7 And now I write somewhat concerning the sufferings of this people. For according to the knowledge which I have received from Amoron, behold, the Lamanites have many prisoners, which they took from the tower of Sherrizah; and there were men, women, and children.
8 And the husbands and fathers of those women and children they have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands, and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water, save a little, do they give unto them.
9 And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue—
10 And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery.
11 O my beloved son, how can a people like this, that are without civilization—
12 (And only a few years have passed away, and they were a civil and a delightsome people)
13 But O my son, how can a people like this, whose delight is in so much abomination—
14 How can we expect that God will stay his hand in judgment against us?
Moroni 9:7-14
The atrocities that we saw by Hamas on October 7th were on exactly the same level as the atrocities in the closing chapters of the Book of Mormon. The only thing we haven’t heard about is cannibalism, both of Hamas fighters against the victims, and of the hostages fed with the flesh of their own children—but frankly, it wouldn’t be surprising, given the scope and nature of the atrocities we already know about.
And yet, there are significant numbers of people in the West who approve of the jihad against the Jewish people? Truly, we are swiftly passing from a “civil and delightsome people” to a “people… without civilization.”
In just ten days, this comedy skit has gotten about 1.2M views on YouTube, and probably a lot more on X. It’s gone viral for a couple of reasons: first, because it makes fun of celebrities, who most of us Americans now love to hate; and second, because most of us who have watched it feel like we’re in a similar position, thanks to the way social media makes celebrities and narcissists of us all.
I can sympathize with the confusion of most Americans, who feel like the recent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came out of nowhere, and don’t really know who’s right. The last big “current thing” was probably the Russo-Ukraine war, and most of us have since come to the conclusion that there are no good guys in that conflict, only innocent civilians and impoverished taxpayers who’ve been bilked out of billions and billions of dollars while our insanely corrupt politicians vow to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Here’s the thing, though: you shouldn’t have to pick a side to be able to declare, without any misgivings or doubts, that this is evil:
Unlike most Americans, I am not unfamiliar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I studied it for four years in college, interned briefly with a major K-street foreign policy think tank, and traveled both to Israel and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. At the time, I was very pro-Palestinian.
My school (Brigham Young University) was actually more conservative and a lot more fair to the Israeli side of the conflict than most universities, but even back in the 2000s the entire American academic establishment had a very anti-semitic bent, and the things I didn’t learn—the lies of omission, especially about the history of anti-semitism in the Arab world—could fill volumes.
The other thing that red-pilled me away from my pro-Palestinian stance was the realization that Islam teaches that it is virtuous to lie to the unbeliever in order to further the cause of Islam. This principle is called “taqiyya,” and when you realize that everything we as kaffirs think we know about Islam has been transmitted to us by someone who was taught to lie to us about Islam, it makes a lot more sense. Not all Arabs are Muslim, and within Islam there are a lot of sects and divisions, but all of them share this principle of taqiyya, and the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are Muslim.
Back in my pro-Palestinian days, there were a number of things that I had to either ignore or chalk off as anomalies in order to maintain my pro-Palestinian views. Things like the insane popularity of Hitler’s Mein Kampf all across the Arab world, perhaps only rivaled by the Qur’an. Things like the fact that generations of Palestinians who have never even set foot in the disputed territories demand the “right to return,” while Arabs displaced from other conflicts, such as the Syrian civil war, have no qualms about picking up and leaving their ancestral homelands. Things like the fact that Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terror groups deliberately target civilians, whereas Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Can you imagine what would happen if the Israelis used their own people as human shields the way that Hamas does? Hans… are we the baddies?
As someone who spent a significant portion of his life studying this conflict, and has since had a 180 degree change of view, the October 7th massacre was extremely clarifying. All those things that I used to chalk up as anomalies now fit into place in a way that makes me wonder how I didn’t see it before. The biggest of these has to do with the anti-semitic origins of Palestinian nationalism in the first place. Before the Balfour Declaration, which started the ball rolling for the formation of a Jewish state on historically Jewish lands, there was no concept of a Palestinian nation. Indeed, until the 20th century, the concept of the Westphalian nation-state was foreign to the Arabs, who instead tended to identify with their local community or tribal affiliation. From the beginning, Palestinian nationalism was created and deliberately cultivated as a means of accomplishing exactly what Hamas did on October 7th: the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Jews.
Which is not to say that the people we call “Palestinians” were not themselves violently displaced by the wars in 1948 and 1967. Unlike what some conservative commentators have said in recent weeks, these people were not “squatters,” but legitimate inhabitants of these lands. Indeed, many of them are descendants of the ancient Jewish people who converted to Christianity, and thus remained on the land after the Romans pacified Judea in the first century AD and drove their fellow Jews from their homeland. It’s a very ancient and complex conflict, which is why I can sympathize with Ryan Long’s comedy sketch.
But what’s happened with the Palestinians is the same thing that’s happened with the blacks and BLM, the American Indians and the decolonization movement, gender dysphoria victims and the transgender movement, same-gender attracted peoples and the LGBTQ+ movement, and women generally and radical feminism. It all follows the same pattern. First, the radical left identifies a minority which they can pretend to champion as an “oppressed class.” Then, once they have established themselves as representing that particular group, they redifine that group’s cause to fit into their grand goal, which is to overthrow Western civilization and establish a Marxist utopia.
Let’s be honest. There are only two ways that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can end. The first is for every Israeli Jew to meet the same end as the victims of the October 7th massacre, or to be violently and permanently driven from their land. The second is for the vast majority of the Palestinians to be resettled somewhere other than the so-called Palestinian Territories, and for Israel to annex those lands. The October 7th massacre didn’t kill the two state solution, so much as it revealed that it was never a viable solution to begin with. How could it, when Hamas—and by extension, those who support Hamas—view the state of Israel itself as an “occupation” of their lands?
Of course, history never truly has an end, so the default is for the current state of affairs to continue in a metastable state until it is either displaced by an outside force, or ceases to be metastable. From 1973 to the present, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was metastable, which allowed the myth of the two state solution to take hold. The so-called “peace process” itself became an industry, and a lot of people built profitable careers by propagating this myth. At the same time, the ant-semitic forces that want to cleanse the Holy Land (and ultimately the world itself) of all Jewish blood also propagated this myth, because so long as the Palestinian people remained in refugee camps instead of being resettled elsewhere, the conflict could continue.
But now, the situation has changed. We are living through the midst of a fourth turning, where conflicts such as this one are no longer metastable, and the old order itself comes crashing down. According to Strauss and Howe, who developed the theory of generational turnings and secular cycles, fourth turnings always start with a lot of chaos and confusion, but somewhere in the middle an event or development happens that brings moral clarity to the conflict, which in turn brings everything into focus.
In the Civil War cycle, this event was the Emancipation Declaration. Slavery was always a major underlying issue to the conflict, but until Abraham Lincoln clearly and unambiguously identified it as the war’s main cause, the war spiraled from a gentleman’s contest on the shores of the Manassas to a bloody chaotic conflageration engulfing the whole nation, and the Union lost almost every battle. After the Emancipation Declaration, the Union won almost every battle until the South was firmly defeated and the 13th amendment made every state a free state.
In the last fourth turning, this event was the holocaust. World War II started as a series of border disputes between the expansionist Axis powers and their neighbors, but after the conflict when global and it became clear that the Nazis wanted nothing less than the extermination of the Jews (and Roma and Slavs and…), moral clarity was achieved. That’s why the Great Power cycle ended with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past two weeks, and now I firmly believe that the October 7th massacre was the event that brought moral clarification to our own fourth turning. Therefore, the moral conflict of our times comes down to this: should the Jews (and by extension all “oppressor” classes, including straight white males) be liquidated in the name of “justice,” “equity,” and “decolonization,” or should we reject the Marxist utopia, return to God, and preserve God’s ancient covenant people—the Jews?
The third world war has probably already begun. This is the defining moral conflict of our times. There will be no return to the status quo ante: the Israeli-Hamas war will continue to expand until there is a decisive victory on the one hand or the other. We are still in the early stages where this particular armed conflict can be contained, but make no mistake: the forces arrayed against Israel, both foreign and domestic, are also arrayed against the West. I hope that the Israel-Hamas war ends before it spirals into a global conflageration, but even if this particular conflict isn’t the volcano, it lies on the same moral fault line.
What should that mean for us, who aren’t directly involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Should we send over billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, and ultimately put boots on the ground in that conflict? I don’t know about that, but I do know that we need to repent and return to God, both as individuals and as a nation, and that we need to call out evil for what it is, especially what we saw on the October 7th massacre. But we shouldn’t stop there. We should call out the evil behind every element of the anti-semitic Leftist agenda, and not just those parts that have to do with the Jews. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the castration and mutilation of gender-confused children, the ongoing slaughter of the unborn, the naked racism of the so-called “anti-racists,” the LGBTQ+ grooming happening in our schools—basically, every social justice cause that has ever been championed by the people now championing the cause of Palestine and Hamas.
This is our moment of moral clarity. Will we stand against evil, or will we fail to call it out for what it is? The October 7th massacre of Israeli Jews by Hamas terrorists was evil—arguably, more evil than the holocaust itself. Whatever else you believe, if you can’t come out and say that, you are, indeed, one of the baddies.
The purpose of this post is not to pick any particular side or advocate for any particular action, but to give a back-of-the-napkin analysis of the current situation on the ground in the Middle East and project where it will likely go in the coming days and weeks. My goal is to approach the geopolitics of this conflict from a realist perspective and not let my own biases led to “wishcasting” or “doomcasting,” but these are just my own opinions, and I don’t have any special knowledge of the situation: just what I’ve been following from open source newscasts and political pundits.
What authority do I have to speak on this subject, besides just being a guy on the internet? In 2010, I double-majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from BYU, but please don’t hold that against me: I’ve since come to realize that most of what I learned in university is a lie, either of commission through the Islamic principle of taqiyya which states that it is morally virtuous for a muslim to lie to a kafir in the service of Islam (and guess where we kafirs have learned everything we think to know about Islam), or a lie of ommission, perpetuated by things like the history of anti-semitism that the American academic establishment studiously chooses to ignore. I also speak and read Arabic, spent a summer living, traveling, and hitchhiking in the Middle East, had two Palestinian roommates in college, and briefly interned as a research assistant in a major K-street foreign policy think tank, though I was fired early for having moral principles.
I’m going to assume that the reader is familiar with the basic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the events of the past week. The situation on the ground is changing quickly, and the fog of war is certainly beginning to thicken, but my understanding of it is as follows:
Israel is mobilizing an army of several hundred thousand soldiers for a ground invasion of Gaza, while the Israeli air force is striking suspected Hamas targets throughout the Gaza strip. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to launch several hundred missiles per day at Israeli targets, though it appears to be rationing munitions as it prepares for a protracted conflict.
With that said, Hamas is clearly targeting civilians while using their own people as human shields, whereas Israel is targeting Hamas while evacuating civilians from staging areas such as Sderot. That’s an important distinction, not only for moral clarity, but for the war for global public opinion, which is currently the most important aspect of this conflict.
Israel’s five war goals, as stated by PM Netenyaho, are: 1) defeat any terrorists remaining in Israel, 2) launch a massive offensive operation, 3) contain the conflict to Gaza, 4) expand support in the international community, and 5) solidify national unity.
Goal 1 has mostly been achieved, though there are still sporadic reports of gunfights with isloated Hamas terrorists still on Israeli soil. However, the border fence has been secured, and so far as I can tell, no new terrorists are crossing over.
Goal 2 is currently pending. The airstrikes are brutal and ongoing, but the real offensive is going to begin with the ground offensive, which is clearly with days or even hours of beginning. In fact, it may have already begun.
Goal 3 is much more tricky. Hezbollah in the north is reported to have 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel, and has issued statements of solidarity with Hamas. Some skirmishes and artillery exchanges on the northern border have already occured. In addition, Israeli forces have exchanged fire with Syrian forces across the Golan Heights, and just this morning, Israel struck the Damascus airport, preventing a shipment of Iranian arms from entering the conflict zone.
So it seems very unlikely that Israel will achieve goal 3, especially since Hamas’s primary objective right now is likely to draw in other elements from the Arab world. They’re already calling for a general jihad, so it would not surprise me if we see a major escalation across Israel’s other borders. It’s not a question of if, but when.
As for goals 4 and 5, Israel currently appears to be experiencing a level of success that I have not seen since I started studying this conflict. The sheer savagery with which Hamas has raped and murdered women and children has, I believe, strongly shifted sympathies in the West toward Israel. Also, unity among Israelis has also never been higher, by all appearances exceeding the unity I saw here in the US in the days after the 9/11 attacks. However, the situation is very dynamic, and changing by the hour. As the shock and horror of Hamas’s atrocities passes out of the news cycle, I expect that most people in the West will either revert to their prior opinions, or put the conflict out of mind.
In the Arab world, however, I suspect that it’s just the opposite. What Hamas lost in terms of public relations with the west, they have probably gained with most Arabs. Anti-semitism runs deep throughout the entire Arab world, and the proportion of Arabs who view Jews as non-people is probably as high or higher than the proportion of Germans who did so in the years leading up to WWII. But the blow to Israel’s reputation for invincibility has now been shattered by Hamas, which now makes this conflict an existential one for both parties. If Hamas survives the conflict with any capability to prosecute terrorist attacks, that reputation will be permanently shattered, inspiring thousands of other Arabs to take up arms until Israel dies by a thousand cuts. Therefore, Israel must eradicate Hamas completely before the war expands to other fronts, and the tide of global opinion turns against Israel as images of dead and wounded Palestinians drowns out the images we’ve already seen of raped and murdered Israelis.
I suspect that Hezbollah is waiting until Israel commits itself to a ground offensive in Gaza before they open a second front in the north. That will be the time when Israel is weakest, especially if they’ve already spent most of their munitions on Gaza. That’s probably why Israel hasn’t launched the ground offensive already. Will Israel launch a pre-emptive strike against southern Lebanon, the way they did against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the ’67 war? The biggest risks with that are 1) a failure or partial success that commits too many forces to the north, before Hamas has been sufficiently defeated, and 2) losing the public relations battle, which is already guaranteed to happen eventually, given the steps they must take with the ground invasion of Gaza.
When—not if, but when—the northern front to this war opens up, Syria and Lebanon will almost certainly be drawn into the conflict. Jordan and Egypt will likely try to stay out of it for as long as they can, since among the Arab states, they are more closely aligned with the West than they are with Iran. Until this summer, Saudi Arabia was also aligned against Iran, but that began to shift when both countries joined the BRICS alliance. Saudi Arabia has also been making overtures with China, who appears to be siding tacitly with the Palestinians against NATO and the West.
Will Iran be drawn into this conflict? If it becomes protracted, almost certainly yes. I suspect they will enter it by launching a surprise attack on a US aircraft carrier, either with a drone, or with a Russian hypersonic missile. If they can sink a US aircraft carrier, that would be a major blow to our own military reputation, which would represent a tremendous victory in itself. Based on what we’ve seen in Ukraine about the effectiveness of drones in modern warfare, our Cold War-era aircraft carriers could prove to be as big of a liability as the Maginot Line, when the history of WWIII is written. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The way to prevent Iran from being drawn into this conflict is to eradicate Hamas swiftly and completely, bringing the war to a decisive close before the Iranians have fully mobilized. But Hamas is deeply entrenched, having used the billions of dollars of foreign aid they’ve received over the years to prepare for exactly this eventuality. So the Gaza offensive is like to strike fast and hard, without much regard for civilians such as we’ve seen from Israel in the past. Because of how this will shock global opinion, Israel has only a narrow window in which to carry it out.
In other words, this Hamas-Israel war is not likely to turn into a long, drawn out war of attrition, such as we’ve seen the Russo-Ukrainian war become. It’s also not likely to become a frozen conflict anytime soon. As for a ceasefire, that’s just not in the cards; the stakes for both sides are too existential, and the window in which Israel has to act is just too narrow. It’s going to be brutal.
But here’s the problem from the American perspective: our economy is so strained, and our fuel and weapons stockpiles are already so depleted that if we send too much military aid to Israel, we risk giving China an opening to attempt an invasion of Taiwan. If we don’t aid Israel, however, and that northern front opens up before Israel has eliminated Hamas, then the odds of this spiraling into a regional war begin to approach 100%. We can try to deter Iran by sending in more aircraft carriers, but to what degree have those military platforms become liabilities instead of assets, given how technology has changed the nature of war? It only took about a dozen well-placed bombs to sink four of Japan’s aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway. How many cheap Iranian drones will it take to sink one of ours? But if we take the neocon path, that opens up China to take Taiwan, or Russia to bleed us out in Ukraine and precipitate the collapse of NATO, which appears to be their ultimate goal.
And then there’s the situation on our southern border, which has been completely overrun. How many terrorist cells have already come over, and become embedded in our territory? How many of them will be activated if the Israeli-Hamas war expands, as it almost certainly will? Will a Hamas-style terrorist attack on American soil strengthen our resolve, or shatter it?
Given these realities, I’m having a hard time seeing how we avoid WWIII—if indeed, it hasn’t broken out already. The battle lines will probably be drawn between US/NATO and the BRICS alliance, since the financial/economic divisions appear to be aligned with the geopolitical ones. And with all the financial and geopolitical blunders we’ve made since the pandemic, it appears that we’ve set ourselves up for exactly this scenario. Seriously—if I’d written all this as a novel, with our southern border overrun, our strategic petroleum reserves depleted, our shamefully disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, a hot proxy war with Russia depleting our military reserves, and the botched pandemic response and lockdowns driving massive inflation and a supply chain collapse, it would have rightfully been panned as a trash. And yet, this is the clown world we currently find ourselves in.
Before WWIII goes nuclear, I expect it will go cyber. I have no idea what that will look like, but it’s probably best to prepare for extended power blackouts and loss of basic infrastructure. Also, if I were China or Russia, when this conflict does go nuclear I would strike the US with a barrage of high altitude EMPs and watch the Americans eat each other. That would certainly force the troops to go home.
How do we prevent any of these scenarios from unfolding? The only way that I can see is for Israel to destroy Hamas before Christmas—but even that isn’t a guarantee, if we become so overextended that China decides to take Taiwan as a result. So if WWIII hasn’t indeed already started, I think we will almost certainly be in WWIII before Christmas.
If you’re smarter than me, please tell me how I’m wrong.
For the last couple of days, I’ve been going back and forth on whether to write this post. It’s not something that’s directly in my wheelhouse, and few things turn me off to other writers and artists more than when they feel a need to publicly post their every knee-jerk reaction to the political issues of the day.
But there are a few reasons why I think it would be a mistake not to post my thoughts about the recent Hamas attacks on Israel, and the new war that has broken out in the region. First, it’s a major watershed event, certainly for Israel, and probably for the rest of the world as well, especially if it spirals into a regional and ultimately a global war (which seems increasingly likely).
Second, I’ve actually had a lot of personal experience in the region, having traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories, studied in Jordan, learned Arabic, and majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic from BYU in 2010. Longtime readers will recognize the influence of all of these studies and travels on my work, especially on my earlier novels such as Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home.
What the Hamas attacks have confirmed to me is that everything I learned in university about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a lie, sometimes of commission, but mostly of ommission. Compared to most schools, Brigham Young University’s MESA program is actually very ideologically balanced. But it wasn’t until after I graduated that I learned about things like taqiyya, which is a principal of the Islamic religion that it is virtuous to lie to the unbeliever in the service of Islam (and guess where all of us Kafirs get our information about Islam). Also, we never delved very deeply into the history and development of anti-semitism. As a result, when I traveled to the Middle East, I was shocked to discover that Mein Kampf is still one of the bestselling books in the Arab world. At the time, I thought it was kind of funny, but not anymore.
So the heinous attacks by Hamas on the music festival and the various towns kibbutzim in southern Israel haven’t shattered my illusions, so much as they have given me a great deal of moral clarity. And I have to say that after seeing what the Palestinians have done to these women and children, targeting, raping, slaughtering, and decapitating them, I cannot help but feel that Israel is justified in making sure that something like this can never happen again—even if it means violently displacing millions of Palestinians to bring this generations-long conflict to an end.
The two-state solution is dead. Land for peace is dead. So is any solution that would involve integrating these pre-civilizational savages into Israeli society. My younger, more naive self would argue “yes, but Hamas doesn’t represent all the Palestinians! In fact, Hamas is an authoritarian regime!” But my older, wiser self who lived through the pandemic knows that authoritarian regimes can only exist because the people living under them comply with their rule. The reason Hamas is has been in power in Gaza for more than a decade is because this wanton slaughter of Israelis is what most of the Palestinians want. Because of that, I don’t see how any lasting peace can be made, unless either Israel or Palestine is destroyed as a nation.
This is a huge shift in my own personal thinking on the conflict, because as recently as ten years ago, my sympathies lay mostly with the Palestinians. But the actions of Hamas and the Palestinian people this last weekend have forever shattered those sympathies, and none of the footage of the bombings in Gaza is going to win my sympathy back. Not after what Hamas did to those Israeli women and children.
And when I see the activists and protesters here in the US flying Palestinian flags and protesting “in solidarity” against the “occupation,” I cannot help but wonder: is this what they want for me and my family? Do the people who consider themselves part of the self-described “resistance” against capitalism, colonialism, and “whiteness” secretly want to force me to watch while they decapitate my children, rape and murder my wife, and finally murder me? Or perhaps it’s not so secret anymore, since these people are putting pictures of paragliders in their event fliers.
If you “stand with Palestine” after the events of this past weekend, I have to assume that you are either willfully ignorant, or a pre-civilizational savage who answers only to force. Perhaps both. Either way, I will never stand with Palestine again.
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.
I am sending this email to you because your voice mailbox is full, no doubt from listeners (such as myself) of popular conservative commentator Matt Walsh who gave us your (publicly listed) number and email address and encouraged us to reach out to you. Lest you think that this email constitutes harassment, I am a father of two young children who is actively researching our long-term education options and considering whether or not to encourage them to attend a university such as your own. I myself attended the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, MA, and many of my high school classmates went on to attend Brown.
It has come to my attention that a PhD student and member of your university community named Sarah Celeste Griffith has, for several months, been calling for the vigilante execution of Matt Walsh at his home. This is an explicit call for violence that, to my knowledge, is not protected by even the most liberal (in the non-political sense) interpretation of the first amendment, and yet your university has not taken any action to censure or discipline this student.
Based on the fact that this has been happening for several months, I can only conclude that your administration tacitly supports explicit and illegal calls for violence against Matt Walsh and his family. Is this correct, or is there more to this story (such as the incompetence of your own administration and staff) of which we are unaware? Now that Brown’s support of this student’s illegal and lawbreaking behavior has been made public, will you take actions to discipline or expel this student? Or is such violence and political intolerance exemplary of the values of a Brown University education—values that I, as a parent of young and intelligent children, can expect Brown University to instill in them, should I send them to Brown?
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.
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 have come to realize something that is, in some ways, making it very difficult for me to keep writing. Not in the short or the medium term—I’m actually making quite good progress on my current novel WIP, and am optimistic about finishing my three unfinished trilogies in the next couple of years. But when I look on the horizon, this thing that I’ve come to realize is looming like a storm cloud, and I worry that if something doesn’t change, and change soon, that storm is going to wipe me out.
When Orson Scott Card spoke at the BYU Library in 2007, he made a profound statement that had a great influence on my writing, and my decision to write. He said that stories and fiction are how the culture talks to itself. In other words, if you want to understand a particular culture, look at the stories that it produces.
The problem is that unfortunately, I have come to despise almost everything about our current culture.
I hate all the hypocrisy and virtue signalling that we see online. I hate how that virtue signalling has poisoned almost every major franchise, from Star Wars and Marvel to the commercials and advertisements that we consume on a daily basis. I hate how the virtue signalling of our gatekeepers has allowed our cultural vandals to erase our history and destroy our cultural icons.
I hate how our education system has become corrupted. I hate how it has been transformed into an indoctrination system that brainwashes everyone who goes through it, producing nothing but legions of woke fanatical footsoldiers and hordes of incompetent midwits. I hate how it holds our children hostage for the benefit of the unions, and how it utterly exterminates our children’s natural creativity and curiosity in order to turn them into nothing but cogs in society’s grand machine.
Above all else, I hate and hold in utter contempt how our culture has become anti-life, and promotes the unrestricted wholesale slaughter of our unborn children as a moral good. I hate how this rejection of the value of life has trickled down into every facet of our society, poisoning how we see each other and how we treat our fellow men. I sincerely believe that our ongoing genocide of the unborn exceeds the evil of the Nazi holocaust in every moral and ethical dimension. I also hope that future generations have the moral clarity to hold us in greater contempt than the Nazis, and plan to do everything within my power to make that a reality.
I hate the sexual revolution, and how it eviscerated the traditional family while also producing the most prudish and sex-negative society that this nation has ever seen. I hate how our sexually “liberated” culture celebrates our worst perversions and teaches us to define ourselves by our basest urges, instead of urging us to strive for something higher and better. I despise the transgender movement that is butchering our children and annihilating their innocence, all for the carnal gratification of the worst sexual predators among us.
I hate how our culture rejects the things of God. I hate how that even most self-described Christians have never read the Bible cover to cover. I hate how our churches are led by moral cowards who fear to offend their followers more than they fear to offend the Almighty. I hate how many of our priests and pastors have come to serve Mammon more than they serve God.
I hate almost every book and story that has won a major literary award within my lifetime. When I survey the field of science fiction and fantasy, I see hordes of talented writers willfully prostituting themselves to the spirit of the age, and pleasuring the whore of Babylon for the praise and glory of the world. When I read the books that our culture holds up as the greatest contemporary works, I am disgusted by the sexual depravity and nihilistic materialism that pervades them. Aside from Brandon Sanderson and a few obscure authors whose works the culture is actively working to suppress, I find nothing redeemable or even genuinely thought-provoking in any of these contemptible works.
Most of my readers are over the age of 55, probably because of just how much I hold our contemporary culture in such contempt. And yet, I cannot help but despise the Boomers for robbing me of my birthright and leaving me buried in a mountain of debts that neither I, nor my children, nor my grandchildren will ever be able to repay. Every generation before the Baby Boomers aspired to give their children lives that were better than their own, but the Boomers squandered everything that the previous generations gave them, and left their children sicker, poorer, and more unloved. In fact, the Boomers cared so little for their children that they locked down the entire country, deprived them of the crucial years of their education, and forcefully injected them with an experimental jab, all out of fear that the virus would shave off a few of their rapidly waning years. The Boomers are the ones who gave us our totally dysfunctional education system, Roe v. Wade, the sexual revolution, and the genocide of the unborn. They are the ones who pushed God and religion out of public life, and corrupted our churches to the point where they would not recognize the Lord if He came down and preached a sermon to them Himself. If our country falls into a second civil war, it will be because of the Boomers more than any other generation.
And now we hear of wars and rumors of war in the east, and people tell me that we are closer to nuclear annihilation than at any other point in my lifetime. And yet, when I look at how corrupt and utterly depraved our society has become, I cannot help but wonder if that would be such a bad thing. We read that the sword of the wrath of the Almighty is bathed in heaven, and that the angels are pleading with the Lord to let it fall, so that it will purge our iniquity from the face of this Earth. Sometimes, I find myself raising my voice with the same plea.
I recognize that “the culture” is not monolithic, and that there are many people who hold similar opinions and think and feel the same way that I do. And I hope you don’t take the wrong idea from this rant: I’m not about to throw my life away, or do something terrible. I have a loving wife and family, and friends in my life who are genuinely good people. It’s funny how that even as things seem to get worse and worse as far as the country is concerned, the people immediately around me don’t seem nearly as bad, and my own personal life actually seems to be getting better.
But as a writer, it’s my duty and responsibility to be a part of the wider cultural conversation, in order to write stories that resonate properly with my readers. To do that, I need to keep my finger on the pulse of a culture that I have come to hold in utter contempt.
How long can this situation stand? Either the culture needs to change, or I need to change something about what I’m doing, which means that I should probably change myself. Should I change my view of the culture, or should I channel that contempt into my writing somehow?
One of the reasons I started writing the Zedekiah Wight stories under my J.M. Wight pen name is to help maintain my sanity in the face of this dilemma. I just finished writing a short story where Zedekiah basically instigates the nuclear annihilation of the galaxy, because of the reasons I outlined above. I was planning to release that story in April, but I may move it up a couple of months. Zedekiah Wight is the character who fascinates me the most right now, even though almost half of my writing group despises him. Is he a madman, or is he the last sane man in a galaxy that has gone absolutely insane? I honestly do not know.
And what about me? Is my utter contempt of the culture a sign that I’ve gone crazy, or that the world has gone crazy all around me? And what does that mean for my writing?
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.
