to that of science… He says Freud was ”a habitual liar who falsified evidence…”and “ he was a self-aggrandizing manipulator of people…”

“Admirable Evasions” delves into the mental health industry’s ‘absolution’ of a patient’s wrong doing based on as yet to be determined psychological mysteries locked in the patient’s brain. Hence the undermining and “Evasion” of morality as the book’s title posits. Hence, morally deficit people are left to roam our streets and at times kill others. Garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is not a defense in court or a comfort to those who have lost a loved one to amoral psychoanalysis with its lawless diagnosis.

“Men can change; this is their glory and their burden, for it is precisely the capacity to change that renders them responsible for their actions; but what they do may be irreparable.”

The above quote from Admirable Evasions is found within the article “The Multiple Lives of Mehdi Nemmouche” . There Dalrymple talks about the “doctrine of the Real Me”.   

Mehdi Nemmouche

Mehdi Nemmouche

~~~

Everyone wants an out…

Remember CPL Max Klinger of the MASH unit who feigned mental illness (in women’s clothes) so as to be discharged as unfit?

Remember “The devil made me do it.”?

On the couch, morality is posited as just a scary apparition, an angry “Epicurean” god, a figment of a tormented mental condition, an unwarranted guilt complex, genes gone awry, synapses misfiring or firing at the wrong time due to over-stimulation. One Nudge too far!

To neo-Darwinists, morality is considered a Darwinian materialist’s adaption to one’s societal surroundings. Neo-Darwinists do not want to go where morality dwells because that would entail submitting to a Moral Absolute. It is much easier for their pride to accept a humanist’s scientism solution every time. It is easier for them to dabble in the mystical arts of new age scientism.

Dalrymple, in a footnote, admits that he (an atheist) has no moral high ground of his own:  “The fact that I do not have any watertight metaphysic of morals does not mean that psychology can just rush in to fill the gap.”

…but fools rush into the utter darkness anyway.

“…Emerson said in one of his brief excursions into comprehensibility, foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” (Chapter Four)

The default diagnosis of mental illness proffered by the media and by the waiting in the wings defense psychologists is most likely evil and its focus on fatalism.

“But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

~~~

Theodore Dalrymple’s answer to the mental health industry’s inability to improve one’s healthy self-awareness is straightforward-read good literature. Read and become self-aware after reflecting on the characters and the situations they encounter in the book. I agree. Psychoanalysis tends to be a masturbation of the ego.

I also agree, as Dalrymple asserts, there is some good in the mental health industry. There are those who are dealing with incurable psychosis. These need help working with reality. But, most people do not need the packaged nonsense. They do need good books, good friends, exercise and to be held accountable for their actions by their friends and society before the point of no return.

As a Christian, I would strongly suggest that if you are desirous of a healthy mind that you also turn your eyes upon Jesus. Cable TV and today’s media have nothing healthy to offer you. You won’t find moral absolutes on TV.

Consider the following offering to evil:

“Lady Gaga’s Bisexual ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ Character Revealed in Sexiest Season Yet”

[Ryan] “Murphy tells ET that he plans to initiate Gaga with a particularly “disturbing and awful” murder scene with her co-star Bomer, when the show begins filming next week.”

~~~

“Diversion is the only thing that consoles us in our wretchedness, and yet diversion is itself the greatest of our miseries. For it is diversion above all that keeps us from seriously taking stock of ourselves and so leads us imperceptibly to perdition.”

—Pascal, Pensées

From the Evil One’s point of view, the liturgy of psycho-babble is meant to replace the Lord ’s Prayer.

In Jesus you learn to forgive others and no longer hold grudges or unresolved anger. Any root of bitterness is soon uprooted and you are free to plant a plush garden in its place. That garden will be where Jesus comes to visit-as he did with St. Teresa of Avila and where He also visits me.

~~~

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20

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I have written about Dalrymple in a previous post: “Three Atheists I Listen To”

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A second opinion:  “The Moral Limits of Psychology”

~~~

Added 8/6/2015: 

Bryant Brewer

Bryant Brewer

Judge rejects insanity defense, convicts man in Chicago cop’s murder:

“Following more than 2 1/2 hours of closing arguments, Judge Timothy Joyce concluded that Bryant Brewer wasn’t mentally ill but simply chose “not to be bound by society’s norms.”

“The only completely truthful thing I heard from (Brewer) is that he’s a cop killer,” the judge said as Soderberg’s widow, Jennifer Loudon, clutched a tissue in her right hand. “He brutally, callously, viciously and without compunction murdered Officer Thor Soderberg.””

…

Officer Thor Soderberg

Officer Thor Soderberg

“Joyce delivered a lengthy verdict, finally announcing the guilty decision after 8 p.m. He found Brewer guilty on all counts — including the attempted murder of three other officers in addition to Soderberg’s first-degree murder.

The judge concluded that the defense presented no admissible evidence that Brewer had schizophrenia.”

 

 

 

~~~

Added 8-7-2015, from NBC News:

“…the same jury that convicted Holmes of 24 counts of first-degree murder and 140 counts of attempted murder last month in the July 20, 2012, massacre at a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora. The jury deliberated less than 13 hours before reaching that decision.”

“Defense attorneys argued that [James] Holmes suffered from schizophrenia and he was legally insane when he carried out the attack. The jury rejected that defense in finding Holmes guilty.”

~~~

Added: 10-4-2015

This astounding finding should be an integral part of the mental health debate:

Robert Whitaker author of Anatomy of an Epidemic asks the question, here paraphrased…

Is there a correlation between the increase of prescribed psychotropic medications over the past twenty-five years and the current epidemic of disabling mental illness? He notes that the disabled mentally ill place a significant burden on society.

Filed under mental health, Political Commentary, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

The “Hate Watchers”

August 16, 2012 Leave a comment

The “Hate Watchers”

Harbingers of exclusion, the “Hate Watchers.”

“Hate Watchers” stew alone, churning inside

Along fault lines long ago buried,

Until,

Projection spews ad hominem, ad hominem miasma,

miasma a lethal dose.

The “other” succumbs under the gaze of the elect,

The “Hate Watchers.”

© Sally Paradise, 2012, All Rights Reserved

*******************************************

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/08/splcs-hatewatch-gives-cover-to-hate/

 http://www.splcenter.org/blog/

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Has the Dark Night Risen in You?

July 22, 2012 4 Comments

The recent massacre of innocent lives at the movie theatre should shock everyone back into reality.  Sadly, I doubt this will happen. Entertainment violence must go on for the sake of masses.  Liberal causes must be funded with the proceeds.

 As a kid I paid 25 cents for a Batman or Superman comic. I understood these illustrated ‘funny’ papers as fantasy narratives. The bad guys appeared as a weird assortment of surreal characters that seemed to be annoyances more than anything. I stopped buying comic books when I grew up.

 The Batman cult has evolved from fantasy comic books to serial spoofs (TV’s Adam West) to abstracted violence (Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher) to evil and chaos personified – Heath Ledger’s Joker (Christopher Nolan).  None of this is lost on the ravenous crowds who lust for more bloody entertainment.

 Teens, adults, even parents with young children come to the theatre to watch the gladiator sport of murder on the big screen. No age is immune to an addiction to violence. And the addiction is gladly reinforced by the profiteers of Hollywood.

 The Dark Knight Rises. Christopher Nolan. Auteurial vision. I see nothing but decadence from the bottom up. I will not go to see this movie out of respect for the victims. I don’t need Batman.

 Something to think about:  you know how a TV jingle or ad gets in your head and stays there?  What is lurking in your head, crouching, waiting to come out?  Will a psychotic break push you to unload the burned-in images of your anger, discontent, loneliness and rage onto others in the form of a cold-calculated bullet?

You are responsible for what you load into your heart, mind and soul. And, for what comes out.

Added:  https://sallyparadise.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/the-trajectory-of-jared-lee-loughner/

In memoriam, from Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony #3 “Sorrowful Songs”:

Filed under commentary, Life As I See It, social commentary, Writing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Withdrawal

July 7, 2009 Leave a comment

window

“I can take your kids, I can twenty-eight percent of your income and I can make you pay.” With these words, Evelyn unloaded her pistol of anger and resentment into her husband as often as she could. These projections of malice and bitterness were focused on Daniel for most of their fourteen year marriage. The marriage ended with the death of their marriage. Daniel narrowly escaped the death of despair brought on by caring.

It was three years into the marriage when Daniel found out about Evelyn’s past. Before the marriage he didn’t think there was anything else to know. He found out that things were not as they presented themselves. First of all, Evelyn did not come across as angry. She appeared happy and confident. She was outgoing and friendly to a degree. She felt inadequate around others she deemed smarter than herself and she would often say so. She talked about growing up in a small town, but she didn’t fill in the details until three years later. The wounds of the past were under the surface of a simple veneer of introversion. She liked to be taken care of and Daniel obliged her willingly.

In the third year, Evelyn told Daniel about her small town life during high school: Evelyn’s mother had committed adultery right before her sixteen year old eyes. Her mother was making out with her lover right in their small town family kitchen. Her mother subsequently denied any involvement with the man and then went on to divorce Evelyn’s father and to marry her lover.

During those same years, Evelyn became involved with a seminary student. She went to his room and closed the door behind her. She lay on his bed and then she told Daniel that she was raped by the student. Before she knew it she was pregnant. A male high school friend helped pay for an abortion. Evelyn told Daniel that her parents never knew found out what had happened. She wanted it that way.

Evelyn went on to tell Daniel about her life after leaving high school. Evelyn moved to college and then left college after a year. She moved out west and lived with someone for a time. She had another abortion. She moved to the south and lived with someone for time. They had a child together. She and her boyfriend sold drugs from their house. They took drugs together. Evelyn told Daniel that she worked as a call girl for a time with her friend Rosa. Rosa was a madam. When her boyfriend had overdosed once too many times Evelyn left him and moved to Chicago. She moved to the Lincoln Park area and cut her hair short. A year later she met Daniel. This is what Evelyn told Daniel that third year: “Those things are behind me.”, but Daniel wondered how far behind they were. He wondered about biting dogs at his heels.

Now, Evelyn loved wine and margaritas. She drank wine at home and then she would drink Margaritas at the Mexican restaurant. She wanted to go there often. On more than one occasion, after she drank three gold Margaritas, she would become mouthy, belligerent and verbally abusive to Daniel. Daniel decided that he was not going out to eat anymore. He began to bring food home.

Evelyn took often the kids to her mother’s house after several of these drinking bouts. Evelyn was angry with Daniel about some unknown fault or quirk or some vast deficiency: “You don’t love me.”; “I don’t feel loved.”; the kids weren’t “handled”; the dishes weren’t done or Daniel spent too much time in the kitchen; Daniel didn’t think ahead that Evelyn would be needing a bottle of wine, a “good” movie and the kids put to bed, again. It didn’t matter. Her marriage and her husband were not the perfection and panacea she demanded. Daniel was told by Evelyn that he was supposed to know what she needed before she said anything. “This is what a man does, Daniel. You’re not a man.” Her husband was not taking her pain away. She thought that alcohol and being with her mother would. So she would take the kids to her mother’s house after these evening drinking sessions and stay overnight.

Daniel felt that he was held hostage in his own marriage. Evelyn would threaten to take the children to her mother’s house if something wasn’t done to appease her before she even had an issue too complain about. The situation was unlivable for Daniel but he didn’t want to break his marriage vows and wander off to seek peace. He was committed to the marriage but he felt his hands were tied by the invisible bonds of her past.

After much marriage counseling and endless self reflection Daniel realized that he did everything he possibly could in seeking to remedy the marriage and to pacify the rage which quelled in Evelyn’s heart. There was nothing more that he could do. He wanted the painful spasms of fighting to end. He didn’t want to fight with her. At every turn, though, she found something wrong with him. Her perfectionism had become an obsession of finding the missing ingredient. She wanted a perfect man to fix her imperfect world. The children, and Evelyn‘s mother, would learn how imperfect Daniel was from Evelyn.

Daniel wished that he could surgically remove the growing cancer of hatred and disdain that Evelyn had retained in heart over the years. He understood then that a woman could hold a grudge forever if she wanted to. She could not forgive, she would not forget. Evelyn would not let go of her anger because it became too familiar to her. It became a cherished locket of fury hanging from her neck, always with her, but hidden beneath the surface. It was the locket of fury that replaced the wedding ring on her hand. Five months after demanding a second separation she took off her wedding ring and began to date other men.

Daniel, during the two years of separation leading up to a divorce, found one day that depression had cornered him in his small one bedroom apartment. He had been taking an antidepressant prescribed by the marriage clinic. After a year of taking the pills, Daniel found that the pills made him feel complacent. He felt that things were slipping away from him. He didn’t care about work and he soon didn’t care about the marriage falling apart. He decided to stop taking the pills. Within a matter of three weeks a deep depression encircled him. Daniel sat crying at his desk at work. He felt the jagged edge of every painful chasm in his soul. He didn’t know what to do but he knew that he wanted to get far away from everything and find a place of healing. He called his doctor.

The psychiatrist at the marriage clinic asked Daniel what he wanted and Daniel said, “I want to get away from everything right now.”

“Do you want to sign yourself in to the hospital?”

“Yes”, Daniel answered, thinking of an enormous Garden of Eden which would usurp the enormous load of grief in his heart with its heavenly serenity.

That night Daniel signed himself into the Hospital. After filling out the pile of papers required by the hospital Daniel was given a different antidepressant and a sleeping pill and then sent to bed. His room was shared with someone already asleep, snoring in his bed. Daniel went over to the window bed and lay down on the slab covered with blankets. No sleep came until the early morning.

That was Friday night. On Saturday, Daniel was given a cold hospital breakfast and a little cup with pills. There was no change of clothes only open hospital gowns and elastic slippers. The other patients sat around a little table eating some parts of their breakfast. Each of them was nervous to make eye contact with anyone else. There were some patients who were definitely around the bend. Conversation with them didn’t matter. Daniel sat down that first morning and ate silently. He just stared at the TV hung from the ceiling. A game show was on. Daniel knew that his expectations were not in line with the reality he was seeing. He wanted to leave immediately. It would take a week before he could go home to his one bedroom apartment.

During the morning smoke break that first hospital morning, outside in the cordoned garden area, it was whispered that someone had hung themselves in their room the week before. Mostly, though, the patients shared cigarettes and talked about what they would do when they got out. Some said they would quit smoking. A small cantankerous Chinese woman told Daniel that she didn’t know when she could get out but when she did she would open her own business in her house after she kicked out her boyfriend. He had called the police on her and they put her in the hospital. She was a manic-depressive, she told Daniel, and she hadn’t taken her pills for a week.

Phone calls from the hospital were limited to one phone in the hallway. It could only be used from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm and 7:00 pm till 8:00pm. Daniel called his office during the day and told them that he was in need of a short vacation and it had something to do with his marriage breaking up. He wanted to keep his job. The cost of the separation, the cost of two separate homes; the cost of his imperfection was becoming monstrous before his eyes. This financial situation didn’t seem to bother Evelyn, who was waiting for the free ride the court would later give her, except for the fact of her unpaid cell phone bill:

“Hello.”

“Hello, where are you?”

“I am in the hospital for some rest. I’ve been having a hard time with things lately. I stopped taking the medication I told you about. I’ll be here until the end of the week. The doctor wants to see if a new medication works before I leave. I want to talk to kids before I get off the phone. I don’t want them to worry about me.”

“Daniel, you need to take the kids this coming weekend. I’m gonna be gone. And, how is my cell phone bill gonna get paid if your in there?”

“I’ll be here until the end of the week. I’ll pick up the kids. I’ll pay it then.”

“No, no, no. I don’t want it to be late. They will charge late fees.”

“Write them a check.”

“I don’t want to write a check. I have enough going on here. You’re in charge of the finances.”

“I’ll be here until the end of the week. I’ll pay it then.”

“You better. Here’s the kids. You have to pick them up. I’m going to Las Vegas this next weekend.”

Daniel spent the week, until that next Friday which was Good Friday, in the hospital and then he was released. He drove to his apartment, changed his clothes and picked up his kids at the house and took them out for pizza that night. He didn’t forget to pay the phone bill. He paid it late and felt a relief, a withdrawal. His life had been returned to him in the few days he spent in the boxy little room along the boxy corridor of the unyielding hospital floor plan. He would never again let someone break him down as he had let Evelyn. He knew that he loved her. He knew that he wanted the marriage to work and to become more than the sum of its factors. But, he also knew now that he had to chart his own life apart from the unyielding demand for perfection coming from someone’s ruthless past.

In the end, Evelyn won the kids over with her begrudging ways. She had sufficiently belittled their father in their eyes. She told an unwary family law court, her family and her friends that the children’s father was not mentally stable. She gained sole custody. She then received twenty-eight percent of Daniel’s income. With the arrogant flippancy and unbridled urgency of a newborn teenager she took the children and they moved in with a single man who will never hear the portentous ‘third-year’ story retold. In these ways and with a thousand well-aimed shots of disapproval into her husband’s heart she made sure that Daniel paid for the infinite losses of her past. Someone had to pay for this she reckoned. It wasn’t going to be Evelyn. She now believes that she has settled her past accounts.

© Sally Paradise, 2010, All Rights Reserved

Filed under Christian, Depression, Human Interest, Short Story Tagged with , , , ,