The Soft Tyranny of Comfort

“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.”

This classic Aesop fable comes from an interesting Epoch Time’s article called  Saving Liberty One Child at a Time, that shows the tall tale to be a metaphor for the viciousness of today’s politics.  From the article:

“Some Americans want to preserve their traditional liberties and to live as much as possible without government interference in their affairs. Others, like Aesop’s dog, are willing to wear a collar if their masters care for them. This difference in values is at the core of today’s political battles.”

Well that about sum things up, doesn’t it?  Of course real life is not so black and white, as many people fall somewhere in the middle of these two points.  I myself am on Team Less Government, but I do believe in some sort of a safety net to help those in need.  It’s when the net becomes a hammock however that things get problematic and we’ve been at that tipping point for some time now.  President Biden’s latest stimulus package punts us right over the edge.

It’s the second largest welfare expansion in our country’s history and is awash in new cash grants and benefits.  More crucially the bill eliminates work requirements, which is just fantastic if you’re looking too keep people trapped in a cycle of poverty and dependency.  

Just like the dog with the collar, a person reliant on the government for basic needs will never truly be free.  Unfortunately there are many public policy types who equate poor people to domestic pets, unable to care for themselves without the benevolence of their anointed betters in government who create massive spending programs in the name of compassion.

Of course this always ends up making life more difficult and expensive, as taxes go up to pay for them and inflation kicks in.  New rules also get layered on top of growing regulations intertwined with ceaseless mandates.  As government seeps in to every aspect of our lives, our own self agency diminishes and our spirits deflate, which only feeds the vicious cycle of dependency.

This concept is expounded on in another fascinating Epoch Times article musing on French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations of tyranny in democratic societies.  According to him, our desires for entertainment and safety work in synergy with government’s own natural inclination to control and become more powerful.  

The article goes on to say:

“Tocqueville describes this power (the government) as a sort of reverse-patriarchy. Fathers, after all, seek to “prepare men for manhood.” But this government “seeks only to keep them [the citizens] in perpetual childhood.”

You see, this is a society of amusement. Its spiritual core is gone. “It prefers its citizens to enjoy themselves provided they have only enjoyment in mind,” Tocqueville declares. But there’s a catch: “It works readily for their happiness, but wishes to be the only provider and judge of it.” This government provides and even anticipates their needs, secures their pleasures, and directs their industry. In spine-tingling words, Tocqueville said it ultimately aims to “remove from them entirely the bother of thinking and the troubles of life.”

In a nutshell, a populace that is distracted, dumb and needy is ripe for exploitation by its leaders, who push the illusion of comfort and safety through policies that eventually lead to despotism.  That government at all levels is loaded with people of such bad character is no surprise, but they are freely elected in to office and to an extent merely reflect the brokenness of society.

The article closes with these chilling words from Tocqueville”

“The vices of those who govern, and the ineptitude of those governed, would soon bring it to ruin, and the people, tired of its representatives and of itself, would create free institutions or would soon revert to its abasement to one single master.”

Let’s take heed and reform ourselves and our corrupt institutions before it’s too late.

Side Note: No payment is required to read the linked Epoch Times articles, they just ask for an email address to register

 

 

To Honor The Dead We Must Live Life

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.

The French of course, as they do in most things, have their own way of expressing this, which this recent flash mob at a train station protesting lockdowns beautifully exemplifies  There’s no English subtitles, but your senses will absorb the message.  Personally I was mesmerized and couldn’t stop watching.  Seriously, watch the video.

La peur de la mort n’empêche pas de mourir, mais elle empêche de vivre. – Fear of death does not prevent death, but prevents life.

Nous, en veut à continue danser encore. – We want to continue dancing again.

Voir nos pensées embrasser nos corps.-See our thoughts embrace our bodies.

Nos venons briser, le silence.-We’ve come to break the silence.

Chaque mesure autoritaire, voit s’envoler notre confiance. Every authoritative measure, sees our confidence disappear.

Ils font preuve de tant d’insistance, pour confiner notre conscience!.  They show so much insistence, to confine our consciousness!

Ne soyons pas impressionnable par tous ces gens déraisonnables.-We are not impressed by these unreasonable people.

Vendeurs de peur abondance.-Fear sellers galore.

Et pour notre santé mentale, nos sourires, notre intelligence, ne soyons pas sans resistance– And for our mental health, our smiles, our intelligence, let’s not be without resistance.

Indeed.  Vive la France!

Art, dance, theatre, concerts, celebrations of life, marriage, death and religious holidays these things are what make us human and yet they’ve been all but canceled or drastically minimized for over a year now.  What does that say about what we value?

We must get back to what matters most.  Nous, en veut à continue danser encore.

Why I’m Not Getting The Vaccine

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.

So What’s My Beef With These New Vaccines?

1.  Based on my age, health and lifestyle, my chances of suffering a severe bout of Covid, let alone death are very small. Injecting experimental drugs in to my body to combat a virus I stand a 99.98% of surviving doesn’t just seem absurd, it is.

2.  Not one of the vaccines are FDA approved.  They have Emergency Use Approval (EUA), but FDA approval requires studies on long term effects, which of course these newly hatched vaccines do not have .  Anyone taking the jab now is essentially a clinical trial participant on long term effects.

3.  Along those same lines, mRNA vaccines are new to the market.  Yes, the technology behind them has been around for awhile, but they’ve never before been used in humans. Call me crazy, but I’d rather be an observer in this grand experiment then a guinea pig.

4.  As with all vaccines, there are potential side effects, some of them very unpleasant like death or the AstraZeneca blood clot fiasco, which caused several European countries to pause those vaccinations. While I understand serious complications are rare, I’ve heard enough, “He/she died within days of getting the vaccine, but we can’t be sure it’s because of this…”  stories to take note.

On a personal note, a good friend of mine went in to atrial fibrillation (AFib) after getting the 2nd Pfeizer shot and had to have an emergency procedure done to get her heart rhythm normal again.  Her primary care physician said she can’t recommend the vaccines after a perfectly healthy patient died after getting it and another, a marathon runner, ended up in the ER with heart damage.

Something called Antibody Dependent Enhancement Syndrome (ADE) is also a concern.  This involves your immune response going whacko where instead of fighting the infection, it opens the door for pathogens to invade your cells making you extremely sick.  The potential for  severe allergic reactions to polyethylene glycol (PEG), which is the packaging surrounding the messenger RNA cannot be overlooked either.

There is also the truly alarming prospect that mass vaccination during an active pandemic will cause stronger, more deadly virus mutations much the same way bacteria learns how to overcome over prescribed antibiotics.  Is this likely?  I don’t know but I’ve heard more than a few scientists express this concern.

Just the fact that many scientists and doctors around the world have strong concerns about these vaccines makes me think we should stop rushing this process.

5.  I’m not supposed to say this but, mRNA vaccines are a form of gene therapy and I’m just not very keen on messing with the ones I was born with.  mRNA stands for messenger ribonucleic acid which basically instructs cells in the body to make proteins to prevent or fight disease. Both the Pfeizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA to program a person’s cells to produce many copies of a fragment of the virus. The fragment then stimulates the immune system to attack if the real virus tries to invade the body, which all sounds pretty gene therapyish to me.

When the American Society of Gene + Cell Therapy  tells us in regards to the vaccines  that gene therapy is a viable strategy for developing vaccines to combat COVID-19, perhaps we should take them seriously that it is indeed gene therapy.

6.  While most Covid cases do not require hospitalization, there are therapeutics available to tamp things down before this becomes necessary, which I would rather take my chances with.  Over the counter supplements include zinc, quercetin, high dose vitamins D3 and C ( I take all of these prophylactically) have been shown to be helpful for immune support.

And many doctors have had success with prescription drugs like Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine with Zinc and Azythromycin.  I’ll leave it up to you to do your own research on these things and discuss them with your doctor, but please know testing positive for Covid is rarely an automatic one way trip to the hospital.

Government Incompetence

I find great tragedy in the fact that the government went all in for vaccines while putting little resources towards effective therapeutics which could have saved countless lives.  A strong focus on good health through weight loss, diet, nutrition and exercise would also have done wonders.  Certainly better than shutting down gyms and parklands around the country while forcing us to stay home, where overeating and drinking became common.

Plus Corruption

Did you know an Emergency Use Authorization becomes invalid if other effective treatments are available?  I didn’t until recently and it sure makes me wonder about how the billions of dollars flowing through the Covid vaccine industry would have come to a halt had a successful drug been found. Certainly it would be difficult not be incentivized towards keeping the money spigot open over pursuing vaccine alternative therapies.

Plus Manipulation

I also find the vaccine narrative as being the responsible thing to do grating.  As with the other empty Corona phrases like stay home/stay safe, my mask protects you and your protects me, we’re all in this together, etc…it’s designed to be divisive by creating moral superiority in those who choose to vaccinate and shame in those who don’t.

It’s classic government psychological operations , where in partnership with the media select information is dispensed to manipulate feelings and induce certain behaviors. Information that runs counter to the narrative will be blocked, mocked and dismissed as crazy talk.

Equals Zero Trust

That’s been the standard operating procedure this entire Covidian year, where the unholy alliance of government, media, Big Tech and Big Pharma trashed civil liberties around the world and caused much suffering.  Now this same alliance is herding us towards mass vaccination by dangling the prospect of normal life in front of us.  If we just line up like good sheep and take our shot a passport to freedom will be granted.

There is nothing normal about any of this and thus I will respectfully decline the vaccine.

For The Children, They Say….

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com

“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.

Funny how that works.  No, not funny at all.

The most epic public policy failure of our kids though certainly goes to shutting down schools in response to the coronavirus pandemic.  It was not in any way shape or form for their benefit and once it became known that children don’t suffer from nor transmit Covid much, keeping schools closed seemed purposefully cruel.  Many schools in California STILL remain closed today, with teacher’s unions weaponizing the elusive goal of “opening up safely” to demand ever more resources while bludgeoning the hopes of kids desperate to go back to school.

This heart wrenching article, The Lost Year, What the Pandemic Cost Teenagers, really drives this home and is difficult to read. It highlights teenagers in two towns; Denver City, TX which opened up schools and sports last September and Hobbs, NM which sits a mere 2 miles away from Denver City, yet may as well be on Mars as pertains to the difference in coronavirus restrictions.  Hobbs schools remained shuttered until just this past February (opening at only at 50%) with sports finally starting a few weeks later.

From the article:

“As time has gone on, evidence has grown on one side of the equation: the harm being done to children by restricting their “circulation.” There is the well-documented fall-off in student academic performance at schools that have shifted to virtual learning, which, copious evidence now shows, is exacerbating racial and class divides in achievement. This toll has led a growing number of epidemiologists, pediatricians and other physicians to argue for reopening schools as broadly as possible, amid growing evidencethat schools are not major venues for transmission of the virus.

As many of these experts have noted, the cost of restrictions on youth has gone beyond academics. The CDC found that the proportion of visits to the emergency room by adolescents between ages 12 and 17 that were mental-health-related increased 31% during the span of March to October 2020, compared with the same months in 2019. A study in the March 2021 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, of people aged 11 to 21 visiting emergency rooms found “significantly higher” rates of “suicidal ideation” during the first half of 2020 (compared to 2019), as well as higher rates of suicide attempts, though the actual number of suicides remained flat.”

Sports too play an enormous role in helping teenagers channel aggression properly while learning life lessons on teamwork, character and leadership. For many, sports play a central role and having them snatched away at such a pivotal time in their lives was devastating.

So much of what’s happened and is still happening to our kids angers me, but what stands out the worst is the psychological abuse of making them out to be dirty vessels of disease who could kill grandma at any moment.  Again from the article:

“We should be more careful with kids,” wrote Andy Slavitt, a Medicare and Medicaid administrator under President Barack Obama who was named senior advisor for President Joe Biden’s coronavirus task force, in a Jan. 3 tweet. “They should circulate less or will become vectors. Like mosquitos carrying a tropical disease.”

In Los Angeles, county supervisor Hilda Solis, a former Obama labor secretary, urged young people to stay home, noting the risk of them infecting older members of their households. “One of the more heartbreaking conversations that our healthcare workers share is about these last words when children apologize to their parents and grandparents for bringing COVID into their homes for getting them sick,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “And these apologies are just some of the last words that loved ones will ever hear as they die alone.”

It’s hard to comprehend really what we’ve done to our children because the setbacks in academic, mental & physical health all play off each other and the vast negative consequences will play out for years to come.

So many times this past year I’ve heard that we are not allowing this, or restricting that to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society.  And yet so many times those restrictions have benefitted the most wealthy and powerful at the expense of the vulnerable and marginalized.

Funny how that works.  No, not funny at all.

The Fear of Freedom

“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.

This has been and will continue to be devastating in many ways for many years, not least of which is the giant shove towards more government dependency coming our way. That shift has been happening in America for several decades, the Pandemic merely exposed it for all its rotting glory.

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.

In her words from this article:

“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.

 

 

They Won’t Stop Until We tell Them To

“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.

While it’s questionable whether lockdowns have done any sort of good at all towards squelching the virus, we do know the devastating consequences they have brought. Sky rocketing poverty, mental health woes in children, major suicide and addiction issues, and increased in non-Covid related mortality rates to list just a few.

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.

A Different Perspective on The Last Few Days in Washington, DC — The Praetorian Writers’ Group

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!

A Different Perspective on The Last Few Days in Washington, DC — The Praetorian Writers’ Group

Ombuds

Is the pandemic behind us? Have people stopped dying from the virus? Have crushed businesses reopened? Have the unemployed got jobs? And how’s that opioid crisis going and our exploding homelessness problem? The ginormous budget deficit all squared away?

Apparently so because the House of Representatives just introduced the mother of all idiotic, fluffernuttery bills that “will honor all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral.”

Thus, among many absurdities, “the Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman would become the Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds.”

Ombuds. Really. That one made up word pretty much sums up all the quackery.

But wait there’s more, a new Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been established too!

Aren’t y’all relieved to know Nancy Pelosi’s House agenda is focused on such important things for 2021?

Between this and Representative Emanuel Cleavers closing a prayer with “Awomen“, I’m not sure I can turn my tv on ever again.

It’s gonna be a long 4 years.

Hope For 2021

This time of year is always a bit off.  All the Christmas build up and anticipation is gone, gifts long since opened, wrapping paper put away, the cookies, cakes, turkey and perhaps a tad too much alcohol already fading in to memory, leaving only, unfortunately, my stretched out belly behind.

And four days from now we will ring in a New Year, which, like living in the shadow of a super star sibling, never quite lives up to expectations.  And how can it not?  Competing with the the birth of Jesus Christ is no small feat!

This waiting period for 2021 to arrive brings good opportunities for prayer and contemplation and something tells me we are going to need plenty of both. An extremely contentious election year tainted by voter fraud will bring a chaotic start to the New Year, which kicks off with a potentially game changing special election in Georgia and the inauguration of a new president who 70+ million people do not feel was duly elected.  And that’s just January.

The Coronavirus is still center stage and so are blue state governors doubling down on lockdowns, whose devastating consequences will only grow exponentially well in to the New Year.  Their unprecedented attacks on civil liberties will seem pale in comparison to when a vaccine mandate comes out.

These are trying times, indeed!  But also a good opportunity to reflect on values and what it is you stand for.  The truth never goes out of fashion, but its defenders shrink and grow periodically.  I believe we are at a time of growth, where many people intuitively know things have gone batty and are not willing to enable the charade any more.

That is my hope anyway for 2021.  Happy New Year!

America The Beautiful

As today is one of giving thanks to our creator and for for the unique and various ways He brings abundance to our lives, I’d like to give a shout out to America.  Yes, I have been to plenty of countries around the world, who all have their own amazing parts, but America is the place I know best and where I would rather live above all else.

She’s a rather beautiful mess these days, with all sorts of divisiveness between her people, and outright dereliction of duty among many of her politicians, who are supposed to be upholding and protecting her founding documents, but are in fact doing the exact opposite.

This speaks to the corruption and evil doing of people and not the principles of which the country is based; individual liberty, divided government, free speech, equality under the law, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and a limited government  to protect those rights.

So while I’m certainly happy about and grateful for my wonderful family, new husband, great friends and the truly remarkable blogging world here and all the people I’ve been connected, I am truly thankful for America and the privilege of living within her borders.

Thank you God, may you continue to bless America and her people!  And Happy Thanksgiving everyone!