Someone I know by name and family took argument with the CDC numbers I provided in a recent essay. While there has been a lengthy thread of back and forth, the latest from Jim and an email from a friend caused me to reflect upon the desperation I have been seeing on the faces and in the words of so many leftist, progressive, Chicken Little fearmongers of late.
Jesus said it—twenty-one times: “Be not afraid.” Pope Saint John Paul II entitled a book he wrote with those three words. He said it, “I plead with you… never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt said much the same: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Nothing wrong with that, absolutely nothing. So why then is it so terrifyingly appalling when President Trump tells us to be not afraid? I don’t get it, I don’t.
There is a short story—are these written anymore—by Edgar Allan Poe in 1848, The Purloined Letter.[1] One of the characters, C. Auguste Dupin, in the brief narrative lays claim that the suspected purloiner of a letter which contained damaging and sensitive information which was being used as blackmail was both poet and mathematician and that as such he would reason well; “as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, …” The narrator of the tale, thus responds, “You surprise me by these opinions, which have been contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at naught the well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been regarded as the reason par excellence.”
It is late and my thoughts are all over the map, just as they have been all day today: too much information, I suppose. First, this morning I ran across this from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus (50-135 AD). Interesting tidbit, Epictetus was born a slave in present day Pamukkale, Turkey, lived in Rome until they kicked him out, then lived in Nicopolis Greece for the rest of his life. Anyway, he is known to have said, “If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.” Hard to argue with that, especially these days, although it is becoming increasingly difficult to laugh at all the lies and smears and blasphemous expletives that are used as weapons to destroy good and honest people.
Equality is much abused. So much so that it has lost its sweet savor which once did temper the acid tongue. It is the same with so many words, words which were born of necessary meaning, now flailed by the winds of vagary and deceit. We have been turned to dust for what is dust but worthless motes of mindless, meaningless matter; played cruelly upon a broken fiddle.
By every indication, that is if one is inclined to swallow the codswallop unfit to print but printed nonetheless, what has been occurring around the nation these past few months are “largely peaceful protests”: there simply is no there there, so please go on about your business and ignore the burnt out shell you once imagined had been your business. If you thought the world had suddenly turned upside down, well, you are seriously misinformed for everyone but you quite obviously knows the world has unmistakably turned inside out, which is to say, right side left and backwards.
Please tell me where is the everlasting emergency? Where is the all-consuming fire, the endless smoking nightmare? One could well suggest California burning and overwhelming evidence supports that hellish state. The wildfires are real and a true emergency, however, at some point, the fires will burn out either from natural fuel exhaustion or through the extraordinary firefighting efforts of first responders; sooner or later the emergency will be over or at least put on pause for a year or two.
Have you ever had the feeling, a growing suspicion deep down that you have been had, scammed, bamboozled, played for a fool? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you felt damned if you do, damned if you don’t? If you are firmly convinced you have neither suspected nor felt either, I would suggest you check your pulse and your temperature then check yourself into the nearest morgue for a final fitting.
America has lost all sense of culture. It is true, for there “is no culture without a felt encounter with the divine. It is a contradiction in terms. There are mass habits, but no culture, because people lose the sense that they have anything of surpassing value to pass along.”[1] Apparently, CCW (Cancel Culture Warriors) have yet to get the memo, or, if they have, they have either cancelled their subscription or never subscribed, most likely the latter.
When then is truth the truth? It is difficult if nigh impossible to discern what is true in a world blanketed with the fog of vague accommodation, exacerbated by the smoke and mirrors of unholy hallucinogenic carnival now set before us. It is a nightmare within a nightmare, everlasting should we perchance never awaken. For a frightening moment now The Matrix seems far too real to be dismissed as mere science fiction. Could it possibly be reality is but a dream? Where is Neo when we need him? Who among us is willing to take the red pill and wake up to reality, to know the truth, to be freed from the umbilicus of the propaganda machine?
