It can all be a most fortuitous and blessed means to an end, if we’ll but let it be.

A federal judge on Tuesday granted the Justice Department’s request to publicly release grand jury transcripts and other material from Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2022 sex-trafficking case. Not that this story will apply necessarily, but more light has been shining in the dark shadows of the room for years now. Still, I’m no longer convinced we’re a people who remembers what to do with light once it reaches us.

Its likely nothing-burger outcome is the latest in a whole menu of them and perhaps the only light we need.

Nothing ever happening–that says it all.

Once upon a time, I was a little more hopeful:

Yes, many Americans are disappointed with Maxwell’s “short” 20-year sentence, claiming this is just business as usual with these types of stories that always go the wrong way.

But this simply isn’t true. This is absolutely one small piece in a several-day turning point that should be showing Americans that the tide is indeed finally turning. With all due consolation to the victims, on the bigger stage, it is one miraculous time to be alive. A sex trafficking occult island is just starting to be exposed, and the deep state no longer appears untouchable. We have been bread-crumbing it since May 11 in The Hayride, discussing related items such as Trump, Elon Musk, and Ukraine.

Yes, some Americans, those of the bloodlust-variety, would have loved Maxwell to be placed in front of a firing squad for celebratory public viewing. This simply wasn’t in the rule of law, though. The woman is 60 years old and will likely die in prison, and since she is a pedophile (and worse), she will be one of those inmates the others may very well torture themselves. Maxwell will not make it out of prison without having to feel at least some of her victims’ torture.

It is almost inconceivable that three and a half years have passed since then. For a long time, and even now despite my shift in focus in recent months, I believed in the court of public opinion. I believed that court of public opinion would capitalize on the Trump factor, regardless of whether or not he would end up being for real, because his very existence was drawing out so many of the enemies of mankind.

Since his latest term started, however, I can see that most people are simply making the same mistakes as they did before, trusting in preconstructed platitudes–no matter the vice–just because our favorite talking heads are saying it.

We are still sheep and still deceived–only now the deception flatters us by making us feel awake.

And to think that that may have been the ploy all along.

My own red-pilling led me not to influencers or political movements but to Traditional Catholicism–to frequent confession, to the Latin Mass, to the sacraments that actually heal. And I had hoped, sincerely, that more of my fellow Americans would follow that path.

But the Maxwell story encapsulates everything our nation has chosen not to care about–the same apathy that marked us long before 2020.

Specifically, what they’re doing to those children. And it goes well beyond just “trafficking,” as I’ve contended time and time again.

Back in 2022, after Maxwell’s conviction, America should have treated that moment as a spiritual alarm clock–a mercy bell rung from Heaven itself. It was never just about the crimes themselves, horrific as they were. It was about what God was revealing to a nation that had grown comfortable in its distractions, numb to the reality of evil, and forgetful of the sacraments that heal the soul–not to mention call down graces from Heaven in answer to prayers for the children. But instead of repentance, instead of truly coming together to make real change, we treated the exposure like entertainment, or worse, something to get to later–when my favorite talking head tells me what to think about it all. We “red-pilled” our friends–or at least tried to–while refusing to kneel before the only One who actually sets captives free:

See, it was just a few short years ago that the idea of rich elites being involved in child sex trafficking was just tin-foil hat conspiracy theory. The cognitive dissonance was too much for people, and instead of leaving behind their many electronic and entertainment distractions to see if these ideas were actually true, they chose to lambaste conspiracy theorists as quacks. Loons who have too much time on their hands.

Now, however, the sex trafficking crimes are set firmly in the middle of mainstream consciousness. This cannot happen overnight. It is why I repeatedly use the term “information warfare” to indicate exactly how much American revivalists are depending on every single American who wants a piece of the fight, who wants to save this country and world for their children. There has been a mass awakening already, and at this point, there should be little in the way of fear or insecurity in discussing these hot-button issues in the office or in your homes. It must be talked about, and if it is attached to prayer, in my opinion, it can create a truly wise person and information giver.

I was trying to co-opt the America First movement into a Christ is King movement. Who knows, if maybe a pair of searching eyes followed in that direction?

Now, years later, with more truth emerging, with more pump-fakes from a government that seemingly has no urgency in really inspiring the people to change their lives from the grassroots up, the picture is even more unsettling: many of the “good guys” we trusted to expose the darkness may well have been participating in the spectacle all along. The season of exposure has been a mercy, time and opportunity to read and dig for ourselves, to pray and fast for real guidance–but alas, mercy, time, and opportunity always becomes judgment.

Read the Book of Jeremias (Jeremiah). Watch how God deals with a stiff-necked people. Then compare the language to the Apocalypse (Revelation); the parallels are not just poetic–they are prophetic. Read the Douay-Rheims version for that special nuance in language–and theology–only it can provide.

All of this is to say–using what is likely a wholly pointless headline in the news cycle concerning a story that should not be pointless at all–in the end, it doesn’t matter whether the Justice Department releases every transcript or redacts none of the names. Government transparency, even if it’s real, cannot save a people who no longer responds to revelation with repentance. We saw the JFK files. We watched the Diddy saga unfold. We know about tunnels under cities. We scroll past every unveiling of corruption with the same indifferent shrug.

Our crisis is not informational. It is sacramental. It is Biblical.

It is the crisis of a people who knows something is wrong but refuses to repent.

The real question is not what the DOJ will release–it is whether we will finally release our grip on sin and turn back to God while we still have time. A second question is how many psyops can they unleash on us before we finally learn to recognize the dialectical pattern playing out every single time. Our call is to exit the stage, to ask God in earnest if efforts like this very piece have any legitimacy to them, and whether or not we are responsible for the warnings. Truth keeps breaking through the surface, and there are still watchmen on the walls sounding the alarum–but only the humble will hear the trumpet. Only those who bend the knee to God, not to men, will recognize the light in a darkness not waiting till some future evening to get here.