Category: Thoughts

Unpopular

(You know I had to write something about this.)

If you haven’t heard, there’s a war going on. Truth be told, there are a lot of them. Funny how nobody’s talking about Israel’s attacks in Syria, Saudi Arabia’s continued bombing of Yemen, the genocide of the Uyghurs in occupied East Turkestan, or the war still being waged against common sense in English-speaking counties. No, only one gets the media coverage.

Problem is, the media is backing the wrong side.

Zelensky is one of the most corrupt heads of state in the Western world. There’s a reason the Biden and Clinton families launder their money through Ukrainian businesses. They know they’re in good company, and that the local government will turn a blind eye. What do you expect from a comedian?

Now, that’s not to say Vladimir Putin is a saint. Far from it. He’s corrupt in a different way, owing to his long history with the KGB and its post-Soviet successor. Putin is a strongman of the same style as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and even Kim Jong Un. He rules with an iron fist, brooks no dissent, and is generally a poor example of a democratically elected leader.

As I write this, the Russian army is encircling Kiev. They’ve taken Kharkov, and already held Crimea after the 2014 revolution. But here’s where it gets interesting. You see, Putin has the perfect casus belli because of that event eight years ago. And, if he were the leader of any other country in the world, we would be backing him wholeheartedly.

Most of the countries of Eastern Europe are messes of cultural and linguistic tension. You might think that’s ancient history, but it really isn’t. The cultural barriers proved stronger than even the Iron Curtain. They broke up Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia a few decades ago, and the disputed independence of Kosovo a few years later. Most of the former Soviet states are arranged along ethnic lines, or as close as can be: Kazakhstan for the Kazakhs, Uzbekistan for the Uzbeks, and so on. Quite simply, it’s nationalism put into action. Yes, there are others in those countries who don’t fit in, but most regions have an overwhelming majority of their respective peoples.

Ukraine is…a little different. Yes, most people living there are Ukrainian, but a few parts have a very large contingent of Russian-speaking people. These Russian “enclaves” (for lack of a better term) include Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. All three of those declared their independence during the revolution. Crimea, as we know, was effectively annexed by Russia, but the other two weren’t. For almost a decade, they have been the subject of repeated and sometimes intense bombing campaigns. Their people live under constant threat. And the “good guy” Ukrainians were the cause.

Even if you detest Russia, and you hate Putin with the fire of a thousand suns, you still can’t deny that the people of Donetsk and Luhansk have a reason to side with the invaders. They have been occupied territory for eight years. Their democratic referendums were ignored by the world at large, as is the case in any other Western democracy with a thriving and justified separatist movement—look at Catalonia, for one good example.

So I stand against Ukraine. I stand against Zelensky and NATO, because they have shown that they care nothing for the most basic right of all: the right of autonomy. I stand with those who are fighting for their freedom and their lives in the Donbass region, just as I support any other valid separatist movement.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me move to more important matters. As we are seeing in real time, the West is trying to fight a war using nothing but propaganda and cancel culture. Fortunately, that is failing for anyone who has taken a moment to think about the situation, yet not everyone has done that. So why don’t we?

While the Donetsk and Luhansk occupations were Putin’s stated reason for going to war, the real reason is one he has been complaining about for about 20 years: NATO expansion. The vast network of agreements that ended the Cold War also came with a number of unwritten rules. One of those was that the two sides, NATO and Russia, would have a buffer between them, a neutral ground mostly made up of former members of the USSR: Belarus, Ukraine, and so on. NATO wouldn’t infringe on the border to antagonize Russia, and Russia would refrain in the same manner. In the Ukraine case, this unwritten agreement was later written, as part of the fallout from 2014.

Zelensky’s attempts to join NATO and the EU are a direct violation of that agreement. The West’s arms deals to his country are eerily similar to the events that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis. If we wanted to look like a threat from the Russian perspective, we could hardly do a better job.

Putin is not evil, nor is he a Joker-like psychopath who acts without apparent reason. No, he has reasons, and our media’s failure to acknowledge them has done everyone a disservice. Instead of pretending Zelensky is the plucky hero of a B-list action movie out to fight the new Hitler, we should all take a more rational look at the situation.

The “stand with Ukraine” contingent abandoned rationality already. They see a world of black and white when the reality is infinite shades of gray. They imagine themselves the audience of a Marvel movie, or perhaps extras in it, and they cannot comprehend the idea that anyone would see things another way.

But I do. I see the lies being poured out by both sides. Mostly by the West, by my own government. Russia is not losing this war. They’re advancing every day. They have advantages in manpower, materiel, and morale. They’re fighting for what they perceive to be their countrymen, as well as the defense of their very way of life. Supporters of Ukraine, on the other hand, are fighting to prop up a corrupt regime and a decaying alliance.

Russia has time on their side. They’ll never be overrun in a counterattack. The sanctions and boycotts barely hurt them at all. In some ways, those may even be helping: Putin’s approval rating in independent polls is at an all-time high. And China is waiting in the wings, ready to use this opportunity to remake the geopolitical landscape.

Most of all, though, the West’s overreaction to a border skirmish has shown how powerless we truly are. Sanctions against a top producer of oil, natural gas, fertilizer, and many other economic necessities will hurt us more than them. Cutting Russian citizens off from the global economy reveals its true intent as a blunt instrument of control.

Don’t stand with Ukraine because you think they’re the heroes. Stand against them because their allies—in other words, all of us—are increasingly looking like the villains.

Ottawa has fallen

In America today, we live next door to a communist dictatorship. That is a fact one can no longer deny. Last week, Justin Trudeau assumed unlimited and unchecked powers usually reserved for the direst of wartime circumstances. Why? To stop a legal protest of Canada’s working class from upsetting a few elites.

At every turn in this sordid tale, Trudeau has chosen the path of the despot, following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chavez, Nicolae Ceausecu, and Trudeau’s own potential birth father, Fidel Castro. Rather than take the simple and harmless step of ending the mandate that Canadians be subjected to a dangerous and unnecessary genetic experiment as a condition of employment, hospitalization, or even emigration, he has doubled down on the fear and terror. He has become a tyrant of the worst kind. As C.S. Lewis stated:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

This is what our neighbor to the north has become. America’s Ned Flanders has turned into the world’s Montgomery Burns. It is no longer enough to support the truckers. Now, all those who love liberty must throw their support behind the growing movement to expel Justin Trudeau and all those like him from power. Never again should such people be allowed to hold the reins of government, perverting the very ideas of liberalism and representation.

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people does not turn on its own citizens. It does not trample peaceful protestors or freeze the bank accounts of those who support a just cause. It does not bar journalists from reporting on these abuses of power. Trudeau is not liberal, except in the modern sense of progressive liberalism, which is merely a thin veneer over the evils of Marxism.

Of course, I’m not Canadian. You probably aren’t either. But don’t think it couldn’t happen here. The Constitution is one of the greatest documents ever written in the history of humanity. Again, this is a fact that no lover of liberty would deny. The problem is that it is, at its core, a piece of paper. Its ideals must be defended, and defended even more fervently when those who have sworn an oath to uphold them would rather spit on them.

Think about the inalienable rights the Founding Fathers thought were most in need of protection from tyrannical governments. Do those in power in the United States support, or even care about, those rights?

Do we have freedom of speech? Ask Joe Rogan and Dr. Robert Malone.

Freedom of the press? See what InfoWars and Project Veritas have to say about that.

Freedom of religion? I know how the thousands of soldiers discharged for refusing the “vaccines” on religious grounds would answer.

The right to assemble peacefully? We’ve spent the last two years barred from doing exactly that!

The right to bear arms? The McCloskeys and Kyle Rittenhouse would like a word.

Protection from unreasonable search and seizure? That’s been gone since 2001, or do you like taking off your shoes at the airport and having every online transaction tracked?

The right to a fair trial and to face your accuser? Derek Chauvin certainly didn’t get a fair trial. The January 6 protestors are still rotting in jail, sometimes with no evidence they did anything illegal at all. Yet Lt. Michael Byrd murdered Ashli Babbitt on that day, and I don’t see him in handcuffs.

Even the states’ rights protected under the Tenth Amendment have been ignored in favor of the regime, as we saw most blatantly in the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania.

Put simply, those in charge, whether here in America or in neighboring Canada, do not care about our rights. They see them as barriers standing in the way of their Great Reset. But those rights are not theirs to infringe upon, or to abrogate.

The whole reason the Founding Fathers wrote that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights is because they are just that. We’re born with them, and nothing can take that away from us. Government’s job is to support those rights, to provide a place for us to exercise them. Not to remove them on a whim.

So many people think the fight is between Democrat and Republican, or liberal and conservative, or even black and white. No. That’s all a distraction. The real struggle is the masses versus the elites. It’s the ideals of freedom standing against the corporeal evils of tyranny. And it’s a fight we have to win. For ourselves, for our children, and for every generation that comes after us, we must stand up to the authoritarians, the totalitarians, the communists and neofeudalists who see humanity as nothing more than sheep to be herded. We must protect our freedoms so those who follow will know that they are there to be protected.

If we don’t—if we lose this battle—then the future is nothing less than a new Dark Age. If we win, all we really gain is a reprieve until the cycle begins anew, because the price of freedom, as the saying goes, is eternal vigilance. But even that is worth fighting for. Liberty is worth fighting for, whether you’re a Canadian trucker, an American teenager protecting his neighbors, a separatist in Catalonia or Crimea, or a demonstrator in Hong Kong. Everyone the world over has that same birthright: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s up to all of us to keep the flames of freedom alive, to cast down those who would seek to quench them.

Trudeau and all those like them must fall. What they are doing is nothing less than a crime against humanity. In some cases, it’s attempted genocide. They want humiliated and silenced, but those punishments are reserved for the ones whose ideals are in opposition to freedom. So is the most final punishment of all. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I really don’t. But I wouldn’t shed a tear for any of them if it did.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Recuperation

In December 2019, I was sick. Not deathly ill, but I certainly had more than a runny nose to deal with. For about a week, I tried letting it run its course, but it only got worse. Let me reiterate that I was never in any actual danger. I never had trouble breathing or suffered from heart problems or anything like that. It was just a bad illness, and I went to the ER because I was worried that I had the flu, which did kill my cousin a few years before.

My brother had the same thing at the same time, so we went together. He got called back first, and the doctor told me, “Your brother tested positive for the flu, and you live in the same house, so I won’t bother testing you. I’m going to treat you as if you had it.” We each got a prescription for Tamiflu, a recommendation for cough syrups that would alleviate the symptoms, and a stack of papers showing our diagnosis: Influenza A/Unknown Pathogen.

Well, it wasn’t the flu, as it turns out. What I had then was the Commie Cough, two months before it was officially released to torment the world. As we now know, the virus itself was let out of its lab as early as September of that year, during or slightly before the Military World Games, which were held in Wuhan. Since then, it has mutated, as viruses do, to become far less lethal and far more infectious. The latest strain (the “Omicron variant”), however, has more hallmarks of human genetic meddling, this time seemingly for the purpose of evading existing natural immunity such as mine.

That part worked, at least.

The last time I wore a mask for any reason was in the ER on that December night. At no point in 2020 or 2021 did I wear one. At no point did I submit to medical screening by a business or government as a condition of entry. In May 2020, I walked out of America’s Best when they demanded to check for a fever—an optometrist has no business asking for my temperature, nor does his cashier, who was the only person I needed to see that day. In November of that year, my brother and I were the only two people in the entire precinct who dared to breathe free while performing that most sacred of American traditions; as Hamilton County uses Dominion machines, I can’t tell you how our votes were counted, but I do know neither of us would ever vote against liberty.

Last year was better, because some people around here have started getting wise to the authoritarians’ game. Instead of being looked at as a pariah, I’m seen as the one who was right all along. A great feeling, but I wish I didn’t have to feel it. (My running joke in 2021 was that my “female” name would be Cassandra. Of course, that is a joke, because I know nothing short of magic can make me a woman, but I hope you get the reference.)

As I’ve said all along, I neither need nor want a “vaccine” based around rewriting my DNA for what is, in 99.9% of cases, nothing more than a mild case of the flu. Now, I can say that with even more confidence, because I have yet again survived what is supposed to be the worst plague of modern times.

The first month of 2022 showed that my natural immunity has waned to the point where I was susceptible again. This time around, the symptoms were almost exactly the same, just milder in every form. I didn’t spend 4 days alternating between fever and chills…just 1. I started feeling sick the Friday before last, January 28. By Tuesday, I was starting to feel better. By this weekend, I was left with nothing more than a nagging cough and a general sense of lethargy.

What’s different this time? I didn’t go to the hospital. I knew that was a waste of time. Early treatment for the Wuhan virus in “professional” settings is still essentially limited to “Lie down until you can’t breathe, then come back in so we can put you on a ventilator until you die.” I’m 30 years too young to get monoclonal antibodies, one of the few working treatments that were still allowed…until two weeks ago. A lifetime of heart problems doesn’t interest me, and even if it did, the vaccines’ staunchest supporters don’t claim they’ll heal you.

Instead, I took matters into my own hands. Following the Zelenko and I-MASK/I-MATH protocols, I spent the past nine days taking a collection of natural supplements designed to treat the symptoms, bolster the immune system, and fight the known dangers of the virus. Specifically, I added these to my daily regimen:

  • Zinc, 50-100 mg
  • Vitamin D3, 5,000-10,000 IU
  • Vitamin C, 1,000 mg
  • Quercetin: 1,200 mg
  • Nigella sativa seed oil: 500 mg

The last was not in my original plan. My boss sent me a bottle as a “get well soon” gift, and I added it to the list once it arrived. It’s on the FLCCC list as a substitute for ivermectin, which I didn’t think I could get, though the dose I took is way lower than what they recommend. (Seriously, at my weight, they want me to take 20x what I have listed here!)

Other than these, the only “medicine” I took was the occasional Tylenol or similar when I felt too much of a headache. It’s almost the opposite of what one of those dancing Tiktok nurses would tell you to do. And it probably had the opposite effect, too, because here I am, 10 days later, feeling just fine. I worked a full day with no ill effects besides the usual fuming at a senior developer who refuses to understand how CORS works—sorry, still annoyed about that one.

But I knew I was never really at risk to begin with. I’m relatively young, and my only comorbidity is obesity. The average virus-related death has 4, and is a man in his 70s. (My stepdad, who turned 70 last month, also had it. He took the same supplements I did, but added prednisone after a trip to the ER that showed potential pneumonia. He’s fine, too.)

This is not a world-destroying plague the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Black Death. The virus that has shut down the world is a run-of-the-mill flu that is easily treatable with OTC products and natural supplements. For those who don’t response to the supplements, we have safe and effective medicine (ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, aided by azithromycin) to help you along, and monoclonal antibody treatment for those who absolutely need it.

Oh, wait. No, we technically don’t have those, because Regeneron has lost its FDA authorization, HCQ is banned in some states, and the Nobel Prize-winning ivermectin is derided as better suited for horses. Yes, that is how much those in power hate us, and how desperately they want us to take their vaccines: they would discourage or outright bar us from using treatments which are known to work. That we’re dealing with a fatality rate of under 0.15% even against those odds should show you just how much of a whimper the big, bad Wuhan Virus really is.

In 2019, I felt like I was ready to die because of the flu I thought I had. In 2022, I’d rather live to protect others’ right to get sick, get over it, and move on with life. Because that’s all we have to do. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Die on your feet

Being a very smart kid in a very rural town, I got bullied a lot when I was younger. Pushed around, told to “move out of my seat”, and all those other wonderful things the supposedly tough boys did to assert dominance over those they considered inferior. Worse, of course, was the way I received the same treatment from adults, specifically teachers and school administrators. In every case, I understand now, the root cause was fear. The bully fears being ridiculed, so he ridicules in turn. Scared of the idea that someone will mock him for his limited intelligence, he does the same to those who have plenty to spare. The psychology just doesn’t change.

A bully is a bully. Even if that bully happens to be the leader of a Western nation.

Justin Trudeau is, to put it simply, no better than the men, women, and boys who bullied me as a child. His behaviors are the same, his actions merely on a different scale because of his influence. Above all, his thinking is the same. He expects to get his way, for the lowly nerds to do as he says and cower before him like they always have.

Bullying is all about control. It’s about proving that you have power over another. When that power is taken away, the bully realizes he’s left with nothing. His threats become hollow, and increasingly shrill, their rising violence matched only by their rising impotence.

The best way to put that fear into a bully is by not complying. Too often, our children today are taught that the only response to bullying is to “tell a teacher”. Many schools level harsher suspensions for self-defense than for the actual attack, as an attempt to further inculcate a sense of helplessness before shows of power. And we’re now seeing cases of students fighting back against the teachers bullying them, defying the unconscionable and increasingly illegal mask mandates; the teachers’ response in one California case was to barricade the students in a room and turn off the heat. Imprisonment and torture, in other words, for the crime of speaking truth to power.

Authority is treated as if it were bestowed by divine right, but that can only go so far. You can only push people so much before they finally reach a breaking point. I reached it on March 12, 2020, and I’m glad to see the wonderful people of Canada letting it be known that they have at last done the same.

Trudeau is nothing but a bully. Now that the people have stood up to him, he has nothing. His power derives, as in any liberal democracy, directly from the consent of the governed. Yes, he can command the police and the military of Canada while he remains in power. Using them against his own, however, would seal his fate. History is littered with the names of dictators, all of which we rightfully spit on today: Milosevic, Ceausescu, Allende, Pinochet. One more would be nothing.

But this doesn’t end in Ottawa, or in Coutts or Tofino. This only ends when the entire world is freed from these tyrants. When no human being anywhere on earth is threatened by the requirement to submit to a medical experiment in order to travel, keep a job, or buy food for his family. When no one is looked down upon for wanting to breathe clean air. When over seven billion human beings are free to live their lives as humans, making their own choices, exercising their own free will.

Canada has shown how to stand up to bullies. Kind, polite Canada, the Ned Flanders to America’s Homer Simpson, has displayed the courage needed to send their bullies into hiding. It’s past time the rest of us followed their example.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Never stop honking

You locked us in our homes for two years.
You let our loved ones die, then denied them the honor of a proper funeral.
You permanently scarred our children’s minds and bodies.
You destroyed our livelihoods.
You laughed as we descended into the depths of despair.
You silenced us when we tried to speak out about your lies and your schemes.

If you have to hear the trucks’ horns every day for the rest of your miserable lives, it will not count for a fraction of the pain and suffering you have inflicted upon us. The punishment must fit the crime, and your crimes are far worse.

Every trucker in Ottawa, in Amsterdam, in Prague, and soon to be in Washington is a hero the likes of which we in America have not seen since the Founding Fathers stood up to the largest and most powerful empire on the planet. Everyone who supports them supports not only freedom, but the most important right of all: to make ourselves heard. All those opposed are mere servants of the cruelest dictatorship this world has ever seen.

Trudeau must go. Biden must go. Merkel and Macron and anyone who has not only allowed this to happen, but encouraged it, must go. We deserve better leaders. We deserve liberty. Those who stand against that deserve all they will receive.

Sic semper tyrannis.

Electric boogaloo

I’m currently on the mend from a recurrence of the dreaded Commie Cough, this time the strain (possibly) designed to thwart existing natural immunity.

I don’t need a vaccine that changes my underlying genetic code. I don’t need a ventilator that doesn’t help. I don’t need a drug rushed to market that causes permanent damage to a third of the people who take it.

All I need to feel better is this:

It’s beautiful and brave, a true display of what the love of liberty is all about. What is happening in Canada right now is what needs to happen everywhere. Every country in the world needs to see the same show of unity against the tyranny that has controlled us for the past two years. End the mandates, end the masking, end the experiments, and end the Great Reset, or we will resist until you do.

May I be deserving

For me, one of the hardest parts of depression to recognize and combat is the feeling that I’m just not good enough. This isn’t quite the same as Impostor Syndrome, which is more the feeling that others think I’m not as good as I claim. No, in this case, I’m the one questioning my ability, my prowess, and my worth.

I have had a few good things happen to me. I can’t deny that. The problem is, I don’t believe I deserve them, so I can’t accept them for what they are. I assume there’s an ulterior motive at work, or that something will happen to knock me back down to where I feel I belong. And the inevitable stumbles only reinforce that belief, proving (in my mind) that I was right all along.

In reality, I’m the CTO of what is potentially a billion-dollar company. My mere presence, according to investors, is worth eight figures. Next week, I’m going to be interviewing someone who may become the newest member of our dev team. In other words, someone who will do nothing but take pressure off of me.

In my mind, I’m a mediocre programmer with no formal training and a wandering mind, whose biggest software release was a recipe book app that racked up 20 sales over three years. No matter what my boss says—or how much he would prefer I call him something other than that—I constantly feel as if I’m one mistake or one missed deadline away from being fired.

In reality, I love and am loved by a woman who has been blessed with seemingly infinite patience. She understands me better than I ever have. She brightens my world, even as she expands it. Just seeing a text from her lifts my spirits and sets me at ease.

In my mind, I wonder how anyone could ever love me, and why, after all I’ve put her through, she hasn’t kicked me to the curb yet. She tells me there’s no one better for her, while I think she could throw a rock from her front door and hit a better man.

At my darkest times, I simply feel that I don’t deserve any of it. The love, the trust, the patience…what have I done to deserve it? Certainly nothing material. My biggest accomplishments of the last ten years in that department are a few novels that almost nobody outside my little circle has ever read, much less enjoyed. Mentally, I know I’m very high on the intelligence scale, but when have I had the chance to use that?

With everything happening in the world and nothing happening in my life, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that my time isn’t running out. I’m 38 years old. Since my birthday three months ago, I’ve often wondered whether I would make it to 40. On the worst days, though, I started wondering whether I wanted to. Whether it was worth going on when I knew in my heart that things weren’t getting any better than they are now. And, even if it was, whether I deserved it.