COVID retrospective: what has surprised you?

I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it, especially economically. It seems massive inflation is in our future, unfortunately. No free lunch and all that.

I’m surprised that (mostly what @FaithAlone wrote) but also: how fast old convictions go out the window.
Example: Homeschooling was a big “no” here. Christian fundamentalists went to jail for not sending their children to school. Last spring the English word “homeschooling” has entered the German language with days, after decades of making fun of Americans. Many women can’t deal with their children being present the whole day.

I’m surprised at the impotence of “science” that we “just need to trust”. Nothing really works, not even the vaccine: You still need the mask, there is a new mutant, etc…

I’m surprised how many people are just afraid, very much in fear. If you’re over 80 there are so many things that can kill you, the virus being just one of them. The ability to deal with risk is completely gone.

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The graciously pleasant responses to my first post ever on a thread here in Sanityville a couple weeks back (I wasn’t booted for bumping an eons old topic and even got a couple hearts ) has inspired me to try offering another set of thoughts. This time on an only moderately out-of-date thread! :grinning: This thread seemed the easiest one on which to post something that essentially summarizes many of my thoughts on so much of the last year and a half. And that is this: I’m not only surprised but absolutely astounded that the vocabulary term “conspiracy theorist” carries any remaining weight whatsoever as an accusation in our society and seemingly still very little as commendation of one’s capacity for prescient thought and meaningful analysis and prediction. It seems we live during far stranger times than any of us would initially think. At least, that’s my view. One that I believe is actually very consistent with a Biblical and Christian read on the matter. I don’t say this to offer a discouraging or fanatical assessment of things but overall hold a view much in the opposite direction.
BreakfastWithLions

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Love that pic.

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I guess it depends. I’m a bit of a conspiracy theory connoisseur,** and I think it still holds an important place as a negative ascription. The problem with the term has always been that people disagree about whether something is a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory. The Bible is clear that we are not to assume things are conspiracies like the rest of the world does (Is 8:12), nor live in fear of them. Thus, Christians should be quicker to assume something is a conspiracy theory than to assume it is a conspiracy.

Qanon is definitely a first-order conspiracy theory in the worst possible sense, with lots of people deeply deeply taken in by it.

On the other hand, for the last year, it’s been clear that politics alone is what necessitated declaring the Wuhan lab(s) leak theory a conspiracy theory. I’ve said from the beginning that it seems likely to me that it was an accidental leak from a lab. Could it have been created via gain of function experiments? Sure. Or collected. Very unlikely an intentionally engineered and released biological weapon. I’d consider that a conspiracy theory, though not as crazy a one as Qanon. But it seems some people can’t question the official line without jumping all the way into the deepest end of it must be a conspiracy.

As a matter of fact, I’d go so far as to blame people on both sides believing conspiracy theories for most of the insanity before, on, and after Jan 6.

Regardless, the further apart the two branches in our society drift, the greater chance that both sides will believe insane conspiracy theories about the other side. It’s easy to believe pretty much anything about people who literally kill babies, just for example. But I’m sure we can all imagine similar lines from the other side. It’s nothing new. Christians were executed for cannibalism and atheism.

Also, it would be nice if all the conservatives who were convinced that we’d never be allowed to go back to normal would admit they were wrong. They were engaged in a silly conspiracy theory that never made an ounce of sense.

** You know about the ancient Sumerian text that describes the land of the lords of the blazing rockets? :wink: Yeah. I’ve read that book.

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I would recommend Jonathan Kay’s book Among the Truthers if you’re interested in an analysis of conspiracy theorists, what makes them tick, and why they’re mostly wrong. Not entirely wrong but mostly so.

There was an article in the BBC about Q over the winter. It was fascinating in that it absolutely blasted any notion of credibility for anyone who believes anything about Q. I tend to agree: Q is ridiculous. The idea of a secret revolutionary ‘they’ who can fix the current corruption but who is so inept that everyone knows who ‘they’ is is laughable.

But this BBC article did so by laughing at the idea of a secret paedophile ring among American elites. Pizzagate. That sort of nonsense that only uneducated red-state Americans believe in. Hacks. To quote Mel Brooks: ‘you know…morons.’

Except that Bill Clinton was known to be in regular company with Jeffrey Epstein. And there is legal testimony that Epstein trafficked a minor (at the very least). Even Christopher Hitchens went into print in a whole volume of blistering criticism against the DC Democrat establishment that knew Bill was up to his eyeballs in sleaze yet did nothing about it. Secret paedophile ring of establishment elites? Take out the rhetoric and suddenly not so far fetched.

So with @jtbayly I’m frustrated at conspiracy theories among conservatives (no, I understand that wasn’t his main point). But I’m also tired of seeing legitimate criticism being lampooned as conspiracy theory.

That’s not so much a reply to @jtbayly as something that’s been stuck in my craw for a while.

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Hey Pastor Joseph, It actually encourages me to hear you say some of these things. I’ve taken (I think) a similar approach in respect to much of my thinking over the years. That is, a Biblically-based, believing Christian worldview and all of the aspects of thought (or at least my best attempts at them) that flow consistently from that.
E.g. a way of analyzing
a. What one observes in the world (either personally or via understanding what others say/communicate about what they know) - and
b. all the appropriate “a priori” truths which make those other “facts” of both sensory experience or knowledge obtained from others intelligible and reliable
(maybe I reversed those in their importance) :grinning:

Luckily, I think that those items ARE most truly and consistently obtained from such a belief system as we share. I guess there’s a reason why someone like Greg Bahnsen seemed to draw so well from the Reformers who in turn draw so meaningfully from the teachings of all of the Bible. I’ve found, oddly enough, that after about half my life in some sort of adulthood my attempts to do just this sort of thing have led me to making the sort of statements made in my earlier post. The “COVID year” has only accelerated these types of conclusions but not due to an abandonment of such principles. If anything, such attempts at careful thought have only increased as well. (Not saying I’m the best at it, only that as world events that are difficult to truthfully interpret become moreso I’m aware of the increased need for discernment and care for how truthful conclusions are, in fact, obtained.) Funny thing is, well before the “less than normal” circumstances of the worldwide reaction to a rather creative bat-soup virus entered the picture I had made a habit of thinking of both Isa 8:12 as well as Hab. 1:5 as my mind considered topics thrown under the banner of “conspiracy theories.” Frankly the use made by the CIA in the popularizing and promulgation of that phrase is one of many slightly annoying things about it. I prefer the term “crazy talk.” :grinning: The point being that I take seriously what Isaiah says to the people of God and also the seriousness of so many things that have in fact gone on in the world but still remain ridiculed or ill-reported in the media or general discussion. But also the overall ability of the Scripture to consistently deal with all these things.

In the sense that the phrase “…most of the insanity before, on, and after Jan 6.” accounts for at least the last half decade of history, I’m inclined to think if we had all taken so-called conspiracies more seriously we could have avoided much of the real insanity! Case in point is the very events of that day. Most (on the left and MSM) seem to blame “out-of-control, disrespectful Trump supporters” for the “siege.” Conservatives then complain that the Democrats in gov. are making advantageous or even illicit political use of the worst of the actions and some have finally managed to hint at more subversive realities (sometimes not in the most helpful ways - see Isaiah’s warning.)
There have, however, been numerous people working in loyal support of showing the truths involved for as long as these things have been unfolding. It practically seems like the entire playbook being used against our country is known ahead of time and what we really lack is the appropriate combination of commitment to bravery and an ability to discern amidst the (intentional) confusion of conflicting descriptions. (Despite the fact that imo a Christian with the theological underpinnings to ground their thinking presuppositionally should have some of the least excuses.) For a really important example of only SOME of the info that’s out there regarding a more consistent, truth-exposing understanding of what was occurring on the 6th of Jan., I’d recommend everyone take the time to view the reporting by Millie Weaver found here: https://www.millennialmillie.com/post/psyop-the-steal

Over?!? This thing is just beginning. :crazy_face:

But maybe I’ll have to wait for another post for that. (These discussions do become challenging for reasons more than all the disinfo out there; when trying to describe things that aren’t part of “what everybody just knows,” you can find it hard to know what groundwork to lay (for consistency’s sake) and when to pass by particular details. Perhaps if more in our society didn’t base our thinking on “what everybody just knows” we wouldn’t have allowed some of these problems to get this far. I truly feel encouraged speaking about the matter at this establishment, though. Living in a village whose namesake is sanity pretty much requires it. :grinning: God bless.

That’s not at all fascinating. That’s the exact sort of thing that should be entirely expected and is precisely what’s observed in almost universal fashion from the media. Take a situation (worse if a bizarrely complicated situation) and create the discussion in such a way as to keep almost all meaningful analysis out of the equation. If it can be done in a manner as to irrationally divide people up so that they’re even less motivated to try to address the discussion outside the media-created narrative then all the better for anybody seeking to control others via the manipulation of information.
I always sort of knew that kind of thing was possible in the abstract, I suppose, but have learned more and more over the course of trying to understand (responsibly and Biblically :grinning:) some of these “crazy” topics. To say that there has been long term weaponization of these sorts of things really would be a substantial understatement.
Just as an interesting little example I saw only a day and a half ago - [The Art of Deception]

Or to describe the issue from a pop-culture perspective -
[from “Sneakers” - 1993]

:grinning: Blessings

Quite possibly. The game plan for the illiberal left was published decades ago, and it has proceeded apace.

Well, of course. The Overton window has been moving slowly for decades. But the people who were hyperventilating about how we’d have to wear masks forever didn’t exactly help convince anybody of that real problem, did they?

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This is the key problem: It doesn’t really matter if something is a conspiracy or not. It’s true or it’s false. People cooperate to achieve ends all the time. That doesn’t mean that everything is coordinated or even cooperative, but there’s nothing unreasonable about coordination as a hypothesis.

And many of the things called conspiracy theories aren’t even conspiracies. I’m old enough to remember the Wuhan lab escape hypothesis being labeled a “conspiracy theory,” which makes no sense at all: Who would conspire to set a deadly novel virus loose on their own people? “Conspiracy theory” is just shorthand for “not what the ruling class wants you to believe.”

And perhaps if our rulers wanted us to believe fewer “conspiracy theories,” perhaps they could take a little care to tell us the truth a bit more frequently. Once you’ve seen how the FBI gets terrorism convictions, it’s impossible to un-see it, and the theory that federal agencies had agents and informants at high levels in the groups who took an active role in the January 6th “insurrection” (LOL) becomes as surprising as the sun having risen.

Naturally, just because the government and the media and academia lie to us regularly doesn’t mean that everything they say is false. Nor does it mean that everything that is off-Narrative is true. But I’ve gotten much, much better advice about Covid from anons on the Internet than I got from the CDC and the WHO.

Regarding Q, I’d actually be very surprised if the whole Q thing wasn’t an op by the three-letter agencies from the jump. Look at the dog not barking: They know who Q is, and they haven’t arrested him (them) or leaked his identity to the NYT. I can draw my own conclusions from there.

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Either that or a brilliant anarchist or a liberal agitator or a Russian or Chinese operative or… literally anybody except a conservative who cares about the things Q is supposedly about. It’s so clearly an attempt to either cause trouble for the USA as a whole or to torpedo conservatives. And as with all conspiracies, the truths it contains are what gives it a lot of power and appeal.

For an interesting take on the psychological side of it, this is an interesting read (HT @AndrewHenry):

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Out of curiosity, are you aware of any such game plan for the recon crowd? I.e.

  1. Get guys in your church on city council, school board, etc
  2. Push a certain curriculum, introduce these measures, in this incremental way…
  3. Win?

I’m sure someone has a book on an approach, or even the end goal. By end goal I mean, we want our society to look a certain way, how do we get from here to there. We need to educate the people first with preaching the word, then with discipleship on the spheres of sovereignty, etc etc.

Some kind of blueprint could be a rallying cry of sorts. They’ve got the Green New Deal. Is there a “God’s Law New Deal”? Just food for thought.

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The US military often times will penetrate momentarily the air space of our enemies for the sole purpose of observing and collecting data of their military response. It’s known by us, at the moment of penetration that we aren’t intending to start an engagement but rather track those procedures that precede a potential engagement.

Domestically, out government does the same with its own citizens. But rather than merely observing, they inject themselves into those processes and even help develop the responses that would facilitate a likely conviction. This isn’t theory, but it is conspiracy.

The thing that we need to ask is how are those domestic agencies always way ahead of the curve of future events? They always seem to have people inside long before the events ever took place.

I would say read Beyond Freedom and Dignity by BF Skinner and you’ll have a sense of how they use psychology to move Overton’s window and also to gain access inside otherwise disorganized but passionate groups of people.

Qanon whether actual or not, was a perfect model of penetrating disgruntled conservative air space and feeding them useful lines.

Before we think this is stupid theories remember the feds just rounded up a bunch of drug cartel folks because they sold them encrypted messaging services, run by the feds.

It was during the Obama administration that former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano led DHS to prioritize conservative Christians, pro-life activists and military vets as possible threats to National security. But she did latter apologize to the vets. That’s not theory, but it is conspiracy.

Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent antigovernment conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty. Conspiracy theories involving declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of a failed economy. Antigovernment conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.

….

Unlike the earlier period, the advent of the Internet and other information- age technologies since the 1990s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training, and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations, and facilities, potentially making extremist individuals and groups more dangerous and the consequences of their violence more severe. New technologies also permit domestic extremists to send and receive encrypted communications and to network with other extremists throughout the country and abroad, making it much more difficult for law enforcement to deter, prevent, or preempt a violent extremist attack

Maybe your sphere has been “allowed” to be back to normal but many are struggling with covid injection mandates. My son’s college just mandated covid shots. Many will lose their jobs if they don’t get the shots.

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I’m still trying to understand how this is all gonna work under existing federal law. For one, federal employees will not be required to be vaccinated to return to work.

But secondly, PHI (Personal Health Information) is very much protected under HIPPA. In fact, it was the basis for the Arizona Health Services Department for refusing to share with me which facilities that I had to inspect had residents who were positive for COVID19. So as a health and safety inspector I wasn’t allowed to know which facilities had the virus because it would reveal PHI potentially about the residents. Now that’s crazy, but HIPPA is real.

The rules that govern the security requirements for storage, protections, and reporting are immense.

As a Public Heath employee for about half of my years in public service, I had to undergo HIPPA training every single year, and most of it was a litany of threats if PHI was even improperly viewed, much less shared.

In order for any employer to become an entity that falls within a “need to know”, this sets a very high standard of security and liability. If my new employer wants to go there, I might have to remind them of those liabilities and responsibilities to secure PHI, before I’d be willing to share with them any status of vaccines etc….

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I have heard both that HIPAA privileges your vaccination status and you can’t be required to disclose it, and also that HIPAA doesn’t privilege your vaccination status, and yes, stores, schools and employers can ask you about your vaccination records.

As with so many things in this last year, you have two sides, each with their own information, insisting they are right. I don’t know who to believe.

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I haven’t read much, but yeah, I’ve been curious as well.

It seems odd to me that it would be privileged, since I seem to remember schools requiring an up to date vaccine card two decades ago.

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The level of moral authority that goes along with the current vaccination discussion (both ways I might add) is rather irritating. To say the least.

If I were half as dogmatic when preaching or even teaching in the church about the ethics of contraception as those who ask vaccination questions (again: both ways), I’d be out of a job. Yet somehow it’s everyone’s business even among Christians who is or isn’t vaccinated.

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For instance, Indiana’s list: https://www.doe.in.gov/sites/default/files/health/2020-2021-immunization-requirements-final-english.pdf

When I entered college in 2002 at Butler I had to get another Hep shot because I had missed it. They had direct access to that information because I certainly didn’t know if I’d been doubly vaccinated for Hep.

It seems quite likely that Covid vaccine will end up on this required list and therefore not subject to HIPAA. Or, perhaps, a challenge to vaccination requirements will be on the table and the whole thing will get tossed for violations of privacy.

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