politics – Page 3 – Prose Poetry Code

Review: United States of Fear

Over the weekend, I was perusing a…well-known library site in search of inspiration or, failing that, simple distraction. Instead, I found United States of Fear, by Mark McDonald, M.D. And I’m glad I did.

This is a very short book, consisting of only four chapters and clocking in at (according to my reader app) a measly 178 pages. I’ve written that much in two weeks before, but that’s fiction. United States of Fear is very much nonfiction. It’s real, the real life we’re dealing with at this very moment.

Dr. McDonald is a psychiatrist working in Los Angeles. In itself, that wouldn’t be cause for celebration. “Nobody’s perfect,” I would say. What makes his perspective important is that he uses his practice and position to publicly call for a return to rationality, something sorely needed in the world today. As he bluntly puts it, America is in the grips of a mass delusional psychosis. This is very similar to Dr. Robert Malone’s diagnosis of mass formation psychosis; in both cases, the point is that most people in this country have fallen victim to a self-reinforcing, even contagious sort of fear.

We can’t blame that entirely on our elected leaders, so many of whom disregarded not only basic scientific facts and their oaths of office, but all common sense in their quest for medical tyranny. We can’t pin it all on mainstream media, which has displayed perverse pleasure in stoking the fears of its dwindling supply of viewers for two straight years. No, we all share in the blame.

The seeds were sown generations ago. As the author explains, the fear gripping our nation today has its roots in the Red Scare of the 1950s, the feminist movement of the 1970s, the political correctness craze of the 1990s, and this century’s obsession with terrorism. In every case, the dangers existed. Some Americans really were Soviet spies. Some men really were rapists and abusers. Some people really were harmed by callous use of language. And some people really were Islamic fundamentalists wanting to destroy the West. But not all of them, and not all the time.

So it is with the Wuhan virus. Dr. McDonald consistently uses that terminology, and I respect him for that. Call this thing what it is: a biological agent released from a lab in Wuhan, China. (In the short weeks since the book was published, we’ve discovered—confirmed, rather—that it was developed by the United States, but that wasn’t known at the time.) Words have power. Names have power. Refusing to use a name because it is taboo only gives that name power over you.

The virus itself, of course, has little power of its own. Yes, it is infectious, but no more than the seasonal flu we’ve all had at some point in our lives. The currently favored strain, dubbed “Omicron”, is even more contagious, and this follows the normal pattern for viruses: they mutate to become easier to spread, but lose their lethality in the process. “Omicron” case numbers bear this out, as the strain is more like a common cold, and the only people dying from it either already had something very wrong, or else they’ve suffered debilitating immunodeficiency effects from the experimental mRNA treatments we’ve all decided to call vaccines.

As the author explains, and as attentive researchers have known since March 2020, the Wuhan virus is essentially only deadly to those who are sick, morbidly obese, or elderly. The fear effects surrounding it, on the other hand, are well on their way to destroying an entire generation. Year-over-year IQ averages have dropped 20 points since 2020; this is more than a full standard deviation, meaning that the average child of 2021 would be in the bottom third of intelligence when compared to those only a year older. Social development is also being stunted, as these same children are having trouble forming friendships and interpersonal bonds simply because they aren’t allowed to. Even infants are suffering: lip-reading is an important part of acquiring speech, yet it’s impossible when everyone around you is wearing a mask. If all this weren’t bad enough, cases of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts in children are skyrocketing (no surprise, as they’ve done the same in this middle-aged man) and too many parents are too afraid to do anything about it.

Dr. McDonald specializes in child psychiatry, so it’s no wonder he spends a lot of time on that topic. Really, though, it’s a symptom of a bigger problem, which he discusses at length. Most of the fear comes from women, specifically educated, left-leaning women in urban areas. In other words, the same ones who have grown up hearing about “toxic masculinity” and “systemic racism” and other such nonsense. They are socially conditioned to look at the world from the perspective of a victim, and what does a victim want above all? Safety. The Franklin quote never enters their minds, except as an object of derision.

Men, he is quick to add, haven’t done their share. We have let ourselves become passive and weak. Although my experience is tainted by the same sort of depression, I can vouch for this personally. I recognize how much of it comes from social expectations. I was raised in a conservative, Christian environment with firm gender roles. The man, I was always told, is the breadwinner, the protector, the paterfamilias. The woman bears children, takes care of them, and serves in general to nurture. Men are strong in body, women in heart, and that’s the way of things.

Modern progressivism and feminism have turned that on its head, denying that this millennia-old way of looking at the world has any merit whatsoever. To this side of the political spectrum, women are supposed to be independent fighters, the center of a household, and men are relegated to a role one step above that of a sperm donor. We lose control, we lack agency, and the very real biological processes underlying the “traditional” family are completely ignored. Not surprisingly, it is this same segment of the population that expresses the most dissatisfaction with marriage, the least desire to reproduce, and the strongest urge to control others’ lives.

That’s the author’s thesis: America has become paralyzed by fear mostly because it has subverted the traditional social order. And I wholeheartedly agree. It’s what I’ve spent the past two years trying to find a way to say. Maybe I don’t always live up to my own expectations—believe me, I’m well aware—but I understand why I have them. Too many people don’t “get” those perfectly natural urges they feel. And we fear what we don’t comprehend.

Before I close out, I will say that Dr. McDonald also doesn’t have a full grasp on the complexities of the situation on the ground. First, he recommends Telegram and Signal as virtual meeting-places because they are “largely secure” and “inaccessible to the NSA.” This is patently false, and it hides a very important point. Telegram is a censorious platform that has suspended users for posting certain information. Signal’s claims of encryption cannot be verified at the protocol level. Both should be considered suspect at best, compromised at worst, and neither is the friend to privacy that we need. Instead, it would be better to promote truly free platforms such as Matrix and the fediverse, as well as applications like Element which make end-to-end encryption simple and safe.

Second, the doctor repeats the mistaken assumption that everyone in America who needs therapy can get it. Some of us can’t. That’s especially true of in-person visits, which are vital for improvement. Most psychiatrists and therapists in rural areas have switched to virtual-only appointments, have adopted anti-health policies of mandatory masks or vaccines, or have an unwritten rule that every mental problem can be solved by just prescribing more SSRIs and amphetamines. The truly good practitioners—what few there are—are booked for months, and some of us need help now. I know. I’ve been there.

Almost no one has the complete picture of just how much the fabric of our society is fraying. I don’t claim to. I only know what I’ve seen and felt. The America I grew up in began dying over 20 years ago, when so many people decided to throw away essential liberty over the fear that a one-in-a-million event would repeat. But it limped along for nearly two decades. The killing blow was in 2020, and it could have been prevented.

I’ll admit that I was afraid of the Wuhan virus at first. But I learned about it, and I realized it was nothing to be afraid of. Anyone who took twenty seconds to check the Diamond Princess figures could say the same thing: this is a bad flu at worst. Instead, they surrendered to fear, and they forced all the rest of us to go along. They brought us into their delusion, whether we liked it or not, and they have imprisoned us inside it with no clear escape.

Every time you see a person wearing a mask outside, you’re seeing a victim of this fear. Whenever you watch a woman—it’s always a woman, and there’s a good reason for that—taking a Clorox or Lysol wipe to her groceries, you’re watching the result of mass delusional psychosis. Overprotective mothers not letting their children play, or even locking them in their rooms, are but a symptom of a greater disease. The Wuhan virus has two safe, effective treatments: ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Our social psychosis has no such easy cure. It will take a lot of work on everyone’s part. Men need to remember that they are men. Women need to be willing to let themselves be protected by those who have evolved to do exactly that. Parents must teach their children that safety is never assured.

“Fear is the mind-killer,” wrote Frank Herbert. A lot of minds have died these past two years, but maybe we can resurrect them.

Disgust

https://newschannel9.com/newsletter-daily/tennessee-appeals-order-blocking-school-mask-mandate-limits

Last year’s state law banning mask and vaccine mandates was a huge win for individual liberty in Tennessee. It put us on par with other free states like Florida and Texas, where people are allowed to live their lives without tyrannical interference and biosurveillance. Now, Waverly Crenshaw wants to take that away, regressing us to the dictatorships of California, et al.

Yes, you heard me right. Waverly Crenshaw, who swore an oath as a U.S. District Court judge to uphold the rights of Americans, wants to overturn one of the greatest victories for human rights in this state’s history and send us back to the dark ages of 2020.

This is a travesty in every sense. It is a blatant overreach by a federal government that anyone who believes in the founding principles of this nation must consider an enemy, indeed an invader. It is a violation of the 9th and 10th Amendments, which secure those rights not expressly defined in the Constitution, such as the right of informed consent stated in the Nuremberg Code. And it will kill Tennesseans, by encouraging the use of a deadly experimental treatment on our children and raising the risk of bacterial pneumonia and other potentially life-threatening conditions due to the constant use of masks that do nothing to protect against what everyone sane realizes is little more than a bad cold.

The justification is flimsy at best, a claim that this rejection of the death cult in Washington is somehow a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. How? In what way is the protection of Tennesseans hurting the disabled? By taking away requirements that they get a shot with a known risk of severe heart conditions, a shot that has already killed thousands of healthy children, teens, and young adults in America? By letting the deaf read lips again, instead of covering everyone’s mouths? By improving children’s mental health through letting them, I don’t know, interact?

As investigative reporters such as Alex Berenson have shown these past two years, the “deadly” virus is nothing to those who are under 50 and in relatively decent health. Even the rest of us can take cheap and safe medications to alleviate the worst symptoms. The only pandemic is stupidity, and it is running rampant in Nashville.

Tennessee has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and that is a good thing. It should stay that way. We want to be like Florida, a model for the rest of the nation and the rest of the world. There’s a reason people are fleeing the totalitarian wastelands of California and New York to come here, and it’s not so an unelected bureaucrat can tell us we have to toe the line.

No, people like Waverly Crenshaw do not deserve positions of power, for they have shown that they abuse their power. They do even not deserve to be called Americans, as they have violated the most basic tenets of the American way. Voting will not solve this problem, because too many who hate our ideals cannot be held accountable through elections. We must find a different solution, one that will remove this kind of rot at its source.

The things we believe in

(Title is a song by Orden Ogan, a great band that doesn’t get nearly enough love even in metal circles.)

In another timeline, this was the day I proposed. No, really. A few months ago, when I was still riding the high of getting a job, I let myself believe that. I planned for it. Today would be the day I drove 100 miles to the home of my beloved, got down on one knee, and asked her to be mine forever.

In this timeline, things went a little differently. I haven’t talked to her in over a month, and the reason is quite simple: I don’t feel deserving. Of her, of a relationship, of happiness itself. I haven’t for a long time, but the past few weeks have made that feeling (or lack of feeling, I suppose) grow by leaps and bounds.

I don’t believe in myself. That’s just a fact. Not only do I not, but I can only question those who do. Why? What have I done that would give you the impression that I’m worthy of that? Why would you think I have an upside? Because I certainly don’t see one.

The question I’ve been reflecting on lately, then, is a natural extension. Since I don’t believe in my own abilities or worth, what do I believe in?

I’m not a religious man. I think I’ve stated that often enough. I grew up in a very evangelical family, and that experience turned me off organized religion, although I still subscribe to a kind of “cultural Christianity”, as it is known. Growing up as an inquisitive, rational thinker, I studied faiths of various sorts, looking for the inspiration so many have claimed to find. What I’ve determined is that the metaphysical is not something that can be studied. It can’t be explained by reason or scientific methods, only personal revelation. As I’ve never had any of those, I consider myself an agnostic in the literal sense of the word: one who does not know.

I also call myself a humanist (in that same literal sense) because I truly have faith in humanity as a whole, in progress and the ability for us to overcome obstacles set by the environment or our fellow human beings. The past two years have shaken that faith to its very core, as I have seen more than half the population of this country, including some of my closest friends and relatives, abandon the notion of cooperation and the Enlightenment ideals I hold dear, replacing them with divisive hatred and prejudice. I continue to believe that we can be better if we all work together toward the common goals of liberty, equality, and prosperity. I am fast becoming a believer in the idea that we unfortunately won’t get to that point without a lot of bloodshed.

I strongly believe that knowledge is power. Learning opens doors. Hiding information harms us all. My brother and I often argue over that tired old thought experiment: What if we discovered aliens? Should the discoverers keep that a secret? He says yes, that the potential for mass panic is too great. I counter by arguing that the knowledge itself is worth it, that the benefits of understanding that we are not alone in the universe outweigh any possible negatives. Ignorance, in my opinion, is not bliss. It is a prison.

I wholeheartedly believe in the necessity and indivisibility of the family. I come from a broken home, and I long ago vowed never to create one of my own. Today, even this has become political, as the very idea of the family unit is under attack, so I must side with the political movement that supports healthy families over single mothers with a string of divorces, or hormone replacements, or eugenic sterilization. If that makes you think of me a bad person, so be it. I admit that some of my allies on this issue hold views I find repugnant. Politics, after all, makes strange bedfellows.

The last point I want to make here is related, and it is, in a sense, the belief I hold most dear. While I don’t believe in any divine purpose to human life (see above for my reasoning), I absolutely believe that we are born with one natural purpose above all: reproduction. Our first goal, as per Darwinian evolution, is the survival of the species and our genetic lineage. If we do that, we are successful biological organisms. If we don’t, we’ve failed. It’s that simple.

Maybe it’s too reductionist, but it does have its advantages. Cries of overpopulation have no effect on me, because I know that this planet is nowhere near its carrying capacity, and progress can only increase that limit. I see through the transparent attempts at population control via the “climate crisis”, the “pandemic”, and other nonsensical notions. Anti-family propaganda merely makes the belief more entrenched.

Belief is nothing unless you act on it, unless you are willing to accept its consequences. Thus, I must accept the logical conclusions to which my beliefs lead. I will not sign an NDA or attempt to gain a security clearance, because I believe knowledge should be available to all, not hidden away for only the eyes of the supposed elite. I will not do contract work for a public school that teaches the harmful ideology of critical race theory. While I support the legality of abortion, I would not consent to it in the case of a woman I impregnated unless she was in mortal danger. I would not accept or pursue a no-fault divorce, especially if children were involved. Finally, if I ever reach the point of knowing with absolute certainty that I am no longer able to fulfill my most natural purpose of fathering a child, I will commit to take steps to ensure I am not a drain on humanity’s collective resources—if absolutely necessary, that would include preparing to end my life by whatever means are available.

The ultimate expression of one’s beliefs is the willingness to die in service of them. Martyrs, crusaders, war heroes, and ideologues the world over have done it for lesser causes. Maybe I’m not yet ready to go that far, but I have been thinking about it. I have been wondering what, if anything, is worth risking my life. Freedom, certainly. Knowledge, most likely. But what else? What else do I consider that valuable?

All that was

(Title is a song by Ayreon that is more than just amazing: it actually fits my mood perfectly.)

It’s hard to think, harder still to act. Lately, the pressure has just been growing and growing, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any end in sight. I’ve come to the conclusion that the end of my journey is looming in the distance, coming ever closer with each passing day.

On some of those days, I’d almost welcome it. That’s how bad things are getting for me.

This isn’t only about depression. It’s not merely a reaction to the violations of human rights I, like billions around the world, have suffered in the past year and a half. No, this is a combination, a culmination, an amalgamation of everything that has happened in my nearly 38 years of life.

We are the product of our experiences. In my case, I’m the product of a world that never cared to care, and that world has worn me down. It has eroded my spirit almost to nothing, washed away my hopes and dreams in a torrent of tears, and drowned all but the strongest emotions. I’m not angry at the world anymore, because it’s nearly impossible for me to feel anger at this point. Instead, there’s just a numbness, an emptiness where such feelings used to be. So it goes for joy, desire, and self-worth, as well. I feel as if I’m nothing, but only because everything that makes me, well, me has been taken away.

I wanted to make the world a better place. To leave it in better shape than I found it, as the saying goes. Over the past few decades, I’ve had innumerable ideas on how best to do that, but the last few years have seen them coalesce around a few pillars.

One is my writing, whether fiction, opinion, or fact. I’ve written over 60 completed stories and worked on 2 nonfiction books, including one that has reached a finished draft. I’d like to do more, because there are still a lot of ideas I’ve never had time to get around to writing. I just don’t feel I’ll ever have time. (Honestly, that would be the case if I knew I would live forever. Such is the life of a dreamer.)

Second on the list is, for lack of a better term, making. I mean this in the “maker culture” sense of creating, DIY, and so on. I have a 3D printer, for example, and a CNC router has been on my wishlist for a year or more. Making things interests me, and I’ve constantly looked for ways to use that interest as a positive force. That has taken me to a lot of different places, researching things like post-apocalyptic prepping or sustainable architecture. Not because I believe in the necessity of such things, but because they overlap with an interest. So they clearly have some purpose, right?

Closely related to this is the software angle. Specifically, I’m a big proponent of decentralization on the internet. I support the so-called Indie Web, the fediverse, and various retro-style applications and protocols such as Gemini. These are things that will help the world, if only they can gain traction. Resistance to censorship is vital today, as anyone who has ever dared to express an unpopular opinion on Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube can attest. Technologies like cryptocurrency are also sorely needed; that’s another road I wish I’d had time to explore.

All of it, however, comes back to one simple thing: freedom. I believe in freedom, in the inalienable human rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness expressed in the founding documents of our nation and the Enlightenment from whence they came. No one should control my life but me. That’s my firm opinion, and it’s the closest thing to dogma you’ll ever hear out of me. The vast majority of my depression, I’ve found, comes from the knowledge that I have essentially zero control over my life. And we have a term for people who have no control over their lives: we call them slaves.

Every single one of my goals, then, boils down to emancipation. Liberation for myself, liberation for others. Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion. The power to speak one’s mind without fear of censorship, whether government or corporate. The ability to defend oneself, including defending ourselves from our elected officials, if necessary. Autonomy of body, mind, and spirit. Freedom of association, to choose those people we would prefer to align ourselves with.

Having no power over my own life, I cannot begin to tackle the larger issue of giving others that same power. I’ve tried. I do what I can, but it just isn’t enough. One man can’t take on a million.

In such dire straits, some turn to faith, but that’s another thing I can’t do. Faith is anathema to me, whether it’s a traditional religion or the new cult of scientism. I have to know. Or, if I can’t know, then I have to know that something is knowable. To do otherwise, in my opinion, is trading one set of chains for another.

No, I really don’t have an easy out. I’m caught, imprisoned, stuck in a place I can’t escape. And it’s my nature to be an escapist. Thus, every waking moment is painful. I can’t be who I am, who I want to be, who I was meant to be. That’s the kind of denial that hurts on every level, and it has taken from me until I now have nothing left to give. It seems that all I have left to hope for is to go out in a blaze of glory, with a bang instead of a whimper.

Defense mechanism

The pithy, meme-like definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. By that standard, I am completely, certifiably insane.

I do the same things, fall into the same patterns, again and again. My days all seem to blur into one, the only breaks in the monotony coming when disaster strikes, such as the death of my cousin in July. Everything in my life feels to me like a downward spiral, as if I’m swirling around a cosmic toilet bowl, and some part of me sees that analogy as all too accurate.

All that should be fairly obvious to anyone who has read some of my earlier posts on PPC. Nothing new, really, except that I think I’ve finally reached the point of acceptance. If the path to becoming a better man, to reaching the kind of life goals I want from myself, requires battling my own inner demons, an apathetic family, and a hostile world at every turn, then I have to stop and ask, “Is it even worth the cost?”

History lesson

World War I is now over a century in the past, but we still remember it today. Four years of bloodshed, devastation, and misery inflicted on the entirety of humanity for the trivialities of a fading noble class. Millions of lives lost, countless others left permanently damaged in body, mind, or spirit. The entire world left upside down.

Some people see their lives as metaphorical warfare, and I often wonder which wars they’re talking about. The movie kind, almost certainly, the stylized tales of individual heroism. They see themselves as protagonists, as the lone wolf fighting off waves of Nazis, Communists, Taliban, or whoever their preferred enemy might be. In their lives, the bullets fly, but they never find their mark. Wounds are patched up off-screen, and the mental trauma is swept under the rug.

Not so for me. I feel more like an infantryman of WWI: nameless, faceless, with little hope for survival. I’m stuck in a trench, never truly gaining ground except to give it right back. Monotony and drudgery are enemies as great as the ones sniping at me, and harder to defend against.

Even the best soldier gets worn down eventually. Even the strongest man cracks under the constant pressure. I was never the best, never the strongest, so I sometimes wonder how I’ve held on this long. And sometimes I wonder if I have, or if I’ve already been broken beyond repair.

I consider myself at war in more than the metaphorical sense, however. As I see it, this whole country—no, this whole world is at war. It’s mostly a cold war at this point, this battle of good versus evil, liberty versus tyranny. We see occasional flickering flames, such as the present rioting in Australia and ongoing protests in France, but most of the war is being waged in the hearts and minds of our fellow man. We’re just waiting for our Fort Sumter, our Lexington and Concord, our Pearl Harbor or Franz Ferdinand or Dien Bien Phu. The moment in which our enemy, in this case the enemy of all that is good and just in this world, finally makes that fatal mistake and turns a cold war into a shooting conflict.

Last stand

But being a soldier is hard work, remember. We in America have been in a constant state of war for twenty years running, but the last few have seen that war turned against the common people, and the past eighteen months have seen the good guys take loss after loss on the psychological battlefield.

Early research into what has, at various points in history, been called combat fatigue, shell shock, and post-traumatic stress disorder gave a good upper bound for the time a battle-ready soldier could expect to be deployed in active combat before suffering a mental breakdown. That time works out to around 280 days; curiously, about the same amount of time as a pregnancy.

We’ve been under siege for twice that, and the numbers show that we’re all starting to break at a frantic pace. Depression is skyrocketing. The same goes for anxiety. General feelings of malaise, despair, hopelessness, and similar negative emotions are so common that it’s getting almost impossible to find someone who isn’t seeing the worst in each passing day.

I have all of the above and more. I used to look at each day wondering what I could do, what I could make, and how I could make a difference. Now, though, I greet each morning with a sigh and a vain hope that it won’t get any worse. I can’t blame all of that on external factors, of course. Some of it comes from my own problems, problems that were exacerbated, not created, by current events.

Placing blame really misses the point. What’s more important is that I’m broken, I know I’m broken, and I accept that putting myself back together is beyond me. I’m a casualty of this war, make no mistake.

If I have to go down, let me go down swinging. That’s all I feel I can ask now. I doubt I’ll ever have children—another hope dashed in the past year and a half—so there aren’t a lot of reasons to keep fighting. What fight I have left, then, is in the defense of the ideals I hold most dear: liberty and justice for all, equal opportunity, the rights each of us has from birth. For the sake of those I love, I’ll fight in the name of those ideals as long as I can. Even if I can’t live in a world free from the evils of tyranny, maybe I can help make it so they can. It’s a small chance, but it’s all I’ve got, so I’ll keep on fighting for it until the bitter end.

I just can’t help but think that end is coming sooner than I ever expected.

No more heroes

(Not a song this time, but a game. A game I’ve never played, in fact.)

The world is a very dark place now. I don’t even mean that from the context of my severe depression. No, anyone can see that humanity as a whole is being forced into a period of fear, repression, and regression. A new Dark Age. Like the old one, this one has a religion at the helm, a cabal of priest-like figures issuing dogma and demanding that we bend our lives, our minds, and our wills to it.

This time, however, that religion isn’t Christianity, but something far worse: Scientism. The perversion of science in the past decade has, as we all know, reached its peak. The falsified data regarding the coronavirus that was released from the Wuhan lab led to the global spread of authoritarianism under the guise of a so-called pandemic that we now know is less deadly than the flu we deal with every year. The same forces are using the same sort of faulty data to push a “cure” that is quite literally deadlier than the disease. Those facts are indisputable by anyone who has taken a critical look at them.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg, the apex of Scientism’s anti-science crusade. While they make a mockery of biology by discarding decades of groundbreaking discoveries, other fields are finding the same fate. Climatology is one of the biggest strongholds of the cult, as findings are routinely discarded or modified to fit the doctrine of global warming. Statistics has suffered, too, with techniques and equations being derided for no other reason than because they were used to illustrate the blatant fraud in the 2020 election. Genetics is in the process of being replaced by gender theory. Math is called racist because its results are objective facts.

This infiltration extends to the soft sciences, too, though it is harder to show what came from Scientism versus what was already present. Psychology isn’t much more than arguing about various shades of “dysphoria” now, but is that a passing fad or a sea change? The push for historical diversity even where there was none can be seen as wokeness or the usual tearing down of work done by the generation before.

Thanks to a complicit media, every part of our lives is currently under the sway of Scientism. In my view, this is exactly like the control of the Church during the Dark Ages, but with one glaring exception. At least Rome provided some benefits to devout Christians. The modern dogma offers only suffering, never redemption.

Heroes arise

It’s a trope older than movies, older even than books. When the darkness is at its fullest, that’s when the stars come out. That’s when the heroes show their faces. At that moment when all seems lost—modern screenwriters literally call it the “All Is Lost” moment—the good guys reveal themselves, or simply reveal their true power.

Since that trope, like so much else in the shared culture that is the West, has been co-opted by the same media whose purpose is to beat us down, the real heroes aren’t often seen. Indeed, we’re supposed to think they don’t exist, and instead give our praise to mediocre athletes, mediocre musicians ,and the occasional random drug addict turned counterfeiter. We aren’t even allowed to look to heroes of old, because all of them have been demonized, excommunicated by the cult of Scientism for the sin of living under a different moral code.

The media’s idea of heroes is like it’s idea of everything else: bland, uninspiring, and designed to appeal to no one while pretending to appeal to everyone. And that almost has to be deliberate. If we have no one to look up to except flawed characters who never truly prevail against the evils in their world, would we not begin to think that such evil in our world is inevitable?

Worse yet, the few actual heroes still around are vilified for taking a stand, because that stand is against the reigning cult. People like Mike Lindell and Jovan Pulitzer, Glenn Greenwald and Alex Berenson, Kyle Rittenhouse and Ashli Babbitt. Groups such as America’s Frontline Doctors. These are the closest thing we have to heroes, because they stand against tyranny. They stand for freedom and the future of humanity. They are willing to put their careers, their reputations, and their lives on the line for what they believe.

Not everyone can afford to take that kind of stand. We’ve become too integrated, too reliant on the very system we need to bring down. But tyrants always fall in the end, and the tide is slowly turning against those of the present day.

Protests in Denmark have succeeded in reversing the draconian restrictions of that country. Those in France are less effective, but attrition is starting to have an effect. The truckers’ strike in Australia, getting precisely zero mainstream media coverage here in the US, has enormous popular support.

Those are big news. They involve the fate of entire countries, entire cultures. One might think that, of the nearly eight billion people in the world, how can one man or woman do anything? But this neglects the local impact, which is no less important. Petty tyrants in your city, county, and state can also be defeated through the same means. Look at how many vaccine mandates had to be dropped at the last minute, as hospitals couldn’t deal with an immediate 20-30% reduction in staff. (I don’t see how, as they’re all pretty much empty, but there you go.) School boards everywhere are backing down as angry parents challenge mandatory mask-wearing for children who were never in any danger to begin with.

It’s a long struggle, but then the fight for freedom is eternal, and it must be waged anew by each generation. In the end, we as a nation and a species will emerge victorious. To do that, however, we need heroes. We need everyday heroes. The father taking his child to school without a mask. The woman willing to be fired rather than injected. The doctor who writes prescriptions for ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine…and the pharmacist who fills them. The researcher risking his career to point out that temperatures were higher in the 1930s. The geneticist who states that X and Y chromosomes do, in fact, exist. The historian who dares to tell the truth about America: that we are a nation found upon the ideals of liberty and justice for all.

And the time may soon come when we are called to defend those ideals in a more physical, more lethal manner. In that case, we’ll need the other kind of heroes, the same kind that our children are being taught to hate today: Washington, Patton, Lee, and all the great leaders from the bloodier times of our past.

When a true believer in his cause assassinated a prominent leader who had forcibly taken his people’s property, denied them the basic rights of law, and waged a brutal war solely because those people wanted to be left alone, he uttered three simple words: Sic semper tyrannis.

Thus always to tyrants.

Human pride

June, as everyone not living under a rock knows, is Pride Month. It’s that special time of year when corporations across the country dress up their logos with the rainbow flag that gains colors faster than a box of crayons and spread vague, virtue-signaling one-liners about how they stand with certain people against hatred. Oh, and there used to be marches and stuff, but then Valentine’s Day used to be a Catholic saint’s day, too.

The original purpose of Pride Month wasn’t that bad…at least in theory. As a social movement to increase awareness of alternative lifestyles and relationships, it served a purpose. Of course, since the Oberfeller decision a few years ago, that purpose is now superfluous. Gay marriage is legal across the nation, the ultimate expression of acceptance. And that case also set a precedent: sexual orientation is considered a protected legal category under the 14th Amendment, so the entire “gay rights” agenda has been fulfilled. Equality is here. There’s no need to fight for it any longer.

Thus bereft of a goal, Pride Month has been left to a rather confusing pair. Commercialization is the fate of all holidays, really, so it’s only natural that a month-long celebration of once-forbidden love would find itself in the corporate crosshairs. But the movement was always geared towards the political left, so we now see the curious juxtaposition of anti-capitalist progressives on June 1 “standing with” the very global corporations they were threatening to boycott on May 31.

Both sets share the same desire, however, so it’s not entirely unreasonable to see this temporary alliance of convenience. For these groups seek to divide us for their own gain. Progressives thrive on conflict, as we know; their whole worldview is based on class warfare, on setting us against each other. Corporations, of course, are only out for short-term gains, but those most immersed in the “pride” culture tend to be the ones with captive markets and virtual monopolies. They can’t very well lose market share, but a few tweets can reach the small segment of the populace who would otherwise ignore them, and that’s just modern PR.

But using this month as a reason to incite further divisions in society or, worse, to cast those who are tired of the force-fed propaganda as hateful and loathsome, is a tragic miscarriage of justice, to say the least. Much like Black History Month, what was once a celebration has become an inquisition. It’s anti-human. It’s anti-equality. It is, to put it simply, a perversion of everything the various equal rights movements were founded upon.

Instead of worshiping what sets us apart, we should begin to embrace what we have in common. We should take pride in being human, because all of us share that. Whatever you believe, whatever you look like, whatever attracts you, you are human. You are one of billions, yet still unique in many ways.

Not only are you human, but so are other people. Everyone you love, everyone you know, is a human being, just like you and me. In a world where dark forces seek to dehumanize us at every turn, to fit the entire population into a number of mutually-exclusive categories solely to set us against one another, it’s important to remember that we are better than that. We can do better.

Within the last decade, we proved that by ending a restriction, a limitation of rights defined as inalienable, that had been in place for over 200 years. None of us is lesser because of who we love, and that statement is now the law of the land. True, we may not always live up to the ideals we express, but that is no reason to reject them. No, we must do better. We must strive to reach them, while knowing we will never quite attain the perfection and utopia we long for.

We are human. Our reach will always exceed our grasp, but that should not dissuade us. The pride we should celebrate is not that which separates us, and certainly not the idea that some of us deserve more because of who we are. No, our pride is in the knowledge that humanity can grow, that each and every one of us can contribute to that growth if we all work together.

Progress doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight, if you’re black or white, if you’re male or female. All that matters is being human. The only entry card to the clique of progress is your humanity. As corporations aren’t people, they’ll never understand that. As progressives stand against unity, they will always fight it. But we know the truth.

In this month and every month to come, be proud. Be human.

Dear agony

(Title for this post is from the Breaking Benjamin song of the same name, whose refrain you’ll see as soon as I finish this parenthetical.)

Dear agony,
Just let go of me
Suffer slowly
Is this the way it’s gotta be?

The simple answer to your question, Ben, is…no. No, it doesn’t have to be that way. But only if something good happens to give you a little bit of hope.

Over the past few weeks, it has.

For fifteen long months, I had suffered. I had all but given up. I’m not afraid to admit that. There were nights that I cried myself to sleep, days where I would hide in my room, not wanting to do anything but sleep. And if that sleep turned into the more permanent sort, well, I wouldn’t have been opposed. At least then the pain would stop, right?

Now, I honestly feel like a whole new person. While I’m sure a certain man in northern Virginia wouldn’t mind taking all the credit for that, it wasn’t just the job that gave me hope. No, landing that position merely gave me the spark. As I’ve said often, if I could get just one good thing to happen to me, all the rest would fall in line. And it might be doing precisely that.

The world still sucks, as we all know, but things are getting a little better. The ranks of those who question the narrative are growing, and they have grown large enough in my humble state to start putting the brakes on our slow decline into tyranny. Better would be throwing this train into reverse and getting us back to liberty: banning mask mandates, banning vaccine passports, opening schools and bars and sporting events. In short, living our lives, instead of cowering in fear. But any progress is good, even if it’s so slow that snails are outrunning us.

That is one belief I hold dear. Progress is good. Progress has given us immeasurable benefits, and it will continue to do so as long as we embrace it. Not everything new is progress, however. Anyone who has grumbled over an app update or yelled at a voice menu knows that all too well.

True progress is that which improves the human condition: longer lives, healthier lives, more freedom, more resistance to the ravages of nature, and so on. Unfortunately, it’s so often the case that we are told these things are bad. We’re defying the will of God or poisoning Mother Earth or whatever.

The worst of this sort of thinking became popular last year, when elites and their hangers-on parroted the line, “Nature is healing.” In effect—and, in some cases, in words—these people made the claim that we humans are a pathogen, and the made-in-China coronavirus was, in fact, a natural response to our overreach in some nebulous way. Of course, the same people say the same things about weather disasters, so you can’t take them seriously, but the sheer idiocy of such a statement never fails to annoy me.

My contemplations of the past year or so gave rise to technetism, but this anti-human religion gives it an enemy. And I feel it gives me a higher purpose, something beyond writing novels and computer programs. Common sense dictates that I reject the nihilism and doom-saying of the environmentalists, the pandemic fearmongers, and all those who stand in the way of progress.

However, a negative philosophy is no philosophy at all; this is my biggest criticism of atheism, and it fits here, too. It is perfectly fine to say that you don’t believe in something, but far more fulfilling if you can find something you do believe in. If you have to make it yourself, then so be it. Every movement began somewhere.

I choose to believe that humans are an inherently positive influence on the world, and on each other. We build, we create, we invent. We solve problems. We come together and make something greater. Yes, there are individuals (and large groups) standing in our way, blocking our progress. Impediments have always existed, though. They’ll never truly go away. What we can, and must, do is overcome them. The best way to start, in my opinion, is to be more sociable. Shake hands, hug, get close to one another again. Take off the masks and let people see that we are human beings.

There’s still a lot of agony out there. For me, it hasn’t all gone away over the past few weeks. But now I have enough positive influences in my life to see the sun peeking through the clouds. Now I have a reason to fight that extends beyond myself and those I love.

Maybe that’s all I needed.

May it be

(Yes, it’s a pun. You’ll just have to get over it.)

At the start of April, I felt I had nothing and I was going nowhere. It’s just that simple. A long time ago, I decided I wouldn’t sugarcoat things here, so I told the truth as I saw it: I began last month aimless and, to put it simply, hopeless.

Since then, things have taken a turn for the better. I have a job as a full-stack developer—basically what I was already doing, but with the added bonus that I’ll be paid for it now. My relationship with the woman I love is slowly but surely picking back up, and I believe it’ll soon reach new heights.

Best of all, Hamilton County at last rescinded its illegal mask mandate a few days ago. Now that this human rights violation is gone (a year too late, if you ask me), I can actually go inside again. I mean, I could before, but only if I went up to Dayton, which doesn’t have nearly the commercial variety of Chattanooga. Now, though, we have finally been allowed to regain one of the vital freedoms, the inalienable rights, we lost last year.

We still lack others guaranteed by the Constitution. Freedom of speech is useless if you’re blocked from using it at every turn, as anyone who criticizes the regime on Facebook or Twitter (or who tries to start an alternative) will quickly discover. Freedom of religion and assembly both normally require being in proximity to other people; Zoom calls just don’t cut it. The right to privacy (enumerated, in part, by the Fourth Amendment) has been in mortal danger for two decades, no matter which party claims to be in power.

To be sure, other places have it worse. Most other English-speaking countries are effectively country-sized prisons at this point: Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are the most notable. The Pacific states get to suffer both lockdowns and riots. Compared to the sheer horror of other places, rural Tennessee really isn’t that bad.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot more philosophical. I attribute this to my precarious mental state, my disdain for the way things are, and maybe even the first wisps of middle age, a phase of my life I’m approaching far too quickly.

I won’t say I’ve become religious, because I still find most forms of organized religion to be far too controlling and irrational for my tastes. If I wanted that, I’d turn on CNN, not TBN. But I, with a little help from those closest to me, have been discovering a kind of spiritual side of myself that was buried deep within.

(One of the few perks of getting older is that you get to use a few certain phrases to start sentences. Here’s one of them.) For decades, I’ve wanted to make an impact on the world, a change in the way things are that bring them closer to how I feel they should be. I don’t believe I’ll ever be the kind of thinker who deserves to be named alongside Thomas Paine, John Locke, or Baruch Spinoza, three of my favorite Enlightenment-era voices, but I do feel I have something to contribute in that vein.

I’m calling it technetism: literally, belief in creation. Because that is what I believe in. Creation over destruction. If I’ve learned anything from the depths of the past year, it’s that. What I value most strongly as a person, as a human being, is the positive power of making something. Whether that’s a computer program, a garden, a baby, a house, a scientific discovery, or a new social order, as long as you’re creating something, you’re adding to humanity as a whole. If you only destroy, by contrast, you’re taking away from all of us.

Creation, then, is the central pillar, but not the only one. It’s flanked by two others that, to me, also represent fundamental aspects of being human: learning and exploration. Without knowledge, we can’t make the right decisions; learning is the way we acquire that knowledge. Exploration lets us grow our worlds and add to our experiences, ultimately with the goal of sharing them through creation, even if that creation is merely the making of a new friendship or a lifelong relationship with, say, a soulmate living 100 miles away.

All three of these qualities are sorely lacking today. Too many people are seemingly against the whole idea of learning, closing their eyes and their minds to anything but the propaganda doled out by their favorite news outlet. Exploration is actively discouraged from childhood, and actually illegal in many places at the moment, because our society has chosen the wrong path in prioritizing safety above all else. And finally, we have all seen the sheer destruction that has wracked our country since last May.

Someone has to stand for what is good in this world. It might as well be me. I’m a man of principle, and I will stand up for what I believe is right. I will speak out against the evils I see in society, and those bent on destroying it. I do this not to make enemies, but to remind you that we can all be friends.

We have more in common than we realize, because we are all human. Deep down, we all have that spark of creation within our hearts. It doesn’t matter if you think it came from God or evolution or whatever. It doesn’t matter if that heart is inside a white body or a black one, a male or female. We are creators. We are explorers.

I, for one, am going to act like it.

Year of hell

(The title isn’t from a song this time. Instead, this very appropriate name comes from my favorite episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the most underrated of the Trek series.)

One year ago, I was free. One year ago, I had hopes and dreams. I believed I had a chance to succeed, to achieve some of the life goals I’ve had for decades. I lived in a country where this was possible, if unlikely for one such as myself. I was depressed, yes, but I felt like I could see the light, that I could reach it, if only I tried hard enough.

A lot can change in a year.

Now, I live in a dystopian nightmare. I haven’t been inside a business in a full year, apart from five seconds inside the America’s Best store in Hixson last May. I went in to get my new glasses. I’d gotten the prescription in February, but then I had to find the money to pay for them. By the time I finally managed that, the whole world shut down, with the notable bastions of intelligence in Sweden and South Dakota. So I couldn’t actually pick up my order until businesses were “allowed” to reopen.

But it wasn’t that simple. As soon as I walked inside, the cashiers demanded a temperature check, so I walked right back out. My mom, who took me down there (can’t drive without glasses, remember), is less allergic to authoritarianism, so she submitted to the illegal medical exam long enough to retrieve what I had already paid for.

Since then, I’ve mostly stayed at home. And that’s most certainly not because I believe that’s the best way to combat a virus.

No, lockdowns don’t work. We have proof of that. You only need to look at the places that didn’t imprison their entire citizenry for months on end to see the real numbers. Similarly, masks don’t work. That’s why I haven’t worn one since December 2019, when I thought I had the flu. (As it turns out, I had the Wuhan coronavirus. You know how I know? Because it was listed as the flu and an “unknown pathogen” on my release papers.) As I haven’t been sick—in the physical sense, as I know I’m seriously mentally ill—since, I’ve seen no reason to restrain my breathing, trigger my anxiety, and curtail my liberty in that manner.

Well, you might think, what about the vaccine? Uh-uh. First off, it’s not a vaccine, because the purpose of a vaccine is to provide immunity to a virus by stimulating the body’s immune system. The Moderna and Pfizer mRNA treatments don’t do this. They don’t prevent you from contracting the Wuhan virus. They don’t prevent you from spreading it to others. They barely alleviate the symptoms. What they actually do is even worse. Ask Hank Aaron. Ask the nurse from Chattanooga who passed out on live TV. Ask the women who’ve had miscarriages, the perfectly healthy men in their 30s who have suffered serious injury or even death.

The virus has an overall fatality rate of around 0.02%, and essentially no reinfection. (Wait, 0.02%? Don’t the official numbers say 0.26%? Yes, but those are heavily inflated. Per the CDC’s own report, only about 6% of deaths can be traced to the virus itself. The rest are due to comorbidities: preexisting conditions such as obesity, heart problems, kidney failure, etc. Since comorbidities aren’t counted for vaccine deaths, we need to compare apples to apples.)

The mRNA “vaccines” cause serious harm in about 5% of cases, and death in as many as 0.4%. We don’t know the exact figures, because they rely on voluntary reporting, and no one wants to point out that Emperor Fauci has no clothes. However you look at the data, though, it doesn’t lie. On the whole, getting the virus is actually safer than getting its supposed cure!

And that’s merely one more truth the world has decided to deny in the past year. But there are many more.

Lockdowns are ineffective. They achieve nothing in terms of slowing the spread of an illness, unless you go to the extremes of a certain communist dictatorship and weld people’s doors shut so they can’t go outside. As sane countries are supposed to respect things like basic human rights and dignity, citizens will go outside. And they should, because the fastest way to end a pandemic is to reach herd immunity.
The Chinese virus isn’t even a pandemic. Take away the overinflated death counts, where suicides, overdoses, car accidents, and murders are attributed to a virus simply because the victim tested positive in a flawed procedure three weeks before the time of death, and it never reached the CDC’s defined threshold of pandemic status. That’s when approximately 5% of all deaths are caused by the pathogen in question; only by counting every death under the sun were we able to hit that mark even at the peak last April.
The makers of the “vaccines” have ulterior motives. Notice that they are indemnified against all liability, and they’ve received billions of taxpayer dollars. These treatments have bypassed the normal FDA requirements, and why? The virus isn’t another Spanish flu. It’s not smallpox or polio. It has killed fewer people than tuberculosis in the past year.
People are suffering. The single-minded focus on this particular virus has caused irreparable harm to our society and our populace. Suicides are at an all-time high. Childhood trauma is rampant. Depression and anxiety, as I know all too well, can make plenty of people wish they were dead, or at least not living through this.
The media is not on our side. For twelve months, they have parroted the talking points of a specific segment of the political spectrum. Andrew Cuomo was a hero when he sent infected patients to nursing homes a year ago, killing thousands of elderly men and women. The governors of California, Washington, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, and many other states have acted in a way more appropriate to the old Soviet Union, if not the feudal era. And not only have journalists not called out these gross abuses of power, but they have lauded them every step of the way.

Twelve months ago, even expressing these ideas was heresy of the highest order. You were instantly branded a denier, a skeptic, an alt-right fascist terrorist. You were called racist, sexist, or any number of other hateful epithets.

Now? Oh, it’s even worse. But some people are waking up. There’s a strong anti-mask movement that isn’t hard to find. The worst government abuses and excesses are finally getting pushback. Alternative social media platforms are gaining in popularity, especially now that the big players—Google, Twitter, Facebook—have deemed scientific accuracy and a love of personal liberty to be violations of their terms of service.

It’s been a rough year. In twelve months, I’ve gone from cautiously optimistic to suicidally depressed. The only thing that gives me hope is the knowledge that I’m not alone in this. Anyone who has taken any time at all to think about what we’re being forced to endure feels the same way. We don’t want a “new normal”, where children aren’t allowed to play, where handshakes and hugs are illegal, where you’re a prisoner in your own home unless you agree to undergo experimental genetic modification. No, we want what we had. What was taken from us.

This “pandemic” isn’t worth the name. Compare the total death counts in the US from 2019 and 2020. Shouldn’t those “500,000 coronavirus deaths” show up there? Look at the flu stats for this winter—rather, the total absence of them. Look at the mental health crisis sweeping our nation, and tell me stopping what amounts to a bad cold is worth that cost. Spare a thought for the record number of suicides in the last year.

Because there were a lot of days where I almost joined them.