If we combine Rushdoony’s insights on plagues and pandemics (from the Myth of Overpopulation), with Edwin Friedman’s insights into anxiety and herd like behavior, with some things that North says about conspiracy, I think we can get a pretty good handle on the meaning of this world-wide shut down.
Briefly, plagues come at the end of eras, when civilizations have lost faith in themselves (check that box).
Next, free floating anxiety will find something to attach itself to. The Left has such huge quantities of anxiety with BREXIT and the crumbling of the EU, and over Trump in America. With Britain being on the verge of exiting the EU, and impeachment failing in America, all of that vast anxiety of the Leftist herd needed something to attach itself to.
Combine that finally with what the Tower of Babel that has been placed in the midst of history, means (functioning on both a conscious and subconscious level). In order to defeat the LORD, we must centralize all and everything. This pandemic can be used to destroy the free market Trump economy, and centralized socialism can swoop in to save the day.
Combine those three, and there we have it…or at least close.
And, I have some thoughts to add. My thoughts are about that strangest of strange figures: the Donald.
I continue to think the Sampson comparison a very apt one. Sampson was a lousy Evangelical. He didn’t act like one, or talk like one, and he hung around with a lot of whorey women. But there was nobody like him in regard to supernatural strength, and oddly, he seemed to do the Lord’s bidding, and routinely rout the Lord’s enemies.
Those are old thoughts, but to give some development. Trump’s real platform has been to stem illegal immigration. He has been termed a “xenophobe,” and a “racist,” for his efforts. I think it true that he, more than anyone in my memory, has re-asserted national boundaries (“nationalist” has been used against him as a moniker of “warrior fascist”). But here is the odd thing, indeed the paradox. In recent memory (I mean 50 years) no one has been more parochial, narrow, and downright ethno-centric, than the sleek, politically correct, universally minded, globalist, Barach Obama. Like so many elite liberals, he imagined himself a “universal” man, when he really only represented the outlook of a 21st century Harvard graduate. He occupied almost a pin hole. Oddly, on the other side, the Sampson Trump, the “narrow nationalist” Trump, the unsleek Queens born, orange haired, chop English Trump (“tremendous,” “really great,” “you’ll be very happy,” “I’m very highly educated. I know words, I have the best words.”) seems to know there is world out there of very different people, a vast array of people, and he sees America as being a unique place with certain boundaries and definition, amongst many, many peoples with outlooks and perspectives and aims and purposes that are radically different. And he wants American boundaries. But oddly, Mr Trump is almost infinitely more international in outreach, conversation, and dialogue than his oddly insular, but globalist, predecessor. Trump seems to actually know there is a world out there, and he also knows it is not all so friendly. He is the first president to understand that China is not filled with people who want exactly what we want in the way that we want it. China is actually a threat, and handing all of manufacturing over to them is not wise. Unlike the sleek and universal Obama, Trump actually knows and respects the “blue collar class.” For Obama, they virtually didn’t exist, and their jobs counted for nothing. Give them away, who cares? Those were dirty and smelly jobs anyway. Who needs them? (as blue collar unemployment, drug addictions and suicides rose).
If boundaries (borders) are evil, then let me suggest that all sleek, upscale, psycho-therapists, who service the ruling class in and around Washington D. C., need to change a great deal of what they say. Somewhere near the top of psycho-therapy babble, is a lot of talk about the “need for boundaries,” in our relationships. I happen to agree with that, but with the chattering class, there is an odd blindness to how widely that should apply. It is not just to our personal “relationships,” and the same bad things happen all the way up to global levels, when all boundaries are erased.
I was first apprised of the central place of the Tower of Babel, in all political ethics, by Helmut Thielicke in his massive, three volume Theological Ethics. God scattered humanity, and gave us boundaries, to protect us from our own depravity. Conspiracies exist. Read the 2nd Psalm if you don’t believe me (Gary North is brilliant here). And the essence of conspiracy is to unite (actually, “breathe together”.) But unity how? It is a negative unity. It is unity against a common enemy, and that hated enemy is the LORD. So God continually scatters us into bounded groups, to protect us from our own depravity. Trump has been a friend of such boundaries, while also recognizing the universal government of Jesus Christ (I do believe he is a Christian). What is global at the moment is a push back to national boundaries, but oddly, just as in the personal relationships that psycho-therapists constantly deal with, boundaries are also the source of “good relationship.” And, people and nations that do not respect boundaries, need to be dealt with, and firmly resisted (and not rewarded with palates of cash hoping to buy them off and buy peace).
The Left need to be rid of Trump. He is the first person to come along who is actually immune to all of the old Jedi tricks of the Left, that have taken out, or at least muted everyone since Reagan (who also had immunity, but of a different, and nicer kind). So, how do you stop him? I am not in the least suggesting Covid19 is a hoax, or a conspiracy, but at this point, the centralizing, boundaryless, globalist Left, are finding it very useful. Covid19 is the first thing that has come along, in four years, that is bigger than Trump. Ride it to the end. Take the evonomy down, and then centralized socialism can ride in heroically, to pick up the pieces, and destroy Trump. Prepare for the same endless, self serving investigations, into Trump’s “incomptence” and “slowness to act,” and who knows what else. It might succeed, I don’t know. But if it does, beware. Remember how Sampson died. He utterly destoyed the temple of the enemy, and killed more Philistines in his death, than in all of life put together. Either the continued life, or political death, of Donald Trump, will be deadly to the great, politically correct, globalists (Judges 16:23-31). Their great temple of centralized humanism, may well collapse.