Holidays—Must Be Time for Another Crisis

News came out over the holiday weekend about a new variant. Followed by calls to panic.

I was listening to a meditation training the other day, which said that one thing that happens with fear is that you cease to breathe, or you fail to breathe deeply. If you take the time to breathe deeply, the fear can turn to simply excitement or interest in whatever was suddenly upon you without warning. So let’s take a moment here to breathe deeply. And then maybe we’ll think better.

Since I’m not a doctor, just a regular person trying to make sense of things, I’m getting my information from what I believe are reliable sources, and I’ll try to reference those. When it’s just me trying to think things through, I try to make that clear.

The new variant of SARS-COV-2 is called omicron. The names have been coming from the Greek alphabet. The most recent was mu, so the next was to be nu. And in fact the first story I heard about it called it nu. But the namers of such things (the WHO) decided to skip nu, because it can be confused with the word new; then any new variant after nu would be called the new variant, confusing it with the old nu variant.

tweet about the naming of the new variant,
found here

So the next option was to be xi (pronounced like z-eye; the Greek letter X, pronounced like sky without the s, is a later letter). That however was said to be confused with the common surname Xi (pronounced like she), which just happens to be the name of the Chinese dictator, in the country that originally spread the virus, but which the WHO doesn’t want to offend. So that Greek letter got skipped also.

That brings us to O; omicron (pronounced O-mi-cron, long O, short other vowels, accent on first syllable) is the small letter, while omega means large O, which you would think is the capital form, but it is a later letter in their alphabet. It’s all Greek to me, as they say. I don’t know what names they use after they get through the Greek letters. It’s sort of like hurricanes when they get through the entire alphabet in a season and have to start over.

So, what do we know about this virus variant? Not a lot. But we know that it was identified by doctors in South Africa. That doesn’t necessarily mean it developed there rather than somewhere else; it just means that’s where it was identified. Doctors there had been facing very few cases of SARS-COV-2 for some time; they were having something of a pause. Then they started seeing this version. Testing showed it was SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19), but the symptoms were not what they had been experiencing. This one showed no loss of smell or taste. There wasn’t much of a cough. If they hadn’t been alert, they would probably have dismissed this as just a cold and not known what they were dealing with. And that quite likely has been happening elsewhere in the world.

It was infecting younger people, often men, around age 40. This demographic tends to get over COVID-19 pretty easily anyway, so that may have affected the data they have, but so far zero patients with this variant have needed hospitalization, and zero have died. After a couple of days of tiredness and muscle aches (about what many people experience following the vaccine), it’s gone.

There’s some definite good news here. It seems to not be affecting the epithelial cells in the nose and throat; that’s why no change in taste or smell. And this also probably means no neurological damage.

From what we know so far, it is a milder version of the illness. Again, we don’t yet know how older or more vulnerable people might react to it. But if it becomes milder for them as well, then what we’re looking at is a good introduction to the endemic stage of the virus—where it becomes simply part of the background of our lives, instead of the focus.

Just to remind, because the reaction to this virus hasn’t followed what we have always known about viruses: they mutate and create variants. The progression is typically toward less virulence (damage to the individual body) and more transmissibility (ability to reach more hosts in which to replicate). That is what viruses do. That is what to expect. And that is mainly what we’ve seen. The delta variant, while more widespread, was milder for most people than the original.

Variants tend to leak through the vaccines. That is, the vaccines are less effective than on the original. There’s a reason for that; the vaccines target a particular protein, in this case the spike protein part of the virus. When mutations happen in the vaccine-targeted protein, then the antibodies provided by the vaccine may not recognize the virus and therefore fail to fight it before it let it replicates enough to make a person sick.

When a person fights off the virus, they develop immunity against the entire virus, not just the targeted protein. So the body’s immune system recognizes the mutated virus—up until the mutations make it a totally different virus—because there’s enough of the parts that make it that virus for the body to recognize. If we see a large increase in reinfection (this variant after recovery from some other variant), I think that means that then we might be very close to having a mutation beyond SAS-COV-2. We’ve seen this with the common cold caused by some endemic coronavirus.

We will wait and see on the vaccines, whether we have more breakthrough cases. But since the vaccines were targeted to an earlier version, and this particular variant alone has 32 mutations in the spike protein, we may find that the vaccines—targeting the spike protein—are less effective on this variant. Or not. We’ll see. But getting a booster that targets the spike protein the way it used to be, logically, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

So, we’re back to the things that don’t make sense. Panic, for one. South Africa’s medical officials not only identified the variant, they quickly shared with the world all their findings. And, as a result, countries all over the world shut down travel from South Africa. Not a single person has been hospitalized, let alone died, from this variant, as far as we know. And yet the country that behaved well is punished for their openness.

map of travel restrictions, found here

New York declared a state of emergency—with zero identified cases in the state, or even in the country. And Biden imposed a travel ban that looks suspiciously more racist than any travel ban his predecessor may have imposed on countries not screening for terrorists. People are talking about shutting down Christmas, returning to lockdowns and masking—for a variant that has led to only mild cases.

The World Medical Association Chairman Frank Ulrich Montgomery says, “The new South African variant is a good example of the mutations and us trying to prevent every possible infection and how it can’t be done. We don’t know anything about its dangerousness yet, but it seems to be spreading rapidly. My great concern is it could lead to a variant that is as infectious as Delta but as dangerous as ebola.” (Glenn Beck mocks this here.) 

Is this rational? Zero deaths, zero cases of hospital admission. But someone who I would assume carries some clout in the medical world worries it might be a very transmissible version of an almost instant killer. Based on what?

I’d like to know whether he had this fear about the Mu variant—you remember, the one we were supposed to be concerned about in September, even though it had been around since January and still wasn’t overtaking Delta. Or, before that, all the other Greek letters. Not to mention the many many variants that don’t get a label.

I learned about the new variant on Friday, when someone linked this story:

·       “New Concerning Variant: B.1.1.529” Katelyn Jetelina on Your Local Epidemiologist blog, November 26, 2021.   

This was the first news I had of the new variant. I’ve encountered this writer before and found her not very persuasive. This article is well laid out and documented, although I would say there’s more fear in it than the available information leads to.

So I went to Dr. Mobeen Syed, who looks at studies and data, and then thinks through it with other doctors. It turned out that he had taken time out of his Thanksgiving with family to look up information and share it. That was here.

·       “Omicron—How Bad Is It?” Dr. Mobeen Syed, November 26, 2021. 

He says for now there’s not a lot of reason for fear. And he added to that a couple of days later, with a summary underneath.

·       “Omicron—Different Symptoms” 

Here’s his summary:

According to the Dr. Angelique Coetzee who is the Chair of the South Africa Medical Board and a practicing GP in Pretoria, the symptoms are extremely mild. Scratchy throat instead of cough. No anosmia and loss of taste, however, lot of fatigue. A young child had high heart rate.

Dr. raised the alarm when four members of a family tested positive for COVID and all suffered with exertion.

Omicron is spreading rapidly among young people. Most patients from which the following symptoms are observed were men. Half of them vaccinated.

No or slight cough means: shedding will be limited to talking, laughing, etc. It will also mean that patients might not realize that they might be shedding. However, absence of cough itself is going to reduce shedding and spreading.

No anosmia and loss of the sense of taste is interesting. It means that the swelling of the olfactory epithelium is not occurring (at least in the patients she saw so far.) This also means that possible neurological effects and possible long-haul may be less frequent.

Patients complaint of sore muscles and tiredness according to Dr. Coetzee.

A six-year-old child had fever and very high pulse.

How is this variant behaving with older population and folks with comorbidities is not known yet.

Omicron's (B.1.1.529) Symptoms are not like delta (B.1.617.2), instead these are similar to beta (B.1.351 - South African variant). No loss of sense of smell or taste. No cough or slight cough. Just scratchy throat. However, severe muscle aches and tiredness.

Young people with body aches and pains and fatigue.

This is the account of the Dr. Angelique Coetzee. She says in an interview to Newsroom Afrika that she has consulted with other general practitioners. They all are observing very very mild symptoms.

No loss of smell or taste. No oxygen levels dropping at this stage.

Dr. Mobeen Syed links to an interview Dr. Coetzee did with Newzroom Afrika and adds, “Finally, this is a single doctor’s account of her patients. We will have to wait for more data from more doctors and studies.”

Dr. Angelique Coetzee, talking about the new variant from South Africa,
screenshot from here

On Sunday night’s Crossroads, Joshua Philipp covered the new variant among other news:

·       “Live Q&A: Governments Eyeing Lockdowns Over Omicron Variant; New Global Social Controls Emerge” Crossroads with Joshua Philipp, November 28, 2021. 

He read a comment from a viewer, Cameron Bacon, who said,

Josh, do I have amnesia, or did the Democrats and communists go from claiming they didn’t trust the vaccine under Trump to now backing a 100-day turnaround for a variant discovered a few days ago that somehow everyone knew about instantly?

He was referring to this story:

·       “US-Based Company Developing Vaccine That Targets New COVID-19 Variant” Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times, November 27 (updated November 29), 2021. 

There is indeed an effort now underway to develop a new version of vaccine based on this new variant. And one wonders why, if it was doable that quickly, that they haven’t do one for the Delta variant. In fact, as the vaccines appeared less and less effective, they pushed for more and more boosters.

Later in the podcast Philipp was talking about natural immunity, which ought to be news worth cheering about:

New information coming out is suggesting that people with natural immunity are of little risk of infection. And you can have an antibody test to see if you need it or not. You can have an antibody test. If people are talking about actual immunity, and if governments actually cared about actual immunity, natural immunity would be considered as part of that. Why it’s not is beyond me.

He read from this story:

·       “Naturally Immune People at Little Risk of Reinfection, Severe Disease From COVID-19: Study” Zachary Stieber for The Epoch Times, November 27, 2021.  

The story says,

Researchers in Qatar examined a cohort of over 353,000 people using national databases that contain information about patients with polymerase-chain-reaction-confirmed infections.

The studied population contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, between Feb. 28, 2020, and April 28, 2021.

Reinfections were counted if a person tested positive at least 90 days after their first infection.

After excluding approximately 87,500 people with a vaccination record, researchers found that those with immunity due to having recovered from COVID-19 had little risk of reinfection or severe cases of the disease.

Just 1,304 reinfections were identified. That means 0.4 percent of people with natural immunity and without a vaccination record got COVID- 19 a second time.

The odds of severe disease were 0.1 times that of primary infection, according to the study. Just four such cases were detected.

No cases of death were recorded among those who got infected a second time.

It ends with this summary:

[T]he study adds to the growing body of research that indicates that people who have recovered from COVID-19 enjoy high levels of immunity against reinfection, and even higher protection against severe disease and death.

There’s plenty of reason to be hopeful as we move into this holiday season. Those who are calling for panic may have an ulterior motive—not to protect your health, but to control your life. If you’re taking good care of yourself, thwart them by going ahead and living your life.

Here are some additional things I’ve read or seen:

·     “Biden Imposes Travel Bans He Called Trump Racist for Imposing” Robert Spencer for PJ Media, November 26, 2021. 

·     “It's the 'Nu' Variant. Everyone Run for Your Lives!” Rick Moran for PJ Media, November 26, 2021. 

·       “Dissection of the Omicron variant” from Newzroom Afrika interview with South African Medical Association's Dr Angelique Coetzee, dissects the Omicron variant, which has been detected in South Africa and is causing havoc throughout the world. 

·       “Omicron COVID-19 Variant Found in More Countries, Sparking Global Concern” Jack Phillips for The Epoch Times, November 29, 2021.

·       “The O variant” Dr. John Campbell, November 26, 2021. 

·       “Omicron - Is Immune Escape Imminent? A DeepDive” Dr. Mobeen Syed, November 30, 2021. 

·       “Omicron good news” Dr. John Campbell, November 30, 2021. 

 

Four Hundred Years of Thankfulness

The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. It was a year later, 400 years ago now, that the survivors got together to celebrate the harvest with the native Wampanoag tribe—which included Chief Massasoit, Samoset, and Squanto, the only English-speaking native within hundreds of miles, all of whom had helped the Pilgrims survive and learn to plant a better (and earlier) crop than they had their first season.

"The Embarkation of the Pilgrims" by Robert Walter Weir
image from Wikipedia

Here’s a piece of the history, told in this American Thinker article: 

The truth is, when the Mayflower pilgrims and the Wampanoag sat down for the first Thanksgiving in 1621, it was a routine—and amicable—harvest celebration. Seven months prior to that feast, they had negotiated a peace treaty, one that lasted for nearly 50 years. In fact, that 1621 treaty was the only one between Native Americans and English colonists to be honored throughout the lives of all who signed it. It was diseases such as smallpox and leptospirosis that largely and tragically led to the decimation of the Wampanoag tribe.

More on that last detail in a bit.

Thanksgiving Day hasn’t continued without missing years—or decades, or centuries—since that time. One of the first Thanksgiving Day celebrations of the newly formed United States of America was proclaimed by President George Washington on October 3, 1789, marking the last Thursday of November than year as “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God.” Even after that time, the celebration wasn’t continual. But it is a deeply entrenched tradition now, and has been since well before my lifetime.

As many of us are doing, I am taking time with family. And I’m doing a fair amount of cooking. We have a plethora of dogs with us this year (our huge puppy is learning to welcome guests and perform other social graces). We’re doing it because of tradition and the desire to be together. But we’re also doing it because thankfulness is a beautiful thing to celebrate.

I’ve been keeping a gratitude journal for several months now. I think of plenty to be thankful for in prayers morning and night and in between, but it is sometimes challenging to find the one thing worth writing down every day. But social science suggests what scriptures have long told us, that gratitude is a way to a happy life, so it has become a habit I want to keep.

An attitude of gratitude is a definite plus in the how-to-live-a-good-life advice. But it’s more than just an attitude; it is an offering as a token of return, even if only a word of thanks. And thanks is not simply about the things you’re thankful for; it’s about who you give that thanks to. And while we often have people to thank for specific things, this day is actually about giving thanks to God.

A study out of Brigham Young University “suggests gratitude to God—and an indebtedness to Him—is far more meaningful and impactful than simply gratitude alone. In other words, counting your blessings without recognizing their source will not give you true happiness.” 

When you give thanks this day, give it to God, to whom you owe all blessings—even those you haven’t noticed yet.

In that American Thinker article, the surprising thing is that there is something of a movement (that I hope does not gather any more energy to move further) saying that we shouldn’t be thankful—for the Pilgrims, for our great nation, for our prosperity; we should be sorrowful, and probably ashamed. And therefore we should re-designate the day as a day of mourning. Mourning, I’m assuming, that we as a people ever arrived on this continent, or that the nation was ever formed.

The article’s author, Eric Utter, offers this commentary:

My oldest brother—who recently passed—had cancer, glaucoma, and Alzheimer's—and when anyone asked him how he was doing, even shortly before he died, he would reply, "Better than I deserve!"

I guess that is partly why I previously found Democrats' incessant grievance-mongering and the cult of victimhood so repulsive and so damaging. Dividing us by identity, I thought, is disgusting. Encouraging jealousy, entitlement, and bitterness is a recipe for disaster. Wouldn't it be much healthier for all of us as Americans to come together in the love of our country, heritage, and unique founding ideals? Or our shared ordeals? I used to believe that if we could all come together with gratitude, that itself would be something for which we could all be thankful.

Apparently the “mourning” pushers think we should feel guilty for "celebrating the genocide of the Wampanoag tribe"—as if anyone getting together this day, with loved ones, to thank God for our blessings ever thought the diseases that badly affected the Pilgrims’ Wampanoag friends was a good thing. What a lie! Eric Utter references this story that calls actual history a myth, so as to invent an actual myth that is far uglier than what actually happened. 

It’s hard to know when to respond to such nonsense and when to ignore it. This year I’ve become aware. If such a thing gains traction, I’ll see what I can to do shout it down (in my quiet blogger way).

In my personal celebration, I’ve been looking for things worth sharing here. I’ll just reference a few:

·       “Barton: Let’s Thank the Pilgrims for Defeating Socialism This Thanksgiving” Tim Barton of Wallbuilders, November 18, 2021.  He gives the history of the tragic follow-up to the 1621 Thanksgiving, when the Pilgrims tried out a form of socialism that nearly killed them. They recovered by returning to private property, for which we can be grateful—and from which example we should learn as a cautionary tale.

1780 Proclamation for a Day
of Thanksgiving in Massachusetts

·       “Proclamation–Thanksgiving Day–1780,Massachusetts” image of the original provided by Wallbuilders, written and signed by then-Massachusetts Governor John Hancock.

·       “The story behind President Nelson’s global prayer of gratitude and invitation to #GiveThanks” Church News in the Deseret News, November 25, 2020.   This includes the video referred to, which can be seen on YouTube here, and included below. It’s about the healing power of gratitude, and could suffice as all I’d want to say here today.

·       “The Pilgrims’ Epic, TRUE Story Sounds a Lot Like Afghanistan” Tim Barton speaks with Glenn Beck, November 19, 2021, showing him an original Geneva Bible carried on the Mayflower and used by the Pilgrims. They discuss some of the history that led to the Pilgrims’ coming—and coming so late in the year—back in 1620. 

Please enjoy President Nelson talking about the healing power of gratitude, and then have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Three Books and Some Other Research Assignments

There are things related to COVID-19 that I’ve been trying to piece together, as a regular citizen without expertise, since the whole thing started. And I’ve been surprised at the things that get labeled conspiracy theories that later get borne out as true. That is happening.

My reading list has grown considerably this week. In one video Dr. Ryan Cole quoted Mark Twain, saying, “The man who doesn’t read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” The information is out there to be had. And a thinking person can find it. Thinking leads to the right questions, which eventually lead to true answers.

cover image from Amazon

So mainly today I’m going to list the books to read and the videos to watch, with just a little about each one. And then you’re on your own.

·       The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy was interviewed on Tucker Carlson Today, on November 15, 2021, an episode called “Coup de Vax.” He talks about a partnership between Fauci and Bill Gates, who came together with a plan to vaccinate essentially all of mankind. There’s a five-minute segment, mostly about Gates, that describes the type of corruption going on. And it’s a good illustration. Then we’ll go on to some of the dots that can be connected for Fauci’s personal culpability:

He began using his philanthropy to create a series of other quasi-governmental agencies: CEPI, GAVI, and a number of others. And then to gain control of the WHO.

He calls what he does philanthrocapitalism. It’s not about philanthropy; it’s about enriching the capitalist. What he does is, he buys—and he does this in a number of areas I show in the book. He does it with food. He did it with core curriculum. He buys large stakes in companies that could benefit from a change in governmental policies, a worldwide change in governmental policies. 

So he owns stakes, very very large stakes, in almost all the big pharmaceutical companies. Then he gives essentially about a billion dollars to WHO every year. But through Rotary International, through GAVI, through CEPI, and through the Gates Foundation—where the accumulation is even larger than the US, which is the second biggest. That gives him control over WHO’s policies. The analysts of WHO say there is nothing that goes through WHO that is unvetted first by the Gates Foundation.

And WHO controls the HIV money, and it funds the health agencies of most African countries. So they’re completely reliant on those annual checks from WHO. And what Gates and WHO do—or WHO on Gates’ behalf, because a lot of people at WHO do not want to do this—he is taking them away from their traditional occupations, which was economic development, hygiene, food supply, food production, and local democracy and local controls. So, WHO does very little of those things now, and they really focus—over 50% of their budget focuses on one of Gates’ vaccines only, the polio vaccine, which is a flawed vaccine. The polio vaccine, according to WHO’s own number, causes 70% of the polio on earth every year. So it’s not a successful vaccine.

But, what he does then is, he, through WHO—WHO will go in and say to an African country, “If you want your annual check from us, here’s what you’ve got to do. You have to show an 80% uptake of the DTP vaccine.” The DTP vaccine we don’t use in white countries, the United States. That’s the vaccine that was killing one out of every 300 kids. We got rid of it. Europeans got rid of it. But Gates gives 161 million African children that vaccine every year. And what he’ll say is, he’ll say—the WHO will say to this country, “You don’t get your HIV money; you don’t your systems money to run your health agency, unless you can show us you’ve vaccinated 80% of your kids”—that’s a hypothetical number, but it will be something like that—“with the DTP vaccine.” So those countries, then, are forced to buy that vaccine. And that vaccine, they have to purchase it ultimately from one of the companies that Gates is heavily invested in.

And Gates— He has a $33 billion corpus that he has put in the Gates Foundation, but it’s still his money. He’s still controlling it. And it’s now tax-deductible. It’s shielded from taxes. And he is now deploying it to change government policies in a way that it enriches companies that he’s elsewhere invested in.

And he does the same thing with food. He has switched many millions of Africans from subsistence that they’ve been doing successfully for, you know, 10,000 generations, to GMO crops, to heavily, you know, lots of chemical agriculture, carbon-based fertilizers—all have to be imported by his companies. He has huge investments in Monsanto, Cargill, and in the processed food companies that are then buying up those commodities cheap: Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Kraft Cheese. Those kinds of things.

So, the more you look at it, the more corrupt it gets.

But his deal with Tony Fauci—you know, which I go into in detail, what the result, the outcome for that bargain on the lives and health of millions and millions of Africans and South Asians has been absolutely catastrophic.

On a related note, there was this story today about Gates, doing what Kennedy described above, in the area of media:

·       “Bill Gates has given $319 million to bankroll select media outlets and change the public narrative—and the internet has receipts” by Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, November 18, 2021. 

 

cover image from Amazon

The next book on the list came up on Glenn Beck’s show November 17:

·         Faucian Bargain: The Most Powerful and Dangerous Bureaucrat in American History, by Steve Deace and Todd Erzen

Glenn Beck did another major explanation of corruption, called "Crimes and Cover-Up: Exposing the World's Most Dangerous Lie." It took three chalkboards. I was a full two hours. So far it’s still available on YouTube, and will continue to be available on BlazeTV (with subscription).

Many of the details are things I have come across before. He traces the history of SARS back to 2002. Anthony Fauci, before that, was attempting to come up with a vaccine for HIV, but he was doing it with an early version of mRNA, which didn’t qualify as a vaccine, by definition (the definition recently changed to accommodate the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines) and wasn’t effective. But he has been determined to come up with this new vaccine technology and have it be required for everyone in the world to take.

If you go through the history, you’ll see the connections between Dr. Baric of, I think, North Carolina University, and Dr. Shi Zhengli—the one called “the bat lady”—from China. Add in Peter Daszak, of EcoHealth, who managed funding from NIH to the Wuhan lab during the time government funding was disallowed for gain-of-function research. Dr. Fauci is involved in all of that. And recent emails show that he recognized the problems with the probable lab-leak revealing their secret funding.

There’s a careful timeline, with backup materials Beck says to go through yourself. So I downloaded those. It includes a three-page PDF list of sources. At the bottom it thanks DRASTIC research “for their tireless pursuit of the truth,” and then links to their in-depth work. I followed the link to here.

Concerning Fauci they have this segment:

Fauci approved a grant of $600,000 to the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] for bat coronavirus research.  Fauci has sworn to Congress that this was not for “gain-of-function” research.  Fauci was relying on a very narrow definition of the term, in which the purpose of the research was to produce more potent viruses.

There is no doubt that the type of genetic engineering conducted at the WIV and other research institutions could have produced potent viruses, even if its purpose was simply to examine the effects of such manipulation. Fauci and others involved in the grant, such as Peter Daszak, have a clear interest in the virus not to have been produced as a result of this research.

It will take some time to go through all of this material. But if Beck’s summary is accurate—and I believe it is, because so much coincides with what I’m seeing elsewhere and have been collecting from multiple sources for well over a year—then we can see in real time the kind of worldwide corruption that we thought we left behind in the last century: the needless deaths of millions of people because of the selfish designs of tyrants who claim they care about “the collective” while disposing of anyone they don’t care about. And they don’t care about anyone who questions them, disagrees with them, or simply can’t grant them more power.

Glenn Beck presenting a chalkboard discussion "Crimes and Cover-Up:
Exposing the World's Most Dangerous Lie."
screenshot from here

When he reviews the three chalkboards, he points out that, on that first one, titled “The Vaccine Arms Race,” the main players, Dr. Ralph Baric, Dr. Shi Zhengli—“the bat lady” of China—and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance are there from the beginning and throughout. But at the point he’s not ascribing ill intent. As he says,

These people actually believe that they should check all animals for all viruses. And they should find a vaccine for all of them, so we’ll always be prepared. OK, I think that’s insane. Very dangerous. But then again, I’ve been to the movie theater before.

But then there’s the big lie. There’s the connection to Anthony Fauci. He managed to pay for gain-of-function research—rather, he used our taxpayer dollars to pay for it, by funneling grant money through EcoHealth, during the years using government funding for it was not allowed. And then there’s this connection with Moderna, from 2015 on, and some very suspicious timing issues, and missing information.

On the second chalkboard, titled “The Pandemic Begins,” is where things start to look sleazy, with public-private partnerships popping up in places that benefit whoever Fauci decides they should benefit.

The real disturbing part is on the third chalkboard, title “Censorship & Cover-Up,” where he goes through a number of those Fauci emails that were recently released. There’s this part:

Two of the three men directing this propaganda campaign—and, make no mistake, as you will see, that’s exactly what it is. They were supposed to be part of Trump’s administration. Look at all of these facts. Is there any other way to describe it other than Fauci and the President’s science advisor colluding behind the President’s back, withholding information from him. Fauci has already been brought in front of Congress, and Rand Paul caught him in a bold-faced lie. Fauci will testify again. But it’s probably time to bring in the former president’s science advisor as well. Just a few, a couple questions, like, “Did you withhold information from the President? Did you ever lie to him?” That’s what will get it started.

Once you’ve watched Glenn Beck’s special, follow it up with Steve Deace’s panel discussion with Dr. Ryan Cole and Daniel Horowitz, titled “Crimes or Cover-Up? Answering the Forbidden Questions of COVID-19,” on The Blaze. 

 

cover image from Amazon

A third book not on my list is Dr. Scott Atlas’s book about COVID-19:

·         A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America, Dr. Scott W. Atlas, MD

I learned about it from his conversation with Tucker Carlson from November 17. Dr. Atlas was brought in to advise President Trump in late summer 2020. What he faced there was a “troika” of doctors: Birx, Fauci, and Redfield. All had worked together from back in the days of trying to develop an HIV vaccine. All are bureaucrats rather than doctors who see patients.

What surprised Dr. Atlas was how they never referred to any data during their meetings. He would bring in multiple studies for every meeting. They didn’t refute any of them. They simply ignored all data.

I’ve sensed that Dr. Redfield would like to have been more open to discussion, because he has been, somewhat, since his retirement. But that doesn’t excuse the utter lack of working with data during those task force meetings. The other two are probably beyond excuse. Dr. Atlas also couldn’t understand their lack of critical thinking.

So, after this sort of bombardment of info this week—all from independent sources, rather than what we now tend to call “legacy media”—maybe we’ll just list a few of the questions that come up when you look at what’s happening and do some critical thinking:

·       Why did we quarantine healthy people, instead of the most vulnerable, unlike all past disease outbreaks?

·       Why did “15 days to flatten the curve,” to avoid overwhelming the hospitals turn into 18 months (and counting) of “eradicate the disease” without any explanation for moving the goalposts?

·       Why is natural immunity ignored or dismissed, as if it doesn’t exist—when what doesn’t exist is any study showing it doesn’t exist?

·       Why is a vaccine being pushed for everyone, regardless of their risk factors, age, or natural immunity?

·       Why are vaccine injuries ignored?

·       Why was the definition of vaccine changed to remove the term “immunity”?

·       Why is the vaccine still being pushed (and attempted to be mandated) when it does no more than lessen virulence, and weakens in even that effectiveness within months?

·       Why have cheap, effective, safe drugs been banned?

·       Why have doctors been threatened for treating patients with treatments that work?

·       Why is damage to the economy and to other parts of public health ignored, with focus all on one single illness?

·       What has the censorship been intended to accomplish?

·       Why has the virus origin still not been found? Or that the probable origin location not acknowledged?

·       Who is to blame for the unnecessary deaths?

·       Why have so many people been willing to submit to edicts from elite doctors who do not provide their reasoning backed by data?

·       When will we stop the harmful lockdowns, shutdowns, and masks and get back to some sort of normal life?

·       When will the story of collusion and cover-up become common knowledge?

 

One last rather important question: When we are among those who have learned the truth, what do we do with it?

In That Case

Today were the closing arguments in the Rittenhouse case, where a 17-year-old boy shot three people in self-defense in late summer 2020 during riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Defense Attorney Mark Richards during closing arguments, November 15, 2021
(Defense Attorney Binger seated in the background)
screenshot from the Rekieta Law livestream

There are so many people who can talk about guns with more authority than I can. But I understand enough to know that this case has broader implications, because it puts self-defense on trial.

In the closing argument rebuttal today, the prosecution said some truly crazy things. Like, we all know what it’s like to get beat up sometimes. You should expect that. It’s not something you should kill somebody over. So, getting hit in the head with a rock and a skateboard and being attacked by somebody with a Glock in hand (a “small” gun, not a big scary one like an AR-15) is not enough; any reasonable person would wait until bodily harm was inflicted before using a firearm that could actually kill someone.

There’s plenty to say about the couple of weeks that have been shown to the jury. But it’s in their hands now, and we’re likely to hear a result by tomorrow.

If the result is a guilty verdict (unlikely), we could expect an appeal based on a mistrial, because there were enough causes for that before it went to jury.

This may be the most clear-cut case of self-defense in history. It should not have been brought to trial. But this case isn’t about law or justice; it is about political posturing.

I’ve been mostly following daily reports from Robert Gruler and Viva & Barnes. Today I watched large portions of the closing arguments—on Nick Rekieta’s livestream. He has been doing those daily. Today there were over 700,000 people watching his livestream when I tuned in, which shared the PBS livestream (because some other stream was more technologically unreliable) while he and a panel of law vloggers commented as they watched. When I checked that video again tonight, over 900,000 had watched. That in itself is kind of a phenomenon. Here are the 9+ hours of video from today.

·       “Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Monday LIVE - CLOSING ARGUMENTS” Rekieta Law livestream, November 15, 2021. 

screenshot of the panel of law vloggers following the closing arguments
on Nick Rekieta's livestream, November 15, 2021

Something to keep in mind is that the mainstream story has very little resemblance to what actually happened that night, or probably to what the prosecution claimed happened. Video and testimony, even of prosecution witnesses, shows that Kyle Rittenhouse retreated, avoided firing until the final moments, with more composure and bravery than many older people with much more experience. He did not provoke. He was attacked. He had reason to fear for his life. And a reasonable person would see that he is innocent. One of those he shot, who sustained a serious arm injury, testified that Rittenhouse didn’t shoot him until he drew his gun on Rittenhouse. The trial should have ended right there.

One of the many observers of the trial, billionaire Bill Ackman, a lifelong Democrat, watched the trial and realized the media story had been false. He said so in a series of tweets, and the response he got was, “Did someone hack your account?” In a fair world, the natural response would be, “Hmm. Maybe I should watch for myself.” Here’s that story:

·       “Billionaire Bill Ackman shows that 'the truth shall make you free'” by Andrea Widburg for American Thinker, November 15, 2021. 

You can watch (or rewatch) the daily coverage from Nick Rekieta at Rekieta Law on YouTube. But for the daily briefings, I recommend Robert Gruler and Viva Frei or Viva & Barnes—all of whom popped in on Rekieta’s panel today. Robert Barnes had been volunteering to help with the defense. He was set to help with jury selectionas were the guys from the Behavior Panel, world-renowned body-language experts. But the defense team at the last minute rejected all help. Not good. And there were times during the trial it looked like they should have paid better attention. But the closing argument today was quite good. Anyway, here are a few highlights from the past week or so:

·       Robert Gruler “Rittenhouse Trial Day 11 Recap: Closing Arguments Review” November 15, 2021. 

·       Viva & Barnes “Rittenhouse Closing Arguments RECAP” November 15, 2021. 

·       Viva & Barnes “Ep. 87: Rittenhouse; Arbery; Bannon; O'Keefe; Baldwin; Astroworld & MORE!” November 14, 2021. 

·       Viva Frei Vlawg “Rittenhouse Trial Final Day —, Rejection & Projection” November 12, 2021. 

·       Robert Gruler “Rittenhouse Trial Day 9 Recap: Defense Rests, Use of Force Dr. Black, Drew H Live, Video Evidence” November 11, 2021. 

·       Robert Gruler “Rittenhouse Trial Day 8 Recap: KYLE TESTIFIES!” November 10, 2021. 

·       Robert Gruler “Rittenhouse Trial Day 6 Recap: Gaige Grosskreutz Direct & Cross Exam, Crime Lab, Kenosha PD” November 8, 2021. 

Viva Frei (left) and Robert Barnes during their recap
after closing arguments, November 15, 2021
screenshot from here

The most interesting testimonies, to me, were Gaige Grosskreutz, with the mic-drop moment when he admitted under oath that Rittenhouse didn’t shoot until Grosskreutz aimed his gun at him; and Kyle’s testimony. He didn’t have to testify. The evidence was all in his favor. It was risky. But he handled it pretty well. He did break down near the beginning—evidence of PTSD, which Barnes later verified he is being treated for. After recomposing, he held up very well. Not flawlessly, but good enough.

There were times during closing arguments when the prosecution was creating the story of what Kyle was thinking—at each of which the defense should have said, “Objection: mind-reading”—but that Kyle’s own testimony had explained. His testimony always coincided with video and other witnesses. So, for those of us watching, and maybe for the jury, it was somewhat satisfying to hear from him. But it shouldn’t have been necessary.

We’ll have more answers on the Rittenhouse case tomorrow. It has been a painful trial for everyone who believes we have a God-given right to self-defense. The panel today, after the end of closing arguments, was guessing what would happen tomorrow. About half guessed it would be a hung jury—not because the evidence didn’t show that Rittenhouse clearly acted in self-defense, but because the jury will be afraid of reprisal if their identity becomes known. Or they don't want to be blamed for the outbreak of more riots. Or possibly because there will be a holdout jury member who already had prejudice against Rittenhouse and is disregarding all the evidence.

If that happens, I think it will not be retried; it will be dismissed, maybe on some Friday afternoon news dump. I don’t know. Maybe the judge could call it a mistrial, which he could have done, based on prosecutorial misbehavior. I can’t see it proceeding forward with us all going through this again. But maybe I’m naïve.

I’m encouraged that there were so many people paying attention. It is a certain kind of person who listens to Rekieta and the other law vloggers: people interested in law and order. Other sorts might tune in directly to the PBS livestream or other sources. But it was nearly a quarter of a million people today. Viva Frei has been commenting frequently on how the number of watchers has been growing daily during the trial. It’s a phenomenon. And it is a metric that means something good for our country.

I hope things go well for Rittenhouse tomorrow, because that is something good for him personally, and also good for justice. Eventually I believe things will be made right for him, whatever happens. And enough of us care about law and order that we won’t lose our rights to apathy.

So, long live the rule of law!

Think More, Speak More

I just want to take a moment ahead of today’s post to honor veterans on this Veterans Day! In my family we honor my grandfather, who fought in WWI; my father, who fought in WWII; and our son, who was twice deployed to Korea just a few years ago.

The wall in the building where our son was
inducted into the US Army, featuring the seal of 
each branch of the military, February 2012

_____________________

Now, on to today’s topic: political correctness. I’ve been reading Michael Knowles’ book Speechless, and I’ve been marking more passages than I could ever quote. One thing that caught my eye was the grammatical part of political correctness. Knowles says,

cover image found on Amazon

Political correctness relies on euphemism, soft words used to sugarcoat harsh realities. We all use euphemisms some of the time as a matter of good manners. We refer to old women as “women of a certain age.” We mourn those who have “passed away” rather than those who have died. In prior ages, a lady went to “powder her nose,” and she still uses the “bathroom” or the “restroom” rather than the toilet. We use euphemisms—literally, “well-speaking” or auspicious words—to be polite.

I all those cases, the polite euphemism softens the reality it describes, but it doesn’t contradict that reality. The old woman is indeed a woman of a certain age. The poetical “passing away” describes the spiritual fact of death. Women may indeed powder their noses after they’ve done whatever else they do in rooms that often include a bath and in which anyone might rest. Polite euphemisms soften the truth, but they do not lie.

So, that’s our starting place—polite words to soften harsh realities but that do not lie: that’s euphemism.

Then we get to something else altogether: the manipulation of language that is political correctness. Knowles describes it this way:

Leftists tend to manipulate language by using vague terms and jargon not just to soften but to conceal and even contradict the realities to which they refer. Killing babies in the womb becomes “women’s healthcare” and “reproductive rights,” even though abortion results in precisely the opposite of health and reproduction. After a Muslim terror attack on a church in Sri Lanka, Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for “Easter worshippers,” a bizarre moniker designed to hide the victims’ Christian identity. In fact, the sole instance in which Hillary used clear language in 2016—when she referred to Americans who refused to support her as “deplorable” and “irredeemable”—proved to be the most disastrous moment of her campaign. Clinton had made a critical error for a radical politician: she told people what she really thought.

Political correctness, then, is not politeness: it is using inaccurate words intended to conceal. It’s lying.

Then Knowles takes a look at the structure of the phrase itself. You take the noun correctness, and you put a modifier in front of it, and it changes it entirely. He credits the late presidential speechwriter and conservative columnist William Safire with using the description “adverbially premodified adjectival lexical unit,” the description itself a play on PC jargon. It’s easy to mock: for example, “short” becomes “vertically challenged.” PC itself, you might want to call “truth challenged.” Knowles describes further:

In this formula, the adjective or adverb usually serves to negate the noun or adjective it modifies. The term “politically correct” itself follows this politically correct formula by using an adverb to negate the adjective it precedes. That is, “correct” means true. But “politically correct” means not true. “Justice” means getting what one deserves without favor. The politically correct “social justice” is a form of injustice because it means getting what one does not deserve because one is favored. “Marriage” in every culture throughout history has meant the union of husbands and wives. “Same-sex marriage,” however favorably one views the concept, is not marriage.

We could list a number of other PC terms that follow this structure:

·       Transgender woman = not a real woman.

·       Justice-involved youth = a juvenile involved in something that is not justice, but criminality.

·       Overseas contingency operation = Obama-speak for something other than an operation, something like fighting a war.

How about this one:

·       Compassionate conservative.

It means something other than conservative—leftist/liberal lite. But it also implies that conservatism—the God-given rights preserved in our Constitution—is not compassionate. If it were the other side being so maligned, they’d take offense.

There are also PC terms that obscure meaning even without this particular structure:

·       Handicapable = not capable in the normal sense.

·       Woke = not awake and aware of reality.

·       Diversity = absolute lock-step agreement in thought, preferably with non-white or non-male genetics.

·       Fetus (or clump of cells) = baby, but taking away the human and live meanings so the mother who wants to rid herself of it will not feel the tinge of guilt that baby killing causes.

You can’t win—or even debate—when you agree to the enemy’s definitions of terms. Not even if you’re trying to be agreeable to find common ground. They have a tendency to change the lexicon as soon as people agree to it. In my lifetime, we have been told to call blacks

·         Negroes

·         Colored persons

·         Afro-Americans

·         Blacks

·         African-Americans

·         Blacks (again)

·         Persons of Color

After trying to keep up, out of politeness, for some time, I got to a point where I now just use the simplest term, the one most likely to convey meaning, not offense: black. Usually I do not capitalize, just as I would not capitalize white in the description of someone’s skin. Neither white nor black is very accurate, because most blacks are some level of brown; most whites are some level of peach or tan. Many many people of most ethnic and racial backgrounds are in the middle (as I am). Negro is from the Latin, meaning “black.” I understand why the unutterable N-word is not to be used, since it pretty much always meant a derogatory version of Negro. But I don’t really understand why the actual term became no longer usable.

Biden, speaking November 11, 2021
screenshot from video tweet within this article

Incidentally, while I was writing today, Biden managed to talk about “Negroes,” as though he’d never stopped using the term, even though Obama had outlawed its use in government. But it is mainly conservatives calling him out—for the inconsistency and duplicity of the Biden supporters. He was referring to a baseball player, from the times there was a Negro league (as it was called at the time). He refers to that awkwardly, but I don’t think he actually forgot what to call blacks today. Still, his gaffe is amusing, as is the media’s covering for him.

I don’t understand why Afro-American fell out of favor, but African-American shortly thereafter (a decade or two) fell into favor, when they are nearly identical. Neither is very useful to describe skin color, because not all Africans are black (the very blonde Charlize Theron comes to mind, as well as a number of Middle-eastern-looking people along the Mediterranean in northern Africa). And certainly not all blacks are American. Are you supposed to learn their lineage before you can refer to their skin color? What do you call blacks in Britain? What about those from Jamaica, not Africa? Are they Jamaican-Americans when you refer to where they immigrated from, but African-Americans when you refer to their skin color? What if they’re still Jamaican nationals who happen to be residing here? African-Jamaicans-in-America?

I have a friend from Honduras. She is clearly black looking, as are all the members of her family. Spanish is the native language. She has been here for about 20 years, and her English is good, but she still has an accent that is challenging for our communication (as my Spanish probably is for her). I asked her, quite sincerely just curious, about the history where she is from, because it was something I did not know. She says everyone from her homeland looks like them, but she is unaware of any origin story of people coming from Africa. I imagine if you go back far enough, you might find a connection from Africa. But it’s so far back, these Honduran people aren’t even aware of it. So, under what circumstance would it make sense to call her and her family African-American, when they clearly are not?

I don’t understand why “colored person” became taboo, but “person of color” is considered polite. The only explanation is that it’s a trap: if you try to follow their speech code, they will change it—because the goal is to be able to shame you for being racist, and this is how they come up with evidence against you.

Knowles points out that “this constant flux is a feature, not a bug, of political correctness.”

There’s a quote Knowles uses to begin Chapter 1 of his book, from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

illustration by John Tenniel, circa late 1800s
found here

The one who controls the meaning of words has power over the one who is not controlling the meaning. That describes the mostly lost culture war. As Knowles says in reference to the debate over the definition of marriage,

The cultural revolutionaries found it far easier to redefine the terms according to the conclusions they hoped to reach. When conservatives acquiesced to the verbal trickery, the radicals won the debate before it had even begun.

And I like this line: “What begins with semantic quibbles ends with refashioning the entire political order.” One thing I have to say for Knowles, whose first published book was wordless: he has quite a way with words.

He points out that conservatives tend to agree, along with John Stuart Mill and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and others: The answer to bad speech is more speech. But those trying to take over the culture believe: The answer to bad speech is censorship.

In such a discussion, one could hardly leave out Orwell’s 1984. Knowles says this:

Big Brother’s government relies on the control of language to maintain power. “Newspeak,” the novel’s most direct prophesy of political correctness, controls its subjects’ minds by changing and limiting their lexicon. Through this curtailing of language, “thoughtcrime”—that is, dissent from party orthodoxy—becomes impossible.

When you control the words, you control the thoughts. Newspeak was designed to take away the ability to refer to certain ideas; it removed the words necessary to conceptualize them. Imagine if you were to take away a common idea, for instance, friendliness. For a while you could use multiple other words, like “goodwill among people who are well acquainted.” But how often would you be willing to refer to someone by saying, “He seems like a person of goodwill among people who are well acquainted, even though I am not well acquainted with him yet”? Before long, you’d simply let the concept go.

In real time we can see this kind of destruction of the words marriage and family. The PC dictators accuse us of disrespect if we do not acquiesce to redefine these words to mean something they are not. For marriage, that would be something that does not involve the sexual procreative act between people who are permanently committed to only each other, and who plan to remain together for the rest of their lives. It has—only in this century, which is only two decades old—come to mean “any two adult persons currently in a sexual relationship.” That’s a very different concept, leaving out creating offspring, exclusivity, and permanence. How can you wonder that the purpose was to destroy to institution of marriage by changing what is thought about it?

And family? We have all the social science data that shows children are most likely to have the best outcomes when they are raised by their own married mother and father. But now we are told it’s impolite—politically incorrect—to assume that two men with a random child, or two women who certainly no more than one of whom is genetically related to a child are “family.” Or single parents who never marry a string of live-in men. Or whatever other arrangement you might think of. Family changes from "parents raising their children" to "any combination of adults with any children or no children." When you change what it means, you erase the idea of its original purpose. If you look at China, where they long enforced a one-child policy, they have raised a generation or two who have no concept of sister, brother, aunt, uncle, or cousin. One hopeful sign is the culture ware is that, in Virginia, where the now-former governor accidentally said what he thought out loud, that parents shouldn't have the right to decide what their children are taught in schools, he got booted out of office.

I haven’t reached the end of the book yet. I don’t know whether Knowles provides us a solution. I suspect not. He ends his preface with,

Political correctness has left us speechless, but the right to speak means nothing to those who have nothing to say.

I suspect his book is a call to speak, to have courage, to keep a grasp on our words and their meanings, the way I keep an old dictionary to remind me of what words meant some 40 years ago. And we should keep using the words that mean what we want to convey. We should keep thinking the concepts of those words. The more words are forbidden for our use, the more we should explore the true meanings that are being snuffed out before our eyes.

We need to think more—and we need to speak more of what we think.