We’re finding out more and more that what we were told with confidence in the recent unpleasantness was not actually true let alone ‘the science’ – although Maureen Lipman in the old BT ad would have said: 'it's an ology’ - psychology... Apparently no one now thinks that lockdowns were a good idea. They were never part of the contingency plans that existed pre-pandemic and were adopted because China did things that way… Experimental Vaccines have been shown to be less efficacious at limiting transmission than was assured. The list of side-effects runs to pages. Cloth masks – no study has shown that they are effective. All this for a disease that was not life-threatening for > 99% of the population.
It also became almost treasonous to challenge these assertions. A senior epidemiologist who questioned the graphs shown in the official briefing (thinking they had just made a mistake) was told to ‘correct his views’ ( news.sky.com/story/covid-19-expert-claims-he-was-told-to-correct-his-views)
That SAGE has now quietly disbanded itself, but no one is being held to account. It is we who will be paying for all this, in myriad ways.
What were they thinking?
Why did the government think they can mandate these things they so obviously knew were false or misleading?
Some at least of the answer is because they can. We have heard more about the ‘nudge unit’ which probably started out innocently enough but has come into its own in a spectacular way. The British Army has its own special unit to organise what should really be called propaganda. We hope this is being aimed at a real enemy but the fact that it is being listed as a capability shows that ’Digi Ops’ is standard fare in Government, to be used to ‘influence perceptions and support operational outcomes’ for any desired objective. [now uncovered BigBrotherWatch-jan23, BigBrotherWatch-feb23 ]
Industrial scale
This is literally done on an industrial scale – fans of Homeland saw an example in the SockPuppets episode:
Later we see a wall of screens with teams or staffers passing on the nudge of the day. I’d hoped this was just a dramatic fiction!
For a Twitter/X example see an identical, seemingly personal message, sent from multiple people. In this case it's much more complicated – is this a pro-vaccine tweet or an anti-vaccine campaign (to show that pro-v tweets are being manufactured) more here?
The most benevolent view of this faking is that it’s done for our good, to keep us safe – but that is a lack of respect, a laziness in making the case to the public (or even to Parliament). It’s a bureaucratic rather than a democratic response, for their benefit, not ours.
Often the fallaciousness becomes obvious (as with Covid) and when one misinformation is spotted you’re alerted to others. A key sign is often a vicious response to being challenged, another is to accuse the other side of precisely what you are doing (Trudeau and anti-democracy).
Not just here
Looking back, the official narrative about the famous Jan 6 ‘insurrection’ at the US Capitol is unravelling as even a NYTimes reporter who was present admitted that it was clearly a peaceful protest (except for a very few). It had to be ramped up with ‘Fake Oppression‘ to justify the suppression of differing views. People are still suffering terrible psychological and financial trauma from being prosecuted even for just filming it (Brandon Straka). Similar reprisals are no doubt being executed against the Canadian trucker protestors.
And now we have Ukraine – see if you can discern the truth from the messaging (by at least 4 sides), not least ‘virtue signalling. Rod Dreher has more on the evil of manipulation.
What has this to do with Kingdom Culture?
God is Grace and Truth and we live best in an atmosphere of trust, so lying is destructive and not ‘bearing false witness’ one of the 10 Commandments. Also:
Woe to the city of oppressors, rebellious and defiled!
She obeys no one, she accepts no correction.
She does not trust in the Lord, she does not draw near to her God.…
Her prophets are unprincipled; they are treacherous people.
Her priests profane the sanctuary and do violence to the law.
... but God acts against this …
The Lord within her is righteous; he does no wrong.
Morning by morning he dispenses his justice
... so that ...
“Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp.
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
No limp hands
False prophets and priests can be the secular variety (dodgy graphs, rule-breaking ministers) as well as the religious. But we want to be active in resistance, no limp hands, out of love for the Lord and the benefit of people. The State exists to enact God’s law on our behalf ‘the one in authority is God’s servant for your good.'
When the State steps outside this it’s up to us to act as a corrective witness so God would rejoice over us again. We saw this with Dr Dermot Kearny helping women recover from abortion pills-by-post despite interference by GMC etc. If we don't the Lord will raise up others to do it, morning by morning (The Doctor challenging Health Secretary Sajid Javid over vaccines).
Whenever leadership is detached from God and is indifferent to or ignorant of His sovereignty, justice suffers and the overall effectiveness and efficiency of government is severely diminished, often to the point of corruption. —John MacArthur
Covid etc is just one area, we have the ‘Conversion Therapy’ ban, ‘Online Safety Bill’, new UK ‘Bill of Rights’ all of which directly threaten Christian witness, not least because faithful Christianity is seen to be such a powerful independent force.
More than ever we need to be discerning, to think about things, to be appropriately sceptical. For factual information, we need to find people who we can trust, and who are known over time. People who have different perspectives and backgrounds and who are seen in different contexts, ideally In Real Life, by their fruits. People who have less of an axe to grind - or at least you know what their axe is!
Francis Collins
Sadly some Christian Leaders seem to have become ‘unprincipled’ in the UK and US as noted in a recent US article about Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health how-the-federal-government-used-evangelical-leaders-to-spread-covid-propaganda-to-churches also a follow-up.
Francis Collins appears on the Alpha promo video. I’ve suggested Alpha check this out and replace that segment. Their main response was that people have different views! I'm not sure that's correct, for Christians, in this case - but I think it will be difficult for some to get their heads round the changes that are happening.
