Great, great post by Julie on how to deal with hard times.
Reminded me of how I learned to deal with hard times. I used to be angry at God. “Why me? How do I deserve this hardship and misfortune?” I asked.
Many years later something klicked in my head and the logos kicked in. Remember. In the beginning was the logos. The answer was so simple. How did I deserve all the good moments in my life? I took them always for granted and was never thankful. That gave me peace. I want to thank Julie for reminding me of that.
“…in our willful desire to live independently of God,
we have severed the lifeline that flows from the source of all life”
Billy Graham
(Wicklow Mountains, Glendalough National Park, County Wicklow, Ireland / Julie Cook / 2015)
There are no exemptions in this life when it comes to difficulties, struggles,
trials and conflicts.
Some are self imposed, some are random and some, for the believer, can be most vexing…
for it can often feel as if God has…
walked away,
deserted us,
or…
is proving to be more stubborn than ourselves.
Some periods will be more severe than others and there is certainly no clear window as to how long or how short such episodes will each last.
There will be times of great dryness…a rough patch of road that leaves one feeling empty…
or better yet, feeling nothing at all, as in void of feeling or emotion… A sense…
When in the course of a discussion/debate/argument you realize that the other person is an absolute ideologue who is blind to anything that is contrary to his ideology and who is immune to rational arguments, facts, data and logic, is there any point in continuing the debate? This question is especially justified when you realize that the other person is also lacking in intellectual capacity, to put it mildly. You might just as well teach thermodynamics to a pile of rocks or discuss quantum physics with a bunch of baboons. Clearly, such a discussion makes only sense if there is an audience. You are not trying to convince the other person. You are trying to reach the persons in the audience who are open to rational arguments.
For the purpose of maximizing the audience I will respond to a comment made by an Australian with the moniker sklyjd here on my blog and not in the place where he made his comment, for he is someone who is both an ideologue and an intellectually underpowered (aka not too bright) person. I know that he’s this type of person because I’ve had an exchange of comments with him on this post at Tom’s blog. His arguments and his evidence were a joke. When I stated that there was no empirical evidence that masks and lockdowns do more good than harm his answer was “they have worked in Australian states” which is idiotic because it’s neither a refutation nor evidence. As evidence that masks work, he provided a link to a Mayo Clinic page which merely states that masks work (no evidence, no data, no statistics whatsoever). That’s no evidence. That’s merely an opinion. What a joke.
Sklyjd’s comment was in reply to a comment I’ve made on this post in which Tricia deals with the brutal, thuggish and authoritarian behaviour of the Australian police and with the question of how Germany could descend into the barbaric madness that was the 3rd Reich. All relevant comments are provided after my general response. My thoughts are in brackets and in red color.
General response
I called sklyjd a nutjob who is justifying this insanity (Australian police thuggery) and who gives us a glimpse into the mind of the fanatic nazi because he is a nutjob with the mindset of a fanatical nazi. He thinks it’s OK that the police prevents journalists from doing their job and that these journalists deserve any violence against them. Only a nutjob would call the protesters brutes because they supposedly don’t care about other peoples lives. Only a nutjob would equate “not caring” with actual violence. Sklyjd’s reply to my comment makes it perfectly clear that he is not only a fanatic but that he is also a collectivist with contempt for freedom. Fanaticism, collectivism and contempt for freedom and individual rights are hallmarks of the nazi mindset.
From the 25 points program of the nazi party (NSDAP): 10.The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
18.We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.
23.We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order to make possible the creation of a German press, we demand:
(a) All editors and their assistants on newspapers published in the German language shall be German citizens.
(b) Non-German newspapers shall only be published with the express permission of the State. They must not be published in the German language.
(c) All financial interests in or in any way affecting German newspapers shall be forbidden to non-Germans by law, and we demand that the punishment for transgressing this law be the immediate suppression of the newspaper and the expulsion of the nonGermans from the Reich.
Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.
24.We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the Germanic race.
The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the principle:
COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD
Relevant comments
sklyjd says: September 28, 2021 at 2:10 am This is not police harassment and the journalist guy is lucky he had some tolerant cops. This guy is a mouthy idiot who could not shut up and claims the virus is a “scamdemic” The police have been handling lots of these kinds (wankers we call them here) who publicise false information about the virus and support anti vax riots. Who in their right mind waves at cops, he deserves to be targeted by the cops who have a hard job and then have to put up with his BS.
Tricia says: September 28, 2021 at 7:45 am I have nothing to say to anyone who feels this type of brutality is justified. Enjoy your existence as a slave.
sklyjd says: September 29, 2021 at 3:13 am Brutality? When these people care less about other peoples lives, cause more lock downs, violence and abuse the police who is the brute? Otherwise we are fine in Australia, you ought to check your own back yard. Be a live slave and get vaccinated.
artaxes says: October 1, 2021 at 3:49 pm Tricia, thanks for continuing to identify the madness and the descent into tyranny.
What happens in Australia is nothing but brutal, fascistic tyranny and their goverment is a bunch of lunatics who think that they can achieve zero covid. Human hubris and abject stupidity at its worst. Nutjobs like sklyjd, who are justifying this insanity here in this comment section give us a glimpse into the mind of the fanatic nazi.
In June I wrote a post on “Critical race theory” and genocide.In that post I addressed the same question that always plagued me until the wuhan virus happened. Here’s a part of it.
“I’ve visited the Dachau concentration camp twice. First time as a boy, next time as a teenager. I’ve read books about the 3rd Reich. I’ve watched tons of videos and films dealing with the holocaust and world war II. In school we were taught about this dark era in German history. I’ve read books on racism, antisemitism and xenophobia. I’ve been living in this country for decades knowing the culture fairly well. And yet, and yet I could not really understand how a country that was one of the most scientifically, technologically and culturally advanced countries in the world could descend into murder, barbarism and insanity.
I could not really understand why people would so willingly give up their freedom, so easily accept being ruled by a dictatorship and so blindly follow irrational, idiotic and arbitrary rules until the wuhan virus happened. Fear and panic brought out the ugliest, most primitive sides of man. Things prior unimaginable happened with a swiftness that took most by surprise, leaving many in disbelief about the very reality happening right in front of their eyes. Those who kept a modicum of sanity, refusing to fear a virus not much more dangerous than a bad flu, were made to fear the state which, in authoritarian, dictatorial style, enforced irrational, idiotic and arbitrary rules.”
Fear and panic is the key, I think. In the case of Germany we must add the fact that the goverment first allowed and encouraged and later mandated the dehumanisation of group of people. We’re on the same frightening path.
We must and we will fight, And we will win.
sklyjd says: October 3, 2021 at 6:53 am “Nutjobs like sklyd, who are justifying this insanity here in this comment section give us a glimpse into the mind of the fanatic nazi.”
fanatic Nazi, ? how do you know I am not a Jew or have lost family members in the Holocaust? obviously you do not care because it had no real impact on you.
[Sklyjd doesn’t know me and I’m pretty certain that he cannot read my mind. So, HOW DOES HE KNOW that I don’t care and that it has no impact on me? What utter stupidity. Complaining that I operate on assumptions and then he goes on and operates … on assumptions. Statements like these led me to the conclusion that he’s not too bright. Anyway, whether he’s a Jew or not is completely irrelevant. I guess, he never heared of “Patrol 36”, an Israeli, Jewish neo-nazi group. I am also aware that there are Jews who are ok with vaccine mandates aka forced vaccination with a “vaccine” that is still experimental. Forcing people to take experimental drugs is a violation of the Nürnberg code which was a reaction to the monstrous medical experiments of the nazi regime.]
You rave on about Australian violence when you condone gun ownership for all including the nutters who extract vengeance with an automatic weapon in schools and shopping centres and then also condemn the people who demonstrate against your own US police brutality when deaths have occurred. Double standards I would say.
[What a joke. Sklyjd is making stuff up and then he’s attacking the stuff he’s making up. That’s a logical fallacy called the strawman argument. I want gun ownership for all EXCEPT criminals and psychos. Obviously, he’s clueless. Automatic weapons are banned in the US. Only semi-automatic weapons are legal. Again, he’s making stuff up. I’m not against peaceful demonstrations. I’m against violent riots and against uneccesary police brutality. While the Australian police is using excessive force against people who merely want to exert their basic human rights, BLM and antifa were engaged in violent riots, looting and burning.]
“Those who kept a modicum of sanity, refusing to fear a virus not much more dangerous than a bad flu,”
Facts do matter, but you clearly do not want to learn anything and understand the facts, whatever your source of information and your belief this is not the flu.
[This dude can’t help pretending to know my mind, phantasizing about my motives. Pathetic! Has this guy any idea how idiotic his statements are? Estimated infection fatality rates are 0.1% for the flu and 0.2% to 0.67% for the wuhan virus. Here’s the paper for the 0.2% estimate. We are not talking about orders of magnitude in difference here. It’s worth noting that fatality rates are not set in stone. The more patients are treated successfully, the lower the fatality rate. The more patients die because of wrong treatment or no treatment at all, the higher the fatality rate. Sending infected persons into nursing homes, as happened in the USA and in Germany, needlessly drives fatality rates up. I’ve heared of cases where infected persons were sent home by the hospital. “There is nothing we can do, Go home and selfquarantine. If it’s getting worse come back.” When it’s getting worse and the person is put on the ventilator it’s too late. Instead of treating persons as early as possible with drugs such as ivermectin, people needlessly died because they were denied these cheap therapeutics. Withholding such therapeutics from patients is insane and criminal. Even if their efficacy was not as great as one hopes it would be, these are very safe drugs. You have nothing to lose. Even If they don’t work, no damage is done. There was a time before the wuhan virus insanity, when information about ivermectin was not completely politizised and you could read in a scientific paper published in 2011: “Ivermectin has continually proved to be astonishingly safe for human use. Indeed, it is such a safe drug, with minimal side effects, that it can be administered by non-medical staff and even illiterate individuals in remote rural communities, provided that they have had some very basic, appropriate training. “
Bottom line: By using the right therapeutics mortality can be definitely reduced further, making the mortality difference even smaller.]
You should go to the you tube videos or talk to a nurse who works in a Covid effected area where people are dying and regretting not getting vaccinated,
[Videos like this one?
]
in Victoria people are begging for a vaccination as they are put onto a ventilator while hospital beds are used up preventing other sick people from cancers and heart diseases who cannot be treated. Many who beat the virus have ongoing medical problems for life.
[In my mind I can hear the chorus sing “Carmina Burana” and I can see apocalyptic visions of pestilence and death. Notice, when sklyd runs out of good arguments he stoops to the lowest level of cheap emotionalism. No data, numbers and worst of all: no critical thinking. Spreading fear and panic is no replacement for a rational argument based on facts and science.
First, guys like sklyjd didn’t seem to care when the goverments in many countries (incl. Australia) caused the same effects by ordering hospitals to cancel elective procedures or procedures deemed not that essential (like breast cancer screenings). In other words: If the unvaccinated, allegedly, cause misery then they are uncaring and evil. If the goverment causes misery then it’s all for the common good and the goverment’s motives are pure and noble. Our “pure and noble” goverments are firing health care workers who refuse to get “vaccinated” at the same time they are accusing the unvaccinated of overburdening the hospitals. Either our goverments are evil and they are willingly causing resource shortages or they are lying or they are just insane.
Second, when it comes to infectious diseases, there are always these options: 1. Prevent people from getting the disease. 2. Use therapeutics to neutralize the damaging effects of the disease. 3. Use vaccines that enable people to fight the disease effectively. 4. Eliminate or reduce factors that make the disease more severe. 5. Create or increase factors that make the disease less severe.
Most goverments have willingly and deliberately limited their options to #1 and #3. These goverments are criminal and negligent and they are to blame for making the disease worse than it needs to. A notable, positive exception is the goverment of India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Trough the widespread prophylactic and therapeutical use of ivermectin they were able to reduce the number of new infections to practically zero. A notable, egregious example for criminal malfeasance is Australia’s goverment. They have banned the use of ivermectin as treatment/prophylactic for the wuhan virus.
Third, there is a glaring moral inconsistency that strangely enough no one seems to notice. The unvaccinated are singled out for using up too many hospital resources. Yet no one singles the obese out for using up too many hospital resources. We know that obesity is a risk factor for the disease. If those who stay unvaccinated are blamed for needlessly using up hospital resources then why not blaming those who won’t reduce their obesity for the same thing? Isn’t it obvious? It’s not about ending the pandemic. It’s about pushing the vaccines.]
Yes if I am a fanatic Nazi you are simply uncaring and wanting to stay an ignorant freedom fighting foolish man.
[If that sounds idiotic it’s because it is idiotic. Why is it idiotic? Claiming that people like me who oppose his point of view are uncaring, completely ignores the fact that we have parents, siblings or children too. Only an idiot would assume that all of us don’t care about the people we love most. He calls those “uncaring” who oppose the nonsensical, unscientific, coercive policies. Why, then, was no one calling for masks and lockdowns all these years when th flu killed people? Was the overwelming majority of people, himself included, uncaring then? What is the magic number of people that have to die in order to flip the switch and to become suddenly a “caring person” who calls for extreme measures? I’m pretty certain that this dude cannot answer these questions honestly but to merely ask these questions is enough to expose his statement as utter bullcrap.
Equally idiotic is the claim that I want to stay ignorant when it is I who not only consider facts from one side but from many sources while sklyd is unable to think ouside the goverment propaganda. Furthermore, sklyd presents us with a false dichotomy. It’s not either liberty OR life. It’s liberty AND life. As I’ve mentioned before, our goverments have deliberately chosen to use only lockdowns, masks and vaccinations and to completely forgo all other options. That’s why liberty OR life is a false choice. Sklyds utter disdain for freedom pretty much proves my point. He shares the same disdain for freedom with the nazis. As for being foolish, I think I have shown who is foolish here.]
Absolutely nothing is 100% safe. [Thanks for proving my point. Because of that we should go on with our lives as normally as possible and accept the miniscule risk of getting severely sick from the wuhan virus.]
These and every other vaccine can and will cause some adverse reactions in a small percentage of people, so does eating food, because one in 100,000 people will die from a food related illness in the USA every year. Crossing the road 6,721 pedestrians were killed on U.S. roads in 2020.
Taking a vaccine is a very small amount of personal risk exactly comparable with the everyday things we do.
[Sklyd is blatandly lying. How do I know that he’s lying? Because the “vaccines” have been barely a year around and absolutely NO ONE knows what the long term effects are. They are still experimental.]
The benefit of the greater society and loved family and friends matter and are just as important as your own health. People would be able to understand that in the past but it appears today some people are just too self absorbed in their own selfish agenda to care.
[Here, Sklyd displays again his collectivist mindset which he shares with the nazis. He disgusts me. Calling people wo want to be free selfish is the height of hypocrisy and mendacity. Why does he not just kill himself? By killing himself he would make 100% certain that he doesn’t spread the virus. The answer is: He is selfish. He also enjoys the fruits of the liberty he so despises. The enormous advances of technology, science and medicine are the fruits of a capitalist system that is based an economic FREEDOM. Killing freedom results in a decline of technology, science, medicine and material wealth which in turn reduces life expectancy and leads to the deaths of MORE PEOPLE. We can witness this phenomenon in all socialist, collectivist sh*tholes which presume to know better than the people what is good for the people themselves.The problem with collectivism is: Who determines what the common good is? The temptation for the rulers to confuse their own good with the common good is simply too great. Even if the goverment had the best of intentions, it is impossible for the goverment to know what is good for all people or even most people because every individual is unique and human beings are just too divers. For this reason you won’t usually see doctors on TV prescribing the same remedy for all. They always caution that you should first consult with your doctor because he knows your medical situation best. This simple wisdom has, in the collective psychosis that has gripped the world, gone out the window.]
Concluding thoughts
It is not self-evident that it is better or morally right to sacrifice the individual good for the sake of the “greater good” or the common good. Is it right to kill one person if doing so saves a village? No! Nowhere is it written that the life of the individual is less worth than the life of the community. Such an idea would be based on a completely arbitrary assumption. Collectivism finds its most extreme expression in human sacrifices. Mayas and other cultures offered human sacrifices to the gods for the sake of good harvests or the sun’s continuing shining or other graces and favors. Strangely enough, it was never the ruler or the king who was sacrificed but it was someone who had no other choice than being murdered for the “greater good”. There is a profound moral difference between a goverment which brutally forces the individual to make sacrifices he doesn’t want to make for the “greater good” and the volontary sacrifice of the individual. We recognize this difference when we see Christ’s volontary sacrifice on the cross or a soldier’s sacrifice when he throws himself on a grenade to save his buddies.
Determining what the “greater good” or the common good is, is very difficult and perhaps even impossible but even if we use the very simple definition that the greater good is that which is good for the overwhelming majority of people, sklyjd’s view is a perversion of that definition for the simple reason that more than 98% of people survive an infection with the wuhan virus and the overwhelming majority of people can deal perfectly well with the virus. Making the vast majority sacrifice their freedom and their economic prosperity for the sake of a miniscule minority runs completely counter to that definition.
One could justify any and all violations of individual rights if one adheres to sklid’s view that the greater good trumps the individual’s rights. For this very reason there are protections for the rights of the individual in a constitutional republic.
Even so, our basic human rights are given by God or if you are an atheist, they are natural rights and I don’t care whether it is a majority, no matter how big, that wants to take these rights away from me. I simply refuse to let that happen. This is especially true when there is no good reason given for taking away my rights. We are only offered nonsensical arguments that fly in the face of the data, empirical evidence, science and medical ethics.
Today, October 1, 2021, Australians demonstrated peacefully for freedom and against the covid tyranny. The protester right at the beginning of the video nails it: “All we want is to be free …” Keep fighting, Aussies! Don’t give in!
Also, Italians demonstrated today against “covid passports”. Viva Italia!
Artaxes' brainbench 