Posted on 03/28/2021 7:16:26 AM PDT by ReaganGeneration2
Every crisis becomes a religion if it lasts long enough.
One factor in that transformation is the Beautiful Theory phenomenon: the power elite insists its remedies are logical and politically correct so they MUST work, even if the actual evidence shows they obviously don't.
When Beautiful Theories crash into hard, cold reality and shatter, faith is the glue used by the elites to put their precious ideas back together. They need MILITANT faith to get the job done: true believers eager to crush doubt and compel obedience by making war on the infidels.
Some are swept into the faith because they desperately crave a sense of control over the crisis. They need to believe Something Can Be Done, and they'd rather invest their faith in debunked Beautiful Theories than have no faith at all. Faith is a coin that demands to be spent.
Some crave social approval, and the purveyors of Beautiful Theories have immense political, economic, and cultural power to make their faith seem fashionable. Virtue signaling is such a plague in modern society because the signals are pre-packaged and made very easy to send.
Some aren't even hoping they can assert control over a crisis by converting to its religion. They'll settle for just having some MEANING, some simplicity, a sense that the righteous will fare better than the unbelievers, that virtue will be rewarded while sin is punished.
That's a very common impulse with the Church of Covid, since the Beautiful Theories were so very obviously wrong. There isn't much left of the faith except the visceral communal satisfaction of hoping unbelievers will be punished for their blasphemies with sickness and death.
That sort of thing happens with all of the crisis religions, although not usually as quickly and obviously as with the Church of Covid. Look at the endless stream of movies about how the world became an apocalyptic hellscape because people didn't believe in global warming.
The last resort of every crisis religion, the last thing that puts asses in the pews, is that addiction to misery porn, the collective hope that unbelievers will suffer someday, and everyone will admit the True Faith was right all along as Judgment Day crashes down upon them.
The elite will never have the humility to admit they were wrong, and they'll never give up on politically or financially profitable "solutions" even when they obviously don't solve the problem. Founding a crisis religion means they never have to say they're sorry.
That applies to some very longstanding crises, like the War on Poverty, whose nostrums long ago transformed into fantastically expensive articles of religious faith even as mountains of data accumulated that proved they were utter failures, and often made the problems WORSE.
You can look for some telltale signs of a crisis transforming into a religion. The most obvious one is when the high priests tell you the "war" you've been drafted into will never end. They become very angry when asked to define success or failure, or lay out exit strategies.
Watch for the moment when you're told "science" means not asking questions, defying dogma, or challenging "consensus." That is the literal definition of faith, not science.
Always keep an eye out for Moving Goalposts, which are the signature miracle of crisis religions, their version of parting the waters or loaves and fishes. Crisis religions work very hard to make their faith unfalsifiable by constantly changing the standards of evidence.
Check to see if certain people are accumulating huge amounts of money and power from a crisis. That's a pretty good sign it's turning into a religion. A crisis should be solved as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don't let it fester long enough to become a special interest.
Above all, look for the whiff of ARROGANCE to develop around a crisis. Wise religions and effective crisis managers have something in common: a sense of humility. Crisis religions are militant faiths that quickly become arrogant, smug, and totalitarian.
Dedicated people who truly want to solve a problem will look for evidence their analysis is wrong, or their policies aren't working, and make adjustments as quickly as possible, no matter the cost or embarrassment to themselves. This is humility.
Crisis religions are arrogant. They reject criticism, insist their Beautiful Theories MUST be right because they're ideologically pure - they fit snugly into a worldview that must not be challenged. Their plans only fail because their commands were disobeyed or sabotaged.
The high priests of a crisis religion see devils everywhere, leering at them from the rubble of every failure. Only sin can explain why their Beautiful Theories are tarnished. Failure never THEIR fault, so it must be YOURS. They find your lack of faith disturbing.
And you know what? A LOT of people want to see the world that way, including a great many self-described atheists. They hunger for the comfort of faith and the vibrant energy of militancy. They want to be right, and they want the wrong to suffer for their folly.
Conservatives think religious faith in the State is terrifying and wonder why so many embrace it. It's because uncertainty is much more frightening. A simple false story is better than a complex true one, and with enough faith, maybe we can force the simple story to be true. /end
“The study concludes that based on data for all recorded deaths in the United States through August 23, 2020, the new CDC system counted 161,392 deaths attributed to the virus. Using the older system, the death total was 9,684.”
See National File, March 20, 2021
Those figures don’t mean at all what they are implying. People who work with datasets need to understand them or they can easily come up with such silly results as your source there.
Why are you being reasonable?
I live in a large violent city. I prefer the 21 foot rule.
Heh. Yeah. Especially at night. Doubled.
I live in a large violent city. I prefer the 21 foot rule.
Be sure to read the comments as well, if folks get a chance.
... and that’s the point: “IF” they’re worn properly ... and for 98% of wearers — untrained in the application, use and maintenance of PPE — that’s a gigantic “if” ... and it’s what makes compelled masking, particularly of healthy people, such a despicable and completely unnecessary and ineffective practice that needs to stop before our society can fully recover.
Last week I saw a guy in a manlift 40’ off the ground wearing a mask. Apparently the smell of diesel fumes wasn’t much of a clue. Then I saw a guy on a motorcycle with a full face helmet. He had a mask stretched across the mouth vent. Real Born to we Wild stuff there.
It was Trump’s CDC at the time and the the numbers are compiled from all the statistics obtained from every state government. I find it pretty difficult to believe that every state government conspired to pr0ovide fraudulent numbers. That’s just crazy. Plus, I have to refer to what I have seen with my own eyes while working as an ER nurse in a hospital that has treated upwards of a thousand covid patients since the beginning. I never needed the CDC to tell me that this virus kills old people quite handily. I’ve seen it.
One day I wanted to watch something on my local channel about a half hour before the news was to begin. I left the room for 10 minutes cuz I was getting some stuff finished. I sat down without looking at the TV and I began to get pretty agitated. I looked up and saw that they were into their nightly covid report. I wasn't even paying attention to the TV and I was getting upset.
I believe this covid crap is the Great Delusion Our Lord talked about "that would be so strong that it will even effect the elect."
Again, stop with the straw-man arguments. I never said it was a cold or a hoax, in fact very few people did. The government response to how deadly this virus is is indeed a hoax (covid average age of death identical to national average age of death). Yes I do believe the death count is overstated. Using the old CDC metrics, the total deaths would be closer to 10k. Obviously that’s too low, but the 352k last year is also likely way too high. But when you incentive hospitals and nursing homes to count them as deaths for increased pay, and you are running a scare campaign, well...
Agreed
Fantastic thread!!! Great find; thank you kindly.
Wow.
Saving and sending via email. Perfect sense.
It also applies to Gore-Bull Warming, and largely to the never ending wars. Especially that hellhole, Afghanistan.
The Beautiful Theory Phenomenon: When Crisis becomes a Religion. What a brilliant idea and treatise.
There are 127,000 deaths above and beyond the reported 2020 covid death toll. I'm not saying they're all from Covid but there's no way they're all suicides and medical problems that went untreated. Some of them are for sure but not 127,000. I'd say about half of those deaths are Covid related. There were only about 10,000 excess suicides after the 2008 crash to keep things in perspective.
And even if it's only... 1,000 of them, that still lays to rest the argument that there was some kind of giant nationwide conspiracy to inflate the death count. It was deflated, not inflated. Covid has killed more people than the official count, not fewer. period.
All that BS about how they were calling motor vehicle accident victims Covid deaths to pump up the numbers is just that, BS. And don't even tell me that you weren't playing right along with that narrative. You're still playing along with it.
Just saw a clip of college basketball athletes competing wearing masks.
you. can. not. make. this. sh1t. up. !
Is that you HerrDoktor FauxiGates, ZuckFace, HoChiJack, MSM, WHO Tedros Adhanom Grebreyesus, Xi or just Soros ?
“I can point to all the times the anti-Covid reality zealot team has been wrong and outright deceptive as in the “fetus tested” comment.“
Where is the evidence that those tyrannical lockdown, mask mandates, and vaccines work?
Fetus-tested is absolute truth. Without abortion, no vaccine.
Don’t get the vaccine then. Nobody is saying you have to. just don’t try to tell the rest of us that Covid is a hoax when there are 479,000 excess deaths that say otherwise.
“Children should not wear masks. Nobody should wear one outdoors or when exercising.”
Lately, in our part of Californicator land, norte of SF, we are seeing less children wearing masks, except when lined up to go classes or leaving.
The people living in/on our cul de sac can be very vocal against Karens trying to chide us into wearing masks.
I’m pushing people, including some members of my family and friends into getting back to normal after our vaccinations. (see my tag line for close to 2 months)
2 recent widow friends are pushing for a return of luncheons of what they called the Church Ladies’ Monthly luncheons. They have one scheduled for next month.
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