Evil may attack us, but sometimes it takes a pause, lulling us into complacency before striking with greater force.  After Germany rolled over Poland in 1939, inflicting half a million casualties in one week, Europe went strangely quiet for a six-month period, ironically dubbed the “Phoney War.”

Hitler had been considered by many to be nothing more than a vulgar barking dog until Poland was crushed by the German military machine, which was not even supposed to exist according to the terms of the 1918 Armistice. 

But the Blitzkrieg, the lightning strike on Poland, put the world on notice: the Germans had an army and weren’t afraid to use it. But then, surprising everyone, Germany appeared to lay down quietly to gnaw on Poland, while secretly muscling up in preparation for adding Norway, Denmark, and France to its portfolio.  At the Nuremberg trials after the war, General Alfred Jodl admitted that Germany would have easily been defeated in 1939 had Britain and France acted quickly. Instead, they held their breath while Germany caught up to, and surpassed, Allied strength.

In that strangely silent interim, the British people tentatively inched their way back towards normal.  Dodged a bullet, they thought.  Whew.  In a profound misunderstanding of the nature of evil, they hoped it was over.

It’s a fatal error to believe that evil can be satisfied.  It needs to cram more and more down its maw, and it has an ever-expanding cavity.  As C. S. Lewis mythologizes in The Great Divorce, the only way to deal with evil is to kill it.  “The gradual process is of no use at all.”

Evil is an emptiness.  St. Thomas Aquinas reasoned that evil is not a thing in itself, but rather the lack of good, just as darkness is not a thing itself, but a lack of light.  Because it lacks, evil can never stop trying to fill itself.  It is a sucking vacuum.

Genuine evil is never satisfied, like Moloch.  Ancient cultures built statues of Moloch, furnaces with mouths through which live children were fed.  Was any number of children sufficient to satisfy the evil god?  No, but the pagans kept offering them up anyway because evil never says “enough.”  You can’t mollify it; you must defeat it.

A blitzkrieg was launched against us in 2020, beginning with a virus, progressing to censorship of medical information, loss of livelihoods, coerced inoculation, and now threatening control of our lives by electronic passports. The “vaccines” must be universally accepted, against medical contraindications, moral objections, and whether or not they cause death and debilitating injuries.

We gamely agreed to two weeks to flatten the curve, and now it’s been two years, with no signs of retreat.  Evil is a tapeworm; it never gets enough.

If American institutions and agencies are deliberately deceiving and manipulating us, that’s not poor judgment; that’s evil.  If the pandemic was planned, if the virus was lab-engineered, if news of effective treatments was silenced to create conditions into which a lucrative vaccine could be introduced, and if that vaccine causes more damage than good while being forced on the population… that’s evil on a grand scale.

It is utterly futile to hope that it will go away on its own and allow us to have our “normality” back.

The hundreds of thousands of people who could have been treated had the government, media, and medical establishment not suppressed news of repurposed drugs and early in-home treatment… not coming back.

The businesses that dried up, the families habituated to the government dole, surviving employers who can’t find workers, disappearing consumer goods that won’t be restocked… not coming back.

The credibility of media and government, which have so mangled the truth that people can’t trust anything they’re hearing anymore, making consensus impossible… not coming back.

War has been declared, not by a foreign enemy, but by the very domestic institutions we have trusted in the past.

We are in that quiet interim.  We are hoping for the best, but evil has put us on notice.  To use the Phoney War to our advantage, we have to stop lulling ourselves with the mantra, “We’ll be back to normal soon.”  We won’t, not considering the nature of evil.  The first, most essential thing is to accept that normal is gone.  Grieve it if you must, and then let’s get moving.  There is a long and absolutely necessary mental leap from “I just want my life back” to “I will fight for truth and freedom at all costs.”

The Phoney War shows signs of breaking out into the open soon.  In Italy, where the “Green Pass” was mandatory after October 15, massive protests have been met by riot police in urban assault vehicles.  In Australia, a de facto police state has come into being in Victoria, leading to protests met, again, with riot squads.  New York is picking up the baton, followed by other cities where health discrimination passports have been rolled out.  The sides are being drawn.

When we truly understand evil and don’t flinch from its intentions, we will know in our gut that it must be confronted.  We are alive in this moment to take up a battle.  Whether we like it or not, this is our place in history. The enemy has been using our torpor and confusion up until now to gather its resources.  Let us make the most of the time we have left.

Graphic credit: GDJ Pixabay license

Sheryl Collmer is an independent consultant in Texas for several non-profit organizations.  She holds a Masters in Theological Studies, as well as an MBA.

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