THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

A precious lesson from
'ignorant' peasants
Translated from

by Aldo Maria Valli


Dear Friends of Duc in altum, I offer herewith my latest contribution to the feature La trave e la pagliuzza for Radio Roma Libera:

I remain most impressed by a video that a friend sent me recently, with the testimony of some elderly peasants and animal breeders, presumably from central Italy, who, when asked about the pandemic, Coronavirus and the measures taken to contain it, candidly show they know nothing about all this. The video is beautiful because the testimonies are laden with disarming sincerity, the faces show simple dignity, and none of those asked tries to be anything other than who he is.

In turn I sent the video to some friends and one of them, who is in agronomy, commented: “They are lovable, and how many like them I know! Persons who are not well educated, far from the social media and the world shaped by the media. I love them all, because they are our [Italian] history: Woe to those who would touch them!”

A female friend commented: “Simple to the point of making you feel protective about them! They live in the same world as we do but they have not been overwhelmed by it. They deserve our attention and respect.”

None of my friends even thought of calling the persons in the video ‘ignorant’. Nor would I say that of them. Though they are truly ignorant, in the literal sense, because they ignore or don’t know about so many things - but it is not as if we, educated metropolitanites, know any much more than they!

If we think about what we really know about Covid-19, we must admit that we remain profoundly ignorant. Despite our exposure to social media and our daily reading of so much news and commentary, we are full of doubts and questions, and the things we do not know surpass by far the things about which we think we know, more or less.

We still do not know well how and where the virus was born, nor how it was first transmitted to humans. We do not know exactly how many deaths attributed to the virus were really due to other pre-existing conditions. We don’t know exactly who died of Covid-19 or because of Covid-19, and who did not. [The fatality numbers in Italy are particularly suspect because health officials have admitted that most Covid-19 deaths reported, especially of the elderly, were attributed to the virus even when the dead persons may not have been infected at all.] We do not know if the virus has really ‘gone away’, we don’t know if it will come back, we don’t know if we should all get vaccinated or not, we do not know what would be the best treatments if the virus came back, etc. etc.

If we know that we do not know very much, we would be cautious and humble, but since we have been overloaded with ‘information’, we presume to know, and so, we become aggressive. It is the aggressivity of the weak who attacks out of uncertainty.

The rural people interviewed in the video had the beautiful bronzed faces of older people accustomed to being in the open air. The fact that they live in isolated rural villages placed them automatically outside the risk for contagion, but not just of what the virus caused: I also refer to their contagion from ‘information’.

Their faces show they have not been stressed by terror of the unknown or by sensationalism. Having been without television, newspapers, the social media and all other sources of outside information, they have maintained a regal detachment and an unassailable serenity.

Does this mean we should not keep informed? Of course not. But the lesson we get from our older rural compatriots is nonetheless instructive: one can die of (mis/dis) information overload as much as of Covid-19. One can die of information indigestion, of news-related stress, of nervous exhaustion from the information overload.

It’s not easy to say how much ’news’ we should have in order not to develop some kind of neurosis. We can each regulate our personal dose as we think appropriate. But the problem is not just quantitative. One should discern the quality of the information we get, information that is truly ‘free’ [and objective] – rara avis in terris!

Watching the video with the elderly peasants, I also thought back to the TV appearance of our Prime Minister during the pandemic when, in the primest of prime time, he entered our houses, in which we had been cooped up by the nationwide quarantine, and he started to reel out figures and to announce measures the government was taking on the recommendation of its ‘scientific and technical committee’.

This was the classic case in which we presume we have received knowledge but in reality, knew nothing at all. We had no way of knowing how the data we were being given was collected, we were unable to compare it with other sources of information, we had no way to understand how the committee came to take certain decisions, we did not know the true competence of these persons who were called on to make the decisions.

All of us, lacking any objective means of judgment, were called on to nothing less than an act of faith. Which gave the sensation, totally illusory, that we knew something when it was simply that we believed [or were made to believe] we knew something.

We must admit that we have lived – and are living – in illusion. The illusion of knowing, of being free to make up our pown minds, the illusion of being free to judge. And the illusion continues.

One naturally starts to think of Plato’s cave, with its enchained slaves who did not know they were only seeing shadows because, being unable to face the source of the projections, identified the shadows cast as effective reality.

It is well to hear the voices of those who, in helping us to recognize our limitations, would call us back to the realism of humility.

Tomasso Scandroglio, who often writes about scientific developments and their bioethical implications, indulges his philosophical fancy about the virus.


The shameless realism of Mr. Coronavirus
By Tomasso Scandroglio
Translated from

June 9, 2020

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The virus confesses that it came to expose human illusions: “You marched for peace, and I have turned you into epidemic bombs. Your fear is a reflection of your selfishness, so I have given you isolation. You loved to laugh at the void, and I have covered your mouths. You have been living virtual lives, so I have taken away your real life. You thought of science as liberating, now scientists are keeping you at home”.

---

I hear someone calling me. I turn around. I recognize those eyes above the now-mandatory face mask. It Is Marco, with whom I had played soccer many glacial years ago. Stouter now but not aged, he starts to recount anecdotes from the past while our shopping carts are in violation of social distancing. Other customers swarm attentively but prudently around us.

At one point, Marco, whose cart is already loaded, says, “You know, I read your interviews. You really do meet all kinds of odd people”.
- “But that’s what the world has to offer, my friend”.
- “You know who you should interview?”
- “Tell me!”
- “Why not Mr. Coronavirus?”
- “I’ll leave that pleasure to others”.

And after a series of exchanges, each one horribly banal, Marco finally broke off and resumed his rounds of the supermarket aisles. At that point, I heard a flat atonal voice addressing me: “Your friend was right. You should interview that which you call Coronavirus.”

I turned and found myself facing an older man, short and rather lean, who wore ‘important’-looking eyeglasses, with completely opaque lenses. He took off his face mask and stepped towards me. One step too near, which forced me instinctively to take one step away. I step back.

- “But yes, interview the Coronavirus. Interview me!”
- “Excuse me?”
- “My pleasure! I am the ex-detainee SARS-CoV-2”, and saying this, he held out his hand as if he was holding a pistol. I moved back farther, while he smiled in a friendly manner: “With armed hands, carissimo”. The two esses in carissimo (‘dearest’) came out hissing and prolonged, like the sound of a dentist’s drill.
- “So, today, each hand has become a weapon, and a gesture of peace becomes a threat! You have taunted war as much as you have marched for peace and I have changed each of you into a potential epidemic bomb. It’s the law of counterpoint, carissimo”.

Again, the hissed esses annoy me. I am also short of breath because of the face mask, but my interlocutor has his hanging from his ear like a big earring. Then I manage to mentally frame the question that seems most logical to me: “Are you really who you say you are?”

"I notice you are at a loss for words," said the little man in a very bored tone, reminding me of the most tedious of my high school teachers.
- “Prove to me that you are Mr. Covid!”
- “First of all, don’t confuse me with Covid-19 – that’s the disease. I am a virus. And I can easily prove who I am. If someone else comes nearer, I can prove it to you.” A strange light flickered in his eyes. I step back again.

He turns, takes three steps and touches a girl, a curly-haired brunette, wearing a fancy mask.

I move towards him, and say: “Well, let’s say you are our Coronavirus. Why do you call yourself an ex-detainee?”

The old man, putting his mask back on, turns to me and asks in a completely different tone: “Excuse me, are you talking to me?”

The brunette, after removing her mask, tells the old man: “Look, he was talking to me!” in a flat exhausted tone.

I immediately understood what had happened. Sars-whatshisname had transferred from the old man to the girl. I was more amazed than frightened.

«I am an ex-detainee because I escaped. Don't ask me if it was from a lab or from the body of a bat. Useless question - even if it is true that before moving here, I had adapted myself to live in those hideous bats. Then, spillover, a jump between species, happened. Listen to how nice it sounds, s-pill-o-ver. Come on, repeat after me: s-pill-o-ver”.

I pay no attention. My reporter’s nature asserts itself. “How would you define yourself?”

“I am a parody of Original Sin – which also made the jump from animal to man, from a serpent to a human being. It’s curious how some things repeat themselves, no?” She puts out her hand and touches the collar of a boy in a crumpled baseball cap who had strayed from his mother’s side. The same thing happened as earlier. The girl put back her mask, and the boy, taking off his, turned towards me.

“What is your greatest value, assuming you have one?”, I ask the boy.

And the boy, in a flat and colorless tone, answered: “I am a realist who obliges everyone to face facts for what they are. Thank me because I have made you know your limitations, I have forced you to look into the mirror. I am the personification of the evil within you and which consumes you, which has infected you and which is killing you. I have given form to your sin because my contagion is wide-spreading, just as the evil in you is diffusive. I am your counterpoint”.
- “What do you mean?”
- “The company you sought before this blazing time of darkness was nothing else but food for your individualism, a showcase for your vanity. So I made you a gift of isolation in which you can savor all the rancid fruits of your selfishness. You loved to laugh at the void, so I covered your mouths with a mask – I have taken away your smiles. Speaking of masks, you are liars, not authentic, hiding yourselves behind a thousand masks, so I have gifted you with millions of masks. You were so enamored with the social media and the possibilities offered by the Web, and now I have chained you to it as your only possibility to communicate with the world. For years, you have enclosed yourselves in a virtual life and now your real life is only virtual. Finally, you had always thought of science as liberating. And now the scientists have you imprisoned at home”.

A woman of exceptional size passes by the boy. He takes a step and touches her shoulder with a finger. As if on cue, she takes off her mask.
- “ And who might you be?” I ask.
- “I will tell you who I’m like, carissimo,” she says in the same tone as the earlier ‘hosts’ of Mr Sars-CoV-2, and pronouncing those esses like a dentist’s drill as they did. “I am like God. I am here but I also in many other places, I can give death or I can save lives, I shake consciences in their innermost.” She smiles and shows her teeth.
- “I observe your pride”, I say.
- “Pride is a luxury I can afford. Come on, it’s clear for all to see: a such a tiny thing has brought all of mankind to its knees. Of course, I feel much better than you all. One example out of many? For some time, you have stopped having children. Whereas I can replicate as much as I wish to”. She laughs, almost to tears. “Better give me a sedative, or I will suffocate from laughter”.
- “You indulge in black humor…”
- “Let me ask you a question: are you afraid of me?”
- “Of course. Naturally”.
- “Then let me tell you that your fear is the reflection of your selfishness. For instance, no one is scandalized by the one million and a half children who die every year of tuberculosis, for the simple reason that they are not your children. But for the first time in a hundred years, a daily scourge in one part of the world is now also your scourge. And so, your consciences have awakened from torpor and numbness which is lethal. And yet, the scourge has merely touched you briefly. I decided to pluck out the flowers that had already faded, to end the silver years, to visit those in the winter of their existence, leaving the buds to be able to germinate even amid unforeseen spring chilliness”.

A man in his 30s, tall and robust, risks turning his back on the woman. She extends a leg and gives him a kick in the calf.
- “It really seems as if you take pleasure in infecting him”.
- “I do not take pleasure in it, Sir. It’s just an attempt to survive. In this, you and I are alike. You survive. But you certainly don’t live. You drag yourselves by the belly because you think and act according to what your belly and lower belly demand".
- "Another question. You have lived hundreds of thousands of deaths up close, even from within. How do men prepare to die? "
- «Those who believe always find the right word, those who do not believe simply do not find any words. It is death that says the last word for them."

The man in his thirties puts on his mask again without having touched anyone and then quickly leaves me. I understand that the interview has ended.

After a few minutes of disorientation, I start shopping again and then I go to the checkout. I go out and in the parking lot, I notice, scattered about, an old man, a girl with dark curls, a boy with a crumpled baseball cap, an obese woman and a well-built man in his 30s, who all turn towards me at the same time, take off their masks, and say in the same flat voice: “Next time, I will interview you”.