Reading the Entrails by Gaslight

 

Many commentators on the right are optimistic about 2024. They do not give reasons; just an instinct that the tide has turned. I have that same feeling.

Perhaps it is telling that friend Xerxes, commentator on the left, has the opposite feeling, and is warning against facing the new year with optimism.

His first argument is that it is pure chance, and the fact that the last three years have been awful in just about everyone’s opinion makes it no more likely the next year will be good. His second argument is that, if we think things are terrible, we need to change our attitude. He uses that old saw, about a couple who asked their real estate agent if their new neighbours were friendly.

            “What were they like at the last place you lived?” asks the real estate agent.
            Whatever the answer, the agent can safely say, “Then they’ll be the same here.”

His argument that experiencing a bad year makes it no more likely that the next year will be good is necessarily based on the assumption that there is no God. Given that the universe is just, it is fair to hope that good will come to balance present evil. This is the theological virtue of hope, and lacking it, assuming fate is merely random, is the deadly vice of acedia.

His next argument, that you are yourself the deciding factor, and responsible for your own good or bad luck, is similarly anti-christian. It is plausible only for Eastern religions who believe in reincarnation. As to the specific example, your new neighbours inevitably being no better nor worse than your old neighbours, that is easily disproven by crime statistics. There are good and bad neighbourhoods. Or ask the Jews who escaped the Nazis whether their new neighbours in Canada were just as bad as their old ones in Germany. Ask the Jews of Israel about their neighbours in Gaza. Ask, indeed, the many of us who came to North America to escape oppression and have a better life whether their new life is no better than their old. And if better, is it really because they changed their sullen attitude?

The Bible could not more clearly oppose this idea, that those who are suffering are responsible for their own suffering, and those who are materially fortunate are morally deserving. Read the Book of Job. Read the story of Dives and Lazarus. Read the Beatitudes. Read about that just man they crucified.

The left is hearing footsteps. They have long been in power, actually since the early 20th century in North America, and they are coming to realize there is widespread unrest. And they are trying to gaslight us.