Sword, Famine, Wild Beast, and Plague

The Four Horsemen

The apocalypse still gathers momentum; like a handcart on the downhill slope. Rioting continues across the US. Meantime, the pandemic still rages. Not only that: the president of the US has walked across the street to hold up a Bible in front of a burned-out church.

And the media and the chattering classes erupt in rage and unbelief. Not about the rioting; they keep referring to it with the euphemism “peaceful protests,” and carefully select their coverage; the truth emerges mostly on Twitter. Not about the complete disregard of quarantine, likely to result in many deaths. Even though they were insisting only days ago that it was madness for businesses to be allowed to reopen. No, they are beside themselves over the president walking to the church. Even the bishop of the diocese promptly issued a statement condemning Trump’s show of support for everything she is supposed to stand for as “the very opposite of what Jesus taught.”

That is madness on the plain stark staring face of it. I did not believe it when I saw it first. Not the Babylon Bee?

Quite simply, the clerisy, the class generally in charge of everything in the US, is or long has been insane in the proper sense of the term: they are not acknowledging reality. Trump’s specific gesture here, and the reaction, hints too at where this insanity comes from. Indeed, where insanity generally comes from. True madness is usually a moral issue; as often as not, it is denial of reality due to a guilty conscience.

The ruling class has gone mad because it is corrupt. Anecdotally, murderers on death row are almost always delusional; although they almost could not have been as a practical matter when they committed their crime. The ruling class is mad, and they see their end coming.

I don’t know if or how Trump knows; perhaps he is just incredibly lucky. But he seems to have chosen an image that would most enrage them: visible support for traditional Judeo-Christian ethical values. It is surely for this same reason that the clerisy, and all the mainstream scribes, are so fierce in their support of “peaceful protesters” looting and killing. Nothing so salves a guilty conscience as seeing another behave badly. They will want to abet in any way they can. There is, to this extent, honour among thieves. Real foxes hate tails.

To be fair, the clerisy will say that at least some of their rage, although even they say it is a purely secondary element compared to the offensive display of piety, is that Trump had the park between church and the White House cleared of “peaceful protesters” to take this walk. Supposedly cleared using tear gas.

But it is obviously only an assumption on anyone’s part that Trump gave the order to clear the park. That would be micromanaging. The chief of the park police says Trump did not. The police moved in because the “peaceful protesters” had started throwing things at the police, bricks, rocks, and bottles of frozen water, and had climbed on monuments that had previously been the targets of vandalism. The police had found caches of weapons nearby. The rioters had set fire to the church the previous evening, and had forced the White House into lockdown.

Some parks need clearing. With or without a pandemic.

If, as almost universally reported, the police had used tear gas, how was Trump and half the cabinet able to walk through with no discomfort a few minutes later? Why, in the video, were the police not themselves wearing gas masks?

They gave everyone fair warning to leave three times through a loudspeaker. For those who did not clear the area, they used smoke canisters, which do nothing more than confuse, and horses trained to apply steady pressure to force a crowd back. Then they put up a new barrier.

Is there a better way to do it?

The mad elites further complain that Trump threatened to bring in the military if state governments cannot get the rioting under control. This, they say, is something a president cannot legally do; it is fascism; it is a totalitarian coup. It is “using the military against US citizens.”

Yet it was done in the Rodney King riots in 1992; many times during the Civil Rights struggle, in defiance of Southern governors; and many times before that. Protecting us from riots—from the capricious violation of our life, liberty, and property by fellow citizens—is the job of government, and the US is explicitly founded on this premise. That means protection from things like looting, arson, assault, and murder.

All common law jurisdictions—all liberal democracies—traditionally have a “riot act,” that can be publicly proclaimed if civil order has broken down. It prohibits all assemblies, including supposed “peaceful protest,” which of course cannot be distinguished or treated separately during a riot or insurrection.

The Canadian version goes like this:

Her Majesty the Queen charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business on the pain of being guilty of an offence for which, on conviction, they may be sentenced to imprisonment for life. God save the Queen.

The penalty for remaining in the streets was reduced fairly recently from summary execution.

This sort of thing is not a joke; this is not a drill. This is for very high stakes. It is a certainty already that many more people will unnecessarily die. Those promoting the riots have much blood on their hands.