Remember that the Internet is full of misinformation. Fact-check everything you hear. If an article says one thing, check to see what the opposition has to say about it. Then, don’t immediately believe said opposition, but weigh both sides carefully and determine for yourself which one is true.
Especially during this pandemic (and other unrelated but co-occurring events), I’ve noticed this very disturbing trend of how there are seems to be a war between left and right-leaning information sources. Two different narratives are being pushed and many well-meaning and good people are believing in one or the other. These two narratives oppose each other and assume the other one will destroy the country.
Make no mistake: there are, in fact, people on both sides with agendas who want to alter the country and the world in ways that will adversely affect other people. Some of them can rightly be called evil because they promote evil and immorality. But there are many, many more on both sides who believe they are crusaders for the truth in an age that promotes subjectivity and postmodern thought.
I think the whole concept of “fake news” (although it is debated as to whether this is even real, but at the moment I’m using this to refer to allegations by one side that the other side is deliberately spreading misinformation) is the culmination of decades of postmodern “subjective morality” promoted by secular culture. I would argue that the left has contributed to this far more, and now that Trump, a right-leaning figure, has adopted it, they have suddenly regretted that their political ancestors did so. But now both sides are engaged in this phenomenon equally.
To make matters worse, these dueling narratives are starting to have real-world consequences. At-risk people are dying from Covid because they didn’t wear a mask, thinking that the whole concept of a lockdown was an authoritarian regime testing how well it could assert itself. Even otherwise discerning theologians like John McArthur are seeing the lockdown as persecution against Christians, and the faithful will likely see dire consequences, especially if they don’t try and do anything else to prevent getting Covid under the assumption that it is ineffective or that getting this disease is inevitable, and they personally will survive.
While I disagree with this idea and it puts me at odds with many of my fellow conservatives who seemed to have adopted it, I don’t blame them for thinking this way. Health experts and organizations, not just political leadership, were incompetent at the start of this outbreak and have let the public down. The WHO erroneously claimed in January (and their tweet is archived somewhere, regardless of what Facebook may say about this post) that covid could NOT spread from person to person. That was incorrect, as we later found out. They also claimed that masks were not needed for the general population, only for healthcare workers and those who were already sick. This was also incorrect, and now we understand how quickly and easily this virus spreads among people who have been infected but initially appear to have no symptoms. Wrong information was touted as fact only to be correct later. How many cases and deaths could have been prevented if the WHO had not been so eager to establish themselves as an infallible authority of truth? With this in mind, I don’t blame “lockdown skeptics”, and I think their concerns about mental health and the economy are not unfounded at all. The post-pandemic world will return us to normal, but psychological and economic recovery will take some time to heal, just as it took Europe some time to heal after WWII.
At the moment, right-leaning lockdown skeptics are becoming impatient. Recently a video has been circulating where a team of “America’s frontline doctors” are claiming that hydroxychloroquine is, in fact, a cure for covid, and that the medical establishment is hiding this. Youtube, Twitter and Facebook have done their part to suppress this information and remove this video. And a trip to any left-leaning news outlet shows that each “doctor” speaking has some strike against their reputation or some sort of dubiousness to them. What is especially critical here that the article I looked repeatedly said “We could not reach [doctor] for comment”. “Could not” or “Would not”? I unfortunately only have the claims of these leftist sites to go by. Are these doctors correct, and has hydroxychloroquine been effective in treating covid? Unfortunately, I cannot tell for sure. Trump, many months ago, suggested it as a potential treatment for covid. Many medical experts immediately dismissed him. Then, however, some studies began to indicate that the drug DID, in fact, work against covid. Then other studies appeared to say that it did not.
All of that left me wondering “Was Trump actually wrong? Or did the doctors immediately deny he was right because they did not want a president whom they oppose for political or personal reasons to be right and them to be wrong?” No one likes it when someone they hate is right about anything, and in this age of partisanship, many “medical experts” and people in the “global elite” and “establishments” hate Trump because he cannot be controlled by them. Trump may be wrong, but if he turned out to be right, then those doctors have blood on their hands and people will have died that could have been saved, all in the name of partisan politics. Alternatively, the right is pushing a narrative that covid is “no big deal” because they dislike the authoritarian approach a government must inevitably have for a new, highly-infectious disease with no known cure. If that is the case, the right and “lockdown skeptics” are being dangerously ignorant of reality by downplaying the disease’s effects, and the left, conversely, is dangerous by exaggerating how dangerous. Sadly, because of the political situation, I don’t know who to believe, and it’s very frustrating.
And now here’s the part I’m more afraid to type because the left has far more power and influence on the Internet than the right: On the other side, though, we are now seeing widespread riots across the country based on a claim that America remains a country filled with systemic racism and white privilege. Just as with covid lockdown measures, no room for debate is given. “White silence is violence”. “If you say ‘all lives matter’ you’re complicit in the oppression” and other such phrases are all over Twitter and similar leftist-run websites (Facebook is also one, but it is more universal and is generally more allowing of conservative thought thanks to its ease of use and diverse userbase of both boomers and millennials). Historical figures are being lambasted and their legacies desecrated based on (sometimes) thin connections to racist sentiments that have been widely known and were common in their time period, in what I believe to be a concentrated effort by the self-proclaimed “trained Marxists” of the BLM movement, who have revenge and a complete overhaul of criminal justice in mind rather than equality or ethical policing, in contrast to the vast majority of peaceful protesters. Finally, cancel culture is seeing a resurgence and the erasure of people with the “wrong” beliefs is being justified by the left as an extension (I would say a gross perversion) of the free market. Left-wing sources of terrorism and extremism are swept under the rug and their existence is denied, while vague “white supremacist” groups are blamed for any violence that occurs during these riots, which is a broad and biased generalization of the various examples of violence by police or protesters that is likely occurring at each location, which is itself subjected to variables.
To clarify, my position on these issues is somewhere in the middle. I think that the masks work. I think it would be best for everyone to wear them until case numbers drop to zero or a very low number. But I also think that the hypocrisy seen by some people, usually on the left, about how “protesting is essential” but a church gathering of 100 is more dangerous than a protest, which may or may not turn into a riot of thousands, is less of a harbor for disease, will naturally lead to skepticism on the right about the left’s claims of what spreads covid and what doesn’t. Because of this, John McArthur’s reaction is natural, although I strongly disagree with it and believe he is endangering his life and everyone in his congregation.
I also believe that systemic racism and white privilege are real things…to an extent. I’m a white person in Mississippi who lives in Ridgeland and before the pandemic, spent a lot of time in Jackson. I am well aware of the divide in this state between the black and white populations. The churches I grew up in for a long time were always and still remain almost entirely white. Almost all of my education was done in schools that I would later find out were “segregation academies”, hence why they were both founded in 1965. White Christians in Mississippi live in a separate and unequal world along side black Christians in Mississippi. In other parts of the country, things are likely different or at least less extreme, but I can completely understand the difference between narratives going on right now between “White Christian America” and “Black Christian America”. It’s sad that there are in fact, two different “Christian Americas”. And if we go by types of Christian beliefs (Liturgical, Evangelical, and “Mainline”) we can divide “White Christian America” into three more groups. In that sense, “White Evangelical Christian America”, I believe, as a group, recognizes how bad racism is, but can only do so much about it without “Black Christian America’s” help. But for that to happen, “Black Christian America” must be willing to forgive the perpetrators like Derek Chauvin–not an easy task–and not see all of “White Christian America” as a potential enemy. Declaring that statues of Jesus where He is inaccurately depicted as white only furthers hostilities. It does not heal. I’m not black, but I do know what it’s like to be mad about perceived injustices. Anger feels good and it makes you feel powerful and in control. But it’s fake and unhealthy and unjustified, and it can spring from unchecked anger, even “righteous anger”. A business should not be destroyed because someone else was unjustly killed, or even if several people are unjustly killed. I don’t have a solution to the problem of racism in America, but the secular solutions being promoted by the BLM group will not work, and neither will the current narrative, that all white people, by not joining the side or adopting the viewpoints of BLM, are against them in the struggle to defeat racism and make America just and equal for black people. In the real world, people can have disagreements about things, like whether or not it’s a good idea to “abolish” the police (idiotic) or simply “defund” them (something which can and should be debated rather than carried out as methods of appeasing a mob).
Finally, there’s a new narrative that the right is pushing lately, that of human trafficking. For those not in the know, Wayfair has been alleged of not-so-subtly engaging in trafficking young girls. But so far, the evidence against them can still be seen as a series of coincidences and conspiracies. Given that the pandemic is going around, many right-leaning Christians are now accusing the general establishment of authority figures–fact checkers, government officials, media personalities, and basically anyone prominent in society–of ignoring this just as they allowed Jeffery Epstein to be killed (at this point, it is very unlikely that he killed himself) so that he could not reveal who was involved with him. Very quickly, Snopes, a notorious and unreliable left-leaning fact-checking website, immediately set up a case against the idea of Wayfair having engaged in human trafficking. I read their “Fact-check” and white they made some good points not raised by their accusers, I can’t be sure if Snopes is telling the truth. Fact-checking websites do a very good job of taking existing facts and manipulating them into pushing the narrative that they desire, but they only do this for political purposes. So Snopes is reliable if you’re going to look up what they say about Bigfoot sightings or alien abductions, but not any claim they have determined they can manipulate into being “partly false” or “partly true”. So while they will freely admit if an alleged tweet being shared that Trump sent years before becoming president is fake or not (this has happened often), they will seize upon any attempt they can to promote a left-wing narrative. The same can be said for left-leaning media outlets.
At the moment, I don’t know if Wayfair is engaged in human trafficking. I don’t know who among those that associated with Jeffrey Epstein are guilty of unspeakable crimes. It is unethical to make accusations without evidence and unwise to engage in conspiracy theories. But make no mistake: wherever powerful organizations take place, sexual abuse DOES occur. We’ve seen it in Hollywood, in the Catholic Church, and if it occurs among members of the “global elite” we should be horrified, but not surprised. I just don’t know if Wayfair is responsible for it. I’d imagine if it was actually happening, the group responsible would cover up their tracks much better.
All of these events and narratives, despite attempts to link them together, really have nothing to do with each other. They are separate problems with separate causes (aside from original sin being the ancestor of all that is wrong with the world, although I’ve heard it argued that diseases are not part of that, but I digress) and require separate solutions to solve. And I believe it is unproductive to consider one “even worse” than the other or “the real problem”. The real problem is partisanship, conflict and hatred. The real problem is humanity’s natural distrust of one another.
So, in conclusion, be aware of the many narratives out there that exist to compete with each other, and don’t believe everything you hear. Be very careful about what you are led to believe by others, and rely on God and His Word as the only source of objective truth. All else is subject to error.
News and Scoot: Dueling narratives
Especially during this pandemic (and other unrelated but co-occurring events), I’ve noticed this very disturbing trend of how there are seems to be a war between left and right-leaning information sources. Two different narratives are being pushed and many well-meaning and good people are believing in one or the other. These two narratives oppose each other and assume the other one will destroy the country.
Make no mistake: there are, in fact, people on both sides with agendas who want to alter the country and the world in ways that will adversely affect other people. Some of them can rightly be called evil because they promote evil and immorality. But there are many, many more on both sides who believe they are crusaders for the truth in an age that promotes subjectivity and postmodern thought.
I think the whole concept of “fake news” (although it is debated as to whether this is even real, but at the moment I’m using this to refer to allegations by one side that the other side is deliberately spreading misinformation) is the culmination of decades of postmodern “subjective morality” promoted by secular culture. I would argue that the left has contributed to this far more, and now that Trump, a right-leaning figure, has adopted it, they have suddenly regretted that their political ancestors did so. But now both sides are engaged in this phenomenon equally.
To make matters worse, these dueling narratives are starting to have real-world consequences. At-risk people are dying from Covid because they didn’t wear a mask, thinking that the whole concept of a lockdown was an authoritarian regime testing how well it could assert itself. Even otherwise discerning theologians like John McArthur are seeing the lockdown as persecution against Christians, and the faithful will likely see dire consequences, especially if they don’t try and do anything else to prevent getting Covid under the assumption that it is ineffective or that getting this disease is inevitable, and they personally will survive.
While I disagree with this idea and it puts me at odds with many of my fellow conservatives who seemed to have adopted it, I don’t blame them for thinking this way. Health experts and organizations, not just political leadership, were incompetent at the start of this outbreak and have let the public down. The WHO erroneously claimed in January (and their tweet is archived somewhere, regardless of what Facebook may say about this post) that covid could NOT spread from person to person. That was incorrect, as we later found out. They also claimed that masks were not needed for the general population, only for healthcare workers and those who were already sick. This was also incorrect, and now we understand how quickly and easily this virus spreads among people who have been infected but initially appear to have no symptoms. Wrong information was touted as fact only to be correct later. How many cases and deaths could have been prevented if the WHO had not been so eager to establish themselves as an infallible authority of truth? With this in mind, I don’t blame “lockdown skeptics”, and I think their concerns about mental health and the economy are not unfounded at all. The post-pandemic world will return us to normal, but psychological and economic recovery will take some time to heal, just as it took Europe some time to heal after WWII.
At the moment, right-leaning lockdown skeptics are becoming impatient. Recently a video has been circulating where a team of “America’s frontline doctors” are claiming that hydroxychloroquine is, in fact, a cure for covid, and that the medical establishment is hiding this. Youtube, Twitter and Facebook have done their part to suppress this information and remove this video. And a trip to any left-leaning news outlet shows that each “doctor” speaking has some strike against their reputation or some sort of dubiousness to them. What is especially critical here that the article I looked repeatedly said “We could not reach [doctor] for comment”. “Could not” or “Would not”? I unfortunately only have the claims of these leftist sites to go by. Are these doctors correct, and has hydroxychloroquine been effective in treating covid? Unfortunately, I cannot tell for sure. Trump, many months ago, suggested it as a potential treatment for covid. Many medical experts immediately dismissed him. Then, however, some studies began to indicate that the drug DID, in fact, work against covid. Then other studies appeared to say that it did not.
All of that left me wondering “Was Trump actually wrong? Or did the doctors immediately deny he was right because they did not want a president whom they oppose for political or personal reasons to be right and them to be wrong?” No one likes it when someone they hate is right about anything, and in this age of partisanship, many “medical experts” and people in the “global elite” and “establishments” hate Trump because he cannot be controlled by them. Trump may be wrong, but if he turned out to be right, then those doctors have blood on their hands and people will have died that could have been saved, all in the name of partisan politics. Alternatively, the right is pushing a narrative that covid is “no big deal” because they dislike the authoritarian approach a government must inevitably have for a new, highly-infectious disease with no known cure. If that is the case, the right and “lockdown skeptics” are being dangerously ignorant of reality by downplaying the disease’s effects, and the left, conversely, is dangerous by exaggerating how dangerous. Sadly, because of the political situation, I don’t know who to believe, and it’s very frustrating.
And now here’s the part I’m more afraid to type because the left has far more power and influence on the Internet than the right: On the other side, though, we are now seeing widespread riots across the country based on a claim that America remains a country filled with systemic racism and white privilege. Just as with covid lockdown measures, no room for debate is given. “White silence is violence”. “If you say ‘all lives matter’ you’re complicit in the oppression” and other such phrases are all over Twitter and similar leftist-run websites (Facebook is also one, but it is more universal and is generally more allowing of conservative thought thanks to its ease of use and diverse userbase of both boomers and millennials). Historical figures are being lambasted and their legacies desecrated based on (sometimes) thin connections to racist sentiments that have been widely known and were common in their time period, in what I believe to be a concentrated effort by the self-proclaimed “trained Marxists” of the BLM movement, who have revenge and a complete overhaul of criminal justice in mind rather than equality or ethical policing, in contrast to the vast majority of peaceful protesters. Finally, cancel culture is seeing a resurgence and the erasure of people with the “wrong” beliefs is being justified by the left as an extension (I would say a gross perversion) of the free market. Left-wing sources of terrorism and extremism are swept under the rug and their existence is denied, while vague “white supremacist” groups are blamed for any violence that occurs during these riots, which is a broad and biased generalization of the various examples of violence by police or protesters that is likely occurring at each location, which is itself subjected to variables.
To clarify, my position on these issues is somewhere in the middle. I think that the masks work. I think it would be best for everyone to wear them until case numbers drop to zero or a very low number. But I also think that the hypocrisy seen by some people, usually on the left, about how “protesting is essential” but a church gathering of 100 is more dangerous than a protest, which may or may not turn into a riot of thousands, is less of a harbor for disease, will naturally lead to skepticism on the right about the left’s claims of what spreads covid and what doesn’t. Because of this, John McArthur’s reaction is natural, although I strongly disagree with it and believe he is endangering his life and everyone in his congregation.
I also believe that systemic racism and white privilege are real things…to an extent. I’m a white person in Mississippi who lives in Ridgeland and before the pandemic, spent a lot of time in Jackson. I am well aware of the divide in this state between the black and white populations. The churches I grew up in for a long time were always and still remain almost entirely white. Almost all of my education was done in schools that I would later find out were “segregation academies”, hence why they were both founded in 1965. White Christians in Mississippi live in a separate and unequal world along side black Christians in Mississippi. In other parts of the country, things are likely different or at least less extreme, but I can completely understand the difference between narratives going on right now between “White Christian America” and “Black Christian America”. It’s sad that there are in fact, two different “Christian Americas”. And if we go by types of Christian beliefs (Liturgical, Evangelical, and “Mainline”) we can divide “White Christian America” into three more groups. In that sense, “White Evangelical Christian America”, I believe, as a group, recognizes how bad racism is, but can only do so much about it without “Black Christian America’s” help. But for that to happen, “Black Christian America” must be willing to forgive the perpetrators like Derek Chauvin–not an easy task–and not see all of “White Christian America” as a potential enemy. Declaring that statues of Jesus where He is inaccurately depicted as white only furthers hostilities. It does not heal. I’m not black, but I do know what it’s like to be mad about perceived injustices. Anger feels good and it makes you feel powerful and in control. But it’s fake and unhealthy and unjustified, and it can spring from unchecked anger, even “righteous anger”. A business should not be destroyed because someone else was unjustly killed, or even if several people are unjustly killed. I don’t have a solution to the problem of racism in America, but the secular solutions being promoted by the BLM group will not work, and neither will the current narrative, that all white people, by not joining the side or adopting the viewpoints of BLM, are against them in the struggle to defeat racism and make America just and equal for black people. In the real world, people can have disagreements about things, like whether or not it’s a good idea to “abolish” the police (idiotic) or simply “defund” them (something which can and should be debated rather than carried out as methods of appeasing a mob).
Finally, there’s a new narrative that the right is pushing lately, that of human trafficking. For those not in the know, Wayfair has been alleged of not-so-subtly engaging in trafficking young girls. But so far, the evidence against them can still be seen as a series of coincidences and conspiracies. Given that the pandemic is going around, many right-leaning Christians are now accusing the general establishment of authority figures–fact checkers, government officials, media personalities, and basically anyone prominent in society–of ignoring this just as they allowed Jeffery Epstein to be killed (at this point, it is very unlikely that he killed himself) so that he could not reveal who was involved with him. Very quickly, Snopes, a notorious and unreliable left-leaning fact-checking website, immediately set up a case against the idea of Wayfair having engaged in human trafficking. I read their “Fact-check” and white they made some good points not raised by their accusers, I can’t be sure if Snopes is telling the truth. Fact-checking websites do a very good job of taking existing facts and manipulating them into pushing the narrative that they desire, but they only do this for political purposes. So Snopes is reliable if you’re going to look up what they say about Bigfoot sightings or alien abductions, but not any claim they have determined they can manipulate into being “partly false” or “partly true”. So while they will freely admit if an alleged tweet being shared that Trump sent years before becoming president is fake or not (this has happened often), they will seize upon any attempt they can to promote a left-wing narrative. The same can be said for left-leaning media outlets.
At the moment, I don’t know if Wayfair is engaged in human trafficking. I don’t know who among those that associated with Jeffrey Epstein are guilty of unspeakable crimes. It is unethical to make accusations without evidence and unwise to engage in conspiracy theories. But make no mistake: wherever powerful organizations take place, sexual abuse DOES occur. We’ve seen it in Hollywood, in the Catholic Church, and if it occurs among members of the “global elite” we should be horrified, but not surprised. I just don’t know if Wayfair is responsible for it. I’d imagine if it was actually happening, the group responsible would cover up their tracks much better.
All of these events and narratives, despite attempts to link them together, really have nothing to do with each other. They are separate problems with separate causes (aside from original sin being the ancestor of all that is wrong with the world, although I’ve heard it argued that diseases are not part of that, but I digress) and require separate solutions to solve. And I believe it is unproductive to consider one “even worse” than the other or “the real problem”. The real problem is partisanship, conflict and hatred. The real problem is humanity’s natural distrust of one another.
So, in conclusion, be aware of the many narratives out there that exist to compete with each other, and don’t believe everything you hear. Be very careful about what you are led to believe by others, and rely on God and His Word as the only source of objective truth. All else is subject to error.
News and Scoot: Dueling narratives
