THE COMMAND WAS EMPHATIC. She heard and understood it loud and clear. The year was 1141.
“Write what you see and hear.”
According to Mirabai Starr, the voice identified itself as “the Living Light.”
It said, “Oh mortal, who receives these things not in the turbulence of deception but in the purity of simplicity for making plain the things that are hidden, write what you see and hear.”
These voices and visions had been messing around with her head for years since Hildegard of Bingen was a sickly girl. But in that year she took them to heart and went on the road.
Starr, in her own way, is doing so: “We are not all prophets,” she writes. “It may not be our job to challenge authority and expose corruption. We may not be the ones to penetrate the code of sacred scriptures and feed the spiritually hungry. It may be up to others to sound the clarion call of impending doom, calling on humanity to change its ways.
“Ours may be a modest awakening,” Starr says. “We may simply refuse to participate for another moment in a life against which our hearts have been crying out for years.”
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Okay, that’s “religious.” It’s from the Center for Action and Contemplation, a Franciscan outfit based in New Mexico. And Starr is, it says here, a “spiritual teacher.” So let’s get back to the real world.
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The real world includes the top editorial in today’s Springfield Republican, headed, slightly ungrammatically, ”Can citizenry overcome the ‘infodemic?’”
Readers are treated to nine paragraphs of warnings against “conspiracy theories, misinformation, and downright falsehoods perpetuated by social media.”
The writer resorts to ad hominem rhetoric and half-truths. Trusts the Pew Research Center (a self-described “non-partisan fact tank”). Lampoons the recommendation of a Houston physician who advocates hydroxychloroquine as part of a cure for Covid-19. Assures readers that the remedy “was debunked by doctors after Trump made claims of its usefulness … weeks ago.”
In other words, stay away from any physician thinking there’s a use for hydroxychloroquine, ever, to save a patient from death or severe illness? Take it from the Republican, a solidly mainstream organ that takes comfort in a Pew poll that only “one in five get their political news primarily through social media.”
“Twitter and other social media platforms must live up to their pledge to remove ridiculous theories,” the Republican counsels. “As the virus continues to spread, we can only hope that the actions of reasonable people will win out over conspiracy-minded believers.”
I.e., physicians, even apart from the pilloried Dr. Immanuel of Houston, who see a legitimate use for hydroxychloroquine against Covid-19 are unreasonable—and perhaps should lose their licenses? Are they all conspiracy-minded (CIA-speak for unhinged)? Is there any merit to these physicians’ willing to endanger their careers and reputations by differing with the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control? Who are these loonies anyway, and how many are out there anyway?
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This just in. A CNN report today from Brazil corroborates the Republican’s view that hydroxychloroquine is for the birds when used to fight Covid-19. It’s “a distraction … it just does not work” the correspondent assures, citing “study after study.”
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Also today …
Is former Vice President Joe Biden up to functioning ably as president or even lasting through a successful campaign into November as the Democrats’ standard bearer? James Howard Kunstler has his doubts. But take his opinions with a grain of salt. He is, after all, a mere maven of the blogosphere and hence not a trustworthy or reliable. Proceed with caution HERE.
WARNING: From three days ago, here’s a view on hydroxychloroquine by Paul Craig Roberts that is incompatible with today’s Republican editorial on the “infodemic” of misinformation on the coronavirus front. Readers who are overcome by cognitive dissonance should sit down and have a tall glass of water. Then continue reading.
And today’s blog entry by Caitlin Johnstone coaches her readers, as she has in the past, in some ways to get their “dissident ideas heard in the new media environment.” After all, she reasons, the mainstream media “have betrayed humanity to an unforgivable extent.” What to do?
“You know,” she asks, “all that space mass media reporters take up in society’s awareness proclaiming what’s true and what’s going on in the world? That’s your space. They usurped it. Take it back from them. … We must move into that space, and use our collective voices to cripple the establishment propaganda machine.”
This is diametrically opposed, in tone and content, to the Springfield Republican’s editorial today, which provides a good reason to take her advice.
— Mark Channing Miller