Do Not Believe Absurdities, No Matter How Often They Are Repeated

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –Voltaire

We have been asked to believe a lot of absurdities the past two years. Peaceful protests versus riots and looting, the relative dangers of a virus with a 99.97% survival rate versus economic destruction, the importance of borders on the other side of the globe versus our own borders are now subjects of serious dispute. We are continually asked to suspend our judgment.

Let’s look closer at some of these absurdities.

Those of us who have to conduct business or have friends in major cities know how crazy the 2020 riots were. Oops, I meant “peaceful protests.”

Those “peaceful protests” injured over 2000 police officers, killed more than two dozen people, and caused over a billion dollars worth of damage. We have a family friend who is a police officer in a major city. In 2020, he was locked in a precinct that protesters attempted to set on fire, had numerous projectiles thrown and/or shot at him, and was in a line of officers driven into by a vehicle. Our friend was able to move in time, but the three officers next to him were hit and hospitalized.

The downtown parts of cities themselves looked like third-world countries. A big stretch of Colfax in Denver had no glass windows for months. It was all plywood, with the hours of the stores just spray-painted on. The violence and destruction were unbelievable.

But those were “peaceful protests.”

The protest up in Canada, meanwhile, was so dangerous it warranted the government seizing emergency powers.

Hmm, I don’t see any burning buildings and no one has been killed, but Trudeau was so scared of his own people demanding to be heard that he disappeared. If you want to hear an interesting discussion between Canadians on the topic, I recommend Jordan Peterson’s interview with the author and radio host Rex Murphy.

We’re asked to believe that torching police precincts is a form of legitimate protest, but people standing in the road, singing the national anthem, and asking to be heard by the head of state is both dangerous and warrants stripping the protests of their rights as citizens. That’s absurd.

The truth is being hidden.

Alt media has published many articles questioning the motives behind government actions regarding the covid pandemic. At this point, I think it suffices to say that many people, including the fully jabbed and boosted, know that the public hasn’t gotten the whole story. A spokeswoman for the CDC recently admitted that they have only released a small fraction of the data they’ve been collecting over the past two years making it impossible for the public to make informed choices about its health.

And yet governments around the world assumed the worst and went on a spree, granting themselves various new powers. More than a billion people were injected with an experimental drug with a safety profile that has largely been hidden.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever get the full story regarding who released what and what possessed governments worldwide to conduct mass medical experimentation on their populations. But most people realized something smells off.

The public is waking up to the absurdities.

We were fed an awful lot of absurdities surrounding covid the past couple of years, and people are starting to realize it.

But just as most people are done being terrified of covid, we are now being asked to get worked up about what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine. Putin pays a great deal of attention to the psychology of other world leaders and knows no one is in a position to fight back.

The European Union is busy regulating itself back into the Middle Ages with their “green” energy policies while Putin sits atop some of the world’s largest fossil fuel deposits. And he has no qualms whatsoever about using them. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Putin waited for the Germans to shutter their last three nuclear power plants before striking.

Will the US get involved?

Well, the US doesn’t seem to have much of an interest in its own borders. Something like 2 million undocumented migrants has crossed the border just since 2020. The southern American border is completely out of control. I don’t think we have any business getting involved in anyone else’s border disputes until we resolve our own.

And yet look at any of the mainstream websites. They are treating the Russian attacks like the beginning of World War III. Some food for thought? The chances of kicking off WWIII get higher each time a panicky journalist stirs up public sentiment regarding distant conflicts. Should those of us in the media urge everyone to be terrified? What about using discretion? What happened to that?

We need to take mainstream news with a serious grain of salt. I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy a few years ago for personal reasons. Orthodox parishes have a big mix of immigrants, and people share stories from all over the world. You hear things from individuals that the mainstream media overlooks.

Let me give you an example.

When I started looking into Orthodoxy, I naturally started reading different websites, one of which is Orthochristian, published by the Russian church and translated into English. I read some articles by Patriarch Kirill, leader of the church in Moscow and found some material interesting but couldn’t stomach how much the guy seemed to love Putin.

I grew up Roman Catholic. In Catholicism, good Catholics obey the pope. Patriarch Kirill isn’t the pope exactly, but he’s the patriarch of a big city, and I didn’t want to sign onto a religion where I didn’t like the leadership. I asked around at the church if we were all supposed to like Putin or something.

An emphatic ‘no’ was the response I received. Eastern Orthodox churches have a long history of surviving persecutions, particularly under the Communist governments in Eastern Europe. My impression has been to listen to Orthodox leaders when they give spiritual guidance, and then tune out when they talk politics, because chances are government leaders (like Putin) are turning the screws on religious leaders (like Patriarch Kirill) to make sure they comply.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently about Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine, framing the conflict in terms of religious imperialism, George Weigel, a Roman Catholic theologian, wrote the article, with a great deal of finger-wagging directed at the Russian Orthodox Church in general and Patriarch Kirill, in particular.

Why Roman Catholic theologians seem to think they can speak with authority about every other religion baffles me. The facts in Mr. Weigel’s article aren’t wrong, but they don’t give the whole story, either.

Two things, in particular, struck me.

First of all, it’s easy for American boomers to tell religious leaders from other countries to stand up to dictators from the comfort of the American suburbs. But less than 100 years ago, Orthodox religions were targeted by the Soviets and overwhelmingly thrown into gulags. Maybe some of the Orthodox leadership in Russia is as ambitious as Putin. I think it’s more likely that most of them go along only as much as they have to not come under fire again.

Second of all, aid never comes without a price. Russian Orthodox faithful, both in and out of Ukraine, are deeply concerned that Western help comes with the price tag of Western pro-LGBTQ propaganda. I personally enjoy living in an open society, but I don’t think Russian and Ukrainian concerns are unfounded.

Part of Putin’s appeal to Russian people, in general, has been his tolerance of religion relative to the Soviet leaders. Ask anyone who spent time in the USSR in the 80s and then has gone back within the past ten years. Churches have mushroomed. Do I think Putin does this out of sincere religious sentiment? I highly doubt it, but he knows that presenting himself as the “family values” leader will play well with an awful lot of Russians who, like most of the rest of us, want to be left alone to raise their families in peace.

Again, I’m not trying to defend Russian military aggression.

My point is simply that mainstream media continually dumbs things down. MSM tries to split everyone worldwide into pro-American or anti-American, as though the United States is some kind of standard by which everyone else should be judged. In the case of Russia vs. Ukraine, we should bear in mind that the two countries are far closer to each other culturally than they are to us.

I wish we could just throw our hands up in the air and say, well, let those countries sort it out. But unfortunately, we’re pretty darn dependent on Russian fertilizer. The US is more energy-independent than the European nations, but we still depend a great deal on trade with the Russians. This will affect us in one way or another. I don’t think this will stop with the annexation of Ukraine. It may be just beginning.

Because the US has transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, we are now hopelessly dependent on other countries around the world. We now face the very unsavory options of letting Putin re-take the old Soviet bloc countries or attempting to fight him, thereby losing the continual flow of desperately needed trade goods (like ammonium nitrate). We just lost Afghanistan. Are we really getting involved in another war? Already?

For now, all we can do is watch and try to revive the old American “can-do” attitude

Whatever we do in our households does affect what goes on around us. Even if we can’t see it right now. Whether it’s growing your own food, making/repairing your own clothes, or fixing your own machinery.  The country that won both World Wars was a nation of farmers, craftsmen, and mechanics – not keyboard warriors.

Human nature does not change. Putin’s lust for power and dominion is no different from Genghis Khan’s or Attila the Hun’s. In case you haven’t read much history, guys like that usually win. The only way to stand against that kind of power is to have a general population that is hardworking, thrifty, and capable of doing without creature comforts when they need to. That was the United States 100 years ago. I have serious doubts that we are capable of pulling ourselves together like that again.

But we have to at least try.

We are all going to feel this conflict one way or another. We can panic and get angry at everyone else. Or, we do the best we can to brace ourselves for some ugly years. There are a lot of resources out there to grow at least some of your food and create your own household goods. Finding a community of like-minded people and nurturing healthy family relationships can only help.

And attempting to get your spiritual house in order can’t hurt either, whatever form that may take. I like my Orthodox church, but if you find love, fellowship, and peace of mind at a Buddhist temple, synagogue, or one of those Bible churches, go for it. We have been asked to believe a lot of absurdities the past couple of years. If we start being asked to commit atrocities, having a solid sense of right and wrong will help us resist such things.

What are your thoughts on the situation? Let us know in the comments below.

Author: Joanna Miller

 

yogaesoteric
June 18, 2022