Ah, yes.
So, how's that liberty thing been working out for you this year?
My posts on religious themes over the years have occasionally drawn scoffing critical comments from smug libertarian-atheist types who, after having roundly dismissed my belief in a sky-god, have contemptuously informed me that the only thing that matters in life is liberty.
Ah, yes. So, how's that liberty thing been working out for you this year?
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Lajos Gulácsy (1882-1932) is regarded as a great painter here in Hungary and his works are included in the Hungarian National Gallery. I personally don't see any 'greatness' in Gulácsy's oeuvre, but I do have a soft spot for the dreamlike quality of his work, as exemplified in the two paintings below.
Friend and fellow blogger S.K. Orr recently learned that philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche composed music. Unlike S.K., I knew Nietzsche composed music, but (also unlike S.K.) I had never taken the time to listen to any of the philosopher's compositions. My music knowledge is embarrassingly unsophisticated, which makes me oblivious to the likely flaws and shortcomings of Nietzsche's musical creations. Having said that, I rather enjoyed the selections featured in the clip below as well as the selections S.K has featured on his blog here. Below is a great Traveltalks newsreel from 1938 featuring Budapest. You Tube appears to be "suggesting" the video to everyone who lives in Hungary (I haven't searched for anything related to Hungary on You Tube for over a year, yet was suggested this video all the same). Most of the comments for the video are run-of-the-mill You Tube comments, but a few note the ominous timing of the suggestion. For example:
Note added: The analogy I draw at the end is an extremely loose one. What we are currently experiencing defies historical comparisons. Back in March I received an email from the Austrian university where I work part-time. The email informed me that the institution had basically locked its doors and that I was to continue my classes in a purely online format until further notice. A week later I received a similar message from the Hungarian university where I hold a full-time position. I ended up teaching the rest of the semester online for both of my jobs.
In September I was allowed to physically return to work in Austria and Hungary and have been teaching most of my classes "live" since then. Anyway, this afternoon the Austrian university sent me a notification that all instruction was being reverted back online for the remainder of the semester. The email did not surprise me much, but I do consider it ominous. I suspect I will receive a similar communication from my Hungarian employer in the coming week. Moreover, I very much doubt these new measures will be limited to institutions of higher education, which means Austria and Hungary might be teetering on the edge of another round of hard national lockdowns. Hey, why not? Just yesterday Ireland declared it was locking down for a minimum of six weeks. The worse I had anticipated earlier this week has arrived much sooner than I expected. At this point, all I can say is 'bring it.' Yesterday I published a rather bleak post in which I argued that the successful implementation of the Great Reset agenda would require conditions to become considerably worse than those we are currently experiencing.
Coincidentally enough, William Wildblood has addressed this likelihood in a recent post published on his Meeting the Masters blog. In the post, William delineates our current situation and offers some much-needed perspective about where our focus must be -- more importantly, where it must remain if and when things do take a turn for the worse. It is obvious that we live in very dangerous times. Clearly, I am not referring to Covid-19 which I assume all readers of this blog realise is just a more or less conventional virus that is being used as a means to an end, that end being control and dominance. The virus is really the least of our worries. It will kill off some elderly people just as flu and pneumonia regularly do but it will not do much harm to the great majority. By all means, we should protect the vulnerable but it should be apparent to anyone by now who bothers to look beyond the official propaganda that our reaction has been totally disproportionate to the threat. Whether that is because of fear and panic or politicians, administrators and other figures of the establishment wanting to hold onto power or even something deliberate and planned is another matter. Whatever the cause of it all, the reality is that we have been deceived into giving up freedom. The real danger is spiritual and this, I fear, is only the beginning. The groundwork has been carefully laid over the last few decades, centuries even. We have been gradually led away from the knowledge that our life is centred in God to a worldview which is totally materialistic and atheistic. This to the extent that even many people who think they are spiritual or religious still adapt most of their thinking to the materialistic ethos. I am not always exempt from this myself. It's the water in which we swim and it can be difficult to throw it off completely. But look at Christ and the prophets of old. They did not compromise with the worldly powers and worldly wisdom one iota. They grounded themselves totally in spiritual knowledge without any concession to the world. We too must do this. There can be no compromise with lies, even lies plausibly dressed up to look like partial truths. Why bother with partial truths when you have the truth? They are usually just means to smuggle in the lie anyway. I say the danger is spiritual. What I mean by this is that we will be asked to give up more and more of our personal integrity. Read the rest of William's post here. The title of this post is a parody of the kind of article titles one comes across on the World Economic Forum's website. The formula is a simple one -- an outlandish declaration followed by a teaser that promises to explain why the outlandish declaration not only makes sense, but is absolutely necessary for world survival.
The range of topics these sorts of articles address is both vast and comprehensive, but the same overarching message underpins them all: everything -- yes, everything including your job, your lifestyle, your nation, your outdated social views, your concept of money, your consumption habits, everything you believe, do, and are -- needs to be "reset". I don't spend a great of deal time reading WEF articles anymore, but I happened to peruse a few recent ones today after I finished lunch. As I was doing so, I was struck by a rather obvious thought. For the Great Reset agenda to succeed, things will have to get worse -- much worse. Yes, things are bad enough as it is, and yes, you could argue that some of the initial Great Reset agenda points have already been implemented, but at the same time any full-scale implementation of the WEF's inconceivably all-encompassing initiatives will require conditions that are considerably worse than anything we have experienced in the past six or seven months. Not a happy thought, I'm afraid, but I believe it is imperative to steel ourselves against the probability of things getting much worse in the near future. The Thinking Housewife recently shared a short video by a group calling themselves the World Doctors Alliance. Awful globalist-sounding name aside, the organization declares itself to be "an independent non-profit alliance of doctors, nurses, healthcare professionals and staff around the world who have united in the wake of the Covid-19 response chapter to share experiences with a view to ending all lockdowns and related damaging measures and to re-establish universal health determinance of psychological and physical wellbeing for all humanity."
The WDA includes the following on its website: We were told initially that the premise for lockdown was to ‘flatten the curve’ and therefore protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. It is clear that at no point was the National Health Service (NHS) in any danger of being overwhelmed, and since May 2020 covid wards have been largely empty; and crucially the death toll from covid has remained extremely low. We now have hundreds of thousands of so-called ‘cases’, ‘infections’ and ‘positive tests’ but hardly any sick people. Recall that four fifths (80%) of ‘infections’ are asymptomatic (1) Covid wards have been by and large empty throughout June, July, August and September 2020. Most importantly covid deaths are at an all-time low. It is clear that these ‘cases’ are in fact not ‘cases’ but rather they are normal healthy people. So-called asymptomatic cases have never in the history of respiratory disease been the driver for spread of infection. Rather it is symptomatic people who spread respiratory infections - not asymptomatic people.(2) It is also abundantly clear that the ‘pandemic’ is basically over and has been since June 2020. We have very highly likely reached herd immunity and therefore have no need for a vaccine. We have safe and very effective treatments and preventative treatments for covid, we therefore call for an immediate end to all lockdown measures, social distancing, mask wearing, testing of healthy individuals, track and trace, immunity passports, the vaccination program and so on. There has been a catalogue of unscientific, non-sensical policies enacted which infringe our inalienable rights, such as - freedom of movement, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. These draconian totalitarian measures must never be repeated. The site contains many other observations and insights concerning the birdemic; the same sorts of observations and insights many bloggers (including yours truly) have voiced since about March 2020. These include:
And so on . . . Now I am not a medical doctor, but back in March I argued that the birdemic scare should never have made the news, and that it was being used a pretext for something far more sinister. This organization of doctors appears to agree with that notion. The only questions I have concerning this organization of medical professionals:
I am doubtful on both points. As Bruce Charlton noted very early on, the birdemic is not about the birdemic. In this regard, the birdemic has achieved its purpose. The coup has happened; the totalitarians are in control. I very much doubt the general public of any nation will be moved by organizations like the World Doctors Alliance.
Incoherence. An endless drone of incoherence from all sides and from every conceivable angle. With each passing day it becomes more intense, more inconsistent, and more unintelligible. Running parallel with this is the unwillingness to acknowledge the incoherence - the constant acting as if the lack of orderly continuity is actually orderly continuity. Framing all of this is the total lack of penitence displayed by those who actively generate, distribute, and promote the incoherence.
Don't get me wrong - I don't expect anyone who actively opposes God to fall to his or her knees and publicly cry out in repentance, but at the same time I imagined I would catch a glimpse of remorse every once in a while; that I would pick up the faint scent of compunction here and there; that I would detect nervous whispers of regret beneath the droning. At the very least I anticipated mild expressions of doubt seeping through now and again. But I have yet to sense anything of the kind, and I doubt I will see much of it in the future. Look, the evil we face now is unabashedly unapologetic. And why not? Relentless and unmerciful, it simply does not care about what anyone thinks because it has come to the perfectly correct conclusion that barely anyone thinks at all. |
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March 2025
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