We know now that in the early years of the 20th century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than mans and yet as mortal as his own. Orson Wells opening line of War of the Worlds radio narration 30 oct 1938.I want to preface this by acknowledging that in Ecclesiastes 3 there is the call to plant to love to live to work and then to enjoy the fruits of all ones labors. Perhaps most profound are the two most natural calls in verse 2: A time to be born and a time to die. At the turn of the new millennium I was an 18-year old senior in high school. All the fuss over Y2K had whipped the world into a frenzy: concerns such as the collapse of the global economy due to a malfunction related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates beginning in the year 2000 making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. One might have thought we were about to enter white mans hell what with all the doom and gloom we heard. Our weapons chief among which human ingenuity were useless against the ravages of the gravest existential threat posed to humanity by the digital age since well Skynet. Well now Skynet was a wonderful work of fiction if youre a Terminator fan. So was the vastly overestimated poison pill posed by Y2K. Very soon we will learn this to be true with the coronavirus the latest apocalyptic terror we are told will shake down the heavens and the earth from the Great Wall of China to the halls of Montezuma and beyond.
Our current inhabitants of the world have less regard for the unborn and vulnerable as society secularizes than what they see in their bathroom mirrors. But ironically we fear death as we travel down the rabbit hole into nihilism and pitiless despair. Societys rejection of God in so many quarters is largely to blame. And here we are with the coronavirus causing hundreds of millions (or more) globally to buy up every package of paper towels toilet paper and Kleenexes available for sale (a major boon if youre Bounty or Charmin). Ammo is rushing off the shelves at the speed of light due to fears of looting if say some coronavirus zombie apocalyspe were to occur. About 38 of Americans are supposedly unwilling to purchase Corona beer because God love em the damn beer might infect them.
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My cheeky homage to the coronavirus./caption
Such tall tales of human superstition are usually funny. Sadly however the facts too often turn out to be stranger than fiction.
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Image of empty shelves for paper goods (toilet paper paper towels Kleenexes) from a London supermarket. Courtesy of the BBC./caption
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Yeah this./caption
I now want to make some points about the coronavirus: The media and in particular the Democratic Party is overblowing the situation well beyond what is truth and what is not. For one we know the survival rate is about 98 and that medical staff somewhere in Texas is putting the finishing touches on a vaccine that will hopefully do its part in ending the menace in its current mutated form.
Most shameful is the Democratic Partys blistering attacks on President Trump with respect to false accusations the president referred to the situation as some hoax while suggesting there were somewhere cuts to the budget for public health officials and this was reported by the Associated Press:
Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. Thats a distorted picture. For starters Trump hasnt succeeded in cutting the budget. Hes proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arent suffering from budget cuts that never took effect. ... … Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness the front lines in detecting and battling new disease. But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that predates Trump. … The CDCs response has been excellent as it has been in the past" said John Auerbach president of the nonpartisan Trust for Americas Health which works with government at all levels to improve the nations response to high-risk health crises. Some Democrats have charged that Trump decimated the nations public health leadership but Auerbach said CDCs top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years.caption id=attachment_32754 align=alignright width=400
The New York Times headline from October 31 1938 featuring the heading about Orson Wells War of the Worlds (center)./caption
The reaction if one believes the media is the disease will bring the global economy and America to a standstill or worse if youre a committed identitarian all of us will plunge precipitously into white mans hell (just like in 2000 right?). Right as the Democrats are poised to yield the party platform over to a deceitful Marxist in Bernie Sanders should he win the nomination over the (un)ambigiously senile Joe Biden (who then will transition America into a period of forgetting) this reminds me of another moment in the history of American pop culture: the infamous Orson Welles narration of War of the Worlds in 1938 which resulted in mass panic.
Or did the panic happen at all? Did people really believe space aliens from Mars were attacking Earth?
This is the gravest issue in preparation for the coronavirus a disease we are simultaneously told amounts to no more than a case of the flu or at worst pneumonia.
https://youtu.be/9q7tN7MhQ4I
The second point which I made in reply to a Nashville-area news station where people were pointing fingers of blame everywhere was simply this and it was harsh: My God people. The level of cowardice here is nauseating. Yes there are hoaxes (and no coronavirus sadly is not a hoax). Yes the panic (or not a panic?) over Welles narration of War of the Worlds is a notorious example of media manipulation of the truth for the purpose of entertainment (or mere social engineering of the popular culture of the day). Have we truly forgotten that Jesus warned his disciples to not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul? That instead we should fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell? The irony is not lost on me that those most terrified of death are the ones who dont see that life is sacred either among the unborn or the sick and elderly. Theyre the most secular personalities in our society the ones most consumed by worldly possessions in life who have created a religion of man to corrupt our world and yet in death will neither possess those riches or control their legacy in the minds of ordinary people (if in fact they were ever actually relevant). No one in Hollywood earning tens of millions of dollars pretending to be other people (or aliens like in War of the Worlds) can teach us how to die: we come about that naturally and honestly. Ironically theyre usually the ones rehearsing for the final act as if their curtain call is less equal than the others or their causes. So for Gods sake dont be afraid. You have nothing to worry about at any level with the good Lord on your side.