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Naomi Wolf Calls for Revival
I posted a link in the Link Library to Naomi Wolf’s latest Substack piece, Have the Ancient Gods Returned?
I was interested in the Naomi Wolf piece because it is startling that someone who was, at least in the popular mind, associated with some of the late 20th Century cultural trends, finds herself quite at odds with what is going on today. Wolf, like most of us I imagine, is trying to understand how things have gotten so out of whack. As the saying goes: failure starts slowly, then quickly. Wolf operated in social, political, and professional circles that were very comfortable, until they weren’t. And, from this and other pieces she has written, her perception of a sudden shift has been very devastating to her.
Reading Wolf is less like drinking a cup of water than it is taking a bath, less of a direct ferry trip across a lake and more like a leisurely exploration of every bay and cove. If you don’t like that, let me try and summarize the piece’s main points as I see them:
- It is hard to see events since 2020 as being merely coincidental. The global sweep of totalitarian practices justified by a health “emergency” came too quickly to be an organic evolutionary movement.
- Absent an effective and obvious global organization working in concert with governments, how do you explain it?
- The rights that have been lost since 2020 were a reflection of a robust Western Civilization based on Judeo-Christian principles. Those rights could not be lost without a rejection of Judeo-Christian principles.
- Judeo-Christian principles reflect a covenant, or contract, with a monotheistic G-d. That G-d supplanted the pagan gods that were to be individually propitiated and who seemed to have an unquenchable appetite for sacrifice, violence, abasement, and turmoil. Belief in that monotheistic G-d, and conducting oneself as an individual and a society in accord with the principles He set down, delivered us from the power of the pagan gods and the troubles that they promoted in and amongst mankind.
- As a society, we have violated the contract with G-d. This has been happening for a while, but until recently our institutions retained the forms of a Judeo-Christian system even as the internal framework decayed or was dismantled. But now we can see the consequences of such decay and dismantling as these institutions, one by one, cease to operate within their earlier forms.
- While Judeo-Christian belief is not the exclusive preserve of any religion, it has identifiable elements: respect for individual sovereignty; a rule of law resistant to political favor and preference; a subordination of government to G-d and His creation, the individual; the concomitant empathy and action required by individuals toward one another; the acceptance of personal responsibility and accountability, not assigning those obligations to the state.
- In breaking our covenant with G-d, His ability (?), willingness (?) to protect us from the pagan gods of old is diminished or withdrawn. As a society, we are left to live again in a world dominated by those gods and with all the consequences therefrom.
- If we want to make the pagan gods retreat, we must, as a society, embrace the covenant again.
I do like her description of the Covenant in what are quite understandable contracting terms. In law each contract to be binding and enforceable requires “consideration.” Most of the time, one party’s consideration is money, but the law does not require that it be so. Consideration can be anything that someone does to fulfill their end of the bargain.
Most people see contracts as highly transactional. But my own background in law involved long-term contracts with many subparts but always operating within what is more fairly described as a “relationship.” The contract document itself created many ways the parties could seek remedies without completely breaking off the relationship. And so it is that Wolf’s description of the Covenant resonated with me in ways that might not resonate with someone who more typically engages in single sales transactions.
It is easier to imagine an evil genius behind the problems in our society — national or global — than it simply being the natural consequence of changes that have been coming for some time. Wolf sort of concedes this as she leaves the demons as spirits of various malignities rather than persons. But her tendency toward drama does make her overstate: the success of censorship and control has tended to obscure the real resistance that in fact did occur although uncelebrated and, for the most part, unsuccessful as yet. Thus her argument — “How could this have happened all at once without something resembling a conspiracy?” — is a bit overwrought.
But her broader point is still interesting if you abstract it: Judeo-Christianity is the foundation of what we call Western Civilization. That civilization not only made the societies that follow it economically successful, but had the broadest sharing in safety, security, and peacefulness (notwithstanding horrific wars and despotisms). Even though I am personally agnostic I do believe that the belief in G-d as the Creator, humans as creations endowed with rights, the state as subordinate to G-d and His creation, is extremely important to maintain the power balance between the citizen and the state. And when we depart from this belief, a power hierarchy asserts itself to the detriment of mankind; the individual is respected only to the extent he/she can subordinate another; the application of law is only supportive of the power hierarchy. And that is where we are today in too much of our society. Not completely — here and there the forms remain, and some jurisdictions are more respectful of Judeo-Christian values than others.
If we are to reverse the Obama-promised “transformation,” we must whole-heartedly re-embrace Judeo-Christian principles. If enough of us do, and do so persistently, the fallen institutions can be rebuilt and the covenant restored. It may not be a covenant with G-d, but it is a covenant with our fellow man — to live peaceably, to do unto others as they would do unto us, to take accountability for our government and demand that it be accountable to us all, not just to a minority working a power hierarchy against the rest of us.
[L]ove your neighbor as yourself…
Leviticus 19:18
See you in them and respect them as a means of gaining respect for yourself.
Move over Asbury University, we have a bigger revival to perform.
Published in General
Weird that people can blame the 99.9% of the Jewish population that didn’t even know the Crucifixion was happening …
What about my point that it was arguably God’s fault, and even a few Jews directly involved weren’t really acting from their own malice or something?
Or the larger-humanity argument that even if most Jews didn’t know about it, they were all part of the same fallen human population and would have done the same thing if they’d been there?
The elites wanted Jesus dead in great measure because massive crowds would come out to hear him preach, everywhere he went. The “Give us Barabbas” show would have been managed by planting agents in the crowd, primed to yell on cue. And armed with cudgels to deal with any differences of opinion!
So you’re literally finding fault with God.
Would you be happier if I said it was God’s Plan? Not sure what difference it actually makes.
Well, Jesus did try to disrupt Passover. So, what did Jesus expect, a standing ovation?
As a non-Christian, the idea that God need to get his own son whacked by the Romans in order for the sins of mankind to be forgiven does seem a bit warped. But hey, why not?
Well, “But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus,” and eventually, “Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.”
So, yes, but Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
It’s a story that keeps changing each time another gospel is written.
Eventually someone writes about Jesus resurrecting a smoked tuna. It’s like when Fonzie jumps the shark on a late Happy Days episode.
Here I will quote the gospel of Mark, chapter 11, starting with verses 15-16, using the New Revised Standard Version translation.
Now, that story, as presented in the gospel of Mark, is probably not completely true. But if this were true, this would qualify as disrupting Passover.
You can find the Bush Administration’s National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza here:
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza.html
You can find the Bush Administration’s One Year Summary for the strategy here:
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza-oneyear.html
You can find the Obama Administration’s “Pandemic Playbook” here:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6819258-Playbook.html
You can find the North American Plan for Animal and Pandemic Influenza here:
https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/international/Pages/napapi.aspx
And if you’re still curious after all that, you can find Canada’s pandemic preparedness plans here:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/flu-influenza/pandemic-plans.html
Dang. When I saw your mockery and ridicule I deleted my question. It was obviously too late.
After all that? Ha!
I started with scanning the 2nd item in your list, looking ahead to see where it was going before I started going through it more systematically. I ran into the term “antigen sparing technology,” which I had never heard of before, and that’s leading me to some interesting information about the history of different vaccine technologies.
At this rate I’ll never get through the first paragraph.
One of the most worthy items that Wolf has ever produced involved her graphic and her chart explaining the 10 necessary steps by which fascism overtakes a democratic nation.
It caught on like a house afire even among some right wing media websites.
For instance, this is the Liberty Beacon’s take on her thinking:
From the web page at the end: the following 11 measures (Reprint allowed under expression for non-profit educational purposes.) —
We now have:
This is quite astounding. When has the reacti0n to any pandemic in modern times ever been this outlandishly over-the-top? And you call that normal, natural, and sensible??
Predictions of imminent fascism have been a recurring theme in American politics for at least 90 years, I note.
Not that we shouldn’t keep an eye on elite attempts to restrict individual freedom, of course.
That is a very obscure line of reasoning, but one that I’ve pondered myself for ages.
Anti-Semitism is found in the hearts of people, not in any writings I know of in the New Testament.
He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.
– Tom Wolfe, “The Intelligent Coed’s Guide to America”
But then why did the crowd choose “BRIAN?” (how many will get this?)
On Ricochet, probably most.
Anyway I think you mean “BWIAN!!!”
Yes. As Joseph said, men intended things for evil but God intends those things for good.
And frankly, I am convinced that it’s planted in people’s hearts by Satan to harm or destroy God’s chosen people.
That’s been historically true, but the light here is quite a bit dimmer now.
I get her stories in my email and I found this one riveting. I appreciated her explaining, as a Jewish woman, how she was taught about the demonic (based on Old Testament) and if you read through, the end of her piece knocks you on the head. Things are beyond upside down. She talks about the spiritual transformation as it’s explained throughout history, that cultures go through when they turn their back on God. It is well written and will haunt you after you read it.
So, Naomi Wolf is not just a useless Baby Boomer with useless degrees? Who would have guessed?
You are right to protest Jerry G’s statement of the reaction being a normal one.
After all, Steven, this top epidemiologist, who was living in England but was originally from Finland, she was over in the Far East at some health conference in early 2020.
In the immediate moments after the pandemic was declared, she had to take one plane to a connecting flight to yet another plane to another final connecting flight.
This trip convinced here that the entire narrative was rubbish.
First of all, very few deaths had yet been experienced.
The way The WHO officials and Fauci had managed to pull off this “declaration of a global pandemic” was by their conjointly re-defining the word pandemic. No longer did an infection have to kill off a decent number of people across the globe in order to be labeled a “pandemic.” Instead, according to the new definition, all it had to do was to show up in several countries at the same time and be considered a new (or “novel”) infection.
One thing that blew her mind was that each of the airports that she experienced all had the same brand new but absolutely identical signage posted.
One of the more troubling aspects to her way of thinking was the restriction of “six feet” apart. After all, prior to this 2020 pandemic proclamation, six feet apart was not a thing. (One expert in health matters began saying that to prevent an aerial spread of this infection, you would have to be at a much more considerable distance, like 20 meters away, from other humans – not a mere six feet.)
Six feet apart is however just about the exact distance that any individuals need to walk and stand apart from one another in order for digital surveillance systems to do an identity check and sweep of an individual, which Bill Gates was stating we all would be desiring of each other.
She also was astounded by this: The fact that all the signs in all the various countries were all using the same words, except in different languages. To her, this indicated that this was all planned far ahead of time. “We’re all in this together.” “Stand six feet apart.” “Wash your hands.”
The preacher that Wolf bases her argument on seems unfamiliar with various aspects of satanic behavior that were perpetuated by the Holy Mother Church.
For example, during the 2nd half of the 700’s, the Germanic tribes were “converted” to Christianity by the soldiers of Charlemagne going thru village by village across these lands, carrying swords & buckets.
The assembled tribes people were given a “free” choice. Each individual was queried as to their decision regarding the matter at hand: renounce the gods and goddesses that they had grown up with, and affirm their belief in the new God, Jesus.
Or else the individual could affirm the continued belief in the gods and goddesses who were part of their heritage, but then must bear the consequences.
The consequences? Why, then the sword would descend to separate the head from their shoulders and land in the provided bucket.
A quite barbaric but successful method of convincing people so that a New World Order was embraced.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, cited the subconscious hidden memory of this collective trauma as being the root cause of the rise of the Third Reich, a Reich whose stated intent was to restore the German people to their roots of their ancient and powerful supremacy. (A supremacy their leader Hitler stated would allow the nation to flourish for at least one thousand years.)
Additionally, the well organized Holy Roman Church also instigated the Inquisition, which started out in the 1100’s as a way to tamp down feminine sexuality, midwifery, and herbalists, all branded as witches, but expanded year by year, century by century. Eventually by the 1500’s, Jews, the Moors, Christian “heretics” and more were tortured until they confessed their alliance with Satan, repented, and then perhaps allowed forgiveness offered by a priest who would hear the confession. (Quite often the torture was so overwhelming that the victim died before the confession could be heard.)
Joan of Arc is a famous victim of the Inquisition, who was condemned to death at the stake for her supposedly being a witch. (When in reality the English were making her suffer for being a better soldier and general than the men who had been leading the English army against the French.)
There is also the nasty business of power plays inside England in the early 1500’s, which involved the Anglican Church under Henry the VIIIth attempting to root out those remaining faithful to the Catholic Chrurch. When his daughter Mary assumed the throne, it was then Catholics persecuting the Anglicans.
Over in France, there was at least 100 years of blood letting as the Protestants went after Catholics who went after Protestants, depending on the chosen & proclaimed faith of which ever king was on the throne.
That sets us up for the French revolution of 1789, which inspired grotesque democide for a decade and was perhaps almost as awful as the Holocaust. But since there are no photos or videos, its horror was not as established.
Yes, the admonition I quote from Leviticus that Jesus later quoted when asked what the law required has been more honored in the breach than in the implementation.