What an Interesting Time to Be Alive

January 17, 2025 by J.B. Shurk

A lot of people are anxious these days. They are worried about nuclear war, mass government surveillance, artificial intelligence, lab-created disease, central bank digital currencies — you name it! I’m worried about those issues, too. However, there is a part of me that relishes the opportunities we have to shape the future. This is an interesting time to be alive.

This is not the age of tranquility. There have been epochs for which that description might be apt — when people were born and died without experiencing much change during the course of their lives. The technologies that existed never advanced. The universe of human knowledge never expanded. Time stood more or less still, as if humanity were stuck in amber.

We’re not stuck in anything. The technological revolutions from the late nineteenth century forward have remade the world time and again. We’ve gone from telegraphs to telephones to cellular phones to smartphones. Mass communication has evolved from printed newspapers to radio broadcasts to television news to internet chatrooms, email, and social media. In the last twenty years, individuals have seized control over the instruments of mass communication — becoming self-created news reporters, entertainers, influencers, and celebrities. In the last ten years, governments and their corporate allies have tried desperately to claw back control over the mass media monopoly they once had.

Global wars have jumbled history’s trajectory and shifted the balance of power more than once. In some ways, World War II never truly concluded. An Iron Curtain demarcated the world for another half-century, and even thirty years after the Cold War, its battles rage on. Russia’s tense relationship with former Warsaw Pact members, China’s belligerent insistence on swallowing Taiwan, Israel’s generational defense of its sovereign borders, post-colonial Africa’s cauldron of bloody civil wars, and the continuing state of war between North and South Korea are but five of the most prominent examples of conflicts that have continued, in one form or another, for eighty years.

Religious belief has surged, dwindled, disappeared, been replaced, been reimagined, and perhaps even been rediscovered. Interwar nihilism and self-indulgence that took root during the apocalyptic atmosphere of WWI fully blossomed with the generation that arrived after WWII. Europe and America rejected their Christian foundations and invented “new age” religions for the public’s consumption — repackaging the language of Christian virtue into hippy-dippy self-help guides, mindful meditation, “social justice” movements, environmental doomsaying, and other malleable yet commercially successful hogwash designed to sate humanity’s spiritual needs.

The “greenies” rejected Jesus Christ but told us that we’re all going to die for our “fossil fuel” sins. The central bankers and globalist oligarchs joined this self-hating bandwagon because the “climate change” religion offered them a chance to maximize wealth and power. For years, they have elevated a line of “global warming” popes — Al Gore, Klaus Schwab, John Kerry — all claiming to have influence with planetary gods that might be willing to save us from Armageddon if we do exactly what the rich people vacationing in Davos, Switzerland say.

The World Economic Forum updates its globalist bible every year so that laypeople know what to believe and what to worship. The “climate change” clergy even promote young know-nothings such as Greta Thunberg, who play-acts as a modern, “truth”-telling “green” Jesus. Global “elites” love the “net zero” religion because they can make up new commandments as needed, condemn naysayers as selfish apostates, and rebrand totalitarianism as philanthropic virtue. “Global warming” pseudoscience allows the U.N., the WEF, and other religious denominations to tell everyone else how much to pay in taxes, how much freedom to give up, and how to behave.

And yet there is substantial evidence that a very real Christian revival is gaining energy. Older people who have perhaps lost their way are picking up dusty Bibles to see just what truths lie within. Well known commentators — including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Russell Brand — are doing something that few could have predicted even five years ago: they are publicly discussing the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Young people, too, are finding their way to Christ. What would have seemed quite unusual last decade is becoming almost commonplace: athletes, musicians, actors, and academics are bearing witness to Christ’s purposeful influence upon their lives. Even politicians who forgot Jesus’s name as they became worshipful converts to the “green” religion are slowly recovering from decades of amnesia and remembering the King of kings.

In this wildfire of technological change, global conflict, and spiritual upheaval, the challenges all around us feel daunting. If you will allow me to offer minor encouragement, it is this: do not look away. Do not let the noise distract your thoughts. Do not let the madness drive you mad. Do not let potential dangers drown you in fear. Be resolute. Be purposeful. Be hopeful. Be brave.

Consider this clearly: there has never been a moment in history when so many lies and so much propaganda have been mercilessly directed toward the human race. Intelligence agencies and corporate news platforms bombard our brains every day with false information. Governments have abandoned truth for the “narrative,” and the “narrative” is nothing but a psychologically valuable weapon for achieving political victory. Meanwhile, political victory is defined not as something that is beneficial for all people, but rather as something that gives those with great wealth and power even greater reserves of both.

In 2025, so-called “democracies” pursue the same totalitarian objectives as the “authoritarian” regimes those “democracies” vilify. They seek to control minds, monitor movements, police behavior, regulate speech, and subjugate free will. European and American politicians may talk a big game when it comes to “democracy” and “freedom,” but they have long been the greatest threats to both.

Yet they are afraid. They are losing. We are winning. How do I know? Their absolute abandonment of even the pretense of supporting free speech is a dead giveaway. Western leaders are so fearful of losing power that they have become overtly pro-censorship.

Former European commissioner Thierry Breton openly brags that Europe and U.S.-NATO scuttled the recent Romanian election because voters chose the “wrong” leader. He promises that Eurocrats will do the same in Germany if German citizens vote “incorrectly” this year. How can a prominent European statesman defend such brazenly anti-democratic tyranny? He blames free speech. Voters, he alleges, are reading and listening to the wrong voices.

Breton’s authoritarianism echoes placeholder-president Joe Biden’s denunciation of Mark Zuckerberg’s “shameful” decision to purge left-wing “fact-checkers” from their years-long role as professional censors who monitor and delete public debate on Facebook and other Meta platforms. Biden called the move away from government-directed censorship “completely contrary to everything America is about.” The so-called “leader of the free world” and a man constitutionally duty-bound to defend the Bill of Rights thinks it’s “un-American” to protect the First Amendment.

Failed governor “Nero” Newsom insists that Biden censor online criticism of his administration’s disastrous response to California’s deadly wildfires. Fellow tyrant Hillary Clinton wants Americans who “engage in misinformation” to be “criminally charged.” Of course, Hillary also expects that she, Newsom, Biden, and Breton will continue to exercise a monopoly over official “truth.” These shocking abuses of power reveal just how deeply afraid Western despots have become.

Of what are they afraid? They are afraid of you. They fear your voice, your private thoughts, and your desire to be free. You have untapped power that they see. What an interesting time to be alive.