Lynd Minnesota, Larvita McFarquhar, Civil Disobedience

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/a-heroine-for-our-time-2.php

My wife and I took the 2.5 hour journey to Lynd Minnesota to show support for Ms McFarquhar. By the time we left at 9:30 (the official start of the event), there were approaching 100 maskless people in a fairly large space in defiance of El Capitan Walz decrees that thou shalt stay cowering in your home lest thou surely die. 

Well maybe. I agree that I shall surely die. Will it be because of Covid due to taking this risk? Through the experiences that my wife and I have had in the last 5 years, I've decided that even my next breath is God's decision, not mine. What about others? I believe that no matter their beliefs, the length of their lives and the date of their departure are likewise not under their own authority. Every knee will bow before Christ, even that of der Fuhrer Walz. 

We used to live in a country that had a Constitution with a Bill Of Rights, of which the first amendment stated: 

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Today, freedom of religion can only get a 5-4 decision from a supposedly "conservative" SCOTUS, and the Woke are all in a tizzy because the court didn't "listen to the experts".  Praise God for Amy Coney Barrett! "The experts" have a long record of being certain and wrong. They were all certain that we were out of oil in the 1970s, and more recently that fracking could never make us energy independent. On a personal note, my faith in "experts" really went down after a top surgeon at Mayo screwed my radius and ulna together. So much for "measure twice, screw once"! 

We have been told many things about Corona -- no need to wear masks, they are not effective anyway; stay home for "a couple weeks to flatten the curve"; "we are all in this together" while the elite got their hair done, had big maskless parties, arbitrarily shut down small businesses while letting the big ones stay open;  etc; ... the list is so long it is very tedious. 

Freedom has never been free, easy, nor risk free.  Soldiers risk their lives and die to get and preserve it. Police likewise not only risk and die to preserve it, and also become the targets of abuse while they do it. Freedom requires people to make their own decisions and ALSO to allow others to do the same. Will either your or their decisions be "right"? 

We used to live in a fallen world where everyone had at least a basic understanding that the answer to that was most certainly NO! However, even in the Civil War, while we were in the process of killing 600K of our fellow Americans, there was understanding of the cost of freedom that is close to vanishing today. We still live in that fallen world, many just think that the "experts/elite" will "save us". 

The foundation that we once pretty much all agreed on was: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We don't live in that place anymore, and even our supposed "leaders", think that they are endowed by "you know, the thing".  We have no foundation, and therefore we have a nation divided that will not stand. 

So we took a little trip, took a risk, and met some nice people. Talking to a retired 10 year military veteran proud that his discharge was signed by President Trump, and hearing a very stable and rational woman say that as she has been watching in horror as once sacred rights have been abandoned by so many, that she has needed to frequently pray to control her anger. 

We were once a nation that held phrases like "Give me liberty or give me death", and "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" were held to be near sacred. 

Today? I suppose "Trust the science and the experts" would be the key article of faith for a majority of this territory that was once America. 

Darwin's Doubt

 https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071483

This is a book that doggedly works to put some meat on the challenges to the modern Darwinian dogma. We are at a point in history much like the time of Martin Luther, where the dogma of the Catholic church was crushing all other Christian thought. The "church", meaning the Catholic Church had all the power, and the keys to Heaven and Hell -- to question was to be a heretic, and eternally damned. 

Today, dogmatic Darwinism is the scientific religion -- a statement that is an oxymoron, as an any real scientist like Richard Feynman knows -- the core difference between science and religion is that actual science is NEVER "settled" ... it's "truth" is always conditional on the next piece of discovered knowledge. Whatever fails that test is religion,  not science. Much of modern "science" is religion, and one only needs to visit one of their "science" museums to attend a scientism worship service. 

 Starting in the "1950s" as more and more information about the actual mechanisms required for "evolution" to randomly create "more adaptive" phyla, rather than just modify through selection within the same phyla (meaning they could breed and reproduce) became more clear, some actual scientists began to doubt the Darwinian dogma. As in the time of Luther, the reaction of the Church of Darwin was to punish and excommunicate the heretics. 

Even as eminent a biologist as Stephen J Gould has declared that neo-Darwinism is effectively dead based on current genomic research. I cover a much easier to follow than this book introduction to why in here.

What "Doubt" covers is a whole lot of detail behind what are currently considered the odds of a SINGLE helpful inheritable mutation. What are those odd? From David Gelernter  (an eminent Yale computer scientist) ...   

The odds against blind Darwinian chance having turned up even one mutation with the potential to push evolution forward are 10⁴⁰x(1/10⁷⁷)—10⁴⁰tries, where your odds of success each time are 1 in 10⁷⁷ — which equals 1 in 10³⁷. In practical terms, those odds are still zero. Zero odds of producing a single promising mutation in the whole history of life. 

To get to life AT ALL by randomness has not been reproduced in the lab, even by "stacking the deck" with what we believe to be the perfect "primordial soup. We can't get a SINGLE viable, let alone successfully reproducing cell. 

We can get all sorts of mutations in the lab by chemical or radiation exposure ... as we would expect, even when you cause millions of mutations, they nearly always kill the next generation, or produce offspring that are grotesque and anything but "improved / more adaptive". 

However, as unlikely as adaptive DNA mutations are, it turns out they are not the only operative factor ... there is "epigenetics" ... which at a high level means that Lamark had a point. Changes to the phenotype in one generation CAN be inherited. 

If you choose to undertake this book you will be introduced to lots of biology, genetics, genomics, geology, statistics, history, information theory, etc ... almost certainly, no matter how studied or intelligent you are, your eyes will glaze over at some point. 

... and of course it won't "prove" anything if you have already accepted the Darwinist faith. While Christianity promises a better life now, and eternal life hereafter, Darwinist faith only promises that life has no underlying meaning or purpose, and that when you die, that is it.  

My purpose in going to all this trouble is that modern "Wokeism" of which the Darwinist faith is a foundation, asserts that all who disagree need to be ridiculed, isolated, and punished in this short life. The results of this "Wokeism" so far are many despondent people choosing to end or effectively end their self understood as meaningless lives via suicide, drugs, distraction, or being motivated by hate and virtue signalling relative to those that question the Darwinist / Woke doctrine. 

The result of this is that we now live in a decadent, increasingly fascist world -- a new "Dark Age of Dogma". 

I recommend reading the suggested/linked intro post, as well as "Purpose And Desire" prior to taking on this book. It is a worthy book, roundly criticised by The Unholy Church of Darwin" as "creationist drivel" -- although other than asserting that one doesn't get complex entities without  some kind of plan/direction, it says nothing about God and in no way defends young earth creation.  

Why did the chicken cross the road? Perhaps it was because he wanted to ... rather than because it was predetermined materialistically since the Big Bang. 

Biden The "Palmist"

 https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/joe_palmtificates_on_thanksgiving.html

A "devout" Catholic that doesn't know the "P" in "Psalms" is silent. Why, I'm "certain" that this will create a covfefe  type media frenzy! Important coverage from the Atlantic of the terror of that misspelling of "coverage". Why, how are we even to know that he is sentient? He may be so delusional to think he is a legitimately "elected" el presidente of the banana republic of BOistan!

This must be covered! It sounds like as many as ONE thousand people may have seen his crucial Thanksgiving address. 

Perhaps he needs to contact a palmist? 

Influencing Elections, MSM vs Russian Style

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/theres-more-than-one-way-to-steal-an-election.php

From the day Trump won in 2016, to April 18 of 2019 when the public saw the Mueller report, we were told by the MSM, Democrat / Deep State complex that the 2016 election was invalid because it was "influenced" by Trump / Russia "collusion". 

What was that "collusion" supposed to consist of? A very few false Facebook posts! 

Even though as far left a media source as the Washington Post now admits that for all the MASSIVE media coverage, there was no "there there". It really was a massive hoax perpetrated by the MSM/Democrat/Deep State, and they got caught -- without consequence. 

However, that fact is largely unknown to Americans. All the while though, there  really is MASSIVE misinformation influence in American elections. The media once at least claimed, and to a minimal degree attempted to be "unbiased". No longer. The MSM/Democrat/Deep State complex is a coordinated apparatus to advance the power of their collective  and suppress any who have differing opinions. 

While the MSM/Democrat/Deep State complex railed against the supposed but fake "Russian interference" that was never asserted to be anything more than some FB posts for years, they were and continue to be engaged in the most massive political influence campaign in history right before the eyes of what has to rank as the most complacent and ill informed populace in history! 

The link provides some documentation of how this works. 

The Denial Of Death, Earnst Becker

 https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/06/books/reading-and-writing-life-before-death.html

Like the NY Times reviewer, this was the 2nd time through the book for me, with the other being long ago. The book was published in 1973 when it was still permissible to claim homosexuality, gender dysphoria, coprophilia, pedophilia, and necrophilia as "perversions" rather than "identity".  Even in 1982, when the review was done, such a book was allowed to be published and used in college classes, as it was in my philosophy class.  Surprisingly,  it is still available on Kindle, and even hardcover on Amazon if you are willing to part with $621! How long before it is banned?

Becker knows that the problem of life is death, thus the necessity of  the  "causa-sui" (self caused) project. Most people try to deny death by distraction with work, pleasure, drugs, other nostrums and addictions. Some choose art or beauty. Page 33, "The ultimate horror for Swift was the fact that the sublime, the beautiful, and the divine are inextricable from basic animal functions."  

in one of Swift's poems, a man in love with a beautiful woman laments: 

No wonder how I lost my wits; 

Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits!

Another common way of putting this regular reminder that we are physical beings with ugly smelly bodily functions is as Montaigne put it; "On the highest throne in the world, man sits on his ass". 

Mr. Becker asks us to be, or to try to be, heroic, and while this is a large order, it can be argued that we are constitutionally pointed in that direction. Also, it would seem that life is hardly worth all the anxiety, the frustration and the inevitable humiliation unless there is a hope of glory. Our movement toward glory may be a response to what Mr. Becker calls the "suction of infinity",  which I take to be a rather sophisticated substitute for the traditional notion of heaven.

So, somehow we need to deal with this most truly existential of problems.  Kierkegaard followed the Augustinian/Lutheran tradition said that education is facing up to this fact. Luther said, "I say die - taste death as though it were present". 

Becker is writing a secular supposedly "scientific" work, so he can't quote the bible, and I can: 

Romans 6:4-9:

6 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.

"Science" denies the possibility of the metaphysical, which is why the book is a history of at best partial attempts to supposedly "deny" the stark fact of death. 

On 151, Becker says; "As philosophers have long noted, it is as though the heart of nature is pulsating in it's own joyful self-expansion". Indeed, J. Scott Turner has written a marvelous book on the reality of "nature pulsating in it's own joyful self-expansion" -- it is better known as LIFE! 

On page 198, we see Beckers summary of Kierkegaard's conclusion: "If neurosis is sin and not disease, than the only thing that can "cure" it is a world-view, some kind of affirmative collective ideology in which the person can perform the living drama of his acceptance as a creature". 

To put it more simply, we are BOTH saints(spiritual beings) and sinners (material beings). What we seek is transcendence -- once provided in the west by having and practicing Christian faith. Now tragically attempted by worshiping false gods of material possessions, wealth, political "wokeness", academic degrees, "science". etc 

On 215, we see; "A constant danger in science is that each gain risks abandoning ground that was once securely annexed. Nowhere is this more true than in the "role theories" of mental illness threaten to abandon the Freudian formulation based on bodily facts". 

"Bodily facts" = materialism. The assertion that everything, including us, is ONLY "stuff", the only thing to worship is the idea of "progress" -- it is getting "better" every day until ultimately the sun becomes a red giant and the earth becomes a cinder, or somehow we move to space and only cease to exist when the universe cools to absolute zero, or compresses to a mathematical point in the "big crunch". I have faith that if/when one of those things happen, I'll have no less time in heaven than the day I died. 

On 25, he paraphrases Kierkegaard and states; "faith is the hardest thing; he placed himself between belief and faith, unable to make the jump. The jump doesn't depend on man at all - there's the rub; faith is a matter of grace." 

Luther would agree. It is a GIFT from God through the fully human and fully God person of Jesus. 

For non-Christians, the book will ultimately be a disappointment. It is impossible for a human to succeed on their own to deny the fact of death. They can CLAIM that they are OK, but even in the case of Freud that results are bad -- irrational phobias, rage, mental illness,  addictions, etc  

The last sentence of this causa-sui(the search for immortality) project for a secularist is: "The most that any of us can seem to do is to fashion something - an object or ourselves and drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak. to the life force". 

Order or chaos, God or the Devil. Choose you this day whom you will serve! It is the ultimate eternal "choice". 

Shapiro On "Unity"

 https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-bidens-call-for-unity-means-shut-up-conservatives

My short answer to Biden's calls for "healing" is that he really means HEEL! 

If conservatives and Christians just roll over and celebrate abortion, transgender, gay "marriage", losing freedom of religion, destruction of the family, BLM, speech restrictions, loss of freedom of association, loss of the right to bear arms, ever expanding government, fake "elections", and one party rule -- then we will have "unity". At least for those that are not in the Gulag or dead. 

Ben's take ...

No, “unity” in the Biden formulation isn’t a recognition of what we have in common; it’s a demand that we silence ourselves in order to mirror Biden’s priorities. Unity, you see, can be achieved one of two ways: through recognition of the other, through a determination to understand those who think differently than we do; or through ideological domination. It’s rather obvious which pathway Democrats will choose. After all, social ostracization is one of their most powerful tools. Why disarm now?

So what is it that we have "in common? We breathe and bleed? 

When one tribe has lost respect for life, liberty and the pursuit of meaning (which requires a higher power that has created a purposeful universe), then what do we "agree" on outside of basic biological functions? 

Are we ONLY animals, "red in tooth and claw"? 

Horowitz Article

 https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/fighting-words-by-david-horowitz.php

Little longish, well worth it ... pretty much 100% my thinking. Replacing "liberal" when referring to the left with "Fascist" or "Totalitarian" is important. 

Alito Federalist Speech

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/justice-alito-tells-it-like-it-is.php

A great speech ... worth your time. 

Covid Corona Great Barrington Declaration

If you want to know about lockdowns, stated by experts, here you go (short). 

If you want to spend quite a bit of time learning about viruses in general, and Covid/Corona in particular, the video  is good. The short answer is "it's the flu, and we don't know why the world went crazy." 

Naturally, even though the guy speaking ( Dr Sucharit Bhakdi) has great credentials and awards, the world wide media elite has decided his motivation is "money/fame" for spreading "lies". So a 77 year old that has WAY more marbles ih his head than Joe Biden, suddenly decides to cancel his reputation and career for a few bucks? 

I had a nice conversation with a local plumber/sewer guy the other day about a county sewer inspector that had finally been encouraged to "move on" after a lot of complaints. He said she really knew the rules and wanted them applied 100% in all cases -- no grace. She asked him at one point: "Why do you care? You make even more money when the rules say you need a more expensive system?" 

He didn't answer her, but the answer was that he knows people are not made of money, and they can't afford $15K vs $6K ... he wants to put in what they have space for and WILL work ... he lives here, and he wants BOTH clean water and decent people that don't get pushed out because of ever increasing regulation. 

So you ask, what does this have to do with Corona? The answer is, "follow the money". When bureaucratic power rules, there is no concern for "collateral damage". Money and power become the only concerns. 

If you read this blog, you already know that my guess at the answers are: 

1. A global "Davos elite" that combines, global corporations, global media, the UN, bureaucratic "woke" governments, universities, legal systems etc decided to "not waste an opportunity". 
2. This power structure speaks with one voice, and it's prime objective is power/control. 
3. The global health power structure (WHO) huge biotech corporations, etc saw an specific opportunity to flex their muscles ... think "military industrial complex", OPEC, the EU, Climate Change, etc.  Not to mention no doubt billions of dollars being made by people "in the know". Is this a "conspiracy"? No more than a stock market bubble or "fad" is a "conspiracy". 
   
4. Of course, Trump ... he is a threat to those global structures. Why he has not met a bad "accident" is one of the worlds great mysteries in my mind. They didn't want a martyr ? 

Covid Denial Fake News

https://www.wired.com/story/are-covid-patients-gasping-it-isnt-real-as-they-die/

One of the MANY things I find disconcerting about our time is the tendency to turn every disagreement into a strawman argument. 

Statement: "I think the response to Covid is excessive and damaging". 

Response:  "Oh, you are a crazy Covid DENIER!

As tribalism increases, this sort of strawman is more common, especially for Covid. 

The summary of the linked is that a nurse dealt with many patients gasping for breath and saying "it isn't real", "I thought this was a hoax" sort of things as they die. The MSM has widely spread this as part of the "tragedy" of Covid denial -- even Slate, not "right wing" in any sense, observes that this sort of thing is why media trust becoming non existent. 

I can imagine it is somewhat common for dying patients to say all sorts of things similar to this -- "I never believed this would happen to me", "I was so certain I'd beat this cancer", "I had faith the Lord would cure me", etc, etc, and often not very coherent for reasons I would think all would understand -- drugs, pain, extreme weakness ... I've never died and only have a sample of two that went peacefully under plenty of medication without gasping for breath. 

The best we can hope for is fairly quick with minimal pain and panic -- trying to make it worse than it is has very little benefit. If the news spent half the time on the tragedy of a young person dying in a car accident, maybe their screams as responders tried to cut their broken body from a mangled vehicle, interviewing the bereaved family, etc, hopefully we would just shut off the news, steel our level of denial, etc. No matter how careful you are, it CAN happen to you, just like Covid. 

I doubt there are any lung damaging conditions that make dying from essentially slow asphyxiation much fun -- lung cancer, pneumonia, tuberculosis, CPD ...

Why can't we get along? One reason is tribalism. It is prevalent in our time and pretty much all of us are guilty because "tit for tat" is a natural tendency. Pro-lifers often say "you must want to kill babies", which is equivalent to saying to a smoker "you must want to get cancer", or someone overweight "you must want to die of a heart attack". All have elements of truth, but such a statement is not going to help anything. 

We are not going to fix human nature, but understanding it and tribalism may help us be a tiny bit more civil.