After The Twitter Tiger

      The poor old Duckie, Donald the failed Duce, is looking like a Twitter Tiger now, without whatever it takes to become a proper fascist. It is amazing that so much of his presence could be simply turned off at the click of a mouse. I wonder however whether it is wise to take this as the last word on the matter. He may be pretty scattered himself, but the depth of his support should at least give cause for caution in completely writing him and his followers off, particularly if the latter come up with a more focussed and competant leader. 

     Like so much that is false, Trumpism nonetheless thrived on a few sparks of insight that the world, and particularly America, finds difficult to acknowledge. The first and biggest is that the old ideal of The City on a Hill is widely  discredited,  even in the subconscious of those who profess it, pace Barack Obama, whose tome A Promised Land I am currently reading. I note that the biggest set-backs that Obama encountered in his campaign were when questions bubbled up from the Black experience regarding the self-image of Americans as a Chosen Race; when Michelle blurted out that she was 'proud of her country, for the first time in her adult life', or when Barack's old pastor said that 9/11 was in part 'a matter of America's chickens... coming home to roost', - referring to 'our record of wanton violence overseas'. Even the Ducky in his presidential campaign averred that America's military interventions overseas hardly qualified as success stories.     

     What the USA in fact stands for in many minds is MONEY more than anything else, so there was a certain relief when that guy came along saying it out aloud, relieving the folks of their sense of guilt when he stood before his golden gates saying, Behold, I'm Mr Money, or even better, 'The King of Debt', and what's more, America first,-I'm here to unapologetically put YOU first'! After all that idealism of Barack Obama, which one might dismiss as a lot of hot air, it was a relief to get real again!

     If the Ducky had been left in peace to tickle up the feel-good factor of Americans, he would have been re-elected. It's the pandemic that popped that bubble. Yet even here, there is a strand in his narrative that scores. He was mad to call it a hoax, and I do not wish to imply that in the practical reality we are faced with lockdowns are not a necessary response, yet there is something that seems very wrong with them in practice, some element of a death wish. One obvious example of it is the fact of all these old people having to die in isolation, cutting across every human instinct (especially Irish ones). Beyond this is the horrible uneasy feeling that we are witnessing the onset of a ghastly totalitarianism, which is buttressed by the conviction some of us have, that when society loses touch with God, it inevitably falls prey to some kind of thralldom.

      A more immediate and empirical conviction is that the pandemic could have been tackled much more promptly and effectively were it not for willful mass blindness to the possibilities of homoeopathy. This goes back to the dawn of the 'scientific age' in the mid 19th century, when the 'gentlemen of the Medical Council' suppressed the results, strongly favouring homoeopathy, of a Government survey of the effectiveness of the treatment administered to cholera victims in the various London hospitals. In response to a parliamentary question, they unanimously asserted that 'That by introducing the returns of homoeopathic practitioners, they would not only compromise the value and utility of their averages of cure, as deduced from the operation of known remedies, but they would give an unjustifiable sanction to an empirical practice alike opposed to the maintenance of truth and to the progress of science'.*  

     There are none so blind as them that will not see! The pity is that these attitudes have not changed, while science has moved on to the extent that, in the age of quantum physics, there is the possibility of a better understanding of homoeopathy. However I readily admit to being scientifically illiterate, which probably has helped me to appreciate a good thing when I see it. I looked over Fiona's shoulder for years as she studied homoeopathy, practised for a while and used it en famille. Since I was diagnosed with prostate cancer last autumn, I have been using it myself, and am fairly confident of success. I admit however that we are sailing in the dark, and I learned long ago that the first rule of navigation is to consider the possibility that one might be wrong. I have difficulty, however, in persuading the medics to do the same!

     So to get back to where we started, for all the indignation about the Ducky these days, let us remember that but for the pandemic, we would probably be facing another Trump presidency. Much will depend, for President Biden, on how it goes now. Will the vaccine cavalry in fact ride to the rescue? Anyway, whatever did happen to 'Yes We Can'  and all that? Is there a torch that can be raised aloft again? What went wrong and how can America, and the rest of us, avoid being dragged, deeper, into the same old cycle? Will the Biden Presidency help rid us on this side of the Atlantic of the mendacious vandals of Brexit? And will we finally be able to walk the walk with regard to climate change?

     It is true of course that money talks, especially in American politics. One of the exhilarating features of the Obama presidency was that the underdogs appeared to be getting the better of the plutocrats. One did not have to be black to feel that. However, I think, if one wants to see the values of a Promised Land prevail, there are certain mistakes that the Democrats should not make again, possibly on account of big money too (from Planned Parenthood for instance), such as championing especially partial-birth abortion, which is impossible for many of us to distinguish from infanticide. It would almost make me vote Republican, if I were American. Why not do the right thing, and stop handing good ammo to the other side?

     Beyond this, there is a further reason why that famous flame of Liberty has nearly been  blown out. As St Peter said, 'God does not have favourites'. The real Promised Land is not the property of any nation, tribe or language, or even political party. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the poor, the hungry, the rejected, vulnerable and homeless. If President Biden can remember this, he should do ok. If the Republicans only remembered it, they might be a respectable party again. May they all succeed in reuniting their country, in humility though, without jingoism of any kind. Joe Biden is stepping off on a good note. For now at least, I wish the new President well!

 

God Bless President Biden, from the other side of the Atlantic (looking West from the Priest's Strand, Sherkin Island}!

     

*Click here for article from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 

     

Sorry Doc, I won't be taking the Vaccination.

 Sorry Doc, I won’t be taking the vaccination! The question is bound to come sooner or later. I shall seize the bull by the horns and set down in writing some of the reasons why this will be my answer, and in the process attempt to answer another question that comes my way now and again,- what do you think about this pandemic?

‘Science’ of course is supposed to answer such questions for us. Politicians and everybody else are generally expected to defer to her dictats. However there are in the case of the pandemic the mainline scientists, whose general approach is that we must fight Covid with lockdowns etc until the vaccines deliver us from it, and the fringe 'loonies' who insist that lockdowns are in fact counterproductive* and sometimes even dare to question the efficacy of vaccines. I cannot begin to pretend to get my head around charts and facts and figures, so how do I set about establishing my own position in any kind of a rational way? 

I cast around for experts whom I deem genuinely capable of setting aside their own opinions and drilling into the data to find out what stands up. It is a tall order. Meanwhile, for my part, I can only make a start by reviewing what I have gleaned from my own journey. I am allergic to endlessly sparring over ‘facts’; in the end one does have to situate the problem within whatever wider frames of reference one has managed to establish, while the test of integrity is our willingness to painfully interrogate them.

I have strayed from the question,- what about that vaccination? It’s not a new problem. My doctor has been trying to get me to take a ‘flu jab for some years. I pointed out that I knew several people who had had the jab and still had ‘flu. One exasperated response to my refusal was ‘well don’t come to me when you get pneumonia!’ He's a good man though, taking my jybes in good heart, and as for the medical 'industry' as I am tempted to call it, I recognise that there are many good people in it, and also that there are times when, like the Fire Brigade, they are vital.

 

Yet as it happens I have so far neither caught the ‘flu nor had pneumonia, though I do generally get a bad cold around the turn of the year that sometimes threatens to get on my chest, but which Fiona’s home brand of medicine - mostly homoeopathy and diet - has so far always coped with. Yet for a start, we do not ‘fight’ it, but rather regard it as a kind of annual revamp of our immune set-up, like training a horse to jump fences. It is one of the big theoretical objections to vaccinations, that they bypass and rather sabotage the natural workings of our immune systems. Are we supposed to get yet another jab for every kind of virus that comes at us?

There is the question mark over these substances that we fire into our veins so blithely. Neither the manufacturers nor their insurance companies are prepared to stand over them, and they insist on governments taking the responsibility for any ‘complications’. It is anyway of course very hard to actually prove when the vaccines are to blame. In the case of the swine ‘flu vaccine, it took ten years and much effort to pin the blame for narcolepsy on it, to the extent that the Irish Government had to pay compensation, though GSK still refuses to accept responsibility. The fact that the current crop of vaccines has been turned out under massive pressure does not augur well.

In the case of the pandemic, what is the alternative to ‘fighting’ it with lockdowns and vaccines? Pandemics in the past, though like the ‘Spanish ‘flu’ they were sometimes much more deadly, nonetheless passed eventually. Meanwhile, supposing we seriously take a look at ourselves and ask whether the ‘fighting’ posture is the best one? After all, in the cause of ‘security’, our leading nations are apparently willing to expend astronomical sums on weapons that would wreak unimaginable havoc, death and destruction, in a completely different order of magnitude to this pandemic. They do not exactly achieve peace. The attitude to health, out of the same stable, gets through vast sums of money forever ‘fighting’ this and that, without actually being very successful at building a healthy world.

There is a pattern of whacking molehills to be discerned. We wallop dis-ease in one form and it erupts in another; and of course we tend to forget that everything is interconnected, on psychic, physical, social, economic and spiritual levels. Supposing we ask ourselves, might the pandemic be trying to tell us something, even to help us respond to much greater threats? Might it have something to teach us? Let us look at it holistically. It is possible that Covid19 could have been brought under control months ago with homoeopathic prophylactics.**

Beyond this, were there by any chance apparently unconnected signs in differing modes that our way of living was unsustainable and in the gravest danger of breaking down? Had we any personal indications of the need to slow down, consolidate, integrate the various facets of life into something sustainable? ‘Progress’, profit, GDP, the very 'scientific worldview' have broken down as yardsticks by which to pace our lives.

In many ways we clearly need to go backwards, for an immediate and particular example, with regard to things like heating this house, in which we are fine and cosy after a long and painful change from dependence on large amounts of oil to warming ourselves mainly with two wood stoves. Such a move needs to happen, of course, in tandem with efforts to improve insulation and avoid the need for excessive heating. We might even need to wear thick clothes in the winter, instead of T-shirts!

Both Chimneys in Action.

There’s a lot of work involved in tending them in this cold weather, not to mention in the cutting and curing of firewood, but actually I enjoy it. No better exercise than cutting and splitting logs, and I even enjoy the little ritual first thing in the morning of kindling the embers for the stove in the west room, which stays in all night and heats those few of the old radiators that I have kept. It’s a great occasion for that prayer to the Holy Spirit,- Come Holy Spirit, kindle within us the fire of thy love; send forth thy spirit and we shall be recreated, and thou shalt renew the face of the Earth!’

Nothing reveals our need for renewal more clearly than the general paucity of ritual these days, reduced as it so often is to banal things like football. Ritual is the human way of pulling our lives together, in  the interaction of meaning and community. Again, we need to take a step or two backward in order to go forward; but can we call this renewal a matter of ‘making progress’ at all? I scratch my head trying to think of another word. I can only think of an old English West Country sailor's term for making headway against the wind - winnin’ . So that’s the best I can wish for you this New Year,- may you be a-winnin’!

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_vAQyVlXzU&t=10s

**Preliminary results have emerged from the use of homeopathic immunisation (Homeopathic Prophylactic) in nearly half of the Cuban population. The Cuban government has utilised HP since 2007 to successfully control diseases such as leptospirosis, cholera, dengue, hepatitis and now COVID19. The effectiveness of their COVID19 HP is around 90%, which is totally consistent with the results from HP interventions in tens of millions of people worldwide. - Irish Society of Homoeopaths, 14/12/20