Taking ownership of your life brings power to make needed changes. True freedom begins with reliance on God to guide this process and provide what you need.
I’m so very sorry for the 3 minutes of life wasted if you watched this video all the way through. Personally I couldn’t stomach it past 30 seconds, but I posted it because it exemplifies perfectly the absolute clown world we live in, where shallow virtue signaling by pampered celebrities is supposed to mean something significant, while serious issues remain hidden and undiscussed.
It also brings the phrase, jumping the shark to mind. For those unfamiliar with it, this is when gimmicks are used to promote something once very popular that has lost relevance and the gimmicks completely fall flat. Just google “Fonzi” and “shark jump”, you’ll see. It was the beginning of the end for the beloved TV show, Happy Days.
I had thought we were well past this moment for the vaccines after the giveaways of booze, doughnuts, cash and even joints (way to go Washington state!) were offered as incentives to get the jab. This, mind you for protection against a disease whose number one risk factor is obesity. Silly me, I had forgotten that anything Covid related is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes new levels of absurdity.
This is a touching essay by Martin Kulldorff, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration from Spiked-Online.com. The GBD was written as an alternative to the warped and tragically wrong lockdown narrative that had caused governments from around the world to shutter business, schools and otherwise every day life in order to combat the coronavirus.
Kullfdorf and the other authors felt strongly that the collateral damages from lockdowns were causing immense harms and that the most effective and humane strategy for getting through the pandemic was to focus protection on vulnerable populations, while keeping society open as much as possible for the rest.
Needless to say, the GBD authors, all extremely accomplished in their respective fields of epidemiology, virology and public health, were immediately vilified and anyone referencing them on social media, myself included, were harassed, bullied and shamed for promoting a “let er’ rip” response to the coronavirus that would kill millions. Continue reading →
Below is a post from Peckford42 that provides an excellent summary of the corroding nature of learned helplessness and how the giant Covid PSYOP of this past year has shoved us in to a societal wide, curled fetal position. Give it a read, ask yourself some tough questions and then check out Peckford’s excellent site.
What is a culture of compliance, and ever-shifting rules, doing to us?
Why would any American allow the government to deny him a final goodbye to the person who raised him? Why would anyone allow grandma to die untouched in a hospital room without fighting back? In the post-vaccination era, why don’t people remove their masks? Learned helplessness, employed as a control tool.
Learned helplessness is well documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.
“The wolf is starving, thin as a rail, when he meets a well-fed, strong dog. When the dog learns the wolf is barely surviving, he invites him to come and live with him on the farm. “You’ll get plenty of food and treats of all kinds,” the dog says. “And all you have to do is bark at strangers and make a fuss over the farm’s owners and children. It’s an easy life.”
The wolf is salivating at this prospect when he notices the dog’s collar. “What’s that around your neck?”
“Oh, that,” the dog replies. “It’s nothing. It’s just used when they chain me up.”
“You have to wear a chain? You aren’t free to do what you want or go where you please?”
“Not all the time,” the dog says. “But who cares?”
“Thank you very much,” the wolf says, “but I’ll keep my freedom!”
And with that, he turns and runs off into the forest.”Continue reading →
The French have a saying called joie de vivre which technically means enjoyment of life or exuberant spirit. Like many French to English translations, it’s true essence is difficult to convey as the phrase is more akin to an emotion or way of living.
It’s not so much about excitement, but the spark of life found in every day things; a dance with a stranger, a shared laugh with a shop clerk, a heartfelt experience during a prayer meeting, a meal with loved ones, a single flower catching the sun’s rays.
Insanitybytes2 touched on this in an awesome video called Life from her post How Then Shall We Live? It really shows the importance of human connection and how it’s the glue that keeps us connected, healthy and joyful.
Our dystopian world of masked faces, fear and isolation can make us forget this, but we must push through this nonsense and show people how to live again and that acting like human beings who smile at each other, hug and dance together is not a danger to society. In fact the very opposite is true. Continue reading →
First let me say the obligatory, “I not an anti vaxxer.” While my faith in government and public health authorities has been utterly destroyed this past year due to their collective horrible pandemic response, I believe vaccines as a whole have brought us miraculous benefits. I also think, at this point, the people who are vulnerable to a bad case of Covid should get the vaccine and that those of us who are not should not feel pressured to do so.
“I play football and basketball and those sports make up a big part of my life, and when I’m not here every day doing something with those sports, honestly, I feel really lost in life. Since I’m a junior, college is starting to cross my mind, and without this essential year of learning, I feel completely unprepared for college. I know I’ve still got another year, but time goes faster than you really think.”
He continued, “I just believe we should be here at school and we should be here playing football. It’s crazy to think that just down the road, they’re playing a football season — they’re almost done with their football season. It’s honestly ridiculous. And I’m willing to keep my teammate and classmates in line, minding whatever rules, just so I can be back here doing the stuff I love.”~Kooper Davis, Teenager from Hobbs, NM
How many times have you heard a politician say, “it’s for the children” when pushing some nonsense bill? Whenever that term is used, you can be darn sure that whatever is being proposed has very little to do with kids and more than likely goes against their best interest. The never ending pork saddled school funding bills for example, always seem to put plenty of cash in teacher union coffers and very little in to classroom instruction or student betterment. Continue reading →
“Economics is not an ideology, it is a principle in nature, nothing is wasted in nature. There is no separation of health and economy, we support our health by working for our existence.”
I love this quote by businessman and philosopher Daniel Model, who is the subject of a fascinating interview in the video below. He expounds a lot on freedom and how fully living requires the belief that your own thoughts and actions can and do influence the direction of your life. This is called personal agency which is essential to psychological well being and healthy relationships.
Some other quotes from the video:
“Money is the big illusion, work is the real purpose in life and to have experiences and a journey of development.”
“If money is used (by the government) to prevent you from working, then you in a way have lost completely the contact stuff of your life. Then you are a kid, maybe getting milk from your mother. You’re not independent, you’re not thinking, you’re not really a respectful person anymore.”
“The fear spirit speaking is government, you must do something, it is urgent, it is life or death!”
Personal agency is a large part of what makes us human. Living in fear erodes this and moves us towards the animal instinct of survival; merely existing over living. Governments and media are experts at taking us down this path through hyperbole and demonization of our so called enemies, which primes us to willingly give up our freedoms in return for the illusion of safety.
The obvious example here of course is the shutting down of large swaths of society to combat a virus for whom most people the odds of dying are very low. The drumbeat of fear from the media egged on by exploitive and power hungry politicians and the censoring and shaming of less apocalyptic views all but assured the general public’s acceptance of unprecedented societal lockdowns and the overall thrashing of civil liberties.
In other words, the government used fear and hysteria to get us to agree with the closing down of most societal functions and destroying million of jobs. Now they want to spend trillions of dollars to repair this damage which will fail. Money cannot replace dignity and purpose, nor bring back lost human connection or restore mental health. It is very good however at creating a victim mindset and increasing dependency on more pay outs.
On top of this, the government crippled our own personal agency in deciding what’s best for ourselves and families in dealing with the virus. I believe it’s the moral duty of those of us who don’t face much threat from it to keep things running as normal as possible, while sharing in the risk of getting it and becoming immune. By taking this choice away from us the government made itself the moral arbitrator of accepted behavior and decider of what is and is not considered acceptable risk.
This brings to mind British-Indian Infectious Disease Epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta who often uses the phrase social contract when discussing the pandemic and how lockdowns badly warp it.
“What politicians can do is maybe alter their language to reflect that we do live with risk, we have to make quite difficult decisions about trade-offs that exist between ways of life, between livelihoods, and sacrifices that have to be made at a societal level. They would do well to urge people to think at a communitarian level.
I think the lockdown is really individualistic in its general construction. Things that we normally disperse within the community, such as individual risk, and individual blame. Now I see young people being terrified, even though they realize the risk to themselves is low, that they might infect a friend who will then give it to their grandparents. This chain of guilt is somehow located to the individual rather than being distributed and shared.
We have to share the guilt. We have to share the responsibility. And we have to take on board certain risks ourselves in order to fulfill our obligations and to uphold the social contract. So I’d like the politicians to remind people of that, because that’s what they’ve been elected to do – to see the social contract is being properly transacted.”
Yes, exactly, but this is impossible for people saturated in fear to grasp. The outlandish hostility Ms. Gupta has received for her perfectly reasonable coronavirus views is a testament to this.
Excessive fear is a direct threat to personal freedom. The greater the fear, the larger the perceived threat and the more acceptable sweeping, normally unthinkable measures become to combat it.
Endless school closures, mask mandates for years to come, digital vaccine passports, no international travel, social gatherings, concerts, plays or festivals, new variants, wash, rinse, repeat…..when does this all end?
Only awareness can stop this panic and a strong sense of personal agency that is naturally allergic to government overreach. Until this happens, we will continue our merry slide towards authoritarian rule.
“The mask is about compliance, next they’re gonna tell you, you have to contact trace, then they’re gonna tell you, you have to take the vaccine and guess what kids, once you take your vaccine, they’re gonna tell you sorry the vaccine isn’t as effective as we thought it was gonna be so now you’re still gonna have to wear your mask, still gotta get contact traced, still have all the restrictions and social distancing and still take the vaccine. And what did you get out of all of this?”
I don’t know who this guy is, but he completely nails it in this video clip from last spring on the charade of coronavirus restrictions, the destruction of small businesses and turning life as we know it upside down.
While he infers that the end game here is a master/slave society where us compliant little sheep are ruled by elite technocrats, I just can’t give our current crop of hapless pro lockdown politicians that much credit, at least here in the U.S. They are just too dumb to be such masterminds of evil.
Don’t get me wrong, many are without a doubt exploiting the pandemic for their own benefit, but I think most of really have no clue what to do as far as combating it so they enact endless and senseless dictates that give the illusion of doing something and then run around with their hair on fire when this has 0 effect, blaming and shaming their citizens for behaving like human beings and doing bizarre things like spending time with other people.
Take pro lockdown Governor extraordinaire, Gavin Newsom, of California where I live. We have been in some sort of hard shut down since last march, with even outdoor dining banned in most counties and schools, gyms, nail & hair salons still shut down. Mask mandates too have been in place for several months and yet despite all this California has some of the worst Covid #’s in the country.
Here’s a little secret that’s not so secret really because deep down everyone knows this.
“They’re isn’t much that can be done to stop the spread of a highly communicable, airborne, respiratory virus.”
Oh you may slow things down a little, maybe, but in the end the virus is gonna do what viruses do, which is infect as many people as possible until herd immunity kicks in, either naturally or in combination with a vaccine. There is nothing a governor, mayor, city council person or even president can do to protect you other than provide truthful stats on transmission methods, death rates and demographics of who it affects most seriously so you can decide on the proper precautions best for yourself and family.
In fact, I would argue the more the government tries to help you, the worse things get and nowhere is this more apparent than with the never ending ill conceived lockdowns and forced distancing policies.
The worst in my view is the societal effects from the constant fear mongering and shaming. It’s a form of psychological abuse really and has always been part of politics, but many politicians have taken it to an art form during the pandemic. Combine this with mandated work closures, forced isolation of others, restricted gatherings and the breakdown of interpersonal communications through anti-science mask mandates and this will break society. In many cases it already has.
As I’ve said in previous posts,“I believe the extended coronavirus lockdowns to be the single biggest public policy mistake made in our lifetime, if not ever, whose negative effects will be with us for years to come and in many ways we haven’t yet realized.”
We have a severe crisis of courage within our political class in that instead of telling us the truth about this virus and leading the way in fearlessly facing it, they cower and hide behind nonsensical mandates and shutdowns, pretending that this will somehow eradicate it.
What will people do when they realize it’s all been for nothing? I was hoping by now that more would have caught on and be willing to just ignore the mandates and get on with life. Many of us in California are doing just that to the extent we can, but so many others here are crippled by fear, clinging to the restrictions like a life preserver and angrily lashing out at anyone pointing out their gaping holes of logic.
Maybe folks will finally come around after the vaccines are administered and cases still rise and politicians double down on restrictions. More likely that will usher a mass descent in to madness and chaos as the public realizes the shiny coin of vaccine that was supposed to open the door to normalcy is not the panacea it’s being made out to be.
Look, the virus is a nasty bug, no question but it affects mainly very old and/or very frail people most seriously. For most of us we are looking at mild to moderate symptoms (if any at all) with an overall estimated survival rate is 99.5 percent, according to the CDC, Yes, there are always outlier cases which are tragic, but this is true of the flu too and the numbers just don’t justify a complete re-ordering of society
The fact of the matter is many of us will get the virus and most will end up just fine. The best we can do is keep things as normal as possible while directing resources and brainpower towards protecting the vulnerable. As Donald Henderson, the man credited with eradicating smallpox once said,
“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of community is least disrupted.”
We must learn to do normal life along with the coronavirus, there is just no other way. We will get there eventually either with or without a crushed economy and broken society. I choose the latter.
I’d been struggling with what and how to write about what happened in DC Wednesday, when I came across my friend xPraetorius’s post that sums up my thoughts perfectly so I thought I’d re blog it here. x brings some fantastic insight so please make sure to read his post.
In x’s view, the important message of why so many people showed up in support of Donald Trump has been completely overshadowed by the Capitol building fiasco in which a small faction of protestors did some pretty stupid and awful things. Exactly who participated in that and why remains to be seen until a full investigation is done. Punishments should be given accordingly once that process plays out.
Do not be fooled though in thinking a chapter is closing and a sense of normalcy and calm will return once Biden takes office. As the left keeps hammering their false narrative as to what happened, they will push more and more for conservative thought to be labeled dangerous and its followers to be canceled out of existence. You’ll be hearing a lot more about domestic terrorism in the coming months and it won’t be pretty.
This is only the beginning of a new and uglier chapter.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer my news as, you know… news — “Hey! This interesting thing just happened!” — not as pre-written narrative into which some manipulative, scheming bastard, trying to control my perception of things around me*, then fits or fabricates any events he can to support that narrative.
* “Manipulative, scheming bastards, trying to control our perception of things around us” — a nice summary description of today’s media!
Howdy and thanks for stopping by! I'm weirdly obsessed with individual liberty and feel it's not given enough credit as being a necessary factor for living a truly empowered and fulfilled life.
Whether it's self serving politicians who are constantly trying to make victims out of us, or the negative fixed narratives we impose on ourselves that limit what we can do, we are constantly giving up personal power over to some person or thing which ironically only shrinks our world further.
This blog is about sticking up for freedom and hopefully opening up a deeper conversation on what it's meaning is, how it enhances our own empowerment and why it's so important to protect.
