Cataclysmic and Calamitous Times

Lately, every time I set out to write about something deeper and principle-based, I get distracted by the crazy news. I’ll try to tie this into something eternal in the end.

The cataclysmic news this week includes—well, let’s start with a massive hurricane.

Hurricane Helene, image from here

 

Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene, which hit the Florida panhandle as a category 4 storm a week ago, caused widespread devastation across 10-12 states. Some areas had 30 inches of rain—much of it before the storm actually arrived, so mudslides were a common outcome. The death toll is still unknown; compared to catastrophes in some third-world countries, deaths are low, but there are still a lot of missing people, maybe thousands. This may be the most devastating storm since Katrina. (I believe Hurricane Harvey was as devasting, with more than 50 inches of rain, as the storm stalled over Houston for days, but it was milder once it moved on to other areas.)

A bridge out near Ashville, North Carolina,
photo from here.

Communications, roads, water, and electricity are out—some of this may be long-term. Pack mules are being used to bring in supplies, which I thought was fascinating. If we ever get stuck in a pre-industrial situation, there are pack mules. This was probably common a century and a half ago, but now I see it as a rare and inventive solution.

Pack mule teams to the rescue,
image found here.

Churches (here’s one story; here’s another) and individuals are working together to bring relief. Glenn Beck talks about the Hillbilly Airforce (similar to the Cajun Navy, citizen volunteers from Louisiana that helped us out in Houston with Hurricane Harvey), in this story:

·        "What Glenn saw while helping hurricane victims in Asheville SHOCKED him” October 4, 2024.

He was there helping organize airlifting people in need. Government tried to shut them down. The people, who had organized themselves and found people with helicopters to come and volunteer, told the government guys, since they weren’t there to help, to get out of the way: “Get off our land!”

Glenn saw one FEMA truck, behind a building. The US Rep. he was with went with him to talk to them. It was a communications truck. The workers were sitting around playing cards or something, doing nothing. Glenn said almost nothing, to avoid lighting into them. There are government resources at military bases as close as North Carolina. Meanwhile, Kamala continues fundraising and avoiding media appearances, while the so-called president “commands forces” from a beach in Delaware.

FEMA has instituted a priority system, based on DEI dogma. A poor white Appalachian child cannot be prioritized over a suburban black, because of, you know, privilege.

Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity starts off a brief video with, “Welcome to the quickening.” Maybe that refers to how fast news is coming at us, or maybe it’s an end times reference. But he, as I am doing, will talk about several big news stories: the hurricane and lack of response, the port strike (which I mention below), and the unrest on the Israel/Lebanon border. This 10-minute segment is limited to the hurricane and response:

·      “Hurricane Helene and Government Inaction, Israel Invades, and Free Speech Under Attack” Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity, October 2, 2024.       

In the absence of true reporting and government distrust, there are some conspiracy theories about attempts at weather control—that either went awry or went as planned, not sure. I have no idea what may be true. I mention it, but I’ll need more information to become a believer. But I know enough not to put it past this current government regime.

Anyone who still trusts government—and turns to government as their substitute for God—may need an experience like this to wake up. Some note that, besides helping one another, the only place to turn is to God, and that is happening.

There’s another named storm, Kirk, out in the Atlantic. A fearmongering press suggested it might take the same trajectory as Helene. But my weather app shows it much further east (Helene came up from the Gulf in the south) and heading eastward; it may be possible that it will hit the UK or France, but it’s definitely not going to hit the east coast of the US. Still, it is not a storm you’d want to meet out on the waters.

 

Iran Attack on Israel

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Israel’s new year and high holy days season—which starts on a new moon, and also happened to coincide with an annular eclipse—Iran attacked Israel with a barrage of 180 missiles. (Iran claims it was over 200.) Most of the missiles were intercepted. A few hit in central Israel. Mostly administrative buildings were damaged, and some homes received shrapnel damage.

There were no deaths. A few people were treated with shrapnel wounds, mostly minor. Whatever else you might say, that outcome seems miraculous. As in biblically miraculous. There’s the prophecy of the two prophets raised up to Israel in the last days, who, according to Revelation 11:4-5:

“they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days [1260 days, or 3 ½ years] clothed in sackcloth….and if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.”

I don’t yet see the two witnesses. But it sure looks like someone is protecting Israel, so, if it’s them, we’re probably somewhere within those 1260 days.

Basic info is in this BBC News piece:

·       “What we know about Iran's missile attack on Israel” David Gritten, Matt Murphy, and Patrick Jackson, BBC News, October 3, 2024. 

 

Earthquake in Tonga

There was a 6.8 earthquake in Tonga on October 2. I’ve seen very little news concerning it. (There is a story here.) I’m remembering the 6.8 earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1989, just two months after we moved away from there. The Bay Bridge collapsed. Roads and rails were torn up, and there was widespread devastation. That’s a very big quake.

image from here

Fortunately, this quake in the island nation of Tonga was about 6 miles deep and did not cause a tsunami. The nearby islands felt the shock but did not suffer a great deal of damage.

But if you want to worry some more about earthquakes, there’s this story:

·       “Record spike in earthquakes around Washington's 'high threat' volcano” Ellyn Lapointe, Daily Mail, October 4, 2024. 

 

Vice Presidential Debate

There was a vice-presidential debate Tuesday night, October 1. “Catastrophe” is a word you might use, depending on which side you were on. J. D. Vance comported himself well, looked presidential and in control—dispelling the media lies about him being “weird” or unreasonable and angry. Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, looked like a wild-eyed and/or befuddled Elmer Fudd. Take just about any screenshot the entire debate. 

J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, VP debate,
random screenshot taken from a clip shown by Dan Bongino 

He badly fumbled such questions as why he claimed to be in Tiananmen Square during the riots when he was not there until months later—adding that to the list of stolen valor-type lies. He said something to the effect that his people know and understand him, and he’s sometimes a knucklehead. That’s really doesn’t explain why you would invent a story to give yourself credit for some particular experience that you didn’t have. The whole rest of the world has not gone, “Tiananmen Square, now was I there at that time when the government mowed down civilians in the street? I can’t quite remember.” Tim Walz is unique. In a bad way.

Another fumble—and this was a misspeak he didn’t seem to be aware of—was trying to explain his change from supporting the 2^nd Amendment to wanting gun control. He intended, I think, to refer to a conversation he had with parents of Sandy Hook victims, but he said he changed after talking to the shooters. Oops.

He was in the unenviable position of trying to explain why Kamala Harris would suddenly do everything right once elected—and be an agent of change—when she’s had the power to effect those changes for three and a half years so far. So, for him, and that side of the ballot, you could call the night memorably catastrophic.

 

Port Workers Strike

The hurricane aftermath, with roads wiped out and bridges collapsed, is going to cause some shipping problems. Quartz and lithium mines, necessary for making computer chips, are inaccessible for the foreseeable future. And people are going to prioritize getting food, water, and fuel. So the timing could hardly be better for a longshoreman strike all along the east coast, and even including the Port of Houston here. As I was writing, word came that they had settled for a sizable pay increase, or maybe have paused the strike until January.

Ports under threat of closure,
image found on Facebook.

Even with only a few days of buildup in the ports, the ripple effect could still take weeks to work back toward normal. The big concern for the overall economy was, if it lasted for as long as a couple of weeks, we could be feeling the effects on through Christmas, with even early orders not making it in time. This would have had a substantial impact on businesses, many of which plan on making a large percentage of their annual sales during the Christmas holiday season.

 

Avoiding Prophesied Calamities

A prophetic scripture came to mind: Doctrine & Covenants 88:87-91: 

87 For not many days hence and the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man; and the sun shall hide his face, and shall refuse to give light; and the moon shall be bathed in blood; and the stars shall become exceedingly angry, and shall cast themselves down as a fig that falleth from off a fig tree.

88 And after your testimony cometh wrath and indignation upon the people.

89 For after your testimony cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand.

90 And also cometh the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.

91 And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.

 Brigham Young put it this way: 

When the testimony of the Elders ceases to be given, and the Lord says to them, “Come home; I will now preach my own sermons to the nations of the earth,” all you now know can scarcely be called a preface to the sermon that will be preached with fire and sword, tempests, earthquakes, hail, rain, thunders and lightnings, and fearful destruction. What matters the destruction of a few railway cars? You will hear of magnificent cities, now idolized by the people, sinking in the earth, entombing the inhabitants. The sea will heave itself beyond its bounds, engulfing mighty cities. Famine will spread over the nations and nation will rise up against nation, kingdom against kingdom and states against states, in our own country and in foreign lands; and they will destroy each other, caring not for the blood and lives of their neighbors, of their families, or for their own lives (Discourses of Brigham Young, 111–12).

Dan Bongino has a T-shirt he sells that says, “Is it bad enough yet?” Some people read about apocalyptic times and think it is all going to be much worse than what we have seen, as if to say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” And, granted, the book of Revelation, among others, looks pretty scary in places. But for people in North Carolina and Tennessee right now, without roads, electricity, food supply, or communications, seeing entire cities wiped out by flood and mud, unable to reach loved ones to find out if one another has survived—for these people this is probably bad enough.

In Houston in 2017, with biblical downpours of rain, watching boats go up and down the water-filled streets to rescue people, we thought that was probably bad enough.

People in war-torn countries probably think what they’re facing is bad enough. People caught in human trafficking (more human slavery now than at any time when it was considered legal and acceptable, which included most of human history) probably think this is bad enough.

I thought things were bad enough in the 1990s, but then I was surprised by the 2000s. I was certain things were bad enough in the 2010s. Then 2020 came, when we began playing apocalypse bingo as we read the news.

A meme I saw in May 2020; I don't know the original source.

While it’s true we are often blessed in our personal lives, going on with things—as they did in the days of Noah, right up until it began to rain—that doesn’t mean the prophesied pouring out of desolations isn’t happening somewhere else in the world. And, because of our communications, we’re likely to hear about these things, wherever they happen.

Another prophecy warning outcome caught my attention this week. This is the next-to-last paragraph of The Family: A Proclamation to the World:

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

There is a way to forfend the foretold calamities; it is to strengthen personal families, and to strengthen the concept of Family within our communities. We should “promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society” (final paragraph of the Family Proclamation).

This is not to say that all those negatively affected by the hurricane and other catastrophes in the news have failed to support their families and Family in general. Some of the outpouring of desolations will rain down upon the just and the unjust. But, as God “preaches His own sermons to the nations of the earth,” He is saying, “Turn to Me.” If government has been your god, you can see what a puny, powerless god it is in such times. If you’ve been depending on your own strength and control, that doesn’t stand up well to the power of nature and Nature’s God.

A starting place is to honor family, to keep commitments to those we are closest to in love. And we support that for others as well. This may lead to the essential place: honoring God, through His Son Jesus Christ.

I recommend a couple of video conversations from this week, toward this end:

·       “General Relief Society President - Family Proclamation, 'Family Is The Doctrine Of Christ'” September 29, 2024  Greg Matson, CWIC Media, September 29, 2024. He repeats the point from of former general Relief Society President: to be anti-family is to be anti-Christ.

·        Stu Does America, September 26, 2024. Stu Burgiere talks with Ryan T. Anderson about the post Dobbs world of abortion. Anderson, with the benefit of much research on top of seeking moral ways of living, points out that people in general favor abortion in just three circumstances: when the life of the mother is at stake, as a result of rape or incest—and when it’s their personal situation (their own or their child’s). It’s that last one that is the problem. We need a people moral enough to prevent such circumstances whenever possible, and to face them when they show up even after all you could do.     

So, the way to avoid prophesied calamities is simple, if not easy: Turn to Christ, and share Him—by example and word—with your immediate family. And then share Him with your extended family, friends, and community. People who do that will get through these times. People who don’t have no such promise.

 

Year-End Review of the Spherical Model

It has become somewhat traditional for me to celebrate year ends by reminding readers of what the Spherical Model is. I tend to do this the end of December and in early March, which marks the time I started this blog in 2011. The Spherical Model is a new way of looking at ideas, in the three categories of political, economic, and social. This is an alternative to the left/right model, which is both arbitrary and inaccurate.

Also sometimes near the end of a year I’ll do a sort of “best of” post, or collections of posts that go together. Typically that would be posts related to the political, economic, or social spheres, plus maybe some related to education, or the courts. This year’s collections are possibly more topical. But that may be because the big news stories show the attacks on freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

So today I’ll share again a short reminder about what the Spherical Model is, and then I’ll show some of the ways that it applied to issues in the news this past year.

__________________

Back in 2004, during our homeschooling decade, I was looking for a way to explain political ideas. And I began to ask questions, like: Is there a better way of looking at political ideas than right or left?

Because there is nothing innately conservative about the right or innately liberal about the left. In fact, the directional terms come from the seating arrangement of European parliaments, in which conservatives favored retaining the monarchy while liberals were in favor of people’s power.

So the typical line model we use to describe political ideas as right and left is just a seating arrangement. Yet we’ve come to think of this line as a spectrum.

Political conversations tend to describe the far ends as extreme, assuming there’s some virtue in being balanced in the middle. And we refer to our nation as center right—just a little more conservative than exactly center.

But what are the extremes? Do we assume communism or socialism at the extreme left, and fascism at the extreme right?

That can’t be right, because communism and fascism are both totalitarian statist tyrannies, just slightly different flavors. Nazi means “national socialist party” and the communist Soviet Union’s name was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

So if Nazism and communism aren’t diametric opposites, then what are the logical extremes?

How about total government control, or tyranny, versus total lack of government control, or anarchy?

  

That’s better. Then freedom is that perfect balance in the middle.

But wait; there’s a problem with this model too: It’s common in history for people suffering in anarchy to turn for relief to total government control—anything for security. But in this model, as a people move to the left, they have to pass through that balanced freedom section. You’d think that it would be very common for someone to stop and say, “Hey, this freedom is good. Let’s stop going leftward and stay here.” Yet that pretty much never happens. But going directly from chaos to state control is historically common.

Plus, notice that there’s not that much difference between the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of anarchy. Total government control means the state has all the power—the police, the military. The state can do what it wants, and the mere citizen is without any rights except what the state decides to grant.

Anarchy, on the other hand, means that power belongs to whoever is stronger and meaner than the next guy. If you threaten to beat people up (or kill them) if they don’t give you all their belongings, and you’re strong enough to mean it, then you have power. If someone else is stronger or better armed than you are, then you have to yield power to them.

In other words, anarchy, while less organized, is power in the hands of the strongest and best armed—just like a tyrannical government.

So maybe government tyranny and anarchic tyranny are pretty close to the same thing. When I show this, I use a ribbon, labeled at the ends, and fold it in half, so it looks something like this:

 

Tyranny and freedom are really the opposite extremes.

Not bad. But it puts all those different kinds of tyrannies in the same location, and maybe there are differences.

A simple line doesn’t give us the dimensions we need.

So, how about if we use three dimensions—a sphere? If we draw a line at the equator, we can separate freedom (northern hemisphere) from tyranny (southern hemisphere). And then we can draw a longitudinal dividing line, with more local interests in the western hemisphere and larger interests—from state to nation, to international, in the eastern hemisphere.

I call this the Spherical Model.

The Political Sphere of the Spherical Model

Down in the south, you can see that one side of tyranny is the chaos of anarchy, and the other side is the totalitarian control of government tyranny. It’s easy to get from one to the other—which is what much of world history has shown us. You can have communism, socialism, and Nazism as separate patches in their quartersphere, based on how much control they exert on their people (southern direction), or how far they plan to expand (toward the eastward extreme of world domination).

Up north in the freedom zone, location is mostly a matter of whose interest. Free people don’t yield power to a governing authority beyond the appropriate interest. Families make their own decisions about the care, upbringing, and education of their children. Communities on up to cities and counties decide on local law enforcement and protection needs. States (or provinces) deal with their particular infrastructure and laws. Only very limited powers are granted to a nation—as are enumerated in the US Constitution. And that sovereignty would never yield to an international power, but would cooperate with other free sovereignties concerning international issues.

If we identify ideologies according to level of control exerted onto free people, and also their level of interest, we can identify location on the sphere. And that will tell us how close we are to thriving in the northern freedom zone.

We can use the spherical model again for economic ideas: the north will be the prosperity of free enterprise, and the south will be the poverty of controlled economy. Those differences have direct relationships with political ideologies, so we can overlay the economic sphere right over the political sphere and see how things interrelate.

And what about social ideologies? Again, we can use the same sphere; the north will be civilization, and the south will be savagery.

The Political Sphere, Economic Sphere, and Social Sphere 
of the Spherical Model

 

In all three overlaying spheres, the question becomes, not which is better, left of right? But what are the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization? There’s no too far north extreme; there’s only getting north enough and doing what it takes to stay there, generation after generation, without southward slipping.

______________

The political, economic, and social spheres all have their own set of principles for reaching true north. And those are the things we deal with in this blog. Here and there we identify these principles. I’ve listed them a few places—in the most detail on the website. And also these versions:

·         “The Basic Principles”—January 2, 2017 

·         “What Is the Spherical Model”—March 1, 2013

·         “Economic Sphere Basics”—March 4, 2013 

·         “Basics of the Civilization Sphere”—March 6, 2013 

·         “Economic Principles for Volatile Times”—August 27, 2015 

For practical use, I’ve written questions based on the Spherical Model, to ask political candidates—if you get a chance—to determine whether they’re aiming at the northern hemisphere or just trying to control the southern hemisphere. Since we’re Primary Election season right now, I recently added to the list, including a few questions related to issues for this year:

·          “The Right Questions to Get the Right Stuff,”—December 6, 2021. 

And there’s one this year on the proper role of government, worth reviewing:

·         “Government Is Force—Not a Benevolent Provider, Not Deity”—April 22, 2021 

OK, so, what issue-related happenings can we view from the Spherical Model?

 

THE 2021 COLLECTIONS

I usually write two articles a week, so around 100 a year. This year I slacked off to around 85 pieces, but they trended longer. It was a heavy news year.

 

Family

Let’s start with a few posts about the value of family to civilization, and related to that some successes in the fight against abortion.

·         “What Matters Most”—May 6, 2021 

·         “Don’t Forget That We Need Fathers”—June 10, 2021 

·         “Speaking Up for the Family”—October 29, 2021 

·         “Denial of Reality and of Womanhood”—November 8, 2021 

·         “Much Power of Speech”—December 2, 2021 

 

The Election—and Election Integrity

I’ve covered this topic fairly frequently over the years. And I wrote about it once or twice weekly the last couple of months of 2020. So I’ll add just a couple from 2021:

·         “Things Will Play Out One Way or Another”—January 4, 2021 

·         “Three More Updates on the Neverending Election Saga”—February 8, 2021 

 

January 6th

The big news of January 6 relates to our freedoms. The event was a rally intended to encourage legislators to question the electors sent from states with big questions about election fraud. It was a legal, constitutional procedure—done by Democrats multiple times just this century, albeit without cause. While Trump was yet speaking to an enormous crowd, big disturbances began at the capitol building a mile away. Doors were breached, and legislators were evacuated quickly to safer places. While there was violence, no one was killed by the so-called “insurrectionists,” and business got done later that evening. No one was found to be carrying a weapon. The only death was committed by capitol police against an unarmed woman who was not a threat. Meanwhile, capitol police are seen inviting people into the capitol to walk around.

Afterward, barriers went up. Biden described this as the most heinous act against our country since the Civil War—eclipsing Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The more time passes, the more this looks like a government attempt at entrapment, a failed attempt to paint all Trump supporters as domestic terrorists. Just this past week more surveillance footage was publicly released, showing capitol police beating an unarmed woman, who was charged and held; this video footage was not available for her defense until a week ago. It seems likely now that at least one of the deaths of participants labeled as due to natural causes was actually another police killing. And word is leaking out about abuse of prisoners held without trial for all these months, some without access to representation or their other constitutional rights. The corruption is far beyond any we thought we could see while there still exists a remnant of our constitutional republic.

·         “Living Through Another Historic Day”—January 7, 2021 

·         “What I Think Happened”—January 14, 2021 

·         “Time for the Annual Pointless Impeachment Trial”—February 4, 2021 

·         “Non-Theoretical Conspiracies”—June 28, 2021 

·         “Some Are More Equal Than Others”—October 21, 2021 

 

 

School Board Battles

During this year’s Texas legislative session, I worked hard on a very good school choice bill that got voted out of the Senate committee but failed to get a floor vote. Legislators are afraid to touch the issue and get labeled anti-public schooling. There are things we simply can’t depend on legislators to do. Related to schools, across the country parents are fighting school boards on Critical Race Theory and LGBT agendas being taught to their children. We had that fight locally—and won all three of the school board seats on the November ballot.

·         “Fighting Off the Infestation”—May 20, 2021 

·         “Stand Up, Speak Up”—June 14, 2021   

·         “Just Another Parent Speaking Out to the School Board”—June 21, 2021 

·         “School Board Meeting Debrief”—June 25, 2021 

·         “How to Retake the School Board”—July 26, 2021 

·         “The Critical School Board Races, Part I” and “Part II”—September 16 and 21, 2021 and 

·         “It’s Not a Class; It’s an Ideology”—October 11, 2021 

·         “We Won Some Battles in the Ongoing Idea War”—November 5, 2021 

 

Pandemic

The pandemic continued throughout the year. I wrote about it frequently in 2020. In March of this year I wrote a sort of timeline. And I’ve added pieces fairly regularly the rest of the year. Information—i.e., science, with data—keeps coming from reliable sources, which are censored by media. But the information is there for those willing to look for it and do some of their own research. And that has meant a lot more freedom for the self-educated than for those frozen with fear and giving in to government and corporate overlords. This pandemic—along with the plague of the authoritarian response to it—has affected all three spheres: political, economic, and social.

·         “The Two Weeks That Stretched into a Year, Part I”  and “Part II”—March 6 and 11, 2021 

·         “Go Ahead and Party: or The Two Weeks That Stretched into a Year, Part III”—March 16, 2021 

·         “That Explains It”—April 8, 2021 

·         “So Many Reasons—or That Explains It, Part II”—April 14, 2021 

·         “Hesitancy Might Be a Good Thing This Time”—May 11, 2021 

·         “Something Is Up—and It’s Worldwide”—May 13, 2021 

·         “Who Can You Trust?”—June 4, 2021 

·         “Panel of Experts”—August 3, 2021 

·         “Have a Plan”—August 16, 2021 

·         “I Have More Questions”—September 3, 2021 

·         “Trying to Make Sense of What Makes No Sense”—September 27, 2021 

·         “So This Is Why People Have Ears That Do Not Hear”—October 8, 2021 

·         “Three Books and Some Other Research Assignments”—November 18, 2021

·         “Holidays—Must Be Time for Another Crisis”—November 30, 2021 

·         “Coming to a Fortunate End”—December 14, 2021 

·         “Not Like the Others”—December 27, 2021