New York Times reporter Reid J. Epstein reported smugly that President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows “threw a 70-person indoor wedding for his daughter, flouting coronavirus restrictions.”
Squealing in flustered frustration from behind his mask, the high-minded Epstein shamed, “In one image, Mr. Meadows can be seen delivering a father-of-the-bride [wedding speech without a mask: shame, shame, shame].”
Epstein’s lament notwithstanding, 19 of the 20 areas with the highest COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks have a mandatory mask mandate. So much for the “settled science.”
The censorious self-righteousness of the mass media knows no bounds as they steadily fan the flames of panic in the American culture. Their desired outcome is to turn a flu-like situation into a pan[ic]demic. Why are the rightful owners of America—We the People—even putting up with such media-inspired scare tactics and alarmism?
Two brothers in England attended their father’s funeral and attempted to move their “socially distanced” chairs near their grieving, inconsolable mother. The pharisaic funeral director paraded up front to castigate and embarrass them in front of the fellow mourners.
CBS News reported last week that desultory California Governor Gavin Newsom put out a tweet on Saturday advising restaurant-goers to keep their masks on while dining. “Going out to eat with members of your household this weekend? Don’t forget to keep your mask on in between bites. Do your part to keep those around you healthy.”
We may enlighten the ignorantly unenlightened governor by repeating the words of Dr. Linda Johnston, M.D.: “The coronavirus is about 100 nanometers in diameter. Cloth mask ‘holes’ are 1,000 times larger than a virus. An analogy is used that a mask is like a mosquito getting through a chain link fence. It’s actually much worse, it’s a mosquito getting through a chain link fence with holes 14 yards in diameter.”
The governor’s instruction of “keeping your mask on in between bites” is equally irrational and indefensible as was his unconstitutional edict from March for keeping liquor stores, marijuana dispensaries, Costcos and Walmarts open, which he deemed “essentials,” while closing churches as “non-essentials.”
The response to the coronavirus has generated a state of affairs replete with inconceivable and irreversible contradictions, where professed lifesaving measures have resulted in the large-scale destruction of livelihoods and the creation of a sterile, lifeless society. A state of affairs where social distancing has engendered a condition of separatism, proclaiming that nearness endangers health and constitutes a threat to the community. A state of affairs where familiarity becomes remoteness, impropriety or even animosity.
When all is said and done, there may indeed be a demonic, diabolical agenda behind all this! The feckless social and medical meddling, to paraphrase Paul Andersen, “is a Mephistophelian bargain with the devil that jeopardizes our very souls by changing what it means to be human.”
As of Aug. 29, in Ventura County, California, there have been 115 deaths by COVID-19. Only 2 of those died from the virus, whereas the other 113 deaths had preexisting conditions known as comorbidities (they died of something besides COVID-19). One of the 113 died from a fentanyl overdose, demonstrating how manufactured the death toll of the pan[ic demic hoax] is. Nonetheless the medical examiner listed his death as COVID related!
Listing deaths as from COVID-19 seems to be rewarding financially.
Seven months of lockdown in California, from which 65% of businesses will never recover, is all due to the malfeasance of one man: Governor Gavin Newsom. There was a time in American history when tyrannical, totalitarian types such as Newsom would have been driven from office and publicly shamed for their dereliction.
Secularism appears to have produced a weak-willed, spiritless American citizenry, disposed or willing to comply.
The labelling and stigmatization of dissent as social failure has resulted in institutional guidelines becoming a tool of surveillance, accusation, judgment and condemnation. To remain a member of a compliant group, noncompliant members must be attacked and sacrificed. The hysteria and fear promulgated by despotic rulers and mass media alike brings out of the woodwork those who have an unwholesome need to bully, including flight attendants, cashiers, desk clerks, shop assistants, holier-than-thou leftists, blue state governors and mayors, among others.
The time has arrived where Christians are going to have to say no to heavy-handed wedding planners, insensitive funeral directors and autocratic blue-state governors and mayors.
Sir Winston Churchill provides the reason in his prescription for the defeat of the tyrant Hitler: “Up until 1934 at least, German rearmament could have been prevented without the loss of a single life. It was not time that was lacking.”
Indeed, rather than time, it was the unconditional yielding to the imperious need for control of the rabid Adolf Hitler and his henchmen, compounded by the lack of opposition to their heinous subterfuge.
With this, America finds herself at a 1934 kairos moment.
To paraphrase Millennial Tomi Lehren (born 1992): “If restaurants open at full capacity scares you—stay home. If air travel scares you—stay home. If bars scare you—stay out of them. If going to the office scares you—stay home. If states and cities without mask mandates scare you—steer clear from those bastions of freedom. Please let the rest of us be free.”
The only antidote to the current crisis is a return to the mission announced by our Christian American forebears at Jamestown in 1607. They swore a covenant to Jehovah God, which we Christians over the last 200 years have failed to carry out: “We do hereby dedicate this land, and ourselves, to reach the people within these shores with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to raise up godly generations after us, and with these generations take the kingdom of God to all the earth.”
Two principalities are waging war as they vie for ideological supremacy and control of the public square: Christianity and secularism. Total victory by Christians and banishment of secularism from the once Christian culture is likely our only way out of more calamity and catastrophe.
Up to this point, American Christendom has grown soft. It’s all but the vigorous Christianity brought to America’s shores by persecuted English Puritans in the early 17th century.
To quote from Daniel Dreisbach’s masterly work, Reading the Bible With the Founding Fathers: “18th-century Americans lived in a culture shaped by Christianity and its sacred text. The Bible, more than any other written word, informed the world of the Founding Fathers and the society around them. It was the most accessible book in 18th-century America and was among the most important sources of cultural influence in the colonial and early national periods. It shaped the language. It also informed education, letters, arts, law and politics. … The Bible and Bible-based texts were ubiquitous in elementary and secondary education, and they were of special importance to literacy education. … It is difficult to overstate the place of the Bible in the lives and culture of 18th-century Americans.”
Thankfully, Gideons and Rahabs are now entering the public square after a long absence. For this we praise His name, because “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising out of the sea” (1 Kings 18:44b). {eoa}
David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
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