Disable the Fear Campaign

“The lockdown policy was a deliberate intent to destabilize the global economy.” – Michel Chossudovsky, Ph.D.

In an interview with Taylor Hudak, Michel Chossudovsky, Ph.D., author, editor, and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Ottawa, discussed the deceptions and economic disasters resulting from the global and deliberate government lockdowns intended for two weeks to flatten the curve from a flu virus. The U.S. government was the model which 193 governments, members of the United Nations, plus the Vatican (Holy See), around the world followed to stem the spread of a mysterious virus. Michel Chossudovsky Interview - Engineered Destabilization Of The Global Economy & The "Reimagining" (thelastamericanvagabond.com)

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) through its director, Tedros, “declared a public health emergency of international concern.” At the time, there were 83 Covid-positive cases of flu worldwide. https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/international-health-regulations/news/news/2020/2/2019-ncov-outbreak-is-an-emergency-of-international-concern

By the time the WHO declared the pandemic, there were 1,078 cases of flu outside of China. Several hundred cases of that were on one ship, Diamond Princess. COVID-19 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship: estimating the epidemic potential and effectiveness of public health countermeasures - PubMed (nih.gov)

Air travel with China was stopped by President Trump, a move which snowballed into a ban around the world. Chossudovsky said that “most of the airlines in Latin America were bankrupted” and some in southeast Asia as the result of the Covid lockdowns.

Professor Chossudovsky spoke of the possibility of insider trading and the fact that the “killer virus” fear campaign coupled with Dr. Tedros’ timely “alerts” of the need to implement a worldwide pandemic, “indelibly served the interests of Wall Street speculators and hedge funds” managers.

Professor Chossudovsky explained that if one has “fore-knowledge” of a declared emergency such as a pandemic, it is impossible not to speculate on such “fore-knowledge.” There was a huge increase in wealth which was made on the day of the announcement. The stock market crashed following the announcement, redistributing the losses of ordinary people from their pension funds, mutual funds savings, and investments to the rich who profited greatly from the “fore-knowledge.”

But the virus did not trigger the stock market crash per se. It was the “fore-knowledge” and the massive speculation that led to the crash which eventually affected the real economy.

On March 11, 2020 Niel Ferguson and his team’s faulty model of casualties produced the study which was financed by the Gates Foundation and was used as a scientific foundation and justification for the lockdowns. His team’s computer modelling predicted half a million dead in the U.K. and 2.2 million in the U.S. Tedros announced the pandemic. Neil Ferguson's Coronavirus Imperial College Model -- ‘Professor Lockdown’ Resigns in Disgrace | National Review

Dr. Chossudovsky stated that on January 21--24, 2020, the World Economic Forum met in Davos, Switzerland, and Moderna representatives, business leaders and the WHO director Tedros were in attendance, discussing the mRNA vaccine before the public health emergency was declared. https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2020

As soon as the U.S President accepted the predictions of the two Covid tsars brought in, people were locked down in their homes world-wide, following the U.S. example, could not work, the companies closed, the service economies were closed, and the global economy partially collapsed. It was all done to “save lives.”

There were about 44,000 cases on that date, not even close to a “killer virus,” it was more like a seasonal influenza, a public health concern for sure, but not a pandemic. “The lockdown was a closure of the global economy – a globalized bankruptcy program,” said Chossudovsky. “They closed down planet earth” for a “killer virus.”

The impact was devastating, an economic crisis of major proportions – small and middle-size companies were wiped out, bankruptcies of larger chain companies that have been around for decades, large airlines wiped out, shopping malls, travel industry destroyed, hotel industry, restaurant industry, mom and pop boutique stores, grocery stores, tourist industry in France, Italy destroyed – all was engineered, in his opinion so that the global economy would destabilize, resulting in concentration of financial power in a few billionaire hands. More negative outcomes:

-          Most of the airlines in Latin America were bankrupt

-          The airline fleet was mothballed in the desert

-          Food and other staples were hard to find

-          Farmers dumped their produce - being unable to service grocery stores, school cafeterias, and restaurants

-          People lost their jobs and homes

-          Mental health was terribly affected for all ages

-          Marriages broke up and domestic violence escalated

-          Schools were closed

-          Children were forced to wear face masks in schools eight hours a day by their dictatorial teachers who took their masks off periodically to breathe

-          Small and middle-sized businesses were closed for good while liquor stores and marijuana “medical” stores were deemed essential and stayed open

-          Mom and pop grocery stores and hardware stores were closed while huge chains remained open

-          Hotels and restaurants closed permanently

-          Beauty shops were forced to close

-          Gyms and pools were closed

-          Parks and vast state and national forests were closed to human access

-          Humans lost their faces and their identities behind a suffocating mask

-          The fear of contagion drummed up by constant public announcements and media driven panic created a sick phobia among a large swath of the population akin to a severe and incurable mental illness

Economically speaking, the billionaires will buy out the bankrupt assets for pennies on the dollar, will buy up agricultural land, small and medium-sized farms, shopping malls, and other financial assets of the now bankrupt owners, victims of the forced lockdown. Some assets were bought at ‘negative prices,’ Chossudovsky stated. “The acquisition of real assets” and control of the destabilized economies were the ultimate goals of the lockdowns.

The increase in wealth accumulation during the lockdown period is documented by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C., a progressive organization. Highlights include:

-          Among the nation’s 657 billionaire, wealth increased $1.3 trillion since the Covid lockdowns

-          80 million Americans lost work between March 21, 2020-March 21, 2021

-          18 million Americans are collecting unemployment

-          There are 43 newly minted billionaires since the lockdowns (i.e., Airbnb, Door Dash, Snowflake), added to the 614 existing ones

-          Combined wealth increase of the 15 billionaires with the greatest growth in absolute wealth was $563 billion or 82%

-          Topping the chart were Elon Musk ($137.5 billion richer, Jeff Bezos ($65 billion richer), and Mark Zuckerberg ($47 billion richer).  A Year of Billionaire Pandemic Gains - Institute for Policy Studies (ips-dc.org)

Across the world, in the remittance economy of India, farmers come to cities to earn money in street commerce, they do not have homes, and they live outdoors. The government decided to send these people back to their villages during the lockdown, but they had no money to buy transportation, they walked, and some died on their journey back. “This is genocide,” the professor added, “transition from poverty to despair, to mortality.” Their death certificates could have read death from Covid-19. Some countries have changed the criteria of death without doing an autopsy because they were too expensive and too few hospitals were authorized by law to do autopsies on Covid-19 patients.  

As deaths from Covid-19 escalated on official reports and in the media, deaths from flu and other diseases all but disappeared. The reported death toll from Covid-19 is “an element of the fear campaign,” Dr. Chossudovsky added, and it has been done all over the planet. “The data is questionable, and the PCR test is invalid.”

The massive human invasion on our southern border by illegals, who wear no masks, do not practice social distancing, and are not “vaccinated,” is not subjected to the lockdowns that Americans have had to endure. Illegals are released on their own recognizance into the American population – the next Democrat voters and pew fillers in churches who sponsor them once here. The unaccompanied minors are flown by our government to southeastern towns in the cover of night and resettled quietly among the American population. The largely male group of unaccompanied “minors” become potential recruits in the violent MS-13 gang in the U.S.

None of the above could have been possible without the massive fear campaign to which Americans and the rest of the world were subjected to non-stop by the mainstream media, the Covid-19 medical czars, and the compliant medical professionals.  Disable the fear campaign, the briberies, threats of more lockdowns, and the pressure to “vaccinate” immediately in exchange for the freedom to exist and do what you did before the lockdowns, and the countries and their economies may begin to heal and rebound despite what Michel Chossudovski calls the “engineered destabilization of the global economy.” 

Encourage people to go back to school and work and disincentivize extended unemployment and endless stimulus checks when so many jobs are available and there are no takers because welfare is more generous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Romanian Whistleblower Talks about the Medical Tyranny

Dan MV Chitic, a Romanian attorney, is trying to keep a Romanian whistleblower protected from harm as he recounted what has happened to him in March 2021. The Romanian authorities have instituted a form of medical martial law by which Romanians were only permitted to go to the grocery store, pharmacy, gas stations, to work, and then home. At any given time, the heavy patrolling police could stop them and ask for their I.D.s and their papers for destination. 

The whistleblower named Ionut was stopped by such a cop and asked for his I.D. and detained him because it appeared to the cop that Ionut was breathing heavily (he had been walking a long distance). The cop told him that he had the C virus, handcuffed him, and called the ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, still handcuffed, Ionut was forced into the ambulance by the cop and the attending medical person and taken to the hospital without his permission. 

He was admitted and placed into a ward with other patients and then his handcuffs were removed. Perfectly healthy, he remained in the hospital forcibly during which time he was given unknown pills and a shot each day. After three days, he testified that they finally did a C-virus test which came back negative seven days later. Ionut was moved to another ward already occupied by an older gentleman on I.V. Ionut remained in this ward against his will for 11 more days after which he was released. 

During his ward stay in the hospital, he made friends with the older patient who did not have any idea why he was there. They were visited by a nurse twice a day, morning and night, and by a doctor at 10:30 a.m. each day. 

They were fed three meals a day, toast, and jam for breakfast with tea, soup and bread for lunch, and a small piece of meat for supper with mashed potatoes. The older gentleman got progressively worse, following various infusions and he died. They zipped him into a body bag on the floor and two nurses attempted to drag him. As they were struggling, a doctor came in and suggested to take him to "reanimare." (a sort of ICU) Ionut said, he was way passed reanimation as he started to turn purple.

The whistleblower is hidden by his lawyer Chitic (who asked other citizens to come forward and tell their stories and to also protect the whistleblower) as he is fearing for his life from the medical tyranny authorities, police, and politicians. He is the only one who was courageous enough to step forward and reveal the medical conditions and the medical tyranny that has gripped their nation and the globe simultaneously.

 

Financial Outcomes of Lockdowns

Our fifty states are interconnected through trade and travel and states that did not enforce lockdowns are still affected by states that chose to shut down completely. Blue states, poorly managed to begin with and tightly locked down, are clamoring for a piece of the huge financial rescue coming from Washington.

This welfare is enabled by the Treasury’s money printing without any backing of goods and services faster than paper can be supplied thus contributing to the rising inflation, inflation partially hidden by the elimination of fuel and food from the proverbial basket of goods that determines each month the rise and fall of prices.

In addition, the disastrous executive orders passed in the first 100 days of the new presidency have affected our economy quite negatively, coupled with the out-of-control spending, much of it totally unrelated to the pandemic effects. Temporary and permanent effects of the lockdown have disrupted the economy and bankrupted many small businesses and larger ones that were already struggling before the “pandemic” hit.

If data is compiled and reported correctly, it is obvious how GDP has been affected by lockdowns in terms of loss of consumption, investment, government spending, and trade with other countries.

We had a relatively large working population “pre-pandemic,” now Americans are being paid more to stay home while employers are struggling to find people willing to work in service sectors.

We had, at one time, the most productive workers in the world. The U.S. economy used to make at least $40,000 worth of goods and services for every living American and over $80,000 for every working American. (William J. Baumol and Alan S. Blinder, Economics, 2007)

To find out what the total output of the economy is, you must look at the gross domestic product (GDP) which is comprised of consumption (the largest component), investment (I), government spending (G) and next exports (X-IM, exports minus imports). Government buys goods and services from private businesses amounting to about 18 percent of GDP, it does not produce goods, but it provides services. Two-thirds of GDP is consumption.

When you look at the GDP number for 2020, you can measure the size of the economy, what it produced in final goods and services that year. The real GDP shows adjustment to the economy in the purchasing power of money by correcting for inflation (increase in prices of goods and services every American buys). As you can plainly see in grocery stores and at the gas pumps, these two important elements for every household have skyrocketed in prices. Yet they are no longer included in the basket of goods used to measures inflation.

Economic data hides the human factors that cause immense suffering in a terrible economy marked by a terrible GDP.

Take the world-wide Great Depression of the 1930s. The U.S. GDP dropped 30 percent, business investment was almost non-existent, and the unemployment rate grew from 3 percent in 1929 to 25 percent in 1933. In the labor force, one person in four was jobless. And the government was not handing out unemployment and stimulus checks. Soup lines, closed factories, people begging, and homeless were at an all-time high.

NPR reported that GDP shrank at the annual rate of 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020, “the sharpest economic contraction in modern American history,” as reported by the Commerce Department. GDP Drops At 32.9% Rate, The Worst U.S. Contraction Ever : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

The estimated real GDP for the first quarter in 2021 by the Bureau of Economic Analysis is an increase of 6.4 percent. This figure reflects some economic recovery, reopening “establishments,” and government assistance payments, such as direct economic impact payments, expanded unemployment benefits, and Paycheck Protection Program loans, distributed to households and businesses through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.

“The full economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the GDP estimate for the first quarter of 2021 because the impacts are generally embedded in source data and cannot be separately identified.”  Gross Domestic Product, First Quarter 2021 (Advance Estimate) | U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

But how does one correctly estimate and quantify the loss of economic welfare on a societal level which impacts the economy?

-          Suspended or permanently lost freedoms for almost 15 months now

-          Permanent or temporary effects on mental health

-          Loss of economic opportunities due to the lockdowns

-          Loss of investment in human capital due to closed schools (students learned precious little in public schools or in college for over a year now)

-          Personal and professional loss resulting from inability to travel for business or leisure

-          Educational, friendship, and family losses due to lockdowns

-          Children being out of school and not in contact with outside humans

-          Adults being out of the labor force and not in contact with colleagues

-          Mental and physical uncertainty

-          Loss from proper medical care when care was virtual and inadequate

-          Loss from ability to go to hospitals due to fear of contagion

-          Loss from death because of other neglected serious medical problems

-          Severe loss from lack of socialization of people of all ages

-          Loss of our humanity and identity due to masking everywhere

-          Social distancing caused more than just reduced economic activity, it profoundly affected many individuals

-          Loss of entrepreneurship (some was replaced by a robust mushrooming of production of personalized masks and shields)

-          Loss of innovation

-          Small business formation collapsed except those supporting the lockdowns and mask wearing (door delivery, curb delivery, contactless credit card use, fashionable masking accessories and gloves)

-          The disappearance of buffets; new and permanent sanitation rules in retail and food processing and serving

-          Losses from wedding venues, birthday, and other parties

-          Banned activities such as going to church and everything related to it are not counted in GDP as a loss

-          Playing sports and attending professional and amateur games damaged economic activity in concessions and booster club activities/fund raising

-          The huge cost resulting from the lost value of living due to lockdowns, of seeing and associating with family

-          The loss of leisure time, i.e., traveling abroad, going on a cruise, on vacation, to a wedding, to a graduation, birthday, etc.

-          Loss of mental health, disability, suicides from lockdowns, drug overdoses, increased drug use and dependency, child abuse, elder abuse, and spousal abuse.

In his book, Economics in One Virus, Ryan A. Bourne wrote that “a third to a half of even the near-term decline in early phases of the pandemic was purely due to the lockdowns, as opposed to panicked changes in behavior from risk-averse consumers and workers.” (Cato Institute, 2021, p. 79)

Bourne wrote that there was a decline in vaccines for other child diseases, cancellation of elective surgeries by hospitals that potentially made a person’s health worse and increase in nursing home deaths that were not related to Covid.

The Covid-19 lockdowns in various states have had and are still having an economic impact that may or may not be correctly and fully quantifiable.  Bourne wrote, “Mercatus Center economists James Broughel and Michael Kotrous conclude that the initial lockdown measures probably cost somewhere between $255 and $464 billion in lost output (1.2 to 2.2 percent of 2019 GDP).”

Economic activity is much easier to calculate but how do you quantify the loss from schooling alone, what economists call “human capital accumulation?” And how does one quantify all the other intangible losses? What kind of subjective yard stick can one possibly use?

A lot of money has been created and a small part was distributed to the population in the form of various payments, stimulus checks, unemployment, and extended unemployment checks, etc. The money created did not go to economic growth or investment as people either were not allowed to work, their employers went bankrupt, the jobs went away, few new jobs and businesses were created, and many chose to stay home as the government’s weekly welfare checks was more than they were making while working. So, the increase in the money supply then caused inflation.

Investments were made heavily in the real estate market and construction market as people were fleeing mismanaged and locked down blue states. Housing prices and construction materials, especially lumber, have skyrocketed.

Consumption goods prices increased as well as retailers were unable to get enough merchandise stock in the brick-and-mortar stores and consumers turned to Amazon online and to other giant retailers that could remain open to the detriment of mom-and-pop stores that were not allowed to stay open.

The excessive money creation means that we have too much money chasing too few goods, inflation is high, and people want to invest in tangible goods such as real estate and precious metals, hence their prices are going up.

The lockdowns were exaggerated responses to a mismanaged health crisis and a rush to vaccines, but it was mostly a money supply-created crisis in order to generate the precise outcome we are facing today – high unemployment, high inflation, more government dependency, huge government spending (on political pet projects domestically and internationally), high gas prices and less mobility, high energy, less access to proper medical care, forcing solar and wind generated energy to fully replace fossil fuels, some of the many items on the agenda of the Great Reset/Build Back Better. The long-term global effects of the “new normal,” caused by the flu virus and by the subsequent opportunistic response to it, are not going to be pretty.

 

 

 

 

The Marxist Cultural Revolution

"The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” —Carl Sagan

The Marxist Cultural Revolution is in full swing with social emotional learning.  Who needs academics when you have Marxist indoctrination?

One of the first things I noticed when I first landed in America of the late seventies was how unfamiliar with their own history, world geography, and mathematics Americans were, even those with college degrees, yet they were not ashamed to confess it, they were quite proud of their lack of knowledge. I wondered then, how did America become so successful with so much ignorance walking about?

Surely, I thought, it was not the fault of the public schools. It must have been that America was such a vast country, far removed from the rest of the world and separated by two oceans. They did not need to know.

The Internet was just a pipe dream in sci fi novels. There was a large following of readers who delighted in sci fi, western, and romance novels. It was a time when there were sales of door-to-door encyclopedias and dictionary salesmen. People living in the country areas subscribed to the Book of the Month Club or borrowed books from libraries on wheels. 

As such a large country, few seemed to read much unless it was something high schools and colleges required. It was quite fascinating when I discovered that my next-door neighbor, a highly regarded and published college professor, spent his free time reading romance novels. 

I never thought at the time, having just escaped a strict socialist regime ruled by the Communist Party, that I would ever have to worry about it in this vast and free country where people did what they pleased and what they found enriching – going to church, picnics, family events and gatherings, football, and baseball on weekends. 

As decades passed, Marxist elements in the public schools grew louder and louder and more influential. Textbooks were rewriting American history, demonizing America and glorifying socialism and Marxism. Parents never pushed back against this tidal wave of indoctrination, they assumed that teachers and administrators did their jobs they were trained to do – educating young minds to protect America’s bright future.  

Dr. Aurel Mircea, a defector from a communist regime, having found freedom and opportunity for achievement in America, wrote: “Marxism-Leninism has been successfully disseminated in the Land of the Free; we are now having a few generations of USEFUL IDIOTS calling the policies and deciding America's future.” 

Ron Ewart wrote, “In the name of racism and so-called equity and diversity, we are creating a nation of morons. The U. S. government, special interests, and academically educated idiots are literally tailoring a society based on the lowest common denominator, in an attempt to prop up and pander to a single race. To accommodate Black and Latino learning disabilities, we’re dumbing down the White and Asian races.

On top of that, we have replaced reason, logic, intellect, common sense, and objective learning with diversity, reverse racism, and racial emotion, creating never-ending racial tension in our entire culture.”

The newest Marxist tide of destruction is “cancel culture,” young generations appointing themselves the arbiters of right and wrong, judge, jury, and executioner. Thanks to the social media and corporations, the cancel culture promoters get to dole out retribution to those who oppose their wave of cultural destruction. Past history is judged through the lenses of their 21st century woke sensibilities. Nobody is immune to punishment if they come in the crosshairs of the “cancel culture” Marxist movement. 

Everything that was good about America became evil in 2020. People who love America found themselves out of a job, out of social circles, censored on social media, censored in person, diminished, disparaged, demonized, and barred from participating in college life, organizations, college courses, and conferences. A Corona virus gave this Marxist group in America an opportunity to invent 50 different ways to rob half of America of their rights and freedom of speech. 

Suddenly, it is elitist to mark down bad spelling, to give bad grades to those who fail, to achieve, to learn advanced mathematics, real science, chemistry, and other difficult courses because it makes the non-achievers feel bad about themselves and it is thus racist. 

Enter Critical Race Theory (CRT) already present in most public, private, and charter schools in America, the most tolerant country on the planet. CRT is an indoctrinating tool through racial identity, divisiveness, and hatred through skin color. 

The current American schools’ and the mainstream media’s talking points narrative of “systemic racism, white privilege, whiteness, oppressors and the oppressed,” was brought to America to Columbia University in 1930s New York by Marxist academics from Goethe University (Frankfurter School) in Frankfurt, Germany.

These German Marxists undermined American traditional principles using the ideology of Critical Theory which attacked all societal norms through the promise of revolution [cultural revolution], the seeds of which have finally sprouted today into a huge forest of Marxism, watered constantly by American professors and teachers who graduated from universities that modeled their College of Education teacher curriculum for decades after the Columbia University’s Marxist model. 

Ideological conformity and Marxist equity were enforced in communist countries by the security police (Stasi in Germany) and its vast network of activists and informers. Because of today’s advanced technology, these same goals are achieved in America with the help of big tech companies who censor any dissenting, patriotic “thought criminals,” who dare post, comment, write, or publish on their social platforms and on the Internet in general. 

Millions of illegal aliens are clamoring to cross our southern border illegally, to enter our country that these Marxist radicals consider a “white supremacist country” riddled with “systemic racism.”  If that were true, why in the world would anyone want to come to such a country? Why wouldn’t they go to what the left considers the best places in the world to be, like Amsterdam?  As the talented cartoonist Branco wrote about illegal aliens knocking at the border wall, “Please let us in so we can become victims of systemic racism and white supremacy.” 

Modern Marxists realized that the major obstacles to their revolution in the vein of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, and Mao, “workers of the world unite,” were the family, Christian faith, a Republican government, nation-states, reason, and free speech. These were stumbling blocks in the march towards a totalitarian Marxist state and thus a world government. Bit by bit these “stumbling blocks” are being destroyed in all western societies simultaneously, taking advantage of the abject fear of death from a virus with a 99.8 percent survival rate and several drugs that can cure it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Electricity and Social Emotional Learning for Equity of Woke Warriors

The Roman soldier was not concerned about the fate of the Empire, stretching beyond the administrative reach, the politics of the day, the power and overreach of the patricians, the 600 Senators (senex = old man), the Roman army; soldiers only cared about the pebbles in their shoes because those pebbles caused them pain and discomfort when they marched on campaigns.  They were happy when they were given “pane et circenses,” bread and circuses.  Free gladiatorial performances in the arena kept them placid and pacified with free tokens for plain bread.

The Roman empire was so vast that, when its most important city, Rome, the “Eternal City,” fell in 410 A.D. to Gothic armies camped outside its walls, the world then, devoid of instant communication, took a lengthy gasp. The city that stood unconquered for 800 years fell to Germanic barbarians under the leadership of Alaric the Goth.

St. Jerome, living in Bethlehem, is reported to have said, “When the brightest light on the whole Earth was extinguished, when the Roman empire was deprived of its head, when to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, I was dumb with silence.”

But the western part of the empire lingered on for 66 more years until 476, at the end of which Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed by his German commanders. But the sacking was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Citizens had been poisoning themselves with lead for a long time:  Romans drank from lead cups, cooked in lead pots, transported water through lead pipes, and used lead oxide to sweeten their wine, just to name a few of its many uses. Skeletons found around the vast empire exhibited classic evidence of lead poisoning.

Sterility, probably caused by lead, prompted emperors to encourage having more children to stop the population decline. But, poor health, population decline, and indefensible vast borders were just three of the reasons the empire declined and eventually fell.

One Greek historian had remarked almost three hundred years before Rome’s downfall that it had turned “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron.” Our infrastructure today, government, American exceptionalism, and everything that had made America great a long time ago is fast turning into ruin and rust just like Rome, the Eternal City.

Centuries later, humans have not changed that much, they just have better medicine, machines, and transportation. They may not all be soldiers but most only care about their lives, the mundane, sports entertainment, the modern version of “bread and circuses,” and the ability to feed, clothe, shelter, and protect their families. They follow obediently the “government knows best” directives with blind obsequiousness. But the government is made up of little dictators with many faults, inabilities, dishonesty, and lack of vision for generations to come.

The population does not care about politics, the machinations of Washington, D.C., the power grabs, the agendas, the control, and the theft of the nation. They want a home, a car, electricity for heat and air conditioning, medical care, preferably free, dignity, and freedom to live as they please. So, what will happen to their “Shining City on the Hill,” the symbol of their empire? Will it turn to ruin and rust as well?

What is the pebble in the shoe of the 21^st century American woke warriors? It is capitalism and its tool of progress, fossil fuels.

The current woke and delusional generations are determined to destroy their own successful economy and replace it with a disaster promoted under the label of Democrat Socialism and their platform of the Green New Deal.

Democrat Socialism is just a new phrase invented by the left to repackage and sell the old failed socialism model to the ignorant masses.  The Green New Deal is neither Green, nor New, and no Deal, it is just U.N. Agenda 21/2030 retreaded and euphemized to convince the woke voting base that there is an annoying pebble in their shoe and they can regress to a primitive life they’ve never experienced before and go barefoot in order to save the planet from the scourge of humanity.

The old Greenies and the younger Woke Warriors applaud the Green New Deal without giving it a thought where electricity for their Teslas and other electric cars will come from. They just feel instinctively that solar panels and wind turbines will replace the “evil” and “poisonous” fossil fuels” that are killing the planet and the cute little turtles choking on plastic straws, fishing nets, plastic bags, and plastic bottles.

It is so much better to make paper bags and destroy the trees that produce oxygen, trees are so abundant and grow so fast, but, once Bill Gates and Harvard mitigate global warming by spraying chalk in the upper atmosphere to block the harmful rays of the sun, good luck growing anything, including trees.

So where will electricity come from, woke warriors? Where will charging stations for your fully electric cars, millions of them, get their electricity from? From the fairy dust in the atmosphere, the same place where your food will come from once you kill agriculture.  Will you produce enough electricity to sustain our large economy, production, travel, heating, cooling, shopping malls, industry, technology, hospitals, and your ever-increasing electronic gadgets and toys? Will this electricity come from:

-          Wind turbines that only produce a small fraction of electricity when the wind blows at a certain peak speed, turbines that must be manufactured and maintained with help from fossil fuels, turbine blades that are difficult to recycle and must be transported with heavy machinery operated by fossil fuels?

-          Solar panels – the wafers do not last long, must be replaced, produced using fossil fuels, cannot be recycled, are toxic for the environment, and need a lot of land to display, land that is needed for agriculture.  Who needs land to make food when you can eat Bill Gates’ fake meat?

-          Nuclear power plants – none have not been built in this country in quite sometime and the greenies reject the idea of ever building new ones, it is too dangerous to humans and to the environment.

-          Hydroelectric power plants - The environmentalists want to destroy the dams necessary for hydropower, the rivers must flow just like they did centuries ago, unimpeded by man

-          Fossil fuels, oil, and coal - These are dirty words for the woke generation, they are convinced that our current civilization can survive and prosper without them.

Maybe the social emotional learning standards of equity over academic content now proposed by the “progressive” Department of Education in Virginia will fill the social justice warriors’ plates with food, bring electricity, heat, air conditioning, transportation, and medical care. https://townhall.virginia.gov/L/GetFile.cfm?File=C:%5CTownHall%5Cdocroot%5CGuidanceDocs_Proposed%5C201%5CGDoc_DOE_4780_20210329.pdf

Perhaps the woke generation has it all imagined and resolved – technology will be everything and the news media, social media, and the climate change industrial complex will take care of ALL their basic needs – food, shelter, cars, energy, education, health care, travel, and non-stop virtual entertainment if they obey the ruling elites.

 

 

 

 

 

Consider ‘Luck’

On a recent trip to a local store, the manager asked me to fill out a ticket for the drawing they were having for Mother’s Day. As I was filling it out, I stated casually that I am never lucky at such drawings or at lottery. She added, but you are lucky more than you know. If your car broke down irreparably, you could afford to go buy a new one.

I am not so sure that is my definition of ‘luck’ as I have worked extremely hard my entire life, saved, and drove cars way past their expiration dates. To me they are just means to get from point A to point B in a safe way. Yet she inadvertently made the point that ‘luck’ has a different meaning and definition for different people – some agree, and others disagree in their definition and interpretation of ‘luck.’

Luck is defined in the dictionary as a chance happening of fortunate or adverse events, prosperity, success, or one’s personal fate. But the dictionary definition of luck does not include the many-faceted interpretations of the word and concept as used in the 21st century.

Economically speaking, luck is seen as being born in wealth, sometimes generational, other times just parental wealth which will someday get passed on to their offspring. What they choose to do with this wealth is a different story.

Luck is being in the right place at the right time. Luck is being born with gifted genes which allow you to develop into success with less effort. Luck is hard work for some, with the reward of a better life because of it.

Luck is winning the lottery, sometimes multiple times. Luck is escaping near misses and staying alive. Luck is surviving a disaster when everyone else around it did not. Luck is surviving a disease and chemotherapy when others do not. Luck is not being buried by an avalanche or a volcanic eruption. Luck is escaping a devastating fire or numerous lightning strikes. Luck is escaping drowning and sharks when lost at sea for days and weeks.

Luck is being born healthy and having a strong genetic constitution. Luck is being born beautiful and athletic. Luck is having artistic, musical, scientific, and mathematical talent at an incredibly early age. Luck is surviving an airplane crash.  Luck is surviving alone at sea for days and weeks and being found alive.  Luck is surviving the Titanic disaster and making it out alive again after two subsequent ships sunk with the same survivor from the Titanic tragedy.

Luck is having unforeseen blessings in life – people, family, friends, faith, love, and other life-changing events.

Some think that luck is being able to achieve your dreams. Luck may be a variable in reaching one’s aspirations and dreams, but so are education, skill, dedication, determination, courage, and hard work.

Reza believes that luck is seizing opportunities presented equally – two immigrants have the same opportunities upon arrival in America, but one becomes a taxi driver and the other becomes an engineer.

Others believe that luck is where you are born, what family you grow up in, what town you grow up in, and the neighborhood surrounding you, i.e., Americans are lucky to be born here.

Joyce Q. thinks that the choices you make have a component of luck. You are also lucky if you have abundant food, thus food safety, clean water, hospitals, and a dependable and safe roof over your head.

Ozmarina believes that luck is represented by ancestors who determine what we do and whether we inherit good things or bad things in life. “The sins of the fathers follow until the third generation.”

Susan S. said that she has been lucky because she was blessed. “Everything in my life happened for a reason. I have had many troubling situations, but God has brought me through them. He put so many people in my life, and it has made all the difference.”

Ed Merkel quoted his retired Air Force veteran friend who used to say, “Lucky beats good every day of the week.” Merkel added, “When I worked, I used to tell my staff that ‘luck’ is not a strategy that will enable us to meet corporate objectives. At best, ‘luck’ is serendipitous. If the first five cards I am dealt contain 4 aces, it is the ‘luck of the draw.’ It probably would not happen again in 10,000 hands. Luck is nice when it occurs, but there is no substitute for knowledge, experience, and planning.”

People who escaped socialist/communist oppressive regimes consider themselves lucky to live in a capitalist society and do not understand the younger generations’ determined drive to replace capitalism with the repressive and regressive socialism.

Central Americans risk life and limb to trek to the United States, illegally across the southern border, to economic abundance and freedom from government subjugation and fear which they had lived under the socialist hellholes they were unlucky to had been born into.

The truth is, if you build something worth having, someone is going to try to take it away for themselves or for others who have not earned it. That is not ‘luck,’ of course, it is hard work on the part of the owner and confiscation on the part of those who did not earn it.

David C. believes that there is zero likelihood that such thing as luck exists. “Nothing happens by accident or by chance. People micro-manage the Author of the atom and e=mc² into so much less than He is.”

Luck is being born with a talent which takes little work to pursue and the talented do not have enough appreciation for the gift they were endowed with by their Creator.  They expect everyone to bow to their majesty. Others must labor for years to develop and market their God-given talent. And others squander the ‘luck’ or talent they were given and regret it in later life.

“Luck is a human perception of something that happened to them.” Luck is also perceived as the experience of something positive which occurred by random chance. The Romans consulted their soothsayer for their luck or misfortune. Wild predictions into the flight of birds and the shape of animal entrails were spun into one’s future events of luck or misfortune. Many believe that luck is elusive and that the present and the future are dependent on the luck of the draw and predestination. But ultimately, you are lucky to be born.