When it comes to government, always assume the worst.
Back in 1913, if you had predicted the brand new Federal Reserve would steadily debase the currency and exacerbate rather than dampen the business cycle, you were dead right. You would have gotten more points if you predicted its creation was the first step towards abandoning the gold standard and that it would eventually finance government deficits.
Similarly, back in that unlucky year if you predicted the new Constitutional amendment allowing the government to levy an income tax would lead to massive confiscation of incomes and fund gargantuan welfare and warfare states—the blob—you hit it on the screws.
Later, if you predicted that the New Deal wouldn’t reverse the economic contraction that the government had already transformed from a garden variety financial crash and recession into a Great Depression, you were right again. More points for those who foresaw both the abandonment of any effective Constitutional constraints on the federal government, and the fiscal consequence of welfare state collectivism—a spiraling and uncontrollable national debt.
Fast forward to the aftermath of September 11, 2001: if you said that when the US went into the Middle East it would never get out, that “emergency” measures like TSA screening and the Patriot Act would never be rescinded and clearly advanced a police state agenda, and that the George W. Bush administration’s new standard of fiscal and monetary recklessness would soon be surpassed, you were right again.
Fast forward to now. If you predict that governments’ response to the coronavirus outbreak will reveal not so hidden agendas of globalist power and domination (Why do you think they keep saying, “The world will never go back to the way it was”?), terminate the last vestiges of freedom, destroy the economy and financial markets, kill far more people than the virus itself, and set precedents for everything from enforced confinement to martial law to mandatory vaccinations to electronic money to compelled microchipped identification and surveillance whenever a group of experts makes scary projections about lethal microbes—which from now on will be almost always—you’re well on your way to being proved right on all counts.
Anyone who thinks that “emergency” measures will be rescinded or will not serve as future precedents is referred to Draconian Emergency Measures Enacted By Governments Throughout History That Have Been Rescinded and Not Served as Precedents. It’s available for free on Amazon and takes only four seconds to read; the title is longer than the book.
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of this whole ordeal is that Americans have surrendered to panic and propaganda without a shot. Molon labe and They’ll take my gun when they pry it from my cold, lifeless fingers patriots—bumper-sticker freedom fighters—are cowering in place, living off their 3, 6, 12, 24, or 60 months of provisions, lest they encounter a germ. Neighbors are reporting on neighbors who leave their houses, take a walk, clear their throats, or other heretofore legal activities (they would still be legal if the Constitution had any remaining relevance). Apps have been developed to monitor and report people’s locations, coughs, sneezes, sniffles, and runny noses. Can one that monitors and reports social distances be far behind? If only one life is saved…
With a few noteworthy exceptions (lewrockwell.com takes the gold medal), the alternative media has been a disappointment. Bloggers who would normally cast darkly skeptical doubts if the government announced the sun will rise tomorrow have accepted official statistics, projections, propaganda, and draconian measures without a peep of skepticism or doubt.
That’s what baffles and irritates me. If there’s anything we’ve known for years—hell, decades—now, it’s that Enemedia, professional politicians, and Deep State bureauweasels are all outrageous, audacious liars. As my grandma used to say, they’re the kind of people who would much rather climb a tree and tell you a lie than stand on the ground and tell you the truth. We also know full well that they’re utterly incompetent, entirely out of touch with how life is actually lived by ordinary Joe Lunchbox-types, and just generally bass-ackwards ign’ernt about so many of the topics they are nevertheless arrogant enough to pontificate at their presumed inferiors about, at wearisome length.
Then all of a sudden a panic is manufactured out of: A) wildly inflated statistics and projections; B) unreliable, incomplete, and/or contradictory information; and C) completely worthless computer modeling…and that inspires a dismaying number of erstwhile skeptics to shed their hard-shell cynicism about politicians, government, and media—cynicism which has been proven eminently justified over and over again—to join the hysterics in a frenzied stampede to the waiting boxcars? To re-embrace the old naive faith in The Powers That Be they remember from childhood and meekly hand over the last battered, tattered shreds of their liberty without demur? To unquestioningly “Go Home, Stay Home” merely because that’s what Big Daddy told ’em to do?
I dunno, does this fail to compute for anybody out there besides me?
- Entries
Computes for me.
Said it all, Mike.
I understand trepidation here. I, as well as you, and other readers slot into various at risk group levels. So we take a chance every time we leave the house. Well, everyone takes a chance every time they leave the house. Even if we’re good drivers, we take a risk when we drive. When we cross the street. Everything we do has some sort of risk, from what we eat to what we do to where we go to who we meet.
Life is a risk with only one outcome. For right now, as far as we know, we will all reach the end.
I want to stay alive because I want to guide my children through Life. I want to take care of my Wife. I want her to guide my Children through Life. I want my children to have their children and then they guide them through their Life. It would be nice if me and wife could help our Grandchildren navigate through Life.
Staying inside the House, afraid of dying is Not a Life.
Not only that, but if Society decides that is the Life we must be forced into, ALL of our Lives will be forfeit. We, as a Society, are a Social Society. There is no “Life” if we spend it inside, in our Modern Caves, alone, and afraid. We will all starve to death in the cold and the dark and the Ecomentalists will have won.
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It is the fruition of the largest social engineering project the world has known IMHO. Never before possible but now is due to the technological pathways provided by SM via FB and others.
Herding mentality to its fullest by ensuring the consistency of what everyone sees. No matter how they paint it or what videos they show, the theme is the same.
I look at it all and am amazed people can’t see that no group could be this stupid…it is a purposeful and driven attack at obtaining the power that they think was stolen from them…
As Riflemyn notes, this Virus has been perfect in scaring old people who are at risk and feel they must stay home at all costs or die.
It also plays well with the millennials and younger, who have been taught that humanity itself is a plague that Gaia is going to eliminate to save itself.
The only thing I haven’t seen yet is how Climate Change is somehow involved in this pandemic.
Note one thing. A popular TV show described a pandemic flu that killed millions and altered the world view. Called Counterparts.
Or how about The Twelve Monkeys, or any of a dozen sci-fi fantasy films released in order to frighten us to death about viruses. Well, at least to frighten young people.
This ChinaFlu hardly hits young people. Weirdly it hits young people less than regular flu does. We are always told to get our children a flu shot in the fall. Flu hits everyone and is generally harmful to elderly, but not usually shaken off by young people. I had the flu a number of times when I was 10-20 years old. Put me in bed with a fever and drinking lots of liquids and all the other things we did when we got the flu.
This one has little effect on the Young.
We must figure out what is going on here. For some areas it is a Pandemic. For most places it is just a bad flu. What makes that difference?
“What makes that difference?”
Bio-engineering.
I think we’ll find that some places developed immunity by infection because they did not shut down soon enough, and they faired better than those that shut down before enough people developed immunity.
I don’t know whether we will ever really know the truth. I think this disease was not a naturally occurring one though I can’t prove it. Too many signs point to it. It is much easier to spread and has a longer ability to stay virulent without a human host, etc. You have all read it elsewhere ad nauseam.
Our reaction and the fear that we as a population have given it is a function and outcome of the pussification of this great country by our enemies. I think we have, quite frankly, overreacted and over-corrected and in so doing, sacrificed our economy and way of life.
I think we should put our fears and our big boy pants on and “restart the engines” and get the economy moving again. The longer we internalize the current state of affairs, the longer they will seem normal and none of us wants that
At this point, no, we won’t be able to know because for anyone telling it straight there will be someone else obfuscating. Who’s to know who is being straight and who is purposefully lying and who wants a Narrative and who is really just running on emotion and so “sees” it differently.
Only time can tell.