"Goodby to All That"

One of the top WW-1 memoirs is Robert Graves' "Goodby to all That" in which he details his experiances as a British Officer in the trenches of France. Graves' memories are compelling in and of themnselves and your WW-1 library is not complete without this work.

Of all the phrases and words Graves uses, the most memorable to me is the title itself; "Goodbye to All That". I supoose most of us at one time or another have reached a point in life when we said, or wanted to say, "Goodbye to all that".

Last week I said, "Goodby to all that." regarding my Facebook account. I haven't totally deactivated the account, but am taking a much needed sabbatical from it.

For some reason the Facebook platform has a way of amplifying all the good,the bad, and the ugly of social media. The bad and the ugly are even more amplified during this American Prsidential election year coupled with the COVID 19 pandemic.

Yes, I see the same kinds of stuff on Twitter, but my Twitter list is not primarely built around freinds, families, and aquaintences, and it has been easier to ignore or block obnoxious tweets and people.

Social media has created a platform for all sorts of half-baked conspiricay theories, mis-information, selective data picking, etc, so on, and so forth. It gets to be nauseating and when you see professing Christian people engaging in those things, it is depressing.

Goodby to all that...

...and maybe I'll have more time for blogging here.

The New World Order with COVID 19

I watched the news about the COVID 19 Pandemic. It was spreading from China to other parts of the world. It reached the Seattle, Washington area. It was only a matter of time before we would see it in our urban Michigan area. And so it came.

We knew the Michigan Governor was going to issue some kind of "stay at home" order, and on Friday, March 20, 2020, the order was issued. Sunday, March 22 we stayed home and watched the livestream service from our church.

That was the 1st Sunday. It is now Friday, June 26 and this coming Sunday will be the 17th Sunday. A few weeks ago we started to again meet in the church building, but with restrictions regarding masks and limited seating to encourage social distancing.

Online social media has become saturated with news, analysis, and opinion about the pandemic to the point where my eyes would glaze over and I just ignored most of it; blocking much of it, especially the "conspiracy theories". Michigan had some of the more stringent emergency orders in place, and that became a political hot point between the Governor and her more extreme political enemies.

Being a political independent removed me from the echo chambers some of my friends and acquaintances were caught up in. It is frustrating to watch it. COVID 19 became very politicalized. To wear or not wear a mask became politicalized. To often basic science was ignored or thrown under the bus to sustain a narrative with not much connection to reality. And on top of all of that, it is a major election year.

At our age, my wife and I are in a "vulnerable group" for COVID 19. When we are places where we will be in proximity to other people, we wear a mask. The mask does not stop oxygen or carbon dioxide flow, or even the virus itself. The mask stops the water droplets that are carrying the virus. Stop the water droplets and you stop the virus. That's why we wear a mask when it is appropriate to do so. It's how we can practice loving our neighbors.

The other issue is the abject failure of our culture and society, and even the church at large, to recognize God's hand in judgement through this pandemic. I'm not talking about specific people of whom I know nothing about who have died from COVID 19. But I am talking about judgement at large against a culture and society that is immersed in a selfish secular materialism bathed in the blood of millions of aborted unborn innocent babies.

How long do we think as a society and culture we can keep shaking our fist at Him and spitting in his face? The COVID 19 pandemic with its economic consequence is the small cloud of what is to come. It is the proverbial warning "shot across the bow". Whatsoever you sow, you shall reap. It is an inevitable consequence which at some point will become unavoidable.

May God Almighty yet have mercy upon us.

The Politics of Rage

We are increasingly bombarded by the political use of the tactic of outrage. And it is easy to be outraged because there are so many stupid or unjust things being done that evoke outrage. Outrage is the meat and potatoes of right wing talk radio potentates like Limbaugh and Hannity, and of the left wing rags such as CNN and USA Today among others. After all “outrage” sells, and sales means money.

So many stupid and unjust things are being done on all sides, that one could easily come to the conclusion that they are done deliberately and with a view and intent of creating outrage that can be manipulated and exploited. Having lost a collective moral bearing where everyone does what is right in their own eyes, what did we expect?

But how long can a continuous string of outrage be maintained? The outraged mob runs from one outrage to another, figuratively lynching the perceived offenders, then off to the next outrage and lynching. What’s worse is some offenders probably do need “lynching” figuratively not literally, but as with a good part of vigilante activity, due process and careful sorting out of the facts gets brushed aside in a rush to judgement.

And it is also true that a continuous torrent of outrage over this and that and whatever eventually takes a toll on the emotions and psyche of a society and culture. The constant arousal of collective emotions of rage begins to dull the collective conscience. Collective emotional batteries run low and there becomes less and less energy to sustain the “good fight”.

At some point comes the real possibility of a collective cardiac arrest.

What happens then?

Regarding the Presidential Debates

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidates' debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.

~ Simon & Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson"

War and Propaganda

  "It is not a nice thing to see a Spanish boy of fifteen carried down the line on a stretcher, with a dazed white face looking out from among the blankets, and to think of the sleek persons in London and Paris who are writing pamphlets to prove that this boy is a Fascist in disguise. One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. The P.S.U.C. militiamen whom I knew in the line, the Communists from the International Brigade whom I met from time to time, never called me a Trotskyist or a traitor; they left that kind of thing to the journalists in the rear. The people who wrote pamphlets against us and vilified us in the newspapers all remained safe at home, or at worst in the newspaper offices of Valencia, hundreds of miles from the bullets and the mud. And apart from the libels of the inter-party feud, all the usual war-stuff, the tub-thumping, the heroics, the vilification of the enemy —all these were done, as usual, by people who were not fighting and who in many cases would have run a hundred miles sooner than fight. One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right."

"Homage to Catalonia", George Orwell

Propaganda and the Death of Truth

In an age of 143 character quips and 10 second sound bites, the one yelling loudest and longest supposedly "wins". But what do they win? Has anyone ever really changed their opinion on an issue on the basis of tweets and sound bites? Look at who the social media blurbs are addressed to. "Liberals are really going to be mad when they see this!" "Conservatives just don't understand x, y, and z." Ninety nine percent of such social media sound bites are preaching to the choir. Liberals will not be mad, because they will not see the blurb, and if they did, they will not care. Conservatives will not be reading your brilliantly contrived propaganda sophistry, and if they did they will pick it apart in other blurbs you will probably not see, let alone read. Watching all of this going on in social media is like watching a comedy, but sadly, as with much comedy, the roots of that comedy are found in tragedy.. Welcome to the post-modern world. Behold the fruit of your post-modernity...

So this week, once again as they have done so many times before, the propaganda machines from all sides of the political fence are generating "drama" out of some issue or other; said drama calculated to advance the specific agendas, goals, and world views of the groups behind those propaganda machines. Emotions are appealed to on both sides and critical scrutiny and careful dispassionate rational thought and discussion is the casualty of the sophistry and "new speak" used to bend popular political and cultural will and thought into channels that feed the never ending lust for power and control of said groups. ...and all under the rubric of "news"... Of course "propaganda" is a word little used or understood. We can't talk about the nature of propaganda lest we expose the house of lies and deceit the propaganda machines have created. May God Almighty have mercy on us and deliver us from this scourge...