Driven by Fear

“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.” – Thomas Sowell

Fear is a powerful emotional reaction, rational and irrational. The dictionary defines fear as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.”

Fear is ingrained in our human behavior and in animals’ survival instinct. Fear is considered by psychologists a “negative” emotion that can and will often cloud reasoning and common sense and will drive humans and animals alike to behave often in ways that are counterproductive to survival or to a positive outcome.

Animals can detect fear in other animals by smell, sight, and hearing. Scientists have shown that animals smell fear via certain chemicals. Some creatures are better sighted than others, but the hearing is always many times better than humans.

The common elements of fear in humans are the perception of danger (which triggers a response), the seriousness of the danger (the risk of survival or non-survival), and how imminent is the danger (right now or later).

To avoid the unpleasant potential outcomes of fear, we mitigate fear by developing coping mechanisms such as denial, avoidance, and submission. Everyone is unique in her or his response to fear and how they mitigate specific elements of it.

The primary reason millions of people lined up like sheep to get their inoculations, even fighting with those who were deemed by the government as first in line, was fear – fear of death, fear of losing their jobs, fear of being unable to travel to their favorite destinations, fear of being rejected and ostracized at work, fear of not being allowed to shop for food, to enter a doctor’s office, to enter a hospital to get treatment, to eat in a restaurant, go to school, and many others.

In 2020, the abject fear of one virus had become the dominant force driving humanity’s lives, social interaction, and the distance and numbers allowed in any one spot. For many humans, this abject fear still controls their lives to the exclusion of all else.

The government was glad to use fear to control the population, to control elections, to control the economy, to control human interaction, to control religion, flying, schooling, vacations, parks, woods, beaches, concerts, which direction people walked or lined up in order to gain access in public life, to control which businesses stayed closed and which remained open, which jobs were essential and which weren’t, etc.

Fear still drives many Americans to wear masks while in the ocean, while walking alone on the beach, in a forest, on a deserted street, in their own cars alone, and when eating in a restaurant with their spouse. One wonders if they wear the masks to bed.

Fear fuels negative transformations, but it can also fuel positive ones. Once a child accidentally touches a hot plate and suffers a burn, the fear of that pain teaches him/her to never touch something hot or boiling.

Children tend to be fearless; adults harbor a serious dose of fear based on experience, knowledge, or lack thereof, and senior citizens are superlatively fearful because their very existence can be threatened by the wrong physical move.

Fear is triggered by dark places, strange and sudden noises, heights, depths, flying, social interaction/rejection, public speaking, snakes, spiders, rats, mice, scorpions, bears, tigers, gators, abandonment, getting lost at sea, getting lost in the desert, death, dying, drowning, avalanches, choking, disease, contagions, cancer, and many others.

Fear can be exacerbated by unexplainable phobias and severe anxiety with no apparent cause.

Movies use scare tactics to induce fear in viewers – grotesque masks, makeup, frightening music in anticipation of attacks, and other methods. It was reported, for example, that some viewers of the silent film The Phantom of the Opera fainted in theaters when the character’s mask was removed.

Daily scare tactics of a powerful person on a White House platform, issuing dire warnings against not wearing a mask or not social distancing, worked very well as proven by the Covid-19 public fear.

Public service announcements (PSAs) with manufactured consensus science worked very well as a tool of fear mongering.

Fear may or may not increase the chance of survival. The most recent example of this perception was the face mask still required in some places and still worn voluntarily by people two years after the Covid-19 pandemic. This fear is irrational as masks were not effective in controlling the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

Walter Canon described in the early twentieth century the “flight-or-fight” response to fear. Human reactions to fear are fight, freeze, faint, and flee.

Neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux wrote that humans are different from animals in perceiving fear because they perceive it as a feeling. The amygdala appears to be the “fear center of the brain.”

Research found that two types of neurons are responsible for fear response:

-      Flight is triggered by activation of cells which express corticotropin 

-      Freezing is triggered by activation of cells which express somatostatin

“The researchers suggest that we can switch rapidly between responses to ensure the highest chance of survival.” The Four Types of Fear - Foundation for Conscious Living

Media and government-driven fear of massive population die-off was used to control billions of people who were forced into untested, multiple “vaccinations” despite the mounting injuries and deaths. When that fear was not enough to inject everyone with highly experimental gene-therapy shots, government strict quarantine and massive job-firings for non-compliance were used. World-wide bureaucrats learned from this two-year experiment that abject fear can be effective in population control but destroys the world’s economies and irreparably alters their lives forever.

The Making of a Tyrant

Ceausescu giving a propaganda speech

It does not take a tremendous education to become a socialist tyrant/dictator - just a resume full of social justice activism from an early age, protests in the streets, some peaceful, some violent, a few arrests, an adoring media, financial support from the right movers and shakers, and a pliant and adoring group of supporters who share the potential tyrant’s ideology. Once they give him unfettered power with the help of the media, corrupt politicians, and the military, the sky is the limit.

A socialist/communist tyrant has an excessive ego unparalleled by any other human. His single-mindedness is focused only on the aims of the Socialist/Communist Party, their power, and rule. To achieve these goals, getting rid of opponents/enemies, by any means necessary, is essential. A tyrant does not value human life the same way most humans do. He emboldens his followers and turns them into cults of destruction and even death.

The tyrant equates himself with the country he represents. In his myopic eyes, he is great because he is the “father of the country” and has made everybody’s lives better such as greater wealth, medical care, schooling, while society around him is usually wallowing in misery and despair. He is convinced that, if people are not grateful for his regime, it is because they do not understand the common good and must be forced into it.

The tyrant is eager to erase the past, to destroy historical records, statues, rare documents, monuments, constitutions, its culture and heritage, manufacturing a new history and,  in doing so, the tyrant constructs a new man, dumbed down, frightened into compliance, poorly educated, and a society dependent on the Democrat/Socialist/Communist Party which requires absolute adulation and total submission.

The tyrant sees himself as the “creator of thought,” the builder of a new country, the one who has the right “vision,” who will “build back better” once the old world is torn down. We are not exactly sure how, why, what, and when “things” will be built back better and compared to what. It is heresy to question the tyrant, and nobody is allowed to do so.

The tyrant is the admired “hero” whose praises are sung by a terrified into submission populace, afraid of their own shadows. The people who depend on a paycheck know that anything less than total obedience spells disaster and a short trip to the nearest gulag and/or ostracization from society, expulsion from school, and job loss.

Even the tyrant’s wife is paid undeserved homage. Ceausescu, for example, the tyrant/dictator people had to submit to for years, was married to a “brilliant scientist, a world-renowned person of learning, a Communist leader, and a Doctor of Science.”

She was so brilliant that she never finished elementary school – she was awarded fake diplomas left and right. Nobody dared to cross her. Academies around the world gave her honorary degrees, praising her work alongside the “greatest hero of peace, collaboration and understanding among people,” a “hero” who often ordered the assassination of his own people without any hesitation or remorse.

Tyrants view the patrimony of their country as their own pocketbook, to do as they please with it. There is a logical reason so many former communists became billionaires after Ceausescu’s execution on Christmas 1989 – they took as their own as much public property as they could before the people woke up to take inventory and to send to justice the offenders. By the time the people woke up, the damage had been done and billions of dollars in cash and public property were missing without a trace.

Tyrants do not care if they violate their people’s human rights. They do it with ease because, in their eyes and their communist ideology, humans have no rights at all. They must do as they are told and must worship the dear leader in every conceivable way – poems, guided applause, statues, posters, TV programs, daily mainstream media propaganda, concerts, parades, marches, monuments, self-dedicated buildings, and any form of mass media adoration and deception, including newspapers dishonestly and falsely called “The Truth.”

Media euphemisms invented to deceive the masses serve a tyrant’s ideology to the fullest because a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. Truth then dies on the altar of the socialist/communist ideology and reality mourns it abundantly.

Even in death tyrants were worshipped and masses were forced to parade by, grieve, and fake-cry his loss, a last tribute to venerating his dominance and control by terror. I still remember as a child having to pay “respects” to our first communist tyrant, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, a man who made our lives miserable each day, and having to walk alongside my parents in a vast line stretching for miles.

Abject fear is a tyrant’s strong educational bamboo stick. When people are disarmed, fear reigns.

 

 

Political Indoctrination at Our Local Grocery Store

I saw two black posters, framed and displayed at both entrances of our local Wegman’s grocery store – “Stop hate, end racism, spread love.” Nobody can argue with the message, but I find it offensive because it is political indoctrination in a place where I buy food.

I asked the cashiers’ manager, a young self-described black woman, why a grocery store would get involved in politics and political indoctrination of the day, coming from the left side of the political spectrum instead of selling groceries. Her answer was that she was from Buffalo and everyone in her town, which suffered violence at the hands of a deranged man, was happy that her employer stood behind its employees. But Wegman’s headquarters is not in Buffalo, it is in Rochester, NY. She just stared at me.

I told her that I failed to understand how a piece of paper with three sentences on it protected her from “white supremacists and racists” in this particular store.

She replied that she felt safe because those two posters were there. I asked her how a poster would protect her from another deranged individual walking in with a gun and committing violence against innocent bystanders and shoppers.

I further inquired if money would not be better spent on caring for the mentally ill and to institutionalize those with violent tendencies, until such time that it would be safe to have them walk among unsuspecting citizens. “No,” she answered, “hate and racism cannot be reversed.”

I asked her if she could give me one example of racism and hate that she experienced here in northern Virginia. Her answer was that she did not feel comfortable talking about it in the grocery store.

I replied that she made my point. I do not feel comfortable being lectured and politically indoctrinated in a grocery store either, by posters prominently displayed at both entrances, however seemingly innocent the three sentences may be. It is political pandering to the left and its divisive agenda. I prefer to find milk in a grocery store, not politics. On this day, the shelves where milk was found were empty. There was Fair Life milk in the back of the store.

I ended our conversation after I told her that I did not feel comfortable buying food in a place that is trying to indoctrinate me, a survivor of communism. We had such political indoctrination posters under communism all over the place, including grocery stores.

In Memoriam! Dr. Vladimir "Zev" Zelenko was an American Hero (1973-2022)

 Reprinted from the AAPS (American Association of Physicians and Surgeons) email:

Thank You Dr. Zev Zelenko (1973-2022), a Hero for All Patients and Physicians - AAPS | Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (aapsonline.org)

AAPS mourns the passing away after a long illness of Dr. Vladimir “Zev” Zelenko, who inspired physicians to save millions of lives by treating Covid-19 early with hydroxychloroquine.  Dr. Zelenko’s courageous stance in favor of patients and the ability of physicians to treat them will forever live on in his name. As misguided public health authorities demanded that physicians not use hydroxychloroquine and other inexpensive medications for treating patients early for Covid-19, Dr. Zelenko did not waver in his dedication to patients.  He generously shared his “Zelenko Protocol” with all other physicians, thousands of whom used it to save the lives of millions of patients suffering from Covid-19. Dr. Zelenko’s leadership is timeless in how to treat Covid-19 patients, while not being intimidated by authorities who improperly interfered with use of his brilliant treatment protocol.  Zev’s shining example is what all physicians should aspire to be, and he will continue to be a model for the medical profession for generations to come. Our gratitude and prayers go out to his family.  Our work at AAPS with medical students will continue to urge that all reach for the immortal high standard set by Zev and seek to attain it as best we can. Zev seemed like an angel sent to us, whom we could only obtain glimpses of how wonderful he really was and continues to be.  He departs this world with our endless gratitude, and leaves our medical profession with a priceless legacy.

Let’s Buy Electric Vehicles We Cannot Afford

1905 electric car

I’ve been trying to purchase a new Toyota hybrid car for quite a while. The dealer lots are quite empty.  Customers are told that they must “reserve” a car in order to purchase. That never happened before in America in any previous administrations.  In the meantime, Toyota recalled a few thousand electric cars before they rolled out to the dealers.

The environmental “Green” politicians and our government have tripled the price of gasoline through its anti-fossil fuel economic policies from day one of this disastrous administration, in hopes that Americans will rush to buy their expensive and unaffordable electric vehicles (EVs) as mandated by the Green New Deal which is neither green, nor new, nor a deal.

To use a phrase that the globalist left and the United Nations have concocted in 1992, “sustainable,” to describe just about everything we do in life and in any economy, EVs are not “sustainable” for many reasons. They are just a toy for the rich and for young Americans with trust funds or money to burn on the latest fad.

You don’t have to be an engineer to realize that there are huge problems with the total replacement of fossil fuels and combustion engines with electric cars powered by lithium batteries.

Young engineers claim that the United States would only need to increase its energy production by 30 percent to accommodate all the possible EVs Americans would drive. But the theory of energy needed is quite short-sighted and leaves out a large swath of our giant economy and its commercial needs. The calculations only take into account private driving and not our industrial and transportation needs, i.e., big trucks, ships, airplane fleet, military, hospitals, schools, businesses, etc.

Few mention our aging grid that needs huge upgrades in order to prevent crashing. The patch grid currently in use fails frequently during power surges and larger needs due to inclement weather and heat/cold waves.  Blackouts are already occurring without millions of EVs in use and in need of charging.

Lithium batteries have a lifespan of 7-8 years and the cost of a new battery is $10,000. The rare metals are not in endless supply and lithium must be mined in certain countries where pollution is rampant and child labor is used.

Construction and disposal of lithium batteries is controversial as they are seldom recycled, they must be buried.

Producing such lithium batteries is certainly not carbon neutral at all even though the engine of an EV may not pollute the environment.

We know that time is money and the downtime between charges, somewhere along the highway, is certainly an issue that must be taken into account. There is a huge opportunity cost to such collective downtime that nobody has bothered to calculate.

Gas stations service hundreds of cars a day, filling the tanks quite rapidly. In order to have a large electric station that could charge even a fraction of cars in much longer time, one needs acres and acres of space to accommodate EVs sitting there for half hour or more at each station terminal.

People living in high rise condos and apartments would be unable to charge their EVs overnight unless they run electric cables out the windows which is totally impractical or park in garages that are retrofitted with electric chargers for each parking space, a cost that would be collectively astronomical to invest in.

EVs draw serious amps to charge, thus popping transformers like corn in a kettle.

The electricity for charging stations is generated mostly by fossil fuels, not carbon neutral fairy dust as claimed by proponents.  To say that solar panels could provide the electricity needed for EVs is ludicrous when you consider that a town of 45,000 people would need 15 square miles of solar panels to support its electricity needs.

Owners of EVs, if they can afford the high prices, will become slaves to a designated dealer for service. Insurance rates for EVs are certainly higher, and first responders to an accident would need specialized equipment to deal with a crash or the ensuing lithium battery fire.

Are there enough rare earth metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel to produce just batteries for EVs?

Without fossil fuels, how do the “Greens” propose to mine the metals for the EV batteries, with picks and shovels?

What happens when the metal resources for EV batteries dry out?

Until all of the above problems are solved, hybrids are a good interim solution to cut back on air, water, and soil pollution.  

Until such time that the grid is seriously updated and not patched, and the proper infrastructure to accommodate EVs is established, EVs are just more expensive toys for rich people and millennials to virtue signal what good earthers they are and what dangerous polluters the rest of us are.

 

 

 

Phone Conversation with Maria*

A few days ago, I talked to my childhood friend about our shared fifteen years in the same communist apartment block built in a hurry in the 1960s by the communist party regime. The activists were eager to move into that drab concrete and steel building as many villagers and urbanites as possible, farmers whose property they stole and whose homes they demolished, and poor proletarians who had no home of their own as everything of value they had ever owned had been confiscated by the Communist Party for the “good of the people.”

We reminisced about our fifteen years in the same government schools but different classrooms, and what our parents tried to do to help us survive and even in some cases, make our existence better. Her life was much nicer, we did not understand why at the time, but we gathered around her mother’s tiny kitchen as often as she would allow us.

Maria* told me that her dad used to be the communist apparatchik in the factory where he worked. As payment, for reporting on what other workers said during casual conversations at work, and for his efforts to indoctrinate others during daily discussions and weekly mandatory “syndicate” meetings, he received a monthly monetary stipend and rations of food from special stores dedicated to the loyal communist party members and activists.

Not all workers were permitted to be members of the communist club, they had to earn that distinction. And having an unacceptable background that was considered “bourgeois” was not exactly a ringing endorsement for membership in the rarified club of Bolsheviks. It did not take much to be considered “bourgeois,” a larger plot of land, or a nicer home inherited from parents and grandparents who worked hard to build it.

Bolsheviks welcomed snitches and convincing activists like her father who sported grey hair at an early age, making him look more distinguished, like a wise sage who could be trusted. When he died of old age, Maria threw away all his rubbish books he had in his communist activist library.

Maria had a rare rotary dial telephone in her home, something we only dared to dream. Most apartments had to wait 14 years to have a phone installed and bugged. Maria had better and abundant food, nicer clothes, medicine and proper medical care, finer furniture, and a black and white TV long before our parents were able to afford one.

Today, 33 years since the “fall” of communism in Romania, we were able to talk openly about our lives from long ago and laugh about it. That is not something we could have done during the oppressive socialist republic regime.

Another friend who lived on the same fifth floor as my parents did, right across from our apartment door, had a better life than ours as well, thanks to their father, a trucker, who lifted items regularly from whatever shipment he was hauling that day, and brought them home to feed his family. When he had an excess of whatever was in his cargo, he bartered with others. Decades later, his son, with a sweet but toothless grin, was still living in the same apartment with his family and elderly mom.

As kids, we did not understand the implications of why those two families’ lives were better. We just saw more food and we were hungrily envious. Nobody brought food to our door but, as we played games or did our homework in her apartment, sometimes we would get morsels of whatever desserts the lady of the house prepared for her family. The wonderful smells would waft up the concrete block’s stairwell and people knew who was cooking tasty food that day.

My daddy, an honest man to a fault, despised these people who stole to survive. Daddy knew bartering with stolen food was against the law and punishable by long jail sentences, but these people were desperate to keep their families alive any way they could in the absence of welfare. One neighbor went to jail for several years for simple theft at his factory. Daddy always said that he would rather we starve than steal from the oppressive regime that kept us so thin and dependent on their food rejects and bones scraped off meat that the inept communist party economic planners brought to the market daily.

My mom always shook her head in disapproval at how much food Americans squandered each day, not realizing how close to food shortages they are. In the end, the abundant system in this country failed her just as miserably as the communist system in Romania had failed her decades ago. Mom’s favorite phrase for everything not run properly was, “this is a village without dogs.”

 

*This is not her real name

Niculina Apostolescu's Obituary

Today, we are honoring the life of our beloved Niculina Apostolescu, born in the Ilie family in Tirgosul Vechi, Romania, on March 17, 1932.  She was one of 6 children raised under a tumultuous time in our global history, World War II. Although not formally educated beyond eighth grade, Niculina (Bibica) had an innate sense of intelligence that stretched far beyond that of textbooks and school; she understood how to survive and prosper.

The light of our lives was extinguished on June 9, 2022. Her happy smile, love, devotion to family, boundless generosity and love are gone forever. Our hearts are inconsolable.

Niculina Apostolescu is survived by her only child, Ileana Johnson, her granddaughters, April J. Jones and Mimi Eileen Johnson, her son-in-law David Paugh, her great-grandchildren, Holt Jones and Hardy Jones, her youngest sister Elena Gheorge, several nephews and nieces, Dragu Ilie, Carmen Ilie, Monica Adam, Rodica Zamfir, Stefan Zamfir, Adi Carpen, Cornelia Ilie, Mircea Apostolescu, Vasile Apostolescu, Lioara Apostolescu, Ionel Apostolescu, and Gigi Apostolescu.

A natural homemaker, Niculina loved to cook, took care of others selflessly, and was one of the best bakers in the family. Her bread and “sarmale” (stuffed cabbage) were legendary.

At the age of 48 she escaped communist Romania and defected to the United States where she became a permanent resident. She helped raise her granddaughters in the U.S. and lived a much better life than she would have lived under the oppressive communism.

When she defected in 1980, the communist government confiscated all her property left behind, personal belongings, her savings, the apartment she co-owned with her husband Florin Apostolescu, and her pension. She owned nothing anymore and was never happy about that. But she lived a happy life in my home until she was struck with dementia and needed nursing care around the clock.

Niculina’s crocheted doilies in the shape of grapes were famous. People loved her stitchery and her macrame artwork painstakingly done with a thin crocheting needle. A few people in Mississippi display her work in their homes to this day.

Her green thumb was revered by everyone; how she could bring plants back from the brink of death and give them new purpose and life. She was a calming presence in the lives of so many, never having met a baby or an animal that she did not love, and always wanted to entertain and host people in our home.

Although raised in a very stoic generation, she had such an ingratiating sense of humor that would make a sailor blush. It was dry and subtle, but impactful. This brought joy to so many.

Although native English speakers could not readily communicate through language with Niculina, she communicated through the love and kindness she showed others. She never learned English but she taught her granddaughters to speak Romanian fluently.

Some people think that she was so fortunate to have lived such a long and full life, this is true, but to those who knew and loved her, it will never be enough. Love cannot be quantified in years, but in experiences and memories. Even in death, her spirit and legacy are not extinguished, but remembered so fondly in the lives of those she touched in so many positive ways.

Her earthly body may have reached its final sunset, but her endearing soul remains ever present in her family, and in nature; the flora and fauna she loved so dearly.

Niculina was extraordinarily strong in her Orthodox faith and strived to live her life by those principles daily, reading scriptures each night before going to bed. She never feared death or talking about what comes after our physical body has ceased functioning.

For many of her family, she was the glue that kept them together, helped pick up broken pieces, help mend back together broken relationships, and comforting broken hearts.

Niculina, our beloved Maia (grandmother) and Mom, we are eternally grateful for having been a part of your family and life, and thank you for loving us unconditionally, even when sometimes we took it for granted. May God grant you Eternal peace and Rest!

“Her children rise up and called her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her. Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” Proverbs 31:28-29