!H for horsemen --- agk's diary 4 February 2022 @ 02:50 --- written on GPD Win 1 at kitchen table during ice storm --- I call this diary, "Where the horsemen hang their hats." You're, of course, familiar with the horse- men. Zechariah's horses were red, black, white, dappled. Riders scouted and returned to report to God. Black and white horse riders also comforted people north of Jerusalem with God's spirit. Horses rode again in John of Patmos' Revelation. He remixed them with Ezekiel's catastrophic judgments. Here's Ezekiel: > When a country sins against me...and I...destroy > its food supply by bringing on a FAMINE, wiping > out humans and animals alike.... > > Or, if I make WILD ANIMALS go through the country > so that everyone has to leave and the country > becomes wilderness and no one dares enter it any- > more.... > > Or, if I visit WAR on that country and give the > order, 'Let the killing begin!' leaving both > people and animals dead.... > > Or, if I visit a deadly DISEASE on that country, > pouring out my lethal anger, killing both people > and animals, and Noah, Daniel, and Job happened > to be alive...only these three would be delivered > because of their righteousness.... Believe it or > not, there'll be survivors. These catastrophes are the special interests of public health nerds, observers of catastrophe. They're small founts of research funding, helpful for paying modest mortgages. We sometimes raise effective defenses but often just make powerpoints. Ezekiel understands: even the most righteous guys can't help anybody but themselves, as he tells it. On gemini, gopher, and websites like lobste.rs, Ezekiel 13 thrives. I love to read denunciations of dark patterns by people paid to slap on whitewash and sew soul-trapping devices---especially dark patterns they know intimately, propagated by their team in adtech, social media, binge-optimized streaming, databases, or blockchain schemes. I can't really make those denunciations myself. I have no special knowledge of how mass denial and despair are sown or structured. I'm an Ezekiel 14 girl. What I know is catastrophes and survivors. Horsemen have been my companions for much of my life. John stages his horsemen with a careful observer's nuance. His catastrophe-pattern is recognizable all over the world. In Syria the white horse of US, British, and Turkish conquest arrived in 2010 and 2011. Internal warfare followed between the foreign-backed Sunni profess- ional and managerial class of the north, coastal multiethnic/multireligious government forces, and far-north Kurds. Red and white horses rode together as all factions entreprenerially accumulated foreign backing. Da'esh and White Helmets marketed their wars to mainstream atrocity-flick fans. American and Russian airstrikes followed. Turkey invaded to ethnically cleanse Kurds. The black horseman holds a scale; weighs money or food. Food exists, but a day's wage buys a survival ration for one---not enough to feed a family. Most horrific famines were like this, from Victorian holocausts in India and Ireland to the Biafran fam- ine. Oil and wine flow free for the wealthy, but the mass's ration is exported or fails to be impor- ted, at least at a price the mass can afford. Today in Syria, US-imposed sanctions cut off food. The Lebanese banking collapse disposed of the rem- aining middle class's money. Siege is the cruelest form of mass killing. Almost everyone's hungry. After the black horse, the rider on the sickly one collects the dead. Life becomes hell for the living. In Babylonian captivity, under Roman domination, and Anglo-American empire in living memory, this is the order of horsemen. Beneath their hooves, daily life always continues. Prophetic critiques ring through history to shake people who react with denial ("Everything's NOT fine!"), and comfort those who despair ("The catastrophe isn't the whole story; you're sustained by people who need your love.") At public health conferences I've looked at dozens of powerpoints, thousands of posters quantifying a horseman's deeds. Fuck that, though. Beneath, despite hooves, people raise babies, raise fists, raise Cain, and live ordinary lives together. Psalm 20: > Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but > we will remember the name of the LORD our God. The spirit of God's never far from ordinary life lived together. No experience of catastrophe, prophets bellow, is unredeemably meaningless.