An Eclectic Reading List

Today began with a slow read of Matthew 24 and Jesus’ warning, See that no one leads you astray and Let not your love grow cold in a time of increased lawlessness. 

And then I thought about our present experience of lawlessness and opened chapter 10 of Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

The chapter titled, Believe in Truth. quotes the scholar Victor Klemperer, a German/Jew who survived the Nazi years in Germany and recorded his first hand observations of tyranny, in a published diary, I Will Bear Witness.

Cover of I Will Bear Witness by Victor Klemperer

Victor Klemperer, an eyewitness and a survivor of tyranny, wrote that truth dies in four modes.

  • Open hostility to verifiable reality.
  • Shamanistic incantations, eg Heil Hitler, propagating the Führer myth.
  • Magical thinking or abandonment of reason.
  • A misplaced faith.

Next I checked the news and listened to the Arizona House Speaker, Rusty Bowers testifying about January 6, 2021, in Washington DC and the cost of resisting deception.

August 19, 2021. Rusty Bowers speaking at the ceremonial signing of the the bill to mandate Holocaust education in Arizona schools.

I turn again to Matthew 24 and read,

Stay Awake!