Talk Backwards

In the 1970’s the great but late Steve Goodman wrote a song “Talk Backwards”. The song just keeps on repeating itself in my head. 

“Hey everybody wherever you are

There’s a new way of talking and it’s gonna go far;

You take the letters in the words,

Turn ’em all around; you say the last ones first

And you check out the sound

Talk Backwards”  

Check Out The Sound

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, called for the Black Lives Matter protests; ”to continue, … unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.”

Just a few months ago, during the BLM riots, members of Congress portrayed police officers as racist rabble. Accusation of “police brutality” rang through the temple of our democracy. 

In June 2020, Rep. Kamala Harris voiced support for the BLM protests. She said, “that they’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.” Reports indicate that she even contributed to bail funds for the BLM rioters.

It just took an uninvited mob entering Congress’ sacred temple to change that cavalier attitude.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scorned the intrusion as a “desecration of this, our temple of Democracy.” Temple? I did not realize that members of congress were gods. 

Temple? Maybe she meant they are prophets of democracy. That would explain why the infidels who entered the Capitol chose, “their whiteness over democracy.” 

Some have called the Capitol the “fortress of democracy,” “the people’s house” and are calling for harsh measures of revenge on those people who set foot inside in their own house.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer compared the January 6th “coup” to Pearl Harbor and a “day of infamy.” Schumer complained that the “temple to democracy was desecrated…our offices vandalized” the rioters were able to “stalk these hallowed halls.” 

Sen. Cory Booker compared an incursion that did break windows and furniture, with the 1814 British invasion that torched the Capitol.

Politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “We came close to half of the House nearly dying” from the attackers. 

President-elect Biden said that the protestors’ action was “an assault on the citadel of liberty: the Capitol itself….An assault on the rule of law.”

“Never can tell, one of these nights

Those who talk backwards will demand their rights.

They’ll rise up angry and get a solution

In the form of an amendment to the constitution,

That guarantees ’em freedom of reverse elocution;

And then every T.V. show that airs

Will have to be captioned for the forward impaired”

Explain For The Forward Impaired

Why the hyperbolic enhancements of one protest while pandering for another protest? Why similar acts of violence are not equal. Why will some protesters be severely punished while others overlooked? Do the gods of Congress believe this is the American way?

Did the Washington “coup” do more or less destruction than a SWAT team’s no-knock raid? Like the ones that happen thousands of times a year in American neighborhoods across the land. 

Remember 1984, the Supreme Court entitled government agents to intrude onto private land without a search warrant as long as they did not venture into areas where individuals were involved in “intimate activities”. “No Trespassing” signs no longer applied to G-men but they do for protestors. 

Did those that “stalked these hallowed halls” steal more secret and personal information than the National Security Agency -NSA vacuumed up from millions of Americans’ emails? 

Remember it is your congressional appropriations that allows for the NSA to continue to destroy all Americans’ privacy. Remember when Edward Snowden exposed NSA documents showing that the agency surveillance on anyone “searching the web for suspicious stuff“? What happens to protection for whistleblowers like Snowden?

Were more killed in the “day of infamy” raid than the violence perpetrated by U.S. military forces that Congress allows to continue. 

Remember we are now engaged in combat in 14 nations. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/opinion/american-troops-yemen.html

Did the “desecrators of the temple” cause more disruption than the blockades of medical supplies and nourishments that the US government has imposes on Yemen, Syria, Venezuela, Iran, and other nations. 

Remember that around 80 percent of Yemenis rely on aid, and 13.5 million people face acute food insecurity. 

Tragically this “white-lash” take-over killed people. Did it kill more people than the sanctions and blockades on foreign countries that you allow?

Remember an estimated 40,000 people died in Venezuela as a result of US sanctions that stopped ordinary citizens access to food, medicine and medical equipment. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-sanctions-us-excess-death-toll-economy-oil-trump-maduro-juan-guaido-jeffrey-sachs-a8888516.html

Will the money spent to repair the damages the vandals caused at the Capital cut into Congress’ funding of the military complex?

Remember $21 trillion will be pumped into the Pentagon to allow the United States military to drops an average of one explosive once every 12 minutes. Does that seem odd because we’re technically at war with zero countries.

https://upstatedroneaction.org/wp/trumps-military-drops-a-bomb-every-12-minutes-and-no-one-is-talking-about-it/?print=print

Give us your best Reverse Elocution for these issues.

Oops’ I Forgot About Corporatism

The corporate social media giants just fired a shot that ripped right through the Bill of Rights. But here’s the catch, private companies are not under the demands of the Constitution. In other words “damn the 1st Amendment, we have the right to do as we feel fit.” But do they? Who is their master?

In my previous blog I admitted that I was scared of future legislation that would “secure the nation” against “domestic terrorism”. I must have had a senior moment thinking that the US was an open market based republic that endorsed free speech. In reality we have transgressed into a Corporatism State controlled by the industry giants that Washington has seduced into their bed. 

Corporatism has nothing to do with a business corporation. Corporatism is a system of government. The term is derived from the Latin word for body, corpus. The body of Corporatism is the private businesses or sometimes public/private “independent” commissions that are used to regulate their industry. Under Corporatism the leaders/CEOs become the chess pieces for governmental/state strategies and dictates.

One Hand Washes the Other

Corporatism hides behind the fact that private companies are not under direct control of government. So, when the government delegates through “private” organizations their directives are “softened” by an intermediate layer of authority. This system gives a perception of free and independent entities serving their clients but in reality they are the arm of the government. As a matter of fact many refer to Corporatism as “soft Fascism”.  

Rulers have always had an aversion to an open markets that function without direction or control by the state. In Corporatism, the Oligarchs of industry benefit from Washington’s protection. They are allowed to pursue their motivations of profit and maintain their self-interest, property, competitiveness and as long as they fall in line with the Washington directives. 

Technically industry compliance is voluntary but the Oligarchs will not tolerate non-compliance. Put more bluntly, Historian Andrew Wolvin, said of Corporatism it’s, “based on voluntary cooperation, but those who did not comply were to be forced into participation.” 

Big Tech

The Corporate regulatory government is very efficient and is capable of an almost immediate response to crisis or perceived crisis. The ruling elites, of their industry, can disseminate the dictates of Washington without the usual delays of a parliamentary procedure as they did in deplatforming of Parler. 

https://gizmodo.com/dropped-by-virtually-every-vender-parler-is-scrambling-1846031337

The war on “domestic” terrorism has been declared and big tech has mustered its forces to lend aid. This war is aimed at the openness of the 1st amendment, the inability to control their narrative. Tech’s big three CEO’s were given their marching orders this past summer. Just prior to the final push toward the 2020 Presidential election, Congress instructed them to go forth and do a better job at censoring their domains. The reward appears to be that Congress and the giants of tech will collaborate on censoring and the writing of any anti-trust legislation. 

On November 15th, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Congress held a public evaluation of their Presidential election performance. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/17/tech-hearing-dorsey-zuckerberg/ 

Big Tech was questioned about their companies’ “content moderation practices” during the election. Congress played their role wonderfully. The Republicans grandstanding about excessive censorship aimed at conservatives while the Democrat peacocks unfurled their trains while pushing for more censorship against misinformation and hate speech.

This divide on censorship was revealed at this past summer’s Congressional hearings, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his confusion as to which god he should serve. “The fact that both sides criticize us doesn’t mean we’re getting this right. But it does mean that there are real disagreements about where the limits of online speech should be.” November’s election of Biden cleared this ambiguity. More censorship!

Mainstream Media

The take-over at the capital has jump-started a vindictive hysteria across media venues. The Washington Post has argued for a “hate speech” ban. Most mainstream media reports “reveal” that it was white supremacists and anti-Semites who overrun the Capitol. The New York Times tells us that “a debate has broken out over whether the once-sacrosanct constitutional protection of the First Amendment has become a threat to democracy.” “Hate speech,” threatens democracy?

Will the Democrat president and Congress succeed in passing laws that specifically deny First-Amendment protections to white supremacists, hate speech, anti-lockdowners, anti-green initiative or any other anti-wok group? Preying on the public’s fear of “terrorism” has a long and successful history of abuse. 

We The People

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn author of Gulag Archipelago, claimed that the foundation of totalitarianism is an ideology made of lies. The system depends for its existence on a people’s fear of challenging the lies. Many of us, if not most, do not have the strength to stand up in public and say what they really believe. However, we need to show some courage and refuse to affirm what we do not believe. The dignity of truth may be the only way the 1st Amendment will survive.

“Never let a serious crisis to go to waste” 

In their article “Global Instances of Coups from 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset,” authors Jonathan M. Powell and Clayton L. Thyne define a coup; “A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.”

Am I going out on limb to say that a ragtag group of Trump supporters that were essentially allowed by law enforcement to walk into the capitol does not qualify as “military or other elites”. Posing for pictures, stealing podiums, selfies with cops and acting more like lost tourist than criminals may qualify them as trespassers but certainly not a military force of elites or domestic terrorist.  

Surreal pic.twitter.com/rCMHa7ikgs

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 6, 2021

The media comparing this incident to the burning of the White House in the War of 1812  is more criminal than the “mostly peaceful” demonstrators breaking into the Capital. However, rest assured the new sheriff in town, Joe Biden, will take measures to protect this domestic tourist attack. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-says-mob-that-stormed-capitol-were-domestic-terrorists-11610046962

By coincidence, before the Capitol incident, The Wall Street Journal reported that Biden already had plans to of passing a law against domestic terrorism. https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-urged-to-take-fresh-look-at-domestic-terrorism-11605279834 

This is the same situation that occurred after 9/11. Oh my, the new sheriff was also involved with the usurpation of our liberties that the Patriot Act brought about. Biden voted for the 2001 Patriot Act, which greatly expanded the federal government’s surveillance capabilities. However, there is more to that story. Remember, Uncle Joe has been around for a while.

Biden has said the Patriot Act was modeled on a terrorism bill he wrote after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, that was never signed into law. “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing,” he was quoted as saying by the New Republic in 2001. “And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill,” he said, referring to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s introduction of the Patriot Act. https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/patriot-act

In a 2002 Senate hearing on FBI counterterrorism efforts, Biden again took credit for creating the Patriot Act. “Civil libertarians were opposed to it,” he said. “Right after 1994, and you can ask the attorney general this, because I got a call when he introduced the Patriot Act. He said, ‘Joe, I’m introducing the act basically as you wrote it in 1994.’”

Biden’s Patriot Act was Washington’s reaction to the terrorist attack of 9/11. How did that work out? Everlasting wars, the loss of privacy and freedom for what? Security, yes a nation in fear traded away freedoms for security.

Biden has now been “blessed” with a new “terrorist” crisis. The fear induced by the media and many politicians are plowing the fields for a Biden’s response. I too am scared! My fear is from the “domestic terrorism” legislation coming in response to the “DC Coup.” Yes, I fear a further loss to the depleted civil liberties that Americans have left.

During the polio epidemic (1948-1951), the Asian Flu (1957-59), the Hong Kong flu (1968-69), the Avian bird flu (2006), and the Swine flu pandemic of 2009, all very serious diseases, mitigation was conducted by medical professionals. However, the mitigation during Covid has changed the protocol.

In 2020, the model-building disease mitigators and the bureaucratic medical professionals have become the darlings of the central planners, Hollywood’s useful idiots and corporate media. In turn this model based disease mitigation has been used by authoritative politicians to intimidate. Modeling is a tool that should only be used to prepared for a worst case scenario.

Epidemiology took a turn around 2006, when agent-based modeling strategies displaced the accumulated wisdom of the ages. In his report “Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science; Volume 4, Number 4, 2006,” *Donald A. Henderson, (1926-2016), concluded that the overriding principle in Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza is that;

“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 the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

Our catastrophe has been an orchestrated campaign to override the wisdom of the real medical professionals, epidemiologists, economists and historians. Today’s Covid mitigators choose to trampled on commerce, life, and the freedoms of the people. Lockdowns jeopardized people’s health, their welfare, and create conditions for a financial collapse that will be felt for generations. 

Quarantining and lockdowns are not about mitigating a virus, they are about coercion. How to control and create a dependent society without force or violence. The “passive coercion” being perpetrated upon us is scary and should not be underestimated. However, human freedom has always been the best path to responding to life’s risks, including this virus. Why the change? 

There once was a popular bumper sticker proudly displayed by many liberal “boomers” that read “Question Everything.” What happened to that spirit? The lockdown has no precedent, it is not based on science. There is no proven relationship between lockdowns and virus control. The burden of proof belongs to the “lockdown” scientist that overthrew 100 years of public-health wisdom and replaced it with an untested, top-down imposition on freedom and human rights.

A virus will not be intimidated and frightened by credentials, edicts, speeches, and computer-generated forecasts but humans are. The fact is that intelligence and medical therapeutics fare much better than fear, panic, and coercion. A virus is going to do as viruses do, same as always in the history of infectious disease.

Let’s recapture the wisdom and freedom of the past to deal intelligently with viruses in the future, “Question Everything!”

*Twentieth-century’s most acclaimed disease eradicator, credited with ridding the world of smallpox.

George W Bush challenged the public school system to “leave no child behind.” What was the intended message? The statement seems to indicate that every child must be gathered and brought onboard. The question is, onboard what? I’ve always loved John Madden’s adage, “It doesn’t matter that the horses are blind, just load up the wagons.” Maybe Woody Guthrie’s description was closer to what Bush had in mind, “this train is bound for glory, don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy”.

Well, the righteous and holy have extended formal education from youth to the “adulthood” of their 20’s and now pushing into their 30’s. John Taylor Gatto claims that this is one of the public school’s top priorities. He believes that by expanding the school years adulthood is delayed. Why is this a priority? Children are more dependent and require protection.

Gatto goes on to state that, “maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives.” He claims that easy divorce, easy credit, easy entertainment, and easy answers have contributed to “a nation of children, happily to surrender our judgment and our wills to political extortions and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults.”

Authority is smart, calculative, and predatory, they realize that compliance is the key to power and survival. So they offer us a deal, their protection in exchange for compliance. H.L. Mencken wrote that public school “is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.”

Compliance vetting is a responsibility that they delegated to the public school system. In school, the non-compliant are medicated, ostracized, humiliated, and disciplined into submission. Those uncompromising individuals are eventually faced with the dilemma; comply or be kicked out of the club. Based on family financial limitations and social acceptance they usually get on board the train bound for glory.

The educational Marxists have perfected a system that has standardized behavior and thought. More importantly, they have mastered a standardized reaction to defiance and dissent. The group-think, cancel culture of diverse and different opinions nurtured in the public schools has graduated into society. Lenin could only dream of a system capable of producing such a compliant society awaiting instruction from a corrupt media to announce the latest statue, person, group, organization, or policy to hate.

The COVID-19 hysteria is an assessment of the public school’s system of compliance and ridicule of defiance. We surrender freedoms for protection; we comply with the authoritative experts; we will listen to the medical geniuses.  For what? The biggest social, economic, and political crisis of the last century.

Society has become an extension of high school. Combining an inability for critical thought with addiction for social, group-think acceptance we get a system where the coolness of self quarantines and style of wearing masks elevate you to hero/popular status. These actions are dutifully performed with a deluded spirit of protecting others.

Stepping stones are emerging in a pond of fear leading us to the Isle of Subjugation. We listen to the sirens sing, “we are in this together,” ignoring the implied, whether you like it or not. George W. Bush described it best by saying, “you’re either with us or against us.” This is what COVID has become, not a battle against a virus but a battle to silence the non-vetted voice of dissent.

Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) explains this attitude in “A Few Good Men” “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to the man that rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom [safety] that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just say thank you and went on your way.”

Thank You to all the mask-wearing, self-quarantining heroes that are providing me with a blanket of protection as my wealth diminishes daily. The heroes’ response to the pleas  for intelligent dialog is reflected in Colonel Jessup’s dismissive conclusion, “I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.”

Racism = Welfare + Minimum Wage + Gun Control + Public Schools + War on Drugs

Social justice and systemic racism are being used to stimulate divisive rhetoric. However, it has distracted us from discovering the root of the problem. Racism may be a branch growing from the invasive tree of big government but is not the cause. Racism grows as a result of state-supported policies that negatively impact the socio-economic condition of the poor and minorities. Changing these policies may not eliminate racism but will be a good start.

The Welfare State

After President Lyndon Johnson’s legislation passed into law he proclaimed, “I’ll have those “people” voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” The result of his civil rights legislation included a massive increase in the welfare state. This was his legacy also known as the “Great Society.”

Economist Thomas Sowell once wrote, “The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state.”

LBJ’s Great Society increased government welfare programs in the mid-1960s. The Great Society brought about a growing dependency of the economically deprived, in particular the black community, on government programs. This has devastated the black family and in turn a deepening cycle of poverty.

The 2017 U.S. Census Bureau indicated that only 5.3% of families with a married couple live in poverty, compared to 28.8% of households with a “female householder, no husband present. Single mother households are five times as likely to be in poverty compared to households with both parents.

In post-Great Society, the black community rate of unmarried births has tripled to today’s level and 70 percent of all black children are born to an unmarried mother. Socio-economics is the reason why 20 percent of blacks live in poverty, more than twice the rate of whites (8%). Governmental design is the primary architect in the social landscape that surrounds us.

Minimum Wage

Economist Walter E. Williams has labeled the minimum wage “one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of racists everywhere in the world.” The minimum wage laws have succeeded in producing too many young black people coming from broken, low-income homes. These laws have guaranteed a community frustrated and pushed into a life of government dependency or crime. Far too many end up hopeless in prison or in the ghetto.

The socio-economical effect from artificially increasing the wage employers decreases the demand for low-skilled workers. Pricing low-skilled labor out of the workforce makes it harder to enter the workforce and without employment an escape from poverty becomes difficult.

Thomas Sowell underscores this point: “Unemployment among 16 and 17-year-old black males was no higher than among white males of the same age in 1948. It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment rates not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers.”

Gun Control

A community caught in a cycle of government dependency and hopelessness finds itself packed in inner cities laden with high rates of violent crime with no legal way to defend oneself. This community becomes more dependent upon a force that preys on the vulnerable.

By imposing strict gun control laws the honest citizens living in the violent inner cities have no way to defend themselves against the criminals. Honest citizens have been rendered defenseless and are forced to let the criminals handle “justice.”

Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter says, “All gun control is racist.” Throughout American history, gun control has been used to keep blacks and Hispanics ‘in their place.’ One of the top priorities of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War was to enact laws barring gun ownership by the freedmen, making it easier to terrorize them and quiet the racial fears of whites.

Public Schools

Walter E. Williams has written, “the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader. In some cities, there’s an even larger achievement gap.”

Public schools are systemically incapable of providing high-quality education for children and have especially failed minority kids. Educational choice has to be in the hands of parents and families, not politicians and bureaucrats.

Low-income, minority families recognize the government indoctrination centers are not working. In a 2018 national survey by Education, Next found that Hispanic (62%) and black (56%) expressed far higher support school choice initiatives.

Educational options are available but are inaccessible for minority families. Even though they crave access to other educational options they have been shut out. Due to the state monopolist control and protection, the cost of alternative schools is out of their reach.

War on Drugs

The war on drugs has put thousands of minorities in prison for crimes emerging from the government’s attempt to dictate to citizens what they can or cannot put in their own bodies.

“Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and almost 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are black or Latino.” The drug war, like the war on poverty, is a major factor in the homes of the black community.

The war on drugs has devastated the minority communities, and its enforcement just increases the number of confrontations between police and minorities. Whether it is a no-knock drug raid or a stop and frisk confrontation, opportunities for police brutality incidences should be minimized not expanded.

Conclusion

Big government is the most violent and threatening enemy of minorities, not racism. State control and intervention is the purveyor. Maybe instead of picking sides in the white against the black divide, we should instead focus our energy on dismantling the state-supported programs that promote socio-economic injustice.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/if-i-were-a-racist/

Policing – Let’s Start There

Let us look at the system that exists beyond the trees of identity politics.

The tragic murder of George Floyd has been hijacked by identity politics opportunists. These exploiters have seized upon the emotional response drawn from witnessing an inhumane police take-down of Mr. Floyd. They have entrapped their flock of followers into a mob mentality environment fueled by calls of racism mixed with violence.

Occupation 

Race, in the United States, is a problem. However, Mr. Floyd’s death came from tactics used by the police. These tactics and George Floyd’s death are the direct results of a military occupational force. Mr. Floyd’s killing is not much different than the “collateral damage” we witnessed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Brutality is the symptom of our communities’ militaristic trend in public policing. This is a system that authority and dominance are a higher priority than problem-solving. A military force is created to occupy not to police.

In an authoritative system, servants are required, after all, what good is authority without dominance?  Therefore, this system preys on the most vulnerable making the minorities and poor communities the selective targets. These two groups in particular have been pushed into a corner and ignored as the state continues to morph further into a system of extortion and violence.

In video after video we see cops terrorizing citizens. Those citizens, mostly minorities and poor people, that have had their doors kicked in and then forced to watch helplessly as their family members abused (in some cases die) are angry. The cops regularly botch their swat-like raids usually for some non-violent action deemed illegal by the state. Then with the aid of qualified immunity, cops that screwed up are cleared of any responsibility.

The herds of misguided protesters must stop and become more independent in thought and action. Their emotional response must be directed towards changing a system that is far more punitive against those that threaten their authority than crimes against private citizens. Mr. Floyd’s death is the result of the militarization of the police. Changing the strategy of policing is the conversation we need to encourage. 

The Media – Go To Hell 

Wake up! The state media, like all good scammers, have perpetrated a bait and switch act to change our focus away from the real problem of state authority. They will continue shepherding us down the convenient road of racism as their masters usurp our liberty. Racism is a problem but in this case, it is being weaponized.

It’s striking that just a few weeks back the “we’re in this together” fools were calling for mothers in parks and hairstylists to be hauled away in handcuffs but now they are in favor of the police standing down to allow private property to be burned and destroyed.

Transitioning from punishing peaceful people for violating arbitrary lockdown orders preventing Covid spreading activities like surfing, playing golf, or hosting a child’s play date to allowing rioters to run amok destroying property is quite remarkable. Those same fools, the political leaders, that overstepped their “pandemic” authority, are now dismissing the damages of citizens’ property as unimportant.

Why is disobeying a government order, no matter how arbitrary, considered more threatening than the property or the lives of its citizens? Is it because the police are the executors and military arm of state politics? Is this agency more interested in preserving the authority of the state than protecting its citizens?

Stop Trolling 

George Floyd was tragically caught in a net that police cast for a non-violent crime. Racism may be a contributing factor, but policing is the crime. Racial profiling may be another factor contributing to this series of toxic events but let’s be clear it is policing that caused the murder. These contributing factors are serious issues but must not blur our focus on the actual cause of this tragedy.

George Floyd’s race, gender, guilt, or innocence is not the issue. The issue is that once a citizen is selected by the police his safety and safety others must be protected to continue within our justice system. That is how guilt or innocence is to be rendered. Even rapists or murders can not be choked to death by a police officer let alone a person of interest for the alleged “crime” of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes.

Injustice can only be ignored for so long before a lashing out occurs. Those that witnesses the George Floyd murder, have been angry at this system of law enforcement for some time. This system is unfair, targeted and more resembles a militarized standing army than the guardian of the law.  America’s system of law enforcement is broken and needs radical change. Is it too late?

Sweden’s Approach to Covid-19

Many of us say claim to value non-conformity but prove otherwise. Voltaire observed, “Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.” In the Covid crisis, Sweden was internationally stoned for taking a “new road.”

Fear of the COVID-19 pandemic has driven the citizens of many countries around the world to be extremely trusting of their governments’ information, predictions, advice, and edicts, the Swedish government flipped the script by placing its trust in its citizens.

Sweden did not institute mass shutdowns or ramped up authoritative policing. Instead of closing its economy, national leaders asked its citizens to limit the spread of COVID-19 another way: by acting responsibly.

The Swedish government’s approach was not overly invasive and many “experts” considered too light. The government’s response was to limit public gatherings to 50 people, asked its residents to wash their hands frequently, encouraged remote work, and self-isolate if they feel ill or are over 70.

The Swedish people lived up to that trust, and have appreciated its leaders’ strategy. It has won the approval of Swedes, and support and popularity have soared.

The 10 million Swedes were allowed to visit libraries and pools, which remain open. People were allowed to drink IPAs in their local restaurants, children still got up to go to elementary schools in the morning, although students over 16 have been encouraged to school at home.  In other words, Sweden’s economy was allowed to pump on most cylinders while people take sensible precautions—without an explosion of deaths akin to those witnessed in Italy and Spain.

Vindication?

Sweden’s unusual approach to fighting the coronavirus pandemic is starting to yield results, according to the country’s top epidemiologist. Anders Tegnell, the architect behind Sweden’s relatively relaxed response to Covid-19, told local media the latest figures on infection rates and fatalities indicate the situation is starting to stabilize.

Is this vindication for Sweden, which has been widely denounced for bucking the trend among governments of imposing draconian “shelter-at-home” decrees that have crippled the world economy and thrown millions out of work. 

If a fair analysis of the Swedish scenario is applied we would question the “well-trodden” path taken by most countries. The Swedish model indicated that our cowering posture has proven to be counterproductive.  We should demand an answer to, “Why were the experts so quick to employ force and the threat of force to impose mass shutdowns?”

“They tried to make me go to rehab, But I said, “No, no, no” Amy Winehouse

Individual responsibility used to be part of the American model. But we have developed a culture of giving up individual responsibility whenever we are shepherded into fear. Fear of terrorists, of economic hardship, of a virus has pushed us towards economic devastation.

If Americans are going to rehabilitate our thinking,  we must rediscover our country’s founding principles and insist that our leaders place at least as much trust in its citizens as Sweden has. In order to accomplish this initiative, we must learn to trust ourselves as a society of individuals, have faith in our neighbors, and understand the concept of spontaneous order.

Leonard Read observed, “The more complex the economy, society, or situation, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely.”

An open letter, published in a recent Vineyard Gazette, inspired this blog:

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2020/04/15/open-letter-vineyard-hospital

COVID – PTSD

My COVID-19 battle has left me with scars. One of those scars is an uncontrollable scoff. I have not yet fallen victim to a COVID inducted PTSD but I am exhibiting some early warning symptoms.

I now scoff at statements like, “we will need to make sacrifices.” I typically reject the “we” collectivism. My past experience with shared “sacrifice” is that those who are comfortable and continued to; receive paychecks, cupboards full, rent paid, and insurance coverage intact do not share as equal as those that lost their job.

I scoff at statements like, “being in this thing together.” I don’t remember joining or trying out for this thing. If I had joined, I definitely would have considered the fee and the members that would surround me. That makes me more of a conscript than a volunteer “in this thing.”

I scoff at statements like “we will need to make those decisions together.” Together! I have not been contacted “to make those decisions.” Besides, how can I be taken seriously if I’m non-essential and told to go home and cower?

I scoff at the self-proclaimed “experts” claiming that they are not “writing these words to create panic” then reference the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Institute, in Seattle and quote forecasts using words like “staggering”, with “death toll” and “men and women of all ages, genders and medical conditions”

I scoff at the COVID-19 pirates that want to “share the reality of where we are today,” by a back-handed admittance of failure. Like “our community hospital … was simply not built to handle an increasing population and a worsening pandemic. That is an alarming mixture in this health care crisis and there is no other way to soften that statement.” We know that! That was the propaganda behind “flattening the curve.” Remember, you “essentials” accepted the responsibility to plan, innovate, and solve those logistic challenges.

I scoff at those that will tell half of a story and ignore the other half. Yes, the Covid-19 virus is highly contagious and dangerous. But it preys primarily upon a limited, identifiable, isolate-able population that can be protected and cared for at a tiny fraction of the cost being imposed by the hysterical shutdowns now in place.

I scoff at those making most of the noise do not separate the COVID statistics by demographics. Most deaths are those over 69 years of age. Over 80% of those elderly that died had more than one chronic disease inflicting them, primarily hypertension and diabetes. Dementia, coronary artery disease, and renal disease also make the elderly vulnerable.

I scoff at the millions of the younger, under 50, healthy individuals that have yet to realize that they only account for about 10% of all the COVID cases. I scoff because they have been put under house arrest to protect them from a 2.6 per 100,000 death rate. Their death rate from accidents and suicides is higher. What’s next? Taking away their cars, guns, and sharp objects.

I scoff at the experts that offer deep humanitarian wisdom like “agree that this is a time to think of each other and our greater community” while the effect of the economic shutdown projection of the needy is nowhere to be found. Take a look at the food pantries and check out the length of the unemployment lines.

I scoff at those that can frame simple directives into flowery verbiage like: “embracing a spirit of unity with a singular focus of taking care of one another for the safety of one another” instead of just saying “be compliant and wait for their next instruction.”

I scoffed when former White House chief-of-staff to Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, was famously quoted as saying, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” These are dangerous times when crisis empowered authoritarians abuse their influence and scoff at liberty. Liberty comes at a high price a price that many have scoffed at.

Articles like the following have kept my PTSD at bay: https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation

I’m Calling You Out

On Wednesday, Martha’s Vineyard witnessed a demonstration requesting the local government to relax the restriction they have levied upon the work conditions of local businesses. Although I support the efforts of the organizers and their reasonable request, I probably wouldn’t have participated. However, my laziness was interrupted by hate, cyberbullying, and slander directed at the organizers. Before Covid (BC) these tactics would be called out as wrong, intolerable, and un-American.

George W. Bush’s once stated, “you’re either with us or against us.” That logic produced two-generational wars “on terrorism.” It appears that this same narrative has been perpetrated on the people. We have been asked to accept one narrative and only one narrative. You are with us, “in this together” or against us “deviating outside your quarantine.”

Since when has asking the authorities to relax their restrictions on workers been labeled as; “against us,” insult to nurses, un-American, a threat to the community and idiotic. Some of the more zealots have even demonized the organizers on social media, Facebook “hate,” cyber-bullying, and calling for boycotting their products.

It should be understood that a recovery of the economy must begin at some time. Our start for a reasonable and safe economic recovery is being delayed by intolerable social responses to any request asking for reduced authority. I do not accept that the quarantine must be observed until “we say it is safe” or “we now have a cure.” This is not a viable path to follow. 

The protesters are asking for the authorities to unchain the creative, economic, and production power of those in quarantine. They are asking local government to restore the peaceful cooperation within our local commerce that existed BC. The victims of Covid are not limited to the symptoms of the virus, there are others suffering economic despair.

Both the protesters and I believe a safe reopening will help to reduce the economic suffering that many of our residences are experiencing. I fear that some of the “lucky,” those that have maintained an adequate income or enough savings to get through the covid-19 shutdown, are insensitive to the hardships facing the “unlucky.”

We are asking our towns to at least explore alternative ways to restore our local economy. This is the basis of the protest, asking them to return authority back to our businesses and residence so that they can lead and share in a safe recovery. After all, in a pre-covid world, the problem-solvers were celebrated and the cowering compliant were tolerated. 

Thank You Hospital Workers – You Flattened the Curve – But!

I understand the levels of stress put on the medical community must be mitigated for us to be released. It appears that the medical community has reached that stage. The original intent of the policy was not to eradicate the virus. It was to buy time for the hospital system, to flatten the curve, for them to function properly.

They succeeded in this objective. Our hospitals have been servicing patients that have become infected, and have continued with their normal operations of caring for those who are acutely ill, who suffer from accidents, chronic illnesses, or are victims of violence. They have done yeoman’s work to prepare our community for the Covid-19 crisis.

In other words, the medical system is functioning very nicely. The hospitals are functioning enough so that we can start to get back to our lives. The hospital has given us assurances that effective treatments are available to everyone and the hospital capacity is not close to being exhausted. 

They succeeded in the, “flatten the curve,” mission. Their mission has never been to wait for a cure. They have basically assured us that their treatments and facilities are prepared, if necessary, for added demands from COVID-19. They have been our heroes but it is time for individual risk management strategies to be returned. Pass the baton back to the individual.

A reasonable evaluation of the most recent COVID-19 calculations would indicate that we are entering the backside of the peak in COVID-19 cases. I am not an expert but the signs are pointing in the direction of returning to normal.  Let us return to the social spaces of work, play, and live with one another like we did once upon a time. 

Return to Normal

There are trade-offs when plans to reopen the economic system are at stake. The peaceful cooperation of our resources is ready and willing to solve problems. The USA has always looked to the entrepreneur for discoveries to improve the human condition. Now is the time to create expectations that will guide the local businesses and entrepreneurs in the desired direction.

Free people are not helpless people. We will adjust, we will adapt, and we will take on the responsibility of being architects of our own fate. Society must be judged by how well it minimizes human suffering; physically, emotionally, and economically. It is time to allow the stakeholders to initiate the activities and opportunities that will promote recovery.

Am I foolish to hope that the truth of reality will be our guiding light and not the politics of the state and those compliant with their narrative? Critics will continue to use this crisis to slander classic liberalism and libertarianism. Maybe we all would be better served by embracing the fact that if freedom is allowed to flourish it will provide answers in these turbulent times.

I hope that my presence, at that rally, will help to neutralize the viciousness of the social media clique, fear of the unknown, a corrosive mob mentality, and the divisiveness of the COVID narrative.

Let’s begin our return to normal!

RussMac  OB