Quinquagesima Valentine

The Anglican church calendar for the Sunday before Lent or Quinquagesima Sunday makes no mention of it being Saint Valentine's Day today. The old Roman calendar remembers a martyr of the early Christian era whose feast coincides with a pagan celebration of romantic love and desire, and that's what persists in contemporary social custom, thanks to commercial marketing as much as anything else. The Revised Common Lectionary theme is about Christ's Transfiguration. The old Church in Wales 1984 Prayer Book readings which I used when reading through the day's Eucharist focus on Jesus foretelling his passion, and is accompanied by 1 Corinthians 13, extolling self-giving sacrificial love rather than romance. This suits me better - love that endures in hope and trust, despite the odds. What the world needs right now. 

I woke up to the news that the US Senate voted not to impeach Trump, which putting on record personal and video testimony of the frightful events of January 6th and all that led up to it. Trump is already out of his self-imposed silence declaring he will run for president again. President Biden's administration is going to need all that the power of that love which endures in hope and trust over the next three years. Will the truth prevail? Will lies and duplicity in public life be defeated? We can only pray that good-will not ill-will prevails.

I cooked lunch again today and then walked up to Llandaff Cathedral, something I haven't done since the current lock-down started. I was delighted to find that it was open for private prayer, so I donned a mask went in and spent ten minutes savouring the atmosphere and praying. It's a place with memories going back sixty years for me. When I got back, I listened to Evensong from Clare College Cambridge on the BBC Sounds app. It's broadcast at three o'clock, but I'm never ready to listen to it at that time, so catch-up is much appreciated.

I found another French crimmie to watch on Walter Presents, called 'The Red Shadows'. It was set on the Cote d'Azure to the west of Marseilles, just like the last series I watched. The story-line is also a mix of family drama and flic movie, and even features some of the same actors, thought not in the same roles, thankfully. An audience winning formula or what? I wonder. Later on, another episode of 'Finding Alice', which I'm watching more out of curiosity about its handling of bereavement, rather than eager interest. Its pace now makes it border on the dull.

 

Pandemic origins according to WHO

The government has announced its plan for organised quarantine hotels for travellers returning to the UK from overseas, at a cost of £1,700 for an obligatory ten day stay for entrants from high risk countries. This includes two covid tests while confined in personal isolation. Only rich people and executive business travellers will be able to afford this. At the moment foreign holiday travel is considered illegal. A surreal notion. The hopes of an air travel industry revival any time soon are being dashed, as infection rates are still high, even if declining slowly. Any easing of restrictions and return to some kind of normality could take longer to arrive than we expect or wish for.

The WHO investigative committee has reported on its visit to Wuhan. Their findings rule out an accidental release of a virus from a research lab there. The market at the centre of the initial outbreak is thought to be the place where the virus, occurring in bats, may have crossed the species barrier, perhaps to other animals before crossing the barrier to humans. Something similar I guess may have happened in other parts of the world spontaneously, given there are reports of covid traces being found in waste water in other countries at or before the first reported outbreak. 

We're already learning from recent experience that very similar if not identical new mutations in covid19 are emerging in this way, so why not. Right at the start of the crisis environmental health experts said this kind of thing was inevitable because of the breakdown of natural ecosystem complexity which normally would check the spread of new viral mutations and the crossing of species barriers to humans. Biodiversity loss all over the planet, no matter what complex mix of species a region may contain, has a similar outcome. Humans are now reaping a disaster they have sown.

It's been another bitterly freezing cold day with strong wind. Again it was a challenge to walk in the park in the afternoon and stay warm. Yesterday afternoon I took a photo of a Tesco trolley parked on a hillock by the north west entrance of Llandaff Fields, noticed over the weekend. I posted the picture on Instagram tagging Tesco Metro's community service team. By this afternoon it wasn't there, hopefully retrieved and returned to service. I was leased about that.

I spent rather a lot of time later in the day shifting my collection of Ibiza photos from one Google Photos account to another, having discovered I uploaded them to my Google Blogger account without realising, many months ago. I need all the free space of that account for texts posted over the past fourteen years - yes, that's how long it is since I started with my first 'Edge of the Centre' blog.

It was good to hear this evening that the American Senate has voted to proceed with impeaching Donald Trump. It may not lead to a two thirds majority decision to convict him, but at least the full story will be told and stay on the record. It will be there to be quoted against Trump if he decides to run for a second term as President in four years time. And then the voters can made another hopefully informed decision on the basis of what they know then. 

Inaugural honesty in a pandemic of swindling as well as covid

A lot of rain overnight. Clare walked down to the Taff before I got up this morning, and remarked how high the water was, I went down to the river before lunch. The water had risen even further, overflowing on to the footpath by the bridge. It's as bad as it was last February, although I think there may have been an overflow a few weeks ago. We've never seen such extreme weather.

I went to our local HSBC branch to bank a cheque after lunch, wondering if it's one of 82 local branches set to close in the latest cost saving round of reduction of local services. It's disturbing to think banking bosses are willing to disregard the needs of people who cannot travel to larger branches and queue to be seen because they don't want to bank on-line or by telephone. The idea is that such clients can use services provided instead by their local Post Office, to bank cheques, make payments, deposit or withdraw cash. 

It seems some sort of deal has been done with the Bank of Ireland which I believe operates a franchise to offer financial services to the Post Office. I wonder if this will lead to clients deciding to transfer accounts to the Bank of Ireland via the Post Office? Certainly in Switzerland and EU countries Post Offices offer a range of banking services including debit and credit cards. Maybe it'll develop like that here too.  

Earlier in the week I received a text message purporting to be from HSBC recognisably a phishing scam. I enquired of the bank if any agency within the HSBC security network was keeping a record of fake phone numbers used for phishing scams. Apparently not. Only if emails purporting to come from HSBC can be forwarded to them, so they their provenance can be tracked. Voice calls and text messages are too many to be logged, and fake identities change very rapidly, so it's impossible to retrieve useful information that enables the source to be tracked. Bank staff have to deal with a growing number of client subjected to fraudulentl solicitations. Some people suspect and need reassurance, others are duped. We get half a dozen spam calls a week at least, sometimes twice a day. A swindling epidemic.

This afternoon, an hour of sheer delight listening on BBC Sounds catch-up to Choral Vespers in Latin from the London Oratory. A lovely gift for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. By the time it was over the US Presidential inauguration ceremony had started, so I switched channels and listened to Joe Biden's speech on catch-up. It was a moving powerful appeal for American unity in facing the challenge posed by the pandemic and its economic impact. He was open in declaring himself to be a man of faith, appealing to the heart of faith in others. It was a powerful secular sermon, delivered by an active Catholic. No religious piety displayed, but a deep commitment to truth, justice, equality and reconciliation. 

He was an inspiring contrast to the divisive self centred rhetoric of Trump. His parting speech wasn't inflammatory, simply a rehearsal of what he considered to be his achievements, couched in vague references to the improvement in 'numbers' on his watch. Now Trump has gone to Florida, with no intention of retiring or staying out of public life, who knows what will happen next?

This evening, Clare and I watched 'Staged', the entire first series of comedy shorts about rehearsing a play via Zoom under lock-down, starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, with a cameo appearance in the sixth episode of Dame Judi Dench, sending herself up, as did David and Michael throughout. We laughed out loud throughout  from start to finish. A refreshing inspired contemporary on-line drama production. 

Trumpism confronted at last?

Another damp drizzly day, but the temperature is nine degrees, unusually mild for January. There were eleven of us for this morning's Eucharist at St Catherine's. It's our regular day for home deliveries of food ordered on line or over the phone. Something went wrong with the Co-op delivery. All the groceries Clare ordered turned up, but in addition a couple of bags of someone else's order. It's happened before, and when it does we don't get charged for the excess, but they won't take back the mistaken goods, as a precaution against covid. 

The small amount of fresh food we eat and the canned food we give to the food bank, as there's no way of tracing who the spare bags were intended for. When they discover the shortfall however, they can call the Co-op and get a replacement delivery. It's happened to us in the past, and the staff in out local branch are very good about it. It's a huge task for any store, for which few were structurally equipped to do from the outset. I guess they are still learning by doing. 

I suspect that home food deliveries will remain commonplace for much of the rest of this year, as it'll be summer before the whole population is vaccinated, and longer still before the vestiges of covid contagion are eliminated from the population. I just hope food stores don't lose too much money in the process and end up going out of business, as is happening with so many high street retailers.

Our organic veggie bag delivery resumed today, so I walked around to collect ours after lunch and went for a damp walk after making a bereavement call in preparation for next Tuesday's funeral. Pidgeon's called me about a service for the still-born child of a Romanian couple. They seemed OK with having an Anglican priest. I'm willing to help, but I asked if a Romanian priest had been approached. The person who called me didn't know about the Romanian Orthodox church community in Cardiff, or of services that take place regularly in St Dyfrig and St Samson's church. It seemed to me that pastoral care and support from a Romanian speaking person was important in such a tragic situation. I couldn't offer any contact details, but directed the enquirer to the Area Dean, who should have that information. I do hope he is successful finding a Romanian pastor, for the couple's sake. 

Sunset is now at four thirty, and that little extra time seems to make a difference, even if the skies are grey, as they often are. I recorded tomorrow's morning prayer video before supper, the relaxed in front of the telly and caught up with the day's news.

Talk of impeaching Trump for a second time while still in office turned into a reality this evening with a vote in the US Congress House of Representatives, in which the slim Democrat majority was reinforced by the votes of ten Republicans, A trial will take place in the Senate, though it's unlikely to happen until after he leaves office. The point of the exercise then will be to complete a process which will prevent him from standing for office again in 2024. 

With credible threats of more orchestrated violence from extremist groups in all fifty states, Washington is already in lock-down a week early. Hotels are shutting for the next week, and AirBnB reservations have been cancelled across the board to prevent an influx of demonstrators accumulating in advance. A security operation of this scale surrounding Inauguration Day has never been seen before, and shows how determined the political and governmental leaders are to protect American democracy and the Constitution from subversion and insurrection. There's no knowing in reality how far right wing populist sentiment has been stoked up by agents of foreign powers, but it is clear that the Alt-Right movement in American public discourse over the past decade has been driven by patriotic resentments and fears of change, coupled with the persistence of the rich-poor divide. 

The right to free speech is widely accepted, social media has evolved and given a platform to people of all kinds of persuasion, promoting ideas and values from the highest to the most debased imaginable. In the absence of shared moral consensus, racist and sexist hate speech flourish on-line, and conspiracy theorists strive to persuade people that the brand of falsehood is true but all others are liars. A place of nightmares as well as dreams and visions. Will it be possible for Joe Biden's administration to reset the nation's moral compass, and do enough justice to those voicing real grievances to ensure healthy debate and reconcile a country now do locked in confrontation and conflict? 

Trump saw the way things were and exploited them to gain support on his pathway to power. His effort to do things his way has unleashed pent-up forces of division he was incapable of channelling for the common good, and this has only made things worse. A great deal of soul searching and repentance is necessary when the drama of coming weeks dies down and the pandemic is brought under control. By the time Joe Biden's Inaguration takes place, over 400,000 Americans will have died of covid and 24 million been infected, with immense collateral damage done to the world's biggest economy. Biden is an active practicing Catholic. He needs all our prayers to become the blessing America needs right now, to curb the curse of Trumpism.

Timely words about bogus Messiahs

Before uploading today's Morning Prayer video I listened to John Bell's 'Thought for the Day' on Radio 4 reflecting with some perspective on last week's events in Washington. It was a superb concise analysis of how and why certain strands of religious people have rallied behind Donald Trump, despite his appalling behaviour before and during his years of office. Part of the problem he said, is the false separation of the political and spiritual dimensions of life, as if political ethics and values were nothing to do with God - a totally un-biblical and heretical notion. 

It's a tribal way of avoiding having to think deeply about what religious faith and practice mean for the entire way in which we live and serve God. In a changing world, having to understand and be concerned about events is avoided by hiding behind a tribal banner. Trump gives the illusion of caring about what they believe and promising to defend them, in exchange for their unquestioning loyalty. He becomes regarded as a divinely appointed champion of their religion and liberty so that challenging Trump is perceived as an assault on God, so believers are prepared to fight and die for him.

"For many other Christians" says John Bell, "Trump has been a bogus Messiah, his photo shoot holding a bible outside a church during a Black Lives Matter protest was not, in my view, an endorsement of faith, but an attempt to convince the faithful that he was on their side. His ability to stand on a podium, manipulate emotions, pontificate and defy contradiction is in complete distinction to the great religious leaders. They, like Jesus, sat at ground level, even among those who disagreed with him, to discuss thorny issues, make themselves vulnerable and affirm the humanity of all."

I felt that I should quote him verbatim as it's the first time I have heard any Christian leader or teacher openly say what I have been thinking since Trump was elected. He sees himself uniquely as one who can save America from all its misfortunes - a bogus Messiah indeed. If any American religious leaders have said this openly I've not heard it, likewise as for European religious leaders. Is it considered unseemly to engage in openly criticising a head of state for dangerous messianic behaviour? Is this the price of unity? 

Unless, of course, news reports have been suppressed or not syndicated so that they don't become part of the public debate. It seems that only comedians and satirists have stood up and dared to mock Trump. On Wednesday, the retiring Archbishop of Wales came out openly in criticism. Sorry, too little too late. And what abut the rest of the establishment of church hierarchies? Simply to have stated, time and time again in public that the true Messiah Jesus didn't behave like Trump would surely have been a start in witnessing to the truth, rather than being so reticent for so long. 

Every Advent the church reads prophetic words about the Messiah from Old and New Testaments. early Christians in a turbulent changing were very conscious that life as they knew it could come to end both violently and abruptly. In this context the Messiah would appear, but nobody knew when or how. It was a mystery. Jesus and the Apostles urged people not to second guess how things would work out according to God's will and warned against preacher and leaders promising to rescue them and claiming to be sent on this mission by God. No matter how good or well meaning they seemed to be any claims to be godlike or superheroes shouldn't be trusted, they were manifestations of the anti-Christ - fake Messiahs. Nobody these 'enlightened' days dares to go against the flow and call a populist leader, religious or secular an anti-Christ. The use of such words has lost its force by being part of the rhetoric of sectarian protestant preachers, usually with the Pope as their target. So it was good to hear John Bell coming at the current American political crisis from a mainstream biblical perspective today.

When I stepped out of the house to walk after lunch I thought it was drizzling and about to stop. I didn't realise it had only just started and over two hours the fine mist turned into rain and soaked my ski jacket. Curiously, the temperature went back up to nine degrees at night, after hovering around zero yesterday. Apart from the grass today, gaunt dark trees against a uniform grey sky, with hundreds of crows wheeling above the trees on both sides of the Taff, made for an ominous and dramatic landscape to walk through rather than photograph, simply too wet to get a camera out.

The Welsh government has banned indoor mixing and outdoor socialising while walking now. You wouldn't think so, to judge by groups of teenagers and adults standing or walking along in groups of four if not more. I know it takes time for new instructions to sink in, but I see no sign of police officers out on patrol. The city centre has CCTV. Apart from traffic crossings there's no surveillance in the park, so patrolling is all the more needed to remind people of what's expected of them to stay safe.

No telly this evening. I spent my time trying to resurrect an old Acer laptop with a new linux install. It used to work except that the trackpad didn't function. I got the hardware to work perfectly and reinstalled Mint 19, but after the first successful reboot, the existence of the hard-disk was not recognised. There's something amiss in the set up of the UEFI secure boot firmware that I cannot figure out how to change. It's so frustrating! 

More covid worry and frustration

Waking up again to more bad news of covid infections continuing to rise out of control, and calls for a stricter lock-down. We were twenty adults and three children for the St Catherine's Eucharist, but for how much longer, amidst calls for even tighter restrictions, heaven only knows. Our church warden fell at home broke her leg and needed a few days in hospital after surgery. Then someone on her ward was tested positively for covid, so now she's stuck there in quarantine for ten days, and we're hoping and praying that the rest of the ward doesn't get infected.

When I walked in the park after lunch, I noticed that Coffee #1 and Cafe Castan were open for takeaways. Outside Cafe Castan, despite distancing measures, and a line of people queuing properly to be served, small groups of people stood un-distanced, un-masked, chatting nearby. And no sign of law enforcement. 

The BBC seems to be interviewing an 'disproportionate' number of elderly people expressing the opinion that the country should go back to a much stricter lock-down asap. Maybe they can't get anyone who doesn't care a toss about others to stand in front of a camera and be counted, unless they are in some kind of anarchic demonstration in defence of their civil liberty right to be careless and selfish. 

Calls for Trump to be removed from office before his term finishes continue to grow in the USA, as public outrage against him and congressional supporters continues to grow. He's been banned from both Twitter and Facebook, and the alternative far right free speech extremist social network is being removed from app stores and deprived of its web server space, as the big companies are recognising how damaging the persistence of their paranoid hateful messaging has turned out to be. The control of both national and international security rests ultimately with a President who increasingly behaves like a mad dictator, to the point of talking about a counter demonstration on the day of Joe Biden's inauguration.                                 

After my walk and before supper, I caught up the third and fourth episodes of 'Spiral / Engrenages', it is turning into a tragically powerful story of undocumented child migrants from North Africa in Paris, and how they subsist by mugging people and stealing phones or wallets. A phone shop dealer not only acts as a 'fence' for stolen phones, but is trusted to perform a social service for them, by electronically transferring ill-gotten euros to family accounts back home. 

One child gets murdered having stolen a batch of cocaine from a dealer who has collected it from drug 'mules' bringing it into the country in their digestive systems. It was shocking to hear an airport customs officer stating that they could only catch a fraction of travellers transporting drugs daily in the way. An dramatic exaggeration or not? Maybe recreational cocaine users will watch this series for entertainment, and realise how their demand makes them complicit in such an evil form of exploitation of poor people.

It was Anto's birthday today, and various family members Whatsapped him their greetings and talked on line. No family get-together in this year of covid for any of us.

After supper I worked on this week's batch of recordings of morning prayer, this time in the attic bedroom. At the moment the parish intercession list for the sick and departed needs regular updating. Unfortunately this can happen after I've made a recording, and then it needs doing again, since it's impossible to edit the video and get it to render correctly on Whatapp, the chosen platform for prayer group use. With a four year old phone, uploading the video file is problematic as the phone doesn't have enough memory and the process stalls. I've had to strip all but essential apps from it to free space. Recording ahead is necessary in case I hit unforeseen problems. Doing it on the day carries too much of a risk of failure. Doing it the day before risks not having an up to date intercession list. I wish there was a better way of doing this that'd justify scores of users making the change, but there isn't. It's been hard enough to develop the circle of users to may who have never used Whatsapp before. If only I could figure out what stops edited videos from rendering correctly on a smartphone ...

Winter watch

Finally, reading from a teleprompter, Trump video broadcasted a condemnation of Tuesday's mayhem on Capitol Hill - it's being likened to a hostage video by the media commentariat. Half a dozen members of his cabinet have resigned, dissociating themselves from his actions. Open discussion in Congress about removing him from office before the due date. Whether it will happen or not on such a short timescale is doubtful. 

Trump also stated that he won't attend Biden's presidential inauguration, the first time this has happened since 1860. Whatever he does on that day (and nobody knows what), will draw attention away from the President. A calculated move to undermine a celebration of national unity. A refusal to be reconciled. As long as he's in office he can still wield executive power to do dangerous things, The worry is that he'll declare war on Iran, and leave others to sort out the chaos generated.

Meanwhile rates of covid infections and deaths continue to climb in America and in Britain. A third new vaccine has been authorised for UK use, and there are reports of two new effective treatments that can be used on seriously ill covid victims, shortening their stay under an intensive care regime. Both assist in dampening over-reaction by the inflammatory mechanism of the immune system and reduce the chance of a fatal outcome to the infection. One drug costs a thousand pounds per treatment. A lot of money, but set against the cost of two thousand pounds a day per intensive care patient, its cost effectiveness is evident. The rate of advance in some areas of medical science this past year has been as amazing as the spread of the virus has been terrifying.

My crisp cold afternoon walk in the park was blessed by the sight of a family of long tailed tits foraging in the trees leading down to Blackweir Bridge. I also caught sight of a tree creeper in the same vicinity. They occupy same habitat year after year. Unlike the last time I saw them when I had a camera with me, this time I didn't. But never mind. It's a comfort to know that nature continues as best it can despite global warming and  other man made environmental damage projects.

This evening heralded the start of a new series of Rebecka Martenson - Arctic murders, set in the far north of Sweden. The first episode portrays the life of a community of Sami reindeer herders, with some wonderful photography and explanatory detail about their way of life today, with a family drama and a fatality at the heart of it. A must-watch series now for the next seven weeks of winter in the warm.

Better winter days

Throughout the day, condemnation of the violent invasion of the congressional confirmation proceedings has been drawing comment from leaders all over the world, with Trump coming in for severe criticism. Americans are still reeling from the shock, and Trump himself has been silent. Uncharacteristically, the Archbishop of Wales, John Davies, has spoken out. I can't find any statement from other Archbishops in Britain so far, but Boris Johnston among other UK political leaders has spoken out. About time. What took them so long? 

Admittedly Trump has given voice to dispossessed, frustrated and marginalised Americans, whose lives have been impoverished by social and industrial change, plus globalisation of trade, but he has encouraged them to see him as their saviour. Hopes have been nourished by his inflammatory rhetoric and his selfish ego has fed off their idolisation of his personality. It's a short path from being a charismatic strong leader to being an authoritarian dictator. It was interesting to hear what authoritarian heads of state had to say of events on Capitol Hill, quick to point out the flaws and weaknesses of democracy from their perspective.

Yesterday the forces of law and order were weakened to breaking point by the unexpected onslaught, and took time to recover, but after the disruption Congress continued with its duty and ratified Jo Biden as President. Then Trump conceded with a statement which didn't acknowledge his electoral loss, but stated there would be an orderly handover of power. But he still has a fortnight in office in which he has authority to put measures in place to impede progress for the new administration. It'll be a nervous wait until Inauguration Day.

I had lunch early and drove up to Thornhill for a funeral in the big Wenallt Chapel. Seven family members and two former neighbours of the deceased. Most of the extended family live around Nottingham, so the service was live streamed for their benefit. I needed to be on the alert, as I discovered at the last moment that the deceased was known by her second name, not her first, for which I had prepared. A daughter gave the eulogy, and somehow the hymn to be played after this got lost, but it didn't seem to matter as we were carried forward by the warmth of the tribute she made.

When I got home, a quick excursion to the bank and the shops, then marmalade making. It was my turn to today, the third and final batch, about seven kilos' worth in two dozen jars. Very satisfying. Now, we're out of jars and hunting for an extra place to store them! 

The temperature has hovered around zero, but as it's less humid, I don't feel so chilled to the bone indoors and outdoors, so walking in the cold is pleasantly stimulating. I was out at sunset on Pontcanna Fields. The temperature drop was quite sudden and the air was still. Low lying mist gathered over the grass as I walked shrouding solitary walkers and their dogs momentarily. It was magical! And one time when I didn't have a decent camera to hand, so I had to use my Blackberry phone camera. It's a nice photo but not nearly as sharp as it could have been, but never mind. Owain and Kath both posted rural walk photos of vegetation covered with frosty rime. In our neighbourhood, starlings roost in the terrace eaves and garden trees, but I've also heard a great tit calling recently, a sound that evokes memories of skiing with Valdo in Jura forests.

Sacred freedom

A slow start to a rainy day with pancakes for breakfast. I don't know where the rest of the morning went, as the next thing I was doing was cooking a veg stir-fry with prawns for lunch. It wasn't quite the success I hoped for, as I overdid the chili. I'm fine with cooking a paella or a risotto, but don't recall solo cooking a stir-fry before so it was an experiment that nearly worked.

Straight after lunch I went for a walk around Thompson's Park for an hour. It was dry when I set out, but two heavy showers left my rain jacket sodden through by the time I got home to shelter. I changed my jacket, and donned rain trousers before resuming my walk in the Fields for another hour. It didn't rain, the cloud began to break up and the sun briefly put in an appearance. I never have rain trousers on when I most need them, and if I put them on, it rarely rains, or stops fairly soon, or so it seems.

The wound remained quiet throughout exercise. After return, I sat down in the lounge to relax befote making a cup of tea, but I sat down on a awkwardly placed neck cushion, which normally provides some support for the sitting bones and relieves pressure on the most sensitive part. This time it was subjected briefly to the full wright of my body, which was excruciatingly painful. As Clare pointed out, there was going to be bruising after the op anyway. But it's taken four days to appear.

After supper I watched TV on my Chromebook lying in bed, rather than sitting up. The last couple of episodes of Danish crimmie 'DNA' were quite complex and not easy to follow as two interlocking story lines with flashbacks came to their surprising resolution. Crimes were committed by well meaning folk, compounding errors and betrayals. A tragic narrative, but the conspiracies weren't the work of organised crime, but pious decent folk whose zeal to do righteous things led them astray. Things aren't always what they seem, or what you'd like them to be when you see the whole picture. Or think you do. 

It seems this is an important message for our time, for religion and society alike in a time when conspiracy theorists speculate around selected facts, and believe their conclusions are 'scientific', and immune to scrutiny. The aim seems to be the undermining of trust and confidence in the disciplined logical processes of empirical enquiry in which frames the questioning of theories and data quality in all branches of science. Better the freedom to doubt than the prison of utter certainty.

The BBC fact checking team has published a detailed account of testing allegations in one example of electoral fraud Trump announced he'd litigate over. A database of dead people voting plundered from public records, disregarding parent and child namesakes, where the child lives at the address of the parent, or a deceased namesake exists in another state with the same date of birth as the one who voted. Faulty data harvesting, faulty method, creating an illusion of certainty, yet treated as if a certain fact by the so-called leader of the Free World. Such foolishness!