current events – Page 5 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

2024 US election scenarios that would fulfill the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy

For a background and explanation of the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy, read this first. I also did a blog post about it here.

A lot of people who were following Ezra’s Eagle in 2020 thought that Trump’s presidency would end before the 2020 election, probably with an assassination, and that Mike Pence would be the second short feather. After the election, they thought Mike Pence would back Trump’s play for the alternate electors and become the second short feather that way. Since none of that happened, they took that as evidence that the prophecy was false. After all, if Trump was truly the first short feather of the eagle’s left wing, why did he serve out his first term?

But it’s become increasingly clear that the January 6th “insurrection” was actually orchestrated by the FBI and the CIA, with undercover operatives like Ray Epps who groomed the “insurrectionists” and urged them into the Capitol. For those who have been paying attention, the 2020 elections and January 6th event have all the hallmarks of a color revolution, perpetrated with the goal of 1) removing Trump from power, and 2) preventing Trump from running for office again.

If we assume that President Trump was the first short feather on the left wing, and that his reign was cut short with the FBI/CIA sponsored color revolution disguised as an “insurrection,” then Biden is the second short feather, and his reign has to end by January 5th, 2024 in order for the prophecy to be valid, since 2 Esdras 11:27 says “And the second was sooner away than the first” (speaking of the second short feather on the left wing). Therefore, if Biden is still in office on January 6th, 2024, the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is false (or at least this interpretation of it).

But Biden’s health is severely compromised, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that there are elements in the deep state and the DNC that want him gone—hence the impeachment hearings, the leaks and whistleblowers about the Biden crime family’s influence peddling operations, and the not-so-subtle calls for him to either step down or not seek re-election. So is it unreasonable to think that he might not complete his term in the White House? Not at all.

So with that in mind, here are all the 2024 election scenarios I can think of that would fulfill the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy:

Scenario 1: Trump v. Biden 2.0, with RFK Jr. as spoiler

Trump gets the Republican nomination, and Biden gets the Democratic nomination. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs as an independent (which appears to already be in progress).

After a historically contentious election cycle, RFK Jr. draws enough voters to prevent either Trump or Biden from reaching the 270 electoral votes necessary to win. This may or may not be aided by Trump or Biden being removed from the ballot in several states, ostensibly over Trump’s criminal indictments and Biden’s accepting foreign bribes.

Before congress can select a president, Biden dies under mysterious circumstances and Harris, under pressure from the deep state, cedes power to an “interim president.” An outside crisis is also engineered, either in the form of a financial collapse or a major global war (eg Russo-Ukraine war expanding into Poland, China invading Taiwan) in order to justify suspending the Constitution and “restoring order” after the election.

In this scenario:

Trump is the first short feather.
Biden is the second short feather.
RFK Jr. is the third short feather who “thinks to rule” (cf 2 Esdras 11:28).
Harris is the fourth short feather who also “would have reigned” (cf 2 Esdras 11:31).
The “interim president” who assumes power without being elected by congress is the first eagle head.

This scenario also works if Biden snubs Harris by running with a different candidate for vice president in 2024. In that case, the fourth feather would be whoever Biden picks as his VP, since that person should have become the president if the 2024 election went to Biden.

Scenario 1a: Harris as deep state mastermind

Similar to the above scenario, except that Biden snubs Harris by choosing a different VP pick, and Harris refuses to cede power after the lame duck session.

In this scenario:

Trump is the first short feather.
Biden is the second short feather.
RFK Jr. is the third short feather who “thinks to rule.”
Biden’s 2024 VP pick is the fourth short feather who “would have reigned,” and
Harris is the first eagle head.

Unlikely, considering that most people in Washington (and most of the rest of the country, too) consider Harris to be dumber than a box of rocks, but it is a possible scenario.

Scenario 2: Biden’s Dark Horse VP

After a contentious primary season, Trump loses the Republican nomination to Desantis or one of the other candidates. Alternately, after winning the nomination, Trump privately makes a deel with his deep state enemies to back down from the general election, in exchange for ending the lawfare persecution against him and his family. Either way, the ballot on November 5th shows someone other than Trump as the Republican candidate.

Meanwhile, Biden makes a deal with the deep state to snub Harris and pick their chosen candidate for VP, in exchange for the deep state allowing him to run again in 2024. Otherwise, the deep state would destroy him by revealing the full extent of his corruption.

The 2024 election is just as contentious as 2020, with the ballots still being counted weeks after November 5th and accusations of voter fraud muddling the results. Eventually, Biden is declared the winner, though half the country refuses to accept it. Then Biden dies under myserious circumstances before January 5th 2025, and his VP pick, a deep state insider, is inaugurated instead.

In this scenario:

Trump is the first short feather.
Biden is the second short feather.
Desantis (or whoever gets the Republican nomination) is the third short feather who “thinks to rule.”
RKF Jr. is the fourth short feather who also “thinks to rule,” and
Biden’s VP pick is the first eagle head.

Scenario 3: Trump as turncoat

Trump secretly makes a deal with the deep state, agreeing to become their agent in exchange for the presidency in 2024. They continue the lawfare as a smokescreen, but in reality, Trump and the deep state are working together to advance the same agenda.

Biden does not seek re-election, and Newsom wins the Democratic nomination instead. RFK Jr. runs as an independent. Trump ostensibly wins the election, though half the country refuses to accept it, and accusations of voter fraud abound.

In this scenario:

Trump is both the first short feather and the first eagle head.
Biden is the second short feather.
RFK Jr. and Newsom are the third and fourth short feathers.

Why would Trump join forces with the deep state? I think the better question is why wouldn’t he? He’s turned on his pro-life supporters, he’s never renounced the covid vaccines, and he never actually delivered on his promise to “lock her up.” He demands personal loyalty from everyone, to the point where that is his only qualification for making a political alliance, but he never reciprocates with loyalty for those who support him. Remember how he turned on Kayleigh McEnany? Also, he hasn’t offered to help with any of the legal fees for his supporters currently languishing in jail for their involvement in January 6th.

As for the deep state, if they could bring Trump onto their side, it would be a coup of epic proportions. With the Democrats clamoring for a police/nanny state, and the Republicans increasingly clamoring for a Caesar, making an ally out of Trump is the best way to thread that needle and secure their power.

I put Newsom as the Democrat nominee in this scenario only because he currently looks like the most likely candidate if Biden steps down. But it could also be Michelle Obama if she runs—in fact, it would actually work better with her, because she’s seen as having the power to unify democrats and independents, which would counteract the spoiling effect of RFK Jr. and throw Trump’s re-election into even more doubt.

Scenario 4: The deep state flips the board

Trump gets the Republican nomination. Newsom gets the Democratic nomination. RFK Jr. runs as an independent.

The deep state does everything in their power to prevent Trump from returning to power, but with RFK Jr. acting as spoiler, they cannot throw the election in the same way as they did in 2020. Therefore, before the election actually happens (or alternately, before the results are fully in), they engineer a crisis which allows them to 1) cancel the election, 2) suspend the Constitution, 3) remove Biden from the White House, and 4) install an insider as “temporary president,” until the crisis is over.

In this scenario:

Trump is the first short feather.
Biden is the second short feather.
RFK Jr. and Newsom are the third and fourth short feathers, and
The “temporary president” is the first eagle head.

What sort of a crisis could the deep state engineer? It could be an expansion of the Russo-Ukraine war, due to some sort of false flag or NATO provocation, or it could be a financial crisis that causes a global credit freeze, shutting down the banks. This would have the added benefit of paving the way for the rollout of a Federal Reserve central bank digital currency (CBDC), with the Fed and/or Treasury promising to back all frozen bank deposits at a rate of 1:1, provided that the depositors accept the new CBDC. They could force compliance by threatening not to redeem the deposits of anyone who protests the move. Most Americans, caught off guard (just like with the pandemic), would probably not resist. A CBDC would also fulfill the prophecy of the mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation.

Scenario 4a: The deep state refuses to play

Desantis gets the Republican nomination. Biden steps down, and a dark horse candidate whom the deep state has not approved gets the Democratic nomination. RFK Jr. is either assassinated or otherwise removed from the election.

Because neither Desantis nor the Democratic dark horse candidate are acceptable to the deep state, they engineer a crisis that cancels the election, suspends the constitution, removes Biden the White House, and installs one of their own (see above).

In this scenario:

Trump is the first short feather.
Biden is the second short feather.
Desantis and the dark horse are the third and fourth short feathers, and
the “temporary president” is the first eagle head.

Very similar to the previous scenario, except that RFK is removed from contention first. Also, I suppose that Newsom could be a dark horse candidate that is unacceptable to the deep state, but I think that’s unlikely, given how the Californication of America seems to be the deep state’s ultimate goal, at least domestically. Douglas MacGregor has an excellent take on that here.

Scenario 5: Obama as deep state mastermind

Desantis wins the Republican nomination. Michelle Obama wins the Democratic nomination. RFK Jr. runs as an independant.

With Trump no longer on the ballot, independents are evenly split between Desantis and Obama, and RFK Jr. acts as a spoiler for the democrat vote. But since Obama is the deep state’s preferred candidate, they either cancel the election outright or declare her the winner before the results have been verified. Alternately, the election actually happens and neither candidate gets to 270 electoral votes, leading congress to choose the president. During the lame duck session, Biden dies or is otherwise removed from office, and Harris cedes power to Obama.

In this scenario:

Trump is the first short feather.
Biden is the second short feather.
Desantis and RFK Jr. are the third and fourth short feathers, and
Michelle Obama (or perhaps her husband, if he’s the one really calling the shots) is the first eagle head.

So what are the scenarios where the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is not fulfilled? Pretty much only the ones where Biden serves out his full term all the way to the 2024 inauguration, and/or the 2024 election results are clear and uncontested. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d rather put my money on one of the five scenarios listed above than on either of those things holding true.

Define “woke.”

Woke (WOHK): Adjective

Of or pertaining to the mass formation psychosis currently gripping the United States and most of the developed world. This mass formation psychosis is led by radical leftist ideologues and driven by social media addiction. Due to the collusion between major technology companies and the US government, there is also an element of state-sponsored propaganda and control.

The mass began to form in the late 2000s with the popularization of social media. As these technologies began to replace face-to-face human reactions, it created the pre-conditions of social isolation and free floating anxiety, in large part due to the addictive nature of the algorithms which promoted content most likely to induce outrage and anger in the end-user (see CGP Grey, “This Video Will Make You Angry”). Once these pre-conditions were in place, all that was necessary to create the psychosis was a target or series of events to focus the attention of the mass.

The 2010s were characterized by several of these focusing events, starting in 2012 with the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and continuing with numerous mass shootings such as Orlando and Sandy Hook, several landmark Supreme Court decisions on gay rights such as United States V. Windsor and Obergerfel v. Hodges, and the rise of such controversial movements as Gamergate and the Sad/Rabid Puppies. The culminating event in the creation of this mass formation psychosis was the election in 2016 of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.

Following Trump’s election, rogue elements of the bureaucracy, the administrative agencies, and the intelligence community (colloquially referred to as the “deep state”) successfully exploited this mass formation psychosis in an effort to hamstring the Trump administration and ultimately remove him from power. These deep state actors acted in collusion with the Silicon Valley technology companies that ran the social media platforms.

Because of the inherently left-leaning political bias of these Silicon Valley companies, this mass formation psychosis always had a leftist bent, and tended to promote radical leftist ideologues as its leaders. However, in any mass formation, the leaders are often just as caught up in the psychosis as the followers. This soon became manifest in the moral and rational incoherence of its leaders (see “What Is a Woman?”), and in the various internal contradictions of their own respective causes and beliefs. While “wokeism” is inherently political, it is not primarily characterized by a unified political ideology or movement.

The high water mark of the mass formation psychosis occured in 2020 during the covid-19 pandemic, during which it took on all of the defining characteristics of a cult (see “What is the Covid cult?”). The George Floyd riots were the major culminating event, but Trump’s ostensible defeat in the disputed 2020 elections and his subsequent removal from power in the January 6th color revolution removed the central focusing element necessary for the mass formation psychosis. Since then, the deep state and political establishment has attempted several times to find a new focusing element for the psychosis, with such issues as climate change or the Russo-Ukraine war, but thus far these efforts have proven unsuccessful (see: “I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING!”)

At this time (March 2023), it is unclear how this mass formation psychosis will end. If Trump is re-elected in 2020, it may catch a second wind, or it may be replaced by the right-leaning mass formation psychosis characterized by Trumpism and the MAGA movement. It may fizzle out slowly, or it may be defeated by the growing demand for a religious revival in the United States. Alternately, it may prove to be the precursor of a much more dangerous mass formation psychosis, this time driven by AI and the outbreak of World War III. Regardless, the events of the next 12 to 18 months will determine which course our society will take.

The best take on the Nashville shooting:

The trans activists are celebrating the mass shooter as a hero.

The mainstream news media cares more about getting the mass shooter’s pronouns right than reporting on the actual shooting.

The “president” started his address to the nation about the tragedy by boasting about his ice cream stash and asking very eagerly about somebody else’s kids.

The reporters from the aforementioned mainstream news media actually laughed at the “president’s” outrageously inappropriate performance, as if it were a comedy routine.

Celebrities like Jane Fonda literally called for the murder of Christians in the days and weeks leading up to this shooting.

And Twitter is full of scum who are twisting themselves into pretzels to somehow blame the victims for this tragedy.

But it’s not all bad news. The police who took this piece of human garbage down were absolute heroes, literally running toward the gunfire and throwing themselves into danger to save these kids. Their brave actions doubtless saved many lives:

Those men should never have to buy drinks in Nashville again.

The false narrative of a transgender “genocide” is a call for violence

Yesterday, a 28 year-old female-to-male transgender attacked a private Christian school in Tennessee, killing three teachers and three nine year-old students before being shot and killed by police. According to the police, this was a targeted attack that was likely motivated by the shooter’s transgenderism. Tennessee recently passed a ban on transgender surgeries for minors, and this shooting happened immediately after trans activists called for a “day of vengeance” against what they falsely call a “genocide.”

What do the trans activists mean when they accuse conservatives of perpetrating a “genocide” against them? Where did they come up with that term? My understanding is that it comes from the idea that when somebody declares themselves as trans, they adopt a new persona that replaces who they were before. Thus, the new persona of Caitlyn Jenner replaced the old persona of Bruce Jenner, or the new persona of Elliot Page replaced the persona of Ellen Page. In the eyes of the pro-trans ideologues, when a trans person adopts their new persona, it is like a new person is born into the world. Thus, anyone who refuses to affirm their transgender identity is guilty of trying to “kill” this new person, and anyone who opposes transgender ideology generally is guilty of “genocide.”

We saw this play out recently in the fiasco over the 2021 Hugo-nominated short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter.” It started when Clarkesworld published the story, which was written by an anonymous male-to-female transgender under the name Isabel Fall. The story was based on a meme ridiculing transgender ideology, and Fall’s intent in writing the story was to own the meme and turn it into a pro-trans statement. However, the readers of Clarkesworld failed to recognize this, and attacked Fall as being secretly anti-trans, going so far as to suggest that Fall’s author bio (born in ’88) was a dog whistle to Nazis.

This is where things get interesting. Isabel Fall (who to my knowledge still remains anonymous) reacted to these attacks by requesting that Neil Carke unpublish the story. Fall then decided that he wasn’t transgender after all, and stopped transitioning. This prompted a bunch of hand-wringing by the woke leftist mob that had attacked Fall as being secretly anti-trans, ultimately culminating in the essay “How Twitter Can Ruin a Life,” which was nominated for a Hugo in 2022. When you read it, you realize that these people literally believe that Isabel Fall was “killed” by the online reaction to “her” story, and thus became a victim of the ongoing “trans genocide.”

Here’s the thing, though: nobody actually died in this fiasco. The person who wrote “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” is still, to my knowledge, very much alive. But the three nine year-old kids and their three teachers who were shot to death in Nashville yesterday by a transgender mass shooter are NOT alive. And if it turns out that the shooter was motivated by this false narrative of a “transgender genocide,” then all of the trans activists calling for violence in reaction to this “genocide” have blood on their hands.

It very much reminds me of how woke ideologues conflate speech with violence, and violence with speech. The logic goes like this: hate speech is a form of violence, therefore we are justified in using actual, physical violence to silence and intimidate anyone who is guilty of anything we deem to be hate speech. In much the same way, trans activists believe that the rejection of anyone’s transgender persona is a form of genocide, and therefore people like this shooter are justified in committing actual mass killings of people who oppose transgenderism.

It is not possible to share a country with these people, for the simple reason that it is not possible to agree to disagree with someone who follows this kind of zero-sum logic. We must all either submit to their ideology, or we must, as a society, reject it. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that we should round up and kill anyone who posts a transgender flag to their social media. However, anyone who calls for violence in response to the “trans genocide” should be prosecuted immediately, and punished to the fullest extent of the law. Calls for violence are not protected speech under the first amendment. If we fail to do this—if our legal system fails to hold these transgender ideologues responsible for their crimes, perpetuating the double standard that lets “mostly peaceful” leftist rioters walk free while the J6 “insurrectionists” languish in solitary confinement—then I fear that our country will break apart and fall.

I say this, recognizing that it may very well get me black-listed in the award-winning publications in my own field. Mainstream science fiction has very much embraced the transgender ideology that promotes this false narrative of a “trans genocide,” as evidenced by the fact that “How Twitter Ruined a Life” was nominated for the Hugo. But as a writer, I believe that it is my solemn duty to speak the truth as best I understand it, and when I see tragic events like the ones currently unfolding in Nashville, I cannot in good conscience remain silent about this issue.

Accusation is projection is confession. When transgender activists accuse us of committing genocide, they are confessing that they want us all dead. Plan accordingly.

This scenario would fulfill Ezra’s Eagle

UPDATE (6 November 2024): I have written a new post with my post-election thoughts on the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy, as well as an in-depth analysis of the lost ten tribes and how they may (or may not) play into the apocryphal prophecy. Read about it here.

UPDATE (12 August 2024): I don’t know why Google has made this old blog post their #2 result for the search term “Ezra’s Eagle,” but if that’s what brought you here, you probably should check out this page first, taken from Michael B. Rush’s book A Remnant Shall Return. As far as I can tell, he’s the one who discovered this obscure apocryphal prophecy and how it (might) speak to our day. He’s also posted the complete audiobook on YouTube:

To be clear, I don’t necessarily agree with or endorse everything that Rush says. In fact, I’m not even sure if I believe in the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy anymore, or in Rush’s interpretation of it. But if that’s what you’re looking for, his book is the place to start.

UPDATE (21 July 2024): With everything that has happened in the past week, I have posted an update to this scenario, which could still play out very similarly to how I outlined it in this post. You can find that update here.

ORIGINAL POST (6 March 2023): For the last couple of months, I have been fascinated with the prophecy of Ezra’s Eagle as laid out by Michael B. Rush. I’m reading his book A Remnant Shall Return right now, and while some of the stuff sounds crazy to me (like the idea that the lost ten tribes will come down from space and save America from the Antichrist), I think he may be on to something with his interpretation of Ezra’s vision in chapters 11 and 12 of 2nd Esdras.

If you’re not familiar with Ezra’s Eagle, you can read this sample chapter from his book that explains it, or you can watch this video that he put out. Or you can read the chapters on your own and study the diagram in this video, which lays it out pretty well:

The TL;DR is that the prophet Ezra had a vision where he saw a three-headed eagle with twenty feathers, where each feather represents a different ruler who reigns for an appointed time. Some of the feathers are short, indicating a ruler whose time was cut unnaturally short.

The traditional interpretation of this vision is that the eagle represents the Roman Empire, but Michael B. Rush discovered that the sequence of rulers corresponds much closer to the United States, starting with President Hoover. Why Hoover? Because he was a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a major deep state organ, and the eagle represents not the United States per se, but the American Empire ruled by the deep state.

This interpretation of Ezra’s Eagle probably reached its height, at least in conservative Latter-day Saint circles, around 2018 or 2019. Its proponents predicted that Trump, as the first of the four short feathers before the reign of the three eagle heads, would either be assassinated or removed from office by impeachment. Then the 2020 elections happened, and a lot of people said “well, it can’t be true, because Trump served out his complete term.”

…except did he? Laying aside the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the January 6th “insurrection” was, in fact, a color revolution perpetrated on American soil by our own intelligence agencies, with the intent of permanently removing Trump from power and installing a compliant puppet regime in Biden-Harris. That’s why there were so many federal agents and informants like Ray Epps urging the rioters to storm the Capitol, and that’s also why many of the Capitol police stood aside and let the rioters in—because the deep state wanted an “insurrection,” because it would provide the justification for everything that came after. Remember, General Milley reached out to his counterpart in the CCP before Trump finished his term. Also, Trump was impeached the second time and banned from social media before he finished his term.

In fact, the January 6th “insurrection” was an extremely ham-fisted and clumsy color revolution, as these things generally go. What the feds really needed was for the rioters to get violent, leaving dead bodies all over the place. Instead, most of the rioters were surprisingly well-behaved, stopping many of the more violent types among them from destroying property and staying out of the roped-off areas once they were inside. New footage revealed by Tucker Carlson shows that the “Qanon Shaman” was escorted around the Capitol by the police, as if he were on a tour. The only people who died in the Capitol that day were “insurrectionists.” Still, the deep state needed an “insurrection” to justify the crackdown, so that was the script they played, setting up the ridiculous show trials and repeating the lie incessantly on the legacy news media in the hopes that people would believe it—and many brainwashed blue-pill types actually did.

So personally, I find ample reason to believe that Trump was the first short feather, and the date that I would put as the cut-off point of his reign would be January 6th, 2020.

A Surprisingly Plausible Scenario

If Trump was indeed the first short feather mentioned in the prophecy, and Biden is the second short feather, the following verses are of special interest.

From 2 Esdras 11:

25 And I beheld, and, lo, the feathers that were under the wing thought to set up themselves and to have the rule.

26 And I beheld, and, lo, there was one set up, but shortly it appeared no more.

27 And the second was sooner away than the first.

28 And I beheld, and, lo, the two that remained thought also in themselves to reign:

29 And when they so thought, behold, there awaked one of the heads that were at rest, namely, it that was in the midst; for that was greater than the two other heads.

30 And then I saw that the two other heads were joined with it.

31 And, behold, the head was turned with them that were with it, and did eat up the two feathers under the wing that would have reigned.

32 But this head put the whole earth in fear, and bare rule in it over all those that dwelt upon the earth with much oppression; and it had the governance of the world more than all the wings that had been.

And from 2 Esdras 12:

24 And of those that dwell therein, with much oppression, above all those that were before them: therefore are they called the heads of the eagle.

25 For these are they that shall accomplish his wickedness, and that shall finish his last end.

26 And whereas thou sawest that the great head appeared no more, it signifieth that one of them shall die upon his bed, and yet with pain.

27 For the two that remain shall be slain with the sword.

28 For the sword of the one shall devour the other: but at the last shall he fall through the sword himself.

Now, here is the scenario that fulfills the prophecy:

Biden either does not run for president in 2024, or else he runs but loses the primary—an unprecedented political event, but we’ve had a lot of unprecedented events in the last few years, political and otherwise. Personally, I think it’s likely that Democrats will field Michelle Obama, and that she will rally so much support that she takes the nomination in a landslide.

Meanwhile, the Republican primaries come down to an ugly bruising between Trump and Desantis. By a narrow margin, Desantis wins and takes the nomination, but no one comes out of the fight smelling clean, and there’s a lot of bad feelings on the Republican side of the aisle, all of which combines to create an especially contentious election season, even more contentious than 2016 or 2020. If you thought Trump Derangement Syndrome was bad, wait ’til you see how the Democrats smear Desantis, and the unity and momentum they’ll have from a Michelle Obama run will make the Republican voters lose their minds as well.

Whoever the Republicans and Democrats choose to field, these will be the third and the fourth little feathers “who thought also in themselves to reign.”

Except they never will, because a major geopolitical crisis emerges with only weeks to go before the election. What sort of crisis? A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, for example, or a major escalation of the Russo-Ukraine war. Personally, I think the most likely crisis would be a complete collapse of the Ukrainian state, and victorious Russian forces rolling into Kiev.

The Biden administration is caught flat-footed by this crisis, and fails to formulate an effective response. At this point, a deep state triumvirate emerges from the shadows and reveals to the world the truth about Biden’s deteriorating health, proving indisputably that he is not fit to be president—and in the process, cutting his administration short “sooner away than the first.”

This triumvirate seizes power and suspends the constitution, declaring that the crisis is simply too great for our already divided country to face in its current state, especially with how contentious the elections have become. It will be just like how President W. Bush said that he had to destroy the free market in order to save it, except with our republic.

At this point, things get really bad. The wars in Ukraine and (possibly) Taiwan escalate and becomes truly global. Nuclear weapons are used. At some point, a second pandemic breaks out, this time with a much more deadly virus, and the leader of the triumvirate “shall die upon his bed, and yet with pain,” succumbing to the second pandemic. After his (or her) death, either the country falls into a civil war with the other two members of the triumvirate on opposing sides, or they both struggle internally for power, and both of them get assassinated. Things get really, really dark.

Then, if Michael B. Rush is right, the Antichrist comes to power.

Who are the members of the deep state triumvirate that suspends the constitution? My guess would be 1) someone from the military, such as General Milley, 2) someone with ties to the banks and the Federal Reserve system, such as Janet Yellen, and 3) someone in the State Department specifically over the Ukraine portfolio, such as Victoria Nuland. But this is just wild speculation on my part—though after Janet Yellen’s visit to Ukraine, I did start to think that Tom Luongo may be right about the deep state grooming her for the succession. My money’s on her for the first eagle head.

Granted, the longer this scenario plays out, the crazier it begins to sound. But we happen to live in very interesting times, where things that started as crazy conspiracy theories are increasingly turning out to be true.

I have no idea if the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is true, but this scenario would qualify as a fulfillment. And laying aside the identities of the three eagle heads, it does seem increasingly plausible that Biden’s presidency gets cut short during a contentious election cycle, in which he is not the nominee for the Democrats. That’s what caught my attention in all of this.

I have a lot of other thoughts on this subject, but that’s all I’m going to share right now. What are your thoughts?

I will never apologize for refusing to use sensitivity readers.

The Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming estates have been in the news lately, after their publishers have worked with committees of “sensitivity readers” to rework their books in order to make them less offensive to woke sensibilities. The outcry was so great that Roald Dahl’s publishers agreed not to go through with their plan to sanitize his books, but to release the originals along with the censored versions (though I have heard conflicting stories indicating that the ebooks have been retroactively censored).

For many readers, this was their first time learning that “sensitivity readers” are a thing. While their outrage at the Orwellian rewriting of dead authors’ works is entirely justified, sadly, this is nothing new to the science fiction and fantasy field. Indeed, as Larry Correia and Steve Diamond pointed out in the latest episode of Writer Dojo, sensitivity readers have been a thing for at least a decade, and the most insidious examples of censorship are the ones we don’t see, when writers self-censor for fear of offending the outrage mobs.

For several decades now, science fiction and fantasy has skewed hard to the left, and the fact that there wasn’t a major outcry against these self-appointed Orwellian censors back in the 10s is a damning indictment of field as a whole. Why did it take until now, when the beloved works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming were threatened, for large numbers of people to speak out against this trend? Because all of the big names and major institutions in the SF&F field (or at least, the traditionally published side of it) tacitly approve of the censors and are quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) working to advance their politically correct agenda.

Back in the early 10s, when sensitivity readers were starting to become fashionable, I privately swore that I would never, under any circumstances, submit my work to any of these professional grievance mongers, nor internalize any of their rules to self-censor my work. If I was writing about another culture and needed to make sure I got things right, I would seek out feedback from a trusted friend who had personal experience with that culture (which is actually surprisingly easy here in Utah, thanks to how many of us have served missions in every corner of the Earth). I would not seek feedback from anyone whose paycheck depends on finding new and innovative ways to be offended.

The thing that’s sad, though, is how many writers have bent the knee to these cultural vandals, because they felt it was the only way to get their work out there. I happen to enjoy being a voice in the indie wilderness, but it’s not for everyone, and a lot of writers are self-censoring in order to keep their agents, or their publishing deals, or even just because they hope to have an agent or a publishing deal someday. It’s sad.

If I were feeling conspiratorial, I would point out that if my goal was to establish a neo-feudal, Orwellian police state, where religion was replaced with The Science, individuals were atomized away from their families, and the common folk were divided against each other by identitarian tribal distinctions in order to make them easier to govern, I would seek to capture the SF field before moving forward with my plans, so as to prevent a new 1984 or Brave New World from spoiling them. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all. If possible, I would subvert the SF field to actively advance my agenda, such as pushing the Marxist politics of envy, or the Malthusian economics of depopulation, or the post-modern rejection of any and all sexual mores and gender roles, so as to destroy the family as the fundamental unit of society. But none of that would really be necessary, so long as I made sure that nothing of any real truth or beauty came out of the field. All of the major awards would favor the ugliest lies that my propaganda machine put out into the world, and all of the professional organizations would pit authors and editors against each other according to their tribal identities, such as race or class or religion. Victimhood would be rewarded, and merit would be suppressed—and anyone in the field who dared to oppose this agenda would be harrassed relentlessly by my underlings, who would work to get them canceled from publishing deals and disinvited from major events.

In any case, I’m not going to be a part of that, even tangentially. Which is I I will never use sensitivity readers to review my work, nor apologize for refusing to bend the knee to the woke censors.

Are vaccine-related deaths decimating the SF field?

This is an extremely polarizing and contentious issue right now, so I’m going to try to make this post as fact-based and non-sensational as possible.

Full disclosure: I never got the covid shot. My wife and I both had covid before the “vaccines” became available, and decided that our natural immunity provided enough protection for us. We were also trying to become pregnant, and even in January 2021, we had heard rumors that the shots were affecting both men’s and women’s fertility, as well as women’s menstrual cycles, and didn’t feel that the risk was worth it, in spite of the tremendous social pressure to get “vaccinated.”

At the end of the day, we simply did not trust that the “vaccines” were safe (and I put “vaccine” in quotes, because we now know that these shots do not provide lasting immunity, nor do they prevent transmission. The health establishment literally had to change the definition of “vaccine” for that word to apply to these treatments). We were wary of the fact that the emergency use provisions absolved the manufacturers of any liability, and that the long-term effects of these shots was unknown. In our family’s calculation, the potential risks outweighed the potential benefits, especially since we already had natural immunity and were unlikely to contract covid again.

In the past year, some very disturbing things about the “vaccines” have come to light. A recent poll by Rasmussen shows that more than 1 in 4 Americans believe they know someone who has died of the covid “vaccines”—not from covid itself, but from the vaccines. Interestingly, more Democrats (about 1 in 3) than Republicans (about 1 in 4) claim that they know someone, which is interesting, because the political left was much more taken with the “vaccine” mania than the political right. Remember that super cringey vaccine song on Colbert’s show?

The last two years have been crazy, for sure. But how has it affected the science fiction and fantasy world? The January issue of Locus Magazine made me curious about this, since Greg Bear recently passed away “after complications from heart surgery,” and the obituary section mentioned two other people under the age of 60, one of whom “died unexpectedly.”

So I went through all of the back issues of Locus from January 2021 to the present, and made a comprehensive list of every person mentioned in the obituaries, with their age and cause of death. If they died of a stroke or an accute heart-related issue, I bolded their name, since the mechanism for death appears to be related to blood clots caused by the spike protein that the mRNA “vaccine” is designed to generate. Also, I bolded the name of anyone 70 or younger who died without the cause of death listed. The global average life expectancy is just north of 70, which is lower than the US, but I decided to take the lower of those numbers. I also bolded any names where the cause was listed as covid, since many people who died in the first couple of weeks after getting the shot were automatically listed as covid, especially in the initial rollout.

Here is the list:

JAN 2021

Ben Bova (88): “contracting COVID-19, developing Pneumonia, and suffering a stroke.”
Phyllis Eisensetein (74): “suffered a stroke in January 2020 and entered hospice care not long after.”
Richard Corben (80): “died December 2, 2020 after heart surgery.”
Dean Ing (89): cause not listed (died July 21, 2020).

FEB 2021

James Gunn (97): cause not listed.
Storm Constantine (64): “following a long illness.”
Anton Strout (50): “died unexpectedly.”
Jael (83): cause not listed.
Alison Lurie (94): “in hospice.”
Richard West (76): “of COVID-19.”
Joseph Altairac (63): cause not listed.

MAR 2021

Kathleen Ann Goonan (68): cause not listed.
Rowena Morrill (76): “following years of poor health.”
Jean-Claude Carrière (89): “of natural causes.”

APR 2021

Norton Juster (91): “complications following a stroke.”
Dean Morrissey (69): cause not listed.
Michael G. Adkisson (65): cause not listed.

MAY 2021

John C. Pelan (63): “of an apparent heart attack.”
Wanda June Alexander (69): “diagnosed with lung cancer last year, and though she underwent successful treatment, her lungs were severely damaged, and she entered hospice care in January 2021.”

JUN 2021

Marvin Kaye (83): “in hospice care.”
Don Sakers (62): “of a heart attack.”
Jan Stirling (71): cause not listed.
Jim Rittenhouse (64): “in hospice care.”
Anish Deb (69): “of COVID-19.”

JUL 2021

Bob Brown (78): “after a valiant battle with esophageal cancer.”

AUG 2021

William F. Nolan (93): “of complications from an infection.”
Stephen Hickman (72): “of natural causes.”
Joe McKinney (52): “in his sleep.”
Paul Alexander (83): cause not listed.
John Longendorfer (90): cause not listed.

SEP 2021

Elizabeth Anne Hull (84): cause not listed.
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison (75): cause not listed.
C. Dean Andersson (75): “in his sleep… after a long illness.”
J.W. Rinzler (58): “of pancreatic cancer.”
Ron Weighell (70): “a few weeks after suffering a stroke.”
Lorna Toolis (68): cause not listed.
Judi B. Castro (58): “following a brief illness.”

OCT 2021

Erle Korshak (97): cause not listed.
L. Neil Smith (75): “after a lengthy battle with heart and kidney disease.”
Carol Carr (82): “of lung cancer.”
Genevieve DiModica (73): “of natural causes.”

NOV 2021

Mary Kay Kare (69): “of a blood infection.”
Gary Paulsen (82): “of cardiac arrest.”
Lou Antonelli (64): cause not listed.
Douglas Barbour (81): “of lung cancer.”
Otacilio Costa D’Assuncao Barros (67): “was found dead in his apartment… after two days without contact by neighbors. The cause of death has not been disclosed.”

DEC 2021

Petra Mayer (46): “died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism.”
Robert Thurston (84): cause not listed.
Jim Fiscus (76): “died suddenly.”
Catherine M. Morrison (52): “after a brief illness.”

JAN 2022

Anne Rice (80): “of complications from a stroke.”
Diana G. Gallagher (75): “of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
William G. Contento (74): “after a long struggle with prostate cancer.”
Jeremy G. Byrn (57): “after a long illness.”
Chris Achilleos (74): cause not listed.
Jose Luis Benicio da Fonseca (84): cause not listed.

FEB 2022

Willie Siros (69): cause not listed.
Dave Wolverton (64): “after suffering a severe head injury falling down the stairs the previous day.”
Ron Goulart (89): cause not listed.
John Jos. Miller (67): cause not listed.
J. Brian Clark (93): cause not listed.
Sally Gwylan (67): “in a traffic accident.”
Jane E. Hawkins (70): “was a cancer survivor, but she received a terminal diagnosis and went into hospice.”
Elizabeth Miller (82): cause not listed.
Bill Wright (84): “fallen at home and ‘thought he had broken his back.’”
Chuck Verrill (unknown): “after a long illness.”
Athos Eichler Cardoso (87): cause not listed.

MAR 2022

Angelica Gorodischer (93): cause not listed.
Tom Dupree (72): “of cardio-respiratory arrest.”
Harold R. Johnson (68): “of lung cancer.”

APR 2022

Andy Remic (50): “of cancer.”
Faren Miller (71): “after being hospitalized with serious respiratory problems.”
Shirley Hughes (94): cause not listed.
Melissa Mead (62): cause not listed.
Priscilla Tolkien (92): “after a brief illness.”
Aiki Flinthart (unknown): “after receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis.”

MAY 2022

Robert C. Cornett (69): cause not listed.
Bill Johnson (65): cause not listed.
Valerio Evangelisti (69): cause not listed.
Joel Houssin (68): “after a long battle with MS.”
Carlos Emilio C. Lima (65): “from an infection following surgery.”
Lygia Fagundes Telles (98-103): cause not listed.

JUN 2022

Patricia A. McKillip (74): cause not listed.
Sergey Dyachenko (77): cause not listed.

JUL 2022

Ken Kelly (76): cause not listed.

AUG 2022

Eric Flint (75): cause not listed.
Geoffrey H. Goodwin (50): “of heart failure.”
Dorothy J. Heydt (80): cause not listed.
Barbara Haldeman (Barbara Delaplace) (69): cause not listed.
Jonathan Lyons (52): “succumbed to injuries after being mugged.”

SEP 2022

Nichelle Nichols (89): “of heart failure.”
Alexei Panshin (82): cause not listed.
Robert “Bob” Self (55): “as the result of an accident.”
Wayn McCalla (53): “following a long illness.”
Roland J. Green (76): cause not listed.

OCT 2022

Peter Straub (79): “after a long illness.”
Bruce Taylor (75): “after a brief hospital stay. He had a heart condition and was in poor health recently.”
Maureen Kincaid Speller (63): “she had cancer.”
J.G. “Huck” Huckenpohler (81): cause not listed.

NOV 2022

Robert A. Madle (102): “died peacefully in his sleep.”
Albert E. Cowdrey (88): cause not listed.
Hilary Mantel (70): cause not listed.
Matthew Mather (52): “died suddenly.”
Lani Forbes (35): “of neuroendocrine cancer.”

DEC 2022

Tom Maddox (77): “of a stroke.”
Martin Morse Wooster (64): “the victim of a hit-and-run.”
Jill Pinkwater (81): cause not listed.
Sue Strong Hassler (84): “of complications from back surgery and COVID.”
Anne Fakhouri (48): “following a long illness.”
Justin E.A. Busch (63): cause not listed.
Ned Dameron (79): “of ALS.”

JAN 2023

Greg Bear (71): “after complications from heart surgery.”
Anne Harris (58): “after suffering a stroke.”
Marcus Sedgwick (54): “died unexpectedly.”

To be clear, there may be benign explanations for many or even most of the people whose names are bolded. Strokes and heart attacks have been killing people long before the covid “vaccines” existed, and continue to kill people without any help from the “vaccines.” Also, many people who died under 70 may simply have been in poor health—after all, it’s not like the SF field is known for robust physical fitness. However, there may also be people on this list who did die of vaccine-related issues, whose names I did not bold because they were over 70 and the cause wasn’t listed. So it cuts both ways.

My purpose is not to compile a comprehensive list of vaccine-related deaths in the SF field, but to point out some deaths that appear to be suspect. And of the 114 people listed, more of them “died unexpectedly” or “died suddenly” than died of covid, which is worth noting.

If you haven’t seen the documentary Died Suddenly, it’s worth watching, even though it does have some flaws. Most notably, toward the end it recycles some disturbing footage of people who either did not die, or who died before the pandemic, implying that they all died of the vaccines. You can find a much more in-depth and non-sensational treatment of vaccine-related deaths and injuries on Chris Martenson’s channel, especially in this video where he interviews several morticians about the clotting issue:

Vaccine safety is a very serious issue, and every day, it seems that we are learning new things about the covid “vaccines” that call into question all of our assumptions and beliefs. The science fiction field has always leaned to the political left, especially on the traditional publishing side. For the past two years, many of our conventions and other events have pushed mask mandates, or required proof of vaccination, including our own LTUE here in Utah.

Has this lockstep, unquestioning, and at times almost militant advocacy of the establishment narrative led to the tragic loss of several writers and artists before their time? Has it decimated—indeed, is it continuing to decimate—the talented creators in our field? How many wonderful stories will never be written because of this? How many voices will no longer be heard?

I hope that we can come to a place where we can honestly start asking these questions. Because if we can’t, then the science fiction and fantasy field has lost much more than those who have died, and the gifts they would have shared with us.

My Wild Predictions for 2023

In January or February, Russia will launch a major new offensive in the Russo-Ukraine War, destroying much of the Western narrative surrounding that conflict. However, it will not be a decisive victory, and the war will not end this year.
China will launch a ground invasion of Taiwan, and will seriously miscalculate the US-allied response. This war will also continue into 2024.
A tactical nuclear weapon or dirty bomb will be used in combat, either escalating one of the ongoing conflicts or starting a new one. However, there will not be a major nuclear exchange between global powers this year.
A Washington DC politician or judge will be assassinated, most likely by a lone wolf radicalized on the internet.
Food and energy prices will continue to inflate. However, deflation will be a more serious problem for the elite managerial class.
The covid narrative is going to flip in a major way. The vaccines and the lockdowns will become anathema, and many prominent players in the pandemic (including Trump) will come under serious fire from both political sides.
Toward the end of the year, we will start to hear rumblings of another pandemic.
Deleting social media will become a major cultural trend.
President Russell M. Nelson will announce something huge in General Conference, on the order of the Come, Follow Me initiative in 2018.
In spite of all these global challenges, our family will continue to thrive and will end the year even better off than we now are, both spiritually and temporally.

The Grand Conspiracy, Part 1: Malice or Incompetence?

Remember the time before the pandemic, when “conspiracy theory” was still a dirty word? It still is in some quarters, but for many of us the term is now closer to “spoiler warning.”

After all, what are we supposed to believe: that Epstein hung himself with a bedsheet that couldn’t hold his weight, from a height that couldn’t kill him, at exactly the moment when the guards had abandoned their posts and all of the surveillance equipment had mysteriously and inexplicably gone dark? That is still the official story—just like Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein’s Madam, was thrown in prison for trafficking sex slaves to… well, nobody, at least officially.

Or are we supposed to believe that a novel coronavirus whose genetic profile shows clear evidence of artificial manipulation jumped species from a bat to a pangolin to a human, in a Chinese wet market (which the CCP destroyed before any investigation could be launched) more than 900 miles from the bat’s native habitat, which also just happens to be down the street from the Wuhan Institute of Virology where gain-of-function research was being conducted with bat coronaviruses? I’m not generally a fan of Jon Stewart, but I think he hit the nail on the head with this one:

Of course, this isn’t to say that all conspiracy theories have weight and value. By no means do I believe that the moon landings were fake—there are just too many people who would have to be in on the thing to keep it secret for long, and also, we can see the tracks of the moon landings from Earth. But conspiracies do happen, and often have tremendous impact on the course of history. For example, the United States constitution was born out of the Philadelphia Convention, which conspired to throw out the Articles of Convention and replace them with something entirely different, which was technically an act of treason at the time.

Conspiracies are real, though not all conspiracy theories are true. The challenge is separating conspiracy theory from conspiracy fact.

Which brings us to the old aphorism: “never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.” For the last two years, when I look at the direction my country is going and all of the harm that the Biden Administration has done, I find myself constantly asking: “is this malice, or is this incompetence?” After all, if my goal was to destroy this country, I could hardly do better than what this administration has already done (Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article about that, and he says it better than me). And yet, every time the press secretary opens her mouth, I am reminded of just how staggering is the incompetence of these people. Or is it?

And then I had a realization: if you go up high enough, all of these people are useful idiots to a force of pure malice that is striving to bring about our spiritual enslavement and destruction. I am speaking, of course, of Satan himself.

Now, perhaps you don’t believe that the devil is real. Laying aside the aphorism that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist,” you don’t have to believe in a literal fallen angel and his hordes of demonic followers in order to follow this particular rabbit hole. The devil is an archetype for a reason, after all. Personally, my own experience has convinced me that demonic forces do indeed exist, but that’s all I care to say on the subject, and I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

But my point is that it’s not like the forces of evil are monolithic: there is a hierarchy of conspirators and useful idiots, and some who may be conspirators on one level are useful idiots on another. At the bottom, it’s almost all useful idiots wreaking havoc by their own incompetence, but at the top, it’s all driven by malice.

Because here’s the thing: when we attribute a particular action to incompetence, we are making an implicit assumption about the motive behind that action. If we assume that Biden’s motive is to serve the interests of the American people, he’s doing a piss-poor job of it—but if we consider that he may have been compromised by China (as the Hunter Biden laptop implicates), or that he only cares about the Biden crime family’s interests, then his actions no longer reak of so much incompetence.

In the game of chess, there’s a thing called a gambit, where the player sacrifices a piece in order to gain an advantage of tempo or position. To the inexperienced player, a gambit often looks like a mistake. Some of the most brilliant chess moves involve a gambit that seems, at first, to be an act of utter incompetence, but that in fact make winning inevitable if the opponent falls for the gambit.

So even though “never attribute to malice” is a good rule of thumb, it’s clearly not sophisticated enough to explain all the insanity we’ve seen in the last two years. But neither is it sufficient to explain this insanity in terms of pure conspiracy—indeed, falling into that trap makes us susceptible to becoming infected by that insanity ourselves. Mattias Desmet points this out in chapter 8 of his seminal work, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. He also says:

In the whole process of exercising power—i.e., shaping the world to the ideological beliefs—there usually is little need to make secret plans and agreements. As Noam Chomsky put it, if you have to tell someone what to do, you’ve chosen the wrong person. In other words: the dominant ideology selects who ends up in key positions… Consequently, all people in positions of power automatically follow the same rules in their thinking and in their behavior and are under the influence of the same attractors.

One of the main points that Desmet makes in this chapter is that when people are driven by an evil ideology—or, in the words of Jordan Peterson, become ideologically possessed—their actions often appear, to someone on the outside, as if they are all part of a grand conspiracy. And yet, none (or at least, very few) of these people have actually entered into a clandestine agreement to support a deliberate plan: they are all just playing the part that they find themselves in, most of them unwittingly.

And yet, even though there is no “conspiracy” in the classical sense, the people who get caught up in the insanity all end up working to advance the purposes of something much bigger than themselves. Indeed, explaining this phenomenon is the entire purpose of Mattias Desmet’s book. He does a brilliant job of it, but mostly from a psychological perspective.

What I want to do is look at this phenomenon from a spiritual and an archetypal perspective, not as a scientist but as a storyteller. That’s why I’m calling it the “grand conspiracy,” even though I recognize that on most levels, it’s not a conspiracy so much as a confluence of interests (or more accurately, a confluence of lusts). I do think that there’s a lot that can be gleaned by looking at it this way, because there is a spiritual dimension to our lives—as Mattias Desmet emphatically points out—and stories and archetypes have been absolutely essential to our understanding of the world since prehistoric times. I happen to believe that Satan is more than just an archetype, but you don’t have to believe that in order for this grand conspiracy to be useful and make sense.

I’ve planned this series out in twelve parts, listed here. From now until the end of February, I’ll post about once a week. Since Christmas is coming and I don’t want to be thinking about all this diabolical stuff over the holiday itself, I’ll post part 2 next Tuesday, and part 3 the week after that, then go back to posting on Saturdays. The first three parts will outline the general theory that I’ve come up with, and the next eight parts will examine each piece of the theory in detail. In the end, I’ll share some concluding thoughts about how this grand conspiracy can—and indeed, ultimately will—be defeated.

I hope you find this series interesting, and I look forward to hearing what you think about it!

Part 2: Creator vs. Created

The Grand Conspiracy (Index)

What’s really behind the “Mormon Church”‘s stance on the Respect for Marriage Act?

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court overthrew Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision. This was a major legal and cultural earthquake. A big question that arose from this decision was how will this affect Obergefell v. Hodges, which codified same-sex marriage as legal back in 2015? Most of the conservative justices stated that Dobbs does not affect Obergefell, but Justice Thomas stated that he was willing to revisit that case.

In response, congress crafted the Respect for Marriage Act, which would require the federal government to redefine “marriage” in a way that would recognize same-sex marriage equally with traditional marriage. What does this mean for those who believe that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and a woman? As I understand it, those who espouse this view could be prosecuted for discrimination if this bill passes. There are some protections for religious institutions, but many conservatives believe that these are too weak, and that this law would put us on the slippery slope to churches losing their tax exempt status and possibly even being forced to perform same-sex marriages.

To everyone’s surprise, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out with an official statement in support of this legislation, or specifically, this “way forward.” There’s been a lot of noise in the press about this, most of which is either misinformed or outright misinformation, so here is the full statement:

The doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints related to marriage between a man and a woman is well known and will remain unchanged.

We are grateful for the continuing efforts of those who work to ensure the Respect for Marriage Act includes appropriate religious freedom protections while respecting the law and preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

We believe this approach is the way forward. As we work together to preserve the principles and practices of religious freedom together with the rights of LGBTQ individuals, much can be accomplished to heal relationships and foster greater understanding.

Some outlets, like the Washington Post (where democracy dies in darkness), are reporting that this statement represents a doctrinal shift for the church, and an embrace of same-sex marriage. However, a careful reading should demonstrate that this is fake news calculated to create a false narrative and manufacture consent for that false narrative. Sadly, this is typical of MSM rags like the Washington Post.

Other commentators argue that the restored church has “surrendered to the spirit of the age” and is siding with Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who is ready to sign the Respect for Marriage Act as it stands, instead of Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is pushing for an amendment to the bill that would strengthen the protections for religious freedom.

Frankly, I don’t see that. The church’s statement does not endorse any specific legislation, but “this [new] approach,” and expresses support for “the continuing efforts of those who work to ensure the Respect for Marriage Act includes appropriate religious freedom protections.” (emphasis added) Yes, the statement came out before the bill passed the house and Mike Lee put forward his amendments, but I don’t see anything to indicate that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is siding with Romney over Lee.

But has the restored church gone over to the spirit of the age? At best, it appears that the church is making a strategic retreat in the culture wars. It’s certainly a far cry from the Proposition 8 debate in the 00s, in which Californians ultimately voted to ban same-sex marriage. What a different world that was! With this most recent statement, it appears that the church has switched from defending the traditional definition of marriage to pushing instead for protections on religious freedom.

How are we supposed to square this with paragraph 9 of the Family Proclamation? That was the question that Greg Matsen asked on the most recent episode of the Cwic Media podcast. For reference, here is paragraph 9 in its entirety:

“We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”

When you read the rest of the Family Proclamation, which is a line-by-line, point-by-point refutation of many of the radical gender theories currently taking over our society (which is remarkable, since the proclamation was issued in the 90s, long before any of these radical ideologies had hit the cultural mainstream), it certainly seems to be at odds with the church’s recent statement, which supports “preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters” and “the rights of LGBTQ individuals.”

But what if those two documents aren’t at odds at all? What if the best way to “preserve and maintain” traditional marriage in our current cultural climate is also to preserve LGBTQ rights? In other words, what if the church isn’t capitulating or retreating from the marriage issue, but making a strategic retreat in anticipation of a new front opening up in the culture wars—a battle which will make strange bedfellows of same-sex marriage proponents and the defenders of traditional marriage?

In an ideal world, the church would want to foster a society in which the laws of the land are in harmony with the laws of the restored gospel—in other words, a society that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Obviously, we don’t live in that society (at least, not here in the United States). So what are our options instead?

On the one hand, we can accept that same-sex marriage is now the law of the land, and seek to promote laws that strengthen both the traditional family and the families of same-sex couples together. On the other hand, we can push for the libertarian approach of “getting the government out of the marriage business altogether,” removing the tax benefits and legal protections of marriage and making the state totally agnostic to marriage and families.

Which of those two paths is more likely to “maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society”? Which of those paths is more likely to lead to a society where marriage is considered to be obsolete and unnecessary?

Which brings us to the next major front in the culture wars, which I believe is going to be between those who view marriage and family as a social goods, and those who view the family as a “system of oppression” and want to deconstruct and abolish it altogether. We got a sneak peak of this in 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement posted the following statement on their website:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

At the time, this statement created some controversy, and the organization ultimately took it down. If you search online for information about it, you get a bunch of articles “debunking” that BLM ever advocated destroying the traditional family. But the radical left’s modus operandi is first to hide and deny what they’re doing, then to accuse you of doing what they’re actually doing, then to ridicule you for pointing out what they’re doing, and finally to attack you for opposing it at all. We’re already well into the first phase of that process.

Black Lives Matter isn’t the only faction in the radical left that would love to destroy or abolish the nuclear family. Those who are pushing to normalize pedophilia would love to see such a cultural shift too. Same with those who are pushing the Cloward-Piven strategy of making us all more dependent on the state. Same with the Malthusian climate change alarmists who are pushing the depopulation agenda.

If this is the next big front in the culture wars, then conservatives might play right into the hand of the enemy by continuing to push a losing cultural battle for the traditional definition of marriage. After all, what better way to “get the government out of the marriage business” than to point out that we can’t even agree on the definition of marriage in the first place? And once the state becomes agnostic to marriage, we’re well on the slippery slope to a society that views the family itself as obsolete and unnecessary.

I would love to live in a society that recognizes the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, and that vigorously promotes measures to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society. Unfortunately, at this point it’s going to take a generational struggle to get us to that society—perhaps even a multi-generational struggle—and we’re not going to win that struggle by fighting the last generation’s war.

So has the restored church capitulated on the issue of traditional marriage? Has it surrendered to the spirit of the age? Hardly. If anything, I think the brethren are just as far-sighted and inspired as they were when they gave us the Family Proclamation. Be prepared to make some very strange bedfellows in the coming years.