This is your finest essay to date, Robert, and that’s saying something. The truth of your words left me in tears of admiration but also of fear and desperation. I kept thinking of the many biblical and historical parallels. I kept thinking, for example, of This Land Is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943). It’s about the cost of truth. Charles Laughton plays a very wise but very meek schoolteacher “somewhere” in Europe under Nazi occupation. Almost everyone in the small town—including his mother—finds it expedient, let alone prudent, to cooperate with the occupiers or at least not to invite “trouble.” In case you haven’t seen this movie, a deeply “moving” movie, I won’t tell you how it ends. A similar movie from the same period is The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage, 1940). But there were many, many, more.
I do think that there’s one significant difference between the Church’s persecution of dissenters (including scientists) and the woke persecution of dissenters (including scientists). The earlier persecution, no matter how lamentable, was a defensive measure. By the time of Galileo, for instance, the Reformation was already underway. It was a time of radical change, theologically but also politically and every other way. There had never been a secular state. No one knew how to maintain order without the only known source of order. The threat of chaos, whatever they called it, was a real one. But the current persecution, that of wokism, is one of unmitigated aggression. The wokers want dissolution. They want to destroy the university, the state, the family, and every other institution. They want to destroy the intellectual and even the moral foundation of society. Although they sometimes refer vaguely to a future utopia, as if the end could justify the means, their strategy for the present is entirely and self-consciously
Actually, I'm in my 5th hour of LiveChat TODAY with xfinity, trying to get my phone number restored. Altogether, it has been 35 hours of LiveChat on the issue. I'm on my 9th agent TODAY...over 25 since I started. And the problem was created when some xfinity agent, without my intention, knowledge or agreement, cancelled my phone service! It was a complete mistake and they are incredibly incompetent.
This is your finest essay to date, Robert, and that’s saying something. The truth of your words left me in tears of admiration but also of fear and desperation. I kept thinking of the many biblical and historical parallels. I kept thinking, for example, of This Land Is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943). It’s about the cost of truth. Charles Laughton plays a very wise but very meek schoolteacher “somewhere” in Europe under Nazi occupation. Almost everyone in the small town—including his mother—finds it expedient, let alone prudent, to cooperate with the occupiers or at least not to invite “trouble.” In case you haven’t seen this movie, a deeply “moving” movie, I won’t tell you how it ends. A similar movie from the same period is The Mortal Storm (Frank Borzage, 1940). But there were many, many, more.
I do think that there’s one significant difference between the Church’s persecution of dissenters (including scientists) and the woke persecution of dissenters (including scientists). The earlier persecution, no matter how lamentable, was a defensive measure. By the time of Galileo, for instance, the Reformation was already underway. It was a time of radical change, theologically but also politically and every other way. There had never been a secular state. No one knew how to maintain order without the only known source of order. The threat of chaos, whatever they called it, was a real one. But the current persecution, that of wokism, is one of unmitigated aggression. The wokers want dissolution. They want to destroy the university, the state, the family, and every other institution. They want to destroy the intellectual and even the moral foundation of society. Although they sometimes refer vaguely to a future utopia, as if the end could justify the means, their strategy for the present is entirely and self-consciously
Actually, I'm in my 5th hour of LiveChat TODAY with xfinity, trying to get my phone number restored. Altogether, it has been 35 hours of LiveChat on the issue. I'm on my 9th agent TODAY...over 25 since I started. And the problem was created when some xfinity agent, without my intention, knowledge or agreement, cancelled my phone service! It was a complete mistake and they are incredibly incompetent.
But, my son is still here and life is good.
Hope all is well with YOU. I love your writing.
All my best, Fred
This is great! I just posted it on Facebook!