The Harried Mystic

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

Hosea 8:7

This verse from Hosea is echoed in the events of this week. Having encouraged sedition and insurrection, Trump and his acolytes have “ sown the wind”. Now comes the whirlwind.

We will be visited by all manner of demons and innocents will be sacrificed to the insatiable unholy appetites of anarchists and antiChrists. Trump and the Republican Party have much blood on their hands, including the many Covid-19 related deaths owing to an absent National strategy to combat the disease.

Rather than an all-hands full court press focus on saving the country from a raging pandemic, these hollow men and women are obsessed instead with preservation of power in the face of certified election results. The events of this week are tragically only the beginning.

The perfect storms of Covid 19 and a pandemic of hatred and rage have combined: a recipe for ongoing suffering. I suspect that there will be further violence perpetrated against our country especially now as the unthinking Trumpists feel betrayed by their dark lord.

Among Biden’s tall challenges is grappling with the problem of political echo chambers serving as instruments of motivating propaganda. The “ free speech” provision needs to be re-examined to nullify the unsubstantiated and hate-soaked rhetoric that incites violence. The majority in our society is demonstrably unskilled in telling the difference between facts and fictions.

The psychology of propaganda becomes an area for high priority consideration. Social media companies need to educate their users and exercise far greater oversight. Banning Trump for life is a good start along with flagging sites containing disinformation. Fresh legislation is needed this year once the new Congress is seated.

Fantasy has no place in governance and policy making. It has its place in the exercise of creative imagination and entertainment. It has its place in fashioning fresh hypotheses for testing. Beyond that, we need to forcefully reassert the dignity of empiricism and call out anything that violates the fact-based canon of methodologies.

It is now a matter of life and death. We are all entitled to our opinion, but not our own body of unverified “ facts”.

© The Harried Mystic, 2021 and Br. Anton, TSSF. and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.