Welcome to another attempt to answer the question, What is happen?, where we try to search through the confusion for answers to the confused question.

The topics this week:

• Attacks on American culture are taking on a spiritual dimension,
• 130 high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked, but it could have been much worse,
• Involuntary human experimentation must end.

I had suspected that, in the week since the inaugural installment of this series, current events would have a hard time stepping to the week prior. As it turns out, they did quite step.

There appears to be an escalation in attacks on churches. Because of the themes of attacking statues of Jesus and Mary, it’s easy to suspect a connection between the church attacks and the recent civil unrest that saw the toppling of statues of historical figures. While the statues targeted were initially those depicting slave owners and confederates, the rioters seemed to segue to historical figures in general, including abolitionist (anti-slavery) Mattias Baldwin, abolitionist Hans Christian Heg, and even an arbitrary elk statue.

Another incident during the week saw a man threatening to kill passengers on an airplane “in the name of Jesus”, who he also claimed was black. It’s not new that there are people whose religion is their skin color. While they were mildly belligerent before, the recent events have enabled them in a big way.

It’s interesting that the recent civil unrest is taking on a spiritual dimension, as the activities of the more destructive individuals does a lot to indicate their side on the matter. According to the Bible, God is a creative being. He created the entire universe, and according to the gap theory, a calamity befell the earth, and afterwards the earth was restored (the days of creation). God is the ultimate creator. But there’s more: upon the creation of human beings, God made the decision to make them in His image. His creative nature was imparted to us.

Each time we write, build, sculpt, draw, paint, or otherwise express our creativity, we are using a gift that God gave to us.

The Scriptures also tell us about Satan. He is an adversarial being who is opposed to God, and is the enemy of humankind. In Satan’s nature is destruction. His desire is to destroy humankind, which God has created. However, he lacks the means to do much besides mess with people’s minds. But that’s plenty.

When someone acts on Satan’s will, they are destructive. Destructive to self, destructive to other people, destructive to righteous living, destructive to family, culture, society, and civilization. If the destruction is not to be brought about immediately, it is intended to be the consequence of subtle acts committed over a course of time.

Of course, there are times when destruction of something is justifiable. Also, one can point out the use of images such as those of Jesus and Mary in worship is something that the Scriptures disallow. However, the nature of the damage done to these statues goes beyond a mere disposal of something forbidden, it indicates a brazen disrespect for the personages that these images were intended to depict. That goes a long way in telling us just what’s behind the destruction of these images.

Twitter was hacked. And this time, the scale was extraordinary. About 130 accounts were hacked, many being high-profile verified accounts, bypassing two-factor authentication, and using some of the accounts to post updates without the account owners’ permission.

Among the accounts hacked in this round were those of Elon Musk, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The accounts posted a Bitcoin scam, receiving over $100,000. It took Twitter hours to determine what was going on and put a halt to the operation. The account of president Donald Trump was apparently spared, as it was placed under extra protection since a 2017 incident where a person in Twitter’s employ banned his account on their last day of work.

As bad as this hack was, it could have been worse. A person with unfettered access to 130 high-profile accounts could do damage on a massive scale.

For one thing, Elon Musk owns a huge corporation, and his Twitter activities can actually impact the stock market. If it turns out his DMs were compromised, and they contain chatter about announcement yet to be made, they could do substantial damage to his company, and to investors.

As bad as that sounds, imagine just the kind of damage that could be done by speaking in the guise of public officials, directly to the public. If Trump’s account were hacked, it could be used to inform the public to seek shelter in the event of possible retaliation to a nuclear strike. One can imagine the public reaction.

Joe Biden’s account was among those hacked. Imagine if someone were to use it to say that he would withdraw from the presidential race, and endorsed Barack Obama as a write-in. Then, because Obama’s account was also hacked, it could have been used to “confirm” the imposter Biden’s wishes. People would believe it, and it might have caused substantial damage if it were to have occurred closer to November.

Considering the potential for damage that can be caused if high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked, I could imagine that there would be great interest in increasing Twitter’s security.

Interestingly, the hacker(s) behind this hack also posted Twitter’s back-end interface, which appears to indicate that users or their content are blacklisted from searches. That’s interesting, considering that Twitter themselves has denied shadow-banning users for years. Does Twitter owe some of it’s users apologies?

In a dark reminder that science is not always right, a suit filed against a pair of doctors, 100 unnamed nurses, and Los Angeles County alleges that the accused have given a detained young boy a strong form of estrogen in an experimental treatment, without the consent of the boy or his family. The complaint also alleges that other boys in the same facility were given similar treatment.

It would seem that the spirit of Josef Mangele is alive and well. What’s more, he has apparently made his home in the United States, where he continues to prey upon those who are helpless to defend themselves from him.

The tendency of the human mind is to seek answers. However, no answer out there is worth surrendering one’s mind to debasement. A determined and sustained predation on the helpless or disadvantaged is strongly against the spirit of human advancement. The nature of the crime of experimenting on the unaware is such that the strongest condemnation that can be afforded by the criminal justice system doesn’t quite properly answer it.

Because those targeted by this crime include marginalized groups such as religious and racial minorities and the physically and mentally handicapped, the strong interest of anyone with a sincere progressive mindset should be to end involuntary human experimentation altogether.

“When did all of you forsake yourselves?”
-Gaara