Francis Berger
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Weather: Under It, Quite Severely

2/20/2023

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Spring has exploded here in western Hungary. Clear skies. Pleasant temperatures.

Unfortunately, my immune system has responded to this development by exploding in a different, less pleasant way.

The old adage of being "under the weather" doesn't even begin to describe the overall state of ill health I have experienced in the past few days. 

Aw, well. Nothing a little time won't cure. 

I hope to be back blogging soon . . .  perhaps in a few days' time.    
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Christ Without Christendom

2/17/2023

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I have never lived in Christendom, and to the best of my knowledge, no Christian alive today has. To claim that such-and-such country in the West was -- until very recently -- a part of Christendom or even a Christian country is delusional.

Sure, Christianity continued to influence some aspects of culture and society in some Western countries until about the Second World War -- maybe even up to about the 1960s in some places -- but it would be a stretch to refer to the influence of this sum of "somes" as Christendom or as characteristics of a so-called Christian country. 

Christendom is behind us -- far behind us. Same goes for Christian nations. Furthermore, I doubt that I will ever live in a Christian nation or in any kind of Christendom in my lifetime. My son's lifetime? Who knows? Maybe -- but probably not. Same goes for his kids. 

Bleak outlook? Well, it depends on one's perspective. If Christianity depends on things like Christian nations and Christendom, then the outlook is bleak indeed.

However, if one can separate Christ from nations and a grouping of nations, then the outlook brightens considerably. 

There is no Christendom. There are no Christian nations. There is only Christ. 

And if you stop and think about it -- really think about it -- you might begin to see this as a blessing, not a curse.
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Life in the Garden of Death

2/15/2023

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The Garden of Death - Hugo Simberg - 1896
My vegetable garden began as a hobby – a way to spend some constructive time outdoors in the spring, summer, and autumn. Household finances were not a primary motivator. I simply enjoyed the process of planting, nurturing, and growing a little extra food. The superior taste of the produce from my garden was reward enough for me.

Well, what began as a hobby is now somewhat of a necessity in this part of the world. The official food price inflation is above 40% at the moment, but the actual “real” food inflation is 100% and higher . . . in some cases, much higher.

My family can still afford to buy food at grocery stores, but at such ridiculously elevated prices, it is worth looking for cheaper options wherever they may be found. That’s where the necessity part comes in. Although I don’t really need to grow any of my own food, I would be foolish not to.

I am not a prepper. Nor am I a bunker-building survivalist hell-bent on surviving some much-vaunted zombie apocalypse. I’m just a common man attempting to lessen the impoverishing effects of inflation . . . ahem, cough, cough . . . price gouging.

I can’t fully escape the pressure the demons are applying via their economic, financial, trade, and supply chain tactics, but I can still do little things to ease the pressure here and there. Growing my own vegetables happens to be one of them. 

And these little things are nothing to sneeze at. For example, the dozen egg-laying hens I purchased last spring have saved my family between 700 to 800 dollars over the course of the year. To put that into perspective, that’s an average month’s salary after taxes in Hungary. The hens have been such a great success that I am already working to obtain at least a dozen more this spring. I may also begin raising quail. Perhaps some ducks, as well.

None of these things will make me self-sufficient or liberate me from the System. Nor will they fully protect my family from larger potential dangers or ramped-up demonic pressures. Yet they do offer some reprieve.

More importantly, they offer glimpses into reality’s independence of Ahriman. Those glimpses alone are worth the extra effort of digging and hoeing.

Revelations of life in a garden of death.  
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Grain of Salt? More Like Boulders . . .

2/12/2023

6 Comments

 
One of the most depressing aspects of the past three years has been the sudden and unwanted revelation that most of the people I have looked to for insights, discernment, interpretations, observations, cognizance, clarification, and ideas have been dead wrong about nearly everything that has transpired in the past three years.

I'm talking about incredibly intelligent, well-read people here. 

By dead wrong, I don't mean inaccurate predictions or garbled analysis. That's par for the course and is to be expected.

​After all, being wrong is a part of being human. I've been wrong about many things and will continue to be wrong about many more things. No, by dead wrong I mean wrong in the most fundamental way -- at the level of metaphysical assumptions -- at the core concept level of being, existence, and reality.

Experiencing intelligent, well-read people being consistently and predictably wrong at this level -- the level of first principles -- has been difficult to ignore and increasingly challenging to excuse.

It wouldn't be nearly so bad if the dead wrongers admitted that they should at least consider honestly re-evaluating their assumptions, but very few appear willing or able to do so.

As far as I can tell, they've made their commitments, and they're sticking to them. Fine and well, but I hope they understand that everything they continue to say about theology, spirituality, morality, ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, logic, cosmology, and all the rest of it now requires a boulder of salt.

​A mere grain is insufficient to cover dead wrong.  
   
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The Thing About Fast Food Kitchens

2/11/2023

2 Comments

 
Having a chef for a father means I grew up with a solid understanding of what the term "good food" means.

Nevertheless, I had a certain weakness for fast food throughout my childhood and adolescence and enjoyed eating in places like McDonalds, Taco Bell, or what have you.

Thankfully, my youthful affection for Big Macs and Whoppers began to fade by my late-teens. When I hit my mid-twenties, I stopped eating fast food altogether.

The reasons?

​Well, there were the obvious health and nutritional considerations and the general quality of customers who frequent such establishments, but what really turned me off fast food were the kitchens.

Have you ever really stopped to consider what fast food kitchens look like?

Below is an image of a typical (higher end) fast food kitchen:  
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And this is what a typical post-mortem examination room looks like. You know, the place where they perform autopsies.  
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Because I worked in many restaurants in my youth, I get that virtually all kitchens in contemporary restaurants -- fast food or otherwise -- look like autopsy rooms, primarily because stainless steel is durable, corrosive-resistant, relatively hygienic, and easy-to-clean.

Regardless, the whole thing turns me off. Always has -- which helps explain why I don't go out to each much anymore. 
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Because They Have Become Useless

2/10/2023

1 Comment

 
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Behold the peck "immunity certificate" the Hungarian government handed out to all of its pecked citizens at the height of the birdemic.

Yeah, you read that right -- "immunity" certificate. 

For a while the government strongly implied that all Hungarians would require one of these in order to conduct their day-to-day lives.

For a while Hungarians did need one of these if they wanted to travel by plane, or visit a hospital, or go to a restaurant, or attend certain public events.

For a while there were suggestions that the card would eventually be needed to for other things like attending school, using public transportation, and going grocery shopping.

Some "experts" went as far as to demand the creation of an apartheid society or the incarceration of people without "immunity certificates". 

Fun times. Great people.  

I never got the "immunity certificate". Those who did eventually realized that they were not really immune to anything. 

Well, in its infinite wisdom and goodness, the Hungarian government has decided to bring an end to the era of the immunity certificate -- at least in Hungary: 


According to Világgazdaság, the government will issue no more COVID immunity certificates because they have become useless.

Based on a new decree, owners can keep their immunity certificate and can access their EU digital COVID certificate via its QR code. People will also be able to access their digital COVID certificate with the help of different apps.


The Hungarian government refuses to state the obvious. These certificates did not become useless -- they were always useless, at least from the perspective of public health. Ah, but they were certainly useful for trying to establish a totalitarian bureaucracy, weren't they?

Shame that didn't work out, but I'm sure they're not done trying, particularly since the fine folks at the EU continue to push the whole digital ID thing. Too bad about all the destruction in the meantime though.

One more thing -- revocation is not repentance. In fact, it doesn't even qualify as an apology.

​Just throwing that out there.   
1 Comment

Slaves Well Before They Became Slaves

2/9/2023

3 Comments

 
When we think of slavery (or servility or subservience or self-abasement), we tend to conceptualize it as a purely external force exerting oppressive pressure on an otherwise free and resisting being.

Within this conceptualization, the free and resisting being only becomes a slave after force overpowers his freedom and resistance to oppression.

This force then smothers the free and resisting being into submission. Thus, slavery is the dominance of oppressive force over a conquered but otherwise innately free being. 

This is all fine and well to a certain degree, but it limits slavery to an external imposition, thereby neglecting the reality that most forms of external slavery first arise deep within man himself -- that the exterior slavery man experiences is, more often than not, a form of slavery man has created for himself within his interior being. 

Some slavery can be purely external, but most of the slavery we see around us today is the product of consciousness.

This tends to get lost in the mix because the only slavery we perceive and experience as slavery is that which manifests and plays out in the external world.

The external world certainly has the power and force to enslave, but this power is nothing compared to the internal power of man to enslave himself via consciousness. 

Hence, our go-to conceptualization of slavery is sorely misguided because it casually ignores the reality of a purely external force exerting oppressive pressure on a servile and consenting being.

Within this conceptualization, the servile and consenting being was a slave long before he ever encountered the external oppressive force.

Such a being does not need to be overpowered or smothered because he was submissive long before the external power appeared. Such a being welcomes the external force and regards it as a liberator.

Thus, the appearance of an oppressive external power does little more than draw out the servile consciousness of such a being and renders it tangible and perceptible to those who are still able to discern between what constitutes a free and resisting being and what does not.  
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On the Hill Top

2/8/2023

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On the Hill Top - Károly Ferenczy - 1901
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There is No "Globo-Only" Option; Even if There Was, It Would Be Spiritually Unviable

2/6/2023

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Conservative and/or Christian bloggers and writers often cite Hungary’s government as the epitome of traditional values, common sense, anti-wokeness, and “sticking it to the globalists.”
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I get where they’re coming from. When I moved to Hungary seven years ago, I was singularly impressed by the seeming candidness of Viktor Orbán’s apparent illiberal politics and Christian-national policies, particularly when juxtaposed to the converged governments of the Anglo countries in which I had spent the majority of my life.

Unlike their conservative/right-wing counterparts in other parts of the West, Orbán et al. not only talked the talk, but they also seemed willing to walk the walk. For example, the leaders of most Europe countries responded to the 2015 migrant crisis by asking their citizens to rush to train stations and bus terminals and welcome the mostly 18-35-year-old male “refugees” from the Middle East and North Africa with hugs, balloons, and stuffed animals. Orbán et al. went in the other direction and worked to install a 320-kilometer fence to stem the migrant tide pouring in from the southern border.

Having been in the country for only a few months when this transpired, I must confess that I was dazzled by Orbán’s common sense response to a manufactured globalist crisis. I was even more dazzled by the Hungarian government’s staunch and unwavering defense of the fence after the EU and its globalist-puppet governments began attacking Hungary with their usual arsenal of human rights concerns, Nazi accusations, and fascist labeling. Hungary returned fire by turning on the EU and going against George Soros-funded NGOs.

To put this in perspective, this was at about the same time as the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and Trump’s election in the United States. A palpable pushback against globalism was in the air; for a few years, it appeared the anti-globalist political forces might succeed in putting a halt to the increasingly unbearable and suicidal global machinations flooding the West. Sadly, it wasn’t to be. The political pushback that had picked up momentum during the migrant crisis fizzled when the birdemic erupted onto the scene in late 2019.

Shortly before the 2020 global totalitarian coup, I thought about what had gone wrong. Why had Brexit, Trump, and Orbán’s anti-EU stance all flopped? It did not take me long to realize that a part of the problem seemed to lie in the inability or unwillingness of nations and their leaders to spiritually extract themselves from the globo component of what some right-wing and Christian bloggers and writers pejoratively refer to as the “globohomo” political paradigm. I usually avoid the term in my posts but refer to it here, mostly for illustrative purposes.

If I am not mistaken, globohomo is the official abbreviation for “global homogenization”, but said right-wing and Christian bloggers extended the connotations to refer to the social/sexual engineering globalist forces pushed upon populations via the continuation of the sexual revolution.

Anyway, within the globohomo conceptualization, the globo half of the political model refers to globalist agenda items that have to do with finance, economics, trade, law, business, the environment, and so forth.

The homo half touches upon agenda items like the assault against traditional families, the promotion of homosexuality, feminism, abortion, and the trans agenda. I suppose you could expand the homo part to anything on the human side of the equation and include other agenda issues like anti-racism, anti-whiteness, mass migration, equality, equity, diversity, inclusion, and so forth.

To return to the point I was beginning to make, conservative, anti-globalist forces seem capable of putting up rather fierce resistance to some or all of the globalist agenda items on the one side of the globohomo manifesto, but are lukewarm when it comes items to the other side of the agenda.

For instance, I may be wrong, but I perceived Brexit mainly as a reaction against the globo side. Though concerns over homo agenda items certainly played a part – mass immigration being one of them -- the Brexit movement seemed more focused on the practical side of getting the UK out of the EU financially and politically.

The same applies to Trump and his “drain the swamp” rhetoric and promise of making America great again. Though he spoke of building walls and bringing industrial jobs back from China and elsewhere, he tended to avoid topics like rolling back gay rights, the trans agenda, or other sexual-social issues.

Orbán’s government in Hungary takes the opposite approach. Though nationalistic and pugilistic in its rhetoric, the Hungarian government barely makes any waves about remaining in the EU, receiving EU funds, or allowing global corporations to set up shop in Hungary so that they may exploit the intentionally low wages of the Hungarian workforce. Orbán et al.’s only apparent beefs with the EU and globalism rest predominately on the homo side of the agenda.

The Hungarian government is happy to comply with the globalist agenda as long as the homo aspects remain off the table. Case in point, the Hungarian government has frequently criticized and passed resolutions against the trans agenda, but is perfectly willing to comply when it comes to things like the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, global climate targets, green energy, smart cities, and every other imaginable non-homo agenda item.

Many rightists and Christians tend to dismiss such political concessions as meaningless. Others are quick to rationalize them away as examples of pragmatism, realism, strategizing, or just plain “playing politics”. The underlying belief seems to be that the globo half of the agenda is not altogether evil or not all that spiritually significant and that concessions made on that half of the agenda are unavoidable in “the real world”.

The problem with this attitude and approach is that it refuses to recognize the globohomo agenda as entirely evil. Moreover, it sees the agenda as a list of bullet points rather than unified damnation campaign. Some bullet points need to be challenged and resisted; others, not so much. The hopeful among rightists and Christians go as far as to claim that the globohomo agenda can be rolled back and defeated if conservatives manage to seize control of the globo part of the program.

Rightists and Christians fail to realize that the globohomo agenda is a package deal. Despite appearances to the contrary, there is no “globo-only” option. Any political force than accepts the globo part of the agenda also accepts the homo part by default, and the demons behind the agenda will not rest until they have secured this totality. Regardless, they still win even if they fail to do so.

The ultimate evidence of this lies in Orbán’s groveling subservience to the 2020 global coup and its birdemic. The Hungarian government did not resist the “global-only” diktat of “none are safe until all are safe”. On the contrary, it relished the opportunity to impose measures, lockdowns, and terrorize the populace into receiving the peck.

To this day, it regards its actions during the birdemic as virtuous and inviolable. Dissenting voices are either ignored or silenced. Orbán and his government have expressed no regret for their deeds, nor have they given any indication that they have anything for which to repent.

From the demonic perspective, that qualifies as a mission accomplished.

Since the birdemic, Hungary has reverted to its pre-birdemic schtick of criticizing the homo aspects of globohomo while remaining mostly aligned with the globo points. The Globohomo Empire has responded to Hungary’s partial disloyalty by installing a gay, Jewish human rights lawyer in Budapest as America’s ambassador.

To drive home the point that “globo only” is not an option, the Empire ensured that the ambassador arrived to family-friendly, conservative, traditional Hungary with his “husband” and two children in tow. Since his arrival, the ambassador has done little more than remind Hungary about where its loyalties lie and express veiled threats about potential consequences should the country prove disloyal to the agenda as a whole.

Though I generally avoid politics on this blog, I have outlined the above to draw attention to a crucial point about the same sort of dynamic at the level of individual Christians.

At that level, the globohomo agenda is simply an umbrella term for what Dr. Charlton has called the Litmus Test Issues of Serious Christianity. If 2020 has revealed anything, it is this – all countries, governments, institutions, and organizations in the West are on board with the Litmus Tests.

Put another way, there isn’t a country, government, institution, or organization in the West that is not spiritually aligned with the globohomo agenda in some significant way. Unfortunately, this also includes all the mainstream Christian churches in the West.

The takeaway here is simple – individual Christians must assume responsibility for their faith, discernment, and decisions. Christians cannot trust or rely on external authorities to guide them, defend them, protect them, represent them, or “save them”.

Moreover, unlike so-called conservative and Christian politicians, individual Christians must recognize and understand the need to spiritually resist and reject the globohomo agenda in its entirety.

Christians cannot fall into the political trap of resisting and rejecting some agenda items while simultaneously embracing others. Nor can they regard this sort of “pick and choose” approach as spiritually coherent, tolerable, or acceptable.

You cannot profess to be a serious Christian if you claim to oppose gay marriage, the trans agenda, and mass migration but accept the climate emergency or the UN’s sustainable development goals.

You cannot profess to be a serious Christian if you have resisted all the Litmus Test issues but find nothing immoral about believing in the birdemic or willingly succumbing to the peck program.

The globohomo agenda/Litmus Test issues are a unified and indivisible demonic agenda. You cannot be against one part of the demonic agenda if you actively support another part. Globo only or homo only or one failed Litmus Test are not viable options because each accepted agenda item invites evil directly into the heart. Once evil has been invited in, it is only a matter of time before “globo only” becomes “globohomo”; it is only a matter of time before one failed Litmus Test becomes two or three or four.

Fail one Litmus Test, and you fail them all.

It is that simple.

Ideally, Litmus Tests are passed when we reject them forthrightly at every level of our being; however, individual circumstances may not allow for an external/material/worldly rejection of a Litmus Test/globohomo agenda item.

The most obvious example that springs to mind is Christians who took the peck to keep their jobs. It is not the action of taking the peck that defines whether one has failed the Litmus Test. What defines a failed Litmus Test is the individual’s spiritual attitude toward and understanding of the action.

If a Christian recognizes that the choice made is inherently against God and Creation and repents the choice, that Christian passes the Litmus Test regardless of his action.

On the other hand, if a Christian regards his choice as good – as a choice that is somehow, miraculously aligned with God and Creation, and then packages this attitude with all sorts of rationalizations and justifications, and then insists that he has nothing for which to repent, then that Christian has failed that Litmus Test.

Whether he admits it or not, he is firmly on board with the demonic globohomo agenda where it counts the most – in his heart and in his spirit. His vehement opposition to the remaining 99% of the agenda means very little if he refuses to repent that 1% agreement.

If you’ve signed up for globo, you’ve signed up for homo. Conversely, if you've signed up for homo, you've signed up for globo.

There is no globo-only or homo-only option in the demonic globohomo agenda at the political level. It’s a package deal. Take it or leave it.

The same applies at the individual spiritual level. The choice – the spiritual choice – is ours to make.

And every choice we make is ultimately a spiritual choice. 
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Mednyánszky - Memento: Scene of Horror

2/5/2023

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I appreciate László Mednyánsky mostly for his landscapes and quality of light, but the Wandering Baron also has a knack for capturing mood in his other pieces, such as in this rough oil-on-board study called Memento: Scene of Horror.

In my humble opinion, "The Psychological and Spiritual State of Contemporary Man" would have been a more fitting title.  
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