Let my subscription lapse (it seems always to be the case that funds in the bank account are lacking at the worst possible moment, tsk) some time ago. The editor, Rusty Reno, was the object of thrown rotting vegetables and eggs on Twitter the other day because (I gather) he suggested that too much of the plague nonsense is simple cowardice, fear in the face of what other generations and other peoples reckoned the straightforward if complex vagaries of life. I read a couple of his 'diaries' this morning (prompting the pulling out of the debit card); here and here. A breath of fresh air, it seemed to me. So much of what goes on in the world these days provokes head-shaking in my little room.
... Yet the government and media seem always to stoke fear, rarely to reassure, and never to call for courage. They remind us of the power of the virus to cause death. They emphasize the danger of communicating it to others—and thus causing their deaths. Officials fix on these messages because fear motivates people to comply with these unprecedented policies of social control. They want us to treat every encounter as perilous, tinged with the threat of dying or causing another to die.I resent the relentless propaganda and resist the atmosphere of fear that has descended upon New York. Fear is a debasing, humiliating emotion that erodes our dignity. It is a powerful acid that disintegrates the bonds that unite human beings. I foresee that adult children will fear visiting their elderly parents should they fall sick. Grandchildren will be kept away. Fear will prevent our fulfillment of Christ’s commands in Matthew 25, not the coronavirus....
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