Tuesday, May 23, 2023

A couple of socio-political points

Matthew 7.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

I'm always amazed when people at Church rationalize liberalism, especially corporatized liberalism, DEI and wokeness. By Christ's own words, it's a corrupt tree that brings forth evil fruit. There are more examples than I care to attempt to catalog here, but here's at least one new one brought to my attention recently. 

https://slaynews.com/news/facebook-cracks-down-christian-content-labels-hate-speech/

Quoting from the article:

Facebook has provoked a widespread backlash after the social media platform deleted Christian content and labeled it “hate speech.”

The issue was highlighted by journalist Billy Hallowell, a former Blaze writer.

Hallowell, a Christian, exercised his religious freedom by posting on Facebook: “Jesus died so you could live.”

However, despite his post reflecting one of Christianity’s core beliefs, Hallowell’s post was deleted by Facebook and he was accused of spreading “hate speech” on the Big Tech platform.

Hallowell shared about this on Twitter, backed up by screenshots, and a comment stating that the incident was “very, very bizarre.”

It's actually not bizarre at all, if you accept that Facebook's woke policing units are hateful, anti-Christian bigots and in the thrall of Satan as clearly as anyone we've ever seen in the scriptures has been. One sad side effect of our Western Civilization cult of niceness is that we are unable to effectively do what Jesus commands the believers to do, which is discern and judge between good and evil and recognize evil for what it is so we can more effectively remove it from our lives.

While such attacks against constitutional rights can sometimes be written off as an “error” or a “technical issue,” this wasn’t the case.

Hallowell followed Facebook’s appeals process, assuming the “mistake” would be corrected.

It wasn’t.

Facebook’s moderators reviewed Hallowell’s post and doubled down, accusing him of spreading “hate speech.”

That's not really a good interpretation of the law. We do not have a constitutional right to post anything at all on Facebook. Nevertheless, it's another facet of our cult of niceness that we don't recognize after all of these many, many, many times that calling this an "error" or "technical issue" is a lie and an excuse that the tech companies make after they are caught. These kinds of errors only ever happen to conservatives and Christians. 

At that point, the punishment that Facebook’s censoring machine thought fit the “crime” was to make the post invisible to anyone but the author.

After the post was reviewed by a Facebook moderator, the crackdown became more severe.

The post was deleted altogether after an “appeal.”

“Your appeal was reviewed,” claimed Facebook.

“We are unable to show content that goes against our community standards on hate speech.” 

If this is supposed to be something that we're outraged about, I suppose I'm not, nor do I recommend the thirty-second outrage that the pundits seem designed specifically to engender. In fact, especially in light of Russell M. Nelson's most recent talk in General Conference, I think getting angry and outraged is to be particularly discouraged. The prophet of God has literally warned us that such is not appropriate at this time. Will there come a time to flip over the tables of the money-changers, or wave the Title of Liberty? Maybe. Or maybe we need to be delivered by God himself after showing our patience and meekness, as the people of Alma did when enslaved by the Lamanites.

But, if not to get outraged, why do I point this out? Just so that you can know and prepare yourself accordingly. We do not live in a mostly righteous society where the rights of those who are trying to be righteous will be protected. Quite the opposite; the "morality" of our ruling caste is directly opposed to our rights and liberties, to Christianity, to Western Civilization, to white people, and to Americanism. This is part of how the Z-man interprets the famous "evil party vs stupid party" routine. The Democrats are clearly the evil party, attempting non-stop to destroy all of those things mentioned above, but the Republicans are clearly the stupid party, because they refuse to accept, in spite of all of the evidence constantly in front of our eyes, that the Democrats are, in fact, evil. Or even if they accept it, they refuse to accept that anything different needs to be done about it to keep that evil from spreading and destroying us.

It is long past time for conservatives to recognize that the decades-long pattern of evil from the left is not just political disagreement; it is enemy action, and the enemy is actually the Devil himself, who has long been resentful that Western Civilization exists which (imperfectly) perpetuates Christian doctrine, and elevates the potential of the individual as literal Sons and Daughters of God. He's resentful of America that brought those ideas sufficiently to fruition that the environment was such that the Church could be restored here, among a people striving to live up to the true standards of Christian doctrine. And because the Devil is a petty narcissistic individual, he will not forget that or let it go. He's been eating away at the foundations of our liberties and righteousness since America was founded by Divine Providence and the Church was Restored, again by Divine Providence, in both cases in the face of stiff opposition from the forces of evil.

2 Nephi 28 addresses this idea:

20 For behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good.

21 And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

22 And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.

23 Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God, and be judged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.

24 Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion!

25 Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well!

Because we do not live in an "all is well" society, society will not protect you. The government will not protect you. The courts will not protect you. The police will not protect you. Your community may not protect you. Most of those are actively hostile towards the profession and practice of free religious liberty, especially if it is Christian, and especially if it is the true, restored Christian church, i.e. the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

And if those are hostile, the corporations are even more hostile yet, especially as they have embraced the doctrines of ESG, DEI, and wokeness that are deliberately—and this can be easily and readily observed by their fruits, as Christ himself commanded us to do—designed to attack Christianity and the people who's society has allowed it to be restored in its complete form and from there grow to eventually fill all the Earth.

Anyway, I wanted to talk more about a second point, but I don't want this post to become too long. Rather, I'll simply link to it, and with extreme brevity point out what to look for. Especially because we're in the Come Follow Me personal study curriculum going over the New Testament again, which I'm not as familiar with as I should be so that many details don't immediately come to mind like they do for the Book of Mormon, but a few broad patterns have always intrigued me. 

For instance, while the New Testament talks all of the time about the casting out of devils, we don't really recognize that as a thing in modern society. Is it something that simply doesn't happen very much anymore? Personally, I don't believe so. I think that many forms of mental illness were considered possession by devils in latter days, and that honestly we should trust the wisdom of the ancients more; rather than in our hubris assuming that there are perfectly natural explanations for mental illness and we don't need to profess supernatural evil as being related to them, it probably is. 

Now don't get me wrong. I don't believe that all mental illness is because of the activity of evil spirits, nor do I believe that all activity of evil spirits results in mental illness. But it is curious, is it not, that in this article here, there is a very interesting statistical correlation between evil, liberalism (especially extremist liberalism, i.e. wokeism) and mental illness. This would suggest circumstantially that there is a link between evil spirits bringing evil into the world through, among other things, mental illness. 

I've heard people who suffer from general anxiety disorder and depression talk about feeling like they are in their heads as spectators to their own emotions; knowing full well that what they were saying and doing was not reasonable, but unable to stop it. I think that there's a line somewhere between natural struggles and trials that people must deal with and those that are facilitated and exacerbated by forces that may not be entirely natural.

Anyway, here's the article: https://vdare.com/articles/it-s-official-again-leftists-particularly-leftist-women-are-nuts

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