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The Times, They Are A'Changing

 

I was there and I was young and everyone was young and the world was young and we believed the world was changing and it was. 

Some of the changes were good. Some of the changes were bad. But it was not what we imagined. It never is, never was, never will be.

And then, too drugged, we missed the cosmic moment. We got trapped in our traffic jam on the way to Woodstock and the garden. Some of us made it even to the gates, chanting, dancing, shaking fists, brave behind our placards. We wanted the world, and wanted it now, when we should have wanted heaven and forever, and then fell back into sex and money and paranoia and confusion and joined the 27 Club or became disco zombies or learned to code and retreated to cyber monasteries or taught in Asia.

And now, oh God, flashbacks, it seems to all be happening over again. There are wars and rumours of war and rogue criminal governments and thought crime and racism and discrimination and tumult in the streets.

But something else is wrong, has gone wrong, has gone most utterly wrong. 

This time the bones creak, and no voices rise in song.

This time there is no music.

Why Are Pigs Sprouting Wings?

 

There is apocalypse in the air. Governments are doing unaccountable things, as though they know something we don’t. Snow falls in Mecca; lightning strikes the Vatican; maybe such things happen in normal times, but people are now in the mood to notice. And then there are the growing claims about UFOs. Tucker Carlson says he knows things about UFOs so dark he will not even tell his wife, and “there is a spiritual aspect to it.”

Which last comment gets me thinking: here’s one explanation for what is going on.

Christopher Hitchens, seeking to debunk Christianity, argued the improbability that God would let mankind subsist on Earth for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, right up until 1 AD, before revealing himself. What about all those previous generations? And why then did he do it in such a backwater, in Palestine?

Hitchens is exactly wrong. The early years of the Roman Empire were probably the first time in history that God could have sent a message to mankind, and expect it to reach from Britain in the West, to China in the East, and down to Ethiopia. The Roman Empire had, for the first time, secured those trade routes. And Christianity did quickly extend this far.

No doubt God was sending local revelations all along—which is why so many of the world’s myths seem to contain elements of the Gospel story, with avatars, virgin births, and the like. But until 1 AD, they inevitably stayed local. 

And Palestine was not a backwater. Jerusalem is actually, literally, the centre of the populated world, now as it was then—the one spot from which it is easiest to get everywhere else. This is why Middle Eastern airlines have been so successful: their headquarters and stopover point is most efficiently located for everywhere else.

And this is true not only by air. Palestine is a land bridge, a funnel, that joins three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and their trade routes. It is at the crossroads of the three great ancient civilizations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece-Rome.

And this is true by sea as well: it is roughly the meeting point of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, the necessary point of portage to go by sea from Europe to East Asia and vice versa. All lines of communication and travel met here. This was God’s megaphone.

Now… if either God or perhaps some alien civilization wants to send all of mankind a further message, we have just now reached a similar, but greater, inflection point. Now, with the internet, with smart phones, is the first time in history he/they could appear to all of us, all at once, without filter by government or earthly authority with their own self-interests. 

We might now be getting the preparatory attention-getting signs; like the herald’s trumpet or the town crier’s bell. Or like John the Baptist in the New Testament. And the panic of Herod at the birth of a more legitimate ruler, or the mind-frame of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, may explain the current actions of governments. 

I don’t jump immediately to the idea that these are the End Times. Perhaps; perhaps the beginning of the thousand-year just reign predicted in Revelations. Yet, more simply, revelation is ongoing, as it is throughout the Bible: there are repeated calls from God to return to faith and fealty, reminders that he is there, new and renewed covenants. In more recent years, we have seen apparitions of Mary calling us back to faith. She has even appeared on Egyptian TV. Now may be the time for an emphatic reminder, a visit from the boss himself, perhaps a renewed covenant. 

Or, alternatively, now may be the opportunity for some more advanced civilization to make itself known and tell us what it feels we need to know.

I think, in the end, aliens are less likely. That hypothesis requires too many assumptions.

Apocalypse Now?

 

We used to b so hopeful back in the 1960s. This, many of us felt sure, was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Which would be in every way better than the present age.

The mood has darkened significantly.

An interviewee on John Cleese’s Dinosaur Hour made an unsettling point. Increasingly, mankind is developing technologies that could put an end to mankind. We have been living with the threat of nuclear annihilation since the 1950s. We are now close to developing AI to a level at which it might act unpredictably. And then there is genetic manipulation, which might be used to create something rather worse than Covid-19 at almost any moment. A highly virulent, 100% fatal virus seems a possibility.

At the same time, technological improvements make such tools accessible, over time, to more people. 

How long will it take before one such tool is in the hands of a psychopath, the sort of mind that shoots up schools? Someone who wants to die, but also wants to take the whole world with them?

The commentator on the Dinosaur Hour thought it inevitable by the end of this century.

I can’t see, offhand, where his logic is wrong. Other than it is all, as it always was, in the hands of God. Perhaps he planned this for the end times.

This might also explain the frequency of reported alien visits in recent years. Either they are coming to save us, or to watch the fireworks.

Apocalypse Maybe Later

I think it may now be winding down, but for weeks, people have been speaking of the conflict in Gaza as if it were the start of World War III.

I think the opposite. Hamas is not a serious military force; this is nothing like as serious as the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, when substantial Arab armies were arrayed against the Jewish state. The very barbarity of the initial attack smells of desperation: like a tantrum. Knowing they have lost the support of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, all that is left is an attempt to, improbably, horrify Israel into surrender. And we can be sure no major Arab state is going to enter the fray.

There is a feeling of apocalypse in the air, and so every hiccup is taken as a cosmic death rattle. The end may be nigh, but not because of events in Gaza.

The Headless Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A remarkable aspect of the current uprising in Iran is that it has no leaders. It is entirely organic and spontaneous. Yet it continues, night after night.

Whether by coincidence or otherwise, the Free World is also without a leader, at a time of crisis. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the sort of thing that might easily spark World War III. World War I was set off by far less.

Yet Joe Biden is not up to the job. The next option for leader of the free world would normally be the UK Prime Minister; Boris Johnson was holding down the position for a little while. But Liz Truss is in crisis and not even effectively leading her own parliamentary caucus at this point.

Okay, so the German chancellor? Scholz is new on that job and heads a shaky three-party coalition. He can do nothing decisive. Besides, Germany is in an energy crisis.

We are pretty far down the power and influence totem pole once we must all defer to the President of France.

Yet things still seem to be working out well enough for the free world without a leader. The support for Ukraine seems solid, and effective, and they are getting what they need. I understand someone has even set up a crowdsourced fund to buy tanks for Ukraine.

The Freedom Convoy back in February was also a virtually leaderless movement. Much of it was spontaneous.

Moral: leaders are no longer so necessary. Improvements in communication technology let people handle problems on a distributed, decentralized basis. Welcome to the internet. Welcome to direct democracy.

This is exactly why the leaders have been acting wild and autocratic lately. They are hearing the footsteps behind them.

The Double Rainbow

 

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

A double rainbow appeared in the sky as Queen Elizabeth died. As a monotheist, I must believe this is significant. While many things look grim, we may be on the verge of a golden age.

One cheerful note: Ukraine seems to be succeeding in their counterattacks. Imagine them pushing the Russians out. Then imagine the possible consequences inside and outside Russia. Imagine this as a civil war, between democrats and autocrats. Imagine Russia going democratic, as did the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Isn’t this the inevitable march of history? Imagine a Europe that includes Russia.

Britain has a new prime minister. For all we know, Liz Truss may turn out to be an especially good one. Margaret Thatcher wasn’t Margaret Thatcher either, before she became Margaret Thatcher. She is making the right noises.

In a day or two, the Canadian Conservatives will have a new leader, almost surely named Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre has stirred up a lot of excitement. Remember Trudeaumania? We are seeing something like that now. This means people are hopeful again and full of energy for Canada’s future. We saw such an outburst of hope too in the Freedom Convoy. Since we have a minority government, an election might be forced at any time, and the worst rascals swept away.

King Charles III is not immediately popular. People blame him for the breakup with Diana; I have always thought he got a bum rap. His relative unpopularity may give him the humility to shut up: the sole necessity to do a good job at his peculiar post. If he can do this, people will warm to him. And the transition after so long a reign feels like a new beginning.

The American midterms are coming up, and the Republicans stand a fair chance of taking both houses. This could end the mad inflationary spending we have been seeing. Investigations could be opened into the corruption of the Biden family, the FBI, and the Deep State. In the days of Watergate, with the Presidency diminished, even before Nixon’s resignation, senators and representatives took up much of the role of leading the public debate. That may happen again, and Biden fade into irrelevance. 

The media landscape is shifting quickly in the US. CNN is firing all their ideologues. Warner Brothers and Netflix seem to be awakening from wokeness. New “woke” movies and TV shows seem to be bombing badly. Fox News is dominating the airwaves. Daily Wire is growing daily more powerful. Joe Rogan is moving daily further to the right. There is a tipping point, and things can change suddenly once “everybody knows” something new.

Things are crumbling in China. Many are alarmed at the effect this could have on the world economy. But if this causes the CCP to fall, the longer term geopolitical effect could be much better—like the fall of the Soviet Union. And I expect it to fall. Over the longer term, there is no way central planning can do better than market forces.

If it does not fall, it is going to stall. The magic of development will move on to Southeast Asia, India, and Africa. Where now it is more needed, and can do more good.

We are facing energy crises in Europe and in California, and no doubt other places. Bad as this may be over the coming winter, it may also discredit the “global warming” hysteria and usher in more sensible energy policies.

And if the world is desperate for oil, we have lots in Canada. This ought to be good news locally. The energy crisis is entirely artificial, and so it should be easily fixed. Now maybe we will build the GD pipelines, the refineries, start fracking in the UK, build new nuclear plants, and stop wasting money tilting at windmills.

There seems to be a housing crash in progress. While this is destabilizing, housing prices have grown unrealistically high. It is a good thing if they come down. Speculators have been investing in real estate when it would have been better economically to invest in productive industries. 

We seem to be through the pandemic. I have said from the start that, once this happens, we will quickly forget all about it as though it never happened. I think we are already starting to do so.

Since the pandemic was an extraordinary event, it should have little lasting economic effect. The bounce back should recover the lost ground, over the next few years. This seems to have been the case after the Spanish flu. That it has not yet is a measure of the incompetence of current governments. Incompetence, or malice.

If our governments and elites have been showing incompetence and behaving badly, they have probably always been incompetent and behaved badly. What is new is that we are seeing it clearly, thanks to improved technology. The first step to solving a problem is seeing it. Things may not be getting worse, except for the elites—they are getting better. The leviathan is thrashing about; but these may be death throes. The Freedom Convoy suggests that we can run things better without them.

Pope Francis has been hinting at retirement. Cynics are saying this would make no difference, since he has chosen most of the cardinals who would vote on his replacement. But historically, conclaves elect someone the opposite of the previous pope, particularly if their papacy seemed troubled. Even if the cardinals are cynical careerists, this would make sense to them. They will want someone who is convincing on doctrine.

Unfashionable as it may be to say so, our route out of this or any mess is spiritual revival. We need to recover our bearings. That means, for most of the world, Christianity. There are glimmers of a spiritual revival in the American pop culture. There are rumours that, if the lid came off, there would be massive conversions to Christianity in China, as there have been in Korea since the lid came off postwar. There are rumours of massive conversions to Christianity in Iran. There are massive conversions to Christianity in Africa. From a distance, it is obvious to these cultures that Christianity is the key to everything.

When the spirit descends, dramatic changes can be almost instantaneous. Situations that look hopeless can turn around. 

That may be what the double rainbow promises.

The End of Abundance?

I cannot confirm it online. But I hear a rumour there has been a sudden drop in birth rates across the world just in the past year.

True or not, it is surely true that birth rates have been dropping in the developed world over the last few years; and in most of the rest of the world too.

Many reasons could be offered. Feminism, pushing women into the workforce and devaluing motherhood. The rising costs of, and requirement for, children’s education. The move from rural to urban; kids are less useful and more costly in a city. The growing availability of contraception. The ability to rely on social security, rather than family support, in old age.

But there is another possibility.

Darwin notes, in The Ascent of Man, that whenever Europeans encountered a local population that was significantly less materially advanced, the fertility rate of that population suddenly dropped dramatically.

Why?

Because their established world view was challenged. They experienced “culture shock.” As the future they expected was removed from sight, they felt there was no future. Why have children?

Our elites have been telling us for years there is no future: global warming will kill us all. Overpopulation was going to kill us all too. Moreover, our elites explain, our world view is wrong. There is no truth, no meaning. The principles on which our culture is founded are racist and misogynist and wrong.

Macron, President of France, recently said publicly that the “Age of Abundance” is over. We will have to learn to do with less.

There is certainly a pervasive sense that we are at the end of something. Exacerbated by thoughts of death from the pandemic.

But we are hearing this from Macron and the elites. What if they are wrong? What if the problem is not with our world view, but with the elites?

I suspect this is the case. In ordinary circumstances it would be odd to hear this pessimism from the elites. Aside from what is real, it is their job to rally morale. They seem to be doing the opposite. THis in itself suggest a problem with the elites.

Perhaps the elites are projecting on the rest of us their sense that their time is limited. Not ours; theirs. They hear time’s winged chariot drawing near.

This is so because the explosion in information technology makes experts less useful, and reduces their ability to control.

Xi in China, or Putin in Russia, look in danger of imminent loss of power. But they have largely brought it upon themselves by attempts increase or consolidate their power. Why did they get so reckless? Might they have been driven by desperation?

So too with Trudeau in Canada, Ardern in New Zealand, and the erratic actions of the media and the Deep State in the US. The dragon, mortally wounded, is thrashing about.

Do we need to fear, or are we overly influenced by the elite here?

Look for signs of vitality and optimism in the world. They do not come from anyone in the established elites. They are all gloom and doom.

Yet I saw a strong sense of optimism and hope in Canada’s Freedom Convoy, and its supporters around the world, last February. Peace and joy seemed to be breaking out all over. I see it in the United People of Canada, who have, perhaps suitably, taken over an Ottawa Church for open discussion from all sides.

The elites fear new ideas. These common people do not. Without new ideas, there is no future.

I see optimism instead of fear of the future in the “populists” who back Trump and “Making American Great Again,” in the US. Brexit in the UK was a new departure, and expressed confidence in the future.

Perhaps this tells us all we need to know. It is not that we have no future. It is that the future does not include the elites, and so they are fighting against it.

But in all likelihood, the future will come. It belongs to those who have hope and optimism.

The View from Patmos

 

I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay,* and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.”

When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.”

I looked, and there was a pale green* horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.

I try to avoid apocalyptic thinking; old people are too prone to it. But has anyone noticed that we have already seen two of the four horses of the apocalypse canter by?

COVID-19 has decimated us. Just when it looked as if over, it has mutated into something more dangerous than other recent variants, and is surging again in most of the Northern Hemisphere, even though it is summer. If it does not end up killing us all, monkeypox is in the wings. That’s the first horseman, pestilence.

The war in Ukraine continues; it could in principle at any moment become nuclear, or a world war. It is certainly killing a lot of people, displacing more, and disrupting the food supply everywhere. That’s the second horseman, war.

And partly as a result of the first, partly as a result of the second, food shortages are beginning to appear. Many predict worse by the fall, and perhaps famine in some parts of the world. That’s the third horseman, famine.

Is the fourth horseman on the horizon: Death? Perhaps that refers, broadly, to the doctrine of human “overpopulation”; environmentalism, “climate change.” What John Paul II called the “culture of death.” This horse is green, at least in the ASV translation; and he seems to correspond a verse or two later with “the beasts of the earth.” Environmentalism is indeed causing severe problems in the Netherlands. In principle, environmentalism wants to kill most of us. The recently mysteriously destroyed Georgia guidestones advocated a total human population of no more than 500 million.

The signs of the apocalypse are so vague that they can probably be made to fit the events of any era. Indeed, I believe they were not meant to be a prediction of the future, but a description of the eternal present as a war against good and evil. Jesus himself warns against trying to predict the end time. “Nobody knows the day or the hour”; he will come “like a thief in the night.” Were things really more orderly and coherent in the 1930s? The 1960s? 

So no, I reject the thought that this is literally apocalyptic. But the Devil is playing his tricks. There is an intelligence behind this; a Satanic weltanschauung. It has many names: “the great reset”; “the new world order”; “critical theory”; “postmodernism”; “social justice.”

More simply, evil is being allowed its day. 

It is given dominion, according to St. John, over a quarter of the earth. That’s enough to do a lot of damage.

Reasons for Optimism

 

Great plagues follow the sound of the trumpet.

As civilization itself seems to crash and burn all around us, I look for hopeful signs.

1. As recently as thirty years ago, things looked much better. The Soviet Bloc dissolved; the personal computer had begun its revolution, starting in garages. This was sudden and unforeseen; especially after the dispirited Seventies. People spoke of “the end of history”; the bad guys had lost. Perhaps something like this could happen again, and in any given year.

2. The early or eventual dominance of the Chinese Communists seems to me far from inevitable. Their very actions suggest they feel themselves extremely vulnerable. It seems likely their economy is largely a Potemkin village.

3. With the fall of Afghanistan, there is naturally concern that Islamist terror will return with a vengeance. I think much of that Islamist terror was funded by oil revenues. With the decline in oil revenues in the Middle East, I suspect that may not be the case.

4. Energy from oil is becoming cheaper. We may also be on the cusp of producing cheap and clean power from nuclear fusion. Should that happen, it could be a boost to the world economy comparable to the computer revolution. No more worrying about climate change, no more worrying about running out of oil, energy almost free.

5. We may also be on the cusp of a revolution in medicine. Accelerated by the COVID crisis, we may soon have vaccines for viral diseases of all kinds—including HIV, the common cold, and cancer. With the recent breakthroughs in genetic sequencing, we may be close to a cure for genetic diseases, and even for old age. This could reverse our fears of demographic decline.

6. The incompetence and aggression we see in the clerisy just now may mean the opposite of what it appears to. It may be a result of that computer revolution. It has removed their justification and revealed their relative incompetence and mendacity, like Toto pulling the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. So they are acting out of desperation, even out of hysteria. The long-term trend may therefore be the opposite of the short-term trend: towards greater democracy and individual autonomy. This seems the inevitable logic of any greater and less restricted flow of information, and this is what the new ICT provides. Just as the invention of printing led to challenges and the ultimate decline of “priestcraft” and hereditary ruling classes in its day.

7. Christianity is vital and spreading in Africa. There are signs that, if and when the government lid comes off, it could spread rapidly in China. We could be looking at a world Christian revival. If America and Europe have lost vitality, China and Africa may be ready to take over—not as barbarian powers, like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, but as new centres of world civilization as we have known it.

8. Islamism may burn itself out, if it has not already. Leave aside the issue of funding from oil. Islamism looks a lot like a nativist movement formed in reaction to culture shock from growing global interaction. I note that the actual bombers are almost always Westernized, middle class, and Western-educated. We saw a similar phenomenon in Nazi Germany, reacting against foreigners, foreign elements, and “cosmopolitanism.” Perhaps too in China under Mao, or Russia under Stalin. If so, history suggests this lasts for a generation or so, then subsides as the new influences become assimilated and the alienated culture joins the emerging world culture.

9. The US is obviously in dire need of a religious revival, a recommitment to its cultural underpinnings. But it has historically gone through such periodic revivals. If this is some built-in feature of American culture, we are overdue for another one. That might blow America back onto an even keel. 

10. Multiple considerations seem to be converging on the creation of a CANZUK trade area and alliance. While the actual cultures of the CANZUK nations are in the chaos of postmodernism and self-doubt, this reconstituted Commonwealth at least brings one thing back to where it rationally ought to be, and where it was before Europe began to decline in the nineteen-teens.  Britain used to be a bastion of common sense, against the rationalist excesses of the Continent and the mass enthusiasms of America. The new union might restore the self-confidence needed to draw apart from the European and, currently, American cultural suicide. There can be new life in old empires. The ancient Hellenic world yielded to Rome, then revived as the Byzantine Empire, and carried the torch of civilization for another thousand years.

11. The papacy has failed us; but the pope is old, and has been ill. People worry that, since he has been able to choose the electors, the next papacy is likely to be as bad. But by that logic, how did we get Francis? John Paul II and Benedict must have chosen all the electors, yet Francis’s approach is very unlike theirs. Received wisdom has it that the cardinals choose the next pope in reaction to perceived flaws in the previous papacy. That argues that the net pope may be different from Francis.

12. It is at least possible that, in rapid succession over the next few weeks, Gavin Newsom will be replaced by Larry Elder, and Trudeau by Erin O’Toole. We may be talking soon of a gathering right-wing tide. Once a tide turns, it continues to rise.

And hey, if the world really is coming to an end, that's good news for the good guys, isn't it? There are worse things than the New Jerusalem, and heaven on earth.

Apocalypse Maybe Later

 

My Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is of course convinced the world is about to end. She cites, for example, 2 Timothy:

“But know this: that in the last days, grievous times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. For some of these are people who creep into houses and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. … Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

It does sound like the current situation.

 But people who try to predict the end of days are going against the Bible itself. Jesus says “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” He will come, when he comes again “like a thief in the night.” Of such times of universal tumult as are cited in 2 Timothy, he says “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24). In other words, general chaos and the breakdown of order and morality are NOT signs of the end.

Jesus also said that those listening to him would not die before the End Times came: “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” And Paul wrote 2 Timothy not for a distant future, but to someone alive in his day.

I recall a bishop once saying that all millennial movements are manifestations of the Antichrist. I think this is true. Marxism is such a millennial movement. So is "climate change" environmentalism.

I think it is natural for the righteous among us, as we grow older, to develop the impression that the world is falling apart around us. This is largely because the world is always falling apart around us. Any serious study of history must realize this is so. 

In our younger years, we refuse to see this. We must, after all, live in this world for a human lifetime or so, and so we are in denial. As we age, it becomes easier to accept that things are not getting a lot better. Although they are probably not really getting worse, the growing realization of how bad they are gives us this subjective impression. And so old men and women are inclined to see the world as going to hell. It is perhaps a part of the process of letting go.

The End Times are always with us. Although there will necessarily be an end of the world, just as there was a beginning, this is not of great significance to any one of us. The End of Days and the Second Coming that Jesus and Paul refer to in the Bible is our own physical deaths.

The Shape of Things to Come

 

My Austrian Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is convinced we are in the End Times. And I must admit, things are looking rather apocalyptic recently. Last night, learning of William Barr’s resignation as US attorney-general, I sensed this might be a first shoe dropping. It seems otherwise odd for Barr to leave so soon before the (presumed) end of Trump’s administration. Why not stick around for one more month?

Unless something is about to happen in the next month.

Especially since Barr is not leaving in anger, to make a point, and Trump is not asking him to resign in anger, to make a point. It seems, therefore, as though the point comes later.

Might Barr be resigning because Trump wants his AG in the near future to do something that Barr does not want to do? 

The situation in the US is now so disordered that almost nothing seems off the table.

By now, the results of the recent election are surely not credible; at least to roughly half of the US population. Also yesterday, the results of a local Michigan audit of the Dominion voting machines, now made public, claimed that they seemed deliberately designed to allow for fraud. They are used in 28 to 44 states (I see different figures). We have video from Atlanta of ballot stuffing, or something that defies any other explanation. We have expert claims that the election results are statistically improbable to the point of practical impossibility.

That profoundly undermines the social contract, profoundly undermines what holds the USA together. If free speech is no longer permitted, and one cannot any longer vote a government in or out, only one resort is left for the disaffected: group violence.

At the same time, evidence is suddenly—and mysteriously—flooding in that Chinese influence in the US is pervasive. The names of two million Chinese spies have suddenly been discovered. McCarthy himself could not have dreamt of such a figure: I recall his high number as around 200. A video surfaces of a Chinese academic, speaking in China, boasting that they can easily influence US government policy and Wall Street through their connections. A spy is outed who has been sleeping with mayors and congressmen. We suddenly learn that a vital piece of software, Solar Wind, has been hacked and open to unknown parties for the past six months. Solar Wind is used by the US military--and by Dominion Voting Systems. We suddenly learn that Hunter Biden, and James Biden, have been under investigation for possible criminal charges for the past two years, and their relations with China are at the centre of it. Everything seems to be converging.

This all looks strangely coordinated. As if some hidden power first fixed the election for Joe Biden, and then some hidden power moved to discredit him and raise the alarm. 

People who scoff at conspiracy theories, and insist they must not be true, have never lived in China. In China, conspiracies are a national sport. Something is always going on.

The pattern suggests that two powers are at war here: presumably the CCP does not want Chinese spies exposed, and whoever exposed the Chinese spying did not want Biden elected. Unless the point was just to foment chaos; but that seems too clever by half. I wonder if we are seeing a covert war not so much between the US and China, as between the CCP and Falun Gong, over the relatively ignorant and blundering USA. It is the Falun Gong, for example, which would have the resources to expose that video of a Chinese academic speaking inside China. The Falun Gong seems strikingly well organized and active above ground currently, with The Epoch Times, the NTD network, regular public protests, and other initiatives. They may amount to a Chinese government in exile.

The mood in the US is now, I suspect, pre-revolutionary. Until now, the Antifa thugs and Black Lives Matter have been able to rule the streets. I think it is a given that they are being backed behind the scene by Chinese interests, among others. But if Biden takes office, it is hard to believe the Proud Boys and others on the right will continue to “stand back and stand down.” Instead, we are going to have competing organized groups squaring off. The violence will probably quickly escalate. Weimar Germany again.

There is currently a visible, audible, palpable push towards radicalism and action on the right. Fox News and Drudge Report are rapidly losing audience to more strident voices: One American News, Newsmax, Citizen Free Press. Barr is too moderate now; the Supreme Court is too moderate now; following the rules and staying polite is too moderate now; there are chants to boycott the Republican Party, and form a new one. The thirst, the demand, is for decisive action.

I suspect Trump is getting ready to invoke his 2018 Executive Order on Foreign Interference. This might also justify, in turn, declaring martial law. Which might be necessary now to maintain order. This might be what prompts Barr’s resignation, as this would require authorization by the Attorney-General. In a sense, I suspect Trump is forced into this; aside from the danger of civil society collapsing into street violence, if he does not, at this point, he is likely to himself be abandoned by his former supporters as just one more squish who has let them down. Some new leader may then may emerge from the streets, the shadows, or the beer halls. Some little corporal.

The left, of course, already has such figures.

It is no doubt not the end of the world. But revolutions are not good times for all non-psychopaths.

News of the Apocalypse

Of course, you saw this coming. Who didn't see this coming? Bubonic plague has broken out in China.

Meantime, Brazil's president Bolsinaro has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Claims are that the hail the size of baseballs that was pelting Wuhan a few days ago has spikes and looks like a model of the coronavirus.

Up next: one third of all the seas turn to blood.

Film at eleven.

News of the Apocalypse

Apparently there will be a full moon this year on the night of July 4th, America’s big day. Oh, and a lunar eclipse. 

Biden, apparently suffering from rapidly advancing senility, is far ahead in the polls.

Mobs are now tearing down statues of elk.

Meantime, China is experiencing a new outbreak of the coronavirus now in their capital; an emerging strain of influenza capable of a separate pandemic; historical flooding on the Yangtze River; hailstones the size of baseballs in Wuhan, the original site of the coronavirus outbreak, just downriver from the Three Gorges Dam, now in danger of bursting. A tornado was recently filmed (videoed?) on the outskirts of Beijing. And did I mention the knee-deep snow that in Western China on July 1st?

God is no longer being subtle about it.

News of the Apocalypse

Apparently, we have been experiencing a rash of earthquakes.

A Journal of the Plague Year

A friend with an Iranian wife confirms that Iranians are touchy-feely on greeting, like Italians. They kiss three times on the cheek, and embrace.

This seems to reinforce my thesis that the greater severity of the virus in Iran and Italy has to do with the dose you get at first exposure. A good argument for social distancing. You might get it from surfaces or air transmission still, but it is likely to be a mild case.

And reassuring in terms of the risks in Canada. Canadians are reserved.

Premier Ford was just on the television mandating the closure of all non-essential businesses, and extending the school closures. His health minister reassured everyone that they had ample medical supplies. Does that mean for what’s happening now, or what will be happening in two weeks?

Liquor stores remain open. Some are kvetching, but I think it is the right call. Some people are going to need that, at this of all times.

Apocalypse Watch: Tower Collapses

Chinese hotel quarantining coronavirus victims collapses.

Apocalypse Watch: Snakes Alive!

Latest sign of the pending apocalypse: a man in Ireland hasbeen bitten by a poisonous snake, for the first time since the days of St.Patrick.

Welcome to the Plague Years

The Dance of Death: souvenir of the Black Plague.

Things are getting worse regarding the coronavirus. In fact, I think “assume the worst” might have been the right advice all along.

Here is what I think we know:

1. The virus escaped from a Chinese lab. This, which originally was scorned as a conspiracy theory, is pretty clearly true. This might explain why it has such sinister characteristics. It seems possible it was being worked on as a bio weapon.

This would explain the draconian measures undertaken by the Chinese authorities. They knew more or less what they were dealing with, and knew it was alarming.

2. It is extremely contagious. Perhaps it was designed to be extremely contagious. A recent report has one Korean carrier infecting over 40 people.

It can spread through the air; it can remain live on surfaces for an unknown time. The Chinese have been spraying everything in view with bleach.

3. It can spread before the victim shows symptoms. This makes it virtually impossible to stop by quarantine. You don’t know who to quarantine.

4. It has an incubation period of perhaps 24 days, during which the victim may show no symptoms, but be contagious.

This is unfortunate, because, until now, the Chinese and other governments have been quarantining people for 14 days before declaring them virus-free.

5. Some reports suggest that a victim can remain contagious even for an undetermined time after recovery.

6. It produces a death rate on first infection 20 times greater than the flu; about at the level of the notorious Spanish flu a century ago. And that is assuming the health care system is not overwhelmed. Wherever the virus takes hold, we can expect the health care system become overwhelmed.

7. Surviving the virus does not create immunity. It is apparently possible to become reinfected. The second infection is worse than the first. It looks as though it can cause sudden death. There are videos of people in Wuhan collapsing in the street.

Leaving open a further question. If you survive the second infection, could there be a third infection, and so forth? This seems probable.

8. Nobody has immunity, because the virus is so new. If the virus spreads, sooner or later, everyone gets it.

9. It has escaped containment in China. It is now loose in South Korea, Japan, and Iran. Italy also looks worrisome.

The Iranian medical system and government structure is probably incapable of an effectively quarantine, because of its relative underdevelopment. It is likely to spread from there.

Add this up, and we might have a doomsday weapon.

All is not lost; the virus might spontaneously mutate, and someone might at any moment come up with a more effective treatment.

The Recent Prophecies of Eliezer ben Nisan ha'Cohen

According to his son Adam, speaking at the Junos, Leonard Cohen confidently predicted that Donald Trump would win the recent US election and become president.

Cohen died the day before the election.

Publicly, at least, Cohen always stayed strictly politically neutral as a wise artist does. As he sang in “The Future,” “I’m neither left nor right.” And he’s not American; he had no dog in the race. But Cohen was a true prophet. Not that he literally saw the future, any more than any prophet can, but he saw beneath the surface of things, and so was able to draw the proper conclusions about what would happen next. It is a matter of reading the human soul. Perhaps also the will of God.

This is the job, actually, of any true artist. To the extent that they are true artists, they are inspired by God; they are prophets. And they tell us what is happening in the world of the spirit. But Cohen was especially aware of this.

Cohen’s prediction is that much more impressive because he made it while living among the entertainment industry, and intellectuals, in Southern California. A place and a milieu that was solidly for Clinton. California gave Clinton her plurality in the popular vote.

Yet Cohen was sensing what was going on in the wider culture, in the rest of the country—in the rust belt. It was not something he was picking up from the people around him, who, according to Adam, all thought Clinton would win.

So Cohen was a true prophet. We ought to listen to him.

As it happens, he did an album called “The Future.”

Cohen has said often that the world is undergoing a spiritual catastrophe.

On the album, he makes two prophecies that seem contradictory. One, “The Future,” is of disaster. The other, “Democracy is Coming,” is optimistic.

But Cohen has said that the former is far more likely.

Here it is:

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent, repent
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine
Of survival

Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It's over, it ain't going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future: It is murder

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms, there'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see your woman hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets coming round
Trying to sound like Charlie Manson
Yeah the white man dancing

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ
Or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby: It is murder

Cohen, as a true artist, has said, quite properly, that his poems and songs don’t mean anything, any more than a diamond means anything. There are just beautiful. He is right; it is blasphemy to “interpret” art. If you could say the same thing in an essay, you would write an essay, which is after all easier to do.

Still, it is unsettling how very wrong so many interpretations of Cohen tend to be. We do exegesis on the prophets; even Jesus did explain some parables. So I claim the liberty to clarify.

It's lonely here
There's no one left to torture

Cohen is not calling for sadism; I think we can take that as given. By making the statement, he is alerting us that he is speaking ironically. What he is saying is, give me back a moral code, in which such things, if done, are secret. The standard modern notion is that morality is simply torture—so he using the term ironically.

He argues it is better, and more moral, to have a moral code you can break than to have no moral code. So it is better to sin than to never sin, in this sense, by denying there is anything sinful. The danger is moral relativism. And Cohen further says that the result of moral relativism is loneliness.

Keep that in mind.

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left

I think I need to comment here, because many will think Cohen is endorsing sodomy and environmentalism here.

In later performances, Cohen removed the words “anal sex”; I guess he regretted them. I think he changed it to “risky sex.” What he is saying is that he wants risks, rather than either crack or sex specifically. While some might think he wants anal sex, does anyone really think he means to endorse crack cocaine? Which is to say, I think, he is calling again for morality. If there is no risk of doing moral wrong, then there is no opportunity to be moral. That is the risk evoked here: these are examples of doing wrong. This is confirmed by the reference to “Stalin and St. Paul.” Stalin and Saint Paul are evil opposed to good. The Berlin Wall is the clear delineation between the two.

It does sound as if he is referring to environmentalism as a possible new morality: “Take the only tree that’s left”; but I think not. It does not sound entirely reverent to suggest you stick your last tree up your … anal sex? And it sounds parodic to suggest that a tree can fix a hole in a culture. He is saying that environmentalism, the worship of nature, is a pathetic substitute for culture.

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

Here is a clear statement of the problem. The world—the physical, nature—has overcome and obliterated the soul, the spiritual. Which is order—Aristotle called it “form.” Christians call it “logos.” Moral order is a part of that, along with logic, which is to say truth. And beauty is a third form of order: the good, the true, the beautiful.

That, then, is the catastrophe. We have abandoned the good, the true, and the beautiful, for chaos.

And here is the solution, put as gently as possible: repent! The important, the vital, the essential first step, is to accept and admit that we are wrong.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol―that our lives had become unmanageable.

I’m the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible

Here Cohen makes clear that he speaks in the person of a prophet. And he calls for love as the only solution.

Here a lot of people will eagerly jump in and say, “Aha! Cohen is calling for free love! Go for it, baby boomers!”

Just the opposite. The confusion of sex with love is at the core of the problem he has just diagnosed.

What does sex have to do with repentance?

If you know your catechism, you should know how love fits in here. We honestly repent of our sins in the confessional, when we do so, not out of fear of punishment, but out of a full realization that we have offended God, “who is worthy of all love.”

Repentance comes from love; it is its first natural expression.

And, as Jesus says, love is primarily love of God; if we do not love God, we do not love our fellow man either. Jesus says, love God with all your heart. Then love your neighbour as yourself. You cannot do the second without the first. You might do nice things for your neighbour, but you cannot love him.

As AA recognizes.

Step 2: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Love does not mean romantic love, specifically, here, let alone sex. This should be obvious from the scope he gives: the rise and fall of civilizations, human survival.

I think he is right, too, that civilizations rise and fall, succeed and fail, based on the amount of love for one another and for God among their citizens. Armies fight and win because of love: your love for the next guy in the trench, and for the folks you defend at home. Nations rise if and when those who happen to be in charge do what they do for love of others, instead of for self-interest.

Cohen clearly sees that we in the West are losing that, or have lost that, and this will be our downfall.

We have turned away from God, and the spirit, and so we have turned away from each other.

As W. B. Yeats similarly put it:

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code

What could be clearer than “the breaking of the ancient western code”? This is the code that Moses brought down from Sinai. The devil is in the saddle. He is now in charge.

The image of the woman hanging upside down is a kind of inverted crucifix. Cohen perfects the inversion by making the figure a woman, and having the hanging expose her genitals. So this is an image of our inversion of our traditional values. Now it is all about sex, and nobody sees anyone’s face, anyone’s humanity, any more.

Art, beauty has disintegrated because it has lost its moral purpose. Poets want to sound like Charlie Manson. I have read some suggesting that Cohen’s concern here is to condemn bad poetry. It is, in a sense, but do not miss that he is telling you what makes bad poetry bad. Immorality is ugliness, and ugliness is immorality. You cannot have the good without the true, or the true without the beautiful, or the beautiful without the good.

Cohen puts double emphasis on the line “the white man dancing.” The usual claim is that this would be a good thing. “White men can’t dance” is intended as a criticism. It is because they are “uptight,” that is, too self-controlled. But self-control means morality. The image also suggests a second sense of “dancing,” as you see in old Westerns: the idea of being forced to dance as a humiliation. White men are being humiliated.

You begin to see here what he was seeing in the Trump phenomenon, perhaps. It was the white men standing up for the ancient Western code. In popular leftist terms, Cohen is a “white supremacist.” Not that that term really means what the words say it means.

Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby: It is murder

Like me, it seems, Cohen sees abortion as key to the whole problem. He puts that reference here at the end, making it a sort of punch line—a secondary punch line, because this verse is followed by the repeated chorus “Repent! Repent!”

Abortion is indeed murder. It is the present holocaust. It is the ultimate proof of our lack of love for our fellow man. Abortion is the ultimate litmus test: are you a sheep, or a goat? Are you with God, or for yourself?

That is Cohen’s Jeremiad.