Coronavirus and other stuff

Do you realize the chance of spreading or contracting COVID-19 while outdoors enjoying God’s gift of fresh air and sunshine is, according to the CDC, just about zero (less than one-hundredth of one percent). And interestingly, the self-described smart people who enjoy telling us how to live the details of our lives have known this for many, many months, probably since April 2020. This is why I have never worn a face mask when outdoors, and why I never will. Since I have been vaccinated, and received my second Moderna shot over a month ago, I don a mask indoors only when a business or organization demands I do so. After all, it’s their property and if it makes them happy, okay, I’ll comply, even though it’s idiocy. As a form of mild protest, I have started to seek out businesses that actually follow the science and realize vaccinated people are not a threat to others. As our enlightened Governor Ron DeSantis stated: “If you been vaccinated, act like it!”  I am so happy I live in Florida. Our president, though, lives in the nation’s most corrupt city, Washington, D.C. Because he is old, almost two years older than me, he too has been vaccinated. And yet he apparently wears his mask wherever and whenever there’s a camera to capture his image, even when he’s on a video call with other world leaders. “It sets an example,” someone in the administration remarked. But what kind of example? Does he hope to convince the leaders of other nations that Americans are fools, or at best led by one? It would seem so. 

Hot news flash! Actually two flashes! The first, President Biden told us today that if you’re vaccinated, being outside without a mask is okay with him...unless you’re in a group, then you’d better ignore your common sense and wear a mask. Too late and too little, Mr. President. You and the CDC are still waaay behind the science. Oh, how the power hungry just love to keep control of people. It’s time to revert to normality and live our lives as we’d like. Interestingly, as the President walked across the lawn to the podium to deliver his message that masks were no longer needed outdoors, he was wearing a mask. Ah, well, maybe he should join the rest of us here in The Villages. He’s certainly old enough. The other flash: I just read that our esteemed Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will permit President Biden to speak to a semi-virtual joint meeting of Congress this week without wearing his mask. The fact that our congressional leaders still require their members to wear masks, despite the fact they’ve all been vaccinated, is more than ludicrous. But I suppose it helps advance the “we’re got the power, peasants, and don’t ever forget it” syndrome. Whatever happened to the founders’ belief that the people are sovereign, not the government formed to do the people’s will?

By the way, speaking of Nancy Pelosi — the “I’m a devout Catholic” politician who rejects Church teaching — did you happen to catch a rather interesting statistic? In San Francisco, the city she represents in the U.S. Congress, a total of 257 San Franciscans died as a result of coronavirus. But during the same period 713 of the city’s citizens died of drug overdoses. And also during this same period we have spent trillions on coronavirus and relatively little on fighting these killing drugs. As I write these words, these same drugs are pouring over our borders thanks to the incompetence of the Biden administration. As border patrol and ICE agents are distracted and overwhelmed by thousands of unaccompanied children, invited to come here by the president, other illegals are crossing the border carrying drugs like the deadly fentanyl and spreading them throughout our country. The cartels are running the show, running drugs and trafficking children, while our federal government supports them in this evil.

Did you watch the Oscars? Didn’t think so. Judging by the ratings it seems the only folks who actually wasted a Sunday evening watching these woke, out-of-touch, narcissistic imbeciles were other Hollywood types and their immediate relatives. Don’t you just love people who condemn the country that made them rich and famous? They also condemn its citizens as a collection of ignorant racists.  These citizens are the same people that actually pay for the mediocre films Hollywood’s produces. The entertainment industry, of course, has no monopoly on imbeciles. They also fill the ranks of NFL, NBA, and MLB teams, along with the boardrooms of many Fortune 500 companies. Based on the organizations these luminaries support with gobs of money, one can only conclude that they’re hoping for the ultimate triumph of socialism. Another irony, since they’d be the first to lose their incomes, and perhaps their heads, when the proletariat revolution hits the streets. 

Speaking of revolutions, the left would love one, but they hesitate because of one overriding truth: the citizenry of the United States is better armed than the leftist rabble. (Yes, even some deacons have a few firearms tucked away.) One can understand, then, why the left spends so much effort on “gun control.” Of course, it has nothing to do with controlling guns, but everything to do with confiscating guns, for the latter is their goal. This, sadly for them, will be an impossible task because every gun owner I know has no intention of turning over his or her rifles, handguns, or shotguns. And the people of the USA own over 400 million firearms. The leftist revolutionary wannabes face other obstacles, Perhaps the most obvious is the Supreme Court and its recent support for Second Amendment rights; hence the attempt to redefine the court’s makeup. The goal: a friendly, rubber-stamp court that ignores the Constitution. Finally, they hope to restructure the leadership of our military by packing the upper ranks with careerist officers who will go along and get along with the politicians. Once they have the military leadership in their pockets, they can bring in the big guns to control the country as needed. If they succeed in all these efforts the banana republics of Central America will look to us with envy.

Oh, there is so much more...particularly our new, defeatist policy relating to Iran and the resurrecting of Obama’s anti-Israel approach to the Middle East, but I’ll save it for another day.

Pray for our nation, brothers and sisters.

Gulags, Past and Present

Note: This post is the first of several that will address a book first published almost 50 years ago and its author's prophetic insights into our world today.  

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As usual, I’m involved in re-reading a book I first read years ago. It’s one of those books that many people bought because it received so much publicity when it first appeared, and they thought it would look good on their bookshelves. Written by a Nobel laureate, it was, however, non-fiction, quite long, and filled with pages of tedious, highly disturbing facts...so most of those who bought it never actually read it. This is a shame since it offers a detailed description of the blueprint followed by totalitarians of the left and the right once they take the reins of political power. 

The book? Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Its three volumes have been published in paperback editions, but the first two volumes are also available in a single hardcover. For those who might balk at reading this long work in its original entirety, an authorized abridged edition has been published. My copy Is the hardcover edition containing the unabridged Volumes 1 and 2, which I purchased shortly after it was first published back in 1973. Just an FYI: here’s a link to a used copy of the edition I own: The Gulag Archipelago. I’m sure you can find other, newer, and less expensive editions.

Before he turned his talents to researching and documenting the history of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union’s brutal treatment of its own citizens by Lenin, Stalin, and their toadies, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was already a highly respected best-selling novelist. His One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) gives us a glimpse of the horrors of the Siberian Gulag by telling the story of one man's struggle against the dehumanizing evils of Soviet communism. Among his other novels, I managed to read In the First Circle (1968), Cancer Ward (1968), and August 1914 (1971). As I recall, I read all of these novels while at sea during my Navy years. There was no TV aboard ship and certainly no Internet in those days, so when I wasn’t working, flying, sleeping, or eating, I could usually find an hour or two to read.

But it was Solzhenitsyn's great non-fiction work, The Gulag Archipelago, that for me had its greatest impact. It's one thing to read a work of fiction, even one based on and reflecting historical realities, but it's quite another to encounter the lives and deaths of thousands of real people with real names and real families, human beings devoured by a system of almost unspeakable evil. 

Both historian and prophet, Solzhenitsyn’s painstaking research presents his readers with the reality of communist ideology brought to life...or, perhaps more accurately, to death. He pulls no punches, and as we read we encounter the logical consequence of atheistic materialism, the culmination of a socialism that denies the sanctity of life and deifies the state. Solzhenitsyn bares the truth of the communist state as a cruel, demanding, capricious, and unforgiving god. In 1985 he summed it all up:

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then, I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by the upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as precisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

To read The Gulag Archipelago is to come to the undeniable conclusion that communism is nothing less than Satanic. And the sad truth is that so-called “democratic socialism” too often chooses to follow a similar path because to maintain its grip on political power socialist governments demand universal acceptance. Those who disagree must be silenced, one way or another.

I was led to turn once again to Solzhenitsyn's book after listening to some rather shrill comments made by Biden administration folks, some members of Congress, media pundits, and others who seem to have embraced rather unsettling approaches to dealing with their political opponents. Some examples:

• President Joe Biden seemed to dismiss the Islamist terrorism that has threatened our civilization over that past few decades, and decided to focus instead on "domestic terrorism" by means of executive order. By this, of course, he doesn't mean the months of destructive attacks, the riots, and the deaths perpetrated by far left groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. No, the president is focused on supporters of his predecessor, Donald Trump...you know, that collection of a few hundred January 6 wackos accused of trying to overthrow the government by means of an unarmed insurrection. Interestingly, beginning the day of his inauguration, Antifa and its allies have been rioting every night, continuing to work their destructive ways in our cities, but we hear not a word about it from the Biden administration. One gets the impression that the only folks deemed to be "terrorists" are conservative political opponents of Joe Biden.
  

• David Atkins, newly elected as a California member of the Democratic National Committee, told his Democrat colleagues to "start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan" so that we can "deprogam 75 million people" -- presumably speaking of Trump voters. Of course, such deprogramming can succeed only if its targets (victims?) are denied access to their usual sources of news and information. In other words, deprogramming demands a significant degree of censorship and the elimination of the Constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, among others. 

• Shortly before election day, Keith Olberman, former MSNBC anchor, let loose with another of his mindless rants:

"Trump must be defeated...and his enablers, and his supporters...must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society." 

Heavens! All 75 million of them? He advocates prosecuting American citizens for supporting and voting for a particular candidate. Olbermann’s a very scary guy, but fortunately I don’t think too many people actually listen to him...one hopes.

• Washington Post columnist, Jennifer Rubin, a "Never Trumper" who labels herself a Republican, used Twitter to tell the world that any of those Republicans who challenged the 2020 election results must be disqualified from public office and ostracized from society:

"Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into 'polite' society."

Personally, I really don't think I'd want to be accepted into Rubin's idea of polite society. It sounds horribly impolite. It also begs the question: What about all those Democrats who rejected the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections? How about it, Jennifer, can we eject them from your polite society too? Oh, wait a minute...that would probably include you.

• Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) believes that all Trump voters should automatically be suspects for a domestic terrorist attack and should be looked at by law enforcement. Cohen was especially concerned about all those National Guardsmen who probably voted for Turmp and were assigned to protect the Capitol. Can you imagine? We must protect the nation from all those conservative, patriotic, military folks who risked their lives to protect Steve Cohen and the rest of us from the global terrorist threat because...well, they might morph into domestic terrorists.  

• And then the nation — OK, just a tiny slice of the nation — watched Katie Couric (I really didn’t know she was still around) on Bill Maher’s HBO show as she jumped on the “deprogram the conservatives” bandwagon: 

“I mean, it’s really bizarre, isn’t it, when you think about how AWOL so many members of Congress have gotten. But I also think some of them are believing the garbage that they are being fed 24/7 on the Internet, by their constituents, and they bought into this big lie...And the question is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.” 

For Katie and her friends, to disagree with them on policy or candidates is to commit a political mortal sin, one that demands repentance and conversion, apparently by interventionist means if necessary.

• Finally, we have Michael Beller, a staff PBS attorney, who not only suggested tossing Molotov cocktails at the Trump White House, and added:

“We go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away...We’ll put them into the re-education camps.” 

His comments, which were recorded and leaked by a conservative group, were so over the top that PBS actually fired him...at least for now.

I could offer dozens more, but these suffice to make my point. Reading them calls me back to Solzhenitsyn as he describes many of the attitudes that led to the horrific reality of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. More on that in my next post.

Strange Doings

Just a few of the random thoughts that have arisen in my often confused and certainly aging mind as I try to understand the more confused minds of those who make the headlines.

Oh, Canada! A few days ago an acquaintance asked me, "Did you read what Canada has done? What's with those Canadians? Have they gone insane?" He was referring to a law passed overwhelmingly (67 to 11) by the Canadian Senate that makes it a crime to refer to a person's sex by other than the term the person desires. In other words, should a Canadian decide that he/she/it is none of these but prefers to be called by another manufactured pronoun, such as "zir" or "zie" or "zit" or whatever, you must acquiesce to the loon's desires or face criminal prosecution. As my friend suggested, this is, of course, insane. But rest assured, the Canadians have not "gone" insane, they have simply remained insane. Indeed, a mild form of insanity has been their occasional mental state for the past few hundred years. After all, rather than join us in our quest to free ourselves from tyranny, they remained loyal to King George III, a man whose madness is rather well documented. So...the Canadians rejected George Washington -- a good guy and a very smart and sane man -- and instead placed their future well-being in the hands of another George, who happened to be a madman. I rest my case. I have only one question: Will those 11 senators who voted against the measure be prosecuted for discrimination? This would seem to be the most likely outcome for a nation comfortable with insanity.

LGBTQetc and Islam. Isn't it a bit odd that the Alphabet Corps of self-declared victims of sexual discrimination has become another voice decrying what they perceive to be Western (i.e., once Christian) Civilization's rampant Islamophobia? I do find this odd since virtually every Muslim-majority nation has sharia-based laws prohibiting homosexual and "related" behavior. And in many of these nations -- including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, and others -- the punishment under these laws includes the death penalty. Strange bedfellows...so to speak. It only confirms the late James Burnham's belief that liberalism is just another form of suicide. (See his remarkable and prophetic 1964 book, Suicide of the West.) 

Violence on the Left. What do Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, and Bernie Sanders have in common? Well, OK, four of them are dead, but all five are (or were) Marxists. And once we establish that basic fact, the violence we encounter on the political left today becomes understandable. Socialism is just a seemingly "soft" form of Marxism. But it is Marxism nonetheless and accepts the basic tenets of Marxist faith. One of these tenets is the need for revolution to accomplish its ends. In the words of Elton John: "We go up the revolution, freedom strike another blow. Yeah, strike another blow." In this context, of course, freedom includes only the freedom to believe what the Marxist believes.

That's why all of those young collegiate Marxists, who have been indoctrinated by all those aging professorial Marxists, get violent whenever someone who holds an opposing view dares to show up on campus. Yeah, strike another blow.

That's why a mediocre comedian can hold up an effigy of the decapitated head of the president and get rave reviews from her fellow travelers. Yeah, strike another blow.

That's why a Bernie Sanders toady can decide it's fine to shoot up a Republican congressional baseball practice. Yeah, strike another blow.

That's why a Nebraskan Democratic official can say he wished the baseball-field shooter had actually killed that  Republican representative instead of just wounding him. Yeah, strike another blow.

Interestingly, according to a recent poll, registered Democrats now prefer socialism to free-market capitalism by a double-digit advantage: 49% to 37%. I can only assume this will lead to increased violence on the left and quite likely an increase in violent responses from the far right.

Yes, indeed, we live in a strange, confused world. Thank God for God.