Francis Berger

Why Am I Worrying About The Common Man?

3/31/2020

Over the past week I have come to the realization that I have spent far too much time worrying about the fate of the common man - the John Q Publics, the Jane and John Does, the Mr. and Mrs. Nobodies, the Joe Sixpacks, and all the men and women of the street who have been, ironically enough, more or less banned from the street.

The primary source of my concern is the impending systemic catastrophe barely anyone wants to acknowledge, let alone discuss. The birdemic panic has essentially knee-capped Everyman economically. The longer the lockdowns continue, the more acute the pain and suffering that follows will become. Some believe this will finally motivate the John Does to see the light. I imagine some of them will. Yet in my mind, the deeper the pain and suffering becomes, the more the material world crumbles from beneath the herd, the greater the chance the common man will recklessly hurl himself at the feet of the System and beg for mercy. (If, that is, there is any System left from which to beg mercy when all of this eventually comes to an end.)

In all honesty, I can't understand why I have been so worried about the fate of the average Joe these past two or three weeks. To begin with, I am not at all inspired by or inclined to the faux altruism and democracy that our civilization extols among its highest virtues. Secondly, though I acknowledge the existence of groups and masses, I don't particularly care for crowds and cannot bring myself to like or love abstractions like "the people" in any meaningful way. Finally, I know for a fact that I would not particularly like most of the people who make up that formless blob known as the common man.

Now, before anyone accuses me of misanthropy, allow me to stress that I feel no scorn or contempt for the common man. I am not one of those self-righteous bloggers who does little more than gloat about his own superiority while ceaselessly denigrating the masses as brainwashed 'sheeple' and the like. I accept the fact that most people are stupid, short-termist, selfish, vain, greedy, lecherous, and manipulable, but screaming this from the rooftops on a daily basis does nothing for me personally.

When all is said and done, I can think of many times in my own life when I have been stupid, short-termist, selfish, vain, greedy, lecherous, and manipulable. This does not automatically excuse these traits in others, but it does serve to remind me that I am human as well, and like all humans, like all common men, I have been prone to and will likely continue to be prone to shortcomings, failures, and yes, even sin.

Hence, I have nothing against humanity, but I refuse to worship it. It is not an idol for me. I don't want to make everyone equal or ensure everyone's perpetual comfort and satisfaction in this world. To be frank, I have barely any socialist impulses at all. No, I think my concern springs from a different angle.

Though it's sometimes difficult to maintain, I tend to think of people as fellow children of God. We all have souls. We all have potential. We all have a purpose. We are all here for a reason. We are all here to learn from experience and to develop spiritually. Berdyaev once said that a single human soul is worth more than the whole of human history, and I suppose my concern for the common man stems from that sort of notion.

I sense a great deal of evil behind the events currently unfolding all around us, and I cannot shake the feeling that these events are going to inflict a tremendous amount of material suffering upon the common man. This is bad enough in itself, but what really troubles me is the potential spiritual misery the material anguish may ignite. The near-future will likely become a mass winnowing of souls - and I get the sense that the souls of many common men will not make it through this process.

And I guess that's where my concern is rooted. But then I remember that each person has his or her own individual journey, and his or her own individual choices to make. I can infuse my concern into prayer or attempt to communicate through this obscure blog, but when all is said and done, there's not much more I can do.

I can feel for the common man, but I have to recognize that this feeling can only do so much to save him - and nothing at all if he feels no inclination to be saved. I can attempt to communicate to the common man, but I must accept the communication will mean little if it is ignored.

And I must force myself to remember that if what Berdyaev says is true, my soul is worth all of human history as well. On top of that, it is the only soul I truly have any semblance of influence over.

The rest is ultimately not up to me - and one way or the other, I simply have to accept that and loosen my grip of concern for the common man.

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So Thankful To Finally Have The Opportunity To Live In A Diverse, Inclusive, and Equal World

3/30/2020

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For years the Left has done little more than agitate for diversity, inclusivity, and equality - or D.I.E for short. Fueled mainly by resentment, short-term careerism, and general idiocy, Woke SJW types the world over have vitriolically railed against perceived oppression, social exclusion, racism, sexism, ableism, and anything else to which they could attach the -ism suffix for the better part of sixty years.

If only the world were more fair and more accepting, they wailed. If only the powers-that-be were less discriminatory and less prejudiced, they cried. If only people would wake up and understand that everything was a social construct, they argued. If only people could understand that the only way to liberate chained humanity was to reject the very fundamentals of what it means to be human. If only, if only, if only.

Well, I have great some great news for you, Woke comrade. The great struggle is over. The march through the institutions has ended. The emancipation you yearned for is here! Justice at last; justice at last! Thank the God you don't believe in, you have justice at last!

You see, the lockdown has achieved all of your noble aims in one fell swoop.

The lockdown has included us all and has rendered us all equal. Best of all, it has managed to achieve this under the banner of diversity. People of all races, colors, creeds, religions, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities have all been equally imprisoned. Social exclusion and privilege are of the past. Actually, society may itself be a thing of the past soon, but why mull on that now?

The entire planet has become one massive interconnected safe space!

Congratulations!

Isn't a wonderful feeling to see your life's ambition manifest in reality?

Hey! Why the long faces? What's that? This wasn't what you were aiming for?

But of course it was! You were just too blinded by resentment and virtue-signalling to truly understand that your ideology could have no other logical end.

Well, it doesn't matter because your time is up anyway. The oppressors have no more use for you anymore. What's that? Oh, no, those guys were never the oppressors. No, no, it's them over there, the ones stomping on faces out in the street. You know, the people you were working for.

Now get this, they didn't really believe any of the stuff they pushed on you - they just used it as a means. The same way they used you as means. In fact, they thought most of the stuff was rather amusing, and they tended to get quite a laugh out of it. Look, I'll get right to the point - they have no further use for you. None whatsoever.

Oh, and you want to hear something really funny? The real oppressors, the guys you worked for, believe in God! No, seriously! I mean, they don't believe in Him in the sense that they follow Him or love Him, but unlike you, at least they know He exists!

Yeah, that does hurt, doesn't it? Kind of makes you wonder what you were really working for all those years.

The planet? Sure, maybe you could chip in to help save that, but as far as I know, the oppressors are already taking care of it. I heard them saying something about people making supreme sacrifices.

Can you think of anything more glorious and just than that, Woke Comrade? Are you ready to make that sacrifice?

Maybe not?

Ah, if only we had a choice in the matter.

If only; if only.

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The Establishment Starts Marketing Its Totalitarian Solution To Our Current Problem

3/30/2020

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Note: This post includes excerpts from the mainstream news - those who averse or allergic to such things should probably skip this post.

Well, I have to admit - that didn't take long.

Excerpts from an article titled Gordon Brown calls for global government to tackle coronavirus, taken from The Guardian, March 26.

Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response.

A virtual meeting of the G20 group of developed and developing countries, chaired by Saudi Arabia, will be held on Thursday, but Brown said it would have been preferable to have also included the UN security council.
. . .

Brown said there had been resistance in 2008 to using the G20 as a vehicle for tackling the financial crisis, but that it should be clear to world leaders that there was no possibility of a go-it-alone approach working.

“We need some sort of working executive,” Brown said. “If I were doing it again, I would make the G20 a broader organisation because in the current circumstances you need to listen to the countries that are most affected, the countries that are making a difference and countries where there is the potential for a massive number of people to be affected - such as those in Africa.”

It's great to see all these people who saved the world in 2008/2009 are more than willing to step up to the plate one more time to save humanity from imminent disaster.

Bless 'em.

I love the inclusion of the word "temporary" when mentioning global governance there Gord. Very slick.

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The Roman Catholic Church and Lourdes - S.K. Orr

3/29/2020

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S.K. Orr - a pen-friend, outstanding wordsmith, and recent Catholic convert - reflects upon the actions the Roman Catholic Church has taken in response to the birdemic crisis.

The people in charge do not believe what they say they believe.

If the leaders in the Roman Catholic Church truly believed that the waters at one of the most important shrines in the Christian world are efficacious in the healing of the sick, they would have gone to war on this issue, declaring that the shrine at Lourdes would remain open, that pilgrims are welcome, and that the leadership would indeed die on this particular hill if need be.

But they didn’t do that. Instead, they aped what every other group, religious and secular, has done in response to this mysterious virus. The leadership of the Roman Catholic Church does not believe what they claim to believe. Actions speak louder than words.

This is all very personal to me and has been for years now. When I was a Protestant, I used to inwardly gripe that many of my fellow churchmen didn’t truly believe what they claimed to believe. I could see it by how they lived, how they interacted with other people, how they conducted business, how they treated the people from the poor part of town. I see this same pattern writ large in my life today. Every person with whom I work is a professing Christian, some belonging to what I could call severe sects. All of them are losing their minds, worried about everything from sudden death to interstate highway shutdowns to bread lines to the mark of the Beast. When they catch me just staring at them, they tag on a “But God’s in control of all this,” or even worse, a “This is God’s wake-up call to America.” waving the holiness pennant from the pews or the office chairs.

Over the course of my life, I eventually came to see the Catholic faith as the surest and most consistent expression of the Christian message, and I came to this understanding by way of an arduous, jagged path. I am not a real Catholic, not an official Catholic. I see myself as a Catholic of the heart, living in exile. So I cannot even be comforted by the things that most Catholics can draw on. In fact, those folks do not see me as one of them. I say my prayers and attend to my devotions and cling to my lectio divina and correspond with a lively collection of monks and other Catholic clerics, and I say the rosary and observe the holy days, all to maintain a sense of the holy in my life, a taste of the mystery of the spirit, a sense of connection with the God Whom I’ve been chasing after all my life.

And then I see the leaders of the Church which holds my affection pull a stunt like this. It’s disheartening, in the literal sense of that word.

I found it disheartening as well. Read the rest of S.K's post here.

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Not Forsaken; Not Destroyed

3/28/2020

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8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;

Uninvited Guests - Jakub Rozalski

10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
11 For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you.

2 Corinthians 4:8-12

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How Long Before "Go Viral" Is Declared Hate Speech?

3/27/2020

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Craig, a reader of this blog, brought up an excellent point in a comment on yesterday's post. He was complimenting another commenter for an imaginative phrase, and in the process managed to unearth gold.

"the powers that shouldn't be" is brilliant. It needs to go viral! (BTW, is it still acceptable for things to go viral, or is that terribly insensitive?)

I am of the opinion that the ultra-PC nonsense we have all had to endure is waning and will occupy a much smaller part of "public discourse" (I hate that term, really do) than it has in the past two or three decades. Nonetheless, I imagine many leftist types do currently find the term go viral a wee bit insensitive and "problematic."

On the bright side, the anticipated campaign against go viral might end up being the swansong for SJW types the world over.

Note added: Kudos to SF for his "powers that shouldn't be" phrase as well.

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The Dark Side Does Social Distancing

3/26/2020

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Vader over at Junior Ganymede posted this yesterday. I had quite the chuckle. Perhaps you will, too.

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A Microchipped Population Is Suddenly Very Conceivable

3/26/2020

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Although I am generally open-minded to the ideas conspiracy theorists promulgate, I end up rejecting most theorists and their theories for a variety of reasons. For example, one conspiracy theory I could never bring myself to take seriously was the notion of a microchipped population.

While I could comprehend why a ruling elite hellbent on totalitarianism might attempt to implement such a measure, I didn't believe the kinds of conditions that would make such an obviously tyrannical and intrusive program viable could ever manifest in the world. In other words, I didn't believe the circumstances that would allow the Establishment to convince the general population to freely submit to the necessity of microchipping could ever come about.

Well, I don't wish to alarm anyone, but the circumstances required to make the microchipped population conspiracy theory attainable are currently in play.

So strap on your tin foil hats and humor me as I indulge in a little speculative conspiracy theorizing for your reading pleasure.

Before I wade into it all, I must make it known right at the start that I place myself among those who firmly believe that the Establishment is using the current birdemic lockdown as a means through which it can advance its totalitarian takeover. Simply put, this is a power grab. The Establishment seeks to further enslave its citizenry. I don't know how it will unfold exactly, but I am certain that when it is all over, they will have become far more powerful and we will have become far more powerless. I also must make it known that I view everything happening now from a primarily spiritual perspective - that is, I am more interested in the spiritual ramifications of material events than I am in the purely material aspects of these events themselves.

With that out of the way, let's focus on the topic at hand. As I mentioned above, I never gave the microchipped population theory much consideration in the past because I could not imagine circumstances that would allow for a successful and unresisted implementation of such a blatantly intrusive and dictatorial measure. Well, the birdemic has changed all of that. Now I'm not implying that microchipping will happen - I am merely pointing out that the circumstances that would allow for the implementation of such a program are currently unfolding all around us.

Those who promulgate the microchip theory claim the Establishment will employ the technology essentially as a means of enslavement and control via micro-surveillance. The basics of this theory are the following: each person will have an unremovable chip planted somewhere in their body; this chip will serve mostly as a tracking device; the chip will also be able to spy on individuals (hear conversations or see a person's surroundings); the chip will also collect data about a person's mood, health, habits, etc.; the chip will serve as a cashless payment device which will be the only way people can buy or sell goods or receive payment for work; the chip can also be altered and deactivated, thereby changing or nullifying an individual's ability to interact with the larger network; the chip could also be used to end someone's life; and so forth.

In essence, a microchipped population would be somewhat of a living paradox. Though it would appear free on the surface, it would actually be the most monitored and unfree population that has ever existed because practically all of its movements and actions would be tracked, traced, and, potentially, influenced. It would basically be a population of prison-free prisoners.

Of course for the average person in the general population, none of this sounds appealing or desirable. This immediately raises a question. What could possibly motivate people to freely, perhaps even gladly, submit to such a clearly tyrannical program were it ever attempted? In the following, I offer some points that could be applied to our current situation.

Health and Welfare

a chip could offer a means through which an individual's health could be monitored, both by the System and by the individual in question.
infections or contagious diseases could be quickly identified making quarantines and other public health measures more effective and less disruptive, making the likelihood of future birdemic plagues slim.
a chip could also monitor other everyday health issues and greatly improve everyone's general health and life expectancy.
chips could provide screening possibilities for entering buildings or participating in public events of all sorts. Those with detected illnesses would not be admitted thereby guaranteeing "healthy, safe spaces" where those present can enjoy their time without having to worry about catching viruses or bacteria.
chips would provide a means through which parents could very closely monitor the health of their children. The health of other loved ones could also be easily accessed.
chips could also prevent the spread of other diseases. For example, sexual partners would be able to scan each others chips for signs of sexually-transmitted diseases, etc.

Safety and Security

microchips could greatly reduce crime and improve law enforcement.
monitoring movements could prevent terrorism and mass death events.
peace of mind through the tracking of children and other loved ones.

Finance and Economics

a microchip could serve as a cashless payment method, eliminating the need for cash which, as the birdemic is apparently proving, is a catalyst for the spread of germs.
tax fraud and other financial crimes would become virtually impossible.
robberies and muggings would decline.
microchip finance would spread greater equality around the world by lessening the discrepancies among various currencies/economies.

I could list many more potential 'benefits' of microchipping, but for the sake of brevity, I'll end the list there. I imagine these apparent benefits alone might persuade some portions of the population into accepting microchipping even during the best of times, but I suspect the majority would still oppose the idea despite the apparent advantages it offers.

And I assume this is why the Establishment has not made any major attempts to push this agenda through in any meaningful way yet. But current events could provide the catalyst the Establishment needs to successfully push microchipping onto the general population (if that is, indeed, one of the Establishment's aims). The ploy probably would not work in generally good conditions, but they just might work if the deteriorating conditions currently developing become bad enough.

How? Well, the old saying 'desperate times call for desperate measures' immediately springs to mind. If the Establishments succeeds in exploiting the current chaos to its own advantage, it could succeed in making people desperate enough to accept microchipping as a viable relief/survival measure. It could also exploit the deteriorating conditions currently at play to reset their System in such a manner that would make mandatory microchipping a necessity in order to participate in the System.

The considerations listed above and general altruistic/welfare considerations aside, assume the Establishment makes microchipping a prerequisite for the common things that form the foundation of everyday life. In other words, the Establishment retools its System in such a way that it would be impossible for individuals to attend school, find employment, obtain or make payments, receive healthcare, travel, get married, join organizations, etc., unless they were microchipped. What then?

And what if the Establishment manages to foment conditions via some sort of partial or complete financial and economic collapse that would make microchipping not only tenable, but practically unavoidable for anyone wishing to restart their lives or improve their individual circumstances? What then?

Until quite recently, I categorized myself among those who believed microchipping as a means of bureaucratic, totalitarian population control could never happen. Yet until quite recently, I also believed the total economic shutdown of the world over a virus scare could also never happen. Nor would I have given much credence to notions like international lockdowns and social distancing - but these things have become realities - realities we are all currently living through. In light of these developments, a microchipped population for the express purpose of Ahrimanic control is no longer inconceivable in my mind.

Once again, I am not suggesting this will happen. I am merely pointing out that the conditions for this sort of totalitarian micro-surveillance have been set in motion and are currently evolving.

Okay, thank you for indulging me.

We can all take off our tin foil hats now and return to lockdown mode. I'm sure none of this will come to fruition and everything will be back to normal in two or three weeks time.

If it isn't, it wouldn't hurt anyone to keep this microchipping thing in the back of our minds - just in case.

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The Establishment Loves to Rub It In

3/25/2020

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You got to hand it to the Establishment - they really know how to rub it in.

They have deliberately plunged us headlong into what will certainly be the worst economic and financial crisis in a century (one that will very likely end in some sort of collapse).

Against this backdrop, I come across an advertisement on You Tube. The ad is for something called Master Class - online courses offering a range of subjects taught by supposed experts in their fields.

The one below features Paul Krugman teaching - wait for it - economics and society.

A single choice quote from the esteemed Nobel Laureate reveals everything:

"The crisis of 2008 wasn't as bad as the Great Depression. And if you ask why, well, it's because we learned something."

The bad thing is, we will now be forced to live through all the learning Krugman et al. did more than a decade ago because, like it or not, we're all enrolled in the course.

Krugman et al. are forbidden from learning from experience. That's the price one pays for serving evil.

We, on the other hand, can and must learn from experience.

Like it or not, it's a part of our individual and collective spiritual destinies.

Learn from experience and you'll have the chance to return the rub in the most meaningful way possible.

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Captain Coronakiller

3/24/2020

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I'm sure mommy and family blogs on the net have covered this extensively, but I often wonder how the current plague of fear around the birdemic ceaselessly being pumped by the media is affecting children.

Thankfully, the subject has not been a major topic of discussion in my home, but my eight-year-old is quite perspicacious. He understands why he is no longer allowed to attend school and though my wife and I have made a point of keeping media to a minimum in the house, my son still picks up small snippets of information here and there via the television or radio.

During our walk this afternoon, he asked me how dangerous the virus was. The question contained an unspoken crux; I sensed it immediately. You see, my wife works at the local bank here and she is among the few people in my village who have not ceased working despite the lockdown measures currently in effect. I paused on the dirt path for a second and briefly contemplated how I should address the question.

"Well, it might be very dangerous for some people - like old people who are sick - but for others it probably poses very little danger at all. If they get it, they might feel a little sick, but they'll quickly get better."

My son nodded, "If mom got it, she would get better quickly, wouldn't she?"

"Of course she would," I replied. I said this calmly, but a jolt of anger toward the media worked its way through me all the same. "But mom's not going to get it because she's important and she's tough. If she didn't go to work, people couldn't get the money they needed to buy food. So what she does now is really important. And she's too tough for that virus. It wouldn't pick on her. No way."

I wasn't sure if I had said the right thing, but my son appeared comforted. We continued walking down the path between the canola fields.

"And you're tough, too," I said after a moment had passed. "You'd scare that virus away before it even came within ten meters of you."

My son scoffed slightly, "But I wouldn't even see it!"

"You wouldn't have to. What's important is that it sees you. And when it sees you, it's going to think twice about tangling with you."

"Why?"

"Because it would be able to detect your hidden superpowers."

"What hidden superpowers?"

"Well, I can't tell you what they are because then they won't be hidden anymore, but believe me, you've got the power to scare that virus away, and so does your mom."

"So I'm some kind of superhero?"

"As far as the virus is concerned, yes," I said. "So what's your superhero name?"

My son paused on the road again and furrowed his brow. "Captain Coronakiller!"

"A touch on the vicious side, but I like it."

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I Envy Bald Men Their Crisis Readiness

3/23/2020

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This is a light-hearted post. I somehow felt one was necessary today . . .

I am one of those men who - despite a venerable age of 48 - is still cursed with a full head of hair.

Unlike my baldheaded brethren, I am forced to consider and make time for things like combs, shampoos and, yes, haircuts. Many of my hairless homies probably envy these worries of mine, but I argue, most firmly, that my barren-domed brothers simply to not understand how oppressive and burdensome a full head of hair truly is.

Allow me to explain. I should have got a haircut back at the end of February, but I kept putting it off for various reasons. And I continued to delay my trip to the barber shop even as the ominous corvid-filled clouds of the birdemic plague began gathering on the horizon. The whole time, my full head of hair kept getting fuller and longer. Some mornings I could barely get it to look civilized, yet I continued to make excuses for not visiting the barber. I was convinced there would always be a tomorrow - and I kept convincing myself of this until one fine day my tomorrows suddenly vanished.

In a flurry of events I still find too harrowing to contemplate, every barber within a thousand-kilometer radius of my home was forced into lockdown. I joined them a mere day later, confined within the four walls of my home, isolated and alone with my overgrown and tangled full head of hair.

During the first few days of lockdown I could barely get myself to look into a mirror. The odd time I did, I could see my full head of hair was mocking me; new curls lolled playfully onto my forehead and swooped derisively over the edges of my ears.

Whenever I do leave the house, I make sure to hide it all beneath a wool hat, even when the temperature is nearly twenty degrees above zero.

But it's always the worst at night. I swear, I can hear it growing in the darkness. It whispers to me then, my hair, and fills my dreams with nightmare visions of a world without barbers.

The problem is, I don't have time for all of that at the moment. I have much more pressing matters to worry about now like stocking up on two-years' worth of toilet paper and buying a flamethrower for when things get really stupid.

There's a crisis brewing and my hair is interfering with all the prepping I still need to do. It's more than I can stand. For example, the other day I had a really hard time cleaning my assault rifle because my damn hair kept getting in my eyes.

On top of that, I have to make extra room in my bunker for hair care products, which means less room for beef jerky, which means my damn neighbor is almost guaranteed to live two weeks longer than I stand to, and it's all thanks to my stupid hair.

My hair-challenged chums don't have to worry about any of that. The smoothness with which they can transition into crisis mode matches the smoothness of their scalps. Face it - bald men are crisis ready! While I'm wasting time stocking up on things like shampoo and hair gel, they're doing useful stuff like installing water-free compost toilets and planting landmines in their front yards.

And when the crisis is all finished, my bald buddies will all come out of it looking exactly the same as they did when they went into - tough and hard, like these guys:

Whereas I will come out of it looking like my family namesake from the aptly named Hair.

Give me a head with hair - yeah, whatever.

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Spring Blossoms

3/23/2020

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The plum trees in my backyard are putting on quite show this season. I hope their blossoms pull through the sudden dip in temperatures and high winds we have been experiencing over the past two days. If they do, we should have a good crop this year. If not . . . no plum jam for winter.

Hang in there blossoms! Warmer, calmer days are just ahead!

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Totalitarianism Via Altruism

3/21/2020

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The word 'lockdown' has been frequently employed in the past two weeks to describe the circumstances the birdemic virus has triggered in the world. In our current situation, we have been instructed to interpret the term lockdown as a state of isolation or restricted access enacted as a security measure.

Appropriately enough, we have been, in effect, isolated and have seen our access to the most mundane of daily tasks severely curtailed. The justification for these draconian measures? A strain of flu virus that has been declared a pandemic and is apparently threatening the lives of millions.

The lockdown is working because it appeals to altruism. Governments around the world have isolated us and restricted our access to the daily routines of life under the pretext of disinterested and selfless concern for the welfare and well-being of others. We have been told that being locked down is the only way to save lives. Any objections to the implemented security and safety measures are treated as declarations of callous selfishness bordering on criminal recklessness. In some places non-compliance has indeed become a crime, punishable by fines and or jail time.

People have thus far accepted the lockdown without much of a fuss. To do otherwise would be to deem oneself selfish and uncaring. However, like nearly everything in our society, the psychology of the lockdown is saturated with the poison of inversion. It provides a perfect means through which people can appear to be self-sacrificing for the greater good while simultaneously fortifying themselves in selfishness and self-concern.

Let's face it, I imagine many people welcome the lockdown more as a means to protect themselves than as a means to protect others. After all, no one wants to become a victim of this terrible plague, do they? Nor do they want their families to fall ill. The self-centeredness beneath the altruistic syrup coating the lockdown measures also becomes evident through the empty shelves we find in grocery stores and pharmacies. This sort of thing would be rare or would simply not exist if the emotions supporting the apparent altruism were authentic.

The Establishment and the governments it controls are using altruism as a justification for the severe actions it has taken. They inform us they are doing this for our own good. The tell us they don't want to do any of it, but must in an effort to flatten curves and protect the populace from a mass death event. They are quick to point out their own selflessness and concern through their willingness to sacrifice their economies and societies in an effort to stem the tide of encroaching death. They eagerly parade a few of their infected own on the media to drive home the point that no one is safe.

Employment, taxes, debt, deficits, profits, markets, supply chains - none of that matters here and now. What matters here and now is isolating and restricting the general population to stop the spread of a killer disease that threatens to overwhelm our health care systems, thereby destroying the very foundation of civilization itself.

Yet, paradoxically, the altruistic actions the Establishment is taking, actions the general populace have thus far adhered to with practically little or no protest, also run the risk of destroying the very foundation of civilization.

As far as I can tell, a massive inversion of the old adage 'prevention is better than cure' is currently being played out. The Establishment seems intent on destroying the economy and society in its efforts to hinder the spread of a disease it claims will endanger civilization. I am certain the policies and regulations the Establishment has swiftly enacted around the world will soon show prevention to be far worse than cure in this case.

This brings us to possible underlying motivations behind the Establishment's current lockdown measures. As I mentioned above, we are being told to interpret the lockdown through the lens of altruism. We are being obliged to view the measures themselves as necessary means to achieve safety and security. Whatever freedom we enjoyed has been suspended in the name of welfare.

While this is happening, the other meaning of the word 'lockdown' - the one employed to describe prison conditions when prisoners are confined to their cells so the guards may prevent or control a riot - has been almost completely ignored.

How odd.

Official pundits and armchair pundits alike have argued against the foolishness of reading too much into our current lockdown situation. These pundits claim that the actions and measures we are currently experiencing are not unprecedented. On the contrary, history teems with examples of societies going into lockdown mode as a means to combat a terrible plague. Many have cited the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic as a notable, fairly recent example. Pundits are also quick to point out that life more or less returned to normal once the public health threat subsided in the various historical examples they point to.

Sounds reassuring, doesn't it?

I certainly hope the pundits are right. I really do. Because if they aren't, then we are likely living through what will one day be known as the biggest and, thus far, most successful totalitarian power grab ever attempted in the history of the world.

Sounds hyperbolic? Yes, it does, doesn't it? And perhaps it is hyperbolic. But being told you would not be allowed to gather in groups larger than five or take the family out to dinner would have sounded hyperbolic two weeks ago as well, wouldn't it have?

The truth is no one knows what the future will bring - but the present is displaying some pretty grim clues. We all live and breathe in the in the present, and this present has become totalitarian in nature. Whether it stays that way remains to be seen, but as of now we are little more than prisoners on lockdown.

This immediately raises a question. Why now?

I can't say with any certainty, but my intuition tells me it has something to do with the economy. The Establishment knew the economy would eventually implode. I am of the mind that it should have imploded back in 2008/2009, but that implosion was averted by ridiculous fiscal and financial stimulus actions and policies that managed to paper over the problem until now. Whatever the case, the Establishment appears quite intent on allowing the implosion to proceed now, and, to me at least, it appears to be using the birdemic virus as a both a shroud and an explanation for the cause of the ever-accelerating collapse.

Bad policies, rapacious greed, and criminal negligence won't be blamed for the collapse; a virus will. To top it all off, the Establishment gets a chance to prove their altruism and demonstrate their love of humanity. By destroying the economy to prevent the spread of virus, the Establishment can show that it loves human life more than it loves money. And as the collapse escalates, it will ask us all to adopt the same stance - all in the name of altruism.

Nevertheless, there is one thing the Establishment values far more than money or human life - and that one thing is power. Though the Establishment may appear to lose material wealth and comfort in the coming weeks and months, they have made and will continue to make vast gains in power during the lockdown. These gains in power will come at the expense of our personal freedoms and liberties. If we want to know what that will feel like, we need do no more than simply look around because, as of now, we're living it.

Of course, the pundits will argue this all temporary, but in my experience the Establishment rarely, if ever, walks back its encroachments on individual freedoms and liberties. Instead, they have tended to use each step forward as a launching pad for a future encroachment. Think Patriot Act and try to remember the last time you weren't asked to remove your belt or shoes or given a free body massage at an international airport. Or try to recall the last time you weren't asked to fill out intrusive forms in order to transfer larger amounts of money. Or the last time you felt well within your rights to call a man pretending to be a woman a man.

What has happened and is happening now makes the Patriot Act look like nothing more than a list of club rules a child would write in crayon and stick the wall of his backyard treehouse. Consider the following little news item from Israel that covers a proposal involving "A Total Suspension of Individual Freedom":

When MK Yoav Kish (Likud) sought to clarify whether she meant a total lockdown or curfew, Sadetsky replied: “A lockdown and personal monitoring of people, and a total halt to personal freedoms.”

Sadetsy and Moshe Bar Siman Tov, the Health Ministry’s director general, tried to persuade committee members to give the Shin Bet the go-ahead to use “special technological means” to detect where people diagnosed with the disease had been and the people they were exposed to while they were contagious, and to isolate them.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday that such methods had been adopted, it provoked a strong public outcry due to the extraordinary loss of civil liberties by methods normally reserved for use in the war on terror.

These special means include gathering data about a person’s location via their cellphone and additional technological information using secret tools, and cross-referencing all of the data.

The process identifies all of the contacts coronavirus patients have had and the places they were, whether they are aware of it or not. A text message is then sent to any people who may have been affected, telling them to self-isolate.

The suspension of individual freedom. Micro-surveillance. Special technological means to detect movement and contacts.

I hate to say it, but Ahriman is cementing its grip on us. I hope the pundits are correct when they claim the isolation and restriction measures will be lifted once the virus fades, but I don't believe this will be the case. Even if the virus threat recedes, the economic fallout of the Establishment's policies will remain.

If this economic fallout turns out to be as bad as some suggest, lockdown measures will probably be maintained or increased in the name of protecting safety and order. Of course, neither of these will truly exist in any meaningful sense if the Establishment succeeds in tanking its own System, but that's very much beside the point.

The main point, as far as the Establishment is concerned, is to keep us isolated and restricted in our cells. We are all prisoners now. Prisoners in the name of the greater good. Locked down in the name of altruism.

Ahriman is stepping ever closer to a totalitarian world order, and it is wielding altruism as its weapon of choice in the achievement of this aim.

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There Is Only One True Safe Haven, And It Isn't Gold, Crypto, or Bonds

3/20/2020

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Back on March 8 I wrote the following in a post called Listen All Y'All, It's a Sabotage:

The current global financial and economic system strikes me as sophisticated and complex, yet fragile and delicate. Everything depends on everything else. There appears to be very little margin for error. A small, seemingly insignificant problem could easily ripple across the whole network - become amplified and magnified. Set of a chain reaction. Topple dominos.

So sophisticated and complex. Yet so fragile and delicate.

And the powers that be seem quite intent on bringing it down. Now. I couldn't tell you to what degree or for what duration, but the way the hysteria is spinning out of control indicates that this might be the start of something big.
. . .
I am no economist, but I know enough about the voodoo our current witchdoctors have concocted to know that most of what accounts for the global economy is built on ravenous consumption fueled by Himalayan heaps of debt. I know enough about personal finance to understand that the average Westerner is one or two missed paychecks away from catastrophe. I know enough about business to comprehend that with the exception of small, family-run enterprises, no corporation on the planet will ever use its vast profits to help itself sail over stormy seas.

And against this backdrop, they have decided to terrorize and slowly shutdown the world.
. . .
On one hand, I am making attempts to see the possible positive side of these rather baffling developments, but its hard to see a positive side when such blatant sabotage is clearly at play.

The purposive pursuit to end something usually indicates a desire to start something new. I feel no kinship for or affiliation to our current System. It is clearly an obstacle. A barrier. It needs to be dismantled and sent to the scrap yard in order for something better to emerge. But the dismantling I am seeing now will unlikely lead to anything better. More likely, it will lead to something worse.

And that is a possibility we must consider.

That was twelve days ago.

I remember feeling apprehensive when I wrote that post. I didn't want to sound like an alarmist or play a part in spreading fear and panic, but it became rather clear to me that the Establishment was intent on crashing the economy. In the twelve days that have passed since, I have become positively convinced of it.

Bruce Charlton has posited that the economic collapse is deliberate and planned.

I agree with him.

But here's the thing - this is not something I want to be right about.

Let me repeat that - this is not something I want to be right about.

And I know Dr. Charlton does not want to be right about this either. The problem with Dr. Charlton is he can be incredibly prescient, to the point of being prophetic, as demonstrated by this post from November 27, 2019.

I hope I'm wrong about this. I really do.

I hope and pray that in a month's time I will have succeeded in making an utter fool of myself.

Having stated that, I noticed I was wrong about one thing on March 8. The Establishment is not shutting down the world slowly. Quite the opposite.

In a span of twelve days, it has succeeded in essentially placing nearly everyone in the world under house arrest, all under the guise of altruism and public safety (something I'll probably write about tomorrow).

Stock markets are tanking, currencies are fluctuating, debt is imploding, liquidity is disappearing, industries are cratering, and jobs are vanishing.

For its part, the Establishment is going through its well-worn routine of stimulus packages, credit expansion, and money printing to 'solve' the crisis.

In the midst of this sudden chaos people the world over are scrambling to find safe havens. Investors are selling their stocks and ploughing into cash. Others are buying up gold and silver. Others still believe they will be spared by putting their capital into digital currencies. At the ground level, people are hoarding toilet paper; loading up on canned goods; buying assault rifles.

Everyone is desperate to find safety and security - some form of sanctuary through which they hope to ride out the storm. And who can blame them? The will to survive often roars to life during times of potential peril.

But here's the catch. The will to physically survive is both natural and good, but our highest survival instinct should always be spiritual survival.

This entails recognizing and focusing attention on the only true safe haven that exists.

I have nothing against those who are scrambling to find material safe havens in an effort to preserve their wealth and protect their families. I am making some adjustments and weighing options at the moment myself. After all, I have a duty to protect my family from whatever hell is bound to come. This is all well and good, to a point, but it must not be driven by fear or despair and it must not be our sole concern during these times.

Above all else, we must remember we are in a spiritual war. The Establishment has begun the process of unleashing unimaginable material suffering, but spiritual suffering is the true purpose of the material agony we are all sure to experience to some degree. It's crucial to keep that in mind.

The Establishment wants to bring us to our knees, get us to turn our backs on God, and embrace whatever faux-salvation it will offer us to help alleviate our material suffering.

Material safe havens may protect us for a while. Maybe they can even pull us through the storm and help us come out at the other end, but they cannot protect us from spiritual devastation.

In light of this, we mustn't forget God's love. We mustn't, not even in the most challenging of circumstances, forget that we live in a loving Creation. We mustn't forget to learn from the experiences we will have and use them to align ourselves with God.

There's only one thing we can take away from this world. And there's only one way we can take it out of this world.

That's the safe haven that matters above all the others.

That's the safe haven we must strive to secure.

Note added: On their respective blogs, Bruce Charlton and William Wildblood have both written extensively about the precedence of spiritual preparation during these times. I owe both a debt of gratitude for some of the views I have expressed here.

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Don't Underestimate Your Spiritual Power

3/20/2020

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The following was taken from a comment I wrote in response to this post:

I have no desire to alienate or distance any serious Christian, Catholic or otherwise. In many ways this blog has become a way for me to form alliances and relationships with serious Christians of all denominations, and I want to continue building those alliances and relationships to whatever extent I can.

By serious Christians I mean those who truly believe in Jesus Christ and wish to follow Him with the entirety of their minds, hearts, and souls. I do not wish to bicker over theological fine points or haggle over who is right and who is wrong concerning history, church dogma, doctrine, traditions, or anything else.

We all have our own unique spiritual destinies, one that is guided by a loving God, and I have no qualms with any Christian who believes he is doing the right thing by adhering to a church.

Having said all of that, we are experiencing something unprecedented in the history of the world. I am not referring here only to the closure of churches over a virus scare, but everything that is happening. What matters now is the primacy of the spiritual. Whatever helps you find and maintain the primacy of the spiritual is fine with me, as long as it aligns with God's reality and loving Creation.

"the Catholic Church is not the Church of the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, the parish priests, or even the laity. It is the Church of the Saints."

I'll go a step further. The Church is you. You should strive to be that Saint. Don't underestimate the power of your spirit. The time for waiting to see what will happen has passed. God is waiting for us to take a step toward Him through an act of Creativity. God is waiting for us to become co-Creators.

I say that not out of heresy or spiritual pride, but out of necessity and sobriety.

Gentlemen, like it or not, we have been un-Churched. As I said earlier, you are now the Church. You need to draw on direct knowledge from God. You are the immanent that needs to meet the transcendent. That meeting happens through love, faith, and hope.

We can and should draw on tradition, but we shouldn't be regressive. Nor should we be passive. We need to move beyond our spiritual adolescence and become spiritual adults.

That is our task.

Here and now.

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