8-27-19 The Fringe
The Fringe - By Pete Garcia -
The longer we wait for our Lord's return, the more antagonistic this world will become toward those who belong to Him. Although this hatred has existed on the earth since Christ physically walked amongst us and has expressed itself through numerous waves of violence and persecution, the overall level of hatred towards Christians will continue to intensify until the Rapture. Part of that antagonism is increasingly expressing itself via technology to block and/or blacklist anyone who dares to go against this world's decaying humanistic views on social and cultural norms. Even today, we can see this happening in the freest nation on the planet with technological giants like Twitter, Google, and YouTube increasingly setting themselves up as the sole arbiters of "truth."
The truth is, that they control the major social communication platforms in the west and are actively blocking out conservative thought and opinion. Married with the complicit mainstream media and Hollywood, this vitriolic strain of liberalism went on full display in the 2016 presidential election. The corporate titans intend to dominate the conversation by blocking any opposing views or opinions that run contrary to their agenda.
One might ask, what is their agenda?
Since these corporations are global in nature (structurally and financially), and their audience and sponsors are global in nature, it makes sense that their agenda would be global in nature. Thus, things like the US Constitution become more of a hindrance than a help to their overarching goals. In other words, our US Constitution acts as the last and final barrier to achieving their one-world agenda. Not content to simply chip away at the hard-fought freedoms the average US citizen enjoys through technological subterfuge, enforced political correctness, currency manipulation, or by simply dumbing down the masses (relaxed drug laws, politically correct public education, etc.); leftist groups have declared all-out war with the right (and by extension, Christians) in a brazen attempt to destabilize the current world order.
You might be a bit skeptical of that last part...because you think it sounds like a conspiracy theory.
Perhaps.
Nevertheless, let us look at what Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube are up to these days to see if this theory has any legs to it.
Facebook
Quote: Facebook revealed its long-awaited cryptocurrency plans Tuesday, announcing "Project Libra," a new type of digital money designed for the billions of people using its apps and social network. If the plan is successful, users will soon be able to shop with and send the currency-known as Libra-on Messenger and Instagram, as well as use it with a wide variety of other merchants like Uber, Spotify, and MasterCard.
Facebook did not provide specifics about exactly when and how consumers will get ahold of the currency, but executives suggest it will first be distributed on Messenger and WhatsApp in mid-2020...
...Initial members of the foundation are Facebook and 27 other partners, including Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Coinbase, and venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. Marcus hopes as many as 100 partners will be onboard by the time the currency debuts, by which time the group will have crafted a formal charter that sets out voting rights and other rules.
...The Libra blockchain-like other blockchains-will provide a tamper-proof record of transactions on the network. But, unlike Bitcoin and other public blockchains, only authorized bodies-in this case, foundation members-will be allowed to run a node...
...Members are also required to support a reserve fund to keep the value of the currency stable. In order to avoid the notorious volatility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, each unit of Libra will be backed one-to-one in a basket consisting of dollars, pounds, euros, and Swiss francs.
Google
Aside from the fact that it is the most powerful and developed web search engine on the planet (with information equaling power), and aside from the known facts regarding their skewed and biased search results, and aside from their increasingly creepy interest in all things Artificial Intelligence, and aside from the fact that they are working with nations like Communist China to help stifle the flow of information (odd for a company who merchants in information huh?), they are also becoming very interested and acting upon the following projects:
Project Maven- while Google has chosen not to continue its work with the Department of Defense to create artificially intelligent military drones because that would be evil. However, Google has continued working to help prop up the authoritarian state of China (along with IBM), which will continue repressing some 1,300,000,000 people.
Project Dragonfly- As of 2019, Google has terminated its services in helping China tailor its search engine so that it can better censor the flow of information to the Chinese people. I would not give Google too much credit for having grown a conscious, likely, the Chinese now have all the tools they need and no longer need Google's services to repress their own people. They are, after all, masters of reverse-engineering everything.
Semptian- It seems like Google just cannot stay out of China and helping them create the perfect, totalitarian state. See a pattern yet? So much for not being evil.
Google Assistant- while portending itself to be an AI helper, it is designed to make calls on behalf of the user. However, the AI assistant was originally programmed to not identify itself as an AI program to the person or business being called. That, along with the other attempts by organizations like Facebook to create AI programs, have proven troublesome, in that, AI does not often act like it is programmed to act.
The Selfish Ledger- originally designed by Google as a construct for collecting data on its users (web searches, website traffic, online purchases, etc.), it could easily be used to modify social behavior (out of fear). This perhaps is the most troubling aspect of it in that it could be used as a tool to destroy anyone who goes against what Google deems as acceptable thought and opinion.
YouTube The most popular upload video streaming hosting service in the world, YouTube has become a multi-billion dollar organization and a recent subsidiary to Google. Stands to reason that if Google leans left (politically), then so would YouTube. While allowing Islamist terrorist videos to air, as well as various forms of pornography to go virtually unchallenged, YouTube is quick to ban/block videos speaking out on conservative issues such as Abortion or Immigration.
The most well-known cases for YouTube bans are with Alex Jones (Info Wars), Tommy Robinson (jailed UK journalist/activist), and Prager University. Prager University (or PragerU), is challenging them in court for a violation of their First Amendment rights as well as punishing YouTube/Google for fraudulent business practices. So if you want to watch someone give a video interview while sitting in a bathtub filled with milk and cereal, you can.
However, if you want to watch someone speak on conservative issues, you often cannot. Furthermore, YouTube has turned to demonetizing conservative groups much in the same way the IRS "indiscriminately" targeted Tea Party and Constitutionalist groups during the Obama error.
Twitter Another multi-billion dollar social media platform has really become controversial since President Trump has taken to use it daily to blast out messages (bypassing the mainstream media) directly to the people. Twitter (like Facebook) has increasingly become censor-happy when it comes to blocking conservative thought and opinion such as pro-life messages. There was even talk about blocking the President's tweets, as they can at times, be provocative. However, like Facebook, Twitter faced the US Senate Committee regarding free speech for routinely shadow banning/blocking/and banning conservative speech. Even a pro-life tweet quoting Mother Theresa was deemed and blocked as offensive. Mother Theresa for pete's sake!!! That's like banning a tweet from Mr. Rogers.
Assessment
The concept of the financial credit score was developed during the middle to late 20th-century as fiat money began to dominate the markets. Originally, this was designed to help banks and retail stores safely lend money and extend credit for purchases to their customers without fear of non-payment. Coincidently, this also became a reality during the rise of the computer age, where information (data) could be processed more quickly and efficiently. This then led to privacy concerns and just "how much" data could be collected about a potential customer or borrower. Hence,
The Fair Credit Reporting Act, passed in 1970, created a regulated system regarding what information would be collected, what could be reported and for how long, and how consumers could obtain copies of their credit reports. Data became more standardized and led to enhanced accuracy.
This same concept of credit scoring, which had been the benchmark for over half a century to determine one's financial reliability, was increasingly looked at as a viable process for other forms of legitimacy. However, as time passed, ones financial standings would no longer be the sole metric, but also their political, religious, and ideological leanings.
Let us take a quick diversion and fast-forward to the 2000s. The events surrounding September 11th, 2001 truly shook American's to their core. For the first time in over a generation, Americans understood that this brave new world was also a very dangerous one. Benjamin Franklin's antiquated quote about those who would trade freedom for security deserved neither, seemed to ring hollow in light of the reality of Islamic terrorism. The 19 Middle Eastern men who hijacked and crashed four planes, did not present themselves as raving lunatics with towels wrapped around their heads, they seemed normal. Benign. Average.
Until they weren't.
They then took advantage of American's general trust in the system. They took advantage of the trust in our model of peaceful coexistence. They took that trust and violated in the most violent way imaginable.
Now, I do not give an abundance of credit to terrorists like Osama bin Laden (or those like him) for shaping world events, because they simply lack the mental capacity to see the bigger picture. They are simply puppets moved about by marionette strings. However, the dark forces who influence them to carry out these appalling attacks, do understand. That is because they understand human nature better than we do.
Under orders from their master fallen angel, Lucifer, they are currently shaping events from behind the scenes in order to cause humanity to trade freedom for security. To trade freedom for convenience. To trade freedom for pleasure. They will do whatever they need to say or do, to enslave humanity. Thus, in true Hegelian fashion, they are causing humanity to rush like a frightened herd toward their desired totalitarian rule under the Antichrist. They understand that our destruction will not necessarily come about by using chaos, violence, terrorism, crime, and fear, but rather, in our reaction to it.
In a post-9/11 world, one's financial standings (credit score) could no longer be the sole metric for one's viability as an upstanding citizen. That (eroded trust and financial scoring), along with the explosion of social media, would give every government on the planet, the irresistible urge to marry all these together.
We can see this playing out in real-time in places like China, where it ambitiously plans to curb the behavior of its 1.3B citizens by 2020. If you are deemed a troublemaker for jaywalking or making negative comments about the government, you might be banned from traveling or even face imprisonment. Add that to its already massive surveillance system and you have the recipe for the absolute, totalitarian state.
China's transition from what Rebecca MacKinnon calls a "networked authoritarianism" to what is now a form of networked totalitarianism is almost complete. The difference is not merely semantic. As John Naughton writes, "An authoritarian regime is relatively limited in its objectives: there may be elections, but they are generally carefully managed; individual freedoms are subordinate to the state; there is no constitutional accountability and no rule of law in any meaningful sense."
In contrast, according to Naughton, totalitarianism "prohibits opposition parties, restricts opposition to the state and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life." The historian Robert Conquest put it best when he argued that a totalitarian state recognizes no limits to its authority. Proponents of totalitarianism have no respect for privacy. In a totalitarian state, privacy is but an illusion.
By implementing a fully functional social credit system replete with an inescapable network of surveillance cameras keyed to facial recognition, China has morphed into a technocratic totalitarian state. For many readers, such reports are nothing new. However, what if I was to tell you that an American organization is currently helping China's authoritarian government to conduct mass surveillance against its citizens? See above about Google and Semptian.
Joseph Stalin would be proud.
Even more disturbing, is that this unofficially gaining steam in here the West.
Let us say you are applying for a lucrative job and through the interview process, you are asked to not only show your credit history but also your social media history.
Scoffers will say, well, do not apply to that job!
Well, ok. What happens when that becomes the industry standard for any/every job?
What happens when a cultural norm becomes popularized that violate your own acceptable norms and standards? Do you abandon yours? Do you submit to voluntary silencing?
In addition, because the West has succumbed to the LQBTQ agenda (among other leftist agendas), companies (under increasing political and media pressure) are being forced to screen their applicant's political and religious views. If those views are deemed not compatible with that company's views, regardless of your qualifications they just will not hire you. It is a form of economic discrimination that is tied not to your qualifications, skin color, gender, or ethnicity, but to your ideological leanings.
Tie this back to what we know about using a crisis to pass repressive legislation. While we may look at China and scoff thinking that will never happen here, just think back to the months shortly after 9/11. How fast did it take Congress to pass the Patriot Act? A month? Two? Congress did so with breathtaking speed and almost zero opposition as if the bill had already been written and just waiting for the right crisis to come along.
Oh wait, it was and it did.
Joe Biden admits, "I drafted a terrorism bill [the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act] after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up [the Patriot Act] was my bill."
We might ask ourselves, what other draconian bill has already been drafted and is just waiting in the wings for that next, major crisis to occur? We will probably not know until it does happen. However, in the meantime, at least be thankful that Trump is president and not Clinton. We have seen the breathtaking power and scope the swamp exacts in protecting its own. If any normal citizen had done even a fraction of what Hillary Clinton had done (as Pres. Trump rightly noted), they would spend the rest of their lives in jail. However, if your part of the deep state, or the swamp, well, the rules do not apply to you.
Conclusion
So far, we have looked at the rise of the left through technocracy. We have looked at how the 20th-century construct for credit scoring, is being hijacked to apply now to political and religious ideologies. We have looked at how those in power (left and right) use the crisis as a vehicle to make sweeping changes in short order. Now we will look at what the Bible says about all this.
He [the Antichrist] causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666. Revelation 13:16-18 [note mine]
When reading the entirety of Revelation chapter 13, we are given the breadth, depth, and scope of the rise of the final, Gentile kingdom known simply as the Beast. Looking back at the book of Daniel chapter two and later, chapters seven and eight, we get a lesson in perspective. From King Nebuchadnezzar's perspective, he saw a towering, imposing, multi-metallic statue, which represented his kingdom, as well as those which would follow. However, when we read about these same kingdoms from God's perspective, they were shown as various types of ferocious beasts.
Here in Revelation, we see this same chimera-type symbolic beast rising up out of the sea (of humanity) and presenting itself as impressive and to marvel after (vs. 13:3). It is presumably called this since it is not a single system per se, but a conglomeration of systems all brought together under the guise of crisis management via technology. If a crisis is the vehicle by which drastic change is implemented quickly, I can think of no greater crisis than the Rapture of the Church.
Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. Revelation 3:10
I believe two of the keywords in the above passage that are often underestimated, are the words endure patiently. To me, this supports the idea that Christ's return, while absolutely certain, may appear to take longer than we may have originally anticipated. Two points to make about the above passage:
- The closer it gets to His return, the greater the intensification of events will become
- As the intensification amplifies, the characteristics of time will appear to change, like how going through an unpleasant event or waiting for bad news seems to cause the time to go drag on forever
Now, the nearness of Christ's return becomes a very subjective (and often contentious) idea amongst believers. For those waiting since the 1960s for Christ return, 2020 seems like a lifetime away. For those such as myself, who really did not become eschatologically woke until 2008-09, 2020 is much more palatable. However, should Christ return in the 2020s, or even the 2030s, we must ready ourselves for such reality if it bears out to be true.
We should anticipate that the longer the Lord delays His coming (so that more can be saved!) things should continue to deteriorate for Christians socially, economically, and politically. Although we are at a tipping point now, we should fully expect to be relegated to the fringe of society. The forgotten and socially forsaken fringe who will need to come together so that we do not fall away. Although we cannot lose our salvation, we can certainly lose our motivation and potential rewards for drifting back to the cares of this life. As the Apostle Paul so eloquently stated,
Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Although the moments seem to drag by, we can look back at the six-thousand years of human history and see how fast everything has transpired, and how very close we are to the edge of eternity. Hold fast, don't give up, and don't give in. Satan knows his time is short, and he is turning up the heat because he fears what is coming...or rather, WHO is coming.
"And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." Revelation 22:12-13
Even so, Maranatha!
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