LIFE

We run through life… we don’t know in which direction…

We work hard to buy a home, a car, we struggle, we stress out,

And we get sick in the process…

Finally we earn them with great sacrifice, with hard work…

And we tell ourselves that it is time to live…

But, as soon as we sit down comfortably to live and enjoy them,

Our time has passed, and it is time to leave.

Letter from Macy's CEO, Jeff Gennette, and my Response

I received today an insulting political message from Macy's CEO. Below is my answer to his form letter of June 7, 2020.

Dear valued customers,

Macy’s is proudly “America’s department store.” Beyond the products we offer, the parade and the fireworks celebration, our company will ultimately be known for the values we exhibit. That starts with fostering an inclusive, welcoming community – one that believes, and acts on a principle that everyone is created equal and deserves our respect.

The death of George Floyd is sadly just one more incident of racial injustice, including those against Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, along with countless others. The grief, frustration and anger that we have seen is understandable. And as a company, we are committed to do our part to end systemic racism.

This week we hosted a virtual Town Hall attended by over 5,000 of our colleagues across the country. Several opened up with remarkable vulnerability and honesty about their experience of being Black in this country, in our company, and in the streets. About the difficulty of living a life on guard all the time, of teaching a young child to do the same. Of constantly explaining why Black lives matter.

As our customer you are part of the Macy’s family, so we are sharing some of our learnings from this Town Hall with you here.

Thanks for listening. We will continue to keep listening, too – every day.

Sincerely,

Jeff Gennette

Chairman and CEO of Macy’s, Inc.

_______________________________________________________________________

Jeff Gennette,

As a Macy's shopper, I am shocked by your overt political message. This letter is highly offensive to me. For you to call me indirectly a racist, is beyond the pale. You are in business to sell clothes not to engage in politics and to try to be my conscience. I have a mother and a conscience already, thank you. You are pandering to a demographic that has looted and destroyed your stores and you should be ashamed of doing so.

It is sad that George, a black man. was killed by police but this issue is not about racism, it is about police brutality. Black and white men have been killed by police brutality but it does not make us or our country racist just because you say so. For you to present it any other way, it is absolutely disingenuous. I do not need your town hall to teach me how to be a good human being, a good American.

"Systemic racism," a new liberal construct invented by the leftist academia to excuse the riots and looting, only exists in the warped minds of those with an agenda to fundamentally transform America into the socialist paradise of globalism. I happen to know first-hand that America is the most tolerant and least racist country in the world.

Since you are now a political organization, I will start buying my linen, clothes, jewelry, and everything else you sell,  from a small business that deserves my dollars more than you do.

Sincerely,

Ileana Johnson

Left-wing Mob Rule Nation and Kristallnacht

Minneapolis looting by paid rioters KWNG photo

I escaped communism in late 1970s and, in forty years, my adopted country changed from the beacon of freedom and prosperity, with ample opportunities to succeed, promoting one’s individual talents, to a left-wing mob rule nation where the Nazi’s Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” is repeated by paid rioters around the nation in Democrat-leadership cities, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Nashville, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland, Memphis, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Madison, Denver, Albuquerque, Columbus, Houston, Phoenix, Louisville, St. Louis, Oakland, and Boston. https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/kristallnacht

I do not see how a country can survive if half the population and one of its two major political parties are dedicated to its destruction. These people want to destroy everything normal people value and replace it with a totalitarian nightmare they call “globalism.” This is war but only one side seems to be fighting.

Communist agitators have filled our population ranks thanks to indoctrination from colleges, universities, public schools, politicians at all levels of government, the mainstream media, and entertainment. Universities are no longer the seat of learning and of expression of divergent opinions but a “bedrock of extreme ideologies.”

Tenured professors like the woman at the University of Alabama in Birmingham allegedly tweeted to teach rioters how to take down monuments. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/1/univ-of-alabama-professor-instructs-rioters-on-how/

Sen. Joe McCarthy was vindicated, the declassified Venona Papers have proven that fact, but he was crucified nevertheless for telling the truth that we have many American communist traitors among us. https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/venona/

Conservatives had hoped that the opposition party, the Republicans, would provide a divergent side to the ideological war that has been escalating for years. To the Republicans’ Robert’s Rules of Order strategy, the Democrats lie, cheat, beat, and steal with gusto. https://robertsrules.org/

They attack anybody who disagrees with them physically, legally, illegally, economically, psychologically, etc. Republicans call for and use proper legislative and legal procedures, reason, logic, civilized means of solving disagreement and conflict, and negotiations. Charles Maranto aptly wrote, “Democrats have a crime family approach” to conflict resolution. “Republicans have been strategic and tactical imbeciles.”

President Trump is but one man who is fighting a tsunami of well-organized and perfectly oiled Democrat machine with one goal in mind, to fundamentally transformation our “evil” nation into the utopian socialism all Democrat politicians and their useful idiots followers and millennials want, a free for all Shangri La that never existed. They know, they are going to do communism “right” because they are smarter than anybody else.

It is nice to get involved in politics and pick and support the right candidates, however, until we change the mindset of the population to a state where they are proud of their own country as the best, most tolerant, and least racist country in the world, nothing will change, the decline to socialism and communism will continue. You must change the prevailing philosophy among the younger generations, a philosophy that says that America is evil and racist, none of which is true, on the contrary.

Do they understand what a bankrupt and tyrannical socialist state truly is? No, because their teachers, media, greedy and corrupt politicians, and Hollywood have lied to them since the 1970s.

I lived in the socialist nightmare Rep. Ocasio-Cortes (D-NY) advocates and demands, under the boot of the Communist Party, and it was not pretty:

-          Freedom, individuality, creativity, and entrepreneurship were crushed

-          If you did not work, you did not eat, welfare per say did not exist; the proletariat received a meager pay, “commensurate to their effort”

-          If you spoke out, you were beaten, jailed, or killed

-          We lived in concrete apartments with little water, heat, and electricity

-          The Antifa-like government goons knocked on our doors and beat us up if we did not comply with the tyrannical rules.

If America goes, so will the rest of the free world. Europe survived the clutches of Hitler only because anonymous and heroic American boys and men fought and died for their freedom. We rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan. We protect Europe militarily still and, if we go, the rest will collapse as well into poverty and tyranny just like Cuba and Venezuela.

President Trump is trying to do the right thing for America, but he is one man, with little help from the Republican Party, and even if he wins again in November, that will only take us to 2024. What will happen after that? How fast will we sink further into socialist chaos at the hands of the Democrat Party lording over everything? Look what is happening to the Democrat-controlled cities and states and you will know exactly what will happen to America.

The Modern Scarlet Letter "M" for Mask by Mimi Johnson

Wikipedia Photo

I am privileged, as liberals like to tout, that I live in a state, that for all intents and purposes, has remained somewhat sensible during this insane and what I consider, unnecessary lockdown.  In the beginning of this fiasco, my company was deemed “essential” and therefore have stayed open through all the insipid social changes.  Initially, we were not allowed to wear masks or gloves in the workplace, which was fine by me, as I found them cumbersome and infringing on my ability to breathe, however, about 4 weeks in, all of a sudden, they were mandatory.  I found this quite odd and in my rational mind, I had to ask questions and cause a “disturbance in the force.”

This new policy caused me more duress than the virus itself.  It became evident that the company was not interested in our safety by any means, but more so for their financial safety.  If anyone were to contract the virus, they would be open to various lawsuits. Since I often question everything, I asked if it were possible to avoid wearing a mask due to personal reasons, especially since in 4 weeks’ time, no one in my location had shown symptoms or been diagnosed with the virus.  The response was swift and unapologetically “no.” In fact, I was asked why I was being so “defensive” about wearing the masks. I felt judged because I questioned this decision, when two days prior, the items were vehemently not allowed.  Needless to say, I now don a mask that is ironically manufactured in China, have no choice over my own personal health, and in order to stay gainfully employed, must comply and not question it. 

So, I begrudgingly began wearing this ill-fitting, strange smelling mask, not for my protection but for “others.” Not only is it physically uncomfortable, but for someone who works in customer service, it does not allow you to communicate effectively with people in person and definitely not over the phone.  Day after day, customers come in and self-righteously comment on how we choose to wear the mask, mainly below the nose so we can breathe effectively, continually treated like a diseased pariah that is committing horrible crimes against humanity. Customers have even gone as far as complaining on surveys that my associates removed their mask momentarily to answer the phone.  Oh, the horror of attempting to communicate effectively with customers on the phone!  The injustice!

I think the pinnacle of my COVID-19 experience happened recently at Trader Joe’s.  Although NC does not require wearing masks in public, Durham County Mayor has put orders in place that you may not enter an establishment without a mask.  For this reason, I generally travel to the neighboring town of Chapel Hill, to do my shopping.  I always keep a spare mask in the car just in case the establishment requires one, but on this day, it was 85 degrees, and I was not interested in wearing a mask to buy vegetables.  I made my way to the door, which now has a stanchion maze in front of it, effectively putting each customer on parade in front of others.  As I walked past each of the masked faces, I felt the red-hot flush of judgment sweep across my body. It was a clothed Cersei Lannister moment, walking to my shame.  I immediately began checking myself for garment malfunctions, but deep down knew why I was getting the stares, I had committed social justice suicide and now might as well pin a scarlet M for mask on my shirt. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, “The Scarlet Letter” seems like such an apropos metaphor in this instance.  We currently follow and worship the CDC like they’ve been bestowed the divine right of Kings by the Catholic church, much like we revere Priests and Reverends, insert Reverend Dimmesdale, society is Hester Prynne, in a secret romance with liberal ideology and the guilt placed upon anyone disagreeing with their sentiments, and society’s chaos is the evil offspring of that dalliance.  As I continued my “walk of social shame,” I held my head high, and continued to the back of the line.  I was not going to bow to the ridiculous constructs of liberal puppets and be shamed into drone thinking.  As I am standing there in the brilliant and abundant sunlight, relishing in my freedom, I could not help but notice the social distancing stickers on the sidewalk.  Ironically, they were not even 6 feet apart.  I began laughing uncontrollably to myself thinking how ridiculous and asinine this entire debacle had become and how these managers either were not able to measure 6 feet accordingly or were just lazy, either way, the hypocrisy was on full display, but no one was paying attention. 

This seems to be the constant theme of our entire society: never paying close attention to details.  Social isolation has not only affected immunology and mental health, but has also seemed to digress our Evolution; everyone acting like savage Neanderthals, hoarding supplies and food, as if they’re in constant threat of a neighboring tribe coming to raid their findings. Our modern society took thousands of years to cultivate and develop, yet in a span of two months, we have managed to ruin infrastructures, like an episode of “Life without people.” I do not know whether to be impressed or frightened. 

I, for one, am ready to change the narrative, are you?

The Face Maskers in the Midst

The Ship of Fools - woodcut

I have spent a lot of time since early March in the woods, in the company of birds, geese, a wild rabbit, a fox visiting my yard daily, squirrels, a racoon, five deer who enjoy the grass in our back yard at dusk, one coyote, wasps, bumblebees, a majestic eagle, a water snake, the river, flowers, grasses, two ospreys, and a lot of mud.

The daily trips to the woods saved my sanity when everything around me turned irrational and abnormal, “socially distancing” from other humans as if they had the bubonic plague, the “new normal” as the Democrat leaders turned Stalinists and their lackey main stream media have been telling us non-stop for twelve weeks now.

Insane lefties took up the crusade of forcing everyone to wear face masks outside, in the woods, in state parks, in the house, in stores, while jogging, biking, in grocery stores, and in their own cars when they were driving alone.

A fashion industry has quickly popped up with useless face masks of various shapes, sizes, thickness, colors, and messages that fit the submissive and scared to death personality of the wearer. One famous individual expressed herself with a crocheted mask with holes.

We must wear a face mask at the bank, coupled with seeing eyeglasses, and it seems that it is now legal to do so. Who would have thought that looking like a robber would be acceptable and necessary in a bank, but here we are. 

I used to walk across a fishing pier where two ospreys were nesting. I enjoyed photographing them while the male was bringing his mate fish in his beak. But the governor closed the pier and the occasional 5-6 fishermen had to move alongside the river’s edge, clustered together under the railroad bridge. How else could they tell each other tall fishing tales and drink beer? Humans are social creatures and need other people to remain sane and healthy. And the catfish and snakeheads fed their families. Thanks to the governor’s crazy policies, the fishermen are now unemployed and unable to provide for their loved ones.

The governor left state parks open but closed the bathroom facilities – too much to clean properly, the ranger explained one day. But they brought in unsightly port-o-potties which had no hand sanitizer and were sprayed by a park employee with Lysol spray. Who can argue with the logic of a governor, who is a doctor, that a port-o-potty with exposed fecal matter and urine is cleaner than a restroom?

People could stand on the river’s sandy beach and fish or exercise, but nobody could sit in a chair or on the sand – it must be crawling with Covid-19 viruses. How in the world have we ever survived so far on thousands of crowded beaches around the world without social isolation or physical distancing! How lucky we were! It is a “miracle” that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Brix saved us on time. It was worth every penny of the six trillion dollars in debt and the millions of permanently unemployed.

Arbitrary rules of physical distancing euphemistically called “social distancing” were established, a form of social isolation which varied across the globe, from 3-6 ft, even though a cough or a sneeze can travel much farther, 18-24 ft.

Then the leftist and regressive population, whose agenda was never about liberty of any kind, started to turn into the Gestapo, vociferously shaming anybody who dared to show up without a face mask - How dare you endanger my fragile health? Go home and hide under a rock! Worse yet, the left turned into the Stasi Karen(s) and called the police on face mask violators.

And the police, being the vigilant defenders and protectors of the law that they are, started arresting parents playing with their children, church goers, partiers in private homes, restaurant patrons who violated totalitarian lockdown orders, towed their cars, fined citizens for daring to open up businesses, and for eating inside restaurants or bars.

People became so conditioned that, while walking in the woods to get fresh air, they wore masks alone and with their spouses and children. Shrill women were shouting twelve feet away from other humans, “stay away from me,” as if they were aliens in the invasion of the body snatchers.

Irrational and panicked, these individuals have lost whatever sanity they have ever had. I can now fully understand how the lynching of innocents happened when crowds reached a frenzy of hatred towards helpless humans exercising their right to exist.

People now cross the street to avoid each other and make no eye contact or attempt at any human interaction. We have become invisible to each other, “contactless” humans.

Parking fee collection during pandemic in northern Virginia state park

Photo: Ileana Johnson, early May 2020

A park employee was collecting parking fees one day using a fishing net with a long handle. The drivers had to put their money in, and the attendant retrieved the said cash from the net following the “contactless” dictates of the non-stop PSAs.

“Contactless,” “safe,” “stay safe,” “safe distancing,” “together alone” (an oxymoron), “new normal” became the indoctrinating phrase of the new generation of supine and scared humans who would rather exchange their freedom for temporary “safety.”

The extreme cowardice and almost overnight submission to totalitarianism without a whimper or logical argument and questioning were painful to watch.

Saturday Lunch

Today we decided to have curbside pickup from Red Lobster for our weekend meal as we've done with other businesses since this lockdown began.

It was a nice, sunny day so we decided to sit upfront on the white benches and eat part of our food. As hubby was trying to juggle not dropping too much catchup, tartar sauce, or his soda on his white shorts, I was watching the noisy, multi-lane road full of cars, with anxious drivers speeding dangerously fast and reckless, like a bunch of convicts just out of lockup, who stole cars and tasted freedom after months in jail, and were eager to get away from the cops.

The traffic at the Target store nearby was heavier than usual and the same middle-aged panhandler was sitting in the shade with his homeless cardboard sign. He had been there for at least five years that I can remember. If he had built two bricks a day, I think at least one room and a bathroom might be finished by now.

We need the sun now more than ever but I have a sense of unease that I cannot shake. I am not going to wear the governor's soon to be mandated facemask and may have to pay a fine or go to jail, a prospect that gives me communism PTSD. Virginia has gone beyond socialism, it is on its way to a tyrannical communist government ruled by the Democrat Party.

The “New Normal” or Modified Normal

Social conditioning is defined as the process of training individuals in a society to respond in a manner generally approved by society and various peer groups and their interests.

In a classic textbook method of social conditioning, all commercials and MSM news reports now contain the line “the new normal.” If the idea and concept reflected in a new euphemistic phrase is introduced and repeated it at nauseam, people will accept it eventually as “the new normal.”

The oft-repeated “social distancing” phrase is also played across the country in supermarkets, on radio, and on television until people accept it as part of life. There is nothing social about hiding from people and running scared. It is really “physical distancing” to avoid infection during a pandemic.  Sadly, fear becomes part of everyday life and people begin avoiding each other in all social interactions that are part of being human.

We know from the bad experience of dictator Ceausescu’s orphans raised in state institutions after having been given up by their parents who either could not feed nor want them, that those infants who were never touched, hugged, rocked, and interacted with, became severely autistic and rocked themselves non-stop in order to soothe the inner need and desire for human contact and love.

The “new normal” represents the fear of one’s own shadow, the fear of government, the fear of not wearing masks, the fear of coughing in public, the fear of one’s neighbors, the fear of quarantine, the fear of getting sick, the fear of other people, the fear of being outside without a mask on, and the fear of existing outside of one’s home which has become a prison of sorts in which the owners are both the inmates and the jailers.

Orwell wrote through his “1984” character named Winston, “To a future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone – to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, form the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of double-think – greetings!”   (p. 28)

The dystopian novel described a time when “nothing was your own except a few cubic centimeters inside your skull.” (p. 27) We do not seem to be so shocked anymore by the dark human nature described in Orwell’s novel. Life imitates art and we are getting accustomed daily to this “new normal” indelibly etched into our collective psyche by the powers with a globalist agenda of population control, vaccines, chip implantation, and 24/7 tracking of every move we make.

The ideas described by Orwell have come to pass and currently surround us everywhere, i.e., thought police, technology giants censorship of our freedom of speech and of our thoughts expressed on social media, thoughts packaged as hate crimes or racism, liberals triggered by the existence of divergent thoughts and ideas, doublethink, doublespeak, “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is strength,” enemies of the Democrat party must be silenced, thought crimes, and the government’s version of the “Ministry of Truth.” Undesirable people are disappearing, professionally “annihilated, abolished, and vaporized.”

United Nations has been peddling 17 sustainable development goals for decades under Agenda 21 now morphed into Agenda 2030, packaging and repackaging them under different euphemisms of global control, until the United States was brought to its economic knees by a virus and forced to accept them under the much-touted aegis of the Green New Deal. The poster child of this Democrat legislation was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the former bartender. We did not take her seriously but, with her powerful backers, she was able to implement most everything in this “deal” which is neither “new” nor “green.”

The restriction of travel and the generalized panic and fear have reduced air traffic to insignificant amounts. Airlines lost billions in revenue and experienced a severe reduction in travel by 95 percent. Airlines like United mothballed 25 percent of their air fleet. Air traffic may eventually exist just for the rich elites and well-heeled politicians on the taxpayer dole.

U.N. Agenda 2030 wanted to reduce our carbon footprint by pushing limited travel by trains, buses, and bikes, keeping the population stacked in high-rise apartments with no parking, five-minute walk from work, play, school, shopping, and living.

Traffic on once crowded highways has disappeared. People are not going anywhere out of fear, because places are closed all over, or because of restrictions placed upon them by governors eager to control the masses while they take vacations and trips to places now denied to the average American.

Democrats have been pushing for a universal basic income for their base, and people scoffed and doubted them. But now the Democrats won. Americans who do work, work from home, while the rest are staying hidden and idle at home, waiting for the government paycheck to arrive so they can live and pay their bills.

Technocracy News expressed what many of us have been thinking, that we need clarity from our President and a concrete date when the economic lockdown of healthy Americans will end, “not in stages, not in phases.” According to Technocracy News, President Trump’s advisers were wrong:

“They convinced the president to make bad decisions based on faulty science and speculative computer models stocked with false assumptions. They are up to their necks in conflicts of interest, mostly having to do with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its many global partners pushing mandatory vaccines and global ID system that can be used for tracking individual Americans.” https://www.technocracy.news/

The “new normal” is not normal at all. There is nothing normal about living in fear, hidden, like an animal in a cage, waiting to receive a handout from the government that taxes those who do work.

There is nothing normal about closing schools indefinitely and having to follow one-way lines into and out of grocery stores.

There is nothing normal about having empty hospitals and furloughed medical personnel and doctors while people are dying from cancer, heart disease, and other non-Covid-19 virus related illness, or suffer in severe pain because their medical problems are judged non-essential by all-knowing politicians.

Perhaps one unintended consequence of this “pandemic” may be the dismantling of the goal for mega-cities which the environmentalists at the U.N. have been pushing for decades and the dispersion of people into less populated areas.

Retail in a physical space as we know it will disappear, replaced by online commerce.  Shipping methods will explode, and product choices will become scarce. Environmentalists will be happy as less resources will be used to manufacture what they deemed as too many goods and services. The U.S. economy will shrink as two-thirds of our GDP is consumption.

Remote work and schooling will become the new wave of commuting in the U.S. Physical schools and bussing many disappear over time. Office buildings may become obsolete.

Domestic travel will slow down as the middle class will have to deal with the loss of millions of small businesses and a disappearing middle-class disposable income.

Stronger border controls and mandatory quarantines for those with and without fever will result in much less international travel. International travel may morph into travel of the affluent who make the rules. Perhaps this will be the modified normal. https://quillette.com/2020/03/25/the-coming-age-of-dispersion/?fbclid=IwAR3D8ZZ2h2SMe0qFcISKnKYq6GsKHZIWiVKevcQf2-YbqW1UfDIcNUnTAHQ