Tuesday evening: Fox is headlining a study....a John Hopkins study as the article puts it....concluding that Covid lockdowns essentially do nothing. Conservatives will read this and tell it to anyone who will listen....and talk radio will hammer this one home also.....end of discussion. This study lists three men....two economists and one that is a political consultant. Two of them are from Sweden. One is a senior teaching fellow at the Cato Institute....and another has at the top of his social media site a quote from John Galt....."Get the hell out of my way." Does anyone think that.....John Hopkins Study.....is the way to present this? I have no doubt that their findings on the economic impact of lockdowns....based on their expertise....is worthy for consideration.....but how are they to be considered experts on the spreading of communicable disease?
Examples....for political points....someone might charge a president of the opposition party as being the worst president on the national debt because the total amount of debt increase was highest during his term....another from that opposition might say 'no.....that although the total figure was the highest...the percentage of growth was lowest with his president in office.' Another example....someone might point to total deaths due to the virus as highest under a certain president....but the percentage of people infected might have been ten times higher when that president took office. We cannot just charge into statistics.....picking out the figures that we want.....and ignoring the figures that we do not want....taking into account only the areas of research which 'proves' our point....while ignoring other areas that may even disprove our point. We have lost logic in debate in just about every sphere of American life....proving Proverbs 21:2...."Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the hearts.
In the Texas rally of the past weekend....Trump threatened great protests in major cities if prosecutors continued doing what they are doing....attempting to cover himself on this by wording it...."if they do anything illegal." He also slipped in possible future pardons for convictions stemming from January 6, 2021....dangling pardons the same way he did on Twitter back when witnesses were about to give testimony in his impeachment hearings. I do not know what the percentage is of his worshiping base among republicans....but I do know that it is not growing....and what is growing is the percentage of republicans who after rallies like this are turning away from him with great concern.
Saturday evening....Trump rally. There is little difference to when....decades ago....I focused most of my attention on 'Christian cults'.....religious organizations that claimed to be Christian but denied essential doctrines. I would read everything I could get on them....even their own literature....especially their own literature....which in most cases was their scripture....and I put ads in the newspaper trying to get generate conversations with people that were just then being sucked into the system. I am getting bored now watching the Trump rallies....though I continue to do so. Nothing changes.....as Trump continually looks left to read the teleprompter....and then right to read the other one....and then left....and right....and left....the whole night.....but no on seems to care.....if they even pick up on it. He just says whatever he wants.....it doesn't matter how outlandish it might be....no one is going to check it out let alone even really think about what he says. Trump jokes about this....pointing to the cameras in the background....but historians and psychologists are taking it all in....for unfortunately this is history in the making....the latest in a long line of psychological manipulation by one charismatic individual....over a very susceptible portion of the population. There was one change to this rally in Texas as Trump did not make his long exit to Lee Greenwood's Proud To Be An American....Rather Sam And Dave's.....Hold on, I'm Comin'.
"For the LORD spoke thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying:
'Do not say a 'a conspiracy.'
Concerning all that this people call a conspiracy,
Nor be afraid of their threats....nor be troubled.
The LORD of hosts, Him you shall hallow:
Let Him be your fear
And let Him be your dread.
He will be as a sanctuary.
But a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense
to both the houses of Israel." Isaiah 8:11-14a
It's becoming very apparent to me....as I've witnessed in too many conversations now....increasingly evangelicals seem to be totally taken in by conspiracy theories. It seems to go like this....they hear someone on the radio or cable TV....automatically believe whatever conspiracy is being proclaimed.....and immediately go out to tell someone else about it....(talk about evangelizing!).....never even questioning what they heard or doing any research on their own. My message is this.....so....do you want a good conspiracy to keep you excited....something better than QAnon or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Tucker Carlson has to offer.....something that won't fade away in a month or two.....then open God's Word.....I'm at forty years now....and every day now is praise offered for that day....whenever it was.....back in 1981.....when I opened the Bible to actually read what God wanted us to know!
Update on the above: It is reported that Anthony Fauci commented on Monday that "the anti-vaccination movement is bigger than we realize." He called it...."very disturbing." What is happening is more than merely....very disturbing....because it is experimenting with the very way that we process information.....which was already seriously edited by postmoderism. It also has been reported that Dr. Fauci is the highest paid government employee. For what he is being subject to....double it.....no triple it! We used to be outraged at what happened to Robert Bork at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings....and Clarence Thomas....and Brett Kavanaugh.....but what is happening to Fauci is far worse. Fauci's salary apparently is $440 thousand dollars....the minimum wage of a major league baseball player is $570 thousand dollars. That could be a player who hits 220 and gets in 20 games a year. Their facts on Dr. Fauci's salary are correct....the usage of that fact is the bottom of the barrel.
While campaigning the first time in 2016....in front of a large crowd....and in response to a news story at the time....Donald Trump said to the pleasure of that crowd...."The mob takes the fifth....If you are innocent why do you take the fifth?" I don't bring this up because his son and his chief financial associate are reported to have taken 'the fifth' 500 times recently....for that is obvious....but I bring it up because it is not only on legal issues.....but in every possible area of life....and in almost every day of his life.....that Donald Trump has no concept of what the word truth might mean. It doesn't matter if it is something minutely insignificant as crowd size....or on impeachment issues....no answer he gives will have been placed on any grid of truth. The urban liberals remember Donald Trump from when he was a part of them....and thus they despise him because they know his schemes. Republicans like me who actually have read into Trump's life know him. It is only those who never knew who he was....and refuse to read anything about him....who cannot see how truth is totally meaningless to him.
