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Sunday, June 27, 2021

The Covid Cult, Its Origins

Big picture stuff from Bobby Jindal, and it's really pretty good. I'm sure many others have generally sensed that with the Covid Panic we're dealing with a Neo-Gnostic cult--to call it a religion seems vaguely sacrilegious. Jindal examines where this weird cult is coming from, and how the Covid Panic is a perfect expression of its deepest yearnings--which aren't all that deep. You can find the whole article here:


COVID's liberal religious revival – how their God-less theocracy's destroying politics, culture

What is unique about COVID that brought this new left religiosity to the fore?


However, before we get to excerpts from Jindal himself, at the page there's a brief sound clip of Niall Ferguson talking about the rise of "fake religions". Notice that he, too, is uneasy about applying the term "religion" to this phenomenon, although he does draw disquieting historical parallels:


So we are dealing not just with the decay of traditional religion, but--far worse--with the rise of new fake religions, political religions. And one thing that's very clear from the twentieth century is that, when people take their religious feelings and they apply them to political ideologies, terrible things can happen. Central to what made Communism so deadly is that ultimately it's a religion.


Fundamentally, while I sympathize with Ferguson's concerns, I can't agree with the substance of what Ferguson is saying--it's sadly warmed over Classical Liberalism, with its fake dichotomy of "religious feelings" and "political ideology." Politics always reflects a religious worldview--there is no neutral ground. Some of that is also present in Jindal's opinion piece. Like the liberal Ferguson, Jindal appears to identify "religion" with subjective "feeling," rather than with reasonable belief. However, here's what's central:


When the first documented COVID case appeared in the United States 16 months ago, few would have predicted the religious revival it ignited. Unlike the four previous Great Awakenings that expanded Christianity’s American footprint, this revival exposed what now is the country’s most politically powerful religion: Secular Science-ism. 

Pollsters have for two decades noted the rise of the "religious nones," people who claim no particular religious affiliation or beliefs. This group makes up less than one-third of the population but skews toward the higher educated, upper income and politically liberal classes. Pew Forum’s research indicates "solidly secular" Americans are 50% more likely to have a college degree and incomes over $150,000 – and 71% of that group identifies with the Democratic Party. 

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed these "nones" really are not without a religious belief structure, however. ...  

Rejection of the afterlife and focus on this earthly life pulls secular liberals toward caution – perhaps to an extent that risk tolerance drives, rather than follows, political ideology. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/covid-liberal-godless-religion-secular-bobby-jindal-brad-todd like Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s edict that summer campers wear masks while canoeing, or the continued closure of schools after teachers have been vaccinated. 

The Science-ism practiced today has its own clergy – epidemiologists, with the Centers for Disease Control constituting a holiest of holies, and Dr. Anthony Fauci as a pope. Left-wing belief in an inevitable positive progression of humanity licenses the worship of our betters, even elevating scientists over science, putting clergy over scripture.

...

In Islam, Judaism and other established religions, the most orthodox adherents demonstrate devotion by wearing symbolic religious clothing in routine daily life; Christians do it with cross-themed jewelry. Same for Science-ism, whose zealots not only wear masks in crowds, but also while they exercise outdoors, walk their dogs or drive their cars alone, even after vaccination. For them, mask wearing is not merely an attempt to limit exhaled aerosols, it signals a sincere, if irrational, belief structure. 

...

Now as even blue-state governors reluctantly rescind mask mandates, liberals who run some local governments and institutions have stubbornly clung to the piety high that only compelling your neighbors can bring. 

...  

The personal voids created by the rejection of traditional religion will always demand to be otherwise filled.  

... The rabid practitioners of Science-ism do not just insist they should be left alone to practice their extreme beliefs; they insist on a theocracy in which all of government’s decisions turn on them as well. 

What is unique about COVID that brought this new left religiosity to the fore? ... 

The emergence of this militantly secular religion will not go away as COVID death counts steadily decline. While a coronavirus revealed the political power of Science-ism, the fulfillment its sanctimony gives its adherents will not subside. ...

...  

Lacking room for grace or redemption, they see humanity needing to save itself, ... 

The most liberal dogma increasingly focuses on structural racism as America’s inherited Original Sin, and insists no baptism can wash away its stain. To compensate, educated White liberals have adopted their own self-flagellation, whereby they publicly and constantly confess their irredeemable privilege. They will continue to invent new rituals and sacraments, like the wearing of masks and other virtue signaling, to demonstrate their piety and to give their lives meaning. 

... 


Perhaps this cultish belief structure of the Covid Cult explains the seemingly inexplicable results of opinion polling that John Hinderaker points to today. While the full Covid Cult may be the refuge from reality for only a minority of the population, perhaps the underlying confusion we see is a result of American "nones" infecting the general population with uncertainty:


* More respondents say we are on the “right track” than at any time in recent years. I assume this mostly has to do with the fading of COVID, ...

* Along the same lines, Joe Biden seems weirdly popular. ... Having a cadaver in the White House feels like a return to normalcy.


* For some reason, the Republican Party is getting more popular, ... Amazingly, approval of Congress is now in the black, at 54%. I am not sure when that last happened. Most likely Americans are just in a good, post-COVID mood.

* Harris tested the favorability of various institutions. ... the military is on top at 78%/12%, ...

* Probably the most important results are those relating to specific issues. ..., 85% of voters are concerned about inflation.

* Immigration is a huge problem for the Democrats. ...

* Critical Race Theory is a major loser for the Democrats.


Follow the link for much more.


11 comments:

  1. So many contradictions in this poll. I have to doubt its validity.

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  2. Emile Cammearts famous quip “He who believes in nothing will believe in anything” is most applicable here. Europeans did it after the First World War, first with fascism then with socialism.

    The Beatles did it @ the height of their fame, running off to India to search for the “Meaning of Life” from the Maharishi. Somebody should have said, “Open a Bible lads, we’re here to serve Christ.”

    False religions. Drugs. Food. Pornography. Politics. There seems to be no end to the substitutes humans will stuff themselves with in order to find fulfillment.

    The sadness is this affliction will not end well for them come Judgement Day nor for eternity.

    Boarwild

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  3. Nope. Polling cant be trusted.

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  4. Neo-gnosticism... hmmm. I attended several college philosophy courses with a pair of full-blown Gnostics (this was roughly four decades ago now). I don't know if they were of the Aleister Crowley occultist variety but they certainly were hard-boiled orthodox believers. Material world, no! Spiritual esoterica, yeah! I know way more than you!

    Their main characteristic from my point of view was their continual great need to feed their egos. Secondarily to that was their absolute and rhetorically violent rejection of anything that challenged their narrow worldview, including virtually all things reasonable by virtue of observation and logic.

    I bring this up because I believe it shines some light on what I think is going on now with the disciples of the left. They don't really care about saving the whales, the forests, the environment as a whole, clean energy, depletion of resources, etc. They don't care about racism or sexism, or about gays, transvestites, transsexuals, or trans-humans. They don't care about science or scientific method or scientific evidence. They don't even care what the next big thing for them to care about will be.

    All they care about is feeding their egos. They want to have the "feeling" that they are contributing to a greater good and that they are better than others for doing so. But that feeling is subjective and has no necessary relationship to the world around them. It is THEY who are important, not the objective world. In fact, the objective world (reality) and reason are their enemies because they keep running up against them.

    This quest for personal fulfillment will never end as long as it is subjectively defined by personal feelings, which are always malleable and guilt-ridden. It is in this sense that modern progressivism will always be very hostile to Christianity. Christianity is all about recognizing your own limitations and your guilt and your need for a real God as the source of your salvation. These people have no such recognition.

    It was easy to see coming over the last 50 years with the rejection of God by our society. How will this end? No place good it seems. But the one true God has his plan and his purposes which are beyond our understanding. He is the only one with the answers and we best submit to His wisdom and His will and pray for those unfortunate souls who do not know Him and make Him known to them.

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  5. OT regarding Assange... WOW @ the FBI in Iceland!!!

    https://stundin.is/grein/13627/key-witness-in-assange-case-admits-to-lies-in-indictment/

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  6. Isn’t it super when one has access to high level insider information?

    Hunter Biden Invested in The Pandemic
    Firm Collaborating With EcoHealth And
    The Wuhan Lab


    Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners – an investment firm led by Hunter Biden – was a lead financial backer of Metabiota, a pandemic tracking and response firm that has partnered with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

    Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) was an offshoot of Rosemont Capital, an investment fund founded by Biden and John Kerry’s stepson in 2009, that counted Biden as a Managing Director.

    Among the companies listed on archived versions of the firm’s portfolio is Metabiota, a San Francisco-based company that purports to detect, track, and analyze emerging infectious diseases, The National Pulse can reveal.


    More here:

    https://thenationalpulse.com/exclusive/hunter-biden-invested-in-ecohealth-wuhan-partner/

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  7. Mark,

    You may have covered this and I may have missed it because I've hit apathy level 11 on the subject...

    I'm seeing the latest and greatest "delta variant" popping up in headlines (Sydney, California). The coverage is of course the coverage is the typical "were all gonna die" or juxtaposed "were all idiots". But I am seeing very little on the discussion of origin.

    I know from previous articles you've covered much about the post vax mutations and shedding... Have you seen anything on variants that are specific to post vax? And is delta one of them?

    Wouldn't post vax related mutation and shedding of a worse variation really take the cake?

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    Replies
    1. I suspect that those are the questions that everyone is asking. I did--a couple of weeks ago--see an article that I can't locate now in which the question was raised: are any of these variants the specific products of vaccine "influenced" mutations (I forget the technical term)? The answer was that that didn't appear to be the case. These so far appear to be simply the inevitable mutations that, as Yeadon says, are the inevitable fate of all viruses: to be a virus is to mutate.

      OTOH, there are a lot of reports that seem to indicate that vaxed people are likely just as susceptible to variants as unvaxxed. That stuff is above my pay grade so I'm waiting for more data.

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  8. Healthline saw a need to refute French Dr. Luc Montagnier’s claim that vaccines could cause variants. They cite this guy as their expert:

    Peter Stoilov, PhD, an associate professor of biochemistry who is leading the SARS-CoV-2 variant sequencing efforts in West Virginia, described Montagnier’s argument as “completely bonkers.”

    Impressive.

    More here:

    https://www.healthline.com/health-news/no-vaccines-do-not-cause-new-sars-cov-2-variants#block-a878f2dc-2f9b-4773-9fbc-a2f4ab3cb753

    Healthline’s article sounds as though it came from CNN or MSNBC or one of Biden’s communications staffers. All of this is “above my pay grade” but I’d put my money on Montagnier. He may be the only one to not have a $$$$$ interest in this.

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