Wokeness – and despair for democracy

Americans seem to have woken up to disparities in our society, particularly for black people.  This is a good thing. Wokeness will go a ways toward fulfilling the promises suggested in the Declaration of Independence.

But there is a most disturbing part of wokeness that is not limited to racial matters, and that is the language fascism of the left. It is as dangerous to a free society as any fascism of the right and too close to what we can observe every day in China.

Lest We Forget June 4

In the social, economic, and cultural miasma that is the state of the world, we might let tomorrow slip by without notice.

A couple of old comments -

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/401-what-chinese-cannot-not-talk-about

http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/402-how-to-end-june-4-et-al

 Has Trump has been doing God’s work?

For years, some evangelical leaders have been touting Trump as the wolf-king, anointed by God to enact the Christian right agenda.  Symbols are important in this swamp-fevered world, and Trump’s immorality is actually a positive sign of his worthiness.  Go figure.

Four years ago, Peter Montgomery noted 25 Religious Right Justifications for Supporting Donald Trump.  Christian right leaders spoke endlessly of Trump as a chosen vessel for God's will, saying things like "God has picked him up" and that Trump is "literally splitting the kingdom of darkness right open" and that "the Lord has put His favor upon him."

Now I wonder if the coronavirus is a symbol from God as well, a sign of displeasure.  Is God finished with Trump?  Is Trump past his heavenly use-by date?

 CCP and Mr. Xi’s Learning Disability

Two full months into the Covid-19 crisis, we see where Mr. Xi’s crackdown on communication and openness has taken him.  He is himself in no danger, but CCP runs into a conceptual wall with free flow of information. That is a disability – a learning disability – for CCP and China now.

For leaders, information does not want to be free - in US or China

Masks of the Red (Cross) Death

You remember the Edgar Allan Poe story - The Masque of the Red Death

Prospero and 1,000 other nobles have taken refuge in this walled abbey to escape the Red Death, a terrible plague with gruesome symptoms that has swept over the land. Victims are overcome by "sharp pains", "sudden dizziness", and "profuse bleeding at the pores", and die within half an hour. Prospero and his court are indifferent to the sufferings of the population at large; they intend to await the end of the plague in luxury and safety behind the walls of their secure refuge, having welded the doors shut.