“Our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us.” “This is not about freedom.”

These are the kind of words a dictator speaks, referring to the masses with the impersonal “you” and using the royal “we” to signal to them that a tyrannical political party backs him up.

Who would have thought that such words would be uttered by the hail-fellow-well-met Uncle Joe a mere eight months into his regime? And just to be clear, by “Uncle Joe” I am referring to Joseph Biden, not Joseph Stalin, whom FDR referred to by the same moniker. Affable Uncle Joe has suddenly turned into Mean Old Joe.

And he seems to be mandating things left and right without regard to anyone or anything except increasing his own political power. Who didn’t see this coming?

The Real Disease

There is hardly a story in the news these days that isn’t an iteration of some form of tyranny on a generalized scale in our country.  The punitive rules, regulations, restrictions, lockdowns, etc. of our political and cultural elites are all gambits in their quest to amass power. And the Coronavirus is a potent weapon in the arsenal of those whose express motto is to never let a crisis go to waste. Well, they certainly haven’t.

The Coronavirus may be a viral infection, but the COVID tyranny following in its wake is nothing less than a metastasizing cancer.

The worst part of the campaign is that they are capitalizing on the real suffering of real people.  This is being done in order to augment coercive control over the most prosperous and dynamic society the world has ever seen.

  • Trample the sacrosanct rights of a free nation? Well – hello? – Coronavirus!
  • Annihilate small businesses and the livelihoods of millions? Because Coronavirus.
  • Create a situation where more people die of the opioid epidemic and the effects of sustained lockdowns than of the disease? Nothing to see here, people. Haven’t you heard we’re in the middle of a pandemic?

Or, in the immortal words of alleged Catholic Arnold Schwarzenegger, “Scr** your freedom.” It’s all so cynical and transparently dishonest.

In the face of what many Americans consider to be a seeping totalitarianism, we must remember the lessons of history: soft tyranny, when unchecked, always turns into hard tyranny.

With More to Come

And if you had hopes that the pandemic was on the wane and that society would soon be getting back to “normal”, well, it’s time to wake up and smell the Hydroxychloroquine.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Delta Variant – allegedly more contagious but also weaker than COVID-19 – has reared its dragon-like head.  Now the elites are in the process of locking society down again. They’re already talking about a Lambda Variant and a Mu Variant, and pretty soon there will be a Gamma Variant, then an Epsilon Variant, and so on. Eventually they will plow through all 24 letters of the Greek alphabet to the Omega Variant. Can’t wait for that one.

The Real Issue

I can only speak for myself, but I have the distinct impression of a powerful unclean spirit behind the whole matter.  This spirit is impervious to reason, deliberately malicious, incapable of moderation, insatiable for power, impatient with delay, and utterly intolerant of dissent.

How else do we explain the total ban on a proven preventive medicine like Hydroxychloroquine during the entire length of the COVID pandemic? Only in recent months has the ban on it been lifted, but the medication that has proven itself effective in treating many kinds of diseases for – oh – 60 years has now been so utterly stigmatized by the medical community that it might as well be banned.

And what are we to make of the total media blackout of the success of Ivermectin on the Indian subcontinent? You’d think that a medicine that literally wiped out the Delta Variant among their billion+ population would be big news, right? Did you know that Ivermectin won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015? I didn’t think so. How would you?

To add to the assertion that COVID is a tool and an opportunity for the tyrants, consider a few stark truths about how easily COVID is actually dealt with when tyrannical ideology isn’t at play:

I could go on all day, but you get the point.

Psychological or Spiritual?

How to explain these dynamics? The famed psychologist Carl Jung would call what is now sweeping over the world a “psychic epidemic.” In his opinion this is worse than a natural disaster or plague because it has the character of a mass human psychosis. That’s one way to look at it.

I think it’s actually something worse: we are on the horns of a very serious spiritual dilemma.

The West is a mixture of ancient Christian cultures that have been systematically drained of faith in the past century at least. At the same time, we’ve also lost our principled spiritual leadership. As a general pattern, Church leaders in the West have voluntarily surrendered their moral and spiritual authority over worldly powers. They look and act like wholly owned sub-departments of the CDC right now.

Leadership Vacuum

Want to see what a vacuum of leadership looks like? The recent infestation of Afghanistan by the Taliban provides a chilling metaphor. The same thing happens when there is a vacuum of spiritual leadership: unclean spirits rush into the void.

In a sane world with rational leadership in both church and state, the pandemic would be a blip on the radar screen of history by now.  But the pandemic is not ending because the tyrants don’t want it to end. They use every possible opportunity to increase the fear and pressure on a vulnerable and exhausted society.  This also increases their own frenzy to grab as much power over us as they can before the window of opportunity closes for them.

It will eventually come to an end, as all pandemics do.  However, the elites are not letting this crisis go to waste any time soon.

To be quite clear: the virus is not an evil spirit. Viruses are natural entities and we deal with them as such. The tyranny that follows in its wake, however, is most definitely spiritual, and we must deal with that appropriately too.

Here’s my solution: St. Joseph.

Joseph Terror of Demons

The COVID crisis will end when the unclean spirit behind the COVID tyranny is driven out.

To bring that about, we must turn to the spiritually powerful forces at our disposal and beg their intervention. One of the most potent of our spiritual allies is the foster father of Jesus Himself.

Thanks to the Vatican’s proclamation of the Year of St. Joseph, there has been a rebirth of interest and attention given to the Patron of the Universal Church. It is a most welcome spiritual counterbalance to the COVID hysteria. Perhaps it’s providential that Joseph is finally getting the attention he deserves. The whole world needs him now more than ever!

During this crisis, I would like to advocate Joseph, under his title, Terror of Demons, as a spiritual rampart against the clear and present danger of the COVID tyranny.

He’s perfectly suited to the task.

Joseph against Fear

While a virus spreads through the air or by physical transmission, tyranny spreads by psychological transmission: fear, fear, fear, and more fear. It’s got the entire world – literally – in its grip.  All the bureaucrats and the complicit media have to do is to keep twisting the statistics to create the impression of medieval Black Plague scenarios all day, every day.  This keeps societies compliant to their wishes. Fearful populations give tyrants power.

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home” (Mt 1:20). Joseph was a man of action. His intrepid courage can vanquish the tyrannical fear that grips the world right now, if only we will turn to him for protection from it. The Pharaoh of Egypt told people during a famine to “Go to Joseph” (Gen 41:55), the Old Testament patriarch. That phrase has been used to describe the dependability of St. Joseph from the earliest days of the Church.

Joseph against Tyrants and Mandates

“Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt…Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him,” the angel told our patron (Mt 2:13). Joseph was charged with the protection of the greatest treasures ever given to mankind. But he didn’t deal with the tyrants of his day head-on.  He was prudent enough to know that real life tyranny has no respect for the vulnerable. He dealt with it realistically and shrewdly and in strict obedience to God’s commands. We need Joseph’s prudence in dealing with our modern tyrants and the complex decisions they sometimes force us to make.

Joseph against Destruction of Labor

“Is he not the carpenter’s son?” (Mt 13:55) asked the Lord’s countrymen. Would it surprise you to know that Joseph was a small business owner in his own right? He was not an employee of a company, which means he earned his daily bread and supported his family by the sweat of his brow. He was no stranger to the ups and downs of economic survival. Should he be deaf to the cries of all those whose businesses and livelihoods are being damaged by the crushing decrees of government?

Joseph against Lockdowns

“He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazorean’” (Mt 2:23). Joseph, the prudent and brave, took the Holy Family to safety. He didn’t put his personal desire to settle in Judea above the needs of his family. He discerned God’s will and moved to Nazareth.  Joseph would not be locked down by any human tyrant!

Our Spiritual Solution

St. Joseph’s many virtues deserve deep contemplation in this year dedicated to him. A simple, meditative recitation of his litany will bring us much closer to him on a regular basis and help us have great confidence in his intercession for us in heaven.

I love the new Go To Joseph website just launched in this Year of Joseph, and I encourage you to check it out. The site has tons of character, kind of a Drudge Report for St. Joseph, but its sole “action item” is to ask readers to add the Litany of St. Joseph to the end of our daily Rosary as a way of bringing all the problems of society, Church, and family to our Universal Patron in union with Our Lady. A brilliant idea!

Joseph has been given to us by the Church at this time as a special patron. He is powerful before the throne of God. Would Jesus deny him anything?

Let us all, as a Church, as one, “Go to Joseph” to vanquish this COVID tyranny. It’s a spiritual reality at base, and it’s killing us. Only a stronger spiritual reality – the anointed protector of Christ and Mary who knew tyranny firsthand – will protect us from it and undo its coercive power.