The Gathering Darkness

We stand amid the roar of the COVID tormented shore and hold within our hands the remnants of our future.

Companion Article: The Belief Trap

[Authors Note: This was originally written in December of 2023 and was part one in a series which culminated with ‘The Gathering Light’, which no longer exists, but another with a similar theme was made this Christmas which can be viewed here. This 2024 version has been polished and expanded so please give it another look if you’ve seen it already. Here are a couple of comments for the initial, rougher version:

Here we go. Buckle your seatbelt.]

Lament for Torn Out Pages

The crowned virus was never our king and still half the world knelt before it. It was never dangerous and still half the world feared and fled it. It held no power over us and still half the world tore out full chapters of their future, and cast those pages as an offering before it.

The danger of the crowned virus was never more than an invisible notion: no more threatening than climate change or middle eastern terrorism. But just like these forbearers because it went unseen it was everywhere: in every corner, on every surface, in every breath; and it was also nowhere. It was simultaneously disease and death and neither. It was capable of anything and nothing, depending on your point of view.

Like terrorism and climate change, it was a virus of the mind.

Yossarian comes to realize that Catch-22 does not actually exist, but because the powers that be claim it does, and the world believes it does, it nevertheless has potent effects. Indeed, because it does not exist there is no way it can be repealed, undone, overthrown, or denounced. The combination of force with specious & spurious legalistic justification is one of the book's primary motifs.
—Catch 22 Synopsis

And so the future for all was splintered and shattered on the rocks of destiny over a lowly notion of danger, and all of those cast out pages, once brimming with promise and potential, are instead teaming with dread, conformity, gullibility & cowardice masquerading as virtue, and irreparable arrested development.

The deformities now written on these sacred pages cannot be unwritten, and this mournful consequence shall ripple down the corridors of time, permanently altering the future, as if this mind virus were forever spreading within the family tree of mankind.

If we fail to learn from this experience then our failure will be total as nothing good will have come from it. However, if we seize this experience as the lesson we need in order to ensure that we will never again allow this madness to occur, then maybe, just maybe, with so much at stake, we will have gained more than we’ve lost, or at least will have broken even.

As we stand amid the mass destruction propagated by the mere idea of an unseen danger, we hold our delicate future in our hands. Where will we go from here, and what will we take with us?

Yes, the world and the what might have been were conquered by an invisible idea and battling this phantom proved as fruitful as boxing shadows on the wall. But now that we know the ropes, and if we’ve managed to gain and keep the right kind of wisdom, the next time we will see it coming and we will be ready.

What “ropes”?

COVID Operation Executive Summary

The virus held little danger so to fix this flaw the script was flipped to ensure that all of the preventative measures were overflowing with harm:

The masks were designed to devitalize you mentally, physically, & spiritually.

The propaganda was programmed to wreck your mind and install the “virus”.

The lockdowns were enforced to eviscerate your economies, education, and autonomy.

The injections are intended to erase you.

All of this damage is by design: death by a thousand cuts.

The Darkness is Gathering…

…from behind masked faces where recognition of who we are is lost.
Where the air is festering with chemicals and bacteria.
Where smiles and empathy and cognition go to die.

The Darkness is Spreading…

…from the television and radio where naked lies program minds with fear and distrust.
Where the ties that bind unravel, replaced with flooding darkness at six foot intervals.
Where critical thought is drowned with panic and slitted eyes regard all others with suspicion.

The Darkness is Rising…

…from the ruined small businesses with their desecrated store-fronts.
Where dreams turn to nightmares of bankruptcy, insolvency, and suicide.
Where hope and family fail and despair rages like wildfire.

The Darkness has arrived…

…from venom needles and toxic tests the blackness spills inside once sound bodies.
Where the light of health is sadistically splintered with pestilence and treachery.
Where blind faith in scientism refuses to acknowledge this invading hatred as anything but love…

…no matter how the obvious cost or the loved ones lost.

The Darkness is Afraid…

…of the light within you and your potential to extinguish the gloom.
Of that place where courage and kindness ebb and flow in revitalizing waves.
Of your discernment shattering its lies.
Of where divide & conquer and fear hold no power.

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Avenues to Keep Work Like This Coming

In late September I was assaulted and have been homeless since. I am surviving the winter in hotels on contributions to this project—any and all help you can give is graciously appreciated and desperately needed:

Venmo: https://venmo.com/u/tritorch

Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/tritorch

PayPal: tritorch@cliffhanger.com

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Late Lament by The Moody Blues (Submitted by

Ned B.

)

Breathe deep the gathering gloom ● Watch lights fade from every room ● Bedsitter people look back and lament ● Another day's useless energy is spent ● Impassioned lovers wrestle as one ● Lonely man cries for love and has none ● New mother picks up and suckles her son ● Senior citizens wish they were young

Cold-hearted orb that rules the night ● Removes the colors from our sight ● Red is grey and yellow-white ● But we decide which is right ● And which is an illusion

The Crossroad of Choice & the Nightmarish Outcome of Inaction

The above lament about the oncoming darkness doesn’t have to be our fate—we’ve been imbued by our creator with ample capacity rise to these challenges. Or…

We can sit back and do nothing against this encroaching darkness, and then one morning we will wake up to have hell on earth smirking right to our faces, and due to this inaction waged against a force that is making zero attempt to conceal the fact that they are diligently working to capture, corrupt, kill, or enslave us, we will have earned this fate of living in a nightmare we knowingly let them create. But our children will be dragged in right along with us, and they will have not, and we will be responsible for throwing them into this prison.

We either stand up and wage war for what is right no matter the cost or our fate will be in the hands of total psychopaths. And then, even if we fail, we can still look our children and our God in the eye and tell them, sincerely, that we fought for them. That we recognized and faced these challenges with truth & courage. And that means everything.

Solutions can be found at the bottom of this article, and here. We will not win this without each of us sacrificing something. And if we collectively fail to sacrifice enough, we will be forced to sacrifice everything, at the barrel of a gun directed by the merriment of a psychopath. They are gleefully building a future that none of us is going to want to live in, and are counting on us to do nothing to stop it. It is on us to end this brisk march to hell, both for our children, our faith, and ourselves.

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Consider she represents humanity, then consider how badly they want to corrupt/destroy her. Shall we let them?

Semper Fi, to Mankind?