People make predictions every year and now that we’re in the year 2023, we can safely look back at those things which were predicted for 2022 and call out the ones that were a total wash.
COVID and the reelection of Donald Trump were two topics which got a lot of press in prediction world.
Let’s start with COVID and far-right, Far Side, Sherri Tenpenny. She’s the Ohio doctor that has totally forgotten the Hippocratic Oath’s precept, “First do no harm.” She’s done nothing but harm in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
It's the end of 2022. Did this happen? https://t.co/Fv7yFCm9C2
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 1, 2023
From COVID to AIDS. And some people believed it. It never surprised me that the MAGAs were drinking fish tank cleaner. They’re dumb enough to do that and Donald Trump was telling them to inject bleach and put UV lights up their euphemism. So that was never a surprise. My astonishment was when educated people bought into this. There was a story last month about a woman who was an assistant district attorney in Orange County, California, who died of COVID at the age of 46.
There are many such stories. That’s where it gets horrifying, that we live in an age where the premiere epidemiologist in the world is not listened to, is in fact demonized, and plain medical fact becomes a matter of controversy. But that was life in the reign of Trump.
Speak of the Devil. You will enjoy this.
Pro tip for aspiring prophets: Don't put specific dates on things, like Manuel Johnson did in 2020 when he claimed that God took him to the year 2022 and showed him that Donald Trump was president. pic.twitter.com/8LqXkLlgv1
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 1, 2023
Prophecy is not a business I want to be in. I’ll stick to blogging. It’s enough of a challenge reading the political tea leaves.
And then there’s this fruit fly. He’s got a prediction regarding global warming.
Televangelist Jim Bakker asserts that "this global warming business is anti-God" and claims that God told him that "a lot of people are not going to accept the signs of the Second Coming [and] that the Rapture is near because they're gonna call it global warming problems." pic.twitter.com/DjlbOVOJJG
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) December 20, 2022
Religion in this country is in trouble. So is politics. And the place where the two paths meet is where it goes completely off the rails.
Given Bakker’s history, why is he assuming that G-d speaks to him?
He seems like Trump, in that the grift goes on.
Because he’s a crack-pot- Nut ….
It’s not so surprising that he ‘hears’ voices.
PJ, it’s easier to fool oneself into certaincy than it is to live with mystery and the truths of this life, suffering, old age if you are fortunate, and death.
I’m still trying to figure out what that kooky woman was trying to say with “full-blown vaccine-induced immune suppressed AIDS.”
I mean, I understand the individual parts of the phrase but putting them together makes no sense.
Funny Joe. I was also doing the same. Then I reminded myself… oh yeah, she’s making word salad to confuse the mob.
Prophecy started to go down the tubes when people began to focus on its predictive aspect, which is not the real point. Prophecy means, or should mean, speaking truth to power. Sometimes that involves some kind of prediction of consequences if the truth is disregarded, but not always, and in any case, it’s never the point. One of the most powerful prophecies in scripture was the prophet Nathan’s rebuke of King David over Bathsheba. He told a little story about a man who had flocks of hundreds of sheep but coveted a poor man’s one ewe lamb, and when David became irate, Nathan said, “That man is you.” No prediction. Just truth to power.
The sad thing is, since we allowed the primary function of a prophet to be swallowed up, we now have no single word for a person who speaks truth to power. And we could use one.