It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity . . . Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

Hello everyone, I have received permission from Steven Yates to reprint these articles on the blog site. What is happening to America? Why does it seem the the more things change, the more they remain the same? Why are we working harder for less and in most families, husband and wife have to work and the husband many times has a second job? Why are those who were supposed to look at tax reform now discussing the taking away of the only significant deduction the American people have at tax time and that is the home mortgage deduction? How is it that now cities can confiscate your land and sell it to corporations who can develop it to generate more revenue for the city? How is it that our children can be taught that homosexuality is a good and healthy alternative lifestyle and that Bible believing Christians are radical right extremist?

Well, the answers are not that simple but they are answers just the same and available for anyone who would like to understand what is happening to us. To my utter amazement, many people do not want to see the truth because if they do, it means they have to do something about it. It is easier to sit back and hope that things won’t get worse for America. Or better yet, go back to the old used up phrases of, “It won’t happen here”, or, “We are still the greatest country in the world”. Those two seem to pacify our feelings for a little while.

The only hope to hold back the evil a little longer is for the American people, one by one, to realize that these facts are truth and unite to do something about it. I fear it has gone too far but with an awakened citizenry, change can still be achieved. Steven Yates has written this series and it will clarify a lot of what we are seeing happen. I will be posting one article a week.

I beg you to prayerfully read these articles and begin to pray for our beloved nation. Next, ask the Lord to show what you can do to help in the battle. Get involved somehow today! Our children and grandchildren are worth it.

God Bless
Elaine


THE REAL MATRIX, PART 1
By Steven Yates
December 7, 2004
NewsWithViews.com

The Matrix, easily the most thought-provoking film in a generation, tells the story of a computer hacker going by the alias Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) who discovers that the world he has taken for granted his entire life is an illusion. The “Matrix” is a virtual-reality simulation created by a powerful artificial intelligence. Since birth Neo has been wired directly into an immense computer system that can project a panorama of sensory information directly into his brain and central nervous system. This creates the illusion of his living in a world where by day he is Thomas A. Anderson, a programmer for a software giant. One of the working premises of the film is that the majority of human beings are born, live out their lives, and die inhabiting cocoon-like structures, plugged into this system, never suspecting the truth. Their life-experiences are fabricated, while their life-energies sustain the ruling entity.

Neo has long suspected that something is amiss without being able to put his finger on it. It was this something that drew him into hacking and into the world of computers generally. His presence became known to Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), leader of a band of rebels fighting to free the human race from bondage to the artificial intelligence. Of course, Neo’s nocturnal computer explorations have also become known to the “agents,” living programs who service the artificial intelligence. The first half-hour or so of the film is a race to see which side can get to him first.

One of the rebels, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), hacks into his computer and lures him to a Gothic nightclub. There she confronts him with his unease:
“I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. You’re looking for him. I know, because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question just as I did.”
Neo: “What is the Matrix?”

Trinity: “The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you. And it will find you, if you want it to.”
The pivotal scene occurs when she introduces Neo to Morpheus. With a thunderstorm in the background, some gripping dialogue ensues:

Morpheus: I imagine that right now you’re feeling a little like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit-hole…I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. Ironically, this is not far from the truth…Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Neo: The Matrix?
Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is?
Neo: (nods)
Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when you go to church, or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. (Produces a box containing two colored pills, one blue and one red.) This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Pause. Neo reaches for the red pill.) Remember: all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more. (Neo swallows the red pill with a glass of water.)
After that, things happen pretty quickly. Neo is jerked free of the artificial intelligence and finds himself in the “desert of the real,” with Morpheus, Trinity and the others on board the Nebuchadnezzar who are struggling to free the human race from control by the artificial intelligence, while simultaneously battling superhuman “agents” and monstrous mechanical “sentinels” sent to destroy them.
Science fiction, right?

Unquestionably, many viewers watched The Matrix convinced that all they were seeing was a science fiction action film—entertainment, without further significance.
I believe it’s more. The Matrix—which has begun to generate a secondary literature in academic disciplines like philosophy and cultural studies—may be seen an allegory for our present situation after the past hundred-plus years. The allegory is about power and concealment. The “real matrix” is then a world most of middle America takes for granted—a world where “they hate us because we are free,” and where the public schools educate. A world where we can trust the federal government and believe Dan Rather. A world where the former obeys its founding document, the U.S. Constitution. In other words, a fantasy world.

Let us conduct a thought experiment. Let us remove the obviously evil artificial intelligence and its minions—“agents” and “sentinels”—and substitute a power system controlled by a few hundred extremely wealthy and well-placed individuals—a super-elite, I will call it. I use this term to distinguish it from visible, national elites. This super-elite operates at an international level, outside all national loyalties. Its only loyalties are to money and power. It exercises control by controlling not just much of the Western world’s finances but much of the information released to the public. It controls the mainstream mass media (television networks and newspapers mostly owned by six or so megaconglomerates) and most education through top-down policies permeating the prevailing form of education in this land: government (“public”) schools. So-called higher education is part of this system. The super-elite bent academic disciplines such as history and psychology in the direction it wanted them to go by generously supplying foundation and grant money to compliant graduate students who then become compliant professors and administrators. Through the endowment system it gained control over Ivy League universities. The latter, via their enormous prestige and control of flagship organizations within academic disciplines (such as the American Historical Association or the American Psychological Association), set the course for those disciplines that others can be expected to follow automatically.

Members of the super-elite that controls this power system were never elected to anything, but elected officials in national elites answer to them. Those without the tacit approval of the super-elite have no chance of coming within a thousand miles of the Oval Office. The masses of people, meanwhile, will have been “educated” to adjust to society, which in this context means following the crowd and automatically withholding support from anyone who “can’t get elected.” Combine these two, and you have a reason why no Libertarian Party or Constitution Party candidate has a chance of becoming President of the United States or even reaching high office at the state level as long as this power system remains in place.

The media elites continue to promote a system which plays Democrats against Republicans although both parties are controlled at the top. There exists, in other words, a strict gatekeeping system. Only those with certain values and attributes, and a certain mindset, need apply.

Let’s now go beyond the thought-experiment stage. Does this super-elite really exist, or is this just more armchair “conspiracy theory”? It is not a theory. It is now quite well documented. The information is available to anyone willing to seek it out. To paraphrase what Trinity told Neo in their initial conversation, the answers are out there, and will find you if you want them to. Or, you can find them, if you go looking.

Note from me:
Well that is part one of “The Matrix Articles”. Think about it and do some research for yourself. I pray that truth continues to come out and that the Christians of this nation will wake up and stand against the evil with prayer and determination. The Holy Spirit who lives and dwells within the heart of every believer can and will hinder evil if a child of God stands firm against it.

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
John Donne, Meditation XVII
English clergyman & poet (1572 - 1631)
Next week: Part 2